Leading from Within: Harnessing Intuition and Spirituality for Powerful Leadership, with Alicia Rodriguez
What if the most effective and fulfilled leaders aren’t just those with the sharpest strategies or the best data, but those who tap into something deeper—something instinctive? Could the true power of leadership lie in embracing intuition, somatic awareness, and the ability to create nurturing environments? What if leadership goes beyond tactics and dives into the realm of self-awareness, authenticity, and inner wisdom?
In this episode of the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, host Andrew Cohn and Alicia Rodriguez, a coach and consultant based in the Algarve, Portugal, discuss the profound integration of spirituality in leadership. Alicia shares her expertise on how leaders can cultivate intuition and somatic awareness through experiential learning in nature and using innovative tools like sound healing and creative exercises. Together, Andrew and Alicia explore how these practices can help leaders not only embody their values but also navigate challenges with greater clarity, confidence, and impact.
Alicia reflects on her transformative journey in Ecuador, where she learned from a shaman, and she touches on the insights found in her book, The Shaman’s Wife. Alicia also emphasizes the vital importance of rest, stillness, and creating the right conditions for success, all while inspiring personal and professional transformation.
Tune in to discover how embracing intuition, somatic awareness, and spiritual practices can elevate your leadership style and bring deeper meaning to your work.
Key Takeaways
The significance of intuition and somatic awareness in leadership.
The impact of immersing ourselves in nature on developing intuitive abilities.
The importance of congruence between a leader's values and actions.
The use of experiential learning in nature to enhance self-awareness.
Incorporation of healing modalities, such as sound therapy, in leadership coaching.
The concept of "Becoming Limitless" and transcending self-imposed limits.
The necessity of granting permission for emotional expression and authenticity.
The transformative power of creative exploration and reframing perspectives on challenges.
In This Episode:
(00:00:00) – Understanding intuition
(00:00:20) – Nurturing intuition
(00:00:35) – Podcast introduction
(00:01:09) – Meet Alicia
(00:01:33) – Value of intuition
(00:02:43) – Somatic awareness
(00:03:50) – Indigenous wisdom
(00:04:01) – Spirituality and leadership
(00:06:44) – Inner and outer games
(00:07:01) – Congruence in leadership
(00:08:39) – Examples of incongruence
(00:11:02) – Personal story
(00:14:06) – Honoring dreams
(00:15:18) – Greater awareness
(00:19:14) – Sensing and leadership
(00:21:12) – Developing intuition
(00:21:56) – Becoming limitless
(00:23:07) – Nature as a collaborator
(00:24:29) – Opening up to new experiences
(00:25:07) – Getting out of our heads
(00:25:56) – Permission to access senses
(00:27:54) – Curiosity and limitless possibilities
(00:28:39) – Imagination over knowledge
(00:29:06) – Emotional transformation
(00:29:52) – The importance of rest in leadership
(00:31:07) – Catalysts for personal reflection
(00:32:06) – Introduction to the book
(00:32:18) – Personal loss and career disillusionment
(00:34:23) – Meeting the shaman
(00:35:27) – Creating conditions for success
(00:38:11) – The book's availability
(00:39:08) – Sharing essays and writing
(00:40:48) – Closing remarks on wisdom sharing
(00:41:10) – Podcast conclusion
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
David Allen
Website: https://gettingthingsdone.com/
LinkedIn: https://nl.linkedin.com/company/david-allen-company
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Listen to the podcast
Watch out podcast episode
Transcript
Alicia Rodriguez: My definition of intuition is an instant knowing without evidence because when we have these intuitive hits, it's like pretty sudden and you get this feeling and it's almost somatic in your body as well. And your body doesn't lie. Your body never lies. Your mind lies all the time.
Andrew Cohn: So how do you work with people?
Who may not have had the benefit of this type of a childhood and nurturing
Alicia Rodriguez: my job is to have them look at that empty space as a field of limitless possibilities.
Intro: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership Podcast, hosted by Andrew Cohen. Andrew is a trusted counselor, coach, and consultant who works with leaders and teams to increase productivity and fulfillment in the workplace. If you'd like to connect with Andrew about individual or team coaching leadership workshops or team alignment, please go to www.lighthouse.teams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Andrew Cohn: In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Alicia Rodriguez, who is an American by birth, uh, living in working in the Algarve in Portugal. I met Alicia probably 20 years ago when she was. Facilitating a workshop about presence and energy, uh, using Aikido and actually co-leading that retreat with, uh, a previous guest on this podcast, Chris Thorson.
