Remembering Home: A Conversation with Indra Jones on Belonging and Remembering Who We Are

Hello, and welcome back to Magic in the Muck, a soul's compass for change. I'm Jennifer Nagel, and I'm so glad that you're here today. Over the past several months, we have been exploring many different pathways of healing and growth and transformation, and there's one theme that seems to keep emerging, and that is beneath all the roles that we carry, and the responsibilities, and the expectations that we live with, and the stories that we've come to believe about ourselves, there's something deeper and something steady that's never left us. Today's conversation feels like it's going to be another doorway into that exploration, and I'm so delighted to welcome my guest, Indra Jones. Indra is a trauma-informed therapist whose work integrates EFT, matrix reimprinting, and shamanic energy medicine, but more than any particular approach, what drew me to invite her onto the podcast was her presence. Indra and I first connected through the Thrive community, where we're both mentors, and recently I had the opportunity to participate in one of her visioning gatherings, and I was so moved, not only by the experience itself, but also by her grounded presence and gentle wisdom and spaciousness that Indra brings to the people that she serves. My sense is that both Indra and I, even though I've only met her a few times, but I just feel that we're both exploring something remarkably similar, and that is what it means to remember who we are underneath the conditioning and the responsibilities and the many roles that we carry. So, let's see where today's conversation goes. I have a feeling it's going to become an exploration of something that's much more universal. What does it really mean to come home to ourselves and to remember who we are? So, Indra, thank you so much for being here, and welcome.

Thank you so much. What a beautiful, beautiful introduction. And welcome into your space, The Magic in the Muck, which is a title, a name that I just love so much. As soon as you shared that with me when we met on Thrive, I was intrigued and sort of felt at home with you and felt a kind of knowingness and remembering this with you, which is amazing, right? Because we're on other sides of the world, we met three times on Zoom, and I agree, I think we are on a similar path to see how we as humans ourselves can remember and reconnect more with why we're here, who we are, what we're meant to be doing, what we can do for not only ourselves but each other, that and the world. So, yeah, it's a real honor to be here. And thank you for inviting me on.

Thank you so much, Indra. You know, I'm curious. When you hear the phrase "coming home to yourself, what does that mean to you?

Gosh, it's the story of so many lives, isn't it? I think for me, if I give you a bit of a background on the arc of my life so far, born in Malaysia to an Indian mother and English father, so already quite magical that we ended up in a jungle with the indigenous people of Malaysia, but my memories of that time are being so at home, being never alone, because there were such trees and such animals and such fruits, just there, there were sisters and aunties and grandmas, and I don't to this day know who was actually a blood relative and who was the lady next door or the lady in the next tree house, or so, there was this sense of family, community, safety, belonging, and never any sense of lack or otherness or aloneness. I would just leave, leave the house in the morning and just go, you know, because there was always someone to sit with or watch or chat to, so those are my first memories of my first few years, and then at the age of seven, really, because my parents felt those should, what they should actually, we should send the children. To a proper school, we should really settle somewhere and buy a house. I should start a business. My father felt that he should start a dental practice instead of being, you know, an amazing dentist for the indigenous people. So it was a time that we all felt as disconnection and during a time where it was very much about earning money, very much about judging people for where they came from and how much they had, and it was also very rare, so it went from a time, isn't it, yeah, yeah, shift from being in the jungle and then village and community, and then all of a sudden the rigidity of the shoulds, yeah, yeah, yes, and there was in that, there was, you should go home, you know, so I was very confused, I said, Why are people spitting on us, why are people saying that this person isn't my dad because he's white? Why are people saying this person isn't my mum because she's black? So I just didn't understand.

I kept explaining what these are, my parents, and we come from Malaysia. It was a feeling in me that I had lost home, and I could see in my parents that they had lost something in the connection of having community, having a place where they weren't judged for what they had financially, or and then there was, you know, the next few years were really about seeing my mother fade and fall into a very deep depression, I think she felt very, very homesick, and my father felt very, very homesick too. For this place we had made our home, so I always had that centered me, of like, I want to go home. Didn't really know that that was the place, but I felt I'd lost something in me. And for the next years, I, I tried to find that in work, in doing in busyness, and well, I will make my own way back by doing and striving, and you recognize that I

I do so well, and then the sense of, like, oh, it's so exhausting that doing, doing, doing, yeah, yeah,

Like, do more than it will change.

