How Epigenetics Affect Our Behavior w/ Ann Shivas, Ph.D.
I think it's important to understand that they are greater than they believe in this moment.
And it took me forever to learn that.
When you sort out patterns that you no longer want, you can become completely unstoppable.
And that feels great.
Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.
I am your host, Roberta Angela.
If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.
Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.
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Now, let's get communicating.
Now, let's get communicating with our special guest from Ventura Island, she is Dr.
Ann Shivas, who has a PhD in Epigenetics, a subject that I have become a little more familiar with because I listen to so much of Dr.
Joe Dispenzer, Ann is going to talk to us about how we can use the science behind this in order to heal ourselves, deal with stress and so much more, and most importantly, change our habits.
She will take us on a journey that she takes her sweet, executive leader clients through when it comes to the science behind this.
And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.
Hi, Ann.
Hey, thanks for having me.
So excited to be here.
Me too.
It's my absolute pleasure.
Welcome.
I'm excited to be here because I think we're going to learn so much from you.
But before we get into that, please introduce yourself to our listeners.
Yeah.
Well, I've been on a bit of an interesting journey in my own life.
I started off as actually a school teacher, out of all things.
So I did my Masters of Teaching and went through and started teaching kids in physical education.
And at the time, like looking back on it now, knowing what I know now, I would teach a whole lot differently.
But I got out of the system because for me, the system wasn't helping every child thrive.
And I was like, oh, I need a bit more.
In regards to my personal health journey, I went back to school and I finished my Diploma of Osteopathy and went into clinical.
I've been a clinician now coming up to about 10 years and just had some wonderful experience of working with loads of people.
I had a clinic downtown Montreal for a while and then went on the road and worked with some pro athletes and things like that.
And then I landed actually in working with corporate because being downtown Montreal, people were like, well, I need a lot of help.
And they're stuck in kind of that corporate cycle of work and stress and not knowing how to manage themselves and so on.
And at the time, I went back and started my PhD.
And I said, well, look, I'm learning this new information.
Why don't I work with you guys?
So upstairs, I go into my first corporate space and started teaching them what I knew.
And it's come a long way since then.
So now I do go into corporate and I have a whole program that I run them through.
And the basis of it is actually teaching them who they are in their own body from a genetics perspective, which sounds so out there going into corporate and doing that, but it works.
And then we get into how these types will naturally see the world and how they communicate, you know, old habits that we've learned and why we express the way we express.
And then how do you change that if you don't want to keep those little habits?
Yeah, and we certainly do want to change some habits.
And we always wonder why do we always go into our old ways.
But before that, here's something interesting that you said.
And I hear this expression a lot here in the US that whole no child left behind.
Is it practical to have no child left behind?
That's a good question.
I think the way the system's built and how education is built, and this is why I left it.
I actually do consult in the teachers a lot too.
So I know there's teachers out there that don't want children left behind because that's where their hearts at, right?
That's why they're in it.
But the way the system is built in this moment, I don't think it's conducive to not leaving any child behind.
I think what we need to do and what I would really push for first is helping the kids know themselves.
So if you take a different model, like we kind of teach in the way in North America of, like you have to do it this way or it's not right, and you have to learn this material or it's not right.
Take all the entrepreneurs in the world, right?
And all the entrepreneurs have solved problems.
And I'm not saying every kid is meant to be an entrepreneur, but give them something exciting to do, like open an ice cream shop.
That's more practical.
And then think of all the skills that are needed to open an ice cream shop and sell ice cream.
And this layers into communication, right?
How are you going to communicate with your customers so that you can explain to them maybe what kind of ice cream they might like?
Also, asking for money and receiving money and giving them money back and communicating that whole process.
Like all of that are things that we do on a daily.
And if kids don't get experience or exposure to that, Australia is looking to ban iPhones below a certain age in the country.
That's a bit interesting to me.
They get kids, you know, more in tune with themselves, more knowing themselves, probably more of this type of interaction, even though we're on tech, but talking, watching someone's face.
It's really important for our social cues and to understand being in a social setting, right?
To me, that's what businesses are built on, are the people.
