Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
The Art of Being vs. Doing: Why Slowing Down Isn't Giving Up
When tiredness hits – not the everyday kind, but the bone-deep exhaustion that occasionally visits – it's often a message worth listening to. I share my recent experience of honouring these signals instead of pushing through them. There's profound wisdom in distinguishing between procrastination and genuine self-care, between "should do" and "need to be." This isn't about abandoning responsibilities, but approaching them with greater attunement to our authentic needs.
Nature offers us the perfect model for this balanced approach. Just as trees release their leaves in autumn—not as failure but as strategic conservation of energy—we too can learn when to release certain activities or expectations. The natural world demonstrates that periods of apparent dormancy are actually essential preparation for future growth. Through practices like mindful breathing, time in nature, and the guided visualization meditation included in this episode, we can develop greater self-awareness and reconnect with our deeper wisdom.
Whether you're experiencing autumn's arrival or spring's emergence on your side of the world, this episode invites you to find small moments of gratitude and presence, even during challenging times. Join me in exploring how embracing both the yin of being and the yang of doing can lead to a more sustainable, joyful way of living.
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
A note for every episode: we do not necessary agree with all the views on our podcast and leave listeners to make their own mind up with what they do or don't agree with.
Want to be a guest on Awakened Conscious Conversations? Send The Gentle Yoga Warrior a message on PodMatch, here:
Hello everybody, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is season 19 of Awaken Conscious Conversations podcast, and as I speak to you, we've had blustery weather. The leaves are falling, so it's a time of fall, this autumnal energy, and the winter is on its way and, as I often say, this is an international podcast, so some places, your spring summer is on its way. Either way, we are going to have a magical, fantastic podcast for you today, joining me next week. I'm very excited about this guest. I'm currently reading their their book and I'm taking a lot of inspiration from it. We were joined by Cody Dees and we're going to talk about anxiety, the language of the soul and, if so, how can it help you. So that is that. That will come out this time next week. I'm recording it in a couple of days as we come into this time of autumn, and I can't wait to have this conversation. I'm currently enjoying Cody's book and there will be more information on the podcast next week.
Speaker 1:For today's show, we are warming up for this wonderful autumnal season and you know that some people can get really affected by the change of the seasons. I've spoken to so many people that find it really hard and this season we're going to have some wonderful magical guests on the show. It's a time for like cozy drinks, cozy clothes, and if it's springtime it's a time for kind of nice spring walks. But it's going to be lots of leaves falling here and there's been a lot of rain and I had some lovely guys come to fix my roof earlier and the house is quite old, it's about 200 years old, 200 years plus old. So, as you can imagine, it's quite an old cottage and they had to go like on the roof and I was doing my work and I just heard, like this, laughter and giggles and basically, just to cut a long story short, the water butt had. It was really full where we collect the water to water the garden because we've had a lot of rain, we've literally gone from summer to having a lot of rain. Well, anyway, it kind of backed up with leaves. So when they tried to clear it it kind of the water book kind of exploded a bit and then all like the gunk and then water went all over them apparently. But they were like laughing and like kind of seeing the the funny, the funny side of it, and thankfully, since it is winter, they managed to clear it, but it was, yeah, you know, like sometimes we know. It made me think about how we know, our ability to have humor, laughter and to see the the the bright side of things. I remember reading this true biography many years ago called Angela's Ashes, and even though the main character had a really difficult kind of childhood, they could find moments, as an author, to put some humor in into that, and I think that's sometimes when young people laugh and other people think, oh, that's in an appropriate time. I think sometimes it's a, it's a mechanism to help us, help us through that difficulty that we sometimes have in life.
Speaker 1:And at the moment I'm feeling very, very tired and I don't have my normal kind of like energy that I normally have, but I put it down to my age and also the changing of the seasons and after I record this podcast I'm going to really factor in some self-care. Yes, I've got a to-do list. There's things people need to reply to, there's a whole lot of stuff that I need to read, but sometimes one has to listen to how one is feeling and today my energy levels aren't like this fantastic, sparkly high level. But what I did was, after I finished my morning's work. I went and the roofers had been. I went for a nice walk around like a country park and even though it's starting to rain I'm still going out. So I put my waterproofs on and I just had a fantastic time. I managed to sit underneath a tree and very marginally get wet and it made me feel a bit more nourished and then it gave me the energy to come and share this podcast with you, because it gives me a lot of joy to do this.
Speaker 1:But then I thought I'm going to factor in after this to do some self-care, to factor in after this to do some self-care. So I'm going to do some slow yin yoga to kind of really help my nervous system, my adrenals, where I think it's been a bit of kind of go, go, go recently, and I always wonder how, what would you factor in to help yourself? Like, sometimes we have got commitments. I completely understand that we can't kind of cancel, but we can kind of find ways to kind of change things. Like there's a part of me that really want to go to like kettlebells, lifting weights and things. But the way my body is today is not the right thing for it to be. It's difference between, like procrastinating, thinking I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow, whereas today I'm really listening to my body and it made me think about something which I shared before, about being versus doing, and doing, I think, has the word should, I should or I should do.
Speaker 1:This is sewn into doing, whereas being is when we listen to our innate wisdom and we understand that sometimes we need to be. You know, we've got yin and yang, we've got the masculine and feminine energies in each and every one of us and it's kind of finding those, those ways to balance that. The yang is a lot of what we live in these days, where we're trying to go for things which we need. But then there's the yin, and when I allow myself to be versus doing, I'm more receptive. I'm able to kind of see the wood for the trees, as the cliche but true saying goes.
