Heart Based Living With Melissa Ambrosini

A Moulin Rouge dancer and TV presenter turned health and wellness guru; Melissa Ambrosini is the sweetheart of the wellness world. She inspires millions through her best-selling book Mastering Your Mean Girl, her number one podcast The Melissa Ambrosini Show and her many motivational talks. We caught up with Melissa and had a truly inspiring chat about life as a wellness guru, and the most important realisations she’s learnt along her path.

She shares endless pearls of wisdom, including: 

• How to tap into our intuition
• How meditating while vacuuming can change your life
• What it really means to ‘love yourself,’ and how to do it
• Melissa’s self-admitted, number one fear

The roller coaster of your early years lead you to many realizations and eventually this abundant path of health and wellness. What was the one most important thing you learned at this time that has never left you even today?

That you have to follow your heart, no matter what. Even if it feels scary, even if it feels wobbly and you don’t know what’s on the other side, you have to follow your heart. Because there’s only so much ignoring your soul that can happen before it starts to eat away at you and for many years I did that. I ignored my soul and it was crying out for a different path, a different direction and that’s really stuck with me ever since. That’s how I live my life now, by listening to my soul and listening to my intuition.

How do you tap into that?

We all have it. Some people just have a lot more noise on top of the surface but we all have it. We all have intuition. Some people intuition is just covered with a lot of noise and a lot of ‘inner mean girl’ as I call it. But other people aren’t, because they’ve done the work to really clear out that clutter and so the way that we strengthen our intuition and listen to it more, is through awareness and diving deep within ourselves and you do that by sitting in stillness.

Whether that’s meditation, or whatever form of stillness is right for you. That’s how you go inward and clear out all of that noise and debris that’s on the surface. It’s like if you were to go snorkeling and on the surface there might be a bit of litter and pollution unfortunately in our oceans. But then you take a deep dive and you discover this beautiful underwater world, these beautiful fish and coral and magic underneath. It might be a bit scary going through and diving through the pollution or whatever’s at the surface of the ocean, but when you take that deep dive and you go down and you go within — there’s so much beauty and you’re so rewarded when you do it.

What’s your daily practice for getting into that space?

Well, I practice meditation twice a day. But, I try and move through my day in meditation. I try and do everything in that meditative state, which is just pure presence. So everything I do in my life, I try and make it a moving meditation. So when I go and hang the clothes out on the line, I actually really look forward to it. When I do the dishes, I’m just with the dishes. When I’m vacuuming, I’m just vacuuming. I’m just being with what is. Because, that’s when you’re so tapped in to your true self. When you’re fully here and now and not stressing about something in the past. When we’re fully here in the moment, that’s when the magic happens. So starting off with some sort of regular meditation practice is the first step and the second step is bringing that level of awareness into your everyday life, into who you’re being in the world.

You also mention you had no idea how, but you knew you needed to love yourself more. After realizing this, did it feel like it was an overnight shift or was it a long journey? 

Ohh, such a long journey, it was — but it doesn’t have to be, it absolutely doesn’t have to be. But for me it was a process of really rewiring my brain because I’d been conditioned and taught, through society, to loath my body. To want to fix it, to want to change it, to hate on it, to speak poorly about it and that took a little bit of rewiring and a little bit of ‘mastering my own mean girl’ to get to that place and so it’s been a journey, it’s definitely been a process, but one that I’m still on today and on that I’m so grateful to be on.

We’ve all heard the saying ‘love yourself’ and there’s a lot of sometimes contradicting info out there now about how to do it. What have you found has really helped get into the space of truly loving yourself? 

I think the realistion that I’ve come to through meditation and a few other life experiences, just how sacred and precious life is and every day, I’m grateful for that breath. For being able to wake up. I’m so grateful, and when you truly realise how sacred and precious life is and you truly realise how sacred and precious your vehicle is (we’re only gifted one for this lifetime that we know of) and some people don’t even have this. Some people don’t have two working arms and two working legs and two eyes and two ears.

So when you get to that real respect and reverence and gratitude for not only this vehicle, but this life that we’ve been gifted; your mentality changes and you switch from loathing yourself, to loving yourself.

That’s what happened to me. I spend most of my teens and all of my twenties, hating myself and hating my body and wanting to fix it and change it. But then you get to a place where you have such deep love, respect and reverence for this amazing vehicle that moves us through life (and mine is so healthy and I’m so grateful) and that’s how you shift into loving yourself… by realizing the sacredness and preciousness of your life. That’s where it starts. Maybe you need to do a bit of reprograming and mastering your mean girl, but at the end of the day; knowing that this life is so sacred and beautiful and that our body is so precious really shifts everything.

You know, you stop thinking “oh my cellulite” and you get over it. Some people don’t even have two legs. Get. Over it. Seriously. I witnessed my best friend pass away from cancer and she had a really serious, aggressive cancer in her left arm called “epithelioid sarcoma” and she couldn’t use her left arm. She couldn’t wash her own hair, tie her own shoelaces, she couldn’t do a pushup, she couldn’t iron her tops. When you see that and you remember that some people don’t have two arms, or two eyes, or two ears, and meanwhile you’re worrying about the little bit of cellulite on your thighs. Like seriously, get over it. Be grateful for what you do have and every single day (she passed away three years ago now), still to this day when I do a pushup, I’m reminded of her. Every day I wash my hair, I’m reminded. And do you know what I say? I say “thank you. Thank you body, thank you arms. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” Every time I tie my own shoelaces or someone else’s shoelaces I think of her.

And so, gratitude for what you do have, expands what you have and the universe then gives you more to be grateful for.

But if you’re constantly focusing on “oh my cellulite, oh my hair, oh this, oh that…” the universe is like “pfft. All you do is winge. You’re so annoying. All you do is winge about what you don’t have. How about you focus on what you do have? It’s time, it’s time now, enough of the loathing and self-hatred, the belittling, putting ourselves down. It’s time.” And, we’ve got to make this shift within ourselves, if we don’t want to pass this onto our daughters and our daughters-daughters. Our sons too, because they’re watching everything we do and even if we don’t say something, when we walk past the mirror and roll our eyes at our thighs, it’s the energy that your kids pick up on and you plant a seed in their mind. Then the lineage of self-hatred and body loathing continues, you didn’t break it and in order for us to break this long lineage — it starts with us.

You’re living a life that you mentioned even you couldn’t dream up. What’s been the most delightfully unexpected parts of your journey to date?

All of it. Oh, I’ve got full goosebumps. I’m married to my soul mate, I live in the most beautiful parts of the world, I have my health, I have beautiful friends and family around me. I get to do work that I friken love. Yeah, those are the best parts.

Just a few more Q&A’s before you go.

What’s your daily mantra? I have two. One is, open wide and surrender and I apply that to everything and anything. The other is ‘choose love over fear.’

Coffee order? I don’t do coffee, but I would get an organic green juice with no fruit, just vegetables.

Favourite café? To be honest, I don’t eat out a lot, because I like to eat all organic and I like to cook and prepare my own food with love at home and so I don’t eat out often.

One thing we don’t probably don’t know about you? That’s a really funny question because I’m pretty open and honest and I share a lot about myself but one thing you might not know about me is that I’m petrified of big waves.

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If you want to read more from our interview with Melissa, hop over to our Green Goodness Co for Business page to read her advice about starting your own business and shifting your relationship with money.

Image: @melissaambronini