Alternative Approaches to Changing Your Drinking with Alysa Rushton

Pod Alysa Rushton Thanks for listening today to this special episode of The Alcohol Tipping Point. This one is a little more, well, what I like to call a woo episode cuz I coming from healthcare and nursing, I have a real. Science background, and I recognize that a lot of people are looking for alternative ways to heal and change their drinking. So I had the opportunity to talk to Alysa Rushton. She is a sound healer and a reiki master. She calls herself an energy intuitive. She's had a really. Interesting story. She's had a near death experience. She's had her own struggles with addiction and just lots of different things in her life and has made like an extreme life change from where she was nearly. You know, since a fateful near death day in 2005 and since losing a hundred plus pounds, changing her life and moving to Hawaii and helping other people in a different way with this sound healing and whatnot. So I wanted to have her on the show just to share her experience and for you, if this is something maybe you're interested in, maybe for you to learn a little something new yourself. I actually, we did a retreat in Taos, New Mexico, and we brought in someone to do sound healing, a sound bath with the crystals, the big crystal bowls, and, and that was just amazing. And. Soothing and calming, and I know we're all looking for other ways to just calm and soothe ourselves. We're looking for other ways to do that besides drinking. So I hope that you find this interesting, that you are open-minded about it as I was, and that you enjoy this episode with Alyssa. Deb: Alyssa, well thank you for joining. I'll call Tipping Point, joining us all the way from Hawaii, right? You Alysa: live in Hawaii? I am. I'm here on the big island. Oh, Deb: that's wonderful. And you just let, are like glowing. I can see you glowing. Alysa: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, this island will do that. It helps you glow. Yeah, we've Deb: did a spring break trip to Kwai this past year and then the year before we went to Maui and just, oh, it's just amazing. It's special. So that's wonderful. You get to live there year Alysa: round. I do. I feel so beyond blessed. Every morning when I wake up, I just, the first thing I do is I look outside and I think, oh my gosh, I'm so blessed. To live here. Yeah. Yeah. Deb: Well, can you share a little bit about who you are and what you do? Alysa: Yeah, so I am really here to help people rise up into the next level of consciousness. I mostly work with business leaders and entrepreneurs who want to expand in some way, and I like to call myself a superpowers activator because everybody has these. Unique gifts and skills and talents that you came into this world with that likely have gotten pushed down and shoved down by a variety of circumstances and traumas and people in your life telling you you can't be that much. And so I help people to reignite all of those. Gifts and skills and talents within themselves so that they can have this rather magical, sparkly, amazing, glowy life. Deb: Yeah. And you've had your own journey to get here. Can you share your experience? You know that you had a real tipping point, if you will, where things changed in your life and you went down this different path. Alysa: Oh woman. Yes, I did have a tipping point. Almost tipped right off the point, in fact. Yeah. So yeah. For everybody listening, I had a near death experience and I, and I overdosed of a medical Western medical drug cocktail. And what happened, just to give you a little snippet of this, is that I was in corporate America. I loved my job. I had this amazing job in technology. I was a corporate trainer, and it was so much fun and I went to work every day thinking, God, this is everything. I love this so much. And I poured myself into my work. And meanwhile, years prior, I had this whole list of traumas, right? Little traumas, big traumas, you know, all of these things that had happened to me that I never really dealt with. And I just poured myself into work. And it was a job that I loved, so it was okay. Meanwhile, you know, I, I wouldn't say I was an addict. I just drank a nice bottle of Cabernet every day, and I did smoke cigarettes, but I didn't really identify myself as a drug user or anything like that, and so I just thought that's what you did. I thought you smoked cigarettes, you drank a good ball of cabernet, had a great. Steak at the end of the long day. And that's how I was living my life. And then fast forward, I got a promotion to the gray cubicle of death, is what I like to call it. And you know, if you're listening to this right now, you might even be in the gray cubicle of death while you're listening to this. So you know what I'm talking about. And it was that corporate cubicle where, All of a sudden, all that fun job that I had was no longer fun. And it was, I had to get scrappy and it was competitive and I wasn't used to working like that. And in that environment it was a stress incubation tank that that coupled with all of these traumatic things that had happened to me in my past, sort of bumped up head to head and I got really sick. And that sickness. Then turned into pneumonia that then turned into mono. That then turned into me trying to figure out why my body all of a sudden didn't work the same anymore, and why I had massive joint pain and all these weird things were happening to my body. And so. Ultimately I got diagnosed with a laundry list of diseases, multiple autoimmune diseases ms. Rheumatoid arthritis celiac disease, all all of these different things, right? And my body was just saying alarm bells. You're not, you know, you're not well. And I went on a medication protocol and ultimately that medication protocol did kill me. I did die on the toilet, which by the way, if you're gonna die, it's