Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

Author Meera Innes - Conscious Singlehood in your 40s & Writing as a Spiritual Practice

• Anthea Bell

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Dearest listeners,

Prepare yourself for more than surface-level discourse...

This week, I'm sitting down with arguably one of my favourite friends in recent times - Meera Innes - writer, cultural observer and in her own words consistent "inquisitor of life". Based in Berlin though with a thoroughly cosmopolitan background, Meera models "conscious" living. Choosing, at this stage in her early 40s, to cultivate a rhythm, value system, social circle and self-care practice that is profoundly personalised and selective. As she says; if a person, place or experience doesn't enhance her life or align with her values, it's a simple no. Not from a lack of compassion / adaptability; but from a deep recognition that it is only in living "congruently" (outsides matching insides) that we find peace and purpose.

In our conversation, we dive into Meera's personal and authorial learnings - touching especially on what we can learn and role-model during this especially turbulent time in human existence. Themes include:

- How to balance the yearning for connection with the need for independence, self-reflection & creative autonomy
- Seeing, sensing and "managing" the world with ADHD
- Whether we can "feel" / "find" ourselves in singleness, versus through the self-discovery that naturally comes from being in "relationship"
- What dating in your 30s and 40s teaches you
- Writing as living prayer - what it soothes, satisfies and serves
- Whether we have permission to "speak" to collective suffering
- How we cultivate self-attention as an "others-oriented" person

For More on Meera & to access her work

Instagram: @meerabell
Substack: https://substack.com/@meerabel/posts 

Stay Connected with the Podcast

To stay up to date with upcoming episodes and guest insights, follow me on Instagram at @ab_embodiment or visit our website.

