Latest / Curiously Guided Podcast / Ep.115 | The Fine Line Between Nervous System Regulation & Self-Abandonment with Kim Kimball, Somatic Coach

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Ep.115 | The Fine Line Between Nervous System Regulation & Self-Abandonment with Kim Kimball, Somatic Coach · Curiously Guided Podcast

• 0:07
  Mariah: Welcome to the Curiously Guided Podcast.
• 0:10
  Shay: We're your hosts, Mariah.
• 0:12
  Shay: And hey guys, I'm Shay.
• 0:14
  Shay: We're two online business consultants passionate about rewriting the rules to success within both life and business.
• 0:20
  Shay: We believe that curiosity is our superpower.
• 0:24
  Shay: And trusting the nudge is a muscle that's meant to be strengthened.
• 0:28
  Mariah: Especially if we want to create a life that feels good from the inside out.
• 0:33
  Shay: So if you're ready to open your mind and let curiosity guide the way, let's get into the episode.
• 0:40
  Mariah: Okay, so this is a topic that I feel like me and Shay have been talking about behind the scenes for a long time.
• 0:47
  Mariah: And I'm really excited to share this conversation with Kim.
• 0:51
  Mariah: So I have worked with Kim like on her SEO and that type of stuff.
• 0:56
  Mariah: And I've been able to see like through the way that she helps people and her blog content and just like her podcast.
• 1:01
  Mariah: I've been on her podcast before, just like the way that she approaches things is so good.
• 1:08
  Mariah: And I just love that she's saying something different from all of like the hacky nervous system shit that we're seeing on social media because you you know how it is.
• 1:21
  Mariah: It's basically like once something uh picks up and trends and people find it trendy, it's like everybody wants to tell you the next biohack or the next hack in order to like regulate your nervous system.
• 1:33
  Mariah: And Kim has been just exploring all of this in a way that's so much uh bigger and deeper that like you can't fit into like one little TikTok.
• 1:43
  Mariah: And so I'm really excited to share this conversation and where it went.
• 1:47
  Mariah: And Kim's uh genius at being able to explain such a complex and nuanced topic in a way that felt really grounding and nourishing, but also almost felt like a big sister kind of giving you advice that we didn't realize that we needed.
• 2:09
  Shay: Yeah, Kim has a really cool background.
• 2:11
  Shay: You know, she got started as a physical therapist, so she's like our favorite type of human that has this really good basis in our groundingness and science and data, but then she noticed, like, oh hey, this isn't just all about the body.
• 2:24
  Shay: There's more going on here, it's more holistic.
• 2:26
  Shay: And so I need like a more well-rounded approach to this.
• 2:29
  Shay: You guys will hear me get my mind blown.
• 2:31
  Shay: If you're kind of a nerd about nervous system stuff, you're gonna love this episode.
• 2:35
  Shay: I have been learning about this stuff for years, and Kim completely reframed like how I'm thinking about this, how I'm using it in my own life.
• 2:44
  Shay: Like, she just has such a unique perspective.
• 2:47
  Shay: And so I'm so excited to share this episode with you guys.
• 2:50
  Shay: It is very powerful.
• 2:51
  Shay: Okay, a little bit about Kim.
• 2:53
  Shay: She's a certified somatic coach who helps highly sensitive neurodivergent women navigate identity transitions, matriescence, midlife career dissolution, faith deconstruction, and the quiet unraveling that comes with them so they can stop self-abandoning and reclaim a life and business that actually fits them.
• 3:11
  Shay: You guys know the deal.
• 3:12
  Shay: If you want to learn more about Kim and get her links, head on over to the show notes.
• 3:16
  Shay: And with that, we'll dive into the episode.
• 3:18
  Shay: All right, Kim, we are pumped to have you here today.
• 3:21
  Shay: Somatics is a word that we throw around a lot.
• 3:25
  Shay: I see online get thrown around a lot.
• 3:27
  Shay: Um, I would probably describe our audience as a lot of very intelligent women who have spent a lot of their lives up in their heads, pretty detached from their bodies.
• 3:38
  Shay: And that's certainly been the journey that Mariah and I have been on over the duration of this podcast, really.
• 3:43
  Shay: And so I'm really looking forward because you are talking about somatics, but you're talking about it in a very down-to-earth way, in a different way than I've heard other other people share.
• 3:55
  Shay: It's almost like this word somatics has turned into like this buzzword.
• 3:59
  Shay: And you you mentioned, you'll talk later about like it's almost gotten to the level of like something we can hack our way through.
• 4:05
  Shay: Who in my understanding of somatics is that's like quite the opposite of how it all works.
• 4:09
  Shay: So, really looking forward to this conversation and hearing your perspective.
• 4:12
  Shay: And if you don't mind, I'd love to hear, you know, the origin story.
• 4:16
  Shay: I'm assuming that somatics popped up for you in a meaningful way at some point in your journey.
• 4:21
  Shay: Do you mind telling us about like how this even got on your radar and how you decided to dive into it?
• 4:26
  Kim: Yeah, I would love to.
• 4:27
  Kim: Thank you so much for having me here and for that little intro.
• 4:31
  Kim: Um, yeah, funny story with that.
• 4:35
  Kim: I was actually a doctor of physical therapy for 13 years.
• 4:39
  Kim: So you can probably see the connection of like, I was a body worker for many, many years with many hands on thousands of bodies um over a long period of time, and of course, got doctorate-level education in that.
• 4:54
  Kim: And I kept waiting to love it.
• 4:57
  Kim: You know, I would wake up, I would have my alarm set at five o'clock every morning, get into the clinic, work from sunup to past sundown.
• 5:05
  Kim: Um I did really high-level sports medicine was my niche.
• 5:12
  Kim: Um, and it was very fast intensity, fast-paced.
• 5:17
  Kim: Um, a lot of stuff that I loved about it, but it just burned me out.
• 5:22
  Kim: Like I just at one point I thought I needed to take long-term disability from my job.
• 5:27
  Kim: Um, I just could, my body, my body couldn't do it.
• 5:32
  Kim: And at that point in time, I didn't have the relationship with my body that I do now to be able to really understand the messages and the signals that my body was sending me.
• 5:46
  Kim: Um, and eventually, you know, it got to a screaming level where I couldn't ignore it anymore.
• 5:53
  Kim: And I quit my job and I backpacked around the world by myself for four months.
• 5:58
  Kim: I started in Iceland, I ended in Myanmar.
• 6:01
  Kim: Um, it was kind of a crazy whenever people hear this, they're like, oh, you had your own eprey love journey.
• 6:07
  Kim: And I'm like, yeah, I mean, kind of.
• 6:09
  Kim: Um, but really the whole point of that journey for myself was to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do.
• 6:16
  Kim: And I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.
• 6:19
  Kim: And I have no idea what else I want to do or what is calling me or what my gifting is.
• 6:25
  Kim: Um and when I came back, I feel like I had really kind of met my own soul in a way.
• 6:32
  Kim: And I came back with a business idea and I talked to somebody else about it, and they were like, Oh, you mean like life coaching?
• 6:37
  Kim: When I described what I wanted to do.
• 6:39
  Kim: And I was like, What?
• 6:40
  Kim: I literally had no idea what life coaching was.
• 6:44
  Kim: Um, and I had to look into it and figure out what it was.
• 6:47
  Kim: And then there was a a coach that offered to give me a session so I could experience what it was like.
• 6:54
  Kim: And this was one of those defining moments in my life when I had that session where it felt like all the cogs and the wheel kind of just clicked into place.
• 7:03
  Kim: And I was like, oh yes, like this is it.
• 7:07
  Kim: This is what I was meant to do.
• 7:08
  Kim: This is what I was put on this planet to do.
• 7:10
  Kim: So promptly, you know, went through a year-long certification program.
• 7:15
  Kim: And um how long ago was that now?
• 7:17
  Kim: At least eight, eight nine years ago now, um, that I've been coaching.
• 7:21
  Kim: And so many hundreds of hours later, and and I started very so this is an interesting part where uh in physical therapy people very much ignore the mind.
• 7:34
  Kim: And there's all of this chronic pain, and it not it doesn't even necessarily have to be chronic pain, but let's say I'm rehabilitating an ACL repair or a rotator cuff repair or some surgical thing, the mind is completely ignored, and in my opinion, greatly impacts somebody's healing, greatly impacts somebody's outcomes, right?
• 7:59
  Kim: If they are under a tremendous amount of stress, the body is going to feel that.
• 8:04
  Kim: And I got really tired in the PT world of people viewing the mind as like woo or anything in that realm as uh uh irrelevant, really.
• 8:16
  Kim: Um, and so when I got into coaching, I was very into the mindset side because it was like a pendulum swing for me, right?
• 8:25
  Kim: Um, where I was like, okay, like I've seen the mind be completely ignored, and I'm learning about the power of that and how amazing this is, um, and how life-changing it was for me personally to go through a coach training program.
• 8:40
  Kim: And I focused on that for a while, and then I started to really see how it was just doing the same thing in reverse, right?
• 8:48
  Kim: And I was like, wait a second.
• 8:49
  Kim: Where it's at is really being able to integrate the mind and the body, kind of the east and the west.
• 8:56
  Kim: And I started to see all of which is perhaps a longer conversation, but see all these patterns of how you know we've divorced the mind from the body, especially in Western cultures.
• 9:07
  Kim: Um, and that has a lot of really long origins that I won't get into at this point in time.
• 9:16
  Kim: But what really when I started to with my clients integrate and call into wholeness every single person that I'm coaching as a whole being, right?
• 9:28
  Kim: That you are a mind, you're also a body, you're also a soul, and really honoring and recognizing and being able to take all of these parts of the wholeness of the person into account.
• 9:41
  Kim: Um, so much more change happens so much more readily and quickly for folks than if I was just focusing on one thing or the other.
• 9:51
  Kim: And I feel really fortunate to have my doctorate background where I can integrate those things and have a lot more background information on things like the nervous system, um, the body holding and tension patterns and all of these things and how it all plays together.
• 10:12
  Mariah: I love this so much.
• 10:14
  Mariah: And I actually had a pretty recent experience with this too.
• 10:18
  Mariah: I was having like some, I don't know, like some hips, some foot, like my whole right side was basically like, nah, bitch.
• 10:24
  Mariah: Like we we are just not gonna operate well.
