Don’t Rush It: Slowing Down in a Fast-Paced World - with Em Frost

The world moves fast and we often get caught up in the current. So many of us default to moving quickly and productively that we forget who we are outside of our roles and accomplishments.

This week I’m talking with artist Em Frost about:

1. The culture of rushing.
2. How to be more present.
3. What we miss out on when we aren’t present.
4. Figuring out who we really are.
5. How to feel more alive in our lives.

About Em:
Em Frost is an artist and mother living in the Maine woods. As the photographer and videographer behind SHAREtheSOUL, she is inspired by helping women create space to be seen in their fullest, most alive embodiment. She is inspired by nostalgia, storytelling, the magic of the natural world, dance and movement, and anything that helps us tap into childlike play and wonder. 
IG: @sharethesoul
Website: sharethesoul.com

Follow along @unforgettingpodcast on Instagram

Transcript

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*This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors*

Hannah:
Do you ever feel like life is just rushing past you? Or maybe you’re the one rushing so much that life is slipping away. The world moves fast, too fast these days if you ask me, so it make sense that we get caught up in the current. So many of us default to moving quickly and productively that we forget who we are outside of our roles and accomplishments.

This week I’m talking with Photographer and artist Em Frost about the culture of rushing, how to be more present, what we miss out on when we aren’t present, and how to feel more alive in our lives.

But first, let me tell you a bit more about Em

Em is an artist and mother living in the Maine woods. As the photographer and videographer behind SHAREtheSOUL, she is inspired by helping women create space to be seen in their fullest, most alive embodiment. She is inspired by nostalgia, storytelling, the magic of the natural world, dance and movement, and anything that helps us tap into childlike play and wonder.

Okay, here is my conversation with Em.

Hannah: As we're talking about rushing anti-rush culture—Choosing to step away from rushing— Does that mean that we do everything slowly? Give us the frame on how you think of rushing.

Emily: Rushing around is, it's this energy for me of I'm very much in my head I feel like, where do I feel that in my body? It's like I'm up here. I'm in my head, I'm in autopilot. I'm. Just going through the motions.

And I think if we spend too much time in that space, we can let very beautiful, precious moments just slip away and just happen. And maybe not even notice them because we're just so like up here. I think life sometimes we don't have the ability to completely, dramatically slow our life down into what we would call slow living 

I think it's very romantic and beautiful to imagine like I want to just lay in the sun and eat berries and like forage and whatever. It's I love that idea. But ,is that accessible?

I don't know. It's not, at least in my life right now, that doesn't feel accessible. So I like the anti rush culture vibe. How can I radically reject rush culture by finding ways to slow down in my daily life. cuz it has to be daily. It can't be like, oh, in a week I get this moment to myself.

It has to be for me right now, every day. Where are these few minutes that I can just come back into my body?

Hannah: Yeah. And so it sounds like you can move quickly without rushing. It's more about being present, right? Because you could be moving slowly, but you're still not present. there are so many times I've been like, oh, I'm gonna go for a walk, and I mean, I've got, you know, a podcast in my ear. I'm sending text messages. I'm looking at my Instagram, I'm taking pictures, and so I'm taking the quote time to slow down throughout my day, but I'm still not present. And it's like actually a practice for me to go for a walk without anything in my ears, without my phone in my hand, and to just take 10 minutes.

This sounds pathetic, but it is a practice for me to

be like, okay, for 10 minutes I'm gonna go outside and not take input. I'm just gonna be present and look at the birds and listen to them and look at the little buds on the trees. And so the rushing to me sounds like you're rushing so much that you aren't seeing what's in front of you.

You aren't experiencing what's in front of you. And like you said, you're in your head instead of being present to the moment.

Emily: Yeah, it is. It's a hundred percent a presence practice, and it is so, so challenging. Especially when you're really busy, the most beautiful star, unite sky could be above you, but all you see is your feet if you're not taking that moment to look up and like, what is around me right now?

Hannah: Yes. It reminds me of when I was a nanny for a family who I still love dearly. And I would get there really early in the morning and do breakfast with the kids cuz the parents worked really late. And so I would get there in the morning and do the morning routine with the kids. And when they moved away I didn't miss the, all the adventures we went on as much as I missed the quiet moment of just having breakfast together. And it's really funny because at one point I visited them, they had moved, across the country and I visited and the little boy said, oh, I know what we could do Hannah. And I was like, what? He's like,you could make me breakfast. You love making me breakfast. And I was like, yeah, I do. And, it's not the making of the breakfast that I love, it's like the moment, right.

