Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.90: Regulating Your Nervous System Through Somatic Work w/ Hannah O'Donovan | The Ambitious Podcast

Transcript

EP.90: Regulating Your Nervous System Through Somatic Work w/ Hannah O'Donovan | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

0:00
I don't know what's wrong with me and I didn't know how to fix
0:03
it. 18 hour days, not stopping to eat or drink or go to the
0:07
bathroom. Well, I'm doing everything I'm
0:09
supposed to do. Like I guess this is just who I
0:12
am and how I have to live. I was just building building
0:15
building this version of success that was not mine.
0:18
Do I feel good in my body? Why would you say, actually, I
0:22
don't know if I want to hustle? There's deep grief associated
0:25
with realizing that you put yourself in this position.
0:30
Hello and welcome back to Ambitious.
0:32
Today we are talking about something that even if you've
0:35
clicked on today's title, might feel a little bit foreign to
0:38
you, but I promise you is everything that you're going to
0:41
want to know. And today we are talking all
0:43
things somatic work. And you're probably thinking to
0:46
yourself, what the heck is somatic work?
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And how does this impact me? How does this impact me as an
0:51
individual or my business? And this is exactly why I want
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to invite you to go deeper into today's conversation.
0:58
So today I'm joined by Hannah O'donovan, who is the founder of
1:01
Soma Soma and the host of the Too Much Not Enough podcast.
1:05
Hannah spent 15 years as a high achieving event producer,
1:08
working 18 hour days and getting all of herself worth from
1:11
external validation until her nervous system completely
1:14
collapsed and forced her to confront what she'd been
1:16
ignoring for decades. What makes Hannah's story so
1:19
powerful is that she's been where many of us are right now,
1:22
or where we've also been living in a kind of severed head,
1:26
completely disconnected feeling between our brain and our bodies
1:30
and the wisdom that our bodies have to share when they're
1:32
screaming for attention from us. Hair falling out, digestive
1:36
issues, anxiety. For me, that showed up as things
1:39
like acne and physical strain within my joints.
1:43
And for you, what I want to invite you to is to look at how
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this might be presenting for you.
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How is there a possibility that somatic work could really unlock
1:53
what you've been looking for within your business?
1:55
And so I want to give you a little bit of a peek into what
1:58
you're going to take away and the things that you're going to
2:00
learn from today's episode. We talked about why we've been
2:03
conditioned to live as severed heads and how your body is
2:07
actually sending you signals that you've been trained to
2:09
ignore from things you know, like all of us do, needing to
2:13
pee and the rush to the washroom in between calls.
2:16
To the deeper. Wisdom that we have about our
2:18
relationships and our career alignment.
2:20
We also discussed her nervous system collapse story and how
2:23
years of long days not stopping to eat and not taking time to
2:28
use the washroom and getting self worth from external
2:31
validation actually LED her to have panic attacks that lasted 3
2:34
to 6 months and forced her to then after that move back in
2:37
with her parents. We also talked about the
2:39
difference between analyzing how you feel versus actually feeling
2:42
it and why talk therapy alone often will keep you stuck in
2:45
your head rather than processing what's stored in your body.
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And we also talked about simple somatic practices that you can
2:51
start today. The orienting technique that
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uses your five senses, asking your body what it needs and why.
2:58
Starting with just listening is also something that will
3:01
massively unlock this work for you.
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We want to discuss as well how doing this work will change
3:06
everything from the hard decisions about relationships,
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friendships, and also defining your success is going to shift
3:12
entirely and why you can't compartmentalize alignment into
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just one area of your life. So Hannah really is going to
3:19
share some practical tools. She's going to explain the
3:22
theory of somatic work, but she's also going to get very
3:24
granular about what this would look like when integrated.
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And I will tell you, as someone myself who is constantly living
3:30
in her head, this was also a very welcomed invitation for me
3:34
and a great reminder of the power of this work and what this
3:37
really looks like when it's integrated effectively.
3:39
So with all that being said, let's get into today's episode.
3:51
Hello you guys, and welcome back to Ambitious.
3:53
Today we are going to be talking about something that I'm going
3:56
to tell you right now. If you are looking at the title
3:59
and you're thinking to yourself, I don't know what this is about,
4:03
then you're in the perfect place.
4:04
Because this is actually really, I would say, perfect for two
4:07
people. The person who is like somatic
4:09
work, what the heck is that? Or the person who maybe already
4:12
has some experience of this and is wondering how you can take
4:15
that relationship. Deeper and I will tell you I am,
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I would probably say kindergartner in my knowledge of
4:21
this, which is why I am so excited today to be joined by
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Hannah. So, Hannah, thank you so much
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for coming on Ambitious. Thank you so much for having me,
4:29
I'm really really excited to chat.
4:31
Yeah, I really, I we were just chatting obviously before we
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press record and we were saying that there's just there's so
4:37
much to unpack. So we're going to get right into
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it because somatic work. I want to really just start and
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I know Hannah, you probably have us from everybody that you
4:45
interface with, which is even I know we we connected at the
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dinner and people like somatic work.
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Like what is that? So for the person who's
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listening and they have already an instant curiosity somatic
4:55
work, what does that mean to you?
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What does that look like? Just to kind of give them a
4:58
flavor of what kind of the discussion today we'll dive
5:01
into. Totally.
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And I listen. I think it's so natural to
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question mark what somatic work is because I was there when I
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first heard the term, you know, however many years ago.
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And I still sometimes find it confusing.
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And the reason I've come to that, I think it's so confusing
5:18
is because we exist in our head so much in this sort of modern
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day society when we're working and kind of trying to push
5:26
through our lives. And the idea of somatic, and
5:30
it's sort of general broader sense in that I can definitely
5:33
dive in a little bit deeper to it is coming into relationship
5:37
with the body. Our body holds so much wisdom,
5:42
especially those of us who identify more with feminine
5:45
energy and sort of divine flow. And there are signals that our
5:51
body is sending us all the time, not necessarily just the ones
5:54
that we're used to everyday, like I'm hungry or I need to go
5:57
to the bathroom, things like that.
5:59
But it goes deeper than that. Our body is constantly
6:02
communicating with us. And I think that a lot of us, I
6:06
know me spent the 1st 30 years of my life basically walking
6:12
around like a severed head. Like I was always in my head,
6:15
always overanalyzing, overthinking, intellectualizing
6:18
my feelings. Everything was driven and forced
6:22
from the mind. And when I finally started
6:25
building a relationship with my body out of necessity, the game
6:29
changed for me. So essentially semantics is
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coming into relationship with the body's wisdom, starting to
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kind of build a two way communication between your mind
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and your body and really dropping in and listening.
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And it can look like so many different things for those
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listening who know about mindfulness, that is a huge part
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of of somatics. And it's things that you're
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probably already doing and don't realize are somatic work, like
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breath work, dancing, really any sort of movement, as well as
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just even stopping and asking your body what it needs is an
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act of somatic engagement. So I think that gives an overall
7:15
kind of view of it, but. I think even to your point of
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the feminine, that that's why to me, I think even for me when I
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first got introduced to it, it felt so Gray and to the note of
7:26
masculine, we're not talking about masculine, sense of
7:28
masculine, feminine around like gender feminine.
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Basically what we mean by that when we're mentioning that
7:34
through today is masculine. The kind of the way that I see
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that is structure and the feminine is the flow.
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It's like the best analogy that was ever given to me to really
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understand this is like if you have lots of flow, lots of
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feminine, but you have no structure, no masculine.
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It's like coffee. It would, it would just fall all
7:49
over the counter and you'd have a if you also have a coffee cup,
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but you have no coffee, no feminine, meaning you have this
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structure of the masculine of the cup, but no coffee to put in
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it. It has no purpose and it's just
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a structure that's ready to hold something, but it doesn't really
8:02
have anything to have purpose to hold.
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And so this duality of the two sides is really what I would say
8:09
is the biggest success for most people in business, but also in
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life. And you mentioned, which I'm,
8:13
I'm really excited to unpack because I feel like our stories
8:16
are very similar. You mentioned that you kind of
8:19
had this like pivotal moment in your 30s that allowed you to be
8:22
like whoa and start to really tune into the nervous system.
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And I think so many people will resonate with that because I
8:29
know even for me, I'm like a quote UN quote recovering
8:32
masculine. Like I, I didn't really, I
8:34
didn't have an awareness though that it was impacting me.
8:37
I didn't really have an awareness at the time that it
8:40
was causing issues for me. And that was only until which I
8:44
know you had shared the sentiment of for your story, you
8:46
got to this point where you could not not see it, like you
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couldn't continue to live unless you acknowledge this.
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So curious, like, what did that journey look like for you?
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Because I think for the person listening, it's really easy to,
8:58
you know, if we kind of zoom back to listen to the person who
9:01
says, you know, I am like in the most alignment I've ever been.
9:04
And they're very in their feminine.
9:05
You're like, I don't resonate with this at all.
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But when you hear from someone like yourself who's been in your
9:10
masculine experience that fully and now has also experienced the
9:14
full feminine and kind of says, you know, here's where my
9:15
baseline is now. How did you get there?
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And kind of what might someone in your journey maybe see that
9:22
are signs that they might kind of, you know, resonate with or
9:25
that they could evaluate in their own lives?
9:27
Yeah, that's such a good question.
9:29
And I love that analogy of the coffee cup and the idea that
9:33
like we're when we're talking about masculine, feminine, it's
9:36
always about a balance. And some people may feel more
9:40
drawn to have a little bit more of the feminine energy or a
9:42
little bit more of the masculine energy.
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But it's always about both sort of intermingling and constantly
9:48
coming back and seeing how you can find that balance.
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And so yeah, I, as I mentioned, existed probably 90% in my
9:59
masculine in my definitely in my 20s and into my early 30s, I was
10:04
an event producer for 15 years. Really just like doing, doing,
10:08
producing constant like deadlines.
10:12
This needed to happen yesterday. How can we push more, you know,
10:16
18 hour days on site, not stopping to eat or drink or go
10:22
to the bathroom. Just like so hyper focused on
10:25
getting things done, getting through the To Do List and
10:28
getting so much self worth from that, so much satisfaction from
10:32
that, that it felt like, oh, this is where I'm supposed to
10:35
be. I'm really good at this.
10:37
I worked for a few different organizations for a while and
10:41
then when I was on my own and when I went out on my own, I did
10:44
had to do barely any outbound marketing.
10:46
I had built a network and I was getting word of mouth referrals
10:50
over and over again. And every year I saw my bank
10:53
account increase and I felt so successful.
10:58
And then I hit a point at about 3334, this was post pandemic,
11:03
after we'd all had a chance to kind of slow down and take stock
11:06
of our lives whether we wanted to or not.
11:09
And it was tough. Both me and my partner at the
11:12
time were in the event world. So things essentially all but
11:16
shut down for us from life, from the live in person event space.
11:20
And I quickly pivoted to online events and started teaching
11:23
myself how to produce those. And once I had a time to kind of
11:28
like, catch up and breathe, my body started sending me signals,
11:32
which at the time, I really didn't pay the right attention
11:36
to. So I started losing hair.
11:39
So I was getting like in the shower, Like, big clumps of hair
11:42
were coming out. I had major, major digestive
11:45
issues. Like, I would eat like a bite of
11:48
an apple and I'd feel like I just ate an entire Thanksgiving
11:51
dinner. Like, I was so full.
11:54
I was hyper anxious all the time and now listen.
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I have dealt with anxiety and depression since I was a little
12:02
kid. Anxiety wasn't a new experience
12:04
to me but this was on another level.
12:07
My fears were so amplified. I have a fear of spiders and in
12:12
the house I was living at at the time there was like a ton of
12:14
spiders out and it was like a very jungly backyard.
12:17
Couldn't even go outside because of it.
12:19
I love to travel, but I stopped booking trips because getting on
12:24
a plane just seemed insurmountable to me.
