Age, Decision Making, Personal Growth, And The Healing Powers Of Energy Work With Gabrielle Pimstone
Getting older is often associated with getting inflexible and calcified in our ways, but it doesn’t have to be this way. In this Eye of Power episode, Gabrielle Pimstone joins Tom Dardick in a conversation about the impact of age on decision-making and personal growth, emphasizing the importance of maintaining energy, curiosity, and a willingness to explore. They discuss the concept of energy blocks, which can hinder personal growth, and how releasing the energetic root of a belief can lead to rapid change. The conversation also touches on the potential benefits of energy work in relation to medical diagnoses and chronic conditions, with Gabrielle suggesting that energy techniques could complement traditional treatments. Tune in for more!
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Age, Decision Making, Personal Growth, And The Healing Powers Of Energy Work With Gabrielle Pimstone
Welcome to the show. It's my great pleasure to have Gabby Pimstone as my guest. Gabby is an expert in energy work and has spent 27 years in organizational psychology. It represents somebody who's got a very keen eye, both from a Western scientific viewpoint as well as a more ancient Eastern viewpoint as far as how energy works. She blends those two things together in her practice. We talk a lot about how that affects real-world cases and stories. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
I've had a number of conversations about the relative age and how we all get older. None of us escape time. Whether we're old, and by old I mean calcified, set in our ways, inflexible infirm, and not looking to a future but looking like my life is mainly past, those are all something we have influence over.
Having said that, it's sobering for me when I look back at how I used to make decisions and do radical change without giving it a second thought. Moving continents, all those kinds of big life decisions that I never pondered very much, and I did. Whereas in this stage of my life, it's a more thoughtful process, for sure.
We could also call that wisdom, right?
You could, and you're right. As I was talking, I was thinking about how I used to operate in an almost knee-jerk way. Everything’s got golden and shadow sides. The golden side of doing it is that you get stuff done, you face the fear, and you move through stuff. It has gotten slightly harder for me as I've gotten older, but it's a learned skill. It's something that you can cultivate.
The positive features of youthfulness are our energy, our curiosity, and our willingness to play and explore. To me, those are things that would do well to keep alive or keep that thing going. They do tend to go away. We get tired. We've seen it before. When you're young, everything's this brand new, amazing, mind-blowing thing. When you're older, you're finding out more subtleties about things rather than these huge swaths.
What you're saying is right. Also, when you're older, you've got to unlearn more because part of change is not just learning but it's unlearning. At age 50-something, my journey has been around unraveling habits that don't serve me anymore and stories that I used to tell myself that I no longer believe. It's an unlearning process. I find that's probably the biggest challenge that I have faced going through a really big life transition in my 50s.
That is a good launching point into energy work. I've noticed in your work that you've focused on energy blocks, and those can look a lot of different ways. I take it from some of the things I've read that you've written that we have blocked energy. It could have gotten there habitually. It could have gotten there unconsciously. Who knows how they get there?
You seem to be passionate about helping people get past whatever those blocks are and hold them in place. That's a lot of what we talk about in the show. It's 1 of 2 things. It’s either, “How do I remove those things that are holding me in place?” or, “How do I feed those things that help me become more of the fully expressed version of myself?” I'd like to explore in our conversation the energy work and how that can move things to express ourselves more fully.
That sounds wonderful. I'm passionate about it because I have had a 27-year career in organizational psychology. I was both a consultant and a leader in the corporate context. For 27 years, I worked on mindsets, emotions, habits, behaviors, and identity as well. The work that most people do is to work on each of those things and go through a process of personal transformation.
I, a couple of years ago, was introduced to energy work. I came to understand that each of those things, our mindsets, the stories we tell ourselves, and the decisions we make, everything has an energetic frequency. It has an energetic signature. When we want to change anything like that, let’s say for example, you want to shift a limiting belief, which is a common one, it is much quicker and much more efficient if you release the energetic root of that belief rather than trying to mentally process the change.
That was a really big a-ha for me. It was a reason why I have shifted away from the work that I do, not entirely because I still bring some of it into my practice, to help people understand what's going on. It's the energy work that helps create a really rapid release. That's where people start to see change a lot more quickly. That was my big awakening. Rather than trying to change the belief, the story, or the rule, you can use an energy technique to release the energy around that and things disappear. They get released permanently.
If I'm understanding you right, what you're saying there is that it's the energy itself that is the catalyst of the situation and the belief surrounding it or the things that feed that or create that energy are somewhat secondary to the energy itself in some way.