And Elisa's, really a remarkable woman who's had the benefit of growing up. In a family that helped her value her intuition and her siblings value their dreams, uh, to value her senses in a way, as she says that most mainstream western culture doesn't teach us to value. And that becomes a part of her work now, is to help leaders sense, really learn to sense.
And she talks about that in the podcast and what that means for the leaders that she supports often in the context of individual retreats. By the cliffs in the Algarve in southern Portugal. So she talks a bit about her story. She talks about the importance of somatics and paying attention to our bodies because she says where your mind lies all the time, the body doesn't lie.
And that's something that she learned as. Really part of living in what she called and learning from and with indigenous cultures. So she teaches leadership presence through energy, as I said, teaching people how to sense. She helps provide tools and resources for leaders that, as she says, the mind would not have provided.
Often that involves giving people permission to pay attention at a deeper level, to use their senses at a deeper level. And she shares all of her experiences, uh, personal and professional, as ways of raising levels of leadership in a very complicated, complex world for leaders. As she describes it, she also shares her experiences leading up to her book, the Shaman's Wife, and how her experience with the shaman led in Central America helped her step into her own spirituality.
And applying some of the great, uh, wisdom of indigenous peoples, uh, to work in the modern world. And she talks about her home and her work in Portugal as the place where she marries her writing with her coaching and leadership development work. It's a fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy it.
Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership. Podcast. I'm so happy to have Alicia Rodriguez here with me on Zoom. If you're watching video, she's not literally on the cliff, but maybe there's a metaphor she can share about all of that. An American living in Portugal, whom I met about 20 years ago in a wonderful retreat on the Potomac, and I'm so glad to reconnect with you and that I've refound you and that you found the podcast and that we can talk.
So welcome to the podcast, Alicia.
Alicia Rodriguez: Thank you so much,
Andrew Cohn: and as we connected in the past few months and started to talk about your work a little bit, it was for me, it's like it was impossible for me not to invite you to be on this podcast, which focuses on that nexus between spirituality and leadership or spiritual dimensions of ourselves and leadership.
And leadership in a variety of contexts. And my sense of your work and certainly your new book, which you'll talk about is really all about that. So maybe we could start with a sort of top line. Tell me about how you think about this connection between spirituality in its broadest sense and leadership in its broadest sense.
Alicia Rodriguez: Yeah. I remember when I first started doing executive coaching, oh God, it was like late 19 something or early 2000, and I was doing a lot of corporate work. And I've always been a spiritual person. I've always strived to develop that side of myself, but I remember distinctly understanding that you don't use that word in corporate environments.
You know, haven't forbid. You ask someone about their spirituality and it's like the eyes glaze over. And so I remember having to couch my language in like language that could be heard or accepted. Even though I was really talking about the same kinds of concepts, and so for me, spirituality is, I look at it as a broad stroke.
It's not religion, although some people, how they express their spirituality is through a structured religion, but many people don't. I grew up Catholic kind of, I would say recovering Catholic now, but for me, spirituality lives in nature and it seems that my life has always brought me to that point. I.
And then in terms of, of the work, I mean, many of the practices I give leaders is about being out in nature because we live so much from our head up and we're not really present. We're, our quality of attention is not good. And I think for our leaders to be most effective, you can't be distracted. You have to know how to focus in, but it's not just focusing in on the external world.
It's the listening that comes in the still moments, the listening within. It's like, what do you stand for? What are your values? What are your principles? When you have to make a difficult decision, are you listening to that voice inside? I think that's an aspect of spirituality and definitely evolving that sense of consciousness and awareness.
But it's an inner game first that's later expressed as an outer game.
Andrew Cohn: And so in an oversimplified way, I'm gonna be reductive, my son accuses me of being reductive and he is right. The inner game could be where the spiritual lives and the outer game could be where the leadership or the doing as opposed to the being lives is.
Am I getting those buckets roughly correct?
Alicia Rodriguez: Well, I wouldn't even make it like both because it's more of a week. Got it.
Andrew Cohn: A weaving between the two. Yeah.
