99 Transcript: Trusting the Intelligence of Your Heart (with Leyla Salvade)
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J: You're listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast, episode number 99.
Intro: Welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast, stories of vibrant women living happy lives. And now, your host, Jen Riday.
J: Hey there, welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast. I'm Jen Riday and I am here to help you heal your heart, to take care of yourself and get out of that place of burnout and overwhelm and feel like you're in control of your life and time again. Every week, I talk to an amazing woman who shares with us her secret for living a vibrant and happy life. So welcome, I'm glad you're here. I talk a lot on the show about listening to your intuition, you've heard me mention ‘mountain moments’, taking some time every morning to get out of the trees of your busy life, your to-do list, your errands, your stuff that you're doing and maintaining and managing, to get out of that, get out of the trees so you can see the forest. I call this a ‘mountain moment’, taking time to breathe, to observe your body, to let go of what doesn't serve you, and to kind of ask questions of God or a higher power or your intuition whatever language use. When we do this, we have intuitive serendipitous experiences. We open ourselves to more of our heart intelligence. And that's what this episode is about today. I’m talking with Leyla Salvade all about the intelligence of the heart, how we can tap into that and grow more capable at listening to our intuition and to our hearts.
I'm so excited to talk to her, and we're going to dive into that in just a moment. But first, I want to read our review of the week from Mutale. She says, “Dr. Jen Riday hosts phenomenal Vibrant Happy Women and there's been at least one vibrant happy man on her podcast. These guests embody a wealth of tried and tested knowledge and wisdom that they share to each of us in the spirit of enhancing our personal growth and well-being. Dr. Riday’s style and approach exude love, gentleness, kindness, and authenticity. If you're looking for real and hands-on tools to guide your process of personal growth and healing, this is the podcast for you. When you become the person you were created to be, you'll give your family, your community, and your world the precious gift of you- Mutale.” Thank you, thank you, thank you. I couldn't agree more with you, Matale, about that last part. When you take care of yourself and become the person you were born to be, you have so much more to give your kids and your spouse and to share your purpose and gifts and light with the world; and that's what this is all about. So thank you so much for that review. And for those of you listening, if you haven't left a review of the show on Apple podcasts yet, I would love and be so grateful if you could do that. Just go to jenriday.com/review and you can find everything you need there; I would love it. It helps Vibrant Happy Women to grow and it means so much. And maybe I'll get to read yours on the air next week. So thank you.
Last week, I spoke with Lea Guy all about how to slow down and find yourself so you can walk the fearless path of love and not fear. That feels so much better to be in that energy of love, right? Well, if you didn't listen to that, go back and do so because she shared so many great tips about being in that energy of love; that's at jenriday.com/98. Well, and as I mentioned, Leyla Salvade is our guest today, talking about trusting the intelligence of our hearts. And without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into her phenomenal interview.
I'm really excited to introduce Leyla Salvade today. And she was born in Switzerland, raised with a melange of 6 different languages and cultures under one roof, and she's lived in Phoenix, London, LA, and New York City, where she currently is right now during this interview. She founded Standing Light in 2014 after being given the name, Standing Light, in a powerful meditation while living in LA, the City of Angels. She spent the next 2 years in requesting and pushing through every block of fear she could find that was holding her back from shining her brightest light. This is a continuous quest and we're so excited to have you here today, Leyla, to share more ideas about your quest and how you're shining your light, because we all want to do that. So welcome.
L: Thank you so much, it's a pleasure.
J: Yeah, I'm so excited. I met Leyla, just like Jaya who I interviewed earlier, in Santa Fe; just like this collection of amazing women, and I knew I had to have her on the show. So I'm so glad you're here, Leyla; so fun.
L: It is; it's so much fun. And Jaya is incredible. I love her.
J: Yeah, so many amazing women out there and I just love getting to talk to you guys. So… well, let's jump right in with a quote that you want to share with us today.
L: Of course. So one of my favorite quotes, it's from The Little Prince actually, and it goes like this, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye,” and that is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; I hope I'm saying that correctly. (Laughs)
J: Nice! You definitely know your languages; that's great. From The Little Prince; okay, I love that. So tell us more, what do you mean by what you can see with the heart? Because, you know, we talk a lot about women's intuition, but some of us are like, “Oh, is that my intuition or is that something else?” What does it mean for you?
