Asha Paul:
Hello, dear listeners. Welcome to the Empowered Life podcast. If you are seeking deeper insight into health, emotional well-being, resilience, meaningful living, and what it truly means to live and age well in today's complex world, you are in the right place.
Through conversations with medical doctors, psychologists, authors, entrepreneurs, and modern thought leaders, we explore how people navigate challenge, transformation, meaning, and growth, both personally and professionally. The individuals you will meet on this podcast come from many different walks of life, yet they share a common thread. Each has faced difficulty, uncertainty, or profound change, and discovered ways to live with greater awareness, purpose, and inner steadiness through the work they do and the lives they have lived.
My hope is that these conversations feel less like interviews and more like meaningful dialogue as though we are gathered together in your living room, engaging with the ideas, experiences, and insights that can help us live with greater awareness, purpose, and well-being. I'm your host, Asha Paul, a board-certified holistic health practitioner and educator focused on healthy aging, emotional well-being, mindful living, and the deeper patterns that shape how we experience life. Friends, today we are honored to have Dr. Debra Sandella with us with an impressive 50-year career in community mental health. She has, in the past, dedicated her life to transforming the lives of others in psychiatric facilities and public schools. Debra's groundbreaking work with a comprehensive team transformed medical beds into acute psychiatric beds, drastically cutting the average length of stay from three to four months to just three to four days. Wow, that is indeed impressive.
Today, Debra is also the founder of the Regenerating Images in Memory method, a neuroscience-based approach for processing painful emotions and memories. Debra discusses this method in her book, Goodbye, Hurt, and Pain. She lives in Colorado with her husband and is blessed with two adult children and three grandchildren.
Welcome, Debra. Oh, thank you, Asha. I'm thrilled to connect with you again.
After so long, how many years has it been since we've seen each other?
Deborah Sandella:
Oh my gosh. Now you're asking me to count years. I don't know.
I would say it was less than 10 years that we reconnected, at least online, but physically it's been longer than that.
AP:
Right, right. How many pilgrimages did you attend with this? Was it one or two?
Two. Oh, wow.
DS:
Wow. That's that long ago, huh? That was a long time ago.
It really was. Yeah, they were very significant for me though, nonetheless.
AP:
That's good to know. So anyway, how are you feeling today, my friend? Oh, I'm feeling very good.
I was excited to be with you again, Asha. Me too. Me too.
Shall we begin our discussion? Sure. So Debra, I recently had the opportunity to read your book, Goodbye, Hurt and Pain, and I was profoundly moved by its content.
The themes you explore resonate deeply with me because my career is dedicated to enhancing emotional well-being and helping others navigate their challenges. Your unique perspective, Debra, on healing and well-being is refreshing and incredibly inspiring to me. I would love to know what personal experiences or insights led you to write this book.
DS:
So it all began in 1995 when I was awakened in the middle of the night by my brother that my dad had had a cardiac arrest and he was in ICU and that they had given him all the medications that they could to keep his blood pressure held holding and it wasn't working and they felt like that he would not survive the night and they wanted a permission to no resuscitate. And, you know, it was a strange experience for me, Asha, because I'm a, I was a nurse in my very first career. So I understand that these nurses were asking for this.
However, I had this really very personal response that kicked in that felt like it had a whole power of its own that was angry, angry that they were even asking this because they didn't know him. They didn't know how he important, how important he was not just to my family, but was to so many people in our community. And I said, no, it was totally, I mean, being the people pleaser that I had always been, it was very out of character.
And yet it was so strong. It's like it was like a force that took me over, took over my mind, so to speak. And as I hung up the phone to head back to bed, knowing I would fly back to, you know, Kansas the next morning, I had a spontaneous image come up in my mind of my dad with his back to me walking off towards the horizon.
And as I saw that, I was screaming and yelling at him how mad I was that he was leaving because I was not ready. And I still wanted him around here. And he very slowly turned around and looked at me and it was like, is a little disarming because his face looked so serene that he was a feisty Italian guy.
And so I, you know, it was not the kind of look usually that he had. And so it was caused me to pause. And he said, Okay, I didn't know you felt that way.
And I was like, my mind, I'm like, what, how can you think I don't feel this way? And all my anger just evaporated in that moment. And my body kind of felt like a wet noodle.
And my mind was, well, this is just in my mind, right? So, so I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep because I was afraid I would lose touch with him. If I slept.
The next morning, when I, I walked into the ICU, the nurses said to me, sometime in the middle of the night, your dad's blood pressure started to hold. Yes, he's doing well. And so my dad survived that experience and lived five more years.
And five years that he and my mom said were the absolute best of their lives. It's kind of like, you know, having a second chance, I felt like I had a second chance too. So that was a very significant event.