Alicia Rodriguez: It's more of a weaving between the two. So it, it becomes, I I think that it starts with the inner, in inner world, with our inner world. That's kind of the sense of origin of it.
And then it's. You know, expressed through our language, through our communication, through our behaviors, through our actions, and the way we interact with one another. One of the things that's really important for leaders is, uh, this idea of congruence. I can't talk about it and not walk my talk. I can't say certain things and then behave in, in a way that's opposed to these values that I espouse.
It's a. So that alignment between like my inner sense of values and self and how I lead, if there's no alignment, it's extremely confusing for the people if you don't walk your talk. So again, I think the, the basis of all of this is the self knowledge piece, the piece where you are being aware of the inner conversation that you're having about whatever it is.
Standing for a belief system or a value without making others wrong.
Andrew Cohn: Well, there's a lot to unpack in what you just said. Sure. Which I appreciate always. But could you, before we just skip past this, could you give an example of what a lack of congruence might look like? Like for so, so like, okay. If, if a leader is in that space of non congruence, what does it look like and how do the followers or peers or observers pick up on that?
Alicia Rodriguez: Oh, so I, I, you know, this is one that's really common. So I'm a leader and I say, I really value time with your family. I really value health and wellness. And then they work until nine o'clock at night every night. Come in at six, don't eat, don't exercise. Basically they're, they're not walking their talk.
And so what happens is the person who they're leading is going to say, well, I have to work till nine o'clock because my boss works until nine o'clock.
Andrew Cohn: And actions speak louder than words.
Alicia Rodriguez: Absolutely. And that's it right there. And so if you can talk the game and not walk it, it confuses people. And you know what, some of the things that I've heard leaders say is like they don't really understand the impact of their words.
They're not attentive to their words. And so I had one CEO who in a meeting said something like, someone proposed an idea and he said something like, eh, this sounds like a really good idea. We should look into it someday. And then all of a sudden everybody rushes to do the research for it. And when they came back to him with a report, he was like.
I didn't mean now, you know, and he didn't realize that what he was saying was being taken like, oh no, you have to do this now. Right. And so that's another thing that leaders have to really pay attention to is that not just congruence, but what are you communicating and are you attentive to the language you're using and what you're saying
Andrew Cohn: and the impact it's having.
Yes. It does because suddenly it matters. I mean, six months ago, when when, when she's in a different role, when she talks about something as a good idea, people go, yeah, yeah. Mean, I agree. But now six months later she says, I think it's a good idea. And resources are are applied and Right. We have a different situation.
Yeah. Yeah.
Alicia Rodriguez: Right. So that's a, that's an incongruence that, that I see oftentimes that, those kinds of things.
Andrew Cohn: So I have to ask you like how you came to this place, uh, and I don't mean your beautiful place in Portugal, but how you came to this place of awareness and this place of work and this area of focus and, and just this sense of perspective and how you're talking about these topics.
Could you share a bit about your story please?
Alicia Rodriguez: Yeah, so my parents are from Columbia, south America. And my father used to say in the house, we are Colombian out there, you're American. And what he meant is that, you know, our, our culture had was different, you know, and he wanted us to honor it. So one of the things that served me very well, uh, besides my love of languages is intuition.
He and my mother, if we had an intuition or what in America, they would say a gut feeling or a hunch. It was honored. We felt a certain way. It wasn't diminished, it wasn't dismissed. It was like, this is something we need to pay attention to. And so I learned how to develop my intuition in a way that I could actually leverage it and use it in, in my coaching practice and teach other leaders how to do it.
And someone asked me recently, she said, what's your definition of intuition? My definition of intuition is an instant knowing without evidence because when we have these intuitive hits, it's like pretty sudden and you get this feeling and it's almost somatic. It's in your body as well, and your body doesn't lie.
Your body never lies. Your mind lies all the time. But if you find yourself contracting or moving away from or feeling small. That's one thing, and if you find yourself expanding and breathing it in and feeling light and open, well that's a positive thing. But your intuition is the one that often guides that response, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
So I think for me, growing up in this family situation where first of all, emotions were valued. You could hug, you could kiss, you could do everything and laugh and cry and the intuitive part, I always had access to that. It was never an effort for me. It was, it was part of like who I was and my being. I had to moderate it when I went into the business world, which was difficult for me because it felt inauthentic.
