Using ceremony and shadow work to manifest what you want with Katie J

Katie’s Bio

Katie J. Jones is a Manifestation Coach, Women’s Circle Facilitator, 300-Hour Certified Yoga Teacher, and Spiritual Meditation Guide. Her mission is to help the world heal through the power of aligned, intentional manifestation.

She does this by holding space for growth and transformation through a spiritual, yet practical, coaching style for groups and private clients.

Transcript

Manifestation is such a powerful tool in creating what you want in life and business. Today I chat with Katie J from Womanifester about how you can use manifestation to create what you want in your business. We go into some of the woo woo components including shadow work and ceremony, and talk about how you can bring these practices into your own business, to create what you want. I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

You’re listening to the Clare Wood podcast, where we talk all things business, finance, marketing, and mindset for entrepreneurs, sharing practical tips, and actionable advice to help you take your business to the next level. Introducing your host: me! I’m Clare Wood, I’m a numbers geek, a travel lover, and a reality tv addict, and I’m here to empower you to create an extraordinary business and an amazing life, because I believe you don’t have to choose between the two. Now let’s dive right in to today’s episode.

CLARE: Welcome to the podcast Katie. Katie is here from a business called Womanifester. I heard Katie speak on the Manifestation Babe podcast, and as soon as I heard her energy, I knew I had to get her to come on my podcast.

KATIE: Thank you, I appreciate you having me.

CLARE: Can you please explain who you are and what you do?

KATIE: I am Katie J, I’m a manifestation coach and I facilitate women’s circles online and in-person. I also am a meditation guide, both on my podcast and on the app InsightTimer. The first thing that I do, tht permeates through everything, is a manifestation coach and help women shed parts of them that don’t feel great and don’t serve them, so they can call in their desires. And not just think about and daydream about an ideal lifestyle, but actually live it through manifestation, that is what I teach.

CLARE: I have spoken about manifestation quite a few times before on the podcast, but today I want to take it to another level. Before we do, what are some of the cool things you have manifested?

KATIE: Great question, the first thing that comes to my mind is something I did recently, which is new clients. It was beginning of this summer 2020 that I finally got my website up. I’ve been doing this for almost 2.5 years and I just now got a website up. I have done some programs here and there, and everything has started to take of exponentially and manifest clients. I don’t have any CTA’s out there, I just have a website that exists, but now all these clients are coming out of the woodworks and booking on-on-one calls with me and I have not been promoting this at all. That for me, has been one of the most recent and special manifestations and that is something that has really been initiated by my spiritual and manifestation practices I use.

I’ve manifested free housing in Costa Rica a mile from the beach.

CLARE: How did you do that?

KATIE: Well, I manifested it. I said I want to live there. I found the owners and got in touch with them, and became friends with the owners because they actually are also from Texas like me, and they needed a house sitter and someone to run the Air BnB so that’s how that happened with manifestation.

CLARE: That is so cool. If anyone is listening and going “Yeah right you manifested it”, then we are going to actually dive into the how.

But I 100% agree Katie, I have definitely manifested. A couple weeks ago, I said I want to call in more international clients and within a week I had 2 international clients book in. It’s crazy how powerful it is when you start to flex that muscle.

KATIE: I hear you. I have friends that say “How do you know you manifested it and it’s not just luck?”. And I say, you can call it luck or coincidence or whatever, but wouldn’t you like the power to play with that? Wouldn’t you love to call in what you want? It’s fun!

Types of beliefs and practices to manifest what you want

CLARE: If people listening are thinking I want free accommodation in Costa Rica, or more clients, whatever it might be, can you share some of your beliefs and practices to call in what you want?

KATIE: Manifestation only works and only starts and initiates when your desires match your beliefs. You can have a desire all day, like I wish my boss was this, I wish I had more clients, but we are always launching these rockets of desire as we experience our lives, what we like and don’t like. But we don’t all believe we can have those things. We don’t believe that we are capable of those things. You might think you don’t come from a family that can have things like that.

We end up talking ourselves out of believing its possible, but manifestation is the process of talking yourself into believing it is possible. As soon as that happens, as soon as your desires match your belief, your beliefs are really sub-conscious, and a lot of people think I could have a million dollars, but do you really believe that? If you sit with yourself, look at those beliefs and all those things in your head, when you take the time to look at those things and observe your sub-conscious, you might start to uncover limiting beliefs from childhood, and that’s when we start to do shadow work.

CLARE: So, if someone has these desires and they think they believe they can have the partner they want or house of their dreams, and it’s not happening, are you saying, there is still a disconnect and they still have more work to do?

