Ann Hince | Tapping Through My Childhood Trauma and Sensing My Way To Peace

We encounter moments that shape our journey in profound ways. Ann Hince's story is a testament to such transformation—a narrative woven with threads of grief, self-awareness, and, ultimately, healing.

In this week's episode, I had the privilege of hearing from Ann Hince, an inspiring author, speaker, and spiritual guide. She opened up about her path to healing after enduring profound trauma and grief.

Key Points Discussed:

• Ann's Transformation: After releasing deep-seated grief from childhood traumas—including finding her mother dead—Ann experienced physical changes in her body.
• Childhood Trauma: Ann opens up about the multiple layers of grief stemming from being born with a physical condition, given up for adoption into a family already dealing with loss, experiencing a house fire, attending boarding school under challenging circumstances, dealing with alcoholic parents, and ultimately losing her mother at age 19.
• Discovery Journey: The pivotal moment came when Ann realized that past traumas were affecting her present life. This epiphany occurred during an altercation, leaving her mind spinning uncontrollably for three days.
• Healing Techniques:
  • Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT): Introduced by a holistic physician who helped reduce stress associated with traumatic memories.
  • Feeling Your Feelings: A method where Ann learned to focus on physical sensations related to emotions until they released.
• Spirituality & Self-Awareness:
• Developing self-awareness through healing practices contributed to exploring spirituality.
• The realization that we are not our bodies and that there is a distinction between body and soul/spirit sparked further interest in spiritual texts.

The connection between inner tranquility and physical health couldn't be more evident in Ann’s experience: releasing emotional tension nurtured mental well-being. It led to astonishing physical changes—including growing taller!

Her story underscores how self-awareness can catalyze healing across all dimensions—emotional freedom isn’t just about feeling better mentally; it can manifest physically, too.

RESOURCES:

• Website | EFT/Tapping Cheat Sheet, Artwork, and More!
• Ann on YouTube
• Human Design
• Sadhguru | Inner Engineering

CONNECT:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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Transcript

Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to Grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Ann Hince, she is an author, a public speaker, and a spiritual teacher. She shares the story of how she has shifted her skull bones and grown three quarters of an inch as a result of her search for inner peace. And she wants you to know that if she has done it, you can too. Thank you so much for being here. I'm definitely intrigued about your bio, and I'm sure anyone listening is kinda tilted their head to the side and probably as curious themselves. So let's dig right into the meat and potatoes of what brings you to grieving voices.

Ann Hince: Okay. Thanks for having me, Victoria. It's great to be here. Yes, I think I would be surprised if I heard that too, like, twenty years ago because I didn't know what I could do now was possible. But it started by releasing the trauma and releasing the grief from all my childhood traumas, including finding my mother dead on the bathroom floor when I was nineteen. So that's where it started, but I just my my self awareness deepened as I went through the process of releasing all that trauma all that burden that I've been carrying and I just kept going deeper and deeper to a place where now I can put my awareness inside the connective tissue, inside my goal and I can release tension stored in there and I can actually hear and feel the release, you know, sounds It's like a chiropractor making adjustments or it sounds like old fabric ripping that I'm releasing the tension in the connective tissue. So it's allowed me to kind of adjust my body or realign my body. I just didn't know this was something that was possible. And it all started with the grief.

Victoria Volk: Let's rewind the clock to your childhood before you found your mother what were the grief experiences that kind of made that loss of your mother the pinnacle?

Ann Hince: Well, there were multiple. I mean, it started off with actually my birth because I was born with my right foot up against my right chin. So I had Oh. Kind of physical therapy for the first six weeks of my life and after to that, after my foot was back to normal, somewhat, I was handed over for adoption. And I was handed over for adoption into a family that had already suffered a loss because they had well multiple losses actually. But they had adopted a little boy, so they had, you know, my adopted brother who was two years older than me. But then they adopted another little girl. And they had her for quite a while. I don't know how long, but in back in England at that point, the birth mother could change her mind up to six months. And the birth mother did change her mind.
So they had to hand that little girl back to her mother, and I was the replacement in the family for that loss. So Like

Victoria Volk: like, we often replace puppies. Right? When we lose when, you know, a dog dies, well, we'll just go get get a new one. Right? So you were the Right placement.

Ann Hince: Yeah. And I think, you know, after a loss like that, you know, as a mother, I think you don't tend to get as connected to the replacement child just in case the birth mother does that again. Right? So again after six months, my birth mother did not change her mind, so they kept me. And then we started traveling around the world because my dad worked for an international company.
So we moved to Barbados and then to Sierra Leone in West Africa. And while we were there, we had a house fire. And I was the one who woke up and found the flames coming through my veteran Law, so I was one alerted everyone. And as part of the process, I actually went to the top of the stairs. I was about three or four maybe.

Victoria Volk: Oh my gosh.

Ann Hince: To the top of the stairs and called down to my dad who was in the kitchen and I said there's a fire in my bedroom. And my dad said, no, I don't believe you or there can't be. No, there can't be. You know, which which as a child, you know, as an adult, it sounds like, well, that's kind of a reasonable thing to say. But as a child, that starts you not believing yourself. Right? Something I said which was clearly true. Right? No child would make something like that up. Was disbelieved by someone who's supposed to be the person who protects you. So, you know, that started its whole. You know, roll a case for it its own. But then, you know, life carried on. So we moved from there. We moved to Hong Kong. And when I was in Hong Kong, at the age of nine, I was sent to boarding school in England. And I was sent to my brother's boarding school, which was a boys boarding school. So for my first year, I was the only girlboarder at this boys boarding school.

Victoria Volk: And they allowed it? Like, that was allowed?

Ann Hince: They did. They had Day Girls who would come, you know, for lessons during the day and then go home. And my bedroom was in Stick Bay. That was my my bedroom. And I was teased mercilessly by those boys.
It was it was horrific. It was so so so bad. So, you know, that was that was a big part of that trauma. And then in my teenage years, both my parents became alcoholics. So life at home was hell in my mind.
That's what I call it. It's like it's just hell. And then my mother got cancer. We didn't talk about it. We talked about it one time.
When we found out she had cancer, we found out it was too late to do anything. So we never talked about it again, which is looking back, it's very odd, but that is the way my family behaved. We just didn't talk about anything deep at all. And then I woke up one morning when I was nineteen and found her dead on the bathroom floor. So at that point, I was the only one in the house, my brother, who was two years old at twenty one was at his girlfriend's house, and my dad was working in Saudi Arabia, and we were back in England.
So I was the only one in the house and I had to tell everyone else what had happened and it was, yeah, it was pretty bad.