I had to come to terms with that, especially years ago. There wasn't permission, if you will, to be that way. Yet if, if you ask my clients, they would, one of the words that comes up all the time is intuition. It's like, oh, she's so intuitive. Or, I have one client, this says her intuition's off the charts. So there's, there's that.
And then I, you know, I worked for corporate for a long time and then I kept having these kind of spiritual, I don't know if you call 'em awakenings or experiences, and that's what it eventually drove me to Ecuador to write the book and then here to Portugal.
Andrew Cohn: Okay, so there's a lot in there. So would you be willing to share a little bit about, when you talk about spiritual awarenesses or experiences, what types of things are we talking about?
Because some people are gonna nod their heads and some people are gonna blank out at this point as they're driving down the road listening to this.
Alicia Rodriguez: So part of it is, let's keep it simple. Talk about dream. In my family, we always honored our dreams, and you'll find that in most indigenous cultures, dreams are honored and uh, they, you know, they sit around, they talk about their dreams and they're interpreted.
So in my family, if we had a dream, we actually talked about it. And looked for what was the symbolic meaning? Not literal meaning, but what was the symbolic meaning behind it? And I still get dreams. I probably, I always will, but like that's kind of like the unconscious. We take in so much information in a day and I think some of it kind of goes below the surface 'cause we're so busy.
But when we dream, that unconscious place kind of takes over. It's like, it's like how many people will say to you, I've been wrestling with this problem, but then I went to sleep and I realized what the solution was. Or, uh, you know, I get my most creative, uh, ideas in the shower. That's because your mind is open and free.
And I think that's, yeah, that's one way.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, your mind is open and free and maybe what occurs to me, tell me if this fits for you, is your greater awareness is open and free. I remember reading this book a few years ago called The Extended Mind, the Power of Thinking Outside Your Brain, and it talked about some of the, some of the research that suggests, like, for example, when we're in nature, we think more clearly when we use an outer.
Resource, like a bulletin board or a whiteboard or a thing with post-its or we can put our thoughts out there. It heads helps open up our greater awareness, um, not to mention the whole, um, proprioception, interoception, you know, the extended networks that we have within our bodies. So when you say, you know, we're living earlier September, living from the neck up, well, we can't really hear everything.
From our neck up and our conscious mind who literally can't hear it, there's so much that's just not available to that limited sensory box.
Alicia Rodriguez: Right? And there are, you know, there are studies around like, uh, the psychological effect of being in nature or going for a walk and all of that. And I think the piece here is I grew up in an environment where all our senses were valued.
It wasn't just visual. It was, you know, what does this smell like? What does this taste like? What does it, what does this touch? So I, as a writer, that has served me really well because I relate to the world and have since I was a child, uh, through my senses first and my brain second. And I think when we have access to our senses and we, we cultivate that access, you get a different way of interpreting the information that's coming at you.
So, like you said, it's like. If you take a walk out in nature, it has an effect on you and it can calm you. It can also, you called it the greater awareness. It can open up that greater awareness and you know, because we live and leaders live in such a complex and, and ambiguous the whole VUCA thing, right?
Volatile, uncertain, complex. What's the, a
Andrew Cohn: vuca I think ambiguous,
Alicia Rodriguez: ambiguous. They're leading in, in this kind of an environment. If they can access that greater awareness, I think that's, that's a huge leverage for them.
Andrew Cohn: Yes. I just, I would throw in a, a story that I heard. Um, I was in a room with Jeanne Houston some years ago, and she was talking about, if you think about.
The level of stimulation that we are processing now every day, every conscious moment, or arguably every unconscious moment as well. Mm-hmm. But the level of stimulation and news and media and access and electronics and speed and just the what we have to take in every moment compared to a hundred years ago, and then we think.
What, in the last a hundred years, how much have our systems, our biology, physiology, et cetera, how much has that evolved in the last a hundred years? You know, just some tiny, minuscule amount compared to the vast exponential increase in, in that external stimulation thing. And her point, and I love her expression, is we need to learn to cook on more burners.
And she was, isn't that a great phrase? And she was talking about intuition and the like, and it's just so critical. Yeah, no, thank you for raising that. And so I'm so appreciative of the way you talk about your childhood and the honoring of these things that are often not honored for those of us that may have grown up in New York and like I did.