KATIE: Yes, there is a resistance still there, somewhere, somehow, they are resisting the full alignment of this is already mine, it’s going to happen, it’s going to be this or something better, and they aren’t attached to it, what it looks like, it just feels good, then you start to attract things that feel good… but you need to be in alignment first. If you are looking around and saying, I believe I can have a boyfriend that’s amazing and awesome and loves and supports me, but I don’t see him in my reality, then you still have some resistance there.

CLARE: There is so much we can go into here. I know one of the practices I’ve heard is, if you think unequivocally are ready and designing something, you say what are the reasons you don’t want it?  This is something I do with clients. I say what are the reasons you don’t want it? And they say I do want it? And there is always something sitting underneath that we may not be conscious of. For example, one of things that I want to manifest is to live and move to the beach, but there are all these things underneath that say, I’ll be away from my friends, my kids are going to have to change schools, what if we don’t like the people in the new neighbourhood. So if you aren’t there already, then there is work that needs to be done.

What is shadow work and why do it

Something you touched on, that I’m super interested to get into today is Shadow Work. Can you explain what it is and what does this work look like?

KATIE: When it comes to manifestation, the shadow is something called the shadow self, coined by Carl Jung, which means the parts of ourselves that are left unaddressed and unhealed in the dark. When I talk about it my hands always come to the back left of my body like we are pushing things to the side, like our relationship with our Dad, or how we feel about our body or money, and the things that are taboo that we talk about in our culture, and all our limiting beliefs under the surface, that is the shadow. It’s not meant to be the scary though. Shadow work is shining the light, shining that light into the dark places, and looking at all those parts of ourselves that don’t feel good. Or the habits in our lives that keep occurring, and keep attracting bosses who are super over my shoulder etc, and you can start to uncover why that might be. When you do that, when you shine the light on dark places, they lose their power and grip over you and what you believe you can have and are capable of. So that brings us back to that belief portion, that belief has to match our desire for the manifestation process to initiate.

CLARE: With shadow work, does that mean digging up childhood trauma or the past, what does that look like? And is it something we really have to do and go through in order to manifest what we want?

KATIE: If your childhood trauma is unprocessed, then it could come up, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to re-live it or anything like that, but understanding that it happened and that you created coping mechanisms because of it, can be really helpful, in disarming that anger or hatred or shame or guilt that you have been holding onto sub-consciously. If that is tied to your Father, for example, and he never made much money, and you are over here wanting to make good money, but you still have this father-wound you are holding onto that is preventing you.

Shadow work is a process of looking at those things, but it doesn’t need to be a re-living. That’s something to leave for a Sharman or plant medicine etc, if you want to re-live it to release it. That’s not what shadow work is, it’s really just the process of loving the parts of yourself that have been hurt, by others and by yourself by not honouring your truth. There is a lot of forgiveness work that happens, and awareness about where it is in the body, is it in my throat, in my stomach, is it in my head, and that can give you insight into the message you are getting from that trauma that is trapped in my body and doesn’t feel safe. And it makes you ask, how can I attract my ideal client, if I can’t be my ideal self. That is why I end up attracting light workers and healers, people that want to help other people, but haven’t been taught or I need to hold space for them, to talk about these things, and they might see that’s their mum’s voice in my head saying that for example. Let’s learn from it, and integrate it, so you can move on and stop letting affect you and holding you back.

CLARE: What does holding the work look like? Is it counselling? Is it something you can work through yourself?

KATIE: It looks different for different people, at different times of their journey. The whole point about what I do is to reconnect them to their own inner wisdom because it exists in all of us. We’ve been disconnected from it for a long time, we’ve been told to not trust our intuition, not to feel our feelings, not to trust ourselves really. And some of that was for our own safety, our mum’s did put the fear of God in us sometimes to stop us from not walking out onto the street. It’s part of our domestication and helpful a lot of the time, but some of it ended up teaching us that we can’t do these things, so the work looks different at different times.

So you might hire me, a spiritual life coach and we might uncover some childhood trauma that I can’t go deeper with, so that’s when you would need to go to psychotherapy or plant medicine, and that’s where you feel like you are called, you are the one that knows and feels into that guidance system, that gets you closer to shedding the layers of domestication that no longer serve you, so you can be that full expression of your most successful and authentic self.  

CLARE: Obviously we can’t go too much further on a podcast. One of the things I noticed on your Instagram profile, you have a highlight called Ceremony. I’d love to understand what is ceremony, why do you do it, and how does it relate to the manifestation process?

