Episode #80: Intuitive Emotional Writing for Self-Healing & Soulful Selling with Shantini Rajah

Ruth Poundwhite 0:06
You’re listening to creatively human with honest conversations about what matters to us and how it really feels to build an online business, put our work out into the world, make an impact in our own unique way And importantly, to get well paid for it. I’m your host Ruth Poundwhite business mentor to quietly ambitious humans. Welcome back to another interview on the creatively human podcast. And today I am chatting to the lovely Shanti Raja all about her intuitive emotional writing technique, how it can be used for self healing as well as a powerful boost to our copy in our businesses, and how our copy connects with readers. We talk about the importance of Shadow Work, how to get into the right emotion before you start writing and the power of a single breath. shintani is a writing coach, creative copywriting expert and energy practitioner. She is the creator of the one healing breath method and the intuitive emotional writing technique, which we’re going to dive all into in this episode shintani brings together a unique alchemy of deep intuition and creativity to her work. And she loves helping conscious entrepreneurs, creatives and healers find their true voice, showing them how to work with the power of mindful writing, mindful breathing, and mindful living so that they can call in money and magic with truth, presence and heart. Her personal writing and client work have been featured in publications like Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, and Inc, and her clients are some of the biggest names in spirituality and healing. This is a really wonderful exercise for anyone who wants to use the power of journaling, connecting with your shadow side, allowing yourself to express parts of you that are sometimes hard in order to heal those parts of you, and more powerfully show up. And it’s also really useful if you write copy for your business and kind of tuning into the emotions and the power that that can have in the way that what you write connects with your people. So let’s get started. Enjoy. Okay, so let’s start by talking about your intuitive emotional writing technique. What is it? What does it involve? What are the benefits of doing it?

Shantini Rajah 2:25
Okay, so we’ll get straight to the heart of it. So what is it? In business? As you know, Ruth, it’s about. So here’s what’s happening currently, everywhere in every industry online for that matter, even offline. But let’s talk about the online world. It’s getting more and more crowded as we speak, everyone, and their brother is jumping on and starting an online business. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a great thing. The more the merrier, I say. But here’s the thing that is a danger in US losing our diversity, and how we speak how we express ourselves because of and I see this with love. All of those gurus and experts out there who love talking about templates, and copywriting guidelines, okay, I have nothing against those, those and I’m not gonna say that they aren’t helpful, because they are especially when you’re just starting out. But it’s just a framework for you to use and jump off. Because what we need to do is we need to be ourselves, that’s the at the end of the day, there’s like, so for example, if you’re a tarot card reader online, there are countless people do the same thing. So what differentiates you? Is you your voice, who you are, who you’re being how you’re showing up? How, what are your values. So all of this can be when you know how to work with intuitive emotional writing technique. All of this can be expressed in your copy and in the words that you use even on live stream or in podcasts. So that’s the overarching view of the technique.

Ruth Poundwhite 4:22
I love that. So that’s the kind of like, why it matters. And I’m, you know, my philosophy, I’m definitely on board with that you being the unique thing in your business. So that’s the why. So what does it What is it? How do you use it? What do you do? Can you talk us through the different stages? I don’t know how, I don’t know how much you could talk through in a simple way for our listeners. But yeah,

let’s give it a go.