• 10:28
  Mariah: And so I didn't know who to reach out to because I was like, I don't want to take like an online course.
• 10:32
  Mariah: I don't like I want hands-on body situation, but I'm somebody that tended to especially recently kind of lean more into that mindset, more into that massage, more into like that.
• 10:44
  Mariah: And I was like, well, that's not doing it.
• 10:45
  Mariah: I've tried all of that, so actually let me come back to PT.
• 10:49
  Mariah: So I reached out to a friend of mine and I was like, bro, literally, like my neck is on fire, my rights, like I can't even work right now.
• 10:56
  Mariah: Like it's just it's ridiculous.
• 10:58
  Mariah: And then I got a little taste of why I went all the way into the mindset side of things, is because it's like, oh yeah, it's because your glutes not working.
• 11:10
  Mariah: Clamshell, clamshell, clamshell.
• 11:12
  Mariah: And I was like, okay, so I walk away doing clamshells.
• 11:17
  Mariah: And I was like, I mean, like, yes, I get it.
• 11:20
  Mariah: You have to bring the muscles.
• 11:21
  Mariah: Yes.
• 11:23
  Mariah: And to me, I'm like, this doesn't make like any logical sense, but it's almost, it feels almost impossible to find people that understand both sides and can integrate, where it's like he didn't ask me not once, hey, how's stress at work?
• 11:43
  Mariah: I mean, to be honest, I consider myself pretty ambitious, and so I'd probably be like, I don't know, like we're just chilling when like really I'm sitting here hammering like 10 hours of work into like six hours and I'm not moving my body.
• 11:57
  Mariah: I was working so much that I didn't even have quote unquote time to take a walk.
• 12:02
  Mariah: And it's like, well, that's a problem, but there wasn't anybody kind of reflecting that back to me.
• 12:09
  Mariah: And then it's like I was also trying to figure out these nervous system hacks because you know, my phone listens to me.
• 12:16
  Mariah: So then my entire Instagram algorithm is literally just like take some deep breaths and like do all the shove your face in cold water.
• 12:24
  Mariah: And I'm like, I'm not doing that, like I just I don't want to.
• 12:26
  Mariah: But there's such a lack of depth of information, or it's extremely hard to find it, especially for people, and I'm sure like we can all relate on this call for smart people.
• 12:40
  Mariah: Like, I consider myself very smart, like I'm not a big dumb idiot who's like just tell me what to do.
• 12:46
  Mariah: I'm like, no, I'm willing to like take off all the masks and like do the work, and I'm willing to sit here and to integrate and to understand, like, I will be a fantastic student, but there are not a lot of people integrating this.
• 13:01
  Kim: Yes, and you know, it's so interesting to hear you say, I will be a fantastic student and I'm willing to take off the mask and essentially to do the depth work is really what I hear you saying.
• 13:13
  Kim: And so few people are willing to do that, that it's almost like there's there's no, there's not a lot of market for it because everybody's like, oh, you want your quick fix, here you go.
• 13:24
  Kim: Right?
• 13:24
  Kim: Like I have boxed up the quick fix that everybody's looking for, instead of actually, like I'm proposing, looking at people holistically and as a whole being.
• 13:38
  Kim: And obviously, all of that takes more, in my opinion, depth of training, depth of knowledge, depth of wisdom, experience, um, to be able to integrate all these things for a practitioner to even be able to offer that to someone.
• 13:56
  Kim: And, you know, in the Western world, we can see it in the medical system as well, right?
• 14:01
  Kim: Of like, oh, well, if you're having stomach problems, you go to a gastroenterologist.
• 14:05
  Kim: If you're having um, you know, back problems, you go to a spine specialist.
• 14:09
  Kim: If you're it, it's everything is so boxed off and compartmentalized rather than looking at things as a whole.
• 14:18
  Kim: It drives me bananas.
• 14:20
  Kim: But yes, I love this.
• 14:23
  Shay: Before we dive into like looking at things as a whole, I want to rewind a bit to something you said at the beginning of your origin story.
• 14:31
  Shay: You mentioned that you couldn't stay in your job anymore.
• 14:33
  Shay: It was getting so bad it was screaming.
• 14:35
  Shay: Do you mind sharing as much as you feel comfortable?
• 14:38
  Shay: Like, I certainly have had those moments in my life that have kind of led to, I think most of my career changes were driven by some kind of like physical pain.
• 14:45
  Shay: But tell me about like what did that look like for you?
• 14:48
  Kim: Yeah.
• 14:49
  Kim: I was having really severe physical symptoms.
• 14:54
  Kim: So um, let's see if I can go back in my mind to how long ago this was.
• 15:00
  Kim: Um, I was having almost like uh these things that I had never seen before in my life.
• 15:07
  Kim: Like I would take my sock off, and the imprint from where my sock was would be there for hours.
• 15:14
  Kim: Just this retaining fluid.
• 15:17
  Kim: I went to my hairdresser who I had been going to for years and years, and he felt my hair, and he was like, Something is going on with you.
• 15:25
  Kim: Like the complete texture of your hair has changed.
• 15:29
  Kim: It feels dry, it feels brittle.
• 15:32
  Kim: Like I would look myself in the mirror and I'm like, I look severely unwell.
• 15:37
  Kim: Like I had circles underneath my eyes, I looked just like pale, just very sickly appearing.
• 15:46
  Kim: Um, I could not put on weight at the time.
• 15:50
  Kim: I was really uh just looked malnourished, to be honest.
• 15:54
  Kim: Um, even though, you know, I was trying to eat well, all these things.
• 15:57
  Kim: And my most uh severe symptom, I would say, was just really debilitating fatigue.
• 16:04
  Kim: Like I couldn't really get through the day, um, which is why I started thinking about I may need to take long-term disability because I literally feel like I cannot be upright.
• 16:14
  Kim: And I would go home from work and it was like I couldn't have a social life.
• 16:19
  Kim: There was nothing that I could do to socialize.
• 16:21
  Kim: I would be flat on the couch for the rest of the night.
• 16:23
  Kim: Like my work day just took it all out of me, right?
• 16:27
  Kim: Um, not to be TMI, but I also did not have a cycle for two years at that point in time.
• 16:35
  Kim: And, you know, no one would believe me that I wasn't pregnant.
• 16:39
  Kim: And I'm like, I'm not pregnant.
• 16:40
  Kim: I promise I'm not pregnant.
• 16:42
  Kim: I just am not having a cycle.
• 16:44
  Kim: Um, and so I I went to, again, this is just talks about like the specialists.
• 16:49
  Kim: I went to so many different specialists.
• 16:51
  Kim: I would go see this person in the box and this person in the box and this person in the box, and nobody could give me any answers.
• 16:56
  Kim: And I finally did a lot of the research on my own, and I went to a doctor and I was like, hey, everything that I am experiencing seems to really correlate with really severe gluten allergy.
• 17:08
  Kim: Do you mind if I just cut that out myself and see what happens?
• 17:13
  Kim: Um, and I did, and my period came back two weeks later after having been gone for over two years.
• 17:21
  Kim: Um, and I quit having anaphylactic reactions that were ending me in the hospital with, you know, when I would eat certain foods.
• 17:28
  Kim: And so I haven't eaten gluten in like 15 years, which is amazing.
• 17:33
  Kim: And that was a huge part of my healing, but essentially my entire body was shutting down and like a freeze and fight or flight responses because of the stress of honestly misalignment that was happening in my life and the amount of stress that was coming from that.
• 17:50
  Shay: Yeah, I think we I certainly can remember chapters of my life where I feel stuck in flight, flight or fight.
• 17:58
  Shay: And I hear a lot of my friends saying, like, hey, I feel stuck.
• 18:01
  Shay: I I feel like I'm stuck in this emergency response and I don't know how to get out of it.
• 18:06
  Shay: And it's kind of got me thinking about what doesn't what I don't even know what the goal is.
• 18:12
  Shay: Like, we all want this goal of a regulated nervous system, but I don't think a regulated nervous system means we're like monks in a cave feeling like calm and meditating all the time.
• 18:22
  Shay: Like, what is I can relate to the one side of stuck in fight or flight, but like what is the other side?
• 18:28
  Shay: Like, what is a well-regulated nervous system?
• 18:31
  Kim: Yeah, the way that I like to think about that is that a well-regulated nervous system is responsive.
• 18:38
  Kim: And what I mean by that is it has an appropriate response to whatever is in front of you.
• 18:45
  Kim: Like a regulated response, is a if a bear is chasing me, is for me to go into fight or flight.
• 18:52
  Kim: If I didn't go into fight or flight with a bear in front of me, that would be profoundly dysregulated response.
• 18:58
  Kim: Right?
• 19:00
  Kim: Um, so uh a regulation to me is not being calm all the time.
• 19:06
  Kim: It's is my nervous system having an appropriate response to what is in front of me.
• 19:12
  Kim: And once that bear is no longer here, does my nervous system come back down?
• 19:18
  Kim: Does it not stay stuck in the fight or flight mode?
• 19:22
  Kim: Am I able to complete that stress response, in other words, right?
• 19:27
  Kim: Um, so that to me is regulation, is having this robust responsiveness to whatever is in front of us.
• 19:35
  Kim: But the internet has flattened it to, oh, I'm calm all the time in the face of whatever.
• 19:41
  Kim: And that's that is actually dysregulation, in my opinion.
• 19:45
  Kim: Um, we need to be able to respond to what's in front of us.
• 19:50
  Kim: Like if I um step off of in into a metro train track and there's a train coming, I need to be able to mobilize.
• 19:58
  Kim: I don't need to be calm in the face of that.
• 20:10
  Mariah: This season of the Curiously Guided Podcast, including this episode, is sponsored by Adobe Acrobat.
• 20:16
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• 20:20
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• 20:25
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• 20:29
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• 20:40
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• 20:45
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• 21:01
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• 21:41
  Mariah: This really has been blowing our minds lately, and we think you're gonna like it.
• 21:46
  Mariah: Yeah, and I think like you're right.
• 21:59
  Mariah: You you said before that like uh regulation has gotten flattened into a hack and uh it's easy, right, to create quick clips for social media and then as humans, I I talk about this with my husband quite a bit because it's like as humans a lot of us like don't have the capacity to go deep into things because we're dysregulated all the time.