That's what every business I go into, they understand that.
They're like, hey, I want to take care of my people.
I want to learn how to communicate with my people.
I want to be better and I want to help them be better too.
And I don't know, there's probably some schools out there that are doing amazing things.
So I'm not going to knock every school, but the mainstream system, probably not.
I haven't heard that about Australia, but to be honest with you, I would support them in that because two reasons.
One, I had a guest who has won so many best art teacher in the state of California award.
And she says over the years that she's been teaching, because they're trying to replace art classes with tech now.
Because you know, government will say, you can have either or, because we don't have a budget for both.
And she says, the problem with tech, especially when they start at kindergarten is that they don't even know how to scribble and to hold a pencil properly.
The cognitive skills, the emotional skills are diminished.
And then secondly, like you said, we discuss communication and some skills on the show, and you cannot develop those skills unless you literally on a daily basis practice them with other people.
And when will you learn them if all you do is just scrolling on the Internet?
Yeah.
And I think of the deeper part of this too is, we don't really want to change people, but we want to guide them on their journey, if that makes sense.
The essence of it is exactly what you said.
How do you show up in a world with social beings?
How do you communicate with them?
How do you commit to actually doing a job for a year and learn skills from that?
And within those skills, okay, maybe the first job is like you're making and delivering pizzas.
Okay, great.
What are the soft skills you're going to learn from that?
I think everyone should have a customer service job in their life, by the way.
Yes.
I mean, I used to work at a Dairy Queen as a kid.
And so you learn time management.
Like you have to pump out ice cream cones when people want their ice cream cones, right?
And so like those soft skills, even at a young age, you can carry through and you learn how to deal with conflict when someone's not happy with their ice cream cone, right?
It's the reality of it and that whole ice cream cone situation is going to carry on in life because chances are there'll be conflict, you know, as we go through.
So how do we deal with that?
Always.
So first, please explain to us, what is epigenetics?
So epi is above or around and genetics is you.
It's the best way to explain it.
That's the word.
OK, so everything that surrounds you interacts with you.
For example, an easy way to explain is if I go outside in Canada in the freezing cold winter, I'm going to shiver because it's cold.
OK, but if I go outside and I'm in on a beautiful warm island, which I'm dreaming of right now, I might get sunburned.
OK.
And so those are two different expressions based on my environment.
But let's put it in real time context.
So if we take a person, and they get constantly yelled at as a kid, no, no, no, you're not doing this right.
You're not doing this right.
You're not doing this right.
They'll start to look at their world as everything.
I'm not doing right.
It's a programming.
And so when a boss or a supervisor comes along and says, hey, look, you're just not doing that right.
They'll probably have that same childhood reaction of like, I'm not good enough and I'm not doing well.
And everyone can kind of feel that in a way, because we all have some kind of pattern of feeling put down, of feeling diminished in the workplace, of not feeling appreciated.
Like, this is everything I hear when we go into corporate.
Like, they don't appreciate me.
They don't respect me.
I'm not heard.
These are all the things I hear.
And so what I take people on the journey of is saying, well, look, we got to go back into how you've been programmed to come into this world and actually reprogram you.
And it's very specific on what I do.
We go back to certain ages from when they remember hearing that, and we re-pattern it in their whole body into something new.
And the trick with genetics and epigenetics is what you believe and perceive you are, you'll create around you.
You'll see it, you'll think about it, you'll create it.
Joe Dispenza talks a lot about that.
So he talks a lot about gratitude.
Okay, if you have gratitude in you all the time, what are you going to see the world like?
Gratitude.
But the thing is, is not everyone can stay in that because they don't know how, because they haven't exchanged out those old patterns first.
So we want to go back and exchange out the old patterns, like even the habits of like, okay, I'm stressed, I'm going for the sugar food, right?
I'm stressed, okay, I'm just going to self-sabotage myself really and go for the sugar food because that's comfortable for me right now, instead of looking at the pattern of why I got so stressed in the first place and put myself in that situation.
So in a way, when I work with people, I'm that middle person of observing and learning and listening to them, okay, this is exactly how you think and see the world.