Yes

If I genuine have that

difference.

Yes,

One thing I am curious about is that, you know, many of the beliefs and the patterns that we carry with us weren't ours to begin with. I hear that in, in the work, in the experience that I've had with you, like one of the themes that you're running through your work is around how a lot of what we carry were never ours to begin with. How do we start to recognize what belongs to us or what's simply been inherited, or absorbed, or conditioned over time. \

That's such a beautiful and very rich question, and I think that's something I've been fascinated by, and that is very, very central to the work that I do, whether that's one to one or in groups, because we get very narrowed down, don't mean well, I am Indra, and I do this, and I am funny, and I am clever, or I am not funny, and I'm not clever, and I'm not enough, through that kind of narrowed, I am. We actually end up much more at that. I am not stoned. My identity equally with, well, you know, I'm not clever because I didn't go to this school because my father didn't earn enough money, and my granddad beat him. So we're taught that our ancestral and our ancestors, what we carry ancestrally is often the curses, the weight, right? But actually, how many ancestor ancestors do we all have? Hundreds and hundreds and 1000s, 1000s, 1000s, and we don't go back in awareness, we go back to our grandparents, maybe our great great grandparents before that, we don't know who they were, what they did, what gifts they had, what wisdoms they had were cut off from the blessings of our ancestors. Yes, and so when we come out of that I am that kind of narrow view of it's me at the center of the world that I'm not connected to before or after, we're cutting ourselves off, aren't we, from all of those gifts and blessings, all of the support that we have, and for me that goes forwards as well, you know. We, we are the descendants, right? So our ancestors dreamed of us, prayed for us, and perhaps, perhaps prayed for a time where we would have enough food and water, and a space to sit to share like this, in order to heal, you know, in order to do this healing for them,

I just had a full body response to that. Yeah,

Yeah, and the same for our descendants. We are their ancestors, they are healing us, so we feel the ripples of what they're gifting to us, and already then we're not alone, we're at the center of a spiral, a spiral forwards in time, backwards in time, as well as out to each other, you know, from you to me, from Canada, England, from the beginning of time

That really expands who we are, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, and then straight away, for me anyway, straight away I'm more

And that we're not alone,

You're not alone, we're really not alone, and that really has taken me practice and consistent remembering and talking to my ancestors and talking to trees and talking to rocks and kind of saying maybe I am completely crazy and maybe I'm gonna go with this body ripple and stay a while to feel a connection, to feel a connection to everything we're gifted on this planet, to the water, to the fires, to the air that blows our hair, you know, it's that's home, and I think for many years I thought that I was searching for a place that was home, you know, was it to go back to Malaysia or back to India, where my mother came from, and actually I found myself at home in the Egyptian desert. Wow, Mount Sinai, you know, the Sahara, Glastonbury, these places that I have no knowledgeable connection to are my homes, and I think we all have soul homes, spiritual land homes, the homes that grew us, the land that grew us. Yeah,

So your whole understanding of home has taken a completely from when you were younger, looking for where is home and what is home to a felt sense of home,

Exactly. That I felt, can I be my own home?

Can I be my own home?

Yeah, and can I be when I'm not feeling at home, when I have a night where I don't sleep, and I've, you know, been scrolling or emailing, or when I'm not feeling fully connected, and can find home by asking Mother Earth, by feeling my 10 toes on the ground, and asking, asking for her to hold me as my home, can I ask my grandmothers to put their hands on my shoulders and really support me, help me to feel them, so that it can be home in their

When you're accompanying people on their own on their journeys, how do you support in reconnecting and finding that sense of home, even for the listeners right now who can be listening to this? Is there one small or big,

So often it's a simple place, your left hand over your heart center, your right hand over your beautiful belly, your root, and feeling your feet connecting with the ground, and just taking it. Deep delicious belly breath, and then it may be to drop your attention, then to simply the touch of your hand on your chest, perhaps to feel the warmth of your fingertips touching your skin and and to drop your attention even more into the space between the palm of your hand and your skin and just dive into that space and to feel the sense of that space is there are there walls in that space? Are there thoughts in that space? Does that space have a color, a sound? Could you drop your eyes into that space? Could those eyes be the eyes of your heart, your own wise heart? Yeah. and could you look from here, and how might it be if we all look from here? If we met each other from the eyes at heart, if we saw ourselves from these eyes, how might your day be different. How might this next five minutes be different, and often it's simply that, like, to to just allow space,

Isn't that? I mean, that's so beautiful, because even in these few minutes it's that the presence, the intentional presence in the pause, and the intentional way of connecting inward, and such a beautiful, so beautiful Indra, you know, with the eyes looking in, you know, I had the privilege of participating in your visioning session last weekend, where you invited us to connect with our future selves, and it was so meaningful for me. What do you, what do you believe we're connecting with when we access that inner, wiser future version of ourselves.

