How to Heal Your Body
After a life of intense spiritual search, overcoming personal traumatic obstacles, chronic illness, dedication to spiritual practice under a self-realized master, and being called to take her spiritual experience and knowledge to the world, Sally Thurley is the ultimate spiritual mentor and teacher of how to live in the world embodying grace.
The Sally Thurley Toolbox
Sally knows the level of dedication and commitment we need to be the I AM in the world and has not only all the mystical and yogic tools and practices but has also successfully developed her own.
As a spiritual entrepreneur, Sally is passionate about working with people to find their experience of God, inner peace resulting in world peace, and finding the joy in their spiritual calling and taking it to the world as a service to mankind.
Sally Thurley knows from experience that suffering can be a divine calling, a springboard to hope, freedom
and love and can be overcome.
Website – www.sallythurley.com
Book – www.shemonk.com
Meetup – https://www.meetup.com/Enlightenment-for-Entrepreneurs-Melbourne/
Facebook bus page – https://www.facebook.com/spandacoach/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel
Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/241533499639751/
______________________________
CONNECT WITH BILL.
Transcription:
Intro 0:05
Recovery After Stroke podcast. Helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Bill 0:14
This episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast is brought to you by revealsolutions.com.au. If you’re a coach and looking for new tools to help take your coaching sessions to the next level, then you may want to consider grabbing a pack of coaching cards. There are several different types of coaching cards available, including the mBraining coaching cards, The Growth coaching model cards, and The Emotional Intelligence coaching card amongst others.
Bill 0:42
Each pack contains at least 40 cards with different questions and prompts for you to ask your client during a coaching session. They’re made in Australia from very high-quality plastic-coated paper and protected by a plastic box to ensure durability and easy storage. Pack starts from $42 including tax and delivery is free to any Australian address. Go along to revealsolutions.com.au Click the shop link to check them out.
Bill 1:15
Good day everybody and welcome to another episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast. My guest today is Sally Lakshmi Thurley. Hi Shirley. After a life of intense spiritual searching, overcoming personal traumatic obstacles, chronic illness, dedication to spiritual practice, and a self-realized master, and being called to take her spiritual experiences and knowledge to the world. Sally is the ultimate spiritual mentor and teacher on how to live in the world. embodying grace.
Bill 1:51
That’s something we need more of for sure. Selling knows the level of dedication and commitment. We need to be the I am In the world and has not only all the mystical and yogic tools and practices but has also successfully developed her own. As a spiritual entrepreneur, Sal is passionate about working with people to find the experience of God at a pace resulting in world peace, and finding the joy in this spiritual calling and taking it to the world as a service to mankind. She knows from experience that suffering can be a divine calling, and, and springboard and a springboard to hope that freedom and love can be overcome. Welcome, Sally.
Sally Thurley 2:41
Thank you, Bill. That’s quite a mouthful.
Bill 2:44
That’s a pretty cool bio. It’s it looks like there’s been a lot of thought put into it. And there are some sentences or some words in there that are very different from what you hear from normal people. Well, normal people from people other people’s buyers, right? Yeah. So I really I really, firstly, want to thank you for being on the show. We’re gonna have a really interesting chat. And I’m just curious, tell me a little bit about yourself before we get going. And I start asking you all the little questions that I want to ask.
Sally Thurley 3:15
Sure. Well, I’m a single mom. I’ve got two amazing teenage kids. I live down in the Mornington Peninsula. I, when I was 11, I had a spiritual awakening, which was a very random and strange thing to have had been an expat kid born and raised overseas. And I was walking down the beach, one day down here, and I had what’s called a headless experience, where you look at your hands and you realize you’re not the body.
Sally Thurley 3:43
And I was 11. And I was a Christian to a practicing Christian. I was very devoted and would go to Sunday school and all that kind of stuff. And but I had this huge download at that moment I kind of, you could say, went into a very expanded space of presence.
Sally Thurley 4:00
And got a download of what karma is and how language creates the world these crazy things right 11 at 11 and you think that would be a great thing but actually it caused the cause this lifetime of where the hell do I hear that because, you know, this Christian kid just moved out to the burbs of Melbourne in the 70s and had this awakening and so I spent the majority of my time you know, looking Is this what life is all about? Is this what it’s about? Is it my father working 18 hours a day at the bank?
Sally Thurley 4:31
Is it my mother doing this? Is it all these things? Is it a career is it all that kind of stuff? And so yeah, it’s part of my book that I write about, I talk about this, this journey and it wasn’t till I was 16 that I heard a Buddhist nun when I was at boarding school. Say you choose your parents. It was the first time I’d heard anything at that level of wisdom that I got as a download as a child.
Bill 4:52
Alright, stop there for a sec, Sally, we’re getting into uncharted territory very early in this conversation. Yeah, I like it says 11 you have an awakening, some kind of an awakening. You’re not making anything of it at 11 though, you don’t really know what’s going on. It’s just happening.
Sally Thurley 5:10
That’s the beauty. And when you’re a child, you just go Oh, yeah, you know, the Santa Claus these fairies in the garden? Yeah, I’m gonna have a headless experience. I’m gonna look at my hands. And it used to happen to me quite a lot. I was the kind of kid who’d be falling asleep, but not experiment with me this body, and I kind of made it to the point where I could move in and out of the body.
Bill 5:30
Oh, my gosh, tell me about that. Well, how do you do that? What’s it like? Can it be taught?
Sally Thurley 5:36
I think it’s just it’s an ability to be very open. And to have an open state of mind because everything that happens to us happens through the mind, the mind is the vehicle to freedom. So if you can move in and out of the mind moving out of time move in and out of the body. itself. It’s like you know, you can lie there and realize that the body is numb, that the body actually is just lost. Listen doesn’t move and you’re the consciousness, you’re the spirit that ignites the body.
Sally Thurley 6:04
That was that kind of experience at 11, you treat that, like, I’m going to play tennis tomorrow. With the squat at the end of the ride, it was just like that. So so I was already probably quite out there as a child, but smart enough to know. to not talk about it too much as my own inner world. It was my own experiment.
Sally Thurley 6:24
And funnily enough, when I did have that thing happen, I got the download comma now, I’d never heard the word My parents never spoke about that kind of thing. So I went to school and did show and tell. And I was in grade six. And I spoke about this, this thing, and I and we had been talking all week about society and I piped up and said, Oh, my God, I know all about it.
Sally Thurley 6:47
Now things happen because we have this what I’d call now divine assignment, we come to experience life a particular way. And our reaction to it and the way we use it like all this kind of stuff. I was land I was absolutely lucky. booed off the stage. And I was humiliated at school.
Sally Thurley 7:04
That was at school. And I said That’s Hocus Pocus is no such thing as karma. And that was shocking and horrifying. And in that moment, I realized, okay, whatever this is that I like it. So it’s going to come my, my thing that just drove this huge discovery is seeking.
Bill 7:21
All right now, you said you had some kind of a situation or an experience where you’re able to experience the mind being switched on or switched off kind of something like that. Is that my saying it right?
Sally Thurley 7:40
Yeah, I think the better way of what I finally learned when I met my teacher was that their vocal routines there are these that you could call them like shut up lines in the mind. And we all to some varying degree, allow consciousness a lot of wisdom in a way block it and it depends on how much work we do or how broad our mind use.
Sally Thurley 8:00
So it’s kind of like in areas were really shut down, we’ve got a blind closed completely to. I mean, now people talk about 2D, 3D 5D, like the dimensions that are out there. But for me, it was more just an ability to know that we’re not this mind. We’re not this body and there are things that we can do that are extraordinary when we open the blinds.
