Pathways to Self

The Practices & the Questions

Some of you have been listening to this book without a physical copy in hand. It felt strange to interrupt the flow of an audiobook to walk you through each practice, so I decided to include them here — every practice from the book, chapter by chapter, in one place.

And for the book clubbers out there: I see you. I get deep into the principles presented in every book I read too, so I've included discussion questions for each chapter as well.

I hope you enjoy and thank you for being here!

With love,

Black and white photo of a person being lifted by a trampoline.

The Practice

  • Practice 1: Notice Your Mind

    • Sit and listen. Close your eyes and bring your attention inward. Don't try to quiet your mind. Instead, listen to it. Let it speak freely, as if you're overhearing a conversation at a table beside you in a café.

    • Play with the voice. Say a sentence in your mind. First, yell it internally. Then whisper it. Notice that you are neither the yeller nor the whisperer — you are the one who is listening. Stay with that.

    • Separate from it. As thoughts arise, don't follow them. Don't finish them. Don't engage. Just notice: "my mind is speaking." Not "I am speaking." "My mind is speaking."

    • Lean back. Gently shift your awareness back, as if you are taking a seat behind your thoughts. The voice continues, but you are watching the thoughts like clouds in the sky.

    • Notice any patterns. Pay attention to any repetition — reoccurring concerns, loops, or stories. This is the nature of the mind. Let it repeat. You don't need to stop it.

    • Return to the seat of awareness. Each time you get pulled back into thinking, simply notice and step back again. No judgment. Just return to the awareness that is watching it all.

    Do this for a few minutes at a time throughout your day. The goal is not to silence the mind. The goal is to stop reacting to it and to exercise the muscle of returning to awareness.

    Practice 2: Meditation as Mind Training

    Choose your anchor: your breath, a piece of music, a guided meditation, a candle flame, or a single point of focus on the wall.

    Focus on the anchor for a period of time. Start with five minutes a day. When that feels steady, move to ten or fifteen. It is not about the length of time, it is about the consistent practice.

    Notice the difference. How did you feel before? How do you feel after? What is the difference day to day?

    Repeat. It's said it takes twenty-one days to create a habit. The practice isn't to feel peaceful. The practice is to return in discipline and devotion, and eventually, something deeper becomes available.

  • The Practice

    • Choose one place you're out of alignment. Not everything. One thing. A decision you've been avoiding, a conversation you haven't had, or a promise you've made to yourself that you keep pushing off. Be honest. You know where this is.

    • Define your commitment. What is the simplest next step that can bring you back into alignment? Not the full plan. Not the perfect outcome. Just one clear action that says: I'm going to do what I said I would.

    • Set a clear timeframe. Give yourself a window to act. Ideally within twenty-four hours, or another defined time you commit to. Self-trust is built when your word has weight.

    • Follow through. Do it without overthinking, negotiating, or waiting to feel ready or for conditions to be perfect. This is the moment that matters. Action builds trust.

    • Acknowledge it. Pause after. Feel the shift. Even if it is small. This is how trust grows. Not through big breakthroughs, but through consistent follow-through.

    • Repeat. Each time you keep your word, you strengthen the relationship with yourself. Each time you don't, you notice it and return. No shame. Just awareness and recommitment.

    Set yourself up to win:

    • Keep the promise small and achievable. Build evidence, not pressure.

    • Share your commitment with someone you trust. Accountability creates momentum.

    • Say your word out loud. There is power in hearing yourself commit.

    • Create an environment that supports you. Remove friction where you can.

    • Focus on consistency over intensity. Trust is built through repetition.

  • The Practice

    • Choose one to three nonnegotiables. Pick one to three small daily actions that genuinely support your life. Not what looks impressive. Not someone else's routine. Yours. It could be drinking water before coffee, moving your body, reading ten pages, writing down what you are grateful for, taking a morning walk, turning your phone off at a certain hour, or going to sleep earlier. Keep it realistic. Keep it personal. Keep it simple enough that you can actually sustain it.

