Ep 3: You don't have to be profound

In this episode, we’re exploring the Union pillar of The Abbey Daw Method and what it means to truly come back into connection with your life. I share a recent experience of stepping outside my normal routine, leaving the comfort of my everyday rhythm, and allowing myself to fully experience a moment of joy, music, friendship, and presence. It reminded me that transformation doesn’t always come from having a profound realization or finding the perfect words. Sometimes the most meaningful moments happen when we give ourselves permission to live, to play, to feel, and to be fully here. Union is the practice of reconnecting with yourself and remembering that your life is happening now.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Okay, I just pressed record. Welcome back to the Abby Dah podcast. I'm your host, Abby Da. We are on episode three. What a milestone. I mean, I say that sarcastically, but also it is a bit of a milestone because it's not always easy to press record and share with your own voice. I had to remind myself that this is for me first. And if people happen to get something from this, these teaching moments, I will be so happy. But ultimately, I'm learning and growing and exercising my voice. And that alone will make me a better human being. If you've been listening the last few episodes, thank you so much. If you're here for the first time, welcome. I intend that these episodes feel like you are in my living room with me and we're literally having a conversation, drinking tea together like we're best friends. I would love this environment to feel safe. And I would really like to grow a community out of this endeavor. So thank you for sharing with people if you have already. Thank you for the positive feedback, the love. It really is so meaningful to me. And today I was in a bit of a funk. I felt as though I was about to sabotage myself because I was toying around with the idea of not posting an episode. I kept saying, just put it off until tomorrow. You have nothing profound to say. What are you even going to teach today? And then I had this realization, maybe that's exactly what's wrong with the way we've learned to create. We've got to let go of this idea that what we say has to somehow be this profound, extraordinary thing that's going to change people's lives. And I know for myself that's not realistic and that's performative. So before we dive into this episode, I think it would benefit us all if we first felt our feet be where your feet are to get out of your head. And if you are in a place to close your eyes, close your eyes, place your hands on your heart, and take a breath with me. Breathe in through your nose, fill up your entire body with breath. And at the top of that, inhale, take a pause. Feel the abundance of breath in your lungs and the sweetness it has left behind in your body. And exhale, let it go. Send that breath all the way down, down, down, and in that allow your body to relax. So that's the reason why I actually decided to press record today and make this my topic of conversation. What if consistency isn't about always having something groundbreaking or profound to say? What if it's about trusting that ordinary moments carry extraordinary wisdom? That we don't have to be profound to be liked, to go viral, to whatever we tell ourselves. To be perfect is boring. And to be a bit messy, to be imperfect is the human experience. And I know for myself I want to lead with that example. So let me tell you a story. I bought tickets last minute to go see my favorite artist of all time. I can't even count how many times it has been. It's just been a lot. And it is the musician Sarah McLaughlin. She, in a lot of ways, her lyrics was my therapy as I would train for marathons. I know, which is ridiculous. People would see me running down the street training for my marathons, but little did they know I was listening to depressing, slow music of Sarah McLaughlin, which was breaking me open and breaking me free ultimately from my own inner cage. So she's been a profound influence and muse on my life. And I had purchased tickets to her concert. She was here last week in my city, and I invited a friend. And when I invited my friend, I was actually prepared for her to say no, because a lot of people to say yes to a night out on a Thursday with a family is hard. She got back to me right away and was like, yes, I would love to go. And it was really refreshing to get a yes from my friend who has a family to care for and is a badass leading woman in business. We show up to the concert. There's a lot of people. And I didn't quite know where our tickets would be, but I knew they were somewhere in the first section. But as the security led us to our seats, we sat down front and center of the stage. And I was just beaming with excitement. The tickets were in the perfect spot. The evening was the perfect summer night. And there was a sea of people around us enjoying live music. People decided that they were going to pause their life and come to the show. When is the last time you said yes to something simply because it made you feel alive? Even the things that you want to say yes to, there's like this inner voice that's like, uh, I don't know. I don't want to dress up and go out. It's too much work. And even though Sarah McLaughlin is my favorite artist, there was a few moments definitely where I wasn't even sure if I wanted to buy tickets. Buying tickets felt like too much work. So I'm really glad that I did. And as we sat there and danced and laughed and people watched, we met people all around us. I saw a friend, actually, a few friends that I hadn't seen in two decades that came up and gave me big hugs. And as Sarah was singing, I realized this is the therapy that I need more often. The music was sitting in my lap. It took me back to that time where I remembered why this music was so important to my heart and my soul. My soul was saying thank you so much. And as I looked at my friend sitting next to me, you could tell she was super grateful too. And she was smiling. It was connection. The whole night was connection. I felt like it was a little slice of heaven for two hours, listening to this angelic voice. And suddenly my