December 2, 2025 • 48 mins
Welcome to an eye-opening episode of the "Stuck In My Mind Podcast," hosted by Wize El Jefe, featuring a profound conversation with the multi-faceted Angel Howard—professional dancer, corporate executive, somatic movement therapist, and founder of Wild Heart Expressive and the Chakra Mental Method. This episode, rich with authentic reflection and practical wisdom, is a heartfelt exploration into the power of embodiment, the challenges of high achievement, and the essential role of communication in well-being and leadership.
The Body Never Lies: A Journey from Burnout to Alignment
The episode begins with Wize El Jefe reflecting on his own journey to meaning through podcasting, setting the stage for Angel Howard's transformative story. Angel Howard candidly shares her corporate beginnings in the high-pressure world of 1980s business culture. She describes the physical and emotional toll of burnout—“the day I couldn’t get off the couch”—and how this was a wake-up call to attend not just to outward success, but to inner fulfillment. Through firsthand anecdotes, she illustrates how the relentless pursuit of “more” is often empty, driving individuals away from their true needs and into exhaustion.
What makes Angel Howard’s narrative compelling is her recognition that the body holds and expresses our deepest stories, even when words fail us. She unpacks the dynamics of corporate posturing, the “peacocking” of success, and how the disconnect between words and bodily signals breeds mistrust. The somatic awareness she brings is not only insightful but actionable, offering listeners a lens to examine their own lived experiences of stress, ambition, and authenticity.
Cross-Cultural Discoveries & Reclaiming Joy
A pivotal moment in Angel Howard’s journey was her time studying and living in Europe, where she discovered cultures that prize communal meals, relaxation, and appreciation for life beyond work. The contrast between European and American work cultures highlights the importance of self-care and the integration of play and rest into daily life. Wize El Jefe resonates with this, contemplating how fear and lack of courage can hold people back from living more joyfully and authentically.
The episode finds its emotional center when Angel Howard asks Wize El Jefe what feeds his soul—a question that opens up a vulnerable, honest discussion about finding purpose through podcasting, self-growth, and spiritual practice. Both speakers share how intentional reflection, affirmations, and connecting to a higher purpose have brought them greater alignment and joy.
The Healing Power of Movement
Angel Howard delves deeper into how movement became her lifeline during personal crisis, notably in the aftermath of a traumatic marriage experience. She recounts lying in fetal position, paralyzed by grief, and discovering that simply moving her body—even a finger—helped her process pain and reclaim her sense of self. This raw story exemplifies the essence of somatic healing: expressing and releasing emotions through embodied practices.
She explains the foundations of her work with Wild Heart Expressive and the Chakra Mental Method, integrating yogic principles, elements like fire and water, and the understanding of how emotional states manifest physically. Her approach helps individuals locate sensations in the body, connect them with emotions and stories, and begin the process of conscious, embodied leadership.
Success, High Achievement, and Why “More” is Never Enough
The conversation turns to why high achievers—especially those shaped by achievement-oriented families and demanding career environments—often feel unfulfilled despite their visible success. Angel Howard shares her personal struggle with always feeling she must do better, never being “enough,” and how this internalized pressure can become like an addiction to achievement itself. Crucially, she encourages listeners to celebrate every milestone and practice gratitude, rather than relentlessly chasing external validation.
The pair discuss the pernicious effects of social comparison, particularly in the era of social media, and how true fulfillment requires shifting focus from external accomplishments to internal motivations. Angel Howard suggests practical self-inquiry questions for listeners who sense something missing beneath their success: Why do you feel unfulfilled? Are your motivations driven by genuine internal desires or by societal expectations and comparison?
Communication: The Foundation of All Relationships
One of the most powerful themes of the episode is communication—both internal (with oneself) and external (with others). Angel Howard reveals that 93% of communication is nonverbal, consisting of body language, eye contact, and gestures. This insight becomes crucial in the realm of leadership, where congruence between words and embodied presence breeds trus
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(00:00):
Sa.
(00:32):
Foreign,
Welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind podcast. I am your host
wiz, and today's guest has
taught that that the body cannot be ignored when chasing
(00:54):
greatness. My next guest is a professional dancer, corporate
executive, somatic movement therapist, and founder of Wild
Heart Expressive and the Chak Mental Method.
From the stage to the boardroom, she discovered the thread
that matters is how your body carries our story. She helps leaders,
creatives and change makers release trauma and tissue,
(01:17):
reclaim voice in their business, and lead
and lead embodied. If you're ready to feel your life
and lead it, you're in the right place. Please welcome
Angel Howard to Stuck him on Mind podcast. Thank
you so much for inviting me and
me here. Pleasure's all mine. It's all mine. So I'm excited. So,
(01:39):
angel, you've lived many lives. Dancer, corporate executive, somatic
therapist. How did you realize that success on the outside
wasn't filling you up? Ah, well,
I mean, the day you wake up and you're like, I'm an
80s corporate chick and I'm doing. I'm top of
my game. I'm doing great. But there's more. There's more.
(02:01):
And the there's more push
is always empty because you will never
fulfill. There's more. That's not enough.
You can do more. And that's actually familial for me. You know, that's the
way I grew up. But the day that I couldn't get off the couch, I
would say that was a big dawning day. I was paralyzed. I just
(02:22):
stared at the walls and I'm like, what is wrong with me? And I was
exhausted. I probably couldn't speak very well that
day. If somebody had come to me. I lived alone in. In the San
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles area.
And I think, oh, yeah. In fact, one of my
neighbors happened to be a friend of mine who.
(02:45):
She lived that life too. But you get into this
groove of doing too much all the time. And in that time in
la, your neighbors weren't like, checking on you like they do in the South. They're
like, hey, we haven't heard from her in a while. And I had a friend
of mine, her. She died one day and
nobody found her for three days. So, I mean, you start
(03:07):
to realize, whoa, I'm the only one taking care of myself.
You got to take care of yourself because burnout really is
paralyzing. Yeah,
absolutely. So at Coca Cola and beyond, you've learned that
body carries our story even when we don't have words. What did you
observe about the body's. Message in the corporate world?
(03:30):
Yes. Or beyond that. Okay, well,
remember I was the corporate chick in the
80s, okay, the 80s were a big push. It was
the bigger, the better, the more more we want. More bigger,
bigger, better, better. So you've heard of peacocks and.
Oh, what is it when a guy, when he struts his stuff.
(03:54):
So corporations and men. Men. I'm just gonna say men in the corporate
world had to fill their chest up to fill the room up, you know, they
had to come in and be beat their chest and like, listen to
me, I know what I'm talking about. So it was all about
the presentation and what we now call the imposter
syndrome. And what I teach people is you can do all
(04:16):
that all you want, but how you really feel about yourself, the
stories you carry, that. The insecurities that are just
there, they come out. We read it
because we as humans are social animals. We as humans
are animals and we have that limbic brain,
that instinctual area that looks out
(04:38):
for danger. And when somebody is
saying one thing, yet emitting another message,
disconnect. And that breeds distrust. So I'd say that's where
I saw it in the corporate world. Okay,
so what moment pushed you from climbing the ladder into
(04:59):
the world of somatic movement and healing? Oh, wow, that's a big
gap. Well, that's a big gap because I
went from climbing the corporate ladder to getting a master's
in international business and finance. And I did that
in Southern Europe. And what I
discovered there is Europeans are very human.
(05:22):
They accept the fact that we are in our human bodies
and we have to take care of them. And for them, an hour
lunch is just the minimum. You know, and
then eating late in the day and always eating
with people and having that. Having a little social
time every day. So I learned, even though I was being
(05:44):
very successful in pushing in school and getting my master's,
that the play time and the relaxed time
was as important because I'd forgotten that in the corporate
world. No, it's crazy how
in other countries they don't.
(06:05):
Yes, they work and everything, but it's not like here, where it's just work, work,
work. They don't. We don't. We need to take time to focus on. On ourselves
and. And take those moments like our lunch.
Yeah, yeah. And. And. And enjoy it with other people.
Right. We lack here where we don't have that,
where it's just work, work, work, work. They're not as,
(06:28):
externally, I call it, focused or motivated.
They really Are internally think about Italians or French. They
love life. You know, they. They love more. They want to. They want to be
with their love. They're wonderful. They want to eat chocolate, they
want to drink wine. It's just a part of life which is
feeding the soul. At the same time, you can be successful,
(06:51):
you can work hard. I have a lot of Italian friends that work their rear
ends off, but, man, do they enjoy their dinners.
Yeah, that's something that. Yeah. I have
a friend, she's from Italy and she just
loves life, travels all over and does so many different.
And she works hard. She. She's. But I can
(07:15):
just. The communication I've had with her and
the relationship is. I realized, like, man, I would love
to live my life a little bit more like how she does.
And why don't you? I guess fear,
maybe. Maybe I'm not. Just
don't have the courage to do something like that. Oh,
(07:37):
now I'm going to turn the tables on you. I'll start talking to you. This
is going to change here real quick anyway. I won't
do that to you unless. You say it don't matter. I'm here to talk. Okay.