So that's the one-on-one work I do with people because it's so detailed that they must come into themselves and want to face themselves and know themselves better.
And then as they get rid of and translate out old patterns and add in new ones, they start to feel different because old patterns like this can consume us and drain our energy.
When we drain our energy, we feel heavy, we feel sad, we feel judged, angry, fear.
All of these are really heavy emotions that we really don't need.
And we don't need to live and nobody wants to live there, so we must exchange it out for something new.
And that's the process.
Now, getting a little bit deeper into epigenetics is the fact that nobody's the same on the planet, which I find fascinating.
I've like always found this fascinating, like, why are people different, right?
Visually, we see people and they look different.
But has anyone ever thought of the fact that everyone has a different purpose on this planet?
And it's true, because we're all built differently, and from ages zero to where you are now, your experiences and mine have been totally different in life.
So even maybe we show up to collaborate with something because we want to see change in the world and we want to help people.
The way you help and see the world will be even somewhat different than mine, and the way your personality shows up in your experiences are going to be different than mine.
And that's the joy of being human, is we can all collaborate instead of compete.
I think in a way competing needs to go, and we need to learn in a way how to collaborate with each other, saying, okay, I can see where you're coming from.
How can we connect this together?
And that'll take a lot of stress even out of the workplace, because like, what are your experiences adding to this?
Or what do you think?
You know, everyone's experiences are different in how they want to input, and participate.
We always say collaboration will always trump competition every time, because when you collaborate, you see each other as being on the same team, versus when you're competing, it's literally looking at your enemy.
We both vying for the same thing, and I want to get there first before you do.
And it's about, again, like the enjoyment of the process, rather than the competition and the force, I guess you could say, of competing against someone else and having to be better at someone else.
Because where would the mind go?
I have to be better than this person, rather than I'm going to enjoy the process.
Like the perspective of it and the energy of it is completely different.
And so, you know, when we change our perspective and we look at it more in an opportunistic way, and more of a collaborative way, it's going to create a much better atmosphere.
And that's where I've had culture change in corporations, is actually putting in a model that is more collaborative and getting people to start speaking like that.
It's not easy for them in the beginning, but I'll teach them almost like a new language of like how to listen to somebody when they're stressed.
And when they're stressed, how to take them into a space of going into their unmet needs.
So like I spoke about, someone comes up and they're all stressed out and they're putting you down and so on.
And what we must look at as humans is they probably have some kind of unmet need behind the behavior.
So they act out, they might act like a little child, they might have a temper tantrum and so on.
And that's their life experience expressing itself in that situation.
And so as humans, we can say, okay, I wonder really what they're needing in this moment.
It could be safety, could be support.
The human need behind the behavior is the most important thing to find, to connect with somebody.
And when you can find that and connect, you create safety, you create trust.
And then you can get into the conversation of actually moving forward together of what it looks like.
And that's been the biggest leap I've had with people coming into a corporate space where like, we can't get along.
And actually, one of my American clients, I love it.
They nicknamed the program, Don't Be a Jerk at Work, which I was like, I'm not going to call it that, but you guys can call it that.
Very straightforward.
Yeah, they're like, don't be a jerk at work.
And then my New Zealand clients, for example, they call it collaborative communication.
So they're a little bit more straight.
A little more polite, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so there's so much as a human we can do for ourselves to take accountability for like saying, okay, you know, I'm reacting here and I've been reacting to the same scenario in every career I've taken.
How can I look in the mirror and see what I'm not, what need I'm not meeting for myself?
And let's say I need trust in the workplace.
We will go one step further and say, well, what does that look like to you?
Because like I mentioned before, your expressions in life and your experiences in life are going to be totally different than mine.
So trust and safety might look totally different in comparison to one, where we both live, right?
Two, where we both grew up and who we grew up with.
So it's important to discover with that person what trust and safety looks like and build from there in the workplace.
And then when it comes to competition, I feel like just by virtue of corporate being this hierarchy, everybody feels that they need to compete in order to climb the corporate ladder.
Would you agree?
