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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Melinda, for agreeing to do an interview with us today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Melinda Vail: Yes, and thank you for having me, Toni.  My name is Melinda Vail, and I’m a spiritual counselor, a medium, and a hypnotherapist, and I have a practice in Phoenix, Arizona.

Toni: Well thank you.  Now, when you think of that word inspiration, Melinda, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?

Melinda: Well, you know, that’s an interesting question because inspiration kind of goes hand-in-hand with my practice, because when you’re inspired you’re in spirit.  And so I help people connect to their inner spirit — the sense of themselves that we come into this world with.

I often have people that are struggling, and when you help them to connect to their higher power, it helps them understand how their ego comes into play and helps them to release that ego and connect to that part of us that is always neutral.

All events on this planet, Toni, are neutral events except for the emotion that we assign to them.  When we recognize that our egos are assigning emotions sometimes that aren’t serving us, we can release that emotion and get into a neutral place that allows us to move forward in an inspired way, connecting us to our higher power.

As a medium, I have people that are in grief and have suffered loss and are looking for some validation that their loved ones are safe on the other side.  I feel very blessed in my life that I am able to do that and give exact information, things I would have no way of knowing so that those people understand that life goes on.

So I think I inspire people into a belief system that when we leave the flesh that our body is only a life support system for our spirit and that there is something more to life than we recognize here on this planet.

Toni: When you do this type of work, Melinda, and you come at inspiration this way, how do you think then it helps people to explore their potential?

Melinda: Well, I think sometimes when people begin to release the false ideas that were created about themselves; you know, our spirit, our subconscious mind and our conscious mind are like a corporation in our body.  Our subconscious mind and our spirit are silent partners.  They’re so silent that we don’t even know that they’re there, but they’re the money men.  They hold the bottom line.

So, when you release that ego or start looking further at what the possibilities of life can be, it inspires you to connect to your greatest good, your highest potential, because the trappings of that ego — the falsehoods of what we believe about ourselves — can be released and we can free ourselves from that.

Toni: Wow, that’s really interesting.  Can you give us examples of how you’ve seen that in practice for those that are listening and reading your interview?

Melinda: Certainly.  Let’s start out with when I do that through hypnotherapy.  We have energy wheels in our body called the Chakra system.  Chakra is a Sanskrit word that means “energy wheel”, and there are seven energy wheels in our body that coincide with the seven stages of human development.  As a hypnotherapist, I help people connect to their inner child issues and release those issues so that they can move forward in a way in which they’re not repeating patterns.

So, one time I had a lady who was in her late 40s who had been bulimic her whole life long.  She had been from therapist to therapist to therapist.  And indeed there had been a recognizable trauma in her background, and each therapist connected her back to that trauma that she had a memory of.  When we decided to look at that bulimia, we thought we would just go in through hypnosis in a way in which we weren’t directing the energy.

So when I asked her subconscious mind to go back to the origin of the issue, she actually came upon a pretty benign memory where she was five years old at a cottage that her parents had on a lake, digging for worms because her and her father liked to fish together.  Her father came down from the cottage to jump into the lake.  She asked him if he wanted to eat some of her worms like a five-year-old does.  The father pushed on her belly.  She had a two-piece bathing suit on with a little bit of a belly like five-year-old children often do, and said “No, eating worms makes you fat.”

He wasn’t trying to start any kind of trauma within her.  He was being a normal good father, but what transformed into her subconscious mind was the idea of fat, and she held on to it.  When we reached that memory, which was really a pleasant memory when it comes right down to it, it released the need to binge and purge.  And so a lot of times we have hidden information in our subconscious mind that we’re not aware of that creates patterns and creates behavior as adults.

Toni: That is really, really interesting, Melinda, thank you so much for sharing that example with us.  Now when you come at the word inspiration yourself, what do you need to be inspired?

Melinda: I think I need emotional courage to be inspired, Toni.  I think that you have to have heart, but you also have to have grit.  You have to be courageous enough to put yourself out there to learn and to make mistakes and to make good ones.  I think when you’ve made a good mistake and you’ve learned from it, you have emotional courage, and that inspires me to be better and better and to tap into my own potential and continue to progress that way.  I’m never afraid of screwing up as long as I take that and turn it into a positive for myself.

Toni: And when you know that it’s time that you are feeling that, you know, “Okay, I need to be inspired here, I need to fill myself up”, do you find yourself reaching for certain things or looking for things that provide you with inspiration as well?

