Breathing Out the Old, Initiating the New featuring Intentional Living Architect, Nicole Bartlett

In this transformative conversation, I sit down with Nicole Bartlett -- intentional living architect, certified breathwork facilitator, Reiki Master, and founder of the Louisville Salt Cave -- to explore the power of breathwork as a catalyst for awakening, clarity, emotional release, and renewal. Nicole blends science, spirituality, and courage to guide individuals into greater self-awareness and intentional living. 

Together, we dive into how conscious breathwork helps us:

~ Access the subconscious to recognize resistance and acceptance. 

~ Clear old emotional patterns and energetic blocks that no longer serve us.

~ Bring clarity and alignment through integrating breathwork with meditation. 

~ Open space for the new -- purpose, presence, and possibility.

This episode is for anyone ready to let go of what's been holding them back and breathe into a more honest, intentional, and awakened way of living.

Connect with Nicole: 

Website: www.ndavisbartlett.com

Instagram: @ndavisbartlett

PURCHASE BOOK NOW!

Get Patched! 

Start Breathing & Find Your Flow! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 1:19

Welcome back to today's episode of Unapologetic Living. I'm Elizabeth Elliott, I'm your hostess, and today I have with me Nicole Bartlett. And she is a local gal here from Louisville, Kentucky. Um she considers herself an intentional living architect. She is the founder and um of the Salt Cave. She was the original founder or owner of the Salt Cave. And you spent what you say 10 years sort of nurturing that space for healing here in our local community. Um and I know that kind of, I don't know if that was the intro to your sort of holistic alternative healing modality journey pathway, or if, you know, how did that begin? Was it like, oh, I'm just gonna do this business venture, or was it something a little bit more, uh, was there a little more depth to that than that?

SPEAKER_00: 2:25

A little bit. Um, and thank you for having me on, Elizabeth. I'm really excited to be here. Um I spent 10 years prior to building the salt cave in animal nutrition. I was doing marketing for biotech firms. Uh, and that really gave me a foundation on preventative wellness. So in an animal nutrition industry, they're feeding animals for productivity. So everything down to the measurement of their food is measured, their animal husbandry matters, uh, the well-being of the animal matters for production purposes. So I was looking at health and wellness from a uh lifestyle perspective, and how do you live in a way that feels good? What does quality life mean? So the Salt Cave was kind of this combination of my work background, and I wanted to become a meditation teacher. I had been using meditation and yoga. I've been doing yoga since I was 15, but I'm not an instructor. But I've been using these practices uh to help me stay calm and regulated in my lifetime. And the cave was a nice combination of preventative health through respiratory health. So, in that environment, you're breathing in salt-saturated air. It helps clean up the lung microbiome, you're breathing easier, you rest. It was built really with this meditative uh vision. So it was a nice combination of meditation and uh preventative health. And so we opened that uh business partner and I opened that in 2015, and uh it was one of the first in the first 50 in the US, so of of things like that. So there was a little bit of foundation and wellness, but in terms of holistic lifestyle, that really was a launching pad, I think.

SPEAKER_03: 4:19

Gotcha. You know, I have to admit, I have never been and sat in a salt cave, and I know it's something that I I need to experience.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

It's a portal, and that's what's so funny about building that space. I built it with this idea of intentional living and well-being and holistic health, but it was when we opened doors that in came all of the intuitive healers because they knew the qualities of salt, they knew the properties of this the way it pulls and extracts. It would do the same thing in the lungs if you're breathing the salt in as it would in your aura, in your energetic body. So it was built with this community scale and mind so that people come in together, they quiet their minds, they heal. But everybody that left just felt I can't say everybody, but most people out of being in operation for 10 years when I was there, um, people would walk out just feeling so much lighter. So it wasn't just the salt therapy and the lungs that helped them breathe easier, but they were able to just really lay down that load and let that salt clear their energetic field as well.

SPEAKER_03: 5:27

Um, and so and that's where you were teaching and facilitating some breath work groups there, right?

SPEAKER_00: 5:35

Yes. So in 2017, I started studying breath work. I kind of stepped into this energy world by doing Reiki certifications. Uh and I I've done breath work. I actually have a breath at the cave coming up in January, but I still go back, but I also now go around the city and travel with it. But um, we've done breathwork at the cave for years, and uh again, it's this intentional space where people come to release and let go and shed combined with uh the breath and using it in a very intentional way to uh move energy throughout the body. It's a nice, nice combination to to do that there.

SPEAKER_03: 6:16

Yeah, and so okay, so and and it was was it um and what inspired uh becoming the breath work facilitator? I mean, I know it moves a lot of energy, and I know that we know that we see um, I don't know if you happen, Dr. Mauro is at the Terra. Are you familiar with him? Um, he talks a lot about um the breath work, and I had him on the show maybe March of 2025. Okay. And just you're gonna be the first of 2026, so that's exciting. He'll be my first uh release this um year. Um, this is year three. This will be my third January, but he talks about you know that movement of the cerebral spinal fluid to the pineal gland uh and the importance of breath to help move that energy upward so that you can connect to the third eye or the divine or your intuition or it's unbelievable how connected one feels in the practice.

SPEAKER_00: 7:31

When I think in life, I I I think of things really practically like I wanted to be a breath work practitioner because I ran a salt therapy business that worked with lung health, and this felt like a nice combination.

