Episode 2 — Nature’s Healing Power and the Spiritual Foundation

Introduction

What if the key to a meaningful, joyful life has been right in front of us all along — in the healthy rhythms of nature?

Pål-Esben Wanvig

In this episode, we take you on a deep and insightful journey into nature’s healthy rhythms — those ancient forces with the power to transform body, mind, and soul. Together, we explore how our modern lifestyle often tears us away from this natural balance, and what we can do to reclaim it.

Amina shares her personal and inspiring story — from an everyday life dominated by chronic stress, anxiety, ADHD, physical pain, and exhaustion, to a life filled with inner peace, joy, and freedom. She describes the concrete steps that helped her get to where she is today, and how nature became a key to deep healing.

Pål-Esben illuminates this from a shamanic perspective, taking us behind the facade of illness, suffering, and limitation. He reveals the fundamental principles of true health, lasting happiness, and deep meaning, while offering valuable insights into how we can break free from the hamster wheel of overwork and exhaustion. Through ancient wisdom traditions and practical tools, he shows how we can restore our connection to nature’s healthy rhythms — and therefore to our own innate power.

Our connection to nature’s cycles — and our disconnection from them — affects our entire lives: physical and mental health, the ability to feel joy, peace, and presence, and our deep connection to what gives life meaning.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

But what does it truly mean to live in harmony with these rhythms? How can you, in your modern life, find the way back to a more harmonious existence? In this episode, we break down common misconceptions and explore how you can build a solid foundation for discovering and manifesting your true, Divine nature.

Episode 2 — Full Transcript

Pål-Esben

In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the theme of nature’s healthy rhythms and how these fundamental cycles can shape our lives — for better or worse. We’ll explore the fascinating perspective of how illness develops, seen through the eyes and understanding of a shaman, and not least — we’ll take a closer look at what forms the essential foundation for becoming genuinely well, achieving lasting happiness, and creating a deeply meaningful life.

And these keys to transformation are found precisely in our relationship with what we call nature’s healthy rhythms.

Can you take us back to where it all started for you, Amina, and share a little about what your life looked like before you began this deep journey of development roughly a year and a half ago — which we touched on briefly in the first episode? I’m especially interested in hearing what a typical day felt like for you at that time. What was your everyday life like? What thoughts and feelings shaped your days? Can you paint a picture for us of how life felt during that period?

Amina

I was very far removed from nature’s healthy rhythms, and that was one of the first things I was truly confronted with in this training. Every single morning when I woke up, I felt an overwhelming wave of chronic stress that had lodged itself deep in my body. It was a constant battle getting the kids ready and out the door for school — one didn’t want this, the other protested about that, and there I stood in the middle of the chaos, trying to manage everything while time kept slipping away from me.

My days were marked by a relentless chase, an endless string of tasks that never seemed to finish. It felt as though I didn’t even have time to think about what I hadn’t managed to do — it was just a gnawing, perpetual stress eating away at me. Rest was practically a foreign word, something I knew deep down I needed but never allowed myself.

Ever since I was thirteen, I’ve been a workhorse. I always had a job alongside school, and this pattern followed me into adulthood. It spiralled into a destructive cycle where I worked myself into complete exhaustion, recovered just enough, then threw myself headlong into new projects at full force. It was as if I had an inner fire burning so intensely that it eventually consumed everything and left me utterly burnt out.

The result was that every other week, when I didn’t have my children, I would literally lock myself in a dark room. That was my way of coping with the exhaustion — total isolation where nobody could reach me. But even during those periods, when my body was screaming for rest, I couldn’t bear the silence. I always found something to fill the time with, as though stillness itself were dangerous.

My search for happiness has taken many forms over the years, always driven by the thought: ‘If I just achieve this one thing, then I’ll finally be happy.’

Amina Monsen

Two months after the birth of my first child, convinced that my weight was the source of my unhappiness, I made a drastic decision. I travelled to Lithuania and underwent gastric bypass surgery. The result was dramatic — I lost 40 to 50 kilos in just six months. But the happiness I had imagined would come with the new body never arrived.

This pattern repeated itself again and again. When the weight loss didn’t give me the satisfaction I was seeking, I threw myself into cake baking. I developed an extreme perfectionism around it, entered competitions and appeared on TV shows, and received loads of recognition. But I still felt empty inside. Then I decided the answer must lie in bodybuilding — if I could sculpt the perfect physique, then surely happiness would follow? I dedicated myself to training, built muscle, and earned admiration from the world around me. But as you can probably guess, Pål-Esben, that didn’t bring me the inner peace and fulfilment I was searching for either.

It wasn’t until I began this training programme and was introduced to the concept of nature’s healthy rhythms that things started to shift. In the beginning, I thought I understood what it was about, but today I realise how shallow that understanding was. What fascinates me is that I’m still uncovering new layers of this knowledge, which makes me believe there are even deeper insights to discover as I continue my personal development.

My journey towards finding inner peace has been especially challenging because of my ADHD diagnosis. Bringing winter’s stillness into everyday life felt like pure torture in the beginning. My restless mind struggled to stay focused on one thing at a time, and simply being quiet in nature was an enormous challenge. But through dedicated practice and patience, I’ve gradually learned to find and cherish the silence. Some days are easier than others, of course, but the fact that I’ve managed it gives me faith that most other people can too.

My experience of overcoming these challenges, particularly with ADHD and the tendency towards hyperfocus, has given me a unique insight into how powerful nature’s rhythms can be when we learn to work with them instead of against them. It’s been a transformative journey that has taught me the value of finding balance between activity and rest, between doing and being.

How Illness Is Created — A Shaman’s Perspective

Pål-Esben

Before we go deeper into this subject, I think it’s important that we define what we mean by nature’s healthy rhythms, so that you as a listener have a clear understanding of what we’re talking about and why this concept is so fundamentally important for our physical and mental well-being.

Let’s start by looking at how illness is created from a shaman’s perspective — or at least, how we understand it. We human beings all have our roots in the earth. This isn’t just a poetic idea but a biological reality. Since our bodies are built from carbon and other fundamental building blocks found in the soil, we have quite literally emerged from the earth, and when our life cycle is complete, we will return to that same earth. This is nature’s eternal cycle.

Mother Earth shows us the healthy, natural rhythms through the turning of the seasons — from summer to autumn, from winter to spring, and back to summer again. In summer, we see periods of full activity and energy, while winter brings rest and regeneration. This pattern of activity and rest, action and recovery, represents a fundamental truth about what is healthy for all living beings. It is this continuous variation between these states that creates balance and harmony in nature.

The question then becomes: How can we integrate these natural rhythms into our modern lives?

