The Motherhood Mentor

Challenging the expectations of modern motherhood, safety, and what we really want with Mark Walsh

• Rebecca Dollard: Somatic Mind-Body Life Coach, Enneagram Coach, Speaker, Boundaries Coach, Mindset • Season 1 • Episode 42

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Buckle up for this episode of Motherhood Mentor Podcast, where we dive deep into the transformative concept of being embodied in motherhood with Mark Walsh, an expert in embodiment and trauma work. Mark challenges the conventional expectations placed on mothers—balancing nurturing roles with career ambitions, and being both soft and strong in a world that demands it all.

This conversation explores the difference between reading about motherhood and truly experiencing it, emphasizing that our embodiment—the way we feel, react, and connect with our experiences—is key to navigating the challenges of parenting. Mark offers insights into how trauma can become stored in the body, leading to disembodiment and emotional overwhelm, and shares strategies like breathing exercises and grounding techniques that help mothers reconnect with themselves. 

What roles do shame, guilt, and self responsibility show up in this season? Can moms have it all with no cost? 

This episode offers fresh and bold perspectives and big questions on how to embrace the unpredictability of motherhood, career, prioritize what matters most, and release the pressure of perfection. Mark's insights serve as a reminder that motherhood is a deeply personal journey, and by fostering embodiment, community, and vulnerability, mothers can reclaim their identities and navigate the complexities of raising children in today’s world. 

Tune in for a bold conversation about the beauty and challenges of motherhood with some things that I hope will challenge you and shake up your agency and self accountability. 

About Mark: 

“Mr Embodiment” (Mark Walsh) is the author of The Body in Coaching and Training: An introduction to embodied facilitation, and Embodied Meditation. He hosts The Embodiment Podcast (2 million+ downloads), and led The Embodiment Conference (1000 teachers, 500,000 delegates). Seeing a theme yet? He founded the Embodied Facilitator Course, and has trained over 2000 embodiment coaches in over 40 other countries (some of which will even let him back in). He recently went out to Ukraine twice during the recent conflict and set up saneukraine.org - a charity now run solely by Ukrainian professional to provide trauma and embodiment training to trainers, therapists and coaching. He gained an honours in psychology (despite been an alcoholic at the time), and has taught widely in the corporate world where he pretended to be a grown up for years, including with blue- chip companies (e.g. Google, Unilever, Shell, Axa, L’Oreal) whom he charged wayyyy too much as they made him wear a suit.

Where to find Mark:

Website



Join us next time as we continue to explore the multifaceted journey of motherhood.

Thank you for tuning in to The Motherhood Mentor. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us.

Stay connected with us on social media and share your thoughts and experiences tagging @themotherhoodmentor

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a somatic healing practitioner and a holistic life coach for moms, and this podcast is for you. You can expect honest conversations and incredible guests that speak to health, healing and growth in every area of our lives. This isn't just strategy for what we do. It's support for who we are. I believe we can be wildly ambitious while still holding all of our soft and hard humanity as holy. I love combining deep inner healing with strategic systems and no-nonsense talk about what this season is really like. So grab whatever weird health beverage you're currently into and let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I have a really fun guest with me today, mark Walsh, and when I first asked him to be on the podcast, he was like well, I'm not a mom, but tell me more. So I'm really excited to have you and talk about embodiment, but also some other fun things I think that might come up. So will you introduce yourself and the work you want to do in the the work you do in the world in whatever way feels good to explain yourself today?

Speaker 2:

No, only joking. So I didn't. Yeah, I thought why am I getting invited on? I'm not a mom, I can't Mark's plane momhood. That's ridiculous. But then I saw your podcast. You did great work, rebecca, like really interesting stuff around trauma and somatics and you know meaning and all sorts of interesting things, and this is what I'm interested in. So I'm happy to chat. Um, my life is embodiment. I am probably one of the people that has made that hashtag I apologize over the last 20 years. So I train coaches to work with the body. That's my job. I have a podcast talking to interesting people around that. I've worked in businesses. I started a charity in Ukraine and have worked in multiple areas of conflict and I work with young boys, taking them to the gym when their mums decide they need a bit of help. So, yeah, a few aspects to what I do. Mostly what I like to do, though be rude, provocative and tell jokes. So hopefully we'll get into that.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I love it so much so for someone who doesn't know what embodiment is or what it looks like, especially because it it's not as at least for me it's not mental and cognitive. But I bet you can explain it really well you're like my mom at Christmas Mark.

Speaker 2:

What is it you do for a living? What is this embodiment?

Speaker 1:

what does it, does it mean? What is somatics? And I'm like well, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So the body, the lived experience of the body. So the body, the subjective study of the body. So the body can be viewed as an object, and that's not very nice when that happens to us, though the medical system does that, that may happen, as dating, it happens in the modern workplace. The body is a thing, isn't it? But the body is also a part of who we are as people. That's why if you lose your arm, how careless you would be upset because you would have lost part of yourself. It's different than just losing your phone or something which is annoying but not part of you.

Speaker 2:

So the idea of the body as more than a brain taxi, as a key aspect of being human and this has applications to health and well-being, human flourishing it's my kind of big area really to coaching. You know that's my main professional application. Trauma, obviously, you know, comes through the body. So so many areas that people have boundaries I know you've had people talk about on the show. So if we're interested in these areas we can read the books. But then that's just what one of my teachers used to call shelf help it stays on the shelf and it doesn't help, Whereas if we get the body involved, we might actually have some transformation, some ability to change our behavior. So that's the short version. You could also say it's a field of study that involves certain areas. It's a type of intelligence we can go into that. Nobody knows what it is. It's just a hashtag to make yoga teachers sound cool.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I explained it the other day of you know I'm starting to understand basketball a little bit because I'm watching my daughter play and what you should know is like I'm a very non-athletic. Well, I'm athletic in other ways, but when it comes to things like basketball me watching basketball and reading about basketball isn't going to actually help me play basketball.

Speaker 2:

No for listeners. By the way, I'm on a much non-Zoom call Rebecca, and she's six foot two, black and male. For those who don't know, yeah, yeah, reading about it's like reading a book about kissing right, it's not going to make you a great lover, or you know. Let's take motherhood. There's a lived experience of motherhood. There's a lived experience of motherhood. There's an actual experience of it which I will never understand. Now I could read books on it, I could read theory on it. You know, I can certainly talk to my friends and empathize I've worked with 50,000 children so I might have something interesting to say to them. But the actual embodiment of being a mother I will never know. So that's important because that's a whole domain of knowing, even if I had to read all the books on being a mom and we could learn from books. But it's not the same.

