Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness [Episode #580]

This week’s topic is: Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness

Our emotional and mental awareness has so much to do with the physical world. It has to do with what comes up for us foodwise with food cravings, how we deal with, take care of, and treat our bodies. A lot of the issues in our bodies often start with our emotional and mental energies.

There’s a lot of impact that can come from being more aware and learning to process our emotions. This all comes from our Four Cornerstone Philosophy, which is food, body, emotional, well-being and spiritual growth. Today, we’re going to be diving into our third cornerstone, and how it applies all through our life. It really makes such a big difference. For me, when I started understanding this, it became a game changer.

It’s 10 years now, since the Beauty Detox Solution was published. I remember back then I really thought I had it figured out, food combining, simplifying. It’s huge and impactful, however, it isn’t everything. And so when I started getting into this emotional awareness and emotional digestion and processing, it’s when I went from base camp to the summit, and it has manifested in daily life. I have a lot more clarity, a lot more energy, and so much more ease. I want nothing more than for you to have amazing results as well.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Laura – Ontario 

Like you, I am a recovering perfectionist and have gotten to a really good place with my relationship with food and my body. But lately I feel like I’m losing grasp of my inner peace and have been experiencing food guilt and body shame. I feel it in my body that I’ve gained weight and this keeps me in my head and leads to consistent self-doubt about my choices. My why is always about feeling good, but the stress of looking my best for my upcoming wedding day isn’t helping my mental space. How do I separate my intrinsic intentions from my extrinsic Intentions so that I can return back to my inner peace?

Gaile – Vilnius 

I’ve been struggling on how to balance my inner life and business. I see that when I have more work to do it’s difficult to get the balance and as I have no balance I am not so focused on my business and feel more lost if I am on the right path?

Cheyenne – UK 

I’d really like to honor my cycle when I’m on my period. I always waddle around feeling moody, sore and in need of some TLC. What would you recommend as some good routines to add to honor my cycle and give myself some love during this time?

Lynn – Connecticut 

I’ve been told I’m aloof but don’t mean to be. Do you have some practices to turn this around so I’m more present or aware?

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Hi Beauties and welcome back to our Thursday Q&A community show where our topic today is Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness. I am so excited about this topic. And I love that we’re delving into this because our emotional and mental awareness has so much to do with the physical world. It also has to do with what comes up for us foodwise, food cravings, how we deal with our bodies, how we take care of our bodies, how we treat our bodies. And also a lot of the different issues that may manifest in our bodies often start with our emotional and mental energies.

So this is a really big topic, there’s a lot of impact that can come from being more aware and learning to process our emotions. This all comes from our Four Cornerstone Philosophy, which of course is food, body, emotional, well-being and spiritual growth. So today, we’re going to really be diving into our third cornerstone, and how it applies all through our life. It really makes such a big difference. For me, when I started understanding this, it became such a game changer. So you know when you think that you kind of, if you’re a climber, if you climb mountains, you think you’ve gotten to the top. And then you get there and you’re like, oh my gosh, that was a false summit, and there’s more and more to climb.

So for me, I look back and I’ve been reflecting back because it’s 10 years now, since the Beauty Detox solution was published. So I’ve been at this for a decade now. And I remember back then I really thought that, I got it figured out, food combining, simplifying. All the things that we talked about, GGS. And it was huge. It is huge. I’ll use it the present tense, it is impactful. But it isn’t everything. And so when I started getting into this emotional awareness and emotional digestion and processing, it’s when I went from base camp to, I want to say I’m at the summit, but I went up, up, up, up much, much, much higher up the mountain. And how that’s manifested in daily life is a lot more clarity, a lot more energy, so much more ease.

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Even then back then, even then from 10 years ago, maintaining my weight, having a flat stomach, having better digestion, having better skin. All of this has just continually improved more and more and more, which is why I am so passionate about talking about it and sharing it with you guys, because I want nothing more than for you to have amazing results as well. Before we dive in today’s show, though, just a quick reminder, to please leave us a review on iTunes. I will thank you in advance. Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s just a great way to support the show energetically. And we all know that reviews are important and helps other beauties just like you find the show. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And also, please be sure to subscribe to our show. Because that way you just get that constant source of inspiration and motivation coming into your inbox into your life. And if you don’t subscribe, it’s easy to forget sometimes, or life gets busy, you get off track. So you can think of it like one of your daily rhythms, your weekly rhythms and practices to subscribe and keep yourself going.

