Malcolm Stern: 0:46

So welcome to my podcast, slay your Dragons with Compassion, which I'm doing in conjunction with my friends at online events. Today, I'm very happy to welcome someone a visitor from the United States, so our times are different, but nice to see you get up early in the morning to do this as well. And this podcast is about how we thrive through adversity. Adversity, I believe, shapes us and makes us become what we are. It can either sink us or it can actually force us into a better version of ourselves. So, alina, you got recommended to me by my good friend, julian, and he was full of praise for you and you're a mystic and a therapist, and anything else you'd like to say about yourself before we sort of crack on.

Alina Panteleev: 1:37

Thank you, welcome. Thank you for welcoming me. Yeah, anything I have to say. Well, I'm a non-dual teacher as well. And a little correction I'm in Mexico and Canada, between the two countries, all right, but I'm ready. I'm ready for. Thank you so much for having me.

Malcolm Stern: 1:55

Great. So non-dual teacher, that's a fair distance from where you started. So I know we had a little chat beforehand a couple of weeks ago and you told me that you were born in the USSR, in Russia, and spent the first 10 years of your life there. Can you tell us what that was like being a child in the USSR?

Alina Panteleev: 2:18

Yeah, well, on one hand, maybe it's not so much suffering. As a child growing up in the USSR, we were deprived of technology, so on one hand, we were always outside, but on the other hand hand I grew up in poverty, um, and we didn't. I didn't have anything. From one one side, it did force me to be outside all the time and and and try to find entertainment outside, but on the other hand, uh, later on, looking through some of the trauma, a lot of the poverty and not having and lack of many things and closed borders and ability to like I didn't grow up with any spirituality or any religion because all of that was forbidden. Later on I discovered some of the benefits of that and some of repercussions of not having any container or space to belong. Yeah, apart from the communism.

Malcolm Stern: 3:16

Yeah, and your parents? Were they communists?

Alina Panteleev: 3:20

Well, we all had to be right. There's no other choice. We all had to be and we had to follow the rules and we had to practice. And so for a great portion of that time and a lot of my suffering actually like my biggest trauma actually comes from a sleepaway, like a communist sleepaway camp, where I was sent to when I was six years old and the regime and very, very strict rules created a huge humiliating element and event in my life that basically blocked my voice and ability to speak in public or share my authentic self at all. For many, many years I didn't even know about that. I had to repress it so deeply that I didn't know I was carrying that up until I was 32 or something like that.

Malcolm Stern: 4:13

And yet somehow you managed to, because I think often when people are born there, it's very hard to actually leave there as well. It's not like sort of going well, I think I'll pick up sticks and go to another country, but somehow, when you were, I think, 10, you got out of Russia. And can you tell me how that happened?

Alina Panteleev: 4:31

Yeah, yeah, you got out of Russia. Can you tell me how that happened? Yeah, so I was growing up in the USSR part of Ukraine which now is Ukraine, and it was actually a very interesting event and all of the elements till that was quite surprising and I didn't know what was happening. It was like a big shock to my system because actually, how it started, my grandmother, who was like the closest to me, we grew up basically with our grandmothers because my father was an alcoholic and my musician I mean, at heart he's an architect but musician at heart and my mom was always busy, working, pretty much trying to make ends meet, and so my grandmother that, I guess, was preventing us from going anywhere she passed away and she was the closest to me. She passed away a year before we left. So things started to rapidly change as well as the borders opened up I don't remember it was before the falling apart of USSR, it was in 1990.

Alina Panteleev: 5:39

And all of a sudden, from one day to another, I find out that I'm Jewish and we're living to Israel the day after. So it was a huge shock. It was like my grandmother, who was like a mother to me, passed away. Then my father I'm separating from my father, which I had a really beautiful relationship with, because in all my somatic journeys, most of the time I work on my mom's influence on me like traumatic influence on me, but never my dad Well, maybe once for his absence, but pretty much it. So it's this absence of him and this finding out that I have to leave everything behind and we're moving away. It was quite shocking and at the same time, you know, I'm 10 years old, what can I do? So there we go. We moved to Israel and there must have been a very different way of life there.

