Why the Wrong Person Feels Like Home | Sheleana Aiyana

Sheleana Aiyana, author of Becoming the One and founder of the Rising Woman community, joins Lewis Howes to discuss conscious relationships, attachment wounds, trauma bonding, and somatic healing. Drawing on Peter Levine's somatic experiencing and his book Waking the Tiger, Imago therapy from Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, and Gottman Institute research, Aiyana covers nervous system regulation, inner child re-parenting, the father wound, and the shadow vows she created with her husband before marriage.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Lewis Howes?

  You have an amazing book Becoming the One That Has Taken Over the World by Storm, an amazing community at Rising Women. And you have this really interesting story that I started to read more about, where you were in and out of foster care for a while, is that right? Up until you were 16, I think.

• 0:19Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 0:20Lewis Howes?

  You grew up without a father.

• 0:21Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 0:21Lewis Howes?

  And your mother was also kind of having some challenges. So it felt like an intermittent mother, kind of off and on.

• 0:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 0:28Lewis Howes?

  How does someone who grows up in foster care, has to work multiple jobs at 16 to survive, and doesn't really have the mother that maybe they desired, how does someone turn out healthy, cautious, and in a loving, committed relationship with a beautiful child? How does that happen?

• 0:47Sheleana Aiyana?

  Well, you know, part of it I can explain, and part of it I feel like is just grace. I often wonder that myself. Because I think so many of us go through these things. And I wonder, you know, what's the difference between a person who experiences just as much or more trauma and doesn't make it out versus a person who does? And sometimes I feel that it comes down to knowing that we were loved. Because even though I went through so much pain and I experienced a lot of abandonment and abuse and all of these things, there was this part of me that knew that I was loved.

• 1:20Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:21Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, like I knew that my mom loved me. I knew she couldn't care for me.

• 1:25Lewis Howes?

  When did you know this? How old were you? Like your whole childhood?

• 1:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  I think I always knew. You know, even though there's a lot of wounding and a lot of relational rupture and virtually no security at all, I still knew that she loved me. And so that, I believe, is one of the most important things that we carry with us is to know that we are loved. And so I always carry that as a relational principle as well. It's like how we... Remind people that they're loved and that they're cared for. Even if we go through hard things together, we have traumatic experiences. Just having that as a base, I think, is what allows us to survive it.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  How did you, I mean, so you knew that, like, in your core, you knew that you were loved, even though your father wasn't around, your mother was off and on, and you were in foster care. You still knew it.

• 2:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, you know, there's something about growing up with a single mom. And I think most people who have experienced that dyad know it's a very deep intimate relationship. I mean, all of relationships with our parents in some way are very deep and intimate, even if it's just in our own hearts and minds. But I had this very deep relationship with my mom. And because she experienced mental illness and all of these developmental issues, it was more like having a friend. So when I look back at my history with her, there are a lot of good memories with play because she was more like my age. So we could have a lot of fun together. She just couldn't care for me or create a safe container or boundaries or be consistent in any way because she wasn't able to do that for herself.

• 2:57Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so we did have a lot of fun in those moments where, you know, we were being kids together. And I knew that she had a lot of love for me. And also I saw a lot of suffering. There was a lot of self-harm and a lot of her having to be in somewhere else so that she could survive. Right? And so that helped me build a lot of compassion once I moved through it.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  But I mean, how old were you when you started to understand how to have compassion for your mom?

• 3:25Sheleana Aiyana?

  True compassion, I was probably 28 years old.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yeah.

• 3:29Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Lewis Howes?

  It took a while.

• 3:31Sheleana Aiyana?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:31Lewis Howes?

  You weren't like, I'm 12 and I need my mom to be there for me. And I have compassion that she's emotionally unstable in this moment or suffering.

• 3:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  I mean, I knew that she was, but it was more painful for me. So I I remember packing my whole world into my backpack and running away in the middle of the night from foster homes and walking for three to four hours in the middle of the night to show up on her doorstep.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 3:54Sheleana Aiyana?

  And sleeping outside on her doorstep, wanting her to let me in. Uh, or her, you know, she was in the hospital a lot and so often she wouldn't even be there. Uh, so I I was just a kid looking for the love of her mom, you know, and I loved my mom a lot. And so eventually that sort of turned into bitterness and a really rough exterior, which is how I started, which is a lot of anger.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  So you were very angry kind of your late teens, early twenties?

• 4:24Sheleana Aiyana?

  Even really as a kid, that was my main defense mechanism. Like I was much more comfortable sharing anger than sadness. We all have this, it's either anger on the front or sadness on the front and what's underneath it is the opposite emotion. And because of the environment I grew up in, vulnerability wasn't safe. And then as I hit 12 years old, I was drinking, sleeping on couches, hanging with people who were five to 10 years older than me in and out of jail, doing drugs. So being vulnerable was not safe. And so anger was all that I knew how to show. I really didn't know how to let love in at all.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So you were craving love, but you didn't know how to let it in because it wasn't there consistently also. Maybe it was there when you were playing with your mom from time to time, but it wasn't a consistent feeling.

• 5:15Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  So it wasn't safe?

• 5:17Sheleana Aiyana?

  It wasn't safe and as I got older, I represented a lot for her too, and she wasn't mothered past probably nine.

• 5:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 5:24Sheleana Aiyana?

  At all. And she was never mothered, but.

• 5:25Lewis Howes?

  So she was looking for you to help her a lot?

• 5:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  Exactly.

• 5:28Lewis Howes?

  And be strong for her and help her. That's a lot of weight, though, on a child.

• 5:32Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And it was also sort of a gift in disguise now. You know, she said to me when she was visiting last, she said, how do you love me? Like, why do you still love me after everything that I've done and put you through? And I I joked with her and I said, well, now I have a blossoming career, you know? But the reality is, is who knows who I would be without the gifts of those lessons? And I always felt, even at a very young age, that these lessons were experiences for me to gather so that I could be of service.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 6:02Sheleana Aiyana?

  Not so that I could just sit in suffering.

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  You had that feeling like I'm going through this pain. This is gonna help me one day.

• 6:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, I had visions of it when I was very young.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  I never had that thought literally until maybe five years ago. Where when challenging things would happen in my life, I was sad, frustrated, you know, anxious, depressed, whatever it was. Upset, angry, all these different things. I wasn't thinking this is happening for my future self to like serve in a greater way. That wasn't until about five years ago when I, when I kept going through breakdowns and I was like every breakdown I've had in my past has helped me now. Like it's given me some wisdom or lesson or experience or something. Or compassion, whatever it might be. And so then I started looking at every breakdown in the last five years as this is exactly meant to help my future self. Serve greater, understand more how to take care of me or others.

• 6:58Lewis Howes?

  And I stopped fighting those moments, but you knew this at an early age. That's crazy.

• 7:03Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Lewis Howes?

  How, but who taught you this?

• 7:06Sheleana Aiyana?

  Spirit.

• 7:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:07Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. Yeah, and I always loved to write, so that's where I channeled it.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 7:12Sheleana Aiyana?

  You know, I was with my thing. And so I think in some ways as you know, that uh, artist archetype. I would enjoy some of those moments of suffering because it would make me very creative.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  Like, okay, I'm in my pain, let me draw, let me write something.

• 7:26Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, you know what I was like, maybe seventeen, eighteen in this really situation ship that's lasting many years. Very hot and cold, but I kind of loved it because I was like, oh, this is good writing. You know, you have to work through some of that stuff.

• 7:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure. The suffering artist, yeah. Now, how did you learn? What were your relationships like with, I guess, men in your teens and twenties? Without having your father really there at all. Your mother, hot and cold, being in foster homes. How did you have relationships early on? Were they healthy and conscious? Or were you attracting people based on a wound?

• 8:08Sheleana Aiyana?

  It was complete chaos.