    • Make your why bigger than your excuses. Before you begin, ask yourself why this matters. Not on the surface. Go deeper. How does this support your body, your peace, your energy, your future, your becoming? Discipline becomes sustainable when your reason for doing the thing is stronger than your reason not to.

    • Set yourself up to win. Do not rely on motivation. Build support around your commitment. Put it in your calendar. Prepare what you need in advance. Remove friction. Share it with a friend. Ask for accountability. Create the conditions that make follow-through easier.

    • Keep your word, especially when you don't feel like it. This is where self-trust and self-discipline meet. Anyone can act when they feel inspired. Discipline is built in the moments when you don't feel like it and choose to follow through anyway.

    • Stay with it long enough to see yourself change. Commit to your nonnegotiables for a set period of time. Start with twenty-one days. Track it. Notice resistance. Notice the stories your mind creates. Notice what shifts as you continue showing up.

    • Return quickly when you fall off. You will miss a day, that is not failure. The practice is not perfection. The practice is returning. Notice where you abandoned yourself and begin again. Immediately.

    • Let it become who you are. Over time, what once felt hard becomes natural. What once required effort becomes identity.

  • The Practice: Wellness Hygiene

    Just as personal hygiene is essential for physical health, wellness hygiene is about tending to our well-being consistently and holistically. It's the daily, often quiet, practices that support our body, mind, and spirit before we reach the point of depletion. Not as a reward for burning out, but as a way of preventing it.

    One way to embody this is by creating a self-care menu — a simple, personal reminder of what actually restores you. Not what looks good. Not what you should want. But what genuinely nourishes your nervous system, your energy, and your inner world.

    Your menu might include things like:

    • Going for a nature walk or hike

    • Practicing yoga, meditation, or deep breathing

    • Writing in a journal or beginning a gratitude practice

    • Reading a book or listening to an audiobook

    • Listening to soothing music or creating a playlist that grounds you

    • Cooking a healthy, nourishing meal just for yourself

    • Engaging in something creative — painting, drawing, crafting, or writing

    • Practicing self-compassion or positive affirmations

    • Getting a good night's sleep and honoring a bedtime routine

    • Pampering your body through bodywork, skincare, or gentle rituals

    • Moving your body in a way that feels supportive — walking, stretching, or trying a new workout

    • Disconnecting from technology for a set period of time

    • Spending time in nature or tending to plants, inside or out

    • Spending quality time with people who feel safe and supportive

    • Engaging in a favorite hobby, or trying something new

    • Offering service or kindness from a place of fullness, not obligation

    There is no hierarchy here. No right way to care for yourself. The only question is: does this fill you up?

  • The Practice: Forgiveness

    Bring to mind someone you are struggling to forgive. This may be someone else. It may be yourself.

    Ask gently:

    • What happened? (Just the facts.)

    • What story am I still telling about what should have happened instead?

    • What am I carrying that is heavy?

    • What am I judging in them that is something I also judge in myself?

    • Am I willing to forgive myself?

    • What would putting it down look like, or feel like, even a little?

    Then ask a deeper question: If I believed that everyone was acting from their level of awareness, their conditioning, their wounds, or their fear, how would that shift my interpretation?

    This does not mean their behavior was acceptable. It means we are no longer imprisoning ourselves in the story of it.

    Place your hand over your heart and say:

    "I release the demand that the past be different." "I release the need to carry this any further." "I choose peace over punishment."

    Notice if your body softens, even slightly. Forgiveness is not a single moment. It is a practice. Sometimes we put the woman down at the riverbank, then pick her back up again the next day. That's okay. Simply notice. And put her down again.

    The goal is not to become someone who is never hurt. The goal is to become someone who does not keep carrying what no longer belongs in their hands.