Alina Panteleev: 6:31

I remember, because we were so lacking. I remember the first shock of the supermarkets and going through aisles of yogurts and little containers I was like wow, where are we? It was a huge shock from poverty to abundance, a lot of abundance. But it was very different. And again, another language and we landed and it was another war with iraq back then. So immediately, uh, like a week after the war started, so it's just like was escalating one thing after another. Um, yeah, that, I guess, builded that inner tension that eventually I had to resolve wow.

Malcolm Stern: 7:11

So there you are from having been come from a lot of poverty into a place of abundance and a very different lifestyle. And how did your mom adapt to that?

Alina Panteleev: 7:22

Yeah, so, as I mentioned, we were met with the war and so my mom was running around very, extremely nervous, where she brought her kids and my grand. So we were a family of four my grandmother, my mom's mom, my mom and my older brother and my dog. That's how we moved. So we all landed and the week after the war started, so basically, and Israel expected a gas war, so we all were handed out gas masks and we had to really like go to school with gas masks.

Alina Panteleev: 7:54

We had to create like this room that had like all plastic inside, so we had to like close ourselves in this room every time the alarm would ring. So it was terrifying because my mom was so excuse me, my mom was so scared and her fear walking around with a little radio listening, because the radio would announce the bombing prior to the alarm ringing, so just like maybe I don't know five minutes before. So she was like glued to that radio and, of course, the fear of my grandmother and the fear of my mom that the children know any of it. But later on, as I'm saying in sessions, when I had to reflect on all of that, it was like, oh shit, we just like landed from all this separation from everything familiar to a war zone, basically. So my grandmother had like, basically a heart attack afterwards after the the war finished I mean, I think we we underestimate what children do pick up.

Malcolm Stern: 8:55

Um, someone once said that the children are the witnesses of the relationship, but I think the children are also the witnesses of life and and even though they may not be feeling that feeling, so they're picking up on the energy of what's around. So you've got a really difficult beginning. You've shifted to what you think is a paradise and suddenly that's a war zone. So you're, you're like your early foundations are quite shaky. What took you? Where did you go after that? What happened from there?

Alina Panteleev: 9:21

yeah, well, coping, but I didn't know it was coping. I like you know, it's just like as a child growing up, we don't see those things. But, as I'm saying, this is all the undone that I had to do in session. So it's just like as a child growing up we don't see those things. But, as I'm saying, this is all the undone that I had to do in session. So it's really interesting to reflect, because one of my mechanisms of survival was to paint anything, to sugarcoat everything.

Alina Panteleev: 9:41

Like everything is fine. This was one of my best mechanisms to survive, so I haven't like really witnessed as it was like dark and heavy. So I haven't really witnessed as it was dark and heavy. But looking at some evidence, basically, well, hebrew came very easy, some engagement with primary school came easy, but one year after I went to secondary school high school I believe, something equivalent to that and that's where kind of trouble started, where I didn't have anyone.

Alina Panteleev: 10:13

My mom was very busy, again working, so she was absent. So I grew up with a mom who for the 10 years of my life kind of was quite of a terror. She's a beautiful person, beautiful heart, but she was on survival mode throughout USSR years. So all I knew my 10 years growing up in USSR is mom who was absent, and then if she was present she was extremely violent or angry. So, and okay, what I witnessed done to my brother is even worse than what was done to me, but it's just like a collective thing that living in fear was the first thing actually that shifted in Israel, because somehow she became calmer, I guess less survival mode and she found a job and so on.

Malcolm Stern: 11:01

So it was the first time in my life when I was 10 years old, actually witnessed myself falling in love with my mom for the first time and you said you'd had a really lovely relationship with your dad but he was an alcoholic and had sort of left your mother and did your relationship carry on when you'd moved?

Alina Panteleev: 11:21

Yeah, so that's the wound. I had to look through some sessions and it actually didn't because my mom was never the bridge and it actually didn't because my mom was never the bridge she hated everything about. Because the issue is because we were so poor. When they separated it was 1987.