SPEAKER_02: 7:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:44

What I didn't mention in building it was that I was doing kundalini yoga for six months daily, and I again I didn't know what I was doing. I just found Gaia TV and started doing these videos that helped me release anger. Um, and so it's it is this connection with the higher self that breath work has allowed. So I studied it for six months before I ever breathed. And in that first breath experience for me, it changed my life. I found a no that I didn't realize I was missing. Essentially, what I mean by that is my discernment became crystal clear. I walked away from that first experience, uh, really knowing what was serving my highest good and what wasn't. And so from then on, I was just headfirst in. That's another quality I think I carry is I have a tendency to jump and leap. Um, and so yeah, I just dove straight in once I had the experience of it.

SPEAKER_03: 8:44

So you really felt as though you gained some clarity crystal clear.

SPEAKER_00: 8:49

Like I walked away from that experience more true to myself than I'd ever been. Like, like I didn't realize it's it's almost as if what is serving and what doesn't comes in like lightning. Like you're talking about this connection uh to our higher selves, it's just instantaneous. And it wasn't in the breath that that happened. I had a completely different experience in the breath. It was after I walked away from the breath and then had to integrate into my life. It was just crystal clear of what was serving me and what wasn't. And I was in a position where I had to choose how I wanted to handle that. So I think that's a beauty of it, is that it does provide clarity, but we have to have the courage to move forward in that clarity, whatever that looks like.

SPEAKER_03: 11:12

So are you open to sharing like what sorts of elements you did leave behind or um in going in? Do you uh you know, often like when you go to a yoga class, you'll hear hear your instructor or the facilitator, your you know, yoga instructor, uh suggest setting an intention. Is that something that you went in with? Like, oh, I want clarity on, or what was you know, like going in? Like, okay, I'm just want to have the experience, and then um notice what arises because of the experience.

SPEAKER_00: 12:01

I did not have an intention going in. I thought I'm studying this stuff, I need to try it out, kind of like I'm building a salt cave, a better go-to-one. Um so I didn't have an experience. When I facilitate, I encourage people to consider that. I think it's really great to to be intentional in anything we do. So uh, but it's not necessary. Uh the experience I had in the breath was different than the awakening piece that followed. So, what it did for me was just really clear the channel of to who I am. And what happened after was that I was ready to make changes in my life that needed to be made, make hard decisions that needed to be made. And it gave me the push to kind of step forward into that because from that point forward there wasn't doubt. I didn't question what what what I was doing, whether it was the right move or not. Uh, it just really allowed me to kind of go inward and act from a place of self versus trying to please everybody else that might have been involved in my life at the time. Uh, so what was true to me and my higher uh ability to connect and then to take whatever steps I needed to do that. Essentially, I ended up taking over ownership of the salt cave at that time uh fully, which wasn't necessarily in the cards before that session happened.

SPEAKER_03: 13:30

I know that, you know, one of the reasons that I birthed Unapologetic Living, the Unapologetic Living podcast was to help give people the permission to do just that, right? Because so many, I mean, we're brought up, you know, by our parents, families, you know, our extended family communities that our families have us involved in. You're getting all these external messages on how to be and who you are, and how you have to operate to survive in this world and and the path and the steps you have to take to do that and to uh be deemed or considered successful or what have you, right? I'm you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, for sure. And so you have to like peel those layers away to like figure out like what actually resonates with me, yeah, versus like that message of like mom or dad, like you can still hear that, right? Like, I know, you know, there are things that I have heard along the way. I can't believe you're doing that. Okay, you know, but even despite I'm gonna keep moving forward, those messages are still there, and you can become, I think you can get confused or feel guilty or shame or fear, right? That lack of courage to do what really resonates with you. Yeah. And I think some sorry. No, that yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:02

I think some of that is it. I look, I I'm writing a memoir, so I'm looking back over timelines in my life a lot. And I think some of that is part of where we are when we're there. Like I look back at when I was working in agriculture for 10 years. Uh, that was really a learning process. That was a time right out of college when I had just spent five years living on my own for the first time, which had its own lessons that took a lot longer to recover from, but also 10 years of really just figuring it out. So, you know, you spend this time in your life where you're ambitious and you have this energy and you're just saying yes to all the things because you're learning, right? But then there comes a time where you realize maybe you've been saying yes to things that weren't serving you, or it was yes for the betterment of what you think looks like success. And so then you start to recognize, oh, hold up, this isn't serving me. Is success having the white picket fence and the marriage and the family? And or is it having a calm nervous system? Is it being able to walk into a room and feel like it doesn't matter what room you're walking into? You're you're comfortable in your own skin. Uh and so that shifts, and we're able to understand what serves us truly and more deeply. Um so I think that through there's there's this ability to let go of things that no longer serve as they become clearer. And the way that we get more clear is through slowing down and bringing intentional awareness to what our lives look like, how we're creating our lives, what we want to create our lives uh with and how we want how we want to live in the world. I think so much of this is is choice, so much of it is survival as well. Uh, you know, I had to work that job to have insurance, to pay my bills, to put food on the table. And so there's a survival element, but eventually we get to this point where the survival meets uh the service to self and how do we make changes so that we can serve ourselves and uh kind of lessen the fear around the survival piece.