I'm glad you were there, and it's lovely that you enjoyed it. It's connecting with the possibilities, isn't it? I believe in co-creation. I believe we have so much more power than we understand, and I don't mean power over, I mean power within, power to love, power to bring change, power to co-create the world we want to see, and part of that process of visioning forward of opening up your wildest imagination, like what? It can you sense, see, think, imagine the possibility that you could go and meet your most aligned, most wise, most radiant, most confident, most courageous you? Like that you already exist, right? You remember her from the last time she was courageous and brilliant, so we have different possibilities. In five minutes you could be crossing and tired, or in five minutes you could be laughing and peaceful. So visioning is is directing the attention to that future, the future you, that is how you want to feel. How do you want to be in order to bring into the world your beautiful radiance and your gifts? So, through turning the attention and the imagination and opening to the possibility that time is all connected forwards and backwards, you, we can go forwards to meet the future self that can help us to get there, because when we're in the day and the news is saying, you know, climate change, and we're really, really haven't got long, and this war, and this could turn into this, and airplanes may not fly, you know, we're hearing a lot of what could not happen, that's good. So, what's the other way? How can we, how can we say, okay, this is happening? How could we move through this? It's through connection, through togetherness, through courage, through speaking up, through, you know, not giving up. Yeah, I think that's key than not giving up, and also it's much lighter, isn't it? Yeah, so much lighter, yeah, yeah, because those of us who are. Of sensitives or deep thinkers or carers are like, oh, I've got this client to

care for, and this mother, and this child, and this husband or wife or girlfriend, and myself, and then I've got to pay the bills, and there's, you know, there's a lot we, we are carrying that can quite quickly feel just will not fun, not joyful, not connecting. It makes you want to stay at home and draw the curtains, and we get stuck in that question. How will I want change, but how? How can little old me that feels exhausted possibly you? you know, meet someone in Canada and do a podcast at times, right?

How I ask a how question, or maybe it's not a how question, maybe it's a what question. What in your journey led, how what has helped you connect with this,

Trying not to

Say how now about your journey?

What is it about my journey,

But maybe it is.. I don't know if it's a how question, but it is. I mean, you've had such a remarkable journey, and yeah, and where, where did you learn? How did you learn about this way of connecting and remembering who we are, that we're not alone? Yeah, it was envisioning yourself, I mean, that adding that to our, we have our ancestors and our future, like future self, all these beautiful, these beautiful resources for us to connect with

Resources, guides, supplieds,

yeah,

friends, team, you know, any word you want to use, they're all good, right,

They're all good, I know. I refer to my spiritual team, and now I've added my, my future self was never part of my spiritual team before, and now I have this lovely.. oh, it's wonderful to connect with that. Where did you learn this in drag? Yes, that's what I'm asking.

Well, visioning. visioning, I think I learned before I trained as a shamanic energy medicine practitioner, so it was something that I was already trained as a therapist, and my therapist said, and it was while I had cancer, was very, very ill, and I was being told there's no hope, the 99% this is our diagnosis. 99% likely that you won't live another year. And I was like, well, that's pretty dire. Okay, I'll just go home with that then. If that, you know, there was nothing that the medical team that I had could, could give me to give some hope of a future, but that was taken away, and I think my therapist said something like, Why don't you, since you're lying in bed and you can't do anything else, why don't you play around and see if you can, you know, just imagine a cancer cell and imagine some sunshine coming in or something, and I remember thinking I'm not sure I want to do that, but it ignited something in me of okay, well, what can I do while I'm lying here, and so I started to see, imagine, feel myself walking again. I started to see myself making it to the park and putting my face up to the sunshine. Then I started to see myself walking to the park, putting my face to the sunshine, and being able to sit with a friend and have a cup of coffee, you know, these things I was at home going, I can't do this because I'm too ill, I can't do this because I'm too in pain, I won't be able to, I can't, what it all of it started to become, I see myself, see myself there, and, and that did begin to happen, and it became a practice. It's something I do every morning. Three gratitudes for one minute, I will fill up with a time that I can remember feeling hugely grateful for. I'll see it, remember it, feel it, hear it, and then I go to the future, and I vision, you know, I'm on top of a mountain with a group of amazing people, and I can remember, I can remember visioning myself on the top of a mountain before I could walk again,

