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Like many others who have been interviewed for this podcast, Joy Belonga describes herself as a lifelong seeker. Until she found the Three Principles as articulated by Sydney Banks.

Now, Joy works with her clients to point them back to their innate well-being and natural state of peace, possibility, mental resilience and yes, Joy.

 

You can find Joy Belonga at JoyofWellBeing.org.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

• Traveling alone with peace of mind knowing we can always rely on the wisdom within
• Discovering how powerful our beliefs and thoughts are at age 12
• Breaking patterns in order to see life with fresh eyes
• The power of looking within for our own answers
• How our made up stories can be positively changed by rewilding ourselves

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Dicken Bettinger
• The Eden Method
• Angus and Rohini Ross’ Rewilding website

Transcript of Interview with Joy Belonga

Alexandra: Joy Belonga, welcome to Unbroken.

Joy: Thank you so much. What an honor to be here.

Alexandra: Oh, it’s lovely to speak to you. 

Tell us about a little bit about your background and how you found the principles.

Joy: Sure. Background has basically been an educator within the extension system, which is a national system: Cooperative Extension. I worked for Michigan State University Extension for over 21 years, and it was a great job. And they really believed in personal development, so I had 18 days, if you can believe it, to have personal development. And some of those days were fall and spring conferences and things. 

And speaking at fall conference in Lansing and was introduced at a seminar that was being organized through the income health department, and health realization. That’s dating me a little bit, but I was really intrigued. That was a nine-month seminar presented by Dicken [Bettinger]. 

So I traveled once a month from upper peninsula of Michigan, where I was based for my job and had another lifetime there. The funny thing was, is that it took like, four hours to get down to Lansing to learn more about my thoughts for our car ride to think a lot about my thoughts. But it was the gift to learn from Dicken who learned directly from Syd Banks. It was just such a gift. 

I think it took me a while, I’d say at least maybe nine months to maybe get my first insight. And the first insight was, I didn’t have to believe everything I thought, which was huge, really huge. And so from then on, I made some changes in my life that I had been wanting to do, but didn’t have the courage or the gumption. Or I felt like I was stuck. 

I saw that really, from a new perspective, that our thoughts appear real. That’s the trick, isn’t it, they can appear so real. And then we end up believing them. And we think they’re our truth. So anyway, that just opened up a home a whole new world for me.

Alexandra: What transpired after that? Did you transition away from the work you were doing? 

Joy: I tried to incorporate it within my work. I did a lot of volunteer development. And that basically, I just continued to learn on my own. I think the real telltale sign of the impact that this had was, I left to a marriage, I didn’t feel like I was with my life partner. And so that created some turbulence, but I knew that I was going to be resilient and find my way and, and sure enough, I did. 

Then at a certain point down the road, I knew my job was ending so I decided to take a journey. I got myself a road truck, van and traveled for a year with the main idea of getting out of Michigan for the winter. So that didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I needed to get out and explore and it was just really a beautiful, beautiful trip. 

Had I not known the principles, though, I would have never taken the trip because I would have been in the what if. What if this happens, what if I break down? What if I get attacked? What if I get lost? I realized that was just fear and I didn’t need to certainly listen to it. I needed to have some safety measures but to be able to do a year with embracing the unknown, I didn’t really didn’t have a plan other than to get out to the West Coast. Because my kids had moved out there earlier, a couple of years prior and, and it turned out to be such a magical trip with the idea that I didn’t have to have all my ducks in a row and plan how to get from point A to point Z, just the big aha was like, I realized that whatever I needed to know, would be revealed to me and that I didn’t have to figure it out. That was just huge. 

Because I think previously in my life, and as part of our programming and conditioning, we’ve been taught that you have to have a goal, and you have to work hard to be successful. And how about a five year plan? All of those things just kind of went out the window, and I was really had this beautiful sense of freedom of creating my life. In the moment, pretty much. 

Alexandra: You have an affinity for travel. You talk about going on adventures on your website. But it sounds like this was a new experience for you. Is that true?

Joy: The joy ride and going with the mindset that I would just figure it out, or it would come to me was totally different. At a very young age, a really good friend of mine, Kendra, and her mother introduced me to travel. I went to Florida with them, with my first airplane ride, and then actually, we went in a van at the time, another trip. And maybe that’s how that all came about. But I really think that she introduced me to adventure.

Alexandra: Oh, very cool. 

The other thing you mentioned on your website that I wanted to take note of was that you had a mystical experience when you were 12. Can you tell us about that?