Question #1 around the topic of: Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness: Like you, I am a recovering perfectionist, and I’ve gotten to a really good place with my relationship with food and my body. But lately, I feel like I’m losing grasp of my inner peace and have been experiencing food guilt and body shame. I feel it in my body that I’ve gained weight, and this keeps me in my head and leads to consistent self-doubt about my choices. My why is always about feeling good. But the stress of looking my best for my upcoming wedding day isn’t helping my mental space. How do I separate my intrinsic intentions from my extra budget intentions so that I can return back to my inner peace?

All right. All that being said, let’s get into our show today. Reset your emotional and mental awareness. This is so, so big. Our first question comes from Laura and she lives in Ontario. She writes, “Like you, I am a recovering perfectionist, and I’ve gotten to a really good place with my relationship with food and my body. But lately, I feel like I’m losing grasp of my inner peace and have been experiencing food guilt and body shame. I feel it in my body that I’ve gained weight, and this keeps me in my head and leads to consistent self-doubt about my choices. My why is always about feeling good. But the stress of looking my best for my upcoming wedding day isn’t helping my mental space. How do I separate my intrinsic intentions from my extra budget intentions so that I can return back to my inner peace?”

Laura, my love sending you a big hug, sister love. I can feel the energy of your question. I can feel that you’re going through a big struggle. So first of all, I just want to acknowledge you and thank you for being part of our community. And thank you for being so open with us and really sharing from your heart. So it is normal on the path. Remember the path to growth is not linear. And it’s not that we check things off the box and we never go back, it is often two steps forward, one step back, four steps forward, two steps back, five steps forward, one step back. It’s this sort of back and forth. And over time, we start to settle in more and more and more.

So when I was really starting on the journey now, over 10 years ago, I would go forth, but then I would slip back into calorie counting mode a little bit. Like, I should really know some of these numbers. And it was that back and forth for a while until it started to really settle in. There are moments that will challenge us, moments that feel big, and there’s a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, and we build it up in our head. And weddings are one of those times. Parties, events, whatever, just certain junctures of time, we can start to go back to our old patterns, because we put so much expectation around those moments, we build them up so much.

So then fear starts to creep in. And that not enoughness, the disconnection starts to come. Because it all comes from the fear of, maybe I’m not going to look my best, or maybe I am going to mess this up. It’s different than daily life where we kind of cruise in and cruise out and the consequences don’t feel as big. But it makes sense that your wedding is coming up, Laura, and so some of these old patterns can start to emerge. So what happens is, with fear, often comes the tendency or the want almost to try to control things, to make it feel better to self-soothe, to make it feel like, okay, it is going to be okay. So we tend to cling to things that make us feel safer. And so let’s say you’re going along with this pattern, and you’re tuning in, and it’s about feeling good. But then you start to trip yourself up, this fear, whatever the route fear may be.

It could be I want to look my best. And if I’m not my best, then I’ve messed up my wedding day, I’ve messed this up. Again, you just built it up in your head. So what happens is, then you start to try to control the things that feel safer like your weight, you start to hyperfixate. And then this brings in the perfectionism you mentioned. It brings in the controlling, it brings up the body shame, it brings up the beating yourself up in your head. And then the ups and downs and the swings that come from moving away from connection. Because fear is the opposite of love. Fear is the opposite of our nature. Fear is erratic. Fear is reactive. Fear isn’t conscious. Fear takes us away from truth.

So the first thing I would say, Laura, is to really take a deep breath and take some time to really process. This would be great opportunity to journal or just to sit and reflect about some of the deep fears that come up around the wedding. Maybe some of them are around the wedding. But also these instances can bring up so much even unrelated to the wedding like general fear, general discomfort, general pressure that comes, again, that tendency to be a perfectionist comes with tremendous pressure, and then not enoughness. So I would just sit with some of that energy and really look at it and just examine what is really coming up for you. And then I would say to step back a little bit once you’ve done that processing and take a pragmatic approach. Just look at it from the four cornerstones perspective.