12:28
And so the I think craziest thing for me, though, though,
12:31
was that I was still kind of doing the work, as you call it
12:34
at the time. I was in therapy.
12:36
I was in talk therapy, you know, every other week.
12:39
I was working out. I was paying attention to my
12:42
nutrition. I had actually quit drinking
12:44
because it was something that, you know, increased my anxiety.
12:48
And so in my mind, I was like, well, I'm doing everything I'm
12:51
supposed to do. Like, I guess this is just who I
12:55
am and how I have to live. I'm just one of those people who
12:59
doesn't get to exist at their optimum level.
13:02
And that's just what it is. I'll just spend my life managing
13:05
it. And then I actually went to
13:08
visit some friends in New York in late 2021, and I took my very
13:14
first edible. And looking back on it, I think
13:18
what happened is my body had been clutching like just white
13:24
knuckling it through what I've been putting it through, just
13:27
being like, because our bodies have this incredible ability to
13:31
survive through extreme circumstances.
13:36
And the way that I experienced that was like, this is normal.
13:41
I think what happened is I took the edible and my nervous system
13:44
had some sort of space to kind of relax and some signal was
13:49
sent through or perhaps it was divine intervention.
13:52
Whatever it was, it happened exactly the way it was supposed
13:54
to. But it took the edible, didn't
13:57
enjoy it. And then the next day, about
14:00
2024 hours later, I had my first major panic attack.
14:05
And again, like I said, anxiety wasn't new to me.
14:08
I had struggled with panic before but this was like full
14:14
numbness in the chest spreading out through the arms, very dark
14:18
thoughts and a lot of like disassociation.
14:23
And it was very strange. And I thought, OK, hopefully
14:26
this doesn't last long. And it lasted for about 3 to 6
14:31
months where my body just shut, basically forced me to stop in
14:38
my tracks and said, we've sent you signals, we've done this
14:43
nicely. We've really tried to get your
14:45
attention, but now we've got to do something that keeps you from
14:51
going down the path you're going down.
14:53
And in addition to the work piece where I was was more
14:56
misaligned than I understood, I was also in a relationship at
14:59
the time that was extremely misaligned.
15:02
And I could not fill my cup fast enough to like pour it into my
15:06
partner's cup. And like I said, I was doing all
15:08
the things that I thought I was supposed to be doing.
15:10
I was in therapy basically talking about my relationship
15:13
every two weeks. I have no idea why my therapist
15:15
didn't say maybe this is not the right relationship for you.
15:19
But but basically I, I ended up, yeah, I end up moving back in
15:25
with my parents and they had to take care of me essentially.
15:28
I couldn't eat, I could barely sleep.
15:31
I was panicked all of the time. My nervous system has had
15:34
essentially switched into fight flight and it got stuck there.
15:39
I could not get out. It was just every waking moment.
15:43
I was in panic. I couldn't leave the house, so
15:46
my entire social life disappeared.
15:49
I could barely work. Like it took everything in me to
15:52
get to the computer and like I had some clients at the time
15:54
that I had to. In fact, when it first started,
15:57
I was on site at an event and I had to pull out halfway through,
16:01
which I have never done in my entire life.
16:04
It was so hard to say I, I can't be here.
16:08
I'm like, I'm having multiple panic attacks a day.
16:11
I cannot be here anymore. And, and thank goodness the
16:14
client at the time was so understanding.
16:16
But it just like my whole body, my whole system, basically my
16:21
nervous system collapsed and I had to pay attention to that
16:25
because if I, if I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to
16:29
survive it. And that is where I started
16:32
diving into neuroscience and understanding the nervous
16:37
system, understanding the different States and the fact
16:40
that we were supposed to flexibly move between them, not
16:42
get stuck in one or the other. And I really took like a hard
16:46
look at myself and where I had been self abandoning because I
16:51
think at the core of it, that's what it was.
16:53
I had been self abandoning for so long that there was no
16:57
capacity left to keep up with the life I was living.
17:01
Well, I, I, there's so much impact because I, it's so good,
17:04
but I so resonate because I think, you know, and I've also
17:07
talked about this in other episodes, literally all the
17:10
symptoms you noted are exactly what I was going through and I
17:14
was at a complete loss. I was like, oh, maybe I have
17:16
hormonal issues. So I went and did a bunch of lab
17:19
work and all these things and it was the same situation.
17:21
I had hair falling out so much to the point where people are
17:24
like, Hey, like your hair, like what's going on?
17:27
And I was like, I don't know. And they're like, did you change
17:28
your shampoo? I'm like, no, are you curling it
17:30
all the time? And hot tools?
17:31
I'm like, no. And so I couldn't figure out
17:34
what the issue was. And then I had all these
17:36
digestive issues, you know, total TMI, but like couldn't go
17:40
to the washroom to save my life for sometimes like 5-6 days at a
17:42
time. And I was like, OK, then I
17:45
thought maybe I'm gluten intolerant maybe.
17:47
And I started to go down again. It has to be food or same thing
17:51
as you said. I've been going to therapy I
17:53
feel like since I was like 18 and now I'm, you know, 33.
17:56
So with this I thought, OK, well, like I exactly as you
18:00
said, I still resonate with it. I was I to me was checking all
18:03
the boxes. I'm like, I got the blood work
18:05
done. Check I've cut out sugar.
18:07
Check like. You're.
18:08
Doing all these things other than the one major thing that is
18:13
just the simple simple question of like tuning into how you
18:17
feel, not what you think you should.
18:19
Do for what? To eat or what you think you
18:20
should do when it comes to therapy and like even therapy.
18:23
I'm so happy that you mentioned that because for me, even the
18:27
same symptoms that you had or exactly what I had and what it
18:30
it honestly came to was like I exactly as you said, I got to a
18:34
really scary place because I was like, I don't know what's wrong
18:37
with me and I didn't know how to fix it because exactly as you
18:41
said, you think if I'm going to therapy, but I'm still feeling
18:44
anxious and depressed. Why is that?
18:47
Like that's what they tell you to do to get help.
18:49
So OK, great. I'm I'm putting in and I'm
18:50
planting the seeds there to help me, but it's not moving the
18:53
needle or if you're feeling it physically and you're like, oh,
18:57
I'm just tired. That was the other thing I felt
18:59
constantly. No matter the amount of sleep
19:02
you'd give me, you can let me sleep for 12 hours.
19:05
I would wake up exhausted. Exhausted.
19:07
Yeah. Non-stop coffee to get me
19:09
through, which just further that killed my body and my adrenals
19:13
to keep me going. But I literally, as you said,
19:15
couldn't function. And it's interesting because
19:19
for. You.
19:19
The experience was the edibles that caused you to pause.
19:22
And for me this was only really like the biggest change.
19:25
I would say it was only just over a year ago when basically I
19:29
had a coach who was like sit down in the middle of a field
19:33
and just be. And it completely broke me.
19:38
And it should have been. I had signs.
19:40
Actually, I would say earlier because I don't really take a
19:43
ton of, I would say like full vacations, meaning like I'm
19:46
always kind of in some capacity where I was always on.
19:49
And at Christmas though, I always had this time where I
19:52
would block off and I would take two to three weeks completely
19:54
off. The business turns off entirely
19:56
and I disconnect. And for multiple years, for
19:59
three years straight, every Christmas I would have.
20:04
What I would consider to be like a mental breakdown, meaning it
20:07
was like the moment I changed my status on Slack, it was like,
20:13
and all the emotions came up and I would spend 2 weeks crying,
20:19
processing. And again, I'm like, I like my
20:22
life. Like I'm not technically in, in
20:25
the traditional context. It's not like I don't see a
20:28
future. It's not like any of that.
20:29
But it just felt so paralyzing and yet it was weird when the
20:34
Christmas break would be done. Flip the switch.
20:36
Back on and I would go back into as you said that kind of
20:40
operator Doo Doo Doo mode. And at the time I had no context
20:44
as to what the actual issue was. I just thought I've been working
20:48
a lot. I took rest, my body needed the
20:50
rest. I recoup and then I go back at
20:52
it kind of like almost I think about like soccer like you go
20:54
off at halftime, you get recharged, you get back on the
20:56
field. But the problem was like I was
20:59
never not playing like I was forever in the game basically
21:02
other than this one break a year.
21:04
And so you're all of the symptoms you mentioned are
21:07
literally identical to what I experienced with the digestion.
21:10
The other things that I experienced were weight gain,
21:13
even though I wasn't necessarily in my mind overeating a lot.
21:17
I had a lot of inflammation. So I was like constantly bloated
21:22
even though exactly as you said, like I felt like I wouldn't eat
21:24
anything. I have a cup of coffee and I
21:26
felt like exactly I went and like attacked a buffet.
21:28
Like it was just, it was so bad and I couldn't figure out what
21:33
the issue was. And then the other thing that
21:35
came up for me was also like a lot of, I've kind of on and off
21:38
struggle with acne for most of my life.
21:40
Mm hmm. But I had like constant, it
21:42
wasn't like hormonal meaning with our cycle or anything.
21:45
It was just constant state of flare ups and acne.
21:49
And the other thing I would say is I was very emotionally
21:52
irritable. It was like a roller coaster.
21:54
I'd have days where I felt really good and everything was
21:56
amazing. And then the next day I would
21:58
feel so dark and low and I was like, why am I riding this
22:02
roller coaster? This is exhausting.
22:04
And so I think as business owners or even for you in that
22:08
frankly high performing role, I think what I, I take from yours
22:12
and what I so resonate even for my own story is I think we make
22:14
a lot of concessions as to why this is happening, right?
22:17
So it's like, oh, well, this is the case because of X.
22:20
And you start to find all these reasons which you can only
22:24
distill down to justify why your nervous system, quote UN quote,
22:29
should be this way. Instead of what I take from what
22:32
you you said is really, do I feel good in my body?
22:36
And if not, let's remove all the reasons why I should feel this
22:39
way and say, OK, well, do I want to feel this way?
22:42
And starting to ask a little bit of like a different question to
22:45
start to heal that feeling that you might have.
22:50
Like so many things in there and I love what you just said about
22:54
like, do I want to feel this way?
22:57
And I think that that is such an important question to pose
23:00
because especially for those of us who are type A or have been
23:06
or maybe still currently are type A, high achieving, got
23:10
basically all of our self worth from external validation.
23:13
Like, you know, growing up, it was in school, I'd get good
23:16
grades and I'd be like, good, I'm a good girl, I'm a good
23:19
person, I perform well and therefore we're good.
23:23
It doesn't matter if I enjoy this or not.
23:26
It doesn't matter if it is such a struggle for me to get through
23:30
reading a book or writing an essay, as long as I'm getting
23:34
good grades, I'm getting, you know, complimented on that.
23:36
Cool. And then again, when you get
23:38
into work, into, you know, the workplace, into your career.
23:43
For me, it was like, I remember a stark moment when I went from
23:47
university into the workplace and all of a sudden I was like,
23:49
wait a second, I'm not getting graded anymore.
23:53
How do I know if I'm doing good? But basically if I am good as a
23:58
person, because that was so connected and I remember feeling
24:02
very lost at sea. And then I sort of started to
24:04
figure out, OK, this is how my, you know, boss reacts If I'm
24:08
doing good. And this is and then eventually
24:10
when I started my own business, well, if I'm getting clients and
24:13
then I'm increasing how much they pay me, then I am a good
24:16
person. I am worthy.
24:18
I am, you know, allowed to be here kind of thing.
24:21
And I didn't really stop, like you said, at any point to think,
24:27
yeah, but do I want to feel like this in order to feel like a
24:33
good person? Like, is this a life that I
24:35
want? And I was just building,
24:37
building, building this version of success that was not mine.
24:40
It was one that I had picked up along the way through protective
24:43
mechanisms of wanting to be loved, of wanting to be
24:46
accepted, of wanting to be liked.