Shantini Rajah 4:46
Okay, let’s do it. So the first thing to know is this and don’t be afraid of this when I’m going to say it. It’s about fearless self expression. It’s about fearless self expression. A lot of people who are introverted and I am an introvert. I don’t know maybe I don’t sound like one. But trust me, I am. I am one. You know me, Ruth, I’m one. The Woods fearless self expression does the opposite it strikes fear in your heart. And it’s like showing up and being yourself and being vulnerable in front of an audience. So that but here’s what I’m trying to say with intuitive self intuitive, the intuitive emotional writing technique, what it does is it takes you out of that space of feeling like you’re performing. And it puts you into a space of connecting, and communicating. So what are some, here’s how it works. So it’s a couple of like, you asked this, so I’m gonna get straight in. So a couple of stages to the few elements doing. One is what I call shadow riding. So shadow riding is about getting comfortable with all of who you are, even the parts of you that you technically want to hide, you kind of want to hide the parts of me, all I have is the parts of us that are envious the parts of us that you know, when temperamental or when we have a temper, use our tempers all of that stuff. So that’s shadow writing. The second part of it is the technique itself. And it’s about identifying and working with your spiritual expression archetype. And I’ll talk about that in a little bit. And your energy of expression. And the second part is consciously infusing your words with emotion, every time you sit down to write. So consciously doing that, right. So let’s start with shadow writing. So this is kind of like the background work that you kind of need to do to lay the foundation for this technique to work in a way that’s organic and natural to you. So shadow writing, we’ve all seen it right. So Stephen King, so I want to just share, Stephen King is fantastic actors, we can see it all the time in my movies and in books. So Stephen King’s, the shining example was about writer jack Torrance, might have been king himself, I hope it’s always about writing, stories writing, often about writers. So he starts out as a good husband and father, and that is the light side of him, but quickly travels into the depths of what murderous rage, and madness, that is the sheduled. Then there’s the classic Jekyll and Hyde, which is about Dr. Henry Jekyll and his evil or Dingo, Edward Hyde. And of course, after lunch box, psycho, Fight Club, and shatter Island, even what Shannon and highly valued. So anyway, so shadow writing is about allowing yourself to express the parts of you as Stephen King has done and as you know, all the other people that I mentioned, so it’s allowing yourself to express the parts of you that, that this and this is by no means permission to, like, go out there, get on social media, you know, getting into these murderers. That’s what I want to do. That is not at all what I’m seeing is practising in private. And, Bruce, I know you do this already, because this is part of, you know, what happens when we journal? Yeah. And then of course, and it’s about not having that, or even having the inner critic going on and on in your head, but just continuing to create and write as you you know, connecting with the parts of you that as I said, you want to apply from everybody else. So it’s being unapologetic, and unafraid to put what you are really thinking and feeling onto paper. So this happens in the background. So what you do then is, you are creating that space for yourself where feel safe, to be only you to accept all parts of you and realise that, hey, you know what, when I express myself in this way, you know, it’s fine. Nothing Bad’s happened, the world isn’t turning the opposite way these things are, you know, fine, the sun is rising, it’s fine. It’s okay to embrace yourself and accept yourself and to actually look at the shadow parts of yourself in the face, so to speak on paper. So that shadow writing piece

Ruth Poundwhite 9:33
can I just can I just interrupt for a sec. So just to summarise, this is like private work. It’s not necessarily to be shared. This is like the foundations. And would you say that journaling is the like the key way to go about that work, I guess in other ways as well.

Shantini Rajah 9:52
That journaling is the number one way that I would recommend. I do. I some people don’t want to write so they could You could record it, record what you’re thinking and feeling as an audio. But at whatever you decide to do be to really be feeling creative, create a collage of images or whatever, you know, whatever we want to know, go ahead and do that. But I would, the number one rule that I think at this spot, it is an unbreakable rule at the start, is that you must know that you’re not going to share it, if you know you’re going to share any of it, or you feel like someone’s gonna, like, find it to vote to whatever happens is find a way to keep it safe, like keep it, I keep some of my stuff, a lot of my stuff on online, like, you know, on my computer in a password protected document, and things like that. So do whatever it takes to keep that you know, that expression of yourself private. So you know that because no one’s gonna see, you can just kind of go crazy. And it’s fine. So what this actually means is that it allows all of that energy to start to flow, the creative energy, the parts of us that are suppressed, because when we hide our shadow, what we’re doing his way using enormous amounts of energy to keep that door closed. So it’s an it’s just part of, you know, that’s part of it, that’s part of, you know, being kinder, polite, right, you’re not going to go out there and express every time you’re in a bad mood that it doesn’t work that way, and that’s fine. But the effort and the energy of keeping all of that stuff hidden and suppressed, it is a huge block to create. And so which is one of the biggest reasons why I highly, highly encourage you, as in everyone to try to try writing it down and you want to like safely burn it later. That’s fine. But put it down on paper? Yeah. Oh,

Ruth Poundwhite 12:00
yeah,

I definitely. It’s definitely been a huge part of my work and my journey over the last few years. I’m even thinking like, when I had my son, and I was going through a difficult time, you know, after having him with my mental health, I used to just write out how I was feeling. And I and at the time, I didn’t even think of it as doing anything. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, if you know, I mean, I was just doing it because I needed an outlet. And it was very, very helpful in that difficult time. So yeah, it just made me think of that. And, and it is so important that nobody else reads it. So because because it’s hard to even admit this stuff to yourself sometimes isn’t it?

Shantini Rajah 12:40
Exactly, exactly. And it is. And it’s, it’s so important that we let it out. Because otherwise it grows and it gets bigger and it starts to kind of centre and what happens usually is that it comes out at inopportune moments that all of that resentment, or the pain, or the frustration comes out at times that you don’t want it to. So it’s not just about writing for your business, or whatever it is, this is this is about taking care of yourself. This is about seeing and feeling safe to be who you are, which is what we are, which is ultimate the ultimate freedom is to live as who you are. No apologies. No regrets.