Yeah, I do agree and I do see it.
And I think there's some models in the States actually that are getting away from that now.
Even pay grades are quite similar.
They're in California.
I was looking up a few companies and they're talking about it.
And they're having good success with giving everyone the same wage.
So people feel equal, they feel accountable for what they're doing.
Now, these are smaller businesses and startups.
So I imagine that can maybe be easier.
But that needed to say, we can solve a lot of problems of trucks and cars and things like that.
So why can't we change this?
There's actually about six different brain types on the planet, and they'll operate and see the world differently.
And again, it's based on your childhood experiences.
So if you feel boxed in when I say this, because oftentimes they're like, you're boxing me in and I'm a unique individual, and I'm like, okay, yes, you are.
Yes, we know.
It gives them a little bit of a run over of kind of how they would naturally operate in their environment.
And we can even get down to how they would operate when they're stressed.
And so when I teach this in corporate, it's really nice to know because you could view a teammate when they are stressed and be able to help them with the methods that I give.
And I think that's really important because we know chronic stress leads to all disease, period.
So I always tell people, look, if you want to start eliminating chronic disease on this planet, start treating each other differently.
And they're like, I never thought about that.
I'm like, right.
Yes, that is very true.
Yeah, it is true.
And so the six different types, I'm going to just kind of rhyme some things off and your viewers can go on and Google it.
You know, we have a testosterone built body, so they'll be a little bit shorter and fiery and action oriented.
So let's say, well, what do you want me to do?
You know, they're doers.
They have to do, they have to move.
And so their brain will think like that as well.
And then we move over and we get an oxytocin type.
They're just like a bright sunny day and they need love and they need connection and they're master connectors.
So they'll come over and they'll smile and they'll build trust with you right away.
They'll notice something about you.
They're very visual people.
So that was interesting during COVID because when they couldn't see people, we actually saw them fall into a really depressed state because they need that visual connection to be able to feel good.
And so I'm linking some of this into mental health because if we don't sit in our natural ways, we'll feel the effects for sure.
And that type did during COVID.
Then we go over one more and your viewers can look up Prolactin.
Prolactin is what a mother produces when she's pregnant.
And they'll have a larger mass on their bodies and so on, but they're really genuine caretakers.
So they'll fill your cup before their own.
And so as your listeners are going through this, they're probably like, oh my gosh, I get this person, I get this person.
The thing with these people is they'll totally nurture their team.
And it comes very naturally to them.
So people in the workplace can start putting these people in places where they can actually thrive and feel good.
Like I would totally take one of those types and be like, you're in charge of this team, take care of them.
And they'd be like, yay, I love that.
Because it feels natural to them.
And then we go into more of our detailed type that's run by serotonin.
Serotonin is built in the gut, by the way.
So gut health is a total another topic around conversation even as well.
But serotonin is that detailed person.
I need the words, I need the detail, I need the figures, I need to go back into the past and see what's been done three years ago, five years ago, to make my decision.
So try putting that testosterone driven person in the serotonin driven person in the same room.
And you get the mover and the shaker of like, okay, I'm ready to go now, I want to start.
And then you get the serotonin and like, well, we don't have enough detail, we can't start.
Now you can see where there's going to be conflict in the workplace, right?
But if people know that and understand that about how they naturally think and see the world in their environments, which again is epigenetics, then they can work with that instead of working against each other.
They're like, oh, okay, I actually think like this.
So I know actually how to approach this person now and how I can work with them based on what their needs are and what my needs are.
And they get me too.
And then there's two more types.
They're the neuroadrenaline and dopamine type.
They're usually the forward thinkers, they're the leaders in the company, they're the visionaries.
So they'll picture the future.
They'll picture what things want to look like in the future.
And sometimes they're...
Steve Jobs is exactly that.
Usain Bolt, you know, the sprinter.
He's that.
He's that type.
Visionary.
I know what I want in the future, and I'm going to bring my team along with them.
So they love when people are part of their team following their vision.
The thing is, sometimes they put their blinders on, and they kind of forget about everyone else.