Melinda: I think that the power of the Universe, or God, whatever way you want to verbalize it, is constantly giving us things to create inspiration.  We just have to be aware and be open to them.

As silly as this example may seem, I’ve been watching that television show, The Biggest Loser, and that’s actually a very inspirational show, particularly in this season.  There was a young lady on that show who had lost her entire family in a vehicle accident, her husband and her two children, and there she was in front of millions of people on the television trying to get herself healthy and get back to her essence and her well being, and that was very inspirational to me.

I think that we have to look for inspiration in all kinds of ways in our life, but it’s always there if we just kind of open up and see it.

Toni: So it sounds to me that when you … you also draw inspiration from other people’s stories.

Melinda: Absolutely.

Toni: How do you take inspiration for yourself and use that to explore your own potential?

Melinda: That’s a good question and a hard question.  Let me think about that for just a second.  I think that when you’re in the type of business that I am, the type of practice that I have, and I don’t like to use the word business.  I guess I’m in a practice.  And every day the people that come to me have had situations that have happened in their lives that are extremely difficult, and yet there they are looking to find an answer or to be inspired through the exchange between me and spirit and them.  And I think each time I do that, it inspires me as well as them because everything on this planet is an exchange of energy.

If you’re the healer and you’re not being healed while you’re healing, then you’re not doing your job.  Because I think it’s all about exchanging information, exchanging relationships, and being divinely inspired to each other as we work with each other on this planet.  Like yourself, what you’re doing right now is you’re inspiring other people to inspire other people.

I think the Universe is like a giant network marketer.  We just pass it on and pass it on and pass it on.

Toni: I really like that line that you just said, the sentence that you said is that if you’re not being healed while you’re healing … and that’s a pretty powerful statement.

Melinda: Yeah.  If you are too much in your ego, then you’re not healing anybody.  You have to be open to what you might learn from each person that comes to you regardless of what you’re doing, regardless of whether you’re standing and checking people out at the grocery line.  There are people that have checked me out at the grocery line that have smiled and said “Wow, you look nice today” or whatever, and they’ve inspired me to feel good, and that helps me to come back to my practice and help other people as they come to me for other kinds of inspiration.

It’s just an ongoing process as human beings that we have to be open to each other.  And I think — although we’re doing this over the internet — I think sometimes computer and text messages and cell phones and, you know, the age of electronics kind of keeps us from being open and connecting to each other in certain ways.  We have to remember to keep doing that.

Toni: Melinda, did you always think about life this way, to be open to each other and to look at life and look at experiences and exchanges this way?  Were you always that way?

Melinda: No, not really, Toni.  I had a lot of hard knocks in my life.  I’ve had some illnesses that I’ve had to get through, I’ve raised three kids by myself, I’ve had some difficulty.  I think that when we have some challenges in life and we take those challenges and get through them in a way that allows us to see that there’s a great lesson involved, that’s when we start becoming more open to what happens each day to us and how we can take those experiences and make them into experiences that help other people.

I’ll tell you something, Toni, I met this wonderful man a couple of weeks ago.  He’s a quadriplegic.  He was a football player in high school, and he and his brother were both football players, and he had a car accident when he was 16 or 17 years old and became a quadriplegic.

When he got hurt, his brother, who also played football, decided not to go out for the team.  This guy said to his brother, “You absolutely go out for the team; you’re good.”  And the brother ended up being in the NFL as a quarterback.

This man is in a situation where he has to have somebody get him out of bed and take him places, and he’s become a high school teacher and a football coach.  Now, that’s somebody that is inspiring so many young people in such a tremendous way.  And I believe, Toni, that his spirit shows that situation — as hard as that may be to understand — in order to be an inspiration to others.  He came into my office and just floored me with his ability to take what happened to him and create with it.  It was fabulous.

Toni: What a great story, and I really appreciate you sharing that.  Melinda, just the way that you come at who you inspire and what you do during that inspiration process to help people explore their potential to be the best that they can be — and then also sharing it from your own perspective on what you need to stay inspired to do the work that you do — you have given a lot of insight and information that you’ve shared with us today, and I can’t thank you enough from the Get Inspired! Project for joining us and sharing this information with the readers and listeners of the interviews.  So, thank you so much.

Melinda: Thank you, Toni, and thank you for doing the Get Inspired! Project because you are helping lots of people, and I think we all appreciate that.

