The Resonate Podcast with Aideen

Your Past Doesn't Have to Dictate Your Future with Alyse Bacine

• Aideen Ni Riada • Season 1 • Episode 78

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Alyse Bacine  shares her groundbreaking approach to trauma healing and the profound impact it has on authentic self-expression. She explains how childhood experiences create limiting beliefs that prevent us from expressing our true selves and offers practical methods for releasing these blocks.

• Trauma isn't always a catastrophic event—often it's subtle childhood experiences that create lasting programming
• Small experiences can create beliefs that stop us from accessing our authentic selves
• Fear of criticism often stems from feeling unseen or unacknowledged in childhood
• People-pleasing is a coping mechanism developed to feel safe and get needs met
• The Metamorphosis Method addresses core wounds without requiring endless excavation of the past
• Healing must be paired with action for lasting transformation
• Inner child work creates safety for making behavioral changes
• Confidence emerges naturally when internal blocks are removed
• All roads to success require working through uncomfortable emotions and limiting beliefs
• The only way entrepreneurs truly fail is by stopping before breakthrough

Ready to explore these concepts further? Visit Alice's private podcast "The Core Wound Solution" or try one of her transformative breathwork sessions through the links in our show notes.

Connect with Alyse

Facebook: @alyse.levy

Instagram: @alyse_breathes

LinkedIn: @alysebreathes

Podcast: The Core Wound Solution 

Website: www.alysebreathes.com




Support the show

Thanks for listening! To book a free consultation with Aideen visit https://www.confidenceinsinging.com/contact/

Aideen Ni Riada:

Welcome to the Resonate podcast with Aideen. My name is Aideen Ni Riada and my guest today Alyse Bacine. Alyse is a pioneering trauma healer, a transformational breathwork guide with over 23 years experience. She's the creator of the Metamorphosis Method and she bridges clinical psychology and somatic healing to help women align their true purpose and create lasting change. Featured in magazines like Oprah Magazine and Women's Health, her work has transformed hundreds of lives, doubling incomes and catalyzing profound personal and professional shifts. You're very welcome, Alyse.

Alyse Bacine:

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I'm so excited to have you. I just came across you very randomly and I love when this happens as like this lovely synergy between us, and what I am most curious about is the work that you're doing. It's based around releasing trauma, but I'm curious as to how that changes someone's personal self-expression. How do they move more deeply into you know, opening up to the world once they are working on that part?

Alyse Bacine:

part, yeah.

Alyse Bacine:

So I think a lot of people can get the word trauma, you know, conflated with something that's like this huge thing or this horrible thing that happened to you, and that's not usually the case, you know.

Alyse Bacine:

Sometimes it is, but a lot of times what we're talking about is just little things over time, things that you witnessed growing up, the way you watched your parents relate to each other, the way that they related to you, and just your general environment will create programming. It'll create beliefs that you believe to be true about yourself and the world. That will stop you from accessing the truth of who you are and make you feel doubtful or not confident or not worthy or not valuable enough to fully show who you are Meaning. Like you know, you might have a deep fear of criticism because you know you felt emotionally abandoned by your parents, or you felt like they didn't see you for who you really are, or they didn't acknowledge you for who you really are. So you are expecting that the people around you or the world is going to reject you or criticize you if you show who you really are.

Alyse Bacine:

So a lot of people will water themselves down or they will, you know, show up in a way where they are trying to prevent themselves from being rejected or criticized. So they will show up in a way where they're trying to make sure that everyone approves of them or likes them, or they're trying to manage everyone else's experience of them so that they can prevent that trauma from happening again. So it really does directly affect the way that you're able to access your truth, access your authenticity and then express it to the world, Because it just won't feel safe until you're able to pinpoint and address some of these deeper reasons why.

Aideen Ni Riada:

For sure. Like when I started my business, I worked a lot with people who wanted to sing and a lot of adults who want to sing have been told no, you shouldn't sing. And I've heard so many stories of you know. The young kid stands up, decides to improvise during the audition perhaps, rather than sing off the hymn sheet, and doesn't get into the choir. And that in itself, apart from other things that may have happened in that person's life um, that rejection, it's something that you know a kid doesn't forget, especially around singing.

