On this episode of the Healthy Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Jazz Biancci on the show to discuss the power of tuning in to your body. Jazz Biancci, CAPP, founder and creator of The Consciousness Project 2020, is an Author, Speaker and Channel, helping people access their invisible influences to discover what they don’t know they don’t know, to have a greater impact in the world.
In this episode, we discuss:
-The importance of tuning in to your body’s awareness and emotions
-How to live with more integrity during your daily interactions
-Why you should shift your inner dialogue towards kindness
-And so much more!
Resources:
For more information on Jazz:
Jazz Biancci, CAPP, founder and creator of The Consciousness Project 2020, is an Author, Speaker and Channel, helping people access their invisible influences to discover what they don’t know they don’t know, to have a greater impact in the world. Jazz has been a speaker at the Fit, Feminine & Fierce Conference in NYC, the Speaker Salon NYC, and a panelist at Soul Clarity & Abundance Live. She is currently the online host and co-producer of MamboNYC.com, co-host and producer of Spiraling Inspiration on blogtalkradio.com, producer of Healing & Becoming The Divine Masculine, and producer and moderator of The Summer Series LIVE: Anchoring During Troubled Times, and Conscious Masculinity Part ll: Diving Deeper.
Read the full transcript below:
Karen Litzy: 00:00 Hey Jazz, welcome to the podcast. I am happy to have you on. And for those of you who have not listened to the podcast before and have not heard me talk about the speaker salon that I was involved in over the summer last year and the mastermind that I continue to be involved in through Trisha Brouk, then you need to go back and listen to some of the episodes I did with Trisha Brouk because that is where Jazz and I met. So we met last summer. We were a part of a small group of this speaker salon. And for me it was a real big shift in mindset in life. And I always credit all of the people in the group, not just Trisha for being the leader of the group, but everyone else in the group, and Jazz was one of them. And so that's how she and I met.
Jazz Biancci: 00:53 Oh, thank you. That was probably a crossroads in my life. It was definitely a game changer.
Karen Litzy: Yeah, I agree. I, um, it changed my life and all aspects of my life, not just speaking, not just business, but personal confidence, everything. It was just this big, big, yeah, crossroads for me as well. I just absolutely loved it. And Jazz was just this amazing public speaker getting up on stage. Like I was saying, I remember the first time I went, everybody got up on stage. And I was wondering, I'm like, is everyone here a professional speaker?
Karen Litzy: 01:37 What is this? And I was very, very intimidating, but at the end I think we all definitely got so much out of it. And the support and the love, the community was great. But today jazz is here to talk about the power of being in our body. So Jazz, my first question to you is, what the heck does that mean?
Jazz Biancci: It means fully inhabiting your body to allow to provide some feedback that it's meant to provide. So I believe the body is a biological computer and it plugs us directly in to this energetic grid that lays across all things. And so when we're in our body, our sensory system is at work. And we receive messages. So the language of the body is very different from the language of the mind because there are no words. And so to understand and interpret those messages, it requires us to inhabit our body versus, you know, a lot of people live life from the neck up and it's all logic, linear thinking.
Jazz Biancci: 02:47 And there's a level of detachment. So when their body has a response to something, a person, a situation, they're slower on the uptake if they even feel it at all. Because we can feel residents, we can feel when something is a no.
Karen Litzy: So is this like an excuse my kind of layman's terminology here. Is this what people would refer to as their gut feeling? Or is this something more?
Jazz Biancci: It's a combination. So there's a, there's a heart intelligence and there's the gut feeling and they all worked together.
Karen Litzy: And how do we tap into this? So I feel like I am certainly hand raised one of those people that's probably more head up or neck up then the rest of your body. I fully admit that I am. So how can we tap into those other parts to the heart, to the gut feelings and how can we do that?
Jazz Biancci: 03:54 I used to be a linear, logical head person too. And I found my way back into my body as an athlete and a dancer. And I started noticing when I was at the gym and in dance class, how the reach of my arm connected me to my heart. And so a great way to start is just to get physical if you can, and if not to take a moment and just put your hands over your heart in the morning. Take 10 seconds to remind yourself that your heart is not only beating to keep you alive, but it's also feeding you information. And then as you move throughout your day and you're having interactions, notice how you feel when you're ordering your coffee and they call your name. How does it feel? And without judgment, but start to pay attention to your responses to people, to the things you're saying and how it resonates in your body.