• 22:29
  Mariah: So it's like if you're dysregulated, or it's like you're working a shit ton, you gotta take care of the kids, you're juggling this, you're taking care of aging parents, like you add all of these things up, and then it's like, and now you want me to take a deep breath.
• 22:43
  Mariah: I can't, or it's like I haven't had time for myself in X amount of weeks, months, years.
• 22:51
  Mariah: Like, I I think about my mother, like when she was raising us, she was like spinning out, and part of me is really grateful that she didn't have the internet, and part of me is like, shit, dude, if you just had like a little bit of education, but I think we're almost like we're in this weird mix where you can get this like buffet of quick fix options that feel good enough in that moment, but it's really to me, like, and I don't know if these are the correct word, but it's it's kind of like expanding the capacity to live life.
• 23:25
  Mariah: That's like how it is to be regulated.
• 23:28
  Mariah: But like I'm thinking about friends that have you say nervousness or regulation, and they're like, what breath work?
• 23:34
  Mariah: What meditation?
• 23:36
  Mariah: And like they don't see because you're you're living in it, and I can I can really align with this too, like in the beginning stages of business, and like before I really uh allowed myself to look at like these deep corners of kind of like my psyche and just like these things, it's like I was so on all the time that it felt like I was relaxing.
• 24:00
  Mariah: And so, like, that's really fucking hard to notice within yourself, like this mirror of like, when am I ambitious because like it's healthy and like this is my path and like this is what I'm doing, and I'm so excited.
• 24:15
  Mariah: And when am I ambitious to my own detriment of like now I don't even have time to go for a walk?
• 24:22
  Mariah: But then there's like busy, like there's so many nuances to this.
• 24:25
  Mariah: But then it's like, okay, but like we can have a busy season where it's like I'm hustling for three months, and then it's like then I calm down and I cruise and I kind of take my foot off the gas and I'm enjoying like this very fruitful life that I've created for myself, but like a lot of the times we don't realize where we are in these heightened states, and so it just becomes our normal.
• 24:46
  Kim: Yeah, it's very unconscious, and I just want to say ambition is not a problem, you know.
• 24:55
  Kim: I consider myself a very ambitious person, um, extremely so.
• 25:01
  Kim: And I also happen to be an ambitious person who lives in a neurodivergent and highly sensitive body, which is a very interesting combination.
• 25:11
  Kim: I don't know if you guys or any of your listeners can relate to that, but it's an interesting combination.
• 25:18
  Kim: And I think it's really important to tweez apart.
• 25:21
  Kim: And what I hear you trying to do here is tweezing apart.
• 25:24
  Kim: Like, when is ambition coming from this internally sourced and motivated place that's true to me and true to my values and true to my capacity?
• 25:38
  Kim: And when is it coming from a place that I am actually stomping out and overriding my capacity and overriding my values that's potentially coming from a place of wounding, maybe, of like I've got to prove, or I've got to be perfect, or I've got to keep up with whatever other business that I see happening.
• 26:03
  Kim: Um, and again, ambition is not the problem.
• 26:06
  Kim: To me, the problem is that the external result looks very, very similar.
• 26:12
  Kim: And the problem is when we're being dishonest with ourselves, we're not being um integrous with ourselves of what my actual values are, what my actual desire is, and what my actual capacity is of my body.
• 26:30
  Kim: Because our minds are infinite.
• 26:33
  Kim: Like if we imagine what we want for our business and how we want to scale and the impact that we want to have, there's no limitation to that.
• 26:40
  Kim: Literally none.
• 26:41
  Kim: And our bodies are finite.
• 26:44
  Kim: We only have so much capacity.
• 26:47
  Kim: And so we actually have to limit ourselves based on the capacity that we have if we're really being honest with ourselves.
• 26:54
  Kim: And we can go through a time when we're not being honest about that, maybe, like you're saying, for three months or whatever, and I can hustle and I can push, and it's going to have a cost.
• 27:03
  Kim: And if you do that for long enough, the cost is gonna be greater, right?
• 27:09
  Kim: Not sure if I answered your question there, but I kind of went off on a little bit of a riff.
• 27:15
  Shay: No, I think that's perfect, and it honestly tees us up for what I wanted to ask you about next.
• 27:20
  Shay: You know, I've had two people very close to me in the last month sit me down and say, Hey, Shay, I'm having a really hard time.
• 27:27
  Shay: I feel like I can't get out of this overwhelmed state.
• 27:30
  Shay: I'm stuck in the fight or flight, and I want to get out of it, but I don't know what to do.
• 27:34
  Shay: And, you know, uh my brain immediately goes to tools because I've used tools, you know, that's helped me get out of a tough space.
• 27:42
  Shay: But you you submitted a little bit of information to us beforehand and you said something in your form that kind of blew my mind.
• 27:48
  Shay: And it was the question of do I need a tool right now or do I need to change my life?
• 27:53
  Shay: And that really, I was like, I'm thinking about these conversations I've had with my people.
• 27:57
  Shay: That's what it was.
• 27:58
  Shay: It's like I don't think there's enough breathing or cold plunging or whatever.
• 28:02
  Shay: It's it's a life situation.
• 28:04
  Shay: Do you mind talking a bit more about like how to make that distinction of like, do I need a tool right now versus I need to fundamentally shift?
• 28:10
  Shay: I'm not being honest with how my values are my I need my life to be, and a major change needs to happen.
• 28:16
  Shay: Sure.
• 28:18
  Kim: I think a way to really uncomplicate this is to simply ask yourself like, do you find yourself having to use a tool over and over again?
• 28:27
  Kim: Like, do you find yourself like shaking or cold plunging or using breath work um over and over and over again?
• 28:37
  Kim: And if the answer to that is yes, then it means you probably need to just go ahead and change something.
• 28:43
  Kim: Because these tools are meant to be, okay, again, if we're looking at a responsive nervous system, it's meant to be okay, I've gone up into a stress response and I'm gonna help myself complete that stress response.
• 28:59
  Kim: But if you're constantly living up here, it's not meant for that.
• 29:03
  Kim: And so if you find yourself constantly up here, something needs to change in your life at large.
• 29:10
  Kim: And I really look at nervous system quote unquote regulation as a product of the inputs of our life.
• 29:19
  Kim: And that's something that people don't really want to face because again, they want the quick fix, they want the hack, they want to just be able, okay, I find myself in fight or flight.
• 29:27
  Kim: I'm gonna do some breath work, I'm gonna shake it out, I'm gonna do a cold plunge, and they want to just be over and done.
• 29:32
  Kim: It's much harder, obviously, to make the shift to your life.
• 29:36
  Kim: I will have a lot of conversations when I see clients having the same thing over again, over and over again.
• 29:44
  Kim: What needs to change if you're really honest with yourself?
• 29:47
  Kim: Like you aren't happy with your current client load.
• 29:50
  Kim: You're not happy with the current format of your offerings.
• 29:55
  Kim: Like it is not working for the way that your body is built.
• 30:00
  Kim: Um, I'll give you an example of this in my own business.
• 30:04
  Kim: I have um what's called a threshold mapping day, and it's completely asynchronous.
• 30:10
  Kim: And so I have a young child.
• 30:12
  Kim: Getting childcare coverage is challenging.
• 30:15
  Kim: It really works well for me and the way my nervous system works to be able to do things without having to sit down for a call where it's a pre-arranged time.
• 30:26
  Kim: And so this works for me.
• 30:28
  Kim: It allows me to work in my business at my own pace, my own timing, um, still complete and deliver things in an impeccable fashion.
• 30:38
  Kim: Um, you know, if I find myself getting frustrated, like trying to finagle childcare over and over again and feeling flustered with sitting down for a Zoom at a specific time, well, I'm gonna change it, right?
• 30:53
  Kim: I'm gonna quit trying to hack my way out of it.
• 30:56
  Kim: And so I think to answer your question, again, just to not overcomplicate things, is this something that you find yourself having to use a tool for over and over again?
• 31:04
  Kim: If so, let's look at what needs to change and let's look at the inputs in your life.
• 31:11
  Kim: Like I really like I said, I look at regulation as being the natural consequence, the natural outcome of having good inputs.
• 31:22
  Kim: So things like eating adequate protein and macros, getting adequate movement for your body, um, sunlight, circadian rhythm is huge.
• 31:37
  Kim: Having enough white space in our day, having community, you know, working in a way and a pace and a volume that actually fits you and your values, your goals, um, all of those things.
• 31:51
  Kim: These are just to name a few things.
• 31:53
  Kim: But if those inputs are constantly off, like people would be amazed how much, how dysregulating our food intake can be.
• 32:02
  Kim: Completely dysregulating if you're eating things that give you tremendous cortisol spikes and sugar spikes.
• 32:08
  Kim: Your blood sugar has a tremendous impact on whether or not you're in fight or flight, right?
• 32:14
  Kim: Um, same with movement and sunlight and all these things.
• 32:17
  Kim: I won't go into all of it too deeply unless we want to go into it more.
• 32:21
  Kim: But looking at the inputs and truly asking yourself if I'm constantly staying up here, if I'm constantly having to use tools, quote unquote tools, which are really, you know, biohacks instead of actual their faux regulation, right?
• 32:36
  Kim: Um, what what needs to change?
• 32:38
  Kim: If I'm honest with myself.
• 32:40
  Mariah: Yeah, and all the things that you're saying, it's like good food, good movement, good fr.
• 32:48
  Mariah: Like, it's not sexy, it's not some like quick hack.
• 32:53
  Mariah: It's really like, God, I remember when I first got into this space, and you know, the line, it's like, it's not a diet, like it's a lifestyle.
• 33:01
  Mariah: And then you're like, it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle.
• 33:03
  Mariah: Like, I would just get so annoyed, but like, and then I became that person.
• 33:06
  Mariah: I was like, guys, it's not about a diet, it's like a lifestyle, and it's like, but that's really like it's lame to say, and it's cheesy, and like it almost feels too easy, but like it's it's boring, also.
• 33:20
  Kim: It's boring.
• 33:21
  Kim: So and that's why people don't want to do it, it feels boring.
• 33:25
  Kim: And when you're stuck in fight or flight, you're not getting the dopamine hit from doing boring.
• 33:30
  Kim: Okay, I'm gonna go for my morning walk, I'm gonna get the morning sunshine in my eyes, I'm gonna like pre-portion my balanced macro meal.
• 33:38
  Kim: And I'm not saying perfection on any of these things, right?