  • The Practice

    1. Expressing Your Desires

    Desire is not selfish. It is directional. Ask yourself: What is something I wish someone would do for me? What would genuinely delight me? What would feel supportive? What would feel nourishing? Write one down. Now practice expressing it cleanly, out loud, to someone else. You might say: "I would really love it if we could ______." "It would mean a lot to me if you ______." "What I really need right now is ______." Notice what arises in your body as you say it. Your job is not to control how it lands. Your job is to honor what is true.

    2. Expressing Your Truth

    There is a difference between speaking and telling the truth. Truth is often quieter. Simpler. Truth sounds like: "That hurt." "I feel scared." "I'm disappointed." "I need more." "I'm not ready." This week, notice where you are editing yourself. Choose one moment this week when you would normally swallow your truth. Instead, say one clean sentence. No backstory. No justifying. No performance. Just the truth. Then stay present.

    3. Expressing Approval

    We are quick to notice flaws. Slow to speak appreciation. This week, practice giving approval freely and cleanly. To others: "I admire that about you." "I'm proud of you." "I see how hard you're trying." "That meant a lot." And to yourself: "I'm proud of you." "I see how much you've grown." "You handled that well." "You're allowed to want what you want." Notice if you deflect. Stay.

  • The Practice

    Find a photo of yourself as a baby or young child.

    Sit with it for a few quiet minutes. Let yourself really look. Not quickly, not in passing. Take it in. Notice the face. The eyes. The softness. The body. The smallness. The innocence. The essence looking back at you before the world told you who to be.

    Without analyzing, simply observe.

    Then gently ask yourself: At what point did this being begin to believe they were not enough? When did love become something to earn? When did they start to feel like they had to be different to be loved?

    Let the questions land, not in your mind, but in your body.

    Now stay with the image and shift your attention. If this child were in front of you right now, how would you look at them? How would you speak to them? What would you never say to them that you have said to yourself?

    Let that register.

    Then, softly, begin to relate to yourself through that same lens.

    Place your hand on your heart and acknowledge what is true: you were never meant to become someone else to be worthy of love. Nothing you have done has made you less deserving of it.

    Stay with the image for a few more moments. Not to fix anything. Not to change anything. Just to remember.

  • The Practice: Strengthening Boundaries

    Choose one area of your life where you feel slight resentment or fatigue. Ask yourself:

    • Do I consistently feel drained after interacting with this person?

    • Is there an imbalance in giving and receiving?

    • Did I ignore early signals that something felt off?

    • Am I staying out of obligation rather than desire?

    Notice without judgment. Then choose one small boundary:

    "I'm not available for that." "I need to think about it." "I'm heading home early." "That doesn't work for me."

    Boundaries do not require explanation to be valid. Say less. Trust more. Each time you honor one, you strengthen the muscle of self-trust and self-confidence.

  • The Practice

    Throughout your week, begin to notice how you are living. Where are you in alignment with yourself? Where are you overriding what you know is true? Where are you choosing growth over comfort? Where are you choosing comfort over growth? Where are you acting from your highest self? You don't need to correct it in the moment. Just notice. Awareness is what allows the shift.

    Then, at the end of each day, begin to integrate. The mind is most impressionable as you fall asleep. Start by slowing down your system. Dim the lights. Step away from stimulation. Let your body transition into rest.

    Before bed, reflect on your day:

    • Three of the best parts of your day.

    • One boundary you honored.

    • One moment you acted courageously and believed in yourself.

    • One moment you expressed your desires.

    • One thing you forgive yourself for.

    • One thing you are grateful for.

    Let yourself feel each one, not just think it.

    Then reconnect to your direction. Ask yourself: If I could do anything, what would I do and how would I feel? You don't need the how. You only need to stay connected to the feeling.

    Before you fall asleep, let this be the final imprint:

    I am safe. I am supported. I am enough. I am worthy. I am loved.

The Questions

  • Book Club Questions

    1. Dana opens with the image of the medicine woman — a version of herself she didn't recognize as separate from who she was becoming. Is there a version of "you" that feels distant but familiar, one you sense you're growing toward or back into?