Jazz Biancci: 04:58 Because often people will ask us questions like, uh, do you mind helping me with this? And sometimes the answer is no, but we say maybe because we're being polite and feel how that resonates because that lie resonates much differently than the truth.
Karen Litzy: Interesting. And, and I, I think we've all been in these situations, like you said, someone asks you to do something and you say maybe are you say yes. And I was in a situation a number of years ago where I said yes to something, but it was literally giving me stomach pains and you know, it was making me so anxious because I knew deep down this is not right, but I am a bit of a people pleaser. And so I said yes. So for those people like me, which I, I think there's a lot of us out there and a lot of the people that listen to this podcast are, you know, we work in healthcare.
Karen Litzy: 05:57 We want to stay healthy. You want to stay fit. And oftentimes were big givers, right? Because we're, we want to heal people. You know, we want to help people, but then it kind of backfires on ourselves. So what do we do in those situations where someone asks you to do something, you feel it in your gut. It's not, it's literally making you sick, but you say yes anyway.
Jazz Biancci: Well it's, it's baby steps, right? It's a process. So the noticing is a start. Like I used to tell myself, yeah, workout in the morning. I am not a morning person. I have never been a morning person. And so starting to notice how that felt in my body, whether I was able to change it or stop saying, oh I'm going to work out in the morning. It was a different story. So we start by noticing how it feels and then we start asking ourselves, well, why did I say yes?
Jazz Biancci: 07:05 So why did I say maybe when I met and start delving into that because it takes a while before we are in grace enough to say, I would really love to help you with that, but my plate is full right now. Can I help you find someone else?
Karen Litzy: That's great. That's a very, very nice way to say no. And the offer of saying, can I help you find someone else or I have someone else in mind I think is a great way to, from the people pleaser standpoint, again, I'm going to be selfish and go from the people pleaser stand point that you still feel like you're helping even though you're not the one who can do it.
Jazz Biancci: Exactly. And you're in your heart. Because sometimes when we don't understand how to do something and we're, we're getting our legs about us, we can be short or curt or rude just to try to get that boundary laid down, you know? And we don't have to do that. We can take our time with this process and notice what we're doing when we're doing it, understand why we're doing what we're doing, when we're doing at being graced with that and sit in our hearts and give us an answer that's a win win for everyone.
Karen Litzy: 08:32 Yeah. So when we're talking about, you know, being in your body, we're, I'm just going to recap the steps because I'm a step person. I'm a checklist person, kind of. So noticing first what's happening in your body. And like you said, it doesn't mean you have to sit and meditate for 20 minutes or 30 minutes. It's just take a moment to remind yourself where you are and how you feel in that moment. And then delve into the, why did I say yes or maybe when it should have been a no, and delving into the why is something that we've been talking about a lot lately on the podcast and that why goes pretty deep. So it's not just why did you do this? Oh, because I didn't want to. And that's the end of the conversation. And then finally being graced with your decision. And then the most important is to come up with a win-win response for everyone. Got It. Well that seems easy.
Jazz Biancci: 09:38 It does seem easy. The hardest things usually do.
Karen Litzy: That sounds like I've got it down pat now I just have to practice it. And I would assume just like, you know, you were an athlete and a dancer. How many times did you practice certain movements in order to perfect them? Or to feel comfortable with them. Right. So I would assume that this process is just a lot of practice, right?
Jazz Biancci: Ongoing. And it's not about judging ourselves or being mean or shaming ourselves. It's not about that. It's just like, it's a scientific experiment. That's all it is. How can I improve? How can I shift?
Karen Litzy: And so if you're, let's say you're working with a client and you're working with them on this sort of shift, what pieces of advice seems to resonate most with your clients? And again, knowing everyone is different and has a different path, but are there exercises or things that you do with clients that you're like, you know, this is pretty powerful. This is something that seems to work.
Jazz Biancci: 10:55 I have them keep a journal. First I just do like the tick system. So noticing how many times a day that you lie. Like when you're like counting and you're like putting like marks and then you get to the five and you cross it over. So it's just that easy to start noticing how many times a day you lie. So you have a notebook and you just make a tick or use your notes on your phone and you just put a one Monday, one, two like you just keep adding ticks and you count it up at the end of the day. Because it's fascinating because we lie a lot, this self-deception is astounding and it does no service to anyone when we're out of integrity because that's what that is. We're being inauthentic in a moment because we are taught to be polite before we consider ourselves and we can do both without being disingenuous.