And it's a difference. It's a very mental thing. It's a very outer oriented thing. You know, intuition, you know, dreams well. We don't really understand them. Or it's very mental and there's, there's not really a trust of something that we can't see and explain. I am oversimplifying, uh, but there's not really that trust.
So, and I so appreciate, and I hope you do too. I know you do your family and what that, what that encouraged and nurtured in you, you were able to grow and flourish in these ways.
Alicia Rodriguez: It brings me joy, I have to say, as corny as that might sound. It does, it brings me joy and it allows me. To sense into someone's story.
So I'm not just listening to someone's story the way that they're telling. I'm actually really sensing into it. I'm listening for the thing that they don't know that they're saying to me. And the thing that maybe I can understand, that they haven't quite brought up to their own consciousness, to their own awareness.
You know, one of the things I do particularly well is ask. Questions because I ask questions that most people don't ask, but it's because of that sensing. It's because I'm, I'm hearing something else and I'm, but I'm sensing it from the person themselves. Even energetically, I teach leadership presence through energy, which is really different.
No one else does that, you know? Uh, I have a friend who, uh, Chris. You know Chris Norson? Yeah. So with the use of a keto, I mean, that was energy and I, I love that because I think leaders who, who have true leadership presence can manage their energy really well and have that greater field of awareness that you're talking about.
And I, I think that's a real, uh, a real gift and a real skill that can be developed.
Andrew Cohn: So in terms of developing that skill, geez, there's so much for us to talk about. We may need to do a part two at some point, and, and perhaps that part two is when you come here and visit Santa Fe and spend some time sitting with our horses in nature.
Alicia Rodriguez: Oh, love that.
Andrew Cohn: And, and then that'll really, what will that do to the conversation too, but in terms of developing those skills, so how do you work with people? Who may not have had the benefit of this type of a childhood and nurturing, et cetera, who may not trust their intuition or their gut feeling. And how do you support them to access these things, uh, to really access, really all that's available.
Alicia Rodriguez: Yeah, start small. Who starts small? And I take, because I do live in a beautiful place, uh, the people who come on retreat, which is. Primarily how I do coaching, and I, I don't wanna really use that word because it's not, I, I, my work is much deeper than that, but I take them out into nature and I have the, I teach them how to sense they, if they don't know, it could be as little as I.
Walking on the sand and trying to describe in very granular terms what this stand, so to
Andrew Cohn: speak. Yeah. Yeah. So could you say more about that please? I'd love to hear a little bit about, this is not the right word, but you'll know where I'm coming from. Tell me about what your curriculum might look like for someone like me who comes to learn how to sense.
Alicia Rodriguez: Yeah. So no one actually says to me, they wanna come learn a sense. Of course, they usually have something else. But like the sensing part is a big part of it. When I design, people come to work with me one-on-one, so not in groups. Typically, it's just one person with some kind of significant question that they're carrying with them and that sensing piece, if I can teach them how to sense, I give them other options, become available to them that their mind would not have considered.
And I think that's the value. So. When I, they come, obviously the integration, it is like a, a bespoke experience where I'm combining conversation, you know, we're having a dialogue, but the dialogue could be walking on the cliffs, uh, it could be walking on the beach. So I am incorporating a different environment because the only way to disrupt those mental models is to put them in a different environment where they feel groundless.
It's, it's a new experience. They don't, they can't resort to their old habits or their old crutches or the distractions in their daily life. Mm-hmm. And so I incorporate nature and nature is my collaborator and I teach them how to sense through nature. I also incorporate healing modalities because a lot of them will be, oh, that's too woo woo.
This doesn't work. But like, I, I love like sound bolts. I think vibration and sound is so healing. That's one of the things that, uh, as one of my go-tos, I have someone here in the Agar who's phenomenal, and then it's like a debriefing where they have complete permission to have been in their body resting, but still having this experience through the vibration of the balls.
It's a different experience, and that's how they start learning how to value and sense what's really going on in their heart and their emotional field and their energetic field and in their bodies. So it's a combination of a series of different things that I'll do, depending on why they're coming. The idea is to open up, it's called Becoming limitless.
That's the, that's my weak call because I want them to understand that they can become limitless. The limits that are, they're placing on themselves as a result of the container in which they live or have lived, both mentally and physically. So I need to take them out of the container for them to see that other possibilities exist and that, you know, might not walk on the cliffs.