So they're kind of labeled as like, well, he's a jerk, and he doesn't want to understand me, so to speak.
And so they might not have the more so-called social aspects of them, unless they've developed it for themselves, and it's a part of their purpose, and that's okay.
Right?
So it's like putting people in the right position for themselves to thrive is absolutely essential, and then also understanding all of them in the workplace.
And so I've had people build their workplaces around this and reconfigure based on that, and that's been less stressful for people.
When things are less stressful, so we know that communication is going to be better.
And so that's the deeper part of epigenetics.
But then they can go in to saying, well, I still get angry when this person does this, even though that's their natural tendencies.
And I say, okay, well, then let's exchange out that pattern of how you've perceived your world since you were a child.
When we go in and we do some of these presentations, it gets really funny because people start actually understanding one another and appreciating them.
Oh my gosh, I get you now.
I get why you're such the doer and you never want to stop and you talk so fast.
Oh my gosh, I get why you want all the detail all the time.
And to me, you look like you're working slow, but you're not.
You're just taking in all the details before you want to move forward.
Right?
I get why you're so focused on work because your dopamine is running super high and you don't want to be distracted at all.
So I won't bother you when you're doing your work, right?
So it's like just appreciating that about people and loving it about them.
It creates such an amazing workplace for people to thrive.
Fascinating because, you know, we say sometimes that you can think, oh, I'm an excellent communicator.
But that's not as important as finding out, how does Ann experience me when I communicate?
Yeah.
Because that's when we can determine whether your communication skills are up to par or not.
100%.
And like you said, there's the one part of really understanding others.
So that's really wonderful.
So that's the external experience around you.
But there's the internal experience as well.
And I always say good communication starts with listening.
So am I really hearing?
If you came to me with a problem and you were stressed out, am I just going to say, oh, well, that's just life?
Too bad.
Shake it off.
It'll get better.
That's not listening, that's dismissing their human need.
And we do it often and we don't even realize that we do it.
And we're taught to do it probably because we don't have the skills of how to deal with a stressed person.
The flip side of that is if you did come to me and you're having a tough day, which by the way, you can call me whenever, I'd be happy to listen to you.
And you sit down, I'm having a really tough day.
What do you think about this?
You know, and I would say, well, you know, what's really going on with you?
Give me some more details.
I want to understand this.
I really want to sit with you and understand this.
And I would ask your viewers, how many people actually sit down and really hear what's going on in the person and can fully get present and understand it?
I think we can do that in private.
But when you think of the workplace, think of your leader clients, for instance.
Don't you think that sometimes when they say that, it's because we have a pressing deadline, we have to get this done, we don't have time to sort of, with the luck of a better word, caudal you?
Or we can deal with that later, but right now, Ann, we have more pressing issues.
Because as much as we say the workplace is more people centred now, the work needs to be done.
I agree.
When I go into corporate, and they say, well, we don't have time to communicate with that, I would say, well, okay, you know, get what you need to get done.
But how are you checking in with your team to make things better?
So there can still be a check in point where you come and sit down with that person.
Maybe it's their, you know, quarterly meeting or whatever they have around, really want to hear and understand how things are going and how you think things can change.
And I think a lot of leaders do that.
But I think it's also worth hearing the need behind what they really value.
And if we go around those epigenetic types that I explained, everyone will have core values based on who they are.
And when you can understand their core values, you can understand what's really going to make them tick in the workplace and help them grow for themselves.
Yes, I agree that there are these timelines and people need to get things done.
And sometimes systems aren't up to par.
And I have come up with a way to make really clear requests with people so they don't come across as demands.
That's another thing we work on.
Because sometimes people come across as being really demanding and a request and the demand is different.
And I'll just share this with your viewers because I think it's important.
Well, a request is someone says no to your requests.
Okay.
And I would ask people, how do you treat them after they say no?
So do you judge them?
Do you get angry, etc?
Or do you try to understand why they were saying no?
That's the difference.
The request person tries to say, okay, well, could you just let me know why or what's up?
And can we work it out kind of thing?
The demand person goes, well, gosh, you're an idiot and gets angry.