SPEAKER_02: 17:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03: 17:19

Yeah, I was just actually listening to David Guyam. Are you familiar with him? Right before uh we got on here, I took like a quick 10-minute walk because the sun is shining and um just how distracted that we can become and really to get in tune with the divine and the light, we have to quiet, you know, maybe skip the pizza the piece of pizza he was talking about, you know, because we can distract ourselves with food, with being too busy, with I mean, uh overage of anything, exercise, work, you know, and um shopping, sex, whatever, you know, alcohol and substances. And I do think for me, you know, as you, it has shifted over time and definitely having that calm nervous system to be comfortable in your skin anywhere you go. That's definitely at like a top priority over, you know, the white picket fence. And, you know, sometimes I'm like, I'm living in a 937 square foot house that I rent. And I'm like, you know, I want to just write a blog post on the fact that you don't have to own your, you know what I mean? Like you don't have to go buy a house just because somebody said that. Yeah. When I get to call my landlord when the air's out, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 18:47

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 18:48

You know, now you're gonna have other people and all these other messages. Well, you're wasting your money and real estate's a great investment, you're right. And when the time is right, I will. But you know what? As a single mom who's been a single mom for like eight, let's see, for a minute now, having to think about those added expenses if something went wrong, yeah, wasn't going to serve me. Right. You know, and so I do think we have to really take a look at, you know, what feels right and um whatever that is to help connect us with that divine or that, you know, higher self-guiding force. Um really, when you when you go there, you don't really have to do as much thinking about the rest.

SPEAKER_00: 19:40

It it has hands down been what leads me. I'm like the fool tarot stepping off the cliff because my faith allows me to know that I can be caught. There's so much that our egos can tell us is not safe, or we blow things up to be bigger than they typically are. And to trust the process, we don't know what's on the other side. Like who who knows how something's going to work out? And it's and and I do that through listening to my internal structure. I have a tendency probably to hold on a little bit longer than I should. I was listening to your podcast about letting go in January of the 400 and some odd things.

SPEAKER_01: 20:22

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:23

But I I have a tendency to hold on maybe longer than I should, but I also don't have a an attachment to holding on forever. So it it's this faith process of being able to rely on uh the the process itself, just taking the next right step for me uh alongside what it is I need to be secure. So uh it's been a juggle of this leap and let go and know that I'll be caught in some form or another, and trusting the process that what everything happens for a reason. We are where we're meant to be. Uh and um yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 21:06

So okay, so you had the breathworth experience, that first initial one, and now and you've continued with regular breath work practices, breath work practices on your own. I know you facilitate them. You said that now you travel around to bring these guided breathwork uh sessions for lack of a better word to the community. Yeah, so I spent no mistake.

unknown: 21:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 21:36

I spent about three years in my certification certification process. Uh, well, two and a half. I I spent five weekends uh doing intensive breathwork sessions. And then that was you know through coaching and training alongside the breath work, and then I spent at least six months uh working with my mentors and facilitating others. And then in 2020, I launched Breath of the Wild, which is just my personal practice. Uh I try to combine, well, I've done a couple of different practices. I believe that the breather is their best guide, that the breath technique isn't as important as listening to the self. So it's for me, it's a real exploration of the self using the breath. So breathing fast, breathing slow, breathing gentle, uh, breathing full. It's up to the person and what they feel their body needs. And then I kind of help coach and move that along for them. Uh but yeah, I offer this in group settings and one-on-one sessions. I have a personal. Personal practice of um shamanic journeying and connection with the earth. I've worked with a couple of uh local practitioners here in Louisville. And so I I incorporate all of this into my sessions, but I do believe that the breather has the ability to know what it is they need. And my job is just to guide the process. Again, it's trusting the process, it's letting the facilitator really connect and follow their own and build their own intuition in the breath. Uh, and I'm there with them the entire time. Uh for me, it's more creating um uh a safe container in the room when I'm working with group energy or even individual one-on-one. Uh, I do rely on the unseen. I have, you know, guides and uh angels and I I I call in and I ask for help because I'm working with energy. When people are breathing in in a pretty uh expansive state, a lot is moving. And so I don't feel like Nicole Bartlett needs to be the person to manipulate that. I am just a conduit to let it flow in and through and out, or not even in me, but just through through and out the the space or the the location.

SPEAKER_03: 24:15

And then and most of these sessions are what? So the breath work, I've done three different sessions uh with different practitioners in town. I want to say they've been around 45 minutes. Is that kind of yeah, we breathe around an hour.

SPEAKER_00: 24:31

Yeah, it's something like that. I can't. Yeah, the session is booked for two hours. There's usually a 20-minute introduction of who's in the room, what to expect, as much as I can put that into words, and then a good 10 to 15 minutes of just resting, following the breath, and then kind of regrounding and coming back to. Um I try to give snacks afterwards so that people can really get back into their bodies because it is um it's an experience of of higher perspective.

SPEAKER_03: 25:04

Oh yeah, I I would say I was almost um the very first experience that I had. Um I was I I don't I wanna I don't want to use the word exhausted but or fatigued, but I I don't know what word to use.

SPEAKER_00: 25:24

It can be, I mean it's a significant detox.

SPEAKER_03: 25:27

It is, yeah. And so you can feel there is a shift from before you lay down until afterwards. It was a good shift, but it was a shift, if that makes sense. Like it's like I also wasn't ready to go run a marathon afterwards. No, you wanted to more like integrate than I prefer to do four-hour mini retreats because that gives time for integration.