• 8:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  It was complete chaos. Well, when I was a kid, I was actually really scared of men. Because my mom came from a lot of abuse and she didn't have a healthy template. And so the things that she said about men were not good.

• 8:22Lewis Howes?

  Scary.

• 8:22Sheleana Aiyana?

  So I didn't hear any good things about men. And I never had a dad that came home at the end of the day. So I would be at a friend's house and the moment the dad would come home, I would be terrified and I would always leave.

• 8:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:33Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, I was really scared. Like, like as if they were some sort of wild animal. So I couldn't be in the room with them. And so what I realized later is that because I grew up without a father archetype in my life at all, didn't even have someone holding that role.

• 8:48Lewis Howes?

  No dad, he was never there?

• 8:49Sheleana Aiyana?

  No dad, never met him, never seen a photo. Don't know.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  Is he alive?

• 8:53Sheleana Aiyana?

  I don't, I don't think so because I had a dream. I asked spirit to, I asked spirit to put a dead butterfly in my hand if he was passed after I had a dream while I was in Hawaii a few years ago, that he had died. And in the dream, I was grieving a lot. And that's strange for me because I never dream about my father. And I never knew him, but in the dream, he had just died and I was very sad. So I woke up and I said, okay, spirit, if this is true, if he's passed, put a butterfly in my hand. And two days later, we were walking down a pathway to the beach and I found this dead monarch butterfly. And I put it in my hand and I took a photo because I was like, oh, it's such a beautiful butterfly. And I didn't think anything of it. And then when we got home later, I was looking through my photos

• 9:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  and I saw it and then I realized that I had asked that question. And so for me, that was as much confirmation as I could get. And uh,

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  But your mom doesn't know if he's around or?

• 9:49Sheleana Aiyana?

  No, and he was a lot older than my mom. They were really just, it was a very brief,

• 9:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Sheleana Aiyana?

  unsafe encounter. So, I don't know. Yeah.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  So what did that feel like then? Not having a, you know, a healthy father figure in your life? And then how did you learn to trust men?

• 10:07Sheleana Aiyana?

  Initially, when I was really young, the father wound was quite deep. So I always carried this feeling of not being good enough. So I created a lot of separateness between me and other people.

• 10:20Lewis Howes?

  Men and women?

• 10:21Sheleana Aiyana?

  Everyone, yeah. You know, we grew up very poor, had no money. I'm a very small, I'm always the smallest person in every room. And I didn't have a father. There was so many things that were different about me. And so I didn't feel like I fit in. And so I felt quite insecure about whether or not I belonged anywhere. And over time, that turned into the defensive survivor mask, that ultra-independent mask, you know, that many of us end up putting on. And my learning happened through really painful, unsafe relationships.

• 10:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:59Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, well, I was really looking for someone to affirm me from a very young age. And so all of my relationships up until my early twenties were very abusive, were really unsafe. And there's one particular relationship that I was lucky to have survived.

• 11:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:16Sheleana Aiyana?

  But it was in that relationship where I actually remember looking in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself. And all of a sudden, I had this opening and I just saw myself on stage speaking to women about abuse and healing and recovering. And this was like almost 10 years before I ever began Rising Woman or started anything like that. But I had this feeling and I remember telling the guy who was, you know, he was my abuser. And I said, I'm actually going to be speaking on stage one day about these experiences and I'm going to be helping women. He was like, okay.

• 11:51Lewis Howes?

  While you were with him?

• 11:52Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Lewis Howes?

  You stayed with him?

• 11:54Sheleana Aiyana?

  For a little while.

• 11:55Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think people's?

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  Attract someone that can be abusive and then stay in that type of relationship once they've been abused.

• 12:05Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  Where does that wound come from?

• 12:07Sheleana Aiyana?

  I mean, it's almost, it's almost harder to leave once there's been abuse because when you look at the brain, and this is just the science aspect of it, is the brain changes when there's abuse. And it's sort of like these highs and lows that create deeper bonding. So the more ups and downs we have with somebody, the deeper we bond, which is like the trauma bond that we all hear about. And like this toxic relationship, which is why so many people are like, oh, well, you know, the sex is so good, or we're just so passionate together, but everything is chaos. And the deeper we go, the harder it is to get out of that. And on top of it, a lot of us who have experienced abuse have sort of normalized chaos and dysfunction.

• 12:50Sheleana Aiyana?

  I grew up witnessing abuse. I grew up witnessing domestic violence, you know, in homes that I was in, you know, or around me because I didn't grow up in safe areas. And so for me, I knew that it wasn't a good thing, but it also wasn't that different from what I had known.

• 13:09Lewis Howes?

  It was familiar.

• 13:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  It was, and that was a nervous system pattern that I was working with.

• 13:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:15Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so a lot of the work that I've done has been to reclaim my own inner mother and father and to heal my nervous system to actually be able to feel happy and comfortable in safe, secure situations, rather than actually unconsciously craving the chaos and dysfunction that I was so used to.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think I was very used to that as well. And I don't, I wasn't looking for chaos, but I somehow always attracted it.

• 13:44Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Lewis Howes?

  And I don't know what, why, why that was the way, why I kept repeating that cycle until I really said, okay, this does not work. Like when I meet someone, I shouldn't have these crazy emotions or these crazy butterflies anymore. I should have a feeling, but not some crazy feeling.

• 14:00Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 14:00Lewis Howes?

  And it should be more of a conscious approach to getting to know someone and seeing their total behavior, like how their, their words meet their actions, meet their behaviors and how the whole package.

• 14:13Lewis Howes?

  And as opposed to going into something super fast and explosive.

• 14:17Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Lewis Howes?

  Like go slow and conscious.

• 14:19Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, falling into a relationship versus consciously choosing.

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:23Sheleana Aiyana?

  Something that I really never did until I met my husband.

• 14:25Lewis Howes?

  Really? Yeah, I never do that.

• 14:26Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Lewis Howes?

  So how, when did you finally wake up and say, okay, I've been attracting these types of men that are chaotic or maybe some were abusive or they have abusive tendencies or are explosive? And when did you finally wake up and say, okay, I need to do things differently?

• 14:46Sheleana Aiyana?

  I was in my mid twenties and I ended up actually marrying somebody from another country. He was American. And we didn't want to get married. It's just that we were together for many years and in order to try to make the relationship work, we needed to both be in the same country. And so we got married and quickly right after that, things just turned for the worse. It wasn't good already. Wasn't an abusive situation. We were both in our mid twenties. We're very immature. Both had very deep mother wounds and deep father wounds. Neither of us had a father. So you want to talk about projections. We were just projecting all of our parental wounds onto each other.

• 15:29Sheleana Aiyana?

  I don't know if we knew each other at all, truthfully. And in that relationship, I was deeply betrayed. There was a lot of betrayal. And it was as if the rug was ripped from underneath me. At the time, I lost all of my money. I, my, my cat, my soul cat ran away. He left with another woman and I gained like 20 pounds in a month. My hormones stopped producing because I had experienced so much stress from my abandonment wound being triggered. I went and tested my hormones and I, all I had was cortisol. I was physically sick. My body physically just stopped. Everything stopped. And I remember a moment where he had come.

• 16:13Sheleana Aiyana?

  He had been back and forth very sporadically, not in communication. We had shared a home, obviously, we were married. And he came to get some things. And instead of being vulnerable, because of course, I didn't know how to do that. I just yelled at him and chased him out into the road without my shoes on and said, "Don't ever come back. I never want to see you again." Which was not true at the time. And as he drove away with his new girlfriend, I remember feeling like I was three years old. And all of a sudden, I had this flash of when I had been dropped off the first time at a foster home when I was three. And I saw my mom's headlights pulling away and I remember screaming and crying. And all of a sudden, this relief washed over me. And it was just like, this is not about him.