a great place to do it. Do it on the potty. Wow. Deb: Wow. Wait, why? I gotta hear more as a nurse. Like what happened there Alysa: on the toilet? Deb: Just like, so you ha got to the point where you overdosed on too many meds and still, were you like drinking and taking meds? Were you on like opioids Alysa: too? Yeah, so let me just back up for you and everybody else. So, at the time I went on all this protocol, I got a PICC line installed in my arm. So let's talk, you know, advanced treatment protocols here, right? So I got a PICC line in my arm. I'm starting to go downhill. I'm on 28 different medications I gained. During this time about a hundred or more pounds. So I went from somebody who couldn't even hold on to weight to I, I at one point tipped the scales, talk about the tipping point. I was tipping my personal scales at 240 pounds. And that's a lot of weight for me personally. And And at one point through this medication journey, they had me on end of life pain management. So think fentanyl, suckers, fentanyl patches in addition to like massive daily doses of huge amounts of antibiotics and kill, you know, everything to kill everything inside my body. The, the treatment protocol was kill everything inside Alyssa's body. And you asked a funny question. You said, were you still drinking and smoking? Yeah, interestingly enough, I was, you know, I was really sick. I'm fighting for my life, but somewhere in there I didn't really realize that drinking probably wasn't the best thing for me, and that smoking, you know, had anything to do with me being healthy or not. I knew it was bad for your lungs, but I didn't really know outside of that that it was bad for you in any way. I was still eating the standard American diet. And I, you know, and I wondered why I wasn't feeling good. And so yeah, all, all of that nice combination of things did end up killing me. And so I then had to, once that happened, I then had to unpack my life cuz I realized, oh, you know, what I'm doing actually is killing me. And and I realize that's a really. Extreme story, but I wonder for the people who are listening to this, it's like sometimes we do these things every day that we don't really realize. Is how much they're impacting us because we've always done 'em. And look, I grew up in a household where you did, you drank a nice bottle of Cabernet every day. That's just what you did. You did, you smoked a couple of cigarettes or maybe a couple of packs of cigarettes every day. That's just what you did. So it didn't seem aorm for me to eat like this and drink like this, and it just, I felt like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. And by the way, doctors really didn't say much to me. You know, it wasn't a conversation about, well, maybe we should get you to quit drinking and smoking and clean up your diet a little bit. It was a conversation about like, well, what more drugs can we give you? What more things can we give your body, you know, and then now let's give you more drugs to manage the symptoms of those drugs. So it was kind of a snowball thing, but I also get, I I, in the past, I'm, I'm choosing to rewrite this for myself. In the past, I have been a person that needed to learn the hard way and get the full scope of the lesson, so I feel like I needed that full scope of the lesson to really hit that rock bottom in order to see that I could do things a lot differently. And now, truth be told, you know, I don't do any of that. Stuff I eat really cleanly and I, I have chosen, while I don't believe I ever had a problem with alcohol, I would never put myself in a category of somebody who had a problem with alcohol. I personally choose not to drink because now you see, I feel so amazing and I feel so healthy, and I feel that I have this really good connection between me and the universe. And so I don't want anything to interfere with that. It feels so good that I just, I don't wanna mess around with it. Yeah, and Deb: I mean, it shows too, Alysa: that's just, mm-hmm. So Deb: how did you, you I'm sure, woke up in the hospital, had this near death experience, and then how did you get to where you are now? Alysa: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first of all, I woke up, actually not in the hospital, but I woke up. Dead up there. So I literally had a whole experience that I wasn't living anymore. I knew I had transcended the body and I got to absorb. Luckily for me, I got to absorb a lot of consciousness that you just don't really have access to here on the planet unless you are a meditator and unless you are really tapping into that. And at the time I wasn't, I didn't know it was available. So what happened to me on the other side was I got to get a whole bunch of downloads, so to speak, about how to heal my body about things I could do to heal and things I needed to do to heal. And so I was able to get that download. And I also think it was a nice. Reset button for me. So then when I did wake up in the hospital, by the way, legs flailing, strapped to the gurney, I mean the whole nine yards, they had to pump me full of Narcan because it was just a, I was having a huge overdose and I, I realized, oh yeah, I've gotta do this differently. So I got the downloads from the other side and literally the next day I started to change my life. And it really started with there was a man's voice that was in my head and I didn't. Know who it was until years later. It was a man named Emil Kue, and you can Google him, you can look him up on YouTube, and this voice of a Emil was in my head and it was saying, I'm getting better and better every day in every way. And this voice was just in my head and it, and it must have said this phrase over a thousand times in an hour. And I'm thinking, God, whose voice is this? I probably have gotten a little, you know, brain damage from being out for so long. Right. And, you