24:48
And I, from a young age, figured out how to do that.
24:50
And so I just kept doing it and it wasn't until that moment of
24:54
stillness, whatever that looked like for whoever, where you get
24:59
enough space to be like, actually, I can even ask myself
25:03
this question because before that I didn't even realize I
25:05
could ask myself the question, What do I really want?
25:09
And then you're like, Oh, that is a question.
25:12
And at the start I didn't know the answer at all.
25:15
And then you know it, it's, it's a constant discovery of that
25:17
answer. But the fact that you all of a
25:19
sudden realize like, Oh, I've been living in this kind of box
25:24
of understanding and there's a whole world outside the box and
25:28
all of a sudden that opens up and you're like, oh, I don't
25:31
have to do things this way. Interesting.
25:34
And it really does break my heart that like, you know, when
25:39
you were saying that you were losing your hair and that the
25:41
idea was immediately to go to, well, is it the hot tools I'm
25:44
using? Is it the shampoo I'm using?
25:46
Is it we don't even have that base level of understanding that
25:54
it could be our body fighting back?
25:55
Like similar to you, my mom had had COVID and she had started
26:00
losing a lot of hair after COVID.
26:01
And there were some sort of, you know, rumblings online that that
26:05
could be a side effect of COVID. And I was like, well, maybe I
26:08
had COVID and didn't know it. And then I that was why I was
26:11
losing my hair. Like all the signs were there
26:14
right in front of my face, but it was I wasn't asking the right
26:17
questions. And I think that that has so
26:20
much to do with the fact that we are in such a masculine
26:24
dominated, structured society and we wouldn't even question
26:31
that doing, producing and going, going, going non-stop hustling.
26:34
That's a badge of honor. Why?
26:36
Why would you say actually I don't know if I want to hustle,
26:40
especially as a business owner like.
26:43
And as a woman and as to think to think about, Oh, I I don't
26:46
know if I want to push and I think I might just want to like
26:49
relax would be met with. What do you mean?
26:54
Right, Like so many women have thought for us to be able to
26:56
have XYZ and it like there's just so many layers to it.
27:00
And as I was listening to you, the instant thing I thought for
27:02
me that I think made me think, OK, is it the hot tools?
27:06
Is it whatever if I had to acknowledge that it was me,
27:11
that's fucking terrifying to think like, OK, the reason that
27:14
I feel the way that I feel is something entirely within my
27:17
control. If I can say, oh, it's gluten,
27:19
I'm like, screw the bread. You know what I mean?
27:20
Like it's a different type of of responsibility if you're in a
27:25
place where you don't feel regulated and you feel like your
27:28
nervous system is surviving and then someone brings to the
27:31
forefront, hey, you could actually control that within
27:33
your body if you chose to do so in the next three months, as you
27:37
said, 3-4 months to start to unravel that.
27:41
But it's going to take a choice on your behalf.
27:43
I think we're also in such a society where we're looking for,
27:46
and I know we're going to be diving into that today, like the
27:48
quick fixes, right? Like we're in this place where
27:50
we're like, I just don't want to feel this way.
27:52
Take the supplement to offset the bloating, take the hair tool
27:55
out to fix the hair or change the shampoo.
27:57
Boom, done. Because really it's there's a
28:00
aspect of responsibility and an aspect of ownership that is
28:04
required to say, hey, I'm going to go to the root and I'm
28:07
actually going to figure out what's going on for me.
28:09
And when you find out that root is entirely in your control,
28:12
there's two ways to look at that.
28:14
Some way people look at that depending on your mindset.
28:16
And you're like, this is amazing.
28:17
It means that I can take back the reins of my life.
28:20
But when you're in a tricky headspace and I don't know if
28:22
you resonate with this, but for me, I wasn't like when someone
28:25
said like, you can do it differently.
28:27
I wasn't excited by that statement.
28:29
Like I was kind of almost frankly, I was pissed and I was
28:32
sad because I thought this means that I have already felt like
28:36
go, go, go, work, work, work. And now you're telling me that I
28:40
need to do more work in order to be able to undo all the damage
28:45
the work did. Like that sounds like a really
28:47
crappy deal, right? Like it just doesn't, it didn't
28:50
feel. And when we talk about doing the
28:53
work, it's not fun. And I think that that's, you
28:58
know, there's a lot of marketing as I'm sure you see, which is,
29:01
you know, always about like you got to do the inner work and do
29:03
the inner work. But truthfully, like the inner
29:06
work is really, it's really fucking messy.
29:08
You're not excited to go regulate your nervous system.
29:12
You're not excited to dive into your trauma that's stored in
29:15
your body. Like it's not something that I
29:18
think an average person when you're in that state is excited
29:22
to do. And yet, as we were talking
29:24
about, it's really the necessary work to be like, this is the
29:28
required path. Like you can't go around it.
29:30
You have to go through it to get to that other side of kind of,
29:33
you know, for what we're saying, where we're at now.
29:36
Yeah. And, and that is exactly it.
29:38
There is no shortcut. There is no quick fix.
29:42
You have to go straight through it, which is the scariest when
29:46
you're on the other side of it. That is the scariest, most
29:50
uncomfortable thing. And I think it's that's for so
29:54
many reasons. The first being that in order to
29:57
go through it, you have to start building a relationship with
30:00
your body that you've been ignoring for at least a decade,
30:04
if not more, depending on what your story is and where you're
30:07
at. And so like you said, it's easy
30:10
to say, well, you know what, I could just take the supplement
30:12
because I can go online, buy that supplement, pop it in the
30:14
morning. It doesn't interrupt my day.
30:16
It doesn't take away from my To Do List.
30:18
It doesn't force me to come face to face with the fact that I
30:22
have lived for 33 years ignoring myself.
30:27
That's a painful thing to realize.
30:30
It is, there is grief, there's deep grief associated with
30:34
realizing that you put yourself in this position.
30:39
And I don't mean that from a conscious point of view.
30:44
It is subconscious and in some cases completely unconscious,
30:47
but you have put yourself in this position and it is easier
30:52
to blame everything out here than to take radical
30:55
responsibility in here and say I'm unhappy not because of my
31:00
job or my partner or my family, whatever it is, Those are
31:05
definitely factors. They definitely influence your
31:09
experience, but at the end of the day, the only person that
31:12
you can fully influence and change is yourself.
31:16
And what's beautiful about that is when you do, it ripples out
31:19
and has impacts on those around you, huge impacts.
31:23
I've seen that first hand. But there is a resistance to
31:28
take that radical responsibility to say, oh, I've put myself here
31:33
again, not intentionally, but because of my deep need, because
31:40
I think this is what it goes back to.
31:42
You can trace almost every issue, problem, challenge back
31:45
to our want to be loved and connected.
31:48
We as human beings, as a human species, do not survive in
31:51
isolation. We have to be in community, in
31:54
connection with others in order to survive, which is the number
31:57
one thing our body wants to do all the time is help us survive.
32:02
And so our want and need to be accepted, loved, seen as worthy,
32:08
whatever it is, is it the root of everything we do?
32:11
And so we start building up these behaviors, thoughts,
32:14
patterns that put us in situations where we're
32:18
constantly feeling accepted. When our boss says, can you do
32:21
this? And your body screaming?
32:22
Absolutely not. You were so overworked, like you
32:26
were going to break and you say yes.
32:28
And, and, and that's the thing, like one of the biggest things
32:32
that came as I started building a relationship with my body,
32:36
which like started out as the babiest baby steps, which I'll
32:40
talk about. But like, it was all of a sudden
32:42
realizing like, oh, that knowing that's been there, that I
32:47
thought was like a silly voice that wasn't smart enough.
32:51
And I kept going to everyone else outside of me because I was
32:54
like, they know better, like they're smarter.
32:56
So they, what the, even though my gut is saying, no, this
33:00
doesn't make any sense. I'm just a silly little girl.
33:03
Like, I don't know, like I so I'm just going to take their
33:07
word for it. And so I turned the volume down
33:11
consistently on that voice. And as I started coming back
33:13
into relationship, my body, that voice started getting louder.
33:16
That that feeling, that knowing whatever you want to call it.
33:20
And then the power came with that where I was like, Oh my
33:25
gosh, like, I know. And that's things as I started
33:29
saying things are doing things that were in, you know,
33:33
alignment with that voice and things started really working
33:35
out when people started being like, Oh my gosh, you're totally
33:38
right. Or I was like, Oh my, what?
33:41
And so it is really hard at the beginning.
33:45
And the resistance is so fucking normal.
33:49
Like it's so normal. And I think the reason why a lot
33:54
of us who get to a very severe breaking point, like you've
33:57
mentioned, like I've mentioned, push through that resistance is
34:01
because we have no other choice. Because we've seen the very dark
34:04
side and we realize like that's not a way that we can possibly
34:09
continue living. And therefore the resistance
34:11
becomes surmountable where it felt insurmountable before.
34:16
And like, that's why I think these conversations are so
34:18
important because what I would love is for, you know, people,
34:22
but women especially, to not get to the breaking point where they
34:25
have to, but to feel empowered enough to push through the
34:30
resistance before they get to that point.
34:32
And for me, it was so small. Like at the beginning, it was
34:35
literally when I had to pee, listening to the fact that I had
34:38
to pee and going to the bathroom because that was a signal that I
34:42
had ignored, which seems wild when you think about.
34:45
It, it's honestly, The thing is, even as you said earlier, it's,
34:47
it's conditioned to be normal because there's so many times
34:51
that we make jokes about like, oh, you're running to the
34:53
washroom in between Zoom meetings, right?
34:55
Like it becomes a culture that we normalize.
34:59
And I think the thing that you mentioned about not wanting to
35:03
do the work or like being maybe hesitant or resistant to doing
35:06
the work, I think for me, truthfully, when I was in my
35:09
super masculine, I would hear people have these conversations
35:11
on a podcast And I thought in my gut and in my heart, I was like,
35:17
I would love to feel like they feel like when I listen to them,
35:21
whoever they were on the podcast, they felt so free.
35:23
They felt so aligned. They felt so centered.
35:26
And I was like, oh, I'd love to do that.
35:28
But like I worried deeply. And I think it's part of what
35:32
push it away. Push it away like breath work,
35:34
meditation, all of it. Anything that would cause me to
35:36
go inward. I was like, it's not for me.
35:39
That was really deeply rooted from a place that I was so
35:42
scared that if I changed and actually tuned in, and if I did
35:47
start to put these practices into place and if I did start to
35:49
actually get a line, it might remove the thing that made me
35:54
successful. So like if I have been operating
35:57
in go go, Go and I've been operating in a overrun nervous
36:00
system and if I slow down, I knew slowing down to be a
36:04
breakdown at Christmas. So because of that, I'm like,
36:07
well, I don't want to do that because I'm not going to get any
36:09
work done. Like you said, I was struggling
36:10
to open the laptop. I was kind of feeling like I
36:12
didn't want to get out of bed. So you think about, you know,
36:14
when I did TuneIn, I had all these really intense feelings.
36:19
I don't want to do that because that's not what's going to help
36:21
me to continue to grow and to continue to expand.
36:24
And I think exactly as you said, what I didn't recognize was that
36:27
was an extreme experience. So, and you know, another
36:30
instance that came up for me, I went to a conference and I'd
36:33
never done fast-paced breath work and I'd only done very slow
36:37
breath work for like calming for like anxiety and like box
36:40
breathing and that sort of thing.
36:41
So when I did the rapid breath work, I instantly, of course, as
36:45
an intended, you know, I tuned into my body and I just
36:49
immediately the tears came and I was shaking and I was anxious.
36:52
And I remember getting up and leaving the room and being like,
36:54
no, whatever the heck that was, I don't want any of that.
