#175 Layers of Awakening: What It Means to Truly Have a Voice

Today, I interview Manya Gittel who lost her voice during a stroke and woke up to something far more unexpected than the crisis itself. She describes that moment as an inner awakening she didn’t see coming, one that shifted her sense of who she was and how her voice lived inside her.

Manya shares parts of her early life, shaped by her parents’ history and the roles she learned to carry as a child. These patterns became so natural to her that she never questioned them, even as they influenced how she showed up in the world.

What changed after the stroke is something she explains in a way that feels both surprising and deeply human. The way she describes that shift invites you to listen closely and wonder about the places where you too might be living from habit instead of truth.

Today, Manya reflects on how that experience continues to shape her voice and her presence. Her story opens a rare conversation about authenticity, connection, and the moment a person realizes they have been further from themselves than they knew. It is an invitation to explore what happens when someone finally hears the voice they didn’t know they lost.

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Manya Gittel is a coach and trainer from South Africa who works with people around the world. Her background spans decades of facilitation, education, training programs, coaching, participatory theatre, and deep study of the Enneagram. She is known for helping people explore truth through voice, presence, and honest connection.

Manya’s work is rooted in meaningful engagement, both with oneself and with others. She brings a unique blend of insight and experience, shaped by training in both formal and informal settings and by the recognitions she has received for her commitment to personal growth and awareness.

Recent life events have opened new layers in her understanding of authenticity and expression, and she now weaves those insights into her coaching. She continues to guide people toward a more grounded, truthful relationship with themselves and with the world around them.

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Find Manya here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manyagittel/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KnocKnockCoaching/

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/masteryofselfandrelationships

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/manyagittel

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #175 Manya Gittel

“Layers of Awakening: What It Means to Truly Have a Voice”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. I’d like to welcome you to the Find Your Voice Change Your Life podcast. I have a very special guest from South Africa. Isn’t it amazing that we get to connect here on this platform? I get to introduce you, my listeners, to this wonderful woman I’ve come to know through social media and the internet, Manya Gittel. Hi.

(00:34) Manya Gittel: Hi. This is so special to be here with you, especially as you say, across such distance. We have managed to have such incredible closeness.

(00:46) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(00:48) Manya Gittel: We have touched.

(00:50) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(00:50) Manya Gittel: It’s so beautiful.

(00:52) Doreen Downing: Part of why I’ve invited Manya today to the Find Your Voice podcast is because there was a moment not too long ago when she literally lost her voice. She found herself in the hospital after having a stroke. She says she didn’t know she lost hers until she woke up and found it again. What we are going to be talking about are the layers of waking up. It wasn’t just moving from unconscious to conscious. We’re talking about a deeper kind of way of being in this world. As some great sages have said, over 90 percent of us are asleep. We’re walking around asleep.

I look forward to opening up a deeper conversation about what it means to have a voice. Manya is a coach and trainer. I said she’s from South Africa. What she does, what fascinates Manya, is that she loves engaging with people in a deeper way. She works with people all over the globe. If there’s something that comes through today that makes you want to reach out to her, we’ll have her contact information in the show notes.

I don’t know if we will get as far as talking about the Enneagram, but that is one of her specialties. If any of you know about that, it’s a way of understanding human behavior and categorizing it in a way that makes it much more clear how we are who we are. So, hello Manya. Let’s launch our time together here.

(02:46) Manya Gittel: Let’s launch, let’s jump.

(02:48) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(02:49) Manya Gittel: Let’s say hi, and let’s have people hear us.

(02:52) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(02:54) Manya Gittel: Hopefully shout back. Yes, yes.

(02:56) Doreen Downing: I always start this particular kind of podcast because that’s what people want to hear about, which is early life. Were you born in South Africa?

(03:10) Manya Gittel: Absolutely. I am a thoroughbred. I’m such a thoroughbred. My parents both came from the wartime. They came from Europe. My mom came from Ukraine, and my father came from Lithuania. I was thoroughly born in Johannesburg, which is the biggest city in South Africa. Cape Town is very popular these days, but I was born in Johannesburg. I was born in the Florence Nightingale Nursing Home.

(03:47) Doreen Downing: Nursing.