• 16:57Sheleana Aiyana?

  This is not about them. This is about you and your mother wound. And this is what you need to heal. This is about your own inner stuff. And even though it was so painful, in that moment, I was so grateful because I knew that I could get through it. Because the pain was so deep. That if it had been about him, I might not have survived it in my mind. But because it was about me and my inner work, I felt empowered. And so I just dove in. And that's kind of what kickstarted my healing journey.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because you'd been essentially abandoned or betrayed by your father, who was never there. You've been betrayed by your mother. You've been betrayed by friends and, you know, foster individuals and boyfriends in the past. And then now your husband you're being betrayed by. But it sounds like you realize you were betraying yourself as well.

• 17:48Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, I was just repeating.

• 17:49Lewis Howes?

  By making unconscious decisions based on wounds. As opposed to based on a vision of what you wanted, a healthy vision. And there's no, you know, I'm not blaming you. That's something I did most of my life, too. And it's really cool that you've, that, that you got that awareness then. Because a lot of us, myself included, repeat these patterns over and over again. Until the pain is so deep. Until it's like, ah, I just feel like I've ripped open everything in my body. I have nothing left.

• 18:18Sheleana Aiyana?

  Exactly.

• 18:19Lewis Howes?

  Then hopefully, you can wake up and have some clarity. What happened for me, and it sounds like it's what happened for you. What was the next step after that? So that you could get to a place of conscious, healthy relationship.

• 18:32Sheleana Aiyana?

  Most of us hit that wall in crisis and that's the opportunity we can go down the path of bitterness or we can be like, okay, you know, this sucks and I never want to experience this again. So let's feel all of the feelings that I've never felt before. And that's probably what you experienced. I know it's what I experienced. All of a sudden, this hardened ultra-independent survivor mask was just ripped off. And all of a sudden I had feelings that I had to feel and vulnerability that needed to be expressed. I had no idea how overwhelming that was going to be. And at one point I just laid face down on my bed and closed my eyes and I felt like I was on a psychedelic journey. Just from the pain, you know, I would go to bed at night and think I might die in my sleep tonight because this hurts too much.

• 19:15Sheleana Aiyana?

  That's how deep the abandonment wound had been ripped open. And so I started doing deep mother work. I started doing a lot of transpersonal therapy, you know, kind of Jungian style. I did a lot of medicine work, a lot of medicine ceremonies. Over and over and over again, I spent all day in nature. I did breath work every week and I just worked through it and it was hard and so painful. But that was my only option. It was like the thing that I had to hold on to was this belief that eventually the pain would go away. And I remember writing a date on my calendar and telling my friend like, I'm going to be done grieving by this date.

• 19:56Lewis Howes?

  Good luck, good luck.

• 19:58Sheleana Aiyana?

  And I kept having to move the date and eventually I stopped setting a date, you know.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  Healing is a journey.

• 20:04Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Lewis Howes?

  It's not like this destination, like it's going to happen by now. I've, I've said the same thing to myself in the past. I'm like, we're making a decision by this, I'm going to be fine by this time. It just keeps getting pushed, right? And I think it comes to you when you're ready for it. When you're ready and willing to fully receive all the lessons and you're willing to surrender. You're willing to drop your ego and feel all the emotions. And keep making consistent, daily, good decisions. That are based on a conscious vision of what you want as opposed to a past pain. And so how long did it take until you said, oh, I'm starting to feel some relief of all this deep healing work, of all this stuff? And were you doing it alone? Or were you doing it with therapists and guides and coaches?

• 20:48Sheleana Aiyana?

  I was doing it in a combo. I was seeing therapists. I was seeing shamans. I was doing medicine work with myself and in community. And then I was creating a lot of processes for myself because I was just 24/7 in my feelings. I was not have getting breaks because I hadn't felt any of my childhood. So people would always say, how are you so normal right now? Like, how are you not just living homeless and addicted to drugs with everything that you've been through? And I would say, I'm just fine, like, I'm fine.

• 21:21Lewis Howes?

  You were numbing it.

• 21:22Sheleana Aiyana?

  I didn't know that, but yeah, I was. I just completely denied that I had any pain around it, you know? And so all of that I had to feel, all of it. And that was a lot. And so I started creating processes for myself to get through the long nights when I couldn't sleep.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

  What's a process look like?

• 21:42Sheleana Aiyana?

  One of them was I created a little meditation for myself to listen to over and over. Another one is I wrote a letter to myself from my inner mother, telling me that I was gonna be okay. And just saying like, I know that you're in pain right now. Everything's gonna be okay. I promise it's not gonna feel like this forever. Just loving myself. And I actually put it on my wall, taped to my wall, so that when I would look in the morning over at my wall, I would see it. And because I needed it, I needed that anchor. And there's many other things like writing about the vision of who I wanted to be in partnership with, how I wanted it to look. But also, it was really about deep accountability for how I had shown up in all of those relationships, which was not good.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Not blaming, but also taking responsibility.

• 22:29Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a difference because blame is more about judgment and taking responsibility is about action.

• 22:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:36Sheleana Aiyana?

  So for me, I had to take responsibility for the reality that I had never been vulnerable in my partnerships. I wasn't showing up authentically. I wasn't being very loving. And I wasn't really being open. So anyone who entered my field had no clue who I was underneath at all. And I certainly didn't know who they were because I wasn't vulnerable, right? And so we have to take a look at those things if we want to get to the conscious partnership. And that part is hard too, because it's easy to go down the blame train and be like, oh gosh, I did this all. It's all my fault.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Or they did this all to me.

• 23:16Sheleana Aiyana?

  Exactly, but you don't get anywhere that way. That way, that to that lane, if you get into the blame lane, that means you have to go back and start over in another relationship that's going to repeat the pattern until you keep hitting the wall and then you're like, okay, I actually have something to do with this.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:32Sheleana Aiyana?

  The other way is I'm going to take responsibility for my role. Yes, the how they showed up is about them, but how I show up also matters and it's about me. And if I want to create something different, where do I need to grow?

• 23:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and how we respond to people that maybe are doing things out of integrity to us that we don't want, how we react or, you know, why we stayed as opposed to saying, hey, this doesn't work for me anymore. This cannot happen. Otherwise, we're not going to be together anymore. Creating boundaries.

• 24:02Sheleana Aiyana?

  Or even entering the relationship to begin with.

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  First place, yeah. If it's not a conscious entering, then why are we doing it?

• 24:08Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, I remember the guy that I entered the relationship with when I was nineteen. I was very young, not a conscious person, but I've always had intuitive hits and visions. Like I do know when something is right or not, or if there's something going to happen. And I sat on his couch and I got a message and it said, this guy is going to be abusive.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 24:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  And we weren't even living together yet. And, you know, I just moved in with him. Right? And so.

• 24:33Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think you moved in with him?

• 24:34Sheleana Aiyana?

  Well, because I was.

• 24:35Lewis Howes?

  If you knew that.

• 24:36Sheleana Aiyana?

  Because there wasn't a part of me yet that felt integrated in her inner woman, inner mother. I was just a kid, you know, I was this immature wounded kid starving for love. And I was addicted to the chaos and we had very much a passionate, strong sexual connection and I wanted that feeling. Right? I wanted to experience that rush. And so we often do this where we just choose the thing that feels good. Over the thing that's actually going to get us where we want to be. And we do that so much in relationship and we don't trust ourselves. And then in the end, when it goes bad, we say, oh, I can't trust myself because, you know,

• 25:20Sheleana Aiyana?

  I always end up in this mess. But I always say, well, did you ever get an intuitive hit? Or some sense that something wasn't right, but you just dismissed it or pushed it down? Because you can trust yourself. You just don't listen sometimes. And that's the difference. So I had to just learn how to listen.

• 25:41Lewis Howes?