When we analyse how we human beings have been shaped by expectations — from family, employers, society, and not least from ourselves — we see a clear pattern. In today’s society, it is the ‘summer state’ that is most valued. Constant activity and production have become the ideal. We are trained from a young age to be efficient, productive citizens, often at the expense of our need for rest and recovery.

Amina

This was also my personal experience. I was a product of this way of thinking, strongly influenced by my mother’s life experiences and values. She was deeply concerned that I had to succeed in life, that I had to be able to support myself and survive in a hard world. Her perspective was shaped by her own upbringing and traumatic experiences during the war.

My mother came from a generation that faced extreme hardships. During the Second World War, she experienced how the Nazis confiscated the farm that my grandmother depended on for her livelihood. Her family had to survive long periods without financial security, often with minimal access to food and other necessities. These experiences naturally created a powerful focus on survival and material security.

So it’s understandable that she placed such enormous emphasis on me having a solid career and earning good money. In her worldview, personal happiness and emotional well-being were secondary to financial security and survival. ‘Being happy,’ as she put it, was considered a luxury one couldn’t afford to prioritise. This represents a generational difference in values and priorities that still affects many of us today.

The Modern Stress Epidemic

Pål-Esben

And regardless of what background we come from, and how our experiences and conditioning have shaped us, these play a significant role in our lives. When we observe people in today’s society, we see a troubling pattern of constant stress and chasing, where people run from one task to the next without being able to enjoy their achievements. There is a relentless striving to be better — higher, further, broader, stronger — which far too often results in burnout and chronic exhaustion.

This continuous activation of the sympathetic nervous system can lead to a massive, chronic inflammation in the body, which can gradually develop into serious physiological diseases. This can manifest as anything from fibromyalgia to ME and other chronic conditions that are often difficult to treat.

This persistent state of inflammation overloads our immune system, which then cannot perform its crucial task of keeping us healthy and resilient against illness. You yourself are a living example of this dynamic, Amina, where you had internalised the idea that you were never good enough, and that happiness could only be achieved through constant pressure and self-improvement. This resulted in an endless cycle where you raced from one thing to the next, always chasing a satisfaction that never came, while banging your head against the same wall again and again in frustration and exhaustion.

It is a remarkable paradox that we live in an age where we are materially richer than ever before in human history, yet also more unwell than ever.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

This pattern has helped create a society where the prevalence of chronic diseases, stress-related disorders, anxiety, depression, and other physiological and psychiatric diagnoses has reached historic highs. This raises important questions about the connection between material wealth and actual quality of life, and how we have allowed the chase for external success to overshadow our fundamental needs for balance and well-being.

For us shamans, we observe that the main cause of the extensive burden of illness in today’s society lies in our ever-increasing distance from nature’s fundamental rhythms. We have gradually moved further and further away from the life-giving cycles that nature offers us, where one of the most fundamental is the natural alternation between seasons — winter, spring, summer, and autumn. This represents only one of many vital aspects of nature’s healthy and healing rhythms.

The further we remove ourselves from these natural cycles, the deeper we sink into a state of constant stress and overactivation. This leads to a cascade of negative health effects: increased inflammation in the body, sustained activation of the sympathetic nervous system, overload of stress hormones, and a range of consequent problems with the thyroid, the hormonal system in general, and not least the brain, which often manifests as the well-known ‘brain fog’ that so many people experience.

Learning to Slow Down

Pål-Esben

I remember well our first conversations, Amina, where I suggested that you might try to slow down a little, take life more gently, and not feel the need to rush from one task to the next. We began to discuss the importance of reducing activity levels and introducing deliberate pauses into everyday life.

This often turns out to be the most challenging exercise I give to modern people — actually allowing yourself to ‘chill out’ for just half an hour each day, where you literally do nothing. No thinking, no planning, no projects or tasks to solve. Just being present in the moment and letting the mind wander freely, or as we say, ‘zone out.’

It’s fascinating to observe how teenagers often master this skill naturally, while grown adults can experience near-panic at the thought of spending thirty to sixty minutes daily in complete inactivity. And by inactivity, I truly mean total abstinence from all forms of stimulation — no TV, no Netflix, no social media, no news — absolutely nothing that can distract the mind from simply being. For many modern people, this concept can feel frightening, almost anxiety-inducing.

Amina

And I remember one of the first and most significant tasks you gave me was to develop a deeper awareness around my own boundaries — especially learning to recognise the moment when I began to push myself too hard. This was a challenge because I had lost the ability to perceive these important signals before the situation had escalated completely, before the cup had literally overflowed.

I can still remember the overwhelming exhaustion — sitting there completely drained of energy, knowing deep down that a walk in the forest would be good for me, yet feeling utterly incapable of doing anything at all. That’s when you came with the crucial insight: ‘Right, this has gone too far.’ You gave me the important task of starting to notice the early warning signs — identifying when I needed to slow down before the situation spiralled out of control, learning to find space for breaks proactively before the exhaustion took over.

The first time I actually mastered this skill was a triumph I will never forget. It was a truly special experience when I finally began to recognise the signs that I was approaching my limit.

But even the setbacks became valuable learning opportunities. Every time I overstepped my limit, I took the time to reflect and analyse the situation afterwards. I began tracing back in time, identifying the critical moments where I could have noticed the warning signs, and documenting these experiences thoroughly. This systematic approach to self-observation and learning has proved invaluable for my personal development.

Today, I can clearly see how this process has changed the way I handle stress and challenges. Even though I can still experience what I call ‘crashes,’ they are of a completely different character than before. They are milder, more manageable, and I am now able to recognise the signs early enough to take constructive action — like clearing my calendar and giving myself the necessary time to wind down for a couple of hours when needed.

Your recent recommendation to spend time in nature also proved extremely valuable. Dedicating half a day to being outdoors served as a powerful reminder of the importance of this practice. Because as you so wisely pointed out, it is easy to forget even the most fundamental truths we have learned when everyday stress takes over. It’s fascinating how we can get caught in the modern ‘hamster wheel,’ where high stress levels activate our automatic responses and send us back to old, unhelpful habits and patterns.

Bringing ‘Winter’ into a Busy Life

Pål-Esben

All of this sounds simple in theory, even though technically it’s quite achievable. It’s really just about learning to relax a little more, lower your shoulders, and find your way back to your own humanity instead of continuing on autopilot like a robot. But as with all lasting change, it requires conscious effort and patience to break old patterns and establish new, healthier habits.

When I work with clients who come to me with burnout — and there are unfortunately many of them — this is one of the first and most important issues we must address. We explore the fundamental questions together: How can you create space for winter — for stillness and rest — in your daily life? How can you find room for calm and regeneration in the midst of a busy schedule? These are questions that go straight to the core of the problem many people face today.

