#2: Positive Thinking & Karma Yoga

With lighthearted honesty, Kelly Pietrangeli shares what happened when her abusive relationship came to an end and she lost her will to go on.

From her crazy life in the music industry, to her initiation into the orange-robed swami world of Sivananda Yoga, follow Kelly's journey as she sets off down the path towards higher conscious living.

The story ends with a turn around. An opportunity for you to reflect on significant events in your own life story and to ask yourself, 'Does everything happen for a higher reason?'

Download the free PDF of journal prompts / conversation starters for taking it deeper

Read the Transcript for this Episode below:

Episode two of the project me podcast. Hi, I'm Kelly Pietrangeli, and this podcast is designed to be an entertaining and inspiring look at the different woo woo modalities I've dabbled in over the years. Plus the life changing books I've read in each episode. I share a story from my own life and end with a turnaround, an opportunity for you to reflect on your life and to expand your vision of what's possible when you create your own project.

You are capable of amazing things when you break free from your past and whatever's holding you back from who you came here to be in this lifetime. This podcast will show you what's possible when you open your mind, open your heart and stay curious. Hello and welcome back. I am over the moon with a positive response to the pilot episode in episode one.

Thanks to so many of you for hitting that subscribe button and pressing the five star review. I'm so grateful The Project Me podcast made Apple's top shows list in the health and well being section, which is a really exciting start. I loved what AtJamesFamily wrote on Instagram. Can't wait to listen more, and we shall see if I can rewrite my story of mild skepticism with all things woo woo, or discover I'm way more woo woo than I realized.

We are watching this space. Christina dropped me a message to say, Congratulations on your podcast. I listened last night and loved it. Must admit, I had to look up the definition of woo woo. Having said that, I think I am a little woo woo. Looking forward to the next installment. Well, that prompted me to look up the actual definition of woo woo.

And I didn't like what it said. So I'm sticking with my own definition, which is all that is mysterious, magical, and unknown. So I've been told that I have a way of making the woo woo make sense, so stick with me. This episode is sponsored by my own High Vibe Journey program, which is about to kick off. At the time of recording, there are still some spaces free, so jump over to myprojectme.

com to learn all about this life changing four week journey with me as your personal guide. There's a whole page of stories and testimonials from the women who've been on the High Vibe journey, and there's a little intuition test so you can see if your higher self thinks it's right for you right now.

Okay, it's time to head into episode two.

If you listened to the last episode about what led me to read the Celestium Prophecy and how it opened me up to the magic of life's coincidences. You might have thought I'd be sailing off on my woo woo adventure straight from that. But no, I was way too absorbed in my physical reality. That boyfriend who didn't turn up in Barcelona, well I didn't tell you that he was abusive.

It started off as emotional abuse and then escalated into physical. I ended up in the hospital with cracked ribs and I still took him back. I'd heard about this happening with other women but I never imagined it could happen to me. Why didn't I leave? Good question. I'd given up my entire life in California to move to London for him.

I'd left my fun job making music videos for Capitol Records in Hollywood, my little rented beach house, my cute VW convertible, my friends, all of my belongings except what I could pack into a suitcase, everything. And so I felt stupid. I felt trapped. How could I move back to California with my tail between my legs?

Besides, I loved him, and just like all cliche abusive relationships, when he was good, he was oh so good, and when he was bad, eventually, he left me for someone else, said he'd fallen out of love with me, and he didn't find me attractive anymore. Can I just say, I fell apart. I was broke, I needed to find a new place to live, I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I was missing so much work, I was about to get fired.

One night, it must have been about three o'clock in the morning, and I remember I couldn't sleep and I was looking out of my open bedroom window, which overlooked the Hammersmith Bridge, and I had this overwhelming urge to jump. The feeling scared me so much that I called my wise grandma Millie in Minnesota.

As I bawled my eyes out, I expected her to tell me to pack my bags and come home, but instead, she said to me, I don't think you moved all the way to London just to have your heart broken. There's a bigger reason you're there, Kelly, and you need to find it. I said, but I can't go on. I don't have the strength.