• 33:41
  Kim: To be clear.
• 33:42
  Kim: Um, but I am saying that there's a level of boring in actually taking care of these inputs and having healthy inputs to have this healthy outcome of staying within our window of tolerance.
• 33:57
  Mariah: Oh, that was so hard for me.
• 33:59
  Mariah: I'm like, what do you mean?
• 34:00
  Mariah: I'm special, girl.
• 34:01
  Mariah: I'm just like, what do you mean?
• 34:03
  Mariah: Like, I don't, I don't, the routine, lame.
• 34:06
  Mariah: I'm special.
• 34:07
  Mariah: Like, I'll figure it out, like whatever.
• 34:09
  Mariah: And then it's like the more routine I have expands my capacity to experience more deeper levels of pleasure and joy that I didn't know were possible because it's like the you're expanding the structure in which you can flow between.
• 34:30
  Mariah: And when you don't have a structure, do you know how much energy it takes to flow and not know where the corner or the wall or the structure is?
• 34:40
  Mariah: It takes an insane amount of energy in order to like free-fall type situation.
• 34:48
  Mariah: And so the structure and this routine, although boring, it sets you up to be able to experience the zest of life.
• 34:57
  Mariah: Like me and my husband were talking, we we have a person in our lives that we were talking about.
• 35:04
  Mariah: I was like, he just doesn't have any zest for life.
• 35:07
  Mariah: And it's like I look at the situation and it's almost like he's built this routine, but it's like not based on him at all.
• 35:20
  Mariah: And it's almost like how uh it's hard to read the label when you're inside of the jar, right?
• 35:26
  Mariah: Because then he also lives in a very busy city, and so all around him are people that are living the same life, and he's just living the same life.
• 35:34
  Mariah: So what do you mean?
• 35:35
  Mariah: What do you mean this is wrong?
• 35:36
  Mariah: What do you mean this is bad?
• 35:37
  Mariah: What do you mean?
• 35:38
  Mariah: And it's like, yeah, but you are so dull of a human of what you could be, and I haven't heard you talk about your passions ever.
• 35:46
  Mariah: You're just going through the motions, and it's almost like uh you you can slide.
• 35:53
  Mariah: I think that's why it's so hard because you can also do routine perfectly and still not have the uh results that you want, the life that you want, the depth that you want, the passion, the zest.
• 36:07
  Mariah: And so it's hard because I really like what you said in the beginning about it's about being honest with yourself.
• 36:14
  Mariah: Nobody else has the answers to these questions.
• 36:17
  Mariah: For some people, it's um it's the quote of the same water that softens the potato, hardens the egg.
• 36:26
  Mariah: Yes, and it's such um, I can't believe I remember that perfectly.
• 36:30
  Mariah: Thank you so much, Brain.
• 36:31
  Mariah: Um, but like it's it's so good of a metaphor to be like you have to know yourself and be honest with yourself to figure out like what you actually need.
• 36:39
  Mariah: And to me, that's what thematics is.
• 36:42
  Kim: It's honesty with self, it's honesty with what your body is communicating to you.
• 36:50
  Kim: And I'll get into a little bit of a soapbox here as well, but you know, I know people have probably heard over and over again, well, listen to your body, listen to your body.
• 37:00
  Kim: What the fuck does that mean?
• 37:02
  Kim: Because I could be listening to my body and it's giving me a signal that's actually a really outdated response from my childhood that has nothing to do with the present moment.
• 37:16
  Kim: And I shouldn't actually allow that to dictate my behavior, right?
• 37:23
  Kim: Or I could listen to my body, and there is a sensation or an emotion coming up that actually is very informative about where I need to go or what I need to do with next steps.
• 37:33
  Kim: So there's a lot of tweezing out that needs to happen when we say listen to your body.
• 37:39
  Kim: There, there's so much depth and like you said earlier, Mariah, nuance to what listening to your body actually means.
• 37:48
  Kim: And we need to become really in tune with the honest truth, our honest truth.
• 37:56
  Kim: And there's so many reasons that I have so much compassion for that I just want to name of reasons why we deceive ourselves, in all honesty.
• 38:06
  Kim: Um, you know, like I need to put food on the table, I need to provide for my child, I need to um do there's so many reasons why we can deceive ourselves into not seeing the actual truth.
• 38:23
  Kim: And honestly, the truth is hard.
• 38:26
  Kim: The truth is hard to swallow.
• 38:29
  Kim: Like the truth might be, I really feel I'll give you a truth.
• 38:36
  Kim: Well, the truth, it's one of my truths right now.
• 38:39
  Kim: Um, I really feel like in this season of my life, like, yes, I want the ambition and I want my business to grow, and I'm super passionate about what I do.
• 38:49
  Kim: And there's also a cap on what I want to do right now based on where my son is at developmentally as a three and a half year old, and he's not in school, and I want to be here and available, and I'm not gonna get that time back.
• 39:01
  Kim: And that means that right now, if I'm really honest with myself, I can't take as many clients.
• 39:07
  Kim: I have to be um, I have to be honest with myself about that.
• 39:12
  Kim: And that means potentially less money, which means, okay, we might need to make some challenging decisions of different things that we vacations that we can't take, or um, schools that my son can't attend, or extracurriculars that we can't do, or whatever.
• 39:31
  Kim: People don't want to have to make those decisions when we're actually honest with ourselves.
• 39:37
  Kim: So there's a cost to honesty, and there's also a tremendous cost to dishonesty, right?
• 39:47
  Shay: I am really blown away right now.
• 39:48
  Shay: I love framing somatics as your ability to be radically honest, radically honest with yourself.
• 39:55
  Shay: Like that that is the that is the everything.
• 39:59
  Shay: And what's popping up for me, I mentioned those two friends I talked I talked with last month.
• 40:04
  Shay: Both of them kind of have this like stuck feeling.
• 40:09
  Shay: One one is a mother with like lots of young kids, and then the other one has um like a progressive illness.
• 40:15
  Shay: So there's elements about their situation that are just here that they're we have to surrender to them.
• 40:21
  Shay: There's no changing them.
• 40:22
  Shay: And and I find it hard to help those friends because they kind of land in this, like, oh, well, I guess it's just like this for now.
• 40:29
  Shay: You know, I guess I'm just gonna be stuck like this because I've got these small kids for the next 18 years, you know.
• 40:35
  Shay: So what I think I'm hearing you say, and I'd love for you to elaborate on this, is in those situations where the dysregulating event isn't going anywhere, it's more about focusing on the inputs that you can control.
• 40:49
  Shay: Or tell tell me about like how you respond to that.
• 40:51
  Shay: Like, well, there's an I can't change a situation, so I'm just doomed to stay in fight or flight.
• 40:56
  Kim: Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:58
  Kim: I would, you know, in situations where, you know, same situation for me.
• 41:03
  Kim: My son is three and a half.
• 41:05
  Kim: Uh, you know, my mom always says, you have children from their cradle to your grave.
• 41:10
  Kim: Like, that's not going anywhere, and nor do I want it to, right?
• 41:14
  Kim: I adore my son.
• 41:15
  Kim: Um, but those situations, I I really call them double binds, you know, this this situation where you're like, I can't and I have to.
• 41:27
  Kim: I can't do anything about it and I want to.
• 41:29
  Kim: And you just kind of feel that that produces that feeling of stuckness, right?
• 41:33
  Kim: That's a very special thing in our nervous systems, these double binds that typically will lead to a place of freeze.
• 41:41
  Kim: And so there's a lot that we can do as far as stabilizing, stabilizing, stabilizing the nervous system when you're in this double bind state.
• 41:49
  Kim: If anybody is listening and they're like, oh yeah, actually, it helps to have a label for where I feel like I'm at in my nervous system.
• 41:56
  Kim: Um, lots of stabilization is necessary there.
• 41:59
  Kim: And then once some of the thawing happens as you are naming, then it's like, okay, where do I have agency?
• 42:06
  Kim: Where do I have control?
• 42:08
  Kim: Um, because there is always somewhere, right?
• 42:13
  Kim: There, there will likely always be some places where we do not have control.
• 42:18
  Kim: And there are some where you do, and starting to thaw enough in our nervous system and be resourced enough in our nervous system where we can start to make some movements towards the areas where we do have some capacity and agency to make some changes.
• 42:37
  Kim: Um, and by no stretch of the imagin imagination do I want to be insensitive to there are truly systemic issues that are extremely challenging for so many people, right?
• 42:50
  Kim: Um, I'm not trying to gaslight people out of those things and saying, Well, you always have HST.
• 42:58
  Kim: Please hear me that I'm I'm not doing that.
• 43:00
  Kim: Um, but I am trying to tune us into the little places where we do have power to move and to act and in order to help us more move towards the lives that we want, really.
• 43:16
  Shay: I love that you're talking about inputs.
• 43:18
  Shay: I think inputs are so forgotten about.
• 43:20
  Shay: Like, we don't realize when you wake up and get on Instagram, when you watch reality TV, the talk radio in the morning, the ads everywhere.
• 43:30
  Shay: Like, we are all taking these things in, especially sensitive people.
• 43:34
  Shay: And I think we're not aware of like how much of an effect that stuff has on our nervous systems on a day-to-day basis.
• 43:42
  Shay: And I I really love thinking about inputs.
• 43:45
  Shay: I love that language, inputs.
• 43:46
  Shay: But before you said inputs and what you have agency over, you said like they need to stabilize, stabilize, stabilize.
• 43:52
  Shay: Do you mind telling me a bit more?
• 43:53
  Shay: What does that mean?
• 43:55
  Kim: Yeah, it just means um really starting to tune.
• 43:59
  Kim: Our attention to things that feel stabilizing to you.
• 44:04
  Kim: And so, like, for example, if I think about um let's say making myself more visible in my business, just to put it in the language of maybe your audience with entrepreneurs, and that feels profoundly destabilizing for me when I think about that.
• 44:25
  Kim: Well, what would feel stabilizing when you think about doing that thing?
• 44:31
  Kim: Like what would feel resourcing?
• 44:33
  Kim: What would feel good?
• 44:35
  Kim: Um, maybe really closing your eyes and asking yourself that question and tuning your attention to, attuning to something that would feel resourcing to you.
• 44:45
  Kim: Um, maybe it's uh when I imagine and tune into, I have this one particular tree that feels really resourcing to me at a park that's near me, that that's near a creek.
