Becoming You

Is criticism overshadowing celebration in your parenting approach? Are you always swooping in to save your children from any discomfort? This episode breaks down why it's so tough for us to focus on the wins and the progress crucial for our children's growth and self-esteem, why we focus on happiness instead of resiliency, and other things we do backwards in parenting. This episode is a masterclass on what you can start doing today to cultivate more independence, resilience, happiness and self esteem in your children. [00:03:04] Self-criticism and parenting habits linked to emotional wounds; importance of changing negative mindset. [00:05:02] Encourage consistent effort, celebrate small wins, and avoid focusing on shortcomings. [00:09:30] We should celebrate kids' achievements, gain their trust, and keep our promises. [00:12:22] Parent struggles with bedtime routine and prioritizing self-care, but maintains promise to child with consequences for breaking trust. [00:17:50] Parenting should be based on building emotional resilience, not just making children happy. It's about helping them handle frustration, disappointment, and anger. [00:19:53] The focus should be on emotional resilience, not just happiness. Happiness comes from struggles and discomfort. Saving kids from challenges hinders their emotional growth and independence. [00:24:14] Setting up routines and structures can alleviate the mental load and help children become independent. Montessori method encourages allowing children to make mistakes to foster independence. [00:27:11] Setting them up to rely on you, feeling resentful of lack of independence, punishing them for mistakes, avoiding reflection and change, going back to old routines instead of adapting and sharing responsibilities. Healing relationship with mistakes. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

What do you do when you have a spouse, partner, or someone you co-parent with that is not on the same page as you are when it comes to parenting your children? I often get this question from clients who are on board and doing the transformative work of becoming a conscious, peaceful parent. And yet, their spouses haven't gotten the memo and their spouses don't want to follow or be part of the transformative work. My clients end up in this world of being torn and are left feeling they have to parent their children and parent their spouse as well, It can be really, really hard when it feels like you against the entire world, including your partner or the parent or the co parent. This week - I want to give you some mindset perspectives and tangible things that you can do to help you co parent more peacefully, so you're not ending up feeling exhausted and drained. Where do you see these dynamics? What are you going to do this week to build a new foundation with your co-parent? Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

Is your parenting effective? Are you having lots of fights, yelling and constantly nagging? Do you feel disrespected? Today I have a really hard hitting episode for you and you might be uncomfortable confronting some of your parenting strategies and why they are not working, especially if you have been taking in different parenting ideas from books and podcasts. No matter the age of your kids are or where you are in your parenting journey, how you parent needs to start changing today if you desire to have a peaceful, deeply connected relationship with your child and if you want to stop yelling. If you're feeling disconnected from your child, and worry that if you keep talking to your them and treating them the way you are you won't have that close relationship where they come to you no matter what - take some time to examine these 5 reasons your strategies are falling short. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This week, I'm excited to bring you an episode where I was featured as a guest on Misha Akbar's podcast Desi Daze. In this episode, we go really deep into talking about the parts of motherhood hardly anyone talks about. There's a certain level of expectation that comes with how you believe you're going to feel when the baby finally arrives, and you believe you will be the happiest you're ever going to feel. I truly, truly believed with every ounce of my being that that's how my experience was going to be. In a sense, there is a grieving period when you become a mom because there is a loss of that old identity and we are grappling with this new identity and a loss of a previous life - with no time to process or time to grieve. Misha and I share a lot of commonalities in motherhood, and we both experienced postpartum depression. We discussed our struggles with that and the shame that we carried around about whether or not we connected with our babies and, how we seeked help and support. Both our missions are making this a topic that no woman should ever have to hide. What is one or two things that you are taking away? And was there anything in this episode that you heard that made you feel less alone? Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

As our kids get older, a lot of us will inevitably face a situation where they make a mistake - stealing, vandalizing, cheating on a test, or worse! Which will lead you to question yourself as a parent and how you prepared them for the world. Facing every parent's worst nightmare without completely losing our cool, reacting defensively and launching into a lecture is not easy! It's a challenge to not immediately blame yourself. This situation actually can help to build a deeper emotional connection with your children, but you need to break your old cycle of blame, shame, judge and give out consequences without any time passing. This episode I lay out your new action plan to diffuse the situation, and actually connect with your child in this worse case scenario. Did your child ever do something that shocked you? How did you react? I would love to hear from you on what that situation was and how you dealt with it. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