You might walk down to the, the park. You know, there are ways to translate the experience here into their daily life, and that that happens usually on our last day together, where I need to bring it all together and say, okay, you're not gonna go kayaking for two hours, but can you do this other thing? Can you go for a walk?
Can you buy yourself flowers every week and be present to them on your desk? There's so many different ways that we can do that.
Andrew Cohn: I hear you. Just recognizing the opportunity to use nature as a way, and we do that here in Santa Fe as well. If I scroll back to some of what you said, what I'm hearing is the importance of getting out of our heads.
I mean, I think it was Fritz Pearls who said, lose your mind and come to your senses. And how do we get out of our heads? It's, it's a little bit like the Einstein quotation of like, we, we have to solve the problem with a different level of consciousness. I created it, and I know, speaking for myself, when I feel overwhelmed, I can't think my way out of overwhelm.
It's like I need a different modality, perhaps that's what Gene Houston was talking about as well. We need a different modality. So nature can be a way of feeling into different things. Even though I might initially think and tell me if this is a typical type of pushback you might get. Like, well, this isn't what good is this gonna do?
Going for a walk?
Alicia Rodriguez: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. First thing I say is, I'm going to put you through a couple of activities and you're gonna wonder why I said, you have to trust me that I, there is a method to my madness. And inevitably at the end of the week they go, oh, now I get it. But um, I wanna go back to something you said that occurred to me.
This idea of permission, they need someone oftentimes to give them permission to access this, their senses or to think differently. And that's part of the reason that it's so important to get them out of the container because they're, they don't have permission oftentimes to. Express themselves in a particular way.
There's all kinds of messages that, well, you know, if you're a leader, you can't show emotion or if you are leading you, you can't do this or that. And there's like these unwritten rules that people take on that are, I don't know who made them up, but they did. And then they come here and there's permission to be still.
That's, that's the very first thing, permission to rest. Permission to sit and have dinner for three hours because that's the Portuguese culture. And again, it's when you give people this openness and, and this permission that they start accessing a place within themselves that they didn't know existed, that has been calling to them.
And so when people come, they're usually in some kind of life transition. Where they're usually at the beginning of it, where they know that something has to change, but they don't know what or, and it's frightening because they don't know where they're going. It's like stepping into a big unknown. And for me, my job is to, instead of looking at that empty space of unknown with fear, my job is to have them look at that empty space as a field of limitless possibilities.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm.
Alicia Rodriguez: Yes, and get curious. Curiosity is a big thing. Curiosity, permission, playfulness. Let's, and I often you'll hear me say, let's play pretend, because then it releases them from, like, they think that if they make a decision, it's like final or it's, you know, forever. And it's like, well, let's pray. Pretend what if this happened?
Let's talk about, let's create a story. So I, I also use a lot of writing and things like that and imagination. I think you mentioned Einstein imagination also was a big thing where I think one of his quotes said imagination was, uh, more important than knowledge or something like that. Mm-hmm. Yes. I get them into their imagination because that's where limitless possibilities exist.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And I, I, I hear you talking about all of these different ways to kind of get out of this cranium box that we're carrying around that in this western culture, colonized thinking, you know, what's safe, what's not safe? What's okay, what's not okay? Can I just put something out as a possibility, or does it become a commitment because we're so driven to this action-oriented, doing way of thinking
Alicia Rodriguez: and get it right.
And get it right
Andrew Cohn: Yes. And get it right. Right. The imperative to get it right.
Alicia Rodriguez: Yeah, that, that so true. Yeah. And so that's, mm-hmm. That's kind of the process here. And it doesn't have to be serious. It can be joyful. You know, there's, when people dig deep, there is an emotional component that, you know, I hold space for, but at the end of it, I do something.
I, um. I take a photograph of the person the day that, uh, the first day that we meet a closed up of their face, and then at the last day I take a photograph of their face and there's always a difference.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm. And I, I presume it's a difference that they can see.
Alicia Rodriguez: Oh yeah. It's very visible. Yeah. It's very beautiful.
Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Great practice. You know, I took
Alicia Rodriguez: and I think a piece of this, um, old paradigm about I don't get any sleep, so I should be proud of that. You know, the, the idea that you are, you know, the more you work, the, the more successful you are or something like that. Again, that's why leaders have to walk their talk.