Okay. So this, you see this lifestyle of
feeding the soul, and one of the questions that always
makes me stop and think is when someone
(07:59):
asks me, what feeds your soul? What do
you do that feeds your soul? So I'm asking you that question, what
do you do that feeds your soul? What we're doing right now,
having these conversations, being able to. To share these
conversations with other people. This. I love this. This.
When I started podcasting, I didn't know what my purpose was.
(08:22):
And I was 44 years old, didn't know what, what I wanted to do with
my life. And like, I have a good paying job,
but it wasn't fulfilling.
I started podcasting and doing the interviews and having these wonderful
conversations and learning and growing. It really, it
really changed the way I look at a lot of things. It just.
(08:44):
It's just been an amazing, amazing
five years since. Since I started the podcast. I agree
with you there. I have, I have become friends with some
of these hosts because they're just so cool and we have the greatest conversations.
But my next question to you is, why. When I said, why aren't you living
like that, like your friend who's enjoying life and traveling and drinking
(09:07):
wine and having chocolate? So why aren't you doing that? Not the, not
the having to travel. I can understand that. Yeah. You know, serving
yourself. Oh, yeah, no, I am, I am. I'm Believe me, I'm learning. I'm there.
I am. I've learned.
I've grown so much in the past four years. Like, this
year, I took this year, one of my
(09:30):
goals was to improve my relationship
with God. Right. And it was something that I just
felt that I needed to do personally.
And I'm not saying that I go to church every week, because I don't, but
it was just something I just felt that I needed to
talk to God more often and more frequently and
(09:53):
just work on my relationship with Him. So that's one of the things
that's helped me so much this year, because
since that process, things have
really started to fall into place and align
by me opening myself up and willing.
And just like, you know what? I needed this. I needed to
(10:16):
speak to God and I needed these moments.
Every morning I wake up, I do my affirmations.
I spend some time just sitting and reflecting on what I'm going to
do for the rest of the day. These are things that I've
done in the past 11 months that's really helped me
become much more well rounded. Yeah. So
(10:39):
I'll circle back now and put this into the somatic perspective.
Alignment. What a great word. Alignment means
so many things. So when you think about the body, you think about the spine
and the hips and then the shoulders squaring up and
aligning. Right. And that is a physical
manifestation of what's happening also in your
(11:01):
psyche, in your mind, and in your emotions.
When we get emotional, when we get out of
sorts, when we get hit with a remembering
of a trauma or a trigger, it hits us in a way
that gets us offline a little bit. It will show up in our
body. So how do people get back in a line?
(11:24):
Which brings us back to that question. How did I start to notice
in the corporate world this mind, body? Because I
noticed when people were saying one thing and their body was telling me something
else. So when I tell people, when I
coach people, we know what's going on because we can't help
it. We sense it, because it's just we're born that way.
(11:47):
So the thing to do is to find out what it
is. If something triggers, if something goes off, how do you get back into
alignment? You just told us that you take
the time, you have to stop. That's one thing. And I can imagine
that when you're aligning yourself with God, with the higher,
with the higher self, you're not thinking a whole lot about how
(12:09):
many podcasts you got to do and all the numbers Am I right? Yeah. Not
at all. No. Yeah. So that's what I tell you. You have to get out
of your head. I say, people, if you can just cut your head off
for 20 minutes. Two. One. Try one.
Just. Just let go of everything happening, like from your chin
up for a moment, and just go down anywhere in your body where you
(12:31):
feel sensation and follow it. Follow the
sensation. Like, how painful will it be if you actually let
it express? You know, people push pain down so much
they think it's not there, and then they're like, oh, wow, I got a minute.
And then it starts to come up, or something triggers or you move in a
way. So I love this word alignment, because
(12:52):
mentally being aligned, right?
Mentally aligning your goals and what you want
with where you're going. And people ask me, well, how do you know?
How do you know if you're. How do you know you're on? How would you
know if you're aligned? And I say, and I guarantee that
you will agree with me on this, is you get this sense of
(13:14):
joy. You get the sense of peace. You look
at something that you want to do or that you're doing, and you notice for
a minute. If you get out of your head and in your body, but you
notice for a minute and you have this feeling of delight.
Yeah. Like, this is delightful. And
that's a sensation to follow right
(13:35):
when you want that alignment. I love that word. Thank you for bringing it into
the podcast. No, but it's so true, because,
like, this right here brings so much joy to me. Like, this right here
fills me up when I'm doing my podcast, when I'm able to have these conversations
and learn so much, and I've learned a lot in the five years I've
communicated with people from all over the world. That's a great thing
(13:58):
about this, is that I've been able to build relationships with people from all over
the world, with Japan, Australia, China.
And so speaking to
all these people, it's like. It's just. It hits me that,
like, yes, we are all different, but at the core of it all,
(14:18):
a lot of the people that I've spoken to, we have a lot. We believe
in a lot of the same things. We just want. We just want happiness
for ourselves and our families and those we love. We want.
I know. I. I know for me,
being able to discover my purpose and find out the.
And then talking to these other people and finding out that what their
(14:40):
purpose are, and it's just been so. It's just been
amazing to Just to do this. Like, like I said this
prior to this, prior to the podcast and I didn't have
media experience, I wasn't on radio, I wasn't on tv.
And so when I started it was like. And I, and I
finally got the courage to release my app, my first
(15:04):
episode, because it was a lot of deleting recording,
deleting recording because I was in my own head telling
myself, I suck. I don't know who's going to want to
listen to me. I don't have a degree in this or any other.
But it just took me just, finally just
facing my fear and just pressing record and then releasing it.
(15:26):
And of course with each episode I improved
more and more and then I started learning more about titles,
descriptions and tags and
like I didn't know any of these things. Right? So, because I didn't.
I watched podcasts but I didn't know anything about our, our S
feed and none of that stuff. So all the behind the scenes stuff.
(15:51):
It took me doing it and just learning
and YouTube University has been very helpful for
me and it's helped me and it's helped me so much. And
in a lot of the things. That I. Yeah, so
two things that stick out to me. One is you followed your
bliss. It was but to step through
(16:13):
and to step over, to step through that gap
of uncomfortableness, like crazy uncomfortableness. And
also facing those voices, my man, facing
those voices and telling them wherever they came from,
they were in your head and they're telling you you can't. Because, because, because,
because it's not good enough, all those things.
(16:35):
And I don't know if you had to silence it or if you just had
to step through it like stepping through glass. I'm just going to get through
this. There is another side and that's something that I
love for listeners to understand is
whatever we're talking about, where we were, where we are now,
that gap, that gap that we have, we all have to
(16:56):
close. Whether we want better relationships, where we have to look at
what's not aligned, we have to look at it
hidden in the shadows. Those voices, yours came out as voices telling you
weren't good enough. You followed your bliss anyway. And that is
something that is motivating to me. Follow your bliss.
And you believe in Law of Attraction? Of course. I've watched the
(17:19):
Secret so many times. That was, that was the,
the beginning for me to into the world of self
development. Because like I said when we first started
before, when we was offline, where I come from, this
we weren't taught about self development. We weren't taught about any of this stuff. It
(17:39):
was just go to school, get a degree, go to work, and
retire from wherever you're going to work at. We taught about self development.
We weren't taught about reading such and such a book to help you improve,
whatever it was. And then, so when, When I.
When I got with my first wife, she introduced me to the
world of self development. She. She introduced me to the Secret and everything.
(18:03):
It was amazing, was I got to actually interview
Bob Doyle from the Secret. Oh, wow.
It was like, amazing for me to be able to interview
him because, like I said, I watched the Secret, I read the book, and then
to just be able to speak to someone who contributed to
the book and to the movie, and it was just. It was awesome.
(18:26):
So you're a blessing to your, to your listeners, to your
podcast audience, because many of them, I'm sure,
I mean, they would listen to you because you are about self development,
but maybe not. Maybe because you're a guy from New York, you know, and maybe
they're like, what does this guy have to say? And then it's like, if you
can do it, then I can do it. Right.
(18:47):
That's one of the messages I'd love to get out universally, is like,
you're loved, you deserve, and you can do it. You can do
it. You don't need a whole lot of stuff. You just need the
motivation. You need the why. The why is
so important. Yeah.
And you followed your bliss. I love it. Joseph Campbell. Oh,
(19:09):
yeah. I love. I. I love the fact that I'm able to. To have
these conversations. I just, to me, it's.
I wish everyone could have this feeling sometimes, like, when I'm here
recording is like, I wish people could feel what I'm feeling when I'm doing
this. Because it's just, like you said, it's my bliss. This is where I'm
just. I'm just so happy when I'm doing it.
(19:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So where are you taking me today?
Oh, so.
You've walked through burnout, loss, reinvention. How did
movement of your body become the entry point to healing?
Oh, okay. I can give you the exact moment.
