Transcript

Hello, and welcome to your lesson on building self trust, deepening intuition, and connecting with the vision that you have for your unique life. I’m Tara, and I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you so much for trusting your own process, for knowing that your relationship with yourself is something that you want to dive into, and for being open to your growth and supporting yourself more.

I want to start with just a little intro to why I want to teach this, and why it matters. So, as an intuitive, a lot of the work I do is about helping people to understand where they are in their own journey with connecting to themselves, with understanding their own desires, their needs, their boundaries. And ,not getting too caught up in the noise of the world around them. But really learning to hear themselves, to hear what I always say is the voice behind the voice. That connection that you might feel if you meditate and you kind of get that sense of the witness in you watching and listening to your brain speak, to your brain kind of run through your day and your life and all of the ego things that come up in us all of the time. 

And when I’m teaching others how to find this quieter space, I often find that when you’re struggling with self-trust, you don’t even always know it, so congratulations if you’re here, because you are taking first steps that really matter for you. And I also just want to remind you to be gentle with yourself about any of the struggles that you’re currently having with self-trust,with intuition, with knowing your next steps. Because wherever you are on your journey, it’s a great place to be. You are in the right place because you are there. Because these are the lessons being presented to you at this time, and now is the best time to learn them, to open your arms and say hey I’m ready to work with this in a way that is for my highest and best. And not just kind of feel that this is a fault of mine, that this is something that I’m lacking.

 So, when you struggle with something that is about who you are and the innate sense of yourself and your knowing, and really being able to trust yourself, it can feel like you aren’t as capable as other people. But that really isn’t true. You may have extreme feelings of powerlessness, of hopelessness, of feeling like only other people can give you the answers or the support or the help that you need. And of course it’s always good to get help when you need it, but I want you to know that those feelings are often rooted in the body. So we’re really going to get into that in this lesson today, but just know that those feelings aren’t permanent, they’re not something that you always have to feel, they’re not something that are a block that can never go away, they’re something that is just alerting you to where you’re at right now.

So I feel like it’s really important to just acknowledge that there are many reasons you may struggle with self trust. There are many reasons that all need and deserve to be recognized, to be seen and given space to breathe. And, the actual way that healing happens is through witnessing and  being seen, being validated. And you can start that process very gently for yourself by just recognizing hey, I’m here, I’m ready to dive into this, I’m ready to open up to the ways that I can work toward a deeper sense of connection with myself on my healing journey. And we’re always on a healing journey, right? There’s always things in us that are worthy of our attention, deserving of our attention, and that really need it. So it’s not just about getting from Point A to Point B and then we’re done. But it’s really about honoring where you are now, and being excited about it, or at least, sort of being in a space where you can recognize to yourself, like give yourself a little pat on the back and say hey, you’re doing a great job. I used to say to clients a lot, it’s great if you can just say “I’m open to this.” It doesn’t have to be about giving yourself this huge reward or award about the work you’re doing. It’s more about just saying you know I’m open to learning how I can support myself better. How I can find this truth within myself, that will really be an anchor for the rest of my life. Because that’s really what self-trust is, when we build up that relationship with ourselves, we always have ourselves, and so the relationship with yourself is the strongest relationship that you could possibly develop, because it will always be there for you.

And I have to say as well that I really feel this work is so important to do within the realm of spirituality because we can give our power away so easily within the realm of spirituality. It can be really normal to think that other people have answers, that we have to look outside of ourselves, that we have to have someone pointing the way, leading us through. This isn’t to say teachers aren’t important, mentors aren’t important, education isn’t important. I’m a fan of all of those things, if you’ve been with me for awhile, you know that. But often, we can get tied up in this idea that other people have greater answers than we do. Or than we are capable of. And, because I work as a psychic medium, because my intuitive work is about opening up to other people’s energy, other people’s guides and really bringing through messages, what I have found is that sometimes people are sort of not realizing how much power they have to connect with their own answers, and what I want to always do in my work is to take people further than their own answers. To have them get as far as they can, so that in session, we can go even deeper, we can go into spaces where we truly can open up new pathways, new realms, new insights.

And so we really want to make sure in spiritual work that we are taking in our teachers, healers, authors, speakers, whoever it is that we like, follow in the world and whose work we really connect with, we want to make sure that we are taking it in from a space of first being rooted in what is true for us. If we can’t do that, we will feel very overwhelmed, very confused, very off center, very quickly. Especially if the things that are being spoken about do not seem to apply to our lives, we may often feel like we are somehow wrong, that we are somehow doing it wrong, and that if we could be more “like them”, I say with quotes, that somehow then we’ll be right, then we’ll be ok. And this really isn’t the case.

8:33

We want to call in a sense of self-reliance, we want to begin to do the internal work for ourselves to co-create our life from the highest and best place possible, to make our own decisions, and to move in the direction that’s best for us at any given moment. A really solid ground of self-trust is what’s important here. And so today, I want to give you some tools to begin to look at that for yourself, to begin to develop that for yourself.

And I will also say that I do not feel, that, mostly, the roots of our self-trust have to do with some of the more spiritual bypassing reasons that a lot of people out there will say. A lot of people in the manifestation community will say “Oh you just don’t want to make your own decisions, you don’t want the responsibility, you prefer to be codependent with other people.” I really think that that is very rarely the case. I feel that our most common roots of lacking self-trust have to do with our personal histories, have to do with what has happened to us in our life, what we’ve experienced. And has to do with how deeply (or not) we have developed a relationship with ourself. 