Bill 8:22
Okay, well, and when you’re also open and not closed, as a personality, you you’re prepared to experience different things and you don’t judge, etc. Right? Yeah. So how does it 11? How does a child get to that 811 with parents who are Christian, who, whatever, you know, we want to talk about with any religion, you know, there is an amount of closeness in that you need to be this way?
Bill 8:46
This is you know, how the religion goes. This is how you behave as a result of being a Christian or another faith. How does an 11-year-old get to the bank so open-minded when they are raised by people who potentially and I say that I don’t want to be rude or anything I came from a Christian background so potentially closed-minded?
Sally Thurley 9:11
Well, I’m gonna go in there and just set it straight. You know, the mystics were killed in Christianity for centuries killed they killed a teacher for crying out loud. You know, he got now to a cross they’ve burned people on steaks ever since I would have been most definitely burned, you know, way back then.
Sally Thurley 9:27
And in Salem, you would have Yeah, and all sorts of parts of Europe that you know if you’re a heretic, which God I am, you know, I’m not a Catholic. So, the thing is, I believed in, and I still do I notice a strange thing. So I love Christ and I love Christ consciousness. I’ve certainly experienced it. It’s the healing energy on the planet. That’s extraordinary.
Sally Thurley 9:50
But I think I was a mystic. I think that’s what I am I was born one you don’t become one, you can slowly unravel and allow your mystic. To come through, but I was just born and I never felt trapped. I think because I had this broad mind even as a child, I was always searching and seeking and I was one of those obnoxious kids that asked 1000 questions and big curly wants to adults. And I think I was an intense child as well, which I can own now. really intense kid.
Sally Thurley 10:21
But I would go to church and I would, I would milk it for all it was I was the kid that ride her bike when no one else was going. And then when I didn’t get enough in the Church of England, I was the kid that joined the Catholic Church over the road because they sounded louder and bigger and brighter and better, like, but I never got the answers. I never got the experience I wanted because, in the church, they still try and temper down your personal experience. So I didn’t take it too seriously. I just kept looking.
Bill 10:53
It’s interesting when we go through this, you know, the journey of being told what to believe in and Religion and all that kind of stuff that often gets tested. Most people in people’s lives that get tested for you, seem to have got a spanner thrown in the works in some way by this spiritual awakening 11 Perhaps not tested, you still say, you love the experience of Christ.
Bill 11:21
And I get that whole thing because Christ seems to be the very one of the very first, you know, forward-thinking people if we believe the scriptures and believed in, you know, healing and believed in helping people and believed in, you know, that it’s not about, you know, stuff, it’s about being on the planet to do the right thing and something better and he paid it paid a price for it, he made the ultimate sacrifice now whether he was the son of God,
Sally Thurley 11:47
We all are.
Bill 11:49
That’s right. So whether he was the only son of God, like that’s debatable and many people listening to this will debate that and I’m not here to start that kind of a conversation, but I want to recognize I want to acknowledge the role of these, suppose it prophets, etc, like Muhammad and all those people because they have galvanized many people for many generations, thousands of years after they were around.
Bill 12:13
And I think that’s just amazing. I’m not sure though, if they’re any different to a philosopher, or somebody.
Sally Thurley 12:21
Very different look than the prophets and the avatars, and whatever you want to call them are alive and now they’re alive now. They’re always on the planet, we always need them. It’s not it’s not delegated to like two or three of you know, the man’s club. They’re always around, and the only difference is like, let’s look at Christ. Jesus.
Sally Thurley 12:42
His name wasn’t Christ, by the way, and there’s a huge modern mystical movement in the Christian church. That’s bringing me a lot of hope. There’s a guy I’ve been reading at the moment called Richard Rohr, who’s a brilliant pastor in the church whose take taken the non-dual teachings of the East and he’s had some kind of awakening with them. bled into Christianity and said, we have made Christ into this thing that he wasn’t, he was a human, he just wasn’t actually a normal life until he got to his 30s.
Sally Thurley 13:10
And all hell broke out. But we forget we have put in this is what the church has done is what religion has done. He’s the only one who has to make us special and unique. And we’re smart enough to see you know, Emperor’s New Clothes kind of thing. And then and it goes, but what happens is, the further we move away from that time with that great being, from the teachings of that great being, and you said, the scriptures, that thing with the scriptures is that when we come in with a base level of understanding, like straight off the straight spirituality.
Sally Thurley 13:38
We read them at face value, and that’s when it’s wrong, that they’ve you have to have some kind of awakening, some mystical experience, some experience of God, to start to get the real meaning of them. And people don’t allow that to happen. So we’ve got this misrepresentation of the real thing, but as far as, as far as them being Different to philosophers absolutely.
Sally Thurley 14:02
Philosophers kind of think I’ve got a very philosophical mind, they think, and they surmise, but they haven’t had that experience of God. So, and I would say someone like Albert Einstein, who ended up being quite a philosopher video, so ended up being quite mystical, when he was going into the theories of the cosmos, he actually started to have divine experiences. And his final writings were absolutely spectacular when you read.
Sally Thurley 14:29
So I think I think someone who’s established themselves in the divine has transcended thoughts has transcended language, you get to a point where you can’t even explain what it’s about anymore. And philosophers are stuck on one thing and being right in their way, whereas someone who really comes from that experience knows.
Bill 14:52
Okay, so. All right, we’ll move on from there because this is a really pretty cool discussion. And I never thought it would go down this path. But that’s all right. No, no, no, it’s all good. It doesn’t need to go anywhere in particular. But I raised that just a little bit earlier with regards to Jesus and what we classify him as so to speak, or whether he was a philosopher or not, because I wanted to get to the point where, like, everybody, you, you experience some health challenges at some time, we’re all going to experience health challenges.
Bill 15:25
And I’m curious to understand, when you get to that stage, and with your upbringing, and this experience that you had at 11 How does everything that you believe no, etc, now start to shift? Or how does it start to explain what’s happening to you? Because for me, for me, it was an interesting thing that happened to me when I experienced, you know, one of three brain images in 2012 and then the other couple of some months later, because I got to that point where I understood that there was mortality and I was mortal. And that could have been the next day or in a month or whenever.
Bill 16:10
And I kind of had to come to terms with that for the first time ever, you know, pretty standard mail. You know, in Western society, we don’t think about that. And then and then that experience kind of made me question everything that I had done in the past as both a physical person, but also as a spiritual person and somebody who wanted to think that they were better up until that moment better than others in that, you know, I was doing amazing stuff and helping people and all that kind of stuff.
Bill 16:40
But really, it was the ego. And then I kind of had this different level of understanding of where I fit into the planet and how big or small I am and how important my ego is and all that kind of stuff and what I’m supposed to really be doing on the planet. So how did it shift for you when you experience some health challenges? And if you don’t mind, give us a bit of an idea of what those health challenges were.
Sally Thurley 17:06
Well, I was born on Well, I was born and spent the first six months of my life in the Stockholm Children’s Hospital. I was born with disabled legs, so back then no one could do anything about it from the age of four, my knees started to dislocate. And a dislocated lot did a lot of damage. I had my first nail reconstruction at nine to try and fix one leg and see if that would help and it might get worse.
Sally Thurley 17:33
Sometimes when you decide, well, the last thing you want your body wants to be put back into the right place, just fought with that. Then I developed very severe endometriosis for a whole host of reasons. It’s part of a family hereditary thing though, which is a debilitating disease for women at 12. And I was sent to I was actually living in care at that time.
Bill 17:54
What is endometriosis?
