Julie Hilsen (00:06)
Hello dear friends and welcome to Life of Love where we gather to explore with curiosity what’s on our hearts and how to live your life of love however it looks on this day. Messy, pristine fairy tale love or just, you you’re just getting through your day. So we honor each phase, each scene and each way that we show up in our life of love and honor everyone’s struggles and…

just so happy to have the community here and I thank you for your ears and I thank you for your attention. This is growing and we’re adding to this light grid each time we step forward with an open heart to live with more love. So I honor your time and thank you for being here. So, you know, we’re going to have a great episode today, guys. Put on your seat belts because we’re going to learn how to love the way you want to love and we’re going to explore that.

about transforming the way you love if you feel like there’s something missing or that you’re showing up for relationships, but they’re not showing up for you. We’re gonna dive into that today with our dear guest, Christian De La Huerta But first I’m gonna set our intention and then we’re gonna get started. So if you’re in a place to close your eyes, I invite you to close your eyes and.

just breathe in your heart. you’re driving, if you can’t, if you’re operating machinery, of course, do not close your eyes. But just if you can just get into a heart space, But you know what I do is I just sort of put my feet in the ground and just let my breath go to my heart.

Dear God, creator, thank you for bringing me to this time and space. Thank you for bringing Christian into this field with me. I honor his journey. I honor his guides and I ask my team and his team to collaborate as they feel fit. I ask each person who’s available to open their hearts to these messages and the Holy Spirit to

bring forth the highest intensity of this calling that is easy for us to digest, to transmute anything that no longer serves us, and to reach those people that need to hear this. And with compassion and love, I open my heart and I ask this message to come forth the highest good. And so it is. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Right, Christian, thanks for being here on Life of Love. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Christian De La Huerta (02:36)
Hey, Julie, I’m so happy to be here with you. Thank you for having me.

Julie Hilsen (02:37)
Yes.

Yeah, well, I mean, I know that that you’re excited about your book that’s just come out this year,

Christian De La Huerta (02:45)
it’s conscious love transforming our relationship to relationships. So, how we approach relationships, how we hold them.

Julie Hilsen (02:55)
So it’s a powerful way to look at it about relationships because it puts the power back in the individual. It’s not, I’m looking for this person. I’m looking for this, of course you’re looking for a great relationship, but.

I love how the lens of this is, it’s your, this is your intention to come forward and transform your relationship to relationships because it starts with you. So I’m just really excited to have this insight from you and sharing this. So thank you.

Christian De La Huerta (03:28)
Yeah, and

it’s so interesting because we’ve been so conditioned, for example, that relationships have to be till death do us part. And so then when they don’t work out, we think of ourselves and the relationship as a failure. Whereas if we reframe how we hold relationships, for me, it’s like, how do we know how long to stay? Because every relationship is going to have ups and downs.

And often, too often we bail, we’re in one of the down spots, one of the challenging times, but sometimes growth is happening. And so for me, the measurement is as long as growth is happening. And that’s one of the ways in which I think of relationships is consciously. So rather than approaching a relationship because we don’t want to be lonely, because we don’t like, and we don’t want to be alone, because we’re seeking validation through somebody else.

or by society’s definition of, you know, because we have to be in relationship. To me, it’s not about any of that. It’s about finding somebody that’s willing to do a relationship consciously, meaning that they’re willing to do the work. So when somebody does something that, you know, that hurts us rather than immediately hurting them back, which is the automatic thing to do,

or the more even kind of human thing to do is like feeling the ouch, feeling the hurt, and then asking the deeper questions like, what’s going on here? Why does that hurt? Why does that, why do I keep finding myself in patterns of relationship where people keep doing that? Because if we get really honest with ourselves, it’s not even about that other person. It’s like, why do we attract that kind of person or that kind of behavior? What do we put up with certain patterns of behavior that don’t?

honor us or less than honoring of us. At some point there’s one common denominator in every argument and in every relationship and it’s right here. So why do we do that?