Ruth Poundwhite 13:26
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve talked about we’ve talked about the kind of shadow shadow what comes next.

Shantini Rajah 13:34
Okay, so what comes next are two keys to practising the art of intuitive emotional writing. So we are we are dumped the artist how you’re going to do it right. And I mentioned earlier, it’s identifying and working with your expression, type and your energy of expression. And the second part to that is consciously infusing your words with emotion every time you sit down to write. Okay, so let’s start with the expression archetype. So the intuitive expression archetype, and then the energy of expression, essentially, elements moments that I’ve personally defined through multiple writing personas, I’m going to say I have multiple writing personas. Because I’ve written for magazines, I’ve been a ghostwriter for books and copywriter, travel writer, countless, countless writing, you know, gigs, and with clients and brands from everywhere. So what’s the intuitive spiritual expression or type of pouch? So it’s, it’s basically the core essence of who you are as a divinely creative being. And your archetype is deeply connected to your energy of expression. So your energy of expression is about what you feel what you believe, what you stand for, what you’re willing to fight for. This is actually the baseline energy that is projected out into the world. And it ties into your personal, creative energy. So I’m not going to go into all of the truth because there’s like a whole bunch of archetypes, actually. And each one corresponds to an energy expression. But I have a fun quiz on my site that has all of that stuff. So if anyone’s curious about what their intuitive archetype is, and the energy of expression, they can, they can check that out.

Ruth Poundwhite 15:36
Yeah, I’ll put that in the show notes. So when when?

Shantini Rajah 15:39
Oh, thank you. Yes, that’s a good idea. Right. So what I’m going to see here is though, understanding your intuitive expression, archetype, and your energy of of expression, will show you how to honour and respect your unique creative life cycle and rhythm. So you can write your intuitive, emotional copy and content. And this includes everything the blog, post sales pages, whatever. So what I want to say here is, so in case you’re curious, I’m just going to name that architecture six, the divine nurturer, the incarnated goddess, the cosmic spirit, the earth Angel, the secret seeker, and the spiritual warrior. So those are the six archetypes. So you can check that out in figure again, to the quiz and do that and figure that one out. So now to the second piece, and this is something that I have, you know, and it’s about consciously infusing words with emotion every time you sit down to write, as I say, so this is something to do with what I like to call the c, t, e. So we’ve all heard of the CTA. A, right. So yeah, because it’s actually a popular thing. And what what I what I mean, when I say the CTA eats, I call it, it’s an acronym for call to emotion. Well, of course, this is where you invite people to do more than read your words. It’s about inviting them to feel your words. So you need to feel it. For them to feel inspired to feel emotions and feelings, inspire action. And at the end of the day, copywriting is about and writing for your business. We, you know, we want people to take action. That’s to sign up for a free webinar or to purchase something, it’s about action, right? So emotions inspire action. So let’s explore right, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the CTA. So I’ll give you a little example. Is it okay, if I share a little example? Yes. Okay, so so I’m going to talk about the first one’s going to be a sentence without the CTE, and the second one’s gonna be with the city. So without the city, do you want to be a leader in your industry, then don’t follow what others are doing. So that’s without the city that’s without the quality image. So with the call to emotion and the emotion, car enthusiasm, and power, choice and excitement, throughout the business rulebook, forge your own innovative path to stand out as the leader in your industry, don’t be anybody else’s photocopy. So there’s a lot more emotion and energy. There’s a lot of authenticity, some phrase phrases would be unique to the person very often those, you know, to you that praises in the words that you use, as the business owner when you write your copy, right? Yeah. So how do you do that? How do you consciously invite that feeling, whatever feeling it is, so let’s assume you want to infuse motivation and inspiration into your copy or your blog posts or whatever. So I would see the foot, the key thing to do is to feel it yourself. So I want you to feel so basically, what I’m saying is, I want you to feel how lucky you are offering something a product or service, I want you to feel how your offer is going to support people, and how your work is making a difference in the world. So there are a few ways to do this, right? So you can think back to a time when you were fired up and excited and motivated about something and then you could start writing from that place. So it’s just about kind of visualising a time in your life when you felt motivated, right, and then getting into that energetic space and starting to write from there because now you’re all excited, you’re motivated and you’re like okay, I’m going to channel this energy, and it’s going to flow through in your writing. The other way to do that is you could take a deep tensional Breath of whatever emotion I find this works absolutely works for me. So if you’re looking at motivation, take a deep, intentional breath of motivation, you’re wanting to infuse calm with your writing, take a deep breath of calm. So I know this might sound a little out there a little bit woowoo. But I would highly encourage all of all of you listeners out there all of your listeners to try that because it is surprisingly powerful and effective. So