Speaker 1:

So it's so not the same, because, especially in my early motherhood, I had, you know, I had done therapy, I had done all this learning and I would read these books about, like, how to parent, but then I'd go to do it and it's like it's one thing for me to know, logically, how to deal with my toddlers, toddlers, tantrums it's another thing when she's dysregulated and I'm dysregulated to in my body, know how to deal with that and how to show up to it. So I'm curious what, what does it look like and feel like if you're not embodied, like what are some of the ways people might know am I embodied? What does this even mean?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so just to speak to what you just said. So learning and knowing about something is very different than learning a skill and the being, the ontological level of learning is most deep, right. So this is sort of a confusion in the whole of Western culture really that we confuse knowing about things. We have one verb in english to know. That actually means several things and you know, philosophers, for example, will split those up and say that's perspectival knowing versus procedural knowing and there's different types of you know, brain systems involved. So that just you know. You know that now.

Speaker 2:

But it's also just to give a little bit of language around that for people now, in terms of embodiment, everyone's unconsciously embodied. So what does that mean? It means we have an operating system like a dog has that right, you see some dogs and they're like hello, you know. Then I go, how can I help? You know there's dogs that are friendly and I've got that embodiment. That's an unconscious embodiment. So we all have one of those and that may be um, from our culture, from our family, from our trauma, from their practices. We do, you know all those sort of things. But we can develop a more conscious embodiment so we're more aware of our states but also our traits. So it's a bit more than mindfulness in that sense. And once we have that awareness we can develop some range and some choice.

Speaker 2:

But that takes practice. So, for example, you know you might be like, hey, I'm aware that I'm really stressed, that's great. Then you know that that's going to do certain things to your parenting, podcasting, whatever. Um, and then it's what tools do I have that I've practiced, that can step in to help with that? So you know I was a bit grumpy before this interview. I had nothing to do with you. I had a doctor who was supposed to call me and didn't nhs. So you know I co-regulate a little bit with my girlfriend in the kitchen for two minutes. Um, that's not the sexy version, just for listeners. Oh, just just a quick hug, uh. So yeah, and then I did a quick breathing exercise on my own, like a bit of self-regulation. I'd been walking in the by the river, what I call eco-regulation, and then theo-regulation, the fourth kind. Um, I invented two of these words, by the way, so if you haven't heard them before, don't worry.

Speaker 2:

Theoregulation means regulating through meaning and purpose. So it's, for example, going wow, I'm going to help people here, I'm going to be of service, hopefully, to some moms who are struggling. They have a hard time. I want to help them and that inspires me and gets me out of my bad mood. So self-regulation, co-regulation, that's the important one, eco-regulation, that's important too, and theoregulation, purpose meaning spirituality. This is what keeps us sane.

Speaker 2:

And disembodied people lack those things, because the body is the gateway to all the others, right, and the body is the one we can do the most about, because you know, being a mom is impossible, as far as I can tell, because the village has just been destroyed and people don't have any kind of spiritual meaning at the center of sort of the nihilistic western world. And on top of that our ecosystems are damaged and you know, there isn't much nature for most people living in urban environments. Maybe in colorado you're a bit better off than than some, um, and because of that it's just very difficult to be in one's body because it's chaos. It's just that either frozen or in that fight or fly response or in the grasping response, which is what our entire economic system is based on. So this is a bit of a black pill, it's a little bit like bad news. So when we talk about disembodiment. We're really widening it to this much bigger picture.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, happily there are things we can do about it yeah, you just said so much stuff that I'm like take your time, take your time.

Speaker 2:

That's not the theory, the meaning of life, but I just came in there because we pick it apart but I love your, your last.

Speaker 1:

What was what did theo regulation?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so so self, co, eco and theo. So there are four kinds of connection that are mutually supporting or sabotaging. So one helps the other right. Like if I'm in my body I can connect to my girlfriend better. You know, if we're in nature we're going to have a nicer connection. If we're orientated around, meaning, we're going to have a better connection, we're going to be more in our bodies and we're going to enjoy nature more.

Speaker 1:

So they can be mutually supporting or mutually sabotaging yeah, because I mean, even you know, motherhood really does feel impossible. And I love that you're talking about the cultural context, because I think especially the self-help world gets this.

Speaker 2:

So it's just, it's so individualistic and it's so like self rebecca, I know, I know you might not have any money and your family live far away from home and the community doesn't support you and you don't have a system of faith and you know you're feeling isolated and shut off in the world and you're surrounded by technology. It's sending you insane. But do some yoga bitch, have you tried? Manifesting have you been positive and I mean, but it's complicit the women, like I.

Speaker 1:

I work with women who are highly intelligent. They've done healing work, they've done personal growth work, some of them are spiritual, some of them are spiritual in different contexts. And it's so wild to me that like and I include myself in this that on a regular basis I'm like have I tried being good and grateful, have I tried? And then it's like, wait, no, like I need a fuck it list, I need, like a, the world feels like it's burning on fire and I'm trying to raise children while breaking generational cycles, like what the hell does that even mean and how do we do it? But I can't.

Speaker 1:

But if I, I think we can't do individual healing work without talking about the collective, and you can't do collective work without talking about the individual. And I'm someone who, like, lately I just some of the stuff happening in the individual and I'm someone who, like, lately I just some of the stuff happening in the world. I want to bury my head in the sand and then I remember that, like I, I just have to come back to the individual and where my hands can reach and where my feet can reach.

Speaker 2:

But I want to get back to this Theo part yeah, just could I just give you a bit of love first of all, like if you feel insane, you're not insane. Okay, like what you just said. I hear that so many times from clients around the world. You are not the only one so like it's sane to notice how insane we are.

Speaker 1:

And I think too, and tell me your perspective on this. I think what's hard is staying hopeful. In that, like I don't want to be someone who pretends that everything is fine when things aren't fine, like I will not sweep things under the rug of good and grateful Everything's all good, that feels like toxic, family abusive culture all over again. But I also don't want to be someone who's just drowning in this world. Like that also doesn't feel like an option. Just giving up and saying fuck it all. All also feels not an option.