Julie Hilsen (05:22)
I love how you said that it’s not honoring me. That is, it’s a sacred way to approach relationship. I don’t feel honored when this happens. And if that other person is in that growth mindset, is in that conscious relationship that you’re calling out for. I mean, if it wouldn’t be in your field, if you weren’t asking for it, right? So that person is really in that sink with you and they’re worth your effort.

Christian De La Huerta (05:42)
Exactly.

Julie Hilsen (05:49)
to grow through the struggle, they’re gonna see your need to be honored and wanna honor you. That’s beautiful. They can’t honor you where you can’t go and then you say, okay, that’s great, I’ve seen this, I have clarity on my next relationship, because to me that’s a foundation. If someone can’t honor you, then there’s nowhere to go. That’s clarity.

Christian De La Huerta (05:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, the first time is definitely

on them. But by the time we get into the second, third, or plus time of being dishonored, then we become complicit. We are part of the problem. We’re putting up with it. Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (06:24)
We’re enabling. Yeah.

And that’s where you said, come back to what am I doing that is setting up the situation? Am I not setting my boundaries? Am I not clear? And it takes, I’ve, you know, I’ve been married 20, my gosh, it’ll be 25 years this summer. And definitely those rough patches have brought us so much closer, but you know, it’s…

Christian De La Huerta (06:33)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Julie Hilsen (06:49)
it’s that work, that work to say, okay, well, how can we go from here? What do we want? And having those hard conversations and having Mitch meet me and figure out what the plan is. Yeah, you need to be seen. So I can look back at major problems where I was like, are we gonna make it through this? And each time,

Christian De La Huerta (07:11)
Yeah, yeah.

Julie Hilsen (07:14)
brought us like you said, it brings you closer, it fortifies your relationship. It’s you can go to the metaphor of, you know, steelwork when you’re forging a sword, you know, it’s like each bang of that metal and the hot fire, you know, because sometimes it hurts, it’s painful to be vulnerable and say, well, this is this is really how I feel. I’m not going to project anything on you. I’m going to own everything that I feel and my insecurities and

Christian De La Huerta (07:37)
Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (07:41)
and sharing that insecurity, it’s not easy, it’s work. To not give up, but giving up if you need to give up and having that clarity, because if it doesn’t come to honor and love and compassion, then it’s okay. There’s no shame that you just learned something.

Christian De La Huerta (07:47)
Yeah, mean, their work, their work.

Yeah,

exactly. And it sure sounds from the way you’re describing your relationship with Mitch that you’re in what Ram Dass calls a level two relationship. He talks about how we can do relationships consciously or unconsciously. Unconsciously is the way that most of us have done them in the past where we are trying to seek validation or avoiding being lonely or whatever the reason may be. In a conscious relationship,

We know that only we are responsible for our happiness. That we can’t expect that other person or anybody else for that matter to make us happy. Because how unfair to put that responsibility on someone else or on the relationship. You are going to make me happy. Yikes. So if we do them consciously, meaning that we know we own that responsibility, there’s three levels of doing them. In the first level, the other person doesn’t want to play. It doesn’t want to play at that level of

really putting work into the relationship. But enough of it works. Maybe you co-parent well together, you travel well together, you cohabitate together. There’s maybe sex is great. So enough of it works that we say, okay, well, it’s not the end all be all, but I can find some of those other, can meet some of those other needs in myself with my friends or other parts of my life. I’m gonna choose to stay and reclaim some of the time and the energy, the resources.

the effort that I would otherwise be spending looking for the one. And I’m gonna focus out on my own process of growth and evolution, which is ultimately what we’re here for, I think. We’ll skip to and come back to that level three, both beings are already fully realized, fully aware of our God essence. And so the relationship becomes a sacred dance of mirroring that for each other. I don’t think we need to worry about that one yet, but let’s focus a number.

Julie Hilsen (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

I was going to say, who has that? ⁓

Christian De La Huerta (09:53)
Yeah,

So level two is where both beings are willing to do the work of relating. And so like you were talking about, when we feel that ouch rather than immediately blaming or projecting or matching it, it’s like, oh, doing the work. It’s like, wow, why does it feel that way? Why do I keep recreating these patterns? When have I felt this before? All doing that kind of work, which is work and it’s heroic work, but it is so worth it because

Once we do that work, then we free ourselves.