Sally Thurley 17:56
Endometriosis is a disease where at that time of the month instead of for some reason the glare of the endometrium which sheds goes backward it goes into the body and then, of course, every month it starts to grow and starts to shed and you get this internal bleeding this pressure on it grows these horrible lesions and things like that so I felt very very it’s so excruciating Lee painful and I went through this trauma with my family to very unsettled abusive family life.
Sally Thurley 18:29
So yeah, I was having I’ve had over 30 operations for it and of course, now that’s caused most of the problem is the level of surgery and the damage that is done. So yeah, as always either dislocating the leg. I had I would spend time always in and out of wheelchairs and crutches growing up. My friends used to call me duck because I couldn’t walk straight because I was protecting my legs. The kids are so cool.
Bill 18:53
They are so cool. so creative.
Sally Thurley 18:55
Yeah, and that’d be nice. You’d be hunched over when you cry, just thinking I don’t know what’s worse right now. Or it’s my tummy like it was just like that. And then when I joined when I met my teacher and I joined the center, I was told that at 16 I’d never had children. I wasn’t fertile. And I, I became a yogi in a year, a year to that day I fell pregnant with my child, my first child, and they said, Oh, you’ll never have immune to all these things. And I had 10 pounds, you know, now six foot one extremely healthy child. And then I said, Look, don’t get too sad. We don’t and then there’s a whole panel of specialists.
Sally Thurley 19:30
We don’t know how you did it, but just be grateful you’ll never have another one. I was like, so I did my thing. And I you know, by that stage, I was a very strict vegetarian, I was meditating I was doing everything I could and I had my I had my daughter exactly the same day exactly the same day so they to see us apart.
Sally Thurley 19:50
Well, I fell pregnant exactly the same day. They just want a bit longer one can be the other but, yeah. So it was like this thing and then but then I got arrogant. And I thought, okay, there’s nothing I can’t heal because I know the secrets. All you have to do is meditate and he had hot food and I became a whole food chef.
Sally Thurley 20:09
I was a chef at an ashram, you know, I really, really went hardcore into what I was doing. And then, five years ago, four, four years ago, One morning I woke up and I’d lost the use of my legs completely, that had I had very, very, very severe osteoarthritis and could no longer walk and went to the specialist and he actually cried when he looked at my MRI scan.
Sally Thurley 20:33
Yeah, I know. Well, kinda he just said, sweetheart, go home, get your house ready for a wheelchair. This is it. This is your life.
Bill 20:40
He has only got three-quarters of a heart. It doesn’t have the full amount. Did he give you a hug at least?
Sally Thurley 20:46
He was just looking at me going, Oh, my God.
Bill 20:48
Poking sticks at you.
Sally Thurley 20:51
And I said to him, You kidding me? I always thought I had leg replacements. You know up my sleeve. I thought that was my one trump card. And he said this because of the disability All these things I wouldn’t hold. And I had all these things that were wrong with my legs. So it was just like not going to happen. And that was the shock. That was actually the shock. And then I had an adrenal breakdown. Stage three, and no doctors understand what the hell that is.
Bill 21:15
What the hell is that?
Sally Thurley 21:16
I care about too much too much. I had post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from ill health and also an abusive childhood. And it just, it was just time it just came up. And my nervous system even though is a master of meditation at this stage. Could you imagine how that was? And then they said, all you got is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I went, Oh, my God.
Bill 21:39
Interesting. Let’s just talk about that for a little bit because people who experience health challenges, like you did. stroke survivors, people who have heart attacks, whatever it is, can experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Absolutely. So is a really important thing that we emphasize here. And I want to understand how it manifested in you, what did you feel with regard to the post-traumatic stress disorder and what’s it got to do with your adrenals, and what adrenal we’ll get to that in a moment. All right.
Sally Thurley 22:10
Yeah. Okay. Well, basically I had become efficient at shutting down any trauma, the trauma of living as a disabled person and never owning it, never even using that label.
Bill 22:21
Shutting it down where?
Sally Thurley 22:23
Anywhere it would go.
Bill 22:25
Like your conscious awareness.
Sally Thurley 22:27
Out of my, I was not going to experience pain. If I did experience pain. I had a very, very good mental aptitude, you know, mental ability to just put it in its box where it’s meant to go, and I was a fighter and I’d get on with life. I had this attitude, and it worked. If you were around me, nobody else felt. You know, you can feel someone’s pain body I’m really good at that. I can see and feel someone’s pain body but you couldn’t feel mine.
Bill 22:52
Because it worked in that you were able to mask it and make it make yourself appear as being perfection. But really, in the eyes of others, they wouldn’t have known but really did you deep down know? Or did you convince yourself as well?
Sally Thurley 23:07
Had no idea. And actually, with perfection, I’d certainly didn’t put that across it was more on competence. I’m, you know, look at me, I can do whatever I want but don’t put this label on me of all these issues and but actually no I tell you the thing I grew up muscling into transcendence, I could transcend anything I laugh in my half-day workshop, I took what had become a helium balloon like I was big, you know, I had this, this ability to leave my body to leave my problems, and that actually became a problem.
Sally Thurley 23:40
So, that was the biggest lightbulb moment that I write about in my book. It’s like one you might be able to transcend. But unless you can transform, you know, something will eventually happen. If you’re meant to transform if you’re meant to, you know, like you, you’ve got this divine purpose. You wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t had your health problems. It’s amazing.
Sally Thurley 24:00
Calling to humanity. If you’ve got you got a calling that thing and you’re not listening to it, God’s gonna set everything up and just say, hey, by the I’m just about to pull the rug out from under your feet. See? Are you ready?
Bill 24:12
He’s done it. She’s done it three times to me. And you know what, it’s the best three things that ever happened to me three bleeds in the brain.
Sally Thurley 24:20
Yeah. And look at you, you know, you do all this amazing work? Um, so yeah.
Bill 24:25
So if you’re listening and you’ve had a health challenge or stroke, whatever it is, or a heart attack or other health challenges, when I say is the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s not the best thing that ever happened to my physical body. But it is because of that, that I’m doing the things that I love now, which I wasn’t before. And I’m not saying that I wake up in the morning and I can run up a mountain I can’t. My left side doesn’t work the way that it used to when it hurts.
Bill 24:54
It’s not visible. So I have one of those like you a disability that’s not visible now. I don’t consider myself disabled in a wheelchair, none of that stuff. But it wasn’t fun and games when it happened. So I just wanted to make sure that people understand that I’m not somebody who just had a blade woke up and everything was perfect. No, it’s not.
Sally Thurley 25:13
It’s a journey. And we’re here to evolve us all. We’re here to go home. So you know, if it’s your time to do that, then you’re gonna do it. Yeah. And we do fight and kick and scream like you have that you don’t wake up going cool. Like you wake up going, what the hell?
Bill 25:31
But you’re good at being able to leave your body like you were saying, you become a helium balloon. Keep going down that path.
Sally Thurley 25:39
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s a very complex, intricate tapestry of a story. But basically, it just went from bad to worse and everything I’ve used in the past didn’t work. So then I developed Hashimoto’s disease. I’ve done a lot of weight when you got knee problems. It’s the last thing you need. I lost my relationship as a result that I was fully disabled. So unwell and I had to move house to go through a separation. I had to sell my home to pay for my medical bills and that was going fast to pull my kids out of private school because you know, the medical bills.
Sally Thurley 26:11
And then of course I lost my ashram community for a while. It’s just that anything that could go wrong went wrong. And I ended up just completely at a point where all I could do was stare at the ceiling and almost dribble for like, you know, I had I had not I had nothing left and in that moment, I knew I had everything. And it was fascinating and I remember people would come to me they go, but you must be a fraud. Your health coach or whole food chef, your master meditated in his 20s in an ashram, you know, you’re a fraud because spiritual people don’t get sick. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that one but it’s the biggest bs.