It was just this really sweet thing that he knew how much I enjoyed that. But it's having the moments that don't quote matter so much. And when we're rushing, we aren't there for it.

Emily: yeah. Or fully soaking that moment in. I relate to that so, so much, especially when we talk about, little children and just how fast they grow up and just trying to soak in all those precious moments. One right now that comes up for me is you know, in the morning I can be like, oh, I have to get up, I have to make coffee, I have to do it.

And like my to-do list immediately starts like populating in my brain and If I'm just so quick to get into my morning routine, I'll miss this precious three minutes of my day that I look over and my daughter's right there and she has like sleepy eyes, and she's slow blinking and wants to give me kisses and snuggle, and it's like, God, I can't miss, those moments are too precious, they're too valuable.

Like how can I slow myself down to likeenjoy those fleeting, sweet moments, while she's still so little and ugh. Yeah, that makes me emotional.

Hannah: Yeah, of course it does. Yeah. And. it's a practice, like I was saying with the walk. It's not that it's gonna feel good as you're trying to be able to do that, right? Choosing to rest does not necessarily feel good. That's not why you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to do it so that it's training your brain to be able to rest. It's protecting your brain and your system and your body, your nervous system. It's protecting it so that it then can have more space to do that in the future.

 But the thing is rushing is serving us in some way. It's not like we're just choosing to do this thing because we don't care about our kids. Or we don't wanna be present. It is serving a part of us. And so I'm curious what you think rushing is doing for us. Like why are we choosing to do that?

Maybe subconsciously.

Emily: I have this visual of it's like when you have like blinders on and you're just going full speed ahead. Like not taking in what's going on around you. Not taking in input, not taking in, the divine possibilities that maybe are around, 

 It's like, do we carry that a hundred percent all the time, no breaks, and just almost use that as a, some sort of distraction mechanism to, just stay in, fight or flight, stay in survival. And it's like once we finish that one goal, okay, what's that next type of fixation that I can have?

 I would run myself into the ground and probably in the past, like I could look at, my career, my life and see that I have had the tendency towards really burying myself in work andand in projects and in creating things as a way to distract myself from my own life.

Hannah: Yeah, it's, it serves us sometimes. It can turn into a coping mechanism to just get you through and almost an addiction or a compulsion toward hyperactivity or hyper productivity.

And sometimes we feel more. Worthy as a person, we feel more accomplished. We feel more important if we have to be rushing.

like I'm sure we've all worked with people in the past who are just stressed out about every single thing that's going on at work. And the stress makes it feel more important. It makes maybe them feel more important when , we still need you, even if you're not at a level 10 all the time, But it's this thing, these wires that get crossed that it's, I'm important or this is important, or I'll make it through as long as I am at this level of intensity. 

=And so, can you tell us more about how you got to where you are now? 

Emily: I think the shift for me was becoming a mother, because now I have this being that is requiring my full presence and my full attention, and that has just changed my brain chemistry. and changed my relationship to productivity and defining my worth based on my productivity.

I, I'm a stay-at-home mom, and I have a business, so trying to like, juggle those two things, being a mom is always gonna be more important to me now. but I think where all of this stems from and comes from is the beginning of my career. I worked in Hollywood and I worked at a job where the culture was very much, if you are not busy, don't be seen.

So there were plenty of times where. I would be so tired on hour 14 of my shift and I would just go in the bathroom for 30 minutes and just hide because I didn't have a project and I was just so tired and didn't want someone to give me something to do, and I was just like hiding. because I didn't wanna be seen not doing something, not being productive, not being busy.

So that was a very hypervigilant work culture. And I worked in that industry for five years and my nervous system was so fried, and I, love creating art and I knew that there was a way for me to do that in a way that was gonna be healthy for me long term. and so that working there and then making that decision to start my own business, that came from total nervous system, overwhelmed 

Hannah: Can you tell us what, we've all heard nervous system about a million times at this point in the world, but can you tell us what nervous system overwhelm feels like for the people that aren't super aware? Like what was happening in your body, in your mind, in your spirit that made you feel like your nervous system was overwhelmed?

