Be the Hero of Your Life Story with Crystal Andrus Morissette

A Personal Note From Orion

The journey to self-discovery and self-love can be bumpy. However, knowing yourself and letting go of all your old stories will lead you to find love, joy, and happiness in your life. Life can still throw negative things at you, but you know that you can always stand up and face it head-on.

Crystal Andrus Morissette is an international best-selling author, emotional age and communication expert, and women’s advocate. She is a worldwide leader in the field of self-discovery and personal transformation. She is the founder of the S.W.A.T. Institute, an empowerment coach certification exclusively for women in over 45 countries.

In this episode, Crystal shares her journey of finding love, joy, and happiness. She also talks about how to let go of your grudges and old stories to make yourself the hero of your own life. Tune in as she helps you realize what your greatest joys are and how to create more of them in your life!

[01:09] – Orion introduces her next guest, Crystal Andrus Morissette, International best-selling author, Emotional Age and communication expert, and women’s advocate.
[02:42] – Crystal shares about her passion and narrates her journey in finding it.
[08:58] – Orion asks Crystal to share the switch of love and realizations that she had upon looking at her daughter.
[11:28] – Crystal explains that having a better chance of creating a good life is through starting to realize that we get to choose the way we tell stories to ourselves and about who we are.
[17:48] – Crystal talks about her fifth book, The Emotional Edge, which has now been featured on oprah.com a few times.
[22:36] – Orion asks Crystal to speak about her journey of empowerment and owning who she is.
[26:37] – Crystal wants to continue increasing her visibility by reaching more people, touching more lives and empowering women at 60.
[28:53] – Orion asks about the meaning of empowerment coaching and its difference from the other type of coaching.
[32:35] – Crystal talks about the body as a messenger of spirit and soul and gives some advice about connecting to our bodies and being empowered.
[38:54] – Orion reveals her psychic reading experience and asks Crystal about her healing modalities, whether it is through letting go or not getting rid of them.
[44:46] – Orion and Crystal expound their perception about Universal Google and Divine Universal Collective Energy.
[51:35] – Visit Crystal’s websites, Simply Woman Accredited Trainer and The S.W.A.T. Institute to know more about her and learn new special weapons and tactics that will heal the world, one woman at a time.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hello, Crystal and welcome to the Stellar Life podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you. Thanks for having me.

Before we begin and dive in, can you share a little bit about your passion and a little bit about your personal journey to find it?

Sure. It’s funny when people ask that now because I’m turning 51 in a month.

No way. You look very young.

Oh, thanks. I’m turning 51 in a month and I’ve got two grown daughters who are amazing women going out into the world and creating their own dreams. It’s interesting when I talk about my journey because I feel like the really big part of the journey that was traumatic and impactful was so long ago, but it was really a very tough time.

It’s really from the time I was about 12 until I was about 21. Interestingly, I had very little memory. As I got older, I realized there were just so many things I didn’t remember. The only way I knew I didn’t remember them was that I would have people that knew me, that I hadn’t seen in years, especially as an author.

It was pretty traumatic. There was sexual and physical abuse. I just feel like it’s a story that so many women can relate to and have gone through.

When you’re an author and you start having books and you’re on TV, people from your childhood come out of the woodwork and they’re like, ‘Oh, don’t you remember, we were best friends and you stayed the night at my house?’ I’ll be like, ‘I don’t have a clue who you are.’ I wouldn’t say that, but I would think, I don’t even know who you are.

It was pretty traumatic. There was sexual and physical abuse. I just feel like it’s a story that so many women can relate to and have gone through. I think it’s so far behind me now that sometimes I forget how dark it was, and how much abuse I went through, and homelessness, and cervical cancer really young, and a really traumatic head injury that left me with seizures. It was just a really dark, dark time.

Something, for me, switched. Something clicked once I had my own daughters. I had them when I was in my mid-20s. Something in that moment of having these beautiful little girls who I knew were watching me and looking. You don’t realize it until you have kids of your own that children really do look to their parents like the sun and the moon rises and falls on them.

I would say that’s when I really truly started my healing journey that first helped me to look at my own parents through different lenses, to not just look at them as people who made all these mistakes, but people who didn’t have a clue what they were doing, having children. Interestingly, my dad just passed away two weeks ago.

Oh, my God. I’m so sorry.

It’s okay. Thankfully, I have a piece about it because I made the decision a few years back. Before we went into record mode that you said your mission is to spread light and love. I made the decision a few years ago. After we’d been estranged for maybe seven or eight years, that this is crazy. My dad’s getting old.

I understand having fierce boundaries and making sure you protect yourself, but I was at an age that I thought this is crazy for me to be holding on to, so much pain from the past for so long. I made it sort of my mission, the last two-and-a-half years of his life, that I was going to teach my dad how to love.

The Emotional Edge by Crystal Andrus Morissette

I don’t know if I did, but I literally thought to myself, I am going to teach my father how to love. I’m going to just love him. Thankfully, I was with him right up until the last day, and was able to be in hospice with him, hold his hand, play his favorite music from 30 years ago, cry, and be with him. It’s a pretty big full-circle moment to know that these people who created the most pain of anyone, you can also find something at some point in your own heart to forgive.

