Marla Miller: 0:35

Welcome back to Open-Minded Healing. Today, we'll be talking to my guest, sandy Zeldes, about the subconscious blocks people have when it comes to weight loss and how these can be healed. Sandy is a former celebrity chef, certified nutrition consultant and subconscious transformation expert with over 20 years of experience helping women break free from weight-related issues. By using her signature blend of EFT, tapping, trauma healing and functional nutrition, she's able to help others create major changes that actually last because the root cause has been addressed. So if you are someone who's experienced yo-yo dieting or weight gain over the age of 40, or perhaps have cravings for wine and sugar, you may be surprised to learn that the real root cause of the issue is hidden trauma. So rather than taking Ozempic, you may just need to release what is weighing you down. So welcome Sandy.

Sandy Zeldes: 1:39

Hi Marla, Thanks for having me.

Marla Miller: 1:42

So we're going to really dive into this and people will learn that when they have these weight loss issues, or what they feel are weight loss issues, there's really something much deeper going on. So they come to you right. Initially, with some of these weight loss issues, like I mentioned, yo-yo dieting and they're not getting anywhere. Or after the age of 40, which of course happens to most of us, but where you start to gain weight. So that's their intro to your work, right. But then you start working with them Traditionally, traditionally, traditionally.

Sandy Zeldes: 2:24

I mean, it's just a common problem. Frankly, the women reach out to me, right. I've worked with men as well on issues, because I'm a holistic health practitioner who works with nutrition and I use EFT, right, which is basically for letting go of what I call trapped emotion. But emotional stress, trauma, beliefs, it's like acupuncture but for emotions, just to keep it really simple, and it works. It just works right. So you know, people haven't heard of it. For those of you out there, it's been around over 30 years and I think the people who resonate with you just end up coming to you, right. So that's who came to me.

Sandy Zeldes: 3:04

It didn't start out that way. It started out kind of general. I was doing all these festivals. I did a big one in San Francisco and I had this whole long intake form and everything for people and what filtered through was the problem of basically subconscious blocks is where I landed for people who want to get healthier but find themselves stuck, and they're stuck with cravings and habits that don't serve them and it tends to be a lifelong problem. So it can come and go. Most people it doesn't come and go. They might have periods I'm thinking of a couple clients but usually it's a lifelong problem with food, and it can be alcohol as well and different substances that they use to calm and soothe and comfort reward. You know.

Marla Miller: 3:53

It's interesting because a lot of coping mechanisms say it was alcohol or it's emotional eating. But it could also be smoking or it could be anything, but a lot of those make your weight fluctuate.

Sandy Zeldes: 4:08

Yeah, and so weight is the problem that they will notice and it's the tip of the iceberg. I always talk about a tip of the iceberg kind of issue. It's a symptom in my world and it's not because people are lazy, it's not even procrastination. You know my clients have worked really hard at this. I know that most people work really hard, like work right, the word work. They're trying really hard, they're just not getting the results.

Marla Miller: 4:32

And it's not just about people that have excess weight. I mean, it could be people that can't get weight.

Sandy Zeldes: 4:38

They identify with having a weight issue. Sometimes I struggle with how to talk about it because, in my opinion, I think there's an epidemic in our Western culture, and in America especially struggles with perception, and then our perception creates these damaging habits like chronic dieting, which will make you gain weight. Okay, so there's these cycles people get into based on where did it begin? Well, it's not about the food right. However, they can't imagine being able to stick to something right, Stick to a diet plan, whatever it is, whether it's the one their naturopath gave them, because some of them will have gone to many naturopaths, great nutritionists. They know what to eat. They can't implement. They're up at night eating and they don't know why. Or they have their favorite foods they can't quit and it's sabotaging their health. Or that glass of wine, or two, or three, or five or six, you know, and it's something they don't like to talk about. You know, it's not. It's not something the world knows about. Necessarily. Some of them you just wouldn't know.

Sandy Zeldes: 5:40

I mean, I don't notice weight on most of my clients that call me. To be honest, Like when we talk, I don't. They're perfectly healthy. It's not about the number on the scale for most of them, which is interesting, I think Very interesting. And I wouldn't classify people in categories. I'm not a clinician and, frankly, I don't think I agree with doing that, but that's a whole other conversation. What do you mean categories? However, there's a spectrum to being overweight. I'm not going to use the term obese. I work with people who are anywhere from sometimes 20 to 60 pounds, maybe even 80, mostly in the 40 to 60. And then some people it's fewer people that I work with, frankly that will want to lose 5 to 10. That is driving them insane, the 5 to 10. It's really driving them insane.

Marla Miller: 6:41

So, it's a spectrum. Yeah, it's very interesting the perception, like you said. So when someone comes to you, what does that intake look like? I'm guessing they tell you yeah, I feel like I have this much weight to lose and I'm really struggling.

Sandy Zeldes: 6:58

Well, actually they're struggling with food. They're struggling with food primarily, traditionally speaking, and then later they'll tell me about other health complaints. They'll usually have chronic health concerns, but that's not the number one reason they're calling. Some of them can have diabetic, pre-diabetic conditions, but it's actually not as common as you would think, which I find fascinating. So it has to do with stress and anxiety. That's what they're really calling me about.