• 44:57
  Kim: When I imagine myself near that tree, I feel like I gain the support and the wisdom, like the the deep, deep, deep wisdom of that tree.
• 45:10
  Kim: And I know that that can sound really woo, but I truly believe that that those things can be stabilizing and resourcing to our system.
• 45:18
  Kim: So it can be nature, it can be more than human support if you um, you know, believe in the divine or angels, guides, things of that nature.
• 45:29
  Kim: Um, it can be animals, it can be really tangible things.
• 45:33
  Kim: Like I feel like it would feel really stabilizing to have a warm cup of tea and to wrap myself in a really like firm, warm blanket, or put a weighted blanket on me, or lay down and put my legs up the wall and just like rest for a second.
• 45:50
  Kim: Like, what would feel stabilizing to you?
• 45:53
  Kim: That's what I mean by that.
• 45:55
  Mariah: It's so funny because it's just like people don't ask themselves this.
• 46:02
  Mariah: It's so like it's so simple.
• 46:06
  Mariah: It is so simple.
• 46:08
  Mariah: Hey, what would feel good right now?
• 46:09
  Mariah: And people are like, um, I think maybe like a glass of wine, maybe would feel good.
• 46:16
  Mariah: And it's like, no, bitch, deeper than that.
• 46:18
  Mariah: Like, I'm I'm not saying that like the glass of like, I don't know, have wine if you want.
• 46:23
  Mariah: But like, when's the last time that you put your feet on the grass outside and just took a breath into your body, but we forget that that is even a thing that we have to be conscious of because we are so wrapped up in these inputs and we're stimulated from 400 million different directions all the time, that it's almost like, yeah, but I can handle this.
• 46:48
  Mariah: Like, I don't need to put my feet in the like to do what?
• 46:51
  Mariah: And it's so funny because I feel like almost when you're in a very um hyper-aroused state mentally, you almost think like it almost gets funnier to think about simple things because you go, Yeah, okay, because me putting my feet in the ground is gonna make me feel better.
• 47:12
  Mariah: And it's like, and then you do it and you allow yourself to just take a second, and you were like, Holy shit, that's actually what I needed.
• 47:25
  Mariah: Yep, and I notice like my ego or like me, my human, my mind, whatever you want to call it, it's almost like whatever it wants to sometimes.
• 47:38
  Mariah: It comes up as disgust, or I'm just like, ugh, I don't want that.
• 47:42
  Mariah: And then I go, shit, that's what I need.
• 47:44
  Mariah: Like, that's exactly what I need because I had such an intense reaction.
• 47:48
  Mariah: Or it's like if I want to mock it myself, or I'm just like making this like weird excuse of like why that could be too easy, why it's too simple.
• 48:01
  Mariah: It's like I almost have to, and I've gotten much better at this, like the older that I've gotten.
• 48:06
  Mariah: And to be honest, marrying my husband and like finding him and being in a relationship with him has made me realize so much of this because he's naturally like a much more grounded human than I was, and like he would move slower than me.
• 48:23
  Mariah: And we say that like he transitions very slowly, like he's not a person where I'm like, maybe we're going to the farmer's market and then we're gonna stop at the grocery store and then we're gonna stop at the coffee shop.
• 48:31
  Mariah: He literally is like, we're going to the farmer's market, and then I would like to come home and enjoy myself.
• 48:40
  Mariah: And then if you would like to go to the grocery store, by all means, girlfriend, you can go and do whatever you'd like.
• 48:47
  Mariah: But like he moves at a much slower pace than I do.
• 48:50
  Kim: Now I'm very curious about you two's astrological signs based on what you're telling me here.
• 48:55
  Mariah: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:56
  Mariah: So um it's it's most of his chart is in Capricorn.
• 49:01
  Mariah: Like a lot of his chart is in Capricorn, and I have like my north node is in Capricorn, so I'm like, ah, so like everything that I need is basically like the medicine that you have.
• 49:09
  Mariah: What a gift.
• 49:10
  Mariah: And then like our charts kind of really um they overlap in that way, where it's like my Chiron is like his south node, like what he is good at is essentially like what I need support with, and then what he is really shitty at is like what I've already mastered.
• 49:27
  Mariah: And so it's very interesting when we look at that.
• 49:29
  Mariah: And without astrology, I don't know if I actually would have been open to seeing that.
• 49:34
  Mariah: That's amazing, to be honest.
• 49:36
  Mariah: And so, like just having the language, right?
• 49:38
  Mariah: But without him and seeing this example, and it was the same thing.
• 49:44
  Mariah: I dated a guy 10 years ago, and I remember it was a huge eye-opening moment because we were out at the store, and he was get he was like, he was like 10 years older than me.
• 49:57
  Mariah: I was like 21 years old.
• 49:59
  Mariah: We were out at the store, and he was just being a goofy, silly dude, and he was just joking around and like being silly with like the the girl that was checking us out.
• 50:10
  Mariah: And I remember in that moment, I was like, you can be goofy and silly, like in public, like around other people.
• 50:19
  Mariah: Like, I don't have to like pretend that I'm just here, here's my card and swiping my card.
• 50:24
  Mariah: And he like that was a huge eye-opening moment, and so it's kind of that reminder of the people around us can be incredible mirrors if you are willing to let them be, and also notice like back to my disgust and to my ego, like notice where you are shutting the door almost too quickly, and then I have to remind myself how simple life is.
• 50:49
  Mariah: Like, it truly is simple, and like our brains are what complicate it, but sometimes we need that example of simplicity before we even know that it's possible for ourselves.
• 51:00
  Kim: Yeah, I always like to say, I regret to inform you that the simple things really do work.
• 51:07
  Kim: It's like I I remember telling a practitioner uh of mine is like, man, damn, I was like hoping that like doing movement every week and eating well wasn't the answer, and turns out it is, you know, like sorry that these simple things actually work, the boring things actually work.
• 51:28
  Kim: Um, and I think it's really aware of you to and and such a good point that you're bringing in this resistance that we have a lot of times to the simple.
• 51:40
  Kim: And also I just want to say that like when we're overcomplicating things, A, that that's just like snacks for our mind.
• 51:48
  Kim: And B, that it's probably some somebody selling you something.
• 51:54
  Kim: You know?
• 51:55
  Kim: So being aware of like, oh, this is like an ego, ego massage up here.
• 52:03
  Kim: Um, and also somebody is likely selling you something.
• 52:06
  Kim: So just being aware of those things, yeah.
• 52:10
  Shay: I was kind of debriefing with Mariah about talking with these two friends, and I said that to her literally.
• 52:15
  Shay: I was like, it feels like they want to argue with me and tell me that this won't work for them, and they'll acknowledge that it works for every single other person on this world, but they do not want to believe that putting your feet on grass or something so simple could be relief for their very complicated situation that they're in.
• 52:32
  Shay: And I love snacks for the mind.
• 52:34
  Shay: That's so good.
• 52:35
  Shay: Like we love to toil and overcomplicate.
• 52:37
  Shay: And you're right, with all the inputs of all the marketing we're around, we're probably being sold something or that we're lacking something.
• 52:43
  Shay: So, like that awareness is really, really powerful.
• 52:47
  Shay: And the other thing I've noticed is these simple things, they're not immediate.
• 52:52
  Shay: So, like, I'll tell my friend to go outside and touch grass, and she's like, Well, Shay, I'm not immediately feeling better.
• 52:57
  Shay: Like, well, unfortunately for me, at least it doesn't work like that usually.
• 53:00
  Shay: It's like I do it, and then the next day I might feel just a little bit of relief.
• 53:05
  Shay: And then I do it a couple days in a row and then I continue it.
• 53:08
  Shay: It's like these little tastes that kind of take a while to develop and simmer and and snowball effect on themselves.
• 53:15
  Shay: So I really am appreciating this idea of like, don't let the ego mind get in the way and like really derail something that can be quite simple.
• 53:24
  Shay: But I want to go back to I've heard a lot of people who talk in this space talk about completing the cycle, completing the stress cycle.
• 53:33
  Shay: And I do feel like a lot of us are stuck in these loops, these stress loops, and we're like, we can't complete the cycle, we can't complete the cycle.
• 53:40
  Shay: That is language I hear a lot.
• 53:43
  Shay: I'm not sure it's language I actually really understand.
• 53:45
  Shay: Do you mind talking us through like what does that mean, completing a cycle and why is it important?
• 53:51
  Kim: Yeah.
• 53:52
  Kim: So it's sort of exactly what I was giving you the picture of earlier with the bear analogy of um, you know, if a bear is chasing me, it is a proper threat response for me to go in fight or flight.
• 54:07
  Kim: It would be profoundly dysregulated of me to sit on a cushion and meditate when a bear was trying to come my way.
• 54:14
  Kim: Um, and so that's appropriate.
• 54:16
  Kim: But what is appropriate, and I'm if uh folks have can see the video, you'll see my hand going up into sort of a wave motion.
• 54:24
  Kim: So there is a peak of this activation, and then there should be a crest and a fall, which is the completion of the activation, and you're going back into your window of tolerance at that point.
• 54:36
  Kim: And what happens for a lot of folks that are stuck and they're not completing the cycle, they're kind of going up and then spinning and then spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning, and they're never getting to that point of crest and fall to actually complete the stress cycle.
• 54:53
  Kim: So when people talk about that, that's what they're talking about.
• 54:57
  Kim: Um, and the importance of that is if we're just spinning and spinning and spinning and looping and we are never allowing that wave to crest and fall, then that's when you get stuck in that chronic activation, right?
• 55:09
  Kim: Of I'm chronically stuck in fight or flight, I'm chronically stuck in freeze.
• 55:14
  Kim: These are our stress states.
• 55:16
  Kim: And the window of tolerance to me is not accessible.
• 55:19
  Kim: It's it's so narrow, it's just not there.
• 55:23
  Kim: Um, and when we are stuck in these chronic stress states, um, just like what Mariah was saying earlier, life gets very narrow for us.
• 55:33
  Kim: Um, you know, we start to experience a lot of chronic health symptoms because our body is not meant to live there.
• 55:41
  Kim: Uh, we experience a lot of relational issues again, because if we're stuck in fight or flight, when my partner is saying something to me, I'm likely going to interpret that if I'm in fight or flight as they're coming at me because I'm in I'm going to fight something, right?
