Becoming Your Warrior
Each Becoming Your Warrior podcast episode takes you on a journey of expanding your mind, body, and soul and stepping into the life you've always wanted.
You'll understand how much strength, respect, value, and love is already inside of you, how to manifest and harness incredible relationships, health, wealth, and connections, and how to rise and overcome any challenges life presents.
The podcast is hosted by Emma Ritchie, a Self-belief expert based in Sydney, Australia, who is dedicated to helping others to trust and believe in themselves no matter what. Get ready to rise and get inspired into action.
You can find out more about Emma at www.Emma-ritchie.com
Becoming Your Warrior
S2 Ep4 - Connecting To Your Body
As someone who's been there, let me tell you - our bodies are more intuitive than we give them credit! Sometimes I found myself disconnecting from my physical self, ignoring the signals it was trying to send because of my low self-esteem. Our conversation today revolves around how our self-worth, or lack thereof, can cloud our intuition. Through tangible examples like second dates and decision-making, we will piece together this complicated puzzle, connecting the dots between self-worth and body intuition.
Now, the big question - how do we heal this disconnect? How do we foster the bond between our physical and emotional selves? That's what the second part of our discussion focuses on. Rebuilding self-worth is a journey, and during our episode today, I share the steps I follow in my daily routine - dancing, yoga, and even breath-work. We also discuss the yin and yang of exercising and how yin yoga can be a calming counterbalance to the intensity of weightlifting and running. Moreover, the transformative power of collective breathwork is something we delve into, revealing how it can provide emotional release. Through this exploration, we aim to empower you, our listeners, to be your most worthy warriors, tuned into your body and embracing your intuition.
Get dancing, get bendy, get breathing.
With love,
Em xx
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0:00:01 - Speaker 1
Welcome to the Becoming Your Warrior podcast. This is the place where you get to feel inspired and empowered to step into your very best life. Hey, hey, this is Em. This is episode three of season two of the Becoming Your Warrior podcast. This entire season, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, is all about helping you to really connect to your self-worth and live a worthy life, and that's all I want for everyone, including myself. So, so excited that you're here with me and today we are going to be talking about a really important, a really important topic, which is actually connecting to your body. Now, this is something that I had no idea that I even needed to do. So this might be the same for you. You kind of like connecting to your body; what the heck?
But when you are somebody who has lower self-worth, what that actually means is that you are generally a little bit more prone to anxiety. You're a little bit more prone to being an overthinker because, at some stage in your life, your emotions got shut down. It might be that you got told you know, don't cry, boys, don't cry. Or you might have been told girls, good, girls, don't get angry, you don't show emotion, you don't get frustrated. It might be that you know, things weren't celebrated in your house, Like joy wasn't there. So you know your parents might have been I don't know just not capable of celebrating your wins with you and actually allowing you to, you know, feel that joy and feel that feeling of success. And so, because your emotions have been shut down, you just stay in your head way more and instead you're constantly analyzing and looking at ways that you can make other people happy. Or if I do this, then that might upset them. I don't want to upset somebody. If I, you know, if they're not happy, that's my fault and I'm going to internalize that and I'm going to have to figure a way out to make other people happy or make people like me. So it's kind of exhausting. Can you imagine just yeah, being in the brain of somebody with low self-worth? You are constantly thinking and trying to work your way out of things. But when you actually connect to your body, and I'm going to share with you the ways that I've learned to connect to my body, what you're actually doing is you're getting yourself out of your head and you're actually allowing your body to do its job, which is number one, to move. But most second, importantly, it's about allowing yourself to feel, to actually feel the emotions that run through your body, to actually feel you know when you're angry, to acknowledge it, and to allow yourself to feel. Most importantly, your intuition.
And here's an example of when somebody has low self-worth, how, when they're cut off from their body, how things can play out. So let's give you a situation. Let's say, okay, you're on a second date with somebody, all right, and because you've got lower self-worth and obviously just approach this from whatever gender you identify with, so you're on a date with somebody. And, yeah, the second date, and the first date, you know, was great and you were looking forward to this second date. So you got on the second date and already, because you've got kind of like lower self-worth, you maybe have put this person already up on a bit of a pedestal. You've been like, okay, tick, they tick this, they tick that, they tick this, this is everything that I'm looking for. So already in your head, your imagination's going a little bit wild. So you go on this second date and already you're building up this picture of this person. You're starting to think maybe they're a little bit better than me, maybe, just maybe.