So beautifu

And when I met that exact mountain three years ago, and climbed it, gosh, I was in tears, in tears. So, visioning, you know, we really can co-create,

We really can, you know, this just.. I'm really touched by your story. It's remarkably similar to when my husband was diagnosed with cancer 1819 had 19 years ago, also with very minimal chance of living, and, and for him it was, I was, I was in my second trimester with our first child. We were going to be parents, and for his visioning, it was like, I'm going to be a father, and it was visioning like being a father. And he told the doctor, he said, I know that I know the odds, you know, the odds that you're giving me aren't good, but if I survive this, my odds are 100% so I don't need, like, he really set the doctor straight and said no doom and gloom, but that visioning, the imagining, and you know, 19 years later he's a, he continues to be a father to our 19 year old daughter, who is so that, wow, and I share that again for the listeners to hear that this isn't just a one off story, that visioning really does have an impact. I believe strongly in outcomes.

I 100% agree, and it's beautiful that you shared that you've had that experience with your husband. I've had that experience myself, I've seen it with so many clients, you know. Sometimes I think it's being given the gift of how about seeing if we can believe something, because when you're ill or sick or depressed or disconnected or angry, it's like, I don't know how to not be this. I am just ill. I just have a headache. I can't think that way. People say to me, I don't, I don't, I can't, I don't have an imagination. I can't do that. Well, we all can. I think we're told imagination is, is seeing. Even the word visioning is quite like, oh, that sounds a bit like you need a gift to do that. No, because we all can, you know, a smell reminds us of something when sound ignites something, so we have it's how to use all of our senses.

Yeah,

And that's part of visioning. What might you smell like, sound like, where might it be? You know, for your husband, it was being a father. He may not have actually seen what he looked like,

Right?

Right, it was that in his soul, knowing,

Yeah,

He was meant to be a father, mm. amazing,

You know, and then the other piece of that is touching on the, like, the role of nature and Mother Earth, and I'm curious, for you, what role has what role has nature played for you in helping you remember who you are, and on your healing journey,

Absolutely huge, central, magnificent, magical, awe-inspiring part, absolutely awe-inspiring, and I think again, being taken out of that doing life for the time that I was, and being forced or invited to slow down that much, it was an initiation, it was, it was, it was vision cresting, it was sitting out, is what was called in the shamanic practice, where you can sit so still on a patch of grass or on a rock or by a lake, and you're not doing it to do anything, you're not there because you're going to read a book or call a friend or breathe for five minutes, you're there because you're absolutely dropping beneath any of the thoughts, any of the feelings, and meeting that piece of earth and the medicines or the messages it can bring. What's coming to me now is this is this invitation that I had. This was during my shamanic training, which was to meet a rock, and I remember thinking, okay, I'm not sure, I'm not sure I believe rocks are beings, but you know, I'm practicing opening my imagination and my awareness, and the days. Exercise was to go and find a rock that you could drape yourself over and stay there for eight hours, eight hours. Wow. And so, first of all, I was like, well, I'm going to try and find a rock that's comfortable, because lots of the rocks were spiky and uncomfortable, or had a sharp bit on, or a leaf sticking out, or, you know, and I could see all of the people I was training with doing a similar thing, and eventually we all settled, and I was on this very large rock with some uncomfortable bits, and I lay there, and I went through the first hour or so thinking, well, this is just slightly boring, and this is slightly crazy, and then I asked, feel the heart of that rock, and I asked the rock to hold me more softly, and I asked to feel the pulsing of the rock's veins, and that rock, that shaggy, moss-covered, slightly priggly rock became this body became this soft, pulsating being wise ancient one, and that's when I

