Did you know that your emotions are not just feelings but powerful messengers guiding you toward deeper self-awareness?
In today’s episode, I have invited Julie Lucas, an I-Rest and Yoga-Nidra instructor, to explore the transformative journey of connecting with our inner resources.
Stay tuned to discover how embracing the full spectrum of emotions can lead to greater awareness, ease, and lightness in your life.
In this podcast episode, Julie takes us through:
- Julie's transition from analytical footwear designer to Yoga Nidra practitioner
- Interoception: learning to feel the body from the inside out
- Treating emotions as messengers to convey inner state rather than obstacles
- The journey of self-discovery: from feeling stuck to achieving awareness and aliveness.
- Using "inner resource" practice to find safety and ease in the body
- Redirecting attention inward as a powerful tool for transformation
- Connection between feeling "homesick" and bodily disconnection
- Simple techniques for nervous system regulation
- The ultimate goal of cultivating ease and lightness by fully engaging with and understanding our emotional landscape.
And so much more!
As a designer and certified iRest® yoga nidra teacher, I help people get out of the mind maze and into a life they love from the inside out. I had my first experience with Yoga Nidra almost a decade ago. Even as I write this, I can feel what a pivotal encounter it was…a Wizard of Oz kind of moment when life shifted from shades of grey to full spectrum color.
Prior to that day, I had slowly, unknowingly set up camp in my head; life had started to feel robotic and lifeless. The daily grind of analyzing, comparing, judging, and overthinking had become my new normal. During and after the yoga nidra class, everything changed…I felt drastically more alive, lit up, and full of sensations that previously had been drowned out by the noise of my mind. All of the sudden I could feel tingling in my fingers, a full body pulsation, and a playfulness that I now know as innate and ever-available.
In awe of its ability to bring me home to myself, I felt called to study and share this transformative practice. As a certified iRest® yoga nidra teacher, I create space to explore our moment to moment experience with wonder and curiosity – gracefully remembering the truth of our wholeness.
In classes and 1:1 sessions, I help people to meet anxiety and pain as messengers. As we allow our inner landspace to be seen, felt, and heard, we make space for all this “friction” to be digested and begin to move through us naturally. There’s no longer a desperate need to over-analyze… your inner knowing rises to the surface, and the way forward reveals itself. The practice builds interoception, resilience, and fluency of emotions…with a sensitivity to each person's unique experience and history.
Weaving together her training in iRest, Mindful Schools, and Imagination Yoga, Julie offers practices for both adults and children, in-person and virtually. Whether she's teaching in a 7th grade homeroom, a backyard yurt or an elementary gymnasium, Julie brings her whole heart to the collaborative adventures. Her background in both design and posture therapy informs her creative, body-centered approach to the practice.
Book Julie’s 4-session Embodiment Series or Discover How Embodied You Are With A FREE Online Assessmenthttps://www.withinwonder.com/
And find her collection of kids' meditations on Zenimal and Insight Timer. https://insighttimer.com/within.wonder/
Follow Aimee Takaya on:
IG: @aimeetakaya
Facebook: Aimee Takaya
Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at www.freeyoursoma.com
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Free Your Soma, Stories of Somatic Awakening, and How to Live from the Inside Out. I'm here today with Julie Lucas. We are going to explore how your emotions are actually messengers trying to tell you something. We're going to look at how to get unstuck using the principles of opposites.
She's an I-Rest and Yoga-Nidra instructor teacher, and she's going to talk today about how to connect to your inner resource and why our attention is our most valuable resource. So stay tuned.
A: Every day, there is a forgetting, and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your Soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love.
A: Hi Julie, how are you today?
J: Hi Aimee, I'm great. Thanks so much for having me.
A: Yeah, yeah. It's wonderful. Julie and I, we got to experience each other's modalities, and it was really a profoundly beautiful experience, and I feel very excited to have this conversation because I think that more and more people are discovering Yoga-Nidra and also discovering their bodies and discovering their consciousness in a more kind of integrated way.
So some of these things that we're going to talk about today, just I feel like there's a lot of people who really need this information.
J: So true, and I feel like our work is really resonant about feeling this feminine body place, so I'm excited to have the conversation.
A: Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to ask you a question to kind of like take us into all of this, right? When is a time in your life, and if you're listening and you're watching this right now, you can even ask yourself this question to kind of orient yourself and your body, your soma, to this question, right?
When is a time in your life that you felt stuck, and how did you get unstuck?
J: Yeah, I don't think I even recognize that I was stuck at the time, but so I went to school for product design, and I spent much of my career as a footwear designer. And in that role it became really natural for me to be in critique mode, to compare my work with others, to be focused on trends, and really focusing on the outside world.
And there was benefit to that, it was helpful to be assessing and improving, but there really wasn't enough focus inward. And so over time, these habits of comparison and competition began to derail other aspects of my life.