L: Exactly. Well, that's just it, you know? I mean, from an early age on, were taught to think versus to feel in school, you know, we're taught that the mind is the most powerful in your tool. And this notion begins at an early age where feeling is thrown out of the window and only the mind has room to grow, in a sense. So something that I've been questing on, you could say, is the intelligence of the heart. It's something that really, in reality, I really feel I've been questing on my entire life, however, more focused and in a more academic sense over the last few years, I would say. And what most people don't know, in fact, is that the heart is the first organ that grows in the fetus, and it begins to beat before the brain in the head is ever developed.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And so there's a group of scientists in Northern California, they're called… they developed The Institute of Heart Math over 20 years ago.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And they began studying the power the intelligence of the heart. And they, through this study, realized that the heart has its own brain. And there's different beliefs around this, but I personally would say that the heart is in fact 100 times more intelligence than the brain in our head.
J: Ooh, wow! So what do you mean by ‘its own brain’? Like neural connections or it knows what to do, you know?
L: Yes. It literally has its own brain. Like, the same brain that is in our head is also in our heart; much smaller of course.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: But it's the same thing. And it creates a, what you call, a toroidal field of energy around us. So we are energetic beings in fact, and it is through the heart where that energetic field around us that a lot of people talk about is actually generated.
J: Ooh, I love this so, you know, a lot of us in… it's getting pretty mainstream. We talk about chakras; root chakra, sacral, heart.
L: Yes, right.
J: So you're saying the energetic field or maybe the aura starts at the heart.
L: Yes.
J: Ooh, cool.
L: Well, I don't know if it starts up a heart. What I do know is that, you know, we have 7 chakras, right, or we have many, many more chakras actually, but the most famous ones are the 7 chakras that are in alignment of our spine.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And what is actually interesting that I found is that, the heart is the center chakra.
J: Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
L: So it rules in a sense it's ‘as above, so below’, right? And it's the one in the center that kind of rules the ones below and the ones above.
J: Ooh, ‘as above, so below’. So tell us more about energy and the ways we might pick up on it without knowing, especially if we're inexperienced with how that works.
L: Sure. Well, you know, one fun way I like to talk about this is through Disney actually because there's so many movies that talk about this. Like talk about Pocahontas, for example, and mother a tree, she tells Pocahontas listen to your heart, right? And then she closes her eyes and she listens and she starts to hear everything, right?
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And all of our lives, were surrounded by all of these signs and symbols, in a sense, we're guided to listen to our heart. But due to social conditioning, we don't.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And when we're talking about energy, it's something that is so deeply within us. We are energy and we tend to shut that out because it's quite scary because we're not taught how to deal with that.
J: Mm-hmm, yeah.
L: And when we're in a state of fear of something and confusion, of course we're not going to venture there, right? I also love to talk about the virtue of courage.
J: Oh yeah.
L: And what I love to enlighten people on is that courage, the actual word itself, it's derived from the French word ‘coeur’ which means heart. So to be courageous means to act from the heart. And when we have the courage to connect to our heart and open it up, which believe me, I know for myself is a very, very scary thing, but just like with everything else, when you practice, it becomes second nature. So just how you would go workout in the gym and, you know, lift weights and… and break those muscles so that they can rebuild to stronger ones, when we choose to use courage rather than fear, we're really training our heart to open and expand into bigger realms so that we can let more love, more light, more everything in and become more resilient towards whatever may come our way.
J: Mmm. Yeah, they say… a lot of people say, “Hate is the opposite of love,” but really it's fear that's the opposite of love.
L: It’s fear, yeah.
J: So how do we go about moving into that energy of love and expanding that instead of staying in fear which, you know, it's so easy to do?
L: Right. And that's such a beautiful question. You know, I say, whenever we deal with a heartbreak, I truly believe, of course it's painful, but I think it's also one of the most beautiful blessings we've got, because it's our heart breaking open again to create more space to let more beauty in. And it's a matter of ‘the art of letting go’, what I call basically; that practice.
J: Okay.