And then this person you're on a date with says something, and as soon as they say it, it's like something in your core, like just above your belly button is something called the solar plexus, and this is your kind of like your confidence center. It's I don't know, it's just everything. Your solar plexus is just like this absolute, you know, mecca of signals, but it's also where you feel your intuition, and your intuition right above your stomach has just gone oof, red flag, big red flag, like not good. So your body is doing its job and it's giving you this massive warning. But what happens is you might think about that a little bit later on that night and you might go oh there was, my stomach kind of did this funny thing when they said this. But what happens when you've got low self-worth is you brush over it, you dismiss it and you kind of go wow, maybe they were just a bit nervous. You start making excuses for this person. But your body has just sent you a massive, massive signal.
And when you are more disconnected from your body, it's easier for you to let the mind, which is where the low self-worth sits, to let the mind override. Your body is king or queen. Your body knows. Your body has all these nerve endings and these sensitivities. It knows everything and it is desperately trying to protect you and keep you safe. Your mind is a combination of all the life events and all the programs and everything that you've ever been fed. So your mind is a little bit of a monkey. It's all over the shop, it's trying to figure things out and kind of go.
But you said that you wanted this and you said that you wanted all these things that this person's got, and that's way more than what your stomach just told you about this person. So we dismiss things and then we end up going on a third date, fourth date, whatever you get the gist. But everything that you needed to know just happened when your stomach just flipped on that second date and because you chose to ignore it. That's where we run into issues, and it's the same outside of intimate relationships as well. It's the same when we go for a job, or we kind of make decisions, and we know they're not quite right, but we just go for it anyway. So here are some really good ways to start connecting to your body, and the sooner that you can start doing this, the better, and the more often and more consistent that you can do this, the better, because the more that you are in your body, the more you are gonna be guided by your feelings and your intuition and your emotions, and you're also gonna allow yourself and give yourself permission to feel things If somebody okay, here's another example.
So a friend of mine really beautiful friend is a very what I would call an emotional person, a really emotional person, as is very in touch with her feelings, and she cries quite a lot. And when she cried, or when she used to cry a lot, it used to really trigger me, and I didn't know why. And I'm like a really, what I believe, a really caring person. And the first time she cried, of course, and the second time she cried, of course, and the third time she cried, yeah, of course, but then the crying just continued and it went on and on and almost every time I saw her she was crying and I was just like, wow, this is just a lot to deal with.
And what I actually realized, the reason that it was triggering me so much is that I had been told from a young age that I was too sensitive and that I was too emotional and that I shouldn't cry as much as I did, and it was almost like, oh, you're crying again. And so what I'd actually done is I'd shut that part of myself down. I'd pushed that part of myself down which is actually an incredibly feminine part. You know, it's very energetic, it's very feminine to be emotional and cry and let your emotions out of your body. So I shut that part of myself down and instead, when I saw somebody cry, I would always be very sympathetic, but yeah, when somebody is what I deemed overly emotional, I would just kind of be like oh, come on, enough's enough. Kind of pull yourself together because that's what happened to me.
But as I started doing these practices and connecting to my body, I actually realized, oh my gosh, there's a whole load of emotion in there that needs to come up. And now when I cry, like I just bloody laugh, I just let it out, I just cry, and I don't feel any shame around it, I don't feel any guilt around it, I don't feel embarrassed or that I need to shut it down. I just cry as long as I need to cry and I let it out, and it feels so freaking good because I've connected to that part of myself that was shut down. So here are my kind of the top ways that I've started to come into connection with my body that I would recommend to anybody. And that is number one you've got to start finding ways to move your body, and that might feel really obvious. Maybe you're a runner already, or maybe you go to the gym or whatever.
These are all great ways to move your body, but if you really want to start feeling into your body, then my number one way is to dance, and that's my personal preference. So every morning when I get up after I've had my shower, I have my speaker in my bathroom, and I put on just my favorite dance music and I just dance. I just dance while I brush my teeth, I dance while I'm drying my hair. I just move my body, and I dance, and I feel it. So make sure you put on music that you can actually move to and love to move to and dance. Don't just put on a song for the sake of it.