And to explore working together more deeply -

Sending love and light to wherever this finds you dear ones,

A x

I always say that I cannot live on the surface. Like, deep, that's where I live, and if we're not going to be there, I just, I don't know how to be here. You know, if it's, if it's not direct, if it's not deep, I don't understand it. Um, so, I would say that, uh, out in the world, I, I struggle quite a lot with, um, conversation and, and, um, Uh, I have no trouble meeting people, but um, definitely connecting with people can be quite challenging because I feel that a lot of people do like to stay up here and I, I just don't know how to do that I mean, I, I generally question everything anyway, as I said, I'm an inquisitor of life Welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in. Hello gorgeous listeners oh, we have a really beautiful, new friend as a guest for you today. I am sitting in front of the ever so glowing face of Meera Innes all the way from Berlin. She's a writer, she's,, an inquisitor of life in her own words. Meera, it is so lovely to have you with us. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Anthea. It's such a pleasure. And, there is nothing more. That I love than a good yap., a good yap is exactly what we're going to be aiming to deliver for sure. Exactly. And it's my favorite when it just, you know, starts and it flows and, um, moves very organically through lots of incredibly stimulating topics, which is what I found when speaking to you. So really looking forward to my chat. I guess that gorgeous thing where you land in a space with someone, and even if it's electronic, even the smallest of words that one person says, the other person has this deep, almost body wide resonance. Like I felt that with you straight away. And for me, that offers the most ripe opportunity to not just connect, but to share something of of deeper meaning. I don't know if this was you as a child, but I was always one of those people that was teased for not really understanding what surface level conversation was. Just like, right down into the deep soul work. That was my, that was my jam. Um, and I feel like I'm landing into a space with a fellow deep soul jammer. Oh, absolutely. I always say that I cannot live on the surface. Like, deep, that's where I live, and if we're not going to be there, I just, I don't know how to be here. You know, if it's, if it's not direct, if it's not deep, I don't understand it. Um, so, I would say that, uh, out in the world, I, I struggle quite a lot with, um, conversation and, and, um, Uh, I have no trouble meeting people, but um, definitely connecting with people can be quite challenging because I feel that a lot of people do like to stay up here and I, I just don't know how to do that. We had this really profound mini chat when we last spoke about, you gave a beautiful example of going into a, almost like a gym bathroom. And noticing that on the floor were towels that had been kind of loosely discarded by whatever user had been there the moments before you arrived, and that that had really struck you as a sad reflection the level to which people are considering their, their ripple. The way that their touch, their not touch, their words, their not words, create an impact in the environment around them. It sounded very human and humanistic in orientation. Yeah, there have been a few things that have happened recently that have really opened my eyes as I walk through the world with a lot of confusion at the moment, I think. And, I think there are Um, sort of cataclysmic moments throughout our lives, that disabuse us of a notion that we had had about the people around us or the world that we live in. Um, this is definitely one of those times and I'm questioning, I mean, I, I generally question everything anyway, as I said, I'm an inquisitor of life. Um, and lately I've been, I've been questioning a great deal and really paying attention to these small metrics and indicators. The, uh, gym towels in the, in the bathroom. It seems like such a small example, but I think it really gives you an idea of where people's heads are or, or where their heads aren't, um, and. where their heads aren't apparently is thinking about the next person. Um, who, who follows them, who's going to pick up after them. Um, and just that level of attention and care is not there. And as we talked about last time, you know, that's not the way that I was raised. That's not the culture that I was raised in the mentality. Um, having spent most of my, uh, formative years in Asia and Asian cultures that are very communal and community oriented and, you know, you're thinking about everyone else, but other people are also thinking about you. So by default, you're moving through a world where you are. One of many, um, and just this kind of behavior, it reminds me that, oh, wow, this is a very individualistic society that we live in, um, where we're not even thinking about how we can be of service to other people. About how we're being of disservice. In fact, to other people like that, that's not even occurring to many of us. Um, and I would say that, you know, my wiring and the way that I think in relation to, you know, myself in relation to other people, I would say that. You know, that is even inconvenient to me at times, um, where I've had to learn more about how to serve myself. But I do think there is a middle ground to be to be found. Um, and I've been thinking a lot about how. Even on a micro level, um, we can affect people's way of thinking to, to remind ourselves and each other