L: So we're going to get hurt, we're going to be disappointed and we're going to feel pain.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: Instead of shifting or letting ourselves shift to that space of hate or fear… and you can feel it, it's energy, right?
J: Yeah, yeah.
L: Like when you’re in that space, it’s like, “Oh my god, I don't feel good.” You feel heavy, you feel all that like icky, nasty stuff that just doesn't feel good, right?
J: Yeah, yeah.
L: And we are here on this beautiful planet earth to be our most vibrant happy selves, as your beautiful podcast is called of course, right?
J: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
L: So when we just are able to, in that moment of fear, just for a second, step out of it and say … and almost take like an outside perspective, right?
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And say, “Okay, why is this happening to me? Because it is happening for a reason; if it's happening, it's happening for a reason. So what is the lesson in this? How can I grow through this? How can I transcend?” And it's in that moment where you're literally choosing to shift from a space of fear into love, just by asking the questions, just by being curious.
J: Ooh! So you're asking, “Why is this happening?” and, “How can I grow and transcend this? Wow!
L: Exactly.
J: It's so interesting. Fear feels really stuck to me.
L: Yeah.
J: And dark, like you mentioned. But this… as soon as you said those questions, I could feel that heart expansion, you know?
L: Exactly, yeah.
J: Growth, that's what we want.
L: Exactly.
J: And is it possible to feel the pain of a heartbreak and the heart-opening growth at the same time? Like…
L: Totally.
[Laughter]
L: Absolutely. And that's the conundrum, right?
J: Yeah.
L: Because like, you're going to feel it, but what happens, I feel like there's almost like stages and you'll feel it; and the thing is, the stages become faster and quicker the more you practice.
J: Yes.
L: So, once… you know, if I get hurt or if I get into a fight or a situation, that's just, you know, in a lower vibration, let's say, I can much faster now take myself out of it and say, “Oh my gosh, okay let's reframe this. How can I show up through love? And how can I grow? And how can I transcend this?” So there'll definitely be pain, but it's up to you how fast you want to shift through that pain and let in the love.
J: Yes, so it's a choice.
L: Yes.
J: Oh, I love that; I love that. Because I find, you know, when I was in my darkest time as a mom and I wasn't open to new ideas like this, I just wallowed in that pain and I thought I couldn't get out. But what would you say to someone who hasn't had a lot of experience with this, “Just start with the questions and see what happens,”?
L: Start with curiosity, start with forgiveness; I think is most important because we judge ourselves so easily.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And it's only once we are open enough to look at ourselves through love, which by golly, is definitely one of the hardest things any of us have to go through before we can love anyone else, we've got to love ourselves truly.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And I would say that the practice of self-love is perhaps one of the most difficult things we as humans have to overcome.
J: Yes, for sure.
[Laughter]
L: So I would say forgiveness first. And by that, you know, forgiving yourself or whatever you may have done said or experienced in the past. Pain is relative. No matter what I've gone through or you’ve gone through, we’ve all felt pain.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: We're not exempt from it; nobody is.
J: Yeah.
L: And that's why we're here, right? We're having this human experience called life so that we can grow and transcend from these lower vibrational aspects that are really, you know, so available in this dimension. And I'm getting a little bit esoteric, but once we are able to really look at ourselves in a space of love versus hate, that is one of the most powerful shifts we can experience for ourselves. And it's not easy, but it's also not meant to be easy, because nothing worth having is going to be easy.
J: Mm-hmm, I agree. So you talked about lower vibrations. Just for those listening who might not understand that language, what do you mean by lower versus higher vibrations?
L: It literally translates into a feeling that you can actually viscerally feel within your body. And when I say ‘lower vibrations’, let's talk about… an example would be, when someone's like really like screaming at you with rage, that feeling that you're feeling in that moment is probably one of the lowest vibrations you can feel.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And then when someone is praising you, but not in… you know, not in a fake, surface level way, but really genuinely just like looking you straight into the eyes and speaking into your heart really and just saying, “You are so beautiful. You are so precious. I love you. You are everything. And you can do anything,” I mean, you know, just feel it right now, it's like you can literally feel the difference, right?
J: Exactly.