Speaker 2:

So there's this tension to hold? Yeah, yeah. Would you like some strategies for remaining hopeful as the universe burns?

Speaker 1:

I feel like a lot of us, I feel like a lot of women, could use that, because I work with a lot of women who are high functioning but they're burning out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and you know, women modernity is hard, high functioning, but they're burning out. Yeah, yeah, and you know, women modernity is hard on everyone. But I think it's particularly insane for women because it's designed for kind of pushing, driving stronger, faster, more, and most women just aren't set up to enjoy that. Like I'm in quite a yang guy, you know, I fight, I lift weights, I'm sort of, you know, macho kind of guy and I find it exhausting. So for my italian girlfriend, who's much more femme, I mean it's just completely. You know she's done hardcore ngo work, she's pretty, you know she's to be respected, she's smart, she speaks six languages, but it's just exhausting. And I think most of the women I know it's just, you know, cyclical feeling based creatures. It's just too much for this mechanized, stronger, faster, harder, more it's just too much. It's too much for me.

Speaker 1:

You mean we can't like david goggins it no, he's deeply traumatized.

Speaker 2:

He's deeply traumatized and it's gonna burn out before he's 50 anyway. So it's uh, david gog is absolutely not the answer. This sort of you should be invincible. It's ridiculous. Um, so when I work in ukraine so I founded In the War a charity in Ukraine and we deal with the most horrific things you could imagine, things that I won't discuss on a podcast just for your listeners' well-being really, really dark things, and we joke a lot and we laugh a lot.

Speaker 2:

And the philosophy of absurdism I think is very helpful as a way out of nihilism is when you realize there's a dick joke at the end of the universe, that it's all, it's all ridiculous. You have to be a bit Rick and Morty about it, and I, you know this is a very Anglo Irish strength culturally, so it's. You know, I had a lot of Jewish teachers as well, which are very helpful in this regard. You know, the Jews are great at this, you know, and it's, I think, that absurdity and laughter is definitely part of it. Another thing is you need to surround yourself with wholesome people as much as you can, because what I call the anti-culture Right, it's like the anti-Christ, the anti-culture around us is not wholesome and every time you turn on your phone it's not wholesome. You are being poisoned for profit and control. It is a conspiracy, um, so how do we? What do we do we? You know, I make, I buy house plants, I make my house beautiful, I date someone lovely, I have friends that I have saunas with. You know, I surround myself as much as I can with sanity.

Speaker 2:

Um, and the buddhists talk about guarding the gates of the senses. Like my ukrainian, for example, I'm like stop checking the news. Right, like check the news once a week, it's enough, okay, like stop checking the news every two minutes. It's poison. So stop ingesting poison. When you have a choice physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially is very, very key. And, um, you know we have to choose our battles there because you can get neurotic about it and be like oh, there's everything. Is the water? Tap water's bad and this, plastics are bad and my underpants have to be cotton, and you know you can get really neurotic about it yeah, cotton underpants I do recommend anyway.

Speaker 2:

So for the boys. So yeah, there's a couple of strategies one is laughter and one is um. Second one be community wholesome. Third one is guarding the gates of the senses, ie reducing the sort of toxicity load on all four of those layers, and that's going to be different depending on our situation. I was lucky enough to be able to move to the countryside, right. Not everyone has that luxury. So you know, I'm aware that there are people out there who don't have some of these luxuries that I have.

Speaker 1:

But I go, okay, I'm going, gonna choose to do the healthy things where I can and what luxuries are accessible to you where you are. And, yeah, some practices are cheap.

Speaker 2:

Some aren't like. You know. Like gratitude practice is cheap, uh, tre is cheap. Trauma therapy theory, uh yeah, other things aren't. You know, go for a walk in the woods is cheap, but you know, maybe you don't have the time right, you've got've got five kids, so, and again, this is where it's tricky, because without the village to support us, we're just low. You know what I mean by the village. So this is the idea of the Paleolithic village, the support network.

Speaker 2:

You know, even in Southern Europe, I see that you as families In Spain, italy, you see this much more. You know, america is an absolute desert of modernity. Your country looks, you know, outside the country, in the cities there's parking lights, just ugly, and it's a desert socially. People don't have that co-regulation that you see in some of the sort of blue zones, the Okinawa or some of the Mediterraneanranean, for example. So we can learn from different cultures and, um, they each have a kind of piece of the puzzle is how I see it yeah, I, I mean one people need to follow you on instagram because you are my favorite meme dealer like I deal the best memes so people love my memes and I'm like lately I feel like I'm stealing half of hers of like well, well, just go follow Mark.

Speaker 1:

He gets them first, and then I just redeal them to my audience.

Speaker 2:

And I'll take it one step further. If someone's got a book called how Not to Give a Fuck, mine's called Don't Be a Cunt. You know, we always go one step further. People have tried to counsel me for years. It hasn't happened. So you know, I'm just still getting away with being me, which is great fun.

Speaker 1:

See, that's an embodiment. I'm still you know, the recovering people pleaser in me is still learning that embodiment, because that does not come natural to me and I've gotten further than I used to be. But like that level, like what you just did, I was like okay, I'm going to think of Mark when I think of like how do I embody this in a way that doesn't feel like being an asshole? Cause I think a lot of people, when they're coming out of people pleasing or when they're trying to learn a new embodiment, they're terrified of this like who will I become if I'm not this soft, nice, good girl?

Speaker 2:

I wrote a book on people pleasing because it kept coming up with my students after we did some videos and stuff on it. It kept being a big thing and there is a stage called the obnoxious stage people go through so that is a real risk.

Speaker 2:

They're not wrong and also I would say that we do need to be people pleasers, just not at the extent the expense of ourselves. We need to be in service to others. I mean the sort of individual american dream of putting oneself at the center of the universe. I mean that's a recipe for suffering. Yeah, absolutely. We need to put spirit or service or community at the center of the universe and not ourselves. So there's a sort of narcissism to a lot of personal growth, which is the other side of people pleasing. I think the two most popular pop topics I speak about on Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean especially because and I see this with boundaries work a lot like I don't I don't know what your feed looks like, but like the amount of stuff I see about boundaries being just like how to cut people out of your life when they disagree with you or they. Yeah, it's obnoxious and I'm like any any healthy person like you know. There's this quote of like you know, the only people who are going to be mad about your boundaries is going to be toxic, narcissistic people, and I was just like maybe the baby like, yeah, your baby chewing on your nipple, who's got absolutely no respect for your bodily integrity, I mean like I mean I do some fun videos on this.