Joy: I think I overheard my mother and her friend talking about, I don’t know, some kind of like mystical thing as far as I thought maybe it was tarot cards. Somehow, I got the idea about levitation. And I was at my friend’s house right next door, and we had a slumber party and just had the right amount of people. 

I took the role of facilitating a levitation. I had no previous experience and how to do this. But in the first 20 minutes of this one person lies down on their back. And then we have three on each side, one at the foot and one at the head. And with just two fingers, other than the people at the foot in the head, two fingers of each hand under the person that’s lying down, and we repeated things like, “She’s as light as a feather. She’s light as a feather” went all the way around, and then “her cells are compacting, her cells are compacting.” 

So that first 10 or 15 minutes, we just cracked up laughing like, what are we doing? And then I was so adamant. I remembered I said, you guys, I really, I really need to know if this works. And so then we settled down and started over with repeating the phrases. And sure enough, on the count of three, we began to lift the person over our heads. 

It was just astounding, just astounding. And as through the years, I’ve talked with other girlfriends, and they have reported a similar experience. But this was pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. And so each of us took a turn in the center of the circle. 

And then I was last and you lie with your arms folded and your eyes closed. I knew I was being lifted. And then I had to just open to my eyes to make sure or just to validate that this was really happening. The ceiling was just about this far away from my face.

Alexandra: Wow.

Joy: Yeah. So that was really bizarre. It also showed me that wow, our beliefs are really powerful. And at that young age of 12 we didn’t have a lot of obstacles in our way of thinking, Oh, this isn’t possible, right? We’re really fresh and really got serious and really saw that we can change reality with our thinking.

Alexandra: What did you see about it then and what do you see about it now? Are there differences? Or do you see it the same way?

Joy: Good question. I was in a little bit of a shock. I didn’t study to really talk to about this. And years later, my sister was saying, Well, no wonder you went into energy medicine. I’m an Eden energy medicine practitioner. I really didn’t even see that connection to that, until she saw it. 

Now, of course, with the work that we do, and the journey that we’re on about the power of belief, I see it so clear now that our beliefs and our thoughts are so powerful. They in a combined grew, yeah, that extra power now that I’m thinking about it.

Alexandra: Yeah, with a bunch of people there. It surprises me that people were able to change position, and it still happened. Like it didn’t just happen once with one person, and it was kind of a fluke. 

What you’re saying is one person would get off the table or the thing that they were on, and another person would get on, and it would happen again. Is that right?

Joy: Yes, that’s right. I was the last to go. But what occurs to me, you’d think I would have maybe explored bending spoons. But it never occurred to me, it was almost like I put it away and never really gave it much thought. 

Alexandra: You describe yourself as a spiritual seeker, until you found the principles. What changed when that happened?

Joy: I definitely was a seeker. I had such an intense motivation to want to figure this life out. And maybe I saw that it wasn’t really working in my family, or with my parents or other adults, I don’t know. But I was really motivated to read as many books attend as many workshops, learn as many techniques as possible, because I thought then I’d have a handle on how to do this, because maybe there was another intention to get life. 

What was so interesting is once I came across this understanding, and also hearing from Dicken, that he used to have all these affirmation journals, a dream journal, and he’d meditate for four hours each night or day to day and same kind of energy about that. And then it was like, Oh, my gosh, I have wisdom within me. That is what I was learning is like, I have we all have wisdom that comes to us. I don’t have to look outside of myself. 

All that search was looking outside of myself. The big shift was when I saw that spiritual teachers, including Sydney Banks, said to look within, and as the story goes, there were so many people that would flock to see Syd, and he would tell them go home, look within. 

I also had a visual, wouldn’t it be fun to see at a bookstore all the shelves of the self-help industry? And what is it like $12 billion now and if they were just take all the shelves or all the books off the shelves and just have a picture of Sydney Banks and then the phrase ‘look within’. The answers are within, and they come to us, we are so divinely engineered. 

I am so continuously wowed by that to really understand who we are. So when you think about it, we don’t have to think how many breaths to take per minute, or how to how many beats per minute that we our heart needs to beat. It’s like life is living through us if we allow it. I don’t know if we have a choice. But if you see it that way it turns out to be just a lighter way to live life less struggle more joy.

Alexandra: You mentioned you had adopted a lot of techniques and that kind of thing. I’m assuming you saw those begin to fall away or let them fall away when you discovered the principles.

Joy: Yes, I was a big meditator too and thinking that way. I do think it really serves a purpose to quiet your mind down. And that’s where I think when you have just a quiet mind, and then out of the blue insights come to you, or things come to you that are somewhat magical, that that’s just how we’ve been designed. 