Julie Hilsen (10:24)
True. you know, taking that ouch and we’re to the point where we’re able to make it humor. It’s like, all right, you know, and it’s interesting how if you can trust and surrender those, those owie’s to like, yeah, I’m learning about myself. I’m learning about the world and how I want to be in relationship.

And that vulnerability just, you come from that, the other person’s safe to be vulnerable too. And it becomes, like you said, a sacred dance. every once in a while you get a glimpse of it here, of what, you know, I bet that’s how relationship is in the other dimensions when we move on. But we chose to be in this density of this hurt. But also the triumph, you know, it’s like that we get both. We get that.

the hot fudge chocolate sundae and we also get the, I just banged my head on the door. We get both.

Christian De La Huerta (11:22)
Exactly,

exactly. And the ecstatic bliss of making love.

Julie Hilsen (11:28)
Yeah, so okay, so that’s a segue to breath work in my mind. It’s really, it’s to me that breath work and being intimate is so powerful. And I think we take it for granted or maybe it’s like, moaning or whatever. I don’t want to get too graphic, but.

but we do like in sex, there’s a lot of breath work going on. But I wanted to ask you how, when you had your breakthrough with breath work, I was reading about your history and you’re like, you did breath work and you turned over the laundry basket as well. like to say is like you have these epiphany and you’re like, I can’t live the life the way I’m living it anymore. Can you talk about your experience with breath work and how it was a light bulb moment for you to.

Christian De La Huerta (11:45)
You

Julie Hilsen (12:11)
to realize more of your soul calling of the power within you that you wanted to share with others. I’m really curious about that.

Christian De La Huerta (12:19)
I discovered breath work and I jumped tracks after my first session.

and I’ve yet to come across anything that heals past trauma as effectively and as quickly. I can’t argue with the result. It works and it works fast.

And we should clarify that the breathwork is a kind of big umbrella term. Anybody who’s done a yoga class and done pranayama has done breathwork. But the kind of breathwork that we’re talking about here is more intense. It’s like you breathe in a particular way for about an hour, an hour and a half, and amazing things happen. And beyond the healing qualities of it, which is the main reason to do it,

It can be ecstatic. Like I can’t tell you how often people have told me after a breathwork session that they got to the same place that they did on a sacred plant medicine. So, you know, going beyond the limitation of the constraints of the separate personality, having moments of oneness, of interconnectedness with it all available just by breathing and.

Julie Hilsen (13:14)
Mm.

Christian De La Huerta (13:28)
You know, they haven’t studied breath work. The way that there’s so much research on meditation, they’re starting to study breath work now in terms of what’s going on in the body when we breathe in those conscious ways. But to me, the way that I can understand why it is so powerful and nothing short of miraculous is we think about, you when we think about it in most spiritual traditions in the world and even some secular languages, the same word.

One word can mean breath or spirit, depending on the context. And to me that is ultimately why it’s so powerful.

Julie Hilsen (14:03)
because you can connect to another realm. You can connect to your spirit or your soul or whatever, whatever it is.

Christian De La Huerta (14:08)
Yes, yeah,

yeah. And because we are being breathed by, you know, by the Holy Breath or the Holy Spirit, whatever, whatever you want to call it in that moment. And if we do that consciously, amazing things happen. You know, it’s fascinating to me that the breath is our most faithful, our most loyal companion. And yet we take it for granted.

Right, we don’t have to remember to breathe. Fortunately, there’s a part of our body or there’s something that is breathing us. But if we pay, you know, gifted some of the attention or limited attention to the breath, amazing things happen. And if we use it consciously toward healing, incredible, just incredible and irreversible, like stuff that comes up in breathwork and have

Julie Hilsen (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Christian De La Huerta (14:55)
plenty of evidence not only in my own life, but in countless people that I’ve worked with. Once it’s healed and breath-taking, it comes up and it’s cleared and it doesn’t come back.