(03:47) Manya Gittel: And I think that affected my identity. There has been some kind of Florence Nightingale identity floating around, like an archetype. As authentically as you mentioned that I woke up and hadn’t realized I had lost my voice, I woke up while awake. I found a voice I didn’t realize I lost.

I need to use my hands here. There was a part of me — we were talking about layers — that was here. When I interacted with people, that part of me was very busy interacting. I didn’t realize the extent to which I was here, and the other part of me that was interacting with people was over here. This section in between became so visible. It was like, I have to be here. I’m here. This is where I am. What I had been presenting to people, and all the dancing involved in maintaining that for people, could not be here if I had this revelation.

I had a little stroke, but the point is that I suddenly realized I have to tell the truth. If I don’t say who I am, they won’t know how I am. What gave me the stroke was all the sexy glamour of renewing my coaching credential with the International Coaching Federation, getting accredited with tension and trauma release exercises. When you release fight and flight in your body because you’ve had trauma, you shake like an animal. Because we are animals. We are humans with animal bodies.

I carried on. I was on a wave. When I woke up and found my voice, I realized, this is me. Call a spade a spade. We don’t need all of this. We do use these things in our society, but I felt so much happier, Doreen, knowing this is where I was. Somehow I had gotten caught up in being what people wanted me to be, or what I thought people wanted me to be, rather than talking from a real place, which was myself.

(07:12) Doreen Downing: For those who are listening today and didn’t get a chance to see the visual, what Manya was doing was putting her hand out about a foot from her body, representing the kind of identity she had with people, the way she thought and felt and interacted and lived. It was like living outside of yourself. Your true self is what it seemed like.

Then she had her other hand close to her heart. When Manya talked about realizing and waking up, it was like she woke up to this body, this experience inside herself. That felt like truth. That is what I saw when you put one hand far out in front of you and the other hand close to your heart.

(08:11) Manya Gittel: Thank you, Doreen. Thank you for clarifying that. I really wasn’t sure if people could see or not, because I knew some could. Exactly as you say, it was some image, some persona, some role. Various roles I was fulfilling — be it happiness, charm, cleverness, or some standard I expected people to maintain. It seemed like that fell away. This hand held away from myself, that part of myself, all those roles fell away, and I was just being me. I don’t even know, Doreen, what to call that me, because it is so me that it doesn’t have a name.

(09:15) Doreen Downing: Yes, yes, yes. It is definitely the beingness of us. I love it. I love that where we started today was talking about layers. For those of us who have greater awareness, we get to know the times when we are playing a role. For those of us with deeper awareness, it feels like we can make choices. I want to talk a little more about this deeper me, the beingness, because how does beingness have voice?

(10:06) Manya Gittel: Absolutely. Absolutely. There, Doreen, we are getting into the layers. You know that I have struggled with this grandiose narcissist relationship, which means I was a narcissistic supply person. If anyone knows the terminology, or even if they don’t, it involved me pleasing the world. So finding this voice and this place of being was no longer about pleasing the world or the people in it.

(10:42) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(10:44) Manya Gittel: It was really about discovering that I don’t have to please. I don’t have to be something. I can just be. It is a little clumsy at the moment. I am finding it paradoxical, but I was being rather than being, doing. I was actually using the voice that speaks out.

In fact, I have to tell you a story. I would love to tell you a story about an ex and me. We had a twenty-seven year relationship. I had a conversation with him on Sunday. All those pink elephants that were under the carpet during our relationship, that we hadn’t broached, came out in this two-hour conversation that we had. It was wonderful. It was so naked. It was like Adam and Eve. We were without leaves.

We were just talking, and these things we were saying — some of them were quite cruel from one perspective — but if you could listen and hear, it became so revelatory. It was like, thank God that is out of the way. Thank God that is out of the way.

You know, if that person in your life had not been there, and you had not colluded with them, I would have been much happier. It was cruel to say that, but it was truthful, and in the truthfulness it was kind. Am I making sense?

(12:59) Doreen Downing: I like what you just said, that in the truthfulness it was kind. I get that there is an intention, as opposed to saying something without consciousness or awareness that there is another being in front of you. You are not there to destroy this being. You are there to help enlighten together, to be in a conversation that is — I love your word — revelatory.

(13:33) Manya Gittel: Absolutely. What you have captured is this incredible love that exists for the person. So you are being kind. There is love for yourself.