understood that the rocks are our ancestors, we go way back before we can even imagine what we are as humans, or you know, they are beings, and I think just the invitation to meet that, to meet nature in that way doesn't have to be eight hours, but to put your feet on the grass and just really, what does that feel like? What resource can you receive from that? I was listening to beautiful episode that you kissed, did I think it was your last episode about what is rest and what is resourcing, we love that question, because we don't know how to resource and we don't really know how to rest here when we put our feet up and think, what should I do in my rest? I should open a book, I should watch a show, I watch a show or catch up with, you know, my mum, and we're doing while resting, and people say, Well, what are you going to do on holiday? But what I've really, really learned, feel, know, believe, and have been gifted by Mother Earth is how she's resourcing us every second of every day, you know. We have an energy system called an earth star, which is three feet below our bodies. So we have, we have our own energy system that is in the earth that is being filled up with every breath, every moment with energy that comes in through our core, not into our sunstar. So we're being grounded up, grounded down, and resourced in every moment. How often do we stop to receive that, really notice it

Well e ven you describing it allows me to pause and really connect with that in this moment as you share this with the listeners too, and bring it into into their awareness. And thank you,

And it's also, you know, it's resourcing, and it's also a letting go, because we're always in that kind of giving and receiving, and so how much we can just allow to let go into Mother Earth, knowing it will be transmuted back into balance and harmony, so it's not that we're dumping on how it's that we can just release

Exactly,

And in releasing and making space we can restore

Exactly. Yes,

yeah,

Yeah. So, Indra, if there's one, if there's a gentle reminder that you hope that every listener carried away with from our conversation, what would that be?

Then it would be to enjoy co-creating, enjoy remembering the possibilities, imagining and asking, oh asking for support, you know, and if, if he, if you don't know what that is, if you're standing talking to a tree, feeling a bit of an idiot, so what? Talk to the tree and ask for support, exactly. I love that. Yeah, you know, ask, ask your ancestors. Is light a candle and say, you know, spirit team, spirit guides, whoever you are, support me. This is what I want to do. This is what my life is. Come on, let's go, let's go, team, let's go, team. I love that. Yeah, and for listeners who want to find you, I know you're doing a retreat coming up, aren't you, with Lizzie Allen. Yeah, and that's about that. Yes, Lizzie, Lizzie Allen is someone I met through Thrive as well. She's been a Canadian. She's a wonderful, beautiful human being, and we met much like you and I did. We met and just became fast friends, connecting into that belief that we can co-create, that we can fill ourselves up with light, and then spread light to each other. So one of the things we've been doing for a year is visioning every Monday with a group of people, and we began to vision a gathering, an in-person gathering, where we can be on the earth in a really beautiful nature space, be together and really sit with what is arising in the heart and have space to heal and release and restore and to connect with the guides, to connect with your own guides, so there's no experience needed for anybody that wants to come, but it is an invitation to to all sensitive souls, deep thinkers, carers that are looking for some more resource and support for themselves, you know, that weren't this kind of connection to the earth, to spirit guides. There'll be ceremony, there'll be lake swimming. Where is it taking place? It's taking place in this absolutely beautiful, beautiful nature reserve called 42 acres, which is in Somerset, England. Absolutely beautiful. They grow their

own food, five-star meals. It's, it's, it's going to be a real treat. And it's coming up soon. It's at the end of this month, is it in July? Yes, there's a few places left, so if anyone is interested, just follow the links, that will be..

I will definitely put information in the show notes. And how else might listeners find you if they'd like to connect with you?

Well, you can find me on my Instagram, which is Indra dot Jones. My website's currently being updated, but that will, that will be coming soon. You can find me on Thrive dot one, where I do monthly visioning, and we'll also be offering some kind of deep dive courses coming up in fall, I think.

Oh, good.

So, yes, and you can email me. I'm always up for meeting in person. I offer free discovery calls, because I think it's the most beautiful way to connect, isn't it? They're just neat.

It really is when you say in person, do online, okay? For those of us who can't fly off to, yeah, England,

I count this. Yeah, yeah, I do work remotely online, and I mean that exactly, that we consume and just chat one to one,

Beautiful. I'll put all this information in the show notes for the listeners, and I just really want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this beautiful conversation that we had today.

Oh, thank you, Jennifer, it's been really, really such a pleasure, real pleasure, and an honor, and a delight, and such a pleasure to meet a sister.

Lovely. Thank you.