know, I'm thinking oh, I, I may have lost my mind, but I now realize that I was getting this incredible download, a reprogramming of sorts. That I was getting reprogrammed in my body to know that I could get better and better every day in every way. And so it started there. And you know, you gotta remember at the time, I'm 240 pounds. I'm in a walker to get around. I'm wearing diapers. I mean, I'm pretty, I'm pretty much a mess of a human being and I couldn't really read. Because the words would just jumble on the page. And so I thought, well, if I'm gonna try to get my brain back, I'm gonna try to listen to audio tapes. So I go to the, my husband takes me to the audiobook store, the bookstore, and I go to the audiobook section. And all of a sudden this book flies off the shelf almost as if someone had just pushed it off at me. And I'm kind of using my walker, I'm bending down, you know, to get it. And I finally get the book up. And it's Wayne Dyers a book of Wayne Dyers and I, it's the Secrets of Inspiration. And so I would listen to that and just, you know, lay in bed and listen to that. And then afterwards I would listen to another meditation and visualize my. Self being able to walk unassisted, cuz at the time I wasn't able to walk even unassisted. So I would just lie in bed, visualize myself, imagine myself being able to do all these things and wouldn't you know it. Pretty soon my body started to come into alignment with that and was able to start walking and moving. I then hired a health coach who said to me, you know, Do you think you might have some problems with gluten and dairy? And I said, oh, no, I'm, I've been eating those things all my life. What are you talking about? She said, yeah, I know you have, but also look at you, you know you're in trouble. Mm-hmm. And so would you be willing to experiment? With taking them out. And I did. And she had me make smoothies and juices. And here's the thing, there was something about her, her name was Shelly. And I remember meeting with Shelly for the first time and she had that glow and that sparkle and her eyes, and she was just so alive and I thought, I don't know what that woman's doing, but whatever she tells me to do, I'm gonna do it cuz I want what she has. And so anything Shelly would tell me to do, I would just do it full force. Full in. And wouldn't she know it worked. You know, it works. So the dietary cleanup stuff, the visualization, the meditation, the, and then I started to incorporate sound because one of the things I heard on the other side was you have to incorporate sound frequency in order to change your body. That we are actually sound frequency. In when you put sound frequency, you could actually YouTube this. You can look up cymatics at C Y M A T I C S cymatics. And it's the science of how sound changes matter. And so if we are listening to sound frequencies that are disharmonious, It changes our frequency, you know, and you gotta remember, we're sitting in front of computers all day. There's a frequency coming out of that. There's frequency coming outta people's voices and electronics, and it's possibly rearranging ourselves in a very disharmonious way. So what I learned on the other side is the particular sound frequencies that we wanna use for optimal cell health and wellness and rejuvenation. And I literally look younger now and better now than in 2005 when I died. You know, I was. 30 and now I'm 40. Almost 49 this year. And so, you know, I'm at my fittest ever. I'm at my healthiest ever and it's really amazing what sound frequency can do to the actual cells in your body. The mitochondria, it actually lengthen and can show to lengthen your telomeres, which tells your cells how to age, right? So we can do all that through the science of sound, and it's pretty profound. So, In a nutshell, it took me a long time. It didn't happen overnight to go from 240 pounds and in a walker and in diapers to what you're, the human being that you're seeing here before me, before you. It took about five years in total of a lot of really deep, hard work and a lot of reworking, you know, parts of me that. Did wanna smoke the cigarettes and parts of that. Did want to drink the drinks and parts of that. Did want to eat the donuts. Listen, I love a long John, I'll be honest with you. I've done the most of chocolate frosting lo. I mean, who doesn't love that Raspberry pie. I mean, come on. Deb: That's funny. Well, that is amazing. I mean, it really is an amazing story and I appreciate you sharing that and just, you know, I have. Just kind of, sort of heard some near death experience, ex stories, and I know that like a lot of people have them, and so that's fascinating. I, I wanna talk a little more about sound healing and what that is. You kind of gave an intro, but how, how, just like some ordinary gal in Boise, Idaho. Maybe like me, like how I could kind of use some of those ideas techniques? Like what, how do you practice Alysa: that? Hmm. That's a great question. So I. One of the favorite frequencies I have is the 528 megahertz frequency. There's a lot of science around this frequency. In a Petri dish, under a microscope, it's actually shown to repair d n a. So literally a quick search on YouTube, you can search. 