And the reality is that it isn’t as simple as it sounds, is it? Most people’s days are already packed with obligations and tasks that cannot be ignored. You have to get up early in the morning, prepare the children for a new day, make packed lunches and get everyone ready. Then there’s often a hectic transport logistics of dropping the kids at nursery or school. After that, a full workday with its own stresses and challenges awaits. The afternoon brings new logistics of picking up children, driving to various activities and sports, before heading home and getting dinner on the table. And only when the clock has passed eight in the evening, if you’re lucky, can you perhaps get a little time for yourself… But by then you’re often so exhausted that you barely have the energy to enjoy that time.

Isn’t it fascinating — and at the same time a bit frightening — how we modern humans have reached a point where we cannot even allow ourselves ten minutes, half an hour, or just one hour where we simply exist, without having to do anything?

Pål-Esben Wanvig

In the beginning of our training programme, we therefore introduce one of the most fundamental exercises right from the start — what we call forest bathing, or in Japanese, Shinrin Yoku. Here, participants learn to truly begin using nature in a conscious and healing way. This isn’t about the usual walk with the dog or the daily jog. Instead, we focus on how to enter into deep resonance with nature and rediscover the natural connection we all once had.

The idea behind this is actually quite simple, yet deeply rooted in our biology: Nature shows us the healthy, natural rhythms that we human beings originally sprang from. Most of us were born healthy, with an intuitive understanding of these rhythms. But gradually, as we have moved further and further from our natural patterns, we have begun to lose this connection. We have replaced natural food with fast food, where frozen pizza can sit at the top of the food chain. We run from one task to the next in an endless stream of activities. Is it really so surprising that we gradually drift away from our natural state of good health?

When we want to find our way back to a healthy lifestyle and good health, what is more natural than to return to nature itself? We encourage people to let nature’s healthy rhythms embrace and permeate their lives. This is the essence of what we call forest bathing — a simple but powerful practice. It means leaving your mobile phone at home, saying goodbye to the dog, partner, and children for a short while, and going out into nature alone. Not to exercise or achieve any specific goal, but simply to be present.

We recommend setting aside half an hour or an hour where you are simply in the forest, with no agenda or expectations. Perhaps you find a peaceful spot beside an old tree where you can sit and reflect, or perhaps you simply wander quietly and let your thoughts drift. The most important thing is that you give yourself this gift of time alone, where you can be fully present with yourself and the nature around you.

The Inner Landscape of the Seasons

Amina

I’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on my own journey through these natural cycles. When we look at the seasons — autumn, spring, winter, summer — with their unique characteristics of sun, snow, and shifting light, I’m fascinated by how they represent different aspects of our inner emotional life.

Take autumn, for example, which marks the beginning of a letting-go process. And then there’s winter? It’s interesting how my relationship with winter’s darkness has undergone a dramatic transformation. Where I previously experienced the dark as something frightening, as we discussed in the last episode, I now see it as something deeply fascinating and meaningful.

Today, I actively practise this connection with nature. When I encounter challenges or problems in my life, I often take a walk in nature. There I can have a quiet dialogue with a tree or observe nature’s patterns, and ask: ‘How is this challenge I’m facing reflected in nature’s own wisdom?’ What always strikes me is how quickly and clearly the answers come, and how surprisingly simple they really are.

A tree never clings desperately to a rotten apple — it lets it fall naturally to the ground. This simple observation contains deep wisdom about attachment and letting go.

Amina Monsen

It’s fascinating how these insights reveal themselves when you begin to practise this kind of natural contemplation. But it raises an interesting question: Are we meant to move through all these seasons — with their unique qualities and lessons — within a single day?

Pål-Esben

Not exactly. In my experience, the most important thing in the beginning is to understand the fundamental difference between winter and summer — that is, between activity and rest. It’s about developing a deeper awareness around these natural cycles and truly recognising how damaging it can be for our bodies when we push them into continuous activity and stress throughout the entire day.

When we look at this from the perspective of Western medicine, the challenges become clear. I’ve observed how people who constantly operate in summer mode — or active mode — day after day, week after week, month after month, negatively affect their autonomic nervous system. This system governs vital functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, all organs, and our response to stress through the fight-or-flight mechanism.

The autonomic nervous system alternates between two main states: sympathetic mode, which activates fight and flight, and parasympathetic mode, which promotes rest and regeneration. It often strikes me how perfectly our autonomic nervous system is designed to regulate this balance — it is our natural state, a harmonious dance between activity and passivity that creates homeostasis and balance in the body.

But I see a worrying trend in our modern society. When people lock themselves into a constant stream of activity over a long period, they force the nervous system into a chronic sympathetic state — a sustained fight-or-flight mode. Based on my experience with clients and students, I can see that when this state persists for several years, we develop a serious problem. It triggers a cascade of negative effects: increased stress leads to elevated levels of stress hormones, which in turn trigger inflammation. This pattern often lies at the root of many chronic diseases I see in my practice.

When we are guiding the nervous system back to its natural, regulated and balanced state, we must actively introduce the winter component. This is not just a theoretical understanding but a practical necessity.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

The fascinating thing is that we actually have a very precise way to measure this. By means of a 24-hour heart rate variability measurement (HRV), we can get a clear picture of whether a person is in a chronic flight-and-activation state or the opposite. There is nothing mystical or alternative about this — it is solidly grounded in Western medicine and gives us concrete data to work with.

In my practice, I’ve seen how important it is to help people back to a natural regulation, where the body can shift harmoniously between activity and passivity, between energy use and regeneration. This requires us to consciously introduce ‘winter’ into our everyday lives — moments of stillness and calm that allow space for deep rest and rebuilding. This can be through forest bathing, where we simply are present in nature without any agenda, meditation, or through conscious breathwork that activates the vagus nerve — the most important component of our parasympathetic nervous system.

The Shamanic Wheel of the Seasons

Pål-Esben

And when you were introduced to this concept, we started at the very foundation. I remember well how we began with the simple question: How can we bring more of winter’s qualities into your life? This is only the beginning of a fascinating journey. As your understanding develops and becomes more sophisticated, a deep and exciting rabbit hole opens up for exploration and insight.

Because then we truly begin to work with the seasonal cycle, a concept that has deep roots in the shamanic medicine wheel, where we learn to know and understand the unique energies and qualities of the seasons at a deeper level. In this process, we become acquainted with the special rhythm that characterises each season, and the meaningful rituals that follow nature’s course.

For example, Samhain, which marks the start of a new cycle. For those unfamiliar with the term, Samhain is the same as Halloween, celebrated around the 1st of November. At this time, nature reveals itself from a very special side — the days grow shorter, darkness takes up more space, and a deep calm settles over the landscape as the temperature drops.

After the winter solstice, nature’s energy begins to change again, and we have special rituals and practices for connecting with these shifts. Then we move on to Imbolc, when the light gradually begins to return. This brings an entirely different experience of nature — you can almost feel how the energy starts to awaken again. At the spring equinox, the joyful energy arrives in full force, and nature explodes into life and growth.

