We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jocelyn Diles a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jocelyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

It started during my career as a massage therapist. Often, my regular clients would lay down on the table and share with me vulnerable stories about their lives. They would talk about what was causing them stress and where they were feeling challenged. After a while, I noticed correlations between the themes of their stories with the parts of their bodies that I was touching. At the same time, I was deep in my own journey of healing chronic pain and depression. I was studying psychology, going to weekly therapy, meditating, and taking workshops in yogic intimacy. All of this was in a desperate search to heal my body and my mind–I hated myself but so desperately wanted to love myself and experience how life could be with this feeling of total acceptance.

After a few years on my healing path, I came to understand myself in a new way and for the first time I could fully accept and love the person I had become, as well as my past self. Arriving in this space of freedom, I felt a deep desire to support other women in this journey. So I gathered the tools that worked for me and developed a way to guide women through a meditation that supports their ability to go into the body, to listen, and discover what’s asking to be seen and released.

In addition to serving women in developing unconditional love, acceptance, and trust for themselves, I wanted to transition from hands on work as a massage therapist. So I moved these meditations to the phone where my clients could be in the comfort of their own home. Through my own experience of doing online zen silent meditation retreats, I found that when I practiced at home, versus at the monastery, I was able to more easily carry what I had cultivated through the retreat with me at home and in my daily life after the retreat ended. So I found that working with women in this way helped their body remember the feeling.

I found this to be a unique approach because no one else was guiding meditations in this way. I took feminine workshops where we would be guided through practices that had specific intentions, but there was an aspect of getting into the body that the participants were missing. I knew I could guide these women to that place. What makes my process so unique is that it is an interactive practice and encompasses compassionate observation–guided by the breath, my client look within their body sensations with curiosity and no expectation, then listens and observes what shifts.

I found that this subtle approach of guidance combined with home embodiment practices was transforming my clients’ relationships with themselves, but also with their friends, their kids, work, and with their partners.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

What got me into this industry was my fascination with the body and pain that grew while I was thru hiking the Appalachian Trail. I chose to pursue massage therapy as a stepping stone toward a career in physical therapy. But the knowledge that developed through working as a massage therapist led me in the direction of working with energy. I wanted to offer people the same energetic response that happens after receiving a massage, without touching them; to help clients feel as though they have been massaged to their spirit. To feel completely surrendered, safe, open, and move energy outward so they can soften into their world. I found that through my own healing journey, it wasn’t enough to feel so free when everyone around me was struggling in some way. The healer in me wants to heal the world.

My services include workshops both in person and online, group coaching containers ranging from four weeks to eight weeks, as well as one-to-one coaching. With one-to-one coaching we go through a deep exploration into my client’s body sensations through guided meditative journeys to see what needs to be seen and healed. In these sessions I use information she has shared with me to intuitively work with her through asking questions to the body while in a meditative state, offering imagery, and allow whatever comes through me to be spoken. She observes her sensations as she hears these words and witnessed her body’s response in a safe space. Then she shares what she noticed and we go deeper. We continue this cycle until we have reached an end point.

This work is subtle yet profound. My clients find that they don’t have to do much to see a transformation. The work we do to build a compassionate relationship to the body supports my client in connecting more deeply to her intuition, opening her up to the feminine flow, helping her feel more alive, free, intimate, and safe. My clients have improved intimacy and trust in their relationship, developed confident in their decision-making, feel more comfortable with their boundaries, and feel more grounded and connected to their greater purpose in life.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Boy do I have a story of resilience. I am a single mother and parenting solo. I was not expecting this, as most single mothers don’t. I had been living in Guatemala with my boyfriend, and we planned to get pregnant, which I did right away. The pregnancy was emotionally difficult, and our relationship fell apart but we tried to keep it together, thinking it was just the pregnancy hormones.

I returned to the United States to birth my son safely the way I wanted-in a friend’s home. When my son was four months and we had all his legal papers, we returned to his father in Guatemala. The reality is, my son’s father and I came together for our son to enter this world, and that was all. We spent two months in his father’s home, which was incredibly difficult. I watched myself lose all confidence as a mother, I randomly got tendonitis in my thumb and could barely hold my son. I fell into a depression. I did not have any help like I had expected and felt completely alone and filled with rage. We could not go back to Colorado because it was still winter and we had been sleeping in my friend’s garden shed, so instead we flew to Australia to stay with family.

Our time in Australia was amazing and supportive. I was able to take naps alone, go for walks, and have time to focus on returning to my business. I could finally begin my recovery in postpartum. My plan was to get my son his citizenship and live permanently in Australia, but his citizenship was declined and his visa expired so we had to return to America. Meanwhile, my mother and immediate family had become angry with me, offering little to no support, and we became estranged. I was on my own as a new mother, still in postpartum recovery, and needing to restart my life with my son. With all of the travel, constantly moving, the time change, and still not enough time to rebuild my business I was left with no resources. This was when I showed myself what I was truly made of.

We were pet sitting, moving almost every week, I found all of the resources available through Boulder County that a single mother could possibly be eligible for. I had no family, no home, and no child support, but I rebuilt my life with my baby boy. Now we are thriving! My goal is to one day start a passion project that provides single mamas with the emotional support and resources, they need to get back on their feet quickly. I learned that I am incredibly resourceful. I would see homeless people on the street and for the first time understand the heaviness that led them there. I could have given up, but I never let myself. I have a dream of working with massive amounts of women, helping them heal their hearts, and that dream and my son are what kept me going.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

My authenticity! Everyone knows me as being fully myself. I am straight forward, trustworthy, and humble. I want to serve women and families for the greater good and that comes through in everything I do. And I am teaching what I have learned through my own path of healing. Yes, I studied a lot of different coaching techniques, practiced yoga and meditation for almost for two decades, and have my degree in psychology but ultimately life experience is my greatest teacher. I have lived a creative life, made wildly courageous decisions, and am thriving. I feel so satisfied with my life and it did not come easy. I am using my life experiences, intuition, and knowledge to guide my clients. This makes me relatable, more empathetic and understanding. I practice what I preach, I walk the talk, I am trustworthy and people feel that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://elatedwomanembodiment.com
• Instagram: @elated.woman
• Facebook: @elatedwoman
• Linkedin: @jocelyndiles
• Youtube: @jocelyndiles1

Image Credits

Sal DeVincenzo – photo with my son
Angie Barnes – water and massage therapy shots