36:56
And what it, it scared me. And I remember someone saying,
37:01
you know, it's, it's sitting there like all of what you are
37:04
not processing, what you're not acknowledging, what you're not
37:07
giving time and space to is literally sitting underneath the
37:09
surface. And I think what that experience
37:13
showed me was that I was trying to go, go, go, go, go in my
37:15
business and couldn't figure out why I couldn't get that next
37:18
level of expansion, that next level of growth, identity,
37:21
whatever it might be. I realized that it meant exactly
37:25
as you said earlier, you have to go through it.
37:26
I was going to have to deal with this energy that was sitting in
37:30
my body. But because I lived in my head,
37:34
I didn't have to tune in. And you know, you mentioned
37:37
small approaches. And I think that that is, is so
37:41
important because again, when anyone listens to this, they
37:43
think about, Oh my gosh, this seems like I'm going to be
37:44
exhausted trying to get back to baseline.
37:47
But even when you mentioned and it instantly popped up when you
37:50
said it, you know, just realizing the fact like if I
37:52
have to pee, I should go to the washroom instead of trying to
37:55
hold it for like 3 hours after that.
37:57
I also think an invitation even for the person listening is to
38:00
say like when you go to pee, do you bring your phone?
38:03
Like when you're sitting in a doctor's office and you're
38:06
waiting to go into your appointment, are you looking at
38:08
your phone when you are in the car and you're not listening to
38:12
the radio, do you turn on the radio or do you call a friend
38:14
immediately? Like all of these, these moments
38:18
where natural little spaces provided in the day.
38:22
Do you feel it? And I think that for me, that
38:25
was the indicator that sleeping with ATV on meant I didn't have
38:29
to sleep and actually tune into my brain before going to bed.
38:31
It meant I had to be like, OK, great distraction in the car,
38:34
call somebody constantly be on FaceTime with someone,
38:36
distraction. If I go for a walk, I'm
38:38
listening to a podcast, distraction.
38:40
If I, you know, have to do a quick ride to the grocery store
38:42
podcast on the car because distraction, it was this
38:45
constant stimuli that basically, as I see it, my interpretation
38:50
of the nervous system is like exactly as you said, it gets
38:53
louder if you allow it. And I don't think it's a matter
38:56
of that. We have to tune that up as much
38:58
as it's like we got to remove the noise.
39:00
Like there is just so much noise of society and culture and our
39:04
brains and the way that we've operated, maybe even our family
39:07
upbringing and what we've been taught, it's creating so much
39:10
static that you can't hear the message.
39:13
And so I think the exciting part, it is for any entrepreneur
39:17
or for any woman, the sound is there, the message is there.
39:20
Like I think I had messages about the fact that my career
39:24
needed to change in the sense of I need to change the way I was
39:26
operating. You mentioned relationships.
39:28
I think many of us have a voice of what we kind of know in a
39:32
relationship, but there's a lot of static, and I think the
39:35
nervous system work is the difference of whether we can
39:38
truly listen and be like, wait a second.
39:41
It was there the entire time. Removing the static allowed it
39:44
to crank to volume 10 and now I can hear it clearly for the
39:48
first time. So agreed, like the wisdom that
39:52
I have found in stillness and completely removing external
39:56
noise has been pure magic from my perspective.
40:00
And I will say slowing down to be still to be present.
40:05
Was one of the scariest things for me, not just from a Oh well,
40:09
I'll no longer be seen as worthy because I'm not being productive
40:13
or I'll fall behind my peers or a business owner can't work less
40:17
than 80 hours a week. Like that in my head was just
40:20
like a wild concept, but also because I had like you've
40:24
mentioned a few times here, I had to sit with myself when I
40:26
went in stillness. I wasn't able to distract the
40:29
anxiety and depression, all the signals that my body had been
40:32
sending me that was asking me to slow down.
40:36
I was afraid of those. I was terrified, like I thought
40:39
that my mind was broken and that like I would one day like be
40:44
committed because I would lose the plot.
40:46
I'd go crazy and that was just like where I was going to go.
40:50
I have since learned from deeply tuning into my body and and
40:54
doing the work on my nervous system to build up the capacity
40:57
and flexibility that anxiety and depression were actually just
41:00
signals that I was out of alignment.
41:02
And once I started realizing that the moment that they came
41:05
up, I could go, OK, it's time to take stock of what's going on in
41:08
my life. You're going down a path like
41:09
it's actually amazing. It's an insanely useful tool
41:14
once you view it that way that I was like, oh, I'm feeling
41:17
anxious today, but I don't have like a reason.
41:19
It's not like I didn't sleep well.
41:21
It's not like I drank. OK, so then that must mean that
41:25
I am doing something here either committing to something,
41:28
overworking, need a break, whatever it is consuming too
41:32
much social media. I need to take stock and be like
41:36
OK, that needs to go. Need to rearrange here, need to
41:39
take Friday off and maybe go do a Sonic hole punch, whatever it
41:42
is. Like it was just this like
41:44
beautiful signal that my body was helping me with.
41:47
But before I understood that I was terrified of slowing down
41:51
and sitting with my own thoughts.
41:52
But that is the only way through to turn down that external
41:58
noise, like you said, and start getting the clarity that comes
42:02
with being in stillness. And like I always say this, that
42:06
like rest, what we know, this rest does not need to be earned,
42:10
But that is the life that we live in.
42:12
Like you said, you were taking, you know, a few weeks off of
42:16
Christmas. But it seems like that was like,
42:18
well, I've worked really hard all year, so I can take this
42:21
time off. I've earned it.
42:22
I deserve it, you know, and then I'll get back in a few weeks.
42:26
For me, the biggest thing was just coming out of my nervous
42:29
system collapse, my breakdown in 2021.
42:32
I learned my human design, which I'm a projector.
42:36
And for those of you who don't know, I don't want to go too
42:39
much into detail, but there are basically five types.
42:41
We've got projectors, generators, manifesters,
42:44
manifesting generators and reflectors.
42:46
And it basically gives you a little bit of like a blueprint
42:49
of how you were designed as a human based on like when and
42:52
where you were born. It's sort of collaboration of
42:55
four different sciences, including astrology.
42:57
And it does sound woo, but I promise you that.
43:00
Like, there is so much goodness in there from a kind of
43:04
practical standpoint, let's call it, for anyone who's feeling a
43:07
little a bit like, oh, that sounds a little bit too
43:09
spiritual. I will say I was also in the
43:12
bucket originally of like I don't need my and I had a mentor
43:15
who said if you're going to work with me, I require you to do
43:18
this. And it was interesting.
43:19
They were very in their masculine and I was like, this
43:21
is odd because I was like, this is part of the onboarding.
43:23
So I was like, I guess sure. And it was interesting.
43:25
When I got the report back, I was like, I've never felt so
43:28
seen in my entire life. Like the way we operate, our
43:31
limitations, our strengths, like all of it became, yeah, it's a
43:35
very impactful awareness for someone to have going into their
43:39
business. Absolutely.
43:41
And I think it should be required for any business over
43:43
especially coaches, like people providing that kind of like
43:46
leadership and guidance to understand their human design,
43:50
but then more important, the human design of the people that
43:52
they're working with. But essentially I learned I was
43:55
a projector. I started reading my blueprint
43:57
that I got initially, and I had to stop.
44:00
My nervous system felt so unsafe with the concept of rest because
44:05
projectors are not meant to do, do, do.
44:07
They're here to guide and teach and lead and they are meant to
44:11
incorporate a lot of rest into their daily lives, which is not
44:16
what I had been doing by any stretch of the imagination to
44:19
the point where my nervous system, my body rejected this.
44:23
I had to put it down. I couldn't read it.
44:25
I was, there was like a visceral anger within me that was
44:28
bubbling up, which I didn't again understand at the time.
44:32
Picked it back up about 6 months later, started to understand and
44:35
then I started intentionally incorporating rest into my life.
44:38
Not earned rest, but like so my body's signaling that it like
44:43
does not want to get up and go to my computer right now.
44:45
I'm going to listen to that even though logically that makes no
44:48
sense to me at all. Like I need to get these things
44:52
done. But instead I would sit on the
44:53
couch, I would maybe read a book, whatever it was and the
44:57
shift that happened from there I was more productive.
45:01
What would have taken me probably 8 hours to struggle
45:05
through if I had ignored that signal for rest, then became
45:10
done in two hours and I felt awesome and excited about it
45:13
rather than dejected and like I can't get anything done.
45:16
And so while it is very hard and often uncomfortable to come to
45:22
rest when you are in a state of activation, fight flight,
45:26
constant chasing, producing chaos, and like you said,
45:30
consuming external noise all of the time for I would say every
45:38
human being. The magic, the answers that you
45:41
are looking for are found in the pause, the thing that you've
45:45
maybe been grappling for the past couple of years.
45:47
Like you said, maybe being in a relationship that you have that
45:50
kind of gut, knowing that it's not maybe the right thing for
45:53
you, but you've distracted yourself out of listening to
45:56
that. You will probably get a very
45:58
clear answer as you start to pause and sit with yourself more
46:02
often. Well, I think that the, the rest
46:05
part to me used to feel I, I was definitely in the mindset of
46:09
like I had to earn it. So like I, you know, would think
46:12
if I wanted to sleep in one day, I'm ACEO and I have a 7:00 AM
46:15
morning routine and I keep the commitments I set to myself,
46:18
right. And so like it became as the
46:19
inner dialogue was just my brain had this and I, I would kind of,
46:24
I guess prepare anyone, if you're in this, as you noted,
46:27
this, this aspect of like, I had to earn rest and I'm going to
46:30
rest because I'm tuning into my body.
46:32
You're going to have this inner dialogue debate in your head on
46:36
and on and on and on. So like I would go to wake up in
46:37
the morning and I'd have the one side, which is the mask and
46:40
being like, no, this is about structure.
46:42
It's about commitments, it's about keeping them.
46:44
And there was that and then the other side was like, but my body
46:46
feels like I need to sleep for two more hours.
46:48
I really think I need more sleep.
46:50
And before I would just push through.
46:51
It was 321, go get up. Doesn't matter how you feel, you
46:54
move on with your day. And I think, you know, it's an
46:58
invitation for reflection because I think many of us know,
47:00
like, like you said with the relationship, I think we know,
47:03
but we don't feel quite at a place where we can quite admit
47:06
it. I think we know we're in our
47:08
business. We maybe are not operating the
47:10
right way, but again, we're not quite at a place that we're
47:12
ready to acknowledge it. And I even see some social
47:15
situations like one of the easiest ones that comes up for
47:17
me now, which I am very different now than I used to be.
47:21
Someone asked me to like go out or they'll say like, hey, like
47:24
we're going to book this on a Friday and this on a Saturday
47:26
and this on a Sunday. And in my mind, I'm like 3
47:29
commitments in 72 hours. No, ma'am.
47:31
So like for me, I'm like, I know in advance now my nervous system
47:36
is not, I used to think like book, book, book constantly be
47:40
scheduled, but it I know now by tuning in that it's just it
47:44
doesn't work for me. Or if someone even says like,
47:46
Hey, we should go to XYZ. Your body, depending on how
47:49
you're feeling that day, may say, like, this is not what I
47:51
need today. I need a day where I just rot on
47:53
the couch or in bed, watch some Netflix with some snacks, like
47:56
that's what I need. But they're asking me to go do
47:57
ABC. And I think so many of us, we
48:00
kind of bully ourselves into doing certain things because we
48:04
believe it's quote UN quote. Right or.
48:05
Better instead of listening. And one of the things that you
48:10
mentioned was like, again, the the practices of rest.
48:13
So if someone is feeling like they're constantly go, go, go
48:16
asking, do you rest when it's planned or do you rest when you
48:19
tune in that you need rest. I think that's an important
48:22
reflection. The other thing which the body
48:25
work because I know someone listens to be like, well, I feel
48:27
like I don't know what whether to trust my body or not,
48:30
meaning, you know, am I tired? Am I just feeling lazy and I
48:33
don't really want to work today. How do I know to make sure I'm
48:36
reading the right signal? And I used to do in one of my
48:39
past coaching experiences, I did R.E.M. sessions which were
48:42
basically regenerating images and memory.
