Latest / AWAKEN with Dylan Ayaloo: Inner Work, Healing, Yoga & Meditation / [EP52] The Pattern You Can See, But Can't Stop (The Knowing-Doing Gap Explained)

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[EP52] The Pattern You Can See, But Can't Stop (The Knowing-Doing Gap Explained) · AWAKEN with Dylan Ayaloo: Inner Work, Healing, Yoga & Meditation

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  The pattern you can see, but you can't stop.
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  She'd been in therapy for seven years, could name every pattern, every trigger, every attachment style, and she sat down across me and said four words, nothing has actually changed.
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  Nothing has actually changed.
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  If you ever felt that, then stay with me.
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  I've been working on the level of the body, not just minds, for almost two decades now.
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  Hundreds of people, and this is the thing I see every single time.
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  You don't have an understanding problem, you have a location problem.
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  In about two minutes, I'm going to show you something in your own breath that will prove this.
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  In your body, right now.
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  But first, let me show you why.
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  In this video, I'm going to show you three things.
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  First, why knowing your patterns doesn't free you from them.
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  There's a piece of neuroscience behind that.
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  it, you'll never blame yourself for the knowing doing gap again. The second, that live breath
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  thing I just mentioned, not theory, a 10 second experience in your own body. The third, the sixth
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  stage cycle that keeps you stuck. I see it in almost everyone I work with. And stage four is
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  the one almost nobody recognizes in themselves. If you ever said the words, I know what I need to do,
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  I just can't seem to do it. This is for you. I had someone sit down with me last month,
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  incredibly smart, self-aware, could tell her attachment style, her ACE score, her mother's
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  trauma history in clinical detail. And she looks at me and said, I understand everything and nothing
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  shifts. She's not alone. And here's why. The reason understanding hasn't freed you is not a
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  you problem, it's a location problem. There's a researcher called Joseph Ledoux at NYU who studied
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  how the brain processes threat. He found your amygdala, the alarm system, fires in 12 milliseconds,
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  12. Your prefrontal cortex, the part that thinks and reasons and makes conscious choices,
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  takes 10 times longer to even switch on. The research, Joseph Ledoux, The Emotional Brain,
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  Two pathways, the fast path, the telomeres to the amygdala, 12 milliseconds.
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  The slow path through the cortex.
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  The amygdala activates survival responses before conscious awareness.
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  Which means that moment where someone asks you for something and you hear yourself say,
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  of course, no problem.
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  Before your brain could even form the word, no.
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  That's 12 milliseconds of neuroscience.
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  Your body decided before your mind had a chance to intervene.
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  Basil van der Kolk spent decades at Harvard studying exactly this.
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  His central finding, survival patterns are stored as physical sensations, not stories.
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  They sit behind conscious thought.
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  Basil van der Kolk, The Body Keeps Core, 2014.
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  Survival patterns stored in the body as sensory and physical sensations, not verbal memories.
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  Cannot be assessed through talking or thinking alone.
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  Your patterns don't live in your head.
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  That's why all the head work hasn't shifted them.
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  So here's the thing I promise. Right now, without changing anything, just notice your breath.
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  Don't breathe better. Don't change anything. Just notice. Pay attention. Feel. Most people I work
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  with, and I've been doing this for almost two decades now, across thousands of people and
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  hundreds of sessions have the same pattern. Short inhale, long exhale. Tiny sip in, big push out.
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  a breathing problem, that's a life pattern. A short inhale, long exhale. You're literally giving more
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  than you take in. Every single breath. Your body's rehearsing, over-give, under-receive thousands of
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  times a day. And no amount of understanding why you do it will change the breath. The breath changes
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  when the body gets a different experience, not a different idea. And no amount of understanding
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  why you do it will change. The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.
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  You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. Rumi. That's the real work. Not
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  more information, not another book, just dropping out of your head into your body. Asking for what
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  you really want instead of going back to sleep. Quick thing before I go deeper. If that breath
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  thing just landed, I'm running a free live masterclass on Tuesday the 24th of February
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  called The Pattern You Can See But You Can't Stop. In it, I'll take you through a live practice,
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  not just theory, an actual experience of what it feels like when the patterns start to shift in
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  your body. Comment Awaken below and I'll send you the link or in the description. Okay, let's keep
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  going because I haven't told you the most important part yet. Pete Walker, Complex PTSD,
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  describing 2013. The fawn response. The fourth survival mechanism alongside fight, flight,
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  freeze. Fawn. Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs, and demands of the others.
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  There's a name for what I just showed you. Pete Walker called it fawn response. It is a fourth
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  survival mechanism. Not fight, not flight, not freeze. Fawn. It's when your nervous system
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  that the safest thing to do is to please the person in front of you,
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  agree with them, anticipate their needs, shape yourself around their mood.
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  Because when you were small, that's what kept things calm.
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  That's what kept you safe.
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  And now, decades later, your conscious mind knows better.
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  But your body, your body is still running the old program every single time.
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  Here's how it plays out.
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  The moment comes, your mother calls, or your partner pushes,
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  or your boss asks for more and your body takes over.
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  The jaws tighten, the breath goes shallow,
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  the same short inhale, long exhale.
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  And before the conscious mind even forms the word, no.
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  The mouth has already said, of course, no problem.
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  This is the knowing doing gap.
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  It's not a willpower problem, it's a location problem.