SPEAKER_00: 28:10

I love movement before the breath. So a lot of times I'll collaborate with other practitioners for movement or um sound vibration. I just did one at Valetera on the 28th, and it uh it was crystal bowls, movement, breath, and then the last hour of the retreat, people were invited just to journal, walk the grounds, spend time really coming back to self. I do two-hour classes that's any, you know, that makes it accessible and available on a regular basis. The retreats are a little bit more to uh coordinate with regard to location, collaboration, things like that. But it really, if you're going to like, I encourage people if you're going to sign up, take the afternoon off. Like try to really give yourself the space. The integration piece is so important to me. It's much richer than the experience itself, even though you might go into an altered state in the experience, uh, which is very common. The it's the piece after that how do we take what we've received in that and apply it to our lives. And part of my interest in this is reverence. Anything from the shamanic practice to how I was raised uh through Catholicism to the work I do now with Carolyn Mays's studies and sacred contracts, it's all about reverence for the divine. We are not doing this work alone. The breath work that I'm I was trained in was borrowed from Eastern traditions. Monks did this in monasteries. Like it's not made for us to come in and do a two-hour or one-hour breath and then run out and go take care of all your meetings for the afternoon.

SPEAKER_02: 29:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 29:58

There's a richness to what is received in that process, the reverence of gratitude around the gift of that, and then really just taking it slow to allow the body to accept what's happening. I don't know how much of this we actually process through our minds. I feel like most of the experience through the breath is a almost more of a physical, spiritual process. I think the the mental might come later when you realize uh the discernment.

SPEAKER_03: 30:36

Yeah. Um yeah, definitely you're not going to work. Well, I don't recommend it either. Like it's just like I just can't. And then I'm trying to think about the second, and I like the idea of the four-hour retreat because that does, it gives you, and I like it, the idea of the snacks. Snacks are great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, snacks matter. Um, and even, you know, taking time to whether it's you know, in group or at home, I think journaling. Um, and when you talk about it sort of not really, uh, what did you just you how did you describe that? It reminds me of Rudolf Steiner. You know, are you familiar with his like they would so they would teach the kids through story in a Waldorf school? And and then the kids you know, they don't teach to the kid. This the content is taught through story, and then they don't dive into the content in that that day. Right? The kids go home, they take it into their sleep and take it to the you know, other realms, and then they come back tomorrow to review or kind of like come up with or share, you know, what's kind of happened for them since the the story that was shared. Right. Makes me think about that and just taking that all the way in, you know, through the rest of your day and into the night. Because as you said, I mean, I I would imagine, you know, you're kind of sitting with it, kind of like a um, you know, a um psilocybin journey, right? Something like that. But what I like about this is that there's a little more control. Because for me, I thought they were very similar.

SPEAKER_00: 32:38

They are. They they work in the brain the same way.

SPEAKER_02: 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:42

And that what you mentioned about taking it into your sleep, our dreams do so much for us, whether we're conscious of them or not, but even just being able to turn it off and let the subconscious do the work for us. There's such a richness in this that we don't get by mulling through it or trying to find uh what it is that we're looking, right? Seeking uh by literally removing ourselves, getting out of the way, there's greater solutions and insight and clarity. I often say to people when they come to breathe that you might be cloudy the next day, you know, like we're stirring it up quite significantly in the breath and not trying to figure out what it that means, just allowing, right? Like just allowing whatever the process looks like to unfold. And then I also, it's important for me to stay connected to any client that comes and do does breath work because it is such a powerful modality to come in and do that and then leave and feel like you're untethered or in any way unsupported. It that can be jarring. So will not many reach out to me after. I'm still really uh interested in their process and available for just a grounded presence in the practice because there is so much happening well after the experience.

SPEAKER_03: 34:02

Yeah. So not to change or shift subjects, I know, and all of those, right? You're you're leading those before we move on. Because I'm super curious about the Caroline Miss work. Um do you offer those throughout? Are those available um for people to register or sign up or uh look into on your website?