Victoria Volk: You know, in all the years, I've been doing this podcast and all of the examples of grief that I've had. There have been house fires mentioned, and But it's like, let this be a reminder to you listening of The grief that people experience is so vast and you just never know what people have experienced in their lives at first glance. And it just sounds like your entire childhood was just a cesspool of grief and trauma. And so I'm so sorry for you that that was your experience. And I don't say that to, like, poor you pity as pity, but it's, like, I firmly believe because my childhood wasn't the best either, but, you know, I'm not comparing and we don't wanna compare. But I think those experience are what create who we who we become. And we have a lot of say and choice in that. And so I commend you for sitting here and having this conversation with me to getting to this place. That you have despite all of those experiences of

Ann Hince: Yeah. I mean, the only thing right? If people hear my like, the outside of my childhood, oh, I lived in Barbados, and my staff worker, and Hong Kong, and it sounds exciting, it sounds it sounds amazing. But once you, you know, you open the lid and you go underneath, it's like, yeah, there's a lot of things that really weren't that great. So, absolutely, it made me who I am today, but I didn't realize until I was in my late thirties. That it was affecting me, right, until I had two young boys. Mhmm. And the boys who were growing up right, and they were coming towards that age that those boys at my boarding school were. I was scared of boys at the age of nine three thirty seen because of what they had done to me, and I didn't want to be afraid of my sons. So I knew I knew I had to change because it was getting too close.

Victoria Volk: Well, until our children have a way of kind of opening up our wounds and insecurities and all of those things that we've suppressed.

Ann Hince: Absolutely. Yes. That's part of the benefits of parenthood for sure. Yes, they they trigger us in so many ways.

Victoria Volk: What was your experience? Because I'm curious of because I imagine growing up, did you how did you know that you were adopted from a very young age?

Ann Hince: I didn't know until I was thirteen.

Victoria Volk: Oh my gosh. At boarding school.

Ann Hince: And I met my mother when I was seventeen. My birth mother, she's still alive actually in New Zealand, and my adopted mother died when I was nineteen. So, yes, it was kind of like this two year overlap where I had two mothers and then kind of reverted back to my birth month. It was a very strange story.

Victoria Volk: Okay. So can you share a little bit about how that experience went of finding out that you were adopted?

Ann Hince: It was pretty wild. My mind my mind just started to play with all these different possibilities. You know, what could have life be like? Because it was not very much fun in that moment, Mario, as hell. And I just just imagining all these different possibilities. It it was yeah. It was it was difficult because I wanted to know more. And and thankfully, I didn't have to wait that long. I only had to wait four years to find out that actually my birth mother was pretty normal, which is really nice to know. So, yeah, it was tricky. It was tricky for both of us because my brother didn't know either, and he was fifteen at the time.

Victoria Volk: How did you find out? Like, I'm curious, like, did you ask questions?

Ann Hince: No. We were moving back to the same place that we had lived like a little tiny village that we had lived when we'd been adopted, and my mother was afraid that someone would say something. Mhmm. So, yeah, it makes you wonder if that hadn't happened when or whether they would have told us at all because, you know, we didn't didn't look that like, but we didn't look that different. We all had kind of the same color here, you know.
So it wasn't it wasn't totally obvious.

Victoria Volk: That wasn't something you had questioned, you know, like

Ann Hince: I had

Victoria Volk: Did you

Ann Hince: get a little bit only because I was pretty nosy and it looked through a lot of my mother's papers. And I thought I had found something that said my brother was adopted. So then I thought, okay. Well, he's adopted, but I'm not. So did he count? I think he had seen the same paper, so he had questioned it. Yes. And we were so I mean, physically, we didn't look that different, but, you know, emotionally, intellectually, we were very different.

Victoria Volk: And knowing then at such a influential age. Right? Thirteen. It's preteen. And having been at boarding school and all of your wife experience up to that point, which I imagine and moving so much. Right? Like, it's really difficult to create connections with people. And then to find out you're adopted and it's like, does that make you question your connection with your parents, and then you're half, you know, your brother. And so what role did connection play as you went into your young adulthood and eventually meeting someone and having your own children, I'm just curious how that path kind of evolved.

Ann Hince: Yeah. There wasn't a lot of collect connection, and you're right, when you move so much, especially back in those days without cell phones and social media, Right? You'd make friends in one place and then you'd move to another place and and they were gone and you had to start all over again. So I I did not have much connection with my parents. My dad is now what she'd call a narcissist.
I mean, it was all about him. He was always right. She couldn't question him. And then he was an alcoholic. He would just drink all the time. So there was no connection there and and not really with my mother either. So yeah, there wasn't really much connection with anyone. For some reason, I kinda lucked on my husband, I it was some connection that just happened. I kind of knew that he was for me and and That's when I was eighteen, he actually met my mother before she died, so and we're still together. So, yeah, I'm not quite sure how that connection happened and how it stayed? I think it was kind of meant to be.

Victoria Volk: What was your spiritual life like at that point?

Ann Hince: It wasn't any. There there was nothing. I mean, I questioned things. You know, I'd been brought up in the church. She'd been like, I hate it. It was part of the boarding school life. Right? You had to go to church on the weekends. So religion was out. I actually I hated it. And you know, I I questioned spirituality. I I thought about things possibly deeper than some other people that I know, but it was just it was not really a part of my life. I was a software engineer, you know. I wear a look at ballet. Yes. But I was an also also an artist. I kind of had more of a balance, I think, than a lot of people. But Yeah. Nothing really hit home until my late thirties. I think I was just supposed to go through all that and and just be scared all the time and have PTSD and and just had to go through that until I had this experience that kind of woke me up. Do you remember the moment? Yeah. It was kind of a three day moment. It was it was what I call a business altercation with two other mothers at my boys and these mothers were not like me, but I was the scared mother on the inside always and they were self confident, self assured authority type women in my mind So in some senses a little bit like my dad, but they told me I'd done something wrong, and I could not stop my mind spinning. It just went over and over and over. Like, everything I'd said, everything I'd done, everything Ned said, all the things I could have done differently, just all these different permutations and I couldn't sleep for three days. And it was the end of that period of time that I realized, okay, first of all, this is not normal. Most people would not react of this intensely to something that really wasn't a big deal. I also realized it felt a little bit like how I would react in childhood when my dad would tell me I'd done something wrong. So that was the first little opening, little inkling that maybe something for my childhood was still affecting me. And so that that was the beginning. That's what made me start looking.

Victoria Volk: What was the first thing you uncovered for yourself?

Ann Hince: Well, I didn't really know what to do. Right? I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what. So I happened to go to a doctor's appointment in that time frame. I don't remember why I went to him.
It was nothing to do with emotions or memories or anything like that. But he recognized I was more stressed than I should. Have been. And he was a holistic physician. Right? So he had more tools in his toolbox than most doctors do. And he recognized it was mine. I was more stressed, so he asked me on a scale of zero three what my stress level was. Right? Thinking it shouldn't be that high because I was a stay at home mother with two healthy young boys.
You know? Parenthood, it's difficult but it shouldn't have been that stressful. And I said it was an eight out of ten, and then he asked me why. And it was that question that made me realize oh, it was finally my mother dead on the bathroom floor when I was nineteen because the tears from that event were still just under the surface all these years later because I had not dealt with it. So he happened to know this technique that's called EFT. Short for emotional freedom technique. It's also called tapping. Are you familiar with it?

