On Choosing Yourself

On the podcast we cover… 

One of the things I knew I wanted to ask you about was stress and the nervous system. 

I remember you coming in for a reflexology treatment with me years ago, I would usually ask at the start of a session, how are your stress levels? Could you put them on a scale of 1-10? 

Everyone usually answered somewhere around a 7/10. 

You said ‘oh yeah, maybe 1/10’, I don’t like to move beyond a 2/10 and make my life work so that’s the case. 

I was so impressed with your attitude, I found it really inspiring and have spent the last few years trying to create a life where my stress levels are that low all of the time! 

Please, please, please can you share how you keep your nervous system so calm and regulated? 

My intention is always to allow my levels of stress to be very, very low. Because I know how detrimental (stress) is to our health, it is really important to create a life that serves me, not a life I am serving. 

What that looks like is having really clear boundaries around my space and time. I have a morning routine that I dedicate to myself every day, without fail. I get up, I sit, breathe, meditate, maybe go outside. There are lots of different practices I do. Each day I’ll pull on the ones that are aligned for me that day, depending on where I’m in my energy or my cycle. 

When I can feel stress rising, the most important thing for me in that moment is to pause and allow myself to be still and not be taken by the wave of stress of anxiety or external noise and pressure, because that’s mostly what it is. 

We stress ourselves out from the pressures that we conceive or perceive are being placed upon us. But it is our choice to say I don’t take that. I’m not available for that. Thank you for your stress or your worry but I will respond in my own time. 

It’s really living in the energy of abundance rather than scarcity. 

Scarcity leaves us in stress and grasp and anxiety. Wealth and abundance leaves enough space and time for everything. 

The slower I move, the quicker I get things done. 

Have you always lived this way? Or was there a moment of change? 

I was a very, very anxious child. I recognise now it’s because I’m highly intuitive and energetically sensitive. I had a big trauma at 19, my mum passed away and was in hospital for some time before that. For me, there were situations that life brought or impacts or traumas that have driven me into those higher states of stress, worry, anxiety. Then learning from those experiences, oh, I can’t live like this, this is not good for me. I can feel how it is pulling on me. I don’t feel well. 

The deep connection that I’ve always had to my body, and as that journey is deepened more and more over time. The more embodied I become. The more in my body I am, rather than disassociated or fragmented or pulled in all these different places. The more attuned I am to this very subtle current, the quicker or easier it is to recognise and just pull myself back. 

Also the boundary piece like choosing, making sure that I choose to not leak out of my bournary and take on external energy. 

The practices in the times of stress that support you, breathwork, meditation, movement, self-soothing practices, and bringing greater nourishment into the body. The practices that bring regulation back into the body, coming back out of dysregulation. 

Have you had to make some difficult and different decisions to lead your life that way? 

It asked me to make decisions challenging to the old patterns and the way we are conditioned to live life. 

When you are choosing yourself, it’s one of the hardest decisions to make, but it’s the easiest as well. 

We are not conditioned to choose and put ourselves first. 

But when you are there, you’re like, this is the only choice. 

How have you found setting those boundaries and choosing yourself? Has it got easier over time? 

Have you found it easier to make the hard choices as you start to notice the benefits to yourself and your wellbeing? 

There are some things in our life that are set, solid stone, non negotiables, we all have different ones. 
The boundaries are malleable and fluid and arrive in the moment. 

This is because, if we hold preconceived ideas around our boundary, when we don't fully know where we can expand our capacity, what we are and are not available for in the moment. We want to be able to truly hold ourselves in each moment of our life experience and make a decision then. 

Some days, you have got loads of energy, and somebody is asking for support from you, you can choose to say, yes I have excess, I’ve got space and time, what do you need, let me be here, I can help. 

Other days, you are tired, you are depleted, maybe it’s your winter, and it’s a no, because the energy is not there. 

So if the boundary is, I’m never available to help people on Tuesdays, we don’t really allow ourselves to be in the conversation of life and relationship. 

A lot of the time the mind wants to have a set thing and live in it. ‘Oh, this is the pattern and we just live in that and then everything’s okay. Then I’ll be safe…’ 

So it's learning and a lot of this learning is within the body. The deepest work is learning how you feel in the moment, rather than a preconceived idea of how you are going to feel. Actually, how do I truly feel now? And that sounds really simple, but it’s actually very, very deep work. Because a lot of us have been conditioned out of learning what we feel, in the moment. Or we hold a belief of what we should feel in a certain interaction. 

So when we unravel all of these ideas and beliefs that we’ve inherited, we get to learn better how we feel in each moment. 

How do you work with clients to start listening to the body? To start to notice what is theirs? What they are carrying that actually belongs to someone else? 

Carving out space and time for stillness and quietness in your day. That might look like meditation. It could also look like colouring in, or some other form of mindful practice. When there is quietness, there is more space to just tune in. 

Any kind of moment, yoga, free movement are going to bring you deeper into feeling your body, opening your body and all of the places that hold all of these energies, feelings and sensations. The shoulders, the hips… 

Working with a coach, a therapist or a healer, somebody that can attune and recognise the feeling. 

When I’m guiding clients through a process I will bring them back to the feeling. What sits underneath it. We don’t often stop to pause and ask ourselves, what is the feeling underneath that. Developing an understanding of how old that feeling is. We can recognise that we are maybe a little angry in this moment but there also exists a pool of anger from a childhood memory that hasn’t been addressed or felt. So we sit with the inner child and let her be angry, have a tantrum and let it all out. 

Awareness is the key really, body awareness, emotional awareness and creating space for yourself to be with what you feel. 

Showing myself the compassion and kindness to make the space. You can’t keep giving unless you are filling yourself up again. 

I’d love to speak to you about the practices you share around coming back to the body after birth. I don’t think it’s common to plan for yourself after birth. I came to see you for closing the bones. 

Culturally we talk about birth as this end point but it’s just the beginning. You are right at the start and you have to meet yourself. There is no bounce back this is uncharted territory whether it is your third or your tenth baby. 

Everything changes, there is a new energy in the family. 

In our society there exists a big energy around the self sacrificing mother and the self sacrificing woman. The issue is if women stay waiting for the system to take that pressure off they will be waiting a long time. It’s found in the solid no. 

You can do a lot. You can do many of the things you desire to be but maybe not all at once. We move in seasons and cycles. Finding contentment in what is rather than what isn’t. 

Birth can be a really difficult time, where things go very differently from how you had hoped. How do you start to heal that disconnection? Is there anything that you would invite women to explore? 

Birth is a sacred and mystical experience that no plan can be made for. It demands a deep surrender from you. You have to let it unfold rather than pushing it where it needs to go.