Aideen Ni Riada:

But for me, I've noticed with people when they sing that they really feel very vulnerable, because it's usually a part of yourself, a very deep part of yourself and very vulnerable part of yourself, that you're choosing to express a more emotional part of yourself when you sing. So I can definitely see what you're saying has so much truth. But there's so many layers to that, like I even for myself the times that I haven't stepped forward, the times I haven't felt safe to do some of the things or to take certain opportunities during my life, but at the time you don't think of it as you don't really think you need to go back to figure that out. So I'm sure a lot of people are quite reluctant to take that journey right.

Alyse Bacine:

Yeah, well, you know, I think that people can have this perception that they're going to like open Pandora's box and all of these feelings are going to come up or all of these things are going to surface and they're not going to be able to deal with it. And you know the way that I work and the way that I've developed. What I do is to make it so it doesn't have to be that way and really simplify it for you. So this isn't about going and digging up every single thing that's happened to you in your life just for the purposes of doing that. I actually don't believe that that is necessary at all and I don't think that people should do that, because it only will cause a lot of hurt and upset and confusion and there's no need for that.

Alyse Bacine:

So what I really like to look at is, well, what is the specific thing that you're wanting to create, or the specific action that you're wanting to take, that you feel stuck around or blocked around?

Alyse Bacine:

And now let's look at what was the moment from your childhood, or the belief you created, or the thing that happened that is creating this place of feeling stuck now, and let's address that, and I've created a pretty simple process to do that, and then you pair that with taking the action, and then you use the tools before and after to create an energetic shift so that that action becomes easier and easier.

Alyse Bacine:

So I always say that it's very important to pair the healing with the action, because if you don't, you're just going to kind of be spinning around in like you'll get somewhere in the beginning for sure, but then I've seen this so many times with people where if they don't then take the healing that they've done and express it in some way through taking action, through doing something differently, through taking a new step in life, then it just kind of falls flat. So I think we have to be able to put those two things together and also take what's happening now in your life to inform what we need to look at from the past, so we're not just like rummaging around through the garbage trying to find things.

Alyse Bacine:

Like we know exactly what we're looking for.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So it's very relevant to the person's life in the moment.

Alyse Bacine:

Exactly.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And you're encouraging them to take some very relevant action that might make a shift. Do you believe in the idea of fake it till you make it?

Alyse Bacine:

Yes and no. I mean I think that that can't be your only strategy, because that won't work. Because, for example, there's a reason why people do what they do, meaning let's take the example of people pleasing right, because I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with. So if we're looking at changing that behavior, you know, if we use the strategy of fake it till you make it, it would be like, okay, well, just don't people please, right until you stop.

Alyse Bacine:

And the reason why that will never work is because there is a deep reason why you people please, and it was a coping mechanism you created in childhood to get your needs met, to feel safe and to survive.

Alyse Bacine:

Because children have an inherent knowing that if their caregivers don't love them, don't feel a connection with them, then they're not going to get their needs met and they won't survive.

Alyse Bacine:

That's just like an inherent knowing as a child.

Alyse Bacine:

So if you learn that you had to show up a certain way in order for your parents to approve of you or give you love, then that's why you would have decided to people please.