I was pushing myself as an athlete and as in my work to really perform and measure up, right? And so I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, that brought a whole other layer of emotions and resistance, and I felt lost, and really at that time, I did feel stuck.
And maybe a soon after that, I had my first experience with yoga nidra, and there was this palpable shift. It was like this vrvah's moment when things went from shades of gray to full spectrum color. After this class, I felt drastically more alive.
I couldn't believe that this, the sensation in my hand I had not been aware of, like how did I not know that there was so much aliveness here? All this tingling in my hands, this full-body pulsation, and this playfulness that I now know is ever present was just like shown to me after this class.
And so I realized that I'd been camping out in my head. I had disconnected from my body and from all this information that was coming forward as sensation. So yeah, I think this practice has really reminded me of the power of tuning into sensation and just all that's really here for us when we go inward.
A: Beautiful, yes. And a couple of things that you spoke to I think are really interesting is the way that you had this strength made basically like a part of your brain. It was probably your left brain, your analytical planning side of your brain, that was overactive from the kind of job that you had.
And it sounds like you were very good at that, but you spent many, many hours of your life in that part of your brain and it kind of was taking over. And you didn't even realize that, like you just said, you didn't know for some time that you were stuck because we get habituated, right? Or we get used to what we get used to.
And so you were very used to this and obviously skilled at using this part of your brain, but it wasn't balanced, right? And that's kind of what you're pointing to in terms of, like going from black and white to color.
Like we need to be able to be on that spectrum of black and white, right? But we also need to be able to see all of the color in between those polarities, right? And that's part of what it means to be like having a life of possibility and freedom is being able to see the wider picture and not be just stuck in one way or the other way, right?
J: The binary. Yes, yeah. I mean, this idea of feeling offices is a surprisingly powerful way to meet our full experience, right? Sometimes we have a tendency to want to diminish or deny or accidentally camp out into one side of our experience.
And if we do that, we get stuck in this one-sided kind of way of being. And in Yoganitra, we purposely go back and forth between opposites, really feeling sensations, emotions, beliefs even, to get unstuck. We'll feel both sides or someplace on this continuum of opposites.
A: Yeah, that makes sense to me with the work that I do with the both right and left sides of our body. It makes sense to me, we can also be doing this work very internally.
There's a word that you used in your bio that I think really represents what I got to experience getting in touch with when I worked with you. But also what I feel is really one of the biggest benefits of Yoganitra, which is developing intraception. Can you explain to our listeners what is intraception?
J: Interraception. Yeah, I talk about intraception as feeling from the inside out. So feeling our body from the inside of our body. And we're strengthening our ability to perceive subtle signals from our body. And this awareness to me feels like our original superpower.
Right? It's like we, when we're young, when we're growing up, we learn to be potty trained. And that's like our first experience with intraception.
We learn to feel when we need to go. And it almost seems like we stop there. But there's so much more that we can discover. And the skill is so transferable into feeling into the information that's available to us within.
A: Yeah, that's a great point. And I think there's, like, there's an interesting layer to it, which like the example of potty training, is perfect. What you just said, where it's like, we become aware that we're pooping our pants.
And then we can become aware like right after we did it. And then we can become aware like right before we do it. And that's the real clincher when you can become aware of something before you actually do it, even if you still do it, even if you still pooped your pants, like just that awareness of it's about to happen.
I'm about to do that thing. Right? And then over time, we become aware enough that we can hold it before we get to the bathroom.
Right? But the crazy thing is, is that, you know, that intraceptive awareness is still going on, even when we're unaware. It's just like, for example, like the kid could be screaming and crying, and the kid doesn't really know why they're upset.
And the parent doesn't know why they're upset. And maybe we make up a story, you know, about, oh, he really wants that toy, but then you go look in his pants, and you're like, Oh, that's why. You know, so I think like sometimes that's still going on. We have these sensations, we have these feelings.
And because we're not aware of like what's happening in our body real-time, we might make up like a mental story about it when it's actually like something that, you know, we're getting feedback from our body about that's asking for a particular need to be met, but it's invisible to us. So we're like, not sure what it is, we just decide it's this, you know, it's so true.
J: And so instead of constantly seeking answers from the outside world, we're attuning to the sensations of our heartbeat, our respiration, all these feelings of aliveness that are coming to us moment to moment. And when we first turn our attention toward these subtle sensations, it can seem like there's not much going on.
But as we stay with this practice, even for a few minutes longer, the whole world of sensation can open up to us. It's kind of like going out on an in a night sky. And on a clear night, you look up and you might see the moon and a star or two.
But as you stay there longer, you know, more texture and variations of color, more stars, more craters in the moon become available to us. And it's kind of the same way. Like as we be, as we're willing to be with these sensations, more and more becomes available to us. And we really start to spark wonder and awe at all that's really here inside of us.
