How Healing with Yoga Creates Emotional Resilience During a Midlife Career Change with Karen Fabian

Is the story you’ve been telling yourself keeping you stuck?

Maybe it’s not the circumstances that need to shift, but your perspective on them and how you feel inside. 

In this episode, I talk with Karen Fabian, a yoga teacher, podcast host, and founder of Bare Bones Yoga. She left her high-level corporate job to pursue a more meaningful path. We discuss what it looks like to make a midlife career change, especially when self-doubt arises and old narratives resurface.

Karen shares how healing with yoga and somatic healing helped her release grief, rebuild her life, and create a business that supports other women. We also discuss the importance of mindset shifts and how practices such as movement, meditation, and visualization can foster personal growth for women.

You’ll learn:

• How to overcome self-doubt in midlife
• The benefits of somatic practices for emotional healing and resilience
• How to create lasting change through small, consistent steps
• The six pillars for confronting self-doubt and embracing new opportunities at any age.

If you’re navigating change, questioning what comes next, or working through old beliefs that no longer serve you, this conversation is for you. 

Listen now and share this with a friend who could use some support on their journey.

Much love,

Laurie

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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.

Transcript

Laurie James: 0:02

Lori, hey there. It's Lori, two quick announcements before we get started on today's episode. First, I've made a little more room in my schedule to take one more one on one client. So if you've been thinking about learning more about your nervous system and developing a relationship with it so you could find more freedom in your life. Consider this the universe tapping you on the shoulder. Click the link in the show notes and schedule a free inquiry call today before that spot gets filled up second. Thank you to those of you who have answered my questionnaire about a new offering that I'm creating. I'm keeping this questionnaire or survey open for one more week, so if you have 10 minutes to spare, I would greatly appreciate your feedback. There is no obligation, and it really allows me to create an offering that would meet your needs, not what I think you want, and enjoy my conversation with my guest today, Karen Fabien. She's a yoga teacher, podcast host and business owner, and she's going to share with you how she went from a C suite executive to finding a more purpose driven career. And she's also going to share her six pillars to overcoming self doubt and embracing new opportunities at any age. So enjoy our conversation. Welcome to Confessions of a free bird podcast. I'm your host. Lori James, a mother divorce, a recovering caregiver, the author of sandwiched A Memoir of holding on and letting go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer and now 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 expert, so you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those ear buds, 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 for you birds, and thank you so much for being with me today. I am sharing the mic today with Karen Fabian. Karen is a yoga teacher, podcast host, author and founder of bare bones yoga. Karen has a background in rehabilitative medicine and healthcare, and integrates her deep knowledge of anatomy and movement into her teachings as a certified personal trainer and corrective exercise specialist, Karen empowers yoga teachers to lead confident, accessible classes while understanding the why behind their cues, and today, we are going to talk about a couple different topics. One, how she pivoted her career, how to help overcome self doubt and embrace new opportunities as women in midlife. And lastly, pick up a few yoga practices and as sadness that has been successful for her that she's going to share. Karen also hosts the podcast conversations for yoga teachers, if any yoga teachers are out there listening, that covers anatomy, sequencing, expert insights from leaders in the industry. So welcome Karen, and thank you so much for being here with me today. Oh my

Karen Fabian: 3:43

goodness, thank you so much for that lovely introduction, and thanks for inviting me on your show. Yes,

Laurie James: 3:48

of course, as we've talked about before, we hit record, yoga is been a huge, huge part of my life for the last 15 years. It's been such a pillar in my weekly exercise, I kind of got into yoga because I wanted the workout. But when I came out of my first couple of classes and felt this sense of calm and focus, I think that's what brought me back, that's my confession. Can you share with our listeners and take us back to when you decided to leave your six figure career behind, and what was the turning point that made you take that leap? Because that's a lot of security to leave behind. Yeah,

Karen Fabian: 4:40

it certainly was. I mean, what I'm drawn to in terms of the beginning of it was when I was married years ago, and I married somebody that I went to college with. It was one of those things that kind of creeped up on us. We didn't expect that we were going to start dating. We knew each other for a long, long time. And we ended up dating and getting engaged and getting married, and everything was great until it wasn't great, and