Emily: Such a good question.

So this is actually, this is a funny example. So when I was working in Hollywood, we had these headsets, where it's like an earpiece in your ear and it was connected to a walkie-talkie. And it's like this constant all day feedback coming into the earpiece.

And even if people weren't talking to you, you would hear your boss telling other people what to do. And I started having phantom sounds like happening in my brain. I felt like I was on a walkie-talkie 24 7. Like it was like, Just this

Hannah: that is hell on Earth. 

Emily: serious overstimulation. And, I think I started feeling like if I like talk about it in a body sensation, it's like, so much noise happening in my brain.

and it's if you're hearing like two different tracks of music happening simultaneously and people speaking all at one time, and you can't decipher what's being said or what's happening. You just know, you're overstimulated. and so I started acting out in ways that would help me escape from the, that feeling of just so much noise, so much stimulation, I would just try to find ways to escape and to disassociate from that feeling. And I just knew that was not gonna be sustainable for me. if I was going to keep going on that path. I didn't wanna live a life that I felt like I had to constantly escape from. but we can definitely find ourselves in that state for a long time until we hit a breaking point where it's like,I can't live like this anymore.

And that's when we make drastic changes, which sometimes look like they're overnight, but they're actually a very long time coming.

 And I ended up coming back to the east coast, starting my business, share the soul, and it just just felt so good to be on the East coast and to do this work. And I was like, I'm not going back out west.

This feels so good. And it just followed that thread, which led me here to the main woods.

Hannah: Which is the opposite of

Emily: The absolute opposite. Yeah. But it's funny because I just actually got back from a coffee shop that's like my local coffee shop and so many of the people, the locals here are transplants from places like la

Hannah: interesting thing that I think a lot of people

Emily: out here, or just in rural areas, are people who have fled really high intensity work,and are here to create something different for themselves and their families

Hannah: Yeah. And for the people listening, you need to know that Emily is not just like in a small town, like small city, like I live in a small city in New Hampshire. No, Emily lives in the main woods, 

In the woods, 

Emily: Yeah. I'm in a township of like35 people. and so it's extreme. It's so extreme, and we're like, on the edge of hundreds of miles of wilderness and there's no cell service here. So when we first moved here, we didn't have self service or wifi for the first month because it was gonna take a month for the wifi installer to come.

So I'm actually only able to talk to you right now because I have wifi, but I can't just make an outgoing call if I don't have wifi. So when the power goes out, we're off grid fully, and it's a huge culture shock.

Hannah: Wow. So actually the very opposite of the experience of having someone in your ear on a

Emily: exactly. 

Hannah: 15 hours a day. Yes. I

Emily: Yeah.

Hannah: So when we first started talking about this episode and what we could talk about, one of the things that you very clearly love doing in, your work as a creator, as a photographer, as a videographer, is capturing, you said, moments of aliveness in people.

Can you share with me what that means? And then we're gonna bring this back to the anti rush. Don't worry everyone, but what is that experience like when you are the seat of photographer? How do you capture the moments of aliveness in someone?

Emily: first of all, I just really appreciate you pulling that out of me because I think I just like word vomited a bunch of stuff at you when you were talking about having a conversation today. And I said that sort of just as this fleeting thing and then you pulled it out and I was like, wow, yeah, that's like, thatis it right there.

So thank you for seeing me in that way and reflecting that back at me, because I think that is exactly what I'm looking for. And you asked me the question like, what are you looking for as a photographer? And that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for moments where a person is just so alive and so in their body, in their essence.

And I've been doing this work now for a little over five years. I've worked with over 300 women and it's so much more important than just taking a photo. just standing in front of someone and taking a photo. Like you may get a great photo, but it may not be the full story or have as much depth as maybe it could if we go a little bit deeper prior to pulling a camera out.

You know what I mean? So I have this process that I've been doing really the whole time where I love to ask people questions leading into our photo shoot experience, like very much like this, where it's like a two hour video call. and I have these questions that I ask people and really what I'm trying to, my, my motive for these questions is pulling out pieces of a person's story or pulling out pieces of their essence, their truth, 

so one of the questions I love to ask people is thinking about a moment in your life where you felt really alive. Now tell me the story of that moment in excruciating detail.

