Do you struggle to make decisions in life? Maybe it’s what to eat or what rug to buy. Sometimes feelings of overwhelm, fear and anxiety can cloud our judgment when making the smallest of decisions. Or maybe family and society’s expectations have been steering your life rather than honoring what you need or desire.
In addition, most of us have been conditioned to prioritize logical thinking over listening to our bodies, leaving us feeling disconnected from ourselves, alone, and looking for something more in life.
In today's solo episode, I share a powerful tool to connect you to your intuition, inner guide, or inner compass. It’s a tool I’ve been using for years and it’s a way for you to access your inner wisdom so you can make decisions that will guide you to more freedom, peace, and happiness in all areas of your life.
Today’s conversation combines somatic experiencing and a coaching tool I use with my clients so you can enhance your decision-making.
You’ll learn:
- How your body and mind process information at different speeds.
- Why it's crucial for your happiness to prioritize your body's signals over family, friends, societal expectations, or your logical thinking.
- A guided body scan you can use anytime you need to get grounded or centered.
- This is the one tool you can use today to improve your decision-making and help you tap into your intuition.
- A simple way to tell the difference between a fear-based body sensation and your intuition or inner guide.
- The long-term advantages of using this tool in your daily life.
You and your body are wiser than you might realize, and I hope this episode helps you create more freedom and joy in your life.
Much Love,
Laurie
Click here for more information on my “Women in Transition” workshop or Click here
Click here for my Mammoth Survey
Click here for my Somatic Course Survey or Click here to share your thoughts directly with me.
Click here for my Core Values Exercise
Click here for my “Somatic Healing for Beginners Guide”
Click here to purchase my book: Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go
Sign up for my newsletter here to stay current on my upcoming offerings and podcast interviews!
Send us a Text Message.
***************************************************************************************
DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL, MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED THERAPIST IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL WITH RESPECT TO ANY MEDICAL ISSUE OR PROBLEM.
Hey there, it's Laurie. Just a few announcements before I get started on this week's podcast. First, I have room still for my workshop on Saturday April 27 from 9 30 to 12 00. I titled it Women In Transition and it's great for anybody who is going through any type of transition, big or small. We are going to do some self reflection work, some Somatic healing, and really allow you to develop a relationship with your nervous system and identify where it lives in your body and learn how to gently release the energy. So that way you can make room for what's waiting for you to come in. We're going to end with a really yummy sound bath, Susie Miller is going to be leading that and it will really help integrate the morning's work. So that link will be in the show notes.
In addition, I have a Women's Retreat that I am planning for April or September, and with love your insight and feedback if that interests you at all. It's going to take place up in Mammoth so, there'll be a link for a two minute survey that will help me create a retreat that is tailored to what you guys want. And thirdly, I have another survey for those of you who are interested in more Somatic healing, an online workshop that I am looking to create and I have a third survey that will be titled somatic healing survey and I'd love your input on that as well. So that way, I can create a course that is tailored to what you guys want. So enjoy this episode, and I look forward to hearing from you guys.
Welcome to Confessions of a Freebird podcast. I'm your host, Laurie James, a mother divorce, recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go. A therapy junkie, relationship coach, Somatic healer, and now a podcaster. I'm a free spirit and here to lift you up. On this podcast, I'll share soulful confessions and empowering conversations with influential experts. So, you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those earbuds turn up the volume and let's get inspired because my mission is to help you create your most joyful, purpose driven life, one confession at a time.
Welcome back, Freebirds. I'm so glad that you're here with me and over the course of the last six months or however long you've been with me, you've heard me talk a lot about the importance of connecting to our bodies. I've talked also about Somatic Experiencing, and Somatic Healing. While today I want to share with you a simple tool that can help you start tapping into your body's intuition, your inner guide, or inner compass, whichever resonates with you, they all basically mean the same thing. And I'm not going to geek out on the details about what's happening in our bodies. If you'd like more info on that you can go back to an episode I dropped back on October 5th, 2023.
And that's titled Your Body's Wisdom and How You Can Improve Your Well Being Today. Before we get started on this one tool, I wanted to touch on once again that the body is more connected to the truth than our minds. Yet, that's how we've been taught. We've been taught to think our way through everything, and I've said this before but it's worth repeating. Again, the cognitive mind is processing 40 bits of information per second. Yet our body is processing 11 million bits per second. If you've ever been in a situation where you've had a body response but have had no words that your body processing the information first. Maybe it's like when you've been startled or there's been some type of car accident or something out of the ordinary shows up. Oftentimes, we have been taught to override our body's messages, socially, culturally, or even by our families.
A perfect example is there's many cultures out there that tell their children, that it's prestigious for them to be a doctor or a lawyer and really push them into those fields. Yet, that may not be what they want to do. That's an example of us, overriding what may be our intuition, our inner guide, our inner compass is telling us what to do, because we are all different. And what's right for our parents, or what's right for a specific culture may not necessarily be right for us. Tapping into our intuition, our inner guide can get a little complicated, especially if there's been any type of emotional, physical trauma, then it can be difficult because we don't necessarily feel safe in our bodies and have learned to disassociate.
And then we might receive a response that's more fear based, anxiety based or even anger based. But when we learn to connect with our bodies, when it's in a very calm state, that's when we learn how to trust again. When we do this over time, we can learn to develop a better relationship with our body and trust it more. I know, there was a time in my life, I didn't always understand what that meant. When I left my marriage, I would often confuse a trigger with what my intuition was saying. And so it's really important to remember that our body compass, our intuition shows up when we are in a calm state, not when we're in a heightened state, when we don't feel safe, when there's fear, or anger, or any other negative type response.