  Cause you knew it, but you weren't listening to it and acting on the knowing.

• 25:45Sheleana Aiyana?

  Exactly.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 25:47Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, it takes a long time for us to learn how to trust our intuition.

• 25:51Lewis Howes?

  And act accordingly.

• 25:52Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Lewis Howes?

  And not go against our, our traumas, our wounds or our desires.

• 25:56Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  But going after a vision instead. So how long was this process until you met your husband? From like the, the day your former husband was like running away with his girlfriend? Car lights, you know, and you're.

• 26:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  Who, she was at my wedding too.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 26:12Sheleana Aiyana?

  I have a photo of us sitting on a bench.

• 26:13Lewis Howes?

  Oh, no.

• 26:14Sheleana Aiyana?

  And his arm is around me and he's looking at her.

• 26:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh, no.

• 26:17Sheleana Aiyana?

  It's a prophecy. And, you know.

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 26:20Sheleana Aiyana?

  Some things are just meant to be.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's probably good that you guys can stay together.

• 26:24Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Lewis Howes?

  So, so how long was it since that moment of you running out barefoot screaming like an angry, you know, betrayed woman?

• 26:33Sheleana Aiyana?

  A scorned woman.

• 26:34Lewis Howes?

  scorned woman and until you felt you had a sense of inner peace.

• 26:39Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  And, and, and a relaxed nervous system where you were able to see people differently, to see yourself differently and make a decision to be in a conscious relationship. How long was that period?

• 26:54Sheleana Aiyana?

  Well, with the context of the fact that I was doing medicine ceremonies almost every night, breath work every week and seeing a therapist twice a week and doing all of those things. Within a couple of months, actually, I started to feel different. I started to feel, okay, you know what? I'm actually good with this whole single thing. I'm feeling empowered again.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  Self-love, yeah.

• 27:15Sheleana Aiyana?

  I wasn't better or healed, but I was feeling like I had my footing. And I decided not to date anyone and I was going to be single for three years. That was my plan.

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  Had a similar plan.

• 27:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. And within seven or eight months. I met Ben and I remember people telling us, oh, you have to meet Shalina. Oh, you have to meet Ben. You're gonna love each other. And I was like, well, you don't really know me that well. So how do you know? And anyways, we ended up trying to coordinate a date multiple times. And eventually, after me blowing him off, I bumped into him at a coffee shop. That was in my PJs and brushed my hair. And I was like, are you Ben? And we just had this knowing, this remembrance of each other. And I'm not really the type to just get physical with a person right away. But I couldn't help but like wrap my arms around him because he was cold and warm him up.

• 28:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so at first I was very much in denial. Nope, this isn't gonna be my partner. Not, we're not gonna date.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  I still need two and a half more years until I date you one.

• 28:24Sheleana Aiyana?

  You know, and it felt really fast too. I was like, is this okay? But inevitably, we couldn't, we couldn't write history a different way. That's how it was meant to be. He also had a plan to be single until he was thirty five. But he ended up getting married to me when he was thirty five. So that's, you know, how it happened. And it was also a journey and it still is for us. Now, I would say that I had done enough work to know how to qualify him. And so we moved quite slowly and we had lots of sleepovers, but we didn't sleep together for quite a while.

• 28:59Lewis Howes?

  Similar to me.

• 29:00Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, well, because you just psychologically, you need that time. Otherwise, you bond. Once the hormones get going.

• 29:08Lewis Howes?

  The chemical sexual bond is so hard to break.

• 29:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  It is.

• 29:12Lewis Howes?

  Once you go there.

• 29:13Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Lewis Howes?

  Because the, the feeling is so intense. It's so intense emotionally and physically. And you're bonding each other to these heightened states of emotion.

• 29:24Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Lewis Howes?

  It's so hard to say, okay, you know, uh, that's why it makes it, that's why it makes it easier to overlook someone's challenges or red flags when you've bonded.

• 29:34Sheleana Aiyana?

  Exactly.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  Because you're like, well, I want to get that feeling again. So if they're lying over here, if they're mean to people here, if they're abusive to me a little bit here, let's just go back to that feeling. But when you create a space of a relationship without that feeling. And you get to see the full person.

• 29:51Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Which I think the longer you can do that, the better.

• 29:55Sheleana Aiyana?

  And have a friendship, right?

• 29:56Lewis Howes?

  A friendship. And see, couldn't I spend 10,000 meals with this person? Would I enjoy my time with this person over 10,000 meals? Would I want to spend time with them if we didn't have a sexual intimacy?

• 30:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Lewis Howes?

  If so, okay, cool. I wonder what it would be like with that as well. And I never thought that way until I started the healing journey. So, but it gave me a lot clearer sense of direction. Once I felt like a sense of safety and peace within me to make those steps as well. That's so interesting you guys did that.

• 30:33Lewis Howes?

  So how long were you together until you got married?

• 30:35Sheleana Aiyana?

  About four years.

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  Four years.

• 30:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. And when we were about two or three months in, we right away started doing therapy and tantra groups.

• 30:42Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 30:43Sheleana Aiyana?

  We did.

• 30:43Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing. We started a therapy too.

• 30:45Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 30:46Sheleana Aiyana?

  It's necessary.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  I recommend it for everyone starting a relationship.

• 30:48Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Lewis Howes?

  It's incredible.

• 30:50Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  Not because something is wrong or broken, but because you want to create agreements and kept connection and communication early on.

• 30:57Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. Well, when you learn how to be intimate and you really put it all out on the table, there's no holding back. We joined this conscious relationship circle where you're doing group shadow work and processing your ego in front of a room together. And then you're doing these deep tantric exercises with your partner. And so I remember inviting him and he was like, well, you know, it's pretty new. And he, he was the opposite of me. I always had long relationships that lasted way too long. And he had a lot of short relationships over the last 10 years. So he was like, well, how, what if we're not together still, you know? Like, that's a pretty big commitment. And I was like, we're going to be together.

• 31:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so he, he said yes, and he's often a great sport and we dove in. And it was because of that work that we were able to deepen and heal and do so much work together. And the nervous system stuff has taken years, years and years. It's not like, oh, we found each other. Now we're in a conscious relationship.

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Sheleana Aiyana?

  No, it's not like that.

• 32:01Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it's possible to find love, lasting love, if you haven't healed yet?

• 32:08Sheleana Aiyana?

  I do, and I think there's degrees. There's degrees of healing because I don't think any of us are healed in terms of we're perfect. But we can be on the journey and be self-aware enough and to know how to qualify a person for willingness. And if we meet a person who has the willingness and the core values match, and both people say, yes, here's my baggage, here's your baggage, I see you and I acknowledge that this isn't going to always be easy, but I'm willing to do the work along the way. That's a great sign that the relationship has potential because that was Ben and I. You know,

• 32:46Lewis Howes?

  You're both on a healing journey.

• 32:47Sheleana Aiyana?

  We were on a healing journey together. We weren't like, oh, we've done our work and now we're going to fade off into the sunset together. We're like, okay. We're committed to being together and soon we quickly realize there's no better match than each other. And yet it's still going to be difficult. So when it gets difficult, what are we going to do about it? That's the thing you need to clarify. Because if you're with a person who says, well, relationships should be easy. If we have to see a therapist or if we need to do inner work, then there's something wrong, which is the belief system of many people out there. Then you don't have a chance. But if you're both aware enough to say, yeah, I've got some stuff. You know, I'm avoidant or I'm anxious and I'm going to work on that and I want to work on it with you. Great.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think it's interesting. You know, listen, I don't have kids yet, so I know I'm going to get a ton of comments about this. Way too young kids, it's going to get harder, it's going to all these different things. I get it. And I'm not discounting anyone's experience.

• 33:46Lewis Howes?

  But my personal experience has been if you're willing to do the work together upfront and be willing to consistently work on yourself and together throughout the relationship. I believe the relationship should be easy or easier because you're constantly doing.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  You're putting in effort on growing.

