Interview transcript

Transcription of Interview with Carol Allen.

Alison Lee: Alright I’ve already been laughing too much. Getting Ready to talk to my next guest. Carol Allen who is a Vedic did I say the right? No, Vedic astrologer and relationship coach. Her site is “Love is in the stars”. You’re going to love what she has to say. Carol thank you so much for laughing and chatting with me already today.

Carol Allen: Ah. Thank you Alison. I’m thrilled to be here.

Alison: Well first tell us what that is, Vedic astrologer and is there a little history? What is that? And is that different than like astrologer.

Carol: Yes. So what I didn’t realize until I started studying astrology is that pretty much every great civilization since the dawn of time has had its own system. So there is Mayan astrology which we all heard about in 2012 when the word was supposed to end. There is Celtic astrology, there is Chinese of course which we all look at when we go to Chinese restaurants and [inaudible] and our animal symbol. And there’s this ancient system from India called Vedic astrology and its incredible and I met a man at a party a million years ago who gave me a reading and it absolutely blew my mind. And what’s wild is it’s been used for really they don’t even know how long, centuries at least possibly millennia to arrange marriages. And it’s still to this day in India if you’re Hindu you don’t get married typically without the thumbs up of your village astrologer or family astrologer or local astrologer. And so the techniques for relationships are astonishing. So I combine it with relationship coaching and it’s just really, really powerful. It helps people understand themselves and their partners. And more so the dynamic of the relationship itself. Because relationships are a system created between 2 people. And you might be great and they might be great but maybe the system is broken. And no matter how hard you try there’s always a misfire or a short circuit and there are techniques in this system that absolutely show exactly what’s going on. So its super fun.

Alison: Well what’s an example of a system like not working between 2 people?

Carol: Well one of the things that I do because it’s so fascinating is I look a lot at the charts of celebrities because their lives become archival for all of our lives and you know it’s said that 1 in 3 Americans and people in the UK are obsessed with celebrities. So you know we can learn so much from the lives of people in the media. And so I’ll look at the charts of you know a couple. Recently there was a huge announcement of a very famous couple, Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband are.

Alison: Getting divorced or separated.

Carol: Consciously uncoupling, yes. And so when you look at the main relationship techniques that this system does to arranged marriages its says that they would have a challenge, a feeling connected over the long haul and that actually, that Gwyneth would feel like the leader in the relationship and that she would feel that he’s not really there for her. Now it’s really interesting because of course none of us really knows what went on with them, you know. Whenever I do, I write newsletters about this stuff. And whenever I do a newsletter on a couple like this, I’ll spend a couple of days reading everything I can get my hands on. So you know lots of reports said she was the one that kept hurting him and then it was all her idea and he was devastated and then other reports said he was the one that didn’t want the marriage anymore. That she was still holding on for dear life and so who knows? We don’t know but there is a technique between them that is considered not a great idea and it’s not recommended to marry if you have this misfire. And Charles and Diana have the same one, Reese Witherspoon and her first husband had the same one. Brad and Jen had the same one. And it leads to, the ancient books from the system literally say, this leads to misery. And it’s really interesting because even if a couple has all kinds of other great stuff which all the couples I just mentioned except for pretty much Charles and Diana, they all had other great where they really were friends, really laughed a lot probably. You know had a lot of chemistry, la, la la and so can be really confusing and really mystifying. But it makes it hard to join their lives fully. And you know another great example.

Alison: Can you coach pass that though before you give us another one? I mean.

Carol: You know it depends. It depends on what it is and it depends on the severity of it. The one where the woman is the leader can work if the woman’s own nature is more masculine which you can also see in a chart. You can see traits of being proactive, positive, independent, aggressive, assertive, direct, blunt, straightforward. These are all under the umbrella of masculine traits. And then of course the feminine traits which are things like you know yielding, receptive, passive, patience, not proactive more waiting for things to happen than making things happen, more in touch with feelings than ideas etcetera. So if the woman’s nature is more that and the man’s nature is more feminine then it can be actually less challenging for them. And I’ve done this technique now, I’ve had a private practice for 20 years, 23 and I’ve had to. So I’ve literally talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients where I’ll say “Wow you know. Do you notice when the woman’s the leader, everything is her idea.” She tends to be inspired first in the relationship. So she’s the one that wants to go steady first, wants to get engaged first, wants to live together first, wants to get married first, wants to have a baby first, wants to buy the house first. And I’ll say to a woman “Do you notice everything is your idea?” And I’ve never had a woman where this was the case not know it and not feel it. And they’ll last. And if they are more masculine they’ll be like “Oh yeah. I don’t might. No problem. Like no biggie.” But if they are more feminine and sensitive then the challenge is women tend to feel unloved when everything is their idea. They tend to feel like why am I the one always10 steps ahead? Why am I the one always persuading you? You must not feel what I feel. You must not be thinking of me. And so what I love, to answer your question like can you coach past this, taking the pain out of that can be to healing right there. I’ll say to a client; this has nothing to do with how he feels about you. You have the faster process. You’re ready before him. I mean, you just laughed. We’ve all been in relationships where we felt like we were ready first, consistently.

Alison: Well I’m the rabbit and the turtle or whatever that was so I know that and so I think you know; I’m laughing because I can relate to that. You know. But that’s such a good point of what you said.

Carol: And its really common for the rabbit and the turtle to get together. I mean.

Alison: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s hard otherwise with 2 rabbits, there whoo!

Carol: Yeah. They don’t have time to meet each other. Two turtles don’t get up the courage to meet each other.

Alison: No.

