WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT…

Hello everyone. I’m Shauna Hoffman. I am so excited to have this amazing guest on our show today. You all know how passionate I am as a sailor and how I use sailing analogies in my podcasts all the time. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to lock in Carole Fontaine as the guest. Known to some as the sailing, Yogi. Carole Fontaine teaches by sharing stories of her 20 years of living aboard a sailboat to illustrate the life lessons and challenges. A successful professional graphic designer, she left the world of design after her health failed and started on a 10 year journey to search for answers and heal from chronic disease. In that time, she found her voice, took control of her health, and discovered her passion for forgiveness and strength. All while sailing the ocean, diving in caves, swimming with sharks, surviving hurricanes, waking up in a sinking boat and maneuvering in a meager 41 feet of living space with an unconventional husband. And of course a dog. Do you all see why I had to have her on the show? Carole’s a certified life coach, author, meditative writing, Shakti dance, yoga Reiki, master teacher, and she loves to share the stories of being a co-captain of her boat,The Windsong. I can’t wait to talk to her today about her book, Sail Above The Clouds. Now listen to this sail… S A I L, simplify, align, integrate and let go so you can live an extraordinary life. Welcome Carole.

Carole (01:43):
Thank you for this beautiful introduction. Yes. May we all sail above the clouds!

Shauna (01:50):
Every day and always. I’m so excited to have you on the show. I really, really am. I’ve been reading the book. All of you have to get this book. We’ll give you links later as to where you can find out more information about Carole, but Carole, I thought we would start by you sharing this amazing journey from hippie biker.

Carole (02:13):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was very in touch with my rebellious child when I was younger. So I was a young woman in college. I was into bikers and motorcycles and I bought my first Harley. I met my husband who was also a biker and of course we fell deeply in love. And we in Canada, I’m from originally from Canada. So over there in the winter it snows. So we ended up moving to Florida on our motorcycles. When we ended up there, we realized it was way too hot to ride a motorcycle, a motor in your legs and 90 degree weather. So we turned to the ocean, we ended up, I mean, it wasn’t instant. The first few years we wrote a lot and we ended up to a lot of parties and we went to the biker scene, but I really was not satisfied with that.

Carole (03:15):
I became very disillusioned, disheartened, and I wasn’t fulfilled in Florida. And the big dream, the American dream on the beach just wasn’t what I had expected. And I remember being on the beach with my husband and looking out to sea and seeing these boats up there. And I was like, wow, this is the dream. This is the summer of freedom. And we ended up living on the boat, buying a boat from there, living on the boat for 20 years.

Shauna
Had you ever sailed before?

Carole
I had not. I had zero experience in sailing. I think I went on a boat when I was a child once on a vacation, a family vacation. Cause I didn’t even remember if I was seasick or not. My husband had done a tiny little bit of boating on the Lake, but not sailing.

Shauna (04:14):
We talked so much on the show about reinventing our lives and talk about reinventing. Yes, that is a massive reinvention. Then what happened? What were those 20 years like?

Carole (04:28):
Well, we ended up moving on the boat. We needed to reinvent ourselves. We needed to simplify our life. It had become just a, a never ending party. And we needed to get out of this party scene and get in touch with each other and with life and what we want and what our dreams are, what pushed us to move thousands of miles away. We know what had brought us there. So the boat represented that, that dream, what we’re looking for. So the first few years we grew ourselves into learning everything about sailing. We took courses, we, we tried it out. We went cruising. We went to The Bahamas, we made mistakes, but thank goodness, the Morgans are tough boats. But we learned. We learned, we had fun. We enjoyed ourselves. We were young, carefree. It was amazing. It was amazing life. And then eventually we fell back into that mode.

Carole (05:28):
We had, we were back into the party scene, but with the boating crowds. So we had just simply changed a scenery around an underlying dissatisfaction, this satisfaction. We had not addressed what was going on in our hearts and our relationship, what we’re looking for. I was still unaware back then of, I wasn’t really listening to, how am I happy? Are, you know, is everything that I’m doing fulfilling me. Of course I did live in paradise. Some of the places we’ve been, ah, yum, amazing. You know, sailing is just absolutely, but it’s not always idyllic because happiness comes from within.

Shauna
Oh, that is so well said. So how did you start to find that happiness?

Carole
I had five years. I would call my dark night of the soul where after maybe 10 or 12 years on the boat, I became very ill physically ill.

Carole (06:29):
And I ended up seeing many doctors. I was swollen. I had inflammation, a lot of pain. I ended up having a hysterectomy. I had lesions on my liver had skin problems. I had, I could not eat without getting sick and I was getting anemic. So there was a lot of things going on and the doctors weren’t communicating with each other. And I thought I fell into this, the Western medicine cycle of having 10 different doctors that don’t talk to each other. And I became depressed. Of course, at that point, my husband really came through for me and said, this is not working. You need to look at what’s going on and he called my mom from Canada. She came in to the rescue. He really took a look at what was happening. And I fired my doctors. I went the holistic route.