Foodwise, go back to basics. Go back to morning routine, ritual, practice, glowing green smoothie, hot water with lemon, Dharma’s kale salad. Now we’re coming into summer, so more raw food. Go back to basics, simplify your diet, make sure you’re taking your SBO probiotics, a little bit in the body category, body cornerstone, but I’m just mentioning it here. So just simplify and take the food over analyzing part out of it. Just try to keep things really, really simple, not perfect, but simplify. Bodywise, it’s really important now to be kind to your body and to connect to your body. So I really recommend massage, either self-massage or getting professional massage, which is something I think all brides should do, or a combination, just really getting back to body connection.

Take some walks outside, take some deep breaths, just sit with your body. Do some fascia rolling on a roller. Just connect in a loving way with your body. Maybe go get a manicure/pedicure, whatever it is, just soothing self-care body practices. Emotionally, we talked about the journaling and sitting with, what is the wedding bringing up for you? Like, what’s coming up for you right now? Is there fear people are going to judge you? Is there fear you’re not going to be good enough in your wedding dress? Is there fear about maybe your husband won’t love you anymore? Your fear of rejection. Keep digging down, down, down. And when I started to do this, I could see in the stillness the real fears that were there, and then I could start to process them.

Otherwise, it’s always under this mask, these Band-Aids of I’m not skinny enough, which took me a long time to get underneath what that was. It wasn’t about the skinniness. It was about rejection, it was about being lovable, fear of not being lovable, fear of not being loved. And then I could deal with the deeper part. So I would sit and really process what this all is coming. What it really is all about. And then here’s the big one, spiritual growth. All this disconnection you mentioned in your question, the intrinsic from the extrinsic, getting in your head, feeling confused, all of this comes when we are disconnected from our true essence, when we are disconnected from the true self.

Then we start to live really on the level of life that is on the surface, and that’s when we start to feel like we’re tossed around in the waves. That’s when we feel every calorie and we start to feel we’ve messed up this meal, and we start to get into this headspin of, I’m not doing this or this, confusion. And then chaos starts to com. Go to the calm place, go to your center, Laura, go down below. And I promise you, if you sit down there in the center, you will get some reprieve, you will start to feel a sense of centeredness. And that space is there for you whenever you can call on it, whenever you choose to call on it.

So morning and evening, part of your practice, essential part of your practice is your meditations. I’m happy to say that besides the free meditations on our app, we’re putting out two monthly meditations on the blog with explanation and the audio, and it’s going to be really beautifully packaged. So over my mysolluna.com. The ones in May, I think would really apply to you, Laura, it’s about shifting energy. So it’s a little bit of that out of control feeling. We’re moving from inward, winter, to more extroverted, more being seen, seeness. Summer, less clothes, being out more, a lot of different energies are shifting right now. So I recommend that you check those out.

And to remember whenever you feel that you’re in your head, whenever you feel critical about your body, and you’re getting obsessed about all this surface stuff, it is time to go down deeper to the place where that stuff naturally starts to get smoothed out. And it is a practice. And it does take time, which is why I’m really passionate about the guided meditations, which always have this flow of the movement, breathing and connection and then introducing the intention and really moving it into moving into the space, moving into that space of potency to start helping you rewire your brain and the subconscious.

So it’s there for you, and to me, that is really how we make deep lasting change, is to work deeper than the surface. So I really, really encourage you to do that, Laura, to take a look a deep dive, to look at the four cornerstones and to take this holistic approach because you are a whole beautiful being. And when you tap into that, you’re going to feel really whole and really powerful at your wedding. It’s going to be amazing. So thank you so much my love. Keep in touch with us, let you know how you do. Sending a big virtual hug and so much love. All right.

Question #2 around the topic of: Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness: I’ve been struggling on how to balance my inner life and business. I see that when I have more work to do, it’s difficult to get the balance. And as I have no balance, I am not focused. So focused on my business and feel more lost if I am on the right path?

Our next question comes from Gail, and she’s from Vilnius. She writes, “I’ve been struggling on how to balance my inner life and business. I see that when I have more work to do, it’s difficult to get the balance. And as I have no balance, I am not focused. So focused on my business and feel more lost if I am on the right path?” So, I think that this is a great question Gail. I think this is a practical question about feeling centered in your life. So it feels like the essence of your question is that you can feel peaceful inside. But then when there’s more work to do, then you get off balance and the peace goes out the window. So there’s like life, and then there’s your business.