I think it’s really easy to have a very simple approach, like saying Oh well it’s just because this person doesn’t want to take responsibility that they don’t trust themselves, or that they don’t make their own decisions, or that they’re kind of following someone else’s path. So just know that I don’t feel that placing like a blame like that is right, in any way, I think it creates, I think it’s problematic. And I am going to focus this lesson on three different realms. And the reason I’m doing this is because, first of all, we are all interconnected, whole beings. And we can’t really separate anything out. We can’t really say physical-mental-emotional-spiritual realm, and yet it’s great to do that because it gives us a framework for our brains to compartmentalize what we can focus on. What we can really direct our attention toward so that we don’t get overwhelmed, or so that we don’t feel like there’s just too much to even look at one thing.

So during this lesson, even though a lot of what I say might resonate with you, I want you to focus in on that one thing that jumps out at you, that one thing that really resonates with where you are in your life right now. Because I’m giving you a really great, broad, toe-dip understanding of these different realms of the roots of why you may struggle with trusting your own voice right now. And you can pick one of these things and go “Ok, this is what’s best for me, this is what I’m noticing in my life, so I’m going to focus here.” And you may have an epiphany during this, and go “Wow, I  didn’t even realize I was giving my power away in this way to this friend or this program or this belief system.” And this process will help you to unblock one layer at a time, so you can start to rebuild your core sense of self starting from wherever it is that you are right now. So there’s no need to, you know, get overwhelmed with “Oh I think I have all of these different problems.” It’s ok, so do I! And that’s why I’m teaching you this. Because I have done a lot of work on self-trust and really  just kind of getting other people’s voices out of my head and rooting into my own truth and my connection with Spirit. And that’s what I want for you.

13:04

So, this is what it’s about. Really rooting into your identity. Rooting into who you are individually on this planet. What you believe. Who you want to be. How you desire to grow. All of these positive ways that we desire to stretch ourselves are available to us when we clear up the root issues that keep us washed away in other people’s energies, opinions, ideas, of how the world works, how systems work, how we should live our life. 

And so, begin this lesson today, begin this reflection for yourself from a space where you are FIRST acknowledging how great it is that you are even approaching this, that you are doing your best. You are doing your best. Just holding a gentle awareness around the fact that, you can’t use a skill that you don’t have or haven’t developed. And, if you’ve struggled with self-trust, and maybe don’t feel like you’ve ever connected to your intuition or like you have one, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not something to think of as a negative, I want you to think of it as an opportunity to develop a new skill. To develop this stronger sense of yourself. Because once you start a journey where you begin to strengthen this sense of connection with yourself, that will stay with you for the rest of your life. It may not be like, this extreme upward growth from the moment you start. Everything is a lifelong journey. And so, you may go up and down on this journey, and that’s ok. But this profound sense of connection with yourself is something you can develop. It is something that will change your life by helping you to root into who you are and who you want to be so that the world doesn’t sway you as easily as maybe it has in the past, or that maybe has been your habit because of what you’ve been through in your life. It’s also extremely fulfilling to develop stronger self-trust. Extremely fulfilling. And if we’re not here to find fulfillment, to enjoy ourselves, to grow, to thrive, what are we here for? I want you to approach this from, yes, a sense of “I’m going to grow,” but also just a sense of “I get to do this for myself. This is something that’s bringing me fulfillment, or has the capacity to bring me fulfillment.”

I feel that this is a way of creating a new chapter for yourself, by clearing out that sense of powerlessness or hopelessness that’s at the root of lacking self-trust, of not feeling connected to yourself, that keeps you from feeling that you can really lead yourself and your own life. And so, begin here with leading your own life. Ask yourself, does this resonate with me? Is this what I need? Does Tara even resonate with me? Because there are many threads tied up in our sense of self, our self-esteem, and self-trust. And I’m giving you some groundwork, and some strong foundations to rebuild your own, but I want you to make sure that even though I’m sitting here guiding you through this, that you’re asking yourself, Is this right for me? Because when we don’t feel seen in a space or safe in a space, we will actually erode our sense of self-trust. 

This was one of my biggest missteps when I first started to expand my awareness of different spiritual voices in the world (and when I say spiritual voices, I just mean like people on Instagram, authors, speakers, writers) people that maybe didn’t even share my same value system. And I would, you know, take in what they had to say, listen to their voices, and I would think, “Well, I must be missing something because they’re successful here, so they really must have something that is a truth here.” And that isn’t always the case. And we can feel very overwhelmed very quickly when what other people are saying is not right for us, and is not in highest and best, in truth, in highest alignment.

17:53

So, where I’m going to begin is with the body. And it’s probably not a surprise, I do talk about health quite a bit. I study acupuncture, and at this point have for years. I took a long break. And that break was for my health. And,  I’ve struggled a lot with mysterious health issues, with a lot of issues that were due to physical trauma, and those experiences of physical trauma lead to a lot of issues like, psychologically and emotionally that I really had to deal with, that I really had to not just explore, but confront and face and really sort out. And what they taught me most of all is just how important it is to understand that we cannot function at our highest and best capacity when our body isn’t capable of it. And, that isn’t to put us in a space of victimhood or to take responsibility away from ourselves at all. It’s actually to increase our sense of responsibility to ourselves. And here, I like to think of the word responsibility as the ability to respond. When we can respond to our body’s needs. So for much of my  life I didn’t even pay attention to what my body’s signals were, kind of because I didn’t know to, I was so used to pain, I was used to the state that my body was functioning in. And, a lot of us today are very aware of like…psychology Instagram, and so we see a lot of things around like, the vagus nerve theory, and attachment theory, and all of these different models that help us to understand our nervous system.