Marla Miller: 7:24

So how do you delve into that to see more of what's going on than the basics that they initially tell you?

Sandy Zeldes: 7:33

That's a good question. It's funny. Everyone wants to know that. You know, it's just my own process.

Sandy Zeldes: 7:38

I've been working with clients for 20 years and so I work with people over time traditionally, because I work in kind of a complex, chronic issue, you can work with someone one-on-one, do one-off sessions. But that's not what this really is, because it's a tip of an iceberg issue and most of the people who come to me have been doing this for 30 years or more their habits with food right and then the chronic dieting. They lose a little bit and then they gain it all back or more, and then they do it again or they're doing it constantly. One of my clients she was chronically cleansing, like never off a cleanse, and that's the health conscious woman way to do this. I used to see that a lot in my very health conscious clients and they're just constantly cleansing right and constantly on the next cleanse or fast or diet smoothie kind of thing you know, and so they're literally constantly dieting. Okay, so calorie restricting, if you want to put it simply. And am I against it? Of course not. People think I'm black and white. No, cleansing is great. It's so good for you if you do it with a healthy mindset. You're not dieting, you're just cleansing to heal something. You can stay on a cleanse as long as you need to, but it's not 24-7, 365 days a year.

Sandy Zeldes: 8:57

So I had a client who was in her late forties, who had spent a lifetime, since she was 14, literally cleansing it, going on one cleanse to the next, and she actually hired me to put her on a cleanse and so I said you know I don't do that, not. Well, I listened to her and I listened to what's going on with her Right and I said I don't recommend that you've been on so many cleanses. You know, tell me what's going on with her right. And I said I don't recommend that You've been on so many cleanses. Tell me what's really going on. And then she's crying and it turned out it was about how she felt about herself really deep down, which wasn't on the top of mind. A lot of times these issues don't come up until we start working together. Tapping because tapping is not an intellectual process, it's letting go and it peels back layers of the onion is how it works when you're working with an experienced practitioner. So once we started working together, we actually got to the moment.

Sandy Zeldes: 9:53

There's moments when things, patterns and habits get created, and there's many moments it's not just one, but for her there were several that had to do with when she started hating her body, basically, and felt like she was too big. Not every woman has different things that I work with, that they're working on, and one of them can be body image, where they made the decision about themselves, and so that's really rewarding, as you can imagine, to get to work with this woman. You know, short period of time of working together. It was miraculous. She was able to.

Sandy Zeldes: 10:26

We worked through I use the word clearing I don't know if that word works for people releasing releasing it for good, by the way. It's not temporary. If we do it right, we release it for good the trapped energy, emotion around something, a belief structure that got created in different times in our lives, right From different events, and so for her, when we released it, the first thing that happened was that she just stopped caring about cleansing and started eating normal, which sounds like nothing, I know, but it was like a miracle. Okay, it was. It was a miracle, and this is a story I've told a lot. It's just one story of many, but it was a miracle for her, okay, and it went from one day to the next and it wasn't a thought process. She didn't try, she just did it Like it was just gone.

Marla Miller: 11:12

So what's that? Through the tapping process? Yeah, was it also nutrition or anything?

Sandy Zeldes: 11:18

No, no, I don't start with nutrition with any of these people who come to me. That's later, that's advanced, and then it's easy, it's just checking off boxes, yeah Well, so they can implement, they're finally able to just do it, you know, yeah, and so sometimes I add some things just to help, because I've been doing this so long. There's brain chemistry, there's hormones, there's nutritional needs, so sometimes we can plug some gaps of long-term stress. You know I call it, but it's really easy once we get moving though right, and so primarily, I would say almost 99% of what I do is actually the release work and belief work, and it's profound. And so it was a profound shift because it gave her so much peace. She wasn't crying every session, she wasn't sad, she wasn't overwhelmed, she wasn't stressed or anxious, wasn't thinking about food at all. It's a miracle in itself. So that was a win.

Sandy Zeldes: 12:14

But the biggest win was that it continued over the holidays, when she was around her family, and she lost eight pounds without doing anything at all, when she normally would be binging over the holidays or whatever right, or drinking wine or doing things she doesn't do. It didn't happen at all. And she said and Sandy, I'm eating more than I've ever eaten and I'm losing weight. And I said, I know that's exactly right, and she was 45. So when I say over 40, I mean there is hormone decline and the question is, why? So we can come back to that, because I don't think it's actually so natural at all. I think women can be very healthy and strong hormonally speaking, without bioidentical hormones, by the way, which many of us do need, and I'm not against it, of course but our culture is so stressful and our dietary habits, and it depletes our hormones, you know, before we should be. I think I've seen it in very young women.

Marla Miller: 13:08

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that makes sense. So when you were working with her, or when you work with other people as well, how does the conversation evolve? So you start the tapping, you tell them what points to tap. You know whether it's on the head or between the eyebrows or whatever.

