Welcome to "Don't Pick The Scab Podcast," the podcast where we take a light-hearted dive into the world of men over 40 recovering from divorce. This week, we chat with Greg Payne, a certified life coach and holistic healer. Greg, a self-proclaimed IT-to-healing convert, shares his journey from tech grad to energy worker, proving that even spreadsheets can have a soul.
Greg co-founded Awakened Roots with his wife, creating a healing hub that’s part advice column, part energy spa. They offer everything from Brainspotting to Kambo—yes, that’s frog sweat medicine—and if that doesn’t sound intriguing, nothing will. Greg explains that Brainspotting maps trauma to a specific point in your visual field, like finding your emotional North Star, while Kambo boosts your immune system with Amazonian frog peptides. Who knew amphibians could be so therapeutic?
Breathwork and Reiki also make the list, with Greg highlighting how these practices can tune you into your emotional radio station, clearing static and finding clarity. He emphasizes using breathwork to address emotions held in the body, making it easier to navigate life’s tricky transitions, like divorce.
Ultimately, Greg’s message is simple: Self-care isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a lifeline. Whether it’s reaching out to a friend or indulging in a little pampering, taking time for yourself is crucial. So, grab your metaphorical toolkit and prepare to rebuild because healing is just a breath away.
Greg gave it to us fast with no chaser. New but refreshing. Got to get him back on the show! We have more to discuss!
Important Points:
IT grad turned holistic healer and life coach.
Awakened Roots combines energy healing and life coaching.
Brainspotting maps trauma to specific visual field spots.
Kambo uses frog peptides for immune and energy boosts.
Breathwork releases emotions held in the body.
Reiki promotes relaxation, aiding emotional and physical healing.
Self-care and outreach prevent isolation post-divorce.
Men face isolation and need connection for healing.
Emotional intelligence aids in navigating post-divorce challenges.
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don't Pick The SCAB PODCAST, where we explore topics, therapies and out of the box solutions for my men over 40 recovering from divorce.
[00:00:08] Welcome, Greg Payne to the show. Definitely out of the box. He's a certified life coach, a Reckie Master teacher.
[00:00:16] He involves brand spotting, Campbell, Catalyst, Insight Collective and PESI in his healing practices.
[00:00:22] So tell us a little bit about yourself, Greg, and I got some questions for you.
[00:00:37] Welcome to the Don't Pick The SCAB PODCAST, with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during or after a divorce.
[00:00:51] Hey, David. It's an honor to be here right now. I am freshly graduated from my IT degree about six or seven months ago and dived straight into my new life as a holistic healer, life coach, energy worker and breath worker.
[00:01:06] Mm-hmm.
[00:01:08] This has been my dream to pursue the world of being a holistic healer and learn how to have human minds work and how to get them to cooperate with us.
[00:01:18] What inspired you to co-found Awaken Roots and pursue a career in life coaching and energy healing?
[00:01:25] My wife and I have been pursuing our own personal healing for several years with energy workers, shamanic practices and various therapy treatments.
[00:01:34] All this while I've been in school, my wife, Mari, has been working her tail off building up Awaken Consulting Services.
[00:01:42] Mm-hmm.
[00:01:43] And ultimately, Awaken Roots is the younger brother of Awaken Consulting Services.
[00:01:48] It just gives us the chance to have an outlet for all these various healing modalities we've trained with, mastered and used for our own benefit.
[00:01:56] Wow.
[00:01:57] How have your personal experiences shaped your approach to helping others, particularly men recovering from divorce?
[00:02:03] For men recovering from divorce, my personal experience as a man going through multiple difficult challenging moments in my own relationship and including my present one and past exes.
[00:02:17] I've learned that in order to get the real ability to stay with her, listen to what she says and understand what my partner means, I have to dig into that psychology.
[00:02:28] Some of what's running underneath the hood of my behavior patterns that I might not even have thought about.
[00:02:35] Let's talk about brain spotting.
[00:02:37] What the heck is brain spotting?
[00:02:38] It's a good question.
[00:02:40] Brain spotting is a pretty new healing modality.
[00:02:42] It's about 20 years old.
[00:02:44] It was founded by David Grant in the 80s.
[00:02:46] And brain spotting utilizes the brain's ability to heal traumas based upon connecting various traumas, memories, thought histories, relational histories to different spaces in your visual field.
[00:03:02] So brain spotting maps your trauma or worry or any issue that you can think of to a specific spot in your visual field and hold attention there while your body experiences the emotions that might be stuck and suppressed and resolves them.
[00:03:19] Okay.