Speaker 2:

It's. It's like you know, don't, don't feed your children when they cry. That's people pleasing, you know it's uh, children don't get it. So we can teach them boundaries over time, but it takes a while. Frankly, my mom still doesn't get my boundaries. You know I'll be staying at her house and she'll walk in when I'm getting changes. I've seen it all before, you know. It's just, you know human beings. So we've got to cut each other some slack there. It's this overly assertive, impersonating asshole men thing that hollywood has pushed recently, like hey, the best way to be a woman is to be like toxically masculine, like that's absolutely bizarre and uh, it doesn't. I'm going to be honest, like, if it's making you happy, go for it. But the whole sort of girl boss thing being mean to everyone I'm, I just don't see that making women happy. Tell me if that's your experience.

Speaker 1:

No, no. It leads to a lot of burnout and resentment and feeling too hard and rigid and they lose that sense of softness or rest or peace because they're so rigid and their boundaries become these big giant walls that keep out vulnerability and deep connection with other people and it ends up being this whole other thing. So I'm curious we were talking, before we started recording, about like you're new, you're like really into this, meaning making, and then you said another word and I really want to hear about this Tell me about meaning making. What does that mean?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so a couple of years. I mean, I've always been interested in meaning, since I read nietzsche at 16 and wanting to kill myself, and then I became an alcoholic because I didn't have anything to live for. And when you don't have anything to live for, hedonism is all that's left. And you know, I interviewed anna lemke from dopamine nation recently for my podcast and she basically says yeah, neuroscience says if you see pleasure, all you'll get is pain. And that is the entire center of our soulless, godless culture. So you know again, I'm being pretty dark here, right, and this is the situation we find ourselves in, that I call it the desert of modernity or the swamp of post-modernity, and this has got really bad. The last 10 years. Mental health crisis is absolutely ridiculous. Last time I was in the states there was just weird druggie zombies everywhere. Um, people, everyone's mentally ill, like all the kids.

Speaker 2:

I know it's getting better from us talking about it no, there are things we can do about it, but the first thing, though, is to name the actual causes of it correctly. So, the causes of it. For example, people say, oh yeah, men should talk about their feelings more. It's like, no, they shouldn't, because that's not how men get happy. Men need to get stronger, men need community, men need meaning. There's things men need that are like way above the list than being listened to, like it's not.

Speaker 2:

You know, the problem with men is not that they're broken women, and vice versa, so we need to correctly diagnose the root of the issue, which is this in terms of, spiritually, the meaning crisis, disembodiment, lack of village, the eco destruction and this sort of, as I said, the lack of meaning. This is absolutely key. And then there's other factors around that, like the technology, which you know. Frankly, there are drug dealers in our houses, and you know, know, we should throw them out of our houses and there are people with names and addresses. Um, you know, just just in case anyone feels like I'm encouraging terrorism against tech companies, I, I, yeah, I might be, so I was gonna say we're on a podcast you can edit it out if you need to.

Speaker 2:

So there's a whole situation we're in and we first need to look at that. And then how do we find it? You know, what happened was a lot of single moms and lesbian moms started asking me to take to have a cot, says, oh, can you talk to my boy? He needs a mentor, and they thought I might be good at that, for whatever reason, and I said, listen, I'm not gonna really talk to him because that's weird, but I'll take him for the gym. I would take them to the gym because I like working out and I'd take the guys gym. The boys like that kind of thing and you could talk while you're doing it and basically do wide call in body coaching. You know I do it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, regular folks and, um, yeah, a lot of stuff comes up around addictions, around relationships, around meaning and we work through that and there's a whole bunch of stuff I recommend to them. There's a whole bunch of ways to find meaning and a lot of it's just sort of stuff their mom's told them anyway, but they don't listen. You know, they go for that stage where they don't listen to their moms and and the moms usually love it like they wouldn't love what I'm saying half the time, like some of your more liberal audience would be horrified by what I'm saying, but they love the outcome and that's. You know, one boy I took to the gym, just kind of split up with his druggie girlfriend, who was a really bad influence on him, and his mom, you know, texted me to say thank you so much. You know, this was a really negative influence and he stopped smoking weed and he's doing much better and it's like, yeah, no problem, you know they need that again.

Speaker 2:

The village is, you know, the positive men in their lives who aren't their dad basically, and a lot of them don't even have dads. So, um, yeah, it's super satisfying and I've sort of extended it from the boys to everybody else. And, um, also in ukraine, it's really important. You know, if you're gonna work with trauma in ukraine, it's not enough to say do some mindfulness, you really have to. We, we call it the tetrarchies, these four things you know the self, the relationships, the eco and the theo. You have to use all of those when things are really catastrophic and maybe one of them works.

Speaker 2:

You know we take soldiers on retreats in the mountains or you know, we do spiritual work with them and we do the sort of more therapeutic embodiment stuff. You know the things you might expect. So, yeah, it's become a sort of overarching model of human happiness, how to seek the meaning of life and, um, you know, from a coaching point of view, it's really helpful to have this model when you're coaching someone.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because if you just tell them to do mindfulness and the other stuff isn't, isn't there, then you're really missing the big picture yeah, or if their mind doesn't feel like a safe place to be, like if, if the thoughts they're having feel terrible and self-critical, or shaming, or for sure, but their safety is overrated, and I'm a big fan of shame.

Speaker 2:

So, um you know, tell me more about absolute. We need to bring back shame we need to bring back shame.

Speaker 2:

So we need to bring back ethics and morality generally. What's happened in post-modernity, particularly in liberal america, is the good, the true and the beautiful have all been smashed. What does that mean? The good means we don't have a system of right or wrong. We don't't have any way of saying what's right or wrong, which is ridiculous and impossible because we have to make decisions. So we need to have values Just when we leave the house. We have to have a system. But the true? No one knows what's true anymore. It's this post-truth world. No one trusts the media rightly. No one trusts the government rightly. No one trusts this traditional religion rightly and rightly, no one trusts anything.