that, you know, we're all we have, and we're around each other all the time, um, and we can do a lot more for each other. And that by doing more for one another, we're actually doing more for ourselves as well. Hmm. I resonate with that so strongly. And one of the questions that I was going to ask you was around this vocation of writing. And to me, writing, when I do it in my own practice, in my very, you know, minimal way, I'm a lady of voice and of human to human. Writing is something I am planning on diving into next year, but hasn't quite formed yet. But even in my small practice, it's always felt to me like not just a coming home, but an opportunity for revelation. What comes onto the page for me is, is sometimes the, the drudge of my ingrained stories, but oftentimes it's actually something far more potent, far deeper, far more oriented toward love or surprise even than I might have anticipated when I took my pen out. And I wonder for someone that makes that as their life and, and, and their art, do you feel that there's a, a connection? A benefit for you in that practice as far as not only connecting with yourself, but connecting with this concept of the duality between self and others and service. absolutely. Um, so writing is my primary self accountability tool. Um, I, I, I love this example of, um, how powerful it is as a means of not avoiding oneself. Because I know that journaling can be hard for a lot of people and I, I also coach journaling. I help with guided journaling and I found, I find that, People are much more comfortable doing it when someone else is holding space and when there are prompts and you know, there is a safe space within which you can, um, not confront yourself necessarily, but I think it does feel like that for a lot of people. Um, and I listened to a podcast once, um, Dax Shepard, he has Armchair Expert, um, he's the host of that podcast and he's an actor. And, um, a big part of his identity and the identity of his podcast as well as about his sobriety. And he did a really powerful episode a couple of years ago now where he talked about, um, yeah, uh, losing his sobriety and having to start over. Um, and how looking back, one of the ways in which He should have seen it coming was when he abandoned his daily journaling practice, which had been his most powerful tool for keeping himself on track. And he said he realized when he stopped doing that that what was happening was that he was avoiding himself because there was something that he didn't want to acknowledge. And so that's how I use my writing as well. Even though I feel like a bit of a sham recently calling myself a writer, um, because so much of the writing that I've been doing over the last year, um, has not seen the light of day. It's, Only been between me and myself, um, and more lately, God as well. Um, that's a lot of what happens on paper for me. Um, just these conversations and asking much bigger questions. And, um, I work through a lot of what's going on with me, uh, on a, on a page. Um, You know, I can start writing about something incredibly mundane and then, you know, the consciousness will just start to unravel and I'll get much deeper. But there have been questions that I've been asking recently that I am not able to answer, you know, questions about the world and about humanity. Um, I don't have the answers. So I have been sort of like giving those, those over, um, and asking for answers. And I'm wrestling with. Whether it is appropriate to, to share that internal struggle, um, publicly, because there is just so much happening in the world right now that is. So horrifying. Um, and you know, I question whether it's appropriate to make it about the struggle that I'm having with it personally. Um, so yeah, I would say that my writing sits a bit of a wall, but certainly my personal private writing practice is very robust, especially right now. It's a really profound question. whether we stick with this mentality that says that it's relative to the production and the output and the externalization of something that it is valuable. It's almost one of the surreptitious societal implications. You know, you're allowed to freely create if it's in practice for a, for a published book, or you're allowed to freely create if you do that as your spiritual practice alongside a day to day nine to five that earns you money. There's, there's so much wound up into that concept around productivity and the ties, you know. To valuable identity, which for me, goes so much back to what are we afraid of in the field of play and in the field of prayer and in the field of connection to a power greater than ourselves? What's the childlike fear of being ridiculed that comes up in us that makes us want to shield that from the world or, or to, to invalidate that on the basis that it hasn't been picked up by Harper Collins, you know? It's a really interesting theme. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is about self and validation. Exactly. You know, it's saying that how, how I feel doesn't, doesn't matter enough to, to share when, you know, in fact, and this is what I've been thinking about a lot, how I'm feeling. I know a lot of people are feeling this way. And it, that experience and sharing that experience, it does speak to this. Particular moment of time that we're in there are people who are being impacted directly and then there are other people who are, you know, being secondhand trauma of, of watching. Um, and, and what do we do with that and how, how can we make that useful. And I think this goes back to what we were just talking about, um, about the culture in which I was raised about how, you know, we can be of service to the people around us. I mentioned that it, it can be, you know, inconvenient to myself and my process and my experience of living in the world., I'm crippled by always needing to and wanting to add value, and if it's not adding value, then I can't make it about myself. That concern as well as the fear of shame, I think also very strong in Asian cultures. Um, yeah, that, that holds me back. I mean, the first thing that I'm really aware of kind of quite palpably is I've been doing a lot of study recently into, moving from an identified separate, more ego contained self. The kind of the self that is constructed early on in life and becomes a cage, um, and becomes deeply conditioned and quite tied to suffering. Into what this particular philosopher refers to as your unique self. And in his description, the unique self is, is coming to an awareness of you as an expression, a unique expression of the divine, a unique expression of the divine that has a unique purpose in this given life, and On the one hand, you could call that the most wonderful act of faith, to step into that way of seeing and believing. And on the other side, you could see it as something really quite fearful. Because it questions so much of the way that we've established safety with one another up until this point. And one of the things that really struck me when you were speaking is, as a writer, you act as a channel, like a portal, to allow people to see things. Through your eyes and that of course brings them to a level of awakeness or a level of reflective questioning that they wouldn't necessarily have had they not dive themselves into your writing or that particular book. And they won't necessarily know when they come to the book that that's what they're going to receive. We love to think that we know what we're going to get if we buy this, or if we buy that or if we invest in this course or if we invest in this coaching. And. Inevitably, and this is always the case with clients that come to see me, we have a goal that we work on, but what grows around that is It's almost unfathomable and it has such wide tentacular reach to all of the aspects of the life that are in fact the ones that are most meaningful. So as I sit listening to your story, and I had this experience last time, I get the opportunity to feel human pain and to feel human intelligence and to feel intuition live in the moment by virtue of the fact that you're willing enough to share from your voice what is universal. I think that's That's what it comes down to is, you know, whether I can resume to speak on behalf of what is universal, um, and, or even presume that what I'm feeling is universal and that it's not incredibly subjective, you know. So that's, that's about my own fear holding me back. But in terms of, you know, what the reaction that it might provoke in other people, I love this idea of, um, uh, artists challenging other people and making other people feel uncomfortable, you know, maybe not giving them what they wanted. one of my favorite, quotes is, uh, Neil Gaiman, the writer. um, this was in a conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert years ago, and it always stayed with me. He said, when you know what your audience wants to see, like the last time your job as an artist is not to give it to them again. Oh, that one is so important and it's so hard. Yeah, which, but also maybe your job as an artist, but it also as an artist is the most terrifying thing. You know, what if people don't like it? It's obviously like, if you know what people like, you just want to keep listing that reaction again and again. Um, but, um, to your point about this sort of divinely Assigned role, perhaps that not the role itself, but that is something I've been thinking an awful lot about. And, you know, especially in terms of my obligation to challenge and to say something. You know, is I, one of the things I've been most cognizant of. So alongside the horror or all of the horror that I've been feeling simultaneously, I've never felt more grateful in my life. I look at my life. I look at the blessings. I look at the gifts. I look, you know, primarily at my safety. And I'm so incredibly grateful that arbitrarily this is the life that I got to be born into. And I, I think the only piece that I've been able to find about that is to believe that this safety and security and peace in my life must have been an assignment, you know. I mean, I wonder if it is also a critical foundation for your writing. just before we started the airing today, you described a little bit of what your morning had comprised. And we made a promise to ourselves that we would describe to the listeners a touch of your morning routine and that bravery in designing a life that's particularly tailored toward who you are and what you do. That life that you described to me, it didn't have the feeling of constant fear of not having a home, not having financial means, not having enough food to feed your kids, you know, that would be an impediment, it seems to, to my limited understanding to what you do and how you do it. Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, my head is going in a million different directions right now because that shit's like popped off so much. Um, yeah, I mean, speaking specific, specifically to the privilege that I have of Making all of these choices in the interest of my own safety and well being and security. First of all, that's, again, I, I have the privilege of, of making those choices and designing my own life. You know, I'm aware that so many people do not. Um, but allowing that, yeah, my life looks exactly the way that it does now because of the choices. That I have made. I have chosen every single thing about this life and I've made those choices knowing that, you know, that do come points in life when we don't get to choose, you know, life deals as many hands. So as much as possible, I've tried to choose in my best interest so that, you know, occasionally when the rug gets swept out from under your feet, I've at least created conditions. that allow me to feel supported and secure and stable. Um, it's worth saying also that making those choices in my best interest do involve jettisoning other things, um, other choices that people make. For example, um, being in partnership. You know, I'm, I'm not accidentally single, um, at 41. That's, and, you know, don't have a, don't have a family, don't have a partner. That's obviously a huge aspect of. life for a lot of women, especially my age. Um, and it, it is something that I look at and I look at that vacuum and that absence. And it is something I would like having said that, like I said, it didn't happen accidentally. You know, there are choices that I made along the way that have got me to where I am now very intentionally. Um, and I can say, I think the best thing about my life is I can say that I own it. And it's mine, and everything looks the way that it does because I put it there, because I chose it. Um, and I've been able to create that security for myself, which I'm incredibly grateful that I've had the blessings to be able to do. Did you always know that you had the capacity to choose it? Or was that an awakening for you? About five years ago, I had a burnout. Um, and I, I have to say I was incredibly grateful when it happened as well, because I think up until the point that, you know, I don't know if you've ever burned out. Right. I, I have a theory that it's a, it's a burnout as a protracted state once it happens the first time, but I'll come back to that. Um, yeah. You know when it gets to that point where you actually can't get out of bed anymore and you're lying in the dark for five days and you're like oh dear god how does this happen? Um, by the time it got to that point what I compared it to was like a car that was just Out of control. I didn't, I didn't know how to stop. So I had to hit a wall. I had to be stopped, you know, sometimes when you're a vehicle that has, you know, the brakes have come off, the end to that way of living, um, does have to be forced. And so when it happened, felt profoundly relieved. I was like, Oh, thank God. Cause I, I didn't know how to stop living the way that I was living. Um, and all I knew clearly was that I couldn't keep on living the way that I had been living. Um, so I didn't know how to choose for myself at all, but it was kind of easy once I looked at what was not working. I always say that one of like my primary metric for living and making decisions is not this. Like, that's my north. I've written about this, actually. Um, and then I can reorient myself in a different direction. I mean, that's also very astute because from an evolutionary perspective, we are much more motivated by leaving an unpleasant reality than necessarily by believing in the capacity for the alternative. The further down the road that you go post burnout, the more, of course, life offers you these little morsels of humans and connections and experiences that build your imagining of what the future will look like. And part of the reason I think that connection is so critical right around the time of burnout is because you need to almost borrow the faith of the other person and the lived experience of the other person that says, I promise you, we're not stuck here. As awful and dark as this feels, there is not just a path out, there are 50 million different ways of working this, this system forwards. And I'm really grateful to you speaking about burnout because Do you know what, when it really gets to 110 percent of course you know, and ideally, I hope this is the case, most people are willing to take that as a signal and at least for a temporary period of time, which is more often what I see, that they adapt. The problem for me, is people will go through this prelim stage of burnout that just lasts for the whole of their lives and it's patterns of thinking and it's in their overly adrenal ways of behaving and it's in codependency and it's in passivity and it's woven into patriarchal structure like it's so tempting to be in that trance of Doing and working and you know, I remember the first time I heard that phrase hungry ghost and it was used to describe the quality I think it's actually originally a buddhist concept But it was, uh, reappropriated by Tara Brach and others, and the hungry ghost is used to describe within a Buddhist framework, the feeling of wanting, always just like wanting that draw. Um, and I obviously first came across it from, um, an addiction recovery perspective, and it made so much sense to me, that, that deep craving for, um, addiction. It's, it's all, I almost want to say it's more than a craving, it's like a, it's like a, um, harrowing yearning, almost with a, with a groan inside of I need, I need this thing. And of course, where you're oriented to go for that thing, most of the time, is not where you can find it., I became deeply aware of that in romantic relationship. So I'm also really curious about the fact that you and I have some unexpected dovetailing of