Alina Panteleev: 11:39

So three years prior to us living to Israel, but we were all still living under the same roof because we couldn't split the apartment and before it was like, okay, we have the three bedroom, we want to split to one bedroom and one bedroom, but it took forever. So we all lived in, like we mean, my mom and my brother lived in the living room, like curtained away from everyone else, and my, my, the mother of my dad lived in one bedroom and my dad lived in another bedroom. So we all co-lived and so we were witnessed. We witnessed a lot of um conflict, a lot of fights between my mom and my father and and just due to to his drinking, due to his absence, due to not being involved in in in our lives yeah, it always fascinates me how people pick up from very tough beginnings where it's almost like there's almost no foundation.

Malcolm Stern: 12:29

So there's no foundation stone. In your beginning it's like it's all sort of you know built on very, very rocky ground and somehow you found your way through it. And I'm wondering what happened to you as a sort of a teenager and as a young adult? How did you chart your journey from there?

Alina Panteleev: 12:46

yeah, so first, my first well, apart from the sugar coating, my first coping technique technique I did a little that I know about it was I signed up to tennis when I was 10 years old. There was tennis courts. After the war finished there were tennis courts that were built in my neighborhood, yad Eliyahu in Tel Aviv, and they were just built and my brother said, oh okay, my father is a ping pong coach. So we grew up kind of with rackets, different rackets, badminton, ping pong, not tennis. So my brother kind of, okay, they're building the courts, let's sign up. He never went, but I did my coping strategy. I was spending 24-7 at tennis courts and became extremely competitive actually and became one of the best players by the age of 13 in Israel, interestingly enough my mom never, ever seen me play None of the games, right?

Alina Panteleev: 13:44

So it was this trying to create noise to get her attention. That I never did. She actually saw me playing when I was like already 40-something here in Mexico for the first time. She's like, wow, how interesting. I'm like okay, yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 14:01

So effectively. You found a passion and then life started to have a lot of meaning, because you were uplifted by what you were doing, yeah, and you were obviously really good from the sound of what you're saying as well.

Alina Panteleev: 14:12

Yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 14:13

Your competitive urge got birthed and nourished there as well.

Alina Panteleev: 14:17

Yeah, yeah, where did that take you?

Malcolm Stern: 14:19

from there yeah.

Alina Panteleev: 14:20

Yeah, so little that I knew of it, like my competitiveness was more to attract my mom's attention, but it went up and then collapsed down very quickly. So with I don't know, the teenage years, probably getting really frustrated, not having her presence or being alone in another town you know playing or being alone in another town, you know playing. So I went kind of like really down, escalating from really achieving a lot to really falling back down and not having any support. So I started and we moved again. We moved to another town close to the Dead Sea and my mom was working again a lot. So I was basically growing up with my grandmother. I still continue to play tennis, but then already teenage years and so on.

Alina Panteleev: 15:16

So there was a lot of elements of skip, starting to skip school due to something that happened and not having emotional support back home and all constantly, basically constantly repressing everything, repressing everything. So I did, of course, I had amazing friends. I was a tomboy. I was like BMXing, I always had short hair. I was like, literally I wanted to be a boy when I was growing up. So I had these two best friends but nevertheless, apart from this wonderful elements that were happening in my life, there were elements that were basically something happened with the boy I really loved and there was spread news all over, or all over the school that you know, this is a Russian slut, so to say, and she does whatever, and so for me that created so much shame and so like almost impossibility to go back to school and nobody was monitoring me.

Alina Panteleev: 16:07

So at that time I'm probably 14.

Alina Panteleev: 16:09

So I started to skip school a lot like almost all the time and starting to fake like letters from my parents, from my mom, that she's okay, or like something happened or I feel sick or something like that.