A: That's beautiful. Yes. And it really is an art of, yeah, being with the subtle. And we don't live in a world that's particularly subtle. You know, there's a lot of overstimulation. There's a lot of noise around us that we've learned to like habituate and just get used to, you know. And so I think in a lot of ways what you're describing is like a returning to our sensitivity to be able to feel, you know, whispers instead of, you know, the loudness that we've kind of been conditioned with, right? Yeah.
J: And this practice of yoga, Nidra, is a step-by-step befriending of our experience. And we start with the most gross, so our physical bodies. And then we move to the more subtle through breath and energy through emotions, thoughts and beliefs, and into this feeling of witnessing and awareness itself. So it is this really gentle and spacious progression through the Kosha's from the most gross to the most subtle. And in that way, it's really beautiful and really accessible.
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A: I love that. Yes, I felt that when I was working with you that we were really were kind of moving my awareness through different layers. I love that you use the word Kosha. For those of you who don't know what a Kosha is, it's a Vedic word for our energy field, including our body, and that we have these different layers of our body and our experience.
I tend to think of all those layers, if we're able to kind of feel them all at once, that's like a somatic kind of experience where we're in all of our senses in that way. I personally felt that the Yoga Nidra session that I received from you was very much a somatic experience, and you were so skillful in the way that you kind of, like you said, progressively guided me into a deeper and deeper awareness of myself and of my body and allowed allowing.
You talk a lot about allowing. So let's look at this idea that you shared about emotions and allowing emotions and then also allowing emotions to be messengers. Like if we get quiet enough, if we're not resisting the emotion or fighting it off or making it mean something, like how is it that our emotions can become messengers? Can you describe some of that process?
J: Yeah, so at the heart of this practice, it's all about welcoming. So we're welcoming everything that arises in our experience as a messenger. All the sensations, all the emotions, everything is knocking at our door, it's trying to get our attention. And as we invite them in for conversation, the messages can finally be seen, felt, and heard and moved through us naturally. So we're really able to digest life. We feel lighter and more at ease because we've really met what's here.
And the goal of this practice isn't to fix or change anything, actually. It's really just to meet, greet, and welcome what's arising. And so as we do this, there's just all this curiosity here. And we can, for example, meet what the emotion of frustration feels like in a moment and really feel that as a somatic felt sense.
So, you know, if I'm feeling frustrated, where do I feel that in my body? Is it in my jaw? Is it in my belly? Is there a heat? Maybe there's a color or a density? And really giving yourself time to explore, what does this emotion feel like?
And if it feels like it's too much to go to, you know, rage, you know, step back and start at frustration or irritation, it's a nice place to start. Where does this show up in my body? And what is it like to be here with it? And even in one-on-one practices, we'll have a conversation with that emotion. You know, what are you here to tell me? How do I feel about you being here in this room with me?
How do you feel about me being with you? Like, so there's this conversation that we can have with our emotions and really unpack what it is that they're trying to say. Sometimes they're just passing by, passing through. And sometimes the ones that are recurring or the ones that come up in a session are the ones that just are ready to be explored a little bit deeper. Right.
A: Well, and I think this is such a beautiful practice for, you know, the kind of tendency for people to suppress and push aside and ignore emotions unless they're very intense. You know, I think a lot of us, including myself, you know, frustration, it's like, yeah, okay, whatever, get over it. And it's like, did I really like get over it, or did I just kind of like shove it into a corner, kind of like pushing things, more and more things into your closet and not really putting stuff away?
And then it's only when you open the closet looking for something, and everything falls out that you're like, okay, I got to deal with this. Right. People tend to do that with their emotions, their everyday experiences and feelings. And so I can definitely see the benefit to this conversation that you're describing.
And the word that comes to mind is like, digest or metabolize, like actually allow the emotion to be felt, tasted, experienced, known. And in my experience, and maybe you can speak to this as well, like our body naturally will move through and release stuff when we actually are able to be with it. Is that your experience as well? Yes.
J: And it is simply this idea of being with it with curiosity and not trying to fix or change it, but just in the being with it, it will transform all on its own, which is so like freeing. It's like, I don't have to do anything. I can just be with this emotion. It just wants my attention. Right.
A: Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. And you know, I also, you put this down as well that I found very interesting because the subject, the idea of home, right, and homesickness that we can feel when we're disconnected from our body. And that particularly spoke to me because I think I spent a really big portion of my young adult life and even my childhood feeling like this homesickness.
And, you know, in some ways, like I, you know, there were different kinds of like stories that I had about it. It was like, Oh, you know, a mother wound and some kind of disconnection that I had with my mother abandonment, right?