L: And when I say, “We are energetic beings,” it's just that we are constantly connecting through energy and we're giving out energy as well. So we've got to be really responsible the more we learn of how we are going to share our own energy and how we're going to protect our own energy.
J: I love that word ‘vibration’. And maybe you don't know, and probably most of our listeners don't know, but one of the reasons it's called Vibrant Happy Women is because vibrance is related to the word vibration, and we want to be vibrant. And we know what that feels like; it feels like energized and positive and happy and radiant.
L: Yeah.
J: And so when we talk about being vibrant and happy, we can think of… of you, Leyla. (Laughs) I love…
L: (Laughs)
J: I love your definition of that. Well, so as you were talking about that, someone looking you in the eyes and saying, “I love you. You are so precious,” I've had that experience a very few times. One of them was connection to God or the universe and I just felt that energy come to me. And once I had it, I couldn't question it, it was almost like I had moved vibrationally up. But for those who maybe had parents who weren't loving and… and they waffle somewhere in the middle, if you ranked it from a scale of 0 to 10, they’re may be in the 5s, what's the easiest way you've found to raise your energetic vibration or… or that feeling you have if you're just kind of waffling there in the middle?
L: It's… again, it's the self-love practice, it's the forgiveness practice. Because we've all… no matter how perfect or unperfect parents are, there's always going to be a moment where a child is going to experience not being loved.
J: Yes.
L: And that's… you know, that's just part of this journey. And it's in those moments where we have to realize that, only we are responsible for our own love; nobody else can give us love.
J: Ooh yes, I love it! Keep going! Preach this!
[Laughter]
J: Say that one more time. I mean, like, everyone, listened to this. Say it again, Leyla. (Laughs)
L: Only we are responsible for our own love; no one else is responsible for it. And once we become the love generator of ourselves, like we have the courage to forgive because it's so freaking hard to forgive; it really, really is, right? We're holding on to this like heavy, heavy stuff that's so hard to break free from because it's like it's anchoring us down, right?
J: Yes.
L: And we feel stuck, we feel lost, we feel confused. And just choosing to literally just like lift off one of those anchors is already one of the most courageous steps you can take. So when it comes to parents, we also need to realize they're just human too; they're also just trying to figure this thing called life out. They're not perfect, right?
J: Yeah. Right.
L: Nobody's perfect, right? That's why we're here.
J: Right.
L: And projecting blame onto our parents is… I mean, talk about low vibration. I don't need to sound harsh but it's a little bit stupid, right?
[Laughter]
J: Right, right, right.
L: Like nobody is responsible for us besides ourselves. And of course, we hope; we do hope that we can be in a safe environment. That's, of course, like you never want to have your sacred boundaries be taken advantage of; that's not okay. And we also have to be a very mindful of that and being very clear about our only sacred boundaries. However, just as much as… I don't know if you watched… what's movie called? ‘The cabin’ (or something like that)?
J: I'm not sure. Oh, ‘The Shack’, is it?
L: ‘The Shack’, exactly. Have you seen that movie?
J: I have only read the book.
L: Okay. I think that's one of the most beautiful portrayals of everything that I'm talking about because it's really talking about forgiveness and just realizing that, hurt people hurt people.
J: Mmm-hmm. Oh yeah, isn't that true? And then so many moms say, “I want to be a better mom. I want to be more patient.” So instead of trying to will it to happen, heal your heart and stop hurting and then you will hurt others less. Ooh! That's so good, Leyla.
L: Yeah. You know, as for parents, it just goes along with the territory, you know? And it's not just parents, it's also kids that may have, you know, taunted us in high school or middle school or elementary school whatever it may be, you know? I mean, growing up, I'll share a little story, for example.
J: Yeah.
L: When I was in middle school, I had just moved from Switzerland to the States. I was 12 years old and I entered into sixth grade, where for the first few days, I was invited and I had the privilege just sit with the popular girls.
J: Mmm.
L: Because my neighbor was the most popular girl at school and I was carpooling with her.
J: Oh nice; or maybe not nice.
[Laughter]
J: I don’t know where this is going.
[Laughter]
L: Of course, it was very nice; it was very sweet.
J: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
L: However, you know, I have just come from Switzerland I was used to just playing in the woods and just being adventurous and town boyish and just being one with nature and just being silly and playing, right?