Sandy Zeldes: 13:27

Yeah, I mean traditionally, a lot of people came to me knowing tapping, but you know, but I'm wondering People who don't, they don't need to know how to do it, I just guide them, yeah.

Marla Miller: 13:37

So you guide them as far as the tapping goes, but as far as the conversation, I'm wondering did this woman when she discovered when this body image issue first, started, I had no idea. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. So how is it coming up? Is it because the tapping is doing something with the brain that's allowing it to what relax enough to remember these things?

Sandy Zeldes: 14:00

No, so it's so interesting. You asked that. So there's studies on the cortisol and the stress hormones and all of that, but it's actually working. In my experience, working with people for 20 years, actual one-on-one people I can tell you that the experience is very much like peeling the layers of an onion, literally of your consciousness, because it's not conscious when we're starting tapping. Nobody starts the same. It's totally individualized. But the tapping process is also individual and there's no one way to work with people in at least the way I do it, and some people can go really deep really fast, some people take longer, but it's a process. It's like peeling back the layers of an onion for real, and what we think we're aware of on the top of the surface once we start tapping, we think we're aware of on the top of the surface. Once we start tapping, we become aware of something else, if again working with someone who knows the road. So I've just been doing this so long and I know how to get there. That's all I can say. It was very quick and you have to know how to fully release every piece of something like that, and so trauma is kind of encoded in events.

Sandy Zeldes: 15:17

Okay, and it seems to me that our belief structures come from events or things that were said to us in the past and we don't even know, we're not aware of what we're holding on to subconsciously All of us. We're all the same, of what we're holding on to subconsciously All of us. We're all the same, and so we're reacting subconsciously frequently from past events and experiences. So for her, 30 years later, doing this behavior and doing it her whole life, it started right about 14, when she was becoming self-aware sexually and wanting to date and things like that. And she's in PE classes and becoming aware that she's not happy with herself. Someone said something or whatever, and she's not aware that that's the issue. It's not conscious, it's not like oh gee, I wish I could change that. We don't change like that.

Sandy Zeldes: 16:06

In my experience that never changes anything. There's a stress response that happened. There's a belief structure, and so it takes a while to clear sometimes, and there can be many different events. Some people are put on diets, right. I'm just talking about one experience. People could have traumatic events that have nothing to do with food. You know, there's habits in the family. People don't want to communicate and so they're staying in a comfort zone, right? That's a common theme in relationships not wanting to communicate, but it comes from somewhere you know.

Marla Miller: 16:39

So I'm curious about these other issues people have, like, even if it's a weight issue initially and that's the easiest thing for them to wrap their head around, is like I have an issue with my weight, but what other issues have you seen come up through these continued sessions, say, that have to do with the chronic illness or what else? Relationship issues? Yeah, I mean like anything.

Sandy Zeldes: 17:07

So in a word, stress that's stored and it's like a slow burning infection. I feel like it's just still stored in our bodies. Our body stores it to keep us safe. Typically that's how it works. If it's strong enough or we don't get to release it in the time periods, no one helped us. It was nothing that happened that was corrective or to release it, it can create symptoms and the cravings are symptoms. The weights are a symptom of that. The habits, the sleep problems, chronic health issues it's all connected. That's why this is so fun to still work with after all these years, because it tends to be a tip of a very big iceberg. One woman came to me and she had high blood pressure, heart problems. She was rather young actually I thought 43, I think To me that's very young to have heart stuff and she was very scared. You know, if I look back in my notes, I was recently doing that for her because we worked together still on other things. It was a scary issue and that cleared right away.

Marla Miller: 18:10

How did it go away so quickly? Is it because she remembered something from her past? We addressed the chronic stress. How did you address the stress for her? Through the tapping yeah, through the work together, and what was stressing her?

Sandy Zeldes: 18:25

I mean, for her it was communication. Everybody's unique. It's always going to be stress. It's something about anxiety and stress that's causing it and it's always based on you know an individual, like their relationships, but why? The question is, why? Right, and for her it was communication. But why? Well, it was a family systems, it was patterns, it was. She learned it so long ago she couldn't question it. It's like speaking English, Like it's just the language she speaks. It's the water we're boiling slowly. We don't even know it's there. We think it's just normal to us, right, it's just normal, but it's causing us tremendous stress. We don't know why. I can give you an example being overly frustrated with her kids coming home and leaving stuff everywhere and they don't listen, right, they don't listen. And it was very interesting to unwind that one. But there were other things that were going on in her life that were related to being able to speak up.

Marla Miller: 19:24

So the end result after working with you, how long would you say?

Sandy Zeldes: 19:29

Well, the food cravings go away. Well, those are pretty fast usually. The food cravings go away. Well, those are pretty fast. Usually the food cravings, believe it or not, after a lifetime, that's actually pretty fast. It's the stuff that's under it, the reason why it made so much sense. Right? That really unwinds with the work, does that make sense?

Marla Miller: 19:49

Yeah, so you're uncovering. First you tap with the food cravings but then you're uncovering like oh, there's a communication issue and not being able to speak up for herself and not being able to speak up is a big one not feeling comfortable.