Carole (07:31):
I started searching for answers for myself. I took responsibility for my health. I took risk. And when I did that, I realized that I was very unhappy and that unhappiness might have simmered there for so long. That the only way that my body had been able to have me listen to it is scream loudly and make me sick. And this is when I finally stopped and say, Whoa, hold on. What’s going on here? Something deeper is happening. And I reinvented myself completely. I fired my doctor. I fired my boss, quit my job. I even fired one of my best friends. That was a toxic relationship. I reevaluated my relationship and I realized that my husband and I were really having a lot of problems and we needed to face them.

Shauna
How did you do that?

Carole
We talked. Communication first. There’s always a period when we become aware where we’re not quite certain, what’s going on, we’re like, Oh, we know something’s wrong, but we’re not quite sure what it is. And so we asked questions and I had a friend that was adamant on me getting a journal and write in it. You got to write. And I’m like, what? How is writing gonna fix it?

Carole (08:54):
But I did. And that really was the best remedy because writing opened up a whole world of wisdom and awareness, self awareness.

Shauna (09:07):
I love that. I so often give that to my clients to do. And we talk about it here in an every workshop. One of the things that I say over and over and my listeners hear it over and over is when we make the subconscious conscious, it can go away. And when you journal, even when you start the page, if you start journaling … “I’m so angry” and you’re writing and all of a sudden four pages later, you have gotten underneath why you’re angry or hurt or sad or lonely. But until you get it from your head out and a lot of people can do it with meditation. But journaling I find is one of the most positive and productive forms of self-awareness because you’re getting it out of your brain. Then when you talk about the fact that we have talked about it with the connection of mind, body is the fact that we, when we have so much unhappiness and dis ease, it has to, you’re absolutely right. It has to go to someplace in your body. And that’s where so much illness comes from. Deepak Chopra talks about it all the time. Being able to get the disease out of your mind, get in touch with your emotions, your feelings, your fears. Then you can start releasing them and letting them go.

Carole(10:34):
Absolutely. It’s like doing a cleanup of your mind. It’s decluttering your mind. I talk a lot about how to simplify your life in my book, because it sailing above the clouds, how to simplify your life. It’s, it’s more than just simplifying your physical space. It’s simplifying your emotional, your spiritual, your mental space. We carry so much stuff and we don’t ever clean it up. We don’t look at it and writing helps that. And for me, writing, help me get clear on what was going on because I knew there was a dis ease in my life. I did not felt that things were right. I was happy, but it was surface happy. I wasn’t joyful in my heart. And writing helped me get to that space. It helped me uncover all the murkiness. It helped me declutter, all that was taking up rent in my space. I evicted everything that was, that was renting space and say, and once that was done Once you simplify and you clear out the clutter, then you can clearly see what’s left and what you want to keep and what you want to pursue and support and nurture and what you definitely don’t want back in your space.

Shauna (11:59):
None of you can see we’re recording this live so I can see Carol, as she speaks in my head is just sitting here, shaking my head. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I love decluttering our mind. I love that so much. You just nailed it. So in your book, it’s SAIL, simplify, align, integrate, and let go. Speak to those four.

Carole (12:23):
How, when you simplify, just address that when you simplify your life, your life, you, the pattern becomes clear, whatever is left after you simplify, Oh my goodness, it’s clear what you, you want to pursue or what you, you, what brings you joy? What brings you passion? What’s your purpose is because you’ve gotten rid of everything that was making your life busy, but not necessarily passionate. And once you’ve simplified, now that you are clear on your goals, how can you align your life with those goals? So the second book, all the stories and the lessons and the exercise going to be, how to align your goals with your purpose and then integrate. How do you integrate these tools that we have in our life around that are so many amazing tools and exercises and coaches out there that shares things that we can do in our life.

Carole (13:21):
But how do we apply them? We take so many, we take courses and we’re like, Oh yeah, this is really good. This is really good. 30 days later, we sign up for another course and on and on and on. Where does it stop? It stops when we integrate certain practices and we commit to certain things in our life daily life that will really affect our success. When we integrate these into our morning routine, our work routine, our schedules, et cetera. And when we have all that in play, we’re, we’re now aligned. We’re clear on what we want. We have tools to support us. We can take actions into the world that are very aligned, but then we have to let go. We have to trust because once we’ve taken, we’ve done everything that we can. We’re aligned in our heart. Our actions are aligned with our purpose. We need to trust. We need to trust the universe that we need to trust that the universe has our back. And the last book, that’s a tough one. The letting go,

Shauna (14:27):
The letting go. I think also trusting ourselves that we have gotten to that fourth step because we have been genuine to ourselves because we have looked within because we have become truly self-aware. And then if you don’t let go, the things that we don’t let go of, and we hold onto that we know are unhealthy for us. There is much discontent in knowing that we’re holding onto that. I think that ends up being the motivator to finally let go.