    2. The hypnotherapy session with Logan revealed that getting sick as a child was a way to receive control and attention. Have you ever traced a current habit or pattern back to something that once protected you as a child?

    3. Dana writes, "What is unconscious feels like fate, and what becomes conscious becomes a choice." Where in your own life has naming a pattern changed your relationship to it?

    4. The Self-Awareness Practice asks you to separate from your thoughts — to notice "my mind is speaking" rather than "I am speaking." Did you try this while reading? What did you notice?

    5. Dana was, by her own account, the opposite of the calm, grounded medicine woman she saw in regression. What's the gap between how you show up in the world and who you sense you are underneath it?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. Dana's phone call with her brother Tal — naming the story she'd been carrying about him instead of reacting to it — became a turning point. Is there a relationship in your life where you're carrying a story you've never said out loud?

    2. She writes that self-trust "isn't something you wait to feel before you act. It's something you build by acting anyway." Where in your life have you been waiting to feel ready before you move?

    3. Missing re-entry into her media program by 0.4 percent redirected Dana into art, and eventually into philanthropy. Can you point to a rejection or "failure" in your own life that later revealed itself as redirection?

    4. The chapter frames integrity not as morality but as simply "being our word." How does that reframe change the way you think about the promises you make to yourself?

    5. Dana's early experience of not belonging in Canada shaped how hard she had to work to trust herself. How do our earliest experiences of not belonging shape our adult self-trust?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. Dana distinguishes between discipline built from fear ("if I stopped moving I would be exposed as not enough") and discipline built from devotion. Which kind has driven you at different points in your life — and how could you tell the difference at the time?

    2. Her father said "Absolutely not" to network marketing, and it took nearly a decade before he told her "You were right." Have you ever pursued something a parent or mentor didn't believe in? What did that cost, and what did it teach you?

    3. Linda's blunt question — "Have you actually given it everything you've got, consistently, for a prolonged period of time?" — cracked something open for Dana. Is there an area of your life where you've been waiting for a sign instead of just doing the work?

    4. "Motivation got me started, but discipline kept me going." What's one small, unglamorous habit in your life that has quietly compounded into something bigger?

    5. The chapter closes with the past-life diver, searching underwater for something of value in the dark. What do you make of Dana's interpretation that the "treasure" was symbolic rather than literal?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. Emily's response to Dana's honesty — "You're scaring me" — and Jordan's accusation of selfishness both landed as betrayal. Have you ever been called selfish for doing something that was actually self-preservation?

    2. Dana distinguishes "selfishness" from "self-fullness" — filling yourself up so your giving doesn't come from depletion. Where in your life are you currently giving from an empty well?

    3. Dr. Lee's line — "You're very good at doing, but you have no idea how to be" — stops Dana cold. Would someone who knows you well say the same thing? What would it take for you to just be?

    4. The chapter argues that over-functioning and people-pleasing are often survival strategies formed to maintain belonging. Can you trace one of your own accommodating habits back to an early need to stay connected or safe?

    5. Look at the self-care menu above. Which items on it do you actually practice, and which have you been neglecting?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. In the past-life regression, Dana meets the soldier — someone she once judged, then came to understand as "frozen" rather than heartless. Is there a part of yourself (or someone in your life) that you've judged harshly without asking what it was protecting?

    2. Dana connects her chronic overgiving to unprocessed guilt, later softened through the shadow work of seeing that soldier with compassion. What role has guilt played in shaping your own patterns of giving?

    3. The parable of the two monks and the woman by the river closes with the question: "What am I still carrying?" Is there something — or someone — you're still carrying that you could put down?

    4. Dana learns, mid-Vipassana retreat, that her name "Dana" comes from the Pali word dāna, meaning generosity given without expectation of return. Has a word, name, or phrase ever reframed how you understood your own life's purpose?

