Summary: Welcome to Part 2 of my conversation with the amazing Sierra Bender!<br> To outline our chat from last week, Sierra is the Global Tribal Leader of Female Empowerment. She’s the best selling author of ‘Goddess to the Core’ and a devoted advocate for women and girls empowerment. Sierra is a true force of nature.<br> Her voice and mission spans around the globe from the United States, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Costa Rica to South America; featured in media including Oprah Radio, CBS, Univision, USA Today, Marie Claire, Shape, Whole Living, Yoga Journal, Fit Yoga, Yoga International, and Natural Awakenings.<br> Sierra has been a leading pioneer in the women’s empowerment and leadership movement for more than 25 years. Her versatile teachings have been found in spiritual retreat centers and executive boardrooms. Sierra’s extensive clientele includes Olympic athletes, the Vanderbilt Cancer Center, and Country Music Television (CMT) to name but a few.<br> If you haven’t yet listened to Part 1 of our intensely passionate chat, check that out first before diving into this week’s interview.<br> This week we delve into the depths of topics such as:<br> • How purpose connects us to our higher self.<br> • The importance of feeling safe for personal transformation.<br> • How the body is the last frontier for transformational healing.<br> • What would it be like to think with your heart and feel with your mind?<br> • How every disease and illness has an emotional profile.<br> • Taking back the Goddess (and what exactly is the Goddess?).<br> • Opening your heart and trusting your intuition.<br> • Self love, self love, self love!<br> On the topic of self love, I feel moved to share a few words about the untimely death of a man loved by all – Robin Williams. I’ll admit that I find myself deeply affected by this tragic loss and its prompted the contemplation of my last two discussions with Sierra. In particular, I’m referencing the extensive discussions on love – specifically, self love.<br> Robin Williams was someone who suffered from the all too common affliction partnership of depression and addiction. Although he didn’t speak much of it, in a 2010 interview with the Guardian, he stated that he had anxiety and fear about everything. This alone is a profoundly disturbing statement.<br> Many of us knew Robin as a zany, manic, genius-level comic. But who was he really? Because he was always “on”, even friends acquainted with him for 35 years say they didn’t truly know him.<br> The work of Robin Williams touched millions of people around the globe – myself included. He was known for his generosity and kindness. His love, expressed freely made the world delight in pure joy. There was one caveat however. Robin was remiss with love for the one who mattered most – himself. This is an acutely piteous example of how fame, success, money, and love sourced from the external world are meaningless without a sense of love, connection, and self worth within oneself. Lack of self love provokes a profound sense of inner isolation. An isolation so vast that despite an immensely loving outer world, the mind is incapable of moving beyond its own perpetual darkness – a darkness we label depression.<br> Depression is a blanket term for unresolved emotions. It’s a complex composite of pain turned inwards in the desperate attempt for concealment. We live in the quick fix culture of perceptual distraction, where emotional energy leaks are numbed out by drugs, alcohol, pharmaceuticals and a plethora of limitless addictions to remove us from what we need to do most – feel. When we don’t feel, we don’t heal. When we don’t heal, we are never real. And when we are never real, we are empty inside. This is what creates the immense sense of isolation referenced in the previous paragraph. It’s tragic to think of anyone feeling so utterly helple...