Okay, let's go. Okay. My marriage
(19:56):
was horrific. I had a husband that I
had walked in on with another woman when I was three and a half months
pregnant with our second child. So, boom. I mean, that was
something I've never seen. I didn't live around that
kind of stuff. So that was incredible, incredibly shocking. So
at that point, all my ideas of what life is supposed to be,
(20:19):
what marriage is supposed to look like, you know, the fairy tales
and growing old together and all that stuff literally crashed and
burned right in front of me. Yeah. And so that
where movement came in was I had found
this class. I don't even know how. This is another story, but how I ended
up at the Omega Institute getting certified in somatic
(20:40):
movement. That was called dance kinetics. And during that time,
I was dealing with the dissolving of my
relationship. We are still married, but dealing with it. And
every day we move for six to eight hours. Even if it
was subtle, it's bringing attention into the body and releasing.
Bringing attention, feeling it, releasing it,
(21:02):
and let it heal. You know, they say you remove the thorn and
God will heal. Right. So this is the movement
helped first of all, find the thorn, then you
remove it by different types of movements. All different types
of movement. Somatic just means body. Yeah. And then the
one. The one time that I always tell people and I started a book with
(21:25):
this is I'd had a horrible exchange with
my ex husband and my little boys, my
tiny, little sweet boys. And
it was just. It was a horrible exchange. I can't. It just. I can't even
explain it. But the boys were distraught. He was awful. I mean,
peeled out of the parking lot and shot
(21:47):
rocks up at me. Anyway, and I got
everybody settled, and then all of a sudden, I felt the
paralysis again. And I'm like, what am I going to do? I mean,
what am I going to do? And I was in a
town that was his town, not my family, not my town. So I
didn't have a whole lot of support. So I
(22:08):
ended up on the floor in fetal position,
just getting as small as I possibly can, just curling
all the way in, trying to disappear, literally trying
to disappear. And something inside of me,
mostly my boys, because I just could never leave them,
said, just move. Move anything. Move any part of your
(22:31):
body. And I literally was like, okay. I started moving my
finger and kind of like Charlie Brown, just moving my finger. And I was like,
okay, I want to follow this. And then I got up enough to turn
the stereo on, and once the music came in and filled the room, I was
able to just move my body, move into the pain,
move into. And the grief and the anger and the tears
(22:53):
that came up that, you know, you can't express sometimes
in whatever situation you're in. But it's like the lid came off.
The movement helped the lid come off. And I was able to
express these horrible Feelings. And that's.
That's how it really became very powerful for me.
Awesome. Another.
(23:16):
Why is it so hard for high achievers to feel fulfilled,
even when they've. Hit big milestones, to
feel accomplished or successful? I can tell you from my
experience, because I'm one of them. I grew up in a family
with a very successful father who brought
himself up and into being a very successful doctor.
(23:38):
But he was born in Harlan, Kentucky, and put himself
through school, medical school and all stuff. They call him determined, documentary. So he
was our role model. Like, nothing stopped him.
And he had the mantra, if you do it long enough, you will succeed. Like
playing tennis. You just. You got to get on the court. You got to. If
it takes you a thousand swings to get it right. Let's start. 101,
(24:00):
102, 103. He's like that. So you have that
as a role model. Wonderful mom who could have run IBM.
She was a housewife, but she was very. Numbers, economics, all that kind of
stuff. And three older brothers. All right. That we're all successful.
So here's the little sister coming up. And the thing I think is, well, what
can I possibly do to be enough in this whole
(24:22):
situation? Yeah. And even when I brought
A's home. Well, you could do better. A is okay,
honey, but you could make an A plus. B plus. You could make an A.
A plus. Well, that's great. But we expected that of you. So you
never get to celebrate your successes. Your success
is never enough. And that's another thing I tell my clients.
(24:46):
Every milestone. Celebrate, celebrate.
Somehow you just have to say and be grateful to yourself,
but you just. It never becomes enough. Like, we started the whole podcast off,
you know, in Coca Cola, whatever it is that you
reach, it's not enough. And like, people who are making money
there, it's like, I made a million dollars. That's all I ever wanted to make.
(25:08):
But no, let's make a million 250. Let's make a million five.
Let's. They just keep going. It becomes
maybe an addiction, almost like an adrenaline addiction,
just to achieve more at any cost.
Achieving is not bad. Being successful is not bad.
It's what cost is it
(25:30):
costing you? At what cost? Where are you giving? Where is it
detrimental? Where is it pulling from your energy
or your psyche or whatever. More than you have to give. That's when
it gets to be psychotic. Okay,
so for someone listening who senses there's something missing
beneath their success, what questions should they ask themselves?
(25:55):
Well, why? Got to start. Why?
Why do you think that there's. That you're not successful or there's more
to you or more to life. Why? And that's telling.
Because if they start externally, like I'm supposed
to have a wife and kids or I'm supposed to have the
greatest boyfriend or whatever it is, I'm supposed to be driving a Porsche by
(26:18):
the time I'm 26. These are all external goals. Right. So
that's chasing the rabbit down the hole. Yeah.
And if they're unhappy because they're comparing
themselves. See, social media really
brought psychosis to an all time high.
And as we know, suicide. Because everybody on
(26:39):
social media is an imposter. It
is all a facade. My life's great. I'm going to Paris
tomorrow and I'm with my loving husband. And you know people
that post how loving their husband is all the time, it's like, I
don't know, you wouldn't have to if he was. You wouldn't post so much. Anyway,
that whole social media thing has. It's driven us
(27:01):
to compare ourselves because you see something, you're like, oh, I'm
missing that in my life. So I'm answering your question. But it's in
two parts. One is if they're externally motivated. Really got to work on
that. If they're internally motivated. And
like I just know there's more. I just come home and
I just want to sit on the couch. But really I know I should be
(27:23):
out with friends or I get invited out and I don't. So they're
feeling a little depression. Depression, oppression. They just
feel kind of down. Then that may be
internally motivated. And that's, that's
another. That's a whole nother path to look at. There's many reasons why that could
be. There's physical, mental health issues there.
(27:45):
But also why. Why do you feel like there's
more? When you start asking those questions, they'll literally lead
you to what's going on. And normally there's
a place in the body that's holding this belief.
Yeah. Now. And that's where we can start the work for
me. Because the body doesn't lie. The brain makes all kinds of
(28:07):
excuses. The body's not going to lie. So
tell us about Wild Heart Expressive Method and the Chakra Mental
Method. What are the foundations and how do they work?
Okay, so I became certified as a somatic
movement therapist in 1997. You do the
math. And of course none of this stuff was really heard much about in the
(28:29):
southeast of America. And I
came back, but I opened up my Own little place, hung up my own little
shingle. And it was called back then dance kinetics. And it was
a culmination of all kinds of movement therapies.
The school for body mind centering
yoga. And what yoga is, the alignment.
(28:51):
Yoga is all about aligning and the focusing of
energy. And in yoga you have the chakras, base one
all the way up to seven crown. And
that was really good because in the chakra, in the chakra method,
the. You can focus on which part of the body the sensation
is in. Anyway, I taught dance kinetics for so long
(29:14):
and it was correlated with body fluids.
So the, the quality of the movement. Say, you know, you see my hands doing
this is very watery. So that would have been the, the
inner cellular fluid. I mean, who knows what that
is? The cerebral spinal fluid, who knows what that is? But
that's very ethereal because it's suspension of fluid. Anyway, it's all about
(29:38):
fluids. And it was not very fun to teach. So two years ago,
when I started really ramping up my practice again, I thought, you know what,
I've got to make this easy for people. I want people to
command their bodies and their paths. I want people to feel
free. Freedom comes from choice, and that is
choosing not to do something. And choosing to do
(30:00):
something if you're having any kind of body
sensations, even when you think you're not, just to become
aware. The book I wrote, issues in your tissues,
describes the chakra mental. Because each
chakra has an element like
fire, that's easy to explain. You know, fire is passion, fire
(30:23):
is anger. We kind of know that we can relate to that. Fire
burns, you know, a burning in our heart, burning in our belly. We
know these things. Another one, water.
We know what water is, but water is very flowy. It's about having
acceptability in your life and flexibility in your
life. Adaptability. Water adapts to whatever
(30:45):
container you know. And then you have metal. Metal is
plain and simple, black and white. It cuts the
chafe from the chaff. It's the staff from the chafe.
Because that way you can discern what you want and what you don't
want. So that metal element, the movement is very
straight. And you think, well, that's obvious. People can
(31:08):
move from one point to the other in a room. And I say, not so
easy. That's the hardest one, especially for
women who are very, you know, adaptable and
watery, to just go from point A to point B
without distraction. So all of these
help a regular person who's curious
(31:29):
at all understand where Sensation is
in their body. What type of emotional,
physical, mental thing goes along with that? If you're feeling depression,
where do you feel it in your body? So let's take that. You start feeling
low and depressed and I can't, I just can't get out. Where do you feel
it in your body? Maybe you feel it in the stomach,
(31:51):
right? All kinds of things happen in that stomach area. That's the third chakra.