And what is so important about this, and so wonderful about it, that it’s becoming so much more mainstream to talk about and to understand and to look at within ourselves is that we can begin to see the body as as important as it is. Because often in our more cerebral society, we kind of relegate the body to being less important than the mind. To being less important to, you know, our goals and our drive and our willpower. And what’s interesting is that all of those things in Chinese medicine, would be seen as functions of the body. The body, the mind, the spirit, they’re inseparable. Like I said in the beginning. And of course we’re separating them out here because it’s really important to kind of compartmentalize and give ourselves a space to think things through in a manner that isn’t overwhelming. But wIllpower itself does have to do with the health of the body, with the strength of the body, with the body’s energy systems. And we often in our culture drive ourselves to the brink of really bad health because we are simply pushing ourselves to, like, society’s standards, and what we want to really do instead is start at the body level of capacity. We want to begin literally where we are.

And I also want to say here, that I’m not going to get too much into the body and the nervous system and like really complex talk here. But I am going to give you some tools that will help you to begin to connect with your body differently. The biggest lesson or understanding that I completely missed throughout most of my twenties, throughout so much of my life, was really the ability to connect to my body. People would talk about it. They would ask me like what I’m feeling, you know, I would take embodiment classes and I would just be like I have no idea what you guys even mean. And I feel like I lived 100% in my head. And I still work very hard to get into my body, and to be very aware of my body and my nervous system, and what it needs and what is going on within it. But you may already have a very strong connection to and awareness of your body. You may be a person who’s very grounded and very rooted in your bodily sense of safety, in the, you know, awareness of your body’s needs. So if you are that person, beautiful, I am so happy for you. And if you are not that person, stick with me here in this part of the lesson to really just begin to give yourself a little bit of understanding, a little bit of a window of awareness to where you might begin to work with your body, with your nervous system, with the emotional level of your life that is happening because of your neurotransmitters, because of your opioid system and dopamine system in the body. These are really important.

So, this part of the lesson could be like hours and hours long. And, it is not going to be. So, I’m just going to speak to you in a compartmentalized way, and then I’m also going to refer you to my favorite resource for this type of learning.

23:55

So, in this compartmentalized way, I’m going to be talking about living in the safe and social mode in the body, the fight or flight mode in the body, and the shutdown or freeze mode in the body. And, I’m going to speak to how you feel when you’re in these first.

So, when you’re in what’s called the safe and social mode, this is actually a part of your nervous system. We are just using like, layman’s terms here, we’re not going to talk about where those nerves are in the body or what they’re doing because this lesson is short. But just know that there are nerve pathways in the body lighting up when you are in what’s called safe and social mode. So in safe and social mode, you feel like you can connect with other humans safely. This is where you can create bonds with people, this is where you can laugh and enjoy yourself, this is where you should be when you’re doing things like eating and relaxing and resting and creating. And when you are in this safe and social mode, your body is at peak ability for health. It is at its peak ability to produce its proper hormones and neurotransmitter levels. It is at its peak ability because the body is relaxed enough to know that it’s ok to work toward essentially thriving in the world and not just surviving.

Now, when you’re in fight or flight mode, this is another portion of the nervous system. This is a portion of the nervous system that is going to only be aware of your survival, only be aware of your capacity or ability to fight for your survival, for your space on the planet, for your food. And in our world today we aren’t usually reacting to direct threats like a tiger, we’re usually reacting to the stress of work, we’re usually reacting to the stress of our families, or just social anxieties, or whatever else might be our triggers. And these send our body into fight or flight, so our body is ready to fight or to run. And in this space, our respiration is affected, our digestion is affected. Our body kind of takes its reserves of energy and uses it only for the most vital things. Our hormone balance can become disrupted here, our nervous system itself is what’s called dysregulated, and we are not set up for peak health in this space.

And the final mode is shutdown or freeze mode. And I also like the word collapse here because I feel that it (Tara laughs) really  illustrates the emotions that we feel in this state. So in shutdown or freeze mode, it is what it sounds like. The part of your nervous system coming online says that you need to stop. Your muscles are literally cued to shut down. Like, you are literally cued to collapse, you know, into your chair, onto the floor, into your bed. You feel like you can’t move, and your body is playing dead. And it’s playing dead to keep you safe from the tiger. (laughs.) Even though nowadays we usually don’t have that kind of an interaction occurring, our nervous system is responding to different stressors in that same way.

So our body goes into freeze or shutdown mode when it has deemed our situation something that we are not capable of handling in the fight or flight mode, and so we drop into this system that like a possum has us play dead in hopes that the threat will leave, will just go away.

28:18

So hopefully those make sense to you. And what I want to say that I forgot to say in fight or flight mode is the way that you’re thinking in fight or flight mode. When I said in safe and social that you can laugh and enjoy yourself and you know, eat food and be with your family and friends and have a great time, in fight or flight mode you are much more likely to be reactive. You are reactive, you’re in a literally reactive state, you’re on alert. Like, what do I need to do to this threat that’s before me, whatever it might be. Maybe a deadline. And this state actually makes your thoughts more combative, it makes you reactive to other people. It makes it feel hard on you when people look at you the wrong way or say the wrong thing to you, it makes you blow up at them, it makes you emotionally tense.

