Each time I talk about meeting your allies or spirit guides, someone tells me the same thing.

“Monica, I’d love to do something like this, but I’m not spiritual enough. I wouldn’t see anything. Nothing would happen to me.”

I understand why you think that.

But after years of working with women through hypnosis, regression, akashic healing, and shamanic work, I’ve learned something.

You don’t need to see a vision, hear a voice, or have a mystical experience to begin connecting with your inner knowing.

You don’t need all the answers before you begin.

Let me tell you why this matters to me.

For over 10 years, I worked as a yoga teacher and board-certified health coach. I understood nutrition, wellness, exercise, and the things we’re told to do to feel better in our bodies.

Yet I reached a point where I was carrying fifteen pounds I couldn’t seem to lose. I read the books. I listened to the podcast and more.

I went on a journey through meditation and hypnosis, looking for answers.

What I found was a seven-year-old version of myself who didn’t feel safe.

I wasn’t expecting her. I wasn’t looking for a spiritual experience. I wanted to understand why I kept struggling with something I knew so much about.

But there she was.

For the first time, I began to understand how much of our adult behavior is rooted in experiences we’ve never fully processed.

The beliefs we carry. The ways we protect ourselves. The patterns we keep repeating, even when we tell ourselves we don’t want to.

My work changed from that point forward.

I began exploring the subconscious mind and understanding different dimensions of healing. Over the years, these practices became part of the work I now teach others.

And one thing keeps coming back to me.

There is so much wisdom available when we stop trying to think our way through everything.

You don’t have to do everything alone.

Think about how much you do daily.

The people who need you each day. The business you’re building. The relationships you’re trying to understand. The decisions you keep thinking about over and over in your mind.

Perhaps you’re the woman everyone calls when they need help.

You know how to figure things out. You know how to keep going.

But when was the last time you gave yourself space to receive?

Not another podcast to listen to. Not another book to read. Not another person telling you what you should do.

A moment to become quiet enough to notice what comes from within.

When I talk about guides, I’m talking about a presence you experience as supportive and loving.

For some women, a guide appears as an animal.

For others, a guide appears as a beloved grandmother, someone who has passed, a figure of light, or a presence they sense without seeing.

Some receive a message. Some experience a feeling. Others leave with a sense of peace or a new understanding.

There isn’t one right way to experience the journey.

You don’t need a particular belief system. You don’t need years of meditation practice. You don’t need to prove anything.

You remain aware and in control throughout the experience.

You give yourself permission to listen.

And you see what unfolds.

Something happened in my training this week.

On Tuesday, I guided two practitioners through this journey as part of my Root Release Method, which guides them on how to use hypnosis with their clients.

Both came to the experience with their own expectations.

One of them connected with someone she had lost.

The words she received moved her in a way I won’t forget.

Watching her experience reminded me why I do this work. Not because I need anyone to believe what I believe, but because I want women to have the opportunity to experience their own inner world and decide what feels meaningful to them.

I’ll share more of her story on Wednesday.

For now, I want to invite you to experience the journey yourself.

Meet Your Guides

Friday, October 16 · 10 a.m. Pacific · 60 minutes · Live on Zoom

I’m opening this experience to you.

Here’s what we’ll do together.

• The guided journey. I’ll lead you into a relaxed state of hypnosis and guide you through the process of meeting your guides.

• The circle. We’ll have space to hear about one another’s experiences. Sharing is optional, and your camera is welcome to stay off.

• The full recording. Return to the journey whenever you want.

• Return to Your Guides. You’ll receive an audio for your morning practice.

You don’t need to prepare anything.

Bring yourself, find a comfortable place to lie down, and give yourself this hour.

You don’t need to arrive with a question. You don’t need to know what you’re looking for.

Simply come with an open mind.

The experience is included in my paid Substack membership, which is $50 for the year. Your membership includes Friday’s journey and the content I share going forward.

[See Everything About Friday → Meet Your Guides]

Already a paid member? You’re in. Your link is on its way.

With love,

Monica

P.S. I’m also opening a few private 1:1 spots now that I’ve stepped into full-time work in my healing practice. If you’re ready to work with the patterns beneath the surface, reply to this email or book a call here.

Yesterday I taught the first class of my Shamanic Hypnosis Training.

I gave notice to my full-time HR job a couple of weeks ago.

I keep reminiscing about what happened once I gave my notice. Twenty years of HR. Investigations, payroll, accounting, policies, hard conversations in small rooms. Good work, and work I was really good at. And yesterday morning, before any of that ended, I was on Zoom with a group of women teaching them something I have been carrying for over ten years. My deep work.

A few years ago, asked me what I would regret not sharing if I left this earth. Only one thing came up. I never got to share the way I do hypnosis. The medicine woman’s way. For so long, masculine shamans shared these gifts, and as a Master Hypnotherapist and Shamanic Reiki Master, I mastered and integrated everything I learned into an amazing feminine method called the Root Release Method.

Yesterday, I sat with my grandmother’s picture on my desk, and I cried a little before we started, because it was finally happening.

Now, you may have come here for cravings. For the 9 p.m. pantry trip when you are not even hungry. So let me tell you where these meet, because they are not two different things.

The first time I was hypnotized, I was not looking for a spiritual experience. I was a health coach carrying fifteen pounds that would not move no matter what I did. I went looking for what was underneath it. I went back to age seven and then to the age of five and then to the womb with my twin sister. What I found was that I did not feel safe, and the weight was protecting me. After my hypnosis, the weight began to release and fall off. I didn’t have to hold on to the weight as a protection mechanism.