When your child says that they don't want to go to school and they're making your life difficult, they're not giving you a hard time. They are having a hard time and they need you. Whether your child has always had a difficult time with school or is suddenly experiencing anxiety about going, exploring the deeper reasons behind the resistance is the first step to and finding beneficial solutions for everyone involved. This is such a challenge in the moment to validate their feelings when you are heading out the door and they put on the brakes! No matter what it is, whatever your child is going through, it's valid. Just because you might not see it as a big problem does not mean that it's not a big problem for your child. As hard as it is, we have to believe them and take them at their word instead of negating their experience. Once you connect with your child and hear them, I have some real strategies on what you can do to help your child navigate their reluctance. I hope this helps you put together a plan on how you're going to tackle it with your own child based on their personality and the context of your life. My upcoming workshop is September 17th at 12pm EST - it's going to be designed to help you become the parent that you desire to be without all the conflict and the second guessing that you feel. Sign up here. - https://visalakshi.kartra.com/page/groundedparentworkshopseptember23 Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

I talk about our children's feelings, and how we work through connecting with them when they are in moments of stress and disregulation, but how do we learn to emotionally regulate ourselves? How do we stay calm when we are feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, irritated or sad, with our own troubles or with our children's conflicts and problems? The steps to regulation seem simple, but they aren't always easy when we are in a place of disregulation. Our timelines to work through our feelings all look different and that's absolutely okay, and is part of our process to truly connect with and process our emotions. This episode gives you actionable steps you can do right at the time of triggering feelings, but also looks ahead to how you can care for yourself to be in a better state of emotional regulation as a baseline. The more we nourish ourselves, the safer it becomes for emotional regulation. Your child needs you to regulate yourself so that they can then find their center and calmness. My upcoming workshop is September 17th at 2pm EST - it's going to be designed to help you become the parent that you desire to be without all the conflict and the second guessing that you feel. Mark the time on your calendar and the link will be coming your way soon! Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This week I am bringing to you an episode where I was interviewed by another amazing podcast host, John Wang on his show - Big Asian Energy. He is an educator, speaker, a certified coach who specializes in working with Asian Americans on inner work, mindset and their communication skills. We unpacked how Asian culture makes us believe that our worth is solely tied to our achievements and productivity and seeking approval from our family and superiors. We start to believe that our value is measured through external validation and what others think of us. Then this belief system leads to self doubt and a disconnection from our true selves. We did a dive deep into inner child work, the emotional wounds that we incur as children and how breathwork can really free us of this experience and the narratives we tell ourselves that we can step into our truest, biggest versions of ourselves. So listen to this week's powerful episode and enjoy. Find John here - https://www.instagram.com/johnwangofficial/ https://www.bigasianenergy.co/ Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

A lot of us make the mistake that happiness is when there are no problems in life. I know I certainly used to fall into that bucket, and I believed I would be happy when all my problems disparaged and I had everything I desired. But re-framing happiness to be more than just a destination, we see that happiness visits us quite often in life. If you want to be happy, it's about focusing on building many, many, many moments of joy and cultivating a positive mindset - not just positive thoughts. but an overall positive mindset where you feel like life is working out for you - you believe that the challenges that you face in life are there to serve you. If we believe that the challenges and the setbacks we have in life are out to get us, then we are forever going to be struggling in life. I believe I definitely am building my children up to be overall happier in life. My parenting has changed, and I have changed, and cultivating happiness is a tremendous part of this process. You can integrate one or two of these ideas and it's going to help not only you, but your kids as well, and create an overall incredible environment for them to be happy. Don't do all 10 all at once - but let me know which one you picked to focus on. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

How do I become a more conscious, present and patient parent? I often get asked these questions on my consult calls - These are fully booked for the rest of the month but I do have space in September. Parents always want to know, how do I become more patient? How do I be more present with my children? This podcast is one from the archives - I recorded it the first year I had started the show.| Being a conscious parent has always been an important focus for my clients and for myself, and over two years later, our children may be a little older, but this advice still rings true. Our relationship with our children, starts with our relationship with ourselves, and this episode is a fantastic reminder. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This fantastic discussion came up during a connection call with a potential client - she mentioned that she had been using consequences with her child without much success, and by the end of the call she wanted to know what she could do instead. From my personal experience, I found that consequences stopped working as well as my children grew. Consequences did work, they had an immediate reaction and corrected the behaviour, but at what cost? They often leaves your child feeling ashamed and really angry and disconnected from you - when often the behavior that you're trying to correct and the discipline you're trying to instill is a cry for connection and attention. For a child looking for connection, consequences push them even further away, exactly what we don't want do! I have 10 suggestions for other ways you can correct unwanted behaviours - we want to use consequences as our very last resort and there are a lot of options for other ways to help our child understand what behaviour we are looking for. Which of these methods will you use the next time you usually would have given out consequence? I would love for you to share with me by leaving a review of the show.if this was helpful Do you need help and support to stop using consequences with your children? I am inviting you to book a call a free 1:1 call with me right now. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