Sandy Zeldes: 20:03

I think a lot of people I've worked with have that In certain situations. These are really successful women, so it's not every area of their lives.

Marla Miller: 20:12

What was the end result? What did it change within her household?

Sandy Zeldes: 20:16

like her kids, oh well, yeah, that was really exciting and this happens a lot. So this is a common theme of women who are very, very frustrated with something to do with the kids, you know, and they tend to snap and they're frustrated themselves. So for my clients with kids and it's not a top of mind issue why they come to me, but it's something they end up working on, usually because it is causing them stress and they are having that glass of wine in the afternoon when the kids come home or whatever, or they're noticing that time of day. I start to feel off balance and so it's not an issue anymore. They have patience with their kids. When we're done, they enjoy them more, they're not stressed and if they needed to speak up it's not always the case, but if there was something they needed, they were able to clearly communicate it and have it be understood.

Marla Miller: 21:06

So it changed maybe her perception of my kids aren't listening to me and it means this and it was a whole pattern. Yeah, so the kids were actually doing the things she thought they were doing.

Sandy Zeldes: 21:19

There's a whole pattern. It's never one person, it's not just perception. If you're not communicating clearly, for whatever reason, you don't get what you want Like. Things get very frustrating, and so how does the other person, whoever it is, whether it's the partner, the work environment or you? You're just steaming all the time but you don't even realize it. Right, she didn't even realize. She thought she was communicating clearly. So it was a whole process of deeper exploration and the bottom line was worth feeling worthy of it right.

Marla Miller: 21:51

Yeah, I'm sure that's a big one for a lot of people. Well, so how long would you say? I know it's different for every person, but say for her how many months did that take? And are you working once a week together?

Sandy Zeldes: 22:04

Everybody's different, so there's not one answer. But it's weeks, months, it's not years or anything Do you generally work with someone?

Marla Miller: 22:12

is it once a week? It depends on the person. Yeah, yeah, okay. So I just want to explain a little bit more about the tapping and then we'll get into a few more stories of different things people have discovered, but the tapping itself. So you're doing this over the phone, by the way, right. You're doing it remotely, yeah, over 15 years. So you just you talk someone through it like where to be tapping, as you're talking, so kind of throughout the whole conversation, the whole session. They're tapping, yeah, they're tapping, yeah, and we're working together.

Sandy Zeldes: 22:49

Depression. They're tapping on, yeah, they're tapping, yeah, and we're working together. It's very personal, there isn't one way to do it. It's very personal, very individualized.

Marla Miller: 23:03

Well, so, first of all, when they come to you, they don't have to have even any indication really what this deep trauma was, or and it doesn't have to be a big trauma, does it? It could just, oh no not at all.

Sandy Zeldes: 23:10

No, it can be. I mean, most people are just experiencing a lot of stress and they know they're struggling with food or weight. So no, no, no, they don't have to know at all. In fact, oftentimes people, if they think they know, it's usually because they've had long years of therapy and they've talked about something a lot. It doesn't mean that's what's the core thing that is causing right. So it's not an intellectual process, it's very, very natural. It just comes up. You know, whatever it needs to comes up always, every time.

Sandy Zeldes: 23:42

Another example of that I had a woman. I mean, most of them have heard of tapping, of course, and are very interested in working with an alternative practitioner in this way. So they know they want to do something like this. They know that talking about it hasn't helped them. Most of them come to me after many natural health experts and they know they're not getting to it right, they're not pulling the thorns out, they're not coming out. There's like this scab over it. I mean, at best we can put a scab over something right. So they know something's wrong and they would like to look deeper. You know what I mean. So they know, they self-identify that, they know there's something deeper and they definitely want to do deeper work. They don't have to know the answers.

Sandy Zeldes: 24:23

So a woman came to me and she absolutely did not, and I was super confused. She was a mom with kids. What's fascinating to me is the moms with the really supportive husband but they're not feeling very close to them is how profound their relationships change. It's really profound and it's because, like I said before, the food's not about food and the weight's not about weight. With what I do, it's a symptom. So, basically, she was very frustrated with her husband. Right At night after she cooked dinner, she's doing the dishes, cleaning up, cooking, shopping, the whole thing and working and just furious at her husband for not helping or whatever. And you would think that's a very straightforward issue, right, Sounds very straightforward. So we're working on it. You know, I'm not as I don't know, I don't try to assume I know something. I'm just working with someone where they're at and the layers are coming off of the anger. Oh boy, so much anger and frustration. Like I mean a lot of it. I mean a lot and we were there for a while, but that's her process, it's not mine, Everybody's individual. So she was there for a while and then what was under? You know, as we're working together, we're finding out, well, where does this come from? Because he really loves you, Like she knew he really wants to help you. She started to realize, oh, he really tries to help, but I don't want him in the kitchen. So we're going and going, we're clearing and working it out.

Sandy Zeldes: 25:54

And it went back to patterns from childhood. It always does. It always does, I mean for most people it does. You know. She learned you can't speak up.