Here is the part I want you to know.

Before you can go back and find what has been driving a bad habit or self-sabotaging behavior, you need to go somewhere safe first. Not metaphorically. You actually build a place inside yourself that belongs only to you, and you meet an ally there that walks with you. Some people meet an animal. Some meet a grandmother. One woman yesterday met her grandmother and her cat at the same time, and they both looked at her like, " We have been here the whole time; what took you so long.

That place is where every piece of this work happens. The craving work. The weight work. All of it. It is the room you do it in.

And it is the thing people ask me about most. More than hypnosis, more than weight. How do I meet my guide? How do I get to that place?

So this month I am giving it to you. The journey I ran for my students yesterday is going in the Vault this week. I am running it live on Friday, October 16th, and you are invited. You do not have to believe anything in particular. You just sit or lie down and let me walk you there.

The pattern is not the enemy. It never was.

With love,
Monica

You’re finally in bed.
Your body is exhausted.
And your mind is wide awake.

Replaying the day. Planning tomorrow. Running through the list.

I know this place. I spent years running from my feelings all day long. At night, they caught up with me.

Here’s what I learned. A busy mind at bedtime is not a problem to fight. It’s a signal. Your nervous system is still on guard, still scanning for what could go wrong. It’s asking to feel safe enough to let go.

This 30-minute hypnosis guides your body and mind to slow down, soften and drift into deep, restful sleep.

Put it on when you get into bed. Headphones in. Lights off. Let my voice do the rest.

Women always ask me, “Is it okay if I fall asleep?” YES. That’s the whole point. While you sleep, I’m speaking straight to your subconscious mind.

No counting sheep.
No scrolling till midnight.
No forcing it.

Listen every night for 21 days and notice how much easier it gets to drift off.

Free this weekend for Substack members, through Monday night. After that, it goes back into the paid audio library.

With love,
Monica

Subscribe now

Most women have spent years asking, “Why do I keep doing this?” The Cravings Map finally answers it. In a few minutes, you’ll uncover where your craving actually came from: the one event, memory, or belief that’s been driving it all along.

Most women are stunned by what surfaces. It’s the moment everything starts to make sense. Ge…

Read more

Read more

“Is there anything sweet?”
“Just one bite.”
“I’ll start again tomorrow.”

I know this one personally. For years I thought my nighttime snacking was about food. It wasn’t. It was about not feeling safe, and food was how I learned to comfort myself as a little girl.

That craving is not the enemy. It’s a signal.

Most nighttime eating has very little to do with hunger. It’s stress, old habits, feelings from the day, and patterns running underneath the urge.

In this 30-minute hypnosis, you’ll slow the pattern down, create space between the urge and the action, and feel satisfied after dinner again.

This weekend, it’s FREE.
I’m opening this session to everyone on my Substack through Sunday night.

Listen after dinner, right when the urge to snack usually shows up. Get comfortable. Put on your headphones. Give yourself 30 minutes.

No dieting rules.
No food tracking.
No willpower.

As you listen, notice what happens right before the urge shows up.
What are you feeling?
What are you thinking?
What is the craving asking for? Comfort? Rest? To feel safe?

Sometimes the shift happens before the food ever reaches your hand.

Come back to this session any night the old pattern returns. Your subconscious mind is the goal-getter, and every time you listen, you’re rewiring.

Free for Substack readers through Sunday. After that, it goes back into the paid audio library.

With love,
Monica

Every year, around this time, I could almost predict what would happen.

Summer would end. Women would come back from vacations, barbecues, long weekends, dinners out, days at the pool, time with family.

And they’d say, “Okay. I’ve got to get back on track.”

So we’d start a detox. Clean up the food. Move our bodies. Drink more water. Pay attention to what we were putting in our mouths.

And something beautiful would happen. Women felt lighter. Clearer. More energized. More connected to themselves.

After 10 years of this, I started noticing something that had very little to do with food.

The real question wasn’t “What did you eat?”

It was “What made you choose something you already knew didn’t feel good in your body?”

And the answer was often so simple.

Someone else wanted it.

Her husband loved restaurants where it was on everything. Her kids wanted something different. Her family expected it. She didn’t want to make a fuss. She wanted to keep the peace. She didn’t want to be difficult.

So she ate it.

Not because she didn’t know.

Because someone else’s preference had quietly become more important than her own.

I know this pattern because I live it too.

I know cow’s milk, soy, and corn don’t feel good in my body. My body tells me every single time. And when I’m taking care of everyone else, when I’m feeding three kids, and everyone wants something different, those foods sneak right back onto my plate.

Not because I forgot.

Because in that moment, everyone else came first.

That’s where I changed my mind about detoxing.

A detox can show you what feels good in your body. That part works.

The more interesting question is what happens when the detox ends.

If you feel amazing when you take care of yourself, and then slowly slide back into the foods, habits, relationships, and choices that leave you disconnected from yourself...

maybe the problem was never that you didn’t know what to do.

Maybe you stopped choosing yourself.

I remember a client who suspected rice wasn’t working for her body. So we took it out for a while.

She felt noticeably different.

About ten days later, she decided to test it. She ate rice. Afterward, she was so tired she wanted to crawl into bed.

That was useful information. Not because rice is bad. Rice isn’t bad. It was information about her body. Her body gave her an answer.

And there was another layer.

Her husband loved going places where rice came with every meal. And she’d been eating it because it was easier.

