Latest / The MODERN YIN Podcast / How Yin Yoga Helped Me Release Shame & So Much More

Transcript

How Yin Yoga Helped Me Release Shame & So Much More · The MODERN YIN Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey. Hey, Yaning at Life GANG.
• 0:02
  It's Kimberly Roberts of the Soulful Yin brand.
• 0:05
  I'm here to dish out all things about traditional Chinese
• 0:08
  medicine, yin yoga, reflexology. And of course, I'm here to
• 0:13
  disrupt your mind. So thanks so much for pressing
• 0:18
  play on today's episode. Let's do this.
• 0:24
  Have you ever wanted to find a space where you didn't feel
• 0:30
  judged, criticized for who you are, how you feel, how you look,
• 0:38
  what you desire for what you've been ashamed of or have feared
• 0:47
  or worried about? See all of these things?
• 0:56
  The fear, the judgment, the worry, the anger, the
• 1:01
  appearances, and so many other things all related in some way
• 1:15
  to shame. And back in my day, when I
• 1:20
  didn't have an outlet, a source, something to tap into to help me
• 1:29
  process all of that, I fell apart.
• 1:35
  But then eventually I built the tools.
• 1:41
  And then after building the tools, I sent them out to the
• 1:48
  world. So if you are someone who is
• 1:53
  looking for a tool, join the Soulful Yin app.
• 2:01
  All of the information will be LinkedIn the show notes.
• 2:04
  This is like nothing there is out there in this world.
• 2:12
  And what I want to talk to you about today directly relates to
• 2:16
  shame and how I used yin yoga, breath work, acupressure,
• 2:22
  reflexology, yin yoga, meditation, all of that to help
• 2:31
  me release shame that I was holding in my body and helped me
• 2:38
  to create what I consider to be an extraordinary life now for
• 2:43
  myself. And what I want most for all of
• 2:49
  you out there is the same thing. Well, hello there and welcome to
• 2:55
  today's episode. I am diving deep into how I used
• 3:00
  yin yoga to release shame. And I'm going to tell you some
• 3:04
  pretty personal stories about me that I'm going to say are quite
• 3:10
  vulnerable for me to share. And I feel that in sharing this,
• 3:19
  somehow, even if there's one person out there in this world
• 3:24
  that can relate to this and in some way I can help them, then
• 3:28
  this podcast episode was priceless.
• 3:32
  So let's dive in. So I'm pretty sure most of you
• 3:37
  out there, as you reflect back through your life have thought,
• 3:42
  yeah, I'm not too proud of that. I'm not too proud of that
• 3:46
  decision I made, not too proud of that person I was involved
• 3:51
  with. I'm not too proud of the road I
• 3:53
  took, whatever it is. I don't think there's a person
• 3:58
  in this world who hasn't experienced that.
• 4:05
  And when we don't feel proud, what do we feel?
• 4:08
  Shame and shame. I mean, we can store shame in
• 4:15
  the body anywhere. I know from traditional Chinese
• 4:19
  medicine, shame is often associated with like lungs and
• 4:23
  heart, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's
• 4:27
  where you might be holding shame.
• 4:31
  But just know that as I talked to you about some of the things
• 4:36
  that I was ashamed of up until recently, I want you to know
• 4:43
  that I don't think there's anything that you could reply
• 4:49
  back to me with in your own life that I would be so disheartened
• 4:57
  by. Like, we're all just human
• 5:00
  beings living in this human experience, in this thing called
• 5:03
  life. This is what I say all the time.