Sandy Zeldes: 26:03

She was raised a certain way that you're not, you're supposed to do this, et cetera, and so it had a whole belief structure and a lot of pain around it for her. Anyway, so we're clearing it, clearing it, and she worked on herself first. I always think we work on ourselves first before we clear our own charge around it, emotional charge around something, before we address it in our lives. Cause she had a cognitive shift about it. You know she had a total shift about how she saw her husband in this whole issue after spending time working on this, and her shift was I've never asked him. I've never asked him to help because I thought I didn't think I was supposed to, and on and on, and, and she was so scared to ask. It was really interesting, you know, and I see that pattern a lot. So when she started communicating with him and we, we troubleshooted all these ways to do it in a really loving way and not make him wrong, and I mean they, they heal their relationship. So it was never about food. I mean food was so easy for her to just the chocolate had no hold whatsoever.

Sandy Zeldes: 27:10

After this whole thing was resolved and I mean she's losing weight naturally because she's no longer eating so much at night and it was just a little bit of extra. But over time you lose weight naturally unless there's something else going on. She was eating relatively healthy anyway. So she just started losing weight and we weren't even talking about food. We don't talk about food, it's not even part of the equation. And so we're still working together and adjusting as we're growing with the nutrition. It was so many shifts, it was like her whole life.

Sandy Zeldes: 27:42

She realized that she was holding back, doing what she really wanted to be doing, which she hadn't even been aware of. A lot of my clients you know it's an excavation process. That's why it's really fun to do, because they slowly discover themselves again, things about themselves that they really value. And she had realized, because of her own belief structures and her own, whatever it was and it's no blame, there's no shame, there's nothing. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just it was didn't work for her right anymore. She had all these things she was doing when she got married that she had stopped doing, you know, to be a wife and a mother, which is fine, you know, that's good. But she wanted to get back into it and she realized how happy it made her. It was just simple things, it wasn't complicated. She wanted to be a mom, she wanted to cook, she wanted to do all these things, but she hadn't realized how much she'd held back, you know, of herself. It was really interesting and a lot of women do that in different ways. So for her it was that. And then she started. It was a very simple thing she did.

Sandy Zeldes: 28:46

I hesitate to even give examples of what people do, because everyone's different. Some people just want to play piano again, Some people just want to whatever it is that makes them happy. It's not necessarily work. I mean, a lot of my clients are already love their careers. It's less work, more play, more joy, more money, easily, because you're having more fun and you're relaxed and you're allowing things to come to you, as opposed to being full of stress and struggle these things that we think are not related to our happiness, health, success. They're all related. They're all related. Stress is directly related. So, yeah, so she started having fun again. You know her relationship with her husband got better and her kids, of course, Having fun again. You know her relationship with her husband got better, and her kids, of course, yeah.

Marla Miller: 29:34

And the other way, that domino effect, I feel like another big one. You know, weight is a big thing, or, like you said, it seems like a big thing to a lot of people until they dig deeper. The other one I see would be chronic illness. So many people carry that for years and years. And the other one is money, you know feeling like they cannot make money Right or attract money or whatever that is. So have you dealt with any cases they have to do with chronic? Absolutely.

Sandy Zeldes: 30:02

Yes, chronic illness often carries with it tremendous, usually traumatic events that happened previous. It's not always a direct correlation oh well, this happened and then I got sick. It's a series of events until you just break down and sometimes I mean, I don't know if you know the work of Gabor Mate saying his last name right, I love that man and he's correct. He's talking about it clinically. He has a PhD. But I can tell you from experience and also from every client I've ever worked with, we all have our patterns, our story of chronic health issues. It's a story, it's your story, everyone has their own and it's usually repeated chronic stress. That really is the bottom line. Everything else we can work on.

Sandy Zeldes: 30:49

I personally think the nutrition part is very easy. I'm very good at it. I use what I call ancestral nutrition and functional medicine. I find it very easy to do a good job. You know, in functional medicine I find it very easy to do a good job. You know, recovering, doing recovery right, and what I mostly do, I feel like, is recovery work with people, with their hormones, with their neurotransmitters, their brain chemistry, with the nutritional deficits. That's what I actually work with the most. I see deficits instead of dieting, which, to me, is restricting, cleansing, taking away from you. I think we need to give back nutrition, and I don't mean salads, I'm talking deep nutrition.

Marla Miller: 31:29

What do you mean when you say deep nutrition?

Sandy Zeldes: 31:31

You're talking to someone who tends to see a certain pattern right. So I see chronic dieting for year after year after year after year, not just like, oh, I went on a diet, it didn't work. What I see is an epidemic of chronic dieting that doesn't work, and so for that person, I see a pattern, typically of malnourishment, let's face it, no matter how much you're eating. So, yeah, salads aren't going to cut it. I used to be vegan a million years ago and I taught and I did raw and I was a vegetarian for a very long time. And a big turnaround moment for me was when I went back to school for holistic nutrition and, thank God, I happened to be in the right place at the right time, where the regenerative movement was actually kicking off. It's a whole different philosophy and we don't need a lot when we have deep nutrition. We're not eating so much, we're eating less but getting more. Yeah, yeah. Now, everybody's different. If you're a fast food junkie, you might need a lot of salads for a while to cleanse it out. You know like your body has its own wisdom. We're all unique.