48:45
So what they basically do is you have a facilitator that you work
48:48
with one-on-one and they, they bring you through.
48:50
First thing they do is tune you into your body.
48:52
And the practice in short, is really that you start and you
48:56
take a couple long deep breaths and your eyes are closed the
48:59
entire time. And the first question they ask
49:02
is, OK, well, I want you to tune into your body.
49:05
Where are you feeling tense? And I'd be like, I don't know,
49:08
like I was like my wrist. I'm 30.
49:10
I don't know. So like, you know, I would start
49:12
to think about it very logically and I got to say, OK, well,
49:14
where I want you to tune in, like, OK, great.
49:17
I don't know, I guess. And you just are supposed to
49:19
take whatever the first answer is and just answer it.
49:21
So I said, I guess, OK, well, my stomach.
49:23
OK, great. Your stomach.
49:25
So tune into your stomach, take a couple of breaths and like
49:28
just TuneIn to how you feel in your stomach.
49:29
I'm like, OK, And they're like, if you were to give it a color,
49:32
what would the color be? And I'm like, OK, great, it's
49:34
Gray. It's OK, great.
49:36
So now we have a Gray tightness in the stomach.
49:38
Great. So if you had to give it a
49:40
shape, what does it look like? Is it hard?
49:42
Is it soft? Is it like a cloud?
49:44
Is it like a brick? What what do you see?
49:46
We start to pull this thread. And so while the person you
49:49
might be listening to this and be like, what the where the heck
49:51
is this going? At the end of the day?
49:53
It was an opportunity for me to tune into my body.
49:57
And I realized that in the day-to-day, as we're saying,
50:02
when we're constantly on our phones, we have people calling
50:05
us, texting us, you know, D Ming us emailing us.
50:07
We've got, you know, even just external noise, meaning you go
50:11
for a walk and you hear an ambulance and you've got a dog
50:13
barking and you've got a car that's coming down the street.
50:15
You have so much that is bombarding your nervous system
50:18
on a daily basis. And I realize that if I don't
50:21
put these practices into my every single day, if I don't
50:24
create the opportunity to tune into my body, it's not gonna
50:27
happen because it means that I'm being bombarded.
50:29
So for me, and I would love to hear for you, what you recommend
50:33
to clients when it comes to starting to integrate practices.
50:36
Maybe as a baby step one of the first things that I did in my
50:39
journey was actually creating space, meaning acknowledging the
50:44
places where I wanted to be distracted and then taking it
50:46
piece by piece to try to not introduce that.
50:48
I used to bring my phone. I was the 1st to go pee and I
50:51
would bring my phone with me. I'd be scrolling Instagram.
50:53
My phone doesn't come with me to have a bath anymore.
50:56
I'm just have a bath and look at the ceiling if you need to, but
50:59
you're not distracted, you're not bringing a movie, You're not
51:01
like you're just sitting with yourself.
51:03
I find that helped a lot. I think, again, removing
51:05
distraction. So when I went for a walk, I
51:07
used to always be listening to a podcast, which nine times out of
51:10
10 was a business podcast. So I was really, again, in the
51:12
thinking, thinking, thinking. Yeah.
51:14
And I realized that it was taking my noise cancelling
51:18
headphones and not listening to anything, but just using them as
51:21
a way to tune out the world and just walk.
51:24
And that silent walk helped so much because so much is trying
51:28
to come through as you said, but you just can't hear it.
51:31
And the other piece for the body element was trying to find, as
51:35
you mentioned, for whatever feels right for you, something
51:38
that allows you to tune into your body.
51:39
So if it is dance, great. For me, I find ice baths are
51:43
like an instant tune into my body, which is why that and hot
51:46
baths are like kind of my 2 ongoing things that I use.
51:50
But a great coach once said it's not really an effective practice
51:54
unless you can do it on an airplane.
51:55
And that's like, because you need to be able to tune into
51:58
yourself at any given moment. And like obviously ice baths are
52:01
not exactly easily accessible. So even breath work I found to
52:05
be really helpful because it allowed me, you know, even when
52:09
you're in a moment in between calls, sometimes I'll just pause
52:11
and take like 3 deep belly breaths and you instantly feel
52:14
your, your state shift and you realize how you actually feel in
52:18
that given moment and what you need.
52:20
And so I'm curious for you, what do you recommend or someone's
52:24
kind of like, I really would love to tune more into my body,
52:26
but I don't even know where I would start with that or what
52:29
that would look like. How does someone start to kind
52:31
of integrate that practice? Yeah.
52:33
It's like such a good question. And a lot of what you just said
52:36
there is, is very similar to sort of the journey I went on as
52:39
well. Number one thing I always say is
52:42
like it's unique to the individual.
52:44
Yes, as humans that we are more similar in our sort of make up
52:48
in our biology than, you know, society would lead us to believe
52:51
right now. And so there are going to be a
52:53
lot of like overlaps of what works for people and what people
52:56
like and what people are drawn to.
52:58
But just because breath work, you know, your friend said that
53:01
it changed their life, does not mean that it's going to work for
53:04
you. So there's a lot of
53:05
experimentation at the beginning.
53:07
And that's kind of the fun part if you approach it that way,
53:11
that you get to experiment and figure out what your body really
53:15
likes and responds to. So trying out different movement
53:18
classes. Some people love yoga, some
53:21
people can't stand it. Some people need something more
53:25
fast-paced, more up regulating. Some people need things more
53:28
down regulating and also the same person needs different
53:31
things at different times. I do think that breath work, you
53:34
know, not necessarily the extensive kind of like, like you
53:38
said, going on like a rapid breath work journey and really
53:40
diving deep. Not everyone loves that, but
53:42
breath at its core is a really important thing to engage with
53:46
because it has the ability to both up regulate you and down
53:50
regulate you. And for those who are not as
53:52
familiar with the nervous system, we have multiple States
53:55
and some blended states if you're on the polyvagal theory
53:59
side of things. But at its simplest form, you've
54:02
got your sympathetic fight flight state and then your
54:05
parasympathetic rest and digest state.
54:08
And we are meant to move between the two states.
54:12
Our fight flight state is our sort of known as our survival
54:15
state and it helps us survive in dangerous situations, but it
54:20
also helps us bring energy and motivation and excitement to
54:24
things. And so if you are maybe about to
54:26
jump on a call and you're like, I am feeling so tired, so
54:30
lethargic, maybe even a little numb, you're like, I don't know
54:33
how I'm going to bring myself to this.
54:35
You can engage in a certain breath style that will bring you
54:38
up out of that sort of lower rest and digest state into a
54:42
more playful blend of your parasympathetic and your
54:45
sympathetic state. So breath is insanely powerful
54:48
and as you mentioned, extremely accessible.
54:52
You can do it anywhere, anytime. And more importantly, especially
54:56
as you're starting to embark and engage on these things because
54:59
this is where I was at, I was very hyper conscious of doing
55:03
anything in public that like looked like I was meditating or
55:07
closing my eyes or like, you know, now I do a energy work
55:11
modality called somatic channeling and I'll do it like
55:14
kind of anywhere it happens. But it took me a long time to
55:17
get to that point. So the idea of being able to use
55:21
your breath, you can use it on a call and people might not even
55:25
notice. And that was one of the first
55:27
things I did was start to engage with my breath.
55:30
Take 3 deep belly breaths in through the nose and slow long
55:34
exhales out the mouth. Your exhale being longer than
55:37
your inhale signals to the nervous system that you are safe
55:40
and it can downshift into rest and digest.
55:44
And I started building a habit out of that.
55:47
So when I started feeling that physical sensation of anxiety in
55:50
my chest, that tightness, I would engage in 3D breaths.
55:54
That was sort of my signal. It was like when I start to feel
55:57
anxious, I do 3D breaths. I didn't say to myself when I
56:00
start to feel anxious, I lay down on the couch and do a 15
56:03
minute breath work because that would not have worked for me at
56:06
all. I would have resisted it.
56:08
I would have ignored it. I would not have created space
56:10
for that. Especially as someone who is
56:12
neurodivergent, you know, ADHD, that kind of stuff overwhelms
56:16
me. I want the perfect routine, but
56:18
then I never commit to it. So incorporating it into your
56:22
every everyday life, you know, do you have space in your
56:26
mornings? No.
56:27
OK, well then don't try to commit to doing a breath work or
56:30
a meditation every morning. But do you find that at your end
56:34
of your day, you really like the idea of winding down for 15
56:37
minutes, then place it there. Like it's really like I said
56:41
about experimenting Where works for you and that is essentially
56:46
what I did for the best part of two years and honestly I'm still
56:49
doing it. I started experimenting with
56:51
breath work. What did I like, what did I not?
56:53
I started experimenting with sauna cold plunge.
56:56
What did I like, what did I not? I worked at other ship for many
57:00
years, which is a sauna cold plunge facility here in Toronto.
57:04
And I, you know, there was sort of the recommended time to do a
57:09
cold plunge form what the science shows and so on and so
57:11
forth. But I really listen to my body.
57:14
Sometimes I want to do that 2 minutes, sometimes I want to do
57:17
30 seconds. And it was sort of untangling
57:20
from that perfectionism of it has to look a certain way or it
57:23
has to meet a certain data point to be right and useful.
57:27
That is, is not true. I mean, they're obviously
57:30
science is important and there are elements of it that make a
57:35
lot of sense. But it was definitely starting
57:38
with the breath and the another exercise I really like doing was
57:42
there's 21 called orienting, which again is when you're
57:46
feeling activated, you're simply just stopping and looking around
57:50
at your environment. You name three things you can
57:53
see, three things you can hear. When we intentionally engage
57:57
with our senses, we are basically again signaling to the
58:01
nervous system that we are safe. Because if you are not safe,
58:04
like for example, you're being chased by a lion, you don't have
58:07
time to take in information about your environment.
58:10
You are very hyper focused on what you need to do to survive.
58:14
So you're not able to stop and notice, oh, there's a bird
58:16
chirping or look at that beautiful tree.
58:18
So when we do do that, our nervous systems like, oh, you
58:21
must be safe because you have the ability to do that.
58:23
Again, it's something that you can do sitting on the subway.
58:26
It's something you can do while you're watching your kids soccer
58:29
game or even while you're in a meeting without it being too
58:33
intrusive. And then another thing that I
58:36
started doing that I really liked was just tuning in with my
58:38
body and simply like, I like to place, you know, a hand on my
58:41
chest, a hand on my belly. Make contact with my body, if
58:45
that's even just like clasping your hands together, beautiful.
58:48
But make contact with my body and ask my body, what do you
58:52
need? And what I think is so important
58:55
about this activity, which we've touched on a little bit, is the
58:58
idea that you might not get an answer right away.
59:01
And that is totally fine. It can feel scary that you say,
59:04
what do you need? And you're like, I don't know.
59:06
I don't know what I need. And then you start getting in
59:08
your head. If you have no answer, don't
59:11
worry. Even just doing that to me is
59:13
signaling to the body that you want to hear what it has to tell
59:17
you. And it's like when you think
59:19
about building a relationship with your body, it's like
59:21
building a relationship with another human being.
59:24
When you first meet someone, you don't know their likes,
59:28
dislikes, you don't know there's certain facial expressions that
59:31
mean one thing or another, or whether they're sad or happy or
59:36
anything like that. You're getting to know them.
59:38
You're building out a relationship, you're asking
59:40
questions and you're spending time with them, intentional time
59:45
present with that other person to really get to know what makes
59:49
them tick. And as you do that more and more
59:52
and more and engage with them with curiosity, you start to
59:57
learn the little signals that come up.