That is where your stomach discerns what
you take in and what you let go of.
So in that area, if you're taking in things that aren't good for you, you're
going to get sensations in that stomach. You see how I tried to make
(32:11):
the translation of our body's sensations
and use of the elements to make it
easy to really free people up, that they
command their own bodies? Absolutely.
So in your work, you say
(32:32):
your body is your messenger, your voice is your power. How does
that shift or approach to leadership and fulfillment?
Oh, great question. My next book that will be out at the end of
the year is called what's missing with your messages.
First book is the conversation, the communication between
you and your body. All kinds of communication going on
(32:54):
there. So you had communication too. You had those voices telling you couldn't do it.
Right. That is communication. And it showed up in your body somewhere
back then in what's messing with your messages.
It's about body language. And believe it or not,
93% of all communication
is non verbal. We only hear, really,
(33:18):
about 7%. The rest is eye contact,
gesturing, how you're holding your body, your positioning, all
those things. Think about it. And this is where the primal brain comes in. We're
constantly looking at somebody for a clue. We're not listening
so much. We're looking, we're feeling. So
in leadership, it's really essential,
(33:39):
going back to my Coca Cola days, that what you're saying
and what message you want to get across to your employees or
your boss or your children or your spouse or whatever
matches what your body is telling us.
So you have to know what's going on. You can't hide the stories.
(34:00):
You can't feel insecure and tell us
how confident you are. We will not hear it and we won't trust
anything else that comes out of your mouth. So you need to breed
trust, of course, in your business and to motivate people, your
body's got to be motivated. You can't stand
there like a stick and try to motivate people.
(34:22):
You see what I'm saying? So, yeah, it's essential in
leadership. Okay.
For someone ready to connect body and mission, what are two or three
practices that can start doing today? Body
and mission. Body
(34:43):
and mission. So mission is like, what are your goals, what are you
trying to accomplish and how to connect your body.
Well, you got to first make friends with your body, right? You got to love
it. Whether you like it or what you think you see,
you've got to love this vehicle that is carrying
your soul and your mind and everything else and your emotions.
(35:06):
So the first thing you got to do is get familiar with your body.
And then to match your body in
mission, I'd say you have to do some soul searching. What is your mission? What
are you really here for? I'm here to help people communicate. I
love to communicate. I love to help people communicate because I
believe communication is the foundation of all relationships. That's
(35:29):
my mission. So when you watch me right now, even though we're on a
podcast, you see I'm gesticulating. I am
saying with my hands, my body, my shoulders, my eyes,
everything else, the same thing I'm saying to you.
So body emission, your body needs to
be a pure, clean
(35:51):
vehicle for your message.
Because it's your message that's going to get across your mission,
right? So this you you've got, you just have to
align, going back to your wonderful word alignment to align
your mission, your focus with your body.
I can simplify. Let me give one example. Super simple.
(36:16):
If you have a directive and your entire mission is
to keep people safe from kicking horses,
you work on a ranch and that's all you do. You work in a tourist
and your job is to keep people safe from the
horses having curl down shoulders, looking
at the ground. Do you think anybody believes that
(36:37):
they're safe around you? No.
Okay. Your head's. His head is nodding. No.
So that's what I'm saying. Your mission, your body, if you are up,
feel strong. You have your sense, you have your, your, your head on a
swivel. So you have your eyes on the horses, you have your eyes on all
(36:59):
the tourists and you're. And you look alert and your body
feels like it's alert and it looks alert and like you can handle
it. You're standing on both feet, not on one, not
leaning to one or the other because that just shows you're kind of
half in there. It's so easy to interpret. People don't understand.
You're interpreting it all the time. So that's a simple. That's body
(37:21):
and mission. Awesome. Yeah.
Excuse me. So angel
what's the next chapter for you? What are you building in Wild Heart Expressive
or your work that excites you? This new book
coming out, what's messing with your messages? Because it will
have a corporate application and I'm
(37:45):
applying to be and will be doing going through the process of becoming a Vistage
speaker. Vistage with the CEOs. It's a CEO support
international support groups all over the world
and they bring in experts. And I feel like my point of
view of the somatic way is feeling your way
through. You know, men unfortunately in this culture are
(38:08):
not taught to feel. And so as a leader you can't
not feel. So it's about reading the room,
you know, how do you know? It's also about reading the person, the employee that
you're talking to. They may have just had a horrible
divorce or fight or something happen. And you can't go into
explaining their performance report when the
(38:31):
listening is not there. So it's really about being very
conscientious and responsible. That's a big thing for
me. You are responsible for what comes out of your mouth,
how it lands now that's, that's their responsibility.
But when you know you're speaking into let's
(38:51):
say a conservative group or I say like you're
talking to the farmers union and you show up in a three piece suit,
you're not going to get their attention. It's about being responsible, knowing who your
subject is. So next year I'm going on tour
and I am available if anybody gets turned on by this podcast. Reach
(39:11):
out to me if you want me to come and talk to your group because
I love bringing management together,
learning about the different styles, like the
difference between an esteem and confidence because
they're different and I do like a four tier game.
So you learn to see if somebody has high self esteem or low self
(39:34):
esteem and the things you can do. If you're developing your
employees, if you're developing your company, if you're bringing
cohesiveness, this is a really great way of
helping. So I'm excited about sharing the work, my book,
my podcast, the upshift. And I have a new TV show
that's coming out, it's a local PBS. So we serve
(39:55):
four, four states, 2.6 million
households and it's called Women our age
and it's talking to experts about as women
age. You know, we don't nobody talks about it and it's like let's talk about
it, you know, the things. And so that's a new show that's
coming up. But I'm really excited about the travel. I'm excited about touring around and
(40:17):
talking to people and meeting strangers. That's what I'm excited about.
Awesome. That's awesome. So if
listeners take only one thing away from this conversation, what should it
be? How important
communication is in there is in their life, like not to be
flippant, not to throw things out of your mouth at somebody
(40:40):
and to notice. Just notice. Just stop for a second, take
a breath, put that tiniest little pause between
a feeling, especially if it's intense, and the
speaking, you have the power
to remove yourself from the situation. So I want
everybody to feel responsible. They're responsible. And you're
(41:02):
responsible for letting people know how you feel
and what you need, because that actually
makes everybody a lot more comfortable if they know nothing's hidden.
So communication really is the foundation of
all relationships. So how
(41:22):
would you encourage listeners to begin acting on this today instead of waiting for
enough time, right moment, or perfect success?
Well, noticing. Noticing is the best thing. But get my book. My book's on
Amazon.com, barnes & Noble. Just Google or
go to Amazon.com issues in your tissues by Angel Howard
and join my mailing list. That's a great way
(41:46):
to find out. And Also I'm on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn, I actually
do education. I release
things four times a month that have to do with a
chakra and an element. And I do
videos. But also in that book, there's QR codes after
every chapter where you can dance with me and dance with me
(42:08):
on YouTube. Not, not, you know, live dancing,
but. And I have Spotify list. If you're like, I don't know what kind of
music to put on, it's like, I got you covered. So
excuse me. Hold on one second. But.
(42:34):
Well.
(42:58):
It.
(43:32):
I am back. Sorry about. That. You need
to come. Yeah. On stage. There you. Go. Oh, man.
Yes. So. Sorry.
Oh, I think I was in the middle. So I can start with
find me, find. Go to my website and join my mailing list.
(43:53):
You can always email me. Angelangelhoward co
super easy. You can google me, Angel Howard. I am now.
I've now come up. It was on top yesterday. Who knows
today? But you'll find me if you google me.
And yeah, angelhoward co Join my mailing list, because
(44:14):
I don't. I give about four of those out a year.
But I'm running a campaign right now for raising money for
PBS and local programming because local
programming is disappearing in our nation. So,
yeah, that's what angel@angelhoward.co.
(44:34):
email me, join my mailing list. You can find me on Facebook.
Yes. You can find me on Instagram. LinkedIn's the best, though. And you
can message me DM me on LinkedIn because
I'm of that age.
I'd love to hear from your, from your listeners, ask me questions. I
(44:54):
would love. It. I'll include your LinkedIn link in
the description and everything. And so, yeah, so everybody,
listeners, reach out to Angel. She'll definitely
hit y' all back up. So, angel, thank you so much for being such a
great guest. But now we've come to the part of the show where you get
the solo screen and once again, you get the spotlight and you get to plug
(45:16):
away. Let everybody, websites, Amazon.
Everything. All right. Okay. You can find me
anywhere. Angel Howard.co is
my website. Find out more about me there. Hire me to speak. Have me come
into your corporate group. Yay. Look for my new book coming
out. What's messing with your messages? A lot of good.
(45:39):
A lot of good information there on just communication
anyway. But if you happen to be in the corporate world, great stuff.
I'd love to come in and talk to your people. I'd love to bring them
together into a cohesive team
and join my mailing list. I think I said that. LinkedIn, Instagram, it's all
Angel Howard, so I'm pretty easy to. Find.