And as a healing person, a person who, you know, wants to help people heal, there was something there that I thought, what was that? How can I harness it for intentional healing? And so that was, you know, more than 30 years ago, so that my journey of that exploration has led me eventually to creating a new technique that is generating images in memory that is imagery based and somatic or body centered.
AP:
Wow. Well, what a story, Debra. What a story.
And that also gave rise to also was an incentive in writing your book, correct?
DS:
Yes, yes. Because once I started to practice REM, and then realized, oh, this has to go out. It's not just for my practice, this needs to be known in general, because it's learning how to collaborate with our own emotional operating system.
And we are resourced in so many ways that we just don't realize, because the thinking logical mind doesn't know anything about feelings. And so it doesn't understand. And so we've been overriding our more intuitive abilities with thinking.
And that negates them.
AP:
Yeah, very well said. When you spoke about your father, it really gave me goosebumps, because my dad also passed away about nine years ago. And I was incredibly blessed, because I see him only when I go to India, I live here in the US, and he lived in India, I should say.
The time before he passed away, I met him was in February. And he passed away in May of that year. So I can completely relate, because it also felt like a closure.
Totally, totally relate to this parental bonds that we all have, right? Most of us have at least. Yes, most.
Yes. I love the subtitle of your book, which is seven simple steps for health, love and success. Let me repeat that seven simple steps for health, love and success.
Debra, would you mind providing a brief summary of these seven steps? I think it would help us understand the concepts even better.
DS:
I would say that the key significant ones are that really going inward and tapping into what our body and our imagination has to reveal, really help you be able to process emotion at the root cause, like right, what is the real issue? Because emotions actually begin in the body and not in the mind. Once they're in the body, then the mind starts to interpret them.
However, the mind is not always correct on its interpretation. And so REM, the steps are how to use your imagination to reveal to you what is really the root cause of an issue or of an emotion, how to be with that memory, that emotional memory in such a way that it dissolves. So that what we're doing is we're really healing the deep emotional experience that's in the body, the visceral of the body, let's say the gut of the body.
And it happens, trauma happens at the visceral level. And trauma can be the whole range of discomfort. It can be innocuous moment in time that we interpreted something like as a four-year-old that, oh, my parents love my sister more than me.
That's probably not true. But from this immature view, it's easy to make these kind of assumptions. And so when these memories, the true memory that is at the root cause show up, they're usually much easier than to dissolve once we know what they really are.
We can really work with them. Because most of the time we have the mind thinks it knows what it is, but it doesn't know how to process feelings. Because the mind is verbal, but it doesn't know how to feel.
And the feeling part of like, like we talked about in REM, the two minds theory, there's the logical thinking mind, and there is the intuitive feeling mind. And the intuitive feeling mind that is throughout the body through the neurological system, that is nonverbal. It doesn't have words.
So the feeling of it has to be felt so that imagination can give it form. And then when there's form, the mind sees something. And it says, oh, okay, now I can help you measure and analyze this or, you know, figure it out, so to speak.
And so now you have whole brain function, so that you have both sides of your mind or your brain are both bringing their own resourcefulness, and they bring different gifts. They bring different kinds of information and abilities. But it is the feeling side of the brain that actually determines how we act.
Because yeah, so and as we know that how we want to lose weight, what we say the mind knows, yeah, we want to lose weight, I'm going to lose weight. But does that mean it happens? No, it doesn't mean it happens.
Because the body has to be the body wisdom and the body acknowledgement of pain has to be involved in that process.
AP:
Right. Well, that's fantastic. Because as you speak, I'm thinking of another book, which I'm sure you may be familiar with, the body keeps course, right?
Yes.
DS:
I'm very familiar with it. Yes.
AP:
Right. Right. So it's similar to that.
So that's your one of your principles, right? One of the subtitles, and what would be the second one?
DS:
Well, I would say that includes several other steps. Because when you break it apart, it's like I'm making it more connected. So you can understand of the steps.
So that in the end, I would say there is a really dipping into the body to sense through imagination would be the next step, let's say, sensing through imagination. So the imagination gives a feeling form. So that when we're angry, you know, emotions like anger are invisible.
So it feels like they're everywhere. And we're very afraid of feeling those because we feel like we'll be consumed and we'll be an angry person. And we don't we try to avoid anger.
But that's a problem. Because anger actually has a function and a purpose, right? alert us, right, where there could be potential harm or danger, either within how we're thinking about something, or how we are engaged in the world with another with another in some kind of relationship.
And so when we start to override our feelings, we miss out on that information. So receiving the information, and then with that information, allowing the core feeling to be felt is would be another step. I would say it's not linear steps, they're flowing steps, right?