Sandy Zeldes: 32:44

That's why I don't do diets. I don't even do any of that with people, and I've even seen people who have methylation issues which we don't have to get into. That's a functional medicine thing, has to do with the liver, and they have genuine issues. It's a big deal in our culture now because of toxicity, but also some other reasons, and they will convert proteins to homocysteine, which is dangerous. It's an inflammatory blood marker for the heart, and so I've seen it. I've seen it in clients, so everyone's an individual. That's the answer. It's always going to be the answer, especially for chronic illness, and that's why I love what I do too, because I love being a detective to help people who've been through every practitioner or every test and they still haven't found it. I've still been able to find things.

Sandy Zeldes: 33:31

Related to emotion, To chronic illness to chronic problems like a chronic issue. You're 55, 65, and you've never gotten help with this issue. You're still struggling with something. I'm thinking of a 65 year old client I worked with. She was struggling with 10 pounds, so for her it was an issue and we worked on her beliefs and her perception and how she felt and everything about it. Right, and she had health issues she wanted to work with. She had issues that were plaguing her with anxiety and sleep. I think there were skin issues. There were a lot of things she'd always dealt with that she thought were normal for her that after we worked together started to resolve, especially the anxiety. The anxiety and the stress are the top things that usually are causal.

Marla Miller: 34:19

And that went back to what, did she discover, was lurking in her subconscious.

Sandy Zeldes: 34:25

Well, interestingly, she'd had a lot of narcissistic relationships and a long marriage. It's very common, by the way. I see this a lot. In fact I would say it's a big pattern I work with. I was tempted to do a whole series on narcissism. It's still the anxiety that people experience and the fear and how people cope with it is what makes them call me basically. But for her she hadn't even equated it to her health issues, so we worked on all of that.

Marla Miller: 34:54

It was beautiful. So when you were dealing with someone, so like you say, something totally different comes up, totally Having to do with a narcissistic husband. Yeah, and that's what was really the stress, and how? So how did she clear that that was tapping, as you're talking about him?

Sandy Zeldes: 35:14

Well, I mean the EFT process would be very complicated.

Marla Miller: 35:17

to explain, it's a whole process, but it is. It's talking about a lot of different subjects.

Sandy Zeldes: 35:23

It's not talking as much as it is processing it, so you actually like we're talking right now. This is very left brain. It slows down a lot.

Marla Miller: 35:31

It's very different than a conversation, so it's more working through different issues, but through tapping, and that's the way your body's processing and releasing is through the tapping. So she came in thinking it was one thing.

Sandy Zeldes: 35:47

I mean everyone does, but it really it was the stored stress which, again, is what I see.

Marla Miller: 35:53

And do you see that the body sort of addresses things one layer at a time, like when you're ready for it?

Sandy Zeldes: 36:01

Yes, exactly that's why everyone's an individual. There is no one way to do things. Everyone's totally unique. In the early days I thought there was a process, I thought there was a way to do it, and if you do that, I mean you can't get any results with people you have to follow. It has to be their process.

Marla Miller: 36:20

Meet people where they're at, so they may bring up something, say their relationship. They just happen to pop into their head. Yeah, whatever's top of mind.

Sandy Zeldes: 36:29

Oh, absolutely so. I had a client recently. It's never what we talk about. We never talk about the food. I mean, they may think they want to talk about food, but it's never about that. They start talking about everything else in their lives, and so we start there. So she was talking about all these past things that had happened that she was still upset about, and that's how it works. Whatever is top of mind that someone is most stressed about is how it has to work, because how can you get anywhere otherwise?

Marla Miller: 36:59

Well, how do you know that that particular layer was cleared?

Sandy Zeldes: 37:04

Well, that's being an advanced EFT practitioner, right. That's why it's different. Someone with experience and there's all kinds of. There's a lot of ways we check what we call SUDS level. I check constantly. That's why it's not.

Sandy Zeldes: 37:17

Therapy feels therapeutic and it's very tempting for people to want to make it talk therapy, because that's what our culture knows, and they want to categorize the sessions. But I'm like we're not doing that. That's not at all what I do. It feels very therapeutic though, but tapping is different. Tapping is a different process than just talking. Yeah, so so we do test, test, we do test and the proof is in the pudding. So here's how it works literally every time. Every time something's gone gone like not coming back, gone, not little pieces we didn't clean up you don't even think about it, there's no try, it doesn't even come to your mind. So I remind them how do you feel about da, da, da? Give it a number and they're like oh, are you sure? That was an issue? I'm like you know. So that's how we're.

Sandy Zeldes: 38:11

So an example is my client who was dead set against eating salads and smoothies. She was a fast food person, but she wanted to lose weight. She's like let's do some work here and see what we can get to, and within a couple of weeks wasn't very long she found herself craving salads and forgetting to buy cookies and didn't even report it to me because that's not what we were working on. And she's like I forgot to tell you the issue she actually came to me for. She forgot to tell me that she was just done with Because of the personal stuff was what she ended up wanting to work on.