Easier than choosing differently. Easier than being the one who wanted something different. Easier than making herself matter.

How many of us do this?

We know what makes us feel good. We know what drains us. We know what we don’t want.

And then someone else’s preference walks into the room, and suddenly our own knowing becomes negotiable.

This was never really about rice.

It’s about people-pleasing. Overgiving. Putting yourself last. Making yourself easier to live with. Choosing peace over truth.

It’s the mom who accommodates everyone. The daughter who doesn’t want to disappoint. The sister who says, “It’s fine.” The woman who says, “It doesn’t really matter.”

It matters to her. And her body knows it.

Sometimes abandoning yourself looks like eating the thing you don’t want because someone else wants it.

Sometimes it looks like saying yes.

Sometimes it looks like staying.

Sometimes it looks like taking care of everyone before you check whether you’re okay.

Sometimes it looks like setting aside your own values because they’re inconvenient.

Fall has always been a season of letting go.

The trees don’t negotiate with their leaves. They don’t apologize for releasing what they’re done with. They don’t hold on because someone might prefer them to look the way they did in July.

They let go.

That’s what I want to explore with you this fall. Not only what’s on your plate. What you’re finally ready to stop doing to yourself.

Sit with these tonight:

Where are you still choosing someone else’s comfort over your own knowing?

Where are you saying yes when your body is saying no?

Where have you made yourself negotiable?

And what might change if, this season, you stopped asking permission to choose yourself?

Maybe this fall isn’t about becoming more disciplined.

Maybe it’s about becoming more honest.

If this one hit home, watch my free class HERE. We’ll go deeper into what your body has been telling you all along.

With love,
Monica

Because I want to ask you a different question about your cravings.

Not:

“Why can’t I control myself?”

But:

“What is this food giving me?”

That question changed the way I work with women around food.

For years, I handed out meal plans.

Seven-day detoxes.

14-day programs.

30-day clean-eating programs.

And they worked.

Until life happened.

Then the old patterns came back.

The problem wasn’t that women didn’t know what to eat.

The problem was that the plan never reached the reason they were eating in the first place.

JOIN CRAVINGS GONE

What if the craving isn’t really about food?

Think about your own pattern.

When does the craving show up?

After work?

Before bed?

When you’re overwhelmed?

When you’re lonely?

After conflict?

When you’re bored?

When you want a reward?

When you finally have a moment to yourself?

Food can become comfort.

Reward.

Relief.

Connection.

Numbing.

Safety.

Escape.

And when your brain learns that a certain food gives you relief quickly, the pattern starts to make sense.

You aren’t broken.

Your brain learned a strategy.

The question becomes:

Does that strategy still serve you today?

And then there is the part nobody talks about enough

You might say:

“I want to lose weight.”

But what do you believe losing the weight will finally give you?

Love?

Confidence?

Freedom?

Connection?

A relationship?

Feeling sexy in your body?

Feeling safe being seen?

Being able to wear the clothes you want?

And then ask yourself the second question:

What happens if I actually get it?

Because sometimes losing the weight changes how other people see you.

You get attention.

You date.

People compliment you.

You’re more visible.

And for some women, being seen brings up its own fears and beliefs.

Do I feel safe receiving attention?

Do I feel worthy of love?

Do I feel comfortable being seen?

The weight and the relationship with food don’t exist separately from the relationship you have with yourself.

This is where I start working differently

I created the Cravings Gone Method around seven steps:

Calm the Body

Recognize the Pattern

Access the Root

Validate & Release

Install a New Pattern

Nourish the New You

Grow Beyond Food

The goal isn’t to spend the rest of your life managing food.

The goal is to understand yourself well enough that food doesn’t have to carry the emotional jobs you’ve given it.

Comfort.

Reward.

Protection.

Punishment.

Escape.

What happens when food gets to become food?

That is the question I’m interested in.

If you’re on a GLP-1…

This work matters too.

You might be taking a GLP-1 and notice your appetite has changed while certain emotional or situational patterns still show up.

You might be coming off a GLP-1 and wondering what happens when hunger and cravings return.

Or you might have never used medication and still wonder why knowing what to eat hasn’t been enough.

The workshop covers all three paths.

Medication decisions belong with your healthcare provider.

My work is focused on the behavioral and emotional patterns underneath eating.

So here’s your question for today

The next time you want food and you’re not physically hungry, pause.

Don’t judge yourself.

Ask:

What am I hoping this food will give me in the next ten minutes?

Then listen.

That answer tells you something.

And this is where we start.

Want to go from understanding the pattern to working on it?

Inside Cravings Gone, you can start with a 7-day free trial.

You’ll get:

• Your Cravings Pattern Profile

• The Cravings Mapper

• 7-Day Nervous System Reset

• Hypnosis Library

• Stop Cravings Workshop

Then, if you want deeper support, the VIP level includes monthly live work with me, additional Cravings Cure workshops, and the upcoming GLP-1 class and transition work.

Start your 7-day free trial here → [CRAVINGS GONE]

And remember:

**The weight might be what brought you here.

The life you want is why you stay.**

If you watched the workshop, tell me in the comments:

What part hit you the hardest?

I want to hear what you’re thinking.

Get more from Monica Bravo in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

You’re not hungry. You know you’re not hungry. You still want to eat.

I’ve been sitting with a question about that moment. What if you’re not craving food at all? What if you’re craving a feeling, a moment, five minutes where nobody needs anything from you?

Maybe you’re not craving food. Maybe you’re craving a break.