528 megahertz frequency and be given a whole host of beautiful things to listen to, and ultimately it runs the carrier wave of 528 megahertz. And. Or hurts not make or hertz. And that works on your DNA n to start to create a repair process that's in place. So what I like to tell people how to get started is one, find a frequency that really resonates with you. 5 28, sort of great for everyone. If you are dealing with a lot of trauma or you have a lot of fear, you actually will probably do low better with the lower frequencies like 1 28 or. Or the 200 range that'll actually work better on your system when 90 eight's really great for that. And again, a quick YouTube search will find you. All of this. I have music on my site as well in my membership site, but literally YouTube's such a great resource and it's free go there. And what I love to tell people to do is grab some headphones cuz frequency is best when you get it in both ears. And lie in the grass or someplace in nature, because that's something else that I was shown on the other side, is that we're so disconnected from our charging station. And if you think about your phone, you disconnect this phone from its charging station, it's gonna start to not work well, especially when the battery gets really low. Right? And we as human beings need. Particular nutrients that are only found in the soil, and we need energies that are only found on the earth. If you took an astronaut and you put that astronaut into space, they actually start to not do very well. Their health gets impacted because we need the magnetics and energy frequencies of this planet. So what I love to have people do is actually lie down on the ground for 30 minutes. Think of it as your you time, your recharging time. Put a frequency in like 5 28 or 1 98 and you will feel like a vastly different human being. You know, put a blanket and just relax and you're gonna actually have a whole new sense of peace and calm. And interestingly enough, you know, I work with clients all over the globe and they will tell me that they start to get. Downloads insights knowing they'll be able to work out problems that they were think trying to figure out and couldn't get the answer to. But all of a sudden here they are relaxed or in nature and bam, here comes an answer that's even better than they could imagine. Now from an intellectual perspective, that's what Einstein used to do. You know, he didn't try to figure anything out much in his head. He would literally go relax on his couch and get into. Alpha brainwave state. And so that's what you're doing when you're outside in the grass or in nature. You're getting into the alpha brainwave state, and then you're adding in those frequencies that are telling the body, okay, body we can repair. And that's what most people are missing today. They're missing. Those natural repair processes that happen in the mitochondria and in the dna, and we're bypassing that because we're not working within natural rhythms of nature. We're all wearing plastic shoes and we're all sitting in front of our computer all day long. So it tends to be hard on the body, and that's why I think one of the reasons why we're seeing today, People turning towards more alcohol, they're turning towards more ways to check out. They're turning towards, you know, how do I turn off my consciousness versus turning on my consciousness? Because at some point it's far too painful to have your consciousness fully on when you are disconnected. So it just be, it becomes really hard. So if you are connected though, you want your consciousness fully on. Mm-hmm. You wanna be tapped in because there's, you have access to so much wisdom and support. So Deb: h how is it different than meditation? Listening to the sound waves and. Alysa: That's a great question. It's not all that different in the sense that you're doing the same thing with your brain. You're getting into an alpha or theta brainwave state, the practice of meditation, there's so many different flavors of that. It's like saying, how is sorbet different than ice cream? There's so many different flavors of survey and so many different flavors of ice cream. So meditation, you know, you've got the. Mindful meditation where you are simply watching your breathing and having the thoughts pass as they will. There's the com contemplative meditation where you're contemplating an idea and you're meditating that. On that idea. And so, and then there's the transcendental meditation, right, where you're maybe using more of your breath. So there's so many different types of meditation. So ultimately the sound frequencies are nice because they sort of bypass. All of that. What's the mind doing? What's it not doing? What are my thoughts? Thinking? What are they not thinking? How's Sally my neighbor? Doing the brain waves will start to entrain your brain into a coherent state with your heart. And ultimately that's when we get all the wisdom and the downloads and the knowledge when our brain is coherently resonant with our heart. So these brainwave frequencies do it very naturally and the body wants to slip into that state so you don't have to spend 20 years practicing. Watching your thoughts and not having reactions and not being the thought or going down the bunny trails. It just makes it easier for you to do so. And it's also working on the physical body where meditation does as well, but the sound frequencies often go to rejigger your cells. So literally, if I were to, hold on one second. If I were to take this sound bowl and I'm gonna put water inside this sound bowl, you would see the water as I strike the bowl, start to shimmy and shake and do something really different. And so sound actually has a physical impact on your cells. So it's going in and rejiggering you and your yourselves. It's literally making you different. Yeah. Deb: And could you do it, you know, say you are in your cubicle, what did you call it? Your gray cubicle Alysa: of death? Yes. Deb: But say you're someone who, who does have to do a lot of work, like could, can you get some benefits if you just plug in your headphones and work while you're listening to these different frequencies on YouTube for free? Like, can you do that? Alysa: Absolutely. So you wanna be mindful of the frequencies that you're using. But yeah, if it doesn't have, for example, you wouldn't want to use a fatal wave cuz you might just fall asleep at your desk. Okay? Okay. So as long as you're using something in the alpha wave frequency, you could