And it's amazing what comes out. And sometimes people will get really emotional and they'll remember this thing and like,wow, I haven't thought about this in so many years. It's happened to be like 10 years ago. And I really love getting to that place with people where we are just really honest and, bringing them into an environment where they can take a deep breath for a second. something I notice a lot when I am working with someone is, when we come into, for example, like a studio space, they've already had this very full day or this very full morning, and it's like we're going through the motions, we're doing all the things, we're carrying all the bags, we're running up the stairs, and then we get into the room and I can feel the energy is very like frantic, very in the head 

Hannah: rushed. 

Emily: rushed. And if we were to just take a photo there, I mean, again, we can take probably a beautiful photo, but what is the story that's actually being told? And when they look at that photo, are they gonna remember this frantic morning that they had? I want to create art for someone that helps them remember this aliveness, this truth of their humanity.

And I think the only way of getting there is taking time to get there. So it's building the relationship prior to even sitting down. And then it's very often when we're in the environment having to take some time to like breathe together to connect a little bit before the camera even, comes out.

so I'm really working on shifting my work into that place where it's less of a speed date and a little bit more of we're building a relationship now.

Hannah: Yes. I love that and I want to hear more about that. But first I really want to lean into this idea because one of the things I was most excited about talking with you specifically about is looking at your portfolio. Of photos, of portraits, there is something alive in these photos. And I was thinking like a photographer who can really capture these moments of aliveness of like our most usk.

Like you are able to, I was thinking how can we get to what Emily is seeing in us in our own lives? How can we get to that point more when we're not in this day specifically set aside to take photos of us? And there's this idea of, I don't remember who has created this idea, but following like glimmers in our lives and like you very clearly have been guiding people into that space of a moment.

You felt really alive. if I think of a moment that I felt like most alive, most me, most like excited about life, like happy to be here. If I think of those moments and then we sort of.Deconstruct that of who was there, what was I thinking, what was I doing?

What were people saying around me? And taking those things and chunking them down and noticing and then looking for those things in our lives in other places, like a glimmer in our life and following those glimmers and leaning into these spaces of this is where I feel most me. And there's so much talk about self-love, love yourself, have a self-care routine because you love yourself and all this stuff, but likeif you don't even know who you are or you don't even like yourself, like where the fuck are you supposed to start with that?

And this glimmer concept could be a place to start, because I've said this, if you've been in my spaces before, you've probably heard me say this before, but if we don't yet love ourselves, something that can feel so loving is being curious about who we are. And I love that you pointed out that like speed dating versus long-term relationship because.

When you want to start loving someone or when you meet someone you really like them, it feels loving when they want to know who you are,

right? To really want to know you, what you like, what you don't like, what you think about, what you feel when someone really wants to know you, it feels loving.

And so shifting that idea onto ourselves, and if we want to feel more alive, we want to love ourselves more, we can do that from a place of just being curious about who we are, like what our internal experience is like. And so we don't have to fully jump into self-love from I don't know who I am to, I love myself, or I don't know who I am or I don't like myself to self-love.

It can just be I don't like myself. I don't know who I am to, I am learning who I am. And that is what self-love is. That's, the path of self-love.

Emily: Oh, I love that so much, Anna. What I love so much about that is the curiosity piece and how can we get curious to see within ourselves the things that make us feel alive. what if we don't actually know what those things are, how can we get curious about what,those things that make us just like truly filled with joy?

And we do them not because they're productive or whatever for someone else, but what can we do that actually make us feel so alive and so ourselves? and I heard this quote, I don't know who said it, but it's like,burnout is not doing too much. It's doing too little of the things that make you happy or something like that.

And I think that's so true. And something I am feeling and contending with so much in my life right now, is like, what are those things that make me feel really alive and really myself and. How can I make sure that I create time to do those things,and not lose myself in the role that I play to everyone else,

Hannah: yeah. And I really like how you said not connecting just to how other people are in are relating to me or the roles that I feel for other people. Because as we get curious with ourselves, the more you get curious with who you are, you're gonna realize you have some contradictions within

you too.