• 34:08Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  Individually and together. Then it should be, yes, there's gonna be challenges and adversities and breakdowns, but because you're in it together, growing together, taking responsibility, and accepting of one another, then it's going to feel a lot easier. That's my experience. But I understand, kids, this, this, I get it. People say this all the time. And I'm not discounting that. It's, I'm sure there's gonna be challenges, but I think when you're both in it together, willing to do the work consistently, it should be easier.

• 34:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  It should be easier, but that doesn't make it easy. And I think for all of us, we have a different level of tolerance.

• 34:47Sheleana Aiyana?

  And nervous system capacity. And desire to be with that person is the foundation. So I have couples in my sphere who had deep attachment wounds, were clearly a perfect match for each other in every way. And yet their attachment wounds were so strong that the first three years of their relationship was just absolute chaos. But they had tools, they had therapy, they had somatic work, they had processes, and they just kept going because they loved each other. And they did get to the other side. And so I've seen both. And sometimes it just depends on your personality. If you're a really fiery person who's very expressive, and so was your partner, you know, this is Ben and I, there's gonna be more outward conflict.

• 35:33Sheleana Aiyana?

  Than the type of couple who's maybe more inward and avoidant or just non-confrontational in conflict. When you get two scrappers, even if they're doing the work, you know, when there's, when there's something coming up, it's gonna look different than the other couple who's perhaps more muted in terms of their expression. Neither is right or wrong, it's just gonna be different. And we have to assess what we're tolerant of, what our boundaries are, and make agreements for how we're going to navigate conflict so that we don't destroy the relationship along the way, which we can easily do. We have to say, okay, well, these are the boundaries. This is the agreements. And we have to lean in a little bit and honor our partner, even if it's hard,

• 36:17Sheleana Aiyana?

  do some things that we maybe don't naturally do to create safety so that we can get there.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  I think, I can't remember if it was the Gottman Institute that talked about, like, one of the number one factors of deciding if a relationship's going to work or not is how you fight together.

• 36:32Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  It's like how you argue or communicate when there is a disturbance, when there is a frustration, when there's a breakdown. It's how you have agreed to fight, essentially. And I think that could really hurt relationships more or hurt feelings more if you fight in an unfair way that's not agreed upon.

• 36:52Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  If we cross the line too much, if you're, oh, that's a little too abusive, that's a little too dismissive, that's a little too, that's not nice. We can disagree and argue, but you can still be kind.

• 37:03Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  You don't have to scream and yell and call names because that doesn't feel good.

• 37:07Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, exactly. And that's often what happens is we continue to go down these pathways, these nervous system responses that we're used to. And even though we love our partners, we destroy the relationship and then we, we can't repair because there's just too much damage done. And then we end up in the inner work.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think people are so reactive when there is an emotional trigger? Where for some people, that trigger may not matter at all. They may said, why are you so explosive? Why are you so reactive or so hurt over this little thing? When other people are, there's a button inside of their wound and it's just like, ah, they explode, they react. What would it take for people to overcome that? And why do they stay that reactive as adults?

• 37:52Sheleana Aiyana?

  It's body memory from obviously early childhood, but sometimes not so obviously, when we're teens or in our earlier years where, you know, we've been deeply hurt or betrayed by somebody. And that button gets pushed and that old familiar feeling and that story that I'm not loved or I'm not safe or I'm being taken advantage of or I'm going to be left alone.

• 38:16Sheleana Aiyana?

  Or attacked, all of these stories, those get activated in the body memory. And so it's often an unconscious thing when we get triggered or activated in a relationship. All of a sudden, we're blowing things out of proportion because the mind is saying, you're not safe. Defend or run, you know, those two options. And those are nervous system patterns. And so we can't really think our way out of it. And it's helpful to have tools. It's helpful to have self-awareness. But meditating isn't going to be the answer. The answer is going to be working with your body to reorient to what it feels like to be safe and secure inside of you. So I can be in a relationship with you while being present with my own body.

• 39:01Sheleana Aiyana?

  So we can have multiple relationships happening at once. My relationship with me, my relationship with you, the relationship we share together. There's this ability, once we have a regulated nervous system, to know the difference between my emotions and your emotions. And we don't have that when we're coming from that wounded inner child that gets very thrown off kilter anytime something is disturbed in, in the safety. Or, you know, anything with the security is threatened, which can be as simple as for some people, as their partner going out for dinner with their friends.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Or it could be such a threat for some people. It's like, you're going out too late. You're going with these guy friends. Or I don't trust you going to this place. It's like such a threat for that.

• 39:49Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, for somebody who's experienced betrayal or abandonment, or perhaps their parents got divorced and then their mom or their dad remarried and they felt replaced. That's going to be the kind of situation that will cause deep jealousy or feelings of insecurity and worry. And so again, it comes back to working with the body memory and being able to recognize in those moments, oh, I'm having body memory that I'm not safe. But actually, I am safe. I'm here now. And it's okay for me to let go of this story right now. And I'm gonna do something to regulate myself, let my partner go and live their life. Perhaps I can go and live my life.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:30Sheleana Aiyana?

  You know, but that takes work for somebody who's experiencing anxious attachment. They'll, they'll more likely sit on the couch and stew and wait for their partner to come home and then create a fight. Than they would to think to call their own friend and go out and just have a good time. Not in a revenge way, but to just actually nourish themselves on a social level. Or do something that's important to them, like pursue one of their hobbies or get something done that's needed on their to do list. And that's what it means to come back to center and to mature in relationship. So that we can live lives as individuals and create interdependence.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the biggest mistake people make in relationships?

• 41:09Sheleana Aiyana?

  Oh my gosh, what a big question. I would say one of the biggest mistakes that people make is confusing their partner for somebody from their past and not being aware of it. Usually that's a parental figure, the mom or the dad. And then acting from that wounded inner child rather than bringing their adult self forward. And seeing their partner as an enemy. Because if you look at people's relationship histories, myself included. There's a lot of chaos and us versus them and people becoming enemies in the end. And isn't it strange that we go out into the world looking for somebody to share love with?

• 41:53Sheleana Aiyana?

  And then more often than not, we just hurt each other repeatedly. And then we blame each other and then we go off and try to find somebody new and we just keep repeating the cycle. And that's not love. That's not healthy love. That's just wounds repeating the cycle.

• 42:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so what we have to realize is that often we are actually in relationship with a projection of the person who hurt us that we didn't heal with.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Give me an example.

• 42:22Sheleana Aiyana?

  For me, it was always my mom, right? Even with my, my past marriage that I talked about. You know, that projection for me was my mom. So I was projecting all of my anger, all of my disgust, all of my sadness and my hurt onto this person that I was in relationship with and, and he, me. And so on an unconscious level, we didn't have trust. We didn't have safety and we were on opposite teams because we were punishing each other for the ways that we had been hurt.

• 42:53Lewis Howes?

  From the past, not from what they were doing.

• 42:56Sheleana Aiyana?

  Well, there were obviously things that we were both doing that were out of alignment. Uh, but the ability to recognize why we were doing those things wasn't there. We all do things when we're reacting from the past wound, but it's coming from somewhere. And it's often that past shadow figure, that person in the unconscious mind that represents the mom or the dad or the caregiver who didn't show up for us and didn't provide the security and the love and the safety that we needed to develop that whole sense of self. And so we have to go back and do that repair work and then grow up. We have to mature.

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Like our, we have to emotionally mature and go back into the wounded psychological phases of our childhood and mend those phases.

• 43:49Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Lewis Howes?

  And create new meaning around what those memories were. So they can support us now as opposed to hurt us now. Is that right?

• 43:56Sheleana Aiyana?