What really speaks to me in this question is still this feeling, this perspective of fragmentation. Meaning, here’s my inner life, and then here’s my work, and here’s my business out here, and then here’s this part, and there’s this part. And when we see the different parts of our lives as separate, it means that we have separations still inside of us. The more hole we become, and we embody our wholeness, we are already whole. But what I mean by that is, when we step into our wholeness, we start to see that not only are the four cornerstones connected completely, but all parts of our life are truly connected.

So it is possible to create a space of connection inside of yourself, so that you can hold on to that connection and that sense of, again, I’ll say the word again, that connection, as you go into life. You turn up the notch, life gets busier, you can stay kind to yourself, to others, you can stay connected. And then it goes down, it gets less busy, you’re moving through, you’re flowing. It is true how we do one thing is how we do everything. So we’re just kind of moving along. And so it’s important to really take that idea that we don’t have to get caught up in the swirl of life like other people. We don’t have to feel like, oh my gosh, there’s so much going on with my business. It’s so busy. Now, this throws me off, which is like a popular thought. Like, I’m okay until this happens.

It’s natural and it’s normal. But as we get stronger and stronger, and we really embody these cornerstones, and we really, really move into our practices, and we anchor into our practices, what happens is we become more embodied. We embody what we believe, and what we believe we live. And we live that way in our inner life, in our friendships, in our personal relationships, with our kids, and yes, in our business. It’s funny that I look back on my business, I look at Solluna and before that, it was kimberlysnyder.com. Before that it was kimberlysnyder.net until I could buy the URL from this Canadian guitarist that held out for a couple years. And I look back on the choices that I made, and some of the people that I worked with, I didn’t always feel fully aligned.

And sometimes there was instances like bigger things happened. Someone that I trusted, one of the original partners ended up stealing money. That was like a wake up call for me. We go along in life, and we learn and we grow, and I feel like I’m a lot more discerning now. I’m a lot more tuned into really relying on my intuition, where I don’t think I believed in myself as much back then. So what happens now is there’s flow, and there’s things that happen in the business, of course, but I really do feel connected to everybody on my team. Sometimes things happen and you get in little tussles and little misunderstandings. But it’s really important as a team, we listen to each other, we honor each other, and we clean up the mess.

So I mess out too. And sometimes if I’m short or I thought a certain way or saw a certain perspective, sometimes I have to clean up the mess. And I think it’s important that we all treat others the way that we would want to be treated because everything is so connected. So I guess what I’m saying, Gail, is that at the end of the day, as we move into wholeness, this fragmentation of feeling balanced here, but imbalanced there, will start to iron out. So you’ll feel balance or flow, which is the word I like to use, through your life. And again, just as I was mentioning earlier to Laura, it’s a wonderful thing to really nurture yourself in all of your cornerstones, all four of your cornerstones in your daily practices.

So what that could look like to you is, for instance, you meditate in the morning, and maybe in the middle of your business day, it’s busy and you have more work to do and you feel unbalanced, you make it a priority to do a midday meditation. Even if it’s five minutes to reset, to breathe and to close your eyes, to close your laptop. And to come back to that center that you may have found a few years earlier, a few hours earlier in the beginning of your day. And then you also bookend it, you do it at the end of the day before you go to sleep, before you close your eyes, before you really shut down for the night, you rebalance.

Your food choices will support you. You bring nice, healthy snacks to work so you feel good about the food choices. It maybe the middle of the day, you take a stretch or you go for a little walk, so that you feel connected to your. You body feel good, you feel dynamic, you don’t feel that stagnation. You know what, I journal sometimes in the middle of the day. Maybe emotionally, you need to take a breath, notice any feelings, maybe write down anything that’s come up for you. Or maybe if you’re part of our Solluna Circle, which I definitely recommend, if you’re listening to this topic right now, you would probably benefit immensely. It’s our membership program that’s inside of our free app. You check in with the circle.

