On the right side to be exact, just above my skull.

 If you've never experienced that, it won't make any sense to you, but if you have, you know exactly what I mean.

When my anxiety was at its worst, I couldn't get a full breath

And if something intense happened to me, flashbacks of the event would loop over and over and over again in my mind

Navigating change and lost your routine

I've just recently shifted out of having a paid part-time job with standard hours etc to being fully self-employed.

This shift has totally changed up my routine.

I no longer have a reason to walk the same route that I used to.

It's now harder for me to get to the gym to workout.

Doing what you want, sometimes means disappointing others, and that’s an uncomfortable experience to have.

You can intellectually know that you want to do something

Have all of the arguments on why it’s healthy to prioritise your own needs

Maybe you’ve read a book on this topic

Listened to a podcast

Can articulately explain the rationale to another person

Resting in your genius is a helpful route out of burnout

Bed rest and relaxing is intuitively understood as the solution to burnout, alongside meditation, exercise, connection and eating well.

But often a missing ingredient for healing is getting to experience being in your genius. 

And by genius, I don’t mean being a savant or exceptionally intelligent.

I mean the skills that you intuitively grasp, innately excel in and enjoy getting mastery in.

Shame and fear based motivation only gets you so far and burns you out

Finding the intrinsic motivatioSticking to the running theme from yesterday, I’ll illustrate my point.

I’m no stranger to the aesthetic preferences of our culture and there are times when I run to ‘get skinny’. 

I drag on my leggings and lace up my trainers out of fear.

Fear of being rejected for being soft and curvaceous.

Fear of hearing taunts about my fatness (these come from childhood memories of being the chubby kid)

And just an overall sense of being wrong and running being the cure for that.

A celebration of being a bit shit at something and doing it in anyways 

I've been running for 15 years. It’s been an on and off thing for me. Months, years have gone by where I haven’t hit the pavement, but it always beckons me back.

There’s an intrinsic call, desire, pull, goal, knawing knowing that compels me to keep at it, despite the fact that I don’t hit any impressive metrics when it comes to distance or speed and that I’m mostly shuffling along with generous breaks.

Why becoming more embodied helps you to stop defaulting to your people pleaser persona

I had this experience this other day.

I wanted to do one thing, but I imagined that someone else wanted me to take the opposite action.

This person hadn’t expressed that, in fact all evidence pointed to the contrary, but my brain used them as an inner critic, puppet, avatar to beat myself up with.

In response to this perceived judgement, I felt shame for wanting what I want.

Like I was a bad girl (it was a young part of me that was having these thoughts), and that I would be abandoned and discarded for not complying with someone else’s wishes.

My gums live under capitalism

Maybe yours do too?

I was brushing my teeth the other day and I was doing this new thing where I press gently and spend more time on the activity.

I’ve started doing this thanks to my hygienist, who told me, as I have been told before, that I brush too vigorously and my gums have receded as a result.

Despite having been given this precise information years ago, and intellectually knowing it to be true, my body had a whole other timeline for compliance.

Seven years to be exact.

Why is this?