That’s correct.
This is hard for me to get my intellect around. Can you help walk me through it as an uninitiated person to this concept that you're sharing? How does somebody approach that if they're uninitiated?
Maybe to answer that, it's probably useful to go back to something you started with at the beginning of the conversation, which is how energy blocks form. That's an essential part of answering what you're asking. Maybe we can walk you through an example of that. Let's take a fictitious example of how an energy block forms.
You'll see through this example its power to either accelerate you forward in your life or stop you from moving forward. It can either be the accelerant or the hand brake. Energy blocks form through experiences or events that have happened to us. They can happen very often in childhood because that's where we don't have the cognitive capacity to process what's happening to us. They can happen in childhood. That can form in utero. If a stressful event or something happened to your mother, that can then be passed onto you in the womb. Like psychological blocks, they can also be handed down from generation to generation. It becomes a transgenerational issue that needs to be resolved.
There are various ways they can come about, but the easiest example is to think about something that happened in childhood. Think about a child. Let’s say they’re 7 or 8 years old. They’re lying in bed one night and their parents are having a massive argument or a big fight. Their mother gets up and leaves the house. The child who's lying in bed hears the door slam. He hears the car engine going and realizes that their mother has left. That's a trigger. That's an event.
For the child lying there, there might be a thought or belief that goes through their mind. T[1] he belief might be, “Mommy needs protection. I need to protect Mommy.” The emotion that that evokes might be terror, fear, or anxiety. The child lies in bed. There's a behavior that follows, which might be when the child makes a decision, which is an action. They go to lie in bed waiting for their mom to get back. They can't go to sleep until mom returns home, which is what they do. When their mom returns home, they go to sleep. They feel safe. They’re like, “She's back.” They've done their job and they go to sleep.
What you see in that example is the formation of potentially an identity that's around being a protector. What's going to happen from that example or that instance is that they think there might be another fight at home. They might witness a fight on the playground at school. They then think things, feel things, and do things that put them in that frequency of being a protector. Over the course of their life, that person stops giving back to themselves. They give to others. That's an example.
Would that be the same thing as a pattern?
It becomes an identity, and therefore a pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Back to the point that I was making earlier, all these beliefs, these stories, these emotions, and this identity of, “I've got to protect others. I can't look after myself,” all of that has an energetic frequency attached to it. The energetic frequency probably is a mix of control and anxiety. There is a little bit of care, but it's probably fear-based.
This is the energy that when we don't deal with those sorts of experiences, they compound over time. The energy doesn't disappear. It goes somewhere. It gets stored in your energetic body or in your physical body. Over time, it grows. It compounds and it gets deeper. What happens is later in life, potentially, that child, in this pretentious example, might one day in their 30s look back and say, “I've had really unhealthy romantic relationships. I keep attracting people who are selfish. I keep having to take care of people. I can't find an equitable partnership,” for argument's sake.
That is an example. That is a symptom potentially that they're holding an energy block in them. It's a repetitive experience that they have. They can't work out what it is or why it's happening. They try to rationalize it. They try to work at a cognitive level. They try to change behaviors. They try to work through the emotion, but nothing changes because the energetic root is still lodged in them. In my experience having worked in psychology but also having worked in the energy world, if you target the root and that's what energy techniques do, y[2] ou target the root, the behaviors, and everything that's associated with the root and release. They lessen their hold on you, if that makes sense.
I imagine this would be universal. It would apply to any behavior that we would have. Would that be true?
Any behavior. Every single thing has an energetic frequency or an energetic stamp. Some things have a positive frequency. We don't want to look at them. We don't want to change them. A lot of things, a lot of thoughts, and a lot of emotions and feelings, everything has an energetic frequency that either enables or constrains us.
One of the things with these habits that formed or these patterns is they’re never there accidentally. The example you painted there for us, that protective instinct, had an origination either with the person or before the person. It had an origination where there was a need to protect. Whether I was suited to do the protecting or not, I felt the human impulse to do it.
As you were speaking, I was thinking, “What could I pick out of my life that I might relate to that?” I was a bit of a late bloomer. I didn't physically get all that big until I was in college. I didn't need to shave until I was in college. I felt like, “People wouldn't see me as masculine.” That probably set a pattern up that I might not be able to articulate all the ways that that showed up. It can be things like that where you’re physically comparing yourself to other people, whatever your traits might be. They're beliefs that you're saying, “That means this.” If you think that, then it becomes part of the iceberg of yourself that's under the water, right?