Alina Panteleev: 16:24

So, um, so yeah, and then, with these elements brought me to kind of like volunteering it was this one store like escaping somewhere and also interacting, also 14, and my body was growing. I didn't know what I was doing and quite a few, two or three elements of like me too, movement, being molested by some guys, or like the store owner, and so on, when I was 14 or something like that 14, 13, so things like that start to kind of happen and like I'm kind of really was shifting into, yes, discovering my teenage energy and like sexuality, I would say, and a boy was really in love with me at that time and then also kind of that darker energy in me started to bring me to different, not so good places so far in Israel that was, and which finished by the age when I was 15, and at 15 we moved. We immigrated again, to Canada, this time.

Malcolm Stern: 17:29

So the dark side. What does the dark side look like?

Alina Panteleev: 17:34

The dark side. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like skipping school I started to play tennis less brought me to kind of these almost desired me too, elements like where I would hang out, or like go and be more promiscuous and then like regret it and move away out of it, like completely change my environment, or yes, so, so, so, so things like that definitely were happening that definitely were happening.

Malcolm Stern: 18:07

So all the way back near quite a lot of sort of like rocky, sort of lack of sort of safe container for you, um, and and then you moved again. So you moved for three very different countries. So you moved from russia to israel, to canada. And what? What took you to canada? How did you get to to go there?

Alina Panteleev: 18:23

yeah, so to to Canada. We moved well, again. The bombing started, with whatever some terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv. Even the buses started exploding. My brother was nearing the army age and my mom didn't want him to serve in the army. So we all got up again and moved to Canada, actually as refugees, trying to get some sort of a grasp on immigration, of course. What started to happen there in Canada.

Alina Panteleev: 18:54

So I'm 15 again, disconnecting from a boy that loved me a lot, a lot, and and again starting a new French and English now two new languages, completely new environment. My mom extremely busy again trying to work and provide, and my brother extremely annoying. We're two, we're very, very different. So I'm extremely positive and he's very, very negative. So he would criticize my friends and he would always criticize everything that was happening in my life. So these things kind of started to escalate and I've I actually fell in love with a boy that was a girl in Canada, so bisexual, and my brother made so much fun of me it was crazy and so much fun of this particular boy, and so that was again like my mom was so absent, like this is. We're going towards 16 years old already and basically what started happening again. I'm starting to skip school and this, this partner of mine at that time, my first kind of a little bit older sexuality when I was 16. And it betrays me with my best friend. So this basically propels me to quite deep suffering. And I was invited to these Russian friends celebrating 8th of March, which is like a big, big celebration for women in well, it says internationally, but mostly Eastern Europe, and some of my friends, girlfriends, bring me to this house of their newly acquired friends, so guys that are older, so we're like three girls of 16 years old and there's like I'm arriving to this giant party where like a full table of like different foods and lots of alcohol, like vodka, everywhere, and this older guys and younger guys, so between 20, 21, and then 35, and then even 45, you know, guys basically who are celebrating, drinking, doing cocaine, smoking pot, and it's just like. It's kind of like a whole different environment for me.

Alina Panteleev: 21:13

Another element, actually I, interestingly enough, like I think I have to add there that I missed, and it was when I was 14 years old and it was like this darker elements of my life started to kind of resurface due to absence of my mom. I found I don't know how a children's Bible came into. It was very beautiful art came into my lap and I read, actually probably cover to cover, very quickly, the first book that I read cover to cover, I was 14. It was in Russian and was in Israel, which was we were not religious at all, we were not following any kind of tradition, apart from celebrating New Year's, probably the way Christmas is celebrated. But anyways, here I'm reading this book and so I, apart from the suffering, like the light started to emerge All of a sudden I felt like something, someone understands my heart and my worldview, like everyone is insane, but this, whatever it's spoken in this book, is very, very, um, um, very dear to my heart. So, anyway, so it like, in short, in short, what followed after like a year of going to church and trying to find truth in some way, trying to find meaning in some way, when we moved to actually to Canada.