Like we have all these like names and labels for, you know, that feeling of like, you know, maybe we even see it manifested in our lives, like with changing living situations over and over and over, you know, and feeling like we can't settle or find our home. But I thought that you're describing it as a disconnection from our body and that maybe that's the root of that homesick experience that's being projected and manifested and described in all these different ways. Like what if it was that simple?
J: What if it was? I know I sometimes feel like that that we feel like it's all these other things that are not going right. But it's really that we've just abandoned ourselves. We've just shut the door to the small things that end up like you're saying accumulating. And now it's the sweep just disconnected. We don't even know where to begin because there's so much that's been kind of lodged in there. And so, yeah, there's this coming home to ourselves and it sometimes can just be a moment, a flash of awareness like, oh, like it was for me in that class where I just became so embodied that I could see the contrast.
And I don't want to go back, you know, I really just feel at home with myself and how do I get back here? And it can't be this simple just to sit with ourselves and feel, can I feel my pulse? Can I feel tingling in my fingers? Can I feel the space between my fingers and how I'm interacting with the space around me? It's really potent. Beautiful.
A: Yes. Did you spend some of your time with this feeling of being homesick or, you know, what did home mean to you? And then how does what does home mean to you now?
J: Well, it kind of related to me because I left my home of Ohio in my 20s and moved across to the West Coast. And it really was a pull. I could feel the homesickness. Those first couple of years are really hard when you move to a new place. And so, it just feels a little bit different because I didn't know that I had the, I didn't know what this was, this new feeling that I had when I was disconnected from my body, but it was in the returning, it was in the coming home that I was like revealed.
And I could rest into it and be like, oh, I know now that this is what it feels like. I remember, right? It's that constant remembering and forgetting and remembering. And so, yeah, I feel that thread between the actual physical moving of home and this kind of center of center feeling of when you find it in yourself. Yeah.
A: And I think that like, you know, first of all, I think it's really cool that you're from Ohio for some reason. I think that's really great because my mom's from accurate Ohio actually, and she moved to the West Coast too. So, yeah, I think that that depth of that homesickness that you felt, I wonder if you had been more embodied if it would have felt less scary, maybe, right? When we're more connected to ourselves, maybe it's easier and more comfortable to take risks and change our environment. But when we're in whatever ways unconsciously disconnected, it can feel a little less secure to do that. It could, you know, have been more difficult for you because of that.
J: Absolutely. When we come to this steadiness in ourselves, it does translate to everything. If I feel the steadiness inside me, then I'm willing to take the risk. I can access courage. I can see the resilience that happens when I get blown off track and can come back to myself. So, yes, definitely.
A: Yeah. The other thing I'd love to talk about here is, you know, we're talking about it already, but maybe we can talk about it even a little bit more specifically. Describe a little bit about recalibrating our nervous system.
What does that mean? And how might, like, say a client who comes into a session with you, maybe you can describe, like, where some people's nervous systems are when they start, and then what does it mean to recalibrate during that irrest or that yoga, that yoga nitrous session?
J: Yeah. So, we're really getting to know our nervous system through these practices. We're getting to know when we feel amped up, when we feel shut down. We're getting to know what it feels like in our bodies when we come back into that feeling of home.
And so, just in that in itself, it's just a huge aha for many people. Like, oh, I can feel now this difference, right? And so, everybody's nervous system's a little bit different. So, sometimes we'll do a breath practice, and that may increase their feeling of being kind of activated. And so, we'll try a different breath practice, and that may be, like, what helps them to find a sense of ease. So, we're really playing with what is working for you.
It is an experiment, and I mean, there's tendencies for sure, but we're figuring out what works for you. And one of the practices that I often start with is called the inner resource. This is one of the foundational steps of I-Rest, where we feel into a sense of ease, safety, and well-being in the body. And we'll go through a practice of calling in images from our memory or imagination that help to evoke these feelings of peace and the ease. And over time, we can begin to let those images fade away and just really stay with the embodied, felt sense of peace and well-being, this wholeness that's always here. And for some people, this is really foreign.
It can take a long time, and we just welcome whatever's here. And other times, people can connect to it pretty quickly through an image, or they are already familiar with just the sense of being and how it gives them this sense of steadiness. And I find that that practice is really so important to do at the beginning, because that allows us to have somewhere to come back to when we do feel our nervous system has been activated and we're feeling shut down.
We can return to this anchor of steadiness. And that to me is just, it was for me when I first learned it, it was such a gift. It was such a way for me to have some agency over how I returned to that place.
A: Right, it's a feeling of having choice or control over our internal experience. And I think a lot of my life early on, I felt very out of control. I didn't understand what was happening in my body or my emotions, and I was desperately trying to explain it and problem-solve and think my way out of my feelings and all of that stuff that people do, right? And what you're describing is like, I feel like I know just what you mean in terms of finding that new place of calm and then reorienting who I am to that. When I'm in this state of balance and homeostasis and calm, that's who I am.