• 5:06
  And we always just do the best that we can with the tools that
• 5:10
  we have. And so when I look back in
• 5:14
  hindsight, some of the decisions that I made, I'm like, yeah, I
• 5:19
  probably didn't have the best tools in my toolkit, but you
• 5:24
  know what? I had what I had and I used
• 5:26
  them. And the more that I have been
• 5:30
  diving into this mindset work, the more I'm realizing that you
• 5:37
  know what, there's so much more compassion, like self compassion
• 5:41
  that I have now because I know I've only been operating from
• 5:47
  the best of my abilities. So I posted a reel on Instagram
• 5:55
  today. Actually after yesterday, a very
• 6:01
  profound experience I had. I had two really profound
• 6:04
  experiences yesterday. So yesterday morning, I was in
• 6:08
  my yen and meditation practice, and I was thinking about my life
• 6:13
  and where I'm at now versus where I was before and seeing
• 6:19
  all the strides and the accomplishments that, you know,
• 6:22
  have come out of it, out of this, you know, challenging yet
• 6:27
  rewarding work that I'm doing, this healing work that I'm
• 6:31
  doing. But then I started to look at
• 6:35
  some of the decisions from my past that I was like, yeah, not
• 6:41
  too proud of that decision. That didn't make me feel very
• 6:44
  good in my heart, but then I realized something.
• 6:53
  The thing is, is that back when I was in my marriage to an
• 6:58
  abusive alcoholic, I mean, I knew.
• 7:01
  I knew his childhood story. I knew his childhood trauma.
• 7:05
  So I fully understood why he operated the way he did.
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  And I will tell you that most people that judge you or
• 7:16
  criticize you for things that you're ashamed of, they're
• 7:20
  actually equally ashamed themselves, maybe of the same
• 7:26
  thing or maybe something different.
• 7:28
  But they're definitely ashamed. And rather than admitting to
• 7:34
  that and working through it, they decide to project that on
• 7:39
  to other people, which in my understanding of how things work
• 7:47
  in our mind now, I debt. I totally get it.
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  I understand why people project onto other people.
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  But I'm going to be fair here in saying that that is just it's
• 7:59
  not cool. Like it's so not fucking cool to
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  project your crap onto other people.
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  Like, we're all here, we're all doing the best that we can.
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  And when things are not aligning the way that you desire them to
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  be, it's your opportunity to step up and be accountable and
• 8:25
  responsible for your life. So getting back to my marriage,
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  there was a time where when things were not great and then I
• 8:38
  found out that my husband was in rehab and he was having an
• 8:43
  affair with a cocaine addict that was also in rehab.
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  That's when I decided that, you know, I'm done, like I'm done
• 8:52
  with this marriage and I'm moving on.
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  So I had, it had been about four months since I had moved into
• 9:01
  where I am now and I met somebody and I ended up having,
• 9:09
  I'm going to say a casual affair with this person.
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  It certainly wasn't like boyfriend, girlfriend,
• 9:15
  relationship type thing. It was just a casual affair.
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  Now, technically, in the eyes of God and in the Catholic Church,
• 9:32
  which I was raised in, I was still married even though we
• 9:38
  were separated. We were legally separated, like
• 9:41
  on paper through, you know, lawyers.
• 9:44
  We were separated, but we weren't divorced yet, but we
• 9:46
  were still technically married to some degree.
• 9:51
  So in the eyes of God and the Church, I was unfaithful.
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  I cheated now. I mean, he did too, but I
• 10:02
  cheated partly out of I mean, he never knew we were separated.
• 10:09
  I never saw him like the day that I moved out of the, of my
• 10:12
  house, I never saw him again. So he never knew, and I never
• 10:19
  told him. And I didn't feel like there was
• 10:22
  any point to because eventually we were divorced.
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  And I didn't think of it back then as cheating.
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  And even to this day, I mean, some of my friends who knew this
• 10:43
  story already were like, well, you didn't cheat.
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  Like, you were already separate. Like you were legally separated.
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  But I was like, yeah, well, we're legally separated, but not
• 10:54
  like, technically we're not divorced.
• 10:57
  So to me, it was kind of like cheating.