Laurie James: 5:08

I know that well, yeah, no fault

Karen Fabian: 5:11

of either of us. I think, honestly, even in retrospect, I don't even think I would have done it differently. It's just the way it happened. And when we got to the point, after counseling and conversation that we knew it wasn't going to work, I basically said, All I need is a little bit of money to go back up to Boston from where we were living in Atlanta, and I just need a car and that's it. We don't need anything complicated to extricate ourselves from this from this marriage. And so we just sort of worked it out on our own. And when I drove up to Boston and I took that money as a down payment on a house, one of the first things I did was I went on vacation by myself to this wellness experience in St Lucia, never taken a yoga class before, and one of the things on the daily agenda one day was a yoga class, and it was in this really cool room that looked over the ocean. And I was a pre athletic person. I had just never done yoga, and I went to this class, and I literally sobbed the entire time, and no idea. I mean, I knew sort of why, but I was so taken aback. And I can, I mean, this was in 1999 and I can put myself in the room. It was up on stilts looking out the ocean, and I could barely do the poses because I was so overtaken with emotion. So if you don't mind me stopping you there for a minute, you said you think you knew why, or you thought you knew why, that you were having all this emotion. What was it? In your opinion, to me, it was the loss of what I thought I would have for a long time. And so you were grieving. It was the grief absolutely coming up. Yeah, absolutely. And part of me was the person who thought I would go to college, get married, get a good job, and I was doing all of that. And so the part about the marriage didn't work out. I took it as I failed, yeah, and especially where it was somebody I went to college with, and I knew for so long. I remember I called my mom, and when we went on our first date, she was like, who you know? And I said, Yeah, because she had met him, son of college at Boston University, when we were standing in line to check into the dorm, and she was like, Are you dating him from freshman year, I just felt like I failed a big part of my life, and was where the pain and The loss was expressed from. And at the same time that experience, when I got home from the vacation, was on my mind, like, what was it about that modality that lit the spark to that release? And as someone who'd worked initially, I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. I ended up switching programs because I wanted to work with mind body. So jobs were in clinical settings, working with people that had all different kinds of physical trauma, but working with the mind and the body. And after probably a handful of months of past that experience of vacation. Randomly, a friend of mine said, Come to this yoga class. And I went to this yoga class that he had been going to at a studio, and my mind just exploded. I took this class and I said, this is what I want to do. This is absolutely it for me. It's this amalgam of all these things I love, the mind, the body, the anatomy, the physical, the mental, the healing, the somatic. And that started a path of practicing more at this studio, going to teacher trainings by the person who ran the studio, and then knowing that I had to extricate myself from my corporate career, which at that point was a career, was a very sensitive career. I was like a C level person, and my identity was very wrapped up in that. And at the same time, I was very passionate about teaching yoga and having that be my life's focus. Yeah.

Laurie James: 9:37

So before you go on, I just want to say something from a somatic place for our listeners, because so yoga tell me if I'm off on this because you're the instructor. I'm not, and you have much more experience. I'm just I'm a yogi, not a yoga teacher. That it was you were able to grieve because you were allowing your body to. Slow down, right? Because healing happens in the pause, and healing happens when we slow things down. And our society doesn't allow us and it teaches us to go, go, go, go, do, do, do. What's your take on that the

Karen Fabian: 10:18

slowing and the stillness and the presence is sort of the elixir that creates the environment for noticing, and the noticing so much is revealed, right? And sometimes even in the noticing, the pain that is able to come to the surface and be released. I mean, we all know people who live with pain, physical or otherwise

Laurie James: 10:47

or emotional, which can feel physical and can be as painful as physical, right, and

Karen Fabian: 10:55

can lead to disease. I mean, so much now the science is the connection between the emotional state and the physical state, with regard to stress and blood pressure and a whole bunch of things, and

Laurie James: 11:08

for women, autoimmune issues, totally Yes.

Karen Fabian: 11:11

So there's absolutely that connection. So to answer your question, the practice of yoga, obviously, there's different styles. What they all share is movement and breath and moments of stillness, and there aren't a lot of other ways to exercise that focus on those things. Everything sort of has a different focus. And it's not to say bad, right, wrong, anything binary. It's just to answer your question. I think it's oftentimes, I think why people are hesitant to practice because

Laurie James: 11:46

they find it boring, or their mind wanders and it's hard to stay focused on the breath and the movement, because it does slow down. I just wanted to make that point only because we're always growing and healing and different things. But through the eight year period of time in my life that I wrote about in my book, sandwiched, if there's any new listeners on here, yoga was a very as I said earlier on, a pivotal point. But I also had some of my greatest releases, or greatest moments of releasing that grief or sadness or whatever it is I was working through at the time, during yoga or in shavasana, right? Totally. So that's why I wanted to stop there and kind of point that out. No,