When we reach Beltane in May, we notice how the yang energy truly begins to take charge — it’s time for action and outward activity. At the summer solstice, yang energy reaches its absolute peak, and we experience summer’s full power and intensity. Then comes the gradual wandering towards autumn, through Lunessa and on to the autumn equinox.

The fascinating thing is that when we begin to immerse ourselves in this cycle and truly understand it, we start to recognise and resonate with the eight fundamental qualities that nature shows us throughout the year. These qualities are not merely abstract concepts — they are living energies that we can learn to know and work with. By following this cycle consciously, year after year, we develop an ever-deepening understanding of nature’s rhythms and how they affect us.

And once you have been through this cycle once, an entirely new dimension of possibilities opens up. You can close your eyes at any time and consciously enter an inner state belonging to, for example, the winter solstice, regardless of where you are in the actual calendar year. By bringing these special qualities into your life in this way, you take your shamanic practice to a completely new level.

For those who are even more advanced, yet more doors open. Then we begin to explore and become acquainted with the eight unique beings that belong to the different seasons. These powerful beings can become our allies and guides, bringing help, deep insight, and timeless wisdom into our lives. They also open the way for shamanic magic that can expand our understanding and create new possibilities we could not previously have imagined.

When we truly begin to understand and work with the natural rhythms, we discover an utterly remarkable world of wisdom and insight lying right before our eyes.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

Amina

Yes, I really love this subject, and what you mention about having completed a full annual cycle resonates strongly with me. I’ve just completed a whole cycle myself, and what you say about stepping into the experience is so important. One thing is what you can learn theoretically about the seasons — that autumn is the time when we, like the trees, let go of what we don’t need to carry forward, or that winter arrives with its protective blanket of snow. But what truly matters is the deep, personal experience of these natural processes. What does it really mean to feel these shifts in your body? How do these natural rhythms manifest in our physical experience?

I remember so well when I first began to explore this. There I stood, right in the middle of autumn, feeling an almost comical expectation — ‘Okay, it’s autumn now, what feelings am I actually supposed to have?’ It took time to realise that it’s about being open to what comes naturally, without expectations or pressure. For me, it was especially important to accept that it was perfectly fine not to ‘get it right’ straight away.

It’s like when you read those inspiring Instagram posts where someone describes a fantastic experience of hugging a tree, and then you go out with enormous expectations of experiencing the same thing. But there you stand, hugging the tree, and it feels… completely ordinary. The important thing is to keep trying, to be patient with yourself, and to acknowledge that even the act of taking the time to go out and meet nature in this way is meaningful in itself.

Why Nature Heals Differently Than Your Living Room

Amina

Another fascinating dimension of this work concerns the stillness and calm we’re seeking. Through your training, and especially in the online course ‘Change Your Life in 90 Days,’ you introduce the concept of forest bathing — this very special way of being present in nature, where we walk through the landscape with all our senses open and receptive. It raises an interesting question: What is it that makes this kind of stillness so fundamentally different from the calm we can find at home in our living room? Why does it feel so much more powerful and healing to find this inner peace out in nature?

This is about something deeper than just physical location. When we are out in nature, we connect with something greater than ourselves. We become part of an ancient rhythm, a pulse that existed long before us and will continue long after. It’s as though nature has its own frequency that helps us tune into our own inner silence in a way that is difficult to recreate indoors, no matter how quiet and peaceful our living room might be.

Pål-Esben

That’s a very good question. In fact, an incredibly important and relevant question in our modern time. The challenges we keep coming back to concern how we modern humans have become so fundamentally distanced from nature, especially over the past fifty years. We have gradually retreated into our artificial environments, where we spend most of our time in homes that are increasingly isolated from nature’s rhythms. Through new building regulations and modern construction methods, we have created dwellings that function as hermetically sealed concrete boxes, completely cut off from nature’s pulse and energy.

This distance from nature’s rhythms manifests in several ways. It’s not just about physical distance but also about a mental and emotional disconnection. Through our daily conditioning, stressful lifestyles, and the eternal hamster wheel we find ourselves in, we have lost touch with the natural rhythms we observe in healthy nature. This makes it extremely challenging to simply sit down in a chair and find inner peace. We are no longer in natural resonance with our surroundings. We have cut the umbilical cord to nature’s healing rhythms and vibrations, which were once an obvious part of human existence.

Many people claim to have good contact with nature — ‘I jog every day,’ they say, or ‘I walk the dog regularly.’ But this surface-level encounter with nature is not the same as the deep connection I’m speaking about.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

Of course it’s wonderful that people get out and enjoy fresh air — it’s better than nothing. But the real challenge, and what I want to shed light on, is about something much deeper. It concerns a fundamental exercise and a conscious process one must undergo to restore the lost resonance with nature’s basic rhythms. This doesn’t happen automatically just by being outdoors; it requires dedicated effort and understanding to reclaim this essential connection with nature’s wisdom and healing power. It’s about learning to listen, feel, and tune into nature’s subtle signals and patterns that we were once naturally synchronised with.

The Strawberry Field — Why Direct Experience Matters

Pål-Esben

You could do this by spending a few months living in the forest, and then you’d quickly return to the natural rhythms. You might need only a few weeks, during which you truly feel these vibrations and how nature plays its own melody. I have personally experienced how nature changes hour by hour, day by day — how it speaks to us through the whisper of the wind, the song of the birds, and the rippling of the brook. This is nature’s own music, a symphony that we were all once deeply connected to.

And the fascinating thing is that you don’t need very long before you truly feel this connection again. You need a minimum of two to three weeks, and you’re back, truly feeling it in body and soul. But here comes the great paradox of our modern age: Who actually has two or three weeks to set aside for this? We have so incredibly much going on in our busy lives. Who has the opportunity to take three weeks away from work, family, and obligations to place themselves in nature, without a mobile phone, without the internet, just with their tent and backpack? Unfortunately, very few of us have that privilege today.

It’s like trying to understand the taste of strawberries without ever touching or tasting them. Someone can tell you they’re sweet and juicy, with a very special aroma — but those are just words. To truly understand, you have to go out to the strawberry field yourself.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

You have to feel the earth beneath your feet, bend down, dig a little in the soil, crouch and pick the berries yourself. You have to smell them, taste them, savour them. Only then do you get a genuine reference experience of what the natural rhythms related to strawberries actually are.