What is ceremony and why do it

KATIE: I started ceremony at a very young age, I lived in a religious household, and I only stopped doing ceremony when I left that religion and wanted to explore spirituality on a broader scale. I have recently come back to ceremony, and the reason for it is because it is a spiritual practice. It is you connecting to something larger than yourself, whatever you can get your energy behind. Whether that is a God, mother nature, water, I had a client recently who said when she taught herself spirituality, she taught herself by connecting to water, because nothing on earth can live without it. Anything that you can connect to, your ancestors, spirit guides, angles, it doesn’t matter, even energy, no can argue it exists, so ceremony is your space to connect intentionally to that higher being.

We’ve all been to ceremonies before, weddings, funerals, graduations, these are all ceremonies to celebrate something larger than one person, what connects us, the love between people, honouring people. Ceremony how I use it, is to connect to my higher purpose. I believe I am a spiritual being living in a human body. I came to earth, learned these things, and made me forget what I was meant to do in this lifetime. As I learn and grow and heal and evolve along my spiritual journey, I get closer to living out my purpose which is to have fun and experience joy and fulfilment in my work. I do it as a devotion to my work which is spiritual life coaching with women, it’s me showing up consistently during a launch or open/close cart, and saying use me as a vessel for divine love to flow through me, and find the women who need to be in this container and bring them to me with grace and ease and let it be fun and let them be ready for the transformation and ready to pay me and do the work. That is my intention when I show up in my ceremonies.

We will all resonate with how that looks. Some people will play music, sometimes none of that happens, they will sit down on their yoga mag and set the intention. It’s all ceremony and you showing up with an intention to connect with something larger than yourself. These can also be done around moon cycles, seasons.

CLARE: So it’s developing some sort of ceremony that is a way for you to connect with a higher being. So I grew up in a religious house as well, so are you talking pray and things like that?

KATIE: I grew up always saying a pray before eating, praying for thanks for that food being there. That gratitude we practiced, I’m going to attribute to being always able to have food.

CLARE: I’m thinking about my own practice, I love to light a candle when I journal and recording a podcast, so that in itself is ceremony, setting that intention, before this recording today I said I hope this recording reaches my audience and the right people. As it turns out I’m already doing these practices but we haven’t recognised they are a practice and symbolism around us going about the process of manifestation.

How to start manifestation training

CLARE: In terms of your teaching, can people formalise this more? Where do people get started?

KATIE: So many people reach out to me and say, I’ve already been doing ceremony. They are just called to do it and don’t even know why. Its easy for a lot of people to start a morning ritual, so every morning after you brush your teeth and go to the bathroom, you sit on a folded pillow for 5 mins and think about one thing. You are not going to be able to do that, but practice it, that’s why it’s called meditation practice. You can do that or write your intentions day, or what you plan on attracting that day, or as simple as turning on some music and dancing around. It can start with anything, before I walk into the office I’m going to take a deep breath in and let it out, so it look any sort of way.

I like to do ceremony by balancing my masculine and feminine. The masculine structure is I’m setting aside 30mins for ceremony, that can look however I want it to look that day, and that is the feminine flow, feeling into my body, do I want to pull a tarot card or stones on an alter and connect with the elements. That’s what connects with me, but someone else might want to put rosery beads of a picture of their grandmother, if that’s what they connect to. Regardless, it’s something you can resonate with and doesn’t have to look the same each day. Just set aside 30mins each day to show up for yourself.

Working with you own masculine and feminine energy in a business sense

CLARE: Let’s dive into that masculine and feminine energy you spoke about. When you talk about leaning into those sides, what does that mean? Is it something both men and women can do?

KATIE: It has nothing to do with gender. Think of masculine energy as structure, form, strategy, hustle, grind and then feminine is more like flow, grace, ease, pleasure, fun. For example, someone with lots of awesome business ideas who can’t bring them into form, it’s too flowy and fluffy and out there to create something in a physical reality. So you need to try and balance both, and that is always a constant state of trying to feel that balance in both.

There needs to be structure in being, so I have a podcast, I engage on Instagram and do speaking, so those are my structures, but I also allow flow of ideas and the fun of new clients, and celebrating wins.. all of those things need to be incorporated into the business to make it fulfilling. So that’s how I see masculine and feminise manifesting in a business way.

CLARE: I have definitely come on that journey myself. I am a girly girl, but in a business sense, I lean a lot into my masculine energy. I can get very focused on numbers and strategy, so I need to play into that gentler side, because a lot of my clients are females.

For anyone that wants to connect and dive into things deeper, how can they connect with you?

KATIE: You can head to womanifester.com and I’m also on Instagram. I also have a podcast called Womanifester.

CLARE: Thank you for sharing!  

Thank you so much for joining me today, if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you subscribe to receive future episodes, and I’d be so grateful for a review on apple podcast! If you’d like a copy of the show notes or any of the links mentioned today, please jump over to clarewood.com.au/podcast and remember that Clare is spelled CLARE, have a wonderful week and look forward to chatting to you again soon!