• 11:00
  And they were like, well, you were justified in doing what you
• 11:02
  did. And I was like, I didn't look at
• 11:04
  it like I had a reason to. I didn't feel like I was
• 11:07
  justified in having the affair. It was just something that
• 11:12
  happened. Like I wasn't, I wasn't going
• 11:16
  out looking for it. It just happened.
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  But I didn't feel very good about it.
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  I didn't feel proud. I felt shame around it and I
• 11:30
  knew that this casual affair was never going to go anywhere.
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  It wasn't going to be a full blown relationship where we were
• 11:37
  going to fall in love and spend the rest of our lives together.
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  I knew what it was. So I mean, I knew what I signed
• 11:44
  up for, but to me it was still, I cheated.
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  So there was shame around that. There was shame that I left the
• 11:56
  marriage, like, you know, you get married for better, for
• 12:00
  worse, in sickness and in health.
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  And I left. And there was shame around that,
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  that I couldn't make it work. There was shame that I was
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  married to an alcoholic who abused me.
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  There was shame that, you know, how many times I had to lie to
• 12:20
  people when they would see, you know, my arms bruised or
• 12:24
  something. Like I would just tell them,
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  yeah, I know I was. You know, I got into a wrestle
• 12:30
  with the dogs because, I mean, I had three dogs at the time.
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  Like, it was really easy for me to make up lies about why I
• 12:36
  looked banged up and bruised. I don't know if anybody, if any
• 12:40
  of my patients ever actually thought I was being abused.
• 12:44
  If they did, well, they certainly never said anything to
• 12:47
  me. But I don't know if they ever
• 12:48
  thought it either. I hid it so well.
• 12:50
  Like I could have won a freaking Oscar award for her for how well
• 12:57
  I managed to hide things in my marriage from people, from my
• 13:04
  patients, from my family who didn't even know.
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  So I felt a lot of shame around that.
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  I had to lie. I lied a lot out of shame, and I
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  didn't, I didn't know back then that.
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  Like, it was just my mind trying to protect me, trying to protect
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  me from further hurt. And, you know, there was one
• 13:32
  time where my husband hit me and I hit him back and I felt shame
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  around that for hitting him. Like, how could I stoop as low
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  as he did, you know? And then he phoned the police
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  and accused me of abusing him. And when the police showed up
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  and they looked at me and they looked at him and they saw that
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  he was completely wasted. They were like, yeah, we kind of
• 13:59
  know who we're, we're favoring here in this, like.
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  And it certainly wasn't him, but there was shame around that.
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  There was shame around, you know, having to go to my mom and
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  tell her. Yeah, I've been in an abusive
• 14:15
  marriage for most of it. And my mother adored my husband,
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  adored him. She just thought he was like,
• 14:22
  the greatest thing since sliced bread.
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  So to tell her that he was an alcoholic and he was abusing me.
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  And then I had to ask her to help me financially so that I
• 14:33
  could start my life over and have her support me partially.
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  And then having, you know, during COVID, having a business
• 14:42
  where I shut down and then when I, you know, started it back up,
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  I, I almost lost it and I almost had to like completely shut it
• 14:51
  down and move back home with my mom.
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  There was shame around that. Like there was so many times
• 15:01
  where I felt ashamed. Like, how could I just, you
• 15:06
  know, like, why couldn't I get the business working?
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  Like why did it collapse? Why did I get into such like,
• 15:12
  you know, $35,000 worth of debt, like trying to support myself
• 15:17
  during COVID and also pay for healthcare out of pocket for a
• 15:24
  massive health crisis that I was, you know, diagnosed with in
• 15:27
  August of 2022? Like, I was ashamed of that.
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  I was ashamed that I had to. I put up a GoFundMe page where
• 15:36
  people donated to help me with my health crisis and I was
• 15:43
  ashamed that I had to do that. Like why couldn't I do it on my
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  own? I was ashamed that I got sick in
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  the 1st place. I'm in the health and Wellness
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  industry and I got sick and it's like fuck.