I don’t know. I just got into my dad when we were talking about my journey, but it probably all seems to make sense for me right now because I think we hold on. I really realized that now, we waste so much joy. We just waste so much of our joy holding on to things that we don’t need to hold on to any longer.

We did it, we’ve been there, it hurt us, we learned, we’ve set boundaries, maybe we didn’t. Then there has to come to a point that you just decide that your joy, happiness, love, dreams, and passion have to become more important than holding on to grudges, old stories, and stuff that keep you really disempowered and angry.

The story about your dad, and what happened, and how you healed it is very beautiful and inspiring. I hope somebody who’s watching or listening right now, and they’re in the same boat, maybe will consider doing something like that for themselves because when we hold that pain, we hurt ourselves.

I didn’t even realize how much energy went into my entire life of trying to navigate that relationship and get his love. Even when you have a boundary, even when you set a boundary, even when you step away, there’s still always an energy that it’s taking to hold the boundary, to remember the pain, to stay stuck in the story, to tell yourself that you’re more empowered. All of that still takes energy.

I just think when you have too much energy caught up in protecting and holding on, there’s not enough energy left over to create your own best life, and to live with joy and happiness. So it’s been profound for me.

He passed on October 31st, of all days, and it’s been really profound for me that I think I’m so happy I gave myself the gift of going back and cleaning stuff up so that I could be at peace now.

'We're not meant to be perfect. We're meant to be whole.' It means to embody all of these pieces of who we are. Not just body, mind, and spirit, but all of these wounded little pieces of ourselves. Share on X

Wow, so beautiful. When you were in your mid 20s, and you look at your daughters and something is switching, what was that switch and what did you do about it?

Love. The switch was love. It was the realization of, this is what love feels like. Oh, my gosh. There was a realization of, if this is what love is, then everything I’ve been doing up until now hasn’t been love. Even the way I treated myself, I put so much energy into loving them, feeding them healthy food, caring about what they watched, what they thought, how they felt, their emotions, what they needed.

There was just this realization of, if this is what love is, I haven’t been doing this for myself. I didn’t even know what self-love was. It was far deeper than just eating healthy food. It was just how you show up for yourself, how you talk to yourself. It was just a big shift and it allowed me to open up my heart towards and listen.

I’m still estranged from my mother. It’s been 14–15 years. It’s not like I got this whole thing figured out, but yeah, it was a shift on my mum had to have loved me. I don’t mean to be sad and depressed about it, but it was a realization like all the mistakes my parents made, but they had to have loved me because when you hold your baby in your arms for the first time, you think, there’s no denying this feeling. Even though they made mistakes and got it wrong—and they did—love was the healing elixir for me.

Thank you for acknowledging that you’re not perfect. A lot of the time when somebody is in your position where they had succession, they’re a coach and they have some sort of a guru status, women look up to them and admiring them, it’s easy to be like, ‘I’m perfect, I’m holier than thou, and let me teach you.’

The switch was love. It was the realization that this is what love feels like.

But when you share, I feel like it makes it so much more relatable to understand that it doesn’t matter where you are in life. We all have our own journeys and it’s an ever-expanding, ever-growing process of self-love. We never get it. It’s not about getting there.

Human beings are dynamic. We have this full range of emotions. When you start to realize that we do get to choose the way that we tell ourselves the stories and if you can change the way you’re telling yourself the story about who you are, you’re going to have a far better chance creating a good life for yourself because you’re making yourself the hero of your own life.

Here’s the truth. It’s not even so much that you put yourself on a pedestal. It’s that you realize people are starting to put you on a pedestal. The problem with that is that when you mess up—and you’re going to because you’re human—they’re devastated that you’ve messed up. It doesn’t serve them, it doesn’t serve you, it doesn’t serve your friend better. In my experience, anyway.

So just be transparent that you’re a human, you’ve had some good success, maybe had some good luck, maybe you have some good genes. You’re lucky, that’s great, but you still have to do the daily work like everybody else every day, feel your feelings, processing your feelings, figuring out how you’re talking to yourself about this, are you talking in a way that’s going to serve you, and recognizing that, of course, you’re going to fall again.

I think the tools that I teach women enable them to climb back up the empowerment spectrum, closer to living in love, and joy, and peace, and kindness, faster and faster, but you’re gonna fall again, you’re human.

I remember you talking about gurus. I don’t even want to say who the guru is because he’s still a pretty famous guru, but I remember when I first got the first opportunity to interview him. We’re talking 20 years ago, whatever it was. I remember listening to this guru talk about how he hasn’t been angry in 40 years. I literally thought to myself, how is that possible?

Allow yourself to fully embody the feeling without becoming the emotion.

Anger is a natural human emotion. If there’s an injustice like the ‘me too’ movement, all of that. It’s not that anger is an unhealthy emotion. It’s what you do with anger. It’s what you do with fear. They’re all human and they’re all necessary. If channeled the right way, they keep you in check of like, oh, I’m falling into fear.