So the reason it’s nearly impossible for most people to simply sit at home in the living room, close their eyes, and try to connect with nature’s rhythms is that we have been disconnected from this bond for such a long time. The modern human therefore has a strong need to actively seek out nature again. We must go out and experience, feel in the body, and enter into resonance with these rhythms that nature so generously shows us — through the dance of the trees in the wind, the swaying of the grass, the melodic gurgling of the stream, the morning song of the birds, and the whisper of the wind through the forest. All of this is nature’s way of communicating with us, a communication we once understood intuitively.

Forest Bathing — The Science and the Practice

Pål-Esben

So what exactly should you do? Well, it’s an exciting process that begins with what we call forest bathing. On my blog, I’ve written an article about forest bathing and Shinrin Yoku, where universities in Japan and elsewhere have conducted significant research in this area. The research demonstrates the impressive effects of spending just half an hour daily or every other day in the forest — without an agenda, without a mobile phone, and without letting your thoughts wander to planning or worries. It’s about being completely present in nature.

The health benefits are extensive and well-documented, from reduced stress levels and improved hormonal balance to reduced inflammation in the body. Studies also show significant improvement in conditions such as depression and anxiety. In my article on the blog, I’ve included detailed references to the scientific research.

The best thing about this practice is that it’s surprisingly simple to begin with. The exercise itself isn’t complicated, but the effect deepens and becomes more meaningful over time. As you practise regularly, you’ll notice that your approach becomes more refined. You begin to move into ever-deeper resonance with nature — that is, you come into ever-deeper contact with the natural rhythms that surround us.

The fascinating thing is that when we have established this deep resonance with nature, when we have built up a solid foundation of experiences through regular encounters with nature, something remarkable happens. We can then sit at home in our armchair, close our eyes, and recreate the same feelings and experiences as when we are out in nature.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

But this doesn’t come by itself — it requires that we first establish those genuine reference experiences, that we have restored our natural connection with nature’s own resonance, music, and vibration. When you’ve developed this ability, a whole new world of possibilities opens up.

Let’s say you’ve had a particularly challenging day and you need to find calm. You can then, right where you are sitting now, close your eyes and centre your breathing. You can choose to enter a meditative state where you recall, for example, the experience of the winter solstice — the deepest point of yin energy, the ultimate calm. By closing your eyes and actively summoning your reference experience, you can mentally transport yourself back to the last time you experienced this moment in nature. You recreate not just the memory but the entire physical and emotional experience you had there and then. This is a powerful technique that allows you to tap into nature’s healing power, even when you are physically somewhere else entirely.

When Nature and Soul Merge

Amina

I actually have several experiences to share when it comes to being in nature, and especially when a long time has passed since I was last out in the elements. It’s one thing to talk about, but it’s also fascinating how I can step into these nature experiences while sitting at home in my chair, even when I don’t have the opportunity to physically be in nature.

I remember especially well the time you guided us students through a deeply profound experience up on the mountain at Spitsbergseter Mountain Hotel. We were to go out into nature and simply be present, sit with the stones and let nature speak to us. What happened to me up there was truly remarkable — it might sound a bit strange, but I experienced a total merging with the stone I was sitting beside. It was as though all noise vanished, and I became completely one with the stone, until that experience naturally dissolved.

For me, these encounters with nature represent a very special form of stillness and inner peace. I experienced this as recently as a few days ago, when I felt a strong need to find balance in a hectic schedule. My natural fire-force drives me forward at full strength, and I truly love what I’m doing, but I also recognise the importance of finding space for stillness. In those moments, I sit down in this chair, close my eyes, and let myself mentally travel back to these powerful nature experiences. It’s almost like a form of energetic teleportation, where I can recreate and relive these feelings in body and mind.

But I also know the experience of suddenly realising that far too long has passed since I was properly out in nature. It’s an interesting pattern — when we start something that does us good, we experience positive effects, but then we tend to forget to continue doing the very thing that created the positive change.

Just a few days ago, I took time for a forest walk, and this time I did it differently — I had consciously not planned anything afterwards. This gave me the freedom to simply be there, to lie on the ground and be fully present in the moment, without stress or time pressure. This is a type of presence that would previously have been utterly unthinkable for me.

Amina Monsen

It’s actually quite funny to think that my first real, voluntary forest walk didn’t happen until during the Covid lockdown. My friend filmed me at the time, and the footage looks more like an audition tape for a reality show than a nature experience — there I stand in my pink jumper, completely out of my element, complaining that I need the toilet and want to go home.

My resistance to nature has actually been a recurring theme since childhood, so the pandemic definitely had its negative sides. But paradoxically, this period also led to something positive, particularly regarding my personal development and connection with nature. When the cafés and shopping centres were closed, I had to reluctantly admit that a walk in nature was the only option. And to my great surprise, I discovered that it was actually quite pleasant. One walk became several, and soon my friends began to wonder if I’d fallen ill, since it was so unlike me to spend time in nature. This became my first genuine encounter with nature’s power, and it was then I truly began to understand that something deeper and more significant lay here.

The Great Disconnection

Pål-Esben

It’s fascinating and simultaneously worrying how drastically we have distanced ourselves from the nature around us. We are so disconnected from nature’s rhythms and cycles that we barely recognise our own place in the great ecosystem. I see this daily in my work, and you tell an experience that is unfortunately all too common. In my practice, I encounter this with almost everyone I meet — whether they are students seeking guidance, clients struggling with chronic conditions, or people battling burnout and exhaustion. It is the same fundamental problem that keeps recurring. It is extremely rare that I meet people who have preserved a natural and healthy relationship with nature.

From my professional and personal standpoint, this estrangement from nature appears to be one of the most central causes of today’s widespread health problems.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

It largely explains why we see an explosive increase in depression, anxiety, chronic stress, excessive performance pressure, and various forms of chronic disease. This becomes particularly clear when we study indigenous peoples and traditional cultures that have maintained a deep and authentic connection with nature. In these communities, we find remarkably few cases of the mental illnesses that plague modern people. You won’t find widespread psychosis, depression, or anxiety. The complex personality disorders that characterise our time are virtually absent — in fact, many of these cultures don’t even have words or concepts for such conditions.

Why is this so? The answer lies in the fundamental connection with nature. When people live in genuine resonance with nature’s rhythms and forces in their daily lives, a protective balance is created that prevents many of our modern ailments. These conditions arise primarily when we lose this connection, when our umbilical cord to our natural state is severed. Then we end up in a constant state of sympathetic activation — fight-or-flight mode — where we chase after achievement, career, status, and material goods, or surf the internet on autopilot without purpose or meaning.

The Spiritual Foundation — Why You Can’t Skip the Basics

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This brings us to the heart of the development process we’re talking about. We are now at the starting point of an important journey — a journey towards rediscovering and understanding nature’s essential role in our lives. It’s about recognising how nature can be the key to both physical and mental health, to creating a more meaningful life, and to finding a harmonious balance where we allow nature’s innate rhythms to become an integral part of our own existence.

