If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve already done a lot of work on yourself. Maybe you’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, gone to therapy, practiced meditation, changed your diet, worked on your health, explored spirituality, attended workshops, taken courses, worked with coaches, healers, practitioners, or spent years trying to understand yourself, heal yourself, and create a better life.
And maybe a lot of it has helped.
But there may still be certain areas of your life where you don’t feel completely free, where you know what you should do, you understand the pattern intellectually, you’ve probably even worked on it before, but somehow you still find yourself getting pulled back into the same reactions, behaviors, fears, relationship dynamics, health challenges, addictions, or limitations.
Maybe you’ve created success in your career but your relationships are struggling, maybe you’ve done years of spiritual work but you still get completely hijacked by certain triggers, maybe you know exactly what foods make you feel terrible but you keep eating them anyway, maybe you know you need to slow down but you can’t stop working, maybe you understand that you need stronger boundaries but you still say yes when you want to say no, or maybe your life actually looks pretty good from the outside, but inside you know there’s more freedom, love, health, abundance, peace, purpose, and fulfillment available to you.
This is really why I created The AWAKEN Process™.
The AWAKEN Process brings together more than 20 years of my own personal healing, spiritual practice, research, study, interviews, coaching, teaching, and working with people around health, addiction, nervous-system regulation, personal growth, and spiritual awakening, into a process designed to help us understand what is actually keeping us stuck, work with it at the level of the body, mind, nervous system and consciousness, and then use that awareness to consciously create the life we actually want.
At its core, the process is simple:
UNCOVER → AWAKEN → CREATE
We uncover the unconscious beliefs, behaviors, addictions, emotional patterns and protective strategies that are influencing our lives, we awaken to the deeper awareness underneath those patterns and begin updating what is no longer serving us, then we consciously create new beliefs, new behaviors, new choices, and ultimately a different experience of life.
Why Do We Keep Repeating Patterns We Know Aren’t Helping Us?
One of the questions I’ve been fascinated with for years is why we can know something intellectually, sometimes with complete clarity, and still do the opposite.
You know the relationship is unhealthy, but you keep going back.
You know you need to rest, but you keep pushing.
You know the food makes you feel terrible, but you keep eating it.
You know you don’t need everyone’s approval, but criticism still affects you deeply.
You know you’re capable, but you keep doubting yourself.
You know you want to start the business, write the book, improve your health, leave the job, have the conversation, or make the change, but something keeps stopping you.
This is where we have to understand that our behaviors don’t exist in isolation, and most of the patterns we struggle with didn’t begin because something was wrong with us, many of them developed as intelligent adaptations to our environment, relationships, experiences, beliefs, and emotional needs.
From the moment we come into this world, we are learning and adapting.
We learn what gets us love, what gets us attention, what creates conflict, what keeps us safe, what gets us rejected, what makes Mom happy, what makes Dad angry, what we need to do to belong, what we’re allowed to feel, what we’re supposed to believe, and eventually we begin creating conclusions about ourselves and about life.
Over time, these adaptations can become limitations to our growth.
Within The AWAKEN Process, we look at what I call the 3 Limitations to Growth:
- Borrowed Beliefs — beliefs we learned, absorbed, inherited, or concluded about ourselves and life that may no longer be true.
- Binding Behaviors — patterns of behavior that developed around those beliefs and experiences, often originally trying to protect us or help us function.
- Adaptive Addictions — things we repeatedly use to regulate, soothe, stimulate, numb, distract, escape, connect, or change how we feel.
A Borrowed Belief might sound like, I’m not good enough, I have to prove myself, I can’t trust people, I have to make everyone happy, money is hard to make, I’m not safe, I’m too much, I’m not enough, my body is broken, I have to be perfect, I have to stay in control.
These beliefs often aren’t things we consciously decided to believe. Sometimes they were directly taught to us, but often they were conclusions we made from experiences, especially experiences that happened when we were young and didn’t yet have the capacity to understand what was really happening.