being, I'm late 30s, you're early 40s, both single, both without kids, both quite consciously. I wonder if you'd be open to sharing anything about what you've learned through relationship, romantically particularly. Gosh, yeah, you'll have to, you'll have to bear with me as I sort of work through those tunnels in my mind because they are haunted. Yeah, so, uh, so much that I wanted to respond to. So first of all, when you said that we are sort of wired to, you know, You know, move away from, from the known danger rather than moving towards the unknown. I thought that's interesting, isn't it? Because that's essentially antithetical to this whole school of manifestation. That's exactly what manifestation is. It's moving in the direction of an unknown utopia, um, which we're not wired to do. It's, it's true. But having said that, okay, this, this is nice because this brings me onto the relationship track. I think funnily enough, as I, as I said, my primary metric of orientation is, is not this, um, which does speak to my entire relationship history. And I would say that every time a relationship has ended or that I have ended a relationship, it has been because I've been like, Oh, not this. The, this is an unknown that somehow, I mean, it's, it's a literal unknown. Like I haven't ever experienced that relationship that I want to be in the this, but I cannot tell you how I know, but I just know how it feels. I already know it feels like a memory. Mm-Hmm. I know exactly how it feels, and I think, you know, for, for most of my. adolescent to adult woman life, um, when I didn't know how to choose for myself. I did end up in a lot of not this is, um, and I would say it's in the last few years that I have really rooted myself in that very, very deep in a knowing, um, that I have of, of. What it's supposed to feel like and what it's going to feel like. I feel absolutely certain. I have just the most utter, complete conviction, um, that that relationship is in my future. Lately, I feel like I'm getting closer to it. Uh, it's quite, quite exciting. But yeah, especially towards the, the end of my, my thirties and, who am I kidding, once I turned 40, I really made that decision that if it's not that, I would really rather just be by myself, um, because I, I know how to make myself happy, uh, and, You know, there is this, this feeling that I have when I'm by myself, the only relationship that I'm interested in is something that is an enhancement to that. That feels better. I'll even take neutral, but not less than if I don't feel as good with you, as I feel with myself, then that is absolutely, um, yeah, diminishes the quality of my life. What you're describing, I almost just adore the fact that you are awake enough to notice the difference between this is my set temperature and this is my sleep. Going down. because I would argue that for a lot of people that get into relationships, almost the focus on the other person and the story that develops, the fantasy story really, that develops around the romantic relationship, which then takes on a life of its own, it dissociates you from regularly checking in unless you're someone that has a practice of doing that. So again, perhaps we get back to the God prayer in the writing that Those are grounders for you that bring you back to reality. Reality as it is, not reality as I would want it to be. How important do you feel feeling your feelings is? Really interesting that you asked me that because it's something I'm having a very hard time doing right now. Um, and I think that's where the not being in partnership is getting particularly hard because, uh, I'm afraid by the enormous. The feelings that I'm kind of keeping at bay, um, because I just, I don't know if I feel instinctively that I need to be held while I experience and process those feelings, if that's instinctive or if that's just, you know, like a learned helplessness, um, that I, I don't want to, but I think, you know, being held physically, especially it's a very human need. I think, you know, that, that touch, um, easily, that's the hardest part of being single, um, which I do well enough without. But as I said, when, you know, there are very big, heavy feelings, it doesn't make, make me anyway, feel more alone. Um, and then there's also, the part about me being neurodivergent and on the spectrum, um, you know, they say that when, um, an autistic person is having a meltdown, what you have to do is hold them really tightly. you know, it's neurologically decompressing. Um, and. Oh God, I am just, I'll run into someone that I know like well enough, and I'll be like, can you hug me real quick, can you just hug me really really tight for a minute. Um, so, yeah, I'm sort of like the wandering hug pest of my, my district. I'm smiling at you because I'm exactly the same. Right. The irony is that I come from a family of non touchers. Introverted, self supporting human beings that would love to live on their own with books or computers and just do their thing. Um, my father is the only exception to that because he's actually deeply warm, but it's hidden under 50 years as a banker. he's created his own wonderful distortions., but his only way of navigating my, my moments of emotionality, because generally in my family of origin, emotionality is sort of, it's something to do tidily. Over there, separate from human being where you can maintain a level of self respect. You know, that was certainly the impression that I, that I gained from childhood. Interesting as well. if I'm in a, in a state, as he would call it, which is just having