Of course, this is just the beginning of a larger development process for any student or client. But it is crucial to establish this fundamental understanding right from the start. You need a solid motivation to begin such a transformative process. There must be a compelling reason, a deep recognition of why it is so important to restore contact with nature. Because this is not a quick fix — it demands time, dedication, and patience.

A good start can be to explore forest bathing, which I’ve described in detail in my article. It’s about committing to a daily practice over a 90-day period. The key is to invest roughly half an hour each day in nature, follow the specific techniques and exercises described, and gradually build a stronger connection with nature’s healing forces.

And then you take a giant leap forward, and this is where the real transformation begins. Because then you move away from the theoretical understanding that many of us tend to cling to. Then you truly begin to experience what we’re talking about here on a deeper level. And it is precisely this experience that is the absolute key. It’s not about blindly believing in something, or being able to recite all the theories and concepts by heart, but about finding that genuine experience where you truly feel in your body how the rhythms work, where you gain a deep sense of the calm, and where you get first-hand experience of how healthy regulation actually manifests itself in nature.

Amina

Yes, and what I have come to understand now, after many years of exploration and reflection, is that starting precisely there — with the fundamental experience — and having that as a solid foundation, is absolutely crucial for the deeper shamanic development. In fact, and I emphasise ‘in fact’ with force, this is something I only realised in hindsight.

It reminds me of what we discussed in the previous episode, where I was so impatient and kept wondering why we weren’t throwing ourselves straight into all the metaphysical and supernatural aspects from the very start of the training. Because that’s where I, in my naive eagerness, believed I was mentally. And then we were suddenly supposed to go out into the forest! I thought rather arrogantly: ‘Yes, yes, the forest is lovely, I’ve been to the forest before, come on, let’s skip to the great mysteries.’

And then came the great revelation where I finally understood that my ego had to calm down substantially. I gradually realised the importance of simply landing in the here and now, and accepting that it’s perfectly fine to be exactly where I am.

Amina Monsen

The fascinating thing is that when I finally managed to let go of all my preconceived ideas about what spirituality had to be, or my rigid notions of what shamanism should involve, and instead just be fully present here and now, where I am in the training, without constantly longing for what comes later or what seems bigger and more impressive — which, as you so precisely point out, is the ego’s need for constant stimulation — the easier it has actually become for me to open up to all the deeper and more significant things that come naturally in time.

Pål-Esben

Yes, it is my experience too, through more than two decades of deep exploration of these themes, that if you don’t have this solid foundation to build your development upon, you are literally standing in sand and quicksand. It’s like building a house without a foundation — sooner or later, it will collapse.

You can of course let yourself be tempted by all the exciting offerings out there — angels here, channelling there, past lives and regression around the next corner. You can hop from chakra course to chakra course, dream of travelling in the morphogenetic field, reading the Akashic records, or exploring parallel lives. But eventually you have to ask yourself: Where is all of this actually leading? Earth is calling, as they say.

The truth is that our intellect, our karmic memory, the ego and all these aspects of ourselves — they hunger constantly for the spectacular. They want more, they want power, they want those extraordinary experiences that give a feeling of being special or chosen. And let me be perfectly clear — there is absolutely nothing wrong with these experiences in themselves. But if you start here, before you have established a solid foundation, it’s like building castles in the air. You end up floating around in a fog, without a foothold, without the basic stability that is so essential for genuine spiritual growth.

How are we ever to make genuine contact with the deepest divine within ourselves when we are still completely trapped in the straitjacket of everyday life, in the intense madness that characterises the four-dimensional realm?

Pål-Esben Wanvig

It becomes simply impossible to connect with your timeless and spaceless nature — where your full power, your full capacities, and your innate talents lie stored and waiting to be activated — as long as you are completely lost in what I call the ‘monkey world.’ In this world of constant chaos, where we rush from one thing to the next, where we run like people possessed in our personal hamster wheels, where we are bound hand and foot in society’s and the ego’s straitjackets, where we are 100 percent trapped in time and space — there it is simply not possible to achieve this deep contact with our true nature. It’s like trying to hear a whisper in a room full of deafening noise — it simply doesn’t work.

Beyond Techniques — What Awaits on the Other Side

Pål-Esben

And in Yggdrasil Shamanic School, how I guide you and the other students, it’s about something much deeper than just surface-level learning. It’s not just about acquiring cool techniques and methods. Take spontaneous healing, for example, which we introduce already in the very first beginner seminar in our tradition. This is a fascinating method where you don’t even need to physically touch a person, yet you can observe how the body responds and changes when you perform the technique at a distance. That we teach something this powerful at the very beginning says something about the depth of our approach.

But this is only the beginning. Because if you don’t have this fundamental foundation in place, it becomes very challenging to naturally glide into the truly spectacular aspects of the practice. What awaits on the other side of this foundational training is something entirely different from what most people imagine. It is both more grounded and simultaneously more extraordinary than fantasy can conjure.

Amina

Yes, I truly recognise myself in what you’re saying, and I remember especially well the moment that gave me a deep aha-experience. It was when you asked that penetrating question: ‘How will you ever become properly acquainted with your true metaphysical nature, your genuine spiritual light, if you don’t first become acquainted with your fundamental human nature?’ This statement hit me like a bolt of insight. It was as though all the pieces fell into place in that moment, and I finally understood the fundamental importance of starting with the human before reaching for the divine.

In today’s society, we have grown so accustomed to everything happening instantly. We expect spiritual awakening to come overnight, that a simple YouTube video should be enough to activate our kundalini energy, and that enlightenment should be as accessible as flipping a switch.

Amina Monsen

When we look at the ancient yogic traditions, with their 5,000 years of documented wisdom and insight, they tell us something entirely different. They teach us that the path to enlightenment is a thorough preparation process that requires patience and dedication. A critical point on this journey is what we call the shaman death — a fundamental transformation where the ego must relinquish its role as the soul’s ruler and instead become its humble advisor. This is not something that can be rushed or skipped over.

One Grain of Sand in the Sahara

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As long as we are captivated by the spectacular, by what glitters and sparkles in the moment, we remain locked in the ego’s limited perspective. It is the intellect, our karmic memory, and the ego that chase experiences and power, desperately seeking the next big experience. But ironically, it is precisely this chase that blocks our access to the real Sahara — the infinite potential that lies dormant within us. It’s like being so preoccupied with collecting glass beads that we miss the diamond mine right beneath our feet.

I like to use a metaphor to illustrate this point: Everything we experience in our material existence — what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, together with all our metaphysical experiences — amounts to just a single grain of sand in the great desert of our existence. This one grain represents only a microscopic part of our true nature. Our real existence is as vast as the entire Sahara desert, infinite in its scope and potential.