Those beliefs can then create Binding Behaviors, things like perfectionism, people pleasing, controlling, avoiding, procrastinating, overworking, overthinking, shutting down, constantly seeking validation, difficulty setting boundaries, or pushing ourselves beyond what our body is telling us.
Then, when the pressure, emotion, stress, discomfort, loneliness, fear, boredom, or internal conflict becomes too much, we often find something that helps us feel different, even temporarily.
That can become an Adaptive Addiction, such as food, alcohol, drugs, cannabis, scrolling, pornography, shopping, work, gambling, entertainment, relationships, sex, validation, exercise, or even constantly consuming personal development and spiritual content without actually addressing what’s underneath.
I call these adaptive addictions for a reason, because at some point they adapted to meet a need.
They may have helped you:
- Feel safe or in control.
- Numb something you didn’t know how to feel.
- Experience comfort or connection.
- Escape stress, fear, loneliness, anger, shame, or boredom.
- Create stimulation when life felt empty.
- Get through an experience you didn’t have the resources to process at the time.
So the goal isn’t to shame these adaptations, fight them, or label them as evidence that something is wrong with you, the goal is to understand why they developed, what they’ve been doing for you, and whether they are still necessary today.
That changes the entire conversation.
Stage One: UNCOVER
The first stage of The AWAKEN Process is UNCOVER, and this is where we begin getting curious about what is actually happening underneath the issue you want to change.
Instead of starting with, How do I stop doing this?, we might start with, What is this doing for me?
Instead of fighting the behavior, we begin listening to it.
We may explore questions like:
- What triggers this pattern?
- What happens in your body when it gets activated?
- What emotions come up?
- What thoughts or beliefs appear?
- What does this part of you want to do?
- What is it trying to protect you from?
- What does it believe would happen if it stopped doing its job?
- When do you remember first feeling this way?
- What did you conclude about yourself or life from that experience?
- Is that conclusion actually true today?
Maybe your perfectionism isn’t really about excellence, maybe somewhere underneath it is the fear that if you make a mistake, you won’t be good enough.
Maybe your people pleasing isn’t just about being nice, maybe some part of you learned that keeping everyone happy was how you stayed connected, loved, or safe.
Maybe procrastination isn’t laziness, maybe starting something important activates the possibility of failure, criticism, rejection, or discovering that you aren’t as capable as you hoped.
Maybe your need to control everything developed because there was a time when life felt unpredictable, chaotic, or unsafe.
Maybe food became one of the most reliable ways you knew how to experience comfort.
When we begin understanding these patterns instead of judging them, we can start working with them differently, and more importantly, we begin creating awareness around something that may have previously been happening almost completely unconsciously.
And awareness changes everything, because once you can observe the pattern, you are no longer completely identified with it.
That brings us into the second part of the process.
Stage Two: AWAKEN
The AWAKEN stage is where we begin working more deeply with the nervous system, body, emotions, beliefs, protective parts, memories, and ultimately with the deeper awareness that is witnessing all of it.
One of the most important things I’ve discovered through more than 20 years of meditation and spiritual practice is that you are not every thought that moves through your mind, you are not every emotion that moves through your body, and you are not the conditioning you’ve accumulated throughout your life.
You can become aware of a thought.
You can become aware of fear.
You can become aware of anger.
You can become aware of the belief, I’m not good enough.
You can become aware of a sensation in your chest, throat, stomach, head, or anywhere else in your body.
And if you can become aware of it, then there is something here that is witnessing it.
This is what is called the Witness, True Self, or pure awareness.
I’m not asking you to believe this as another spiritual concept, because another belief isn’t what we need, the important thing is to experience it directly.
As we regulate the nervous system, slow down, bring awareness into the body, listen to protective parts, explore earlier experiences, and create enough internal safety to stay present with what is arising, we can begin separating who we actually are from the conditioning we’ve accumulated.
And from that place, we can relate to ourselves very differently.