59:59
You know, my partner, I can see now in a facial expression of
1:00:02
his if he's not feeling so good. And especially as a man doesn't
1:00:06
like to share his feelings so much.
1:00:08
So being able to read those things is like, oh.
1:00:11
OK, great. I have some information now.
1:00:13
And now I can say, hey, are you feeling OK today?
1:00:16
You know, instead of like at the beginning, wouldn't have known
1:00:19
that. But as I pay more attention and
1:00:21
it's the same thing with the body, you're not going to have
1:00:24
the answers right away. And as we talked about early on
1:00:27
in this episode, it is not a quick fix.
1:00:30
This is like a deep excavation with the goal that like however
1:00:37
long it takes out the other side, you are going to have such
1:00:41
an incredible deep attuned relationship with your body that
1:00:46
it is going to bring so much magic and ease into your life
1:00:52
because you were able to constantly be responding to your
1:00:56
signals, adjusting, readjusting, rebalancing depending on the
1:01:00
season or whatever challenges in front of you.
1:01:03
So it's like absolute baby steps.
1:01:05
And as someone who was a very all or nothing human being, I
1:01:09
understand, I deeply understand the want to be like, OK, I'm
1:01:14
going to get hit to three Sonic cold plunges a week.
1:01:17
I'm going to do 30 minutes of breath work every morning.
1:01:20
I am going to move my body. I'm going to do 10,000 like stop
1:01:24
please if that is what is happening, if you are like
1:01:28
stacking your calendar with new mindfulness and you know somatic
1:01:34
activities, I'm. Going to schedule my healing.
1:01:36
Yeah, exactly. That's an immediate red flag to
1:01:39
me. Same thing if you're like, I
1:01:41
find when I get caught up in learning mode, like I'm like,
1:01:44
well, I'll just do another course or I'll just listen to
1:01:46
another podcast or I'll just, that's me stalling and ignoring
1:01:51
that I already have enough information to just dive in.
1:01:54
And so as those little things come up, it's just about taking
1:01:57
a step back, readjusting. Like healing is not meant to be
1:01:59
a full time job, it is meant to be a part of living your life.
1:02:05
And once we start making a full time job, it it.
1:02:07
Well, it kind of defeats the purpose of the idea of the
1:02:10
healing. Right, you're.
1:02:11
Making you're making your healing routine another job.
1:02:14
That is the reason that you're stressed.
1:02:15
So then you're creating another stressor you need to heal from.
1:02:19
Exactly. You mentioned something earlier
1:02:21
that I, I also think is really important and it landed deeply
1:02:25
for me because it's actually something that I'm still even
1:02:27
myself actively working on is not analyzing how I feel, but
1:02:31
actually just feeling it. And you mentioned it earlier
1:02:33
with talk therapy. And I think that, you know, so
1:02:36
many of us are like, I have a mindset coach or I have AI have
1:02:40
a therapist. I am constantly talking about
1:02:43
how I feel. And I remember because I don't,
1:02:46
I'm not formally diagnosed with ADHD, but there's definitely
1:02:48
something happening there because I remember talking to
1:02:51
she's like, I talked to my therapist.
1:02:53
I was like, do you think? And she's like, that's another
1:02:54
session, but she said, how are you feeling?
1:02:58
And I'm like, well, and I started to go in this tangent
1:03:01
for like 5 minutes of like, well, this is this, you know,
1:03:03
this is happening. So that actually makes sense.
1:03:04
I'd be stressed and really analyzing and almost like
1:03:08
thinking about there's, there's Kate on the ground and I'm up
1:03:11
here watching her and telling her, you know, if this is what
1:03:13
she's going, she's experiencing, she's going through.
1:03:16
Yeah. And I remember her stopping me
1:03:18
and saying OK great. Well that was about 5 minutes.
1:03:20
And I appreciate the like the small Ted talk, but I don't know
1:03:25
how you're feeling. And I was like, yeah, like as I
1:03:27
said. And I, I instantly go in and
1:03:29
say, OK, so take a take a breath and just close your eyes and ask
1:03:33
yourself like, if I had to give myself 3 words to describe how I
1:03:37
feel, What is that? It was so interesting because
1:03:42
this wasn't that long ago. This was probably like maybe 3
1:03:44
weeks ago. And I said, well, and I'm there
1:03:49
sitting and I'm like, why do I have no words now?
1:03:51
Because before I was again analyzing everything, but now
1:03:54
that she's like, how are you feeling?
1:03:55
And I was like overwhelmed. And I remember saying a little
1:03:58
bit anxious and sharing. And then instantly the tears
1:04:02
come and like she didn't said anything other than just how are
1:04:05
you feeling? And tell me how you're feeling.
1:04:06
And obviously as soon as I start to tune into I'm actually
1:04:08
feeling meaning not talking about what's happening in my
1:04:11
life or explaining why I have the right to feel that way or
1:04:15
whatever, just truly rooting in like how am I feeling right now?
1:04:20
And when that happened, the waterworks came and I was like,
1:04:24
oh, and it was again, such a symbol to your point of like,
1:04:27
the work is never done. It was such a symbol.
1:04:29
But that even with all these practices and even with
1:04:31
everything, I still, as I think many of us do, we still can at
1:04:36
moments fall into these patterns where we're still in the do, do,
1:04:38
do because it really is a constant work.
1:04:41
As I kind of perceive it. Our body finds new ways to get
1:04:46
us the outcome we want. So if you're still like, well,
1:04:48
I'm doing my breath work and I'm doing my cold plunge and I'm
1:04:52
doing my body work like again, check the box.
1:04:55
Your body might find another place to hide, meaning that you
1:04:58
have another area where you're like, great, I'm going to get my
1:05:00
not tune into my body aspect on this side of my life now.
1:05:04
So I think what I've realized over time is like, it really is
1:05:07
this constant practice. And I think talk therapy is is
1:05:11
fantastic. I still have worked with my
1:05:12
therapist for a very long time. I think everything has its
1:05:14
place. But the thing that I know is
1:05:17
that even when we've done retreats, there's women who are
1:05:19
like, I'm in therapy and I'm paying my therapist good money
1:05:22
and I've never had this stuff come up.
1:05:25
And I think that's because it's, it's truly, as you mentioned
1:05:27
earlier, there's the analytical brain and there's what we think
1:05:30
about things and there's how we perceive them.
1:05:32
And then there's genuinely how we feel like what is stuck in us
1:05:36
that needs to come out. And the best line that was ever
1:05:40
told to me is if it's coming up, it's coming out, which is like
1:05:44
if you're feeling like someone says something to you and you're
1:05:47
like kind of on the verge of tears, but you can't quite
1:05:49
explain why. There's like these signs that we
1:05:53
need to process. And I think also for women, so
1:05:57
many of us, I think have because of culture and upbringing and so
1:06:01
many things, this hesitancy to feel deeply because we're just
1:06:07
trying to hold structure as a partner, as a mom, as a business
1:06:11
owner. And we have to wear so many hats
1:06:14
that then we say, OK, well, like when do we get to take the hat
1:06:17
off? Like when do we get to really
1:06:18
just like park that and createspace for us.
1:06:21
And I think so many of us don't. And it's what creates this this
1:06:24
cycle of so many of us in the cycle of burnout or tier
1:06:28
mentioned earlier, potentially, you know, as I probably did in
1:06:33
some capacities years ago, poking fun at the idea of rest,
1:06:36
poking fun at the idea of flow. That's too woo for me.
1:06:39
That's too mindset for me. That's too, you know,
1:06:41
intangible. That's not actually going to
1:06:43
help me scale my business. And so for the person listening,
1:06:46
I'm curious when you think about, you know, the woman who's
1:06:50
go, go, go, and she's doing all the things and she's trying to
1:06:53
crush another goal and again, might even be tempted to make
1:06:55
this healing routine another scheduled routine.
1:06:59
What might your advice be to her if she's maybe at a place where
1:07:02
she kind of acknowledges listening today, she hasn't
1:07:04
really maybe tuned into her body all that much.
1:07:07
She recognizes that she probably could afford to do that.
1:07:11
What might you kind of want to to tell her in preparation of
1:07:14
what the journey is going to look like?
1:07:17
And then second to that, maybe now that again, even for
1:07:20
yourself, you're on the other side.
1:07:21
How does even for you as an entrepreneur, how does it feel
1:07:23
now like there's who you were, which we've definitely unpacked.
1:07:27
What can she kind of expect or what would you want her to
1:07:29
normalize in the process so she can have some patience because
1:07:32
again, all or nothing, she's going to want to be gone
1:07:34
tomorrow. And then just also help her to
1:07:36
understand this is who you could become.
1:07:39
This is how your life could operate.
1:07:41
This is how your business could look if you just stick with the
1:07:44
process and have patience within that.
1:07:47
I adore this question, so thank you.
1:07:51
The first thing I would say is like, I know you because I was
1:07:55
you and there are days where I still AM.
1:07:57
And I think that for me is the number one sort of message that
1:08:03
I would say is it's a journey, not a destination.
1:08:06
You are not going through this or you are not embarking on this
1:08:11
journey to become a healed, perfect human who doesn't
1:08:15
experience heartache and grief and pain and anger and who is
1:08:20
just like regulated all the time.
1:08:23
You are going on this journey in order to be able to feel the
1:08:27
full spectrum of life because that is what we as human beings
1:08:31
really are here to do is to feel and experience it all and still
1:08:37
know who you are. Feel anchored and present as you
1:08:41
were going through the harder times of life and also the
1:08:44
really joyful times of life. Because the problem with being
1:08:48
high achieving type A go, go, go distracted, follow the To Do
1:08:53
List only kind of people is that you're not present with either
1:08:57
the hard feelings or the amazing feelings.
1:08:59
Or when you are in those feelings, you're worried that
1:09:02
they're not going to last or that you don't deserve it or
1:09:05
whatever that narrative is. So I understand your pain so
1:09:11
much if that is where you are at, if you are in a space where
1:09:16
I was, which is like, I know there's more out there for me.
1:09:20
I can feel it. However small that knowing or
1:09:23
that voice, however quiet that voice is, you know that there is
1:09:27
more for you. There's more alignment, there's
1:09:29
more joy, there's more ease. Listen to that.
1:09:33
Do not ignore it and know that you do have a long journey
1:09:37
ahead. It is not going to be easy if
1:09:39
you really, truly, deeply want to build a life that feels as
1:09:44
good as it looks. There is no quick fix.
1:09:47
I I wish that I could sit here and tell you, do ABC and in six
1:09:53
months you'll be out the other side.
1:09:54
It's a deep excavation. It is a coming home to who
1:09:58
you've always been. And that takes a lot of
1:10:01
commitment, a lot of bravery. And that bravery is often going
1:10:06
to feel like fear. And you're going to want to
1:10:09
abandon it because your body is going to start reacting in ways
1:10:13
that feel like there's danger in front of you when there isn't
1:10:18
necessarily. But it's just something that
1:10:20
your nervous system isn't used to or that it wants to try and
1:10:23
protect you from. But the commitment to this, to
1:10:29
to myself, the commitment that I made to myself to show up every
1:10:34
day and try my best to become more aligned, have more
1:10:39
capacity, be more in touch with myself, become more sovereign,
1:10:42
has been the greatest gift of my life.
1:10:45
The life I always envisioned, that I hoped was out there for
1:10:49
me. But my mind kept saying, yeah,
1:10:52
that sounds really nice, but it's not reality.
1:10:56
That's not how things it is and can be reality, but not in the
1:11:01
way you think it is going to be. Because that ability to expand
1:11:08
what you can hold means that you can show up to the scarier
1:11:12
things with more intention and presence, but it also means that
1:11:17
you are fear, not fearful, but you are uncomfortable.
1:11:21
A lot of the time you're just able to hold that discomfort
1:11:24
with more excitement and joy than, you know, fear and
1:11:29
avoidance. And it's going to look really
1:11:32
messy, like there's no way around that.