And then stress happens and it pulls me out of that calm. But being able to keep reorienting back to like my default is that. And that's a practice. Have you ever had anybody that you've worked with, like you said, you just described that someone might take a really long time to get to that place? Have you ever worked with someone who said, like, I feel very relaxed, but I'm super uncomfortable being relaxed?
J: I haven't. But I have heard another teacher talk about that experience. It's interesting. Some people who have a hard time accessing the feeling of ease will find it through images of their pets or so that can be a really great place to access in a resource. But when people do find it and they're uncomfortable there, it is usually just because it is so foreign to them, I think.
And so it's like small doses and just this slow remembering of like, yeah, this actually we don't like it because it's like so foreign. And it feels like I'm not getting anything done. I'm not being productive.
I'm not getting my attention to all these things that want my attention. And so it can be really uncomfortable. And so we meet that discomfort too. We welcome that too.
A: Wow. Yeah. It's it's hard in the beginning to welcome discomfort. I can understand why a person would really need a practitioner to hold that space for them. Because I mean, when I was living in pain, I spent seven years in chronic pain, you know, and then through hanasomatics and but, you know, not just hanasomatics, like, oh, I did some movement on my own. Like I needed someone there with me.
Like, you know, if I started working with you 10, 15 years ago, Julie, like, I would need you with me the whole time. I would not be able to have done yoga, knee draw on my own because I was definitely like pretty uncomfortable sensing into my body without trying to control it. Like you're doing, you're talking about welcoming and allowing that was foreign to me early on in my life. You know, all of my orientation to like yoga was very forceful, physical, tightening of my body kind of yoga.
Nothing wrong with that. But that was just a thing I was stuck in. Kind of like you described how you were you're stuck in your analysis brain. I was like stuck in like this forceful relationship with my body. And so for someone to invite me to welcome my pain, I would have been like, no.
J: Yeah. And I think, I mean, part of that practice for someone who is in chronic pain is to start outside the body, start in the space around you. Can you feel comfortable in this space? And then it's like getting to the very periphery of the skin or the pain and just slowly, slowly, slowly welcoming in whatever piece and whatever feels okay for the person.
So yeah, it is a hand-holding, I think, because it is a very scary to meet pain. So intense pain on your own. That's just, yeah, it seems like, and there's, you don't really know how to do it. So I think having tools like HANA and what IRest offers are just ways of being guided into this welcoming that is so transformative.
A: Yes. I love that idea of starting with, do I feel comfortable in the space? You know, and that also extends to like the practitioner. You know, like I felt very comfortable with you right away, you know, just connecting with you, feeling your energy, you know, like there was a resonance.
And so, for me, I was able to very quickly relax, right? But sometimes, you know, people have trust issues. People have had, you know, not such good experiences, you know, with a bodyworker, like I've had a few clients like that where it's like, I'm going to touch them, and I can tell maybe we're not going to touch yet. Maybe we're just going to talk a little bit more because you need to learn a little bit more about me before you actually are going to feel comfortable with that.
And they might not be saying that, but you can pick up on these little cues. So I love that idea of, you know, kind of inviting them. And I'm assuming you would do that like through inviting them to look around their space and identify the colors and shapes, right? Like I kind of remember you doing a little bit of that in our session.
J: Yeah, look over each shoulder, you know, feel the embrace of the room. Does this feel like a safe place? Is there a place in the room that you'd like to orient? How is your body positioned? Do you like how you set yourself up? Do we need to find more comfort here? And just slowly creating a space for more comforts so that the nervous system can begin to relax.
A: Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think when we started, we did our session, you sent me an intake form, right? And I filled out some information. And I think that was lovely. And then also, we still had a conversation at the beginning of the session because I feel like you really need to have that real-time in the moment. I know you wrote all this down, but what is it like now? Let's come to right now and see what's showing up at this moment. Right.
J: Because the messengers are going to show up as they're ready to show up. And you may have written something down last week that has nothing to do with what's appearing in the moment. And so we just meet what's here. Yeah, exactly. Beautiful.
A: Yes. So let's talk a little bit about our attention. And we've already talked about this a little bit, kind of that idea that our attention, what we're focusing on, what we're bringing awareness to, you say that is our most valuable resource. Can you give us some examples of like, you know, how bringing our attention to a situation or to experience will shift it for someone?
J: Yeah. So it seems like any time we look at our inbox or a device, we're opening ourselves up for things to grab our attention. Right. It seems like everything out there wants a piece of our attention. And that's because they know how valuable it is. I mean, when we kind of recognize it, wow, they want my attention because it's so valuable. And so we see how powerful it is to give ourselves.