SPEAKER_00: 34:26

They are the what I have available right now is just a really generalized basic chart reading. Now, what I this is okay, so we're talking about sacred contracts work. This is uh Carolyn Mays, uh, she has a book written and it's called Sacred Contracts. It's her archetypal work, very much mirrors the Jungian archetypal study. So in her coursework, there's around 70 or so archetypes. Uh, to work with me on determining this, we would really try to identify your 12. Each archetype falls into a specific house that mirrors the zodiac. Uh, and there's four that she says all people carry. So the four are the survivor archetypes, uh, they are with every person, and then each person has eight unique archetypes. And so that's what working with me, we would pick out your eight. We would go through a form of question and answer, kind of what patterns are showing up in your life since early childhood. It's not a personality, they are a psychic influence. Uh, they are things that have like for me, my first memory is running back and forth in front of a car thinking I was going to get hit when I was walking down the road with my mom. And I have the magical child in uh my eighth house, which is like into Scorpio. It's kind of the occult, the under. So, like a lot of the work around the child archetype is learning responsibility. I chose the child, the magical child, because I had a memory of kind of escaping reality. So when I was running back in front for this car, the reality was that car was driving less than 15 miles per hour. I was very safe, but I kind of went into a different space and arena in that experience, likely having to do more with what was happening in my external life outside of that walk. And so understanding how that works for me in my eighth house, it is kind of a uh deeper meaning for the child. Um, this eighth house is representative of um kind of shadow qualities. So I was using the magical child to kind of escape my reality and understanding how it fell in my eighth house that gives me a little bit greater idea of how I work with that archetype. So the four uh survivors that everyone shares are the child, and there's different ones of there's different children, uh, but that's the only one that's unique. Um, there's the prostitute, and the prostitute is the keeper of faith. What are you willing to sell yourself for or not? Uh the saboteur, which is really what hides in our subconscious. When are we um it's self-betrayal? When are we looking to protect ourselves? Uh, and what how does that look for us? Does it show up as um resistance? Uh, does it show up as maybe cravings? So the saboteur is there, and then the victim, which the lesson of the victim is really how to become victorious. What is it? Uh, what do boundaries look like? Where am I uh victimizing myself or allowing myself to be the victim when I could have set a boundary here or I could have changed behavior and been more victorious in this in this situation? So those are the four survivors, the the different child archetypes are the orphan child, the abandoned child, the divine child, the magical child. Um might be missing a few here, but you kind of pick the the child archetype based on what resonates the most, uh the wounded, the wounded child. And then you have eight unique ones that when they land in the house, the house tells more of the story. And then as you get involved with the archetypes, there's other charts as well. So the initial is the chart of origin, where you do your 12 casting, your 12 archetypal casting, and then there's a uh journey of transformation, which is really designed for periods of time where you're going through something, there's change happening, and then there's a fate to destiny, which is really kind of like a a life overhaul, like a life um change. And those those charts use 36 archetypes in different timelines.

SPEAKER_03: 38:50

Now, now and and you helped determine those. So I remember reading this book. I I remember reading her book, Sacred Contracts. And I remember I I want to say I was 27, I'm 47. I was pregnant with my daughter. I had learned about it from the Waldorf School. Very cool. And it was around the same time that I had uh well started to learn a little bit more about anthroposophy and how uh you know, the the teacher who was our parent child teacher there at the time um had shared with me that you know, we choose our parents. And I don't know, we're talking about reincarnation and you know, I don't I was raised Methodist, but I had questions. And when I went through the University of Louisville, I was really drawn to the Eastern philosophies, even in high school. I remember how old are you? 43. Okay, so I'm 47. I don't know if you remember a time when you could get those like CDs for a penny. You would send off, you fill up this postcard, and you'd get like one a month. And in the end, I don't really know if you saved money, but there was this book club. It came this little, little like paper fin flyer of books on Eastern philosophies with incense and all these like cool that's great. I was like, oh, and I've like signed up and paid whatever 15 bucks or whatever, and I had this, I would get these random surprise things, and sometimes you got to pick what you wanted, and anyway. So I can remember for a really long time just being curious about other philosophies. Um, and then I went to the University of Louisville and ended up studying quite a few of those. Uh my well, my background is um humanities with concentrations in Spanish and religious studies, but it was, you know, broad, you know, a class on the Quran and you know, whatever. I can't remember, but um I did start to wonder about reincarnation. And of course, I was at the Waller School and they and I find sacred contracts, and it really held me. That book in and of itself, and and I don't know. Um, you know, my childhood was a little rough. My parents got divorced when I was young, my father had an affair, my mom was undergoing breast cancer. There was a lot going on in my world, and then I went underwent a major surgery, a spinal fusion at 12. My mom was diagnosed again with the recurrence of breast cancer. She's 71, so everybody's thriving. Um, and then my parents got divorced later, but it was a lot, and at that time it was a lot because I didn't know anybody who was divorced. I didn't know anybody who had cancer, I didn't know anybody who was having scoliosis surgery. I mean, I felt like such an outsider. Yeah. Um, and then I just didn't fit in. Um and so I was going somewhere with that. Where was I going? Because I have this oh um and so I just was questioning, and and so there was a part of me at that time that felt really connected with a victim. Yeah. And upon finding her work and also well, all at the same time, and this whole, I was like, holy cow, I mean, I picked this is awesome. Like I was able to like shift my whole perspective, not saying it was totally awesome. I just knew at this point, like, if it weren't for these things, yeah. And then of course, I'm like, oh, these people are in my life because we have a sacred soul contract to work through stuff. Right. I was able to just again reframe. Yeah. So it's really powerful for me. And I never really, I think I once I got to that archetype, I didn't dig as deep there. I was like, okay, that's a lot more work. I'm not, you know, like you almost like it's overwhelming. It is overwhelming. It feels like you could have connected with many of them, but I definitely can understand the child and the prostitute and the saboteur and the victim easily. Those are easy to yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 46:23