Bill 26:46
I’ve never heard that one and I can tell it’s bs because I can you know, how can your physical body not get sick?
Sally Thurley 26:53
Because it’s not about the goddamn body that you know people. This is why I’m so passionate about busting spiritual BS. Because so much out there that keeps secret that’s just the shadow in the mind, you know. And so but for a while there, I was like, I die, right? And I actually had to bring my teacher one day and I said, Look, I’m, I’m going through something obviously, I don’t know what the answer to it is yet, but it’s got a lot to do with healing.
Sally Thurley 27:19
And he said two things. Number one, this is going to ground you I’d never grounded myself. I was that helium balloon, you’ll get you’ve hit the Earth so hard, you’ve got enough splits. And it’s true, and I’ve been grounded ever since. And then the other thing he said was, the answer is always with those saints. Now the prophets were talking about before the saints and he said, read the lives of the saints that I had studied go back over them, because a great spiritual teacher never gives you the absolute answer.
Sally Thurley 27:47
Never. They’re not meant to. I mean, in this day and age, we can Google anything pick up a Hay House book and you know you’ve got winder shuffle information around. It’ll tell you everything you want to know but you have to work some things out for yourself. So he just pointed Took me in the right direction I spent time reading these saints and it just hit me they all were sick they all suffered they all went through some kind of thing that drove them deep into humility deep into compassion deep into love.
Sally Thurley 28:19
And I knew that I had whatever layer of spirituality I had wasn’t the end point for me there was another layer to go and I had to go through this humiliation is no longer depending on the body and as a doing type I could do it out of pain. So if I felt pain, I’d go and do something. Like That was my nature. So they took the doing away.
Bill 28:41
Distracting process.
Sally Thurley 28:43
That was my unique skill. That’s how I did it. It was like okay, I get my might I had mental toughness, and I would do and for some people, that’s enough for healing, but for me, it wasn’t.
Bill 28:53
You probably had physical pain because of how you were born. And then you would have had emotional pain because of what you went through obviously during your childhood then in every aspect of our lives we pick up a little bit of emotional pain and carry it along and bring it along for the ride so you would have been aware of the different versions of pain that you experienced physical and emotional were you just avoiding one or were you avoiding both?
Sally Thurley 29:20
Good question. I think I by this stage am very comfortable with my emotions and knowing that I was a devotional emotional kind of person I’m very artistic and creative. So you know definitely was accepting of that. So but I think my ability to do would write would override my emotions. I could get quite analytical and logical and override my emotions.
Sally Thurley 29:43
So yeah, really cunning did me no good. But the thing was, I was meant to, and when these things happen. I’ll go back to that teaching I got when I was 16. From when I was at boarding school, living in secret I was there because home was too volatile. I couldn’t live at home. So yeah, I was really that’s when the post-traumatic stress sort of clicked in when I got to the point where I had to be removed from home.
Sally Thurley 30:09
And cortisol results that when you leave in fraud or flight full time, then your cortisol levels go through the roof until one day that your body says I can’t keep pumping it out. Well, it just stops and you just have an adrenal breakdown. It’s a complete Wipeout that I happen that I had.
Bill 30:26
Adrenal glands are the glands that are responsible to create adrenal, the hormone adrenaline, which gets us pumped and going when we have to run away from something that’s dangerous that life is at risk of. So it sounds like the interpretation that your body that you were getting out of that what was happening in your body and all that was stuff I need to run away from my body is at risk. I’m at risk. I’m not safe. Yeah.
Sally Thurley 30:54
Yeah, so wasn’t it I went ahead and went and I thought now It’s okay. I can sit with my father and mother who died. A million years ago that was horrendous. And, and my father and in a cafe at the age of 40 still grabbed me around the arm, you know, and went to pull me in and was yelling screaming at me. And I thought I’m 40 and I just wrote up.
Sally Thurley 31:12
It doesn’t happen anymore. It just doesn’t happen. I’ve tried all that spiritual bs of, Oh, well, they’re your family must always let them in. You’re the evolved one, you find the way sometimes you just can’t have certain people around you. I love my father so much. But I cannot pay in his company. I can do this via Skype because I’m shocked. But you know, I can’t be in his company.
Bill 31:34
You can love him from a distance.
Sally Thurley 31:36
Yeah, I love him admire him, but he’s just, you know, he in his mind, I’m still that six-year-old girl that you can just do that. Yeah, you know, it was it’s not on. So then that was another thing. You know, imagine having all these downloads and doing all this work and then it just drives it pushed a wedge in my family relationships.
Sally Thurley 31:57
So sadhana or deep spirit transformative practice is not pretty, it’s not glossy. You don’t walk into a church or a temple or synagogue or an ashram and have this experience and come out with a white robe on it doesn’t work like that you actually get stripped bloody raw. And you have to go through great loss. And, and it’s, yeah, that can be the way.
Bill 32:24
Some of the loss that you experience, what kind of loss What do you have to lose? What are the things that you lost?
Sally Thurley 32:31
You have to lose everything you think you are, you have to the ego holds on so tightly. The fight is always with the ego when we’re suffering, it’s always that fight that tackles with the ego. It’s, you know, the Buddhists say all suffering is ignorance and that they’re, they you know, the Buddha said that there are three things that’ll definitely happen in life and that’s all age, death, and disease.
Sally Thurley 32:52
So, you know, how we deal with those is of course how we suffer we know because we’ve come out the other side of suffering but You realize when you commit to the side that there is no suffering. There’s no suffering. It’s just attitude.
Bill 33:06
Yeah, it’s interesting when you say things like, you know, you have to lose, you lose a lot and, and I think about some of the things that I lost, and definitely what I lost was the ego. I had a lot of help, though. So what happened to me was when the head switched off, Mm-hmm. It switched off literally, I couldn’t use it. I couldn’t count. I couldn’t know I didn’t know my name.
Bill 33:26
At one point. I didn’t know who my wife was for, for a small amount of time. I had I couldn’t type an email. I couldn’t I didn’t have a concept of time. And how long something took an email that I thought took five minutes I just realized you know, is that the thing for an hour Oh my god, like, had that happen. So the head is completely switched off. So this so then what started happening is these other emotions started coming up.
Bill 33:51
When I say emotions, you know, heart-based stuff. And the gut, my gut started talking to me and the gut was going info info. And I didn’t understand how to interpret that, how to read that. And I and I was really amazed that now with my head switched off, I did pick up some skills. And I went through some coaching and I went through some mentoring and all that stuff, to understand how to connect and how to read those signals and how to be able to guide my life without the head being the one and only intelligence that’s guiding me around the place or telling me what to do.
Bill 34:27
So it was I was able to experience more joy, more fun, more excitement, I was able to let go of more of the things that I didn’t like that I did just because of the money or whatever. So I had this really amazing ability to really just switch the head off now that I’m healing and a lot better than I was. Now I’m able to do that consciously and go, now that’s the head telling me stories I don’t want to know about because it’s doing one plus one equals two.
Bill 34:55
Yeah, money. You got to do that, for example. But actually what’s happening is I want to hear what my heart’s got to Say, I want to hear what it wants to do, how it’s going to, you know, drive me down to a place that’s exciting that’s interesting that I’m going to be able to share rather than gloat about that I’m going to be able to encourage people to do.
Bill 35:14
And then my gut is really sort of helping me take action, you know, that got the action to move towards those things that I love. So that when I get to that point, and I consult my head, and I ask it, Hey, tell me, what do you think of what we just did? It goes, yay, I love it. Well, what do you think about the fact that that made no money? No big deal, man.