You don’t have to analyze or figure it out because we’ve just been so conditioned that we have to give some things to some more thought, and we have to research or analyze. And it really frees up your time. 

Alexandra: That’s a good way to put it. 

I want to go back to travel for a second. I should have said this when you were talking about your trip around, was it North America? Did you come to Canada as well? Or was it just the US in your van?

Joy: It was just mainly the US and a lot of time on the West Coast.

Alexandra: And you’ve climbed the Egyptian pyramids, you mentioned that on your website. 

What else do you think travel teaches us about ourselves or about our place in the world?

Joy: I think the idea of getting out of your everyday world shifts everything. So we are habitual, right, we get into patterns. And pretty much they get automatic without a lot of thinking, I know that you can relate to maybe driving from point A to B and not really realizing how you got there. Because you were so in your thoughts. It becomes automatic. That’s kind of kind of how we are in our day to day life. 

When you take a break from that pattern, and change everything, change the scenery, change, food, climate, human, you name it, everything’s different. And then it’s almost like you come back alive for the first time. Because you’re seeing everything new. I’m in Bend in the beautiful mountains. And then sometimes I forget, it’s like, oh, yeah, there’s the mountains. But when you’re first here, it’s like, Oh, my God, these mountains are beautiful.

Alexandra: I have the same experience here on Vancouver Island. We become so habituated to it. And then in the summer, we get a lot of tourists. And what happens is, it’s actually quite nice, I see them taking photographs of things. And that reminds me Oh, right. This is really beautiful. And I should pay more attention to that. If I could be a bit more mindful of it.

Joy: Powerful, isn’t it?

Alexandra: Yes. And when you were traveling in your van, did you have any experiences where, like you talked about, you might have hesitated to go before you knew the principles. Because what if this happened? Or what if that happened? 

Did you run into any situations that were a little challenging where you were able to be in the moment and just see what happened?

Joy: Yes, two incidents come to mind. When I first got to the west coast and visited with my family, I thought about well, what do I want to do now? I actually Googled it because I was at the time a big affirmation person. So I just typed up the word affirmation and Googled it. And then Louise Hay took over my laptop, and I thought, oh, yeah, I was more in alignment with Wayne Dyer. And whenever I saw Louise Hay, I just thought, Oh, she’s saying the same thing. Well, this was different. And then I went to explore Well, what’s going on now? 

There was a conference happening in San Diego. And I thought, right then, oh, I’m going to go to San Diego. That’s where my next stop is. And the journey just turned out to be a healing journey. But at that time, it was my first leg of the trip from the West Coast and 50 people from around the world were gathered, which was mind blowing at the time. And then we would have different breaks. 

I was there for about five to seven days. And this one particular day, I was at the beach, had my van locked and I had the music blaring and I was doing some exercises. And the next thing I knew I looked to my out the window and there was a gentleman parked right next to me and very interested in what I was doing. And so right then it was like okay, I need to you know vamoose. So I left in a hurry. He followed me for a while. So that was a little unsettling. 

Several months later, this was like part two of Louise Hay’s training, she was doing life coaching in Sedona, and it was headed up by Patricia Crane, because Louise wasn’t doing the training at the time. nor was she doing the training in San Diego. I didn’t realize that that was still you know, that incident of being watched very carefully was still in my mind. But in Sedona, after the week long conference there, I got permission to park at a friend’s house, in her in the road, right by your house. And anyway, the energy and everything within Sedona, and being just coming from a really wonderful group experience. 

All of a sudden, I felt really alone and vulnerable. I saw another car in the distance just about 100 yards from me. It looked like three men in the car, and I swore that they were watching me, What’s another word scouting me I don’t know. Yeah. And it just took me back to you know, being in a fearful state. And this is such a great example of where we can go in our thinking. So it’s really based on a fearful experience that I had before being you know, scouted, watched, stalked, whatever. 

I was just a true believer that this was happening. Finally, I collected myself and somehow you’re going to sit here and worry about it. Are you going to drive by and see if that’s really what you’re seeing. And so I took off and drove past this car, and there was nobody in the car. 

I just had to laugh because I thought, Oh, I’m seeing my thinking play out big time, because I was so fearful that I was being stalked. So other than those two experiences, it was just a wonderful trip and met a lot of people and they would say, make sure you see XYZ, like if you’re going in this direction, and then I got invited to workshops up in Idlewild when I was visually visiting Joshua Tree, National Park. It was a beautiful time.

Alexandra: You mentioned The Eden Project, or what did you call it?