Okay, so if I wasn’t afraid, what would I do? You allow yourself to fully embody the feeling without becoming the emotion. That’s what I’ve learned. Even with my father dying, grief is like waves. They just come in. You might cry hard for 30 seconds, but if you don’t become the emotion, they wash back out, and then you come back into your resting place.

The more that you work on getting your natural setpoint higher, then your natural resting place is more buoyant. It’s easier to come back to love. It’s easier to come back to kindness and being reasonable, and all of those things. It just becomes easier. Of course, we’re human beings. Anyone who tries to pretend they never are afraid, or they’re never angry, or they’re never jealous, or they’re never insecure, they’re lying.

I was lucky enough to meet some pretty famous people and mentors. Some of them are very genuine in real life and some of them have disappointed me.

That’s the thing about the disappointment. That’s what I’m getting at. We as people put other people on this thing.

I remember when I got my first book deal with Hay House. I was 33 years old. I was flown down to California. There I was with Reid Tracy, the president of Hay House, and he was giving me a three-book deal, and a radio show on Sirius Satellite, and then invited me to all the I Can Do It events. There I was with Louise Hay, and Wayne Dyer, and all the big big.

Some of them, like you’ve said, were just like, oh, you’re so amazing. I love being around you. It was like, I’m so disenchanted. I’m so disillusioned. I’m so confused. And then I started to realize that they’re just people.

Emotional age has nothing to do with your chronological age. It has to do with how you’re showing up in the world.

They might be a great messenger. They might be a great teacher. They might be brilliant. They might understand concepts, but it doesn’t mean that they’re living it.

I literally at that point just went, we’re all equal, no one is better than me, and I’m not better than anyone. No one, and we’re all equals. That was like, oh, so then I can be my real me and I don’t have to put myself somewhere, and then we can all start meeting without the hierarchy. The hierarchy is what’s changing. That’s what women are doing. Women are changing the hierarchy that every business has been run on and politics is run on. There’s always someone at the top. Women don’t work that way.

We’re about circles. We work in like, oh, there’s no one that’s better. We’re all important. We all bring something different to the table. It’s like a wheel. We all are different spokes. If one of us are too big, we won’t roll together, we won’t move together, we won’t make things happen together. I feel like the whole hierarchy of doing business is changing. Everything is changing a lot in the last 10 years, especially.

I like the idea of not putting people on pedestals. I have learned to separate the guru from the message, the person, the human being from whatever they’re teaching. I just take what I need and if something doesn’t work, just leave it aside. It doesn’t matter if they’re a great person or less, it’s about the teachings and how it helped me with my life or with serving others. That’s the most important thing.

I agree.

I want to talk about your book. What is an emotional edge?

The Emotional Edge, that was my fifth book. I did that book, and it was amazing. That book came through me almost like I felt like I was learning the material as I was writing it. I felt like it was coming through me. I felt like I was going down the rabbit hole, to be honest with you.

We’re all equal, no one is better than me, and I’m not better than anyone.

The Emotional Edge is a book that’s now been featured on oprah.com a few times. I love being able to say that. You can take my emotional age quiz to find out what your emotional age is. It really amazed me, surprised me, shocked me that no psychologist had ever written on emotional age. We’ve written on biological age that there’s a theory that I’m 51 in a month and I feel like I’m forever going to be 33.

That’s my biological age. I know things are starting to change, but I feel like in my being, I’m young, I still feel young. That’s my biological age. Emotionally, just different, though. Emotional age has nothing to do with your chronological age. It has to do with the way that you’re showing up in the world.

The great psychologist, whether it was Jung, whether it was Freud, whether it was even transactional analysis, a lot of the great psychologists have said that the personality of every human being, the psyche of the human being has three parts. Freud was like, we have the id, the super ego, the ego. Carl Jung was like, we have the shadow, we have the ego, we have the collective unconscious.

I came up with this idea that I said, “Well, within all of us, we all have a child, we all have a parent, and we all have an adult.” Emotional age and getting the edge is learning how to show up as a woman. I don’t want to be your mother when I’m in a relationship with a man. I don’t want to be a child. I want to show up as a woman.

For a lot of us, especially as women, when you think about that 100 years ago, there was nowhere in the world that we were considered people yet under the law, we weren’t considered a person anywhere. Women were really taught to be either a mother. In fact, if you read the books, and I have them all from the first wave of the women’s movement and the second wave of the women’s movement, they would literally refer to women as a drudge or a doll.

A doll is that you’re the pretty, you’re the sexy, you pleasured men, you had to be a trophy, you could be cute, sassy, coy, difficult, demanding, or a drudge. A drudge meant you cook the meals, you gave birth to the children, you maintain the home. Women almost felt like they had to make a choice. Either I’m going to be a selfless, giving, caring woman or I’m going to be cute, coy, demanding, difficult, charming. There was almost this, I have to choose which one or we fall back and forth in between.

That book came through me almost like I felt like I was learning the material as I was writing it.

Getting the edge is learning how to almost connect with and learn who your mother energy is when she was formed. Why did you create her? When is she in charge and getting to know her? Then getting to know this child who’s sometimes an 18-year-old—don’t get me wrong—and she’s promiscuous, wild, and crazy, but getting to know her—at least these are my two—and learning how to integrate them into the wholeness of who you are. You can literally show up in the world as a woman and what does it mean to be a woman.