Speaker 2:

You know, what do you come back to? Your own body is a good starting place. And then the beautiful the world is ugly, like things are not beautiful in the buildings we're building, the technology, the clothes, like every, the way people dress, the way people do everything. Now it's just ugly and these three things are an absolute spiritual disaster to have smashed in this condition of post-modernity. Um, and as a result, we're all going crazy because we can't live without those.

Speaker 2:

So you know, like people you hear in america, they don't shame me. You know this hyper individualism of like nobody gets to tell me what to do. It's so teenage, it's so silly, it's like we absolutely like I fat shame my sister all the time. It's absolutely helpful and it's you know, it's a good example actually, right, I love my sister and and you know there's factors around stress and motherhood and all sorts of things.

Speaker 2:

And I said to her this is not okay. You're going to die before your kids have grandchildren, your kids have kids and I want you around when my kids are born. And it's not okay that you're obese and I will help you and support you to do something about this if you want Right, and support you to do something about this if you want right. And she was like oh, fuck off, don't shame me, no one tells me what to do. A month later, she's rushed into hospital with a serious life-threatening condition related to it and she phones me up the day afterwards, you know, from hospital and says you're right, what are we going to do about it? And I've got nothing but love. But it's like, and you know, and I'll give you some practical help.

Speaker 1:

Is that shame Cause? When, like, when you said like you want shame back, I was like what, absolutely. I was like wait, tell me more. And then I like I'm curious about this. But then what you just described to me, I was like I don't hear that as shame, I hear that as guilt, I hear that as.

Speaker 2:

Listen, this guilt shame thing. The Americans have got it wrong around, but it depends how you language it right. So I'm absolutely talking about the moral domain. To be clear, okay, that's that's. This isn't just like oh well, someone has trauma and that's why and it's an excuse for everything, and it's my neuro atypicality. It's such bullshit. It's like let's actually talk about virtue.

Speaker 2:

You know, the greeks had a system for this. Even the samurai had a system for this. Every traditional culture in the world, every tribe in america has a system for this. So goodness is absolutely a part of it. Now we can be trauma informed. We can add in, you know, more sophisticated behavioral perspectives as well, but trying to medicalize and psychologize away ethics and beauty is just ridiculous. So, um and I know this is challenging because it's that hyper individual I'm the boss of me. No one gets to tell me what to do. This is bullshit. And also the language is difficult because the use of the word guilt and shame, so shame as I use it, and I know other people use it differently. It's this kind of social moral, the use of morality socially. Guilt is more intrapersonal not interpersonal.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so when you think of shame, you think of the word that's coming up to me Now. I just lost the word. I had a really good word.

Speaker 2:

Social pressure. Is that what he's?

Speaker 1:

talking about Accountability.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's part of it, for sure.

Speaker 1:

Or like love, or like bringing people.

Speaker 2:

Loving shame, absolutely there's got to be love there. I mean, you're not just being an asshole to my sister. There's love and there's offers of support and practical help and it's coming from care and it's like I want to see you get old. It's not okay that you're fat. What are we going to do about it?

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Like this isn't oh health at any size and body. It's not Okay, it's deeply unhealthy. And she fucking ended up in hospital and luckily one of the people like me who'd said something about it meant that she had that seed planted and then she, when she hit rock bottom, she was ready. Yeah, the same in alcohol recovery. It's like, you know, we tell people it's not okay, it's not okay to be a junkie and steal from your mom. It's not okay.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I hear what you're saying now and it's I'm giggling because, like when this podcast came out, the podcast right before it, is the unshaming way. We're talking about not shaming, but so I'm like, wait, I want to put you two together. No, but what you're talking about is a really fascinating concept that I think will really have women thinking, because a lot of the conversations that I get to have with women, they're trying to figure out how accountability is the word that comes up for me. I don't think I can use the word shame yet.

Speaker 2:

We're not there yet. I get it. You've been poisoned by American hyper individualism.

Speaker 1:

But I think these women are figuring out. They're trying to critically think about how the personal growth world has told them you need to get rid of this mom guilt, you need to get rid of this mom shame. And when they come to work with me, they're afraid that I'm going to tell them no, it's okay, you just do this and I'm like no, this is really important information for you to have about if your behavior is aligned with your values.

Speaker 1:

If how you're showing up in the world aligns to who you claim you want to be, we can't, we don't want to lose that, Like we don't want to lose that. For all this love and self-acceptance, I'm like I don't think Listen, here's all personal growth aimed at women.

Speaker 2:

right, it's so manipulative. This is all personal growth aimed at women. Nothing's your fault. You're very special and nothing's your fault.

Speaker 1:

And a victim. And it's, and it's and you're a victim, and that's so disempowering.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like actually, if we really cared for people, we need to get out of that. You know, victim has become a religion, particularly in woke America. You have an introductory circle and everyone tells you their pronouns, everyone tells you that you're atypicality and everybody tells you their trauma and it's like how about just tell me your fucking name, let's start there. So it's really getting silly at this point and no one's impressed. Like people in Ukraine are just laughing at us, you know, they just think the whole thing's hilarious.

Speaker 1:

Who are in actual like active trauma.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean like they're like oh, someone in California is traumatized because they can't get a decaf fucking latte, and someone used a pronoun they didn't like. It's like get over yourself, darling, you know, come on. So I mean, I have this juxtaposition in my day I'm on the phone to Ukraine and I'm on the phone to Portland.

Speaker 1:

And it's pretty hilarious at times.

Speaker 2:

I I just love challenging, I get it.

Speaker 1:

I like challenge, though. I like to be challenged and my favorite thing is to work with people or to learn from people who are going to challenge me. Because at some point, you know, part of my journey is I had done therapy and like I knew why I was messed up. I could you know, I could look at the trauma, I could look at the diagnoses, but at the end of the day I was like I knew why I was messed up. I could you know I could look at the trauma, I could look at the diagnoses, but at the end of the day I was like I want to feel better, I want to act better. I want to not just stay in this place where I keep blaming what happened in my early childhood. That's not happening anymore. I was like I'm not a victim anymore.

Speaker 1:

No-transcript, the way that I was thinking and feeling and processing and the way that I was meaning making and my choice. Like you used you use the word choice earlier and I want to come back to this meaning making. So let's say, someone is in that place where they just their neurodivergence and their trauma is deeply impacting them and I get it.