I was just in the circle actually before this, and I was reading and commenting and seeing what other people were sharing about. It’s such a beautiful space, it’s very different than social media. In fact, one of the things I hear about a lot from our community is a lot of people are not on social media that are in the circle. And people like me that are in social media for business reasons, but not as drawn. I’m not drawn as much to being on social media. It’s when it’s there, and I like to connect to people there, but the circle is a much deeper place. So you find the ways to nurture yourself. Let’s say the juncture of like beginning of the day, you really start off balanced.

You’re in your home, you set the energetic tone for the day, morning practice. And then middle of the day practice, I definitely recommend, and then evening practice. And you bring in these elements, you start to get into this flow of nurturing yourself through the day on all the levels. Because what happens is, if we feel good in the beginning of the day, but then work, all this external stuff starts to hit us. If we don’t nurture ourselves, then that’s when we self-soothe. That’s when we rely on our practices. That’s when we do a mini meditation. That’s when we check in with our body and our feelings. Then that’s when we start to feel off balance if we don’t do those things.

So we’re just doing our practices at home in the morning and evening. Sometimes we really need it in the middle of the day the most when we’re in the throes of daily life. We need it then as well. So get ready to go, Gail. I’m sending you so much love. Remember to honor yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And notice how that balance will start to translate across your entire life.

Break

All right, my loves. I’m loving these questions so far. We have two more for you guys on this amazing topic of reset your emotional and mental awareness. We’re going to take a short break, and when I come back, we have two more questions for you guys.

Question #3 around the topic of: Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness: I really like to honor my cycle when I’m on my period. I always waddle around feeling moody, sore and in need of some TLC. What would you recommend as some good routines to add to honor my cycle and give myself some love during this time?

All right, my loves. We are back from our break. We have two more questions. And the first one comes from Cheyenne who lives in the UK. And she writes, “I really like to honor my cycle when I’m on my period. I always waddle around feeling moody, sore and in need of some TLC. What would you recommend as some good routines to add to honor my cycle and give myself some love during this time?” I love this question, Cheyenne. This is a real rhythm within rhythms, cycles within cycles, within cycles. So within our monthly cycle, we have our moon cycle, which is the connection that we have as women to in nature these phases. We have the luteal phase and then the full menstruation and the blood that comes, and then oscillation and it just cycles through and through and through and then we get to menopause, and then it starts to shift again.

So we’re always in flow. We’re always cycling. We are dynamic beings. And I love this question because it’s about really honoring that and tapping into that. Because when we honor where we are, we start to really be … That’s about presence. And it’s not about lamenting, it’s my period, I wish it wasn’t here, covering up, stuffing it down pretending it’s not there and acting and exercising and doing everything in the same exact way. That’s not honoring the present moment, and it’s not really honoring our bodies. So waddling around moody, sore, need of TLC. Now, just reflect this back to you, Cheyenne, like what does you know TLC mean to you during those cycles and during those times?

For me, I will say, it’s a time of deep reflection, more stillness and more quiet than other times of the month. So, I am a busy mom, I know a lot of you guys listening are as well. But I have an hour a day where I go for my walk. And sometimes during my period, I will just come down to my little office where I’m sitting here now talking to you. And instead of going for my walk, I will just go into child’s pose, do yen yoga or just lie down. We don’t have to do the same thing every day. In fact, it’s part of this natural contraction and expansion. It’s part of his natural rhythm of nature, of movement and flow to not do the same exact thing every day so that there’s flexibility within our routines.

We have our morning practice, there’s certain things that are anchors. Like meditation, hot water with lemon, I usually do every day smoothies, even though the smoothies, the ingredients shift seasonally as we add in some seasonal ingredients, things like that. But the time when I have my period, I like to allow more stillness and space. So more time for journaling, more time for meditation. Again, less time for me, like less active exercise, less pushing. I am a gentler with myself. Like you said, TLC to me means I don’t maybe hit every deadline or ask for extensions. I just don’t get as much done in a day and I’m okay with that because that’s part of the natural flow.

And when we push, no pun intended with the flow, but when we push against the natural cycle, we end up really depleting ourselves. And so we may feel exhausted, we may feel like we did the work, but it wasn’t that great of the work or we could have done better. And so we then we have to end up going back and doing the work again and we get frustrated. Ask yourself, again, it always goes back to the four cornerstones because this ensures that we are taking that holistic approach. I would write them down in your journal, and you could do little quadrant, food, body, emotional, well-being, spiritual growth. What are the practices that speak to you?