You have some things that don't totally make sense. And so as we get more committed to learning who we are, a really impactful thing to keep in mind is to not pigeonhole yourself in one of those things Emily, you're a photographer or a mother, right? And those are beautiful parts of you, and you are so much more than that too.

And like you said, with burnout, like you can even have life burnout. You don't have to have just like career burnout, but you will get burned out if you don't, diversify

the parts of aliveness that you're feeling in your life, because. You can, you don't have to be alive in one way.

 You can be someone that really loves connecting with other people, and that makes you feel so alive, and you might feel really alive when you're by yourself. Just journaling or just laying in the grass or whatever. You could feel really alive when you're on stage performing music and feel really alive.

when you're just like sitting and,letting someone else lead you through something. There are so many different parts of us and we can let them all have airtime.

Emily: And in different seasons of our life, something that makes us feel really alive may not make us feel very alive in the next season of our life. You know what I mean? so it's like the curiosity piece. It's important to keep checking in with, as our lives change, as our careers change, as everything around us changes.

It's what do I need now? and sometimes those things like our through lines and they are things that, throughout our lives we can always lean on this one thing that's going to help us feel like ourselves, like something so simple for me is walking outside, going on a short little walk.

even if it's five minutes or 30 minutes or however long, that just brings me back into my body. that's like kind of the one thing that hasn't really changed. but yeah, checking in with that is so key because I feel burnout in my life right now and I know it's because I'm not creating time to do things like that.

Just go on a walk outside and I find all these excuses of oh, but it's likeso cold and there's just no like sidewalks around me or whatever. Like I make all these excuses cause it's hard to do that and it's just easier to not have to bundle my daughter up in a million layers and do the whole thing.

But yeah, I know that that's the key, that's the missing piece for me in my life right now is that's all I need. I just need to go on a quick walk and I'll feel so much better. Just gotta do it.

Hannah: And when we're rushing through, we might not notice that those faces of our lives are changing, Or if we are just rushing through and going through the motions and compulsively being productive, then we miss the nuance of our glimmers and we miss the nuance of who we are. And there's just so much more to ourselves that we could uncover if we become more present.

Even you can move quickly. You can move quickly while still being present.

Emily: yeah, 

Hannah: And as we wrap up this concept of the glimmers, can you share as a photographer, as someone who has held space for people's aliveness, what are some things that you've learned about people as a photographer that some of us who aren't in that space don't have access to?

Do you have any moments

or memories of. Special things that you got to witness.

Emily: humans are so beautiful. There's a couple things. One, the first thing that I'll just go with the first thing that came my mind though. Is we have a really hard time seeing ourselves honestly and lovingly through someone else's eyes. it really, I think it heightens our emotional state.

So, for example, one question I love to ask people is imagine your best friend or person that really loves you. if I were to ask them, what does this person give you? What would they say to me? And that question is so challenging to answer honestly, because for example, if I just put myself in the hot seat, I might hear an honest response.

But to say it out loud, it's like I'm almost filtering it through this lens of oh, but I don't wanna sound like I'm, I'm like full of myself it's this really interesting inner dialogue happens. For I think many of us where we have a really hard time contending with that and to really fully receive a loving witness.

and to see through the eyes of a loving witness versus that like critical judgment, we might see a photo of ourselves and like me, I might look at a photo myself and all I can see is these like little subtle imperfections. But if I were to show that same exact photo to my best friend, they would see such a different photo.

So it's so subjective the way that we see ourselves. to see ourselves through the eyes of a loving witness is really hard for a lot of us, I think myself included. 

Hannah: And for good reason, right? It makes sense why that's hard. It isn't, again, that our brains just come up with these ways to ruin our lives for no reason or to not get love for no reason.

But especially if you've said you work primarily with women and to be telling another woman, these are things that I really love about myself, or these are things that people love about me. We are so conditioned within the patriarchy to be competing against each other and to be hyper aware of not being a threat to someone that I want to, like me, not to be a threat to someone who is working with me.

And so it makes so much sense for that to be hard for me to tell you, like, these are things I really love about myself because then you might reject me, or you might say things about me to other people and ruin relationships. And this is not necessarily how it's going to play out and probably is not how it's going to play out, but we have good reason to fear those things because that is how society has been set up, and that is how we have been conditioned to interact with each

Emily: That there's like that lack of safety. So wewe downplay these things to keep ourselves safe.