Victoria Volk: I am.

Ann Hince: Okay. So he tapped with me. In that office there for about fifteen minutes talking through finding my mother on the bathroom floor and and not having talked about the cancer and all those different aspects. And I walked away from that appointment being able to tell the story in her in my mind for the first time ever. Without the emotions there, And that's when I realized, oh, we just hold those emotions and those memories physically in our body. And we can let them go and that was that was eye opening for me and that was that was the first step on my journey. So

Victoria Volk: What was the next step?

Ann Hince: Well, I went home that day and I went online and I learned everything I could about EFT. Because as I said, I was a software engineer, I like to know things worked before I spent a lot of time invested in it. And it was really nice to know the guy who developed it, Gary Craig. He was a chemical engineer, so that gave me more confidence. And and he gave it away for free. So anyone could go online and learn about it, and that was that was just amazing to me. So I learned everything I could about it, but I wanted to try it out. I didn't necessarily believe that that fifteen minutes with this doctor was really, you know, maybe it was a fluke. I wanted to know for sure that it worked. So at the time, I had a seventeen year old cat at home. His kidneys were starting to fail. And we've been told we had to give them a daily saline shot, like an injection of saline solution, and our hated needles. I'd had so many from living all over the world. I just was petrified of them. So the first time I gave them that shot, my hand was shaking so badly. I didn't wanna have to do it every day. It's just it it wasn't happen. So I thought, okay. Well, let me try out this technique. I've learned about it. Let me actually put in an action. So I did. I tapped about every aspect of it, which is something you do with the f t. So I tapped about my hand shaking. I tapped about my fear of hurting the cat. And I talked about all the memories from all the injections I'd had in different places around the world, you know, ones in boarding school in the different countries. And the next day, when I gave him the shot, the needle just slid right in. All that fear that it'd be living inside of me the day before had totally disappeared. And that's when I realized, that's the freedom I want. I I wanna get beyond all of those emotions and I wanna just feel that piece that I felt at that moment. Mhmm. So that's when I started using EFT every day. I started noticing when I was emotional during the day. And then I would tap and bring myself back to peace. And, you know, the days went by and I started to notice that I was feeling more peaceful. But I wanted it to go faster. I wanted it more and I wanted it faster. So what I did is I wrote down every emotional memory I could think of from my childhood. Like, so all the traumas, the big traumas, the little traumas, the stings, my dad would say, you know, like, you know, the the one we they used back in those days, you know, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Ann Hince: Or

Victoria Volk: my aunt still used that.

Ann Hince: Oh, shame. My aunt used to say shame on you. You know, that was one of her favorite sayings. And so I would I tap through all of those one each night for about an hour to an hour and a half each night, so because I was determined to change. And just things started changing more rapidly.
I was just becoming less reactionary, which was really nice. So I was more peaceful And when I was more peaceful, my household was more peaceful, which was really, really nice. So that that's kind of the first step on my journey.

Victoria Volk: I can see that there was ripples in what you were learning and uncovering for yourself and just how you were changing, your environment was changing, how did that evolve over time then?

Ann Hince: Well, we hear that phrasing, you know, you gotta change yourself and when yourself when you change yourself, your world changes. So, I mean, that is absolutely true. So as as time went by, my boys became more peaceful than they hadn't been totally not peaceful before, but But because I was so reactionary, right, I would react to them, and then they would react to me reacting. Right? So if I'm peaceful, and I don't react to something that happens, then they don't have to react to that. So they can feel free to be their true selves. And it it just changes the whole dynamic of the family and it's really nice to experience. But, you know, talk to people sometimes, they don't believe that that's the case. So you actually have to walk down that path somewhat. Right? So you have to realize, you have to be able to look back and see where you came from. To see where you are now. So you have some perspective. And then you could realize that it's true, that it's really the case So if you haven't done any inner work before, you might not believe that things change. You actually have to do some of the work to to really believe that it does work.

Victoria Volk: How did that experience and learning EFT change your spirituality then? Because where you had none and you didn't really have a faith practice and things like that, what how did that start to change?

Ann Hince: That kind of grew over time. As I what I realized the Feet is doing is opening up the subconscious mind, which is really our body. It's stored in our body. And as our subconscious mind opens, it's kind of one in the same thing. Our self awareness deepens. So when I started this journey, I had so many barriers around me like emotional barriers, protective barriers, shields, that I really didn't know how I felt. I didn't have any self awareness. And as I did more, more tapping, more, more eFT, I became aware of my emotions, right, because I'd been checking on myself multiple times a day. And underneath that, the next layer of self awareness is the physical sensations underneath the emotions. So for example, if we're feeling frustration, right, that's just the words. But what we're really describing is tension that we're holding in our body in a certain place. That we give the name frustration to. Right? So this is kind of reversing that process. So when I'm feeling frustrated rated, I can feel tension in in the bottom of my ribcades in the in the solar plexus area. So I became aware at that level And then I started to use a different technique. I call it feeling your feelings, but I could only do it because I was aware of those sensations. And I had honed my ability to focus so I could focus on those sensations and just keep my focus there until it released. And so this is kind of the word I talk about as the second step on my journey. It's it's just a deeper level of self awareness. And and I will get back to the spirituality as this is a this is a process. As I said, I had I have this engineering mind, so you know, I had to experience it myself myself first in order to put words to it and really understand what was happening. So I would do that more and more instead of doing EFT. If I felt myself feeling some kind of emotion, I would just stop and feel those emotions. Feel those sensations and allow them to release. It felt actually really good. And so I would lay on the sofa and I would bring, at this point, collective from us to mine because I'd worked through my childhood. So I'd bring things like nine eleven to my right. We all had our own individual experience of that collective trauma. So I would feel all those sensations and allow them to release. And at some point, I became able to put my awareness inside my body after the tension had released. So imagine if you have a toothache or stomachache. Right? You can feel where that coming from. Right? You can tell where the pain is coming from. Well, once the pain has released, right, once the toothache or the stomachache gets gone, you can't put your awareness back on it. Because there's nothing calling your attention to it anymore. I could. I could feel inside my body.
And what I realized I was doing eventually was, how do I put it? Well, it's what I think of it is the original meaning of the term insight. Right? It's inward sight or inside sight. And It was not me. Right? There were two parts of me at that point. There was my body and there was part of me that was looking inside. So I couldn't be my body if I could also be focusing at one particular place inside my body. Right? So that's when I realized we are two separate entities with the body and the soul. And there's something we tune into as well, which I believe is you know, spirit. It's whatever we want to call it, but we're tuning into something using our instrument of the body. So that's when I really started to become more interested in, you know, the spirituality aspect of it because I knew without a doubt that I was not my body, you know, which is something you hear a lot. But when you actually know it, you know, you really know it because it can't be anything else, then, you know, becomes more interesting. So I started, you know, I started reading more spiritual texts, trying to relate my experience with what some of those spiritual texts to talk about. And I found that I could relate to some of it. So, yeah, it's been an interesting journey.