And when we are in freeze or shutdown mode (Tara laughs), we are in an even lower area of the ladder of our nervous system, where our thoughts actually go into a loop of essentially negative thinking. So, you might think, “I can’t do this. There’s no way out. I suck. I’m the worst. I’ll never be happy. I’m a piece of shit. No one loves me. No one cares. What’s the point?” This is actually a thought patterning that we get locked into. This negative thinking is NOT just someone’s choice to think negatively. And it is literally a space where we cannot get out of that kind of thinking until our body comes up out of that portion of the nervous system, and into a higher state. Into that safe and social system really, although if we can get ourselves up into fight or flight, it’s still better than the freeze or shutdown state.

So, if you do pay attention to psychology instagram, you may have read quite often, people talking about having a dysregulated nervous system. What they’re saying is that their system is not just in safe and social mode and moving normally through fight or flight or shutdown and freeze mode. That it is scrambled. That it is moving through these different portions of the nervous system at inappropriate times, or that they have so many triggers in their daily life that they are sent down what’s called “the ladder” into these different states and that it’s hard to get out of them. And that they have to use their tools to get themselves out.

So, that’s what I’m going to talk about today, the tools that we can use. We have to use these tools because the physical body is where self-trust begins. It is where your sense of self begins. If your body is in, I’m just going to say, an unhealthy state, and I do not mean to place health as some pinnacle that we’re working toward or that we’re not ok if our health isn’t good. My health is not good and I have to work with it all of the time and really really focus on taking care of my body, but what I am saying is that when you can bring yourself into the best state you can, that this is where self-trust work can begin. Because it almost can’t begin when we are stuck in these different modes, and that’s only because of the brain. The structures in the brain that are working are not connected to intuition, they’re not connected to, you know, wise inner knowing. In the book What Happened To You, by Bruce D Perry and Oprah,  which is excellent, the audiobook is wonderful because it’s read by both authors and it’s just powerful. Bruce says, (Tara laughs) Dr. Perry says, when you’re dysregulated, you simply don’t have access to the smarter parts of your brain. The lower brain structures, the more primal structures, dominate your functioning. These lower, primal structures of the brain, are not intuition. These are structures that simply say “Hey, there’s a tiger, let’s fight or let’s run. Like, we need to get out of here.” And the smarter parts of your brain, as he says, are, you know, the prefrontal cortex, umm the different parts of our brain that allow us as humans to engage in higher thought, in creative thinking. In spiritual work we often say intuition is connected to imagination. It’s that part of our brain that even allows us to let that information flow through. So, just know that it’s not about saying there’s anything wrong with us and therefore we can’t connect, it’s just about saying “Ok let’s recognize that when we’re in these different states we just don’t really have access to that wise inner knowing and we kind of have to regroup and recenter so that we can get into that better nervous system state where we can connect with that voice.

34:25

So, the first ways to really help yourself when you’re in a dysregulated nervous system state is to begin to learn to notice it. So, that sounds really simplistic, I know, but it’s actually pretty hard for a lot of people, and it was incredibly hard for me, and I think still is. And, what I want to say here is that it’s so vital to begin to work with your body in a way that is ok for you. So, for me, I often didn’t realize how unafe I felt around other people or when I was busy or had a lot to do, and it took a lot to begin to notice the cues of stress that would build in my body. Sometimes, it would begin as a little bit of pain in my shoulders or a little tightness in my ribs or like my breath getting a little quicker. And my brain would just want to kind of wave that away, and say, no big deal, like, nothing….it doesn’t matter. Just keep going. And you know, our culture is very much a just do-it keep-going culture. And I would just be like yeah, I mean there’s no reason to be upset right now. Because my rational mind was like all you’re doing is talking to this friend or you’re at the grocery store. But my body, my nervous system was getting some kind of a cue that something was wrong. It was getting some kind of a sign. And once I started to notice those things, I could begin to determine what I needed in that moment. So, maybe I needed to lay down. Maybe I couldn’t sit wherever I was sitting and keep sitting up. Maybe that pain in my shoulders and my back could be relieved by just laying down for a few minutes.

And, one thing that I learned that I give to every single one of my clients now is what’s called 1-1 breathing. So the reason that I give this to everyone is because it is safe for you to use, whether you are in fight or flight mode or shutdown or freeze mode. So, one to one breathing is breathing in for a certain number of counts, you can pick whatever you’d like. I’d always pick four, because it’s easy. And then you breathe out for that same number of counts. So you’ll breathe in for four, and out for four. And what this exercise does is it actually calms the part of your brain that is determining where you’re at in this ladder of your nervous system, and it helps to ease you up the ladder a bit.

So, let’s say you’re in freeze or shutdown mode: if you are feeling depressed and low and can’t get out of bed or don’t feel like you want to get out of bed, you feel like you’re pushing through everything, it feels like you’re swimming through your day with like sooo much effort and like pushing against everything…that feeling is your nervous system trying to get you to just drop. It literally means that your muscles, that the nervous impulses that your muscles normally get- that those same ones are not online like normal, so it is not your fault that you feel that way, ok? But this one to one breathing can literally bring that part of your nervous system up, it can begin to bring you up into a space where maybe you’ll just be in fight or flight mode. You’ll literally just feel, maybe not as depressed, and maybe like uh, that feeling in your muscles that you’re so tired, or whatever it may be, will go away. But it may bring you up into fight or flight mode. But then you feel agitated or irritated, and everything is bothering you a bit. But just know that that’s ok! Justin of the Stuck Not Broken Podcast says that we have to move up the ladder like one step at a time, we can’t skip any of the rungs of the ladder. So you can’t move from freeze and shutdown into safe and social, and just be like, happy and excited and laughing.  You might be looking for a fight for a minute, you might have this energy. And what it needs to do is it needs to discharge. The way that we discharge energy is usually by moving, because the body wants to, basically it wants to prove to itself that there aren’t any threats, that there isn’t anything that we have to do.