J: Yeah.
L: And then moving to Scottsdale, Arizona, which by the way, is dubbed Snopsdale, Arizona; which should only enlighten you and where I'm going with this.
J: (Laughs)
L: I'm sitting in Scottsdale, Arizona, in middle school, sixth grade, at the popular table and they're talking about how they want to match their outfits tomorrow with the color pink and this and that. And I just… it just, you know, however, sweet and beautiful that is. And believe me, I’ve probably had those conversations myself with some of my best friends at some time at some point in life. But it just… you know, it was a continuous conversation of that stuff, and all I wanted to do was just play and have fun and be silly and do that. So I then decide I wanted something a little bit more interesting, I guess, for me.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And I ended up going to sit with the punks.
J: Ooh!
L: Yeah. So that led to a whole upheaval because I think that the popular girls took it as an offense. And for a good year, I would say at least, it was like a sting against Leyla in middle school.
J: Ooh.
L: Because they just hated me for leaving me. And of course, it had nothing to do with me, it was just their own personal issues, you know, of abandonment or whatever it may be and they just took it personally, right?
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And I could have so easily, for everything that they've done… they did some really, really mean things, you know?
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And I could, to this day, still choose to hang on to anger and, “How could you?” and… and just live with the story of the victim, right; me as the victim
J: Yeah, yeah.
L: But I chose, even then, that it wasn't personal to me and whatever was going on with them was their issue and I chose to forgive them.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And I'll never forget, I was actually, at this point, in college in London England. And one of the girls, the most popular girls, actually, was going on a school trip to London; she was passing through. She reached out a Facebook and said, “Leyla, do you have any tips for London?” and I was like, “Screw the tips, I'll take you myself,” you know, “I'll show you around.” And we went out we had some fun and I took her friends out. And at one point in the night, she just broke down and started crying.
J: Oh!
L: And she was like, “I'm so sorry for what we did to you.”
J: Aww!
L: And I looked her straight in the eyes and I told her, “Please, don't be, because…” and however corny this sounds, I said this. I said, “What happened made me that much stronger.”
J: Mm-hmm, yes!
L: Those moments where we have a choice; we all have a choice. We have a divine choice in every single second of our lives to rise or to fall. And that is the most simple thing but the most hardest thing to make the choice on.
J: Yes, we can rise or we can fall. So every day it's a choice to do that as well.
L: Every single moment.
J: We choose it again, and again. You know, I love that you mentioned going through that struggle because, at one point, I thought, “Gosh,” you know, when I was in victim thinking, “Oh, this was so hard,” you know, “I was raised this way,” or, “My spouse's this way,” or, “My kids are hard. So therefore, I'm stuck,” and I tried to believe this. Of course, it didn't work; life had other plans. But I often took that forward and thought, “You know, I had this background, I'm not going to be successful.” But I've learned that many of the most successful people on the planet had really hard backgrounds. And I think that really benefited them because they had to learn how to rise up and be in the right energy and just get… you know, choose love instead of fear. Like Tony Robbins.
L: Right.
J: He had many struggles.
L: Exactly.
J: Okay, let's take a quick break for our sponsor and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more and hear about your favorite things health.
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(Interview resumes) [26:07]
J: Alright, welcome back, Leyla.
L: Thank you.
J: And I love everything you were sharing. And as the break was happening, I thought, you know, I love summarizing what people say, but I was thinking, you know, you said, “We all have pain.”
L: Mm-hmm.
J: “We can choose to learn from the pain and not stay in victim thinking,” and then that idea of, “Only we are responsible for our own love.” It's so empowering to put all the choice, all the decision, all the experience, just right on our own shoulders and to say, “Nope, this is all me.” So thank you for giving us that.