Julie Hilsen (15:06)
I wondered what, what

wisdom tradition you first were introduced with breathwork? Was it a religious type thing or how did you know that it needed to be an hour and a half and what to do? Was there a path or a framework that you followed? I’m just really curious because I’ve been into breathwork, but what you’re saying, it seems like a whole different level.

Christian De La Huerta (15:22)
Yeah.

It is a whole different level. because I’ve also done a lot of breathing techniques. This particular modality was discovered, think, independently in the West, in California, somewhere out on the West Coast in the late 70s and the 80s. And some guy was playing in his hot tub, playing with his breath, and boom, had this amazing expanded state of awareness. So initially they started

practicing it in hot tubs, and it’s still done. Like when I train my facilitators, we do it just so that they have the experience and they know how to do it. But I would actually get in the hot tub with them. And they’re in the hot tub with mask and snorkel, and I’m supporting them. And that’s really powerful, but it’s not practical because it takes two people a long time in the hot tub. So it was taken out and would you do it lying on the floor like in Shavasana or?

you know, on your back from yoga class and just breathe in that circular connected way for an hour to an hour and a half. It tends to be a little bit longer when you do it in a group. But initially they called it rebirthing because a lot of people will relive the moment of birth because as I was saying, it really clears and heals trauma.

And the moment of birth is traumatic for everybody involved. So a lot of people will actually have that memory and relive the process of birth. And it’s fascinating because I’ve had men start out kind of like if their body was in stirrups, because if you think about it at that moment, we were sharing consciousness with the mother, with our mothers.

that like even guys have that body memory of going through, know, going of being the life giver or the container of life. And then so it’s really fascinating.

Julie Hilsen (17:17)
⁓ I see like that,

like they’re, okay, wow. That is, wow.

Christian De La Huerta (17:21)
I know,

I know, I know, it’s trippy. Trippy.

Julie Hilsen (17:26)
Yeah. So do you think

that breathwork opens up like the pineal gland and that gives, you know, that’s like it’s connecting that crystal in our head to what’s available, those frequencies to connect to that? Do you, you know, like I was listening to Joe Dispenza and he was talking about that and he has a video that tries to describe it in some way, but is that, do you think that’s what’s happening?

Christian De La Huerta (17:41)
Yeah.

That’s one of the theories about how it works and why people have those transcendent experiences. That DMT is produced by the pineal gland. And so in those moments, that’s what’s being triggered. But we don’t really know, right? We can’t test what’s going on the pineal gland. They would have to remove it and then we can’t do that.

Julie Hilsen (17:53)
Yeah.

Christian De La Huerta (18:14)
But it is one of the theories also like what happens at the moment of death that the DMT of the Panayagalan is being released and that’s why people have those visions of the tunnel and lights and all that kind of stuff. But we don’t know, right? We’re just, it’s a hypothesis that that’s what’s happening. Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (18:32)
That’s hypothesis. Yeah, well, I mean, I had

another guest on that said that pineal gland actually increases in size as you age. And that was interesting because you age, you get closer to death, and maybe that helps you can reconnect to the other side. Yeah, I was like,

Christian De La Huerta (18:42)
Yeah, I hadn’t heard.

Interesting.

Interesting, I hadn’t heard that but yeah.

Julie Hilsen (18:55)
So I forget things lately. I’m getting older and my pineal gland’s taking up more space. I don’t need to remember everything. I just trust.

Christian De La Huerta (18:59)
There you go. There you go.

There you go. That’s a great way to look at it. Yeah, it’s amazing how, I mean, we’re so smart creatures, but yet there’s still so much about even ourselves that we don’t know. There’s a lot that we know about the body and the body’s functions. But when we think about even like the whole mystery of embodiment and the spiritual aspect,

of consciousness being in a body like we don’t know a whole lot about that.

Julie Hilsen (19:31)
No, like you said, they’re just starting to do research on breath work and how it goes. So with your experience with this breath work and other people, the application, so say there’s a trauma that comes up, do you think that having that experience reconnects you to that piece of being there or is it…

Christian De La Huerta (19:37)
Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (19:56)
Do people need to reconnect on a regular basis to feel that feeling of peace and connection, of being part of one, to know that it’s gonna be okay? What’s your experience? I guess I’m trying to ask, is it a one and done or do people need to constantly do that breath work to reconnect to that?