That's exactly right. Energy is deep below the waterline. It's the most invisible thing. If you are looking at the iceberg analogy, above the waterline are behaviors. Those are things you say or things you decide. Those are the visible things that you can see.
Those are things we're consciously aware of.
Those are things that aren't visible and decipherable. Below the wall line, you'll find things like thoughts. You can access thoughts. They may not be visible, but you access them. You see them. They become visible.
We're having a good conversation where it might spur us to think things that we might not otherwise think in that same way.
That’s correct. The deepest level below the waterline is energy because it's invisible. It’s not because it’s invisible that it means it’s not driving your life. My teacher always uses this saying. He says, “Energy runs the show, whether you know it or not. It's the invisible driving force.” Where you've got an energy block, because it's so invisible, it's like trying to drive around in first gear and trying to accelerate in first gear. If you are trying to even inch forward in first gear, you can't do it. It's the deepest, most invisible thing. It is difficult to wrap your head around. You spoke about that earlier. The techniques that I use and teach people are designed to not understand it but to use these techniques to surface and remove these invisible barriers.
Energy runs the show whether you know it or not. It's the invisible driving force.
I have maybe a cursory understanding of this kind of work, but some of it seems to be where the person needs to take a bit of an inventory where they're going through some perception about either their physical body or something like that. They're trying to sense where things might be tense or different. Am I on the right track there?
It's part of it. There are different ways of identifying that you’ve got an energy block. The one way is physical. We’re waiting into controversial territory. There are arguments to say that this kind of trauma can lodge itself in the physical body. Also, you might feel it in your energetic body. You might have a constant gnawing feeling in your heart area. It is a symptom that your heart chakra is blocked. You might feel constant butterflies in your abdomen that's near the sacral chakra. That's the center of your emotions or your emotional identity. That's a way.
The other way is that you have to look at your life and answer the question, “What are my big patterns? What are the things that continuously tripped me up?” In the example that I gave you with the child, that person might in their later life reflect on the quality of their relationships and realize that they haven't been able to forge adult-to-adult relationships in their life. That's an example.
You might realize if you look back on your life, “I struggled to make money. I've got a block around finances.” You might struggle to do mundane things like go to the shops. You might have severe anxiety. You might struggle to sleep. You might have a chronic tendency to procrastinate. That would be a symptom of a solar plexus block. It's the chakra in your abdomen between your belly button and heart. You've got to look at patterns. I'm a big one for pattern-making because it's in the patterns that we understand our big themes in life. The big themes in life tell us where we blocked the most.
I have a couple of questions on that. One thing is, for instance, my son has chronic fatigue syndrome that’s related to Crohn's. It doesn't manifest too much in gut trouble. Although sometimes, he can be that way. He's treated. He gets infusions every eight weeks. He can live a normal life with those infusions, but without them, he would be without energy. It's not like being tired like sleepy, but he says it's feeling like you have molasses in your blood. That is how he describes it.
I mentioned that because I'm wondering about there are some things that are physical ailments. That's an autoimmune type of thing. It is related to energy even if it's something that we use medical terms to describe. I'm wondering what the dimensions of the energy work are as it relates to medical diagnoses or any chronic condition.
I love this question because it's really controversial. I have to say that I come from a long line of Western medical doctors. M[3] edicine is in my family and I deeply respect it. Some energy healers will tell you that you can use energy techniques to heal and cure. I've learned those techniques, but my philosophy is much more integrative when it comes to physical ailments.
What I would do for somebody like your son, and I'm really sorry to hear that he's living with this because this must be challenging, is a nice compliment to the medical treatment might be to use energy techniques to elevate his energy. It’s not to cure the physical route but to make him feel a bit less like he's stuck in molasses. Part of what I can do is I can do energy activations. They’re not just healings but energy activations where I work at a deep level to raise and elevate your energy so people feel a lot more vibrant and vital. They feel like they've got more energy as well. I would do that.
T[4] here was somebody who was going in for cancer treatment but first had to go through major surgery. I worked with this person to prepare them for surgery. It’s the same with somebody where they were going for gastric bypass surgery. The work that I did with them was to get to the emotional root of her obesity but also to get into a better energetic shape to face major abdominal surgery. That's how I use energy techniques more to complement modern medicine. Others don’t.
Some people might say, “Don't do that surgery. Do this.”