totally do that. In fact, I would suggest the gamma wave frequency. So looking up a YouTube gamma frequency because gamma is connected to super consciousness. And it's going to connect you with that really heightened state of learning and focus and productivity. So these frequencies are excellent for wanting to jam out a project really fast. And maybe you have a project where you're like, Hmm, I'm not even sure how I'm gonna accomplish this task. When you go up into that super consciousness, All of a sudden, you'll have access to new levels of wisdom and insight that you didn't necessarily have in your stress wired beta brain, which is what most of us walk around with, that beta brainwave, high stressed state, especially if you've had a cup of Starbucks coffee, you know, or visited the lunchroom, you're in that more stressed out state, and it's really difficult to get the highest level of answers. Or intuitive insights when you're in that stressed out place, which most of us operate in daily. Yeah. Which is also Deb: why a lot of people turn to drinking. Alysa: Yeah, because drinking turns the dial down on that. Yeah, Deb: temporarily for sure. Well it how, bringing this back to drinking and someone is wanting to change their drinking and they're like, okay, I could try these, this sound wave thing out. Right. What are some other alternative ways or approaches you have to help someone change their drinking? Alysa: Oh, I love this question so much. So one of the first things I think is really important is looking at your identity, because if you're somebody who identifies as a drinker and you identify as a. You know, I'm just somebody who has two cocktails every night, whether I need 'em or not. If you try to approach things on a physical, practical level, and you try to create change there, your natural default is gonna be to default back to your identity. So let me give you an example. Outside of drinking, you wanna start running. You buy the running shoes, you go to the running store, you get a really cute running outfit, but every day in the morning you wake up and you're not running. And it's because you don't identify as a runner. You identify as somebody who likes to be cozy in your bed for five extra more minute. Right. And so change won't happen until we rewire that identity. So the first step is really thinking about how could I identify in a way as a person that maybe doesn't wanna drink this much or at all? For me personally, I'll tell you what I started to think this thought. There's nothing that tastes as good as healthy feels. So there was a time when I didn't, that wasn't my identity and my thought, but I just decided, you know what? At some point, feeling good, feels so good that nothing is gonna taste as good as this feels. So that identity thought statement helped me then make the physical outward shifts. But if I had been in the place of, you know, nothing feels as good as this nice a cabernet, nice glass of cabernet, that's gonna be really difficult for me to make change. And, and then I'm having to use willpower at some point. So I would say if you're, if you're listening to this and you wanna make a shift, take a look at first your identity piece and ask yourself, how am I currently identifying? As it comes to my relationship with drinking and alcohol. And what's the identity statement that you would make? And it is gonna sound like this. I'm someone who does this, right? And so, you know, like I would say now I'm someone who drinks green juice. That's just what I do. I drink a lot of green juice and a lot of water. Those are my two favorite beverages. So give yourself that statement. I'm someone who does this with alcohol. And then you'll know what identity is running underneath the hood in your subconscious mind, and then you can start to work with it. So that is my first tip. Deb: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's so good cuz I think. A lot of people have a hard time saying like, I'm sober, or I'm an alcoholic, like, and I don't use that word either. I, I use. I'm an alcohol-free badass. However, it's hard to get there when you're changing. So if you can kind of ease into it, like you said, like I'm someone who takes care of my health. I'm someone who drinks water. I'm someone who you know is changing their drinking, or whatever that looks like for you, and probably you need to try some on too to get to what feels good Alysa: for you. Totally. Absolutely. And just really quickly, you know, the people who have been in recovery for years who are reciting, I'm an alcoholic, there's a reason why they're not able to transcend that addiction because they are at the identity level reaffirming every day that they've got an addiction issue versus if you really do start to work with your identity at that level and reaffirm, I'm someone who makes healthy choices. I'm someone who loves feeling healthy. I'm someone who hydrates really well, you know, and you make it less about being addicted or not addicted, or, you know, drinking alcohol or not drinking alcohol. It's more about like being healthy and, mm-hmm. Being the identity of health and feeling really delicious in your body. Your body actually responds very well to that, and it doesn't feel like a form of punishment. Because we're wired, we are hardwired to avoid pain and punishment. So if we're saying things to ourselves that are gonna feel punishing, the body will then start to also resist. You know, I always say the issues lying in the tissues. Mm-hmm. So our body is basically our subconscious mind, and so we've gotta outsmart it at some point and give it these really sweet and positive, healthy statements to work with that, like you said don't feel like those all or nothing statements and don't feel like those huge statements, but get us closer and closer over time. Deb: Yeah, that's a great mindset