Karen Fabian: 12:40

I thank you for that. I think it's a really important point, and I think the story sort of gave us a chance to bring it to the surface. So yeah, continue on. Yeah. So at that point, I was very clear on what I wanted to do, even though the practical part of me was like, what are you really thinking of doing here? But I worked out a plan where I sold my house, I downsized to a condo in Boston that was close to the studio. I got a job for the studio, teaching there and also supporting the main teacher behind the scenes on the business side of things, so I pretty much thought I had things covered. And that was when I left my six figure job to go teach yoga, which I distinctly remember the job I had at the time. People were like, This was 2002 you know, you're crazy, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're not experiencing what I'm experiencing. I know this is what I want to do. And so that really was the fork in the road, kind of the turning point for me, where I thought I left my corporate career behind forever. What ended up happening was, although I loved it, and I loved my first foray into teaching, I was not making enough money. And even though I had this nest egg from selling the house and I was pretty savvy with what I was doing. It just wasn't enough, and it was really a problem with the model I had. I was really very much ensconced in working for this other person. Really couldn't create my own brand and my own opportunities and set my own grades. It was pretty much teach for this place. Get paid what they pay you, and you're so busy with that there really isn't any time to do anything at my own rate and make more money. So I built up a lot of debt, and I got to the point where I remember I called my parents and I said, I'm $30,000 in debt, and I really think, for now, I have to go back to work and I'll teach on the side. And I was really it was another point where I really felt like I had failed. I had left this corporate career to do this on my own, which really wasn't, in retrospect, on my own, because I had sort of hitched my wagon to this person. But at the time, it seemed like a really good plan. Right? And so there was a part of me that felt like I had failed, but the practical part of me knew I had to fix this problem of the debt. So went back to work, actually, for one of the divisions of the company, a company I'd worked for before, and I did that for probably two years, paid off the debt, kept teaching on the side, and then right around the time that there was that sort of big economic downturn where the mortgages were sort of crumbling in 2008 Yeah, right around there it was more for me, more around like, a little bit later, like 2009 a lot of the students that were coming to my classes couldn't afford to come anymore. So I found this location where I could teach yoga classes and just charge $10 it was in the heart of Boston, right behind Fen light Park the field, and I just charged 10 bucks. And I called it bare bones yoga, because you bring your own stuff. We're just going to do yoga. And I had a sign that I hung up like this big banner on the days I taught classes, it was actually a renovated gas station, so it had this very sort of industrial vibe. It was actually really cool. And I did that for a number of months, and then the space had to be revamped for something else. But I kept the name, and at that point, I said, I can do this now with this name as my brand, and because I had left this other studio system to go back to work, I thought, this is now what I'm going to do. I'm going to build up this brand as my own. So I left the corporate job for the second time, and now I had the freedom to create my own business, which I really didn't have before, and that's what I did. I created this whole portfolio of different opportunities, everything from teaching in corporates, teaching privates, teaching children working in different nonprofit settings, teaching prenatal in hospitals. I literally had this spreadsheet with 15 different tabs. Each tab was like a different silo of different kinds of yoga. And along with that, because I have an expertise in anatomy and teachers have such a hard time learning it, I created a virtual program teachers anatomy, because the business side of me said I need something that scales, even if I teach 100 classes a week, I be running all over the place. It's not a livable, scalable

Laurie James: 17:28

that's the hardest part I think about wanting to be a yoga instructor is it has to be a sidekick, unless you do something like this, right?

Karen Fabian: 17:39

And so that's the business. Side of me knew that that was something I needed to create, so I started the process of doing that, and that over time really became my main focus. And certainly, when COVID and the pandemic happened and all the studios shut down, thank God I had that online virtual program, because you were ahead of the game. I was ahead. I had been on Zoom for years when everybody was trying to figure it out, and I had a lot of teachers enroll, and that sort of force shifted me into the life I wanted, because I had been running around Boston teaching yoga for 22 years. I'd walked all over town in every kind of weather for, you know, all different kinds of classes, and I really wanted to transition from that, but I would have never walked away from the teaching part unless I didn't have a choice, and with the pandemic, I didn't so at this point, the main thing I do, I teach one class a week. The main thing I do, though, is I support yoga teachers in my program. And even though it's about anatomy, it's also helping teachers, primarily women, mostly women in midlife, who decided to either focus on teaching as a side gig or really start teaching more regularly. And part of what they want is to really develop on the personal side, so they can go into their classes and feel confident. And so that brings me to the conversation with you, because a lot of what we talk about really transcends teaching a yoga class. It really is about, how can I show up in the world as my most confident person?