What’s in this episode

I talk about what I’m seeing with clients taking GLP-1s. Their appetite has changed. The food noise quieted. And they still find themselves in front of a plate they’re not physically hungry for.

That isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong. It’s a sign there’s something underneath the eating that the medication was never designed to touch.

I also share the shift that changed my work completely. For years I was a board-certified health coach handing out meal plans and running detoxes. People did beautifully, and then something happened in their life. Then the old pattern came back. Every time.

So I stopped asking what she should eat and started asking why she needs this behavior in the first place.

That question became the Cravings Gone Method™.

Try this before your next craving

The next time you find yourself at the cabinet and you know you’re not hungry, don’t ask why can’t I control myself? That question has never once produced an answer. It only produces shame, and shame sends you back to the food.

Ask this instead:

What am I hoping this food will give me in the next five to ten minutes?

Comfort. Relief. Connection. Control. Numbing. Escape. Safety. Reward. Permission to stop.

Whatever comes up, don’t argue with it. Just notice it. Your craving is a clue. It’s telling you where to look.

A note on understanding vs. changing

Understanding why you do something is not the same as changing it. I want to be honest about that, because a lot of content will tell you insight is the whole transformation. It isn’t. Insight gives you a place to begin.

Changing the pattern is different work. It happens underneath the conscious mind, which is where hypnosis, NLP and somatic practice come in.

This Saturday: a free live workshop

I’m teaching this in full on Saturday, September 26 at 1:00 PM Pacific, live on Substack. It’s called Why You Still Crave Food When You’re Not Hungry.

We’ll look at cravings, emotional eating, what food might be giving you, and the patterns that show up beneath the behavior. I’ll walk you through the Cravings Gone Method™, and I’ll guide you through an experience from my work so you can feel the difference between learning about change and experiencing it.

It’s for you whether you’re on a GLP-1, coming off one, have never taken one, or have simply spent years wondering why knowing what to eat was never enough.

The replay will be up for 24 hours.

Before you go

Subscribe now

I’d like to hear from you. In the comments: what’s the moment your craving usually shows up? After work? After the kids are down? Sunday night?

I read every one, and the answers often shape what I record next.

If this landed, subscribe. Every week I send conversations about cravings, GLP-1s, emotional eating, hypnosis, and root-cause change. Free, and it comes straight to your inbox.

With you,
Monica

There is a moment I want you to notice.

It’s often around the end of the workday.

You walk through the door.

You aren’t hungry.

You might have eaten a few hours ago.

You know you don’t need food.

But suddenly you want something.

Chocolate.

Chips.

Wine.

Something sweet.

Something crunchy.

Something.

And you start negotiating with yourself.

“I’ll only have a little.”

“I deserve this.”

“I’ve been good all day.”

“I’ll start again tomorrow.”

But what if we asked a different question?

Not:

“Why can’t I control myself?”

Instead:

“What do I need right now?”

What if you’re craving your break?

Think about what your day looked like.

Maybe you spent eight hours working.

Making decisions.

Answering questions.

Taking care of people.

Solving problems.

Being responsible.

Holding everything together.

Then you get home.

And food becomes the signal:

“Now I get to stop.”

The food might not be the entire craving.

The break might be.

The relief might be.

The quiet might be.

The reward might be.

The transition from “everyone needs something from me” to “I get to do something for myself” might be.

This is one of the questions I want women to start asking when a craving shows up:

“What do I hope this food will give me in the next ten minutes?”

Not what you ate.

Not how many calories.

Not whether you were “good” or “bad.”

What did you need?

This gets even more interesting with GLP-1s

If you’re taking a GLP-1, your physical appetite might change.

Yet you might still notice certain food patterns.

Or perhaps you’ve stopped taking one and you’re noticing changes in hunger or cravings.

Or maybe you’ve never used one.

You might still find yourself eating when you aren’t physically hungry.

The question becomes:

What is happening underneath the behavior?

Because hunger, craving, habit and emotional eating aren’t necessarily the same experience.

And this is where my work has changed over the years.

I used to focus much more on the food.

What should you eat?

What shouldn’t you eat?

How much?

When?

I gave women meal plans.

And sometimes those plans worked.

Until life happened.

Then the old patterns came back.

I started asking a different question.

Why does she need this behavior?

What is food doing for her?

What did she learn about food, her body, love, safety or worthiness?

That’s where my work with hypnosis, NLP and somatic practices comes in.

I want to help women understand the pattern underneath eating.

Not spend their lives fighting the food.

Try this the next time a craving appears

Before you eat, pause for a moment.

Ask yourself:

“What happened right before I wanted this?”

Then:

“What am I feeling?”

Then:

“What do I need?”

And finally:

“What am I hoping this food will change for me?”

You might learn something about yourself.

And you might find the craving isn’t asking the question you thought it was asking.

This Saturday, we’re going deeper

I’m teaching a free live workshop:

Why You Still Crave Food When You’re Not Hungry

And what your relationship with weight might really be about.

We’ll explore:

• Cravings, food noise, and GLP-1s
• Why appetite and emotional patterns aren’t the same thing
• The pattern underneath eating
• What cravings might be trying to give you
• How weight can become connected with protection, safety, worthiness and being seen
• My 7-step Cravings Gone Method™

I’ll also take you through part of my process so you experience the work rather than only hearing me talk about it.

Saturday, September 26
1 PM Pacific
Live on YouTube
Free for 24 Hours

[JOIN THE WORKSHOP]

And before you go, think about your next craving.

