Episode 9: The Mystical Connection to Embodiment

Lydia discusses how, as she becomes more embodied, she feels more connected to the land and the planet--not just her body. She gives tips on how to become more embodied and more connected and shares how her life has changed with these practices.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello beautiful listeners and welcome to At the Intersection of Mystical and Mundane. I am your host, Lydia Lazara, founder of Questions Authority Coaching. Today I want to have a conversation with you how becoming more embodied and connected to the earth made my rather mundane life so much more mystical and magical. Well, just about four years ago, right now, and it all came about because I ended up with long COVID after having COVID, and my nervous system shut down, and I well, and I needed to find ways to reset my nervous system to de stress and to take care of my body in ways that I thought I had been doing a good job at, and found out very much the hard way that no, I had not been doing a good job at. And I had been letting go of a lot of caring that I had done in previous years about what other people thought or what I thought they would think or say about me doing different things. And the more embodied I get, the more that I really start to pay attention to what my body is trying to tell me, and the more connected I get to the land that I live on and the land around me, the more I really am losing all of that. Oh my god, what are the neighbors gonna think? Oh my god, what are the people on social media gonna think of me? And I'm I won't lie, in the last week I've been harvesting some of the herbs that are growing in my yard. Some I planted, a lot I did not, and it's throwing real witchy vibes out, uh, in my opinion. And growing up in a very conservative Christian household, you know, anything related to witches was very much devil's work, and I actually got very hmm, what's the right way to put this? I like the Bible does talk about, you know, do not suffer a witch to live among you and all of that stuff, which I actually found out that language was added uh added to the Bible by some kings down the road. Uh uh, but anyway, it wasn't original to the Bible scripts that were written, but that's that's neither here nor there. But what I really learned was witches were evil, witches were satanic, and and honestly, what I learned was our bodies are temples, but we aren't supposed to be in this world, you know, or of this world, and we're supposed to be, you know, always seeking God and the path to heaven, that mystical ethereal place that isn't earth, that isn't our bodies. And so I actually grew up getting these mixed messages of listen to your body. Your body is a temple, but you shouldn't be in your body because your body is sinful and evil, and being connected to the land and your body makes you a witch, and that's not good. And so I know that not everyone grew up with those mixed messages, but I know a lot of you out there have, and I've been breaking down those messages that I've stored inside my body and embracing that natural pull that the more I get connected to my own body and my own soul, the more drawn to be connected to the land I feel, and as I do this, everything feels more magical, more mystical, more colorized, and I am learning how to grow my own food, and I've done some of this before, but I literally used to have a black thumb. Like my husband would buy me a plant, and I would kill it so quickly, and then I got like a jade plant, and I managed to keep that alive for like a decade before it finally died on me, which was really big progress, but I couldn't keep anything else alive. And then a few years ago, I got some pothos plants, uh, which are really easy to take care of houseplants, and they're still thriving. I think I just trimmed some of their vines uh because they're a vining plant uh in the last month for the very first time. Um, and I'm starting new new plants from those cuts. And and I have several other houseplants that were gifted to me when I moved to the current home three years ago that were uh cutlings that are now potted and huge and thriving and doing so well. And and I've moved on to last year I planted a little herb garden with mint and lemon balm, and there happen to be daffodils, and I put a couple other flower plants in there also, and everything is thriving inside that garden. Like I haven't killed that yet, and I've planted a vegetable garden with more herbs this year, and there's something incredibly magical, deeply relaxing and grounding and peaceful when you work with plants, even just house plants. Like I am still just amazed at how positively my body responds, my nervous system responds, how my mind calms down when I'm just watering my indoor plants or you know, trimming back dead leaves or uh extra growth if I want to try and contain something. And then when I get outside and I'm working in the soil, and we have a lot of stinging nettle growing wild on our property, and I've gone out and harvested it. So the second year that I've done that, and I'm you know hanging it up in bunches in front of my windows in my kitchen. Again, very much witchy vibes, right? The weird witchy medicine woman who has herbs hanging from the ceiling of her kitchen all over the place. That's that's kind of where I'm at now. And you don't have to do anything really incredibly time consuming to make that connection, but starting to really take some time with your body, and I do this when I teach yoga classes or when I do my own yoga practice is we'll do a particular move for a while, and I teach kundalini uh style yoga mostly, and so oftentimes that means doing a repetitive motion or breath work for a few minutes, and then we pause and we sit with as straight a spine as possible, as still as possible, just noticing what's the breath doing, what's the heart rate doing? Can you feel it beating inside your chest? Do you feel any like buzzing or tingling sensations in the arms we just worked? Or do you feel the work in your core or an energy growing from the breath of fire that we just did? All of those things, those cues that I consistently do in all of my classes, I do every day at home. In my meditation, that's kind of what I'm doing, is really feeling where am I feeling the energy flowing in my body? What is that sensation trying to tell me and just sitting with it and letting whatever message comes up come up, regardless of what I want the message to be. And it takes time, it takes practice, but even more than time, it just takes practice and consistency and showing up. You don't have to sit for hours every single day, or even an hour every single day to start to become more embodied. You can do this on your drive to work or when you're doing errands, just turn off the music or MPR and you know, put your phone on do not disturb, and while you're driving, just be in silence and just pay more attention to your posture, what you're seeing as you drive, what you're noticing, how your body's feeling in the seat. We drown our bodies out so much by always having on the TV, always looking at our phone, always listening to the music. When we have to have some kind of noise always around us, doing something always, we drown out our body's messages. And then we end up with chronic illnesses and chronic pain or acute illnesses, like over and over and over again, and we wonder why, and we go, Whoa is me, or we think it's a normal part of aging, and really our bodies just started