  And recognize in those moments when that inner child, that wounded, scared child is coming to the front and center and be able to access our inner mother or inner father.

• 44:07Lewis Howes?

  And self soothe.

• 44:08Sheleana Aiyana?

  And parent them, self soothe.

• 44:09Lewis Howes?

  In a healthy way.

• 44:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  Not through numbing or alcohol or addictions or whatever it might be.

• 44:13Sheleana Aiyana?

  Exactly. Shopping, Netflix, whatever, you know? And then, once we have that relationship built, we can actually start doing the deeper work.

• 44:25Sheleana Aiyana?

  With our partners. I don't know if you've ever heard of Amago work with Harville and Helen. Harville Hendricks, he and Helen Hunt, they wrote the book Getting the Love You Want. And they're elders. I've studied with them.

• 44:38Lewis Howes?

  I've heard of that book, yeah.

• 44:39Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, and you know, them and the Gottmans, those are sort of the elders that we owe so much gratitude to for all of this work that we now access and even many of us teach. And their whole model is about working with the inner child, which they don't really say it that way, but it's that hurt child and the parent figure and seeing how much we choose our partners based on an exact template of who our parents were, both the good and the bad. So for example, when Ben and I went, we went to an Esalen retreat years ago before we had our daughter and we did a retreat with them. And one of the questions was, what is the thing that excites you most about your partner?

• 45:24Sheleana Aiyana?

  What drew you to your partner most? And what is the thing that your partner does that hurts you the most?

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  Same thing.

• 45:30Sheleana Aiyana?

  Different, but also they ask you that about your parent.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 45:35Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so when I looked at the thing that I loved most about my mom was the exciting spontaneous adventures we would go on.

• 45:42Lewis Howes?

  Right, the playtimes, the renown them.

• 45:44Sheleana Aiyana?

  And the things that I didn't like the most or that hurt me the most was her emotional unavailability and abandoning me when I needed her. And then when I looked at how I had related to Ben, it was virtually the same. You know, because we were playing out some avoidant, anxious patterns early on. And it was stunning to see that I also fit the exact template of his childhood where I was critical of him and

• 46:10Lewis Howes?

  He had a critical mom or something.

• 46:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  And he had a critical parent who he didn't feel seen and appreciated by. And that was the thing that I would do and sadly sometimes still do. You know, if I'm not being my best self, I'll get critical. And so we fit these exact templates of each other's parents. But if we're aware of it, then we can also say, what is that thing that you really needed? What is that thing that you really needed to feel loved? And then we do that thing every single day. And so we're healing each other's wounds, healing each other's child selves by essentially reparenting our partner's inner child.

• 46:48Lewis Howes?

  So you're reparenting his inner child?

• 46:50Sheleana Aiyana?

  And he's reparenting mine.

• 46:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:52Sheleana Aiyana?

  And we're reparenting ourselves as well.

• 46:54Lewis Howes?

  As I say, because if if we only do it to the other person and not to ourselves, is that going to support us long term?

• 46:59Sheleana Aiyana?

  No, of course not.

• 47:01Lewis Howes?

  Though there's. Doing it ourselves and supporting, yeah.

• 47:04Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, because you know, there's this, especially in the conscious relationship realm, we hear a lot of this, these memes and and this kind of rhetoric that we should be ultra independent and it's not said that way, but it's like you're responsible for your own emotions. Nobody can make you feel anything and you're only responsible for you and then for them. And it's not your partner's job to heal you. And while that's true, that it's not your partner's job to heal you, when you enter into a partnership, you become each other's allies. And you both bring wounds to the table. And it actually is a gift to your partner to say, hey, what's something that I could do to nurture and nourish your inner child? And here's what you could do to nurture, nourish mine.

• 47:50Sheleana Aiyana?

  And that's a gift that we give. And it's not about expecting it or demanding it. But if we truly want to heal in relationship, then we actually do take on each other's baggage as a team. And that's not something that a lot of people talk about these days because we're in this far swing to the other end of the pendulum because we've gone from these like very enmeshed relationships. Now we want to go to this total ultra independence. But somewhere in the middle lies the beauty of doing the dance together and saying, you know what? I'm your ally in healing. I'm going to be your partner in healing. How can I love you better? Here's how you can love me better. And let's do this thing.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  I think it's wise to do that, whether it's daily or weekly, you know, it doesn't have to be every day for everyone. Um, I, I, every week, probably I ask Martha in some way about that. And I like to say, you know, do you feel seen, celebrated and supported? If not, what can I do to support you in feeling seen, celebrated and supported more?

• 48:55Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Lewis Howes?

  She always says, yes, she does. So it's like, it's being conscious on top of mind, whether it's daily or weekly, but just being actively supporting in a teammate to someone and an ally, not an enemy, I think is really powerful.

• 49:11Lewis Howes?

  What are, why do you think we repeat these negative patterns in relationships so frequently? We, you know, we have a bad experience in one relationship, we look for someone new, and then it repeats, and then we do it again and again. Why does that happen for people?

• 49:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  We're looking for resolution. In the back of our minds, we might not even be aware of it, but we're looking for resolution to that thing that happened, or to that story that said, "You're not lovable", or that story that said, "You have to fight to earn love", and so somewhere in our minds, we're looking to prove that story true, or we're looking to complete the process. And so we look for somebody who matches the template, right, like we just talked about, so that we can perhaps do that work. And typically, it hasn't worked out, because what we don't realize is that our partner is doing that exact same thing. But with the self-awareness and the willingness piece, if we're both aware and we're like,

• 50:09Sheleana Aiyana?

  "Okay, we both do have some stuff to work on here. Here's what I've got to work on. Here's what you want to work on. Do you want to do this together with that frame?" Then we really can get on the same track together and team up and do that healing work. Otherwise, it just does repeat endlessly, and it's easy to just blame the other person. "Well, there's something wrong with you. I'm just going to get rid of you and go and find my soulmate."

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  Right, the next person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Interesting. What was the best thing you did before getting married the second time?

• 50:43Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Lewis Howes?

  And that really supported entering the marriage? And then what was the thing you wish you would have done before getting married the second time around, that maybe, "Oh, we didn't have this conversation", or create these agreements, or?

• 50:56Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, the thing that I love that we did was we created shadow vows.

• 51:03Lewis Howes?

  Shadow vows?

• 51:04Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, and those were sort of, we also call them ownership vows. So we wrote our sacred vows to each other, but then we also did ownership vows. And so at our wedding, we had a different type of wedding, where we had- Everybody actually sat in a circle on the floor. Only the elders in our community sat on chairs and we had all of these plush rugs everywhere. And we did a cacao ceremony and a group meditation and then we, you know, we stood in front of our community. And we had spent a month negotiating our shadow vows. And essentially, we were calling out the parts of ourselves that were not yet healed. Or the, some of the worst things that we're bringing to the relationship.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  Things you don't like about yourself.

• 51:44Sheleana Aiyana?

  Or the ways that we show up in a crappy way with our partner, which there is always ways, you know? And so we did that, we wrote it down and we shared with each other and we also allowed each other to give feedback before we did this.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

• 51:58Sheleana Aiyana?

  Is there anything here, you know, that I, is there anything that I do that you want me to own? And, and we used that, we did that in front of our community. We stood and we, we owned, you know?

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 52:08Sheleana Aiyana?

  You know, I own that I'm going to project my unhealed father wound onto you sometimes. You know, and I promise that I'm going to always come back to love. That's the kind of vows that we said. And so it was very vulnerable and intimate, but everyone in our community got to witness. This is the true Shalina and Ben. These are the things that they're working on. We're not painting this perfect picture. And then they vowed to hold us through that. And then every year, what we do is we take our shadow vows. And we go through them together and we say, oh, I think I've actually worked really well on this one. Maybe we should take this one off the list. Maybe that one has been completed. Or maybe we need to add this to the thing, you know? Maybe we need to work on this one.