Bill 35:35
We had such a good time. It was. I mean, so this podcast came because of that. So I get to hear from all some people, and I get to share my story. I get to give people some kind of a tool that helps them potentially, you know, take a new path. I don’t know why I don’t get to make any money out of it. But it’s the one thing that I’ve committed to more than anything in the last five years is this sharing of information and knowledge and other people’s stories.
Bill 36:02
Because I felt like I wanted to feel like it was okay what I had been through what I had done who I was what I had experienced and that I can now move and shift I wanted to feel that and I was looking for people to make that to tell me that so I could feel like I about the version of myself that I was so now I’ve discovered there is a plethora of people like your podcasts, workshops, whatever telling me that who I was what I did in the past how I did it was okay. And now I have a path forward and a way to do things that are for lack of a better word better for me and better for the planet and better for the people around me.
Sally Thurley 36:51
Purpose.
Bill 36:52
Yeah, purpose.
Sally Thurley 36:55
Purpose is so healing you know walking and walking. I can’t Well, stands very long since I just ran a five-day workshop. And I stood and I, I talked, I could tell when my legs but it was suffering and I would get off them. But I stood like a normal walk like a normal person it was an inner triumph for me it was like this was such a drain on my go.
Sally Thurley 37:20
God at least give me the leg capacity that I can park my car and 50 meters to a workshop somewhere. I got a disability sticker. It’s great. I can park 50 minutes past and then walk in and deliver something and the funny thing is what you’re talking about is called self-inquiry. What you’re talking about is a yogic technique where that I, I teach and that’s what I take people away on five days because you know that that’s a that’s not an inquiry you have overnight that’s an inquiry having a one-hour healing session.
Sally Thurley 37:49
So I take people out of their minds and into the heart and into the navel into that gut, because then the other two intelligence centers of the body and when we you reunite them. We allow that energy to flow, then we become authentic, then then we really know what we really want, we get an idea of, actually, this is what I desperately want to help people with this is, and like you’re, you’re doing your podcast and when you mentioned the abundance.
Sally Thurley 38:14
So I just wanted to say that when you do this level of work in the world, he brings such joy and you help so many people, the law of abundance is that it will come in and in other ways, so it might not be directly evident through the podcast, but some other area of your life, you know, the abundance will flow.
Bill 38:31
Yeah, it definitely has come back in many, many ways, especially when people contact you that you don’t know on the other side of the planet that go That was a good episode.
Sally Thurley 38:39
Yeah, well done. That’s awesome.
Bill 38:41
That’s great. I mean, that’s the whole intention. I get to help people now that are never made that to the other side of the planet, and if they choose to meet, well, we can meet via Skype. In just a moment of, you know, connecting, it’d be great. So you talk about the mind and you talk about the heart and talk about the gut. Do you know that the gut has, the same amount of brain cells and neurons that a cat’s brain does? That’s about half a billion.
Sally Thurley 39:11
Yeah, no, I knew it was full of neurons. I didn’t know about the cat’s brain better. Yeah, there isn’t. And there are also brain cells in the heart.
Bill 39:18
That’s it, right? So there’s up to about 120,000, as low as 30,000. Studies have shown this, and I get I got this information from a book called Embracing usually uses your multiple brains to do cool stuff. The author’s Grand Slam of Anika does a whole bunch of research to find these little cool things of information and to give us an application, how to apply them, and how to use them. And I found that book just around that time when I was experiencing when I experienced my after my second bleed, and my head switched off.
Bill 39:49
So they were able to sort of give me a guide into how to access that intelligence in the heart and in the gut. And you know, the reason why there’s between 30,000 and 100 20,000 neurons and why it’s so vast that thing in the heart is that some people who are known as young at heart, even in their 90s will have more than 120,000 neurons and other people who are known as brokenhearted cold-hearted. No hard, have as low as 30,000 neurons or less.
Sally Thurley 40:24
Yeah, well, I don’t know, the scientific thing, but from a yogic perspective, then we’re writing about this for thousands of years, And you there’s three distinct spiritual personalities that we fit into which eventually the Enya Graham, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that came. And you’re either you’re either one of those, you’re either a head or heart or a naval person. And so just say a head person would have a lower heart count, because it’s actually a head person, that that has less ability to get in touch with feeling and have compassion and that kind of stuff.
Sally Thurley 40:57
So, in my room, that’s another thing I try to teach. What you have to balance all your wings, and you have to balance that and so you’d give a prescription of certain devotional practices to help them build that count, or to help them expand in the heart and to say, well, that’s why your relationships aren’t all that great. It’d be cold, you’re in your head, so, and a doing person like me, can completely avoid everything look like they’re engaging in the world, but they’re completely disengaged from everything in pursuit of doing, you know, I thought there’s some action to do yeah, I’m an action type.
Sally Thurley 41:31
So and then heart people you know, they’re beautiful that but they can get so they can become terrorist bombers, you know, that strap bombs to their body, because it’s so emotional. Because what you can talk them into, emotionally into doing something like that because they don’t have the wisdom. They don’t have the wisdom to balance it out to go, Hey, something’s not right here. And, you know, and possibly not grounded out by enough doing so it’s very important that we have somewhat Yeah, how much of that and what we need to do to, to balance ourselves out?
Bill 42:05
Yeah. Wow. This is so far been a really amazing conversation. I’m loving it. Tell me about meditation. It’s, you know, widely recognized as being very important in healing and in connecting to oneself and all those types of things. But give me your version of meditation.
Sally Thurley 42:26
Meditation is just sitting with yourself. Meditation is switching off the most essential part of it. It’s just when you become present, meditation is there to become present. The answers to everything we want to know the answers to all healing all our solutions and problems to everything are in the present moment. So if we can meditate then we can see and become aware of who we’re being what we’re doing, we can ask those questions like you were asking of your heart and your navel and all those sorts of things, but it’s just to be. It’s just to be.
Sally Thurley 43:01
And again, someone who some people need to calm their mind, other people can’t come to mind. So you really need to be around someone who understands different forms and styles of meditation to give you the right one. You don’t have to have a calm mind. There are tricks and techniques to override it, which of course, are the ones I’m good at. And yeah, there are all sorts of forms of meditation. So you know, some people like you hear the Hari Krishna who sings, you know, they walk down the street in Melbourne, everyone thinks they’re crazy. I frickin love them. I love them. And I even started hanging around them for a while.
Bill 43:39
And the best part about them is if you want to get away from them, which there’s no reason to but you can hear them coming a mile away because they’re so loud.
Sally Thurley 43:46
Well, they’re devotional. They’re love types. So you know, they’ll just do because my god that who wouldn’t want to hear about Krishna and, and I’m grateful for them because they make the world a richer, a richer place but they’re actually meditation. That’s meditation.
Bill 44:00
Yeah, I love them I love haircuts some of the haircuts are really funky.
Sally Thurley 44:04
Well, if you want to ditch the ego-ditching hair because we’re usually attached to it as you’re doing really well you’ve got like a number one around number one, but they have like a little ponytail hanging out in the back that you can kind of call that like an antenna as they keep just enough because for some reason I don’t notice their thing is that consciousness or Krishna or whatever it’s like metal would be to conducting heat. It’s like a conducted to the divine. So they keep just a tiny, little bit of hair.
Bill 44:37
Well, I know one thing about hair is hair on a face, eyebrows, whatever the head, and for men, obviously on their face, their chest, etc. It is it’s something that is able to sense and pick up things from the environment. So, in the Paleolithic days or whenever we were hunters and gatherers. You know, we didn’t have the number of clothes that we have on we go out to hunt those hairs, the tent, you know, the hairs on your arms are an extension of our nervous system.