Speaker 2:

I've got it all. I'm not a mom, but I've got ADHD and I have childhood trauma and all the rest of it. So what do you want me to do? Fix all their problems.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, tell us, tell us how to fix me. Can't you do that? Can't you give us like a four-step formula?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, here's the four steps and buy my course. This is the commercialization of this whole field, right? Okay, so I like your starting point. I'd call that personal responsibility. That's absolutely like leadership 101. If I do a course in business, for example, when we do a coaching course, we have to teach people that, or they just turn up late and they don't do their homework and they make excuses, so that's like a hygiene factor. Then I'd say, okay, let's look at this tetrarchy, these four things, and say where can you get some leverage which is going to be accessible?

Speaker 2:

Is it a simple 10 minute a day in body practice? You know, like I don't know, if you're not meditating, why not? You know, get on it 10 minutes a day. Come on, everyone's got that. You know, like I don't know, if you're not meditating, why not? You know, get on it 10 minutes a day, come on, everyone's got that. You know, I've got students who are meditating while breastfeeding. Right, there's ways to do it. So it's um.

Speaker 2:

Next, co-regulation talk to your fucking neighbors, make some friends, form an online men's group, you know, whatever it is right, I'm sure you've got better resources for mothers than I have around. Not isolating, basically, right, like that's the tricky. But there's a real cool group of mums, I see, in a particular cafe and they've got a particular space in the cafe and they're all there and they're there most days and there's a lot of co-regulation and community for these mums and the cafe is really cool to kind of give them a space and it's breastfeeding friendly and it's so good for them. You know, and it's like I mean obviously I sit on the other side of the cafe so because of all the screaming babies, but it's I'm really happy to see it. So this is also cultural. Like if that cafe didn't have that consideration, you know, for that space, then it would be a problem. Or do we go to the meaning making? Do we do? We need to do some inquiry. You know, if nihilism, narcissism and hedonism is the center of your life, good luck bringing up a child, good luck like. I just don't see that happening.

Speaker 2:

It's like, you know, I was very lucky. My, my mom was actually a catholic nun for seven years before she met my dad. So you know, she was just glowing spiritually with my childhood. I didn't have a real catholic education, but she had something because of that. But she had something because of that training she had. You know, I was very lucky to have she took me to india when I was 16 years old, you know. So it's like I had a kind of spiritual education. I was like, so I'm so grateful. I love the shit out of my mom, by the way, it's like. It's like I was so grateful that she gave me that and she made sure there was food on the table and she was a busy working mom, but she always made sure there was real food on the table.

Speaker 2:

You know, like started with the physical make sure I got to bed on time and had some sleep, you know, and it's like it's difficult though, isn't it? I? I remember my mom when I started working in war zones. One time my mom actually drove me at 5 am to the airport to go, I think it's, to afghanistan, because I couldn't get a train, because it was too early, because I was taking the cheap flight early in the morning and um, and she dropped me off at the airport.

Speaker 2:

I thought how hard must it be for a mother to drop her only son off at the airport, knowing that he's going to a war zone? You know that like level of non-attachment and I'm sure, like you know, when I went to ukraine, she was like, don't go. And I'm like, um, man has to do what a man has to do. And she's like, okay, well, just call me when you get there. So it's like, you know, like that's so hard, that's a spiritual power. That's a spiritual power and god lover. Um, you know, is it ecology? Is it getting a few house plants? Is it, you know, moving to the edge of town where you can walk in the woods? There's different levels of it. Right and honestly, anyone who says they've got the answer that works for everyone is selling you something. So, um, I I think the best we can have is a good system where we can go. How, within that system, that gives me a map for making meaning tell me more.

Speaker 1:

Tell me more about the map of making meaning. What do you mean by like, how, how do?

Speaker 2:

people, the tetrarchy, the four things I've been discussing.

Speaker 1:

Right, that's what changes how we make our meaning yeah, we got okay.

Speaker 2:

So it's basically one way consumer culture works. It's just by. The three poisons of buddhism it just one is it just keeps us in fight or flight, so any social media will do that, and then you can't think, you know, you can't feel or think, you lose access to spirituality, relationships and your own embodied wisdom, which is kind of a problem. Uh, the other one is just um, uh, grasping, you know consumer culture. So it's like gets us hooked, which again is addictive, which leads to weakness and fragility, which makes us less capable. Addiction makes you weaker, not stronger. And thirdly, it's just confusion. You know, we're just so confused and having someone go okay, look, this is a system, here's some clarity. This is four things. They're mutually self-destructive or they're, you know, mutually supporting or destructive.

Speaker 2:

Whether here's a few practices for each, and it depends who I'm talking to, because someone like your listeners, they all know what I don't know gratitude practices, but I've been around people that had no idea about that, you know. So it's like you know, sometimes it's really low-hanging fruit when I'm working in business or with the ukrainian military, and we were like you know, sometimes it's like here's a one minute centering exercise you can do on the battlefield and they're like shit, this is, this is amazing, you know, so it's. Other people were like, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm living in san francisco and I've done all this. You know somatic therapies and blah, blah, blah, and that they might need something a bit more philosophically sophisticated yeah, one of the things you said.

Speaker 1:

I just keep losing it. I like go to say something because I have so many thoughts going through my head.

Speaker 2:

Okay, no, because I love it I love how much like oh, there's safety's overrated. Do you want to come back to that we talked about?

Speaker 1:

you like like this whole safety culture you want to go back to that, tell me I'd love to go back to that soapbox moment tell me, um soapbox, I don't have a soapbox.

Speaker 2:

But often in personal growth things like polyvagal theory have become popular and deb's day and steven bridges is fantastic. It's the model we use in Ukraine a lot. But the sort of top of their nervous system hierarchy is, you know, ventral, vagal safety. That's a problem because that's fucking boring, and I would suggest the top of that hierarchy would be two other states, right, what is, you know, ventral, plus sympathetic, which is called adventure and excitement, and this is absolutely like. This is play. You know, this is a, this is a good day, like, think of this. I'm not, I'm not sure if you're straight, but if you are, think of the sexiest man you can think of. I bet he's not safe.

Speaker 1:

I bet he's safe enough, I'm I'm a big reader and a big thing right now on. Tiktok is like fantasy, but like all of the characters that women love, are these like morally gray, like they are the safe they are like danger and safety combined.