(46:02):
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest. I appreciate
your time. I would love to have you back when you released a
new book. So if you. For the new year, if you want to come, come
back and, and come promote the book. I'd love to have. That. Shout
out to podmatch. Did you. You found me on Pod Match, right? Yeah. So
shout out to them. That has become such a wonderful
(46:24):
platform and I've made some great. Friends. Yes. So,
yeah, it's host and guest. It's. It. It's an amazing platform.
Yeah. Shout out to podmatch because they just accomplished something
amazing. They have given back $1 million
to podcasters on their platform.
(46:45):
They. They. There's a. I, I've benefited from it.
They. They actually give back to podcasters
in podmatch. They. I pay $6 a month, but
there's certain guests that I interview
and podmatch actually pays me a commission for. Interview these
guests. How? Yeah. So Pod Match
(47:07):
has delivered what, deliver what they said they were going to do. They've don't.
They've given back $1 million to. To
podcasters. So I'm I'm excited. Shout out to. To Alex
and Alicia San. Felipe. They. They're. They're. Amazing. Great.
Yeah. Love that. I'm glad we're doing that. Yep. Perfect.
But again, you're. You're more than welcome to come back,
(47:30):
promote the book when it's released. I would love to have you back on. This
was awesome. But don't leave just yet. Let me close out the show and we'll
chat a little bit off the air. But thank you so much for being such
a great. Guest. Thank you. Thank you for having. Me. Oh, I appreciate you.
Thank you. All right, everybody, another
great episode is in the books. If Angel's
(47:51):
message resonated, head to our website or
search Wild Heart, Expressive or whatever. Anything she mentioned, go
look for it and explore her programs, retreats,
her books, issues in your tissues and link will be
in the show notes. And if you know someone who's done the work but still
feels disconnected from their body or their voice, share this
(48:13):
episode, please, please. Because it's important.
Because real leadership begins from the inside the body. The
joy of being. Stay embodied, stay aligned, and
stay wise. You know your boy. Wise does it. Peace out.
Sa.
(00:32):
Foreign,
Welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind podcast. I am your host
wiz, and today's guest has
taught that that the body cannot be ignored when chasing
(00:54):
greatness. My next guest is a professional dancer, corporate
executive, somatic movement therapist, and founder of Wild
Heart Expressive and the Chak Mental Method.
From the stage to the boardroom, she discovered the thread
that matters is how your body carries our story. She helps leaders,
creatives and change makers release trauma and tissue,
(01:17):
reclaim voice in their business, and lead
and lead embodied. If you're ready to feel your life
and lead it, you're in the right place. Please welcome
Angel Howard to Stuck him on Mind podcast. Thank
you so much for inviting me and
me here. Pleasure's all mine. It's all mine. So I'm excited. So,
(01:39):
angel, you've lived many lives. Dancer, corporate executive, somatic
therapist. How did you realize that success on the outside
wasn't filling you up? Ah, well,
I mean, the day you wake up and you're like, I'm an
80s corporate chick and I'm doing. I'm top of
my game. I'm doing great. But there's more. There's more.
(02:01):
And the there's more push
is always empty because you will never
fulfill. There's more. That's not enough.
You can do more. And that's actually familial for me. You know, that's the
way I grew up. But the day that I couldn't get off the couch, I
would say that was a big dawning day. I was paralyzed. I just
(02:22):
stared at the walls and I'm like, what is wrong with me? And I was
exhausted. I probably couldn't speak very well that
day. If somebody had come to me. I lived alone in. In the San
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles area.
And I think, oh, yeah. In fact, one of my
neighbors happened to be a friend of mine who.
(02:45):
She lived that life too. But you get into this
groove of doing too much all the time. And in that time in
la, your neighbors weren't like, checking on you like they do in the South. They're
like, hey, we haven't heard from her in a while. And I had a friend
of mine, her. She died one day and
nobody found her for three days. So, I mean, you start
(03:07):
to realize, whoa, I'm the only one taking care of myself.
You got to take care of yourself because burnout really is
paralyzing. Yeah,
absolutely. So at Coca Cola and beyond, you've learned that
body carries our story even when we don't have words. What did you
observe about the body's. Message in the corporate world?
(03:30):
Yes. Or beyond that. Okay, well,
remember I was the corporate chick in the
80s, okay, the 80s were a big push. It was
the bigger, the better, the more more we want. More bigger,
bigger, better, better. So you've heard of peacocks and.
Oh, what is it when a guy, when he struts his stuff.
(03:54):
So corporations and men. Men. I'm just gonna say men in the corporate
world had to fill their chest up to fill the room up, you know, they
had to come in and be beat their chest and like, listen to
me, I know what I'm talking about. So it was all about
the presentation and what we now call the imposter
syndrome. And what I teach people is you can do all
(04:16):
that all you want, but how you really feel about yourself, the
stories you carry, that. The insecurities that are just
there, they come out. We read it
because we as humans are social animals. We as humans
are animals and we have that limbic brain,
that instinctual area that looks out
(04:38):
for danger. And when somebody is
saying one thing, yet emitting another message,
disconnect. And that breeds distrust. So I'd say that's where
I saw it in the corporate world. Okay,
so what moment pushed you from climbing the ladder into
(04:59):
the world of somatic movement and healing? Oh, wow, that's a big
gap. Well, that's a big gap because I
went from climbing the corporate ladder to getting a master's
in international business and finance. And I did that
in Southern Europe. And what I
discovered there is Europeans are very human.
(05:22):
They accept the fact that we are in our human bodies
and we have to take care of them. And for them, an hour
lunch is just the minimum. You know, and
then eating late in the day and always eating
with people and having that. Having a little social
time every day. So I learned, even though I was being
(05:44):
very successful in pushing in school and getting my master's,
that the play time and the relaxed time
was as important because I'd forgotten that in the corporate
world. No, it's crazy how
in other countries they don't.
(06:05):
Yes, they work and everything, but it's not like here, where it's just work, work,
work. They don't. We don't. We need to take time to focus on. On ourselves
and. And take those moments like our lunch.
Yeah, yeah. And. And. And enjoy it with other people.
Right. We lack here where we don't have that,
where it's just work, work, work, work. They're not as,
(06:28):
externally, I call it, focused or motivated.
They really Are internally think about Italians or French. They
love life. You know, they. They love more. They want to. They want to be
with their love. They're wonderful. They want to eat chocolate, they
want to drink wine. It's just a part of life which is
feeding the soul. At the same time, you can be successful,
(06:51):
you can work hard. I have a lot of Italian friends that work their rear
ends off, but, man, do they enjoy their dinners.
Yeah, that's something that. Yeah. I have
a friend, she's from Italy and she just
loves life, travels all over and does so many different.
And she works hard. She. She's. But I can
(07:15):
just. The communication I've had with her and
the relationship is. I realized, like, man, I would love
to live my life a little bit more like how she does.
And why don't you? I guess fear,
maybe. Maybe I'm not. Just
don't have the courage to do something like that. Oh,
(07:37):
now I'm going to turn the tables on you. I'll start talking to you. This
is going to change here real quick anyway. I won't
do that to you unless. You say it don't matter. I'm here to talk. Okay.
Okay. So this, you see this lifestyle of
feeding the soul, and one of the questions that always
makes me stop and think is when someone
(07:59):
asks me, what feeds your soul? What do
you do that feeds your soul? So I'm asking you that question, what
do you do that feeds your soul? What we're doing right now,
having these conversations, being able to. To share these
conversations with other people. This. I love this. This.
When I started podcasting, I didn't know what my purpose was.
(08:22):
And I was 44 years old, didn't know what, what I wanted to do with
my life. And like, I have a good paying job,
but it wasn't fulfilling.
I started podcasting and doing the interviews and having these wonderful
conversations and learning and growing. It really, it
really changed the way I look at a lot of things. It just.
(08:44):
It's just been an amazing, amazing
five years since. Since I started the podcast. I agree
with you there. I have, I have become friends with some
of these hosts because they're just so cool and we have the greatest conversations.
But my next question to you is, why. When I said, why aren't you living
like that, like your friend who's enjoying life and traveling and drinking
(09:07):
wine and having chocolate? So why aren't you doing that? Not the, not
the having to travel. I can understand that. Yeah. You know, serving
yourself. Oh, yeah, no, I am, I am. I'm Believe me, I'm learning. I'm there.
I am. I've learned.
I've grown so much in the past four years. Like, this
year, I took this year, one of my
(09:30):
goals was to improve my relationship
with God. Right. And it was something that I just
felt that I needed to do personally.
And I'm not saying that I go to church every week, because I don't, but
it was just something I just felt that I needed to
talk to God more often and more frequently and
(09:53):
just work on my relationship with Him. So that's one of the things
that's helped me so much this year, because
since that process, things have
really started to fall into place and align
by me opening myself up and willing.
And just like, you know what? I needed this. I needed to
(10:16):
speak to God and I needed these moments.
Every morning I wake up, I do my affirmations.