Bill 45:05
And that’s why they stand on end. And that’s they pick up things, you know, that is so out of our eye awareness of our consciousness eyes that help guide us instinctively down, particularly potentially the path of wherever. And the hair on the face. You know, even more so because there’s more of it and it goes out further so I can see why there’s some kind of relevance potentially to the hair.
Sally Thurley 45:32
Yeah. And they say it’s to divine higher power. Yeah, yeah. No, there you go. Very cool. I hadn’t thought about that. Thank you.
Bill 45:41
So tell me about it. So meditation. Tell me about yoga.
Sally Thurley 45:47
Ah, yum. Yoga is not a downward-facing dog. I really have to put that in there because so many people like I’m a yogini and yoga, the postural yoga comes from a sense of Patanjali. And he wrote the yoga sutras and that’s predominantly when you hear the word, Yogi, you think of Patanjali, or you think of Hatha Yoga, which is exercises, and yet, even in his writings, then the mention of postural Yoga is only once in all of the stuff that he wrote.
Sally Thurley 46:27
Yoga itself means union, it means union with God. So it’s the practice towards union with the divine. And it’s, it’s a complete lifestyle. So you can’t just pull one pot out, and, you know, expect that liberating union thing to happen. Now, there are many schools a yogi doesn’t have to do anything potentially. You don’t actually ever have to do one breath exercise or sit on a mat to become enlightened at all. Hi, bunnies like Thank you.
Sally Thurley 46:59
It’s all about Getting insanely present meditation really is yoga it is the way and I come from a tradition called Kashmir Shaivism that has very little to do with that. It’s a completely different path, but it’s one that is terribly open. It’s just basically saying, if you can sit there and hold everything around you everything you see everything that you can tell with the five senses and can move beyond the five senses that everything is consciousness. There is nothing that is not consciousness. There is no default concept of good or bad or hell or heaven or evil and whatever doesn’t exist. And then that is yoga.
Bill 47:41
Okay, so somebody who has a health challenge, yep. And wants to do yoga, the stuff on the mat, etc. Because you know, someone mentioned that it’s a good thing to do. It probably is good for stretching and elongating the muscles and relieving tension and all that Yeah, yeah, still good. Yeah.
Sally Thurley 48:03
Oh, you were meant to move. Yeah, we’re not meant to be sedentary. You know, even me who was such a mover like I had severe arthritis as a shift for crying out loud like I couldn’t stop. But now walking around the block is actually enough walking around the block is a miracle for me and stretching the movie you can do sitting but don’t try and do we have this thing have this achieving chip, where we kind of think, Okay, well, I’ve lost my legs, I better climb Everest, I better kind of prove to everyone that I’m unstoppable.
Sally Thurley 48:32
You know, and we applaud that. But sometimes they’re missing the point of actually sitting and accepting and going within and saying there is no limitation here. There’s no such thing as a limitation. The body has its commerce, the body is going to do what the body is going to do. Even after enlightenment. You still have the play that you are that you organize before taking this birth. You are going to get your health thing to help you organize that yourself.
Sally Thurley 49:00
Before taking this birth, there are things that are going to happen, whether you are in the right vibration or not, they’re the things that are going to happen, which is why those teachings are going to go. It’s called power of the karma. So it’s just learn, have grace, have grace, learn just to sit with everything as it is and allow your heart to, to open to the moment and to get the real intelligence of what is happening. And if it hurts to be on the mat, or if you’re pushing to go on the mat, give it up.
Sally Thurley 49:30
But then there are things like yoga therapy, that is spectacular, where, you know, I’ve got exercises that I do, not every day because I bit Li, said, Why, but roll at the med monitor really just about holding a mudra you know, something like that and breathing and just standing a certain way. That’s yoga. That’s yoga. You don’t you don’t actually hit real yoga isn’t a push. It’s not hard. You don’t have to sort of, you know, in the West, we love everything to be hard because that’s when it then is worthy of something You know, you’re not sweating, it’s no good.
Bill 50:03
Yeah, it’s just pain is just what’s cut what is it coming out something like something weakness or something coming out or something.
Sally Thurley 50:13
So we’ve done, we’ve done crazy things even to yoga itself, like, you know, we might have turned that into an exercise form and taken the arm out,
Bill 50:21
We’ve made it into a profitable marketed thing. And that’s kind of what happens in a capitalist slash planet. That’s
Sally Thurley 50:33
It’s about to happen to meditation. I die when I say what’s coming out.
Bill 50:36
Oh, well, thank you for that because I was gonna ask you my next question was gonna be, I have this real issue, mindfulness meditation. Now, I love that I love the concept behind what it’s supposed to achieve because I recommend and I guide people who I’m coaching in a very quick meditation The beginning. And I think and through that meditation, we encourage the growth of new neurons, of new opportunities of, you know, new connections to the heart to the gut, of all the things that you know.
Bill 51:13
And we visualize healing and walking, if that’s the person’s goal when we visualize abundant life and amazing experiences. So in that meditation, but when I hear the word mindful, I hear, I’m going to fill my mind with more things. And when I came from a place where I was mindful, and then my mind was emptied, I don’t want to be mindful anymore.
Sally Thurley 51:41
You’re not meant to.
Bill 51:43
Yeah, right. So that’s my challenge with it. And now that you said, what you said, let’s talk about that. Tell me about that.
Sally Thurley 51:49
Well, I come from a transcendent path, which is quite different. Mindfulness is one of many practices. A lot of the time, people the reason why mindfulness is so popular Is because it’s very ABC, it’s very easy. It does work. It makes people very centered, which we’re not good at. It’s literally bringing yourself back. Now I’m walking, I’m putting my right foot forward, I’m putting my left foot forward, I’m breathing right now, I’m picking my spring up, I’m putting in my hot eating, you know, bite. That’s basic level mindfulness. And the deal is that if you’re at the point where that’s actually standard collided the mind you’ve transcended it, you’ve transcended it. So you’re actually now ready for another layer, another level of meditation.
Sally Thurley 52:33
But when I did my map of consciousness, with the people I mentor, it’s like, if you can go from naught to world, to a thought, free mind nirvikalpa Samadhi you’re actually you’re, that’s that sheet hot. That’s like, mastery. So the goal really is to be able to stop and just breathe in at that moment, get radically present and everything, just evacuate for For some people who are there yet, then mindfulness is very strategic, but it’s actually lowered down the ladder of practices. And you can become a very competent meditator never doing mindfulness once.
Sally Thurley 53:14
So it’s just that it’s the flavor. It’s the new black. It’s all over the place. And it makes people feel it takes out the woo-woo. I’m not remotely woo-woo I have this incredible connection to the divine. I use the G word I say, God, it freaks everyone out, but I’m not woo-woo. But people are so stereotypical about that. They’re like, hysterical, that they want something that looks like it’s come off a doctor’s prescription pad. I’m going to prescribe you six weeks of mindfulness meditation. I will do that, you know. Yeah, it’s easy, right? But yeah, it’s still using language and it’s still occupying the mind.
Bill 53:50
I prefer heartful meditation
Sally Thurley 53:53
heartful meditation. Yep. What like.
Bill 53:57
You know, just um, you know, meditation that starts with acknowledging the heart. And then acknowledging the opportunity for growth at the heart rather than the opportunity for creative ways to make more money at the head. Or, you know, I would rather be heartful of my meal rather than mindful of it.
Sally Thurley 54:16
Oh, I see, Well, I think mindfulness would activate the heart. I think it really would I think mindfulness does bring compassion.
Bill 54:25
But it talks about minded it talks about going in the word mindful directly to the mind, at least in the, in the very basic version that I understand the mind, you know, body and spirit or soul. Mind talks about going into the head I don’t.