Alina Panteleev: 22:34

So from 15 to 16, everyone, like I, had the nickname. My nickname was Angel, because I wouldn't swear I wouldn't smoke, I wouldn't like none, none, none of this wouldn't swear, I wouldn't smoke, I wouldn't like none, none, none of this. And and then what happens? Like right after, from 15 to 16. It's basically going from heaven to hell, because before I even smoked cigarettes, I started doing smoking pot and drinking vodka. I passed out the first that night that I went out. I completely passed out and and basically I ran away from home. So it was the house of the first father of my first child who was organizing that party. His name was John, he was 21. And so I passed out on his bed and woke up and decided not to go home again. I was 16 years old.

Malcolm Stern: 23:25

Wow, I don't know if you married him, but you had a child with him.

Alina Panteleev: 23:31

Well, eventually, six months down the line, we had to move back to Israel. We were deported. I was deported due to immigration. It took me like eight years to get Canadian papers. So I was going back and forward between Israel and Canada, maybe two, three times, um being refused as a refugee going back. He was basically deported due to his crime and also lack of immigration papers. Um, because I basically ended up in the group, in the criminal, like little criminal group that their lifestyle was basically emptying Eton centers back in the day, with just huge jackets that they had and with giant pockets and this fast driver that would wait for them and basically they would load themselves up and like go in there and then they would sell to massage parlors, they would sell all the stuff and then we would celebrate with like these kind of celebration that I started with, and so there was a lot of cocaine, there's a lot of vodka, there's a lot of partying, there's a lot of, uh, sleepless nights. So a lot of that started happening in my first real, yeah, serious boyfriend.

Malcolm Stern: 24:48

And you got pregnant in your teens, then presumably.

Alina Panteleev: 24:50

Yeah, I got pregnant at 16. But that was when we went back to Israel. So he was previously using. He was a heroin addict previously. Not when I met him in Canada. Amazing, beautiful heart, a heroin addict previously. Not when I met him in Canada. Amazing, beautiful heart, amazing human being and yet extremely damaged, extremely damaged. So in Canada when I met him it was just like cocaine and pot, but more like partying. But he was a heroin addict back in Israel and an opium addict back in Kazakhstan, where he's from. So basically I knew him on the cleaner side.

Alina Panteleev: 25:29

And here we go to Israel and so it basically puts me like my deficient identity was, like I'm unlovable. So love me, love me, love me and as someone who finally sees me, like my brother criticized me or not, like my mother absent or angry, here's someone who loves me and like I'll do anything, anything for that love. Also living alone in a country where I didn't have no one but just him, and he had been damaged already by having certain environment, familiar environment and friends and knowing where to get all that stuff. And so here I was, pregnant and addicted to herring.

Malcolm Stern: 26:18

So it feels like there's a lot of debris in your younger years and yet somehow, if we fast forward a little bit to where you are now but we'll sort of look at where the steps were to where you are now you're a teacher of non-dual Buddhism and also a mystic, and can you tell us a little bit about what, what those, those mean?

Alina Panteleev: 26:48

yes, so so fast forward. Um uh, a lot of suffering brought me to seeking yeah right, seeking um, seeking um, well, seeking other ways.

Alina Panteleev: 27:02

Because basically when I was 27 my body got um burned down, like it was just like I couldn't like.

Alina Panteleev: 27:09

For three days I couldn't recover because after those drugs came recreational drugs and so many other things, but anyway, um. So I embarked on a journey of enlightenment, like with the fears of a already mature woman that nothing will stop. So I put like everything I learned from tennis and achieving, you know, certain heights, so certain commitment and and intense longing, intense longing for finding, you know, peace or finding the ability to be able to be intimate without drugs, because that trauma back in USSR when I was six years old, prevented me to be able to be myself. I was always afraid being myself. So I had to numb myself and drug myself, you know, for so many years. So anyway, fast forward. I had like a spontaneous Kundalini awakening through my practice and which brought me to India many times, which brought me to my yoga mat, which brought me to meditation many times, and I achieved a state of enlightenment basically when I was 30 years old, three years later after so, state of enlightenment is quite a strong statement.

Alina Panteleev: 28:24

Yeah, so waking up to a true nature.