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  Like should have known better. Like I it's incredible the
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  amount that we beat ourselves up for not being perfect, for not
• 16:13
  knowing better. But at the end of the day, all
• 16:17
  of that, it's it's life. Nobody is walking this earth not
• 16:27
  ashamed of a single thing that they've done.
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  And and if there is anybody that says, yeah, there's nothing in
• 16:32
  my life I've ever been ashamed of, then you know what?
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  They're honestly, they're full of crap because they are not
• 16:38
  connected to themselves and they are living in denial because we
• 16:44
  all make decisions that are not in our highest good.
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  I mean, I felt ashamed for, you know, when I was moving out of
• 17:04
  my house and my real estate agent, like I didn't have any
• 17:07
  food and I didn't have any money for food.
• 17:09
  And her and her husband went to Costco and, you know, they
• 17:13
  brought me $300 worth of food and said here, just take this.
• 17:17
  And I'm like, like, I, I, I can't, like, I can't pay you
• 17:19
  back. And they're like, don't worry
• 17:21
  about it doesn't matter. We just want you to be safe and
• 17:24
  OK and happy. When I thought my business was
• 17:29
  going to close down one of my patients like she was, she was
• 17:36
  giving me money even though she had paid for her treatments
• 17:39
  already. She had bought a package from
• 17:40
  me. She put her package on hold and
• 17:44
  she was paying me out of pocket and she gave me money for
• 17:47
  groceries like and she supported me through my app like and, and
• 17:56
  his. And there was so much gratitude
• 17:58
  around that and also so much shame that I got into that
• 18:01
  position in the 1st place. But here's the thing about our
• 18:06
  mind. Our mind is sneaky AF and it
• 18:13
  will do everything that it possibly can to protect you.
• 18:19
  And sometimes that protection is you do stupid things, you make
• 18:27
  stupid decisions, whether it's in your personal life or your
• 18:31
  business or your career, whatever.
• 18:34
  Like in your health. Like, your mind is really,
• 18:38
  really capable of getting you to believe anything and especially
• 18:46
  the crap. And so yesterday when I was in
• 18:51
  my yen and meditation practice and I thought to myself, is
• 18:56
  there really any point to me carrying around the shame
• 19:00
  anymore? Like really, is there any?
• 19:05
  Nope. Is it serving me?
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  Nope. Is it serving my evolution?
• 19:11
  Nope. Is it serving my patients in my
• 19:16
  reflexology practice? Hell no.
• 19:19
  Is it serving my students on my on my yin yoga and well-being
• 19:23
  app? Absolutely not.
• 19:25
  Is it serving the collective as a whole, this universe as a
• 19:29
  whole? No.
• 19:33
  Can I change it? Like can I go back and change
• 19:39
  any of this? No.
• 19:41
  So I have two options as far as I can see it.
• 19:45
  I either accept it, release it and move on, or I continue to
• 19:52
  let it control my life and diminish who I am and cause more
• 20:05
  suffering. And I was like, my soul's not
• 20:09
  here to suffer anymore. It's already known that journey.
• 20:12
  Why do I want to keep reliving that?
• 20:16
  Like it's time to feel free. It's time to live in peace and
• 20:20
  in tranquility and freedom. And so I said F it.
• 20:25
  I'm done with this. I'm like, I'm letting it go.
• 20:30
  And I felt better. And then last night I was in a
• 20:37
  group mentorship call that lasted 3 hours.
• 20:41
  Like I'll tell you, my mentor is a godsend. 3 hours and I had no
• 20:46
  idea what the context of that call was going to be about.
• 20:53
  But when she started to talk it, it was all about shame.
• 20:59
  And I was like thinking to myself, but of course we're
• 21:03
  talking about this. I just finished meditating and
• 21:06
  doing yin yoga on this and now we're talking about this.