I spend some time just sitting and reflecting on what I'm going to
do for the rest of the day. These are things that I've
done in the past 11 months that's really helped me
become much more well rounded. Yeah. So
(10:39):
I'll circle back now and put this into the somatic perspective.
Alignment. What a great word. Alignment means
so many things. So when you think about the body, you think about the spine
and the hips and then the shoulders squaring up and
aligning. Right. And that is a physical
manifestation of what's happening also in your
(11:01):
psyche, in your mind, and in your emotions.
When we get emotional, when we get out of
sorts, when we get hit with a remembering
of a trauma or a trigger, it hits us in a way
that gets us offline a little bit. It will show up in our
body. So how do people get back in a line?
(11:24):
Which brings us back to that question. How did I start to notice
in the corporate world this mind, body? Because I
noticed when people were saying one thing and their body was telling me something
else. So when I tell people, when I
coach people, we know what's going on because we can't help
it. We sense it, because it's just we're born that way.
(11:47):
So the thing to do is to find out what it
is. If something triggers, if something goes off, how do you get back into
alignment? You just told us that you take
the time, you have to stop. That's one thing. And I can imagine
that when you're aligning yourself with God, with the higher,
with the higher self, you're not thinking a whole lot about how
(12:09):
many podcasts you got to do and all the numbers Am I right? Yeah. Not
at all. No. Yeah. So that's what I tell you. You have to get out
of your head. I say, people, if you can just cut your head off
for 20 minutes. Two. One. Try one.
Just. Just let go of everything happening, like from your chin
up for a moment, and just go down anywhere in your body where you
(12:31):
feel sensation and follow it. Follow the
sensation. Like, how painful will it be if you actually let
it express? You know, people push pain down so much
they think it's not there, and then they're like, oh, wow, I got a minute.
And then it starts to come up, or something triggers or you move in a
way. So I love this word alignment, because
(12:52):
mentally being aligned, right?
Mentally aligning your goals and what you want
with where you're going. And people ask me, well, how do you know?
How do you know if you're. How do you know you're on? How would you
know if you're aligned? And I say, and I guarantee that
you will agree with me on this, is you get this sense of
(13:14):
joy. You get the sense of peace. You look
at something that you want to do or that you're doing, and you notice for
a minute. If you get out of your head and in your body, but you
notice for a minute and you have this feeling of delight.
Yeah. Like, this is delightful. And
that's a sensation to follow right
(13:35):
when you want that alignment. I love that word. Thank you for bringing it into
the podcast. No, but it's so true, because,
like, this right here brings so much joy to me. Like, this right here
fills me up when I'm doing my podcast, when I'm able to have these conversations
and learn so much, and I've learned a lot in the five years I've
communicated with people from all over the world. That's a great thing
(13:58):
about this, is that I've been able to build relationships with people from all over
the world, with Japan, Australia, China.
And so speaking to
all these people, it's like. It's just. It hits me that,
like, yes, we are all different, but at the core of it all,
(14:18):
a lot of the people that I've spoken to, we have a lot. We believe
in a lot of the same things. We just want. We just want happiness
for ourselves and our families and those we love. We want.
I know. I. I know for me,
being able to discover my purpose and find out the.
And then talking to these other people and finding out that what their
(14:40):
purpose are, and it's just been so. It's just been
amazing to Just to do this. Like, like I said this
prior to this, prior to the podcast and I didn't have
media experience, I wasn't on radio, I wasn't on tv.
And so when I started it was like. And I, and I
finally got the courage to release my app, my first
(15:04):
episode, because it was a lot of deleting recording,
deleting recording because I was in my own head telling
myself, I suck. I don't know who's going to want to
listen to me. I don't have a degree in this or any other.
But it just took me just, finally just
facing my fear and just pressing record and then releasing it.
(15:26):
And of course with each episode I improved
more and more and then I started learning more about titles,
descriptions and tags and
like I didn't know any of these things. Right? So, because I didn't.
I watched podcasts but I didn't know anything about our, our S
feed and none of that stuff. So all the behind the scenes stuff.
(15:51):
It took me doing it and just learning
and YouTube University has been very helpful for
me and it's helped me and it's helped me so much. And
in a lot of the things. That I. Yeah, so
two things that stick out to me. One is you followed your
bliss. It was but to step through
(16:13):
and to step over, to step through that gap
of uncomfortableness, like crazy uncomfortableness. And
also facing those voices, my man, facing
those voices and telling them wherever they came from,
they were in your head and they're telling you you can't. Because, because, because,
because it's not good enough, all those things.
(16:35):
And I don't know if you had to silence it or if you just had
to step through it like stepping through glass. I'm just going to get through
this. There is another side and that's something that I
love for listeners to understand is
whatever we're talking about, where we were, where we are now,
that gap, that gap that we have, we all have to
(16:56):
close. Whether we want better relationships, where we have to look at
what's not aligned, we have to look at it
hidden in the shadows. Those voices, yours came out as voices telling you
weren't good enough. You followed your bliss anyway. And that is
something that is motivating to me. Follow your bliss.
And you believe in Law of Attraction? Of course. I've watched the
(17:19):
Secret so many times. That was, that was the,
the beginning for me to into the world of self
development. Because like I said when we first started
before, when we was offline, where I come from, this
we weren't taught about self development. We weren't taught about any of this stuff. It
(17:39):
was just go to school, get a degree, go to work, and
retire from wherever you're going to work at. We taught about self development.
We weren't taught about reading such and such a book to help you improve,
whatever it was. And then, so when, When I.
When I got with my first wife, she introduced me to the
world of self development. She. She introduced me to the Secret and everything.
(18:03):
It was amazing, was I got to actually interview
Bob Doyle from the Secret. Oh, wow.
It was like, amazing for me to be able to interview
him because, like I said, I watched the Secret, I read the book, and then
to just be able to speak to someone who contributed to
the book and to the movie, and it was just. It was awesome.
(18:26):
So you're a blessing to your, to your listeners, to your
podcast audience, because many of them, I'm sure,
I mean, they would listen to you because you are about self development,
but maybe not. Maybe because you're a guy from New York, you know, and maybe
they're like, what does this guy have to say? And then it's like, if you
can do it, then I can do it. Right.
(18:47):
That's one of the messages I'd love to get out universally, is like,
you're loved, you deserve, and you can do it. You can do
it. You don't need a whole lot of stuff. You just need the
motivation. You need the why. The why is
so important. Yeah.
And you followed your bliss. I love it. Joseph Campbell. Oh,
(19:09):
yeah. I love. I. I love the fact that I'm able to. To have
these conversations. I just, to me, it's.
I wish everyone could have this feeling sometimes, like, when I'm here
recording is like, I wish people could feel what I'm feeling when I'm doing
this. Because it's just, like you said, it's my bliss. This is where I'm
just. I'm just so happy when I'm doing it.
(19:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So where are you taking me today?
Oh, so.
You've walked through burnout, loss, reinvention. How did
movement of your body become the entry point to healing?
Oh, okay. I can give you the exact moment.
Okay, let's go. Okay. My marriage
(19:56):
was horrific. I had a husband that I
had walked in on with another woman when I was three and a half months
pregnant with our second child. So, boom. I mean, that was
something I've never seen. I didn't live around that
kind of stuff. So that was incredible, incredibly shocking. So
at that point, all my ideas of what life is supposed to be,
(20:19):
what marriage is supposed to look like, you know, the fairy tales
and growing old together and all that stuff literally crashed and
burned right in front of me. Yeah. And so that
where movement came in was I had found
this class. I don't even know how. This is another story, but how I ended
up at the Omega Institute getting certified in somatic
(20:40):
movement. That was called dance kinetics. And during that time,
I was dealing with the dissolving of my
relationship. We are still married, but dealing with it. And
every day we move for six to eight hours. Even if it
was subtle, it's bringing attention into the body and releasing.
Bringing attention, feeling it, releasing it,
(21:02):
and let it heal. You know, they say you remove the thorn and
God will heal. Right. So this is the movement
helped first of all, find the thorn, then you
remove it by different types of movements. All different types
of movement. Somatic just means body. Yeah. And then the
one. The one time that I always tell people and I started a book with
(21:25):
this is I'd had a horrible exchange with
my ex husband and my little boys, my
tiny, little sweet boys. And
it was just. It was a horrible exchange. I can't. It just. I can't even
explain it. But the boys were distraught. He was awful. I mean,
peeled out of the parking lot and shot
(21:47):
rocks up at me. Anyway, and I got
everybody settled, and then all of a sudden, I felt the
paralysis again. And I'm like, what am I going to do? I mean,
what am I going to do? And I was in a
town that was his town, not my family, not my town. So I
didn't have a whole lot of support. So I
(22:08):
ended up on the floor in fetal position,
just getting as small as I possibly can, just curling
all the way in, trying to disappear, literally trying
to disappear. And something inside of me,
mostly my boys, because I just could never leave them,
said, just move. Move anything. Move any part of your
(22:31):
body. And I literally was like, okay. I started moving my
finger and kind of like Charlie Brown, just moving my finger. And I was like,
okay, I want to follow this. And then I got up enough to turn
the stereo on, and once the music came in and filled the room, I was
able to just move my body, move into the pain,
move into. And the grief and the anger and the tears
(22:53):
that came up that, you know, you can't express sometimes
in whatever situation you're in. But it's like the lid came off.