L: My pleasure, of course. (Laughs)
J: So, Leyla, I happen to know that you teach something called ‘heart to table’, which, ah, sounds so amazing. So tell our listeners about that and, I mean, maybe they can think it's amazing just like I do. (Laughs)
L: Oh, sure. So ‘heart to table’ actually was born in my mother's birthday. I was preparing a raw vegan cake for her and her girlfriends in the shape of a heart. And as I was walking this cake over to the table, I realized that love is the most nutritious and delicious ingredient we can add to any meal.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: And from that day on, I decided to take everything that I had learned along the way and integrated into this new idea that I decided to call ‘heart to table’.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: So what ‘heart to table’ is now, is a transformational dinner experience where, throughout the dinner, by doing different applied methods like meditation and connection activities and mindfulness practices and movement exercises, we shift from our head into our heart.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: So we literally, throughout the dinner, are shifting…
J: Ooh!
L: … from this ego space, from this fear space, the… you know, ‘talking monkey head’, into the heart, where it's just this open space of peace, vulnerability, and love.
J: Ooh! So you teach this, tell us what it looks like practically if we want to be a part of it. What would we expect?
L: It's an event that I share around the world. And right now, I'm actually in the process of finishing the book, ‘Heart to Table’, where I'm going to be sharing the different practices, even recipes, also the ‘heart to table’ story, and I can share a glimpse of that a little bit as well here. And the events are going to start taking place third quarter of the year.
J: Ooh, nice.
L: I put them on hold to focus on the book and then they're going to start up again.
J: So I'm trying to picture this. I'm coming to a ‘heart to table’ event, and what would I expect? Just walk me through what it's like; sounds awesome.
L: Yeah. So it really is a space where you are taken by beauty in every sense. And that is one of the foundations of ‘heart a table’, because beauty is a natural transcendence that we experience. Like, when we're looking at something as beautiful, it's like an automatic heart opening, right?
J: Yeah.
L: We feel that; we're like, “Wow!” And I've, from my backgrounds in fashion, which, you know, I don't really talk about but, you know, for the first part of my career, I was actually working in fashion. I was working at London Fashion Week and then moved to LA and was in the more events world, but also still creating a lot of artwork. And beauty, to me, and creation, to me, has always been deep within my heart; it's… I am an artist at heart. So combining creativity and beauty and the practice of mindfulness, which I adopted and learned at the Zen Buddhist monastery that I spent time at, as well as all of the heart intelligence that I've learned and different meditation practices…
J: Hmm.
L: … I've put that all together, and then also adding of course my the health and wellness aspect of a certified health coach. So I've integrated all of these ingredients into ‘hearts to table’.
J: Mmm!
L: So you're walking in to an experience that quite literally and physically is going to shift you into a higher state of consciousness. And you're going to be seeing beautiful spaces. Every you heart to table location is an incredible, beautiful, decorated space where it kind of takes you out of the mundane.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: So that's kind of the first experience. And then we go through a cacao ceremony. And cacao actually is a heart opener; the actual bean, like it's a heart opener. So it's a medicine for the heart, in a sense. And so we start with that, we share in that communion together. And then from there, we just go throughout the evening and begin different practices that are innately heart openers really, and just kind of shift us into a more human… you know, really like human, beautiful, heart open state, where we're connecting heart to heart.
J: Ah, yeah.
L: And just being open with one another.
J: Ooh, I love that! So beauty, meditation, raising your vibration, healthy food, and amazing company.
L: Yes.
J: I totally love it. Where can we learn more about ‘heart to table’?
L: So hearttotable.com is about to go live in a month or so. In the meantime, you can follow along on Instagram at Heart to Table and then also at Standing Light. And all the information will be there, of course there's also standinglight.com and there's standinglight.com/hearttotable.
J: Perfect.
L: So information is there. We've got the YouTube channel. So, yeah, we've got a lot of venues where you can check out more information, and the book will be coming out soon as well. I think the most beautiful way to show and connect people to ‘heart to table’ is actually through YouTube. And there's a ‘heart to table’ playlist on the Standing Light YouTube page that you can check out all the different ‘heart to tables’ that we've done so far.
J: Ooh! I love it because, anything that forces you to slow down, put away social media and your phone and connect to human beings, connect to your heart, it's just so healing. And, I mean, we talked about self-love and healing our own hearts, so sounds perfect.
L: Yeah.
J: Awesome. Well, Leyla, you're doing really good work. And I want to quickly ask you a few things of… you know, a few of your favorite things.
L: Sure.
J: And let's start with your favorite easy meal.
J: So I usually start my day with a green smoothie.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: Again, you've got to listen to your intuition, right?