Victoria Volk: And what that brings to my mind is the thought of consciousness and the controversy or the not controversy. I don't even know how to say it. But, like, there's

Ann Hince: I think they call it heart problem?

Victoria Volk: Well, there's people that believe that, you know, either you believe that consciousness continues after you die, after you are no longer. In the body. Right? Like your soul is not in the body. And that's what it comes that's what comes to mind when you when I hear you talking is that it's you're connecting with your higher consciousness. It's a connection of yeah. It it's being an observer a neutral observer of the body. Right.

Ann Hince: So let me go a little further into this third step. The third step is when I was put my put my awareness inside my body. And it it was really wild when it started happening because I I knew it felt different. I knew it was different from what I was doing before, but I'd also never heard anyone talk about it. So it was just an louratory investigation for me. It was kind of fun, actually. And so I would put my focus inside my body and I would feel I would move my awareness around and I would find a place with tension, which I could tell was different from a place with no tension. So I find a place with tension I'd focus on it and allow it to release, which is exactly the same thing I was doing with the feeling the feelings. Right? I was feeling the sensation and allowing them to release. And even with EFT, we're feeling what the words bring up as we tap. And we're focusing on it and we're allowing to release. So I'm just working at a deeper level of self awareness. So I would do this in my torso and it took me many, many months and then I was able to put my awareness inside my head, which for me was eye opening because the pain and the tension inside my left cheek was almost unbearable. I could only focus on it for like a second at a time because it was just so intense. And what I realized, it had been there my whole life. And it was attached through the connective tissue to my right foot, which had been up against my chin when I was born. Right? So the fascia or the connective tissue had not been released. The tension in it had not been released, and it was still tense all the way up through my right leg, over to the left side of my body, into my left cheek. And through tension in my the right of my neck. So I realized at that point how everything is so connected. Our body is so connected.

Victoria Volk: And for and for people listening because they might be confused now because you talked about your left foot, but then or your right foot, but then it was the left side. So Just explain that a little bit. I know what it means, but can you just elaborate for people who who may be hearing that and be like, well, how does that? You would think it'd be on the same side. So can you just explain that a little bit.

Ann Hince: Right. Well, the the connective tissue, you know, if you look online, the connective tissue just is connected throughout a whole body and kind of through sheets. If you think of pulling the skin off a piece of chicken breast. It's that that kind of watery slimy tissue between that holds the two together. We have that tissue throughout our bodies. It's all connected. That's why it's called connected tissue. So it's connected throughout our body. So from my left cheek, it's connected all the way across my body, down through my right leg. But it but it could potentially also be my left leg all the way up through my my left cheek.
It it just depends where that tension has been held in the body and how it's been held. So so it's really I mean, it was really interesting, right, to know that, okay, if I'm working on my right foot, I don't actually necessarily have to work on my right foot. Right? Working on this pain in my left cheek is also working on my right foot because it's releasing the tension all the way through the body. So I started doing that. I started focusing on that pain in my left cheek. Just longer and longer periods of time, just holding my awareness on it, allowing it to release over and over again, and that's why one day I actually heard and felt this this release of the the connective tissue. It was actually kinda scary at the time because it it felt like something ripping. And that she's thought what I was doing because I was afraid I was hurting myself. I had to do some research and realize, okay, it's just a connection in the and it's an adhesion in the connected tissue, and it's okay.
So I kept doing that and over and over again. I feel releases in different places and and actually actually felt my skull bones relaxed at some point. Now I hadn't known they weren't relaxed. Until they relax. Right? Then I could feel, okay, they clearly had been tense before, and they needed to relax. And that's when I had x rays taken two years ago, and I should see the changes that had happened, that my eye sockets had aligned, my jaw had aligned, my neck was straighter than it had ever been in my life. But I also at that point, because I was working in my head, I worked out, well, if I'm looking at somewhere inside my head, where am I looking from? Right? Because I could tell I was looking from somewhere to somewhere else.
Like, I try to work it out. Like, you know, my eyes above or below where I'm looking from, you know, where that doesn't feel like it's in the middle of my head. So I I kinda worked out the general area and it's kind of between my eyes. Right? If you're looking from the front, it's between my eyes kind of in the between the eyebrows, maybe a little bit lower than that.

Victoria Volk: Third eye chakra?

Ann Hince: Maybe the crown chakra, maybe a little bit lower. It's not it's not the pineal gland. It's not that far back. So what I think it is, and this is based on looking at a lot of symbology in different places. But I believe it is the sphenoid bone, the body of the sphenoid bone. That I'm looking from and that I can relate that to many different things that I've read in in different spiritual texts. And and so that's why I believe the soul resides So that's when I think, like, during your deaf experiences and such when you go through a dark tunnel, I think you're coming out of the the sphenoid sinus effect in effect through the through the nose and out through, you know, through the body. But I haven't been able to really determine that. I've I've talked to some people who've had near death experiences and some people who've been on Ayahuasca and such things to try and relate that ex my belief with their experience and some kind of relate to that and some don't necessarily. So, yeah, it's it's interesting.

Victoria Volk: Well, I would say it is what you believe it is.

Ann Hince: Well, maybe, but I I'm not you know, that's another part of this journey. It's like some people I'm gonna talk to some people. They they think I'm going into my imagination to experience this. I'm not I'm out of my thinking mind. I'm in my feeling right. So I'm actually feeling things inside I'm feeling inside my bones. I'm feeling inside, you know, my palate, inside my neck, bones, inside my tooth roots. I can actually feel them move. Right? So I'm not it's not what I believe it is.
It's it's what it actually is. Right? That's and that's hard for me to say because I know people don't necessarily believe that, but it's a very different experience to actually know versus believe.

Victoria Volk: Versus Our beliefs create a reality.

Ann Hince: Right. But I'm not sure I ever believed, you know, in in my

Victoria Volk: Oh, I get what you're saying. Six years. I get what you're saying.

Ann Hince: Believe where it's coming from.