Laurie James: 19:29

Confidence and embracing change in midlife, right, overcoming what we view maybe as a failure. And I want to go back to that point, because you had two different failure experiences, one failed marriage, and a lot of women listening. Often. I get a lot of people that are either thinking about divorce, that are going through a divorce, or that have been divorced. I attract a lot of those listeners. So how did you. Overcome that belief This is a failure. My marriage is a failure. Me becoming a yoga instructor has been a failure because, because that's a belief system and fill in the blank whatever it is my career was a failure. I was a failure as a mother, whatever it is, we often get to midlife and feel like we have been a failure in some way. So how do we change that mindset and that perspective?

Karen Fabian: 20:31

Yeah, well, for me, and I think this maybe is something that your listeners can relate to, I, up until that point, had created a whole bunch of stories to sort of hold up this perception I had of myself. So I had a story about why the divorce happened. I had a story about why I had to go back to work and put my teaching sort of on the side. I even had stories at the present moment, not the present now, but the present then, why my business wasn't growing like I wanted it to, and I even got to a point, probably about 10 years ago, where I thought, forget it. I'm not going to teach yoga anymore. This just isn't working for me. I had so many stories built up that were reinforcing in my mind a lot of the limiting beliefs I had about myself. One of them was I had a couple of really good friends who were on the cover of Yoga Journal, and I didn't really know how they got that opportunity, but I was just so jealous and so in, just so in jealousy that Who are they to be on the cover of Yoga Journal and get all that publicity? I had a good friend of mine who got this really amazing gig with a very large brand, and that just catapulted her to so much exposure that she was just fending off people to, like, work with her and come to her events and that sort of thing. And that had me like, why isn't that happening to me? So I had all these stories, and I got myself to the point where I really thought I was going to quit teaching, and I went out before I quit and I hired a neuroscience coach. I didn't want to hire a career coach. I was self aware that it was something in the way I was interpreting things and seeing the and so I knew that a neuroscience coach could help me shift the way I looked at things. And in our first meeting, she asked me just an open ended question, and I started to go into these stories, and she said, Karen, I'm just gonna cut you off right here. If you're going to use this time to just tell me all these stories, you might as well save your money. And I literally burst out into tears, because all of a sudden, all that armor, those stories were my defense system, or my excuses, was the reason why. And she could see that, and she called me on it, and I realized, oh my god, if I don't have those stories, it's me, it's me. I need to now face what's happening, and not so much sink or swim, but see that there's an opportunity for me to let go of these stories when I'm maybe not exactly sure what's on the other side, but realizing that it's got to be better than this, that work I did with her, because at that point, I made a choice that I wasn't going to hold on to these stories anymore. I don't know if she hadn't have asked me that, if she hadn't have seen that if I would have ended up moving forward, I probably would have quit, but interesting enough, our work shifted then to not helping me leave yoga and find a regular job, but actually helping me release my attachment to all these stories, and I ended up, from that experience, becoming fascinated with neuro linguistic programming and how people's beliefs drive how they experience themselves and other people and experiences they have, and this is a huge part of the work I do with yoga teachers in my program who yes, it's yoga, but to go In and teach yoga and feel confident you have feel confident when you're walking around right