[00:03:20] How does Cambo, the sacred fog medicine fit into your healing practice and what benefits does it offer for emotional and physical healing?
[00:03:30] Cambo is a traditional Amazonian healing modality.
[00:03:34] Cambo has very powerful effects on the human nervous system, especially in the lymphatic system.
[00:03:41] Cambo carries unique bioavailable polypeptides that can't be found anywhere else.
[00:03:47] And when you apply them to the lymphatic system via a Cambo healing session, those peptides give your body instructions about how to strengthen its immune system, strengthen its senses, give you energy, give you power, give you connection to your natural sense of self.
[00:04:03] Cambo and Cambo can be very empowering for those who need a little bit of an energy boost or power boost.
[00:04:09] It's traditionally hunter's medicine or warrior's medicine.
[00:04:14] So do the frogs excrete it or do they have lymph nodes or how do you get it?
[00:04:20] The frogs, the philomedusa bicolor or giant monkey tree frog, they secrete this medicine out of their sweat glands.
[00:04:27] It's part of their natural protective mechanism.
[00:04:30] They secrete it so that they aren't cut down and eaten by predators, but there's a wonderful set of natural healing byproducts that are good for humans.
[00:04:40] Oh, interesting.
[00:04:41] What role does breathwork play in emotional healing and how can it help someone going through a challenging life transition like divorce?
[00:04:51] Breathwork can really give you the chance to tune into your body.
[00:04:55] What might be held there?
[00:04:56] When you breathe, you get access to maybe tension in your lungs that might indicate grief, tension in your throat that might indicate anger.
[00:05:02] With breathwork, you can stimulate those spaces in your body, feel them and understand why you might be hanging on to such tension or grief or stress or sorrow or loss.
[00:05:14] A normal breathwork practice can get you feeling a lot less depressed, a lot more empowered to take your feelings on through heart.
[00:05:23] And then how does Reiki contribute to emotional and physical healing and what can someone new to it expect from a session?
[00:05:31] Reiki serves as a powerful, hands-on, natural energy mode of healing.
[00:05:37] It's energy work.
[00:05:38] And one of the first things you'll notice about energy is a deep sense of relaxation, a deep sense of mental calm.
[00:05:44] And from that space, Reiki can work on physical ailments, emotional afflictions, or even long-held traumas and grief.
[00:05:53] Like, Reiki is so gentle, it can get beneath your protective measures while you're sitting on a Reiki master's table.
[00:06:01] Reiki and Reiki and Reiki are a deep sense of emotional and emotional stress.
[00:06:01] And in your experience, what are some common emotional challenges men face after a traumatic experience, not just divorce?
[00:06:09] And how can they begin to address them?
[00:06:12] That's a good question.
[00:06:13] Men have been...
[00:06:15] Because men suck.
[00:06:16] They suck.
[00:06:17] They suck.
[00:06:17] They suck.
[00:06:18] Men have been given specific access to only a very small bandwidth of emotions.
[00:06:24] One of them is anger.
[00:06:25] One is grief.
[00:06:27] Some of them are loss.
[00:06:28] Beneath all those emotions, especially the anger, you might find hurt.
[00:06:33] One way to get through that hurt is to first recognize and know that it's there.
[00:06:37] My practices tend to be experiential.
[00:06:40] They give you the chance to experience not just the anger, but the bigger picture.
[00:06:45] The hurt feelings.
[00:06:46] The desired feelings you might have for your relationship.
[00:06:49] Your sense of grief for being alone and put out and not understood what you were trying to tell somebody.
[00:07:00] Experiencing these feelings firsthand gives you a chance to resolve, not carry them around so much.
[00:07:06] And lower their baggage.
[00:07:08] How can a man stay grounded in the present while dealing with challenging emotions and thoughts during the trauma time?
[00:07:17] To stay grounded, I'd recommend the most important thing is to stay calm, stay relaxed.
[00:07:24] If you let your emotions run amok, they can keep you in these damaging patterns.
[00:07:29] Keep a regular practice of checking in with yourself, meditation, breath work, reading or doing a sport.
[00:07:36] To keep the mind clear, it's extremely important to check in with yourself and recognize when you're too keyed up with worry or anger.
[00:07:47] Or any other emotion that might slow you up and deal with it head on.
[00:07:52] Are there any neuroscience backed techniques that you can use or clients can use or that you use to help clients rewire their nervous system and move beyond deeply held patterns?
[00:08:03] Brain spotting is my most direct way to address issues within the neuroscience of the body and mind.