Cheyenne, what does TLC mean to you on your period? For me, again, foodwise, I like comfort food during my period. I like hot, mushy food like khichuri. So I allow myself to really go into that mode of warm, comfort, being held. Bodywise, as I mentioned, I don’t do a lot of active exercise. It depends on the month. But in general, I like to rest and stretch and do less extroverted Yang practices. Emotionally, I get like all of us hormonal, a little emotional, so I allow more space, my feelings to be felt. I like soft music. I like instrumental music a lot with no words. I like kirtan, the music of Krishna Das, who came on our podcast here a couple of weeks ago is one of my favorite artists.
I let myself feel my feelings and I now feel no shame for that. And spiritually, I just like to be more quiet and meditate longer, but also just have times to be still. And to me, it feels good to be quiet. I don’t own a TV, so I don’t like a lot of blaring noise, personally. To me, TLC is not movies and TV, but maybe it is for you, Cheyenne, maybe that feels like downtime. So it’s very personal how we start to take care of our bodies in a deeper way. And it’s the intuition that will guide us. Things like essential oils and candles and nice sense that sooth us are beautiful practices. I like to do a nice, deep hair mask and just feel like I’m really honoring my body. It’s a time of deep wisdom to come up.

Tami Lynn Kent, who was another guest on our podcast, talked about in some indigenous tribes, the menstruating women would be sat down in the tribe and they would ask them about their dreams, because they believe that a lot of wisdom comes through menstruating women. So it’s so deep and it’s so personal, but reflection, self-reflection will lead you to your intuition, to be your guide. But again, I just encourage you to really approach this. Deep self-care means honoring our wholeness, to look at how you can really honor yourself holistically from the four cornerstone perspective. And I would love to hear about some of your practices, Cheyenne. So please keep in touch with us, let us know how you do. Sending you so much love out there in the UK, big virtual hug and look forward to connecting more.

Question #4 around the topic of: Reset Your Emotional and Mental Awareness: I’ve been told I’m aloof, but I don’t mean to be. Do you have some practices to turn this around so I’m more present or aware?

All right. Our last question comes from Lynn and she lives in Connecticut. And she writes, “I’ve been told I’m aloof, but I don’t mean to be. Do you have some practices to turn this around so I’m more present or aware?” I love this question, Lynn. Love, love, love. Thank you so much for writing this in. I think this is a beautiful question. And this goes back to what I was saying earlier to Laura, and actually, through all these questions, and to Gail, about how you do one thing is how you do everything. It’s an energy that runs through. It’s the person that litters consistently, probably is careless around their home, or careless with feelings, other people’s feelings. The thoughtful person that picks up the garbage is thoughtful in other parts of their life.

And so aloof to me is about some degree of disconnection, which starts with disconnection from self. So it doesn’t mean anything about you, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or anything. I mean, lovely, amazing person. Love and light in your core, you are amazing, you are whole. But if we don’t take the time and the practices to connect in with that wholeness, that disconnection again starts to run through other parts of your life. So then you start to feel a little bit disconnected from other people, maybe not as tuned into their needs. Maybe this disconnection can start from many places. It could start from childhood, maybe it started from survival mechanisms as a child, maybe never been taught to connect deeply with yourself.

I will say, personally, I wasn’t really taught to deeply connect with myself. I don’t fault anybody for that, because my parents and caregivers, everybody around, teachers, everybody was doing their best, but I didn’t really connect deeply with myself. And so definitely, as a child, like all kids, I guess, but as it progressed, I could maybe push my ideas more, I was the leader of friends. And maybe I chose friends that were you no more susceptible to that a little bit weaker so I could guide them and move them along. And then the more connected I became with myself, I could say, some of that was a little bit narcissistic, sit back and really see the quality of everybody and connect. And then people will feel that you are in your heart, and people will feel that you can see them, and you will not feel aloof anymore, you will feel deeply connected, and deeply embodied.