J: Yeah.
L: So I either do green smoothie or gluten-free oatmeal.
J: Uh-huh.
L: And I just… I love to play around. I think, in the kitchen, it's kind of a playground and you should be curious and start testing around as well, like listening to your intuition.
J: Yeah.
L: So what I love to put in my green smoothie is spinach, kale, lemon; and I actually put the whole lemon with the skin, as long as it’s organic.
J: Really?
L: Yeah.
J: Oh yeah!
L: Because that's where the most nutrients are.
J: Really?
L: Yeah.
J: Oh, okay.
L: Got to make sure that it's unwaxed.
J: Oh.
L: Because when they wax the lemons to make it all shiny, that even actually puts chemicals on it. Yeah, it's just not good. So…
J: I didn't know that.
L: There's a little tip. And then um I'll put a little cube of ginger, I'll put half an apple sometimes, and you can also add celery… and what else? Yeah, I usually do those; those are like a core.
J: It's not juicing, so it's actually keeping all the pulp.
L: Yeah, you're keeping the fiber. You’re… yeah.
J: Oh, yes, smart.
L: So it’s smooth… yeah. I have a Vitamix, whatever works; you know, like any kind of blender usually works.
J: Yeah, yeah.
L: And then what I actually… I forgot, I love to add half an avocado as well.
J: Yes! Oh, yummy.
L: To make it extra creamy.
J: Mm-hmm. Ooh, that's good.
L: Yeah, super healthy, but also very good for you.
J: Yeah. Then you're set for the day.
L: Yeah, pretty much.
J: What's your personal favorite way to connect with loved ones, aside from ‘heart to table’?
L: Sure. I love to write and I love to summon little love notes. I also love… I mean, meditation is such a beautiful way of connecting, I feel.
J: Mm-hmm.
L: So I haven't actually done this with my family yet, but I would love to share in a meditation with them. I think that would be a really beautiful practice to share.
J: Hmm, that's cool. I love that idea.
L: Yeah.
J: I know I haven't done that with my kids yet either. Somehow it's become so sacred to me, this quiet time, that…
L: Exactly. (Laughs)
J: … if they were to come and act silly during it, I'd be so sad.
[Laughter]
L: Exactly, yeah. I… yeah, so true.
J: Cool. Well, I'm going to remind our listeners that we'll have links to everything you talked about, ‘heart to table’, your recipe, everything else, at jenriday.com/99. And now, our final question, Leyla, what does it mean for you to be a vibrant happy woman?
L: To have the courage to have an open heart, so that you can live boldly and courageously in your highest light.
J: Ooh! I love that; I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. And… oh, one last thing. Do you want to leave a challenge to our listeners?
L: Yes, I would love to. It would be similar with what I just said actually. I would love to challenge everyone listening to have the courage to open your heart, let just a little bit of light into that powerful space, and dare to feel with what it means to live courageously.
J: Mm-hmm. Well, we'll leave it right there; this was phenomenal. Everyone, feel into Leyla's words with your heart and listen to that intuition and let your intelligence of your heart grow. Thanks so much, Leyla, this was amazing.
L: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
J: Take care.
L: You too, thank you.
J: Thanks for joining us today. I had a blast talking with Leyla, as I do every week talking with these amazing guests, and I really, really appreciate you listening. I hope it uplifts your life, I hope it inspires you just to shift a little bit more upward and live in that higher vibration, which Leyla talked about. I will be back next week celebrating the 100th episode of the show. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited! I have a few surprises for you then, so be sure not to miss it; we'll even be having a giveaway. So I will see you next week. And one last thing. If you received any value from this episode, I would love if you would take a link from the show and drop it in an email or in a social media post and tell your friends about Vibrant Happy Women. The link is jenriday.com/99; simple, jenriday.com/99. Share that with 10 friends today. Help us to make this a movement so more and more women can grab their lives by the horns and feel in control of their lives and their happiness, and have the chance to live their purpose as they shift upward in their energy and vibration and ability to establish these boundaries that protect that. So glad you're listening. Thank you so much for joining us, I'll see you next time. And until then, take care.
Outro: Thanks for listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast at www.jenriday.com.