Whine Down with Jana KramerIt can be difficult to understand all the turmoil facing the world right now, so Jana is connecting with Jasna Burza, who shares her incredible story.
Jasna was only 8 years old when she was placed in a refugee camp during the war in Bosnia, and she’s ready to share that experience with Jana, along with her lessons on trauma and healing.
Plus, Jasna has advice for anyone feeling confused on how to confront negativity, both at home and around the world.
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio Podcast.
All Right, Today's Thursday Therapy. We've got Yasna Burza on. She's an internationally recognized certified life coach spiritual advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, dreamers. She lived in a refuge camp during the war in Bosnia. She's got a book out now called Healer and Heels. You are the one you have been waiting for simple practices to transform your life, also transforming your home into an oasis for your mental health. So let's get her on and start healing. Hello, yeahs Now, we are so excited to have you on wind Down. I'm Jana, I guess I'm my baby.
I got Channa.
This is Kristen and you know I was reading your breakdown and I'm just like man like you've you were in a refuge camp during the war in Bosnia, and I don't I don't want to butcher the How do her?
Here's go?
How do you say Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Yep, Herzegovina. I mean, and now you've just transformed your life and you've got books out, You've got Healer and Heels. You're also doing which I want to talk to you about too. You're transforming your home into an oasis for your mental health because i just moved into a house, so I've got questions about everything. But can we just back up to Bosnia for a minute, because I would just love to know just about your upbringing and who Jazna is.
Yeah. Absolutely, It's actually quite the topic right now because of everything happening happening in the Middle East, and it's been quite triggering because every time I see the images of shelling, the grenades, the snipers, it is exactly exactly what I remember growing up. So I was eight when war started in former Yugoslavia. It was a combination of six different countries. And why do we fight? Right, It's so complex, just like now in the Middle East. My kids keep asking me, Mama, why can't they just live to And that is the really big question throughout Millennia, why do we fight? And I ended up in a refugee camp at the age of eight alone for a month until I was there and I with my mom while my father was taken to a concentration camp. So it's even now when I'm talking to it's hard to believe this happened. In my lifetime, in our lifetime. It's not like hundreds of years ago, and it's still happening today. So the war lasted four and a half years in Bosnia, and it's destroyed our lives. It definitely destroyed the health and well being my father. After he came back from the concentration camp, he was never the same. And I accumulated a lot of trauma, a lot of heartache. But I also really believe. And here's the kicker, and here's the reason why I'm so excited to be talking to you, because I know about the next chapter, and I know about so so much emphasis that you place on this idea that we can heal, no matter what it was precisely somehow placed in my life, because that I could break down everything that needs to be broken down inside of me, parts of my ego, and to learn how to heal, so that I could be the change that I wanted to see in the world.
Yeah, and I'm so sorry with everything good? How can I ask how old you are?
Sure? Forty two? Just forty two?
Yeah?
Oh, well happened right behind just this.
You know, my I'm German in Croatian, so my grandma she i remember she'd come to our classroom. She wrote this big thing and I think it was this middle school and she talked about how she was in the war and the bombing because it was Yugoslavia at that time. She was born in Zagreb. And you know, it's it's wild that you know, we have that generation and then you know our generation now as you were as a child, and you know the refuge camp and then now again, yes, everything in the news is just it's just I can't even like it's it's hard to even go is this Obviously I know it's real, but it's so hard to just fathom.
That any that's going on now.
And that's like even when you're saying eight, So Jane and I have girls that are three months or three weeks apart, and they're about to be eight years old.
And I like.
As you're saying, it was like holding back tears, because how does an eight year old go for a full month, no mom, no dad, I mean, and turn out to be as like beautiful and introspective as you are. It's just honestly, like I I lost words. I'm like eight years old, that is, and you don't get to know where anybody is right. I mean you're put in this position where and you're all alone family wise, yeah, right, there's no one else from your.