Christian De La Huerta (20:15)
Well, I mean, think it’s a great practice to do on an ongoing basis. Like when I do a weekend retreat, we do four breathwork sessions, one a day. We start on Thursday, part ways on Sunday, so we do one a day. It does have a cumulative effect. So two ways that the healing part of it has permanent effect. So if some trauma comes up,

right, whatever, sexual abuse or any kind of abuse and some stuff that people had even suppressed. And so they recover their memory. And it doesn’t have to be that intense. It could be the death of a pet when you were young. We didn’t have the tools to process it. So we’ve been carrying those, what used to be spiritual teaching, that everything is energy. Now we know from quantum physics, it’s all energy, even what feels solid.

We know from physics, energy cannot be destroyed. So the emotions are also energies. And so for all the countless times in our lives that we didn’t feel safe feeling something or much less communicating it, those energies, we just swallow it. We swallow those emotions. We try to sweep it under the rug. That stuff doesn’t go away. It gets.

Julie Hilsen (21:26)
Push them down.

Christian De La Huerta (21:31)
stored in our tissues and our organs and there a couple of problems with that. One of them is like we suppress, we suppress, we suppress, that energy has to come out at some point so that the next unfortunate soul says something to us the wrong way and boom, we have volcanic eruption and we cause harm to our relationships. Or we suppress, we suppress, we suppress and those energies start seeping out and they start showing up as physical symptoms in the body.

heart attacks, ulcers, all the kind of physical stuff that happens. And so it’s not a good strategy to suppress our emotions. And so to go back to your question, breath work is the most effective way I’ve known to clear that cauldron of suppressed emotions and to do it in a safe environment. So that’s the healing part of it. And to me, that’s reason enough to do it over and over again.

Julie Hilsen (22:04)
cancer, mean, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Christian De La Huerta (22:22)
multiple sessions. The other aspect of it, which is what you were talking about, is that connecting with something beyond our tiny individual, separate personality. And, you know, I would say both, like experiencing that one time, having that experience of feeling yourself as part of the whole is life changing and irreversible. And at a cellular level, I don’t think we forget that. And

Julie Hilsen (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Christian De La Huerta (22:47)
at the same time, it’s easy. It’s not hard to get sucked back into the demands and responsibilities of day-to-day living and the drama of life. And so it’s not hard to forget. So I certainly think that there is value in doing practices like that, whether you get to those places through meditative practices or breath work, which is kind of a shortcut to those states of being, you get there right away.

You know, people do have access to that through meditation, but I think it takes a long time to have those moments doing regular meditation practice. And not that breath work replaces regular meditation practice. It doesn’t. There’s a lot of benefits that come from even sitting and trying to quiet your mind and observe your thoughts. What’s going on with three times a week for 10 minutes, there’s a lot of value in that.

Julie Hilsen (23:16)
Mm-hmm.

Christian De La Huerta (23:37)
But in terms of having those states, those really altered expanded states of consciousness, it takes a long time for meditation to do that generally for most of us. In breath work, you can do that your first session. And so yeah, to do it as maintenance, definitely recommend it.

Julie Hilsen (23:50)
So.

it’s beautiful. And that’s one of your themes as I was going through your work is reclaiming power. and I think that’s one of the beautiful things about making love and sex is like you’re in your solar plexus and it’s an intimate time where you’re just connecting to your power right there at your solar plexus with another being and creating this energetic…

Christian De La Huerta (24:03)
Mm-hmm.

Julie Hilsen (24:20)
synergy with that person and that it’s a primal yet powerful way to connect to your power center. And I think that’s why sex gets so addicting is because you’re in that power center and you feel part of everything. And so to have that feeling at your reclaiming your power at an individual level,

You bring so much more to relationships is what I’m trying to get at. And we get glimpses of this, we get glimpses of the fireworks, the oxytocin and all that, but it’s available to us all the time. ⁓ And to claim that, say I own it.