• 21:10
  And she brought up three different women who talked about
• 21:15
  what they were ashamed of. And after listening to these
• 21:20
  women, I thought to myself, wow, the ship that I was ashamed of
• 21:28
  pales in comparison to what these courageous women went
• 21:32
  through, survived it and moved on from.
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  And I'm not going to tell their stories because that's not my
• 21:39
  right. But when I look at, and I'm not
• 21:44
  comparing, but when I look at what they went through versus
• 21:47
  me, I was like, yeah, Kim, you are just as courageous.
• 21:56
  There's no reason for you to hold on to this shame anymore.
• 22:00
  It's not serving you, and it's not serving anybody in your
• 22:04
  life. And it's not serving this
• 22:05
  universe. And it's not serving your
• 22:07
  purpose of what you're here to do in this world.
• 22:11
  It was like another layer of confirmation that, you know
• 22:19
  what, let it go. And then at the end of this
• 22:28
  call, she was doing a draw. So I'm in this program and it's
• 22:34
  an experiment. And there's different phases of
• 22:36
  this experiment. And so at the end of the call,
• 22:39
  she was saying, you know, like I'm giving 10 golden tickets,
• 22:45
  which is basically 10 passes to the next phase of this
• 22:50
  experiment and you can win it. Like it was a draw and I won one
• 22:56
  of the tickets. And I was like, if I, I truly
• 23:00
  believe this, if I had not done the work that I've been doing
• 23:06
  all this time, all this mindset work and all this belief work,
• 23:11
  changing my limited beliefs, accepting the the story of my
• 23:16
  past, being OK with who I was and the decisions that I made
• 23:21
  and stepping fully into my power and being a creator in my life,
• 23:26
  I wouldn't have won that ticket. There's no freaking way I would
• 23:30
  have won. So for me, that was just like
• 23:35
  affirmation from the universe. It was a sign from the universe
• 23:39
  that you know what? Like keep going on the path
• 23:42
  you're doing that you're on. Keep doing this work because at
• 23:49
  some point there's going to be somebody out there in this
• 23:52
  world. Maybe I'll know, maybe I'll
• 23:54
  never know. But I believe that the work that
• 23:59
  I'm doing through my podcast episodes here, the journey that
• 24:04
  I'm taking people on through the Soulful Yin app, the work that
• 24:10
  I'm doing with my reflexology patients, which is so much more
• 24:13
  than just a foot reflexology treatment for them, like all of
• 24:21
  this work, I know that there are people out there that are
• 24:24
  benefiting from it. I don't need to know how many
• 24:27
  people. It doesn't matter.
• 24:28
  I just know in my soul that this is the work that I'm meant to
• 24:33
  do, and I'm no longer going to sit behind the shame of, OK, I
• 24:45
  was supposed to be perfect and I'm not.
• 24:49
  I'm no longer going to sit behind the fear of like, OK,
• 24:54
  well, if I put something out and it's not perfect and people
• 24:56
  don't like it, I'm still going to put it out.
• 25:03
  I'm still going to put out programs.
• 25:05
  I'm still going to keep talking about my app.
• 25:10
  Like, I'm not afraid to show people the gift that I have in
• 25:16
  this world. And The thing is, is that when
• 25:19
  you release the shame, you strip away all those layers, you start
• 25:24
  to realize who you really are and who you are really meant to
• 25:28
  become in this world. And you get to a point where
• 25:33
  you're like, you know what? It's not like some ego cocky
• 25:36
  thing where you're like, yeah, I'm the greatest at blah, blah,
• 25:39
  blah, blah, blah. It it, it has nothing to do with
• 25:41
  that. It's just a beautiful residence
• 25:45
  of assertiveness and of courage and of confidence in yourself
• 25:50
  that you know what, you have a gift and this world is meant to
• 25:54
  see it. And it doesn't serve anybody for
• 25:57
  you to hide that gift. And here's the thing, everybody
• 26:02
  has a gift. It's just sometimes people don't
• 26:04
  know what their gift is yet. But that's OK.