I don't know how you got through losing two husbands and both of your sons. I don't know how you stay so positive when life has been so cruel to you. And she said, when life gets to be too much, and you don't think you can take the pain anymore, you need to pray to God. Tell him, God loves you. I can't take this anymore.

Please take this from me, and he will. Well, in my head I thought, That's good for you, Grandma. You believe in God, but this isn't gonna work for me. But I didn't dare tell her that. When we hung up, I decided I had nothing to lose. So I prayed to God and said, If you're there, please take this from me because I can't take it anymore.

I surrendered and handed it over. And I must have fallen asleep. Because when I opened my eyes, it was morning, and the room was filled with shimmering sunlight, and I felt different. For the first time in I don't know how long, I felt a sense of lightness and peace. And I got out of bed, washed, dressed, went to work, and then I was okay.

You may have thought that this experience turned me to God, but it didn't. I never actually processed what happened that night, I just got on with finding a new place to live and getting on with my life. That was, what, 25 years ago? And really, it's only been in very recent times that I've learned to separate God from religion.

I now see that whether one says God, Universe, Source, Spirit, it's all referring to the same thing. I've come to call this GUS. God, Universe, Source, GUS. But more about that in a future episode. Let's get back to my 28 year old newly single self. I found a roommate and my cat Chippy and I moved into a teeny tiny bedroom with her cat litter box right next to my bed, which was not entirely pleasant when getting up in the dark to go to the bathroom.

I was trudging through life and I'm sure it looked quite glamorous from the outside because I was now a record cover designer at Sony music. There were always parties and gigs. I was burning the candle at both ends and living paycheck to paycheck. My roommate Rowena was always trying to set me up with guys, usually lawyers or media types.

Once with Damon Albarn, the lead singer of Blur, who I had a massive crush on, just as he and I were hitting it off at the Groucho Club, Rowena ended up puking her guts out And I had to take her home in a cab. Another time, she arranged a blind date for me with the editor of a high profile magazine. That didn't go so well.

We were meant to meet at his place and then watch the Notting Hill Carnival. He was found dead in his flat that morning. He died of a coke induced heart attack. I ended up spending this bizarre day consoling the shocked and crying prostitute who'd woken up next to his dead body and being questioned by police as I tried to explain I'd never actually met the guy.

A few months later, as I walked out of Fulham Broadway Tube Station, someone thrust a leaflet into my hand that changed my life. It was about a positive thinking seminar at a local yoga center in Putney. I went along the following Saturday and as I entered the Sivananda Center, I felt a warm rush of love engulf me.

I now know the smell of Nag Champra incense well, but that was the very first time. There were these calm, zen like vibes and warm, welcoming smiles from swamis in orange robes and even home baked oatmeal cookies. It was a million miles from my crazy music biz world. I felt like I'd come home. We sat cross legged on cushions as the swami and bright orange PJs talked to us about the power of our minds.

I ended up signing up for a course of beginner shivananda, and that was the start of my love of yoga. Every Saturday morning, I got up early. Well, early for me, it was probably like a 10 or 11 o'clock class, but I headed to the Sivananda center and I bended myself into downward dogs and cobras, doing rounds and rounds of sun salutations and chanting, Om.

I began to do karma yoga, which meant volunteering to help out around the yoga center, cleaning toilets, washing dishes at first. And then later when they heard I was a record cover designer and an Apple Mac whiz, They had me coming in to teach the Swamis how to use computers. Now that I know about energy and the vibrational frequency of emotions, I can clearly see that all of this was changing my vibration.

I began reading books from their little shop, and I learned for the first time that my thoughts are not me. That my thoughts can be light, or they can be heavy and tangled like weeds. I decided to tend to my mind like a garden to keep the weeds away. And one Saturday, a couple of months later, I floated out of the Shivananda Center home and had a lovely positive day.

I wished my roommate Rowena a fun night out, and I settled in to watch Blind Date on TV with a big bowl of popcorn. I was completely blissed out. My two friends, Sue and Sarah, had been after me to come out with them for a girls night out, but I really wanted to stay in. I knew theirs would be a night of flirting with guys, and guys were the last thing on my mind.