Victoria Volk: True. I get what you're saying. It sounds like, too, what you're experiencing is something that people could experience. I've I've experience really deep, profound meditations, visualizations, meditations, and I think we can have that a similar experience if we allow ourselves to completely relax to that place of where we connect to our higher consciousness and let our higher consciousness give us whatever it is that we are needing to receive messages or visions or insights. Right? To allow our third eye to really open and receive. And how I've personally seen my third eye in visualizations or meditations. It's almost like I'm, like, in a UFO, in a way where it's And I'm seeing my life and seeing me on, like, a TV screen, except it's like, it it's an all white in glass front. And it's almost like, I'm just like on this observation deck or, you know, like, as, you know, you can see, like, air traffic controllers, you know, kind of like that, you know, where you're just observing yourself in that our minds can take us to incredible places and are very powerful. And I think as as our minds and brains change with trauma.
Right? We can create those new connections and new experiences within the mind that can transform and transcend the experiences we feel within our bodies. And that really sounds like that's it's almost like you've little by little have incrementally leveled up on a cellular level.

Ann Hince: Yeah. Well, Kundalini with energy was part of that journey too. So, yeah, definitely think myself's changed. So what you're talking about there is is kind of it is kind of in the mind. Right? You're talking about going into deep. Meditational visualizations where you're kind of seeing things in the minds. Yeah. It's really hard to put these things in word. Right? I don't do that anymore. I go into the body. So I'm not creating things. In my thinking mind or even another part of the mind that does visualization. I'm actually going into the body and sensing tension.

Victoria Volk: No. But we can do that. That's what I'm saying. Like, we can we can become so relaxed that we can almost and I think that experience would be different in need for every individual, but how I would feel how I would see myself or how how I've done that myself is like, seeing myself as like this miniature version of myself going into the body. Right? Like, that's what I mean. It's like you're And then it's like you're seeing with your third eye in this visualization, you're seeing what the body wants to communicate to I I think there's so many ways we can do this. You know what I mean?

Ann Hince: I'm saying that this is different from that. Yeah. Right? Because I I've experienced that before. You're still creating an image.
This is sensing. Right? If you put your awareness on your right knee right now. Right? And just feel how does your right knee feel. When you do that and the moment you do that, you're sensing. You're not putting a picture to it, so you might put words to it eventually, but before you do that, there's a moment where you're just feeling it. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And that's why I'm saying I think I'm fast forwarding this the the real a little bit because I think it's how you get there. Right? It's like how you can get to that deep sensing. And if you have to use visualization to get you can use visualization or deep meditation to get to that deep sensing. If there's, you know, like, He broke his back.

Ann Hince: Joe Despenza.

Victoria Volk: Yes. Thank you. Joe Despenza. You know, I've I've used his meditations and is deep sensing, but there's also visualization that's incorporated into that. And that's what I'm saying. Like, to get the a lot of people need help getting to deep to get to the point where they're deeply relaxed. I still don't

Ann Hince: do it until I had released a lot of the outer layers of trauma, right, the outer emotions.

Victoria Volk: And that's where you're saying EFT was a huge

Ann Hince: Right. That was the first part. It took all those big layers away, all those emotions that allowed me to sense deeper. And then feeling the feelings just allowed me to sense deeper. So I think what Joe Despensa, your your focusing on one particular place and not necessarily clearing everything else out around it.
Right? It's kind of a different way. I mean, if I don't know if this is the right thing to say, but, you know, I've met him before And if you experience him, he doesn't feel like he's a particularly happy, light person. He still kind of feels heavy. So I would say that is because he's he's definitely done a lot of inner work.
Right? He's focused deeply in certain areas, but I don't think the the whole of it's been cleared out. Just I can only say that, you know, because I've experienced it, you know, I used to feel really heavy I used to feel, you know, just so burdened all the time. And I've experienced the different. Right? I'm not I'm not like that anymore. I I feel to me, I feel lighter, I feel happier, more peace. Right? And I've cleared out you know, many layers all the way through my body, not just in in certain specific places. Right? So I would say that's that's the difference that's allowed me to get inside and move around it will rather than just go into one particular place. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: You mentioned the Cundalini too. Uh-huh. And I I had a session with a Cundalini practitioner, Kunduehne yoga, and she walked me through this breath work experience. And it's like, I have never experienced anything like it. Like, where every cell in my entire body just felt like it was vibrating. It's anyone listening? You wanna feel alive? Like, whoa. That was it was quite an experience.

Ann Hince: Yeah. It's a massive energy. I mean, in my experience, it was just a massive energy. It felt like other people around me should no. Why why aren't they? Feeling it too because it was just so big. Mhmm. But for me, it happens just as part of the process. Right? I'd released enough energy myself it kind of it took over almost what I feel is it took over to allow the rest of my body to catch up.
With the parts that had released enough tension. So it went on for months on and off. I could kind of move it up and down my body at will. I could stop it whenever I want it. I just have to relax sufficiently and then it would start up again. And I would relax more up into my spine and it would move up it it was kind of fun actually. But at some point, it got to the place where, you know, I had released enough or it had burnt through enough of remaining tension. That it it just kind of faded away. And it was actually at that point that I was able to put my awareness inside my body, so I think that was part of the process.

Victoria Volk: Did you get to the third part?

Ann Hince: Yeah. That third part was putting my awareness inside my body.

Victoria Volk: So how it has your life changed since.

Ann Hince: Oh, it's lovely. I'm really very peaceful. You know, when I started this journey, I used to love seeing peaceful parents at school. It was so nice, you know. I wanted to be one of them. And one day, a few years into this process, I had another mother come up to me and say, I want to be as peaceful as you are. You know? And for me, that was a big moment that I had shifted enough that other people could notice that that I myself was peaceful. So it's really nice. I actually go out of my way now to find things that I react to. So for many years, I didn't watch the news because it was too much. Now I want to watch the news because I want to feel what's going on inside. I want to find deeper healing still. So that's really nice. There's also a huge depth to life that I had no idea existed when I started this journey. I didn't know that you could actually hear things in your body not just through your ears. You could feel music. Just just throughout your body. I mean, it makes the experience of listening to music so much nicer. But it also means like when you're listening to a conversation, you're able to pick up more than just the sound of their voice. Right? You're picking up nuances in them. In their facial expressions, in their body movements. Because if you can recognize it within yourself, if you can feel it, if you have that depth of self awareness in yourself, you can see it in other people as well, right, which makes having conversations much more enjoyable, satisfying, Also, I've really so much tension in my skull now, which is our echo chamber for our voice. So my voice has changed. I can actually sing a note that I could not sing before because I've released that tension holding my skull in a particular position. Right? It's now much more malleable, much more flexible. So there's that too.

Victoria Volk: What was your health like before that pivotal moment when you realize that something needed to change and how has your health changed since?

Ann Hince: I used to have a lot of digestive issues. And tried many, many different diets, all sorts of things. But it was really associated with all that stress that I was holding inside. So that has released not fully because part of the journey is a deeper level of self awareness. Right? So oftentimes during this journey, I'll think, okay, I can feel something now that I couldn't feel before. And it's not because it's a new you know, when you paint or whatever, it's just something that was hidden before that I've now become aware of. So that's been a, you know, a little bit of a mind thing to get used to along this journey. So I'm just working at a deeper level. But I've also grown three quarters of an inch in my fifties, you know, that that doesn't happen very often. You know, I'm taller than they've ever been in my life before and most of us start to shrink because we're holding so much tension inside. And we tend to think the same thoughts over and over, which, you know, adds tension to those already tense neural pathways inside of us. So as we release that burden, we're actually just becoming more of our natural blueprint. Right? So I don't know what high time going to end up as, but I know my neck is continuing to release every day. So I would not be surprised if I grow a little bit more.