So our muscles want to move, so we can shake our hands or our feet, or jump up and down and kind of shake our bodies out. And this can literally get the energy out of our system. When I have to sit still and I’m in a class or something, and I want to get rid of my energy, I make my hands into little fists and claws, and kind of clench and unclench them. And, Jessica Maguire, who I’m linking to you as my absolute number one favorite resource for nervous system work, says that when we are moving up out of freeze or shutdown, that we can make a face and growl, as though we’re an animal in the wild, protecting our territory. And that this is actually excellent for the nervous system to discharge that energy because it connects with that primal part of ourselves that is trying to keep us safe. We’re literally doing something that is physically showing safety.

And, the one-to-one breathing is the primary tool I teach you, again, because it is safe. There are many tools for nervous system work. Like, so many tools. Way too many to teach you in this short little lesson, and especially this micro-lesson on the physical body needing to be in a good place in order to connect with yourself more fully. But there are some things that are recommended to do in nervous system work that can actually send us further down the ladder. Or if we’re dysregulated, and we’re often in mixed states, which just means, like we can be in freeze or shutdown along with fight or flight, and it’s like we have this incredible tiredness and yet we still have this energy where we want to fight and we want to push and we want to defend. And when we have a mixed state like that, it’s hard to address without more knowledge of what to do. Because we always have to begin with the freeze and shutdown mode. We always have to give a little more energy to the body to bring ourselves out of that part of the nervous system. And once we’re out of that part of the nervous system, we can discharge the energy. But one-to-one breathing will bring you up and out of that.

You can spend time with this exercise of one to one breathing in the mornings for like a dedicated two or three minutes a day, or you can do it throughout the day whenever you need it. I especially like to use this exercise with humming on the out breath because humming activates the safe and social part of the vagus nerve system. And it also helps to improve your digestion, almost immediately. It is really powerful, so if you like to sing, or you like to hum, know that this is something to go ahead and add to your practice, but the simple tool I wanted to give you today is this one to one breathing.

And again, you can connect with your breath no matter what, but I just want to say that it can be a bit triggering for people who are very disconnected from their bodies and have had a lot of trauma, and I know this from direct experience.  It was actually really hard for me to connect with my breath and when I started to do trauma work and body work I was a little confused because I’m really into meditation. But the extreme focus on the breath can actually make the body kind of lock down for danger. And one thing that I do to help myself is, like, massage my hands or massage my ears. I can’t always massage other places on my body because of chronic pain and it doesn’t necessarily help, but massaging my hands or my ears, these are actually microsystems of the body. So if you know about reflexology, or you know about ear and hand acupuncture, the nervous system is actually connected to various portions of the brain that reflect the entire map of the body, so you’re kind of getting energy flow into the body that wasn’t there before by stimulating these points. And it will actually relax your diaphragm, and relax your mind while you connect to the breath. So if you find it triggering in any way, that is a small tip that I really think will help you.

44:05

And know that during this process of really beginning to pay attention to your breath and kind of nurture yourself and your system through this practice, you can take these moments and give yourself whatever else it may be that you need in that moment. Maybe as I said earlier when I was talking about myself, you need to lay down. Maybe you need to just get some water or food. Maybe you need to go on a walk and separate yourself from the situation that you’re in. Or do something that helps your brain to disengage from your work or the stress of the moment you’re in. So the breath practice can just serve as sort of a meditative separation from your day to help you tap in to your body and go “Ok, what does my body need right now?” For me that was really hard to really begin to hear these cues from my body, so if that’s the same for you, just know that you can do it. Just use it as something that guides your attention back to your most basic needs and really like, what your body is calling out for.

So now that we know a bit more about why it is so important to ground ourselves into the body and to give ourselves the space and the support and that from this space we can actually feel more secure in ourselves and sure of our core self, and that this is a very natural step toward greater self trust, I want to go ahead and move into the next section. And in this section, I’m just going to call this the mental realm, I’m really speaking here  to the boundaries that you lay around your own experience of making your own decisions and following your own way. 

So my intention for you here is to have you do what I call an opinion detox. I might also call this instead an input detox. Here, I often have a client who’s really struggling with trusting themselves, with figuring out how to do things  without a lot of outside guidance. I will have them divest from other people's opinions, from other people’s input, from self-help books. And, in self-help, even though I love it, it can feel for many like this endless race toward self-improvement. And when we feel that kind of pressure, we often begin to build self-doubt within ourselves. We often begin to question where we are at and our own timing. And I really do believe in the divine timing of each of our lives. But it can be hard to trust that when it feels like we have somewhere to be, some way to grow, something to do. And sometimes other people in our life are affecting us because maybe they stand very strongly in their opinions and we don’t, and maybe that makes us feel like “Well, then they must know more than I do.” I know that that’s been my experience in the past. I don’t think that’s the case. It can be great to stand in strong opinions, it can be great to truly know your own mind. But not everyone that has strong opinions even knows their own mind or has even clearly thought about life (Tara laughs) and what it is that they think. And a lot of our values are very hidden even from ourselves when we are really struggling to root into our core sense of self. And those values still want to be seen and heard and have a place in our lives. And so we may feel like, that we sort of conflict with other people’s opinions, projections, thoughts, feelings, about us, about life, and we might question it from the perspective of, “Is there something that I’m doing wrong or getting wrong here?” “Is there something that is an issue because I’m not thinking right or doing something right?” And when we get so wrapped up in what other people’s models for living are, we often forget what our own model for what we want our life to be is.