That attention. And so as we gift our shoulders, for example, with just our presence without trying to fix or change, right, from this place of curiosity and openness, that's in where the place where things transform all on their own. And so this idea of just giving ourselves attention is so kind of foundational to all the work that we're doing. And it is kind of where I think the power lies. Absolutely.
A: I think what you're saying connects back to interception. You know, we spend a lot of our lives conditioned and for good reasons, right, conditioned to be focused externally on what's happening outside of us. Many people, you know, if they like, you know, you say, someone who's like a controlling personality, they're like trying to control the external circumstances around them, the people around them, manipulation, all that stuff that like we learn to do as children.
Honestly, we're like, you know, doing these things that we learned very young and we continue to do them as a way to try to, you know, make sense of the world or keep ourselves safe. And what you're describing by instead of pushing that attention out, like when we turn it in towards ourselves, that awareness, that interception, like now we're actually able to experience more of that, how you described it earlier, like that sense of belongingness, right?
And that sense of security that we've been trying to create by controlling everybody else in our environment. Yes. Yes. We can shift from having to be that fixer into being the witness.
J: And when we shift into this place of witnessing or observing, it's a really different perspective, right? We're kind of removing ourselves from our tendency to want to fix and grab and shift. And just allowing ourselves to watch, you know, what is actually happening now?
Can I just be okay with this? What would it be like if I was just okay with that sound outside that feels like it's really annoying, right? What if I just heard that sound as a vibration? Right? Because really all it is is vibration. I'm putting the story on it that it's annoying.
Right? What if it was just vibration? Like, can we let that pass through us? And so a lot of the practice of Yogan Indra is just we begin by opening the senses, hearing sounds as vibration, seeing light and shadow, smelling aroma, tasting, residue of taste.
And then we move even more internally. You know, what is the feeling of aliveness that I have right now? Without trying to control it, fix it, not trying to change my breath pattern, but just noticing what is my experience of aliveness? What is it like to feel life living through me?
You know, and so I think those prompts can really help people to move from trying to judge something or, you know, have a story around something into what's actually happening and how actually amazing and miraculous it is to be in a body and have these disinformation arising.
A: Yeah. It's so funny you mentioned noise because I've actually been on a little journey with noise myself recently, like akin to what you were saying. I was always someone who prided myself on not being annoyed by noises. Like when I was like a teenager and I drive, you know, and driving my first car or whatever, I had like a dashboard that we kind of rattle.
And I had a boyfriend who was always like whacking it. Like he was like, I can't handle that. And I was like, it doesn't bug me. Like, I was like, too cool. I'm like, I'm fine with that. And what I've discovered is like actually, I think the entire time, I was just like unaware that my body was reacting to sounds.
Right. And so I've become more sensitive because I've continued to develop that awareness and get that feedback from my body. And now I do find myself much more aware of, and it's funny because I do, I do what you just said. I kind of judge it sometimes is like annoying, right? Versus if I were to stay with it real-time, it might be more like, oh, there's a rattling sound. And I noticed that as that rattling sound is occurring, my attention is drawn to it like I'm drawn out of my focus. And I'm noticing that my body is tightening up, maybe in specific areas.
Like I'm clenching a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So like it's weird because I used to think that I was not annoyed by those things, but I was just desensitized to it or something. I just was like ignoring it.
J: I have a fun story about sound. A few years ago, I was leaving the grocery store and it started to pour down rain. It was a summer day in Oregon, which was so uncommon.
So we just had this short downpour. And so I jumped in my car and it was so heavy that I thought, I can't even drive. You know, so I'm going to sit here and meditate. And so I was sitting there and hearing the sound of the rain hit the top of the car. It was almost like, you know, someone's giving you a round of applause. And so I just sat and I just listened to the rain.
It has vibration. And over time, I was like, oh, it feels like I'm kind of becoming the rain. And then a little bit longer, I was like, no, it's I'm becoming the listening itself. And it was just this moment of like pure awareness when I was just became the listening.
And I was like, oh, I have to write down. How did I get here? I love this feeling. And I think that there's, there's these openings that are available to us when we kind of, I didn't normally, I would have just gotten in my car and sped away. But because I just took the moment to really listen, it opened up this really this portal into awareness that I'll never forget.
A: Yeah, just from that, slowing down and paying attention. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that I became the listening.
J: Yeah, that's what it felt like. Yeah.
A: That's amazing. Yeah, I've been, I noticed walking out in public, like the noises of the streets and stuff, like my body will get noticeably a little tighter, and I can feel like, oh, my nervous system is starting to get like a little tuned up as I'm out here in public with a lot of people and noise and it's unpredictable.
And I have a small child and like, you know, when you can start to become aware of, you know, your nervous system getting more and more elevated, which you don't, you can probably speak to this too. Like you don't even know it when you're living in that elevation. That's just normal to be hyper-vigilant, to be overwhelmed.