Sandy Zeldes: 38:49

And I've been eating salads, can you believe it? And I forgot to buy cookies. And I buy them every day at 2 o'clock before I pick up my daughter. You know, like the whole thing. She's like I've been doing it for 10 years, I have not missed a day, and I just forgot. And she's like and I don't want them. That's how it works and that's how you know, and it's not temporary, it's not a fluke, it's gone when you work with the right practitioner who knows what they're doing. And so this isn't about the technique, this is about the work that I do.

Marla Miller: 39:22

Yeah.

Sandy Zeldes: 39:23

It's so interesting.

Marla Miller: 39:25

So it is more than I mean. Working with you would be more than someone looking up a YouTube video and tapping and doing it themselves. Obviously, yes, Obviously.

Sandy Zeldes: 39:35

Yeah, that's not. That is actually dangerous to the field and some of us who are advanced practitioners, who are certified and actually work with real clients with complex issues, it's upsetting. There's certain ways it's been popularized that give it the wrong idea that you could just do this yourself. I mean, it's not that simple to get results, deep results with complex issues. Anyone can feel the stress relief, but to get the results is very different.

Marla Miller: 40:11

Yeah, to have the permanent result.

Sandy Zeldes: 40:14

Yeah, with complex issues. Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, isn't there. There was another question.

Marla Miller: 40:33

The money, yeah Well isn't there.

Sandy Zeldes: 40:35

There was another question said to do so many different classes on different topics. But I love working from this angle, the chronic angle, because you change so much of your life when you do so. Every single one of my clients, if they do the deeper work, it doesn't. It takes people different amounts of time. There's not a time limit, it's usually months.

Sandy Zeldes: 41:01

The more you clear of your stress, your pain, your trauma, your belief structures around yourself and how you feel about yourself, all of us, the more free you get and the more, if you want, you attract. I mean it's all about what we want and we're holding things back without even knowing it right. So it's energetic, it's just energetic and that's proven to me year after year, for me too, you know, for everybody. We're all doing it and it's the unconscious stress and beliefs we hold that really hold things back and how we've got ourselves, primarily. But it's also stress. Stress is a killer for our creating our lives. You can just do simple stress relief and I mean deep, energetic stress relief, like tapping and things shift. You know I have so many stories around that. I could go on and on with stories.

Marla Miller: 41:57

What's one example of someone that, after working with you for whatever the initial reason was, but experienced multiple changes in their life in multiple areas, like, do you have a quick?

Sandy Zeldes: 42:10

Well, I'm thinking about one. That's really fun. So I work with a lot of professionals. They're CEOs, executives, artists, performers. Most of them are already in a field they love. It's just there's something they want to tweak. There's always something that could be different, but it's not top of mind. But then, as we're working together, it's part of the stress structure. So we're working on that.

Sandy Zeldes: 42:33

And one client in particular she was the face of a brand and very successful and really stressed. Her work was very stressful for her. Her creative process, which is very common for very creative people. Their creative process is just super stressful for them. High achievers they get very there's a lot of stress involved, but they perform at a very high level and so for her, I mean, it was killing her.

Sandy Zeldes: 43:03

So, as we're doing the work, clearing it, of course it came from all these beliefs about herself and her childhood and when we were done, when she got peace with the food, she started having insights and after she found all this peace, she's like you know, I really don't want to work this way anymore. I think I want to do something else. I said well, why don't you just tell your client that? And she goes huh, never thought of that. See, that's the miracle. Suddenly, she's so like a different person, she's so free, she's thinking differently and she's like, yeah, I guess I could. I said, why don't you just send him an email? I'm actually kind of proud that I was a part of this and she sent an email one day. It was fast, it was easy, it was effortless, it was nothing at all. And not only was he absolutely on board with this new project idea, but overwhelmed with joy to give it to her and take her husband with her on vacation while she's doing it, and pay her more than ever and be on vacation and the whole thing.

Sandy Zeldes: 44:15

And she was laughing. She's like, how can I take money for sitting in bed drawing? But we were laughing. No longer was she binging on ice cream. Do you see the difference?

Sandy Zeldes: 44:25

So that happens for everybody. Like this shift. So I mean, I have that story over and over again. The inspiration's already in us. Everybody has it within them. We all do. We're all super smart and creative, and you have your own template, I have my own thing that would make me happy, or whatever. It's not going to be yours, but it's inside of us, it's our gifts. And so for her, that was her gift and she just never felt comfortable expressing it before like that and she was going to make the most money, having the most fun doing her gift in the best, highest way, when she wasn't stressed. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, and that's everyone. That's how it works. That's the ultimate goal. That's the ultimate goal. I've done it for executives. I've watched them do it show up in their pajamas three days a week instead of seven, you know, and still get paid more. And we just they just tweak it and they do it. I'm not responsible.

Marla Miller: 45:22

They have this inside of them, but they hadn't thought before yeah, or they didn't think it was possible, so it never.