So you flow through the process. And, and as you feel when you feel a feeling rather than trying to not feel it, or forget it, or put it on the shelf, suppress it, distract yourself from it, what happens that is like a feeling is coming through your body, and you are creating a dam right here, that stops the feeling from being received. So now guess what, it's stuck in your body.
It can't move on down the river, and evaporate like it is intended to feelings are not meant to be permanent. They are transient moments of experience of a feeling experience. So that soon as we allow feelings to flow by feeling them, they start to automatically dissolve.
So that you know, we're not really respecting our body's process, we actually have the ability to self heal. But we're interfering with that ability by trying to control our feelings.
AP:
That's great. That's fantastic. Well, I'm going to piggyback on the question of feelings.
When I read your book, I was struck by the following. We frequently and I quote you here, we frequently speak of our feelings as if we are them. You heard it in our patterns of speech.
I am angry, which implies I am anger. However, feelings naturally arise as passing states of awareness, and are not part of us. Rather, they provide feedback, and then expire.
Your statement Debra reminds me of one of Paul McKenna's insights, your nervous system, meaning the human nervous system cannot differentiate between a physical threat to your body, and a mental or emotional threat to your ego. Let me repeat this. Your nervous system cannot differentiate between a physical threat to your body, and a mental or emotional threat to your ego.
Do you see any similarities between these ideas?
DS:
I'm very aware of that because of the neuroscience, you know, demonstrates that that the part of the brain that fear originates, where that originates, does not have the ability to discern the difference between that it's a physical thing versus an emotional thing. So which is why we get really upset. For instance, you can have a fight with somebody who's really important to you, and be so intensely afraid because when that part of the brain interprets it, then it's the fear of annihilation.
Annihilation is the neurological way we think about it. But it's really just a verbal fight with somebody that you can work out and talk. And so I would say that, yes, it is similar in that REM is addressing, like we actually interact with the parts of the nervous system where fear originates.
And we have skills that allow us to connect, help the client connect, them connect with that part of themselves. So that, for instance, even just the breath, breathing, is really critically important for that part of the brain, because it is the only manual function that happens in that area. Everything else in that area happens automatically in the autonomic nervous system.
And instead, breathing, you can go either way. We can manually control breathing, and then we also breathe automatically. So that when somebody's having a panic attack, that is immediately can calm that by controlling your breathing manually.
AP:
That's fantastic. That's absolutely fantastic. So Debra, it'd be nice to talk a little bit about your personal life.
How would you articulate the essence of living an empowered life? What elements or qualities do you truly believe define an empowered life?
DS:
Yes, I think from my experiences, so, you know, it's my, what I have experienced, what has been successful for me, that what I would say is that allowing and inviting aliveness within myself and in my life, both personally and in my work, is very, very important so that I stay, I stay awake to what's going on and what's happening both within me and around me, and what wants to happen. And so in staying awake to what wants to happen, I have always been really following what was calling me, even if I had no logical idea of why. That's really, really important.
I also am a big being in nature, you know, walking and hiking with my husband, we've done camping in our lives quite a bit. And that's always enlivening as well, because nature is so natural. Now, there's no pretenses, there's no trying to cover up anything.
It's like, what you see is what you get. And so I try, I actually, you know, have an intention to live that way, to be transparent and honest with myself, but also with others. And so I think that has really paid off.
I also have had a real strong intention of living passionately, fully and passionately, both personally and in my work. And I would say that that is what's happening. Right.
AP:
And you would define that as an empowered life for you?
DS:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And maybe when you say empowered, and also that I'm always at choice.
I'm also, could you repeat that again? Yeah, that I am always at choice. I always have a choice every moment.
AP:
I love that. I love that, because I adhere to that as well, that everyone has choice, maybe not everyone, but most of us do.
DS:
Well, you always have some level of choice. Let's say somebody who's in prison. Yes, there are some things that are not your choice.
But how you choose to feel in your body, how you choose to be with yourself in prison is still a choice. So whatever level of choice we have, then yes, I want to own that.
AP:
Right, right.
DS:
Because it feels different when we feel like we have choice versus like we're being forced into something that creates victimhood.
AP:
Exactly. However, I do want to acknowledge with all the wars that's happening in the world, people do not have choice at times. I want to acknowledge that as well.
I mean, it is unfortunate, but there are circumstances when people do not have a choice. Right.
DS:
And they're still choosing to respond the way they respond to war. So it's a different choice. Do they have a choice to be in war or not?
Definitely not. That's what I'm trying to show us. Yes, yes.
Yeah. And I totally agree with you. And it's very sad.
It's very sad. I feel very sad when I see what is happening in the wars that are going on right now.