Laurie James: 24:26

and again, from a somatic place, oftentimes and different people have different opinions on this, but from the training, the three years of training that I have done, our nervous system is the one sending those messages up into our brain because of a past experience. And so if you've had a failure as a child, if you got a bad grade and you were shamed about it, or whatever it is. Yes, that same fee and you and you weren't witnessed, it's going to show up. And so in order for us to work through our belief systems, from a somatic standpoint, is we need to do the certain somatic practices to help with that, and so much of the coaching training that I have done, I've always been attracted to the tools that are body based because they've made such a difference on me when I've worked with coaches that do that, and I think that's why I was so attracted to the somatic piece too, or the somatic experiencing practitioner training that I've taken was because I felt I was able to feel that confidence. I was able to feel more present once I worked through and realized, oh, I can regulate my own nervous system, and then my nervous system no longer is sending me those signals and those messages. And yoga can help with that, being calm, bringing ourselves down, because so many of us live up in our sympathetic nervous system, go, go, go, do, do, do. We've got, you know, 20 things on our to do list, and you know, we gotta call walk the dog, and gotta go to the grocery store, whatever it is that's on our list, so we don't allow ourselves, and that's why I love yoga, because it brings us down. So anyways, we got off on a tangent, but I just wanted to share that with our listeners, because I think that that's an important and there are mindfulness coaches that believe it starts in the brain, and there's some studies, but all of the nervous system studies and research that is being done now is showing that the nervous system is sending those signals, because what it does is something New is dangerous, right? We like certainty and we like familiar, and uncertainty looks like danger, so it's going to send a signal to our nervous system that's a threat. We don't want to do that. So when we can learn that we can calm our nervous system down with certain practices and be able to then get unstuck easier. It's not the only thing that helps us get unstuck, but it's, in my opinion, one of the major pieces that can help anyways. No, I

Karen Fabian: 27:30

agree, and even when we talk about the familiar, it's interesting to me, because when I'll work with a teacher and she'll be talking about not feeling very confident when she's teaching her classes, a lot of the triggers that happen when she walks into the room are familiar sensations from other parts of her life, like woman who is in a relationship where she's sort of subservient to the husband I had this one woman whose husband even characterized her as a wallflower, but yet she'd drawn to teach yoga, which is definitely not something somebody does who thinks of himself as a wallflower in a relationship with somebody who kind of supports that identity. And so that was a familiar thing to her, and still, she saw there was another opportunity

Laurie James: 28:20

and good for her for doing that. And the other thing that I want to say just around this is getting in front of people and either teaching or public speaking, that is one of the scariest things as humans, as not just women in midlife, but every human being. There's been a ton of research done on this, that is the scariest thing any of us can do. Yep,

Karen Fabian: 28:47

it's so true, and that's why it's fascinating to me. When I work with people and they even if they intellectually knew that they don't often connect it to what they're doing. And so I always say to the teachers I work with. You know this is such a huge growth opportunity for you, because in your work to be the teacher you want to be, you're going to develop a better relationship with yourself. I sort of think about it like the sword from the stone, right? The Sword and the Stone is mired in this concrete that's born out over years and years of telling yourself certain things and hearing certain things and developing certain behaviors and developing defense mechanisms and stories and on and on. But as you sit in stillness, and as you do the somatic practices, and as you have even the smallest amount of willingness towards a better way of experiencing yourself, you start to kind of pull that sword out of the stone. And I think you know, some of the stories I related to you really were pivotal moments where I pulled that sword out. And that really, to me, was. What I experienced a second chance in a way,

Laurie James: 30:03

yeah, absolutely. And was it as scary as you thought it was before, while the sword was still in?

Karen Fabian: 30:11

Yeah, it's interesting. I can't remember literally that saying, but it's that saying about the pain of change,

Laurie James: 30:17

yeah, has to be greater. The pain of not doing something has to be greater than the pain to change, right?

Karen Fabian: 30:25

And I sort of got to the point, especially when I hired that neuroscience coach, the pain level for me was so high that I was willing to walk away from something that I knew was my dharma. I knew it was my point in my purpose in life. It wasn't to be a corporate woman. It wasn't to do that, but yet I was so frustrated and burdened with all these stories and defense mechanisms and machinations of my mind that I'm willing to leave it. And so the pain level for me got high enough. But the interesting thing was, and this is why I say to people, sometimes it's sometimes not as far away as you think to be the person you want to be. And in this particular situation that I related before, it really was simply her observation of how I was seeing the world.

Laurie James: 31:13

But here, I think, is an important piece that our listeners need to grasp or hopefully understand, I don't want to tell them they have to, because we don't have to do anything, right? You were ready to receive that information at that time, and our nervous systems, our minds, aren't always ready to receive that information. And so I think that goes back to you. It happened in the time line that was meant for you, right? And also, from a nervous system standpoint, it happened when you were ready, when your nervous system was ready to receive it and to manage that change. Yep, totally.