sometimes just thinking about the story that you want to write about is enough, but you know, to get get you into that space to get you into the emotion that you want to infuse. But if you want to take it a step further, so for example, you want to write an empowering blog post, you want to take that a step further and really get into it, you could watch an empowering movie scene on YouTube. Right? You could read a passage in a book, or a blog post from your favourite motivational speaker. So all of this is extremely doable. And I’m not saying that you have to like spend an hour watching half the movie or something, you just have to get into like two scenes, right? Just think about all the movies, the watch face or some of the movies forged that you will walk away feeling inspired and empowered. And then think of those scenes and then look that up if you can YouTube. Otherwise, I said you could read something motivation. And that feeling that emotion that you receive, then starts to channel through as you write. So that’s the quick and dirty.

Overview.

I read the message,

Ruth Poundwhite 21:48
thank you for sharing that. I think that’s so useful. And I spend a lot of time thinking about how we feel about things and how that impacts, like how we sell things, or how we deliver things. And I think you’ve explained it really well, because I do genuinely believe like so something that I would do. I like just, it’s not like a proper thing. It’s just something that I do sometimes is like, put on a certain playlist of music or something before I’m going to write something and it really fires me up. And it does Yes, the mood I’m in does change the words that I write.

Shantini Rajah 22:25
Absolutely. I’m so excited. You said that. Ruth, you’ve been using the technique already. Yeah. I love it. That’s a fabulous point, a playlist compiled one like the, you know, the melancholy playlist for us, or the empowering play like create one. And that’s super helpful. And you really feel excited about it and drawn to it, dance, move your body that helps you because then helps the energy flow through. Because at the end of the day, creative energy is energy, its energy in many any can come through in many forms. So working with it unconsciously, in fighting that energy through your emotions, is a powerful, powerful way of expressing yourself, and writing with confidence and connecting with the hearts. And not just the minds, but the hearts of your audience, the people who you’re meant to speak to, and connect with.

Ruth Poundwhite 23:24
Yes, absolutely. And I just want to say, I think we’re gonna talk a bit more about this kind of this kind of intentional, taking an intentional breath. We’re gonna get to that later. But

Shantini Rajah 23:37
Oh, okay. It

Ruth Poundwhite 23:38
reminded me of when you said when you said that, like, so take a breath. And like, think about calm or think about, I can’t remember what else you said. But it’s so interesting, because I’ve been using that technique as well. And it’s, it’s incredible how simple it is, but how powerful it is. Because one of my things that I come up against all the time is I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough time. And I just like a take it just take a moment and I take a breath in and like I am capable. And that’s the kind of feeling that I’ve found is useful for, for me and that story I’ve got and it’s it just highlights to me. How simple is that? how little I take the time to actually consciously breathe and tell myself something like that.

Shantini Rajah 24:19
Absolutely. And you’re so right. It is a very simple process of technical math. But here’s the thing we don’t think of like me, it doesn’t arise in our minds. We don’t remember in a way to do that. Even though it might occur to us that it might be a good idea, but we don’t consciously do it. So this is the reason why I would recommend that you might you know you can have a post it note somewhere. Kevin, little reminder. tell yourself that you know what, let me get into that writing space and let me be conscious and intentional about it. And not just like Try to force your way up, you know, heaven forbid, powered through and you know all of that stuff, which is not. That’s just not our style. So

Ruth Poundwhite 25:11
yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So I’m just going to ask you in relation to the intuitive emotional writing technique that you’ve just really clearly talked us through. We’ve seen so I can totally understand like, especially thank you for giving that example of the CTA versus the ZTE that was really, really helpful and kind of showing just, it’s more emotional invokes kind of more feeling, I can see how it’s really useful in our copy for our businesses in all kinds of copy. Yeah, let’s talk a bit about how it is useful in other ways. And obviously, I kind of touched on that, I suppose with the shadow stuff, like how it helped me through a difficult, difficult kind of mental health time. How can we use this? I can’t remember how you phrase it now. But this more emotional way of writing to support our whole selves, not just our business.