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  The pattern lives in the body
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  and all the head work in the world can't reach it there.
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  And what happens is this cycle, six stages.
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  I see it in almost everyone.
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  Be honest with yourself about which one you're in right now.
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  Stage one, you overperform.
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  You say yes to everything.
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  Your shoulders climb towards your ears and you don't even notice.
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  You're the helper, the strong one, the one that holds it all together.
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  That's the fawn response, wearing a professional outfit.
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  Stage two, you crash.
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  The back pain, the insomnia, the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix.
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  Your body is saying what your mouth won't.
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  Stage three, you self-criticize.
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  Instead of hearing the crash as a message, you hear it as failure.
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  Why can't I just handle this?
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  And here's what I always ask.
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  When did beating yourself up ever work?
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  Name one time.
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  You can't because it doesn't.
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  Stage four, you hide.
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  You cancel the plans.
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  You scroll.
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  Start to numb out.
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  And here's why this stage is one nobody recognizes.
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  Because from the outside, it looks like self-care.
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  You call it recharging.
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  But you're not recharging.
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  You're having a breakdown.
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  And there's a difference.
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  Stage five, brief awareness.
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  A moment of clarity of, I need to change this.
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  And you mean it.
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  Genuinely.
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  This is the moment you buy the books, or you sign up for the course, or you write in your journal at 2am.
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  Stage 6, straight back to stage 1.
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  Because the inside was real, but nothing shifted in the body.
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  The mind had a moment, the nervous system didn't.
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  And the cycle starts again.
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  If you saw yourself in that, you're not alone.
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  And you're not failing.
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  You're trying to think your way out of something that lives deeper than thought.
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  put it simply, the greatest damage done by neglect, trauma, or emotional loss is not the
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  immediate pain they inflict, but the long-term distortions they induce in a way a developing
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  child will continue to interpret the world and their situation in it. Gabo Mate, The Myth of
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  Normal, 2022. Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you. The body's
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  interpretation of early experience creates the patterns that runs for decades. You didn't choose
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  the pattern, the pattern chose you before you had a vote. Basel-Vander-Kolcon treatment, body-based
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  approaches, yoga, breath work, EMDR, somatic experiencing, consistently more effective for
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  survival patterns than talk therapy alone. The body needs to learn the danger has passed.
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  So thinking about it doesn't work, what does?
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  You have to give the body a new experience,
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  not a new explanation, a new experience.
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  Remember the breath pattern I showed you?
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  Short inhale, long exhale, giving more than you take in.
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  That pattern doesn't change because you understand it.
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  It changes when your body has a different experience.
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  When you actually let yourself take a full breath in,
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  when you practice receiving instead of just giving.
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  Vandercolk research showed that body-based practices, yoga, breath work, movement,
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  change these patterns in a way that talking about them simply doesn't.
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  Because you're working at a level where the pattern actually lives.
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  It's the difference between reading a book about swimming and getting in the water.
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  You can read every book on swimming ever written,
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  and your body will not know how to swim until it gets in the water.
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  This is why you can have 20 insights in a month and nothing changes.
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  Insights happen in the mind, and the patterns live in the body.
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  And nobody told you that these are two different languages.
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  Knowing others is intelligence.
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  Knowing yourself is true wisdom.
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  Mastering others is strength.
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  Mastering yourself is true power.
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  Lao Tzu.
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  Lao Tzu drew that line thousands of years ago.
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  Between knowing yourself and mastering yourself.
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  Two different skills entirely.
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  And most of personal development stops at knowing.
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  and then blames you when knowing doesn't create change.
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  So let me bring this together.
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  You're not broken because you can't stop your patterns.
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  You're dealing with something
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  that was never a thinking problem to begin with.
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  Ledoux showed us the body reacts in 12 milliseconds
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  before thinking even starts.
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  Van der Kolk showed us survival patterns
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  are stored in physical sensations, not thoughts.
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  Walker named the phone response,
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  the mechanism that makes you say yes,
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  even when everything in you is screaming no.
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  And Mate pointed out that the damage isn't what happened to you,
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  it's what's happening inside you.
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  Six stage cycle, overperforming, crash, criticize, hide,
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  brief awareness, repeat.
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  Isn't a character flaw.
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  It's what happens when you try to think your way out of a body pattern.
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  And your breath is the evidence.
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  Short inhale, long exhale.
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  you live every single breath. Change doesn't come from more understanding. It comes from giving the
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  body a different experience. I've watched it happen hundreds of times. Someone stops overriding their
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  body. They take one genuine breath. They let the mask slip for one moment. Something begins to shift.
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  Not in their thinking, but in their chest, their shoulders, their jaws, and the body starts to come
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  back to balance because they stop fighting it. If any of this landed, the masterclass is on
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  Tuesday, the 24th of February. It's where we go from understanding to experience. It's free,
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  it's live, and it's for people who've done all the head work and are ready for something different,
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  something powerful. Comment Awaken below or click the link in the description. I want to leave you
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  with something from Lao Tzu. At the center of your being, you have the answer. You know who you are.
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  You know what you want. You already know. Your body has been telling you. The question was never
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  you know the pattern.
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  The question is, are you ready to let yourself feel it
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  instead of just think about it?
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  If you wanna go deeper, my next video breaks down
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  the four layers of exhaustion nobody talks about,
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  especially layer three,
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  which is where your energy is actually going.
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  It's not what you think.
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  That one's right here.