You're just living in that. So you don't even know when it's happening unless it's like a panic attack or something extreme, right? But like once you tune everything down, then you start to notice as you feel more tense or as you feel more like activated, right?
J: It kind of reminds me of too, as the time that we worked together and I had started before we, our session started, I had been working on my computer and some like kind of detail work. And then we had our session, and I don't know if you remember, but at the end of our session, I was like, oh, my peripheral vision is amazing right now. I could see almost like 360 and you were like, yeah, that's what happens when we, when we close down, our vision actually gets more narrow. And when we feel safer, which is what happened in that session, I felt much safer in my body. I could see this whole panorama of, and I just really could, like I was just such a shift. I was like, wow, this is amazing.
A: Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's, it's something you can physically see in someone's eyes too. Like if you can imagine yourself like sitting in that car, you know, and you decided to slow down and take that moment, you became the listening, like if we were to have taken a picture of your eyes, like before and after, you would have seen that shift. It's like our eyes get longer, they get wider. When we're stressed out, they get like narrow.
They literally like pinch in and kind of get closer together. You know, like if you think about like when someone's worried, like everything goes in, you know, and then when they relax, and they have like those soft, like, you know, glamorous, like eyes, you know, that's what we associate a lot of times with like beauty and, you know, luxury and peace, you know, like is these longer, more relaxed eyes. That's what you see on like the Buddhas, you know, the Buddhas always have these like wide, long eyes.
J: Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I'm curious for you when you go into those experiences in a social setting, when you're feeling you're a nervous system, kind of get activated. What are your go-to practices?
A: You know, I think I do a lot of the things you're sort of talking about, but obviously, I can't like, lay down and do it. I will get aware of my feet.
That's like a really good starting point for me. And that's why I really try not to wear heels or things that are really like lifted away from the floor if I can, because I want to feel the connection of my feet on the ground. So like my tendency, if I'm in a public place and sitting down, is to like twist myself up into like a little ball, like cross my legs and like kind of just do this little scrunchy thing.
And when I notice myself doing that, I'll be like, oh, OK, like you're doing that. Like, can you soften? Can you let your feet just rest on the floor and start to get that feedback from the earth, you know, that the earth is supporting you? I will bring like awareness to like my hips if I'm sitting down, right?
And I will also just notice the tightening, and in noticing the tightening at this point in my practice, and this probably happens with yoga need or two, just in noticing it, it starts to soften a little bit. It's kind of like I think of it, and maybe you use this word to like validation.
It's like when you welcome something, you're like validating it, you know, versus trying to fix it. Like if you have a friend and they're like, oh, I'm having this, da, da, da, da, da, and I feel all this, and you're like, let me fix you. Like they're sometimes like, hey, no, like, you know, but what if you were just like, oh, I hear you, I hear that that's unpleasant. Like I'm here with you in that. That's kind of how I've started thinking about it. Yeah. With the awareness and the noticing. Yeah.
J: I love that. Yeah. It's like your body's asking for validation and say, you're giving it to it. And it's like, oh, thanks for seeing me. Yes. Yeah.
A: That's kind of that. It just starts that way. I mean, sometimes when things are persistent, you know, sorry, for example, and this is where maybe intuition comes in. And like if I'm out in public and I'm noticing, oh, like I'm really getting activated out here right now, you know, and I do my little things. I notice my feet. I, you know, but sometimes it's like, oh, like, I don't really want to be standing on this side of the room for some reason. Intuitively, I'm like, this isn't where I should be standing.
You know, can I just like move myself? Like sometimes getting those messages, right? Taking those cues that, oh, maybe I should go home. Maybe there's a reason that I'm feeling uncomfortable. And this isn't really the place for me right now. You know, so I think that, like sometimes just, you know, noticing is the first step.
And then, as you said, the message might come through. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. And I remember that from our session, actually, there was a lot of just like looking at my experience. And then at the very, very end, after I kind of described like my, the visualized like message that I got, my interpretation of it, you asked me if there was like something that I could do. And it was almost like asking me to go in and like finish the dream or something. It was like go in and like, and then what would you do? You know, what kind of action would you take now that you have all this information and you've recognized these things based on that? Like what's the next step? Right?
J: Yeah. That was that moment at the end of practice where we've digested what's come up and it's really rich when we can ask, what's the intention from here? What wants to move from here? And we're already in that place of curiosity and being with what is that. Oftentimes that is where there's this really rich recognition of what needs to happen. Oh, I need to journal like this or I need to offer myself this attention on a more daily basis, or whatever it is.
And so it doesn't have to be, there doesn't have to be any intention, but there can be. And that often at the end of practices is a nice time to kind of connect with what's come from all you've been meeting.