Old someone else.
It was I was imagine love and Jolie feeling that like all these kids. Now, I just I can't. That's piece of breaks some herts the kids.
I have a nine year old, So the thought of him right now being without me for a month, sleeping on the floor and where his mom is breaks my heart. The thought of him literally hunting for food and clean water, the thought of him not being warm. So being cold is my trigger. We were always so cold, right, So it's all three of us right now we're sitting in it's like I can't possibly imagine it. And as we're sitting in this conversation our company offices and chairs, there's people and children in the Middle East experience in this very same thing. So I think it's madness, and it's the reason why I wrote the book. It is this idea of we keep delegating our power to dress The government is going to fix it, the influencers are going to somehow make it all better. What about us and the energy and how we are contributing to the chaos of the world. We are the ones that are alltimate we have been waiting for and the mystics and people like Roomy and Hafi's have been talking about for millennia, and quantum physics now explains that we literally are changing the fabric of our society with our emotions and our thoughts. And I felt this deep desire and need in the post pandemic world to write a manual for how do we navigate a way out of this? Because I really do believe that it starts with us. And even though we feel helpless right now and my heartbreaks, I've cried more in the last three weeks than I have in the last three years, how do we get through this? How do we make it?
And that's the piece and I want, I want to sorry to interject, because I really want to talk about the ways that you talk about those in Healer and Heels. But when it comes to the war that's going on now, because it's hard sitting here, like you said, in our beautiful, well conditioned rooms and you know we're safe, we have food, what can we do? That's the thing is sometimes I'm like, yeah, I could post the things on Instagram, but then it just keeps happening. I'm one person and I'm like, so, what can we do that would make a difference.
I am not a fan of posting and sharing information that we don't even know is true right now. I think that's part of the problem. Good natured people are sharing things that they feel like they want to do something, so they share what their influencers someone they follow is shared without even knowing if they're doing harm. So I think the best way to do the best things to do right now for all of us is tune out the noise. And that's difficult because science is very conclusive. Doctor John Diamond, he's the father of kinesiology. He talked about this idea of when we even look at something very negative and very very harmful to us, all of our muscles in our body go weak. So how do I help my nine year old and ten year old when I'm a complete mess? And I talk about this in the book. If I were to pay attention to everything bad happens in the world and really take it in because somehow I want to, that's how I feel I'm helping, I will be curled up on the floor by mid morning, unable to help anyone so this is not to be insensitive. It just means that in this very big geopolitical conflict, there's nothing that we can do right now directly. I give money, I do aid, I pray for people. But I think what we can do is pay attention to the discordance and the negative energy that we have in our own lives. We keep blaming others and saying, but terrorists are doing that, and these are the people that are at fault. But we are not paying attention to the judgments that we place upon others. Oh she's so and so, or he is such a jerk, or all of these really quick reactions that we have, I think are just as poisonous. And there's something in the world that's called the Higgs field and it was discovered in twenty twelve in Zern, Switzerland. It's how we really discover this Higgs boson, which is the smallest particle in the world, and it's so bizarre in it's behavior that we have no other word for it than God's particle. It's insane. And this field connects everyone, all of us across the board, and we now have the quantum physics and beautiful researchers that prove that is so so when we think about that, it means that every single thought and the word we utter contributes to the overwhelmed anxiety or the chaos of the world. So tune out the noise. See if you can fortify yourself, your household when you are you, when we are in our household with our little ones, you know, playing room room with our with my son on the on the floor, or singing songs or making great meal. I feel that that's how I'm cleaning my energy and then putting that light into the world. And I think both of you are sitting there, You're doing it just by having this converse by week in and out putting out content that I think heals people.
What do you think you were?
First of all, selfishly, that makes me feel a little better because I was like, I have to, like with everything going on with the baby coming, I started to feel at the time, I was like, I mean, I feel bad for just blocking the noise, but it was just so loud that I just it was causing anxiety.