Karen Litzy: So yeah, it'd be like little white lies or maybe, yeah.
Jazz Biancci: Yeah, because it's all about the observation and understanding what kind of situations prompt us to lie. Noticing when we have fear, because fear is huge. If you're afraid of retaliation or punishment, you're prone to lie to get approval.
Jazz Biancci: 12:40 So it's like noticing those moments that that turn up the volume and then noticing how that makes you feel. Because there is a different way. We just haven't been taught what that way is.
Karen Litzy: So you start, you have people get a journal or like you said on their phone and write down how I'm going to do this because I wonder how many times do I even say a little white lie. I'm going to do this. I would encourage the listeners to do this as well and we'll see what we come up with. It's really fascinating. Yeah, it sounds really, really interesting. So, all right, let's say I do this system for a week and I like five times in a week. What do I do about it? What does that mean? What does that lead to?
Jazz Biancci: Well, it leads to noticing what kind of lies you're telling it to whom, right?
Jazz Biancci: 13:30 Because they may, they may be the lie that like, hi, how are you today? I'm fine and you're not, you know, and then reconstructing that answer so that it feels right in your body and appropriate for the social situation. So someone may say, hey, how are you? And you could say, well, I'm hanging in there, you know, that's acknowledging what you're feeling without giving too much information.
Karen Litzy: Yeah, because I would think that you can acknowledge it, but giving too much information, people will be like, why is she inappropriate? So you have to kind of know where that line is between, you know, allow like divulging information but then being like, what is wrong with like why is this person saying this in this context at this time?
Jazz Biancci: So you're honoring and acknowledging and being aware of your environment at the same time because the residents of truth and creating the habit of truth for yourself.
Jazz Biancci: 14:43 As you begin to notice how that frequency vibrates, the way a drop of water into a glass of water does, you see the ripples, you can feel it. And over time it's, it's a purification. It's a gentle way to start the purification process because the body is an incredible instrument. What I found in doing these practices, I know when someone's lying to me because it feels different than truth. And so it's a confidence of knowing that I can rely on myself and my instrument and my body to provide information that I can rely upon because being able to rely on the body because there are no words attached to it, the body doesn't lie. And so those moments I've had moments. I'm sure you have too, that an alarm has gone off within you that you don't necessarily understand. And do you follow? Do you not follow it?
Jazz Biancci: 15:52 Is your imagination, are you having an anxiety attack? For me it happened in queue boarding an airplane and I've been flying all my life and I was going to Haiti for work. It was my fifth trip to Haiti. I was excited, our whole team was going and we were waiting in queue and all of a sudden something happened in my core and I was terrified and I went to my friend and my coworker and told you, I'm like, I am not getting on this plane. I'm not going. And of course she was like, what are you talking about? We have a job to do. And I'm like, no, something doesn't feel right. And so we went to the director and she's like, you can sit by him and you've heard me speak about this. And I let myself be peer pressured and I wasn't competent in that feeling yet that alarm is one of the first times I felt that.
Jazz Biancci: 16:48 And so I got on the plane, I was sitting next to the director and I buckled in and I'm like, what am I doing? But I still didn't have the courage to say, I’ve got to get off of this airplane. I sat there. So we take off, there's this huge commotion and the commotion is moving forward. The stewardesses cannot get the situation under control and the plane has to turn around the air marshals come on the plane and escort the situation off the plane. So the grid that we have within us in our hearts, that electromagnetic energy pulse connects to what's going on in our environment. And I was connected to that woman because she was in my environment and it was an alarm going off for me to get off the plane. It was also a great moment to take notice. Okay. So when my body does this, I now have evidence to listen and thank God it was just the air marshals and an escort off the plane.
Karen Litzy: Sure, sure. That's Crazy. And you know, we've all had these, oh, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? And then oftentimes that feeling ends up being validated somehow. Now through this work, through this, you know, learning how to be in your body, what has that done for you? So what has that done for your life or for your career that you can share?
Jazz Biancci: 18:34 It allows me to stand in my power and I'm still in awe of it because it's like there's this super power with that we never learned about. No one tells us about that we can fall into by accident. And it's always there. I've always had this ability to be keyed in. And then, you know, you hit puberty and you're a teenager and you're rebellious and you fall away from yourself because you're trying to fit in and then you fall back into yourself somewhere along the line if you're lucky. And so for me, it's really being able to stand in my body, in my strength and know what is right for me. Because when situations happen, the tendency is to go outside of ourselves and have, a caucus about, well, this happened. What should I do? What should I do?