Don’t ask:

“Why can’t I control myself?”

Ask:

“What do I need right now?”

That question might take you somewhere completely different.

We think the craving is the problem.

The chocolate is the problem.

The chips are the problem.

The nighttime eating is the problem.

So we try to get rid of the craving.

We use more discipline. We make rules. We decide that this is the week we’re finally going to get it together. We promise ourselves that after dinner, we’re done.

And then 9:30 comes.

We’re tired.

Maybe we’re finally alone.

Maybe the day has been a lot.

And somehow we’re standing in the kitchen eating the very thing we promised ourselves we wouldn’t eat.

Then comes the familiar conversation:

Why did I do that?

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I just stop?

I’ve heard some version of that question from so many women.

And after years of working with women around cravings, the body, hypnosis, somatic work, and the unconscious mind, I’ve come to see the problem very differently.

I don’t think the craving is necessarily the problem.

I think it may be information.

Valuable information about what is happening inside you.

What you’re feeling.

What you’re ignoring.

What you don’t know how to say.

Or what some part of you may still be protecting.

And once you become curious about that possibility, the entire conversation begins to change.

What if your craving has a history?

Think about a seven-year-old girl whose parents are fighting.

She can feel the tension in the house, but she doesn’t have the emotional language to understand it.

She’s scared.

She’s sad.

She’s overwhelmed.

Maybe she cries.

Maybe nobody comes.

Nobody sits beside her and says, “You’re safe.”

Nobody helps her understand what she’s feeling.

So she finds something that does.

Maybe it’s ice cream.

Maybe it’s popcorn.

Maybe it’s something sweet.

Maybe it’s something crunchy.

Maybe it’s simply the thing that gives her a few minutes of comfort when she doesn’t know where else to put all those feelings.

The food doesn’t stop her parents from fighting.

It doesn’t change what is happening around her.

But it changes her experience of what is happening.

It soothes her.

It distracts her.

It comforts her.

It gives her somewhere to go.

And that matters.

Because a seven-year-old isn’t sitting there thinking, I’m developing an emotional eating pattern that I will carry into adulthood.

She’s simply discovering:

This helps.

And the unconscious mind is very good at remembering what helps.

Then she grows up.

Now she’s 40.

Or 55.

Or 66.

She’s built a life.

She may have raised children, built a career, become a successful businesswoman, become a therapist or healer, studied the nervous system, practiced yoga, meditated, gone to therapy, read every book she could get her hands on.

She may know more about herself than she ever has.

And yet sometimes, late at night, she still finds herself reaching for the food.

She isn’t even sure she’s hungry.

She just knows she wants it.

And afterward she feels disappointed in herself.

This is where I want to interrupt the story we tell women.

Because we tend to look at the adult behavior and forget the history.

We see the woman eating the food.

We don’t see the little girl who may have once learned that food could make an unbearable feeling a little easier to carry.

And I’m not saying every craving began at seven.

I’m saying some cravings have a history.

And if yours does, trying to remove the behavior without understanding what created it can leave you fighting the same pattern over and over again.

What if the behavior is doing a job?

This is one of the questions I ask myself when I’m working with a woman who tells me she can’t stop a particular craving.

What is this behavior doing for her?

Because behaviors that repeat usually aren’t random.

Something about them is working.

Maybe the food is comforting her.

Maybe it helps her come down after holding herself together all day.

Maybe it gives her a moment where nobody needs anything from her.

Maybe it helps her numb something she doesn’t want to feel.

Maybe it creates a sense of safety.

Maybe it gives her a form of pleasure she has been denying herself everywhere else.

Maybe it became a way to belong.

Maybe it became a way to turn inward when nobody came.

And this is where I think the language of “self-sabotage” can sometimes be too simplistic.

We look at the behavior and say:

“Why am I doing this to myself?”

But what if some part of you is actually trying to do something for you?

What if the behavior once protected you?

What if it helped you survive something emotionally that you didn’t yet have another way to handle?

That doesn’t mean you have to keep the behavior.

Quite the opposite.

It means you may finally have a way to understand it.

And understanding changes the conversation.

The women I work with aren’t lacking information

This is something I see again and again.

The women who come to me are often incredibly knowledgeable.

Some are healers.

Some have studied the body.

Some have spent years learning about trauma, wellness, nutrition, meditation or personal growth.

They know what they’re supposed to do.

They understand that vegetables are good for them.

They know they should move their bodies.

They know eating a bag of chips at 10 p.m. isn’t going to make them feel better the next morning.

And yet knowing isn’t always enough.

That’s what interests me.

Because if knowledge were enough, none of us would ever repeat a behavior we had already decided we wanted to change.

We wouldn’t stay in relationships we know aren’t right for us.

We wouldn’t keep saying yes when everything inside us is saying no.

We wouldn’t keep reaching for the food we don’t actually want.

We wouldn’t keep abandoning ourselves in the same familiar ways.

The conscious mind can know one thing while something deeper is operating from another set of instructions.

And that’s where I became much more interested in the unconscious mind.

I stopped asking women to fight the pattern

For a long time, our culture has taught women to fight themselves.

Fight the craving.

Fight the weight.

Fight the appetite.

Fight the emotion.

Fight the body.

Control yourself.

Be good.

Try harder.

But what if fighting isn’t the answer?

What if curiosity is?

Instead of:

How do I stop this?

What if we ask:

Why is this here?

Instead of:

Why can’t I control myself?

What if we ask:

What is this behavior helping me do?