And one of the biggest solutions to this is taking quiet time for yourself. 

Taking quiet time for yourself to just hear your own mind, to simply be, to take time before responding to another person, to take time before making a decision. And I like to see this as creating a boundary around your inner world. A boundary that you yourself need to listen to, that you yourself put up for others, but also put up for yourself. Because sometimes we are the ones that are kind of undermining our own selves, undermining our own opinions or viewpoints or values, and kind of deferring to other authorities in our life. So think about it in your mind, or in yourself, there’s like this beautiful field. And this beautiful field is your innermost value system. And there is this lovely fence constructed around this field. And this field has a gate, this fence has a gate. Things can come in, things can be let out. But often, for when we’re struggling with self-trust, or when we’re someone who’s really never built it for ourselves, our fence has a lot of broken links in it. It has a lot of posts that are out of the ground and just laying there. And the rest of the world is just coming in as they please. And we are just kind of feeling like this space inside is filling with debris, or just filling with energy that we’re unclear about.

And so this exercise helps you to clear out this field, to let outside of the gate things that do not belong there. To put the posts back into the ground and to mend the fences and to feel like you have some control over this space again. Autonomy over this space. And, you know, even though this is a metaphorical space, think about it like your home. Think about it like your personal space. Do you let just anyone and anything come into it? You might. And that’s ok, that might be how you like things to be, but, you know, what is your sense of control over your own environment? What do you allow in, and what don’t you? What is ok, and what isn’t? This is how I want you to think about the mental realm of your boundary system and what you let into this area of your life. Who gets to come in? What kinds of opinions and values get to be let in through the gate? What gets to stay? What needs to go?

What nurturing wants to come in and really nourish the field and enrich the field? And what can you invite in? What would really restore a sense of restfulness inside of this field that is your inner world? Often we don’t feel restful when we are engaging with a lot of outside opinions or outside input from the world that doesn’t truly align with us.

53:30

I had a client last year who graduated from a program and was opening up her own practice. And she didn’t feel ready to take on clients, and I really felt that this person would do a very specific kind of work, and I felt this very early in knowing them, before they were really developed in what they were studying, and the problem that they were having with trusting themselves was really big. And, they kind of felt like they couldn’t act without getting input from their mentor as to how to work with each client, what to do next. And, I let her know that it was really normal to go through this, but that it was really necessary to take space from asking for so much input, because it was literally in the way of her trusting herself. She was frozen to actually open up her space to work with people, and there was really no need. She’s fully trained, she’s fully ready for this. And the biggest obstacle was her own mind, and her own sense that “I don’t know. I can’t be the one that knows this or makes this decision. Or is responsible for this person.” And it was deeply rooted in wanting to help, wanting to be the best she could be for her clients, and these are wonderful places to act from. But it’s also really important at a certain point to trust yourself. Because you can take all the necessary actions of getting the right education, having the right teachers and mentors and guides, and all of that is so important. Simultaneously, it’s important to hold the knowing that you have the capacity within you to make your own decisions in whatever realm of your life it may be. This is, you know, a professional example, but I think it’s a good one because it can really make us think about where in our lives we sort of look to others that seem more experienced or more “right” somehow in what they’re doing, that their ways of doing things are somehow more valid.

So when you choose to sort of step back from opinions and input, and even teachers and mentors like in this example, I just want to be clear that as I said way at the beginning of this audio, like, I totally support education and getting the information you need and having the right teachers and mentors. But when there is this overreliance where emotionally you feel like you can’t function without that person, where you feel like you can’t step into your own work, or your own personal life, or manage on your own, that’s when it’s time to rebuild a more solid sense of self-trust by literally detoxing from input from the outside world. It’s a way of almost making you make your own decisions and take your own next steps without that outside input, and sometimes you don’t even have to necessarily take actions during this time.

I really struggled this past year with a friendship that was very hard on me, and before I made any decisions on what to do with it, or even if there was even anything to do, I took a very long time of spending time without that person around, and simply listening to my own mind, my own thoughts, my own input about my life, about the relationship, about who I am, because what had filled my mind for so long was what this person thought and felt and projected onto me or needed to state toward me that would then influence me or kind of fill my inner-world field-and-fence-system and confuse my own thoughts around who I was, and what I wanted, and how I could see the world.

58:26

So, taking that space, it’s almost like a cleansing for your mind. You get to kind of wash your mind clean of all that other stuff that is sort of polluting the field. And I’m certainly not saying that other people’s opinions are pollution or that, you know, getting outside support is polluting your inner world, but when you feel inundated with self-doubt, when you feel like you can’t function without these sources of input, it is not a positive thing to have in that fencing system. It’s something that really needs to be purged and released so that you can then decide more clearly what is right for you. 

The final example that I really want to use here is actually from my lifelong tarot reader. Her name is Renee. And she really taught me- when I was about seventeen- that sometimes when people see a reader or a healer, someone like me. There can be certain people that are so dependent on the reader, so dependent on what they’re going to hear or what they want to hear that they stop making their own decisions, they start asking about everything. And it isn’t about the deep work that’s possible with this, it’s about sort of the surface-level decision-making of their daily life. And what actually happens is, they’re essentially giving their power away, right? But if we were to look at it from an energetic perspective, and let’s say talk about like the chakra system, what’s actually happening is they’re losing energy in the solar plexus, which is the center of willpower and self and decision making, and if we were to take it out of the chakra system, because you know, all of these energies can be seen through different lenses, that’s just a popular way of seeing the energy body in spiritual work, but for example, in Chinese medicine, this would actually be the energy of the Gallbladder, the ability to make decisions and to keep us really on a track where we know what our next steps are at any given point. And they can be small things, like what we’re going to eat for breakfast, or really big things like a school program that we might want to get into. They can be small and big, but it’s all the same energy.