Victoria Volk: So if people are watching this on YouTube, they'll see. I'm kind of I am kind of hunched forward. My shoulders are kind of in. My posture absolutely sucks at this moment. And so I'm at and what I know is and I've been feeling some stuff lately. Like, my I have so much tension throughout my shoulders and my neck. And I I know emotionally I'm going I'm feeling some things these past few days. I can recognize that. Right? I may try EFT after a week and off this.
Or a really deep meditation because I it's been a long while since I've meditated. I just wanna highlight for people in that when you've worked on the grief, because you you say stress a lot, but I wanna reiterate that what brought you to this podcast is grief. And what does grief do? It causes a stress in the body. It physically stresses the body and not to mention the daily life that we have, can be stressful. Right? It's But I think we label things as stressful. So how has that shifted for you? In because I was just reading something yesterday that kind of made me think about this word stressful and stress And it's like we are such a stressed society, but as it's at the same time, it's maintaining It was talking about, like, our personal management, like, our management of ourselves. Like, we can't and you might be a manager of other people and especially if you're parent, mother, you're managing other people. Right? You're managing a household. But what about your personal management? How are you managing the self? And I recognize that when I'm not managing the self, I feel more stress. I feel more stressed in the body, my posture sucks, like all of these things. Right? Like and so What do you have to say to that?

Ann Hince: Well, a lot of people, when they use the word managing, right, they also think of the word controlling.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm. And I

Ann Hince: think a lot of even there's, you know, different spiritual methods. Also talk about controlling or controlling the mind or controlling the thoughts. My whole journey has been about noticing and allowing and releasing. So, you know, in some sense, it could be called controlling or managing. But in terms of the modern day use of those words, it's really not that. So yes, we want to notice. We want to notice how we're feeling during the day. A lot of us suppress. We suppress or we bypass. Right? We'll have a drink or we'll I don't know. People some people take drugs or some people exercise to try and avoid feeling those thoughts and the feelings and the emotions that are coming up. But when we do that, we're just keeping that energy, that emotion, that stress, that grief suppressed inside the body. Because it it doesn't go anywhere. It needs it needs noticing, it needs acknowledging, it needs feeling, it needs being met, right, if we're if we're If there's something we want to share with someone else and the person we're talking to doesn't really listen. Right? If we don't feel like we've been listened to, that feeling of needing to share that information stays inside of us until someone really meets us, really listens and hears us. That's what we need to do with the emotion inside of us. Once we really hear it, we really feel it, we allow it to be felt, to be released, it will. It will relax and let go. So it's not really about, right, managing or controlling. It's about noticing being aware. And just allowing ourselves to feel those feelings that are living inside of us rather than forgetting them and move on, which most of us are programmed to do. Right? That's that's so common and that's what needs to change. I think even in childhood, in schools. Right? If we learn history and we allow the children to talk about and to feel the emotions that are brought up, while hearing about that history, I think that's how we change the projection or the direction of the world actually.

Victoria Volk: That phrase, self management, personal management, it was actually used by yoga guru. Sand Sandguru. I think it's how you say his name? I'm probably saying it wrong.

Ann Hince: I don't know.

Victoria Volk: I'll send you a link. But, yeah, he's a mystic and a teacher and thought leader and Yeah. I mean, he's got what's his program called? Inner inner something. I'm it's case in my mind right now. I'll share I'll put it in show notes if anybody's interested.

Ann Hince: I think I know who you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And I you know, even him, you know, I have to be careful with my words because who am I, but I don't know anyone else who's developed this inability that I have. So I listen to their words. I listen to the way they talk about things. And I don't believe he has developed this ability. So I don't necessarily listen to what he says.

Victoria Volk: I'm just saying that's where the phrase came from, what I was listening to

Ann Hince: a banding number. But but maybe it's just not the best way. I mean, that's what I've looked at a lot of these different spiritual methods. And I think originally, they were probably correct, but they've been mistranslated through the years. And, you know, people tend to think that we have to have to control ourselves. And really, it's kind of almost the opposite of that. Well, I

Victoria Volk: think it's not See, I hear self management and I don't hear control. I don't get a sense of control in that way. Like, So I think it's a matter of perspective as well. Like and we're all going to perceive yeah. It's yeah. We're all going to perceive what we see and what we hear and what we think or what we feel differently.

Ann Hince: But even Buddhism, when you look at Buddhism, it's it's and even yoga, like the, you know, spiritual aspect of yoga. It's very much about controlling thoughts, controlling things you eat. You know, just all sorts of control in there. Mhmm. And I think originally, they have the right idea, but it's just been twisted over the years. And I don't think it's going to get people where they think it's going to get them.

Victoria Volk: I totally hear where you're coming from. I mean, for me, I I feel like like, a sense of self like, I desire a sense of self mastery in a in a sense of whatever is going on in the world. To be able to feel that piece. Right?

Ann Hince: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: You can put

Ann Hince: down the ability.

Victoria Volk: Are you are you familiar with human design?

Ann Hince: I've heard of it. I don't know much about it.

Victoria Volk: I'm a manifestor type, and and that's a label or whatever, but it helps me make sense It helped me make sense of a lot of things in my life, but the not self theme of a manifestor's anger and the the opposite of that is right right is peace. And so I know I'm feeling aligned in what I'm doing, what I'm saying, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, when I'm at peace. So I've been able I'm starting to recognize and I've been in my experiment with human design and in learning these things about myself. For it's been a couple years, but it's really helped me to open my eyes to have own awareness. Right? Of of when I'm what what not feeling peace feels like in my body, like the tension in my neck and my slouching and my turning inward because this is what we do when we are I see so many people with their your shoulders go up like this. You're not relaxed. Right? You're in the grocery store line, whatever. You you can just see people's posture how they carry themselves. It's written all over them.

Ann Hince: Yeah. They're not aware of it. I mean, most of us Yeah. Most of us are not aware of it. There is so much hidden in our subconscious mind that we are just not aware of and that's that's why you have to go down this road a little bit

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Ann Hince: To start realizing some things that have been hidden in your a conscious mind and then you start to realize, oh my goodness, there's so much more, let me keep going and then covering what's in there. So yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah, I think grief is just in stress, is just written all over us. You know, you can see it another I see it clearly in other people, and I I can recognize it. Within myself. And so how has like, what's life like now? Like, on the daily Are you still doing EFT? Are you still, like, how much time have you devoted to this practice? Are you teaching other people? Teaching you and we touch your kids, like all the questions.