Christian De La Huerta (24:56)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, it’s so interesting.

Yeah, I love how you frame that because like in my case, before I had practices like meditation or breath work, the only time I was able to move beyond the prison of the little mind was making love, right? Was the only time I felt connected, like really one with someone else. And I think that is part of part of the reason that that we long for that, because I think ultimately that is what we’re longing for.

Julie Hilsen (25:17)
You

Christian De La Huerta (25:29)
that deep sense of connection, whether it’s with ourselves, with somebody else, with something beyond that. And to approach lovemaking consciously definitely gives us an access, glimpse into that. And yeah, mean, so much more to say about that. ⁓

Julie Hilsen (25:44)
I know, it’s so gooey, it’s

so beautiful. we have, everyone has this, like we all have our breath too, we’re alive because we’re breathing. And that’s what I constantly feel so blown away by is everything is right in front of our faces. It’s all here within us and around us. It’s just us tuning into it and saying, I deserve it. There’s abundance, I’m available.

You know, like the whole being present, and the breath work brings you present, and the meditation brings you present. Being present in your job makes you a better business owner or employer, however you’re showing up. That presence is such a gift, but the hardest things are the things right in front of us. Yeah.

Christian De La Huerta (26:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, it changes, it changes everything. changes everything

and you’re right. It’s so accessible. Like I was, I had a group last night here in Aspen where I’m living now. And I said that very same thing. What are the beauties of breath work is that it’s so accessible. It’s ours. And once we know how to use it in those ways, then we always have access to that. We always have access to those healing states and those

those incredible expanded states just by using the breath. But like you’re saying, there is that element of personal responsibility and making the time. Just making sure that we’re taking time to take care of ourselves rather than just doing, doing, doing and solving problems and making money and all that stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that. As long as we’re including ourselves in the taking care of.

Julie Hilsen (27:07)
Knowing it’s.

you

Christian De La Huerta (27:24)
And that we’re taking time for self-care and for maintenance and for reconnecting and for reconnecting with that presence that you’re talking about

Julie Hilsen (27:31)
I think it’s

Yeah, this…

Christian De La Huerta (27:32)
And by the way, for

connecting the breath again to love making, it’s an integral part of that. I do a talk on steps to becoming a better lover. And one of them is the breath, using the breath, especially for guys. If you want to prolong the orgasm, use your breath. It’s all about the breath.

Julie Hilsen (27:44)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That’s so fun. you know, it’s interesting how commerce and pharmaceuticals are trying to give us what we already have. Your blue pill is your breath. It’s blue because it’s oxygen. Oh, we’re so magical. We’re magical beings.

Christian De La Huerta (28:02)
True. True.

Julie Hilsen (28:11)
the more I can illuminate that and share and like conversations like this are so meaningful to me. So thank you for sharing these delightful gems because it’s not rocket science, it’s here, but there is a process. gosh, mean, how do you reach, you have your retreats and you have your books.

Christian De La Huerta (28:28)
Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (28:33)
But how do you share this? I mean, can tell your passion about this breathwork thing. So how do you share and scale this so that you’re feeling like you’re fulfilling your soul mission and that you’re, it’s like, you have this knowledge. How do you transmit it and not feel like you’re never sleeping?

Christian De La Huerta (28:50)
Yeah, no, it’s a beautiful question and one that I often live in. I think in terms of legacy, my apprentices for sure, getting as many people to do it as possible. Scaling the breath work is challenging in that sense. I don’t do it virtually. There are some people who do. And I think that may have to do with depth of experience. The sessions that I facilitate, people go really deep.

And because you never know what’s in somebody’s psyche and how it’s going to surface. I don’t feel self safe doing it online. Like in person, I can handle whatever comes up.

Julie Hilsen (29:26)
Well yeah, what someone fell and bumped

their head and you couldn’t do anything? Like, you don’t know their address? Yeah.

Christian De La Huerta (29:30)
Yeah, or recover a memory. Yeah, or recover a suppressed

memory. Like I know how to handle that in 3D, but in a virtual reality, I like to click and then there’s nothing I can do. There’s no way that I can intervene and support them. So I won’t do it virtually unless it’s people that I’ve worked with before, people who’ve come to my retreats or certainly my apprentices. I do offer a year-long virtual coaching program that’s scalable.