Hannah: Yeah. And it's these moments where we create a safer environment or a place where we feel safe enough to share that this is, it's shifting the needle, It helps us heal that wound or that pattern within us. Even if it's just between me and you, we can start healing that and be more ourselves in other places.

yeah. So let's start talking about how we can explore this idea of not rushing, what are some ideas of how we could start exploring this on our own?

Emily: first of all, there's no one right way to rest. it's so nuanced. but for me, like I can only speak to my experience, I just have to start somewhere. And right now that's just seriously five minutes. Dark room, lay down on the ground, literally feel gravity, and just be with myself for five minutes and come back to my thoughts, come back to my body.

and actually I think a lot is revealed just through that. removing of stimulation, removing of input, removing of noise, podcast music, just likeremove the stimulation. What are we left with? what happens, what comes through there? so much can be felt in that space.

Hannah: Yeah, because, for anyone who has never meditated before or who has tried meditating and fucking hates it because they're like, I couldn't get to no thoughts. My brain was just like going even faster than when I was, doing something beforehand. that's what meditation

Emily: Yeah. Just 

Hannah: Meditation is not turning your

brain off. It's letting your brain go and you just noticing your thoughts. And when you get those five minutes to lay down, maybe eventually you get to be a little bit more present. But usually what's gonna happen is you're gonna start noticing what your brain goes to and you're just holding on for dear life and just being the witness to what's going on for you internally.

Emily: Totally. And it's, that practice piece of doing that once great,great progress, great, like start. But I think the real challenge is can we be devoted to ourselves enough to give ourselves even just five minutes every day, at some point, super early in the morning, super late at night, wherever you have the space to, just Give yourself that time and be devoted to that space, to be curious, to observe and just let it all be okay.

Let the noise be okay. Let the chaos and the racing thoughts and all the stimulation be okay in the brain. Cuz I think you're right. Like maybe we get to a point where it's a little less noisy today. Oh, that's interesting. I feel a little more settled today.

Hannah: Yeah. And you don't have to go to the most extreme version of this. To try it, intensity does not equal more progress. Likeif I could just scream that from the rooftops of every, like self-development, self-improvement space it being more intense does not mean you're getting more out of it.

In fact, actually you might get less out of it. You might be backpedaling. 

So like 

I, one way to approach this, if you're gonna devote five minutes of your day to not rushing, to being present, maybe it is removing all input. Maybe in the beginning that sounds really good to you. You wanna just be in the quiet.

Maybe that's too much, maybe you put on one of your favorite songs and you aren't totally alone with your thoughts yet. asking yourself, how can I make this more comfortable for me, this comfort does not equal growth. Again, something else I could scream for the rest of my life. But when you are like, I'm gonna do five minutes, I'm gonna have this favorite song that I like, I'm gonna lay down.

And then you lay down, you realize this is really fucking uncomfortable. So you can get up, get a blanket. But just constantly asking yourself over and over again, maybe this is the practice all on its own, is for five minutes asking yourself, how could I make myself 1% more comfortable? And then you do that and then asking yourself, how can I make myself 1% more comfortable?

And just being with yourself for five

Emily: And seeing what like inspires you from that place, right? Like you may be laying down and be like, oh, you know what, I actually just, I really wanna go outside right now. And then you go outside and you're like, oh, this makes me feel like, okay, this makes me feel alive. Like you can really follow that voice that you know is always there and sometimes very quiet, but it's always there.

Just hard to listen to when you have a lot of other stuff going on that need your attention.

Hannah: Yes. And so much of this as we begin down this path is creating the space to ask ourselves these questions. Because especially if those voices or that intuition or those parts of us that know what we want, if they haven't been listened to for decades, it might be really hard to hear that part of us.

And so the practice is not necessarily hearing yourself for five minutes, it's asking yourself for five minutes, just asking and showing up over and over and over again and showing yourself. I'm gonna show up and ask and I'm gonna listen. And if you aren't ready yet still, or you don't trust me yet still, that's okay.

I'm still just gonna ask and hold this space for if you have anything that you want me to

Emily: Yes. So beautiful. Becoming your own like trusted person. You can trust yourself too. 