Speaker 2:

It's a gangster who's quick at being a gangster. It's a vampire, but it's not going to kill you. It's a millionaire, but he's going to treat you with respect, right? This is every female romance novel you ever read. Literally this is flirting. Flirting is danger and safety. It's also play. If you want to play with a child, like what I'll do to play my niece is, I'll pretend to be a monster and pretend to kill her, and then you know obviously it won't, and then she'll run away screaming and then she'll come back for more being chased, right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, like that's what that's the?

Speaker 2:

the window of tolerance, right, but it's not just tolerance, it's such a yucky word. Tolerance, it's the window of fucking play, flirting, exploration and adventure. And this is where we need to be aiming if we make safety the top. This is like toxic mother archetype not individually, but archetypally. What happened during COVID? The controlling toxic mother took it and said everyone's going to be safe, you're not allowed to leave your homes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's like the codependent who needs you to be okay, for them to be okay which happens a lot in motherhood to a lot of women raises hand, but then it's. I love this concept because one of the things I've been playing with in my life lately is like my fast health and my slow health, of realizing that like okay which tell me the difference?

Speaker 2:

I'm curious.

Speaker 1:

Like just sometimes it feels really good to do things that feel slow and safe and sometimes I want to go lift weights listening to Eminem and sometimes, like when I think of starting this podcast, did not feel safe to my body. Everything in my body was like this is not okay and I had to remind myself. This is the feeling my sister and I went to. My sister brought me to this. It's called, what is it? Slick City. It's these giant slides. I'm talking like you have to climb up and up and up.

Speaker 2:

I'm scared of those. That's too.

Speaker 1:

that's too, I hate heights, but we went and the first few times I could barely get myself to go down the slide because my body just don't love it. I just don't have a need for speed. But I did it over and over and over and over again and I was laughing hysterically by the end and I was like learning my. I had to learn this new embodiment of risk is safe.

Speaker 2:

Like.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to die going down a slide Like I just watched a little six-year-old girl in a dress do it, I think I'm going to be okay, and yet, like if I just stayed in this container of I just need to be safe and okay, I'm never going to do anything brave or crazy, and especially parenting. This is not safe, this does not feel pleasant or comfortable, but like, that's okay, this is good for me and so, yeah, that's what I mean by that comfort and pleasure make you weak.

Speaker 2:

Um, we need a balance. Right like you can't be full, david goggins, but you know you need a bit of italian there, right, but it's, you can't go full italian, just get lazy, right. So we need to be stretching ourselves, we need to be pushing that line, we need to be. That's what training is. In the gym, you lift a certain amount of weight, you know, in the whatever meditation dojo, you do a retreat, it's difficult. You sit for 10 minutes longer even though your mind's going like a box of frogs. This is the training principle. If we don't approach an edge like that, we just get weaker and weaker and weaker. And if you make safety your god, you also open up tyranny. So this also happens in the culture. So people get fragile and systems of governance get tyrannical. So this is what happens as a result of excess safety in culture rather than safe enough. But with some adventure, dad throws the kid in the air a little bit higher than mom likes. Yeah, that's how.

Speaker 1:

That's how nature works yeah, yeah, it almost sounds like that finding that healthy, you know masculine and feminine is kind of some language that people would use, or the yin and yang, the different energies versus I think you know a lot of talk. Somatics and nervous system regulation are like the thing right now for like white female coaches which hide me, but also I'm like no, like stop making videos about teaching moms how to breathe when they're angry.

Speaker 1:

Like teach them how to feel angry and how that anger needs to set a boundary, or cut the codependency with her kid, or anything. Cut the codependency with her kid, or anything. But this idea of my nervous system needs to be regulated and I need to feel calm. I think is just keeping people stuck in this place of you're staying in the embodiment that the trauma created and it's like. But if the trauma isn't happening anymore, how do we teach your body that you're okay and how you have agency and choice and rebecca, I think you need the international yoga voice to soothe you after this.

Speaker 2:

Um, yeah, no, I agree. So sometimes it's like, for example, if people are in polyvagal shutdown, dorsal vagal angle can be helpful, right, just to stay with that model. But the other thing is like, what about passion? You know? What about being thrown on the bed and fucked open? You know, like what? What about having adventures in war zones? What about? You know, like, like, actually going riding the roller coaster of life, like there's more to life than fucking safety. So, um, I think, for various reasons, you know, anger could be like I need to assert a boundary. This is really important. I don't calm myself right now. So there's all sorts of reasons why I mean. That being said, we do need to learn to reduce the level of sympathetic arousal that the culture produces at times. But the key thing here is flexibility. It's the dance of the nervous, not not flat calm boringness, I mean. Essentially, the problem is there's a model that was appropriate for, like, traumatized children and you know, portland applied it to the whole world, and it's it's, it's it's not appropriate for the rest of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we need a dynamic range of health. We need we need a dynamic range of like. That's what I mean by the fast and slow Like. I need to be able to trust my gas. This is the way I've been explaining it to women lately of like I don't think of a nerve, like. They're like oh, I need to slow down, I have to slow down, I'm burnt out.

Speaker 1:

I love to drive 80 on the interstate listening to my old like throwback trash music. I love that feeling. But if my, if there's a brick stuck on that gas pedal and I can't slow down and I'm entering a school zone or there's giant curves or there's traffic, that's going to be scary as hell. I need to be able to use the gas and the brakes. I need to be able to utilize this different range of function and not just be stuck at like, ooh, there's this quote unquote.

Speaker 2:

Balance is a big word Balance is a big word. Yeah, uber cool, super cool. Yeah, I come to the autobahn in Germany. We drive 120 miles an hour. Like so cool, so cool. Yeah, uber cool, rebecca. Yeah, no, I agree, you've got to have the rage right Like we've got to have the passion and the laughter and also the calm. Like you know, I was just sitting on the couch last night with my girl just writing my new book for young men, which no one will publish because it's too radical and I'm just writing my book, chilling with my girl, and we're just happy and it's calm and it's peaceful and it's not super exciting. You know, like that's this this time boring, boring. I've had my adventures, I'm all about the boring life from now on. So, um, yeah for now.

Speaker 1:

Maybe I don't really believe you.