I hope for you to use this podcast episode as a way to bring awareness to your parenting patterns and know that you can absolutely change any of the ways your childhood trauma might be showing up in your parenting. When I first started my healing journey, I didn't think I had that much trauma in my childhood and many people say the same thing. We are incredibly unaware of how we carry micro and macro trauma, which affects everything we do in life, until you actively work on healing those things so that they no longer run us. Some of these examples may hit a nerve and be hard to hear - but I want you to know that you can change and absolutely repair any and all damage - you're not a lost cause and neither is your family. You have so much power to change your story and the future of your family. But it always starts with you. Do you need help and support doing this healing work - so your can kids can feel like you are their safe haven? This is the transformation I provide my clients and I am inviting you to book a call a free 1:1 call with me right now. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This week, I enjoyed taking my oldest son out for dinner, the bookstore, and a movie. My husband and I have been intentional about creating 1:1 time with each child, it's a great way to form connections and really just make them feel really special. As we shopped, my son told me about so many of the books he had read, and about the plots, it was just so cool to speak to him on that level. It was interesting taking a 13-year-old boy to see Barbie, he had picked it, and I didn't quite know what I was walking into, unlike a lot of other movie trailers, it gave nothing away other than the fact that it was about Barbie. This whole episode is about what I took away from the Barbie movie. So, just a heads up, there are going to be spoilers. So, if you plan on watching it and don't want any spoilers, then come back to it after you've seen the movie! I was really happy that I was able to take my teen boy to see this, even though a lot of the topics might have gone over his head. I was so proud that I took him so that he could be exposed to the very real problems that women face in this world - the inequalities, the fears that we face on a daily basis that men don't have to, the pressures that we carry. He got an introduction to that, and we talked about it afterward. And it is my job to curate and expose him to as many different ideas as possible and help him to critically think about things. Now, I don't know that I'm doing a fabulous job of this, but I'm doing it messily. I'm doing it imperfectly, right? And I'm doing it very differently from what my parents did. I would love to hear from you if you watched the Barbie movie and what you thought about it! I want to invite you to book a call a free one-on-one call with me right now. I promise you at the end of this call is that you're going to walk away with a three-step action plan on getting some changes and wins in your relationship and dynamics with your children right away. https://calendly.com/visashan/grounded-parent-call Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This week, my guest Lisa Thee has an inspiring story to share about her career, its evolution in a much more fulfilling direction, and breathwork's support in her life. As a busy executive, her health and wellbeing were suffering, and although she was a little skeptical of breathwork, she has found it a tremendously helpful tool for her wellness. Her career now combines AI and online child safety online and her new book is coming out, Go!: Reboot Your Career in 90 Days - and I know her actionable and real steps will help so many who have felt unfulfilled in their career. LIsa is a Top 50 Global Thought Leader for AI, Privacy, and Safety with demonstrated experience in delivering revenue and solving complex business technology, governance, privacy and risk challenges at scale. Connect with Lisa: Connect with Lisa here - www.lisathee.com www.lisathee.com/go Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This week I had the pleasure of being a guest on my friend, Melissa Eich's podcast. She is a health coach and nutritionist, health coach and we just had a blast having a conversation around how when you're stressed as a parent, it actually shows up in your inability to get healthy, whatever your health goals might be. Melissa did a fantastic job of asking the best questions, and I really hope you enjoy this conversation all about how parenting can become really stressful and get in the way of us becoming our best selves. I share some really great tips on how to reframe your mindset when it comes to parenting and how to think differently about your child or children so that you can have a more peaceful home while also taking really good care of yourself. Connect with Melissa - IG: @melissa_eich TikTok: @melissa_eich Website: www.melissaeichcoaching.com Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