Hannah: So how can we explore this within our relationship? So you mentioned a really cool exercise that you do with your clients, and I wonder, I was just imagining like doing that with someone love, asking these questions to someone that we love. Have you ever done

Emily: Yeah, so the question that I asked of if I were to ask your best friend what this person gives you, so once I was actually able to do that with a woman and her sister, and it wasn't planned, just so happened that her sister came along for this part of our process. And so I was able to look at her sister and say, what does she give you?

And it was so beautiful. It was the most beautiful time I've ever been able to ask this question because there was no filter. there wasn't like that filter of her having to sit with I don't know, what would they say? Oh, I can't say that though. I can't say that out loud. It's no pure receiving.

so beautiful. Highly recommend doing that type of, or just having that type of practice with a person you love, creating a little bit of space to ask each other some questions,and really fully receive the answer, not, Like deflecting or, downplaying what they say or saying, no, no, no.

that's not true. But really just like soaking it in, can be so beautiful. I've had a couple times where I've able to do this, with in community and it's just so beautiful. Highly recommend

Hannah: Yeah. And so if you have friends that you wanna explore that with, I have two sisters, and one time we went to dinner and we took turns saying sort of like two on one saying what the two of us love most about the third, and we went around and it was so fun because we went just like back and forth, just saying things that we love about that person.

Things we wanna just recognize about that person or strengths they have or things that just make them so

them. And then we said, is there anything that you were surprised by us saying that you didn't expect us saying?

And that was a really interesting reflection point. And then also we asked, is there anything that we've missed? Is there anything that we forgot to say? Or is there anything that you wanna add to

your own list?

And it was just so fun. It was 

so great. And especially as someone who like words of affirmation is like my,

I love it.getting to shower anyone with actual words of what I love about them was just amazing. And also to receive that felt so fun. And so that's one thing that we could try in community and we could even add in, When do you notice that I seem, most

me, and getting to this aliveness, right?

What do you notice that I'm doing when I seem most alive? And getting feedback on it. Like maybe it's hard to see us ourselves in that and that's fine.

Emily: That is so powerful, Hannah. And I hope that even just one person that's listening creates a party with their friends where they sit around and ask each other these questions and receive the answers like with their full heart. Oh, that's so life changing.

Hannah: So as we're closing on the ways to support ourselves, you're a photographer. One way to play with this of course is, having someone like you to help us see ourselves. And so what's your take on like ways that we could get external resources, to work on. a better relationship with ourselves in terms of our aliveness 

Emily: I think a great place to start is what we're talking about now, which is just getting together with some people that you love and doing that work. the asking of the questions, receiving the answer, I think that's a great place to start. But I do think that, really anything that is an embodiment practice.

Is so helpful. So Anything that gets you into your body dancing, moving our physical vessel, the somatic work, to get into our body and just notice what I'm feeling.

We really notice what is present, what is alive in that moment, what is real, what is true, in that moment.

And I think it is really helpful to ask for support if you are someone that is, really on a journey of wanting to. Receive a loving witness. there are so many incredible somatic therapists. There are so many incredible artists who would be so honored to walk alongside you in that journey, myself included.

Just as one of those people, asking for help is so hard and especially for something that's so deep. It's so vulnerable, it's so vulnerable and, such an edge of our comfort zone. To be in a place where we're like really receiving a deep reflection of where we are in this moment.

cuz we can't hide from that. Itjust is so honest. A photo is very honest. It is just exactly what is happening in that moment. And you can't, yeah, you can't hide.

Hannah: And we're wired to be together. We're wired to support each other and yeah. When we need support, that's part of being

human. It's always a practice of asking for what we need. And as we close, what would you wanna say to someone who's listening to this right now, who's feeling that they're trapped in rushing so much that they don't even feel fully alive?

they feel like their experience of living is feeling rushed, and they want to feel more alive instead of feeling so rushed. What's a message that you would say directly to that person?

Emily: I think we don't always have the ability to change our whole life's pace or change the pace of the life that we. Have built for ourselves. We don't always have the ability to fully, radically change that. but what are the little pieces or little moments that we can slow down for just a moment to just a breath.

Maybe it's just, sitting in your car and just like taking a couple deep breaths. starting somewhere really small and just seeing what's there in that moment. What inspires you there? What, what do you see there? I think it does create such a domino effect. because we're, when we're honest with ourselves, we see maybe like the next step, what, where can we go from here?