tip. What, what are some of your other alternative tips or. Alysa: Well, and then this goes to the practical is first and foremost to really look at the reason why you're reaching for that alcoholic beverage, right? Why are you doing it? Is it out of habit? A hundred percent out of habit? Is it because you are feeling stressed at the end of the day? I don't know about you, but that's my number one reason why I would do it is because I was. So stressed by the time I got done with my day, that I knew that this was gonna be my instant quick hit to bring down the stress level in my body. So one of the things that I now love to do is physical activity. If I'm stressed, I'll go grab a buddy and do a walk and talk, and we'll just go walk and talk and talk off the day or walk in nature. I think moving the body is something that really we're not doing enough of. In this day and age, cuz we're so stagnant sitting down anyways, and the body's like a river, it wants to move and water needs to move. And because we're mostly water, we need to move the water in our body. So moving the body having that practice of, okay, I get done with my day and I, I immediately kind of go, walk off my day. I move off my day hydrating. When we are fully hydrated, we're not gonna have the level of cravings either for alcohol or sugar. Then when we're dehydrated, the brain goes into a state of fatigue and needs. It's like, oh my God, I'm feeling tired. Give me something that's gonna help out. And it's usually a combination of sugar and alcohol and the brain's like, oh yeah, that's my magical combination. I love those two together. And throwing some salt for good measure, right? So yeah, moving the body and then having alternatives. I mean, for me, I personally love those alternatives that. Feed health and feed the cells and help you age in reverse because I don't know anybody who's getting any younger, but I like to look like I am, right? And so I like to have those things in my diet and in my life that I know are going to be anti-stress. And anti-aging as well. So sometimes that's a really great cocktail. There's some there's some products that I just love by a Hawaiian guy, but you can get 'em all over America and possibly the globe. And one of them is called a chi tonic, and it's a formulation of adaptogenic herbs. That help your body support during times of stress. So make yourself a little herbal tonic. Have that as a beverage to not only nourish yourself, but calm the stress down because we still need ways to get rid of the stress that don't alter our consciousness. And I think for me, that's the biggest part about alcohol is ultimately alcohol alters your consciousness and people do and act. Very differently when their consciousness is altered and there's really something to be said for rising up into your full consciousness because you can really have a different life. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Deb: those are lovely. What do you think are some, some top foods that you would recommend? Alysa: Ooh, tough foods. You know, this is funny because everybody's so uniquely different. I call people bio individuals, right? So just like your favorite flavor of ice cream's gonna be different than mine. What nourishes your body is gonna be different than wet nourishes my body. So in general, we do know that people need a lot more leafy greens and vegetables than they are getting. And what's funny when I talk to people about that is a lot of people will say, I don't really like them. And so part of it is getting yourself to a place where you're involved in your, in your food, and you're actually making healthy meals and you're, you know, invested in a lifestyle basically. That nourishes you and supports you. For some people this might just mean making a fresh salad and a piece of healthy protein, and for other people it might be making a seven course raw foods meal. But ultimately it's about, you know, each person finding that way to tap into the life that's in the food. And I think for many of us, we're so disconnected from our food system. And food preparation. Even I know many moms that their whole lifestyle is driving through the drive-through and getting the food to feed the kids so that they can get to the five soccer games that they have that night, right? And so we're so disconnected from our whole food system that then, All of that kind of goes and lowers also our consciousness because when we're not eating high vibration foods, when we're eating foods that are factory processed and filled with a lot of chemicals that they don't even have to tell us about, it goes to dampen us and dampen our cells and how they operate and creates, unfortunately, a lot of disease and not feeling good. So what we wanna try to do is, Take that ownership back for ourselves and take that responsibility back. And if you can start to take responsibility back for a couple meals a week and make them and have fun and joyful preparation in the kitchen and chopping, turn on some music or involve the family. Get everybody in there, have it be a fun, joyful event. And then eat this beautiful meal that's fresh and tasty and good. That really helps to off let the stress. But here's the other thing, your body will be less stressed. When it's getting high vibration nutrients. So your body feels a lot of stress when it's eating foods that are not filled with nutrients that are more factory processed or box. You know, I used to be a boxed, I mean, I would, you know what I'm talking about, right? Deb: That's funny. Well, what do you mean by high vibration foods? What does Alysa: that mean? High vibration foods. So I want you to just imagine in your mind a. Box of oh, what comes up? Box of cereal. Okay. So imagine you mind a box of cereal and then imagine in your mind a fresh bowl of fruit with maybe a little coconut cadet sprinkled on top of it, and