And that deep connection, again, comes from all the self-work that we do and feeling really, really connected on the deepest level with our beautiful self. So what I recommend here is self-connection comes from, I mean, I say it you guys again and again because I do believe it is the strongest practice, is meditation. If we don’t spend time with our true self, we don’t connect to ourselves, we think we connect, we think we look in the mirror and we’re like, okay, maybe I need a deeper color of foundation because we’re going to summer. Or, look, I need a haircut. Or hey, I’m sleepy, I’m going to go to bed an hour earlier. These are some ways to connect, but it is much more surface.

When we connect in with our essence, which is formless and can’t really be put into words, it’s a whole other game, guys. It’s a whole other level. We start to know ourselves because we spend time with ourselves truly. And we take the time to know and to connect. And once you connect with yourself, you will start to see others and connect with them automatically. It happens automatically. You connect much more deeper. In the same way that when you love yourself, which comes from this connection as well, it all comes from the same place, you can open your heart more and you can love others more as well. And is the same energy that runs through you will run through others. The energy that runs through you to yourself runs through you into your connections with others is what I mean by that.

So I encourage you, Lynn, above any other activity or practice or any other way that you could use your time, as I read your question, it just deeply, deeply speaks to me to remind you and to encourage you, and of course, not force you or push you, but to encourage you to really honor your meditation practice. And to establish one. Maybe you don’t have a meditation practice right now. But to me, of all the practices, it is the one that will bring you to your center. It is the one that will bring you to the connection that you’re seeking. And connection feels good. This is the Feel Good Podcast, it is all about connection. Connection feels joyful, connection feels peaceful, connection feels calm and centered, and in equanimity.

So I encourage you, again, I mentioned we have the free meditations on the website, on the app, find one that really works for you. I think it’s great to start with these guided ones so that you can kind of sit back and be led, and drop in and not have to think, am I doing it right, this or that. And over time you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. But it really is helpful to go with the guided practices, so I recommend that. And then over time, you will start to just feel that clicking in, that anchoring in, that real I started to really know myself and this is me. This is me perfectly imperfect. Me, though. Whole, unique, beautiful me. You can start to feel the truth of that. Not on the cognitive intellectual level. But on a deep, deep embodied level, the level of truth and it feels really good when you get to that place.

Thought of the Week

So sending you so much love, Lynn, on your journey. Stay connected to me. I’m here for you always. Stay connected to the community. Sending you so much love, so much gratitude, and I’ll see you back here soon, hopefully. And all you Beauties out there, all my loves, all my babies, I want to leave you with a quote of the week. I wrote this as I read the show topic, but it actually resonates and it came up when I was answering Cheyenne’s question in particular. The quote I wanted to leave you all with is this, “Stop pushing and let life flow.”

So when we’re pushing, and we’re like, I need to lose this weight. I’m off again. It’s like that angst feeling and that’s like, fear and anxiety and all this … It just feels so stagnant. You can just feel the energy of it. It’s like, you think you’re getting further along faster. But really, what you’re doing is you’re slowing things down. Because you’re creating all these energetic blocks. And there’s all this chaotic energy that comes from that. It’s all fear based, and it will never really work the way that you want it to work. So instead, we actually surrender more. We let go, we merge with … We’re co-creators. We are creators, but ultimately, we’re co-creators. We’re co-creating with God, with life, with the universe, whatever word you want to use.

So when we stop all this frenetic pushing, we take a deep breath, and we flow and life becomes a lot more easeful, a lot more enjoyable. And ironically, things tend to work out a lot better, and in a lot more of the timeframe that we would like them to work out. So love this topic. I love, love you guys. I’m so grateful for our community and our tribe. And I’m always here for you. I’ll call it out again because it’s my big passion project right now and one that I will always pour my heart into, and I love it so much. And it’s where I can offer so much more support is our Solluna Circle, which is inside the app. Check it out, please. I think you’ll love it. You loved the podcast, you’re really going to love the Circle. We go deeper. It’s very personal.

We do a live Zoom every month and I see everybody’s face and everybody has a chance to speak and it’s really beautiful. So I’ll leave that with you. Remember the show notes are over at mysolluna.com. Lots of recipes and articles, meditations, of course, and much, much more over there. I’m also on social @_kimberlysnyder. I’ll be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. Until then, sending you so much love, so much gratitude and see you back here soon.

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