Karen Fabian: 31:57

And I think, and you can probably relate to this as a coach, whenever I speak to someone, and obviously in my world, it's a yoga teacher. And whenever I speak to a yoga teacher who's in struggle, whatever that looks like, I always can see through their struggle to the person inside them that has a higher potential yet, and what a gift that is. Yeah, and oftentimes the person doesn't see it, right, but it's

Laurie James: 32:25

always easier for us. It's harder for us to see what we need to do. It's easier to see what other people need to do. Totally

Karen Fabian: 32:33

the thing, though, that you reminded me of that is because even though I see that sometimes the person's not ready to take steps towards that vision, and it always sort of doesn't break my heart, but there's just a little part of me that sort of just feels the sadness at the same time I can appreciate you know I've, in fact, have had Women admit to me if I invest in your program, I feel guilty because that's$2,000 I could spend on my kids. But this could be a woman who's spending hours every week prepping for their classes because they're hyper, analyzing everything they're doing, and seem like the only way I can feel even the smallest bit of confidence is if I over plan and

Laurie James: 33:25

master and be perfectionist, right?

Karen Fabian: 33:29

And so even despite their lived experience in regards to teaching being so unpleasant, an opportunity to learn a more streamlined, confident way of teaching, they then, in their head, will say, Oh, but I couldn't possibly spend money on myself. I have kids that need that money. This is a unique experience to women, because men don't typically say that. They don't typically put their needs second. It's not, obviously a gross overstatement. I don't want to be, but I think it is, you know, for the most part, an experience that women have where there's sort of, you know, it's kind of like, get on the plane, put your oxygen mask on first, but yet, when you're off the plane, you're taking care of everybody.

Laurie James: 34:18

No, we're always putting everybody else's oxygen mask on first until we either fall ill or our pain is so great we have no choice but to deal with it. Kind of goes back to what you were just saying. You talk about your framework for overcoming self doubt and embracing new opportunities. Can you share with us? Walk us through the six pillars of how they work in practice.

Karen Fabian: 34:42

You know, I sat down on January 1 this year, I sat in my local Starbucks and I had this sort of Epiphany, how can I pull what I've learned from working with so many yoga teachers who are women, who are mostly women in midlife, how can I pull some of what I've. Learned from working with them and offer it to women in general, in midlife. And I created this thing called a framework, called the confidence practice. And I started to sit there and just sketch it out. And I envisioned at the center of the circle the word confidence, and then spokes on a wheel with all the different practice, which, in a way, is sort of like the eight limbs of yoga, although I wasn't thinking that at the time, but it sort of is another framework that's familiar to me. So one part of it is what we've talked about, yoga slash movement that has that physical movement. We can look at it through the lens of science and all the benefits there, but we can look at it also through the lens of somatics and how it opens the door to so much of how we feel. I always leave room for movement yoga, I think is ideal, although a walk in nature is great, going for a jog, whatever it is, I don't want to box people in to think it's just yoga. The second thing is experimentation, meaning trying something new. And this is such an important part. When we look at some of the NLP sort of mind aspects of things, when we have a very fixed thought about who we are as a person, we tend to not be open to trying something new. And all the work I do with teachers, I don't ever say to them, Oh, stop doing that. Do this. I say, hey, if doing that isn't working for you, would you be willing to teach the same sequence for five classes and give yourself a chance to learn it? And if the person has a growth mindset and if their timing is right, like we talked about, they'll say, Sure, I'll try that. And so it's sort of like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. If they told her at the beginning the shoe she had on was going to get her where she wanted to be, she wouldn't have believed it. She had to go through the whole movie to realize, oh my god, I had the power all along, and this is a thing so experimentation as a way to challenge the beliefs you have about yourself. The third thing is self inquiry, and that really shows up in primarily journaling, asking yourself questions on a daily basis, again, in service to challenging a lot of the stories you have about yourself and also how the world works. You know, this is always like this. This is always like that. One of the things my dad always taught me is things are not always as they seem. But if we're a perfectionist, if we have a very rigid way of thinking, we only see things as one way, I mean, and

Laurie James: 37:39

then it's also hard to be open and curious about another way of doing it, or ways or critical thinking. And what's happening in that moment with the nervous system is that you're kind of shut down. You might be in a threat response, but you know, can you stay open and curious about other ways. How can we solve this problem? How can I look at it a different way? Or, you know, maybe I just need to try five different ways to see what works best totally.

Karen Fabian: 38:14

And that opens up so many new doors to what is possible for you to do and a different way of looking at something that maybe your whole life, you looked at a particular way. The fourth of the six is meditation. I know people hear that, and sometimes they think, I can't meditate. How about go for a walk and don't put your iPods in about and listen

Laurie James: 38:38

to the sounds. Listen to the sounds stop and smell the roses. Anything that can help you be more present

Karen Fabian: 38:47

totally. Sometimes I even just take a long shower and don't have the TV on, or don't have, you know, if I like, just be in the shower with the water running and

Laurie James: 38:59

feel the water on your body. Feel the water hitting your body. What does it feel like?