Shantini Rajah 26:06
I would say that, you know, when you’re, when you’re moving outside your business, it’s also important to consider other ways of communication, that could be intentional. So it’s about so here’s, here’s an example. So let’s say you’re about to have a difficult conversation with your partner. Or it doesn’t have to be a difficult conversation, it could be any conversation, could you perhaps you’re going to meet someone, maybe like a friend, at a cafe or whatever. So it’s about thinking about how you want to feel as you’re having the conversation and how you would love for yourself and the other person to feel when you walk away from that conversation. What is it that you want to want them to carry with them as they leave? What is the feeling that that you would love to leave them with? So this is true about, like, as I said, it could be it can be a conversation, it doesn’t have to be writing when we take it out, so to speak into the real world. But in terms of writing itself, as I said, it’s a self healing, that all of that work that goes into intuitive emotional writing, it is a self healing tool, it is about asking yourself, going there, you know, and going to those difficult places, where as you said, Ruth, you said it so well, you’re like, you know, you’re free to to, to kind of go there to even admit some of this stuff, to ourselves. So what it does is it dislodges a lot of the in many cases, I would even go so far as to say trauma and really difficult experience that experiences that are launched deep in our psyche. And it helps to gently kind of release some of that pressure and allow it to rise up to the surface to the point where you’re ready to deal with it and be you know, and perhaps I don’t know, if you want to like, go deeper, speak to a professional about it, or whatever you decide to do. But a lot of the time, you will be surprised that when you start to ask yourself the tough questions, when you start to explore the shadow, you will remember a lot of stuff. I’ve also had clients come to me and say that they start seeing or remembering things in their dreams, wow, you start to see a lot of like image imagery, and maybe symbolism, but sometimes it’s a direct thing. It’s the unconscious, releasing some of the hidden stuff. And it comes up in dreams actually. So it’s it’s very deep work. It’s it’s highly, it’s extremely powerful work. So even if you do it as an entrepreneur, and you just want to try it for, you know, for yourself for self healing, it is it is very powerful, very effective. Yeah,

Ruth Poundwhite 29:04
I can totally see that through the elements I have personally done and through what you’ve said, it definitely seems like it would be so powerful. And I guess it’s also probably useful to touch on this. It’s not about being a great writer, right? Like, it’s about expressing yourself. But that doesn’t mean because I know that some people listening to this will be will be confident with journaling and writing and others listening to this won’t be and I just kind of wanted to touch on that because it’s not about writing incredible prose or copy or anything if you’re doing it for yourself. It’s about just getting it out I suppose.

Shantini Rajah 29:45
In fact, Ruth I’m so glad you brought that up because it’s true actually even in in writing for your business. Because here’s what I believe and I know this is and I’ve seen this to be true and and I’m going to talk about this a little bit if you don’t mind. Yeah, so I believe great, great writing truly great writing is great writing. It’s about being brave. Because when you have the courage to go there to go deep within yourself and to express yourself, you don’t even have to think about the writing. Because here’s the thing, I want to say that if you can speak, you can write. And a lot of people might disagree with me, but I stand by what I believe. If you can speak, you can write, because we have it in us, it’s just that when we start to like put fingers to the keyboard, or we start to like, right beyond pick up a pen, it suddenly feels like this whole other world, and that we need to be experts at it. Don’t press everyone, it’s not about any of them. It’s about being real. And and another thing I do want to highlight what we do see that’s published out there, even with like novels, and whatever else, business books and stuff, a lot of editing. And a lot of revisions have taken place between the point that the person wrote the thing. And the point where you read it. Yes. So what we’re doing is we’re comparing what’s that saying? we’re comparing our our first draft to somebody else’s highly polished and edited, right piece of writing. And that’s just not Yeah, that’s just not true. It’s not true that the I think a lot of people would be kind of shocked if they saw the bootstraps of some of, like, truly great writers, because it would, yeah, I’ve seen first drafts of my own and, and other people’s, and it eventually didn’t sink into this gem, this absolute treasure. But it doesn’t always start out that way. So it’s so important to like, give yourself the space, give us the room to be brave, give yourself permission to be yourself. Even if you feel like you can’t be yourself anywhere else. This is the space where you can be you.

Ruth Poundwhite 32:08
That’s beautiful. Thank you. And I was just reflecting as you were saying that because I love what you say about being brave. I know that I am moved by an obviously, this is not just about writing for other people to read. I mean, a majority of this work is writing just for yourself. But in terms of the writing that we do Do for other people to read, I know that I have been moved deeply by writers who aren’t necessarily on like, technically great writers, like they may make mistakes in terms of grammar or whatever. But I’ve been like deeply moved by their words. And that’s just that shows the power of like infusing this emotion and feelings and doing the inner work because I don’t think that you, I just don’t think it’s possible to have that bravery to make your writing emotional, if you haven’t done or if you’re not doing that in a work at the same time.