a feeling, um, which we do all the time, he does a sort of, a sort of strange sideways man hug, that it's just an arm, and then he, he does it for about, I would say about 15 seconds, and then he just goes, And then we're, and then we're done. And so I have the same that when, but particularly it catches me off guard because I'm so habituated to not having it, even though it is a baseline need, as you say, that when someone comes up to me and Adjust me in a yoga class or like you say, you bump into someone and there's just that delicious moment where it's not just a hug, it's like I can feel the shape of you and my shape is in the shape of your shape. It's so intimate, in a way that I wonder if those of us on the spectrum feel rather more than sometimes the people that we're hugging. Well it's funny about on the spectrum, isn't it, because it being a spectrum, there are also people who cannot stand to be touched. Um, but there are those of us and We just need to be touched and hugged and held all the time. So living alone, Is really challenging in that regard and we're forced to self regulate and, and manage these feelings all by ourselves without that incredibly powerful, helpful tool. Um, that really requires someone else. Um, which is, you know, strong independent women, is really frustrating, but I live with cats, which helps. I've had two people in the last week tell me to get a cat. And I always thought that I was a dog person, but I now live in this. Sort of a very beautiful London hat. And it is ripe for an elegant slinky hat. What's not right, right for an elegant slinky cat is. That couch and that rug because you don't get to have anything that you're attached to. Oh yeah, I'm secondhand everything or things that I don't mind being scratched. But you know, the love offsets the damage. So in my opinion, I think that's quite a good statement for life. The love offsets the damage. Um, it was funny hearing you speak about your dad, because I actually have this theory, those of us in a certain age group, that we all had the same dad. I wouldn't, I wouldn't know how my dad feels about it, because I never know how he feels about anything. Frankly, he's got that internal emoting down, if he feels something. I, I, I, In, in, in the kindest way, I, I wouldn't know. You know, he's very, he's always been very, unobtrusive with his feelings. You know, he'd never want to burden anyone with how he feels. But of course that, that does mean, especially for men like that, that, we don't ever really get to get to know them. And my father would say, well, there's nothing to know. What you see is what you get. Exactly. My dad would say exactly the same thing. Which is a fascinating. truthfulness relative to what they are willing to encounter or believe that they have within them. my analytic head is then super interested in the fact that you became a writer. You gave yourself this portal. Read me, why don't you? yeah, exactly. That's quite uncomfortable, but yeah, I'm sure you'll enjoy it, yeah. So part of the reason that I was asking you about feelings, is because one of the biggest awakenings for me, from a personal development perspective, but also in the work that I do, was really learning to understand the difference between feeling and ruminating on a story that relates to the feeling, where we've, we've created a conjunction between the two. I'm a professional at creating a narrative. I mean, every human is. We're meaning making creatures, it is inbuilt. Um, it's how we understand the world. It's also how we have a load of fun. So I don't want to discredit the benefit of it. The reason I think it came up for me so strongly is because when I first came into the mind body realm, which we haven't asked you about yet, but I'm going to, that a lot of the clients that I was seeing were people in unexplained chronic pain. And we would get to a stage with the physical work where they no longer saw their body as a danger, perpetuating. entity, which is obviously the most amazing amount of suffering, because if you do see your body in that way, you're also trapped within it. And the powerlessness that creates is awful. And it's the same for people that navigate mental health challenge, but we would get to a certain stage and then actually there would be a stalling and oftentimes more than just what's now very well understood, which is the level to which the body carries your emotional resonance and experience and the degree to which somatic practices can be. very restorative and resetting. What became quite clear is that from a narrative perspective within their family systems or within their lived experience, there was There were subtle gains that those people were receiving through continuing with the story of I am XYZ. This is my label. And what started to happen for them was they started to become aware of the narrative. And as we created this gentle partition between the two and gave them ways of feeling their feelings that weren't associated with the stories, a lot more rapid, sustainable healing began to happen. And it sparked my fascination with that as a topic. What's your experience or take on that? Well, I, I experienced that very profoundly this, this year, actually. Um, so one of the things that I've realized is that historically I have defaulted to creating narratives about situations that I don't understand or that vex me, um, or that hurt me because knowing something gives me a sense of safety. It makes me feel safer to have a narrative that I can assign to this situation, um, rather than just existing in