I would never do that. I would never say that. My dad died of cancer. My mom has been a cancer survivor for 25 years. I remember when my mom was going through chemotherapy, she had to stop it early because there was a mortality rate associated with the chemo. A lot of skeptics will say, “See modern medicine.” That chemotherapy saved my mother's life. I would never ever have purported to have been able to fix that. What I did do is somebody who I knew at the time did remote reiki on her to shift her energy and keep her energy at a high-level frequency so that she could get through the chemotherapy a little bit easier. That's how I use this stuff.
In terms of that kind of energy work, is it something that you were called to, you learned, or you found an ability? I've met different people who are energy practitioners. It seems like they are somehow tuned in to frequencies that I don't quite see myself so much. I'm wondering what your view of how a practitioner is made, born, or originated.
Are we going into the nature versus nurture conversation?
That's a related topic.
My story, which is what you're asking, is that I've been in psychology for all these years. I worked in corporate. I'm a trained group facilitator and I've always had an uncanny intuitive knack, which is what's made me such a great facilitator. I bring a group of people into a room, twenty people, and I work with them over a couple of days. I can see things in the group that others can't see. I don't claim to have a special gift. There are a lot of people who've got strong intuition. It makes them good therapists. It makes them good group facilitators. It makes them good diagnosticians. That was a clue, but that wasn't enough to stimulate me to want to leave corporate and start something different.
What prompted that was I was at an inflection point. It was 2020. I woke up. I was in a corporate job at the time, a leadership role. I can’t even describe the stress. I lived with it 24/7. I couldn't sleep. When I did sleep, I had nightmares. I had Graves disease. My thyroid fled up. I lost about fifteen kilograms. I'm not sure what that is in pounds. I was so sick.
It is 40 pounds.
I was like a walking skeleton. I was physically sick. I was not sleeping. I woke up with this gigantic pit in the bottom of my stomach and decided, “I'm going to go for a walk to clear my head.” It was Sunday morning. I drove myself up to a beautiful headland, a beautiful bush walk in Sydney where I live. I put it on my headphones and listened to this incredible podcast. It was the podcast that was the catalyst.
In the podcast, the woman that was being interviewed was telling the story of her daughter who had been involved in a serious car accident a number of years before. The young woman had since learned how to walk again. She'd gotten married and was expecting her first child. The woman in the interview who was the mother was facing such joy but she couldn't enjoy the moment because she couldn't put the anxiety of what had happened to her daughter behind her. She kept saying, “I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall.” It was those words. I am getting goosebumps as I'm telling the story because that was my story. In her story, I heard my own inner voice.
I listened to this podcast and listened to it again a couple of days later. It had such a profound catalyzing effect on me. What I did was I thought to myself, “I'm sick and tired of living with this degree of anxiety. It's been with me ever since I was a child. I don't know how to enjoy the moment. I'm trapped in a job I hate and I don’t know what to do. I'm paralyzed.” It was fight, flight, or freeze. I was in freeze mode. I dialed up my spiritual practice. I started listening to podcasts more. Deepak Chopra’s got those 21-day challenges. I did a few of those, about 3 or 4 of them, back to back that were incredible. I resigned from that job, but I went back to the corporate grind because I wasn't quite ready to make the leap.
Eighteen months later, it was a sad time in my life because I had two geriatric pets. They were 21 years old and they were both dying. I was like, “I'm filled with anxiety again. I can't deal with this.” It was that moment that prompted me to find someone who I could work with. I found my teachers based in America who taught me that energy is the fastest way to cut through this. My journey has been very evolutionary. I haven't let go of the work I do in the realm of mindsets. That's important. What I bring are nifty techniques to help with release. That's my story. I had two inflection points. The first one was a podcast, which is why I love doing shows like this. They've got the potential to change lives.
That's pretty inspirational to hear. What I also take from that story is the uniqueness of your journey. This is a speculation perhaps, but I want to throw this out to you and see what you think. For those who work in energy that is more ethereal, it is hard for people to understand what they're doing or why. For lack of better terms, people say, “That's woo woo,” or they'll be dismissive of it as though there's nothing there. They give themselves permission to stay in science, whatever that means to them.
You're grounded on that side of it with having 27 years of organizational psychology, having family involved in Western medicine, and being very much engaged in whatever that science side is. It seems to me like you are maybe not completely uniquely but unusually positioned to maybe be a guide for people who are either too far on one side or the other. You get them oriented so that they can make perhaps higher-quality choices going forward. Am I onto something there?