[00:08:13] A bunch of backing shows that when you bring attention to specific spots in your visual field while tuning into deep hidden emotions like attachment, grief or loss or depression,
[00:08:27] and experience them with a brain spotting and experience them with a brain spotting guidance and attention and the techniques that we use to dissolve and unburden those emotions.
[00:08:37] How do you guide your clients in discovering their inner healing blueprint and aligning with their innate emotional health?
[00:08:45] How do those two kind of blend together?
[00:08:49] Inner healing blueprint.
[00:08:50] It's a word that I use pretty often.
[00:08:52] The inner healing blueprint, it's based on the observation that your mind basically knows how it's supposed to fit together.
[00:08:59] When you slow down and use different techniques to bypass the rational mind, the sub-quartical mind, the reasoning mind, and the storytelling mind,
[00:09:08] you can tap into that inner healing wisdom and get yourself back into a state of mind that's your natural best.
[00:09:18] Everyone's natural best isn't to hold anger or grief or fear or pain.
[00:09:24] That inner healing wisdom, the inner emotional intelligence can cue you in when something's wrong and you can navigate it with the help of a facilitator.
[00:09:34] What role does intuition play in your coaching and healing methodologies?
[00:09:40] And how can men learn to trust their own intuition during difficult times?
[00:09:45] That's tough for men because we will question ourselves till the end of days.
[00:09:50] When it comes to intuition, we often get that train right out of us as we're growing up.
[00:09:55] Intuition can give you a chance to build a greater skill to navigate.
[00:09:59] If you go through a divorce, for example, you might think all that anger is directed towards your partner.
[00:10:04] But in real life, a portion of that anger goes to maybe your upbringing, maybe your own behaviors, your own thoughts.
[00:10:10] And intuition will help you pull, hit the brakes on raging out your partner or complaining about her and maybe get in touch with what you can actually do on a personal basis to maybe change your own behaviors.
[00:10:24] Maybe give compassion towards your father for demonstrating all that anger that he showed you when you were growing up with him.
[00:10:32] Wow. What are some of the biggest obstacles men facing on their journey to healing after a traumatic event like divorce?
[00:10:40] And how can they overcome them?
[00:10:43] I'd like to say the biggest inhibitor for men would be isolation or ignoring the problem altogether.
[00:10:49] Those two things leave us in the same place, suffering and letting out our emotions fester and wounds get worse.
[00:10:57] To prevent isolation, you have to really make an effort.
[00:11:01] Even when you don't feel like outreaching to somebody, join a team, call your friends, reach out to your sister or your brother who you haven't talked to for a long time and tell them the truth.
[00:11:13] Be humble enough to tell them the truth about your level of distress and what you really need right then.
[00:11:18] The alternative, staying by yourself, continuing your normal workday without any changes can just leave you extremely stressed out, extremely depressed and worried and anxious without any resolution.
[00:11:33] Yeah, one of my big things with divorced men over 40 in the divorce recovery is self-care.
[00:11:39] Man, we don't take care of ourselves.
[00:11:41] How can you express how important that is?
[00:11:44] Because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others like co-parenting.
[00:11:48] Yeah, self-care is of immense work.
[00:11:50] It's the first thing that goes out the drain when we're trying to scramble and catch problems and try to solve them for people.
[00:11:56] One of the best recommendations for self-care is to really set aside some time for yourself.
[00:12:01] It can be consistently in the morning, first thing when you wake up, last thing before you go to bed.
[00:12:05] I personally might use both my self-care, meditation, check-in, reading time and pamper yourself a little bit.
[00:12:14] It could be breath work, it could be meditation, it could be getting a massage, it could be doing a workout.
[00:12:18] Men overlook self-care, men you overlook self-care just decay and they become less effective, less present for others, less present for their jobs.
[00:12:27] And like I mentioned before, you can maintain that without self-care.
[00:12:34] What are the hopes for your clients you work with in terms of their emotional and spiritual growth after a traumatic experience like divorce?
[00:12:41] First and foremost, my desired outcome for my men or women who are going through a hard time is to raise their education about themselves.
[00:12:50] Psychoeducation or education in psychology is really overlooked in our day and age.
[00:12:56] And if they gain awareness that certain tools are available, they can really break those patterns of repeating, falling into depression, isolation, self-sabotage and hurt.
[00:13:08] I like to raise their education one session at a time, letting them know that they have options other than raging, complaining, blaming or even freezing altogether.
[00:13:19] How can understanding and embracing one's emotional and mental health lead to more fulfilling relationships in the future?
[00:13:27] Like hope. Hope is a big word for me.
[00:13:30] Yeah, hope is a big word for me too.