• 52:53Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so we actually reassess our vows. We sort of use it as like a template to check in, do a temperature check. And that has served us very well and we've guided other couples through that as well. So that's the thing that I loved the most.

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  What's the thing you wish you would have done before marriage that you didn't do?

• 53:09Sheleana Aiyana?

  Definitely would have been more somatic work, more nervous system work. Uh, that's something that I started the year that we got married. And it was because when we got married, four years in, all of a sudden I started feeling like I needed to escape. My ego was like, oh, I'm gonna get me out of here.

• 53:30Lewis Howes?

  Get me out.

• 53:30Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, and what have I done, right? Because what if this was the wrong decision? I'm gonna look like a fool.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  I should have waited three years and this and that.

• 53:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, well, we had already been together four years and I was like, we should have waited seven, you know?

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:41Sheleana Aiyana?

  And the funny thing about that is because like, you know, the seven year itch. Have you ever heard the seven year itch thing?

• 53:46Lewis Howes?

  Tell me.

• 53:47Sheleana Aiyana?

  Well, in Canada, maybe this is a Canadian thing, but they talk about the seven year itch, where a lot of couples break up after seven years. But then my friend told me that actually that has been proven untrue. And it's been proven that it's actually the four year itch. And we got married at four years, so I had all that stress for nothing.

• 54:03Lewis Howes?

  Maybe this is the time to leave for you.

• 54:05Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah. But my nervous system didn't know how to stay. And so.

• 54:09Lewis Howes?

  Because it never been a safe, committed, fully committed, yeah.

• 54:12Sheleana Aiyana?

  And not in a relationship where I had all of the things. Like, we had good chemistry and we had the spiritual connection.

• 54:17Lewis Howes?

  It was healthy.

• 54:18Sheleana Aiyana?

  It was always one or the other. And so my body was starting to freak out. And I wanted to run in the other direction, even though I was trying to tell myself I'm safe. And so I had to do some deep nervous system reworking to get into a place where I no longer felt like I needed to escape all of the time, even though I knew consciously that it was good to be where I was in this relationship. And that work is sort of what I ended up going and training in over the last four years, because it was so powerful for me. I realized this is the thing that we all need to do is create security in our bodies and our nervous systems.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you can't, you can only outthink so many things.

• 55:00Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  You cannot think emotions and stress and the body's memory. You have to process, feel, heal, and integrate this human consistently. And it's not just a, oh, I had this like experience of an hour session. I feel a sense of relief and I process some things. If you don't integrate that lesson consistently until the next trigger. It's gonna keep coming back. And so what was the somatic healing therapies that you practiced in the first year that really supported you?

• 55:29Sheleana Aiyana?

  A lot of it was somatic experiencing and

• 55:32Lewis Howes?

  What is that for people?

• 55:33Sheleana Aiyana?

  So Peter Levine, he's now in his eighties. He's a wonderful teacher. He's, I would say, the godfather of somatic experiencing work. He created it. He wrote Waking the Tiger. It's a very old book. I shouldn't say very old, but it's old.

• 55:47Lewis Howes?

  Older, yeah.

• 55:47Sheleana Aiyana?

  It's older. And so it's this body of work that where you're literally working on the most subtle level with the organs and with the nervous system to help the body move out traumatic experiences and memories.

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of like a raking experience or what is this like a body talk experience?

• 56:04Sheleana Aiyana?

  You could maybe say that it's similar in terms of what it looks like where you're laying on a table. If you have someone who's trained in touch work, you can also just do it with yourself. You know, I have online stuff where I take people through in their own bedroom somatic work. But working with a practitioner is ideal. And, you know, maybe they place a hand on your kidneys or on your arm and it's wild what happens.

• 56:25Lewis Howes?

  The releases, right? Yeah.

• 56:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah.

• 56:27Lewis Howes?

  You feel the energy moving and releasing.

• 56:30Sheleana Aiyana?

  Cool. And your body might start shaking.

• 56:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Sheleana Aiyana?

  You could actually start feeling triggers arise in your body. And the practitioner is trained to help you move it out of your system. So for example, if that's like a fight response that you got frozen in, they might allow that response to come up and then they'll hold their hands out and say, okay, now kick and say no. And you're actually completing that process so that it can move through your system. Because when we're holding that fight in our system, we're either gonna freeze or we're gonna be in fight mode all the time in our relationships. And so that's just one example of how powerful it can be. Because that's the body memory that we can't outthink. And so if we move it out of the system, our behavior changes because we have the capacity to change.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  Because our body has completed that cycle. It's created new meaning. It's released it. It's processing it.

• 57:22Sheleana Aiyana?

  It's moved through it.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. I did this, I did a thing called Body Talk. I kind of want to do it again because it was so powerful for me. I did this like 10 or 12 years ago. I only did like a handful of sessions and the practitioner.

• 57:37Lewis Howes?

  At the time, wasn't even touching me. And I remember I was like, I would, I was wide awake, but then within 10 to 15 minutes, I somehow fell asleep. And I would wake up like an hour later, I guess, with my whole body shaking and I'd be on my back. And it was almost like I was just rocking like this, my whole body. And it was my heartbeat out of my back, pushing my body off the, the table. I was just laying there and I'd just be rocking like this, my heartbeat, and I just felt all this energy moving through my body. And I was like, wow, this is fascinating. Someone's not even touching me and how this is happening and processing. I don't think a lot of men typically would hear this and think, I want to try this.

• 58:19Lewis Howes?

  You know, I, I was pretty open minded at that time, but before then I wasn't open minded. It was kind of like, nah, just give me a massage or, you know, I'll, I'll work out and toughen it out.

• 58:27Sheleana Aiyana?

  Not into that stuff.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, but I think it's, um, you know, it's powerful for, for men as well as women to be open to trying some of these things. Especially if you have emotional triggers or wounds that have caused you a lot of anxiety, pain or relational issues. Um, that's beautiful. So you were doing that for like a year and you, you're still doing it, but that's what helped you really heal. You wish you would have done that before marriage.

• 58:51Sheleana Aiyana?

  Absolutely. Yeah. I started out doing sessions with a practitioner. And after a year I realized how powerful it was. And so then I began to train in it so that I could actually facilitate this work with my, my readers. Uh, because it's just amazing how potent it can be. And it's so subtle. You're like, did I just do anything in there? Go for a session, just holds your kidneys for an hour and then I'd go home and sleep for three hours. I would just pass out because my, my nervous system was integrating. It's just wild stuff.

• 59:21Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing. What do you think are the, the key distinctions to conscious relationship and healthy love?

• 59:28Sheleana Aiyana?

  Willingness again, you know, being willing because we're not going to be perfect and we're going to fall off track and we're going to fall into old patterns. But the willingness to repair, you know, the Gottmans, they talk about this a lot too. Uh, repairing is so important, being able to take ownership, being able to apologize. And, you know, being willing to see our part, being willing to see the ways that we are contributing to the breakdown of the relationship. And also acknowledging that to our partner, you know, sort of revealing our vulnerability underneath the defensiveness.

• 1:00:04Sheleana Aiyana?

  And that's one of the things that I tell people when they say, oh, you know, you and Ben must just eye gaze all day and, you know, have these sacred practices and, you know, well, sometimes we do that now that we have a daughter. We'd never do that right now. You know, we have a baby. But it doesn't really look like that. It's really just about being present in each moment and doing your best and doing your best to love your partner as much as you can. And remember that they were once a child. Like we have little photos of each other as children on our altar in our bedroom.

• 1:00:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's beautiful.

• 1:00:37Sheleana Aiyana?