To gain access to this full power, this boundless potential within us, we must be willing to take the thorough journey. It’s about gradually finding our way out of our self-imposed limitations, out of the mental hamster wheel we have created for ourselves. This is not a rapid process but a deep transformation that requires patience, dedication, and a willingness to meet ourselves at a fundamental level. It is through this gradual liberation that we can truly begin to explore and manifest our full potential.

This is a very specific and structured process that demands engagement, focus, and patience to be carried out properly. When this fundamental process is complete, the real development journey begins — a profound exploration of both insight and shamanic magic, where one gradually comes into contact with the deeper layers of the transcendental. Through this process, one begins to approach one’s full, complete nature and gets to experience one’s Sahara — the boundless existence that stretches far beyond time and space. It is at this point that we can truly begin to speak about what is genuinely spectacular.

Why There Are No Shortcuts

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In light of this, it becomes clear how superficial and limiting it is to chase quick fixes — to channel an angel here or seek a spiritual experience there. Such superficial pursuits become merely distractions that hinder the real, deeply transformative development process, which has an entirely different quality and depth.

It is essential to understand that without first establishing the solid foundation — the bedrock we have discussed in this podcast — through restoring our natural contact and resonance with nature, we cannot move forward. This represents the first and most critical step in the process of liberating ourselves from the straitjacket and the energy-draining hamster wheel that so many are trapped in.

Amina

Yes, there will certainly be no solid house without a proper foundation. This is something we’ve all experienced, whether through playing with Lego, building card houses, or other constructions. Time and again we’ve seen how structures with an unsteady base inevitably collapse, regardless of the material used.

Pål-Esben

In our digital age, we are bombarded with glittering promises and fascinating offers. There is an endless stream of courses and seminars, and on YouTube alone you’ll find thousands of channels presenting everything from theories about extraterrestrial beings and intergalactic conflicts to claims about our own alien origins. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and confused in this ocean of information.

We also encounter countless videos promising rapid spiritual awakening through simple exercises — perhaps a specific yoga position that supposedly awakens kundalini energy and leads to instant enlightenment. But this is a dangerous delusion. Directing your energy and attention towards superficial glitter and glamour, without first establishing a solid foundation, is like building a castle in the air that will sooner or later collapse.

This is why I always emphasise the importance of the shamanic development process. Yes, this process can be spectacular and transformative, and I truly want everyone to experience these extraordinary dimensions. But to gain access to these deeper, more spectacular aspects of our spiritual development, it is absolutely essential that we first establish this foundation.

It’s about building stone by stone, layer by layer, with patience and dedication. Only when the foundation is solid can we safely begin to explore the higher levels of consciousness and spiritual insight. This is not a shortcut to spiritual development but the only sustainable path that actually leads to lasting transformation and authentic spiritual growth. Without this fundamental preparation, we risk building our spiritual ‘house’ on sandy ground, where it will be vulnerable to every challenge or setback we meet on our way.

The Gateway to the Extraordinary

Pål-Esben

It might sound a bit dull — this business with nature’s healthy rhythms. I understand well that some might think, ‘Can’t we just skip to the more exciting stuff?’ or ‘Let’s talk about something more spectacular.’ Many want to go straight out into the forest and bathe in the energies there, without preparation. But that is precisely why we must talk about this foundation first.

Because you see, this is the starting point if you truly want to dive into the fascinating rabbit hole of exciting esoteric knowledge. This is the gateway to a world of shamanic practices, communication with light beings, and exploration of astral fields that can give you deep insight, wisdom, and healing powers. Through this process, you will gradually begin to understand — not just theoretically, but through direct experience — what the Akashic records really are. You will discover the truth about past lives, incarnation cycles, and your personal learning themes.

All of this is fundamentally about vibration, and the modern human has unfortunately become almost immune to these subtle vibrations. We are so absorbed in our material needs and desires that we have lost contact, not only with nature’s healthy rhythms, but with all the other dimensions that surround us.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

Therefore, we must first go through a process where we gradually regain our sensitivity. We must ‘de-numb’ ourselves, so that we can begin to feel these vibrations once more. This is the real key to developing the spectacular abilities that people dream of mastering.

I promise that we will come to all these fascinating topics later in our podcast series. We will take you along the entire journey to where you find yourself today, Amina. But we owe our listeners a start from the beginning, explaining the foundation for all the extraordinary experiences you are having now. Without this fundamental understanding and preparation, these experiences would have been impossible to achieve.

Honouring Every Step of the Journey

Amina

Yes, absolutely. This is truly a fundamentally important foundation that we cannot overlook. When I reflect on my own journey and were to describe how my life unfolds today, with all the experiences and insights I’ve gained, I must emphasise that none of this happened overnight. It has required deep dedication, constant effort, countless rounds of trial and error, and not least — the ability to be fully present in the moment, exactly where you are on the journey, and accepting this as a natural part of the process.

When I look back, I wouldn’t have been without any of these ups and downs, all these precious moments of insight, the times I made mistakes and learned from them, the times I thought I’d understood something only to realise I still had more to learn. Every single experience has been invaluable because it has contributed to my own growth and development.

Now that I work with students who are in the initial phase of their Yggdrasil shamanic foundation training, I see how valuable it is to carry this experience with me. It gives me a deeper understanding of their process, both in terms of their insights and the challenges they encounter along the way.

Pål-Esben

And let me be entirely clear on this point: If you wish to undergo such a profoundly transformative shamanic development process as we’re describing here, it is absolutely essential to have an experienced guide or teacher at your side. This is not something you can achieve merely by watching YouTube videos or reading books, no matter how informative those resources might be.

A guide is absolutely necessary because you continuously encounter situations and experiences that need to be discussed, analysed, and understood at a deeper level. You need someone who can provide clarity, objectivity, insight, and guidance along the way.

As long as you’re only moving across the surface, you can of course take various courses here and there, learn a bit about angels in one place and channelling in another. But what we’re talking about now is something entirely different — it’s about a truly profound development process. This is a transformative journey where we don’t just learn methods and techniques, but where we actually transcend ourselves and our lives. We move from a place marked by resistance, suffering, illness, anxiety, limitations, numbness, resignation, and emptiness, to a life that is literally filled with meaning and joy. This is a fundamental transformation of our entire being, a journey that requires continuous guidance and support to be completed in a healthy and balanced way.

The Soul’s Courageous Choice

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Yes, this is precisely what we are discussing here. Because everything points in this direction — that we human beings, as we see it, have a deeper meaning to our existence. When our soul enters this life, when it chooses to inhabit this body that we are, a fascinating journey begins. Our body becomes in many ways a kind of straitjacket for the soul, which comes from a dimension where time and space do not exist. It is as though the soul goes from a state of total freedom to a much more limited form when it enters you and me. This is an incredible transformation, a passage from the boundless to the physical, from the eternal to the time-bound.