And that energy is sort of weakened when we consistently rely on outside input or just don’t exercise it, don’t use that decision-making power. And, you know, to be clear, that’s not the only reason that we can lack some decision-making power, and sometimes I will just say health issues can actually be in our way. So we always want to make sure that we are checking on our body and checking on our physical health because it’s directly related to our mental health and even strength, mental strength and willpower. Just knowing that this part of our energy system or our body can be sort of strengthened through use or weakened through lack of use is a really great way of seeing like “Ok, am I exercising this part of myself, am I building this decision-making muscle?” I keep saying decision making, but I also just mean self-reliance. Because sometimes making a decision is just about trusting our own thought processes enough. And that’s why the detox of outside input is so important.

I also just want to say that when I said to detox from things like self-help books, this can be wonderful, but what’s so funny about this, about me presenting this in this way, is that I was actually inspired to kind of see this inner field and fencing system through a book that I read on boundaries. Because at this time in my life when I read this book, I truly needed outside input to learn about boundaries. It wasn’t that I needed someone to tell me “Hey, you need to do this, like x, y, and z.” It was that I did not have the education, the actual information in my mind to sort of figure out the situation that I was in at the time. So I’m not always saying like “Don’t read books, or don’t do this or don’t do that.” But sometimes there is like a constant seeking. And so if you find yourself looking for the next book, or looking for the next program, looking for the next thing that’s going to give you, like, that’s going to make you feel like you are centered and grounded and capable, know that you can already find being centered and being grounded and being capable. Just sitting with yourself. Just finding a little quiet and listening to your own mind, listening to your own heart, listening to your own truth. And really taking the space for yourself to let this field in you be cleared of everything that isn’t yours, that isn’t authentically you, will make you feel so deeply connected and rooted.

1:04:44

And it’s something that you can do for a short period of time or a long period of time. Sometimes I’ll just give myself a week, sometimes it’ll be a month, sometimes it’ll be three. What I tell clients are based on their specific situations, on what they’re really facing at that moment, on what it is that they are unknowingly giving their power away to, and what realm or area of their life that I want them to rebuild that power and that sense of self-trust. So just really think about where it can really apply to your life right now, and how it can help you.

Ok, so now that we’ve covered rooting into the body and filtering out the distractions in your life that might be really taking away from the sense that you can see your own thoughts and feelings and opinions clearly, it’s time to go a little bit more within. A little bit deeper. This piece is about creating your life vision. And maybe you already feel like you have a life vision, and that’s great. Maybe you feel like you’re really rooted in your purpose, and really living the way that you want. I hope that’s the case. And this really isn’t to necessarily change your direction, or change how you’re living. What the purpose of this is is to give you even more clarity on the values that you have, the desires that you have, to help you sort through what it is you want and why you want it. It just helps you get clearer on yourself.

So, to connect with this vision, to maybe even just create this vision, I like to approach it in one of two ways: you can either go way back in time, to your childhood, or your inner child, or you can go way forward in time, to the hypothetical end of your life or to the, you know, hypothetical very mature years of your life when you’ve really lived out a lot of your life path and you’re looking back at it. So if you take it from the childhood perspective, you’ll of course be looking forward. You’ll be thinking, you know, what did I want as a child for myself, what did I dream about, what did I desire and really want to call into my life, what did I see myself fulfilling in this lifetime? And if you take it from the perspective of the opposite end of your life, you want to really connect with this wise adult self, this part of you or this person that you are going to be that has really developed themselves in the ways that you see for yourself, that has really evolved and grown and, you know, done as much with their life as they desired, as you desire.

And, when you look from one of these two perspectives, you really get a sense of perspective first of all, and you also get a sense of what it is you most deeply believe and want in this life. And it helps you to really connect deeply with a sense of, “Am I on that path? Am I aligning with each of these desires? Am I aligning with each of these values? Am I on my way to becoming that evolved person? Or, Am I on my way to becoming that dreamed-up person that my inner child wants, or that I wanted when I was a child?

1:08:57

And this perspective is something that I think is so good to journal about. A lot of people lead meditations from one of these perspectives, and I think that’s wonderful. But sometimes, my feeling is that meditation can make us feel a little bit blocked. The reason for that is because we’re often expecting something profound to happen in meditation, we’re often expecting some giant concrete vision to appear, or just have some incredible breakthrough. And it’s not that that can’t happen, it’s just that the weight of that expectation can almost keep us stuck, can keep our mind trapped in overthinking. Whereas if you sit down and you write this out and you kind of unpack the perspective that you’re looking from, you can end up uncovering layers without overthinking because it becomes this automatic process. Once you hit a certain point in writing, in asking yourself questions and kind of working through your own answers, you kind of hit your stride and the answers just start to really pour forth and the epiphanies come in really subtle and lovely ways.

So if you choose to go from the direction of your inner child, I will encourage you to get out your journal, and really give yourself a moment to sit and think about yourself as a child or to see your inner child today as like a separate being standing before you. And I want you to really imagine what they look like. What they feel like. And I want you to imagine that they are this child that you care about. And you care about what they want, and how they feel, and who they are. And I want you to get really curious about what it is that is in their head. What they have to communicate with you through this. And then you can begin with some questions.