Instead of:

How do I get rid of this craving?

What if we ask:

What is this craving trying to tell me?

Those are very different questions.

And sometimes a better question is the beginning of a completely different kind of change.

This is where my work begins

When a woman comes to me with a craving, I’m not interested in simply telling her to stop eating the food.

I want to understand the pattern underneath it.

I’ve spent years working with hypnosis, somatic practices, breathwork, yoga, and deeper forms of emotional and unconscious exploration.

And what I’ve learned through that work is that sometimes the most important moment isn’t when the woman stops craving the food.

It’s when she suddenly understands why she needed it.

That moment can be surprisingly powerful.

A woman may come in saying:

“I don’t understand why I keep doing this.”

And then something clicks.

She remembers something.

She recognizes a feeling.

She sees a connection.

She realizes the behavior had a purpose.

And suddenly she isn’t looking at herself with the same judgment.

She’s looking at herself with understanding.

That is the aha I’m interested in.

Because once you can see the pattern differently, you have a different place from which to change it.

Your craving may be telling you something you haven’t heard yet

Maybe it’s telling you that you’re exhausted.

Maybe you’re lonely.

Maybe you’re angry.

Maybe you’ve spent your entire life being the strong one and food is the only place you let yourself receive comfort.

Maybe you’re still protecting a much younger version of yourself.

Maybe you’ve learned to turn inward because at some point, turning toward someone else didn’t feel safe.

Maybe you have spent so much time taking care of everyone else that the craving is one of the only moments that belongs entirely to you.

Or maybe your story is completely different.

That’s the point.

It’s yours to discover.

I don’t want to tell you what your craving means.

I want you to become curious enough to find out.

And this is where I think we have been solving the wrong problem

If you have spent years trying to eliminate a craving without ever understanding what created it, you may have been trying to remove the messenger instead of listening to the message.

That doesn’t mean you need to dig endlessly into your past.

It doesn’t mean you need to blame your childhood.

It doesn’t mean every behavior has one neat explanation.

It means there may be more information available to you than you’ve been taught to look for.

Your body.

Your emotions.

Your patterns.

Your memories.

Your reactions.

Your cravings.

All of them can become places of inquiry.

And sometimes, when you finally understand what a pattern was trying to accomplish for you, you no longer have to fight it with the same force.

You can begin to change the relationship.

What if you could finally understand your own craving?

This is why I created the Craving Root Mapper.

I’m not going to walk you through the whole process here.

I actually don’t want to.

Because I want you to experience the discovery for yourself.

I’ve created a short, approximately 20-minute training inside my SKOOL community where I explain how I think about cravings and why I believe so many women have been trying to solve the wrong problem.

Then you’ll have the opportunity to use the Craving Root Mapper with your own craving.

The one you keep thinking about.

The one that shows up at night.

The one you’ve promised yourself you won’t eat anymore.

The one that seems to have more power over you than it should.

You don’t need another lecture about willpower.

You don’t need another diet rule.

You don’t need to beat yourself up one more time.

You may simply need to understand what is underneath it.

Watch the 20-minute training.

Then map your craving.

That’s where I’d start.

Because your craving may not be the enemy.

It may be information.

And you may be surprised by what it’s been trying to tell you.

Love,

Monica

Maybe it started when you were very young.

Maybe there was no one to catch you.

No one to hold you.

No one to caress you when you cried alone in an empty crib or an empty room.

Maybe the adults in your life were struggling themselves, too overwhelmed, too disconnected, too lost in their own survival to find their way to yours.

And so you learned, without anyone ever sitting you down and telling you, that your emotions were too much.

Too inconvenient.

Too messy.

Maybe you watched your mother hold everything together. Maybe you watched your father do the same. And without a single word being spoken, you learned that strength meant silence.

That keeping it together was how you earned love.

That falling apart was not an option.

I want to dedicate this episode to my daughter, Gabbie.

Because five to ten years ago, she told me something I wasn't ready to hear.

She told me that she always watched me hold it together — and that, sadly, without me ever meaning to, she learned to hold it together too.

She learned that strength meant silence.

And baby girl — if you're listening to this —

That is not true.

It was never true.

I am here for you.

I see you.

I witness you.

And I am so deeply sorry it took me this long to say it out loud.

I love you.

So many of us learned to cry quietly.

And if someone did come, it was only to tell us to stop.

That it wasn't the right time.

That they were too busy.

That we were too much.

So we stopped.

And somewhere along the way, stopping became our superpower.

Not feeling became our superpower.

We became the reliable one. The capable one. The good one. The one who handles everything. The woman who shows up — no matter what.

But here is what I know now after years of going underneath the patterns with hundreds of women...

That strength was never your personality.

It was your protection.

And the little girl who built it deserves to finally be witnessed.

That is what this episode is about.

In this episode:

• Why so many high-achieving women learned that strength meant silence

• How that survival adaptation lives in the body decades later

• Why understanding your patterns is not the same as releasing them

• What actually shifts when the original wound is finally witnessed

Ready to find out where this lives in YOUR body? DM Monica the word STRONG on Instagram @themonicabravo to ask about 1:1 Deep Healing Shamanic Hypnosis Sessions.

Not back to the same person exactly, though I’ve done that too. Back to the same feeling. The same dynamic. The same quiet erosion of myself inside a connection that I knew, somewhere deep in my gut, was already complete.

I kept thinking the problem was me. That I wasn’t healed enough. Wasn’t strong enough. Hadn’t done enough therapy, enough breathwork, enough journaling, enough of whatever it is we tell women to do when they can’t seem to move on.