1:11:36
It is not like your brain at the start is not going to be able to
1:11:41
process a lot of what you're trying to do in the way that you
1:11:44
have previously. For me, I found like a lot of
1:11:47
the concepts that I was trying to embody, a lot of the like
1:11:50
coming into connection with my body, things like that my brain
1:11:55
could not logically process. I learned a lot of science along
1:11:59
the way to help me understand the why so that I remained
1:12:03
committed to what I was doing. So understanding how my nervous
1:12:07
system works, understanding why breath work actually does make a
1:12:12
difference and why I would want to carve out space for it in my
1:12:14
day and do it before I get to my To Do List rather than after my
1:12:19
To Do List is done, which it never is.
1:12:23
So this there's absolutely place for the science.
1:12:25
And I think if you're coming from a very masculine place and
1:12:28
wanting to flow more into your feminine, don't try to just like
1:12:32
throw science down the window and lean into spirituality and
1:12:35
woo because you're not going to your, your brains don't get it.
1:12:38
But when I learned the science, it gave me enough like my brain
1:12:42
could get out of the way for long enough for my body to kind
1:12:45
of take center stage and really engage.
1:12:47
And then over time it all started making more sense.
1:12:50
But it's a long commitment and it's a lot of hard choices and
1:12:56
hard choices. They can look like maybe you
1:12:59
realize the partner you're with is not the right partner, even
1:13:03
though they are wonderful or they're not doing anything wrong
1:13:07
specifically. But you can't be the version of
1:13:11
you that you want to be around them.
1:13:12
And therefore that has an impact on every other aspect of your
1:13:16
life, especially your business. And therefore it might be a hard
1:13:19
decision of leaving a partnership, leaving a
1:13:22
friendship, whatever it is. And then it's also going to look
1:13:26
like some hard decisions that you didn't expect, like having
1:13:32
to be more of your true, authentic self around your
1:13:36
friends in a way that scares the shit out of you.
1:13:40
Like and maybe. Them and maybe them, maybe them.
1:13:42
Exactly. It might scare the shit out of
1:13:44
them too. And it's going to be saying no
1:13:47
to a lot of stuff that your former self would be screaming
1:13:51
at you being like, how are you saying no to this?
1:13:53
This is insane. This is exactly what you wanted
1:13:57
six months ago. And now you're saying no.
1:13:59
Like, are you losing your mind? And it's becoming so committed
1:14:07
to the version that you are becoming that not everything has
1:14:11
to make logical sense anymore. And that is very hard as someone
1:14:16
who has lived in their analytical mind and then like,
1:14:20
OK, I have AB and C in front of me and here's why.
1:14:22
The pros and cons of A, the pros and cons of B, the pros and cons
1:14:25
of C. And also, if you have, like me,
1:14:30
had an external version of success that you have been
1:14:33
working towards and all of a sudden you have to dismantle
1:14:37
that to now figure out what your actual aligned version of
1:14:40
success is. That for me, yes.
1:14:43
Do I want to make lots of money? Absolutely.
1:14:47
But I am actually in the process right now of realizing that
1:14:51
like, I have so much wealth in my life, that financial wealth
1:14:57
is no longer a like deciding factor for me because I've been
1:15:02
paid lots of money to do things that crushed my soul.
1:15:07
And I've been paid nothing to do things that like set my world on
1:15:11
fire in a very good way. And So what we've been taught
1:15:16
about dollars in the bank account or bookings on the
1:15:20
calendar actually may not align with that version of success for
1:15:24
you anymore, but it might take your brain, but also the people
1:15:28
around you some time to catch up.
1:15:31
Like I remember when I was first starting to kind of slow down
1:15:34
and, and really take stock, I started building space into my
1:15:39
calendar. And that for me meant at the
1:15:43
beginning, you know, I was starting my day at 10 AM and
1:15:47
ending at 6:00 AM and started starting at at 9:00 AM because I
1:15:50
like a longer, more luxurious morning.
1:15:53
And I was terrified to tell clients that I wouldn't be
1:15:57
taking meetings before 10. I was like, this is this is
1:16:00
business suicide. What are you doing?
1:16:03
It was so scary to me. And I remember a mentor of mine
1:16:06
at the time having to she, I was also doing some work for her and
1:16:10
having to tell her and, and she didn't really get it.
1:16:14
And I thought, this is so weird. Like I feel like I'm like going
1:16:18
against my mentor. Like I was really struggling
1:16:22
with identity and I kept, I just knew that this was right for me.
1:16:26
And then eventually I started taking Fridays off.
1:16:28
I was working a four day work week.
1:16:30
Again, you're building a business.
1:16:32
People are like you can't, you should be working probably 7
1:16:35
days. A week.
1:16:36
Every moment. And instead I'm like, no, I'm
1:16:38
going to take Fridays off because again, I require a lot
1:16:41
of rest and that actually makes me more productive.
1:16:44
But again, getting sort of like supportive, but like, what are
1:16:48
you doing kind of responses from people.
1:16:51
Two years later, that same mentor is now implementing.
1:16:56
A lot of what I've implemented has actually come to me and been
1:17:00
like, hey, so you've really figured out how to like create
1:17:04
more space and rest. Can you help me figure out how
1:17:06
to do that as well? So there will be many moments
1:17:09
where you're like, I feel crazy by saying what I'm saying or
1:17:14
doing what I'm doing. It is most likely because you
1:17:17
were just ahead of the curve that like saying that it's like
1:17:20
crazy is often just being right too soon.
1:17:24
Like that idea that like you have to commit so deeply to the
1:17:30
life you're building that the opinions of others, not that
1:17:35
they don't matter anymore. Because quite honestly, I think
1:17:37
that that's an illusion that all of a sudden you don't care about
1:17:41
what anyone thinks. You are going to care.
1:17:43
You just care more about what you think than what they think.
1:17:46
So and. I think changing the process,
1:17:48
like I remember someone said about about someone because they
1:17:51
they went on their own spiritual journey and and they said, you
1:17:54
know, so and so's really changed, huh?
1:17:56
And I was like, yeah, but I think that's the point.
1:17:59
Like, let's also think about like for me even.
1:18:02
And you hit the nail on the head.
1:18:04
I have these moments where old me and I, I go back to old
1:18:08
again. When I say old me, by the way,
1:18:09
this is like a year ago. This is not like this is not
1:18:12
like 7 years ago. This is like a year ago.
1:18:14
And I think old me, like you said, if I want to take a Friday
1:18:18
off would be like, that's a work day.
1:18:20
Like are you crazy? Like no.
1:18:22
Or like if I just said hey I'm going to take a nap in the
1:18:24
middle of the day, old me would be like, OK, say goodbye to
1:18:28
your. Grow like what?
1:18:30
You clearly don't care. Yeah, you clearly don't care.
1:18:32
So there was all these narratives that would happen
1:18:35
about the new me would want to do X, but the old me is like no,
1:18:38
no, no, we have to do this. And I even realized one of the
1:18:42
most apparent areas that's come up for me is I used to because I
1:18:45
was again, very in the masculine.
1:18:47
I was very analytical. I was planning my entire life.
1:18:49
I was like, I want to get married by this age.
1:18:50
I want to have kids at this age. I want to do XY and Z.
1:18:53
And then as soon as I had this kind of again like that aha
1:18:55
moment we both spoke about for us.
1:18:57
Then I started to go, OK, like now I'm going to try to journey
1:19:00
into surrender. And it's really interesting
1:19:01
because as soon as you. Start to really flex that
1:19:03
muscle. The old you is like but remember
1:19:06
you could control. You could have it all pre
1:19:08
planned. You could do X.
1:19:10
And that internal battle, I think it, it doesn't necessarily
1:19:14
go away. I think it's just more you trust
1:19:17
the new you more than like. I hear you and I'm still
1:19:21
deciding to go. This.
1:19:22
Way, because this is what feels right.
1:19:24
Also the aspect of like, you're going to change number one.
1:19:27
I think that's the point. But #2 I think that people are
1:19:32
not necessarily going to understand until they have the
1:19:35
evidence. Again, think about them maybe
1:19:38
being in the, in the masculine or them being in the analytical.
1:19:41
You're doing something that to them is very woo and weird and
1:19:44
like you're napping in the middle of the day and you're
1:19:46
having space. Forrest, Like, what are you
1:19:47
doing over there? It feels like they don't know
1:19:49
who you are anymore. And I got a lot of that in last
1:19:52
year, being like, if you flow too much, you're going to flow
1:19:54
your way out of business. Basically.
1:19:56
If you rest too much, this is not, you know, going to help to
1:19:59
still scale the business. Yeah.
1:20:01
But I also recognized I was like everyone only knew old me and
1:20:05
only had the evidence to say old me got these epic results so she
1:20:10
needs to stay that old her. They didn't have any results
1:20:13
correlated to the new me. So I was like, great, I need to
1:20:17
just tune out temporarily all the thoughts and opinions of
1:20:20
this won't work or you can't do that or like we're worried about
1:20:23
XYZ because people were worried that I went too far feminine,
1:20:26
meaning I was too soft. And so because of the softness,
1:20:30
I was going to basically, you know, push myself out of the
1:20:33
things that had been happening. But I think that you have to
1:20:37
trust, as you said, trust the process, trust the journey,
1:20:40
trust yourself to do this and recognize that when you start to
1:20:44
have evidence at some point, whether it is in three, 612
1:20:47
months and people like, wow, you just feel so much more grounded.
1:20:52
And like that's what I got. People who are like, you feel
1:20:54
more calm, you feel way more grounded.
1:20:56
I don't know what it is, but your energy feels different.
1:20:59
And now they're starting to see the impact of basically the work
1:21:03
and the messiness, as you mentioned that I've been doing.
1:21:06
But I think if I had from the get go had people make it weird
1:21:11
that I wanted to meditate or make make it weird that I took,
1:21:14
you know, time off in the middle of a work day, whatever.
1:21:16
If I let that guilt or shame or judgement kind of seep in, I
1:21:21
think the journey would not have gone as fast.
1:21:24
I think the journey would have been much harder.
1:21:25
And so I think the only thing I would I, I agree with absolutely
1:21:28
everything that you said. And I think the only thing that
1:21:30
I would add is this is your process and your commitment and
1:21:34
to be just totally direct about it.
1:21:35
Nobody needs to understand it and nobody needs to get it.
1:21:38
You know, Hannah and I both left long term relationships and we
1:21:42
kind of connected in in person and we're talking and sharing a
1:21:44
little bit about, you know, they're just kind of the again,
1:21:47
awareness and the understanding that we had and making a
1:21:49
decision that truthfully for both of us could have been
1:21:52
judged by so many people as like, this is the right thing,
1:21:54
the wrong thing, the right time, the wrong time.
1:21:57
But you just know. And so in this process and even
1:22:00
listening today, like, I think, you know, for me, if I had
1:22:02
listened to this two years ago, I would have been like, I feel
1:22:06
so seen and I know I have this knowing that this is what I
1:22:09
need, but it feels uncomfy. And so I would say if you have
1:22:11
that knowing today, listening to this, take it as a sign to
1:22:14
create yourself in a little bubble just even for a small
1:22:17
amount of time. And again, you can still
1:22:19
interface with people. It's not like you're pushing
1:22:20
everybody out. It's just having a compass to
1:22:22
say, I am like in a sponge state right now.
1:22:26
And if I take in anything else, I'm just going to take it all
1:22:28
in. And I don't have the discernment
1:22:30
right now to know what is right for me and what's not.