Oh, what kind of support do I actually need? but we need to take that breath to even see what is there.

Hannah: Yes. what's the smallest way in the next day that you can remind yourself that you heard that you care about

yourself, that you're paying attention, like the smallest way. This isn't about setting some big goal for, okay, with tomorrow I'm gonna wake up at 5:00 AM and I'm gonna do a workout, and I'm gonna walk for an hour, and then I'm gonna, have a smoothie or whatever.

Right? Like, no, no,no. That's not what we're talking about. what is the smallest way? can you say good morning to yourself in the mirror? Like just acknowledge

Emily: that you exist.Yeah, that reminds me of like habit stacking, where it's like introduce one new small little thing and then it's like we can stack on top of that all these different layers of support,that, that's such a domino effect.

Hannah: Yes. Yeah, just the smallest step at a time. So you've mentioned that you have changed how you're doing your business, you've changed how you are approaching your offers, and you're creating so much more space in that. And so I wanna give you a chance to first share how we can find you in the world, and follow along with the things that you're doing, but also what your offerings are evolving

Emily: into.Moving out to the woods, I knew that there was gonna have to be some sort of shift with my work. and I've always had this dream of creating a space where we, it's a radical space and it's an edge of people's comfort zones, including my own, to remove ourselves from the day to day for a few hours, 24, 48 hours, whatever it is.

To sit with what is right. It's everything we're talking about here. It's removing the stimulation, removing wifi, removing cell service, super uncomfortable. but getting into that place of little input. And my curiosity is what would we create from that space? What would we create? What would we feel?

What reflections would we have? And I'm just curious, and I don't know the answer to this, this summer, I'm gonna find out because I'm opening up a studio space called the Heart Space. It's my second studio space. And this is like the fullest iteration that, I've really been dreaming up for the past, I dunno, six, seven years.

We're turning a barn on my property into a open air photo studio and movement space, and we're building a, like an Airbnb kind of glamping situation down by the river. And yeah, it is, it's very removed from our daily life, but I think that it is a space that maybe we all on some level could really benefit from.

And how can I create a space that is accessible and is, inspiring and is reflective and is a place where we can drop that armor, drop that daily routine, task-oriented mind, and just receive the silence of nature.

 I'm trying to have such an open mind of what it could be cuz it's so co-created. It's not just like my mind creating this, it's really gonna be co-created by every person that comes here.

Hannah: So it's gonna be, you can go to this space, spend the weekend there for this shoot, so it's not, you're going into a studio in the city. No, you were actually being fully immersed in nature, removing input, and then having the shoot and the

creativity from 

Emily: yes. Because I've found that there's this conversation of working on our business versus working in our business. And I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and it's very hard to create space to work on our business. so that's really what I would love for this space to be is like a chance to like, By design, to really have to radically sit in that reflection space, and ask ourselves some questions and fill all of that empty space time that we're gonna get by being out here, so what happens? What do we see? What do we feel? And then yeah, how can we create art from that as an artifact of those revelations? And then hopefully that art can be something that we look back on and it's like,oh, I remember how that felt. Or, oh, I remember when I had that realization in this photo kind of is an artifact.

Or to help me remember, what came up there. So I'm very 

excited to play with this.

Hannah: Is so

cool. That is amazing. So how can we follow you and see this space because it is a gorgeous place. You aren't like in some random, like rocky sticky, nothing. this is a gorgeous piece of land as well. So how can we see what this looks like and how can we follow you in the

Emily: So my business is called Share the Soul, and my studio is called The HeartSpace. So if you find me on Instagram, @sharethesoul. I have a link in my bio to the Instagram page that I made for the HeartSpace studio, which I'm hoping to really populate this summer with the work that we're doing. we open July 1st.

We're having an opening day party. And I'm so excited to create ways to really open this place up in, in all different ways, for our community to just be here and always have a home away from home.

Hannah: I love that so much. I can't wait to see what comes

Emily: I can't wait to be with you here.

Hannah: I know. I'm so excited. And yeah, thank you Em, I feel like I could talk to you forever,

so thanks for taking some time to share your magic and share some of the things that make you feel alive.

Emily: you for having me.