So there's the reaction.
Don't be a jack at work.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
And so there's two different ways of reacting.
Do we want to react in the stressed way back?
Or do we want to react in a constructive way of being like, okay, could I actually just understand this more?
And that's where it comes back to what we were talking about.
Can I actually just understand really what's going on?
Even if it is a quick explanation in a fast-paced world, at least you're still gathering information and understanding about the person and you're hearing them.
We can hear still in a fast-paced world.
You don't have to sit down and have a coffee every time.
It can be quick.
It can be a quick understanding.
It can be through email.
You know, it can be through voice note.
Like we have all these tools, right, that we can use just to gather information about people.
And that's always really beneficial rather than treating someone differently when they don't do it, because that's going to cause havoc at the workplace 100%.
So now we've covered understanding your team members so that you understand how they operate.
Now, let's talk about our internal work.
How do we change our habits?
Because here's the thing.
A lot of us have been to Tony Robbins' seminars and, you know, we're ready to change and totally revolutionize our lives.
And as soon as we get home, we go back to our old habits.
Why does it seem like we just keep getting defeated on that front?
What kind of habits the people have that you see?
So I can kind of speak into something relevant.
Like, for instance, I suffer from procrastination.
Just out of curiosity, what happens internally in you?
Like panic, stress, like what happens?
Not panic and stress as such, but just delaying, just thinking, I'll still get it done.
But I don't know why I put myself in a position when on the 11th hour, then I will have that pressure.
I'm not proud of myself for doing that.
I know it's something I want to change.
Like if I'm given an assignment today for the next, and it's due in 10 days, I want to start today.
Totally.
So in the process of changing that, can we use your example?
Do you mind?
So in the process of procrastination, I would always go back and say, where do you think you learn that in your life?
I grew up in a household where procrastination was normalized.
I grew up in a household where maybe I didn't feel confident for actually finishing things.
These are just all random patterns.
They might not be yours.
But some examples that I've seen, I grew up in a place where I didn't feel confident in what I was doing, so I always waited till last minute.
So I can make an excuse of like, well, I did it last minute.
Actually, my parents were the opposite.
They really worked hard.
But here's what I'm wondering.
I was really smart at school, always did my homework, hardly ever in trouble.
So I'm wondering, like I said earlier, that I love math and science and everything.
I'm wondering if when I procrastinate, is it because it's something I don't like doing?
And then we would go one step further and say, okay, why don't you like doing it?
Is it because you're not confident in it?
You're not feeling good at it yet?
Like usually there'll be something in your mind that you're telling yourself, like I don't like doing this.
And it's like, well, why?
Right?
And usually the brain's like, well, you can't do it, or you're not good at it, or it's not good enough yet, or you can't find the gratitude and love in the situation that you're in.
Something along those lines.
That's why I'm wondering if there's a connection to my school experience, because if school was so easy for me, now that I'm a grown up and work is sometimes not as easy at school, as school was, is it because it's new territory for me to not know what to do or to find it a little challenging?
Yeah, how do you deal with challenge in your life now as an adult?
Yeah, if life was cruisy as a kid, we might not have developed those skills, right?
Like we said, when you go in and work at a Dairy Queen like I did, you develop customer service skills.
Not everybody has that.
And you can tell when they treat a waiter and waitress a certain way, right?
That they haven't been in their shoes, yeah.
You can tell, yeah.
And so it's the same when we go through every experience.
And so in the workplace, I would look into how you deal with something that's challenging and start to get in tune with your internal talk.
What are you telling yourself?
I can't do this.
I'm not good at it.
I don't know how to deal with it and so on.
Or I'm viewing it as a challenge because that's what I actually believe that it is.
There's loads of different patterns of the way people believe.
So we'd have to sit down and have a little deeper of a conversation of your belief system, of who you believe you are in these challenging situations.
And then what we do is we exchange it out.
So what I do is I take people back to their childhood.
And it's generally done through a really calm scenario.
So I don't do this with people at the workplace generally.
Usually we either do it online or in there at home.
And we get them in a really kind of meditative state.