1:22:32
So I'm going to protect myself, to give myself a little bit of
1:22:36
space, as you mentioned, to Createspace to say, what do I
1:22:39
need? What do I feel, What do I
1:22:41
desire, What feels right? And then once you get your
1:22:44
bearings, and I know this is a very foofy answer, but you're
1:22:46
going to know. You're going to know when you're
1:22:48
ready to accept people back in because you're going to feel
1:22:50
this like inner knowing and confidence at a level you've
1:22:53
never had before. And I will say as someone
1:22:56
obviously who teaches business day in, day out, the exciting
1:22:59
part, which I know is probably something happening in your mind
1:23:01
right now is like, well, what does this mean for my business?
1:23:03
It's actually going to help your business to grow in the most
1:23:06
incredible way because your business is going to remain the
1:23:11
same, but the experience of it is going to be so insanely
1:23:14
different. Like my offers are the same, my
1:23:17
price tags are the same, My marketing, frankly, like, you
1:23:20
know, frequency wise is the same.
1:23:22
Like none of the actual bones changed.
1:23:24
And again, I think going back to that cup and the coffee analogy
1:23:27
we spoke about, the cup is still there.
1:23:29
Like the structure of your business is still there.
1:23:31
The structure of your life can still be there, but the way that
1:23:35
you fit in it and the experience you have within that structure
1:23:37
is going to feel like an entire new world.
1:23:40
And that's the exciting part is like your business doesn't need
1:23:43
to completely change because you're changing.
1:23:44
Just the simply you coming to your business in a different
1:23:47
state of mind and emotional state and perspective is going
1:23:50
to make the next year of your business feel entirely
1:23:53
different, even though you're in the same structure you were when
1:23:57
you started this process. Couldn't agree more.
1:24:00
And like, I think the permission to change your mind is so
1:24:04
important in the sense that like, yes, in some cases your
1:24:08
business will stay the same. And in some cases you'll embark
1:24:10
on this work and realize that your view of business or your
1:24:13
view of your own success or your career or whatever that looks
1:24:17
like no longer aligns with you. And that is also OK.
1:24:22
You could do this work and be like, I want to go and open a
1:24:26
farm and like live in the country and have a slow,
1:24:30
gorgeous, delicious life. And that is that is what this
1:24:36
work is about. It's about having your own
1:24:40
version, your own aligned definition of what success means
1:24:44
to you. Now, as I mentioned, success to
1:24:46
me was basically only based on how cool or like big name to the
1:24:52
projects where I was getting and how much I was getting paid for
1:24:54
them where like and that has flipped completely 180 now.
1:25:00
And, and that kind of cocoon at the beginning of being like, I
1:25:04
actually don't need to explain to people what I'm doing.
1:25:06
And I wish looking back that I had not tried to explain myself
1:25:11
so much because I was like, kind of trying to probably convince
1:25:14
myself, but convince my loved ones and everyone around me it's
1:25:20
OK. Like, yeah, I'm shutting down a
1:25:21
very lucrative event production business and kicking off this,
1:25:25
like, Wellness thing where I'm now going to like be a speaker
1:25:28
and a coach and all these things.
1:25:31
And I'm so, so lucky that I have really supportive family and
1:25:35
friends. And they were like, Yep, OK,
1:25:37
cool. But I still felt like I had to
1:25:39
explain like, well, I'm not making money right now, but this
1:25:43
opportunity coming in this and I'm building and I constantly,
1:25:46
and I do wish I had cocooned a little bit more.
1:25:49
Like, of course, the people like my partner who needed to know
1:25:52
because we're living together and, you know, we share expenses
1:25:54
and things like that and my family.
1:25:56
But like, I wish I had kind of just like had even more just
1:26:00
trust in the process and being like, yeah, things are good.
1:26:03
Like, it's great. I'm really enjoying it because I
1:26:05
felt like I had to defend my pillars of success changed
1:26:10
because literally I kind of flipped the script.
1:26:12
I went from being so successful and wealthy from a financial
1:26:16
perspective, but my health, my relationships, my sole purpose,
1:26:21
all of that were like in the toilet basically to financially,
1:26:26
yeah, I took a hit. But everything else in my life
1:26:30
is like the highest it's ever been from a wealth perspective.
1:26:34
My health, like my connection to my body, my now partnership.
1:26:39
Like if I had said to myself at 33, like you cannot break up
1:26:44
with this person who you've been with for seven years because
1:26:46
like, what will people think? Or what if you don't find
1:26:50
someone else? What if you're alone forever?
1:26:52
Which were absolutely questions on my mind, but it didn't stop
1:26:55
me from doing it. I wouldn't have stepped into the
1:26:58
magic of my current relationship, which is like
1:27:02
everything I dreamed of and more like the thing like the the
1:27:06
fairy tale Princess version of what I thought a relationship
1:27:09
could be. It exists and I was terrified it
1:27:13
didn't. But that self trust you talk
1:27:16
about that belief in being like. I just know this gut feeling is
1:27:20
leading me in the right direction.
1:27:22
It absolutely did because like my partner now checks all of my
1:27:28
boxes. And again, not in the way that I
1:27:29
had it written on paper because it never is, but in everything
1:27:33
that I need. And my ability to take this leap
1:27:37
on my new business, to become a somatic coach, a speaker at
1:27:40
launch, a podcast, is in part because of him because all of
1:27:44
the energy that I was focusing on the relationship and trying
1:27:49
to keep that afloat was being diverted from my business.
1:27:53
And so the minute that I had a partner who filled my cup up as
1:27:57
much as I filled their cup up, I now had all this extra energy,
1:28:02
confidence, everything to put into my business.
1:28:05
And so how one of my mentors says how you do one thing is how
1:28:09
you do everything. And so I think when we talk
1:28:12
about this somatic work, when we talk about coming back into
1:28:14
relationship with your body, yeah, there are huge benefits to
1:28:18
your business. And that is amazing and I think
1:28:21
it is the future of business, but there are huge benefits to
1:28:26
your overall quality of life. There's not a single area of
1:28:29
your life that it won't impact. And I think that that's really
1:28:33
to me, right? The full integration comes in.
1:28:35
It's like you can't, you can't be aligned.
1:28:39
That's what I learned even with, you know, again, going through
1:28:42
that moment a year ago was like, I can't decide that I want full
1:28:45
alignment in, let's just say a relationship with them be like,
1:28:49
but not with my health, but not with my friendships, but not
1:28:51
with, you know what I mean? Like, it's like you can't be
1:28:53
compartmentalized. Yeah.
1:28:54
And so because of that, I also think when you make this
1:28:57
commitment, you're making a commitment to live in actual
1:28:59
alignment and harmony and like, you know, some would call it
1:29:02
balance in all the buckets of your life.
1:29:04
And when you start to get clarity in this one area, maybe
1:29:06
if it is like for us, I think it sparked probably from a
1:29:09
relationship aspect or career aspect, but it starts to then
1:29:13
just kind of seep into everything else that you're
1:29:15
doing. And before you know it, your
1:29:16
whole life has been cloaked in this new brightness that you
1:29:20
just didn't have before. And it really, I guess again,
1:29:23
going back to the exciting part is it all literally starts with
1:29:26
you, which is the exciting part. So obviously listening today,
1:29:30
someone just got a master class in all systematic work and inner
1:29:33
work. But obviously, as we both know,
1:29:36
this is like it's this aha moment.
1:29:39
And so for me, my perception of today is like if you're
1:29:42
listening and you're feeling a download and you're kind of
1:29:44
feeling like good. Like this feels like it's
1:29:46
pulling me. And I'm feeling like I need to
1:29:49
deep dive into this because it's kind of feels like this is
1:29:51
really speaking to me and where I'm at right now.
1:29:53
If someone wants to go deeper into this, like where should
1:29:56
they reach out to you? Where do they connect with you?
1:29:57
Because you also have your own podcast, which I would love for
1:29:59
people to listen to as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
1:30:02
So my business is called Soma Soma and you can follow on
1:30:07
Instagram or TikTok, which is at Soma Soma with ease or head on
1:30:12
to the website and connect there.
1:30:14
Ioffer one to one coaching as well as in the fall we'll have
1:30:20
some like self-paced online programs.
1:30:23
And the way that I'm structuring the business because it is
1:30:26
newer, sort of launched Soma Soma in November of last year,
1:30:30
and I'm really allowing it to evolve organically, which is not
1:30:34
the way I used to do business, But the way I'm structuring it
1:30:37
is that there's kind of an entry point for everyone.
1:30:39
So whether you are brand new to this work, there are resources
1:30:43
available. One of them is the podcast.
1:30:45
As you mentioned, the podcast is called Too Much, Not Enough.
1:30:48
And it's basically all about breaking up with unsatisfying
1:30:52
hustle culture and burnout and building a life that feels as
1:30:57
good as it looks. And so we talk about all, it's
1:30:59
all rooted in the somatic work, but we talk about all different
1:31:02
things. And I have guests on there all
1:31:03
the time who have done this, who have gone from hustling and
1:31:08
burnout and just feeling so unsatisfied and misaligned to
1:31:12
being in like their souls gift and just loving life.
1:31:17
And so we have those conversations.
1:31:19
I think that's a really good entry point for people.
1:31:21
But then, you know, there's sort of like a graduated system of
1:31:24
offerings that you can engage in.
1:31:26
So it definitely recommend checking out the website and
1:31:29
drop into my DMS. I would love to hear, you know,
1:31:32
how this conversation landed for you and and what you are feeling
1:31:37
drawn to next. What's that little kind of
1:31:40
knowing that is is getting louder and louder and louder?
1:31:46
And maybe we can talk about how I can help you follow that
1:31:49
knowing into a life of like, just pure magic.
1:31:54
There's also such an incredible aspect of, and I always talk
1:31:56
about this, I know at the end of of episodes is like one of the
1:31:59
best things I learned is that true transformation is when
1:32:01
you're witnessed in it. And I think when you have, if I
1:32:05
have a download on my own late night 11:00 versus if I have a
1:32:09
download and you hear me say it and express it and acknowledge
1:32:13
it. There's an aspect of
1:32:14
accountability just even built into someone else seeing it,
1:32:16
hearing it and witnessing it that allows it to land deeper in
1:32:19
the person having it. And so I would also invite that
1:32:22
if you are someone who feels like exactly as Hannah said,
1:32:24
that you have this like aha moment today.
1:32:27
You feel like that landed for me or that my calling, I know in
1:32:30
this moment, listening today is blank and I need to change it or
1:32:33
I have this calling to do X, but I haven't been trusting it,
1:32:36
sharing it with myself, sharing it with Hannah.
1:32:38
It doesn't matter. Slide into, if you want to
1:32:39
create a joint message, slide both of our, our DMS and just
1:32:42
even with the intention of just saying, I'm choosing today by
1:32:45
listening to this to decide that I'm going to acknowledge it and
1:32:48
just allowing us to witness you in it and to celebrate you in.
1:32:51
And that even in itself is like really, as as Hannah noted many
1:32:54
times today, it's the first step of awareness.
1:32:56
Yeah. And by doing that, that really
1:32:58
is like a first step in you taking a next step in this
1:33:01
journey and kind of deciding like, I'm ready to do life.
1:33:03
I'm ready to do business differently.
1:33:05
So Hannah, thank you so much for coming on.
1:33:07
I know we could have probably gone for six hours.
1:33:09
So thank you so much for being here.
1:33:11
It was absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for having me.
1:33:14
I I'm so grateful to have these conversations, especially with
1:33:18
people who really understand the journey and and what it takes to
1:33:22
not shortcut it but commit to truly changing their lives.
1:33:27
Yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
1:33:29
All right, you guys. Well, we will have Hannah's info
1:33:31
and all of her socials and everything.
1:33:33
LinkedIn the show notes for the description below.
1:33:35
If you want to connect with her, as I said, here's your
1:33:38
invitation to just, even as you're finishing this, go over
1:33:40
to Instagram, shoot us Adm and let us know what your biggest
1:33:42
take away was. We'd love to hear from you.
1:33:44
And with all that being said, we'll see you in the next
1:33:46
episode. And, as always, stay ambitious.