The movement helped the lid come off. And I was able to
express these horrible Feelings. And that's.
That's how it really became very powerful for me.
Awesome. Another.
(23:16):
Why is it so hard for high achievers to feel fulfilled,
even when they've. Hit big milestones, to
feel accomplished or successful? I can tell you from my
experience, because I'm one of them. I grew up in a family
with a very successful father who brought
himself up and into being a very successful doctor.
(23:38):
But he was born in Harlan, Kentucky, and put himself
through school, medical school and all stuff. They call him determined, documentary. So he
was our role model. Like, nothing stopped him.
And he had the mantra, if you do it long enough, you will succeed. Like
playing tennis. You just. You got to get on the court. You got to. If
it takes you a thousand swings to get it right. Let's start. 101,
(24:00):
102, 103. He's like that. So you have that
as a role model. Wonderful mom who could have run IBM.
She was a housewife, but she was very. Numbers, economics, all that kind of
stuff. And three older brothers. All right. That we're all successful.
So here's the little sister coming up. And the thing I think is, well, what
can I possibly do to be enough in this whole
(24:22):
situation? Yeah. And even when I brought
A's home. Well, you could do better. A is okay,
honey, but you could make an A plus. B plus. You could make an A.
A plus. Well, that's great. But we expected that of you. So you
never get to celebrate your successes. Your success
is never enough. And that's another thing I tell my clients.
(24:46):
Every milestone. Celebrate, celebrate.
Somehow you just have to say and be grateful to yourself,
but you just. It never becomes enough. Like, we started the whole podcast off,
you know, in Coca Cola, whatever it is that you
reach, it's not enough. And like, people who are making money
there, it's like, I made a million dollars. That's all I ever wanted to make.
(25:08):
But no, let's make a million 250. Let's make a million five.
Let's. They just keep going. It becomes
maybe an addiction, almost like an adrenaline addiction,
just to achieve more at any cost.
Achieving is not bad. Being successful is not bad.
It's what cost is it
(25:30):
costing you? At what cost? Where are you giving? Where is it
detrimental? Where is it pulling from your energy
or your psyche or whatever. More than you have to give. That's when
it gets to be psychotic. Okay,
so for someone listening who senses there's something missing
beneath their success, what questions should they ask themselves?
(25:55):
Well, why? Got to start. Why?
Why do you think that there's. That you're not successful or there's more
to you or more to life. Why? And that's telling.
Because if they start externally, like I'm supposed
to have a wife and kids or I'm supposed to have the
greatest boyfriend or whatever it is, I'm supposed to be driving a Porsche by
(26:18):
the time I'm 26. These are all external goals. Right. So
that's chasing the rabbit down the hole. Yeah.
And if they're unhappy because they're comparing
themselves. See, social media really
brought psychosis to an all time high.
And as we know, suicide. Because everybody on
(26:39):
social media is an imposter. It
is all a facade. My life's great. I'm going to Paris
tomorrow and I'm with my loving husband. And you know people
that post how loving their husband is all the time, it's like, I
don't know, you wouldn't have to if he was. You wouldn't post so much. Anyway,
that whole social media thing has. It's driven us
(27:01):
to compare ourselves because you see something, you're like, oh, I'm
missing that in my life. So I'm answering your question. But it's in
two parts. One is if they're externally motivated. Really got to work on
that. If they're internally motivated. And
like I just know there's more. I just come home and
I just want to sit on the couch. But really I know I should be
(27:23):
out with friends or I get invited out and I don't. So they're
feeling a little depression. Depression, oppression. They just
feel kind of down. Then that may be
internally motivated. And that's, that's
another. That's a whole nother path to look at. There's many reasons why that could
be. There's physical, mental health issues there.
(27:45):
But also why. Why do you feel like there's
more? When you start asking those questions, they'll literally lead
you to what's going on. And normally there's
a place in the body that's holding this belief.
Yeah. Now. And that's where we can start the work for
me. Because the body doesn't lie. The brain makes all kinds of
(28:07):
excuses. The body's not going to lie. So
tell us about Wild Heart Expressive Method and the Chakra Mental
Method. What are the foundations and how do they work?
Okay, so I became certified as a somatic
movement therapist in 1997. You do the
math. And of course none of this stuff was really heard much about in the
(28:29):
southeast of America. And I
came back, but I opened up my Own little place, hung up my own little
shingle. And it was called back then dance kinetics. And it was
a culmination of all kinds of movement therapies.
The school for body mind centering
yoga. And what yoga is, the alignment.
(28:51):
Yoga is all about aligning and the focusing of
energy. And in yoga you have the chakras, base one
all the way up to seven crown. And
that was really good because in the chakra, in the chakra method,
the. You can focus on which part of the body the sensation
is in. Anyway, I taught dance kinetics for so long
(29:14):
and it was correlated with body fluids.
So the, the quality of the movement. Say, you know, you see my hands doing
this is very watery. So that would have been the, the
inner cellular fluid. I mean, who knows what that
is? The cerebral spinal fluid, who knows what that is? But
that's very ethereal because it's suspension of fluid. Anyway, it's all about
(29:38):
fluids. And it was not very fun to teach. So two years ago,
when I started really ramping up my practice again, I thought, you know what,
I've got to make this easy for people. I want people to
command their bodies and their paths. I want people to feel
free. Freedom comes from choice, and that is
choosing not to do something. And choosing to do
(30:00):
something if you're having any kind of body
sensations, even when you think you're not, just to become
aware. The book I wrote, issues in your tissues,
describes the chakra mental. Because each
chakra has an element like
fire, that's easy to explain. You know, fire is passion, fire
(30:23):
is anger. We kind of know that we can relate to that. Fire
burns, you know, a burning in our heart, burning in our belly. We
know these things. Another one, water.
We know what water is, but water is very flowy. It's about having
acceptability in your life and flexibility in your
life. Adaptability. Water adapts to whatever
(30:45):
container you know. And then you have metal. Metal is
plain and simple, black and white. It cuts the
chafe from the chaff. It's the staff from the chafe.
Because that way you can discern what you want and what you don't
want. So that metal element, the movement is very
straight. And you think, well, that's obvious. People can
(31:08):
move from one point to the other in a room. And I say, not so
easy. That's the hardest one, especially for
women who are very, you know, adaptable and
watery, to just go from point A to point B
without distraction. So all of these
help a regular person who's curious
(31:29):
at all understand where Sensation is
in their body. What type of emotional,
physical, mental thing goes along with that? If you're feeling depression,
where do you feel it in your body? So let's take that. You start feeling
low and depressed and I can't, I just can't get out. Where do you feel
it in your body? Maybe you feel it in the stomach,
(31:51):
right? All kinds of things happen in that stomach area. That's the third chakra.
That is where your stomach discerns what
you take in and what you let go of.
So in that area, if you're taking in things that aren't good for you, you're
going to get sensations in that stomach. You see how I tried to make
(32:11):
the translation of our body's sensations
and use of the elements to make it
easy to really free people up, that they
command their own bodies? Absolutely.
So in your work, you say
(32:32):
your body is your messenger, your voice is your power. How does
that shift or approach to leadership and fulfillment?
Oh, great question. My next book that will be out at the end of
the year is called what's missing with your messages.
First book is the conversation, the communication between
you and your body. All kinds of communication going on
(32:54):
there. So you had communication too. You had those voices telling you couldn't do it.
Right. That is communication. And it showed up in your body somewhere
back then in what's messing with your messages.
It's about body language. And believe it or not,
93% of all communication
is non verbal. We only hear, really,
(33:18):
about 7%. The rest is eye contact,
gesturing, how you're holding your body, your positioning, all
those things. Think about it. And this is where the primal brain comes in. We're
constantly looking at somebody for a clue. We're not listening
so much. We're looking, we're feeling. So
in leadership, it's really essential,
(33:39):
going back to my Coca Cola days, that what you're saying
and what message you want to get across to your employees or
your boss or your children or your spouse or whatever
matches what your body is telling us.
So you have to know what's going on. You can't hide the stories.
(34:00):
You can't feel insecure and tell us
how confident you are. We will not hear it and we won't trust
anything else that comes out of your mouth. So you need to breed
trust, of course, in your business and to motivate people, your
body's got to be motivated. You can't stand
there like a stick and try to motivate people.
(34:22):
You see what I'm saying? So, yeah, it's essential in
leadership. Okay.
For someone ready to connect body and mission, what are two or three
practices that can start doing today? Body
and mission. Body
(34:43):
and mission. So mission is like, what are your goals, what are you
trying to accomplish and how to connect your body.