• 55:58
  Kim: So when really they're like, hey, I just was curious why the milk was left out on the counter.
• 56:03
  Kim: I'm not trying to fight you about it, right?
• 56:05
  Kim: Um, so we really need to be able to access this window of tolerance and to complete those stress cycles because it has a tremendous impact on us.
• 56:16
  Kim: And and just like Mariah was saying earlier, too, on our ability to be present.
• 56:20
  Kim: That's the key thing.
• 56:21
  Kim: Our ability to be present, our ability to enjoy life, our ability to feel that aliveness.
• 56:29
  Kim: I truly believe that when we're stuck in the threat responses, that aliveness is what leaves us because there can be no thriving when we're in a survival state.
• 56:44
  Shay: Love there can be no thriving when we're in our in a survival state.
• 56:48
  Shay: So I want to talk about a bit more practically of like what it looks like to complete the cycle.
• 56:53
  Shay: We had a guest on maybe in season one that gave a really awesome story.
• 56:58
  Shay: I'm gonna share again because it has stuck with me about this idea of like coming down.
• 57:04
  Shay: And so she said she had a three-year-old, three-year-old son skinned his knee, he was really hurt, big crying, big ordeal.
• 57:11
  Shay: They put a band-aid on it, they moved on.
• 57:13
  Shay: A couple of days later, that three-year-old was getting upset again.
• 57:16
  Shay: And oh, I'm nervous to climb, I'm nervous to get on the slide, I might skin my knee, and was just kind of caught in this like I can't do anything.
• 57:22
  Shay: And she said she was noticing he was getting really scared and couldn't do anything.
• 57:25
  Shay: He kept thinking back, I might get hurt, I might get hurt.
• 57:27
  Shay: And so what she did was, okay, remember when you got hurt?
• 57:31
  Shay: What what happened next?
• 57:32
  Shay: And he said, Oh, well, we got abandoned.
• 57:35
  Shay: And didn't didn't your sister go in and she helped us and she made you feel better, right?
• 57:39
  Shay: Oh, yeah, yeah, she came and helped.
• 57:41
  Shay: And then what happened?
• 57:42
  Shay: Oh, well, then we went and got a popsicle.
• 57:44
  Shay: And how did you feel then?
• 57:45
  Shay: Oh, I was okay.
• 57:47
  Shay: And so she, by reminding the kid about what came next and that he was safe and that he was taken care of, that is what pulled him out of this kind of like stuck in a loop.
• 57:58
  Shay: And I thought that was such a good metaphor because, like, damn, as an adult, don't I I resonate with that story of like something weird happened and now I don't want to go back there because the last time I was there, it was weird and I don't want that again.
• 58:09
  Shay: And so I'm curious, like when you are helping people come out or come down, what what does that look like completing the cycle?
• 58:16
  Kim: Actually, yeah, I love that story.
• 58:18
  Kim: I appreciate you sharing it.
• 58:19
  Kim: What they were allowing him to do was complete the story, you know, that that helped him map the whole arc of the situation rather than just being hyper fixated on the point that was scary.
• 58:31
  Kim: Um, so I think that's really great.
• 58:33
  Kim: A couple things.
• 58:34
  Kim: If it's an acute dysregulation, an acute stress response where they're kind of up on the wave here, right?
• 58:42
  Kim: Um, what I will do a lot of the times is the the language I use a lot of the times is our body doesn't speak English or insert whatever language somebody speaks.
• 58:54
  Kim: That's that's not the language our body speaks.
• 58:58
  Kim: Our body speaks to us in the language of sensation.
• 59:01
  Kim: And so, in order to convey safety to our body, like, hey, we're not an active threat right now.
• 59:09
  Kim: We need to communicate to our body in the language of sensation.
• 59:14
  Kim: And so oftentimes, what I will have folks do if there's that acute stress response, is can you like take a moment and move your head in your space really, really slowly and look all the way around the room and just visibly see that there is no bear?
• 59:36
  Kim: Right?
• 59:38
  Kim: And visibly see that I am actually safe in my environment right now, there's no active threat here.
• 59:45
  Kim: So that's one way is just orienting to the fact that I'm safe right now.
• 59:50
  Kim: Um, another way that can be really, really helpful is like, okay, can I feel the areas of activation in my body, the sensation in my body?
• 1:00:00
  Kim: And can I feel any areas of neutrality in my body?
• 1:00:06
  Kim: And can I notice that that neutrality probably wouldn't be here if I was under an active threat response?
• 1:00:14
  Kim: So again, I'm it's almost like this update to the system of like, this isn't a present time threat.
• 1:00:21
  Kim: I can come down.
• 1:00:22
  Kim: It allows the body to do that completion.
• 1:00:25
  Kim: Um, there's a bunch of other ways to continue to do that, but hopefully that gives you some idea of I'm giving sensational inputs that allow the person to feel and sense that they're safe in the right now.
• 1:00:40
  Kim: Um, if it's more of a chronic threat situation, like I said, that somebody's been looping and looping and looping and looping, um that to me goes back more to the inputs, right?
• 1:00:54
  Kim: Um, because there's been something that's been keeping you looping.
• 1:00:58
  Kim: And so it could be, okay, like there's not enough white space in my calendar to actually allow my body sensationally to register that I'm safe.
• 1:01:10
  Kim: There's not enough, and this is a huge thing for women, there's not enough food intake for my body to register that I'm safe and that I'm not in famine.
• 1:01:22
  Kim: People can be under-eating a lot of the time.
• 1:01:25
  Kim: Our body is like, there is a real threat because I do not have enough food, right?
• 1:01:30
  Kim: There's not enough light, there's not enough um nutrients for me to really feel safe.
• 1:01:40
  Kim: So if it's chronic, I'm going more towards, okay, what input is the body missing for it to be able to really register that I'm safe right now?
• 1:01:52
  Kim: And that goes back to that stabilizing, stabilizing.
• 1:01:54
  Kim: What would feel stabilizing here?
• 1:01:57
  Mariah: Yeah, this is all so good.
• 1:02:01
  Mariah: I do want to, so I have a friend who has been in chronic pain, chronic inflammation, her window of tolerance, especially like eating, like she's the the doctors are giving her new tests every other month.
• 1:02:16
  Mariah: She's allergic to something new.
• 1:02:18
  Mariah: She can only eat very small things.
• 1:02:19
  Mariah: Like she's uh typically it's like she can only work maybe 10 hours a week, and then now it's like five, and it's she's seeing so many specialists.
• 1:02:28
  Mariah: She's 30, 31 years old, she doesn't have kids.
• 1:02:34
  Mariah: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:02:35
  Mariah: And it's like her window of tolerance and the way that she can experience life is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and she will spend any money she can to try to be able to get answers and support.
• 1:02:47
  Mariah: And she is trying to like figure this out, but there's this deep belief that like her body is broken.
• 1:02:55
  Mariah: Yeah.
• 1:02:57
  Mariah: How, and I know that obviously, like, that goes into so many different pockets of like being a human, right?
• 1:03:05
  Mariah: It's not just like one thing or another, like this is a very big and a rather extreme case.
• 1:03:11
  Mariah: How do you start to move out of that?
• 1:03:17
  Mariah: Like it's probably, I'm assuming, like the inputs that you're saying and like these little small things, but like this big idea of like my body is broken, and I've been there too.
• 1:03:27
  Mariah: So, like, I have been in situations where it was like I couldn't eat numerous things because my whole thing would be is uh histamine, histamine flare-ups.
• 1:03:36
  Mariah: And so I would get congested left and right, left and right, left and right.
• 1:03:39
  Mariah: And actually, what made me shift out of it, we haven't talked about it too much on the podcast, but what helped me shift out of it was almost dying.
• 1:03:49
  Mariah: It was like a near-death experience.
• 1:03:51
  Mariah: And I had to have that extreme experience in order to, I'm recovering from emergency surgery, almost bleeding out.
• 1:04:00
  Mariah: And I'm sitting there realizing my body is not broken, and that is a fact that I believe now.
• 1:04:08
  Mariah: Because what do you mean that I almost died and I am healing?
• 1:04:11
  Mariah: What do you mean that like I can sit here and my body is fixing itself?
• 1:04:15
  Mariah: But it's like, I'm sure that you know, not everybody wants to have a near-death experience in order to fucking figure this shit out.
• 1:04:20
  Mariah: But it's like, how do we allow ourselves to move through this in a way that feels nourishing, but combating this belief that is essentially taken over exactly how we see the world?
• 1:04:37
  Kim: Yeah.
• 1:04:38
  Kim: Yeah, as you named, this is definitely certainly a more complex situation.
• 1:04:45
  Kim: Um, that I won't speak to everything on, but I will say I have seen this pattern and I've lived this pattern, like you're saying you have, that paradoxically, I find that folks get healthier and unhealthier the more we limit ourselves and cut things out, and our our our range of that window of tolerance just shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and shrinks.
• 1:05:14
  Kim: Um, and I truly believe, you know, we talked at the beginning of the podcast about it this being holistic in mind and body.
• 1:05:21
  Kim: There's a lot of thought work and um parts work and subconscious work and story work that needs to go into this.
• 1:05:34
  Kim: I've seen that over and over again with folks who are experiencing stuff like this.
• 1:05:39
  Kim: And also, in my opinion, there's a lot of I I work with folks a lot on doing what is a stretch but still doable.
• 1:05:47
  Kim: I find that folks, when they get into this space, like you're saying, it just shrinks so small that you're you're not challenging yourself at all.
• 1:05:55
  Kim: And then it shrinks even more.
• 1:05:57
  Kim: And I think personally, Personally, the key for these folks is to learn to do what is a stretch but still doable.
• 1:06:04
  Kim: And that is what is going to expand their capacity.
• 1:06:07
  Kim: So it's doing the stabilization work that I've just said, while doing what's a stretch but still doable, right?
• 1:06:15
  Kim: It's like, okay, I can work five minutes a day.
• 1:06:19
  Kim: Can I do seven?
• 1:06:21
  Kim: Does that feel like a stretch but still doable?
• 1:06:25
  Kim: And maybe I stay at that point for a week or two weeks and now it's 10, right?
• 1:06:30
  Kim: Um there the body needs to be challenged.