Karen Litzy: 19:36 You always reach out to our friends or family and say, okay, what do I do now? What do I do? I want to do this, but I don't know if I should do this. So what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? And you know, it's like too many cooks in the kitchen.
Jazz Biancci: It's too many cooks in the kitchen and it pollutes the truth for us. And so being able to be in our power is about being in authenticity and integrity and in truth so that you don't go to outside counsel because the reality is no matter how many angles I give you of a story, they're not going to give you the full picture. You aren't there and you don't know what I feel inside my body. You don't know the energy of the situation and I'm not going to have that much time to go into depth with you.
Jazz Biancci: 20:22 So it's being able to hold your own counsel and, and stand in that council because everyone's going to have an opinion about that. So whether it's the choice you make in your career or it's a love relationship, there are going to be outside influences that want to put seeds in your ear. But the reality is only you know the truth. Only you have to deal with the consequences of your actions and only you can know what's right for you. And so being in my body and being in my heart and learning to trust this incredible mechanism has allowed me to do that. And it's changed my life cause I'm not wavering or trying to please anyone because even though we don't think we're trying to please anyone. Well we ask for advice. You know there's like, I remember this was really big for me back in 2005 when like sex in the city and and this whole dating thing and no, there was like the whole Mr. Big and it's a cultural thing, right?
Jazz Biancci: 21:37 So we can think that we're supposed to behave a certain way and believe that that behavior is right and us, it's who we are. I'm a New Yorker. This is what I do when the reality is if you take a moment and you drop into your body, well maybe that isn't how you feel and that doesn't feed what you ultimately want and you're doing a disservice. Are you strong enough to make another decision and then strong enough to stand in it?
Karen Litzy: Yeah. Doing a disservice to yourself. And that's hard. It is. That's hard to, to make a decision and stand in it and be confident in that decision and confident with your own self and your ideals that this is what is correct. This is what is good for me when, yeah, you have the peanut gallery and either ear telling you otherwise or maybe agreeing or not agreeing or what have you.
Karen Litzy: 22:36 But that's hard and I feel like I just want to acknowledge how difficult that is.
Jazz Biancci: It is hard, but you know, it gets easier because you share less things with less people, you know? Because I don't really need to ask someone what I should do in my relationship. I know what I need to do in my relationship. I may need to vent, I may need a hug, I may need to pass an idea over with one of my friends. But it allows me to preface to preface the conversation and say, Hey, I would've had something by you and I want to know what you think about this specific point right here. Or I need to vent. So I really don't need any feedback right now. Are you okay with that? It lets us frame how we need people to show up for us because I don't necessarily want everyone's opinion.
Karen Litzy: 23:41 Yeah, but you want and an ear to listen sometimes
Jazz Biancci: If I know that I have the deli across the street and I want coffee and all I have to do is go across the street and get the coffee and come back, that's much easier. Okay. Then asking the doorman, the person in the elevator, the fire guide, the fire department guy standing outside, I'm the person holding the door for me when I go into the Deli and the Deli person, what kind of coffee I should get. You know this the same way when we have problems, we bounce like a pinball in a pinball machine back and forth. We know what we want to do. We're just trying to get comfortable with it. But if we are in our bodies and in our hearts and we, we feel the resonance because when something doesn't vibrate properly, like when alive vibrates in your body and you have been doing this practice for a while, it feels violent.
Karen Litzy: 24:51 That's interesting. I'm kind of thinking on your, I love that example of why do I need to ask every person I come in contact with from my apartment to the Deli across the street, what kind of coffee I need to get. And when you say that, anybody would be like, well that's ridiculous. And yet that's what we do with big decisions in our lives, our relationships in our lives is we ask everyone.
Jazz Biancci: We give our authority away when really we know the answers. It's just working that confidence and that trust in ourselves and the best way to work that confidence and that trust is to sit with what's going on and see what resonates, what choices feel right.
Karen Litzy: 25:43 So it's really taking time out of your day. Not a lot, but working through those steps that we mentioned earlier. And the more you practice it, like we said, the better and perhaps more efficient you will get at tuning into your body and knowing what that feeling is like, because I would assume if you're new to this, that you're not even maybe sure what you should be feeling. Like how do you know what you should be feeling?