this very liminal space of not knowing one way or the other what the situation is and just allowing myself to live in, um, in comprehension, you know, which is It's just really uncomfortable for me. Like I need to know what's going on to feel safe. I create those narratives for, you know, lots of different situations in real time, but I realized that there was one that has sort of persisted throughout my life, which came from my childhood of, you know, growing up, in different countries, being mixed race. it turns out I see on the cake also being on the spectrum, which I was not aware of when I was a child. So I always felt profoundly misunderstood. Um, I was always a misfit. I was always looking for my place. So I think in my formative years, this, it was true, um, that I, I didn't fit in and I was very isolated. Yeah, I felt very lonely and like lacking sense of belonging, but what I only just realized this year that I had done was I had brought that narrative with me into adulthood and through all my journeys of living in different places. And, you know, I'm in Berlin now. I've lived here for seven years. And I have always told myself this story that people don't understand me. I'm alone. I lack a sense of belonging. And, you know, at, at the end of the day, like, I don't, I don't belong in any group. and then I realized that, well, what if I changed the story? I always set an intention at the beginning of every year. Um, and then I watched that intention just unfold. It's been incredibly powerful for the last few years. and this year at the beginning, I was like, I want to be in community. I want to expand my social group. Um, I want to be meeting new people all the time. And I realized that the biggest impediment to me achieving that, to making it a reality, was not the reality. It was the reality. It was the story that I was telling myself. And as soon as I started telling myself a different story, which is that, you know, I am welcomed. I do belong. I'm loved. I'm supported. Um, the most wonderful thing was not that those things started to happen, but I realized that they already were true. and I would go into these spaces with this sort of like, with my defenses up, um, that was preventing me from belonging fully. So What you're describing is borne out by all of my experience and everything that I see in the studio, We're meaning making creatures, and we take meanings on the basis of previous meanings that we've taken. And until you are awake to yourself doing that, until you are willing to ask yourself the question, even if I have believed this, even if there are patches of truth in this, do I want it? Because it's quite a sobering question. Do I want to believe what I believe?,, can I ask you about your experience of embodiment? Um, what that word means to you, what your physical practices are, especially someone that lives on their own and that has a need for not just physicality, but the love that is transmitted through touch. It's interesting that you asked me that because this is something that I've only really started, getting into this again this year. I mean, I've heard different spiritual takes on this, but if we sort of stay in science for now, I've heard that, um, for people on the spectrum, there is like a great disconnect between, Ourselves sort of cognitively and, and in our bodies, I've always felt incredibly disconnected from my body. You know, I'm like, what, what is this thing? It's great. Long limbs. And yeah, I don't understand the way that it behaves. And I've always felt like there's me and there's this body and I, you know, that's the opposite of embodiment, you know, like I've never really been integrated with my body. like on the, on the spiritual side, I've always kind of felt like I'm from somewhere else and I was assigned a body in this lifetime. I don't really know what the hell to do with it. I don't identify with it. So yeah, it's, it's very new for me. Integrating myself and my body, that is definitely something that I'm consciously working on now. Um, and befriending my body and realizing that, you know, my, my body is me. It feels uncomfortable even saying that because I don't fully believe it. Many other speakers actually are on some form of self identified or externally identified spectrum and one of them is also, an astrologer and she learns through coming into relationship with her body, that it starts off a separation and then it comes into unity, that for her was part of her dharma. And when she told me that, it also reminded me of this, again, spiritual concept that we separate into the difference between divinity and humanity in order to work our way back. into unity for the pleasure and the joy of that. certainly that was my experience. I did all of the things to get away from this. And yet here it is. And it's my grounder in life. Most of me doesn't want to be grounded. I'm gonna, I ask you to close, by tapping into the message that feels the most pertinent to leave us with, for anyone that's listening, what is really speaking through you today? Question everything outwardly and trust everything inwardly. This is a very beautiful mantra, okay, thank you so so so much for your time, it's been rich in all of the ways and, uh, Deeply look forward to connecting with you again. Listeners, we will be with you for another episode very soon, but in the meantime, please take care of mind and body and spirit and one another. I send love your way.

Anthea:

Gorgeous listeners. Thank you. So. So. much. For your ears. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.