Alyse Bacine:

So if you just then now are like, okay, I'm just not going to people please, that might work for a small period of time, but eventually it's going to feel so uncomfortable and so unsafe to you because in your body, your inner child is literally being like. It's going to feel so uncomfortable and so unsafe to you because in your body, your inner child is literally being like I'm going to die if I keep doing this, like I don't feel safe. So that's not a sustainable way to do it. However, if we pair that with addressing your inner child, who doesn't feel safe, for you know, whatever reason we pinpoint and we use the tools that I've created to reconcile that, and we pair that with the fake it till you make it strategy, then it can work, because we're on the other side. We are addressing the reason why you don't feel safe. So then it'll gradually become easier for you to make that change and quote unquote fake it until you make it.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I just love this because I knew there was, I knew I had a real connection. I felt a real connection to you and your work. And, as you're talking about it, I'm just. I'm just thinking about all of the what I call the secret singer concerts that I ran for my, for my students when I was living back in Ireland, and these people would come in with that fear of you know, I've been told I shouldn't sing, I'm not a good singer, and I would, over the course of eight weeks, have them sing in front of their peers and their other students and then eventually sing in front of a big group. Sing in front of a big group and to reassure them that it was valuable for them to sing if they sang from the heart, rather than it's only valuable if you sing beautifully or if you perform to a certain standard. And so I was basically taking them through a kind of a version of, you know, healing that with that um, because they were systematically building confidence in themselves and stepping beyond that fear and starting to feel safe with their, with a new group of people, with friends.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Man, I would say to people, you know, not everyone wants to hear you sing, right, but there's always someone who will want to hear you sing, and it could be down in Ireland, down in the local pub, it could be in the US, here around the campfire in the summer. So I really believe that you know, when you have that feeling in your body of I need to do this like and I'm sure one of the reasons people will come to you is because they have a knowing that there's something they need to do. What kind of clients have you noticed, have you know kind of come to you? What kinds of things do they say? That ache, that wanting, that feeling is where is that coming from for them?

Alyse Bacine:

Yeah, I think a lot of it will be around knowing that they're meant to do something more, and sometimes they will have a pretty good idea of what that is, but it just feels a little bit scary.

Alyse Bacine:

Or they don't know how to get started, or they're doubting themselves or they're like, can I really do this? Or they might be more still in that confusion. You know part of the journey where they know they're meant for more but they don't know what it is and they are not really allowing themselves to see it because of the fear of what that will mean or what they might lose. Or there's people that have just kind of hit a plateau and they're like well, I got everything that I thought I wanted, I created everything that I thought I wanted, but now it feels like there's another step for me and I'm not sure what that is. So you know it varies, but I think it's all around this idea that there is another step for me and there's something stopping me from getting there and I need to look at, you know, what that underlying fear is or what that underlying belief is that's stopping me from, you know, growing in this way or expanding in this way, and then there'll be some people you know that have.

Alyse Bacine:

They know there's a lot of things in their life that they need to reconcile or make sense of. You know where it's like. Well, I wish my relationship was different and I, you know, want to go further in my career, or I want to start a business, and there's like all of these issues that feel like they're separate problems. But actually, you know, in my lens it's just one thing what I call your core wound, and they need to, like, make sense of all of that and figure out how they want to move forward. So, you know it varies, but it's all just around something stopping them from moving forward, and they're not able to put their finger on what that is.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And I know that you've gone through that. Your journey has been that right, because I could see from reading about you that you've made big shifts as time went on within your business that allowed you to expand greatly. Would you talk about your own personal journey along that Like the tangible ways that the things that maybe you had to handle, and just you know how different your life can become?

Alyse Bacine:

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean. You know it's a long journey for me. I think the real place that it started was at age 19, when I discovered breathwork, which was in 2001. And at that point in my life I was really struggling with an eating disorder and anxiety. And when I discovered breathwork it really transformed everything for me and it gave me a place to heal, a place to understand why I was feeling what I was feeling and I was able to really create a shift in my own life from it. And then, you know, fast forward to I became a school counselor.

Alyse Bacine:

I did that for 10 years and then, when I started my business, there's been so many shifts that I have made in my life. You know, one huge one is in my relationship with my husband. Before I started my business, it was more that he was the breadwinner in the family and I was, you know, a school counselor. I did what I did and slowly, after I started my business, the roles completely reversed and I became the breadwinner. He actually like works with me for me in my business and our roles have completely reversed, like in our relationship in my business and our roles have completely reversed, like in our relationship in our household and you know it's been. There's been a lot of bumps in that road and really like changing those roles, but I think we've done a pretty good job.