• 1:06:35
  Kim: It can't, it it's it's just like um, you know, if we uh are completely immobilized and uh uh let's say in outer space and we have zero gravity that's that's exerting any sort of force or pressure against our body, we are going to atrophy.
• 1:06:53
  Kim: And it's the same with our mind and our body.
• 1:06:56
  Kim: And so, yes, honor the capacity, but you have got to stretch it in a way that's a stretch but still doable, or your your range is gonna continue to narrow and atrophy.
• 1:07:08
  Mariah: Yeah, that's really, really helpful.
• 1:07:10
  Mariah: And I think that we forget that, right?
• 1:07:12
  Mariah: Because we're also we live in the society where it's like depending on what you say in your house, is what you're gonna get on your algorithm feed.
• 1:07:21
  Mariah: And so sometimes it's like do hard things, hustle, hustle, hustle.
• 1:07:26
  Mariah: And then in other ways it's soft life, soft life, soft life.
• 1:07:31
  Kim: It's a false binary.
• 1:07:32
  Kim: I hate that binary.
• 1:07:34
  Kim: I love that you're pointing this out.
• 1:07:35
  Kim: I'm very, very, very passionate about this.
• 1:07:38
  Kim: Yeah, it's not either or, and that's the trap of ambition, too, I think, right?
• 1:07:43
  Kim: With folks who are entrepreneurs, it's like either I'm going all out, I'm hustling, I'm busting ass, or I'm living soft grill moss era, right?
• 1:07:50
  Kim: And there's like no in-between.
• 1:07:54
  Kim: And it's like that is not it.
• 1:07:56
  Kim: There can be ambition with the with the structure of that's in accordance to my values and my capacity.
• 1:08:04
  Kim: There can be seasons of ebbs and flows of like, yeah, I'm hustling, I'm stretching myself a little bit more for this launch.
• 1:08:12
  Kim: And I have the resilience and the capacity to do that because I am in my window of regulation.
• 1:08:18
  Kim: And that's okay, and I can come back.
• 1:08:22
  Kim: Like, we don't need this the rigidity of I can only be moss girl, is its own form of dysregulation, in my opinion.
• 1:08:35
  Kim: We need to be able to have a nervous system that can flow and uh adjust to and be responsive, like I said, to the demands that are on our life at any given time.
• 1:08:52
  Shay: That's so good.
• 1:08:52
  Shay: And I I think it teases up perfectly for this last question.
• 1:08:56
  Shay: You brought up this idea that successful women are confusing resilience with self-abandonment.
• 1:09:02
  Shay: And I think there are a lot of us out there that are um just toughen through a bit and calling ourselves resilient, and really we're gonna get to the end of our lives and maybe have some like regrets about how things could have gone.
• 1:09:14
  Shay: Tell me about like what is that difference between self-abandonment and then resilience.
• 1:09:22
  Kim: Yeah, this one is like the closest to my heart because I would say that this is the pattern that has run in my life probably the strongest and just has the strongest undercurrent.
• 1:09:36
  Kim: And you know, I will just say that I'm a person that like I'm a getter dunner, you know.
• 1:09:42
  Kim: I can I'm laughing because I can push through almost anything, and we confuse that ability of I can with I should.
• 1:09:55
  Kim: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
• 1:10:00
  Kim: And again, to me, this goes back to the truth.
• 1:10:04
  Kim: That's the bedrock of everything.
• 1:10:08
  Kim: Okay, well, I can push through this, let's say, partnership that would um add 20 hours of work to my weekly amount that I'm working, and I can get that done.
• 1:10:22
  Kim: Should I?
• 1:10:24
  Kim: Based on where I feel like I'm at in my nervous system levels, based on my current priorities and goals, my values, where I most want to be spending my time.
• 1:10:37
  Kim: Should I?
• 1:10:38
  Kim: Just because I can, right?
• 1:10:40
  Kim: And that's being uh honest with ourselves of maybe, maybe in the past I would say yes to this person because I don't want to disappoint them.
• 1:10:49
  Kim: And that's actually self-abandonment because I know that my real value is being home with my son more right now.
• 1:10:55
  Kim: That's self-abandonment in that moment.
• 1:10:58
  Kim: That's not resilience, that's not me like, yeah, I'm getting it done, right?
• 1:11:03
  Kim: It's abandoning what I actually want, it's abandoning my true values, it's abandoning my true capacity.
• 1:11:09
  Kim: Does that answer your question?
• 1:11:11
  Kim: Girl, you're taking us to church.
• 1:11:13
  Mariah: Me and Shay are over here, like, we're not it, we're like, oh yeah, we're foaming at the mouth.
• 1:11:19
  Mariah: We're just like, this is a combination of a conversation.
• 1:11:23
  Mariah: Like, if you guys aren't watching the video because we don't post them anywhere, uh, Shay's head down was at one point, and I saw like her arms like in the air, like literally, like almost in church, like situation.
• 1:11:37
  Mariah: It's yeah, like it's yes, that answers the question, and like, yes, that makes sense.
• 1:11:44
  Mariah: And I'm like laughing to myself over here because again, it's just that's exactly that's one of the hardest things, in my opinion, in my life, especially right now, that like I am being confronted with in different ways all the time.
• 1:12:02
  Mariah: To be honest, in business, it's to be in business, it's way easier for me because like my worth and all of that is not wrapped up into this stuff.
• 1:12:12
  Mariah: And I've spent a long time expanding my capacity in business, and like business feels good and business feels easy, and I have white space and I can say no and I have boundaries.
• 1:12:20
  Mariah: And then you add in family dynamics and you add in friend dynamics, and these are the ones that my husband has to constantly be like, Why are you adding more shit to your plate?
• 1:12:31
  Mariah: You say that you want to chill.
• 1:12:34
  Mariah: Why are you not doing that?
• 1:12:36
  Mariah: Like, that's what you say.
• 1:12:37
  Mariah: He was like, I don't care if you say yes to this person or take on that additional errand that somebody wants you to run.
• 1:12:45
  Mariah: He goes, I don't care whether you do it or not, but you have said previously that you don't want to do this.
• 1:12:54
  Mariah: So why do you keep doing this?
• 1:12:55
  Mariah: He was like, if it feels fun and joyful and life-giving to you, then do it.
• 1:13:00
  Mariah: If that is not how it feels, then why are you saying yes when you really mean to say no?
• 1:13:05
  Mariah: And to me, it's like growing up in the way that I was patterned and like my family dynamics and being what's the word, like parentified.
• 1:13:13
  Mariah: Like when I was a very small little kid, my entire family would fall apart if I said no.
• 1:13:19
  Mariah: Like that's just the way my parents have both admitted it emotionally, and like all of that, I held the entire family together.
• 1:13:25
  Mariah: And so it takes a lot in a different arena for me.
• 1:13:31
  Mariah: Like it's not business, it's more personal, where it's like I need that intense reflection back from my husband of like you can say no.
• 1:13:40
  Mariah: And it's almost this like reminder of like, wait, I can like exactly what you were saying.
• 1:13:47
  Mariah: I can, but should I?
• 1:13:49
  Mariah: And then it's I'm having to ask myself the question is this worth like you're saying self-abandonment.
• 1:13:56
  Mariah: Like, is do I want to choose this other person before I choose myself right now?
• 1:14:01
  Mariah: And sometimes I do have capacity, right?
• 1:14:04
  Mariah: Sometimes I am so nourished and resourced, and I'm fucking flowing over and I'm like, listen, bitches, what are we doing this weekend?
• 1:14:11
  Mariah: What do we need?
• 1:14:13
  Mariah: But then other times I'm like, absolutely, I don't have the capacity for this.
• 1:14:18
  Mariah: And being able to notice that and see my husband say no, it's easier for him.
• 1:14:24
  Mariah: He didn't he didn't live the childhood that I did.
• 1:14:26
  Mariah: It's easier for him to him to be like, not really feeling it, don't really want to.
• 1:14:31
  Mariah: It sounds awful to me.
• 1:14:33
  Mariah: I appreciate it though, and like there's no story wrapped up in it has been an incredible example and a reminder for me constantly of the same exact pattern because it's sneaky, it's sneaky in these different ways.
• 1:14:51
  Kim: It is so sneaky.
• 1:14:52
  Kim: I love the nuance and examples you're bringing.
• 1:14:55
  Kim: Um I'll give you all an example of this that is recent for me, and I think can be really helpful for listeners to just illustrate this like, yeah, I can, but should I?
• 1:15:09
  Kim: Like this difference between resilience and self-abandonment.
• 1:15:13
  Kim: This is kind of like for me, when I had this moment, I was like, okay, I have like reached the pinnacle of like not like self-abandoning myself when this happened.
• 1:15:24
  Kim: And I know there will be more, but this was like a really big one for me.
• 1:15:27
  Kim: So um, my son is three and a half years old.
• 1:15:30
  Kim: I had a four-year fertility journey before him.
• 1:15:34
  Kim: Um, we had to go through IVF.
• 1:15:36
  Kim: It was absolutely horrible for me.
• 1:15:40
  Kim: Um, and I told myself, I was like, I will never go through IVF again because it was just really, really challenging.
• 1:15:47
  Kim: Um, and then we had another transfer, the transfer failed.
• 1:15:51
  Kim: And I had myself questioning like, maybe I need to go through IVF again.
• 1:15:56
  Kim: And based on various factors, they told me I was gonna have to have somewhere between four to six egg retrievals done in order to accomplish our goals with my son.
• 1:16:06
  Kim: And it was one egg retrieval, and that was awful enough.
• 1:16:09
  Kim: And I really kept on telling myself, like, again, I'm a getter dunner.
• 1:16:14
  Kim: I'm a, I will do whatever.
• 1:16:16
  Kim: I will like, I was I was investigating going to Spain to get all these treatments done and moving my entire family to Spain, all these things.
• 1:16:24
  Kim: Um, and for a while I really entertained.
• 1:16:27
  Kim: I was like, I can do this.
• 1:16:28
  Kim: I know I can do this, I will put my body through this, I will absolutely, I will just grind this out and go through it.
• 1:16:34
  Kim: And I had this moment where I was like, I don't have capacity to do this.
• 1:16:41
  Kim: I don't have capacity to be the wife and the mother that I want to be to my child that's already here.
• 1:16:49
  Kim: I don't have uh, I don't have it in me.
• 1:16:54
  Kim: Like, yes, I could, and who I would be on the other side is this depleted version shell of myself.