Ann Hince: Well, I used it on my kids when they were young. My my youngest son used to have nightmares and I go and tap on him. Didn't need any words because the emotions were already in his body. So I just tap on him and then I'd say, okay, mom, I can go back to sleep now and I would just you know, leave the room and you'd go back to sleep. So they know that it was. They just have a lot of resistance because, you know, children often do. So I'm hoping one day they'll come back to it or or at least do some kind of shadow work to, you know, because I didn't I didn't change until they were you know, six and ten something like that. So they have traumas inside of them from those early years for sure. I do still use EFT not as much because I I have these other things I can use. I mean, I feel inside multiple times a day, like, many, many times a day. Fifty, a hundred times a day. And that many times, I will have something release in my my neck or my my head. So it's almost automatic. To me for me now, it just first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is like, okay, where's my neck gonna crack? And I will just move and allow it to crack. So it's it's very much a part of me now and it it wasn't in those early years. I I just I started doing it more and more because it felt so good, you know, this tension has been stalled inside of us for, you know, for me, for decades and it felt good to release it. So I just kept doing it. Let's see. I do, I mean, I do share the information. I have a YouTube channel that has different videos and I've got If you go to my website and hints dot com, I've got a PDF download of my cheat sheet, my two page PDF with, you know, all the basics of EFT, so anyone could learn to do it. And let's see. What were the other questions there?

Victoria Volk: You answer with the kids, how it's, like, physically I'm curious too, like, with food.

Ann Hince: Right? You asked about my day, like, how I feel different. And my days. My days are peaceful. I enjoy my days now.
It doesn't matter what I'm doing. I can always find peace. And that was not the case before at all. So I'm happy wherever I go, whatever I'm doing, you know, some people will sometimes say, you know, are we looking forward to going on this trip that, you know, you're gonna go on? It's like, well, you know, that's two weeks in the future. I'm not thinking about that. I'm peaceful right now. So kind of time has shifted as well. I think of it differently. Feel it differently. So that's really nice. I mean, my goal was in a piece. So, you know, I'm not fully there yet because I know there's a lot more tension still and I won't feel total feet piece on the inside. Until my I think until my body is totally aligned, and I've got a long way to go yet on that. So but I know I know I know what I'm working on. Know what I'm working towards. So that's and then you mentioned food. I did lots of different diets along my way before I found the EFT. I mean, all sorts, life food, vegan, macrobiotic, vegetarian, just all sorts and I let go of all my beliefs around that, not all of them. I still eat organic. Whenever I can. And I cook my own food mostly. But I've let go of so much tension and all those beliefs around that should have this or I shouldn't have this or if I have this, I'm not gonna feel right. You know, I'd let go of all of that so I can pretty much eat whatever I want. Now, which is really nice. And I have some discussions online, you know, with people who think you should be vegan, you know, that that's so adamant about it. And it's that being adamant. It's that tension. It's that judgment of other people. That's what's holding dysys inside of their body. And I know because I was there too. I was vegan for many years. And I remember having that that judgment. And that's tension. That's dis ease inside of ourselves. And when we're judging someone else, we're hurting ourselves. So go find that judgment. Notice it. Feel it. Allow it and let it release.
And that actually releases the disease from inside of us.

Victoria Volk: Part of my intention is just having this experience lately where I had signed up for this program and, you know, the the fad right now is protein, protein, protein, and you need seen amount of protein. And what I found though is my and I this is not like, this has been going on about five months now, like and I've just, you know, switched a different program and still trying to maintain, like, the tracking and and, you know, the weights and but what I'm what I found, like, just in just in the last couple days, truly. Like, over the weekend. So this is very new, and this is why this tension has actually enlightened today, to be honest. Like, this is true story. I felt I was feeling heavy. I was feeling so heavy. And I was feeling like, my body is screaming at me. Like, this is not for me right now. And I was so adamant of this is what I need, this is I need this person to tell me what, you know, how much I'm supposed to be eating and I need to do these workouts and do diesel regimented. And that is so against my body type, like my body as, like, even as a manifestor. This is where this is where human design has helped me too and realizing that my desires are gonna change depending on my energetic where I am energetically, and I'm more of like in this rest cycle right now, which has corresponded to this program I'm working on, which I've lately just, like, I put it on the table and I haven't looked at it. Like, I just I put it down and I haven't looked at it in, like, over a week. Two weeks actually, probably. And I'm like, oh my god, this is what's happening. I'm in this rush cycle. I'm not why am I pushing myself to do this program? I need to listen to my body. I need to honor my body. And as soon as I've done that, As of yesterday afternoon, I feel so much better today. It is crazy. How our bot like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a perfect example of what we're talking about of how our bodies are always communicating with us. We just you know, the judgment or the the self criticism or, you know, I should be doing this and I should be doing that or, like you said, of other people too,

Ann Hince: Yeah. And we forget that we're so connected. Right? That was part of my journey. I realized how it's all connected, so you could access that tension in your shoulders, in your neck. Through words, right, through through memories, through beliefs. Right? I believe that I should be doing something or controlling or giving someone else control over my body.

Victoria Volk: Yes. That agency and last my sense of agency.

Ann Hince: Yes. So that is connected to the tension in your shoulders. Or you could tap or if you're using EFT, you could tap directly on I have tension in my shoulders. Right? You could feel the tension in your shoulders.
It doesn't matter which way you access it, right, whether it's through words, emotions, or through physical tension itself. It's still accessing the tension in your shoulders because it's all connected. I know a lot of people are concerned like doctor will say, well, it's all in your head. Right? And some people get offended by that. But if we take that to be true, okay. So what is it I'm thinking or feeling? And if we know that those thoughts and feelings are connected to the physical, then we can work with those words and with those memories and with those emotions. And that's what EFT did for me. It's kind of those outer layers. Okay. I'll let me let me go through the memories of those traumas and talk through them and tap through them. And what I didn't realize when I started to do that, that I was affecting the physical because I didn't have that depth of self self awareness. I have that depth now, so I know that it's all connected. So even if you don't know that you're affecting the physical, I can tell you, if you're doing EFT, even on words and memories, you are affecting the physical.

Victoria Volk: I had a question. Do you have a meditation that guides people through that process of interconnecting.

Ann Hince: Not as such. I mean, I have videos on YouTube about the different steps about the feeling the feelings.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Ann Hince: I'm feeling feeling this one about going inside. It tapes work to go inside though. So I'm not sure anyone could do that right off, but they could feel a feeling. So, like, empaths are very good at picking up and sensing their feelings inside their bodies. So that they could do that. So, yes, that's a I do have a video series that that takes people deeper into relaxation and where they can actually notice their depth of awareness. Because I find that people don't know. Right? We don't know what we don't know. So we don't know how far we can go beyond where we are right now. So as I've gone through this journey, I've realized there's different things that have changed in me. Right? Like being able to feel music within the body. Right, rather than hear it with just your ears. So I've recognized some different things that change, and so I I've like, take people through those, right, to notice. I mean, even just simply noticing how reactionary you are. Right? If you're still reaction if you're still triggered by things, or easily triggered by things, if people say you're highly strung, then you don't have a great depth of awareness. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. But it means there's so much more you can find, so much more depth to life that you can find by doing this inner work.