But that wasn’t it.

There is a memory I write about in my book, Soul Retrieval, that I have never fully spoken about in public until now.

After my divorce, I built walls around my heart. I was teaching yoga, coaching others, practicing everything I knew, and some mornings I would wake up and feel the weight of something I could not name. A heaviness. A shield that protected me but also kept me from truly living. My energy was low. I felt disconnected from myself. And I could not figure out why, because on the outside, I was doing everything right.

I sought out a healer. We journeyed together to the beach in my mind, the place that always felt like home to me. And there, we went back to a memory I had long buried. A dinner table. My father’s sudden anger. A plate shattering. The screaming. Him leaving. And I, the little girl at that table, was going very quiet inside myself for the first time.

In that moment, without words, I made a contract. Stay small. Stay quiet. Don’t let people in too far. It’s not safe to be fully seen.

That contract protected me then. It was exactly what I needed at six years old.

But I was still running it at thirty-five.

And the relationships I kept ending up in, the ones where I could feel myself shrinking, where I kept abandoning myself to maintain the peace, those were not random. They were my nervous system doing exactly what it had been programmed to do. Honoring a contract I never consciously chose and never consciously ended.

That is what I went into my book to say. And it is what I am saying here, more plainly, for you today.

You are not broken. You are running an old contract.

What nobody told me, and what I now know from years of doing this work inside my own body and inside sessions with hundreds of women, is that there are energetic contracts still running underneath the grief. Cords still attached. Oaths and vows still active in the subconscious, below the level where logic can reach.

And you cannot willpower your way out of an unfinished contract.

I also know this: soul fragments leave when we are not safe enough to stay whole. Parts of us dissociate, retreat, go quiet, to protect us from pain we were not yet equipped to hold. And then we spend years, sometimes decades, wondering why we feel incomplete. Why we keep attracting the same thing. Why the healing never seems to fully land.

It is because part of you is still back there, at that dinner table, or in that relationship, or in that friendship that ended too fast, still holding the original wound that created the contract in the first place.

Soul retrieval is how we go get her.

And soul contract release is how we finally close the door on what she was protecting herself from.

I recorded a full episode about this on Rapid Manifestation Today this week, and I want you to listen to it, especially if you:

Keep returning to the same relationship, friendship, or pattern even when you know better

Feel like you’ve done the work, and something is still stuck

Have been told your connection is a twin flame, and something about that feels more like a trap than a gift

Are carrying grief that won’t move, no matter how much healing you do

Felt something in your body just now reading about that dinner table, because some part of you recognized the moment your own contract was made

In my first soul retrieval session, I lay in a room feeling excited and a little scared. The healer guided me into a relaxed state, and I found myself on my beach. He invited me to meet the younger version of myself. The little girl who felt scared and alone. She was sitting by the shore, hugging her knees.

I sat beside her. We talked without words. I told her about the woman she would become. The strength. The love. The children. The work. The safety she had built.

She looked up, eyes filled with something I can only describe as relief. I asked her, “Are you ready to come home?” She nodded. And when we merged, a warmth spread through me that filled spaces that had been empty for a very long time.

When I opened my eyes, tears of gratitude welled up in me. Not because the past had changed. But because I had finally brought love to the parts of myself that needed it most.

That is what is available to you.

Not fixing. Not forcing. Completion.

Soul contracts are real. They have a beginning, a purpose, and an ending. And when they complete, when you finally release the cords, the oaths, the vows, what women feel is not emptiness.

It is space. It is breath. It is themselves, coming home.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: [LINK]

And because I want this work to be in your hands right now, this week only I am offering 25% off two of my most powerful courses:

Stop Sabotage Mini Course: This is for the man or woman who keeps getting in her own way. The loop that lives in your subconscious, the belief that quietly sabotages every good thing, often formed in a moment exactly like the one I described above. We go in, and we clear it. Use code [SUMMER25] → [LINK]

Aligned Abundance Course: This is where we rewire your relationship with money, flow, and what you believe you are allowed to receive. Because many financial blocks are also contracts. Often ones that sound like “stay small” or “don’t take up too much space” or “who do you think you are.” Use code [SUMMER25] → [LINK]

Both are recorded sessions. The kind that people email me about days later saying something shifted that they could not shift in years of talk therapy. Because we are not talking about it. We are going underneath it.

The shield around your heart made sense once.

You do not have to keep honoring it.

You deserve to stop the loop. Not someday. Now.

With love, Monica 🌿

P.S. If this brought something up for you and you want to go deeper one-on-one, you can book a private 90-minute session with me at themonicabravo.com. We will clear the cords, release the contracts, and go get the parts of you that have been waiting to come home.

If you haven't listened to last week's episode on grief and the nervous system, go there first, as this is the next layer.

Monica breaks down:

• What soul contracts actually are and why they complete (not fail)

• Why some contracts break instead of completing cleanly, and what that does to your nervous system

• The truth about twin flame dynamics and why they can trap you in harmful loops

• The energetic, spiritual, and subconscious layers Monica clears in her sessions

• Why willpower will never be enough, and what actually stops the loop

This episode is for the woman who knows better and keeps going back anyway. You are not broken. You are in an incomplete contract — and there is a way through.

Stop Sabotage Mini Course — Release the subconscious loops keeping you stuck in self-sabotage. Use code [SUMMER25] at checkout.

Aligned Abundance Course — Tap into your financial flow and energetic alignment. Use code [SUMMER25] at checkout.