Carole (15:01):
Yes, for me, it’s a big it’s a big step that letting go. And I always ask myself, how deeper can I let go? Because there’s always different levels because we’re just, when you think you let go, quite enough, you move thousands of miles again, and you start over again. I had a sailing injury a few years ago, so I could not teach. I couldn’t. I had to move off the boat in a town that I did not know by myself with my dog, while my husband’s sailed away with the boat, because my back was so hurt. I could not be on the boat anymore. I really reassessed myself in that. Oh my God, what’s my identity? Letting go, moving off the boat. I can’t teach anymore. I’m not a teacher anymore. Letting go of all these things. Oh my goodness. It was one of the greatest acts of letting go. My life, that to trust that all will be well. And letting go also means letting go of trying to be perfect of controlling everything expectations and really trusting that you’ve done all that you can, and that whatever’s going to come to. You may not be what you want exactly, but they will be what you need. And from that, you can grow.

Shauna (16:26):
What I love about this process is I don’t think you can get there until you’re aligned. Once you’re aligned and you know, your purpose and you know, you’re aligned with your dreams. You’re aligned with your goals. You’re aligned with your genuine self. Then the letting go can happen. People I think do it backwards. I think they think, Oh, I’m just going to get rid of this relationship. Or I’m going to change my job because I’m not happy in my job, but they haven’t really aligned their spirit. They haven’t simplified their life. I love this so much. They haven’t really done the work. And like you said, you ended up going, you’ll go for one place to the next place with the exact same lessons

Carole (17:15):
You do. That’s what happens. We just, you can move to as many places and change as many jobs, but it’s like when you have a relationship, a lot of women say, I always end up with the same types of relationship. When you see repeating situations in your life, you really want to stop and ask yourself, what’s the lesson it’s disguised somewhere. And once you really noticed this, Oh my goodness. You know, you declutter everything around and get to really, to the bottom of it. And then when you’re clear about it, you want to sure does this align with what I want in my life? And if it doesn’t then it needs to go,

Shauna (17:54):
I have a word that I talk about. And I think I did a podcast. I’ll have to go back and look which one, and it’s on willingness. You have to have willingness to look at yourself. That’s the biggest for me. If you can throw in another word for wind or willingness, sail with the wind, the willingness to look at yourself. If you don’t have the willingness to take that first step, you can’t get there.

Carole (18:28):
Yes. Yes. It gets, it gets scary. It’s scary to look at ourselves this closely, because it’s not always a fun process. There’s a lot of things that were scaring me. I was, I was refusing to look at this. I did not want to look at my relationship and my job. It’s such a ride. I lived in paradise. I lived on the South or, and people, you know, if it would be back down, it was, you know, I’ve been on a boat for 20 years. So back then it wasn’t social media, the way it is now. But if you would looked at my page, it would have looked. Ideally, people are like, Oh my goodness, Carol, how beautiful your life is. But it’s an illusion.

Shauna (19:13):
Which is so funny. Cause that’s the name of my boat, the illusion.

Carole (19:17):
I love it, my, the illusion.

Shauna(19:23):
And it is, it is. And we live in this illusion all of the time and we have to see what is true to ourselves and genuine to ourselves. Yeah. I, I could talk with you forever and I know I’m going to already want you back on another episode. How can people get your book? How can they read? Do you have any workshops coming up? Do you have anything? Where can my listeners find you?

Carole (19:49):
Yes. The easiest way is to go to my site that sailabovetheclouds.com. So sail above the clouds that come from there, you can get the book. You can connect with me. I don’t have a workshop plan, right? It’s the dates not set yet, but I do have one coming up in February. Most likely about meditative writing, some simplifying your life. I teach on zooms. I have different kinds of classes and I love to connect with your listeners and see, you know, how I can support them and inspiring their life and helping their lives. And there’s a free excerpt on there so they can read the first two chapters.

Shauna (20:30):
And what’s wonderful. Everyone she gives great fun examples of what’s happened in her life. And then she gives you exercises in the book for you to work on for yourself. And maybe if the winds are in our favor, we do a workshop together.

Carole (20:50):
Love to love to collaborate with you. Let’s talk more about that. Absolutely.

Shauna (20:58):
We’re all hearing it right here right now, everyone. Thank you so much, Carol. We wish you fair winds and calming seas!

Shauna (21:09):
Everyone, I wish for you fair winds and calming seas. May you be so good to yourself in the next week. Please take wonderful care of yourself. Eat nourishing foods, get lots of sleep. Surround yourself with loving beings. Thank you for letting me into your life this week. And I look forward to popping back in again next week.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…

• A Journey to Awareness Podcast: All Episodes
• Shauna’s website: https://www.workingonme.com

WHEN DOES IT AIR…
January 23, 2021