And the idea, I agree, the reframe is what gives you your power back, right? So the reason we want to know this, or one might want to know this, is so that we can look at the light and shadow qualities. They are neutral beings, they're they are not good or bad, right? She has the vampire in there. That doesn't sound great, but it's also like, how do I allow energy flow in my life? Uh, so they have positive and negative or light and shadow qualities. It's how we react from them. So understanding how they fall in a chart gives you more insight on how to work with these characters that have shown up over your lifetime over and over and over again. And so, yeah, the victim is there to help us with boundaries, right? Like it happens. Life is not easy. Nobody gets out of here without going through hardship. But um, my cat's getting ready to crawl on the screen, maybe. Uh, that's okay. The beauty of that is how we can work with that to get our power back, right? It's not going to the doctor and saying, here's your diagnosis, good luck with that. It's like, what might be at the root of this and what is causing uh me to react in this way? For me, the victim falls in my house of highest potential, which is house 10. And I was like, how in the world do I work with that? But I look back over my lifetime and I can look in specifically in work scenarios where I have felt victimized. I have felt like I've played the victim. And it is through understanding myself better that I was able to set boundaries in a different way later in life. So it's not a it's not a it's not a diagnosis, it's not a sentence, it's it's understanding that this is available for me to look at differently and to see how I can grow through it. And uh they really do tend to be supportive. And when you start looking at it in a chart, and there's all of these relationships among houses, and you have opposing uh archetypes, they influence one another. It's just it's a really interesting roadmap to how we're we're playing this game of life, this Leela divine play, how we show up um in our our greatest self.

SPEAKER_03: 48:43

So now when you say chart, I'm thinking uh like I had a Vedic astrology reading back in maybe the beginning of December. Are are is it is is there is the birth date and time and city are those uh no. No, but is it would you say mostly questionnaires?

SPEAKER_00: 49:02

Yeah, yeah, it's like that and then working one-on-one with somebody. So really narrowing down a lot of the archetypes might feel similar. I was on a call with uh the CMED group right before this, and they were talking about the difference between the servant and the victim, and how the victim is really about uh victimization, whereas the servant is where can I, where am I involved, right? So there's it's about taking your power back, and the servant is willing to give. Uh, so understanding these subtle nuances between, because like you said, it is overwhelming. She probably has over 70 archetypes to choose from. And uh, my job is really to help narrow that down and to help you choose what shows up most true for you, and then narrowing that down to eight specific. They land in the chart the same way. So you would have like essentially it looks like a wheel, and within the wheel are like the pies of each house. So one through 12.

SPEAKER_03: 50:00

Gotcha. And then okay, so okay, let's say you've got my chart. Yes, the goal is to help me reframe, or is it to help me um do you assist with helping me find tools to navigate moving forward?

SPEAKER_00: 50:21

Yeah, ideally, we would start with the chart to understand, just just to understand what's showing up and why. And then we would come back again at a later date after that has settled. You've had time to sit with it and allow kind of just bringing awareness to what's showing up when. Archetypes can be at play in a single day. You might have multiple ones at different times, or they you might be in like a season of life where a couple are kind of leading, leading the charge. Um, and then you would come back again and to go through that in a deeper analysis. So, what does it mean when uh my my nun archetype in house one opposes my destroyer archetype in house seven? They're totally opposite archetypes, uh, and they're in really kind of opposite houses. Uh, the house one is very much your ego, your persona, how you enter the world, house seven is your one-on-one relationships. And I have the destroyer mainly because of breath work. There is in the light quality of the destroyer, there is a desire, a longing for purity, right? Breaking down before uh we rebuild. And that's very similar to the nun, which is in my first house, which is about devotion, right? It's this devotion to God and almost even a I chose it for the negative or the shadow quality of being overly pious and judgmental. There it can be devotion to a fault. So when those two are in relationship, my destroyer comes out when my vows are broken or when a vow is broken against me, because that's something that feels so ingrained in my soul that um it's protected by the destroyer, right? So there's there's this interplay among archetypes based on how they land in your house. And that's unique to to every person, and the houses tell more of that story.

SPEAKER_03: 52:18

And so now are you now? I know are you uh is this I don't what would is it a it's a coursework you're doing right now?

SPEAKER_00: 52:26

Are you already um working and mentoring or I am no, I am on the very cusp of the certification. It should be okay. Certification.

SPEAKER_03: 52:35

I didn't know if that's what it was called or if it had a special word. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 52:40

Well, I don't know if there's anything more specific to it, but yeah, it would be certified and CMED. Oh, in CMED, okay. That's what Yeah, it's Carolyn's uh education. What is it?

SPEAKER_03: 52:53

Um in human design, they are called, they have sort of a name, but it's not um, I forget what they call. My friend is a human design. What does she call herself? But not our I don't know if she calls herself consultant. Okay. Um, but anyway, um, you know, I always think, oh, that's fascinating, and I think it's so important again, just like with both both both modalities really seem to be helping one um be able to more clearly self-reflect uh and to know oneself on a deeper level and to be able to recognize, you know, I could, yeah, definitely, you know, without knowing and being able to articulate specifically which of these uh, you know, have um been prevalent in my life over and over and over again, maybe in certain realms and maybe other archetypes and other realms. As you mentioned, like maybe work, you're this is coming, this is showing up. But at home, in your romantic relationship, this shows up. Right. Right. Because there are things that I could say in a job, which is why probably I have been uh an entrepreneur for as long as I have, then I'm not tolerating at work. Yeah, right, right. Maybe I've tolerated a little too long in some friendships or relationships. Right. And yeah, you know, so the more you know of course, right?

SPEAKER_00: 54:36

But the more you know about what's coming out and when and why, the greater you are able to catch if you're working from the lighter shadow quality. So ultimately, like we're on this journey of life to heal and whatever's next, our highest selves. Uh this gives us the chance to be in touch with that as we go along. And then we can we have a little bit more agency around how we want to handle that and choice versus just being completely unaware of what's playing out in our lives at all.

