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Embodied Emotions: The Foundation of Emotional Simplicity in Three Steps · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How would your life look and feel different if you had greater emotional simplicity?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think it's fair to say that so much of our pain and discomfort comes from trying to manage the barrage and complexity of emotions that we feel on a daily basis.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then on top of that, we have all the negative self-talk and the self-judgment.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So in this very special three-part podcast, I'm going to be taking you through three stages.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The first stage, we're going to look at emotions as embodied experiences.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: The second podcast, we're going to be looking at emotional acceptance and self-compassion.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the third one is about be about emotional challenge and decision.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: They are all available now.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So feel free to go binge, or you might want to just take your time and listen to one at a time.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: What I will advise you to do, however, is to listen to them more than once because you will hear them differently each time.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are ready, let's dive into episode number one.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Shall we start at the beginning?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is emotional simplicity?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's basically a term that I started to use with clients when I started to combine coaching with somatic practice.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what I noticed was when I started to use the term emotional simplicity, two things happened.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Two things happened.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is that my clients could create an idea of it, they could conceptualize it, they understood for themselves what that meant.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps most importantly, they created this almost instant visceral somatic response to it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: They could feel immediately in their body what it would be like for them to have a life that felt more emotionally simplistic.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a game changer.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I have some of my own definitions.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And as we go through these three episodes, you're going to create yours.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if I share mine, it might give you a little bit of a stage on which to build yours.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, for me, emotional simplicity is a way to turn down the volume on the emotional noise so that it becomes more manageable.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are some days when the emotional complexity and the emotional intensity can be so much that I just need to turn it down.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that when I decide to live by my promise to myself for more emotional simplicity, it informs my actions.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It helps me to make choices that generate more of the emotions I want and less of or make them more manageable, the emotions I don't want so much of.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: It tells me what I want to do, what I don't want to do.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of really determines my actions.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a way of me, if I'm really struggling, to remember that I can anchor into certain emotions at will when I know what the emotions are that I want to create.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, what that means for me is that I can be more present and peaceful on a daily basis.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what emotional simplicity means to me.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Please create your own definition.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, like I've already said, this is coming in three parts.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in this first episode, we're going to talk about emotions as embodied experiences.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that I wanted to offer you this one is this first one is really about offering you a perspective shift so you can generate a huge amount of grace for yourself about the emotions and the thoughts that you might be having.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then from this understanding you're going to have, you're going to be able to extend out your self-compassion and then know yourself at a deeper level, somatically and energetically.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when I first decided to do this podcast series, I was thinking about just starting this first episode off as uh emotions being embodied thoughts.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that was just a little bit too simplistic.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is where I'm going to start.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the easiest way for me to explain it is to share with you a simple coaching framework that I learned about a couple of years ago.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's designed by Brooke Castillo and it's called the model.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes in five stages: circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions, results.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the theory being obviously that actions create results, but thoughts and feelings kind of drive your actions.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The circumstance is an event.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: The circumstance means that everything is neutral.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what gives you the charge around that circumstance is your thoughts and feelings around it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take circumstance A, and there's 10 of us experiencing circumstance A.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we're all going to have our unique thoughts about it, we're all going to have our unique feelings about it, which means that we all create a unique charge, a unique experience around this neutral circumstance.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So when you start using the model, the idea being is that you can generate a different thought so that you feel differently about the circumstance.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just say, for instance, you were coming to me for coaching because you wanted to lose some weight and you wanted to lose, I don't know, like 21 pounds as an example.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we discussed all the different thoughts that you had around your body shape the way it is now, how you got where you are, what you think the journey is going to be like.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And these were making you feel, you know, you felt awful, you didn't like yourself, you thought it was going to be too difficult, you've tried it before, you're never going to get there.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea of the model is we I coach you to have some different thoughts so you can engage better feelings about the process, about yourself, about your journey.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in some cases, that absolutely works, right?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's super powerful coaching.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I've worked with enough clients now to know that sometimes just focusing on questions and saying to people, choose a different thought or pick a different feeling is just not enough.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because the thoughts and feelings kind of intertwine.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: You repeat a thought so many times, it becomes an embodied experience.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: You feel it in your body.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just take something like anger as an example.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure if you remember the time when you were really angry, you can feel that in your body.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps, like me, perhaps you clench your fist, perhaps your chest tightens, perhaps your breathing speeds up.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: What about when you're stressed?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do your shoulders come up around your ears?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you clench your jaw?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Does your stomach go tight?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So your the thoughts that you have on a repeated basis become an embodied practice.