I was working on myself and feeling really good for the first time in ages. But those two friends refused to take no for an answer, and they showed up at my flat to drag me off to the poshest part of London in Mayfair. They look so glamorous, and I never had posh nights out. I only ever went to pubs or concert venues or illegal raves.

I had nothing to wear to a place like this. They basically kidnapped me. We went to a bar called Sedona, where people were drinking champagne, and I felt like a total misfit. At one point, I looked across the crowded bar, and somehow, in this sea of people, I locked eyes with a really cute guy, and my heart did a little somersault.

He looked away, I looked away, then my friend said, Hey, there's a guy way over there checking you out, Kelly. I looked over, he looked away, I said to my friends, oh my god, he looks like the guy I lost my virginity to. I felt all these fluttery feelings that I didn't even know I was capable of after having my heart broken so hard.

The next time I glanced over, he was gone. My eyes kind of scanned the place and I spotted that he and his friends were just walking out the door with their coats over their arms. Oh well, whatever, honestly, that is really how I felt. The girls wanted to move on to a club next and I was like, no way I'm heading home.

But once again, I was stuffed into a cab and whisked off to another posh place, a club called the Emporium. I reluctantly checked in my coat. The places I normally went to let you stuff it under a table, but this place made you check it in and pay a couple quid for it, which felt ridiculous to me since I wasn't going to be staying long.

Just as I walked out a coat check, there was that same cute guy from the previous bar. He smiled, I smiled, and I didn't see him after that. Except that later, I couldn't find my friends to tell them I was leaving. I was circling the club so many times that the cute guy finally came up to me and asked if I was lost.

I told him I couldn't find my friends, he offered to buy me a drink, we had a dance, I married him three years later. My wise grandma Millie was right, there was a bigger reason I was in London, and I'm so glad I stuck around to find it. You know that George Michael song, turn a different corner and we never would have met?

I don't like to think about not meeting Luca. He's been my best friend for over 24 years now and the father of my children and the love of my life. You know what he told me soon after we met about that night, he felt attracted to my energy. For sure. I wasn't the hottest girl in that club and we still laugh about what I was wearing that night.

Blue quarter by trousers with buttons up the front. And a plain black button down shirt and sensible shoes. And he's never mentioned energy again since. It is so funny that now I'm all about the energy, but he doesn't use that kind of language at all. So it's funny he even noticed my energy back then.

And now see that the Cosmos were all lined up for us to meet that night. And when it didn't happen at the first bar, I got redirected to the club. And it makes me think about why I had to move to London to have my heart broken. I needed that experience in order for me to really, really see what I had in front of me when I met Luca.

All of these things in life, they, they mean something in the end, if you really look. I also realized what happens when you change your vibe, begin to think positive and start doing yoga. Well, that's what happened to me anyway.

Dear listener, relax your forehead. Take in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. Think of a time in your life when your vibes have been super low.

Now think of a time when they've been sky high.

Do you see a correlation between what you attract into your life when you're feeling good and positive versus when you're not? Are there any people who've magically appeared in your life? Do you believe in soulmates or soul contracts?

What about the power of surrender and prayer? Have you ever reached a point in your life where you just had to hand it over to a greater force?

When you scan back over your life, which events seemed terrible at the time, but turned out to be gifts? Do you believe everything happens for a higher reason?

Are you willing to accept that even now when things don't work out as you wish? It'll all make sense later. I'll see you again in the next episode. How a single session of emotional acupuncture healed the trauma of my abusive relationship and how Paul McKenna hypnotized me in a broom cupboard Project me is a global movement.

Helping women to step out of autopilot and into higher levels of conscious living. The High Vibe Journey is my exciting and transformational four week program that teaches you about energy and how to discover what raises your vibes for you. The next round is about to begin. Go to myprojectme. com to the Courses and Workshops tab to join in.

Be sure to grab the free Project Me Life Wheel Tool while you're there. Good karma comes to those who share the Project Me Podcast or leave a positive rating or review. If you have anything you'd like to share with me, you can find me on Instagram, Kelly Project Me, or Facebook, Project Me Kelly P. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious.

We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.