Julie Hilsen (29:41)
Right.

Christian De La Huerta (29:55)
that happens online. So that’s another way to partake in the teachings. it feels like, when I say year long, it sounds like a long time, but the teachings are spread out, right? So we meet every two weeks and I deliver the teachings just bite-sized, a little bit of content each week. So people get emails by every week with

a couple of questions that are designed to integrate the teachings so they don’t stay just at the level of good information. We don’t need more information. We got plenty of information. We got information overload. What we need is transformation. And that only comes about from really taking on and living from a set of teachings. And so that’s what that year long is designed to do is like we’re going through life. We spending, you know, a whole quarter on doing relationships consciously, a whole quarter on personal.

How do we step into power consciously in a way that’s not about hierarchy or control or fear or domination? How do we do that in a different way? And we spend a purpose on understanding the ego mind and then one on purpose. Like what are we really doing here at a soul level, at mission level? But the thing is that we’re going through life and stuff is coming up. know whether it’s at work or at home, in our relationships with our kids or whatever. And then we put on the…

we tackle it in real time. So we get to apply the teachings in real time. And that’s what makes the transformation really sustainable.

Julie Hilsen (31:20)
space.

That’s it, I did want to ask you about that. And this is probably our last talking point, because we’re running up on our time. But that whole idea of being in power without the bumping into somebody else, like the, I’m more powerful because I’m better than you. That is really something that our society, for whatever reason, has…

has fostered competition and my worth is shown by how much I have or my accumulation or my recognitions. And to make that shift to being powerful within yourself and not as a reflection of someone else or in reflection of someone else, a comparative mode, what are the first steps to just

try to shed that programming because it is, and we try to say that it’s not there, but we do compare ourselves. It’s just part of our society that we’re compared. We’re raised, we’re given grades. It’s part of our mass consciousness, but how do we chip away at that? Where do you start?

Christian De La Huerta (32:29)
Yeah.

I mean, and you’re so right. It’s part of the patriarchal approach to life, right, which is hierarchical, which is based on external validation, all that kind of stuff. And I think that we’re living in the, witnessing the end of the patriarchy. And it doesn’t mean that we want to go back to a matriarchal society. What I think we need is balance, you balance between the masculine and the feminine energies that are in all of us. ⁓

Julie Hilsen (32:50)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Christian De La Huerta (32:56)
But in terms of power, it’s first of all understanding that we have understanding our relationship to power and why we have an ambivalent, conflicted relationship to it. Because we’ve been conditioned to believe that power is a bad thing. Like power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And why good soul wants to be corrupted. And then on top of that, we’ve…

we consider, we connect power with abuse. And no wonder how many abuses of power have each of us witnessed, whether globally and out in the world or in our personal lives countless times. So we tend to have negative associations with power. So by the first step in shifting our relationship to power is understanding that there’s different types. So that kind of power that lends itself to abuse and that is hierarchical is

Julie Hilsen (33:26)
Alright.

Christian De La Huerta (33:47)
I call worldly power or ego power, egoic power. It’s the way that the world relates to power. And then there’s different type of power, which I call soulful power or spiritual power, which nobody can give to us and nobody can take away. Like we’re the only ones who can give away our innate inherent power. And it’s the kind of power that is humble. doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody.

Julie Hilsen (33:51)
Mm.

Christian De La Huerta (34:13)
So think of a Gandhi or Gandalf, you know, in their simple monastic robes, their sandal feet. From looking at them, you would never know how much power they hold until it’s called for, until it’s necessary, and then get out of the way. Gandhi brought the British Empire to its knees when it was at its highest point in terms of global influence. And he did that without ever landing a punch or shooting a gun.

Julie Hilsen (34:17)
.

Christian De La Huerta (34:41)
That’s power. the best part of that power is that it’s available to all of us.

Julie Hilsen (34:42)
That’s power.