Well I did after those After one of the school shootings, I interviewed one of my therapist friends and we talked about exactly this. I like what do we do right because it's helpless. But I do think one so many things you're saying are literally like pouring into my DNA today, Like I couldn't be any more in alignment with everything you're saying, and it's validating in so many ways. But she essentially said, like we forget to just start where we're at, and we're expending all this energy. But it's the same thing. She said that the best thing you can do is to regulate your own nervous system in this moment. So take a walk, cook a meal, hug your kids, because when we're all just chaotically bumping into each other and sharing the misinformation. I mean, I will admittedly say I was a pray for Israel, when I mean Biblically it says we're supposed to pray for Israel.
So I was like, why I pray for Israel?
Right?
And I had followers right to me like okay, this is what's happening, and I and we had the most beautiful dialogue, but it was honest dialogue because I was not afraid to say I don't know. But I can't also get accurate information because there's an agenda woven between everything that is going to frame something to be one way or the other. And truth over volume has always been my motto sonable it's a yeah, well, let's hope we can all write a book on it someday. But it's just but like, the truth over volume is so hard to find for us right now because our worlds are so inundated by by the influencers. I mean, we're friends with these people, I pseudo semi like you know, will say that I kind of am one, but it is hard to really find what is truth and to help then, Like I just think we have a bunch of unqualified people saying a bunch of things that aren't true, and we're just all we're spinning into each other.
Amen. And I think and.
It does feel helpless.
So when you say, like start with you, I'm like, think, thank you for giving us a start, Like nobody even knows what is point A and to.
Start with you, Jasmin, what would you say is the first step on someone's healing journey? Like what is when they're like I'm done with this, I want to start the healing process.
Like what is that first?
Is it? Is it recognizing that or what would you say, like to be that first step into this the journey of healing.
Well, it's always understanding that we that something is off, and I think we know that it is we I have to admit that I have a problem more, that something is not right. And I was reminded by that through throughout your journey and the book, and you write about that so beautifully. So many times I felt like, oh my gosh, she's literally telling my story. And it's in that awareness that we first tune out the noise. And I did this. I remember the book was really for me. I started writing it a decade ago when I went through a series of miscarriages. I had nine. And I know that that hits home for you too, Jana, And that's the We're always going to go through something. No matter who you are and what you do in this world, you are going to experience some kind of a hardship. So even back then, what I did was say something has to change because this keeps showing up for me, meaning I either I changed or change the environment. So I tuned out the noise. I said no to every happy hour, I said no to all of the events. I literally could coon myself in my eye and I focused on me, and that's what I needed at the time. But even now, right now, I think that the healing journey is so individual, and we have all of these gurus telling us this is the exact prescription for how you heal, how you do X, Y and Z, and there is no such a thing because we are so all, so unique, so beautiful, so divinely manufactured orchestrated to be in this world. So it starts with saying, what do I first need right now? For some people is that they need people, They need to reach out to others and not be alone, and for others it's exactly the opposite. So it's being radically honest with saying what is it that I really truly need to heal? What I know for sure is that it is difficult to heal today in this very noisy world where there's incessant chatter, simply because there's so much incoming and it's very difficult to ask ourselves these questions when there's barrage of noise coming at us and demands of life every single day. So how do I make my world extremely small for just a few weeks so I can actually ask myself what I need and take the first step, and then I'm a really big fan of simplifying and reducing my life, saying no to everything that is absolutely unnecessary. An example of this for so many of my mamas for doing the bake baking muffins in school when they haven't had any he sleep the night before because they've been up with their newborn. That's not the time to be mom of the year. That's the time to get more sleep. So I think it's tuning out the noise and refocusing on simplifying our lives so we can tune out the noise and hear the whispers of our own soul. When we do that, the answers do come.
Whispers of my own soul. That's another book.
Yeah, but that's so true. It is true.
I do.