(13:45) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(13:45) Manya Gittel: And there is love for the other person.

(13:47) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(13:49) Manya Gittel: So there is an incredible sense of connection in the truth, which we usually hide behind an image we think we have to put up in a relationship.

(14:05) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(14:05) Manya Gittel: With all good intentions to protect. But actually you are not telling the truth. You think you are being kind, but you are being cruel. And when you say it, you think you are being cruel, but you are being kind.

(14:22) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(14:23) Manya Gittel: Because it is truthful. It is more my real voice. It is more being.

(14:31) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(14:33) Manya Gittel: Thank you.

(14:34) Doreen Downing: Yes. I am going to take a brief break, and we will be back because I have more questions. I want to explore a few more things with you before we end our time together. Be right back.

Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. I am back with Manya Gittel, who is giving us a very profound entrance into her experience of coming closer to truth and lining up with a sense of being, as opposed to this outer shell many of us create. We live our lives mostly outside of our inner truth, our beingness.

This is a very esoteric conversation today, and it really thrills me — the beingness of who we are and how that relates to voice. Because when I tell people the work I do, Find Your Voice, they think it is about being on a stage or learning how to speak up. In a way it is about speaking up, but it is more — really, this is the truth — it is more about finding the truth inside you and having that voice come up and be heard. Having the courage to say what you need to say in certain situations and becoming fearless, not in a way that lacks compassion. That is how I explain it. So we are back. Hi.

(16:20) Manya Gittel: Hi. I am so sorry to say this because my voice just wants to say it. I am listening to you, and I am loving what you are saying. I had a feeling of this is fantastic. I am falling in love, but it felt spiritual.

(16:40) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(16:40) Manya Gittel: It felt like there is such a connection. I would like to express that gratitude.

(16:47) Doreen Downing: Yes. Energetically, without words, I think this is partly what the voice is. For those who are watching Manya and me, we are energetically connected and feeling a lovingness. There is a channel here, and this channel is vibrant and open and alive with a force. To me, that is partly what we are talking about. How do words fit into this deeper sense of being us?

When people come together and share, in a way it is intimate. It has a fresh kind of quality. It is so in the moment, and it is so vulnerable and so alive at the same time.

(17:50) Manya Gittel: Absolutely. That is all I can say at the moment. I am very touched, Doreen, because I do think all of us have this unique, in our own way, general capacity

(18:12) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(18:12) Manya Gittel: to connect like this. I do think it lies in this true voice.

(18:18) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(18:19) Manya Gittel: And its way of being. If we could, as you said, it is very esoteric, this conversation, but if we could be here in an ordinary way — I think we are — but I think we could more consistently be deeper as well and celebrate this incredible depth and specialness of connection that we have when we are more authentic.

(18:53) Doreen Downing: Yes. Yes. Yes. The way I talk about it is expanding the now. We go through life so quickly, and there is an acknowledgment of the now with you that is shared. It is a be with. I call it the Be With exercise, and I teach people that. The Be With. It is beautiful. Can we just be with, and maybe without words, like you and I had a moment without words? It was vibrating.

(19:32) Manya Gittel: Absolutely.

(19:32) Doreen Downing: And—

(19:33) Manya Gittel: Absolutely. I am feeling that without words with you as we speak, because behind the words is the place the words are coming from.

(19:42) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(19:44) Manya Gittel: I have a strong sense of the way you are understanding me, the way I am understanding you. There is a resonance. If we can be more awake to that rather than, as you said, with the Enneagram — Gurdjieff, who brought the Enneagram from Persia — he said we are ninety-something percent asleep. We do not necessarily feel this extent of resonance. We will be hyped or we will be asleep. Like I woke up while awake in the intensive care unit. It was, oh, that is not so important. This is what is important. The preciousness of really being awake. It is that simple. Being with. Being with.

(20:52) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(20:52) Manya Gittel: Your exercise. I have never seen it, but—

(20:56) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(20:56) Manya Gittel: it makes a lot of sense to me. It really makes a lot of sense.

(21:01) Doreen Downing: Yes. That is funny. Given that you and I are on the same wavelength here, let us talk about something that would serve our listeners. How can they have more of what we have?

(21:18) Manya Gittel: Okay. Well, I think it is true. Exercises like the one you mentioned, your Be With, are part of it. It is also a lot of work. This is an uphill journey. If you do the Enneagram, there are moments of awakening and moments of really being asleep, and times you think you are awake and you realize you were asleep.