Instead of trying to destroy the controlling part, we can listen to it.
Instead of hating the addicted part, we can understand what it has been trying to regulate.
Instead of judging the people pleaser, we can appreciate why it learned to keep everyone happy.
Instead of fighting fear, we can become curious about what fear is trying to protect.
And sometimes we discover that a part of us has been doing the same job for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, responding to life today based on something that happened decades ago.
This is where deeper updating can happen.
The body can experience greater safety.
The old belief can be questioned.
The protective part can realize that you are no longer that child in that situation.
The nervous system can experience a different response.
And rather than automatically reacting from old conditioning, we begin creating space for choice.
That is a huge part of what awakening means to me, not escaping life, not pretending everything is love and light, not trying to transcend being human, but becoming aware enough that we are no longer unconsciously controlled by every thought, fear, trigger, belief, emotion, or impulse that moves through us.
Stage Three: CREATE
And this is an important evolution of The AWAKEN Process, because I don’t want this work to stop at healing the past.
I believe we are all here to create.
Once we’ve uncovered the limitation, brought awareness to it, worked with the body and nervous system, and created some space from the old conditioning, we begin asking a different question:
What do you actually want for your life?
Not what your parents wanted for you, not what society told you success is supposed to look like, not what your fear tells you is realistic, not what you think you should want, but what becomes clear through your own inner guidance when you’re connected to awareness.
From there, we can begin installing a new belief, but this isn’t about me telling you what you should believe, and it isn’t about putting a positive affirmation on top of an old wound as most personal growth, manifestation and inspirational work focuses on today. (Which honestly is why a lot of it doesn’t stick long term)
We allow the new belief to come from you.
Maybe the old belief was, I’m not good enough, and what arises from your deeper awareness is, I am already enough, I don’t have to prove my worth.
Maybe the old belief was, I have to make everyone happy, and what feels true now is, I can love people deeply without abandoning myself.
Maybe it was, I have to control everything to be safe, and the new belief becomes, I can trust myself to meet life as it unfolds.
Then we don’t just think about the new belief, we begin experiencing what life could look and feel like when we actually live from it.
We can explore the core areas of life, including:
- Health and body: How do you want to feel physically, how do you want to care for your body, what does vibrant health look and feel like for you?
- Love and relationships: How do you want to love, communicate, connect, set boundaries, receive love, and show up with the people who matter most?
- Purpose and contribution: What do you want to create, build, share, teach, lead, or contribute through your life?
- Abundance and finances: What does financial freedom or abundance look like for you, and what would greater abundance allow you to experience, create, contribute, and give?
- Spiritual connection and inner freedom: What would it be like to move through life connected to your True Self, more present, peaceful, aware, grateful, and free?
We visualize it, we feel into it, we let the body experience that possibility, and then we bring it back into something practical.
What does this version of you do differently today?
What conversation needs to happen?
What boundary needs to be created?
What habit needs to change?
What action have you been avoiding?
What does your body need from you?
What would you do if you weren’t trying to prove yourself, protect yourself, please everyone, or avoid failure?
This is where awareness becomes embodiment, and where the work moves out of the session and into your actual life.
The Goal Isn’t to Become Someone Else
For years, I approached personal development with the idea that I needed to become a better version of myself.
Fix myself, improve myself, accomplish more, heal more, become more disciplined, more successful, more spiritual, more productive, more evolved.
And personal growth can easily become another endless treadmill where we’re constantly trying to arrive at some future version of ourselves that is finally worthy, successful, healed, happy, or enough.
But what if the deeper work isn’t about becoming someone else?
What if it’s about uncovering what has been obscuring who you already are?
The Borrowed Beliefs.
The Binding Behaviors.
The Adaptive Addictions.
The fears.
The conditioning.
The identities.
The roles.
The expectations.
The protective strategies.
And underneath all of that, there is awareness, presence, love, peace, possibility, and the freedom to choose.