body was quiet and relaxed. And it hadn't felt like that for a while. I have been personally going through my own transformation. I am healing some parts of my life that are difficult to look at at times, and it has felt heavy. And it's been exhausting in some sense to feel like, you know, why are we always healing? Why are we always forced to heal? Why can't we just have pleasure? But the thing that I realized was healing doesn't always have to feel that way, especially being at that concert with my friend. Healing can be listening to live music, giving yourself permission to have pleasure, giving yourself to go out, or giving yourself an invitation and permission to go out, asking somebody to go with you. And that is healing. And I left that concert, and me and my friend looked at each other, and we both said, Why don't we do this more? Why is it so hard to say yes sometimes? Why is it so hard for people to get out of the rat race of life? And I'd just been pondering that the last few days. We think healing only happens when we are working on ourselves in these ways: journaling, listening to self-development podcasts, going to therapy, reading profound books, doing breath work and meditation, doing these long healing retreats and courses. All of these things really matter. They are so beautiful, but sometimes healing doesn't happen because we're working on ourselves in these ways. Sometimes healing happens because we're finally living. Let that land in your body. Sometimes healing happens because we are finally living. Now, this goes with part of my Muse pillar, the work, my mythology that I'm putting out into the world. The you is the union pillar. So this is what I mean when I talk about union. Union isn't only found on a meditation cushion. It's not always found at a retreat. It's not always found doing something that is really profound with your healing. Union is remembering what makes you feel like you. And that is why the concert was so healing for me because music, especially Sarah McLaughlin's voice and music, makes me feel like me. That is where I am so happy and joyful and relaxed and extroverted. It's really, really beautiful to see and feel within myself as soon as I go into a venue like that, how I shift. But for you, maybe it's just friendship or laughter, watching something super funny, dancing, creating, singing at the top of your lungs, feeling goosebumps, forgetting to check your phone. That's a big one. Dancing. Whatever it is. Union, though, is coming home to yourself. And I felt like I came home to myself the other night, and I was so happy to have my friend next to me. That was profound. That evening was profound. Because music has always been one of the places where my mind gets the most quiet. And being in that sea of people, hearing everyone seeing 90s nostalgic music with me was transformative. But we have to get out of these, you know, patterns where we don't feel like we can get out of our comfort zone of our routine: going to work, coming home, having dinner, sinking down into our couch cushions, scrolling on our phone all evening. We get invited to something and our body tightens. Should I say yes? It's too much. It's too much trouble for my life. It takes too much effort. But I've learned that when our body closes down or tightens like that, if you pay attention, that is where your body wants to open. So when somebody asks you to go to a concert, but you get that first initial, I don't know, that resistance, go back to that. Be curious about it first. Because is it that you really don't want to go, or is it just gets you out of your comfort zone of your routine? Or fear around something, being social. Because fear narrows us. Comfort zones, it keeps us small in a way. Fear keeps us in our heads. But art, community, and in my opinion, music brings us back into our bodies. I wasn't even trying to stop thinking when I was at that music venue the other night. I simply gave my nervous system an experience that reminded it what safety felt like, what being receptive feels like and open and feeling love, feeling connected, connected to my sense of self. So the bigger lesson here is I think so many of us are waiting, waiting until work slows down, waiting until life gets easier, waiting until we've healed enough, waiting until we deserve joy. But maybe it's not that we should be waiting anymore. Why are we waiting? What if healing isn't waiting for you after life? What if healing is hiding inside life? What if healing is by saying yes to go to a concert? Maybe healing is extending an invitation to a friend you haven't seen for a while to go do something with you. It takes a lot to ask somebody to go with you. It's not easy. It was hard for me. I didn't think I was gonna get a yes. And so when she immediately said yes, that was really, really, I was so surprised and so happy at the same time. And I was so glad that I asked her. And when we left the concert the other night, she was like, Thank you so much for asking me to come. This was one of the best nights I've had in a long time. And then we continued to text about it after the concert and the next day. We got to share stories with each other of our lives. We got to catch up, and we got to have that night together. It was perfect. It was healing, it was friendship, it was connection. So I want you to reflect on these questions. What have you stopped saying yes to? What used to make you feel alive? What invitation have you been declining? Where does your nervous system naturally feel safe? What brings you back to yourself, like me, and my love of music, and the artist Sarah McLaughlin. What have you been putting on the back burner? What friend have you not seen in a while that maybe you'd like to connect to? This is it, guys. The healing is literally doing life, experiencing life, living life. All of us, I think, battle something every day. Life, even in the good, there's always something to take care of. There's always a bit of heaviness. It's it's a wave that we've got to ride in life. And I think healing doesn't mean that all these things go away. It just means that when we fall down off of the wave, we can get up maybe faster than the last time and feel stronger in our legs and in our body and in our