Jazz Biancci: You don't because everybody is different. But if you had a friend who lied to you all the time, you couldn't count on them for anything. That's how it feels from the outside. And you would probably not be friends with that person. Once we start to notice how often we lie to ourselves, we realize that we’re that friend, except we can't get away from ourselves.
Karen Litzy: 26:51 And so you need to be making some changes.
Jazz Biancci: Because you need to trust yourself above all others. The relationship that you have with yourself is the map you take out into the world. And so part of this practice is seeing how it feels. And at first you may feel nothing. At first it's kind of amusing. Uh, it may make you like a little sad like, wow, why did I just do that? I didn't even have to lie in that scenario and I just did it completely unconscious, you know? So it, it helps you in that consciousness as well. So you can start making informed decisions and start listening because sometimes our mouth is on automatic and it's saying things that are completely detached from our truth. It's the talking of Shit.
Karen Litzy: And only until you can kind of be in your body, can you really get a sense that's what you're doing?
Jazz Biancci: 27:54 Yeah. That sometimes we talk ourselves out of the things we want. We pretend that we want something that we don't want.
Karen Litzy: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That happened to me last year. I kept thinking I should do this. Someone told me to do this, I should like it, I should like it. And in the end I was like, this is not for me. And I just changed the entire thing for me like a year to figure that out here to kind of realize, wait a second. Oh, okay. No, I have a little more confidence and I know how I want this to go now I get it.
Jazz Biancci: Yeah. Because you know it's okay to take your time. There's no rush. We think there's a rush, there's no rush ticket where we're going. We have to figure out how we want to do things.
Karen Litzy: Absolutely. And I think that is a great, great piece of advice. And you know, I have one more question to ask is what I ask everyone. But before I do that, is there anything that we missed or anything that you really want the listeners to take away from everything we spoke about?
Jazz Biancci: 29:10 I would say engaging with curiosity and practicing tenderness with yourself is epic because we're not tinder, especially if you're in New York. It's very, very rare that you get a tenderness, but it starts to allow you to discover more things about yourself because you start integrating and making space for the child within you. And it's really quite magical. I mean, your life can really change with a little bit of tenderness and it starts with you telling yourself the truth and how you do it.
Karen Litzy: Yeah. That's such great advice and something that over this past year I have definitely started to do more of. We were speaking before we went on the air about how we are always like so harsh to ourselves and it got me thinking like I feel like we are the biggest assholes to ourselves. You know what I mean?
Karen Litzy: 30:30 Like sometimes like you would never be friends with yourself the way you speak to yourself. We put up with it, but now I can see through the tips that you've given today, how we can change that. That's a big shift for people and I hope that they use some of these techniques and steps to kind of stop being such an asshole to yourself and instead be the friend that you always needed. We should be able to be all of that to ourselves, like you said. So you can kind of stand in your power and know what you need and know what you want in your life. And I realized that doesn't happen in like a week, but it takes as long as it takes. Right?
Jazz Biancci: Well, I mean it's a commitment, right? It's just like any commitment the gym, your career, they're all commitments and they're all a process.
Karen Litzy: 100%. And now before we go, I have one more question for you and that is knowing where you are in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self?
Jazz Biancci: 31:51 I used to be, so I still am very sensitive, but I would break my own heart. So I would say I would tell my younger self to be less cruel and more kind.
Karen Litzy: And that's great advice. And I think anyone listening to this can take that advice as well. Now Jazz, what do you have coming up in 2019 and where can people find you?
Jazz Biancci: Oh, I'm so excited for 2019. So if you want to hear me speak live, there is speakers who dare, which is March 26 at the triad theater in New York City. It's going to be amazing. Um, they can find me www.jazzbiancci.com and I'm working with an editor now, so I expect that my book will be out mid-summer, hopefully sooner. Yeah, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. It's been like a lifetime of making this happen. You can always check my website.
Jazz Biancci: 33:11 I do a conscious masculinity panel the first Wednesday of every month and the panel is amazing. I am so blessed to have such brilliant men participating. So that's on a facebook live and you can find me on facebook at Jazz Biancci, conscious consciousness architect.
Karen Litzy: Jazz. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this good stuff with us. And everyone, thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy, and smart.
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