Victoria Volk: And I think what people don't realize is the deeper goal of this work, doing the work, and looking into yourself, and connecting with the self is that I think so many of us come into this life and we leave this life, not ever realizing our own potential because of it.

Ann Hince: Absolutely. My brother my brother died a few years ago. You know, he was adopted too. Right? So he had a different story from me.
He was adopted from a different family. But he Whereas I went one direction, he went into the way my parents were so he drank and he smoked his whole life and I actually tapped with him a couple of months before he died. I went to his hospital room, and he and I tapped through some of our collective childhood traumas And it was really interesting to talk through some of those things that were being through together. And to have him experience EFT. I I had to tap on him because he didn't have the energy to tap. But but after a few minutes of tapping on on one thing in particular when we were at boarding school, when we left him the first term at boarding we drove away and we were heading to Hong Kong from England. It's a long way away. We left him screaming in the driveway. He was just screaming for us to stay. And he remembered that. It was so clear to him, and and we tapped on it. And he said it had kind of receded more in his mind through this, those couple of minutes of tapping. So, you know, I I think if he had wanted to, do this work. He could have totally changed his life, but it wasn't on his path. It wasn't something he was ready to do. So, you know, some of us Some of us don't, and some of us do.

Victoria Volk: Do you have a relationship relationship now with your birth mother?

Ann Hince: I do. I went to see here at Christmas time. Yes. Yeah. But even

Victoria Volk: though times.

Ann Hince: No. I've met her. I mean, I've met her when I was seventeen for the first time. And then then on our honeymoon, when I was twenty four. She came over when my first son was born and a couple of other times.
So, yeah, I've I've seen her less than ten times in my life, but but it's been nice. And we have technology now, so I call her once a month. So yeah. And and she came over one time and we actually tagged together on my birth on her on her giving me up. So I think that was healing for both of us.

Victoria Volk: Did she ever tell you why?

Ann Hince: Yes. She was twenty six. She just she'd been engaged to my father and they had this one time event after she told him that she was leaving, it was that night. And she left the next morning. She got on a boat from New Zealand to head back to England, and she found that she was pregnant on the way. So, yeah, she was a single mother and she just thought that I would be better off within a a complete family.

Victoria Volk: Do you have any other siblings? Half siblings?

Ann Hince: I do. I have two half siblings from her, and I just found out who my birth father was a couple of years ago through ancestry, and he never knew I existed, and he died a few years ago. So I have a house sibling, a half sister through him. So I was finally met her. I met her at Christmas time to you the first time ever.

Victoria Volk: Was that healing for you to you know, it's like you find out your dot and I don't know what this is like, but So if you can elaborate, that would be wonderful. But, like, did you almost feel like like you didn't know a half of you? You know what I mean? Like,

Ann Hince: Yes. You know, absolutely. Yeah. There was there was a palpable relief when I first met my best mother. I mean, I and again, it was tension that I had not known that I was holding probably since I was thirteen. Right? But I didn't know it was there until I could feel it really when I met her at seventeen. And the same thing about finding out about my birthdays, I didn't know I was I was missing something. Right? Until there was some relief when I found out, and and that felt really good.

Victoria Volk: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I've had my own ahas as I've heard you speak and you know, thank you for letting me share a little bit of my own personal experience throughout this

Ann Hince: day. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I will put links to your cheat sheet, the YouTube, your website, and the show notes. But where can let me ask you this first. Is there anything that you want to share that you didn't get a chance to?

Ann Hince: I don't think so. We covered all sorts of things. Yeah. I mean, thing I love to share at the end is the depths of life because there's so many people who are depressed these days or considering suicide. And and I did too as a teenager, but there was just so much you don't know yet if that's what you're thinking.
So I encourage people to go down this journey and realize the depth to life, right, so that you can enjoy life more. There's just so much enjoyment that you have not yet found, so I encourage you to do that.

Victoria Volk: I do wanna share to and ask the art. So anyone that's not is only listening to this and not seeing it there's some artwork on your wall beside you. Is that your artwork?

Ann Hince: It is. Yes. Wow. So so recent artwork. That's, again, that's been a journey.
Right? I started out doing pencil portraits. And, you know, black and white, I I drew in black and white for years.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Interesting.

Ann Hince: Then I became able to feel into colors. And I started using colors more and and started going less detailed rate and more just what felt right. And, yeah, I can feel into colors more now that I mean, I had no idea that that was possible before. But, I mean, I wear blue now all the time because just blue feels so peaceful full to me. And I feel a a repulsion from white. It's like it reflects. It's it pushes energy away from it, which I find really interesting given that people tend to think of it as a spiritual color. Mhmm. I don't I I kind of almost don't see white cars. I mean, I know they're a car. I know they're there. Don't worry. I drive safely. But if I I have a friend who has a a white car and I I just don't see her. I'll see the colored cars. I'll see blues and reds and yellows and but it's it's that's been an interesting part of this journey too. You know, I say many just read changes.

Victoria Volk: Well, I just wanna highlight that you your wall is purple. You have a lot of purple in your artwork and the third eye chakra is purple.

Ann Hince: Yeah. This is a colorful room. I've also got a green roof with yellow highlights and three different colored lights there. There's a a red, blue, and green. Yeah. I try and keep white out of this room. So yeah. So people I do have my artwork I have a little shop on my websites with Okay. Products from my artwork. If anyone wants to go and have a look. They're very colorful.

Victoria Volk: Just some of the bottom on there.

Ann Hince: Thank you. If someone wants to find me, you can you can contact me on my website. And hence dot com or I'm very active on Facebook. So you can you can interact with me there. I try and post something every day, and I'm trying to explain you know, my story through other people's quotes and and that kind of thing. I try and, you know, add an explanation to things. And also, I'm starting I'm learning how to put on retreats. So our first retreat, a friend and I are gonna put on retreats that's called liberation beyond loss. Which is gonna be specifically for women who've lost a mother. Right? We're gonna do this work, this inner work, the tapping, and the trauma release work around that loss and that grief. So if someone wants to to check that out too. That'll be next year.

Victoria Volk: So amazing. And I'll put links, like I said, in the show notes. Where people can connect with you and find all the goodness that you offer.

Ann Hince: Thank you.

Victoria Volk: And thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your story, and I think a lot of examples of all kinds of different grief in your story. And so thank you for sharing.

Ann Hince: Thank you. Thanks for the great conversation.

Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.