What happens with the Enneagram is that you realize you have been stuck in a pattern of behavior, which is extremely special to you, but it is a trap. It is like when I had my hands a foot away and then close to my heart. There is a fixation. There is a pattern where we remain stuck. Once you have identified your profile, the Enneagram shows you places you could be stuck in that profile. You go, ah, and you can let go and be awake during that revelation where you notice, aha, I thought it was special, but I have actually been stuck.

(22:47) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(22:48) Manya Gittel: I can give an example.

(22:51) Doreen Downing: Sure.

(22:53) Manya Gittel: Yes. So I have had a sense where I have been excluded in the world, and special. It is also related to this depth in the Enneagram. It is called the profile of the Four. When I realized that both the sense of exclusion and the sense of specialness in being excluded were patterns I was stuck in, it made sense. It started long ago. I told you about being a narcissistic supply person. This other person blocked me out of the world, so I felt very excluded, but very special in that.

When I let that go and realized, oh, I am with Doreen, Doreen is not excluding me, I could — let us say fifteen years ago, now we are talking hard work because this is fifteen years ago — I could have been with Doreen and felt excluded or special. Instead, I am feeling I am with you. You are special, you are ordinary. I am special, I am ordinary. We belong. We are together. There is no exclusion in the specialness we have. I am not uniquely separated from this experience. That is one of the ways of waking up. The Enneagram showed that to me because it was in the profile of the Four.

(24:37) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(24:38) Manya Gittel: So I saw, hmm, okay, this is how I can wake up. But there are layers.

(24:46) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(24:47) Manya Gittel: There are different times I can feel excluded or different times I can feel special, and in that moment in my life I can realize, oh, I am in the trap. Let me take that off and let me just be me. Let me be more authentic.

(25:07) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(25:09) Manya Gittel: Let it go. Be me. Talk with my voice and not be excluded, moaning about being excluded or proud of being special.

(25:23) Doreen Downing: Yes. Thank you for that illustration. I think each of the nine types is something people can learn about. Do you have a website or something we can offer people so they can learn more about the Enneagram?

(25:44) Manya Gittel: Well, what I offer is a website where people can phone up and book on the calendar. They click on a link and book a time to meet on Zoom, where we will have a free chemistry session. They can see if there is something they would like to change, something they feel stuck in. We can talk about that to whatever extent they would like to, and we can see if they would like to be part of a coaching program with me.

(26:23) Doreen Downing: Great.

(26:24) Manya Gittel: I have this booking available. The website’s name is MG Coaching Solutions. It is M for Manya, which is my name, G for Gittel, which is my surname, and then it is Coaching Solutions.

(26:43) Doreen Downing: Great.

(26:44) Manya Gittel: I was going to give my email address. Dot com.

(26:47) Doreen Downing: Dot com. Yes. It will be in the show notes so people can check it out there. We are coming to the end of our time, this time only, just this time together. I like to open up the last moment to listen into what it is that you would like to leave our listeners, how you would like to bring our time together to a close. I give that moment to you.

(27:22) Manya Gittel: Doreen, I would like to take advantage of the fact of how we met. There was a sense of just being present and opening up to the opportunity with you. There was a sense of heartfulness, there was a sense of letting go, and I would like to invite the listeners to do that, to remain awake.

Something can pass under our nose and we do not smell it, we do not realize it. It is really a matter of being very relaxed, being very open, and if you feel a tug, to respond to that tug. Doreen, I can only use this precious moment that we have found and its presence with each other as an example of how I would like to invite people to be aware in their lives.

That something can just really compost. Be as awake as you can, be as authentic as you can, and be as open as you can to receiving and responding to what is truly there.

(28:49) Doreen Downing: Oh, thank you so much.

(28:54) Manya Gittel: It is such an opportunity to me.

(28:57) Doreen Downing: Yes. Thank you for the words and thank you for the wisdom, and for me, thank you for the experience.

(29:05) Manya Gittel: Absolutely rightful. I need the same gratitude to bounce back at you.

(29:10) Doreen Downing: Alright.

(29:12) Manya Gittel: Thank you so much. Lovely to be here with you.

(29:16) Doreen Downing: Yes.