Toni: Well thank you so much, and I hope that we speak again soon.

Melinda: I’ll look forward to it.

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For more information about Melinda Vail:  www.melindavail.com

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Sherry, for being part of this project.  We are very excited to have you join us.  If you could, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sherry Green: Yes, sure.  Well I am an American, I live in the UK, I have for many years.  If you want to know what my qualifications are, they are many-fold.  I have a Master’s degree in metaphysics and metaphysics has been a lifelong study for me, so that was really lovely to do.  I am also a qualified hand analyst, recently trained with Beth Davis, and triple-qualified herbalist and I am qualified to work in the UK in that capacity.

Toni: Oh, I see; wow, there is a lot going on!

Sherry: I also spent many years in the corporate world.

Toni: I see.  What part of the States were you from?

Sherry: We started off in Ohio and moved around a bit.

Toni: I see.  Well thank you for the introduction, sounds very interesting.  The essence of the project is to ask 4 questions and try to understand needs and approaches for people in the inspiration business, so the first question is:  Who do you inspire, Sherry, and how do you go about that?

Sherry: Well, I try and inspire just about everybody I talk to.  It is part and parcel of my life purpose, but mainly I love to work with people who are spiritual seekers, people who want to know what life is all about.  I also like to work with people that have the belief that money and spirituality really don’t go together.  I also like to work with my hand analyst clients because it helps people to understand what they are here to do, what their life has imprinted on their fingerprints, to show what they have come to do in this life, and to follow that life purpose.  So that really is the sort of people that I like to inspire, and of course when I work with my private coaching and consulting clients in an inspirational capacity when I am working with spirit, I like to inspire them, too.

Toni: How do you go about that?  It sounds as though your clients, your relationships and so forth, the people with a purpose, those are the people that you seem to inspire on a daily basis, and how might you go about that?

Sherry: Well, I trained for many years to be a medium and also to be an inspirational speaker and in the States you would understand that as somebody who channels.  I have very close contact with my own spirit guides; in fact, I was told recently that I was speaking something that my guide was saying and I was not even aware of it, it is so close now.  I really like to uplift people and my words are, I hope, inspiring and uplifting, and I like to work in such a way that people understand that their problems are temporary and a lot of them are really just misplaced thoughts.

Toni: Misplaced thoughts … that is interesting.  I like that.  I like that saying.  What do you do to help others that you work with, or that you are in contact with on a daily basis?  How do you help them explore their own potential?

Sherry: Well, I do that through coaching techniques, although I am not a qualified life coach, but I have studied it.  I use hand analysis which is very, very useful for that, and I also channel my spirit guides and, you know, just use all the things that I have learned over the years.  I have a vast array of techniques behind me that I can use, and I use the ones that are appropriate at the time.

Toni: Can you give me an example, when you say that you use the hand analysis to explore potential in others, and then as well as using the spirit guides to explore potential, so that we can clarify for those people that will be reading the blog and hearing the audio, what that means exactly?

Sherry: Well, the hand analysis that I do shows that your life purpose is found in your fingerprints.  The other thing that is found in your fingerprints is your life lessons, and the life lessons are the things that you keep bumping up against that stop you from living your life purpose.  And the life purpose will be broad things like family and community, success or failure, artist in the spotlight, healer, those sort of things, you know, all to do with the 10 different digits.  When I am working with a  client, I am always listening to what they say, and I am always listening to the answer in the way that I can to help them from my own inner guidance; and I say my inner guidance because that includes my guides who I consider part of my inner guidance.  It is easier to demonstrate than it is to actually talk about.

Toni: Right.  But you are doing a very good job at describing, so thank you for that.  What do you need to be inspired, Sherry?  Where do you go for inspiration?

Sherry: I like to read uplifting literature.  For the last few years, I have been studying those things that are considered new thought material, science of mind, that sort of thing.  I also like to listen to my devotional material, either tapes or things now, things that you can download onto the computer.  I like to listen to those on a daily basis, because they help to keep me in the space of inspiration that I need to be in to be of use to my people.

Toni: How do you know what that space is?  How do you know when you are there?

Sherry: Oh, I know when I am there because I feel really good myself; I am feeling grateful, I am feeling like life is really worth living.  I feel uplifted within myself, particularly when I am reading things of this kind of a spiritual nature, I get chills up and down my spine, and I’m sure many people can relate to that, when something is really is right for you.