Karen Fabian: 39:06

Totally and obviously, if you can sit for five minutes, that's great. Close your eyes. Number five, one of my favorites, is visualization ending time every day, just for a few minutes. Close your eyes and see what you want, see what maybe, for the day, for the week, for the month, for your life. I do a lot of this with yoga teachers. Close your eyes and see yourself teaching in a way that matches how you want to show up. You know, lots of different exercises I'll have them do, like power posing and creating a power avatar, like different things to start to get their break into the mode.

Laurie James: 39:44

Visualization is such a great tool that is, I think, underutilized and poo pooed often.

Karen Fabian: 39:51

And think about how many athletes are interviewed after the game, and they say I saw myself winning even before tonight. So we have this proof all. All the time, but so and then number six is sort of a basket of different things, healthy habits. And that can look different from person to person, but there are certainly some pillars around nutrition and movement and time and silence. And there's lots of different things I have. One of the things I love doing is habit stacking. So like, I'll listen to a podcast that's really good for the soul while I'm exercising, or I'll do it while I'm going for a walk, or I've connected, you know, having my protein drink before I take the dog. So I try to look for different ways to connect healthy habits. So I get two things done at once, and it also makes the association in my brain. Oh, when I exercise, I list, you know, so if I don't feel like exercising, but I want to listen to the podcast, hopefully get it done. So, yeah, so yoga, movement, experimenting, self inquiry, meditation, visualization and healthy habits. And one thing I'll just share, I talked a little bit about it, but your listeners, I do have, and I'll send you the link, a free, self guided five day challenge called the five day Confidence Challenge, and it has a bunch of fun things in there. So I'll send you the link, and if people are interested, they can take themselves through that five day

Laurie James: 41:15

definitely. I will definitely leave that in the show notes for our listeners. So Karen, I'd love to ask you so many more questions, but we're running low on time. What's one confession that you'd like to share with our listeners that maybe we haven't touched on before? Sure,

Karen Fabian: 41:31

I actually really loved this question, and I kind of felt like no one has ever asked me this before, and yet I had an absolute immediate response, which was that I have doubts every day. The reason I call that a confession is because I'm so confident in what I'm doing and what I know and the methodology I've created and the work I do with yoga teachers. I'm so passionate about it, and I just love doing it so much, and I have experience, so I have confidence. And I think it would be surprising for people who maybe listen to my podcast or watch my instagram videos to think, oh, this person has doubts. She seems like she knows what she's talking about. I think the doubts I have live in the entrepreneurial space, like, is my business successful enough? Am I presenting my offer in a way that will connect with yoga teachers? You know, not necessarily the content of my teaching, but when you work for yourself and your business is yourself, your brand is yourself. It is an extension of you, it is the most mind blowing personal growth experiences ever. But the difference is where, years ago, I would have gone down all sorts of rabbit holes and ended up and I don't do that anymore. I see it, and I just keep moving forward. I just keep moving forward, sometimes to the point where I think about heaven O'Leary on Shark Tank when he hears a pitch and he'll go, this is the most awful business idea ever. And like in the back of my mind, I'll hear myself saying, Are you really just being silly? Just continue. But I know I just say, No, I'm not listening to you. I moving forward, and I can transmute it in maybe a minute or two. And I just, I have all sorts of different we all

Laurie James: 43:34

do, like, I question myself often, or you're tired and you're like, oh my god, I'm exhausted. But then it's like, you revive, and you're like, No, this is my path. Like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and so and then certain

Karen Fabian: 43:49

things I can like, I can go for a walk, I can go for a run, I can play music, I can sing, I can meditate, I can call a friend. Like, I have those things that when I get into that point, I say, do one of those, if I can't get myself moving forward, do what, and sometimes just singing couple songs or going for a quick walk, that it just shifts the brain. Yeah,

Laurie James: 44:13

it does, because you're regulating your nervous system when you do those things. So Karen, thank you so much for being here. I will make sure that all your contact information is in the show notes. And thank you all free birds for being here, and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a free bird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts. If you're interested in becoming a free bird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at Lori e james.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 ultimate. 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 you.