I think about Carl Jung and all these archetypes, and yet, he has no archetype for the woman. All the archetypes, we have the dangerous old woman, we have the maiden and the crone. We don’t have, what is a woman? What does it mean to be a woman in this world?

That sort of became my mission. It’s like, what does it mean to be a woman? Does she have to be a certain size? Does she have to need no one? Can she need someone? Should she have children? What if she doesn’t want children? What does it mean to be a woman?

That’s sort of been my quest the last few years, is really getting to know women from all over the world, and really, you can almost recognize the women who have so stepped into their power. You can feel it when you’re around them. There’s something about them that brings out the best in other women. There’s no competition.

It’s just something about them. When I’m around those kinds of women, it empowers me to be my best self. That’s sort of the mission I’m on now—how do we help women heal this inner child, heal this wounded mother so that you can show up as your best self, too.

What was your journey of empowerment and owning who you are? What was it like?

Emotional age and getting the edge are learning how to show up as a woman.

I always feel like it’s that same old story. It goes right back to like, who was I as a little girl? What did I learn from watching my mother? What did I learn from watching the women in my life? What did I learn from my grandmother? What did I learn about what it means to be a woman? What did I learn about sex? What did I learn about my sexual identity? What did I learn about who I am, what my purpose is?

All of that, I think our journey, all of us, start at childhood. We make a decision by the time we’re five years old. Psychologists say this. We literally make a decision by the time we’re five years old, how we will live and how we will die. Imagine in your little childlike brain. You’re only five years old and you’re watching all of these people around you. You’re making decisions about who you are, your life, what it’s going to look like.

I came from an angry, beautiful feminist that hated men. That was my mother. I came from a father who was charming, chauvinistic, a bully, driven, ambitious, and felt that women are here to serve him, God bless him. A mother who is angry and literally said things to us, to me as a little girl, like, never get married, never have children, they ruin your life. It was this dichotomy.

Thankfully, I had a grandmother who was so loving. When I was getting to a certain age, she’s like, you got to find a good husband, you got to put this meal on the table every night at five. I had all these different messages I was taking in. I was born in 1970, so if you think about the movement for women that began in the 70s, there was a big shift that happened. Then the 80s, and Jane Fonda, and everyone needs to be skinny, and everyone needs to eat carrots, and then the 90s.

When I look at them, I think, it’s so crazy when somebody says, do you know that the 80s were 40 years ago? I’m like, how is that? I remember being in the 80s. Then watching Oprah, literally, no joking, I was homeless at 16. I moved out at 15. I was homeless and there I watched for the very first time, this overweight, black woman. She just stole everyone’s hearts. We all just felt like she was our mother. I figure out how to watch her show every day and I would think to myself, well, what would Oprah do? So Oprah became my mother.

Psychologists say that we make a decision by the time we’re five years old, how we will live and die.

I just felt like I had these different women. Then I had my daughters, so there’s my journey. Those little girls just cracked my heart open and I was like, I got to get this right. I got to get it right for them. I’ve got to get it right to give them the best life. I want to give them the best start in life.

To think now, one of my daughters is working with A-list celebrities as a makeup artist. She’s only 25 and she’s already been at SNL and the American Music Awards. We live in a little town of 400 people, 400 people in Canada, but she got there and I didn’t get her there. She got there because there was an energy that I brought them up with, that I just knew. Even if I didn’t get it, I know this is what women need. I know this is what little girls need. I know this is what teenage girls need.

My journey is certainly not over. I still have way bigger fish to fry. I have way bigger dreams that I haven’t stepped into yet, so I just feel like getting older means getting smarter, bolder, brighter, bigger. I feel like, oh, my God, where am I going to be at 60?

What is your dream when you get to 60?

I don’t have a dream at 60, but I feel like I want to continue increasing my—I hate to use it in this way—visibility. I want to reach more people, I want to touch more lives, I want to empower more women. I just want love. I really just want to look back on my life and feel like I lived with so much love, I gave love, my family is so important to me, the things that really matter.

I feel like I’ve got clarity on what really matters. Loving the people you love, memories, creating great memories. We can’t get so busy with life that we’re not taking the trip, making the meal, celebrating that occasion. I’ve realized that as you get older, when you look back, if all you look back and think are all sad memories, that’s a sad life.

You have to put the energy in to create great memories, and that takes effort. It takes work and effort to put the big meal on. It takes work and effort to do all those things. Sometimes you feel like, why am I doing this? But then afterwards, I always say, oh, my God, I’m just…

How do we help women heal this inner child, heal this wounded mother so that you can show up as your best self?

I just put on an engagement party for my daughter. She got engaged. Honestly, God, it felt like it was months preparing for it, at least weeks preparing for it. After the night was over and everyone was sleeping, it was 5 AM and I was still just sitting outside because it was in the summer with my feet in the pool just taking it all in and thinking, I don’t want this night to end. I want to suck every bit of love from this experience so that when I’m 90, I will remember this feeling.