In the meditative state, they can actually go back into their childhood and feel where they've developed a pattern of maybe how they view challenge, for example.
Okay.
And then we replace it out for something new.
Visceral experience and the feeling and getting them in it is so important because we want them to recreate that in their lives.
The same goes for when I work with people who are abused.
We actually go back and in a way we revisit it.
And we repattern that out of their system and put in something new.
And generally, they don't think about it anymore.
But they have to be willing to go there.
And so that's the deeper part of the work.
I think Tony Robbins and Joe Spence and all their stuff, it's great.
It's a stepping stone for self-awareness.
It means sort of saying, I'm ready to work on myself.
But this work is deeper.
It's more specific.
It's specific to the person.
I've never had two clients that are the same.
And then on the other side of exchanging out all these patterns where they're feeling stuck, they can come into a space of actually knowing themselves in every situation, which personally, I think that's a superhuman power.
Knowing who you are in situations and being able to really stand in your own self.
And that, by the way, is connecting to source and understanding yourself and how you connect to like a larger world and your larger purpose on this planet.
And that's the second part is knowing that you connected with the universe god, whatever, you have a specific purpose on this planet.
And that purpose is yours to live.
And a lot of people don't even realize that they have a purpose.
They're just going through life, doing the same thing over and over again.
But once people realize they have a purpose on this planet, it gives them life, it gives them energy, it gives them this sense of gratitude for being there.
And so you show up differently, right?
You show up being like, wow, I have something to give, I have something to receive.
I love this because I love myself.
So it's all of these patterns that we want to exchange out to get out to the world differently and then get down to the bottom of understanding our purpose and living it.
A lot of people think purpose is what they do.
So it's my job.
My purpose is being a mother, father, it's my job, these kind of things.
No.
In epigenetics, in the deeper parts of ourselves, it's like you're giving your own unique code, okay?
So it's how you show up and how you are is your purpose.
Does that make sense?
Some people say my purpose is to create a non-profit that helps force the children or always related to something you do for others.
But it's also how you decide to show up.
So the people who create maybe a non-profit, part of their purpose might be to nurture others, like they really value and love nurturing others and it comes naturally to them.
And their purpose is to be a mother.
It's not to be a mother, it's to really nurture beings.
So they could do it being a mother, they could do it doing a non-profit, they could do it helping children who need to be adopted.
Like there's so many different ways.
And that's what the universe provides us, is like infinite amount of ways you can nurture on the planet.
There's just so many different ways.
So it's not exactly what you do, it's how you show up and choose what you want to do.
You know, don't put yourself in a box because your purpose, you can do infinite amount of things with it.
You are infinite.
And especially nowadays, there's just so many options.
Yeah, it's wonderful.
Yeah, so did you understand a little bit how I get people out of their unstuck patterns?
Yeah, actually, because we mentioned Dr.
Joe Dispenza and I said the first time I got more interested in learning more about epigenetics was to him.
When he has his retreats, I think they were about four days to a week or so, so they do these long meditations.
He actually does the brain scans of people as they're meditating, because you mentioned meditation as well.
He says, genetically, it changes you, which is then physically changes you as well.
Yeah, he's had some cases, I think, where people healed themselves from cancer and like really autoimmune type diseases.
And he has some really good case studies around that.
So it works, you know, it totally works.
My stuff is probably differs a little bit in the fact that I want people to be themselves without all those patterns all the time.
So I train them to live it all the time.
You know, you're in the subway, you see conflict.
How do you react to that conflict?
You know, because you can either be really calm in the situation and show up differently, or you can react one or the other to what people don't realize.
We are energetic beings.
And I'm going to get a little bit deeper into this.
And hopefully, people are open to following me at this point, because when you show up living your purpose, you inspire people to do the same.
So when you know yourself in certain situations, and you show up not blaming, complaining, accusing, like all these survival patterns we live in, you'll have an interaction with someone in front of you, like we are now.
And this interaction creates an energy exchange.
So based on how I'm living in this moment in my own body, and how I think about myself, and how I'm connecting with myself through source, I'm going to be getting back right in front of me, because that's an energy exchange.