You are. I love that. Thank you so much for that lovely feedback. You're right. When people are overly invested in rational science, like, “Show me the facts,” which I have a part of in me, when it's the only paradigm, I believe and I’ve experienced that to be a block in the crown chakra. The crown chakra is the capacity of the energy center that connects us to the divine realm. It connects us to this connectedness around us that we can't see but that does exist.
When you hear people vociferously dissing the stuff, and when it's such a passion, chances are that their crown chakra needs to be a little bit healed, released, and activated. Nevertheless, the opposite is also true. The people who live in the ethos constantly, there are real issues with that. I've seen it in people I've worked with and people I've trained with. These are people who can connect very deeply. They channel. They can connect to the angelic realm. They can do all of that stuff, but their root chakra is locked. They can't manifest money. They aren't rooted in the real world. They are unable to ground that knowledge in practical how-to for their clients.
Where the magic is is a blend of both. You have to have skepticism. You've also got to have enough curiosity to be able to say, “What if I gave this a chance? Let me see what it's like.” I've worked with skeptics. At the same time, if you're very spiritual and live up to the ethos, you've also got to be able to teach people and give people practical tips and practical how-tos. You can't keep it in this language that most people can't connect to. A blend is the best. Hopefully, I found that for myself. Hopefully, that's the philosophy that I bring into working with my clients.
You have to have healthy skepticism, but you also have to have enough curiosity to give things a chance.
I love that. Balance is the word that strikes me as the theme of what you shared. Things aren't usually so clear. We like to reduce things to the simple so that our little minds can get around it. The world and reality are inconveniently complex. We need to respect that reality by skepticism versus curiosity. They're not mutually exclusive. It’s like the right foot and the left right foot and you're walking forward with these things, right?
That's exactly right. It's the ability to hold the paradox that you're talking about. It's quite a skill, isn't it? These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be very grounded and pragmatic like me, and you can also channel like me. You can do both. It's how you translate. This is where client-centricity comes into it. It's how you translate what you're doing for people who are beginners or not even interested in knowing the mechanics of what you're doing. You have to be able to give it to them in a language that they understand. I happen to find that easy because I've worked with clients for so many years. It’s empathy. It’s meeting them where they're at.
The skeptics are great. I welcome skeptics. Regarding skeptics, I don't choose to change people's minds at all. In fact, if you believe in the stuff, it makes it a whole lot easier and a whole lot more effective, but you don't have to believe in the stuff for it to work. We spoke about this in our pre-chat. Your mind doesn't have to be on board for the stuff to be real and for it to work. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Energy Work: Your mind doesn't have to be onboard for this stuff to be real and for it to work.
My one brother, who is a doctor, is a scientist. He would say it as a joke when people ask, “What does your sister do?” He is like, “She plays tambourines in corporate and that stuff.” He has seen the work that I've done for another family member that took 4 to 6 months. He's asking me if I can continue doing that work for the family member because it's been so transformative.
I had somebody else whose wife asked them to come to me. This person was a skeptic. Their wife was not a skeptic. This guy came into the first session. I could tell he was doing his wife a favor. We had our first session, and afterward, he said to me, “I don't know how to process what has happened. I'm going to need time before we can debrief.”
He then came back again. In two sessions, I really helped this individual release what was the root of excessive eating and excessive drinking. It was excess. He was unable to push the pause button. I went into his childhood roots and we worked at that level. Give it a go. Try to keep an open mind. If it's not for you, that's also good. That's fine.
The topic can go in so many directions. I had a meeting prior to this with a client. We were using these psychological assessments. We used the psychometric tools that we use. As part of a people strategy approach, it was a comprehensive multi-science approach. She'd done one with me a few years ago and not long ago because we're in the process of doing a benchmark for the role she's in
We happened to compare the one that she did a few years ago with the one she did. I don't want to give it a big long thing because it would be an explanation, but a couple of the factors that usually don't move very much had completely swapped for her in those four years. A couple of the other things were dead the same. She's the kind of person that, for all this time, had been spread too thin.
This happens in a lot of organizations where you're almost a victim of your capacity. If you're really good at your job, more is expected of you and then people rely on you. You're working these long hours. You've got way more things that are reasonable to expect. You've seen this. It's a feedback loop that can trap people. She's been in this. This is deeper than the job. This is something that's a pattern for her. I think of organizations as baby birds. They don't care how hard the mother bird worked. They’re like, “Give me the worm. I don't care how tired Mom is. That means nothing. Keep feeding.” It's an easy trap to fall into for that reason.