SPEAKER_03: 55:12

Yeah. So um I know you mentioned memoir earlier. And I am going without making an assumption, I'm going to make an assumption like all of this could be potentially woven into this memoir, right? Even maybe how your archetypes have played out. I don't know, maybe not. And maybe it will uh maybe it's not even, you know, covertly put in the book, but I would assume that you know the memoir is being written to why? Why are you writing a memoir? Why?

SPEAKER_00: 55:55

And uh I I just well first why because I love to write. Because when I did my uh journey of transformation chart, the poet fell in my first house, and that was the path I was on. Uh, I didn't realize this until six months into working with that chart. I didn't start the book, but um I am a writer, and so honestly, I am following what I feel like is my service to creativity. So I've done a lot of things, I've been a dilettante in many different worlds, dabbling in the arts and in healing arts, and I've learned a lot through that process. I think that I have an interesting story to share just in my life experience, and then I'm hoping that people will understand that we have so many more tools available to us than what we just typically rely on our five-sensory experience in life. Uh, working with dreams, working with energy, finding the subtleness and nuances of these things that have been in our lives forever, but maybe we didn't uh pay attention to or missed, or we could have worked with a little bit more intentionally. So the idea is to just storytell and share um how my life showed up and then hopefully help people see that there's so much out there that is in the unseen serving us. I love that you have a religious studies background. It is a passion of mine. Uh and I think right now in the world we're living, it's like this battle between God and science. And the faith traditions have so much richness to offer us, right? Like there's they're the oldest things that we can rely on in in this world. So we can't we can't push them aside just because there's it's been misused.

SPEAKER_02: 57:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 57:57

So uh for me the idea is to be able to really live courageously by falling on your faith, building your faith by recognizing what is available to you in the unseen.

SPEAKER_03: 58:11

Yeah, it's again, you know, I as I said, I was raised Methodist. Um you said Catholic. Yeah, and um my partner, he was also raised Catholic. Uh for me, having faith is still a huge piece of my life. Um I'm not Methodist. I don't really, I won't, I couldn't even um call myself anything. I don't think for me, yeah. But I can hear the war God. We went to church on Christmas Christmas Eve. Um my son's new wife is Christian, they're going to church. We went, it was beautiful, candlelight. And you know, when you're in that space, shit, it doesn't matter. I can be in a fucking basketball game. Yeah, I'm in the room with a lot of people. I get teary-eyed and I get goosebumps because there's so much energy. It really now, if maybe if I was at some other concert that was really dark and I'm not sure, you know, I'm just throwing out like maybe I wouldn't feel that, but and it could be that there's just so many people and so many different emotions and so much taking place because there's so many energies. Maybe I'd even feel moved there. I don't know, but it was um, but like I have a sister, I love her, um, who cannot even hear the word God.

SPEAKER_00: 59:46

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of people like that.

SPEAKER_03: 59:49

Yeah, and and I can go and hear any message anywhere and take out the light, you know, like I can hear the light message, if that makes sense. Like I know, and so for me, there is this, yeah, there's I do have a tremendous sense of faith um in that unseen. Yeah. And you know, sh and I'm not trying to like, but she will she knows, like she's I'm hanging up now. Cannot hear the word. Yeah. We cannot have that type of conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:24

Well, there's a lot of I mean, there's been a lot of manipulation around religion, and there's also uh a faith in in science or reason. Like that's almost its own, like I'm not going to engage with this unless there's evidence. Right. Right. Um but I think there's a truth to having a divine experience. Uh that I don't know that I don't that to me is where it's subtle. Something Carolyn says all the time is what is small is big, and what is big is small. So for me, that's found in watching a butterfly land on a plant, or seeing recognition of spirit in the world that I'm walking around in experiencing, or having complete ecstasy during my deepest forms of grief. Like it's recognizing uh just this deep, deep beauty that exists in the mundane. I feel like that is a way to be with what I call God spirit connection in this in this lifetime. And the faith traditions, while co-opted and maybe faith in religion is different than church, there are really rich uh lessons and values that tend to run across all faith traditions, right? They have fundamental values that exist across the board. So um for me, it's really understanding what that looks like, and integrity is living from that, right? Integrity is living from the place where you know you're not self-sabotaging because you're going to make that hard decision to choose otherwise. And that's when you're walking to me hand in hand with faith, right? Like I know what's good for me, I'm going to make this choice, and allowing grace when that is difficult. I think grace is a huge component, and Carolyn talks a lot about grace. You know, we can't be perfect all the time. That's a false narrative, but we can allow ourselves the grace to mess up for human like it's it's doing what we know we need to do to the prostitute, the keeper of faith, to not sell ourselves out, whether that be to another or to ourselves or to whatever our truth is and whatever we should watch for. Um along with the grace of I can start over every day. Every breath is an opportunity to to do it again.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:15

So stepping back to prior to your first breath work experience because um when I and how you felt as though you walked away very clear with so much clarity on ways to make and take action steps. Would you say that you were less faithful and trusting of your intuition prior to your breath work. Or did you feel like you kind of knew but you weren't quite trusting it yet? Um because it felt like if you knew known, you may not have needed the breath work to and I'm not saying that you you get I guess you know, for me what I'm hearing is that the breath work, the quiet has helped you really get in touch with the intuition and the guy and system.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:35