It feels like a prison for the soul, this physical body of ours. With so many limitations and boundaries that we must relate to every single day. It’s natural to wonder — why does the soul choose to place itself in such a limited situation? Is it because the soul has masochistic tendencies and wishes to torment itself? Of course that is not the case. There is a deeper meaning behind it all.

The soul consciously chooses this state because it represents a completely unique opportunity for learning and experience. In its original, free state where time and space don’t exist, the soul lacks the ability to experience many of life’s most fundamental things. It cannot taste the sweet flavour of ripe strawberries on a warm summer’s day. It cannot feel the overwhelming sense of deep and true love. It cannot immerse itself in melancholy’s quiet contemplation. It cannot feel sorrow’s heavy presence when losing someone dear. It cannot know anxiety’s clammy grip or joy’s bubbling lightness. All of this is impossible in the timeless and spaceless dimension, because there, everything is one and the same.

The soul takes the conscious choice to incarnate in the body of a human being. It chooses to step into this peculiar straitjacket where it becomes limited by time and space — not from any wish to torment itself, but because it has come here to learn and experience in a truly unique setting.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

This is the essence of our development process as human beings. When we look more closely at the fundamental desire for evolution that the creative force has planted in us, and when we study the great mysteries of the universe, we see that everything is part of an evolutionary process. From the Big Bang to the gradual development of our planet — everything is about continuous evolution and growth. This also applies to you and me as individuals.

This is what we call our personal growth process, where we have different learning themes to work through. When we harness this natural drive in the shamanic development process, we don’t end up in despair and depression. Instead, we find our way to a life that is literally filled with meaning and joy. This doesn’t mean that life becomes nothing but a bed of roses — it isn’t, for any of us. But even when adversity strikes, we don’t go down for the count. We don’t fall into the victim role, thinking ‘why me?’ or ‘this must be bad karma’ or ‘I don’t deserve this.’

Instead, we see the world and our experiences from an entirely new perspective. We have learned to see the possibilities that lie in every experience, no matter how challenging it may be.

A New Way of Meeting Life’s Challenges

Pål-Esben

Take, for example, what happened to me this summer, with our bathroom that we renovated twelve years ago. It turned out we had a serious water leak, and it became clear that the tiler had unfortunately done a poor job when the bathroom was built. The situation was so critical that we had no choice but to tear down the entire bathroom and rebuild everything from scratch. Suddenly, 20,000 Euros vanished from our account, and I distinctly remember thinking, ‘What on earth?’

Earlier in life, a situation like this would have guaranteed sent me straight into a depressive state. I would have thought, ‘Oh God, why is this happening to me? This is absolutely terrible! How can this be possible?’

But with the new perspective I’ve developed over the years, I was able to see the situation in a completely different light. I realised this was something beyond my control, and in fact, it was a blessing that we discovered the problem now. Imagine if we hadn’t noticed it for another three years — then we could have been facing even more extensive problems with the house’s load-bearing structures. So I chose to see the positive: This gave us the opportunity to finally get the upgraded bathroom we’d been talking about for years.

What really struck me was that it doesn’t cost a single calorie to be positive instead of negative and destructive. By seeing the situation as a challenge to be solved rather than a catastrophe, you preserve your energy and keep your head clear.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

Amina

Yes, and you have truly guided me to become more like the oak — this majestic tree that stands unshakeable in the storm. It is a deep transformation where I am no longer tossed about by life’s unpredictable events. As you so precisely point out, the bathroom can break down, the car can give out, you can receive an unexpected tax bill, and countless other challenges can appear. Life’s realities have a tendency to surprise us.

It’s so easy to fall into the old pattern of thinking, asking yourself ‘why me?’ and beginning to ponder whether you’ve done something wrong, whether it’s karma striking back, or whether there’s something important you’ve missed. But instead of dwelling on these thoughts, I’ve learned to put the spotlight on a more constructive perspective: When has it ever not worked out in the end? Because the truth is that things always find their solution, one way or another.

And this is definitely a topic that deserves deeper exploration in a future episode — this ability to experience life’s many sides, both the good and the challenging, without losing your footing when adversity comes. The interesting thing is that during this process, you can experience a kind of inner split, almost like a schizophrenic state. I remember particularly well from the early phase of my own development, when many in my circle reacted with concern and pointed out that I seemed almost emotionless.

People around me asked questions like: ‘Why don’t you get upset when your car breaks down? How can you remain so calm when your daughter says such things? Is it really possible that you don’t care?’ This came especially from those closest to me, and I had to explain time and again that of course I care. It’s not that I think it’s unproblematic to have to spend 20,000 kroner on car repairs, or that I’m not affected when my daughter creates challenges in the middle of a birthday celebration. But the difference lies in how I choose to respond to these situations.

I’ve realised that these things happen regardless of my reaction, and that I cannot control everything. This new way of relating to challenges can often seem provocative to the people around you when you’re in a development process, because you begin to change fundamentally from the person you once were.

Closing — A Bridge to the Next Episode

Pål-Esben

Yes, this serves as a perfect gateway to our next episode, where we can explore more deeply what happens both to ourselves and to those around us when we go through such a sweeping transformation process. It’s not always an easy journey, especially when it comes to how other people react to you no longer responding in the ‘normal’ way you used to.

The most fascinating thing is perhaps how other people can actually become provoked and irritated that you don’t get angry and upset over things that previously would have triggered strong reactions. This is truly a deep and complex subject that deserves thorough exploration.

Let’s wrap up this episode here, but before we do, let me address one last important point. You mentioned at the start that you have been diagnosed with ADHD and have experienced significant challenges with maintaining focus. Now that you have come some way in your personal development process, have you noticed any change in your ability to find calm and relax, despite the ADHD diagnosis?

Amina

It is 100 percent possible to live a good life without medication. I truly understand how challenging this may sound if you have ADHD and have perhaps lived with the diagnosis for a long time. My deepest compassion goes to everyone who battles this challenge every single day. Through my own journey and experience with clients, I have seen that change is possible, even when it seems impossible in the beginning.

I have myself gone from being dependent on medication to living a balanced life without it. This was no easy process, but it has taught me so much about the human being’s incredible capacity for adaptation. In my experience, we see that in roughly nine out of ten cases, it is possible to find alternative paths to mastery. This is of course individual, and each person’s journey is unique.

Pål-Esben

This subject is especially relevant today, for both children and adults. We see a growing trend where more and more adults are receiving ADHD diagnoses, which raises important questions about how we can best support these people. This is definitely something we should explore more thoroughly in a dedicated episode.

Amina, I want to thank you warmly for a fantastic conversation today. Your honesty and openness touch me deeply.

Amina

Thank you, Pål-Esben. This has been a true joy.