maybe some cibs. So can you instantly sort of energetically tell that one has a higher quality of light and life energy mm-hmm. Than the other? Yeah. Yes. So the thing of it is, is that the more closely we eat to nature, the higher vibration it's going to have and that frequency of life that the cell is emitting from the food and their cells in the food, right? When you bite into an apple that apple's got, You know, cells in it and you're ingesting that and along with the phytonutrients and all of that good stuff. And that's nourishing the body on a subatomic level and and a micronutrient level. And what happens for most people is because most people these days are some sort of vegetarian or package. It's right, no more vegetarians, it's a vegetarian and they're eating all these processed foods and then the body doesn't do a good job. Uptaking those nutrients. First of all, because many of them are manufactured. But second of all, all the life force is gone. The high frequency life force is gone. And so we don't have the vitality, we don't have the stress resiliency that we would have if we were eating these high vibration, high frequency foods. And simply to say high frequency, high vibe means a lot of life force within them still. Yeah. And you can, you Deb: might just say healthy. Yeah, Alysa: yeah. Deb: But it's kinda, it's a different way of looking at it, that's for sure. Yeah. Alysa: And you can notice this in any grocery store. Do this with yourself. Go to the grocery store and look in your cart and see if you can sense the life force coming from things. And then notice how much of your cart has life force in it. And notice how much of your cart doesn't. Hmm. Deb: Yeah. And I oftentimes just tell people, like, just focus on adding Yes. At first. You know, just add, eat as much food that you can get that grows from the ground, not from a box, but yeah. But just starting simple. Or like you said, just pick a couple meals a week and make it fun. I love that tip. That's good. Alysa: Yeah, make it fun and find, you know, I always say find something that you love to eat and maybe find a way to make it even healthier and more high vibe. Right? And one of mine was lasagna. I love lasagna, but I realized I couldn't eat pasta anymore. So I would explore all these recipes that were raw foods, recipes that allowed me to have fun with food. And by the way, I didn't know how to cook, so I had to take cooking classes and I had to actually, Decide to learn to like to cook because there was a part of me that was like, I don't like to cook. I don't wanna spend time in the kitchen. It's a waste of my time. So I understood though that I had a choice. Have the choice to decide to enjoy something or not. And ultimately, I think each and every one of us does. But yeah, find, find something that you already love and see if there's a way you can up your game with it and up the vibe. Mm-hmm. Deb: And as you were talking about that, I was like, that's another identity thing. Like you've, maybe you were telling yourself. Oh, I don't like to cook. I'm I'm, I don't like to eat healthy or whatever. So just switch that like I am open to ex, I am a person who is open to exploring new foods and that kind of thing. I Alysa: love that one. Yes, because ultimately it will help you make that shift. Beautiful. Well, Deb: I kinda wanna switch gears cuz I know some of the work you do is on forgiveness. And I think this is a big topic when it comes to drinking. There's, there's a lot of shame and guilt and so how, how can we navigate forgiveness? Alysa: Hmm. Yeah, forgiveness is such a potent topic and you know, I will also say that the shame we've been talking about vibration, if you look on. Again, the Google. If you go to Google and you Google the Consciousness Scale, it's by David R. Hawkins. You'll notice that shame is the lowest form of emotion that you can have, and that shame actually, I. Is really heavy and dense and you'll feel it in your body, and people with a lot of shame actually will carry a lot of weight because it's so heavy. It carries a vibrational frequency and so then that charges your cells to hold extra weight. Okay, so forgiveness is something that's so powerful because it basically neutralizes shame and judgment. So there's a process that I teach and I didn't come up with this process. I learned it from Joe Vitali first, and then when I moved to Hawaii, I relearned it in a whole new way and. In Hawaii, the ancient Hawaiians would do a system called Wholeo, which means to make right again. So Wholeo, and it is a way to practice forgiveness and basically how I teach, it's a little different. So I do this in the sense that you don't ever have to call your person that you're frustrated at and do this in person with them. You can do it energetically. So let's say that your business partner really frustrated you and you're, and you're really just angry of how they're showing up to their job and you're not happy with their work and on and on and on. So in Hoon Pono, you would say these four statements. I love you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Please forgive me. Now, here's the hiccup. You might go, well, why am I saying, please forgive me? They're the one who's messing things up. They're the ones who are not showing up to work in the way that they should. They're the ones who are not being professional. They're the ones. And what we are trained to do is we are trained to point the finger outside of us. It's them over there that are making me feel this way. So the idea with Hope Pono Pono is I'm taking responsibility from my side of things. I'm happening to have a program that's projecting itself outward and showing me this behavior, this event. This, whatever it happens to be. Okay? And so it requires you to basically look at yourself like a movie theater. If you went into the movie theater and