Shantini Rajah 33:05
Absolutely agreed on that. And that’s why Shadow Work and all of the any other sort of, you know, meditation, mindfulness, anything that you believe is like a process, and it doesn’t have to be super spiritual, it can be anything yoga, whatever allows you to express yourself and to get real with yourself. And to give yourself some, give some space, give some time to quiet your mind. Anything that gives you that is a is a wonderful, wonderful practice. It’s going to help you to show up with courage. And in truth, I love what you said, because it’s so true. I mean, I’d love for people to like, do a little like, like experiment, write test this out. So like, Go Go on, get onto social media, right? Look, any any anything like whatever, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, maybe not so much. But maybe Facebook, Instagram is better, because you get to write longer in there. Yeah. So kind of scroll through this the feed and then start to pay attention to the post. And I don’t mean of course, the images, I’m talking about the words, right, the posts that that stop, you need scroll. And you find that it’s very rarely a perfectly punctuated, perfectly written posts. It’s the ones that are real. And we can like kind of almost intuitively feel when the writer means what they’re saying. We can feel it. It’s it’s an instant extremely. It’s it’s not something that you can put down into a process in that sense. But as a reader, we can always feel it when a writer means every word that they’ve written. We know when it’s true, which is why it’s powerful for copywriting, even and for business. And then for work that you want to do that is conscious and authentic. When you believe in your product, and you write that sales page, and you come from a real place, and you mean it, people will feel it. When they read it,

Ruth Poundwhite 35:22
yes, yes, this is so important. And also, it makes, you’ve just connected some dots in my mind about like selling and offers that we create, and how we shop and sell them. And I think so much of the time, we find it hard to genuinely mean what we say about whatever we’re selling, being great because of that shadow stuff. Because of these fears we have because of these worst, these, the most terrible things we think about ourselves, and we’re afraid that that will be seen, I don’t know. And I was just, it just sort of started to connect some dots there with me in terms of like, This work is is not just good for communicating and selling in your copy, it’s also good for you personally, but leaving in the thing you’re selling in the first place.

Shantini Rajah 36:13
That is so beautifully said I love that Ruth, you’re so right, it is so true, because you’re right about the shadow and all of the other work. Because what happens then is, if you don’t get in there, and you don’t accept and embrace who you are with all of everything, what’s gonna happen is it’s going to start to turn into this, what it starts to do, it turns into fear turns into doubt, you start losing trust in yourself. And when we don’t trust ourselves, when we have all of those doubts and fears, we’re not going to be able to sell. We’re not even going to be able to write actually, even if you’re not selling, it’s going to be so hard to sit down and write and speak, and whatever else we need to do in our business and in life. So what this does, is it It knows it cultivates self trust, he cultivates that? Yeah,

Ruth Poundwhite 37:12
yeah, absolutely. So can I just ask you, if you could, if you could give one piece of advice, or one, like exercise or whatever, for someone who, you know, is resonating with this potentially feeling blocked about how they’re showing up or writing or potentially just wants to use it for their own personal healing? What would your biggest tip be for those listening?

Shantini Rajah 37:39
So one, like activity or exercise you can do? Yeah, okay, this is gonna sound super weird, but I’m going to share Okay, yeah. So, this is not an this is a known thing. This, you know, in writing in writers among writers, and in writing circles, this is known. So, I would love for people to Okay, copy. And I mean, literally, copy passages, or even like an entire chapter of a book, for example, like, sit down and write it out word for word. So for example, I mentioned Stephen King. So if you love Stephen King, and you love his right, and you can choose whoever you want, this could be Oprah, and you know, something in a magazine, whatever, but a writer that or a piece of writing that you love, practising it and physically copying the words from the weapon. And I mean, like with pen and paper, right? It’s, it allows you to get into that space of creative energy, it starts to move you into that space of seeing yourself as a writer. So this is an it helps you to start to put the words together in a way that is in a way that you want to, because here’s the thing, you’re not going to choose a writer that this is the reason why you must choose a writer whose work you admire. So again, as I said, it doesn’t have to be around business, even if you’re going to be using this exercise to get connected with writing for your business. I would say choose any piece of writing even be a screenplay or whatever. I would say sit and copy that out because it kind of it sounds weird, but try it. It’s, it’s really, it’s weird, but it’s just as powerful as it is weird. And it’s a known thing. People do this and it is it changes you transforms you. In fact, what they do see is what’s known is that you’re supposed to carry on doing that for like a while, like weeks or even a month. You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do it. Yeah. But that’s how you get into that space. of, you know, being able to put the words together and We that feels really good to you. So it’s just about copying it. And this is just Of course, a private exercise. Not really like opinion. But yeah, that that’s the one thing that I would say, which is super weird. But I would love people to try it. Yeah,

Ruth Poundwhite 40:15
thank you. I’ve never done that with writing. But it did remind me of when I was at school, I was doing my a levels, and I did music. And I was composing. And that I did that to like, get my creative juices flowing. I sort of like played existing things backwards. And or just like, you know, listen to, like, play it out different things. And it’s just like that, I guess.