I call it soaking prayer in my bathtub at night, and it's I tell my husband. I'm like because he'll say, like, oh, can I come in and talk to you?
And I'm like, I.
Wish you could, but I need to hear my own heartbeat for a minute, like you, just because I mean, we're moms, right, so like that even the people we've created we love are noisy. So at some point it is about just like getting silent with yourself and you also believe then I think I read this that you're a big advocate for your space. Also like resembling the amount of noise and kind of like what is the reflecting words are really hard for me today, but reflecting kind of these the noiseless way of life.
To say this, even last night with the baby coming, there's my house is a mess. There is like this, I'm looking at this, going I still got to hang that, and then this, the nursery needs to be done, all the things, and I'm like, I what I told my fiance was I have to I need to have these areas put together before the baby came, because I'm starting to just feel chaos kind of in my soul and I feel agitated, and I don't want to have to deal with this when the baby comes and I and but we have two rooms that are done. So there's the master, which is kind of my oasis. So when I start to feel a little oh God, there's so much to do, I just go sit in my room and it's just it's very peaceful. So I'm so thankful to have that. But last night there was just crap everywhere on the island, and I'm the kind of person I don't like sink. I don't like any stuff in the sink. That's just I can't go to bed with stuff in the sink. It has to be in the dishwasher or running or whatever. And I just looked at it, and you know when it just feels like everything's being left for.
You to to do, which.
I know and I don't think they like it because he don't mean the biggest help wherever, like he's amazing around the house. But just in that moment, I just saw everything and I was just like, I'm a ticking time bomb. And we got like a week to get this train roll here. And so I think for you, Jasmine, like what I'm obviously you you're in alignment with that too, that you need things put together in the house.
Is that kind of what.
We're what we're simplified declared.
But there's a brea good reason.
Tell us everything. I'm drinking everything you're saying with a straw, I'm like, tell me.
It has become such a big part of my life. I actually went for three years. I researched, had my spiritual teacher, and then I went really deep into quantum physics, and I'm like, wait a minute, these two branches are talking about exactly the same thing. Let me write about it in a way that's really understandable. So there's a there's a science behind why we feel distraught when things are all over the place, the messy kitchen, the messy environment, everything in our space. Our spaces are not empty, they're fully alive. We think of space as empty, but it actually carries information, and that is this information, this vie information that can be molded and changed with our thoughts, with the things that are in our environment. So when we have a lot of clutter and things are all over the place, that creates something in physics called negentropy, And what that means is that every part of that clutter or things out of place creates disorder in our minds and carries that energy that then envelops us. So what I've learned in my research is that we can actually create holy spaces in our homes and mimic the energy that we feel, for example, in Westminster Abbey or a temple or church. Every time we go into a holy space where there's reverence, it's actually no miracle. It's physics, people go into that space every single day that's orderly, and they condition it with their good thoughts wishes, and over time that space imprints the energy of our own emotions and thoughts. It starts really first and foremost with the physical clutter, because that is the easiest way to fix our environment and change it. So I always tell everyone, if you're feeling all over the place, really first and foremost, even for your dinner right now, I'm like, I can't even imagine or remember being in the last weeks and feeling like, oh my god, my whole life is going to change again. You can just set this intention of right, you can just set an intention of you know what, I'm going to take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and I will handle this before baby arrives. And that intention molds not just your reality. We now know through observer effect in quantum physics that our thoughts change physical matter, and intention is a focused thought. So if you do that, you're molding your environment. You're making your future so and then you're also changing the material composition of your and making sure that your space reacts to you as well. If that makes sense. Does that make sense because I don't want to be too sciencey, but this is really important for us to know.
It makes so much sense. I love the idea.