So you might ask of your inner child, or ask of yourself, in your childhood memory, what did this child love? What did they dream of? What did they wish that they could have had, and didn’t? What nourishment did they miss out on, that as their caretaker today, you could begin to provide them with? How did they want to be seen? And were they? In what ways did they want to express themselves? Did they get the opportunity? Were they seen? Were they appreciated in those expressions? How can you express yourself in the ways that they didn’t get to, today? How can you begin to bring into your life the things that maybe they didn’t get to fulfill?

And, as you write, and as you maybe come up with more questions for yourself as you go, begin to notice how your life is so in alignment with exactly who you were then, and how you were then, and what you desired then, and also begin to notice where maybe it isn’t. Where maybe you feel some dissonance between what you really desired and where you are now. And this, you know, isn’t about being wrong or right, because it may be that it’s great that you didn’t go in the direction that maybe you thought you would. But this is to wake up in you if you do feel connected and fulfilled and on the right path for you. This is to help you to see from a perspective that is your own, that is from very deeply who you are, and who you were, but that part of you is still with you today, it’s still alive even if you haven’t connected with it or you don’t connect with it regularly, and it’s something that you can consistently do.

1:13:42

I really like to check in with my inner child any time big changes are coming up with my life, and every time triggers are coming up regularly, and just emotions are kind of everywhere, because I know that there’s something that wants to be fulfilled, there’s something that that child in me is needing. And just like with human children, children can’t provide for themselves. Our inner children are the parts of us that are dependent on us, that need us to be the wise, centered adults that we can be to give them exactly what they need so that they feel safe, so that they feel nurtured. And this is an incredible level of self-care that you can reach for yourself, but today we’re just beginning from a sense of reconnecting with your vision for yourself.

So, if you’ve chosen to look at this from the direction of your extremely wise, mature, grown self, you can ask slightly different questions. Because you want to look from this future perspective, you want to look as though your future self is looking back at the past, is looking back at where you are now, is like mysteriously smiling at you knowing what’s coming for you and how your life is going to unfold, and that there’s just this wisdom and surety in the way that she looks at you.

So, you can imagine her before you as well. And because you haven’t been her yet, or them, to use a more gender neutral pronoun. Of course I’m thinking of myself, so that was why I said she and her, but you can look at them, and you can really envision, what do they look like? What did they build in their life? What did they create? What do their loved ones say about them in their life right now? How do they see her? How do they see them? What are the roles in future you’s life? This might show you where you might want to grow certain relationships in your life, where you might be neglecting certain relationships, or not putting the energy into them that you truly desire, and so really look, is she a friend, is she a mentor, did she have special roles within family, within her community? What were those relationships like? And what was her lifestyle like? Did she travel? Did she stay in one place? What does her home look like? Does she have anything she wants to tell you about where you are now, or where you’ve been, or where you’re going? What is she doing now? At this age that you’re viewing her at? How is she involved in the world? How is she engaging with her life each day?

And you may come up with so many more questions from here. And, follow that flow. Really just let yourself go and just let yourself write this out, and imagine this and let yourself see what may be hidden dreams are in you that you really wish for yourself, or ways that you want to grow and evolve, that maybe you haven’t started a path yet to get there. But this is this initiatory moment that lets you know “Ok, this is what I want, and this is how I can get there, and I’m going to start that now.” It’s also just a way of really honoring yourself, really honoring your desires, honoring your vision. When you can honor the vision that you have for yourself, you are crystal clear on who you are. And other people can say what they want, do what they want, and you know, it won’t affect you because you have this solidity to you, this stability of purpose and direction and inner knowing.

My biggest desire for you is to remember that you’re the ultimate authority on your life. That isn’t to say that Divine doesn’t have a plan, that we have 100% control over our lives. That isn’t true. We don’t have control over our lives. We never really know what’s going to happen in the next moment. But when we have this sense of clarity with ourselves and this sense of personal autonomy, this is the closest we can get to being the ultimate authority for ourselves because we strengthen our sense of self-referral. We strengthen our sense of connecting to our own wisdom, to our own answers. We detox ourselves from feeling stuck and powerless and dependent because of the swirling energies of the world around us, whether that’s other people, or social media, and, you know, the regular media, and the overculture. And we begin to really have the opportunity to heal wounds in ourselves that keep us from believing that we have our own answers, that we have our own knowing, that we have our own wisdom, and we stop giving away our power, whether unknowingly, or because it’s kind of like compulsory within us to think like “Yeah, I don’t have the answer here, I don’t have the wisdom, I don’t have the knowledge.” And to know that you really do.

1:19:49

So I deeply hope that this served you, that this gives you some tools to begin to rebuild your sense of self-connection, self-trust, and this core sense of self that really is something that deserves to be built over time. So know that none of these are like a silver bullet. Nothing that we can learn, ever, is, you know, the one thing that we need. But really realizing that everything in our life is taken care of layer by layer can free us to give ourselves the grace and the space that we need to nurture our own growth and evolution with patience and kindness and bravery and surrender. And you are 100% worth all of the time and the energy that you put towards yourself, that you put toward your own growth and evolution. So know that I am here cheering you on, and just wishing you the very best in your journey right now. I know that wherever you are, you’re right where you’re meant to be. You can learn and grow from where you are, but just know that you are safe, you are ok where you are, there is no rush. And to just be very gentle with yourself through your healing journey. Thank you for your commitment to this deep work, for your time listening to this lesson. I hope it served you.

With love,

Tara

Recommended resources for nervous system learning: www.jessicamaguire.com, or her Instagram @healing_the_nervous_system