Well, you got to first make friends with your body, right? You got to love
it. Whether you like it or what you think you see,
you've got to love this vehicle that is carrying
your soul and your mind and everything else and your emotions.
(35:06):
So the first thing you got to do is get familiar with your body.
And then to match your body in
mission, I'd say you have to do some soul searching. What is your mission? What
are you really here for? I'm here to help people communicate. I
love to communicate. I love to help people communicate because I
believe communication is the foundation of all relationships. That's
(35:29):
my mission. So when you watch me right now, even though we're on a
podcast, you see I'm gesticulating. I am
saying with my hands, my body, my shoulders, my eyes,
everything else, the same thing I'm saying to you.
So body emission, your body needs to
be a pure, clean
(35:51):
vehicle for your message.
Because it's your message that's going to get across your mission,
right? So this you you've got, you just have to
align, going back to your wonderful word alignment to align
your mission, your focus with your body.
I can simplify. Let me give one example. Super simple.
(36:16):
If you have a directive and your entire mission is
to keep people safe from kicking horses,
you work on a ranch and that's all you do. You work in a tourist
and your job is to keep people safe from the
horses having curl down shoulders, looking
at the ground. Do you think anybody believes that
(36:37):
they're safe around you? No.
Okay. Your head's. His head is nodding. No.
So that's what I'm saying. Your mission, your body, if you are up,
feel strong. You have your sense, you have your, your, your head on a
swivel. So you have your eyes on the horses, you have your eyes on all
(36:59):
the tourists and you're. And you look alert and your body
feels like it's alert and it looks alert and like you can handle
it. You're standing on both feet, not on one, not
leaning to one or the other because that just shows you're kind of
half in there. It's so easy to interpret. People don't understand.
You're interpreting it all the time. So that's a simple. That's body
(37:21):
and mission. Awesome. Yeah.
Excuse me. So angel
what's the next chapter for you? What are you building in Wild Heart Expressive
or your work that excites you? This new book
coming out, what's messing with your messages? Because it will
have a corporate application and I'm
(37:45):
applying to be and will be doing going through the process of becoming a Vistage
speaker. Vistage with the CEOs. It's a CEO support
international support groups all over the world
and they bring in experts. And I feel like my point of
view of the somatic way is feeling your way
through. You know, men unfortunately in this culture are
(38:08):
not taught to feel. And so as a leader you can't
not feel. So it's about reading the room,
you know, how do you know? It's also about reading the person, the employee that
you're talking to. They may have just had a horrible
divorce or fight or something happen. And you can't go into
explaining their performance report when the
(38:31):
listening is not there. So it's really about being very
conscientious and responsible. That's a big thing for
me. You are responsible for what comes out of your mouth,
how it lands now that's, that's their responsibility.
But when you know you're speaking into let's
(38:51):
say a conservative group or I say like you're
talking to the farmers union and you show up in a three piece suit,
you're not going to get their attention. It's about being responsible, knowing who your
subject is. So next year I'm going on tour
and I am available if anybody gets turned on by this podcast. Reach
(39:11):
out to me if you want me to come and talk to your group because
I love bringing management together,
learning about the different styles, like the
difference between an esteem and confidence because
they're different and I do like a four tier game.
So you learn to see if somebody has high self esteem or low self
(39:34):
esteem and the things you can do. If you're developing your
employees, if you're developing your company, if you're bringing
cohesiveness, this is a really great way of
helping. So I'm excited about sharing the work, my book,
my podcast, the upshift. And I have a new TV show
that's coming out, it's a local PBS. So we serve
(39:55):
four, four states, 2.6 million
households and it's called Women our age
and it's talking to experts about as women
age. You know, we don't nobody talks about it and it's like let's talk about
it, you know, the things. And so that's a new show that's
coming up. But I'm really excited about the travel. I'm excited about touring around and
(40:17):
talking to people and meeting strangers. That's what I'm excited about.
Awesome. That's awesome. So if
listeners take only one thing away from this conversation, what should it
be? How important
communication is in there is in their life, like not to be
flippant, not to throw things out of your mouth at somebody
(40:40):
and to notice. Just notice. Just stop for a second, take
a breath, put that tiniest little pause between
a feeling, especially if it's intense, and the
speaking, you have the power
to remove yourself from the situation. So I want
everybody to feel responsible. They're responsible. And you're
(41:02):
responsible for letting people know how you feel
and what you need, because that actually
makes everybody a lot more comfortable if they know nothing's hidden.
So communication really is the foundation of
all relationships. So how
(41:22):
would you encourage listeners to begin acting on this today instead of waiting for
enough time, right moment, or perfect success?
Well, noticing. Noticing is the best thing. But get my book. My book's on
Amazon.com, barnes & Noble. Just Google or
go to Amazon.com issues in your tissues by Angel Howard
and join my mailing list. That's a great way
(41:46):
to find out. And Also I'm on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn, I actually
do education. I release
things four times a month that have to do with a
chakra and an element. And I do
videos. But also in that book, there's QR codes after
every chapter where you can dance with me and dance with me
(42:08):
on YouTube. Not, not, you know, live dancing,
but. And I have Spotify list. If you're like, I don't know what kind of
music to put on, it's like, I got you covered. So
excuse me. Hold on one second. But.
(42:34):
Well.
(42:58):
It.
(43:32):
I am back. Sorry about. That. You need
to come. Yeah. On stage. There you. Go. Oh, man.
Yes. So. Sorry.
Oh, I think I was in the middle. So I can start with
find me, find. Go to my website and join my mailing list.
(43:53):
You can always email me. Angelangelhoward co
super easy. You can google me, Angel Howard. I am now.
I've now come up. It was on top yesterday. Who knows
today? But you'll find me if you google me.
And yeah, angelhoward co Join my mailing list, because
(44:14):
I don't. I give about four of those out a year.
But I'm running a campaign right now for raising money for
PBS and local programming because local
programming is disappearing in our nation. So,
yeah, that's what angel@angelhoward.co.
(44:34):
email me, join my mailing list. You can find me on Facebook.
Yes. You can find me on Instagram. LinkedIn's the best, though. And you
can message me DM me on LinkedIn because
I'm of that age.
I'd love to hear from your, from your listeners, ask me questions. I
(44:54):
would love. It. I'll include your LinkedIn link in
the description and everything. And so, yeah, so everybody,
listeners, reach out to Angel. She'll definitely
hit y' all back up. So, angel, thank you so much for being such a
great guest. But now we've come to the part of the show where you get
the solo screen and once again, you get the spotlight and you get to plug
(45:16):
away. Let everybody, websites, Amazon.
Everything. All right. Okay. You can find me
anywhere. Angel Howard.co is
my website. Find out more about me there. Hire me to speak. Have me come
into your corporate group. Yay. Look for my new book coming
out. What's messing with your messages? A lot of good.
(45:39):
A lot of good information there on just communication
anyway. But if you happen to be in the corporate world, great stuff.
I'd love to come in and talk to your people. I'd love to bring them
together into a cohesive team
and join my mailing list. I think I said that. LinkedIn, Instagram, it's all
Angel Howard, so I'm pretty easy to. Find.
(46:02):
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest. I appreciate
your time. I would love to have you back when you released a
new book. So if you. For the new year, if you want to come, come
back and, and come promote the book. I'd love to have. That. Shout
out to podmatch. Did you. You found me on Pod Match, right? Yeah. So
shout out to them. That has become such a wonderful
(46:24):
platform and I've made some great. Friends. Yes. So,
yeah, it's host and guest. It's. It. It's an amazing platform.
Yeah. Shout out to podmatch because they just accomplished something
amazing. They have given back $1 million
to podcasters on their platform.
(46:45):
They. They. There's a. I, I've benefited from it.
They. They actually give back to podcasters
in podmatch. They. I pay $6 a month, but
there's certain guests that I interview
and podmatch actually pays me a commission for. Interview these
guests. How? Yeah. So Pod Match
(47:07):
has delivered what, deliver what they said they were going to do. They've don't.
They've given back $1 million to. To
podcasters. So I'm I'm excited. Shout out to. To Alex
and Alicia San. Felipe. They. They're. They're. Amazing. Great.
Yeah. Love that. I'm glad we're doing that. Yep. Perfect.
But again, you're. You're more than welcome to come back,
(47:30):
promote the book when it's released. I would love to have you back on. This
was awesome. But don't leave just yet. Let me close out the show and we'll
chat a little bit off the air. But thank you so much for being such
a great. Guest. Thank you. Thank you for having. Me. Oh, I appreciate you.
Thank you. All right, everybody, another
great episode is in the books. If Angel's
(47:51):
message resonated, head to our website or
search Wild Heart, Expressive or whatever. Anything she mentioned, go
look for it and explore her programs, retreats,
her books, issues in your tissues and link will be
in the show notes. And if you know someone who's done the work but still
feels disconnected from their body or their voice, share this
(48:13):
episode, please, please. Because it's important.
Because real leadership begins from the inside the body. The
joy of being. Stay embodied, stay aligned, and
stay wise. You know your boy. Wise does it. Peace out.
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