I was just as you were saying, I'm like, what spaces in my house feel holy to me? Because there are certain rooms that are less than holy right now, my closet being one of them. Make another yes, oh yeah. But it's funny because we didn't find out if we were having a boy or girl. We had a little girl five months ago, and so there was the chaos of like where does everything you know your but I have to design and create I call it habitats around the people and their energy, you know, like I need to know them first. And now her room is probably like the holiest place in my house to me. Like I go in and I'm like, ah, but it's so like almost soaked in gratitude or something that I feel it when I walk in. And now I'm like, well, I just have work to do in every other room in the house, because it doesn't matter how cute it is. There's just a lot of I do feel that, like cluttering, just crap. Every We've been in our house for seven years and all of a sudden You're like, how did all this stuff get here?
We chose it, But I don't like that.
It's yeah, it's so easy. We live in a world where I feel like things are just coming out and they're not coming in and they're not coming out. But see what you did in the nursery, right, And that is so incredibly important for new moms because you know, I'm looking at you, Jane, I'm like, you're going to be so tired in a few weeks. And I always felt like whenever I was feeding, it was a holy place because it was a place that it's going to embrace me. So we can actually change the energy of any space now if we can. You know, there's I have a husband and i have two boys, So I'm not even going to attempt to claim the entire house because it is impossible. There's just nowhere. But I can claim a dominion over one room, over one corner where it can be a holy ir reverence space. Develo uphold me. And here's why that's important. Every day we go into the world and we can now measure our field, our energetic field. We can measure it up to six feet around us. And Heart Math Institute has done beautiful research around our heart, which is five thousand more times more important, more more impactful, and bigger than that of the brain. So we're going around in our days bumping into each other field. Majority of those fields are discordant. There are anxious energies, too much overwhelmed. Then when we come into our house, we need an oasis, a space that will that will embrace it, embrace us, They will hug us, they will literally let our worries and cares of the world melt into that space, just like a mother's arms do that for a baby that's in distress. That is the importance of having our space. It's not just an abode in which we eat, braids, sleep. It's so much more than that. And I think that by doing that, it's a radical way of changing the world. How when I come I cohere all systems within myself. I can come into my bath and I can bless the water, and I can really come into the space where I'm becoming more aligned with who I am. And then when I go on the next day into the world of those bumping fields and discordant energies, I become the light in this world. So for me, that's my mission how do I make this world a better place? And I always ask myself, how does it start with me? Where do I have to make the changes? And the home is one of those simple things that doesn't cost a thing and we can do that.
Yeah, I love that. And in Healer and Heels to talk about because I feel with you know, life and kids and impending deliveries and anxious feelings. Is there any good tips you write in the book about how to calm that anxious mind because I definitely go too.
And I'm trying.
To switch my thoughts because I know thoughts become and so I'm every day I wake up and I go, I'm going to be okay, Baby's going to be okay. Everyone, It's like, what's Everything's going to be okay? Because in my mind, I'm like, it's not going to be okay. And oh my god, the doctor said this could happen, and this could happen, and oh my god, I could code and it's just all the things. So I'm like, what are some good tips to just breathe in peace?
Well, I'm going to go back to what we discussed earlier. The first is to tune out the noise as much as the outside knows that you.
Can hear, but it's my noise though. That's the problem. How do you have your own it's my own mind.