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: They are bodily experienced as well as something that is going on in your brain.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is that the more they are practiced, the more automatic they become.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Joe Dispenser talks a lot about this.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: So go Google him and find him on YouTube and stuff.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But he talks about how we can become so well rehearsed as a series of thoughts and feelings that we can get out of bed in the morning, and before we've even had a thought, we've already stepped into being who we've always been.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is put your feet on the floor and put your feet in a pair of slippers, it's almost like putting a pair of slippers on and you anchor into being that person without even having a thought about it.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're somebody who's really been struggling to change the way that you feel and you feel like these thoughts are going around in your head and you're kind of in this thought and feeling loop, now's the time to cut yourself some slack and understand that these have become um automatic responses, automatic experiences that you have because they've been repeated so long.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have, when the emotions are strong, your body takes that as a sign that, oh, this is really important to me, must remember it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the more we have it and the stronger they get, the more important our body thinks is.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So no wonder it's hard to let that stuff go.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to add on to that, to give you even more self-compassion and grace, how would you think and feel differently about yourself if you knew that some of these patterns of emotions began from the day you were born?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I've already mentioned in previous episodes that when I talk when I talk about somatics, we often talk a lot about shapes, the shapes that we take on.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you an example just so you can feel it in your body and you can see it in your mind's eye.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine that there is somebody that you know who has never been given a voice.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were always told to be quiet as a child, they were put, you know, baby was put in the corner, they weren't allowed to verbalize their thoughts and feelings.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the shape that this person has taken on, it means that they've often got their head, you know, their chin tilted and their eyes are downcast.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: They tend to speak with a very quiet voice.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps their shoulders kind of round over and their chest caves in backwards.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: They have tiny mouse-like footsteps.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is the shape of their experience.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to do to really land and give some weight to this episode is to share some words from the book Your Body is Your Brain by Amanda Blake, because the way that she writes is absolutely phenomenal.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is going to just help you to really create that perspective shift that I'm looking for so that you can extend yourself that level of grace.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we start with this.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Children's brains are heavily tilted toward sensory and movement-based learning.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our centers for speech and language don't come online until we're about two and take many more years to fully mature.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: By contrast, the smartosensory context uh cortex, which is heavily involved in sensation and movement, is active from birth and usually fully developed by the age of four.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: As children, we adopt emotional and relational patterns, not as abstraction, but primarily through what we sense and what we feel.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like trees, we shape in response to our environment, subtly bending and twisting our physical form to match our early life circumstances.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike trees, we more often than not move out of that environment as we grow older.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the autopilot associations that get wired into our brains and bodies are helpful early on, but they can outlive their usefulness as we enter new situations.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then this part really, I hope, just sums it up for you.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, your brain doesn't stop at the base of your skull and your nerves don't end in a vacuum.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: For you to take just about any action, your brain must communicate with the rest of your body.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: To swallow your tears, you have to squeeze your eyes, your throat, your chest.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: To greet a friend, you open your arms for a hug or your hand for a handshake.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: To ask a question or to express surprise, you adopt a particular tilt of the head and tone of voice.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: These automatic embodied responses are a vital part of the very fabric of our everyday social and emotional experience.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And each one of us has embodied our own unique set of associations, which emerge out of the culture we live in, the activities we take on, and our early relationships.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it turns out it's not just your brain that's your social and emotional sense organ, it's your entire body.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So in case you didn't know, this stuff lights me up.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I'm sharing it with you in this very first episode is I want you to understand that when you're struggling to navigate emotional turmoil, emotional complexity, when you're struggling with the thoughts, you I want you to understand that there is this interplay between your emotions and your thoughts.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to take some grace from the fact that you had these, you created a very large part of your model of the world at a very early age through your sensorial awareness, through your felt sense.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: When you had no other way of creating context, you felt it and you stored it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And these patterns become embodied in, and that's who you become.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we have been brought up in a world that teaches us how to learn and not to think.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've also been taught to value our brain, and we've stepped so far away from our body that we have disconnected from its innate wisdom and the messages that it has for us and our true selves.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my hope is not just through these three episodes, but through the whole of the Seeking Simplicity podcast, that I'm going to bring you back to your body, that I'm going to bring you back to reconnecting with your wisdom, that I'm going to bring you back to understanding what self-love and some self-compassion and self-acceptance looks and feels like for you and how you take that into your life.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So whilst that was a whistle stop and a very simplified, almost crude explanation, I hope I as kind of I've managed to meet my intention, which was to create a perspective shift for you that allows you to create space for grace and choose your forward pathway from a place of self-love and completeness versus some kind of self-disgust, self-loathing, self-hate, and this sense that you're broken because you're not.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to read that book, I will put um a link in the notes below so you can go grab it for yourself.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is an amazing book.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can't give any more love to this.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like I love it the world.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in the next episode, we're going to be talking about emotional acceptance and self-compassion.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So please make sure you tune in and you know what to do.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you love this episode, please do subscribe to the podcast.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Share it with your friends, and I'll catch up with you in the next episode.