It's my discipline practice. So I had I had no problem listening to my intuition. Uh what I did before breath work and even before the cave was numb it, whether that was through well, probably probably primarily alcohol or busyness overworking. Um, so I would leave jobs without anything lined up because intuitively I was done. Like I knew I had to get out, right? Like it wasn't good for me, and I had to leave. And there was a piece of privilege associated with that, but there was a lot more willing to risk it all, right? Like I'm gonna be homeless and I have to get out of the situation. But what I was doing was probably masking a lot more, leading up to that, to where when I got to that point, it was just no going back. I was beyond where I needed to be. So, what breath work has done is um I essentially quit drinking for three years when I was doing the breathwork practice. And I don't now like I live a sober life, essentially. I might have a glass of wine here and there, but I don't, I just don't. I live a sober life now. So the breathwork is the discipline, it's constantly coming back and clearing. Um, I make a practice of doing breathwork myself, not just facilitating it. I feel like I can't teach something I don't practice. So therefore I breathe as a tool. So it what it did was it really clarified and then I've used it consistently as a practice to stay clear. But that might look like anything for anybody, right? The more I've worked with these archetypes, I've had similar experiences of dropping in deeply with knowing and knowing this with intuition. And so I think it's just it comes back to intentionality. Am I living from a place of uh truth to myself? What does that feel like? What does it feel like when I betray myself? How do I stop doing that? And and so, in order for me to be free, to live freely, unencumbered entrepreneur, I don't like reporting to anybody. I I like to be able to do what I want when I want and what I need to do. And to do it in a way that I can still be a function adult, I have to have discipline. So it's this breath work is my discipline practice among a bunch of other things, but that one really helps me stay clear. Like if I get cloudy or I'm confused or I have to breathe.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:08

Well, um, you know, I think I'm thinking about uh like individuals, of course, midlife here, midlife who are facing, you know, maybe marital problems and they're they're like on the fence and wavering, yet they kind of have the answer, you know, and I that's just one, it's like you said, like it might be a career, it could be, you know, there it could be a big move, right? And I'm just thinking that maybe if again both of these, the breath work, right, can help maybe like move stuck energy that's interfering with that ability to communicate clearly with the divine. Yeah. Or to free up. I I mean, I guess you know, what I hear it's it's what I hear oftentimes, it's a lack. of faith that the universe or you know God will show up and provide all you know it's like quitting the job I have no problem doing that right with I'm with you but there'll be other things in my life I might get stuck.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:17

Yeah and I can still be that way you know so it's haven't mastered it by any means but but the job thing okay I'll find another you know I'll figure it out yeah but I'm not gonna be somewhere when I was done with the job and that was one of the things I heard a lot oh Elizabeth's had all these jobs you know okay I've got all these jobs she might use in her master's in elementary education well I'm not gonna go do something I'm not gonna I'm gonna be feel like I'm in a prison doing it's not you know so whatever right you can do what you want that's right yeah your life your choice you know to help it you know maybe someone out there right now as we go into 2026 right to kind of like begin anew or to uh let go of um the weight that's no longer I'm not talking about physical physical emotional mental whatever weight behind it sounds like you know working with you and like integrating a breath work practice or experiencing at least once yeah uh it's such a great intervention in the world of holistic health this one is it gets there and nobody wants to go into grief right like things can be difficult to walk through so having a support network is so important and having somebody to walk alongside you through that process really matters uh because jumping it becomes self-betrayal when you continue to worry about it and fret over it and you're not making a change right then it you're betraying yourself uh but taking that step to stop that can be really really hard so it the intervention helps uh working with a support network whether that's your friends family uh therapist I'm not a therapist and that's something that you know I let everyone know to to work with somebody that um can support you through the process but I love to collaborate with therapy groups because I'm like here to help you get unstuck right we've been going through this process over and over and over. For me it was when I was fed up with my own BS right when I was done doing the same thing I've been doing my whole life and I keep coming back to the same challenge. Like I've just it's gotta stop. And it takes guts and it takes um takes self-trust and that's what I think if I if I can help people with anything it's developing trust in themselves. I'm not here to do it right like I can't do it for you but I can help you discover the truth of who you are so that the the rest of it um just kind of falls into alignment.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:03

Well I love that I love what you're doing to help you know all the individuals in the community um where you have a website yes and is that where they can find individuals the audience can find um information about your breath work sessions I know you said you have one coming up in January.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:22

I don't know it might be full but yeah the scheduling for me is at n davisbartlett.com it's n d a v i s b-ar t l-e-t-t and then all of my socials are in Davis Bartlett as well. So Instagram there's information I have a sub stack that has uh blogs about the archetypes and some others that I've written those are in Davis Bartlett I'm on LinkedIn there as well but the website is in davisbartlett.com.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:51

Okay then you're on Instagram did you say Facebook? No TikTok no okay okay well thank you so much for joining me today it's been a pleasure and I'll have to um you'll have to let me know if there's something going on in February.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:04

Yeah thank you Elizabeth I really appreciate the time to chat and get to know you better.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:09

Yeah likewise and all of Nicole's um socials website will be in the show notes below so be sure to check that out thank you so much for joining us today