Alyse Bacine:

It was very challenging, you know, and I think there was a lot of things that came up for me around when I left my job. I was a school counselor and my parents were both teachers and it was very scary for me to veer off of this path that you know my family went down. That felt familiar to me and there was so much that came up around just feeling like I was being not a good mom or I was being, you know, irresponsible, and the fear of failure and the self-doubt and like, can I really do this? That was a huge thing that I had to overcome and you know I also in my lineage. There's so many issues around money and lack and scarcity and I had to overcome all of that.

Alyse Bacine:

There was so many things. I don't even know if I can list them all, but I feel like I always joke that the business is the carrot that you dangle in front of yourself in order to do the deeper personal growth work. So I think it's always kind of calling you forward to evolve and grow and look at things that are hard to look at and walk through the uncomfortable emotions or the beliefs that you have that you don't want to look at, or the decisions you've made that you don't want to look at, that you need to change, and then you have to kind of look at it and keep moving forward. So, um, so yeah, there's been so many things and I'm happy to go deeper into any of those I just didn't know like where to where to focus.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Well, I admire you and I'm grateful to you for doing what you've done, because what you are doing is you're stepping forward in a way that can know help people. Um, they may not look for that help from anyone else, and I really feel that's one of the biggest reasons why I encourage my own clients and students to do what they do, because they influence a specific group of people and, um, they may be the only one who can can inspire them in that way by you stepping into who you fully are, who you are desiring to be, um, and that's a good enough reason to step into it.

Alyse Bacine:

you know just that desire, um yeah, and the other thing I just want to say about that too is, I think that all of those things that I mentioned, what happens on the other side of that is this like profoundly deep level of inner knowing, confidence like your work just getting better and better, like, over time, as I've walked through all these things, just my level of knowing of who I am, what I'm meant to do here, my confidence in my work, my ability to help people, my ability to articulate it, the power that I'm able to hold is just completely on a whole nother level, because I was willing to walk through all of those things.

Alyse Bacine:

And I think I always say that, as an entrepreneur, like the only way you fail is if you stop. But if you keep going, eventually you will succeed. You will, you know, create success. And you know, I think some people stop at certain points because they're like, oh well, this, this just means that I'm not meant to do this, or maybe this isn't meant for me. But if you keep going, that's how you access these deep levels of power and these deep levels of like just confidence in what you do and knowing of your abilities. You know, and I think that that's a really important piece of it too.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And so many people are very outwardly focused, like very action orientated, got to do this, but what you're talking about here and what your work really involves, is turning more inward.

Alyse Bacine:

Yeah, for sure. I mean it's all about the inner and you know, anytime people come to me, I just had a conversation with someone right before this who was like I don't know, you know, if I should be in this relationship or not, and I'm like that's never the question we ask, Like I never will start out asking that question because once you do the inner work, all of those things just become clear to you. Like you don't need to ask those questions, you don't need to mull over decisions, you just know once you do the deeper inner work, it's just so clear.

Alyse Bacine:

And that happens for everybody.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yes, and what are you really running away from? Is it something that you need to look at?

Alyse Bacine:

Because there were relationships and that dynamic.

Aideen Ni Riada:

it's always a two-way street, right? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this idea of you know, becoming more confident, embodying confidence. How does trauma prevent that?

Alyse Bacine:

Yeah, so you know, it's a lot around ways that you decided that you didn't have value or you didn't feel worthy or deserving, or you didn't feel that who you really are is good enough.

Alyse Bacine:

You know, and there's so many different ways that that can happen in childhood. It can happen simply from inheriting it from your parents, you know, inheriting their beliefs about themselves. A lot of times we don't even realize that we identify with our parents, especially our mom, because, when you think about it, you were built from the cells of your mother, which, literally, you took on her consciousness. So a lot of times as kids, it takes a long time for us to even have the awareness that we are not the same person as our mother. You know, and we really identify in a lot of ways with them and who they thought they were. So a lot of times it can be as simple as you know your mom believed that this is what she was capable of in life, or your mom believed this is what she was worthy of and you just took that on as your own.