I remember when my youngest was literally a newborn, and looking down at her hands, and saying, I need to imprint in my mind what her knuckles look like. Her little baby knuckles are just dimples. They’re not even knuckles then. But to be able to remember it, your memory is so important. If you look back on your life and all you just see are painful times, you have to rewrite that script. You have to rewrite that script for yourself. You have to start deciding. I’m going to create great experiences for myself.

What is empowerment coaching? What’s the difference between that and other type of coaching?

I love that you asked that because a lot of people don’t understand what it is. Empowerment. If you think about what it means to be empowered, what does it mean to be empowered, the ability to make choices for yourself, the ability to stand in your power, the ability to use your voice, the ability to know that you’re equal.

For me, empowerment coaching—I created an empowerment spectrum—is all based on, if you think power, you think the more powerful you are, well, I always just think of it as the lighter you are, the brighter you are, the more energy you have. I don’t mean frenetic energy, I mean authentic energy. Like me saying, I’m up at 5 AM like I haven’t gone to sleep yet because I’m loving the energy, the magic.

My journey is certainly not over. I still have way bigger fish to fry.

Empowerment coaching is that we look at the full spectrum of emotions, from shame and guilt all the way up to acceptance, reason, love, and joy, and that energy or emotion, by emotion, we meet a client where they’re at. Through a series of questions, processes and meditations, and different interventions, we authentically shift them one energy or emotion at a time until they can see themselves, their life, their situation, their challenges through a higher perspective, and that they can make a more empowered decision for themselves.

I’m not a life coach. We don’t put a list of to-dos. It’s like, this week, you’re going to get this done, and that’s important too. We’re not therapy. We are not like, and then what did he say, and then what did you say, and then what did he say?

We help a woman. We’re really about coaching from the body, not from the head, so all those emotions lie in the body. We’re able to help a woman travel into her body and to realize the story she’s been telling herself, and then level by level, rewrite that story until she’s finally the ‘shero’ of her own life. It’s authentic and it’s sustainable.

It’s a step-by-step process so that when she falls again—and she will because it’s part of being a human being—when we give our power away, again, until we figure this thing out, we actually have a step-by-step process to being like, okay, I gave my power away. Now, I need to climb back up to take my power back and stepping back into my power, because when you’re empowered, you really do make way better decisions and choices for yourself.

And I love the idea of connecting to the body. A lot of us live from here up. There’s so much information and fear around what’s going on these days from the media and from society. It’s really easy to get caught up in our heads and get disconnected from our bodies. When we are disconnected from our bodies, we shut down our emotions. We shut down everything that we are.

We were just numb. We just want to numb it.

Your body is the messenger of your spirit and soul. Your body is always talking to you 24/7. It's telling you what it likes and doesn't like. Share on X

When you put something down, all those emotions for so long, it can manifest as depression or disease, either a mental disease or a physical disease. Because you’re the one that manifested those, you are also the one that can heal it.

You’re the only one.

Yes, so what are some advice about connecting into the body, getting out of your head and into your body, and recognizing how to balance the emotions?

Your body is your messenger. Your body is a messenger of your spirit. Your body is the messenger of your soul. Your body is always talking to you 24/7. It’s telling you what it likes, what you don’t like.

Your body is a truth barometer. When you learn how to listen to your body, your body will actually be like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, green light, go, this feels so good. It also says, just pause, proceed with caution. It also tells you when to stop.

It’s interesting because your body also is your secret keeper. Every story you’ve ever been through every experience, it’s all stored in the body. Like you said, it can manifest in different ways.

I start just with a simple meditation of, I will say, close your eyes. Let’s imagine we’re up in your busy brain. There’s a little you standing there on a little platform like an elevator. We’re just going to close our eyes, we’re going to just press the down button on your elevator, and you’re just going to let yourself lower down, down, down. Sometimes it gets stuck and you realize, oh my gosh, like, I’m really having a hard time moving.

I’m not a life coach. We don’t put a list of to-dos.

I just help her to move down and I say, you know, let’s connect with your breath. Let’s get out of your busy brain and let’s get down and connect with your breath. Let your shoulders come down from your ears. Take a deep breath. Let your hands relax.

When I gave birth, and I gave birth naturally and I really amazed the nurses—I know I sound like I’m being a guru right now, and I don’t mean to—I’m like, I can help women give birth. I was so connected to my body when I was in labor that no one checked on me once. I sit in the dark in a rocking chair. I just kept my hands completely relaxed. I kept thinking every labor pain was like a tidal wave. I was either brave to fight through the waves and exhaust myself or I could see my baby coming to me with every wave, and the more that I just relaxed and allowed this process to unfold

Honest to goodness, five hours later, my very first birth, I said, “Oh, my God. I feel the baby coming out.” I was that calm. My husband was like, “No, no, they said it was going to be hours.” I was like, “No, the baby’s coming out.” Even pushing her out, nurses came afterwards and said “What do you do? How did you push her out that fast?” I just was so connected to my body, to her.

Even the silliest things like when you get hiccups. Do you know where your diaphragm is? Can you feel it? And then you just go and talk to it. Like you literally say to your diaphragm, slow down, relax, open up, because you feel the hiccup coming on, you just read through it.