you were sitting down watching the movie and at first you really liked the movie, and then all of a sudden it got scary and you didn't like it. It was a lot of stuff that you didn't wanna see. You wouldn't go up and cut up the movie screen. You would not do that. If you didn't wanna see that, you would instead maybe go back to the movie projector and take out that scary part out of the movie projector movie that's being projected. And so the idea is that we are the projector of our lives. Our consciousness is projecting outward. And so if we go in, we can energetically work to offer forgiveness of this energy that's being projected so that it gets cleaned up. Basically, if that makes sense. So it sounds a little something like this. Let's just say my business partner's name's Joe. I don't like how Joe's been showing up. Joe's been just really letting the workload down. I'm gonna say, Joe, I love you. Thank you for showing me that I've been running a program of not taking responsibility for work and not being a great colleague. Please forgive me and know that I'm deleting this program now. And what that starts to do when you say that I love you, I'm sorry. Thank you. Please forgive me, is it starts to actually soften the energy. It stops any judgment, blame, or shame. And it starts to clean. It acts like a cleaner in your system. Well, let's say you've done something personally that you're not proud of. Maybe you were out one night and maybe you had too many drinks and maybe you were a little handsy with a coworker that you didn't wanna be, and you are shaming yourself about that. So you could say, you know, Alyssa, I love you. Thank you for showing me running the program of. Having bad boundaries and not showing up as a person that I wanna be. Please forgive me and know that I'm deleting it now, and you're just gonna continue to do that and do that and do that until you inside feel a shift. You'll feel it. You'll feel lighter and brighter, and that's when you know you can stop the process. It's also great for anything you're ruminating on. You know, it's really easy to ruminate on something, especially. Stuff that you personally have done or other people have done to you or around you. So if you're ever ruminating this tech, this technique of I love you, I'm sorry. Thank you. Please forgive me and insert the program that you would have to be running in order to see this as the movie projector. Right? If it's bad driving, if it's. You know you're out driving. Do it while you're driving. By the way, expect to see the roads open up for you cuz this energy is an energetic that opens energy. It doesn't close it down. So you're gonna expect to see this feeling of lightness, of brightness, of drivers behaving a little bit differently. Because the thing of it is when you change what's on the inside, the outside world changes. If we expect to change everything on the outside of us, nothing ever changes. And that's the big secret to life. It's an inside job. Yeah. Deb: And I think that's really empowering too. Like you have the power to change how you feel, what you say, what you do. You don't have to move, you don't have to change jobs. You don't, you know, like you, you have the power within you. Alysa: Yes. And to your point, you know, how many people have I seen change jobs like this boss is a total jerk. I can't believe them. They're, they never appreciate me for what I do. They change jobs. The same boss, that's a total jerk, you know, their name is different now, but they're the. They're dealing with the same issues, and we think that changing those outer circumstances gonna change, but we keep looping back to the same patterns and to the same boss in a different human suit and to the same partners. And ultimately, that's your sign and signal that it's the inside work that's gonna make that shift and change. Mm-hmm. Deb: Yeah. Well, thank you. Is there anything else you would say to people who are listening to the show and they're struggling with drinking? Alysa: Yeah. You know, well, first off, I've been there too. You know, and you're not alone. It's drinking is something that has been instilled in our history as a means to relax and chill out and check out, and to, to give yourself the understanding that you're in the process of breaking a rather long cycle of checking out and dampening down the consciousness. And I suspect your listeners listening to this are ready to tune up the dial on their consciousness. I suspect that they are ready to take things to a new level of awareness. And what's really amazing is that when you decide to release alcohol in whatever way feels right for you, you will notice. That you have more access, you have more connection to source energy, whether you call it God or Jesus, or Buddha or whatever, or maybe you don't call it anything at all. Maybe you call it nature. You'll notice that you're more connected. You'll notice that your life starts to operate even more easily. You'll notice that you get opportunities for healing and growth and evolution that you might not necessarily have when you are reliant on a substance to keep you. In that place of calm and does it require a bit of work? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. That's Deb: wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing these alternative ways to just live life better. And I'm going to definitely start doing more sound healing and listening to different hurts and just exploring that. Cause I think that's really fascinating. How can someone Alysa: find you? Oh, well first of all, thanks for having me. It's been such a pleasure. And yeah, go to alyssa rushton.com and I'm sure you'll have a little link for them in the show notes. I will. I Deb: will. Well, thank you so much. It's just wonderful connecting with you and we will be Alysa: in touch. Oh, likewise. Thanks so much for having me.