Malcolm Stern: 28:28

And it's almost like you managed to transcend the rubble of your childhood and teenage years and found something of real value.

Alina Panteleev: 28:40

Oh yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 28:41

And you're living that now, presumably.

Alina Panteleev: 28:43

Yeah For sure For yeah, and you're living that now presumably. Yeah, yeah for sure For many, many years.

Malcolm Stern: 28:46

So what do you do now? I know that you teach, but what does your life look like now?

Alina Panteleev: 28:51

Yeah, so well, right now it's more embodied enlightenment, because enlightenment is very transcended of human experience. Right, so it's like running away and transcending all of the darkness. Yes, it's tremendous freedom and mind calms down and everything. But my body was still conditioned. So this brought me for four years of doing somatic work, which now, where I find myself, is more embodied enlightenment state where I teach both elements, and not just both elements, but also I put the element of not necessarily pushing ourselves into success.

Alina Panteleev: 29:31

The element that helped me to achieve freedom is like yes, putting the work, yes, putting like, yes, seeing the trajectory, seeing division. So I I work with the three elements of waking up to our true nature, or waking up from attachment to the noise in our head and our separate identity as the ego state and basically the trajectory of like what is it that we came here to do? Came here to be? And the other element that is crucially needed is repressed emotions and somatic processing stuff, of clearing up basically our vehicle out of all the trauma and all the conditions that we're carrying around and all the darkness that we're so afraid of looking at.

Malcolm Stern: 30:16

And I can see that for most people who found. I used to run a lecture series called Alternatives in St James' Church in Piccadilly and we had all the great teachers there Kartala, marianne Williamson and Jack Cornfield, and Ram Dass and Tickler Hahn. They all came through that environment and what I could see in most of the stories that I heard is that, in order to really be able to genuinely stand in a place where we have access, some angle towards spirituality, that's often built on having transcended suffering, and it feels like that's very much your story that, having gone through confusion, suffering, abandonment, lack of home, lack of base, something has now landed in you. So where do you go from here? What's, what is? What does your life look like going forwards?

Alina Panteleev: 31:06

Going forwards. So I'm building Wow, I'm building a school and online academy right now, and actually everything gets aligned with that. So I'm really extremely grateful that some people showing up to probably partner with on the digital end of things like I'll be the teaching end of the spectrum, so it's called Soul Fire Rising Academy, so really helping people through these three elements, to break through the suffering and transcend, not prematurely or not as a bypass, but transcend through trauma into their authentic expression. And so I'm really excited to bring that into the world and really passionate about working on it right now. Right now I'm working with clients one-on-one and also been training groups in the modality of somatic inquiry, which the modality I've learned was kill the inquiries, which now developing into more repression inquiries. But it's a weaving combination of some things that I want to bring to the world as a school, as an academy, worldwide academy, to awaken humanity beyond our suffering.

Malcolm Stern: 32:18

It's a noble goal, it's a big goal, and I shall look forward to seeing how your, your path, carries on along the way. So we're coming towards the end of our podcast, and the question I always ask before we close is what's the dragon you've had to slay, what's the obstacle you've had to overcome in order to be who you?

Alina Panteleev: 32:36

are the fear of being myself. Yeah, yeah, um, and the fear of being myself was really coated with a lot of darkness and probably a lot of, a lot of disconnection and therefore the all the medication through drugs and alcohol over years and years. Basically, for 10 years I was poisoning myself all the time to be able to be alive.

Malcolm Stern: 33:05

You come through to the other side as a reasonably healthy human being.

Alina Panteleev: 33:14

Oh my gosh. I'm like the healthiest, the most conscious parent ever now. I have two more kids after my first son, and I'm extremely grateful for where I am, because my life is nothing like it used to be, and yet, at the same time, it's all of me right here.

Malcolm Stern: 33:30

Well, that's very lovely. Thank you very much, Helena, for coming today and speaking here, and look forward to seeing how your path pans out as well thank you so much, malcolm it was a pleasure, with an honor, to be here. Thank you.