A: Yeah, I loved that. I found it very useful and you know, the imagery is actually stuck with me. And I'm happy to describe it to people too, that they get an idea of what it can be like. But you know, as you guided me through this, I just had this visualization that I was in this tent.
Do you remember that? I told you I was like an army tent. It was like a canvas tent and it was all this activity and people were around and they were on a mission and they were like mission and doing things and getting stuff done. And I was like involved in that. I was like in the tent.
And then there was this realization that I was in the tent, that I wasn't really in the rest of the world that's out there, you know, that I was in this very particular kind of like environment, you know, and how that felt. And then at the end of the session, you know, you asked me like, what would you do? Like, what would you do in the tent?
And I was like, well, you know, I could like open the tent, and I could look out and you asked me, well, what would you see? And I was like, I would see like just this expansive world that exists outside like my busy tent, you know, and it was very simple, you know, but it had meaning for me, and I've continued to digest that and think about that because I think it represented and maybe people can relate to this is like just how busy we get and focused on things. And that's great. You know, like we need to get stuff done.
Bravo. And when it's time to leave the tent, you know, or be off work, can we actually go back into that expansive place, right? And not stay like stuck in the tent.
J: Yeah. I remember you mentioning at the time that there was a reason that the tent was here, there was something that needed to be done. There was work that needed to be take place. It was intentional, but that there might be a time when this tent was dismantled right because it was finished. And so, like, yeah, there was definitely like threads that kind of connected to your life where you could see that this was happening now and that it wasn't, you know, didn't have to be always like this, right?
A: Oh yeah. No, I mean, if I'm like totally frank, like the message I got like, and I've been processing is like, because I'm an entrepreneur. And so I'm like always working if I want to be, I can like be working at any time of day because I just open my phone and like you said, my attention goes to like, oh, I need to email this person back and oh, they sent me this, right?
And so many times I don't leave the tent, and I am on my phone when my kid is there and I have to catch myself and go, okay, no, like be the role model. This is dinner time. Do not look at your phone. I know somebody's message to you but don't read it right now. And I'll have to create that boundary for myself.
And that's what the tent really represented to me. What's that busyness? It's like, yes, you do need to respond to that. But right now, we are outside the tent. Yes.
J: Yes. And it could be such a clear visual for you to kind of use throughout your day, which I love. Yeah.
A: Yeah. No, so that was, that was incredibly valuable. You know, thank you so much for that experience. And, you know, I have a number of clients that have been very curious about yoga, Nidra, um, and have been doing stuff on their own. But I think being guided by a person real-time was a super valuable and unique experience because it just deepened it. I think you can listen to a recording, you know, just like, you know, I have videos, you can do a video, but having that personal interaction and personal touch is like, it just takes it to a whole other level.
J: I agree. My experiences with dyad, when it's just one-on-one, are so much more profound because you have this opportunity to voice what's coming up and have someone witness you. And there's just this intimacy and power in that, that we don't often give ourselves.
So I really, I agree that there are very different experiences, both have value, but one-on-ones, I feel like it's like a deeper level of exploration and ways of seeing it that you might not access through a recording. Yeah. Yeah.
A: Yeah. There's like a lot more possibility. Yeah. Because you have someone there kind of co-regulating, offering up their energy that's going to add like a different spin on whatever, you know, your pattern or your mode of operating is.
You're going to be called out of that a little bit by that other person. Yes. Yes.
Beautiful. Well, you do you offer, you offer online services like I received. Can you tell people a little bit about the different things that you have and offerings that you have? Yeah.
J: So I teach yoga and drop oftentimes on insight timer, and then one-on-one practices I do on Zoom and those are available through my website. You can sign up. And I also have a lot of recordings for kids on insight timer because I love to translate these yoga practices to bedtime adventure stories. And so I have maybe like 20 different tracks of for kids on Insight Timer. And that's great.
I occasionally I teach in person here in Portland and yeah, reach out to me if you have questions or if you're and you can also do book a consultation if you're not sure and you want to ask some questions, I do free consultations for that. That's wonderful.
A: Yes. If anybody's been curious, if you're listening and you've been curious about yoga, Nidra, or just in general getting in touch with those subtle sensations and awarenesses, if you feel like there are emotions or, you know, ways of operating that you've been stuck with or stuck in, I think it's a really powerful tool.
And I highly recommend working with Julie from my own personal experience. It's been fantastic. I think it goes, like I said, very perfectly with what I do with anesthmatics, I feel like combined, you know, together, they, yeah, they go really deep into that feeling of creating safety and aliveness in our, in our so months.
J: Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure talking with you.
A: Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. And we'll talk again soon.
J: Okay. Thank you so much.
A: Hey there, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram at Aimee Takaya, and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this somatic revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating.
And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit, youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now.
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