I'm moving away from the term gentle parenting and using the terms conscious parenting or grounded parent. The word can put people off, because they might have certain not-so-helpful connotations attached to the word gentle. This all comes back to our own mindset - words have stories and deeper meanings and stories associated with them. The belief in what gentle means and if we can embody that meaning is just putting too high of expectations on people who are new to thinking about being a different parent. No one is a perfect parent. Being a conscious parent means you are aware of your emotions, rather than accepting the default of being only gentle, and the more we work on ourselves, the better version of us shows up for our children, and ourselves. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

This week's guest is a friend and past client, Ami Doshi, a busy mother of two teens, and a wealth management specialist where she works with women looking to live their best lives by taking control of their financial health. We connected several years ago when she was looking for a life coach, and I am so excited to share her recent experience and her self-reflection on her personal development over the last few years. When we started working together, she was not trusting her intuition and felt an internal need to be a little more mindful about how she was curating her life. She felt reactive and that she was allowing circumstances to dictate her next steps as opposed to articulating what she wanted and curating a life accordingly. She just recently undertook the massive challenge - 29029 Everesting, and her experience was so profound. She shares the determination, self-trust and acceptance, and sheer grit she had to complete the challenge. By trusting in herself, being so confident, and hearing her inner voice so strongly, as she completed her climbs she had tremendous revelations about her own strength of mind and her body, leaving her with newfound clarity and true freedom. I hope you enjoy this episode about sheer embodiment and the feeling of deep accomplishment, and how Ami truly now feels that she, herself, in her heart, is more than enough. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

You Absolutely have what it takes If you are looking for a different way to parent, you've heard about gentle parenting. But what does gentle parenting mean? Are you worried you are going to give permission for your kids to be in control? They won't have any form of discipline? Maybe you are worried you don't have what it "takes" to be a gentle parent, and that's only for a very patient person and that doesn't feel like it's possible. This podcast is going to show you that it is possible for you and your family to have a more gentle, connected, and cooperative relationship. It really is about being an empathetic listener and a gentle guide to your children, it's not about letting your kids be in control. As parents, it's essential to be gentle and compassionate with ourselves too. It's okay to have moments of frustration and anger, and gentle parenting focuses on repairing those ruptures with specific steps to strengthen trust, respect, and love. Tune in to this episode to learn how to become a gentle parent and build a positive relationship with your child. Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

We all have moments in our family where we go head-to-head with our kids. We don't back down. They don't back down. They don't listen. We try to explain, and then before you know it, everyone is yelling and fighting with each other, and everyone's just left feeling exhausted, This episode has my 7-step process to help you regulate yourself and de-escalate the issue, and it really is a de-escalation. This is a true negotiation and conflict because disagreements like this are like you have been hijacked, it's what it feels like when your child is being defiant, not listening, or being disrespectful. Your entire evening and your mood and your energy levels are all being hijacked by your child or your children and their lack of respect and consideration. Our job as a parent, Is to really try and connect with the emotion behind the outburst. Now, this is a real challenge - we ourselves have our own triggers and emotions to deal with, but we are ultimately the caregivers and it's upon us to model how to behave and help our children feel safe when they feel they're out of control and they're feeling powerless. Tune in and start implementing the process, this will absolutely help you during the next outburst. Let me know what stood out to you. Find out more about my program, The Grounded Parent https://visalakshi.kartra.com/page/thegroundedparent Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE

We are often very quick to prevent our children from making mistakes, to protect them from their own mistakes, and give them as much advice and life experience as necessary to protect them from failing. We want to see them succeed, and protect them. But by doing this, we often fail to realize what a gift there is in mistakes that our kids make. I have been really challenging myself to allow my kids to make mistakes, as long as it doesn't affect them physically or in an adversely mental way. There is a lot they can learn through their own process to find their own answers. Now that I follow the values of gentle parenting and conscious parenting, I still really have a hard time guiding them and supporting them through this process without nagging or projecting my own feelings. This week's episode shares two recent examples of parenting where I did my best to keep myself on the sidelines and to let the situation happen without my intervention, but rather as a teacher and guide. Find out more about my program, The Grounded Parent https://visalakshi.kartra.com/page/thegroundedparent Sign up for FREE live breathwork sessions here Set up a free consultation call to work with me privately here Send me a DM on Instagram HERE