Carol: Yeah. So that’s one example. I mean there’s a million example. But that’s a very common one and that one isn’t a deal breaker. There are combinations that can be more deal breakers between people. Like for example, you know recently a couple years ago Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, that was a big story. And again none of us really knows what really went on there. But the rumor we heard again and again was that he had all the power, that he ran the show and she was this passive little mouse that followed the lion and did whatever he wanted and dropped all her friends and became a scientologist and didn’t take movie parts that he didn’t want her take. And that she really, her power and her voice were completely usurped in the relationship. So there’s, in this technique there’s something you look at that says balance of power. Who has more power? So you know I took a look and low and behold he had way more gun power and what you want is you want to be equals. No surprise you know in a healthy partnership you want to have an equal balance of power and they absolutely didn’t. And it’s so interesting, in relationships like that research has shown 95% of the time where there is a loin and a mouse, the mouse leaves the lion and the lion is stunned. And that’s what she did.

Alison: Oh yeah

Carol: You have to and you have to slink away in the middle of the night because there’s no negotiating when there’s no balance of power. You have to pull the rug out and run for your life. And that one’s a deal breaker.

Alison: Yeah. I was just going to say that’s done. Yeah. That doesn’t seem possible to do that. Well when people come to you for coaching in relationships, is it usually when there’re like the last straw? Or is it that, you know. What’s the popular sort of scenario?

Carol: Obviously in any kind of coaching, you’re going to hear from the most upset. So you are going to hear from people whose hair is the most on fire. But because I’ve done it for so long there’s always of course a spectrum. There’s people who come just for curiosity, there’s people who had a friend do and it just sounded like fun. But you know there is an awful lot of trying to calm people down who are on the edge of the cliff, you know. Call them back from the edge, just come back.

Alison: Come back and join us. Well now talk to us. Because I know when we were just warming up before that you were going to talk about the highly sensitive person and I know I’m not saying the right.

Carol: Well you know, your listeners are probably in their studios right now painting and sculpting and doing all sorts of fabulous creative projects and my experience creative people are often highly sensitive people. And in my work, people that are spiritual are usually the most drawn to the kind of work that I do. They’re the most open to something as weird as Indian astrology from ancient India.

Alison: Well give an example of what highly sensitive is because I think when you are in the highly sensitive group its only what you know. So anything out of that doesn’t even make sense. So what would be like a little description of highly sensitive contrast to not highly sensitive in a situation.

Carol: So what’s amazing with astrology you can see personality, you can see temperament, you can see talents. interest, you know. So artists you can always tell charts of artist. You can always tell writers from painters. It’s so fun. And as a whole, as a group they all tend to have also the trait of high sensitivity. And in psychology, I didn’t know this until not too long ago. there’s a term that’s to describe or to categorize this group of people and its highly sensitive people. And it’s found that 15 to 20 percent of the population, the general population are highly sensitive and so little thumbnails get you. They literally have stronger senses. So they’re more sensitive to temperature, they feel things more intensely. They feel pain more intensely, they hear sounds more loudly, they see sights more strongly, they smell smells more powerfully. Its literally like, we all get our eyes and ears tested. Nobody tests to see if we hear and see too well.

Alison: It’s a good point.

Carol: And so highly sensitive people have this intensity of feelings both physically and emotionally and so. You know I was sharing with you, there’s a beautiful site called highlysensitivepeople.com and theirs a quiz there and there’s a beautiful except by the great write Pearl S Buck and she says “To a creative, a loss is a tragedy, a friend is a lover and a lover is a god.” It’s actually longer than that but she’s basically saying you know; life is on 11 to quote Spinal Tap. Everything is ramped up, everything is dialled up. And what I have found because in my work, probably 80% of who takes my seminars and who comes to me are highly sensitive, not 20%. It’s like way disproportionate. They have a lot unique gifts and challenges in relationships. What I find is that they tend to hide out. They become the best kept secret in town. When they do sort of put their toe in the water of dating and meeting people, they take it all so hard. They’ll say to me “Oh. I internet dated is was devastating.” You know they use very dramatic language. And so I’m expecting some huge story like a guy with an axe, you know putting them in his trunk. And I’m like what happened? And they’ll say men 10 years older than me wrote to me. And I’m like, “Ok you know that happens to everyone right? You know that means you were internet dating right?” But they take it all so personally and you know I don’t mean to make fun because my favorite people are like this.

Alison: Oh, me too. I fall into this category, so I understand this, you know.

Carol: The best people in the world fall into this category and the greatest thinkers, creators they are both teachers, artists. it’s like thank god for this part of the population. And it’s not easy to be this way and it’s not easy to try to open yourself up to love and rejection. And so many women that show up to my door and they are beautiful and successful and funny and heart centred. They have so much to offer and they dated somebody for maybe 3 months who hurt them 7 years ago and they haven’t dated since because they are still smarting. So that’s the thing that breaks my heart and that’s where when I meet somebody highly sensitive I go, “Oh no!” Because they have such a challenge with my area of expertise. When they read online like oh that they should just date more and make more of an effort, it’s very hard for them to do what’s not hard for the rest of the world to do.

Alison: You know it’s so good to expose that because I remember hearing about this and if you grow up and you are an artist and stuff, I would hear things like “You’re overly sensitive.” And I remember thinking, OK that must be bad. And then finally.

Carol: Yeah. You go through life with everyone telling you not to be who you are and that.

Alison: And that you are overly sensitive. That was the common thing. All you people who are hearing that right now are going “Yes. I hate that!” And it’s like no you’re sensitive, I mean I guess if you put it on a meter but there’s no such thing as overly sensitive.

Carol: Well the implication is that you’ve a choice. So just stop choosing to be that way. Like cut it out. Knock it off. As though, it’s like saying to somebody with blue eyes stop having blue eyes. Change your eye color. Just decide to have brown eyes.