For some reason, I'm thinking about her because I think that it's a circumstance, but this is probably some sort of energetic block for her. It's probably a theme that goes throughout her life, no matter what role she's finding herself in. She's putting everybody else in front of her. That is probably what it comes down to. At some point, you run out of you.
That’s correct.
My question to set that up was does that sound like a familiar pattern to you? What do you make of that?
It's a very familiar pattern. I'm always reluctant to say what I think until I read the person's energy. A) I'm not in state at the moment and B) The person's not with me, so I'm not tuned into the energy. It could be anything.
You’re not talking about this person.
Generally speaking, what you're describing is an inability to put down boundaries. There's something around identity and personal power. It is the inability to say, “I'd love to be able to help you, but unfortunately, I'm swamped at the moment. I can't.” That's the kind of conversation this person's not having. Typically, although not necessarily exclusively, on the surface of it, you would imagine that is a solar plexus issue.
The solar plexus is the chakra that is between the belly button and the heart. It's our ego identity. That is where our personal power comes from where we authorize ourselves. It can either be overactive or underactive. For the overactive case, it would be somebody who's domineering, controlling, or dictatorial potentially as a leader. What you're describing with this woman is potentially an underactive plexus where there isn't enough self-efficacy. There isn't enough ability to authorize themselves, give back to themselves, or prioritize themselves. That would be an example.
That might not be where the root is. Remember. I always work on the root. The root could be anywhere. For absolute argument's sake, this person might have experienced something in their childhood where they had to grow up really quickly, for example. This could have brought an over-emphasis or an overly exaggerated sense of duty and responsibility and their heart maybe shut off. They had to grow up. They suffered a trauma.
Always work on the root.
Maybe the inception point or the root is in their heart chakra. Maybe it's in their throat chakra because their throat chakra is around self-expression. Potentially, somewhere in their past, their voice was shut down. No doubt, if I looked at this person, there'd be stuff happening in their solar plexus. Where the root resides is anyone's guess. I've given you another opportunity. I'll clear out the solar plexus, but I'll find the root. That's what I want to remove because when you remove the root, that's when everything changes.
The other case that I was thinking about as we were speaking was there are a few people that I've met over my life, friends and so forth, that are shut down in the sense that they are very reductionistic and materialistic. They poo-poo anything that isn't here and now that is something that we consent to. They wouldn't believe in an afterlife. They wouldn't believe in ghosts. If you say angelic, they're like, “Whatever.” To them, that's a delusion.
It's almost like they're so adamant about it. It almost feels like fear in a way. They almost don't want it to be anything but the reductionist, “What I can see is what I need to deal with,” kind of thing. It seems to be a little bit more prevalent in males in my experience than in females, but I do know some women are like this. It seems to me like it's more commonly male where it's like, “I want to be able to control my world or understand and control everything. Anything outside of that's not going to be welcome in my worldview.” What do you think of that?
That is such an interesting one. That could be anything. Off the top of my head without reading anyone's energy, that could be a block in the crown chakra or their third eye, which is intuition. The upper chakras connect us to the spiritual realm. It could be that there are blocks there. It could bleed, to your point. If there's a dire need to control, the root might be in the solar plexus. It might be fear-based. You might find a lot of fear. If I did a childhood timeline reading, I'd be able to tell where it came from. If something happened in their childhood that made them fearful of the unknown potentially, that would sit in the root chakra. It could go anywhere. It requires me to be able to sit and be in front of that. It could be anything.
There are two friends of mine not so much lately, but over a long period of time, we were friends in the sense that we played volleyball all the time together and went on vacations together. The themes of both these guys’ lives have been their very pursuit of the fun and more of the hedonistic sort of things. Those are like the here and now and, “If it feels good, do it,” approach. Both ended up divorced. It doesn't lead to the best outcome because it doesn't make you a great partner when you're like that, it seems. I don’t know if that clears the picture up as to the archetype that I'm pointing to.
That's an interesting one. I'm thinking of this conversation from the psychological angle, which is where I'm also trained, but also the energetic angle. Energetically speaking, I'd be interested in the sacral chakra. The sacral chakra is our emotional identity. It’s driven. The energy there is all about our emotions, desires, sexuality, and pleasure. All of that stuff sits there. That would be an interesting journey into the sacral to see what might be going on there. It sounds like the imbalance is because of an excess of energy. That might be what's happening there too much.