[00:13:32] In my experience, if you can gain a little bit of a new tool, a new resource that gives you a little bit of progress, your hope can go through the route because you've been sitting with these problems for longer than you'd like to admit.
[00:13:45] And a touch of success, a touch of the right education, the right session or tool that will heal you, let that hope connect and anchor into what you're actually experiencing.
[00:13:56] And it can-
[00:13:57] For listeners who are new to breath work, what simple practices can they incorporate into their daily routine to support emotional healing?
[00:14:04] With breath work, there are a few regular practices that I like to cultivate.
[00:14:09] One's called the 20 connected breaths.
[00:14:11] It was given to us by Leonard Orr.
[00:14:13] And what 20 connected breaths are, it's basically four quick short breaths that are intentional, followed by one big sigh.
[00:14:21] And after you have the big sigh, you can really feel some of your emotions leveling out, your mind becoming more calm.
[00:14:29] This has been proven to improve athletic performance, professional performance, along with really giving you the chance to regulate your emotions.
[00:14:37] So, 20 continuous breaths is a go-to for me.
[00:14:41] What advice would you give to men over 40 who are struggling to find purpose or direction after a divorce?
[00:14:47] Some of the first steps.
[00:14:49] First steps.
[00:14:51] The number one step is to be gentle, self-compassionate.
[00:14:54] That's an incredibly difficult emotional and mental situation.
[00:14:58] Going through divorce, going through any other loss as well.
[00:15:01] You can't expect yourself to come out of this like Superman.
[00:15:04] You have to be a little bit kind to yourself.
[00:15:07] Let yourself feel those deep emotions of her.
[00:15:09] Let yourself feel the memories come up from what you might have had before.
[00:15:14] And let yourself really be optimistic about some of the feedback you got from your partner.
[00:15:19] We talked about the two selves, self-compassion, self-care.
[00:15:23] What about self-confidence?
[00:15:25] That's a big one.
[00:15:26] Yeah.
[00:15:26] Self-confidence is a huge one, especially after you have a shattering break, like a divorce.
[00:15:33] Self-confidence is always a moving target for me.
[00:15:38] You can have self-confidence situationally.
[00:15:40] Like if you're an ace at your job, that can be a source of self-confidence.
[00:15:44] But outside of a specific context like your work or say your sport, think all the way to self-confidence by dropping in and asking yourself what needs you have right now.
[00:15:56] What your feelings mean right now.
[00:15:58] And you have to be strategic about it.
[00:16:00] Pick each step according to your day's given needs.
[00:16:05] Self-confidence grows over time with progressive, successful, positive moves.
[00:16:11] If you could offer one piece of advice to men recovering from divorce, what would it be to encourage their emotional and spiritual healing?
[00:16:20] The big one.
[00:16:21] Give me one.
[00:16:22] Okay, give me two.
[00:16:23] Give me two.
[00:16:24] Okay, two words.
[00:16:25] I'd say self-care and outreach.
[00:16:27] Men get stuck in a rut.
[00:16:29] They can shrink down to the fraction of their normal strength and lose out.
[00:16:33] If you outreach, you're not going to be festering in a pool of your own painful and difficult emotions.
[00:16:40] With self-care, you aren't going to take on the blame for going through such a loss.
[00:16:48] Man, this was a quick one, man.
[00:16:50] You got all my questions.
[00:16:51] This is like the lightning round.
[00:16:53] I was feeling that way too.
[00:16:56] I like this.
[00:16:57] I wish all my podcasts were this fast.
[00:16:59] How can listeners connect with you and learn more about your work and the services you offer?
[00:17:04] And then I'll add them at the bottom of the show notes too.
[00:17:06] Sure, yeah.
[00:17:07] If you'd like to connect with me directly, you can reach me at greg at awaken-roots.com.
[00:17:12] Our website is awaken-roots.com and we do host a monthly online breathwork events that are available internationally at awaken-roots.com.
[00:17:23] Cool.
[00:17:24] Damn, Greg.
[00:17:27] That's what I like, man.
[00:17:28] In and out.
[00:17:29] But hold on to the mic.
[00:17:31] I'm going to sign off here and everybody have a good rest of the week.
[00:17:36] And I appreciate you, Greg, for coming on the show and just force feeding us, man.
[00:17:41] That was awesome.
[00:17:42] I like that.
[00:17:43] My pleasure.
[00:17:44] I didn't mean to go too quick or too lightning fast.
[00:17:48] Oh, no, that's fine.
[00:17:48] Hey, I am not complaining.
[00:17:50] Every podcast guest is different and you're my first in this modality.