It's, you need rest, you need stillness. You need quiet to be able to do the things at a very optimal and high level, because if you're exhausted, you're not any good for anybody and you're not going to think clearly. So you need movement. You don't have to work out like two hours a day or something. It could be walk your dog for a half hour or something.
But all these things that. You actually see in indigenous cultures when I was living in Ecuador, these are just fundamental things that people did. They, they weren't sitting in front of computers, you know, so, I mean, I think there's a way to integrate a whole experience where you're living with, you know, mind, body, spirit.
Heart, emotions, energy and say, okay, well, where in my life do I need to put more attention so I'm not moving enough? So that's the sematic area. What do I need to do to move, or, I'm not addressing my spirituality in the sense of stillness. I'm not really listening to my voice, my inner voice, my authentic voice.
So how do I make space for that? That, and these are questions that I think we go so fast in our life that it isn't until something happens. And usually there's some kind of catalyst and usually not positive that causes people to stop in their tracks and go, whoa. And you know, the pandemic was a perfect example of that, by the way, was like, oh, I, I should be paying attention to these other facets of my life.
And if you're a leader, I think you need to do that.
Andrew Cohn: Pay attention to those disruptions and covid was a big global disruption on that whole, it was adaptive cycle. We might talk about. It's a big, big disruption. And so you mentioned Ecuador, have to ask you about the book, have to ask you about that. If I could call it phase in your life.
I may be oversimplifying. Uh, but please talk about the book and how that came to be and what you'd like to share about that. And your experience. Excuse me. I don't wanna define it to what's on the pages.
Alicia Rodriguez: I was in, I guess, what year was it? It was 2012. The seven years before 2012. Just I had a lot of personal losses.
Just significant losses. I was also becoming very disillusioned with. The corporate environment. I was running associates, I was in corporations, but I was privy to things that made me really uncomfortable. And so I was having like a, a heart to heart with myself and thinking, okay, I was starting to feel complicit in things.
And um, even though I was working for the organization, I often got my clients saying, yeah, we're not sure we're gonna use you as a coach anymore because people leave. I realized that I was developing people beyond the capacity of the system.
Andrew Cohn: So people would work, they would, they would work with you, you'd coach them, and then they'd realize, I don't wanna be here anymore.
Alicia Rodriguez: And then because they would, their awareness would change and their just a human development, they would, they would move from like achiever to post-conventional and all of a sudden they're asking different questions or they're being disruptive in a conve, in a conventional environment. And then I started having all these kind of, uh, ethical conversations with myself and combined with my personal losses, I was feeling a little like, now what?
What do I do? And then a friend of mine invited me to Ecuador to translate for her. She was doing a dissertation on trauma and shamanism, and I knew something about shamanism. I went to translate and then I met her mentor, which was, uh, the shaman in the book, the Shaman's Wife. And in that first week that I was there, I had the most incredible, extraordinary conversations with him where he explained so much about these kinds of events that would happen in my family that could be called extrasensory, if you will, or metaphysical.
And, uh, that started the relationship with the shaman. His name was napo. Eventually since I was like right on that cusp and I was grieving all these losses and he says to me, I can teach you to be more than your grief. I can teach you to be greater than your, the challenges that you're facing. I can teach you how to merge the sacred and the secular.
And that was a very compelling message for me because I had not really stepped fully into my own spirituality at that point. Because I was trying, I just didn't know how. And so that was it kind of, okay, let's do that. And, uh, eventually I moved to Ecuador. We built a retreat center where we would host people who needed to go and, you know, be healed in many ways.
And that lasted until 2019 when I, I left him. And that's in the book Why I left him. That's the whole thing. Then in 20, late 2020 December of 2020, I moved to Portugal. I moved on a whim. Someone said, Hey, you'd really like Portugal, and I needed to leave Ecuador. And I said, okay. And then I just. My friends would say to me, you're so courageous.
And I would say to them, there's a fine line between crazy and courageous, and I'm not sure which side I'm on. And it was a little bit of both. And now I do my work from Portugal. I love my retreats because I, I can really, really be at service to people in a very deep and transformative way. And my lifestyle here is I talk about, uh, to my clients, you have to create the conditions in your life.