Alyse Bacine:

Or it can be. You know the way that your parents related to you, the way you watch them relate to each other. That created different beliefs about you. Know what you're capable of or what your value is or what you need to hide about yourself in order to be accepted. So I think all of those things will create a way that you interact with yourself and the world. That will make it so you don't feel confident because you feel like there's all these things that you need to hide about yourself or all of these ways that you are not deserving or not valuable. So it's going to create a level of you know, just not feeling confident in who you really are or able to access your full power. So when you do this work, you just naturally start to be able to access that.

Alyse Bacine:

I think one of the things that always blew my mind when I first started doing the metamorphosis with people is everybody would come into this kind of awakening around their purpose and what they're meant to do and this level of power and confidence in it. And you know it wasn't even something we really talked about. It was just from doing the deeper work, it was just a natural byproduct. So I started to see over time that, as people did the deeper personal growth and trauma work, that would just happen, you know, and it wouldn't be something they would have to work on or address, it just happened.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Awesome. So you've mentioned the metamorphosis program. Um, would you like to tell people a little bit about that and other ways that they could work with you, and perhaps even you know if you have any suggestions for people that may not be ready to work with you, that you know? You mentioned breath work. Um, what, what do you think would be good next steps for people?

Alyse Bacine:

Yeah. So there's plenty of different ways to you know dip a toe into my work. So the metamorphosis which you mentioned is that's my flagship program. That was the first program I ever created and it's still the one. That is the most important thing to do in my world when you're ready, because that's where you go through all of your major relationships your birth story, your mother wound, your father wound and your sibling wound and you learn how to disentangle from those relationships and pinpoint what your core wound is and how it's showing up in your life. And then you learn my inner child healing process to dissolve it and navigate it when it comes up in your life. So that's, you know, the the, and that's 12 weeks and that's the the you know most important way to work with me, meaning that like when you're ready. That's kind of like the body of my work.

Alyse Bacine:

However, as you said, breathwork is a huge part of my work. It's something that I learned very young and it's a tool that I use in everything that you do with me. So you know ways that you can dip your toe in is. I have a private podcast called the Core Wound Solution, where I teach you the concept of the core wound and how to pinpoint what yours is and start the process of addressing it. And I can give you the link for that. It's just, you know, you put your email in and you can download it. That will be a great place to start. Also, I have you can download one of my breathwork sessions and try that. I can give you a link for that. So you know there's plenty of ways to to dip your toe in before you. You know, jump in with both feet.

Aideen Ni Riada:

That's awesome and we will include those links with the show notes and thank you so much. Is there anything, any words or any reminders that you'd like to say to people before we start to wind up today?

Alyse Bacine:

Um, I guess I would just say that you know, when we talk about the concept of trauma, it's not always something that has to be this huge thing or has to take um, uh, years in therapy to untangle. It's just more looking at what it is that you're wanting to create in your life and if it is not showing up in the way that you desire, most likely there's something that needs to be addressed, and you know it's important to do that so that you can move on and do what you're meant to do in the world. So I think that that's really important for people to understand. And also, you know that it doesn't have to take forever, it doesn't have to be super painful, it doesn't have to be this whole long thing. It's just simply about removing whatever is in your way from becoming who you know you're meant to be in the world.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Amazing, and that's really what it's all about. You know, is being. It's like that flowering or blossoming of who you are as a person. So I'd just like to thank the our listeners. Thank you so much for being here for this podcast. Um, I'd encourage you to connect with uh Alyse. Alyse Bacine, and I'll be including all of her links below, and and we're very grateful that you are listening and we would love to hear from you. So please give us you know, send us an email or get in touch if you would like to. Thanks again from the Resonate Podcast with Aideen. I'm Aideen Ni Riada and I look forward to having you listen in another time in the future. Thank you, bye-bye.