Put on something that makes your heart beat like a pump and that you can feel it in your body, and just doing that just five minutes a day is a godsend. Now, I'm not a dancer, I'm not trained, and I'm not professional in any way, shape or form. I like to think I'm a good dancer, but I don't know. Anyway, that's another story. But basically, just move your body. And when you are moving your body, you're not only like feeling your heartbeat and feeling the blood move around, but you're actually moving energy around your body. You've been asleep for hours, you've woken up, and now your body's moving around. And just doing that five minutes a day, I promise you you will feel so different, you'll feel alive, you'll feel energized.
There's something about dance. There's this ancient inbuilt tribal thing that we all come from tribes. We all know that tribes dance, we all know there was celebration in tribes, and I don't know what it does. But just dancing five minutes a day just awakens that in me and it reconnects me to something much bigger than myself. So that's my first way to connect to your body. Second way and again this is what I mean if you've got your own thing already, if you swim or if you move, or. But my second way is absolutely, and I just cannot get yoga out of my life, no matter what. I just can't move away from it for too long. Yoga is just hands down, the most incredible way to connect to your body and you don't have to do it. You don't have to go to a studio. You can jump online and do a 10-minute yin class where you're just opening your hips for 10 minutes online, and even doing that will allow you to connect to your body.
One of my favorite yoga styles is yin yoga, y-i-n. And if you are more drawn to the masculine way of life, if you identify as a man or more masculine and you are doing very yang practices like weights, running, swimming, jogging, you know, crossfit, whatever it is that you're doing, that anything that kind of builds muscle and heat is called yang movement. And if you are more prone to that way of balancing yourself out is to do more yin practices. So, for example, meditation and more of yin yoga, which is a slower yoga and it just gets into your joints, and it just opens up the energy in there as well. But whenever I, even if I just sit down and do a 20-minute online yin class, I feel absolutely magic afterward. I feel like I'm back in my body, I'm out of my head, it doesn't take long, and it is incredible.
But aside from that, you know, if dance and if yoga doesn't appeal to you, just find something that you can do that's going to allow you to move. It might be being out in the garden. It might be like just getting your hands in the dirt and just moving things around and just feeling. Allow your body to feel and be there with your body. Get out of your head and just notice the dirt on your fingers, you know. Notice the feeling of the plants as you're putting them in the ground or the shovel, you know. Allow yourself to feel and come back into your body, and as you start doing these practices, as you start really focusing on your heartbeat, as you start focusing on what's going on inside your body, your intuition is allowed to come through and what will happen is you'll start to listen to your body way more than you listen to your head and those feelings of lack of self-worth.
And finally, the final way that I would highly recommend that you get into contact with your body is through breath work. So you may have heard of like Wim Hof. That's probably the most famous example I can give you. But there are so many ways to do breathwork online. There are so many great apps out there. Or, better still, if you are in an area where you know that there are breath work events, you know where sometimes 20, 30, 40 of you get together and actually do this collective breath work. It is the most powerful natural thing I think I've ever done in like 90 minutes. It's just incredible, and the release that you get from it, but the connection to your body is unbelievable, and you're actually able to let go of things that you didn't even realize were there. It's almost like you tap into your subconscious and you just release everything. So really, really beneficial. So, yeah, just again, dance, yoga, any kind of movement, and breath work is going to be such a great thing for you to get into contact with your body.
So they're my top tips for connecting to your body, and the more you connect to your body, the higher up your worthiness will go, because you start listening to your body and your body's got your best interests at heart. So I hope you found that helpful today. It's been a game changer for me, and it's allowed me to finally start really feeling my emotions and not shaming myself for feeling them, and I really, really hope that this helps you and you get to do the same as well because it's magic when you actually start tuning into your body, tuning into your feelings and allowing you to feel, and allowing those emotions and feelings to finally move through, not be pushed down, not be suppressed, to actually be felt and to be listened to. Sending you so much love as you continue this journey with me to become your most worthy warrior. Lots of love. I'll see you soon. Thanks for listening today and if this episode helped or inspired you, just remember to share it with friends or family who could also use some inspiration. Today, we are all about sharing the love.
Transcribed by https://podium.page