So if you've tuned out the world, that's wonderful. It really starts with we're always the regulating our nervous system by taking a deep breath and they breath in and out. And what that does is that we cannot hold peace and fear, or peace and anxiousness at the same time in our soul, heart and mind. It is impossible. Our brain doesn't work that way. So wherever we're placing our attention is what is going to grow. So all of us will wake up in the morning and say, oh my god, I have so much to do. How am I going to do it? This is impossible, there's no way, and there's barrage of things, and just in a moment, you can just stop and immediately say everything is going to be all right, And you say it in a slow and methodical way, because again it's that intention. And remember that intention changes physical matter, it changes atoms. So this is not to be downplayed. And saying that, why, I know the thought thoughts change, you know, my reality. We say it with such such little bit of a lack of reference reverence. I think that it's just repeating it to ourselves. Everything is going to be all right, and so it is. And that would be the first, very first step. The second is to surround ourselves with somehow some part of nature. Trees are incredibly powerful, or greenery or plants in completely downregulating our nervous system. And here's how. There's a practice that starts in Japan called shinrin yoku, which translates to forest baiting. It started as an antidote these really really busy lives, and it now shows that it has actually been incredibly transformative for us because it immediately within twenty minutes of being among the trees, they produce something called fighting sides, which is a chemical that somehow plays with our chemical composition, and within twenty minutes regulates and lowers cortisol and adrenaline and increases oxytocin, increases the cancer fighting proteins. That just makes us really really really good. These are the physical manifestations and things that we can actually measure in a lab. I draw my blood before and after I go into the forest, and boom, it's an immediate thing that suits my physical body. But I think what it does, and this is a little bit more difficult to measure. It's subjective, but I believe it does something to us. Studies show now that trees actually talk to each other, not in a way that we are talking, but they communicate one another, warning themselves when there's danger ahead, when there's any kind of danger, or they need more water, or they need to protect themselves from something coming. I also believe that the trees can feel that we're there, So it's another way where I feel enveloped. And that physical lowering of adrenaline and cortisol coincides with lowering and slowing down our thoughts, so we can take a bigger inhale and have a bigger exhale. And those are the kind of thing and the third thing that I really really sometimes it's very difficult for me to meditate where my mind is rasing prayer. And there's an entire chapter in the book about prayer and the science of prayer of how important it is. Regardless of your faith or even if you are religious or not, you can say a prayer of goodness or well intention for someone else, and just by sitting in the space and saying, Dear God, today I'm going to say a prayer for Jana. May her days be soul peaceful, May her preparation for the baby be so effortless, and may develop her with light. May she come into the state where she's so fully prepared to welcome this beautiful, incredible miracle into the world. And may everything be just the way it is. So science says that when we do that, not only does it work, intercestory prayer has been shown to have incredible res and that's because of that Higgs field. I change as a results. So when I pray for you, I feel so good because I'm connecting to the field of potentiality of goodness, and then it changes my chemical composition. So just know that for the next few weeks, my prayers, morning prayers, You're going to be in them so and you're going to feel them.
Yeah. Well, I just thank you, and I'm so excited now to get your book, Healer and Heels, And I appreciate everything you said, and I will say, Michigan, Jana is why up north is my favorite place in the world. The water, the trees, all of it.
It's just.
Yeah, it's so I totally agree with you on the tree aspect. But Jasna, where can our listeners find you?
I spend most of my time on Instagram at Yasna dot Borza, and I'm happy to answer any questions. And I that's really it. I don't have.
Sorry, I americanized your name with jazz. It's okay, Yana, Yeah, I know, okay, like people call me Yana from over there.
Yeah, yeah, that's.
Quite all right. There's really there's for me. I'm there's nothing that I sell. There's not there. I don't have a product. There's nothing that that you.
Got Healer and heels girl, and everyone needs to go there.
That's right. Yeah, the book because it's incredibly healing. But I just really want to remind all of us that we are the ones that we have been waiting for and that there comes a time for everyone in our lives where I'm just so reminded of Matthew Perry passing. Despite all of the abundance fit material that we may accumulate in our lives, sometimes our demons are there to haunt us. So unless we attend to those, we can't really create the goodness in the world. So when we get to the point we should try and tell ourselves we have arrived. How may I be of service in this world? And that's how we change the world and be the light in this world. And I'm so thankful to you for this huge honor. I adore you to pieces. Thank you for having me.
Thank you, Juvelie, thank you so much. I appreciate you.
I want to hug you.
I know anytime you're in Nashville, let us know. Please love your friend. Thank you so much. Everyone go get a healer and heels by Yasna Versa.
Thank you friend,