Toni: What do you need, and this goes hand-in-hand with your answer here, but when you are looking for material and different sources of inspiration, what do you need to research or explore in order to uplift your own potential, to keep that where it needs to be?  Not only in the space of inspiration, but to the greatest potential that you can be?

Sherry: I am continuously learning.  I am a continuous learner, and I tend to follow my nose, if you know what I mean.  I have many interests and they interweave with each other, and it might be one thing one day and one thing another day, but I always follow where I am guided to go because I know that is going to be the place that I am going to find my greatest inspiration and the source of my own ability to help people.  Sometimes it takes me in a circular path; sometimes it takes me off in very strange directions, but I have always been a person to follow the synchronicities that life gives me and when something is right I know is right within me, that I need to do.  So it is more difficult, as I say, to explain than it is to actually do.  I need also to be studying things of a metaphysical nature.  I am always studying something of this nature.  I also need to spend a lot of time in my own space and in nature, which are great sources of inspiration for me for meditation.  I am a frequent meditator.  I also need to interact with other people of like mind, because they help me to see more of who I am, the things that I might overlook.

Toni: When you go through this exploration journey and you get into the space you need to be in and you are one with nature and the meditation and finding like-minded people, how does that go back to how you inspire others?  Is there a correlation there?

Sherry: Oh sure.  I can’t be of any use to anybody else unless I am in the places of inspiration and upliftment myself.  If I am feeling really depressed, I can’t help anybody, so it is important to me to be in that sort of, we could call it a spiritual space, where you are feeling at one with the flow of Life, and I say Life with a  capital L.

Toni: Why?

Sherry: Why?  Because that is the space for me where I get the greatest clarity, where I can see more of what I need to see to be able to help somebody else, to be able to inspire and to be able to uplift them, to be able to give them the guidance that they need.  It also puts me in a better place, and you have to clean vibrationally so that I can actually call to me those things that I need to help somebody else.

Toni: That is very, very interesting.  It sounds as though you do a lot of self-awareness, to get into the space that you need to be before you can even help others to explore their potential or inspire others.  That’s what I am hearing.

Sherry: Yes, that is absolutely true.  I think it is vitally important for anybody who does any kind of work like this, that they should be very self-aware.  It is my opinion that you have to be self-aware, and I like really working with clients who are very self-aware as well.

Toni: Sherry, the four questions I have asked, the questions for the project which is who do you inspire and what do you do to explore potential, what do you need to be inspired, and what do you need to explore your own potential — and all of these interviews obviously have other questions that will come out — but where you said that in order for you to get to that place for you to help others, are there techniques that you could share very simply that you would advise others that are looking for ways to inspire themselves or to keep them themselves motivated?  When you say you have to be self-aware, do you know of a way quickly that someone could do that, to get there, to be that productive?

Sherry: Well, self-awareness is a life journey, I am afraid to say, but you can get there more quickly if you are a regular meditator, there is no doubt about it.  That is one of the things that meditation is about.  It is not only about being relaxed, but it is also about turning within and looking at the ways you react and act by how you think about things.  So it is vitally important that we become aware of our thoughts, which is what meditation is good for, and there are many, many different types of meditation, especially now that there are meditation techniques that use the beta-waves and things like that.  A lot of my friends have found those very helpful.  But it is a lifelong journey, because as we become more aware, it is like I am peeling the layers of an onion, and you find more and more things inside of yourself.  It’s a journey, and life is a journey, it isn’t an A to B and you are finished.  Life is a journey, and it is a wonderful exploration.

Toni: By yourself going on that journey and finding your own self-awareness is how you help others to be inspired and how you help others explore their potential; that is what I am hearing in this interview.

Sherry: Yes, that is exactly right.

Toni: Well, I cannot tell you how you have inspired me and my thought process, and I know that others will benefit from hearing your words and also seeing this in the blog, and I thank you so very much for providing this snapshot of your approach and your needs so that others can benefit from them in this Get Inspired! Project; so thank you so very, very much for this interview today.

Sherry: Thank you, Toni.

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For more information about Sherry Green:  www.handanalyst.co.uk

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This interview was recorded in Skype.  To download the audio for listening on an mp3 player, iPod, etc., simply right-click the green player image at the top of this post and select “Save Target As” to save the mp3 file to a folder on your computer.

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