Sandy Zeldes: 45:30

It just was never a bit, or it wasn't even an idea until they cleared enough stuff to see it and then it became, oh look, I could do this. And sometimes they laugh, like a lot of times people will be like this is what I want and I'm like, well, maybe we'll tap for that, let's see if we can get that. And all they have to do is ask. Sometimes, you know, often, because a lot of times we don't even ask, you know and you never know.

Marla Miller: 45:55

Yeah.

Sandy Zeldes: 46:06

I mean you don't know, right, you don't know, we don't know, and that's why I don't like goal setting, because we're thinking limited. And so I personally clear first and say what's possible because I don't know. Every time I've goal set, personally, I know myself I come up with something that is usually restricted. You know what I mean. I thought that would make me happy or whatever. So now my goal is happy, like I just want to feel free and expressed and whatever. You know the feelings and I'm sure that it'll work itself out. And when I start from an end result instead, boy does that not work out, you know, in a painful way usually, what do you mean with the end result?

Marla Miller: 46:37

Like something specific, like a goal?

Sandy Zeldes: 46:39

set saying I want X, y, z. I need you know this thing. It's so bad.

Marla Miller: 46:47

Well, I think you're right, it's good to come from that different part of your brain, like not from the frantic or the anxious or the stressed part of your brain that's going to limit you so completely.

Sandy Zeldes: 47:01

I think it does. Yes, I've seen it for all of us, all my clients. I wouldn't say it like, I'm not saying it theoretically. I'm saying it based on watching people and myself, and I've seen such miracles just from letting go. We don't realize what we're hanging on to most of us, yeah, it's hard to see it for ourselves and some of it's just old and buried and it's normal. It's very normal, I think.

Marla Miller: 47:28

Well, what would you tell someone here? Is there any last thing you want to say? As far as who could benefit from this work and working with you, possibly, in addition to coming in for weight loss, they can do that right and get to the bottom of it.

Sandy Zeldes: 47:44

There were different ways to work with me in the past, but it's all really the same entry point. People can come with chronic illness. It doesn't have to be about weight, but traditionally that's what I've worked with.

Marla Miller: 47:55

And then the financial the life goals really, um yeah, just when you find you're getting particularly stuck over and over, exactly.

Sandy Zeldes: 48:09

So someone who wants a deeper solution and it doesn't have to even be a chronic problem, it can be uh, you know, because my clients stay with me a long time, usually after, because they love clearing everything, continuing working on their goals, their business goals or other dreams they have or other relationship issues. Just anyone really can benefit, we all benefit. But it's typically someone who wants to do this kind of work. Look deeper yeah, some people don't you kind of work. Look deeper yeah, some people don't you know, and that's okay.

Marla Miller: 48:45

Yeah, yeah, it has to be like you said. People are drawn to you. You find the right clients because they're drawn to that energy and that type of work they're drawn to doing something really alternative.

Sandy Zeldes: 48:57

They know what EFT can do. Eft has been around over 30 years so and, I think, very popular Recent times. Some other people have kind of made it more mainstream, but it's still not. Yeah, I still would think it would be much more mainstream than it is. But those of us who love working, I still love working one-on-one with people because everyone's unique story, you know.

Marla Miller: 49:21

Yeah, well, we started working together and maybe we'll have a podcast episode about that when we finish.

Sandy Zeldes: 49:31

And that'll be your call, based on how you want to perceive it. Yeah, it'll be so fun. Yeah, it'll be fun. How can people?

Marla Miller: 49:40

find you.

Sandy Zeldes: 49:40

So right now it's Sandy Zeldes and my name will be posted as well. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, it's my name. I also have eatlikeagoddesscom, which is my older site. We're rebuilding a new site to add different functions, so it's under my name. Oh great, yeah, and there's my course on daily home heal subconscious blocks to weight loss that we're going to put on the page as well, as there's a 10 minute audio for people to experience, just some simple tapping, because a lot of people just want to experience it. So it's just a guided exercise to bring down your stress response. That's all it's designed to do, just as a sample, and that's free on my website. And then, yeah, if someone's ready to work together, there's also a link for that. Okay, there's articles.

Marla Miller: 50:34

There's lots of good articles that we've posted recently all right more information, so so the website they can go to again is eat like a goddesscom or sandy zeldascom all right, and then it's z-e-l-d-e-s and sandy s-a-n-d-e-y yes, right and I was gonna do a different name, but it's too.

Sandy Zeldes: 50:57

We are now using my full name, so now people have to spell it. I was going to make it much easier. You know healing with Sandy, but now, no, we're using the name. All right, we'll go with that.

Marla Miller: 51:10

Well, like I said, I'll put it in the show notes and thank you for coming on and exploring this whole thing with EFT emotional freedom technique, right, exploring this whole thing with EFT emotional freedom technique, right, what it stands for, and tapping and really diving into it and seeing how many things it can affect in your life, to release those emotions and stories we've told ourselves sometimes.

Sandy Zeldes: 51:34

For years, absolutely Stress and beliefs. Yeah, thank you so much. Very creative. Yeah, thank you, marla, pleasure talking to you.