screaming because they couldn't get you to hear them any other way, other than shutting you down for a while. And what do you do? You take some meds, you numb the messages, you don't let yourself feel it, you wonder when it's gonna be over, and you repeat this disastrous, ultimately deadly cycle over and over and over again, and you get to the end of your life and you wonder what you did with it. So stop wondering and start listening. And when you can start listening just a little bit, and then you start incorporating little practices that get you more connected to nature, to the planet we live on. So maybe you live in a high-rise apartment, get a little house plant, get something that's low light tolerant and doesn't require a lot of work, but offers some greenery, offers a natural air purification because it does an excellent job of filtering toxins and carbon dioxide in your environment and giving you back clean, fresh oxygen, and just learn to take care of a plant. Repot it, get your hands in that soil, feel the roots, touch the leaves. Like at this point, I have pothos plant vines with leaves like hanging just like behind my couch, and sometimes I'll just reach my hand back when I'm sitting there and just gently like pet the leaf and just like hold it like that. Might sound really weird, but it's a connection that your body, your nervous system is missing if you don't do this already. Plant with intention, water with intention, walk outside with intention and presence. If you go for runs or walks outside, maybe you need to keep your phone on you, but keep the earbuds out. Don't listen to music and just notice your surroundings, even if you're in the middle of the city, notice the trees that are planted or the window flower boxes, go to a park. Put your bare feet on grass in a lake, in a river, in a puddle. Get connected in whatever way you can because this starts to open up your body. You start to live a little less. Contracted, a little less rounded shoulder, always walking around like you got to protect your soft spots, and you start to realize that you are powerful and that you are connected, and that you don't have to pay attention to what everyone else is saying is important. You can make that choice for yourself, and the more you start to make that choice for yourself, the easier it becomes to choose those things that truly matter to your very soul, to your body, that truly help you feel good, not temporarily good, you start to learn to delay that gratification. You start to learn that those surface level cravings that your mind interprets as craving the sweets or craving that chocolate or craving that salty, savory stuff, and you start to learn that reaching for that bag of chips or that chocolate candy bar or that pint of ice cream isn't what your body is actually asking for. For me, when I'm craving sweets, oftentimes I find that what makes my body really happy is maybe it just wants tea with a little bit of honey. Like right now, as I'm recording this, I am drinking a tea that I made from stinging nettle, lemon balm, creeping charlie, or ground uh ground ivy, it's another name for that, peppermint, and a little bit of orange dust, all of which minus the orange dust came from my yard that I steeped in hot water, and it's very soothing. And so the or maybe the sweetness, it maybe if I'm actually really hungry but craving sweets, some root veggies like sweet potatoes or carrots and roasted, those my body loves, and it feels like when I eat those versus when I satisfy that sweet craving with like a candy bar or ice cream or something like that. When I eat like the root veggies, the sweet potatoes, what happens? My body feels like it's kind of like melting and relaxing, and at the same time, it feels stronger and more powerful and more solid in itself. It's this really distinct group of sensations that I get when I satisfy one of those cravings with what my body truly wants versus what my mind wants to interpret that craving as. That savory and salty. I found that if I get like some Brussels sprouts or kale or something like that, and roast that with some salt and a little bit of olive oil and some other herbs, and I eat that again, I get that same feedback from my body of that melting of that, ah, thank you, versus when I go for like a salty potato chip or something like that that's been heavily processed and comes in a bright-colored bag from the grocery store. When I eat that, I typically end up feeling like greasy and heavy and bloated and gassy, and it's it's not the same level of satisfaction. The craving might go away, but how my body feels afterwards is very different, and that's magical. When you start to make those connections, everything seems to get clearer, everything seems to be more sharply defined, almost as though you had cataracts and then you had them removed, and you can see more clearly again. Everything is brighter, more colorful, more defined. You start to see opportunities to connect more meaningfully, and it just is the snowball effect of more and more and more, and it starts to get you excited, and life feels so much more and fuller than it did, and you're not doing nearly as much, and you feel so much better. So I guess what I'm hoping you tick away from this conversation is that paying attention to the sensations in your body, and if you look up like um if you search like on Google or a search engine, like somatic body sensations list or something like that, you're gonna come up with a list of all different types of sensations because we tend to like keep it really simple with hot, cold, pain, ache. You know, we don't necessarily go into like soft, melty, maybe it feels sharp, sticky, crunchy, numb, tarry, buzzy, tingly. There's so many different words that we can use to describe the sensations in our body, and the more you get curious about what all these different sensations are, whether you name them or not, the more embodied you will get. I started writing down a little over 10 days ago, kind of in a little notebook, I just write down when I woke up, when I went to bed, what phase of my cycle I'm in, and then I write down like, did I get up and I drink some water before lemon water before I had my breakfast? What did I have for my breakfast? And how did that make my body feel when I was done eating? And just writing things down and paying attention to just how your body responds to the different food and drink you put into it each day does wonders for making you more aware of your body's messaging and how it's really feeling, and that does not take a lot of time, especially if you keep that notebook with you and you write down in the moment, so you're not trying to go back and think, oh, how did I feel? But you start training yourself to think about how did you feel right at that moment that you finished or in that next 20 minutes. And you can even use a notes app on your phone to do that, but I invite you to do that, and I invite you to start noticing how much more magical life becomes when you become more connected, when you become more embodied. So again, I extend this invitation to you to meet me at the intersection of mystical and mundane and see life through new eyes. Experience the world around you and inside of you in a whole new way every single day. And I'm so grateful you're here. Thank you so much for joining me. Please, if you enjoyed this conversation and other episodes, share the podcast with a friend. I'd love to see this grow. And I will chat with you again in a couple weeks.