Shantini Rajah 40:39
And didn’t work.

Ruth Poundwhite 40:40
Yeah, it did.

Shantini Rajah 40:42
Oh, there you go. I think I

Ruth Poundwhite 40:44
think I heard john lennon saying that. He said john lennon? I don’t know. But I do. Like, I love the Beatles. So yeah, potentially was john lennon, who said that he would play stuff backwards to get inspired for his music.

Shantini Rajah 40:59
I didn’t know that. Oh, my gosh. So this is like the writer’s version of that. Yeah. Right. So

Ruth Poundwhite 41:05
just getting into that energy of someone else’s words. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So I’m just going to quickly ask you about the breathing piece, because I know that you touched on taking a breath as one of the methods for tuning in with how you feel before you write. But I know that you’ve got a lot more to say about the power of a single breath. So we don’t have long to talk about it, but I really wanted to touch on it. So maybe it’s best for you to explain your philosophy of the one healing breath.

Shantini Rajah 41:41
Oh, yes, my philosophy. Okay. So the reason, the reason I came up with it is because I can be a bit of a nervous Nellie. So, you know, and I can be like, and I realised, like, few years ago, I realised that for them, you know, I was walking around, holding my breath, because I was like, almost perpetually anxious about something or worried about something. And when I became conscious of the fact that I was holding my breath, I was like, that’s it. It was just, it made me sad, because I mean, breathing is like, it’s like everything, it’s our birthright, it is the thing that keeps us alive. But yeah, I was walking around. And I knew that if I was doing it, I can, you know, I could imagine that a lot of people were, but anyway, this went on for a while. And as they see, in spiritual circles, I had this divine download, sec. And it was like this instant knowledge, which thing, it was an intuitive hit. And I literally, this is gonna sound weird again, but I literally heard the words one killing breath in my ear. I heard it amazing. And I knew what I was supposed to do with it. It just knew what I was supposed to do with it. So what I did, what came out of it eventually was that I created this, I worked with an artist, I created a series of images for one for this one healing breath, practice. So each image represents a positive energy or emotion. So one meaning breadth of love, one healing, breadth of creativity, one healing, breadth of inspiration. So things like that, or courage. So and then, and this is the interesting thing. And I also heard that it was meant to be shared. So that’s what I did. So I created those images. I shared it, it’s on my website. So what it does is, it’s, it’s a way for anybody. So no matter how busy you are, no matter what’s going on in your life, we all have time to take one conscious healing breath. So what I like to say is when conscious breath is combined with intentional words, it brings you back to yourself in an instant, in just the time it takes to inhale and exhale. And that’s what the one evening that is about.

Ruth Poundwhite 44:13
And when you say intentional words, is that like the example you gave earlier?

Shantini Rajah 44:18
About? Yes. So yeah, be like love. It could be like the courage as I said, any of those words, because I have so here’s the thing that practice, you know, it’s like a series of emails and feel to see the soluble. So it’s basically a series of emails that people can sign up for any it lands in your inbox, and it’s this whole bunch of positive words and energies coupled with images. So what he does is when you see that he can you know, the whole idea is to open that. Take one healing breath of whatever image or positive energy or word stat of the day. And, and so far people, people are loving it because it brings you as I said, it’s like that one moment in a day, no matter how busy your day is that brings you brings you home brings you back to yourself. Yeah,

Ruth Poundwhite 45:15
it sounds so doable. Especially because like I said earlier, it’s one of those things that simple, but we don’t make time for we don’t retain all the attention to actually doing it. And and it’s just it’s so doable. Like everyone can spare that minute to do that. Every day at least. Yeah,

Shantini Rajah 45:38
absolutely. And here’s what I like to see as well. What is the thing that that brings us all? together? What is the thing that is common to all of us, no matter where you come from, no matter who you are Mary and Jane, and your whatever right nationality, where you live, what? where you grew up, we all all that breeds lives. And it is as simple and it is profound. And as inclusive as that. We are all connected with our breath.