One of the wonderful things about the world is how we're all the same and how unique everybody is. Both are true, right?
Absolutely. There's no one-size-fits-all. I can talk about all of the chakras and archetypally what they mean, but the root, I go into a person's energetic timeline and understand what's happened to them. Everyone's story is different. The section point is going to be different. The manifestation might look like it's a sacral chakra issue, but it could be something quite different. It could be anything. You don't want to get into the trap of labeling, “This issue is related to this chakra.” You've got to fine-tune. I'm able to read energy and help the person tell their own story and understand their own story. It's beautiful.
You said something else that before we wrap up, I want to return to. You talked about how the solar plexus is the seat of our ego identity, and then you went on to explain where our personal power is. I wanted you to expand on that a little bit. The reason I'm asking that is that on the show, we're focused on the full expression of who we are as people, maximizing our agency, and removing those blocks that would hold us in place and cause us not to do those things.
It seemed to me like when you started talking in those terms, we might have been going on an area that almost everybody who would be inclined to tune in might get some insights in there. I wanted to see if there was something more we could explore as it relates to that chakra or that insight that you were talking about.
Let’s say you've got a block in the solar plexus and you haven't stepped into your power. That's the problem, for argument’s sake. A common behavioral issue is the tendency to procrastinate. It comes from there. It is an inability and avoidance of making a decision, taking a risk, and taking accountability. All sit there. That would be something worth looking into. If you feel like you can't make decisions, you've got a bit of an avoidance, you procrastinate, or you put off things, that would be a wonderful entry point into a healing that could potentially unlock what's happening in your solar plexus.
For a lot of the people that I have worked with, it's a common place for people to experience blocks. I've noticed that the solar plexus, heart, and throat are very common areas. They are probably no more common than anywhere else, but the problems that present can be debilitating. For example, if you've got a block in your third eye or your crown, the problem that's going to present is not going to stop you from living your life. It’s going to be you won't find your sole purpose. Your intuition won't be on, but you can still go about your daily life.
Whereas if you've got blocks in the heart chakra, you find it difficult to connect with people. With the solar plexus, your self-esteem and confidence take a beating. If you've got a block in your throat, you can't speak up. These things have crippling effects on very simple day-to-day lives. That's why they've presented more often than others. What I can do is not only heal the block, but I give people some simple tools to keep the energy as clear and pure as it can be. You don't have to be an energy master to do that. These are things that are accessible to anyone.
You don’t have to be an energy master to keep the energy as clear and pure as it can be.
Two more things.
Go for it.
One thing is that my wife and I started doing yoga together. We pretty much do it every day. It's been over two years since we started that discipline. The reason we started was because I was visiting out in Utah and a friend of mine got me a session. I had back trouble. My back bothered me for 30 years. It took the form of if I was standing somewhere, after about 10 or 15 minutes of standing, my back would start hurting and it would keep getting worse until I would sit down.
Like a frog in the boiling pot, I knew it was a limiting thing, but I didn't realize how limiting it had become. I got this therapy. Since she did a very good job with my friend, he bought me a session with her. She said, “If you do yoga, I'm not saying it's going to get rid of your back pain, but it will knock it down by at least 40%.” I said, “I’ll take it. I’ll take 40% less pain.”
When we started doing it, I didn't notice much. About five months in, I was on a cruise where there were a lot of concerts on the cruise. There were 40 bands on this cruise. There was a lot of standing around but I had no back pain. That was the first time since ‘92, my ski accident, I kept with it. During that time, there would be some stretches where I didn't do it. I'm not completely healed in the sense that the back pain will come back. I do need to keep with it.
The reason I'm asking about this or the reason I'm telling this story is that as you talk about chakras, when we're doing yoga, we're talking a lot about these areas not specifically for healing, but we are focusing on and doing things like that. I'm wondering. Are these related? Is yoga spiritually nurturing too for that reason?
It is very much so. I'm laughing as you're talking, not at your accident or your injury, but I have a chronic back injury that sounds very much like yours and I got it from yoga about several years ago. I still do yoga. It's wonderful.[5] What yoga has done for me is it helps with the flow of energy. It doesn't release energy blocks, but it helps with the flow. That's really important because you want a balance. You want your energy to be flowing as freely as it can in your body.