Then personal growth isn’t just about fixing yourself, it becomes about freeing yourself from what is no longer true or necessary, reconnecting with who you actually are, and creating your life from there.
What Does The AWAKEN Process Actually Look Like?
The AWAKEN Process is experiential, which means we’re not just going to sit there for an hour talking about your problems.
Talking can absolutely be valuable, understanding is valuable, insight is valuable, but insight alone doesn’t always change the pattern, which is why we work with the nervous system, somatic awareness, breath regulation, parts work, memory reconsolidation, compassionate inquiry, meditation, visualization, belief updating, and direct awareness practices.
Depending on what you’re working through, we might work with a specific memory, a protective part, a recurring behavior, a sensation in your body, an addictive pattern, a relationship trigger, an old belief, a fear around money, health, love or success, or something completely different that begins revealing itself through the process.
There isn’t one rigid path that every person has to follow.
Your system tells us where the work is.
My role is to help you slow down enough to hear it, create enough safety to work with what arises, guide you through the process, help you see what may be difficult to see from inside the pattern, and continually bring you back to your own awareness and inner guidance.
Because ultimately, I don’t want you dependent on me.
I want you to become increasingly capable of noticing your own patterns, regulating your own nervous system, listening to your body, questioning your own beliefs, connecting with your own inner guidance, and making choices from greater awareness.
Who Is The AWAKEN Process For?
The AWAKEN Process is primarily for people who are already interested in growth, health, healing, spirituality, consciousness, and creating a meaningful life, people who have often already done quite a bit of work on themselves, but know there are deeper patterns they are ready to address.
You might be dealing with an addictive behavior, chronic stress, burnout, relationship challenges, recurring emotional triggers, health challenges, fear, anxiety, self-doubt, procrastination, people pleasing, perfectionism, overworking, difficulty setting boundaries, or simply a sense that you’re capable of living with more freedom than you currently experience.
Or you may not be struggling in a major way at all.
You may simply be ready for the next level of your life, to deepen your relationship with yourself, become more conscious of the patterns that are influencing you, reconnect with what you actually want, and create more health, love, abundance, purpose, peace, and freedom.
Ultimately, This Work Is About Freedom
For me, the goal of The AWAKEN Process isn’t perfection, and it isn’t about reaching some point where you never get triggered, never feel fear, never experience pain, and never have another difficult day.
Life is still life.
The goal is greater freedom within it.
Freedom from allowing your past to unconsciously determine your future, freedom from believing every thought that moves through your mind, freedom from repeating behaviors you know aren’t serving you, freedom from constantly needing something outside yourself to change how you feel inside, freedom from living according to beliefs you inherited from other people, and freedom to consciously choose how you want to live.
Freedom to love more deeply.
Freedom to care for your body.
Freedom to create abundance.
Freedom to do meaningful work.
Freedom to experience pleasure and joy.
Freedom to be present with your family.
Freedom to trust yourself.
Freedom to create.
And freedom to experience the peace, happiness, and wholeness that I believe are already here underneath so much of the conditioning we spend our lives trying to overcome.
That, to me, is The AWAKEN Process™.
UNCOVER the Borrowed Beliefs, Binding Behaviors, Adaptive Addictions, protective patterns, and conditioning that may be limiting your life.
AWAKEN to the awareness underneath them, work with your body and nervous system, understand what these patterns have been trying to do for you, and update what is no longer true or necessary.
CREATE new beliefs from your own inner guidance, begin making different choices, and consciously create greater health, love, abundance, purpose, peace, and freedom in your life.
You don’t have to spend the rest of your life fighting against yourself.
You can understand why these adaptations developed, appreciate what they have been trying to do for you, work with them instead of against them, reconnect with the deeper awareness underneath them, and then decide what you actually want to create from here.
Uncover. Awaken. Create.
That is the work.
If you’d like to schedule a free call and see if The AWAKEN Process™ is right for you, fill out this short form and we’ll talk.
Many blessings,
Nathan Crane, Creator
The AWAKEN Process™