Ruth Poundwhite 46:13
Yeah,

it’s so powerful. And I’m definitely going to include the link for people to sign up for that. And I just wondering, like, what are some of the shifts that you can see through doing either with you or other people through just being mindful, taking an intentional breath, right, every day. So

Shantini Rajah 46:34
the biggest thing that happens is you start to cultivate self awareness. You create space in your day for self nurturing, self love, giving yourself what you need. And it’s it’s kind of like, created, like, I wouldn’t call it a movement at this point. But there are people who like, just, they just go back again and again, back to the spot, because it’s a series of emails, and they go back, and they’ve created like a ritual out of it. So when they receive the email, either at that point, or later in the day, they create space, they light a candle, you know, maybe a scented candle, and they maybe play a little bit of, you know, relaxing music in the background, and they take that breath, because what it brings is that self awareness it gives you it’s the simplest, speedier spiritual practice ever. It is like the easiest form of self care ever, and it has lasting effects. Because as you keep doing it day after day, you start to get into the practice of energy, start to create this habit of becoming aware of how you feel and what you’re thinking throughout your day, which is so important. This ties into mindfulness, it ties into creating inner calm, inner peace. The honestly, the benefits are quite, quite endless, I would say. Yeah, to be honest.

Ruth Poundwhite 48:09
Yeah. So I think that the best way for people to experience that is just go sign up for your one healing breath. And also, I wanted to mention here that you are making Yeah, a card deck as well on you. Oh, yes.

Shantini Rajah 48:24
God deck, I’m super excited. This was actually a, it was a what’s the word? It was a request, people wanted a deck, they want wanted a physical version of it. So yeah, I’m in the middle of creating them. And I’m super excited. But it actually,

Ruth Poundwhite 48:44
yeah, it’s gonna be beautiful. So definitely look out for that anyone who’s listening and is interested in this, but you can get the emails for now, before the cards are ready. Okay, so thank you so much. I have loved talking about all this stuff. I think it’s so it’s, yeah, it really explained to me a lot of the things I feel intuitively about the way I work and the intentions I set for how I you know, how I show up, but I think it’s going to help a lot of people basically, both in business and personally. But for now, I gotta wrap things up by asking you a random question, which was actually actually suggested by you. So I’m going to ask me to you, but I will answer it as well. So okay, the question is, if you could be anyone which you could be dead or alive, other than yourself for just one day, who would you pick and why?

Shantini Rajah 49:42
Yeah, this is a tough one and then no wondering why I suggested in group, but I have to say, yeah, it is a fun one. I have to say it’s a fun one. So, um, so I can’t pick too high. I can I can only pick on you know what I would like to? In probably be. I’m thinking it’s probably going to be somebody. Surprise, surprise somebody who’s like a writer Jane Austen. I’d like to get into my head, I’d love to, to be her. I would love to experience what it’s like to be that, that sort of rider that level of creativity. But if I had a second option, I’m going to say the Buddha, the Buddha. I know I don’t have a second option but the Buddha and that’s because I would like to see what it’s like to experience complete serenity and tranquillity. Yeah, absolutely.

Ruth Poundwhite 50:51
That is a good answer.

How would you? How can you say, my Honestly, I wanted to like be smart about it and think, Oh, I’d like to be someone who is really different to me so that I know what it’s like to be like super confident, or super outgoing, or a man or whatever. But actually, I just like I just want to be like the Queen for a day.

Shantini Rajah 51:15
Like literally, literally the queen.

Ruth Poundwhite 51:18
And I think it’s because I’ve been watching the crown. I think that that’s why the queen is in my head. I’m just fascinated this whole like idea of how the other half live. I’m fascinated by it. So I’d like to see what it’s really like in Buckingham Palace. And

Shantini Rajah 51:33
oh, yeah,

Ruth Poundwhite 51:34
I would definitely would not want to be her for forever. But for a day. Yes.

Shantini Rajah 51:39
You know if that ever actually happens. Promise me you’re invited me to tea. I’ve always wanted to have tea with the queen. Oh, yeah.

Ruth Poundwhite 51:46
Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

Thank you. That was a really fun way to end but thank you so much. This has been a one pager. If you want to find out more about shintani visit her website at Shanti raja.com. And definitely sign up to her free one healing breath series which is linked to from the shownotes thank you so much for listening to another episode of creatively human. If you have a moment, I’d be so grateful. If you could rate and review the podcast it really does make a difference. And if you’d like to carry on the conversation or ask a question for a future q&a episode, there are three ways to connect with me on the Facebook group on Instagram at Ruth Poundwhite or my personal favourite, my behind the scenes newsletter. Just go to Ruth poundwhite.com forward slash newsletter to subscribe and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.