heart until the next wave comes. It just is life. And so if we can just, you know, feel like healing doesn't have to just be in a therapy office or doing some profound journey or a retreat or course, and we just say yes more to life, I believe that that is just as, or if not more, healing. Saying yes to the plane ticket, last minute, going somewhere, fun, travel, healing. Some of these experiences I've had in the last few months have been so healing for me. I've learned so much. It's where a lot of my consciousness and awareness or downloads, I don't know what you want to call it, just new wisdom has come from. Is the things that I've said yes to, like getting on an airplane or going to a concert that has changed me the most. I really believe sometimes we get it wrong. It all matters, all of it. But I think I want to ask myself personally, I wonder if sometimes I've confused depth with that we have to feel this heaviness all the time in order to get deeper. I used to say as a regular yoga teacher, and I still say it sometimes, sometimes we have to come out of the pose a little bit to go deeper into the pose. And maybe that means sometimes we just have to come out of the heaviness of life or of the deeper therapeutic work and have some fun to go deeper into ourselves. Healing doesn't always have to be deep in the sense of painful, intense, or emotionally exhausting. We can get addicted to that and it keeps us stuck. Sometimes the deepest thing we can do is laugh until our stomach hurts, dance, sing, feel. Awe, marvel at the world, be with someone we love, enjoy friendship. Sometimes joy is every bit as transformative as introspection. In fact, I feel like joy is more transformative because I believe that once we start to feel joy or love, we get scared it's gonna go away. And so sometimes we push it away without even knowing. But I believe when it comes to union with self, we gotta let in joy and tell ourselves it's okay to feel joy, it's okay to be happy, it's okay to say yes to a concert, it's also it's okay to do something, even if it feels like it's selfish, it's okay to have pleasure. Maybe to unite with self is to let yourself have pleasure. And in that feeling good and in that experience of pleasure is surrender. I believe when we're having fun, when we give ourselves that opportunity to take a pause with the busyness of life and go have fun and feel good, that is when we surrender because we get to enjoy the present moment. When we're having fun, we're just enjoying the present moment. You all deserve that. Life is heavy. There's a lot going on in the world right now. It is it's scary at times. I don't believe that we're just running away to pleasure is ignorance is bliss. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying give yourself permission to step out of this fear that the world is spoon feeding us right now. It's you can't go anywhere without feeling like you have to be cautious about something. Give yourself the opportunity to go relax. And so circling back to the beginning when I was like, well, I have nothing profound to say. I don't know what to say. But then I just talk about my experience the other night and what I learned and how music reconnected me to my soul and helped me to relax and clear away heaviness that I'd been feeling for a while. For me, that felt profound. And so by me sharing that, I hope that it gives you permission to experience the same for yourself, maybe in a different way. That really is it. My experiences, I hope, help other people. I hope by sharing my experiences and my stories, you connect deeper to your voice. We're all craving connection, but we're looking for it in places that we're not going to get it. So, my invitation for you is maybe after you listen to this podcast, find something fun to do. Something where you can let your hair down. Maybe I have inspired you to go book a concert. Summer isn't quite over yet. Invite a friend. Take a road trip. Say yes to a spontaneous trip without feeling selfish, like you're selfish or like feeling like you're letting people down. Give yourself permission to take a break from the heaviness of doing the healing work, which is so so critically important. You should be healing and growing, but there's many, many ways to heal. And give yourself permission to live in your life. Also, there are some of you who have chosen intentionally to have a season of being in a hibernation mode. And that is totally fine. That is beautiful. Maybe you've been doing all the extroverted things all the time and you need to take a pause. Honor that. Just give yourself permission this week to do something that gives you some pleasure. Maybe it's just going to your favorite restaurant, ordering your favorite glass of wine and your favorite meal, taking yourself out on a date. As simple as even maybe driving a different way to work, just to change things up a little bit. To go a different way sometimes is profound enough. Sometimes picking a restaurant you've never eaten at is profound enough. We thrive in our, we want to predict every moment. We want to predict that we're going to wake up in the morning, we're going to smell that fresh scent of coffee, which is beautiful. And then we go in the shower, and then we do our next task, and every day starts to look the same. Then we get in our car and we drive the same way to work. We do the same chores. We speak to the same people. All I'm asking you is to do something that takes you out of your comfort zone, even a little bit, out of your repetitive routine. And in that, living your life a little bit differently, a little more slack, a little more permission to just do something a little different will unite you with yourself and the world in a way maybe you never imagined and change you in a big way. Even the smallest things, the smallest shifts can change us. The smallest little turn of the dial can change us. So that is what I have for you today. I'm so glad that I decided to just stay true to my word and do my podcast when I said I would, even if I didn't feel like I had anything to say that would help anybody. Because you know what? Sometimes not being profound is profound enough. Have a great week ahead, and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.