    5. She writes about the "dark night of the soul" — the period of grief, loss, and identity collapse that preceded her deepest healing. Have you experienced a season like that? What did it clear space for, even if you couldn't see it at the time?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. The past-life logger dies without ever telling Ginny he loved her. Is there something true you've been sitting on — with someone else, or with yourself — that you haven't said out loud?

    2. Mama Gena taught Dana that self-expression isn't about volume, it's about congruence — not performing bigness, but not editing herself down either. Where do you tend to over-edit your own truth before offering it to others?

    3. Dana traces a memory of being told, as a child, to "stop crying and put a smile on your face." How did the emotional rules of your own childhood shape what you feel safe expressing now?

    4. The chapter distinguishes masculine energy (doing, achieving) from feminine energy (being, receiving, feeling) and argues our culture over-values the former. Where do you notice that imbalance in your own life?

    5. Try the "Expressing Your Desires" practice — write down one thing you wish someone would do for you, then imagine saying it out loud. What comes up in your body?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. In the warrioress regression, Dana realizes: "I was never searching for him. I was searching for the version of myself who could finally recognize that I am the source." Have you ever looked for something outside yourself that you later realized you already carried?

    2. Dana traces her body image struggles back to a single comment at the beach — "too bad you didn't get your mom's body" — said with no ill intent. Can you name a small, offhand comment that shaped how you feel about your body or yourself for years afterward?

    3. The chapter walks through the hypnotherapy scene where adult Dana comforts four-year-old Dana in her childhood bedroom. If you did this exercise with a photo of yourself as a child, what would you want to tell her?

    4. "The Girl on the Hill" and "The Ruler" show two opposite responses to pain — one closes the heart for safety, the other overextends until it collapses. Which pattern do you recognize more in yourself?

    5. Dana writes that self-love "is not earned through achievement, beauty, service, or sacrifice. It is remembered." What would change if you believed that about yourself today?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. The friendship that turns from small "pink flags" (a laugh, a copied idea, a "you're remembering it wrong") into a full rupture is one of the book's most specific relationship stories. Have you ever ignored small early signals in a relationship, only to have them escalate later?

    2. Dana writes, "The only people who tend to resist your boundaries are often the ones who benefited from your lack of them." Has setting a boundary ever revealed something true about a relationship you hadn't fully seen before?

    3. The chapter connects self-confidence directly to nervous system regulation — arguing that a dysregulated body will always find a story to justify how unsafe it feels. Do you notice a difference in your own self-trust when you're calm versus when you're activated?

    4. Marianne Williamson's line — "Forgiveness is a mental technique for transforming fear into love" — reframes forgiveness for Dana as something you return to, not something you owe. Is there someone (including yourself) you're ready to stop "carrying" in this way?

    5. In the past-life regression of the exiled tribal mother, Dana realizes: "To me, it felt like she chose to leave. To her, it felt like she had no choice." Has a departure or ending in your own life ever looked different once you understood the other person's constraints?

  • Book Club Questions

    1. Dana's Canadian fundraising expedition was, by conventional measures, a failure — a broken RV, missed footage, a shortened route — and yet it led directly to work she now considers some of her most meaningful. Has a "failed" project in your life quietly redirected you toward something better?

    2. In the past-life regression of the pastor, Dana lives a life of total devotion to God but no human intimacy or personal desire, and reflects, "In this life, I am asked to weave them." Do you feel a similar pull between two things you've been taught to treat as separate?

    3. The book closes each chapter's "doorway" into a single throughline: awareness, trust, discipline, self-fullness, compassion, expression, love, confidence, all in service of realization. Looking back across the whole book, which of the nine steps do you most need to return to right now?

    4. Dana writes that self-realization "is not another mountain to climb, but a remembering to return." How does that idea sit against more conventional ideas of self-improvement or personal growth?

    5. The book ends in Peru, not with an answer but with a beginning — a new pilgrimage. What's one small, concrete practice from this book you want to carry into your own life going forward?