Sally Thurley 54:41
Well, that’s because all liberation happens in funnily enough, it happens in the head. It’s the head we have to overcome.
Bill 54:47
We have to widen it. We have to let it go. We have to chill it out.
Sally Thurley 54:52
We have to crack it open.
Bill 54:55
I did.
Sally Thurley 54:56
We did. Have you seen I think her name’s Jill Bolte Taylor have you seen the clip that she wrote on YouTube that reminds me of you? She was a brain neuroscientist, she had a brain hemorrhage. And that took seven years to recover from she became enlightened by that experience. And the thing, if the word mindfulness is creating a, you know, a hook, then ZAZ in, which is the Zen Zen form of meditation doesn’t is almost the same. But it won’t use the word mindfulness doesn’t is spectacular. It’s a beautiful meditation. If you’re, if that’s sort of devotional thing you might be you might be devotional by nature. So you need those more heart-based practices.
Bill 55:44
You’re right I am I always have been I’ve resisted it as much as I could, you know, I never was but I am now.
Sally Thurley 55:51
It’s the one thing we do resist. No one wants to know that they’re heart-based or emotional.
Bill 55:54
Yeah. So you know, I suck like the best of him at any time at the drop of a mile. Just drop off a hat. You know.
Sally Thurley 56:01
It’s beautiful.
Bill 56:02
It is it’s good like it does, it’s freeing, it’s liberating. It helps me. It helps me just helps me, you know, whatever. And we talked about that when I speak on behalf sometimes at the strike foundation. We talked about that. The people who experienced stroke often become very emotional, and the people around them really struggle because now they’re very emotional. But I know exactly why that happens.
Bill 56:30
Now, I know it happens because the heads are switched off the heart Connects, and emotions come up that have been hidden for a decade, two decades, a lifetime. You know. So I think that the word mindful is the connotation of that for me, I think that is where the difficulty lies in that discussion about the meditation that is mindful. And that’s I think what it is so when you describe with a different word that doesn’t say mindful then I like that better.
Sally Thurley 57:00
And also you might not, that’s a wisdom tradition that might not be your cup of tea anymore. So there are three odors. There’s bhakti yoga, Yana yoga, and karma yoga. And they, if you have predominantly heart-centered, you don’t want to be doing Western tradition stuff, you need to be doing bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion.
Sally Thurley 57:21
So, you know, I’d be giving you all these practices to do to feel your heart up and we want you to be that rich nectary in person, that experience where you, you feel your heart you feel you almost it’s throbbing for the pains of the world. It’s like it just desperately wants everyone to love and be happy and once well pace and, you can’t the heart drives doing when it’s doing that then you’re being of loving service to the world and, and it’s like your way you’re wanting to know in the devotional practice of wave-like when a wave you want to recognize acknowledge everyone.
Sally Thurley 57:59
And let them know that they are these loving, magnificent beings that, you know, chocolates pouring out of the heart. I don’t know where that just came from, but like, you know, live streaming through and it’s, it’s your infinite intelligence is in there and there are so many ways and fill in our kitaen that singing meditation is one of them.
Sally Thurley 58:19
But there are a lot of devotional practices and one of them that’s really important is that when we got rid of religion, we threw a lot of devotional practices out the baby with the bathwater, and that said, I’m a big stand for throw out, really, we’ve got to purify the crap that didn’t work. There’s a lot that gets created out of culture for crying out loud. We’ve lost ceremony, ceremony, and face timing with family oral devotional practices and building relationships and all that kind of stuff. A devotional and it’s a yoga as much as sitting there in mindfulness.
Bill 58:54
You’re talking my language.
Sally Thurley 58:56
Yeah, well, we’ve just nailed what you are. So I can give you I’m very happy to give you some practice there. But yeah, like, it’s like that doesn’t even resonate anymore. I’d actually just teach it. I would start looking at those devotional things.
Bill 59:13
I pretty much have like it’s taking me. It’s gonna take me 18 months to develop my online course. 10 steps to brain health for stroke survivors.
Sally Thurley 59:23
Wow, awesome. Well done.
Bill 59:24
I’ve never taken 18 months to do anything. Good. Because there was no money in it. Yet in months what I mean is 18 months. Oh, my God. Forget about it. What can I make a quick buck now? Yeah, I mean, so I’m about six months into that process. And all we’ve done, and it sounds like all we’ve done all we have to show for it is a guide, which is seven questions to ask your doctor after a stroke. It’s for carers.
Bill 59:53
And it’s for stroke patients if you’re, you know if you’re able to comprehend that and download it as a patient. That’s, that’s great. If not, it’s awesome for carriers because they ask simple questions like What kind of strike did I have? Where did it happen? What did it impact? Is it going to? Do I have the risk of another stroke? What can I do to help avoid another stroke? questions that I wished? I asked.
Bill 1:00:19
But even when I did, no one had the answers, but at least it starts with curiosity in that person’s body, mind, and spirit to seek out solutions to the challenges or the path forward. So when you look at it, it looks like one page and only seven questions come through or seven pages and only seven questions are well that it’s not a lot for seven months but the amount of time and effort and thought prices and the work that’s gone into it to make it that is, is six months worth that is what was needed to get it done if I had done it quicker wash and if it was up on my site and everyone could download it straight away. We’d like the thought process that was needed to really make it a valuable tool.
Bill 1:01:04
And to really have it when somebody can just print it off and carry it to the doctor and read those things off and go, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, I want to know the answers to all these. So this is now being able to take, and when people download it, they’re not going to take any money. I’m not gonna take any money for that. So, in the past, it would have been okay, well, what’s in it for me, I’m gonna give him all this stuff. Well, I need to get something out of it. And I do need to get something out of it for my time when I build a course. When I put it online when I have to pay to have it up there permanently and all that kind of stuff.
Bill 1:01:36
There’ll be something to come from it, but it’s taken months. It’s gonna take months to get to that point. And I just love the fact that I can sit and do that now. And because now I’m working towards doing that thing that drives me which is my heart, rather than doing what distracted me from my heart and drive my brain, my head in my conscience. So, look, it’s been, it’s been a great journey I’ve, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m better for it. You know, I’m reminded of it every day like you are with the challenges that you’ve got. It doesn’t define me.
Bill 1:02:12
But, I am who I am. And I don’t try. I don’t wish that it didn’t happen. I wish that my leg doesn’t hurt today or that I that I’m not going to lose my balance today or any of that stuff. I just, I just gonna do the best I can with everything that I’ve got, that I’ve been dealt with. So that makes it a lot easier for me to see myself in the future as somebody who is contributing to society, somebody who’s got great connections and great people around me. So I’m kind of feeling a similar thing for you, you know, you’re able to see into the future and go You know what, I like this version of me.
Sally Thurley 1:02:56
I want to just draw attention to the fact that I’m I know you already know this but you’re on a bigger spiritual journey than you give yourself credit for. And why don’t you my book called shame out I’m trying to find a male version of that because the joke is a monk, you know, it’s a man thing. But for me when I listen to you, and I hear you and me, I’m very present to you right now I’m very connected to you know, our hearts are very connected to you, and I’m feeling your spiritual journey, and it’s rich, beautiful, and you’re already learning that there’s, you can move beyond time, you know, time is just this manifest thing that is there for a little reason, but still manifest like a tree is manifest, and we can go beyond time and nothing matters.
Sally Thurley 1:03:35
And you’re becoming, you know, this is this also mystical journey for you. And you’re becoming this beautiful, humble creature with a giant heart and you know, what that is what’s going to radiate and pulsate with people and, and I call it the funnel of love, like so we’re both entrepreneurial, we both like that. You have to, you know, have that way to be that way. And if we just remember that At the top of our funnel that 80% is how can I just love and just give and then the rest will just start to take care of itself?