Joy: Yeah, it’s based on Donna Eden. I think she learned a lot from like healing touch, I believe. And anyway, she put a curriculum together. And I got certified. It was a three-year study. And she thought that everybody could see energy. And she was gifted with that ability. 

She was able to heal herself with this technique, this energy medicine, and she had been told, at least once or twice that she should get her life in order because there was nothing else they could do for her. So literally, she took her health in her own hands and was able to move blocks and energy and all kinds of things. That started this journey for her to teach others their health, specifically when our medical system told her that there wasn’t anything else they could do for her.

Alexandra: Do you still practice that to this day?

Joy: I do. I have a few clients that I’m working with but my true passion is really this understanding because I think everything is created through our thinking. And sometimes we feel it in our body. And if we can change our consciousness to a greater sense of well-being, which one of Syd’s sayings is that we’re only one thought away from our well-being. And once we see that the body mind spirit, it’s all connected. Then it has a tremendous impact on our health and well-being and whether pain gets what they call stuck in the body. So I’ve been on this healing journey and I have joy-of-well-being dot org If and anybody’s interested and love to have conversations to explore if this is a fit for them.

Alexandra: If you’re working with someone using the Eden method, do you fold in the impact that their thoughts are having on their physical being?

Joy: It’s sometimes because the emotions come up. And usually there’s a story connected to the emotions. So it brings up the conversation for sure.

Alexandra: Oh, fascinating. Wow, that’s really, really interesting. One of the other things you do – your plate is quite full – is your rewilding coaching. You’ve been trained by Angus and Rohini. Correct?

What does rewilding mean to you?

Joy: It’s based on the metaphor that they found how wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, which is an amazing four minute video if you get a chance to watch that. 

To me, what it means is rewilding us back to our true nature, before all that programming came in and conditioning and coming from the formless energy into form. You can see this rewilding at its best with young kids, because they are so spontaneous and loving and laughing. And just having a great time and being curious and not in their thinking very much into their being. 

I think that the rewilding is coming back and letting go of all that story that we might have made up over time. Because number one, we want to be loved and accepted. And throughout the course of our journey, we might change who we are to be loved and accepted. 

Rewilding is a great term I love the whole process. I’ve learned so much from Rohini and Angus. I was able to go deeper, I think, in this understanding.

Alexandra: Were there any parts of you that you discovered during that rewilding process that you had sort of shut down? Based on the social things that we learn?

Joy: Yeah, there was a number of things that came. I was just going through a heartbreak, and realizing that we’re built to be resilient. And in the story that I made up after the breakup as to what that meant about me and that I was not enough and creating a lot of pain and struggle for myself. 

It’s part of the human experience. We have to go down the rabbit hole at times. And now I find that I’m not going down the rabbit hole as deep as I used to. And so that that’s been a big shift. I see, as I’m on the other side of the breakup, I see that my world is opened. And I see that things happen for a reason. 

We can get really caught up in the chaos and that change of it all. And we don’t see it at the time. But down the road, we see that it’s happened for a reason. It’s happened for our own evolution for our own rewilding, that something needed to shift.

Alexandra: What a lovely way to look at something challenging. That’s beautiful.

Joy: Part of that is to be held and supported, loving group, then what I see is the irony is when I first joined the rewilding group, it was in lockdown. Couldn’t leave my apartment, but yet I was connected with 34 people around the world. Isn’t that hilarious? 

Now the group is just continuing to be close and we connect and it’s just a beautiful experience to be held and supported to be seen, and reawakening to who we really are. And that is love. We are all love.

Alexandra: Oh, beautiful. Thank you for saying that. That’s lovely.

As we get towards the end of our time together, is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?

Joy: I don’t think so. This is my passion. And I love, love, love having one on one conversations. I just finished a four week series in person here and then. I’m really excited about doing more of that and recreating that experience that I had in the rewilding group. 

It’s a group of nine other women plus myself that gathered here in Bend. I’m looking to do more of that. Because I really, really do believe this is the answer. It’s all about this understanding. And it’s all about this the misunderstanding that we’ve grown up with. I can’t think of a better time with all the issues regarding mental health issues. There’s no, there’s never been a greater time to share this understanding.

Alexandra: I totally agree. Absolutely. 

Where can we find out more about you and your work? You mentioned your website. Tell us the address again.

Joy: It’s joyofwellbeing.org. 

Alexandra: Perfect. Okay. And as ever, I will put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Joy. It’s been great chatting with you.

Joy: It’s been a delight. Thank you so much for the invitation. 

Alexandra: My pleasure. Take care. Bye bye. 

Featured image photo by Jingda Chen on Unsplash