AP:
So another question is, I would love to hear about your personal moment in your personal journey, an experience that deeply resonated with you, which significantly shaped your sense of purpose, but also led you to ultimately having a fulfilled life today.
DS:
I've had a lot of synchronicity in my life or serendipity, if you want to call it that, where things will show up when I need them. Or, you know, I think that when I was writing the book that I would meditate first, and then just ask for that that wanted to be expressed to flow through me. And yet, and so when I was writing, it would feel like it wasn't my ego writing, and that it was a different aspect of me that was writing.
So that it could feel it could be written in a wiser voice, I suppose, or, you know, a more compassionate self. So that those kind of experiences have kept me very enjoying kind of the mystery of life. The magic, the magic, and my first book was Releasing the Inner Magician, which came Oh, yeah, that I forgot, that's a really important one that changed my life.
I had when I had just left psychotherapy closed that practice. And I was writing a book. And the book was called Raising Your Inner Voice at that point was the title.
And I was writing. And then one day, I went to save it on my computer. And where the title had my old title had been it said, Releasing the Inner Magician, I go like, what?
Where did that come from? You know, and it's like, well, that's an interesting title, I'm going to write it down. And maybe I'll use it for a later chapter.
And so I so I erased it, saved it with my Raising Your Inner Voice. And the next time I went on to the computer to write, the whole file had popped onto my desktop with Releasing the Inner Magician as the name. So yeah, so I knew that now I have to figure out what that means.
Because I'm not working with magicians. And it was like, what is that? But it really is that part of us that so much more can make things happen more easily and quickly than we think.
AP:
Wow, that's fantastic. Because I forget the name of the teacher who speaks about the magic I witnessed today. That's part of my journaling work every night that I do.
The magic I witnessed today, you know, it's phenomenal. Because in the beginning, when we think about magic or magician or whatever, we never relate it to ourselves, or we think it's got to be something ethereal out of the world. But the magic could be the smile on a child's face.
That really touched your heart that day or something extraordinary, you know. So I hear what you're saying about magic and magician. It's not just otherworldly.
Right? No, not at all. So as we approach the conclusion of our conversation today, although I genuinely look forward to the possibility of engaging with you again, what would be one or two specific practices that you consistently embrace that helps you cultivate a growth mindset and fosters personal well-being for you, Debra?
DS:
I think it is to take the time when I'm having, when I'm wondering about something, to take the time to go inward and connect with my body and just rest in my body a bit. Because then usually it'll, some new insights will float to the surface and that make it more clear of either what I'm feeling and how come or what some other options are or some ideas of what I can do. But they just kind of float in.
They're not a thinking process. And so it makes them feel very magical. And so it is like receiving a gift.
AP:
My friends, I hope everyone listening has thoroughly enjoyed this exchange that Debra and I've had. Having the opportunity to sit down with Debra for an in-depth and meaningful conversation has been an enriching experience. I encourage you to read her book, Goodbye Hurt and Pain.
It's an excellent read, filled with profound insights and practical strategies, which I believe you could benefit from. I want to extend my heartfelt thank you to Debra for her generosity and sharing her wisdom and experience with me. It is a true privilege to engage in such an insightful dialogue with you, Debra.
Thank you, Asha. You're welcome. My friends, if you are interested in exploring Debra's remarkable body of work further, I highly recommend visiting her website, riminstitute.com.
That is r-i-m-i-n-s-t-i-t-u-t-e.com. As a closing reflection, I'm reminded of something I have observed repeatedly throughout my own work. Understanding our emotions and truly healing them are not always the same thing.
Many of us spend years trying to think our way through stress, hurt, disappointment, or fear. Yet, as Debra shared today, the body often carries experiences long after the mind believes it has moved on. When we learn to listen more deeply to our feelings, our breath, our inner wisdom, and the messages our bodies may be communicating, we open the door to greater freedom, resilience, and well-being.
I was particularly struck by the idea that emotions are not who we are. They are experiences that arise, provide valuable information, and eventually pass. That distinction alone can be incredibly empowering.
Rather than identifying with our emotions, we can learn to become curious about them, listen to them, and allow them to guide us to a deeper understanding and healing. If this conversation resonated with you, I invite you to continue exploring these themes of emotional well-being, self-awareness, healthy aging, and living a more empowered life. Many of the themes Debra and I explore today are topics I continue to explore through writing, teaching, and my SupraConscious Study Program, where we examine the relationship between physical well-being, emotional resilience, awareness, and living a more empowered life.
To learn more about my work and the resources available to support your own journey, I invite you to visit AshaPaul.com. Thank you for joining me today. Until next time, take good care of yourself, stay curious, and remember that growth often begins with becoming aware of what is happening within.