In my book, The Emotional Edge, the very first line says, I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t, so what should I do? The very last word in the book is ‘breathe.’ It’s funny because people get caught up in the word meditation and I always say, don’t worry about meditating, just let’s breathe together for five minutes. Let’s just breathe together. Just the breathing of that in itself can reconnect you.

I’m very connected to my body. I’m a yoga teacher. I’m a nutritionist, so I’m also very connected to my physical body, but I always just help women reconnect and find the wounded spot. I always say, let’s travel around and imagine you have a special X-ray machine and you could just laser in on every ache, every pain. Let’s just go to one of them right now. Let’s just go to the heaviest one. Let’s go into it instead of fighting it, because there’s something wounded in there that needs your attention.

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Being mad at it, taking painkillers, and rejecting the pain only amplifies what you fear you draw near, what you repress finds a way to be expressed, all those great sayings. Then we just say, let’s travel into it and let’s ask how old it is. What is it feeling? If you could give that feeling an emotion, what would it be? Is it anger? Is it sorrow? Is it fear? I give her those words. How long has it been there? Who is it connected to? What would we have to do to help you release this? Then I might empower her to write a letter to that person, then we burn it together.

I loved when I heard Jane Fonda say in masterclass with Oprah, “We’re not meant to be perfect. We’re meant to be whole.” I just think so many women are so confused by that. What does it mean to be whole?

It means to embody all of these pieces of who we are. Not just body, mind, and spirit, but all of these wounded little pieces. All of the pieces of ourselves that we buried so deep in our basement, so to speak, in our subconscious, in our bodies that we just almost letting them come up one by one. Getting to know them, love them, thank them, and tell them that you got this now. The real you, you’re going to take over, you’re going to help them.

It’s some really neat, dialoguing work between you and your other selves. I call it working with parts. When you start to realize that you’re always having a conversation in your head about you, once you realize that, then you can start to realize, but the real you is the listener. You’re not any of those voices. You’re not any of those conversations. The real you is the part that’s listening to all of them.

When you can start to make peace with all these conversations that are going on, something gets quiet. You’re able to just come back to yourself, come back to your wholeness, which is in your body. If you were to say point to yourself, I’ve never seen someone do this. If I were to say point to you, I’ve never seen someone do this. You’re not your mind, you’re something inside here, so we have to be connected to our bodies to be empowered.

Women have tremendous healing, just from using your mind to connect with your own body.

I love that. I had a psychic reading a couple of days ago. One of the images that was shown for me was that I have a box. When I opened the box, there’s another box, and then I opened it, there’s another box. Inside there was another box, and another box, and he was telling me, you are now on a journey inside.

I’ve been through many seminars, studied for many people, traveled the world and all that. It’s always like, what can they teach me? He was telling me, go inside because there is so much truth when we go inside, when we are connected to all those parts that we have created that had a role, function, and purpose in protecting us at a certain time. But that part that was protecting as a five-year-old might not be useful right now and might be holding us back.

I love the way you do it and the way you connect to all those parts. You heal and embrace them. What do you do with the parts? Do you let them go? Do you embrace them?

Never get rid of them. They’re you. Especially in yoga, because I’m a yoga teacher as well. There are all these different healing modalities. They all matter, they’re all important, and they’re all wonderful, but I remember when I first started doing yoga. Of course, I was an overachiever. I was a wounded girl that wanted to prove my worth, so everything I did, I was an overachiever. Whether that’s because I was so abused or whether that’s just because it’s my drive and my personality, it didn’t matter.

I remember my first time going in for teacher training. I was trying to get myself in a certain pose. The teacher was mean, I thought she was mean, and she was like, stop trying so hard. Your ego is so huge. You need to get rid of your ego. But I remember thinking, you can’t get rid of your ego. Your ego is part of you. It would be far better for me to get to know my ego and understand why she’s a perfectionist, why she’s an overachiever, why she needs people to love her. What does she need?

Rather than saying, get rid of her, I would have to say, oh, my God, you must be exhausted. I didn’t even know I’m so sorry that I put you in charge. Or if your part, that part that we’re talking about is a scared little girl, how do you get rid of her? Why would you get rid of your scared little girl? You need to take her up out of the basement.

You have to put the energy in to create great memories.

I always kind of make jokes. I always talk about everything being in the basement. We bury everything down in our basement. I always say, imagine that you just go down there with a light. You start to find all these very parts of you and you invite them up to the dining room table. You get to know them and you find out what they need.

You find out why they’re scared and you find out why did I get rid of you? Why am I so embarrassed of you? Why am I so ashamed of you? I’m so sorry. I love you. Forgive me. I’ve got this now, the real me, Crystal at 51. I can take care of us. I got this now. So my inner mother can protect my inner child. The real meat can go out and run the show. But if I’m at odds with my inner child, she’s going to keep bashing on the basement door trying to get my attention.

It’s interesting when you talked about the boxes. Part of the meditation that I do is I always say, now let’s travel over to your heart and let’s just ask if it’s open and full of love and safety, or is it scared and hiding behind a wooden cabinet?