There are specific yoga techniques that I use for myself personally to balance some of my chakras. For example, for my root chakra, I'll do the tree. I don't know if you can do a tree, but it's a very paradoxical pose because you're standing on one leg but you feel so grounded in the Earth. It is a wonderful way of connecting yourself. I imagine as I'm doing that an energy cord between my root chakra and the Earth and the connection between those two things. The energy flowing does help me ground. That's good ground. If you have blocks in your heart chakra, any backward bend can help with that. What it's doing is it's opening up that region. I find that to be relieving. That also helps with the throat chakra, the backward bend, because you are opening your neck and your throat area.
Is it like a Cobra or an upward dog?
A cobra, upward dog, and all of that stuff. What's interesting about the downward dog, which is a common place we come back to any yoga practice, is when you're doing a downward dog, you, it's a very sacred pose because you are creating a triangle. You're creating a pyramid structure with your body. Pyramids are sacred geometry that we use for protection. Yoga teachers often say, “You come back to your home. Come back to downward dog.” For me, the symbolism of the pyramid structure always makes me feel safe when I'm in a downward dog. There are so many crossovers. It's a hugely spiritual practice.
I hadn't thought of it as far as that shape's concerned. It is fundamental. Much of the practice, those downward dogs would be one that you're going through a lot. When I first started, I had a common problem with acid reflux. When I would go into anything that was inverted like that, I had the burn throat sensation and I'd have to stop. I went to a nutritionist and changed my diet and that went away. My relationship with poses like the downward dog changed a little bit. I'm more enthusiastic. I didn't think about the sacred structure aspect of it. That's a nice tip to think about. Thank you for that.
It's a pleasure. I get the same feeling in the Trikonasana. I don’t know if you know that one. Trikonasana is where you bend down and you create a triangle shape with your hand. A lot of people struggle with it. I go into flow when I do it because I'm creating a triangle and that is protecting me. All of it's beautiful. There are a lot of crossovers.
The other thought is when you talked about the tree pose or the balancing pose, I was processing those as important because I saw the correlation between balance and longevity. If you can continue to either maintain or build balance, it's positively correlated with longevity in the sense that at least if you're balanced well, you're not going to fall as much. Unfortunately, as people get older and frail, the falls are what end up taking people out a lot of the time. If you're working on quality of life in later years working on balance, however it is, yoga's a wonderful example of it. I don't necessarily say it's the only one, but these are the kinds of things that help keep you from feeling maybe as old as you might be in age.
That's right. That's a really interesting perspective. I've never thought of the benefit of balance being longevity. That’s interesting.
Balance and strength too. Strength is another thing. It’s the ability to get up. In other words, doing squat maneuvers. We add this every time we do yoga. If you do 15 or 20 squats, and you don't have to have weights, but if you want to do weights, it’s fine, where you bend down and get up repeatedly, keep those muscles spry and strong. I don't know if it adds years to your life. What it will do is it will add quality of life to your life.
Also, mobility to be able to get up out of a chair. Somebody could struggle. You could do a seated pose as well, which is a very difficult yoga pose that builds that ability. There is so much ancient wisdom in yoga. People are catching up to it.
It's not going anywhere in our lives. It's every day from now to forever.
I love hearing that.
To wrap up, because we're coming up on time, for those who read what you've shared with us who want to connect with you and want to explore this more, where would you direct them? Give parting words about how they can get in touch with you or what you might share with them to do to take a first
I've been on LinkedIn all my life. I've transitioned to Instagram. That is the best way to get hold of me. I'm starting my presence out there and I'm enjoying it a lot. I share three times a week. I share very useful and very pragmatic tips. I'm also great at responding to DMs. It's @Gabrielle.Pimstone. That is probably the easiest way to get hold of me. I'm more responsive there than I am on LinkedIn. That would be my recommendation.
Thank you so much for joining us. I've really enjoyed our conversation.
You've been an incredible host. Thanks for your insightful questions. I really appreciate it.
My pleasure. Thank you.
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I’d like to, once again, thank Gabrielle Pimstone, Gabby, for being on the show with us. Thank you so much. I look forward to our new friendship and personally experiencing some of the work that you do with your clients. Thanks again. We'll see you guys next time.
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About Gabrielle Pimstone
Gabrielle Pimstone is an Energy Coach who is dedicated to assisting those on the cusp of change, but in need of that crucial nudge forward.
Her story, “Finding Your Inner Hero: A journey beyond burnout”, narrates her journey of resilience and reinvention, highlighting six defining moments. She offers inspiration and practical tips to individuals to break free from stagnation and fear. Her central message is that it's never too late make meaningful life change.