• 1:17:02
  Kim: I could, but I'm going to choose not to in this moment because I don't have, I would be abandoning myself and I would be abandoning the capacity that I have.
• 1:17:15
  Kim: I would be being dishonest with myself about the capacity that I actually have and what I have to give to this situation.
• 1:17:24
  Kim: I know that's a very like high-stakes situation.
• 1:17:27
  Kim: Um, but again, it was like the moment where I was like, okay, I've I've got this like no self-abandoning thing really down in in this moment.
• 1:17:35
  Kim: Um, but I feel like that's like kind of a good example.
• 1:17:40
  Shay: Cool.
• 1:17:40
  Shay: I what is really coming through for me right now, and I hope I can say this well, is that I'm realizing more and more so that our nervous system is really like the canary in the coal mine.
• 1:17:52
  Shay: Like it is, it is the weather vein.
• 1:17:54
  Shay: You know, when when these things start to pop up, something is going, something is off.
• 1:17:59
  Shay: And what I'm hearing you say is a lot of times that something we talked about radical honesty.
• 1:18:05
  Shay: It's radical honesty about your own wants, your own values, your own priorities in that chapter.
• 1:18:12
  Shay: And we talked about easy tools.
• 1:18:14
  Shay: And the thing that keeps coming to my mind is what you do with a life coach on day one of okay, right now, these are the priorities in my life.
• 1:18:24
  Shay: These are the big ones, these are the medium ones, these are small ones.
• 1:18:27
  Shay: And remembering for you, what are your ethics, what are your values, what are your priorities, and then revisiting that exercise regularly because they can shift and they can change.
• 1:18:36
  Shay: And for you, that example, like what your previous priorities were, it sounds like they shifted over time.
• 1:18:42
  Shay: And so I love this idea of like, I think at the heart of this, a lot of this is I often say to Mariah, I feel like a lot of us don't know what we want.
• 1:18:51
  Shay: We don't know what our values are.
• 1:18:53
  Shay: We don't know ethically how we want to operate in this world, what we want to be known for.
• 1:18:58
  Shay: Like, that's really zooming out and sitting with yourself and that radical honesty idea.
• 1:19:03
  Shay: And I really feel like a lot of women, especially when you ask them what they want and what they need, can't even answer the question.
• 1:19:09
  Shay: And so I'm just again like, oh shoot, reconnecting with values, recorrecting with priorities, like that really when those things are off, that's when your body's like, hey, we're not acting how we want to be acting.
• 1:19:22
  Shay: And so then your nervous system comes in and starts to give signals.
• 1:19:25
  Shay: That to me, like I've never had this.
• 1:19:28
  Shay: Kim, thank you.
• 1:19:29
  Shay: Like, I like like I'm having light bulb, light bulb, light bulb.
• 1:19:32
  Shay: Like the way you think about this and talk about this is nuanced and holistic.
• 1:19:36
  Shay: And the way you're framing it is a different way than I've ever heard before.
• 1:19:41
  Kim: I think you got it, Shay.
• 1:19:43
  Kim: That was really beautiful.
• 1:19:44
  Kim: I appreciate you sharing.
• 1:19:45
  Kim: Yeah, it is a canary in a coal mine.
• 1:19:47
  Kim: It's meant, it's meant to be seen as a messenger.
• 1:19:54
  Kim: It's letting you know.
• 1:19:55
  Kim: Like I always just look at it as this is letting me know something that is asking for my attention.
• 1:20:02
  Kim: To start with that it might be asking you to change something, but at the very least, it's asking you for your attention and get more acquainted with it, get more in relationship with it to really determine is this something that needs to be changed?
• 1:20:18
  Kim: What is it asking for?
• 1:20:19
  Kim: What message is it trying to tell me?
• 1:20:21
  Kim: Because it is trying to tell me some kind of a message.
• 1:20:25
  Mariah: And it doesn't always have to be burn down the business, burn down the life, change all this stuff.
• 1:20:30
  Mariah: If you are quiet enough, you can hear it when it's a little shift, when it's as simple as like, you know what?
• 1:20:40
  Mariah: I've been putting too much shitty creamer in my coffee lately.
• 1:20:44
  Mariah: And that is an example that I'm coming to terms with right now.
• 1:20:49
  Mariah: It's pumpkin and it's delicious, and I'm literally, but like I know, I'm like, I know, because typically it's the bitterness that I really do enjoy with coffee.
• 1:21:00
  Mariah: And it's a silly example, but it can be something very, very small with that.
• 1:21:07
  Mariah: And like we were saying, like, it's not sexy, it's fucking boring, but also it's being curiously guided.
• 1:21:17
  Mariah: Like, sorry to beat y'all over the head with like the name of this podcast, but like that's the point.
• 1:21:22
  Mariah: Like, that's it.
• 1:21:24
  Mariah: That's the juice of life, that's how we move through the nuance, that's why we how we find our medicine.
• 1:21:30
  Mariah: That's you can't make decisions from your life or for your life based on other uh people's decisions.
• 1:21:42
  Mariah: You have to develop the honesty and the relationship with yourself enough to be curiously guided because that is the only thing that I believe that we have.
• 1:21:56
  Mariah: That's it.
• 1:21:57
  Mariah: The rest of this could go away tomorrow.
• 1:22:00
  Mariah: And the only thing that we came in with in this life and we are leaving with is the ability to be curious about all of these different ways.
• 1:22:08
  Mariah: And like you have to find out what that means for you.
• 1:22:12
  Mariah: And it's not in one chapter of life, it's an ongoing thing.
• 1:22:17
  Mariah: In three weeks, you know what my medicine's gonna be?
• 1:22:20
  Mariah: This shitty pumpkin creamer.
• 1:22:22
  Mariah: I'm gonna have to buy it again.
• 1:22:24
  Mariah: Like it changes so often.
• 1:22:27
  Mariah: And are we quiet and are we calm and are we uh do we have enough white space?
• 1:22:33
  Mariah: That's why I really like like how you brought that in.
• 1:22:36
  Mariah: Because it's like, do we have enough white space to listen?
• 1:22:38
  Mariah: If you don't have enough white space, you're not gonna hear any of this.
• 1:22:41
  Mariah: You're you're not gonna have the capacity because other things are going to take your attention, and it's easy, it's easy to let it take your attention, but like the juice and the zest of life isn't uh you don't come by it easily, but but it's simple and like there's all of these nuances that go into it, and I agree with Shay, like Kim, the way that you explain this stuff, it's beautiful and it's deep, but it makes like it's actionable and practical.
• 1:23:14
  Mariah: And so thank you for sharing your wisdom, for answering these questions, for going on this journey and having this conversation.
• 1:23:22
  Mariah: I feel like time flew by.
• 1:23:25
  Mariah: Uh, if people want to learn more about you and what you got going on, where can they find that information?
• 1:23:31
  Kim: Yeah, the best place is my website, which is Kim Kimballcoaching.com.
• 1:23:36
  Kim: I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes, the spelling and everything.
• 1:23:39
  Kim: Um, I'm also on Instagram, somewhat infrequently.
• 1:23:43
  Kim: That's the second place the second best place to find me, Kim Kimball Coaching on Instagram as well.
• 1:23:49
  Mariah: Okay, perfect.
• 1:23:50
  Mariah: And then Kim has the threshold mapping day as well.
• 1:23:53
  Mariah: Do you want to give people a quick overview of like what that is and how they know if they're maybe a good fit for this?
• 1:23:59
  Kim: Yeah.
• 1:24:00
  Kim: So really, if you find yourself at what I call a threshold moment, which is just, okay, I know that something is shifting, something is changing.
• 1:24:09
  Kim: What got me here is not going to get me there.
• 1:24:13
  Kim: And something's gotta give.
• 1:24:16
  Kim: And I don't quite know what my next steps are or what needs to change.
• 1:24:21
  Kim: Um, I help you map that out so that you actually walk away with clarity, with tangible next steps.
• 1:24:28
  Kim: Um, and it's one full day asynchronous together for 150.
• 1:24:33
  Kim: Um, and yeah, it's a great way to start out and get some tangible next steps and some clarity.
• 1:24:40
  Mariah: Yeah, that's incredible.
• 1:24:41
  Mariah: We're gonna put the links to all of that in the show notes below.
• 1:24:44
  Mariah: And then we have one more question that we ask every human on the podcast.
• 1:24:47
  Mariah: So, what's been sparking your curiosity lately?
• 1:24:50
  Mariah: Can be business, life, silly, serious, whatever comes to mind.
• 1:24:55
  Mariah: Oh.
• 1:24:55
  Mariah: Sparking my curiosity.
• 1:25:03
  Kim: I'm gonna say I'm really intrigued by learning about homeschooling right now because I attend and tend to homeschool my son.
• 1:25:13
  Kim: And just really like learning about the industrialization of the school system, turning kids into little cogs in the machine and little factory workers, and you know, learning about my son, the way that his brain works, how we can actually do things in a way that I feel um will better help him prepare him for being an out-of-the-box thinker and not industrialize him, for lack of a better word.
• 1:25:47
  Kim: So yeah, that's kind of intriguing me right now.
• 1:25:50
  Mariah: What a gift.
• 1:25:51
  Mariah: We need more of that.
• 1:25:52
  Mariah: Me and Shay, man.
• 1:25:53
  Mariah: These are like mine and Shay's conversation for the past like month, wrapped up into one episode.
• 1:25:59
  Mariah: Uh, yeah, that's incredible.
• 1:26:00
  Mariah: Your son is very lucky to have you.
• 1:26:02
  Mariah: Thank you so much.
• 1:26:04
  Mariah: Thank you both for having me.
• 1:26:05
  Mariah: This has been really fun.
• 1:26:06
  Mariah: Yeah, of course.
• 1:26:08
  Mariah: So thank you again for coming on the podcast.
• 1:26:10
  Mariah: Like I said before, guys, definitely reach out to Kim.
• 1:26:12
  Mariah: We're gonna put all of her links and information in the podcast show notes below.
• 1:26:17
  Mariah: But I think we're ready to close this episode down.
• 1:26:19
  Mariah: So remember, friends, that you have the power to create whatever the fuck you want.
• 1:26:24
  Mariah: Follow the nudge, ask questions, and let curiosity guide the way.
• 1:26:28
  Mariah: We'll see you in the next episode.