Most women, it’s hiding. It’s hiding, it’s scared, it’s been hurt. I always just say to women, I understand why you’ve locked your heart in behind that wooden cabinet because you’ve been hurt and you’re scared, and you don’t want to be hurt again. But for the next five minutes, can we just find the key to the cabinet and unlock it? Let’s take the cabinet off and just feel what it feels like to breathe with your heart so open and free.

Do you know there’s a little faucet on your heart and it’s connected to this omnipotent ocean of love? Why don’t we turn the faucet? At first it’s like, just a couple drips, and then I say, turn it a little more. Then let that energy, that omnipotent holy water just fill through you and wash around like a warm blanket on those painful places. Women have tremendous healing, just from using your own mind connecting with your own body.

Yeah, because you are talking directly to their subconscious mind, the subconscious mind understands symbols and metaphors. It doesn’t understand logic and smart talk.

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It doesn’t understand words even, necessarily, that’s why we dream and—

Yeah, but when you give the images, it’s like, oh, I know what to do now. I’m open to love.

That’s why it works. It doesn’t matter what country or nationality. It doesn’t matter what religion. It doesn’t even matter what gender you are. This all makes sense to all of us because we are all connected to this something. To me, it doesn’t matter what you call that something, but it is a powerful energy. When you connect to that, you open yourself up to all the wisdom of all the people that are so wise and empowered, too.

When you realize, I’m part of that, I can connect with that same force, that same power, that same energy, so that becomes exciting, that you don’t have to be blocked. You can open yourself up and know how to still protect yourself, but to open yourself up to the flow.

Absolutely. I totally believe in that. I call it the universal Google. It’s just like you open a channel and everything comes. Even when I work with people, sometimes I get stuck because it doesn’t matter how much you learn. Everything that you learn is 0.000000 of the real knowledge that is out there, the real reason. So just open yourself. Open your vessel and allow the wisdom to come in. Then I will ask the right question, or see an image, or say the right word.

But you’re trusting yourself that you’re connected to that. You call it the universal Google, I call it the “DUCE”, the Divine Universal Collective Energy. I’ve always just say, I’m talking to the DUCE. My husband would literally be like, I’m just connected to the DUCE right now. I’m just channeling.

I’ve written five books. I hear people talking about how it took them years to write a book and I’m like, I wrote one of my books in seven days, 70,000 words in seven days. I just wrote, I cried, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a little crazy.

When you first open yourself up to spirituality and have these big shifts that you feel, it can be scary.

That was my mad science. It was coming through me. I opened myself up, I closed everything else off, and literally shut the internet down. My kids, when they were teenagers would be like, I need the Internet, I’d be like, no, I’m writing a book. I can’t have any energy. I took it a little too far. I’m a little more balanced now.

I think when you first really open yourself up to spirituality and you have these big shifts that you feel, it can be scary. The healing process can be very scary. When you first start cracking open, it can be scary.

It reminds me of that true story of The Clay Buddha from Thailand. It’s a true story that in 1957, they were moving this five-ton statue of a clay Buddha that had been deserted in a temple. They were moving this five-ton statute to a new temple in Bangkok. In the midst of moving it, one of the straps broke. The statue fell, and hit the ground and cracked, and everyone was horrified until they realize there’s something glistening under there.

They did something that would take a lot of courage that began chipping off the clay. They discovered that under the clay was a solid golden buddha. The story goes that hundreds of years earlier, the Burmese army was coming into Thailand at the time, and the monks knew this solid golden statue is so valuable, it will surely be stolen. So they devised this brilliant plan. Cover the gold with clay so that it won’t be stolen. The plan worked except the army slaughtered every single monk and the story could never be passed on.

I often say, we’re just like that. We were a little girl and we were born golden. We were golden, we were shiny, we were bright, and we loved ourselves. We love life. Why wouldn’t life love us? Then things happened. People didn’t understand us, and we started to just put on these forms of protection to keep our gold safe. The trouble is some women reach a certain age and they don’t even remember that they had gold. They don’t know where they hid their gold, but I always say the good news is that you can never lose it. It’s in your body. It’s in you.

The forms of protection are all the different archetypes that we take on, all the different masks and personas, all the wounded selves, all the versions of ourselves along the way. That’s why when you first have the cracking open, it can feel terrifying. I don’t know if you’ve just always been spiritual, but I’ve worked with a lot of women that all of a sudden have a very spiritual moment.

It’s scary almost, like what’s going on? Like I’m crying, I’m healing, I’m opening myself up to something. I’m scared. Is this tidal wave of emotion going to overtake me? So we shut it back down. But when you start to realize just like me talking about my father passing, true emotions last about 30 seconds.

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If you hear a funny joke, you will laugh hard for about 30 seconds, but then it dissipates. You’d have to hear another funny joke. That’s how true emotions pass through us. Fear is meant to be a quick shot of adrenaline to get you the hell out of dodge. You’re not meant to live in fear. You’re meant to have a quick, oh this doesn’t feel right, I need to move away.

In Sri Lanka and Thailand, when the tsunamis hit, I found it fascinating that none of the animals were killed in the tsunami. Only domesticated animals. Only dogs and cats that were kept down. Every animal from the land felt something coming. They are so connected to their bodies, to the universe, and to nature. They intuitively knew to go to high ground. But human beings, we’ve turned off that radar. We don’t know how to really feel real fear. It’s different from anxiety.