Speaker 1:And and it's just sometimes it feels like when I'm doing too much and I push myself, when I get to this level of tiredness which only happens a couple of times a year, but I notice it when I get to this level of tiredness, if I ignore it and I just keep on pushing and doing, then I'll get sick or something like that and it feels like the being is that kind of wisdom we can tap into when we're kind of chasing so much and we feel like we're not getting anywhere. But then we're getting exhausted with it and instead we find the being, because we race through our lives thinking I'll be happy when I do this, I'll be happy when I do this, like sometimes I'll say to myself, oh, I can have this small bar of chocolate once I've done this, this and this, and I guess that's not a bad thing sometimes if in moderation. But if I'm living my whole life thinking, oh, I'm not going to allow myself to have any fun until I'm a success. Well, who measures success?
Speaker 1:And sometimes things seem hard and then they, because actually they're a gift. And then sometimes things seem easy and actually they're not. They're a curse, not an a curse like your curse, but more like, oh, actually this isn't the the best thing. But then we can live in. Sometimes when we think, oh, because things are going good, we get a bit down because we think things are going to go bad. But the thing is, life is a is like a ripple. You know it's going to be and depending on how we sit on the raft of that ripple. We can even be really stubborn and think no, I want to go against the flow, which sometimes we have to do. But all the time going against the flow and not listening to how we're feeling and being isn't the ideal way of being.
Speaker 1:And you know, the energy of nature is the biggest and most beautiful spotlight into being and in that nature cascades a sort of a deep healing energy. If only we would a appreciate her and b spend more time in her. And when I was a child, you would open the window in the summer and then, if you had a light on, your room would be full of insects. We need to try and bring more nature towards us, not push it away. And of course you may not want loads of insects in your house, but can you make a hotel so that they can flourish in your garden? And if you don't have a garden, can you still make a hotel so they can flourish in your little pots and things like that?
Speaker 1:Being can feel bumpy too when you feel like you're not feeling so good. Maybe you're going through things like the menopause or pregnancy or any kind of thing that you're going through, any kind of thing that you're going through. Sometimes being is difficult, especially like if you're being at a time where you've had some sad news and there's no quick fix to get one out of that feeling and grief is a very difficult thing and it and it comes and goes. Sometimes you, such as you think you've kind of overcome it, it can come back on like the most, I don't know, least obvious things sometimes. But my, my tip for when you're trying to be, but things aren't so easy is, if they're really hard, then maybe you should do something that's going to make you feel better.
Speaker 1:So that's what I'm not saying all doing is bad, but when you're being or doing, can you find something that you're grateful for, even if it's like a horrible time, like maybe if you had some sad news, but you're grateful for the hot cup of tea that your relative has given to you, or the the touch of your bath towel as you have a shower. You know, it's just this tiny little little things and in this time of austerity the abundance and the sign of feeling prosperous is going to come, come from nature it's, it's the way over this kind of very difficult time worldwide for so many people. And if you're not having a difficult time. Please also don't feel guilty. You know we all go through times where difficult and sometimes things are going well as well. So what blessings can we feel and connect and how can we really listen to what we need in this, this precise moment, and feeling grateful for all those wonderful little things that bring us joy in this moment and allowing ourselves to feel how we are feeling. But I've touched on this before. Allow ourselves to feel and it's important to feel and understand that you're feeling a certain way. But I say this again, just because we thought something doesn't make it actually real. So we feel, then we kind of move on.
Speaker 1:So calm breathing is my biggest self-esteem builder in all of this, because sometimes the doing comes from our overdoing, because we need to do, because sometimes we can be too being and then we're not doing enough, but generally not always the case. But doing, you know, can come from a state of where we've got low self-esteem. So how can we build that up? And I always find calming breaths and trying to have the confidence and the self-care to just sit and be sometimes and okay, you may really struggle in meditation and you're sitting there. I was doing, I was doing my chanting earlier. I'm doing a specific chant at the moment and each day as I sit down at the moment my mind's really busy, but then there's snippets where it's not and that's where you build on. Don't look at where you're losing your attention a bit more, where you've kind of you're in that meditation, and meditation can just be sitting somewhere, calmly going for a nice walk. Anything like that will help you do and be and find that joy. So I'm going to share with you a wonderful calming meditation.
Speaker 1:Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice straight back always nice to sit on a block or a cushion, or that's not available for you you sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching and if you're doing something that requires your concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation, let's begin. So the meditation we're going today is we're going to do a visualization meditation meditation.
Speaker 1:So the world feels like it can move fast at times, but in this meditation you are visualizing, laying down on the most comfortable day bed that you can imagine. Maybe it's a comfortable sofa or one of those comfortable day beds, or maybe it's a comfortable sofa or one of those comfortable day beds, or maybe it's a yoga mat, but whatever signals a sense of calmness. That's where you imagine that you are and as you lay there, feeling so supported, so supported, perhaps thoughts may pop into your mind about what you should be doing and, of course, in a life which feels full of so many tasks, it can be difficult to entice ourselves away from that. But the being comes from the acknowledgement of where you are now and in your visualization, you feel as if this beautiful, softest blanket you can ever imagine is made up of your favorite fabric and it kind of wraps in a kind of cocoon, and you feel as if you're lovingly held, lovingly supported and lovingly nurtured. So's okay to let go, to stop thinking of all the doing and then being for in the place of being.
Speaker 1:That is when we eventually discover our best course of action. But the action will come later, later, later, later. Well, after the meditation, the being is all that we need right now. The being is the moment, and I just invite you to stay here for a bit longer just doing some calming deep breaths. I'm still here, but I'm going to be quiet so that you can just focus on some calming breaths that are calming and natural for you. So, dear one, as you come out of this visualization, take one more final deep inhalation, one more final deep exhalation, and just allow yourself to completely and utterly be back in the body, back in the moment, and just take your time as you slowly go about the rest of your day.