For the success that you want. And success could be, you know, more peace in your life, more joy. It doesn't necessarily mean just career success. So if you wanna be a writer, are the conditions for your writing present in your home or in your office? You know? So I'm always looking at creating the conditions for the thing that I want or that I want to create, and I have created the conditions so I have a particular lifestyle.
That allows me, uh, my writing, which is really the, the thing that I've been passionate about for so many years. And it isn't until I came to Portugal and I could marry the, the writing aspect of my life with the retreats. It's like they, they kind of help one another in many ways. And the, the Shaman's wife, the book was the process that I went through and the learning from the indigenous wisdom traditions.
That actually do apply in contemporary life. And so a lot of what I do here is based on what he taught me, not in the sense of, you know, uh, shamanic ceremonies. If I do that, it's for myself. I don't do that with clients, but it is, but the wisdom that's behind that really helps me serve the people that come here and give them the ability to step into that void without fear.
To look at it as a place of limitless possibilities.
Andrew Cohn: Hmm. Beautiful. I'm gonna just question this a little bit. I'm not sure that it would be without fear, but the attraction, the invitation, the opportunity outweighs the fear.
Alicia Rodriguez: Yeah. I am very, very honored that people trust me with that because a lot of people come to me, almost 99% of the people who come to me come by word of mouth.
A lot of these people haven't met me. Yet they're trusting me to be non-judgmental and to hold them even when they're afraid and help them through that. And so that is not lost on me. I see this as really sacred work and I take it very, very seriously. Uh, joyfully, but seriously at the same time. So it's kind of both.
Andrew Cohn: So the book, uh, the Showman's Wife is available probably everywhere
Alicia Rodriguez: it is now. Yeah, it's now it's a, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Coval. It's both in Kindle and in paperback. And trying to sell the foreign rights to, because everybody in Portugal is saying, when is it gonna be in Portuguese or Spanish, or Dutch, or German.
So I'm, I'm looking into that now. And then next year it'll be an audio book.
Andrew Cohn: Cool. And will you read it?
Alicia Rodriguez: Yes. I was like on the fence about that, but everybody's like, it's a memoir. You have to read it. I was like, okay. So yeah, I'll be reading it.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Wow. There's so much for us to unpack in some of what you've.
Talked about, and I appreciate the overview and the orientation and, and the invitation. And it's not just invitation to come to you in Portugal. It's an invitation to, to, well, to read the book and to read your essays, and if people wanted to read your essays and some of your writing that you said is so core to you, where do they find that?
Alicia Rodriguez: So I write on medium, I write on substack as well, under nothing is ordinary that that would be because nothing is ordinary. That's the name of my substack. My website is alicia m rodriguez.com. So there's a lot of material there, a lot of media. I've done a lot of podcasts in the last couple of months just because of the book.
This will be on there as well. And so it's much easier sometimes if you're not reading to listen to a podcast while you're walking or cooking or whatever. So there's a, a lot of the conversations I've had in the last couple of months have been really phenomenal. Phenomenal people like yourself, and really interesting.
I've gotten a lot of feedback that it really helps people. So those are the places you find me. You have my website on Medium, and then of course my profile on LinkedIn has my background and it has, uh, testimonials. I, I think I have a couple of hundred almost testimonials on my coaching as well as my, uh, retreats.
My writing, so I'm pretty much all over social media as it turns out.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. I remember meeting you 20 years ago or so in that retreat, um, that was Aikido based and I at the time, yes, it was still practicing Aikido and there was some connection there. And look forward to staying in touch and continuing the conversation.
Maybe we can find a link or two to attach to this podcast when it's published, just to make it easier for people to find certain things.
Alicia Rodriguez: It would be, yeah, it would be my website. That's the easiest because everything is on the website.
Andrew Cohn: Right. Beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom. I feel in a way, like I'm cutting this off, but even if we talk for another two hours, I'd be cutting it off.
Alicia Rodriguez: We could keep talking. You have to come here and we'll talk over coffee here
Andrew Cohn: ab Absolutely. Over coffee. What are those little pastries stuff? I still at,
Alicia Rodriguez: but still at the.
Andrew Cohn: Yes. Thank you. So the conversation continues and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
Alicia Rodriguez: Oh, thanks for the conversation. I always enjoy this.
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