  And that helps when you see the little, you know, for you, your little Martha, oh, you know, you have a little photo of her on the fridge. If you're having a moment where you're feeling butt hurt and then you go and look at little Martha. Like, oh, my gosh, how can I be mad at this beautiful being, you know, this beautiful innocent being? And it takes work to come back to that innocence over and over. And to me, that's what conscious relationship is about.

• 1:01:03Lewis Howes?

  What is a skill you wish you could have mastered by now that you haven't mastered yet?

• 1:01:10Sheleana Aiyana?

  Oh, my gosh, a skill that I like a relationship skill or just any skill?

• 1:01:15Lewis Howes?

  Relationship skill.

• 1:01:16Sheleana Aiyana?

  Okay, I was gonna say like triple axel.

• 1:01:21Sheleana Aiyana?

  Of relationship skill, I would say would be mastering the art of always being present. I still don't have that down. And that's the thing that I'm most drawn to mastering is presence. Even as a new mother, presence is the most beautiful experience for me. And anytime I am in deep presence with my partner, everything else fades away, you know, the ego, any, anything that's in the way. So that's what I would love to learn in this lifetime.

• 1:01:50Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. Why do you think so many people are struggling today in relationships? Is it wounds? Is it they haven't healed? Is it they have a bad model of relationships from their parents?

• 1:02:01Sheleana Aiyana?

  Probably all of it.

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  You know, social media? What do you think is hurting people today in relationships?

• 1:02:05Sheleana Aiyana?

  Everything you just said. Social media is a tough one. Right now, we have these human meat markets.

• 1:02:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:11Sheleana Aiyana?

  Where you're supposed to go shopping for a partner and you're grading them based on what their photo?

• 1:02:16Lewis Howes?

  Looks.

• 1:02:17Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so much of it is energetic, right? And you don't know who this person is. I'm the kind of person who I don't care if you're a supermodel, unless I can feel you, I don't actually even know if you're attractive or not. And so for me, it's really about that deep spiritual bond. So, so many of us are, we're shopping in these human meat markets for people and it's not working. And it can even become addictive. There's, that's a real thing.

• 1:02:42Lewis Howes?

  Just like swiping or like.

• 1:02:44Sheleana Aiyana?

  Yeah, dating app addiction. Uh, and of course, you know, we don't have many templates for healthy relationship. We don't see it much in the media at all. It's a lot of chaos and we also, many of us don't have elders anymore either. We don't have those people who can support us and guide us. Or who can remind us how to come back to love when we need help in our relationships. So, so often, something gets hard and we just throw the relationship away because we don't know what else to do. And so my hope is that through this work that I'm doing, that you're doing, that we're all aiming to do is that people feel that they have

• 1:03:22Sheleana Aiyana?

  a container they can step into so that they can stop glamorizing the idea of the perfect relationship and just start learning how to be happy.

• 1:03:30Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think so many people struggle with feeling loved and lovable?

• 1:03:39Sheleana Aiyana?

  It's the age old question, isn't it? I think we're born and all of a sudden we have these human fallibilities where we struggle to believe in ourselves. We struggle to believe that we're good enough. And it seems that it's built into the human condition in some ways. That we come in with these stories and you know, some traditions believe, you know, you cut the umbilical cord and you're separated from spirit or from God or whatever you'd like to call it. And so in the human realms, you know, we're going to be experiencing these, this type of suffering. And I feel that a lot of that can be nurtured in childhood. And it seems that no matter what, we all come out with some sort of insecurity

• 1:04:22Sheleana Aiyana?

  or pain story, or trauma, or life lesson to work with. And I sort of imagine there's this celestial team, you know, in the cosmos with stamps. And they're just choosing, oh, this group of babies is going to be born. Here's your life path. Here's your life path. And they're just spitting them out. It sounds funny, but that's kind of the cartoon that I've made in my mind because it helps me remember that we all come here with a path. We all have something to learn and we're not here to interfere with people's paths so much as we are here to just encourage and be loving along the way. And that goes for being a parent, too. We can't change their life path, but we can interfere with it. And so the most loving thing we can do for everyone that comes into our lives

• 1:05:07Sheleana Aiyana?

  is to honor their experience and to do our best to be kind while we're on the journey.

• 1:05:14Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is going to be your biggest shadow challenge while being a mom?

• 1:05:20Sheleana Aiyana?

  My biggest shadow challenge, well, I'm only six and a half months in and it's already been such a deep ride. I've experienced so much heartache over the impermanence of this new life. You know, everything just changes so quickly. And one of the things that I've noticed is that it's very easy to want just to save her from everything, like just keep everything perfect for her. And like never have a bad moment, you know, never express my own anger, you know, never have a snappy moment with my husband, just be the perfect loving mother where she never experiences any discomfort and pain. And I also know that that's not human.

• 1:06:03Sheleana Aiyana?

  And so that's actually been confronting for me is to see my own sometimes innate desire to just save her from any pain and having to let go. So it's a bit of that devouring mother archetype where I just want to like keep her close. So I'm working on that.

• 1:06:23Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:06:25Lewis Howes?

  That's great. Well, I'm really excited about this. You've got an amazing book called Becoming the One. And an amazing community called Rising Woman, which has, you know, taken over the internet and has an amazing community and message empowering people to really learn these strategies of healing and overcoming the trauma and creating a new vision for your life and having deeper relationship with self and others. So I want people to follow you over on social media, Rising Woman, and also Becoming the One book, which has been a massive big, big bestseller. How else can we be of service to you and support you?

• 1:07:01Sheleana Aiyana?

  Thanks. I mean, reading my book is great. Be of service to your families. That's, that's the legacy that I hope to leave behind is helping people be more loving in their family systems. Cause I've always felt overwhelmed by how much pain there is in the world and I always have this drive, like I want to save everyone from their pain and I want to feed all the children. And I'm starting to really get how important it is that we just do that on a community level. And so the greatest gift that anyone can give is to take something from my work or my book or an interview that I have done and say, you know, I'm gonna just be of service more to the people in my life around me.

• 1:07:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great. It's beautiful. Got a couple of final questions for you. This one's called the three truths.

• 1:07:50Sheleana Aiyana?

  Okay.

• 1:07:50Lewis Howes?

  So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want to live in this world, but then you gotta turn the lights off and go somewhere else. And you've accomplished all of your dreams and you've got the family, the relationships, everything you wanted to create, it's happened. But for whatever reason, you gotta take all of your messages with you, all of your book, content, information, it's gotta go to the next place.

• 1:08:14Sheleana Aiyana?

  Okay.

• 1:08:15Lewis Howes?

  So no one has access to anything you've ever shared before. When you leave, hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons that you'd share with the world. From all the things you've learned, what would those truths be for you?

• 1:08:29Sheleana Aiyana?

  One of those truths would be that love truly is the only thing that matters. When we go.

• 1:08:38Sheleana Aiyana?

  That the greatest gift that we can give the world is to love our families.

• 1:08:45Sheleana Aiyana?

  And that presence is all we have.

• 1:08:50Lewis Howes?

  I would acknowledge you, Shalina, for everything you've overcome, for your journey and for your courage to to talk about it, to use the pain and the trauma and the challenge and share these lessons with the world. You've helped so many people heal, grow, understand the chaos of their life, get out of challenging relationships, you know, do the work to get into healthy, conscious relationships. So I really acknowledge you for your entire life story and using it for good, using all the pain, all the trauma, all the sadness, all the darkness for good. And I'm so grateful that you're in a healthy relationship now and got a great guy with you. I'm so happy for the family you're building and acknowledge you for the light you bring to so many. It's really beautiful to watch. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:09:36Sheleana Aiyana?

  These are great questions. For me, my definition of greatness in terms of like what I see as greatness is integrated humility and praise and the the capacity to celebrate and enjoy life and also the capacity to feel the grief and and the pain of the other side of joy and love.

• 1:10:02Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately

• 1:10:42Lewis Howes?

  that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.