It’s important for you to be able to know what real fear is so that I can navigate my way. But I think a lot of us just live in a simmering low-grade anxiety and depression all the time. The cracking open is like the chipping away of the clay. It can be really liberating and you get all this energy all of a sudden that you can feel almost bipolar and manic.

You’re actually supposed to be buoyant. We are designed to be very buoyant, very happy, and very joyous. Then we put on all this stuff that weighs us down. When we first start chipping off and we start stepping into our power, it can be scary. We can not always know how to navigate it.

People can start saying things to you like, ‘I don’t like you anymore. You’ve changed.’ I have changed. I let go of 50 pounds of baggage. I have changed. I’m not the same person. I’m buoyant. I’m lighter, so join me or let me go because I’m going.

Exactly. Beautiful. I want to speak with you more. I need at least 30 more, 40, maybe 50 more hours, but I want to be respectful of your time. Before we say goodbye for now, I have two questions. One is, where can people find you? I know that you also have a coaching certification for women who want to learn your system and this beautiful method of yours. The second one is, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

Great. The first one, I always just want to say, I’ve lots of different websites. I have a magazine, I had my personal website, but I always just want to say swatinstitute.com, Simply Woman Accredited Trainer.

If you can change the way you're telling yourself the story about who you are, you're going to have a far better chance of creating a good life for yourself because you're making yourself the hero of your own life. Share on X

When I first named it that, I had so many people say, why would you call it SWAT? That sounds so masculine. I said because we’re the new special weapons and tactics that’s going to heal the world, one woman at a time. It really does work that way. It is one woman at a time. One important human being at a time, and the trickle effect becomes exponential, so www.swatinstitute.com.

You can find my name on Facebook. I’m still old and just getting the hang of Instagram. My kids will say, ‘mom, you’re too old for Instagram.’ I’m like, ‘no, everybody’s on Instagram now.’ I suck at all that stuff, but you can find me at Crystal Andrus Morissette, my name on Facebook.

My three top tips for living your best life. Get your sleep. You need your sleep, I need to sleep. Okay, I’m just so funny. I was about to say, take your makeup off before you go to bed. I can be really silly. Drink your water.

My three best tips for living your best life. Become your own best friend, and if you don’t know how to do that, sign up for free mentorship coaching through my school. Literally, we offer any woman anywhere in the world empowerment coaching at no charge, so do whatever you’ve got to do to become your own best friend, because no one is going to love you like you love you. We really do teach people how to treat us.

By the way, we love ourselves. It’s all about the way we love ourselves, so I’m going to say, become your own best friend, nourish your body, and believe in your dreams. I don’t know why those are the ones that just popped up for me for now.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure and an honor speaking with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time and being such a bright light in the world. Thank you for your love and your care.

Thank you. Thank you, too. Thank you for having me. It’s been my pleasure.

Thank you, and thank you, listeners. Remember to get your sleep, become your own best friend, nourish your body and your dreams, and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Don’t waste your time holding on to grudges or old stories. Instead, decide that your joy, happiness, love, dreams, and passion are more important than your grudges and old stories.
{✓} Choose the way you tell your life story. If you change the way you’re telling yourself the story about who you are, you’re going to have a better chance of creating a good life for yourself. Make yourself the hero of your own life.
{✓} Allow yourself to fully embody the feeling without becoming the emotion. All emotions are natural and necessary. You need to channel each emotion the right way, and it can keep you in check.
{✓} Don’t put people on pedestals. Learn to separate the guru from the message. Just take what you need, and if something doesn’t work, just leave it aside.
{✓} Focus on creating great memories. Happy memories are essential to your mental health. It strengthens your sense of identity and purpose and bonds your relationships.
{✓} Learn to connect to your body. Emotions lie in the body. You need to connect with your body and realize the story you’re telling yourself. Then, slowly rewrite that story until you are the hero of your own life.
{✓} Open your heart. When your heart is closed, you can’t truly experience life. Instead of hiding because you’ve been hurt and you’re scared, unlock it to access the strongest force in the universe, which is love itself.
{✓} Open yourself and be a vessel to the flow of wisdom. Don’t be afraid to capture the wisdom of wise and empowered people. It doesn’t matter how much you learn because everything you’ve learned is 0.000000 of the real knowledge out there.
{✓} Get enough sleep and hydrate. Rest and hydration enable recovery for overall health.
{✓} Become your own best friend. No one is going to love you as much as you can love yourself.
{✓} Check out Crystal Andrus Morissette’s website to get to know her more. Also, visit Simply Woman Accredited Trainer’s website to learn more about her coaching and courses.

About Crystal Andrus Morissette

International best-selling author, Emotional Age and communication expert, and womens advocate Crystal Andrus Morissette is a worldwide leader in the field of self-discovery and personal transformation. She is the founder of the S.W.A.T. Institute, an empowerment coach certification exclusively for women that is in over 45 countries. Crystal is the author of several best-selling books, including “The Emotional Edge,” featured on Oprah.com.