• 26:08
  That's what you're here to discover what your gift is.
• 26:15
  And once you do, like, let that shine.
• 26:20
  Like let that gift shine because the world is a better place when
• 26:28
  you are in a better place when you're when you're not living in
• 26:34
  the constant ruminations of your mind, when you're not sitting in
• 26:40
  the constant worry and rabbit hole spiraler spiring.
• 26:46
  When you're not sitting in the fear of like the unknown and
• 26:51
  what's going to happen and, you know, always thinking, worst
• 26:54
  case scenario, you're not going to be living in the shame of
• 26:57
  what you did in the past and not being proud of it.
• 27:00
  You learn from it and you move on.
• 27:03
  It's like, OK, I made those those decisions in hindsight,
• 27:06
  they weren't the best. All right, lesson learned.
• 27:10
  Not going to do that again and you move on.
• 27:15
  But but if you leave all of that stuff inside of you, you're
• 27:21
  living anything but an extraordinary life.
• 27:24
  You're living a life of pain and suffering, and that's not what
• 27:31
  you're here for. So whatever it is that you are
• 27:36
  ashamed of, that you think is so awful that you did, I guarantee
• 27:44
  you it's not that bad. Even if you cheated, even if you
• 27:49
  lied, even if you stole, even if you hurt somebody.
• 27:55
  I will tell you that I don't condone any of that.
• 28:01
  But we all just operate most of the time from that primal part
• 28:09
  of our brain that's always just trying to keep us safe.
• 28:12
  And sometimes in that trying to keep us safe, it gives us some
• 28:16
  really misguided directions. It's like a really fucked up GPS
• 28:22
  system. But you know what?
• 28:26
  You can override it, and that's what your journey is here for.
• 28:30
  And This is why I created the Soulful Yin app, because back
• 28:36
  when I was in the literal crap of my marriage, I had nowhere to
• 28:41
  go to. I was too ashamed to go for
• 28:43
  help. I didn't have the money to go
• 28:46
  and see therapists, so I had to do it myself.
• 28:52
  And I remember, you know, years later saying to myself, I'm so
• 28:56
  grateful for all of these tools. You know, the breath work, the
• 28:59
  meditation, the yen, the acupressure, the reflexology, it
• 29:03
  all helped me get to where I am now.
• 29:07
  And I said this, these tools have helped me.
• 29:11
  So I want to somehow find a way for these tools to help other
• 29:16
  people. I don't know how universe but do
• 29:21
  something help me. And that's when the Soulful Yin
• 29:26
  app came out. It's the number one online yin
• 29:31
  yoga and well-being app scaling every single day.
• 29:37
  And it's because there's nothing else out there like it.
• 29:41
  One place where you can get programs, courses, miniseries,
• 29:46
  acupressure techniques, reflexology practices, yen yoga,
• 29:49
  breathwork, meditation, download health and mindset ebooks.
• 29:54
  Like it's all in one place. And it's what I prayed for like
• 30:04
  15 years ago, and now it's here. And I want thousands and
• 30:13
  thousands and thousands of people to be able to get onto
• 30:17
  their mat and to release the shame, the anger, the sadness,
• 30:25
  the grief, the fear, the insecurities, and all without
• 30:30
  judgement. Because I'm here to guide
• 30:36
  everybody to flexibility, to awareness and to an
• 30:43
  extraordinary life. So if you're ready to join me,
• 30:47
  hit the link in the show notes. Start your 7 day free trial and
• 30:53
  start living your extraordinary life because you don't know how
• 30:58
  long you've got. So don't waste any of it living
• 31:03
  and suffering. So thank you so much for
• 31:11
  pressing play on today's episode.
• 31:14
  I hope to see you in the app. And above all, I truly hope that
• 31:21
  you are moving in the direction of living an extraordinary life
• 31:25
  because you're worthy of it and you deserve it.