And if you are someone that is struggling with this, let's set up an inquiry call and let's work through it together because it's really important to know the difference within your own body, and really learn to distinguish between the two if you wanting to connect with your body more. And when we do, our body will tell us the truth. Here's an example, think about a time that you have told a lie. Notice in your body, where that shows up? Is there a tenseness in your body? Do you feel a restriction in your body? Now think of a time when you didn't. When you told the truth when you didn't tell a lie. Where do you feel that in your body, now? What do you notice that's different in your body? Do you feel less restriction, do you feel a softness? If so, where?
The reason it's important to stay connected to your body. It's because it's a portal to your own wisdom to freedom, that inner freedom. And what's true for you because what's true for you is not necessarily what's true for me,or what's true for what society dictates or what our culture might have dictated, or what a belief that we held on to a long time ago may not necessarily be true now. A perfect example which I've talked about before is I had this belief, this ideal that if I created this perfect family, that it was going to save me. Nothing could have been further from the truth and what was true for me then, or what I thought was true for me then, is not true for me now and it's okay for those things to change.
We are all different. We have different wants. We have different needs, as people in general but also in different stages of our life, and that's okay. So as we get into this, I wanted to start out with a simple body scan. You can slow this down, I'm gonna take about five minutes to do this but you can slow this down. Or you can hit the pause button and come back to this when you're in a place where you can sit quietly or lie quietly on your bed. So to start, we just want to notice our feet. We're gonna start from the bottom up. Just notice your toes. Notice the bottoms of your feet.
Notice the tops of your feet. Now to show your calves, your shins, your kneecaps, the back of your knees, your thighs, your quads, and your pelvic area. Notice if there's any tightness, any softening in your body. Now, we're going to move up to your stomach. Notice any softening or restriction notice the back of your body, or the back your body might be touching the chair. Notice the front of your body, notice your ribs, notice your breathing, notice your upper back, your chest your shoulders. Now just notice your fingers, maybe you even wiggle them, your palm of your hands, the back of your hands, your wrists, your forearms, your elbows your upper arm.
Now let's move up into your head. Notice your jaw, and to see if there's any tightness there. Maybe even move your jaw around, loosen it up. Open your mouth wide. Notice the back of your head. Notice your nose, your eyes, your eyelids, your forehead and the top of your head. Now that we've completed this body scan, the tool that I'm going to introduce is a very simple tool in my coaching training. We call it The Body Compass. But it's really the body scan was a way to calibrate and calm the body, and this tool is going to be a great tool for you to tap into the body as you make decisions.
There is a little bit more to it than I do in coaching, but the simple thing is to think about a small decision you need to make over the next couple of days. Not anything big am I going to get there divorce or not? Or do I need to buy a new car or not? But make it small, do I go to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods to buy my groceries this week or do I have eggs for breakfast or oatmeal? Or what creamer do I put in my coffee this week? And when you are looking at two options, and let's just take the Trader Joe's and Whole Foods option. You think about going to Trader Joe's and the experience that you might have the food that they offer. Notice what body sensations you are having. And if you were to use a scale from a negative 10 being the worst, zero being neutral and a plus 10.
Where would that fall on that scale? Now repeat that with going to Whole Foods or whatever the other option is for you. When you think about Whole Foods, or whatever your other option is. What kind of experience will that be? How will that nurture you? If you are looking between these two, maybe how you might feel when you're sitting there eating the food? Where does that register on a scale of minus 10. Zero being neutral, plus 10 being the best experience. This is how we start to learn to really tap into our bodies. And when we use this exercise or this tool, on very small simple decisions that we have to make. The more we can use it, the more we can start tapping into that inner wisdom. And then we can start making using it for bigger decisions, and slowly working up to using it for a car.
I have been practicing this for years and now it's very easy for me to just tap into my intuition and I almost in some instances have a knowing of very easy yes or no, around certain decisions. Some decisions that still harder. Typically those are the bigger ones or the ones that are going to impact me the most and or my family. But the bottom line is when we can relax and connect to our bodies. It is not only helpful when we make our own life decisions for ourself, which is going to give us so much more freedom, inner freedom. We can be more present with others, we can be truer to ourselves, we can develop more empathy toward ourselves and toward others.
And remember Freebirds, this is a journey and it's a practice. It's not a destination. And you might get off track but you can always come back to this podcast or this tool. And just notice how you're using it throughout the day, because at the end of the day, our body, that inner wisdom, that inner guide, it's our body that's going to take us to where we want to be. Not your mind, your mind will always try and persuade you to play it safe. So the more that we can trust our bodies, and allow that to be our guide, the more freedom we're gonna find the more happiness and joy, especially at this space in our life.
So let me know if this is helpful, and if you're looking for more guidance, don't forget about my upcoming workshop. That is Saturday, August 27th We're going to take a deeper dive into Somatic healing and some reflection and really learning to let go. And also my retreat and the somatic survey for the upcoming course that I am looking to create for you guys. So, thank you so much for being here and I hope this gave you the opportunity to find a little bit more inner freedom. Until next time.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions Of A Freebird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts. If you're interested in becoming a Freebird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at laurieejames.com to learn how we can work together or to sign up for my newsletter. So you can receive tips on how to date and relationship differently and ultimately find more freedom and joy in your life. If you found this podcast helpful, please follow or subscribe rate and review and share it with friends so they can find more freedom in their second or third act also. Until next time.