Sally Thurley 1:04:08
And then you’ll have no qualms about the fact Well, you know what, if you want me to do that for you, I’m going to just charge you for that as it keeps it clean. But when you realize that 80% of what we’re doing our business on our purpose is so heart-centered and is just how can I reach out to people? How can I love them? How can I stop them in their tracks and get them to turn a corner? Like I see you as a shaman?
Sally Thurley 1:04:31
What if I’m gonna call it this, this spectacular spiritual being using the world using their experience in the world as their practice to keep them expanded to keep them open with this? What other normal people you know, able people would find a deterrent and I’m with you, I don’t know if I’m going to stand up in the morning that I’m not going to get grinding pain. And I know that you know, for a week every month I spend in pain and I can’t function can’t work, but we just make our life around it and we keep our hearts open and that is so valuable that itself is so valuable to other people.
Bill 1:05:10
Yeah. Shame Monkey is the book. Yeah. Where can people find a copy there? Could you put it up to the camera?
Sally Thurley 1:05:19
Oh my god, you know still unpacking. Oh my god, I can’t believe that I’ve just come back from retreat. And I took my bedside coffee, which is right here in Shimano calm online. Yeah, and
Bill 1:05:31
I’ll put a copy of the photo on the podcast episode anyhow. shamonk.com. if people want to come to your courses do they also go to shamonk.com.
Sally Thurley 1:05:42
Okay, go to my website, Sally thurley.com. I’m all over the place. So find me on social media. I have a made-up group called Enlightenment for Entrepreneurs, which is where we go really into all this kind of stuff. It’s also a group on Facebook. So all my events and everything. I usually On Facebook all that made up and all my information, Sallythurley.com and the book is at shamonk.com.
Bill 1:06:06
How come I never heard about your pain in your meetup and we’ve come across everyone else’s meetups somehow?
Sally Thurley 1:06:11
So shocked to hear that. I don’t know why but I run them through our place too.
Bill 1:06:20
Our place Melbourne is the venue and it’s in Camberwell in Victoria. But if you’re not in Camberwell in Victoria, you can connect with Sally in any way you want Facebook emailed with blah, blah, blah.
Sally Thurley 1:06:34
That’s right. And on my enlightenment for entrepreneurs group, I do run live meditations. And I do like run live Qs and A’s and live interviews as well. So if you got questions, you want to know things you want to meditate with me. Then I do those live online?
Bill 1:06:49
I do. I really do. Before we wrap up tell me a Lakshmi where does that fit into the whole picture because Sally Thurly is, I’ve called you Shirley heaps of times today.
Sally 1:07:04
So my grandmother Shirley, I love her two beats.
Bill 1:07:09
Shirley came up. So Sally Thurley is not anything like Lakshmi. It doesn’t come from that space. So what’s Lakshmi?
Sally Thurley 1:07:19
Lakshmi for 20 years I used I was called Lakshmi. When I did the whole, I did the hardcore thing. You know, I joined an ashram I said it was the fate of an enlightened being. And, again, another thing to let go of any identification, when you initiate or when you join, they give you a name, and the name they think very, they think thoroughly over and it’s like, what is that person’s energy? It’s karma you get given the name and you actually have to grow into it.
Sally Thurley 1:07:49
You have to allow that name to take over. And I got Lakshmi, which if anyone knows the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon, that’s quite a big name to carry and I certainly copped a lot for getting that name. She’s the goddess of abundance. So, for me a lot of my, my journey in my spiritual practice was to understand my abundant nature and what abundance truly uses and to live as I leave.
Sally Thurley 1:08:14
Now in total uncertainty, which is a very spiritual thing to do. Humans need certainty. spiritual people can live in uncertainty, not knowing where the money’s coming from not knowing where the next thing is going to be not knowing where you’re going all the time, that actually sets that’s what abundance is about. It’s actually just a flow. It’s not about the big bank account and the yachts and that kind of stuff at all.
Sally Thurley 1:08:35
So Lakshmi is what all that’s about and when I came out of the ashram back into the world, and that was my calling to leave all that behind, it wasn’t easy. People struggled with the nine Lakshmi I just found, you know, I would go to a meetup or do something, I try networking and they couldn’t get them out or they had an aversion to it. So I thought okay, it’s time to bring my name back. But I couldn’t. I tried. I cut Lakshmi and I just was terrible. So, you know, half of me was missing. So I just worked it all together. Totally.
Bill 1:09:11
Okay. Sounds cool. By the way, your grandma says, Hello. I had a feeling that I needed to say that to you.
Sally Thurley 1:09:17
Yeah. You know what, when you said it before, I thought, I think it’s time to ring grand. She’s 95 in Queensland, so give her a call.
Bill 1:09:25
Yeah, that’s interesting. Well, we had an amazing conversation. Thank you so much.
Sally Thurley 1:09:31
Thank you, Bill. Loved it.
Bill 1:09:32
Thank you so much for sharing all the things you shared and giving me some of your time. I really, really appreciate it. I’ve got to learn a lot about you that I didn’t know. And let’s face it when I saw you walking, I never would have guessed that you were somebody that was in any way shape, or form, you know, troubled with issues of your legs and that is kind of That’s really comforting to me because I experienced the same thing. I had a conversation with my wife yesterday, which was about, you know if I, if I’m struggling on a train, and I need to go and sit down in the disabled seat if it’s free. I’m not gonna have a really, I’m not gonna have a good time convincing somebody that I need to sit down.
Sally Thurley 1:10:20
Yeah, yeah. Although it’s funny how I don’t know about you, I’ve got legit, I’ve got my sticker. I’ll pull in and the person with the wheelchair next to me, they’ll abuse and like there’s a hierarchy disability. Well, it’s quite funny. And I take it as a, you know, take it as a compliment. If someone says that you’re not disabled enough, he shouldn’t be there. It’s like, Yes, good.
Bill 1:10:41
Wow. On that note, thank you so much. And I look forward to catching you at one of your courses, or your meetup, or somewhere because now that you’ve told me that those things are happening, I’m definitely going to be there somewhere at some point
Sally Thurley 1:10:53
Awesome. Can’t wait. Thank you so much, Bill. pleasure.
Bill 1:10:56
Thanks, Sally.
Bill 1:11:00
Now if you or someone you care about has had a stroke, and has started their recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be. There may be a whole lot of questions going through your mind, like, how long will it take to recover? Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid in case of makeup my doctors and therapists were always helpful in explaining things, but obviously, because I’d never had a stroke before, I didn’t know what questions to ask.
Bill 1:11:30
And so I worried a lot and missed out on doing things that could have sped up my recovery. So if you’re finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying and head to https://recoveryafterstroke.com/ where you can download a guide that will help you. It’s called seven questions to ask your doctor after a stroke. These seven questions are the ones I wish I’d asked when I had my stroke because they not only helped me better understand my condition. They helped me take on more It brought in my own recovery, rather than just waiting to be told what to do at my next appointment to the website now, https://recoveryafterstroke.com/, and download the guide. It’s free. Thanks for being part of the show.
Intro 1:12:16
This has been a production of https://recoveryafterstroke.com/ Check out our page on Facebook and start a conversation by leaving a comment at https://www.instagram.com/recoveryafterstroke/. Subscribe to the show on iTunes and check us out on Twitter. The presenters and special guests of this podcast intend to provide accurate and helpful information to their listeners. These podcasts can not take into consideration individual circumstances and are not intended to be a substitute for independent medical advice from a qualified health professional. You should always seek advice from a qualified health professional before acting on any of the information provided by any of the Recovery After Stroke podcasts.