I just, that’s, and I feel like we don’t have adequate language for power. Like, there needs to be a separate word, you know what mean? Because when you describe it in those, just those two different aspects of power, those two different lenses to view it, it clarifies so much. And you’re right, that helps shred away the patriarchal power.

Christian De La Huerta (34:58)
Yeah.

Julie Hilsen (35:12)
system and I’m totally in alignment with that balance. Finding that balance would be beautiful and I think there’d be less confusion and we wouldn’t have so many labels. ⁓ I really do think that these labels put us in systems that make judgments too easy and we’re not getting to know people for people. We’re seeing their label first and then it gets dangerous because then there’s judgments made before you

Christian De La Huerta (35:22)
I know, I know.

you

Julie Hilsen (35:39)
if I could give one gift to humanity, that’s what I would, I think I would give that piece of just see every person as a person.

Christian De La Huerta (35:39)
then.

Yeah, and

for sure. And then the other problem with those labels is that they can be abused, right? So then you have unscrupulous totalitarian inclined political leaders who use those differences to otherize others, to make other people different, whether it’s immigrants or whatever it is, men or women, whatever minority that we pick on. But in dividing, you know, we conquer.

Whereas when humans, it weakens us if we get beyond those illusions of differentness. Because they’re all illusion. Our DNA is 99.9999 % identical. And no matter how much pigmentation we have on our skin, our DNA is almost identical. And as a matter of fact, we share 98.4 of our DNA with chimps.

Julie Hilsen (36:10)
Yeah, it weakens us, but yeah.

Christian De La Huerta (36:36)
50 % of our DNA is identical to bananas. So it really, when we think of it in those terms, it’s not woo-woo stuff to think of one family and one human race and the interconnectedness of all species. It’s not fantasy. It’s not pretty poetic stuff. It’s scientific fact.

Julie Hilsen (37:00)
And I just, have this deep feeling that in the next few years we’re going to learn more galactic connections that we had no idea. So I’m excited for where humanity is going, where the earth is going. And so I’m just happy to be on earth with you right now, Christian. This has been a delightful conversation.

Christian De La Huerta (37:18)
you

Thank you, Julie. And you and I, obviously you and I could talk for hours and wouldn’t run out of stuff to talk about.

Julie Hilsen (37:27)
Well, anytime and I hope everyone can enjoy your book and get to your retreats and your breath work sessions because that sounds amazing.

Christian De La Huerta (37:39)
Yeah, thank you. And by the way, the other

discussion on power, the earlier book that came out about three years ago is called Awakening the Soul of Power. And that really helps them to understand our relationship to power. And I like the word power, by the way. If you look at the etymology of it, power means to be able to. So it’s related to potential. It’s the same root.

So it’s not just that kind of power that we have negative connotations to it. It’s all about who we are and our potential and our ability to do and get things done in this third dimensional reality. it’s a good thing.

Julie Hilsen (38:14)
Yeah, I agree. It’s so fun. So maybe everybody make a little note, power, you know, and reframe if you look at how that shows up for you and maybe transmute it into the positive, the powerful, the presidential. Make it sacred.

Christian De La Huerta (38:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Sacralize it. Make it sacred. It’s a sacred

thing.

Right? That the energy itself is neutral, right? It’s what we do with it. Same thing with our emotions. The emotions are weakness. They’re not strength. They’re not good. They’re not bad. Same thing with powers. How we use it, what we do with those emotions, how we express our power, depending on that, it has a good or not so good effect.

Julie Hilsen (38:37)
That’s great.

And that’s what we’re here for, to have that choice to choose the highest good. That’s why I say every day’s a chance to live the life of your dreams and reclaiming your power is part of that reframing whatever you need to do. So yeah, follow your intuition people, it’s all there. It’s all there. Thank you everyone for listening and staying with us and sharing these episodes. This has been a great conversation. And Christian, anytime you want to come back on Life of Love, we’ll be happy to have you.

Christian De La Huerta (38:58)
Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Julie. And thanks for having the show and for fostering this kind of conversation. know in your willingness to do that, lives are being changed and impacted. So thank you.

Julie Hilsen (39:36)
Thank you for seeing me.