What we put out always comes back.
So if we put out anger, anger comes back, and we'll see and perceive anger.
That's how it works when we're connected to source.
And so when you ask, you receive, but it's up to being so conscious in yourself to understand what you're receiving and what you're creating in your environment.
And that's where the work differs a little bit from Joe Dispenza, because people go to work on maybe one thing.
I work on the whole being in the moment.
And so they get to show up differently.
Their personalities will change.
They'll react less because they've practiced it.
And it is a little bit of a practice.
But, you know, people over about 10 hours of work together change drastically.
And they don't even think about old patterns anymore.
And they know how to exchange them out themselves.
And that's kind of my goal is to be like, hey, here's you, and this is actually how you work with yourself.
You can adjust even when you're at home.
Yeah, totally.
You can do it anywhere.
You know, you don't have to go to an event.
And the events are great.
I'm sure they're absolutely wonderful.
But, you know, you can do it with a friend.
You can do it anywhere when you know yourself.
That's the beauty of it.
It's always having that self-awareness and always exchanging out something to be new in the moment.
If you don't like being around angry people, exchange out your anger and you'll create something new in your life because you're not carrying the anger anymore.
So this is how it works.
We truly are superhuman.
Ann, is there anything I haven't asked you that you were hoping to share with our listeners today?
Oh, gosh, we got through a lot.
You know, what I would really love to leave your people with is actually understanding that they're greater than they believe in this moment.
And it took me forever to learn that.
It took me a lot of trials and tribulations in my life to learn that.
And I would say for people not to wait until you have to go through all of that to understand that when you sort out patterns that you no longer want, you know, you can become completely unstoppable and that feels great.
But then the second part of that is you can actually really help your communities.
You can show up differently.
You can help your workplace differently.
It's absolutely amazing watching things change around you as you change.
This is epigenetics at its best.
What can you say regarding shouting out the outside noise?
Because there's just so much outside noise, especially with all the tech and the social media exposure.
We talked about my social media.
So I just joined social media.
From a personal experience, I'm not on social media much.
I mean, I message people here and there and stuff like that, but I didn't really like all the noise, so to speak.
I didn't like how it was making me feel.
So I changed it.
You know, I had it way back and so on.
So I got rid of all the apps on my phone and I don't have them.
So people can make choices that benefit them a little bit more.
My teacher always said the outside represents the inside and the inside represents the outside.
They're the same.
So what you're creating on the outside, if there's noise on the outside of you, it means that you have to work on the noise inside as well.
Words of wisdom from Dr.
Ann Shivas from Vancouver Island.
She has a PhD in Epigenetics, a former teacher who has taught us so much today regarding our superpowers and how we can do this ourselves as well.
And this has been very educational, insightful, and there's so much that we've learned from you.
We really appreciate you being here.
Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for having me.
My absolute pleasure.
Before you go, please tell us if you have a website, because you know you're not big on the socials, where can we find you?
I'm on FYI, Facebook, YouTube and Insta, but it's brand new.
I have a business called LifeLift conveniently, because that's what I want to do.
When I work with corporate specifically, is I like meeting with the person who wants to spearhead the program alongside me.
So on the website, LifeLift.live, people can actually go on and fill out a form of what they're looking to do in their corporation, and we try to match really what they want.
It's a bit bespoke, but it's working quite well in regards to having that communication, out of all things, before we go in and deliver something to make sure that it's successful.
So that's the best way for corporate folks to find me.
And then, you know, if people want the one-on-one work, actually, I'm going to say this, reach out via Instagram.
There's ann.shivas, which is my personal, and then there's lifelift.community.
So that's a really good way to get a hold of me if somebody wants to reach out.
So lifelift.live is the website?
Yeah.
And I'm actually doing a practitioners training come February.
That's going to be interesting.
I'm going to teach practitioners across the world this model.
So it's going to really help a lot of people heal.
I'm pretty excited for it.
Love hearing that.
We're going to be definitely following up.
Thank you so much.
Ann, this has been such a pleasure.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
I'm so glad that you're here.
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