Both available at themonicabravo.com

Book a 1:1 Session with Monica: Ready to clear the cords, oaths, and vows keeping you in the loop? Book a private 90-minute session at themonicabravo.com

I remember that about 15 years ago, I was a yoga teacher leading packed classes, helping hundreds of people find peace in their bodies and inside, I felt completely empty.

Not depressed in a way anyone could see. Not falling apart. Functioning perfectly, actually.

Running marathons. Building a career. Showing up for everyone who needed me.

But there was a void I couldn’t explain. A disconnection from myself, and I felt like parts of me had quietly gone somewhere I couldn’t reach. I was stretching myself thin, carrying unprocessed emotions, and doing what so many high-achieving women do beautifully: pushing through.

Until my body finally said NO.

One day, I literally could not sit. The pain in my back was so severe that running, which was my escape, my daily ritual, my way of outrunning the feelings, stopped completely. My chiropractor looked at me with kind eyes and said something I wasn’t ready to hear:

“Monica, your pain isn’t just physical. It’s emotional. You’re holding onto anger, disappointment, and sadness. To heal your body, you need to heal your heart.”

I nodded. And then I didn’t listen for another year.

Because that’s what we do, isn’t it?

I had young kids, and I didn’t have the time to heal.

We intellectually understand that something is wrong. We read the books. We do the yoga. We meditate. We journal. We invest in the courses. We know the language of healing.

And yet something keeps pulling us back to the same loop.

The same patterns. The same emotional weight. The same ceiling we can’t seem to break through in our businesses, our bodies, our relationships.

Here’s what I know now after years of deep investigation, lived experience, and working with hundreds of women through shamanic hypnosis, somatic breathwork, and soul retrieval:

The loop is not a willpower problem. It is not a mindset problem. It is not even a healing problem.

It is a pattern that was wired into your nervous system and subconscious mind before you were eight years old, and it has been running quietly in the background of every decision, every craving, every breakup, and every moment of self-sabotage ever since.

Your unconscious knows exactly where it’s hidden.

And that is precisely where we need to go.

I spent years trying to heal the symptoms. The anxiety. The weight my body held onto no matter what I did. The way I kept giving everything to everyone else, only to wake up depleted. The cravings had nothing to do with food.

What finally changed everything wasn’t another tool or technique.

It was going to the root.

Through soul retrieval, shamanic hypnosis, and somatic breathwork, what I now call The Bravo Bliss Method, I began reclaiming the parts of myself that had fragmented under the weight of old beliefs and stored trauma. Parts that had been left for very good reasons. Parts that were waiting to come home.

And when they did, everything shifted. Not just emotionally. In my body. In my business. In how I showed up in the world.

If you’re reading this and something in you is saying, “she’s talking about me,” she is.

This Substack is for the woman who has done so much work and still feels the loop.

The entrepreneur who is brilliant on the outside and exhausted on the inside.

The healer who knows how to hold space for everyone except herself.

The woman whose body has been trying to tell her something for years.

You are not broken. You are not behind. You have not failed at healing.

You simply haven’t gone underneath it yet.

That’s what we do here.

Welcome to The Bravo Bliss Method.

With love, Monica

P.S. If you’re ready to stop managing the pattern and finally find where it started, I work with women 1:1 through Deep Healing Shamanic Hypnosis sessions. You can learn more and book a session [here]. And if you’re a healer or coach who wants to learn this method and bring it to your clients, my certification opens in June. More details coming soon.

Stay busy. Stay productive. Get distracted.

Nobody tells you that grief is not proof something went wrong.

Nobody tells you that what feels like heartbreak is your nervous system going through actual physiological withdrawal — real, not metaphorical.

And nobody tells you that the love you are grieving was never outside of you.

It was always yours.

In this raw and personal episode — recorded outside in her backyard from the middle of an experience, not the other side of it — Monica Bravo shares what she is learning inside grief right now. She reads words from her meditation teacher Peter that stopped her completely. She explains what is actually happening in your body during loss. And she guides you through a short somatic breathing practice you can use anywhere when the wave arrives.

This is not about fixing grief or rushing through it.

This is about understanding what grief actually is — and why feeling it fully is one of the most courageous things you can do.

If you are moving through heartbreak, divorce, a friendship ending, the loss of a version of yourself, children growing up, or parents aging — this episode was made for you.

What you will hear in this episode:

Why grief is not proof something went wrong — it is proof your heart opened

What meditation teacher said about heartbreak and surrender that changed everything

Why the love did not leave with the person — it was always inside you

The real science of what happens in your nervous system during loss

Why not feeling is not healing — and what our culture gets wrong about grief

How grief becomes soul retrieval and brings pieces of you back

A guided somatic practice for when the wave arrives

Monica Bravo is a Shamanic Hypnotherapist, Somatic Practitioner, and creator of the Bravo Bliss Method. She is the author of Soul Retrieval: A Journey Out of Depression Into Wholeness. Everything she teaches she has lived first.

Find Monica on Instagram @themonicabravo or at themonicabravo.com.

If this episode touched you — share it with one woman in your life who is moving through loss right now. Not to fix her. Just so she knows she is not alone.

IF THIS EPISODE TOUCHED YOU:

Share it with one woman in your life who is moving through grief right now. Not to fix her. Just so she knows she is not alone.

CONNECT WITH MONICA:

• Soul Retrieval book: Amazon

• themonicabravo.com

• Stop Self Sabatoage Course: Get it HERE