Speaker 2:

You know I've had some adventures in life so I'm ready to settle down. It's dogs and cats and kids and living in the woods and enough running around the world for me.

Speaker 1:

Puzzles are great boring fun.

Speaker 2:

Puzzle. That's some old lady shit. I like it.

Speaker 1:

My husband made so much fun of me because I wanted puzzles so bad. But like just sitting there doing something that like doesn't isn't productive. Listening to good music I love it Not being productive.

Speaker 2:

That's nice, though, because we're in this. It's not productive but you're doing something. Okay, give it a shot.

Speaker 1:

Don't knock it till you, try it.

Speaker 2:

No, no, I'm old lady. Shit, I love it.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to try it Make some tea, do some old lady shit, do a puzzle so back.

Speaker 2:

I think everyone's tired of having to be a consumer unit of productiveness the whole time, like the hustle culture that's pushed on boys, for example. It's just really unhealthy really. You know they're like you've got to be working 12 hours a day all the day. You know it's like, oh, fuck off. You know like I can't be bothered yeah, I want to come back.

Speaker 1:

You said when you were talking about you know passion and you know kind of this dynamic use of our nervous system. I was talking with some women the other day and we were talking about nothing in nature is more dangerous than a mother with cubs Nothing. Tiger and yet like I feel well, but like the most dangerous tiger is a tiger with babies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a mother tiger right, at least in.

Speaker 1:

Colorado the worst. Thing you can come across is a mama bear with babies.

Speaker 2:

We have ducks in England, so I'm not. You know this is. I can't relate to this. Our land's a bit more benign here.

Speaker 1:

If you come to the mountains of Colorado.

Speaker 2:

Okay, you've got to be careful of bears with baby bears.

Speaker 1:

Bears whatever, probably not that concerning, but if that bear has babies with it Cougars.

Speaker 2:

I love a cougar. Who doesn't like a cougar? Who doesn't like a nice cougar?

Speaker 1:

Animal or the. I didn't say nothing. You didn't say anything, but I heard you. But we were talking about like. I feel like our culture has come down on mothers so much of the expectations Like. When you were talking about your mom and describing how amazing she was, you were using such simple things. And I'm working with these women who they're like, even myself. We have these expectations of like. Not only do I need to like provide safety I'm going to use quotes there but I also have to like provide emotional regulation and I have to make sure I'm always regulated so they never get dysregulated. And, oh, I need them to be happy and healthy. And I was like they're human, they're not going to be happy and healthy. That's a completely bullshit expectation for them.

Speaker 2:

Put money in a therapy fund. It'll be fine. Just put money in a bank account for therapy. Later, of course, we feel like failures when we think that our jobs are to do all these things, and then also possible they're trying to heal trauma break cycles, but you've got to be a sex goddess, a spiritual goddess, a boss babe at work, a perfect mother, the perfect wife. It's impossible, every, any one of those is a part-time job.

Speaker 1:

But what if they want? But what if they?

Speaker 2:

want. This is why feminism was a mistake. Clearly it's it's. You've been lied to by capitalism and feminism and they're in cahoots. So that doubles the taxation base and makes you exhausted. What was your question, sorry? What if they? What if they?

Speaker 1:

I lost. I lost the plot, and now I just want to hear you say more of like what you would say, to tell me what you think about this, because I'm curious and I want to be challenged.

Speaker 2:

I'm not going to tell women what to do. I've been around them. That's a terrible idea, so that would be a huge mistake.

Speaker 1:

It's a huge mistake, and yet women don't want to be told what to do.

Speaker 2:

But in a very real sense. Sense. They also want to be told what to do. Yeah, when your best-selling book for women ever was about women being told exactly what to do. So it's clearly a repressed fantasy if nothing else, isn't it so?

Speaker 1:

uh, let's be honest about that.

Speaker 2:

Uh, yes, what's the question?

Speaker 1:

sorry, I'm just having fun now I know I love it and I'm just following you and I was like wait, come back.

Speaker 2:

What are we talking about? Feminism is a lie. Capitalism is a lie to women.

Speaker 1:

When a woman's stuck in that, let's say she's stuck in that embodiment and I love like so many of your reels. You're like how can I help you? So if I described myself to you that way? How?

Speaker 2:

would you help me? So what embodiment are you stuck in, Rebecca?

Speaker 1:

The embodiment of I have to do and be everything for everyone. I have to be the spiritual, I have to be regulated. I have to be this boss, babe, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, first of all, a lot of love and compassion. Right, let's go back to self-care. It just sounds like, hey, perfectionism is a way to abuse yourself. Like take an out breath, like letting go of that a little bit. Letting the shoulders drop one centimeter, that's a third of a freedom unit. Yeah, it's just like letting go a little bit. Letting the shoulders drop one centimeter, that's a third of a freedom unit. Yeah, it's just like letting go a little bit. Let's start there, okay. And then that's the sort of nice part that's me being nice when I coach people. A lot of it's just just love. It's just love, you know. Like that's what people like the kids I coach. They just need a break. Yeah, someone tells them they believe in them and they can do it, and gives them an old suit for their first job interview. It doesn't take much, it really doesn't.

Speaker 1:

Which I think is a lot of what women need too, like what you just described. I'm like they just need someone to tell them they're doing a good job.

Speaker 2:

Well, they need two things. The first bit is a bit of love and a break, and this bit so much, which is choose, okay. So society is telling you to be five things and maybe in your life you could be all five. I've never seen anyone do all five at once and I, you know, I coach very rich people with nannies and you know all sorts of phenomenal smart women with you know languages, degrees, harvard, etc. Choose, and women don't like to choose. You ask a woman if she wants chocolate or cake, she'll say chocolate cake, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So which of your children do you want to sacrifice? Okay, which of your children do you want to drown? So the others are going to live? That that's a tough message, right. It's like, yeah, you want to run a company, you want to have a business, you want to work 50 hours a week? Okay, then you're going to neglect your kids. Is that what you want? Okay. Do you want to be a working mom? Okay, that's totally valid. My mom was a working mom. There's lots in that respect, that, but you know it's going to be harder to put dinner on the table. Yeah, and just in terms of, like the time and care and love that's needed. It's just so many hours in a day. Right, you want to be a spiritual goddess and go to bali? Okay, you know, this is a sacrifice, right? So it's, um, the idea.

Speaker 2:

Society has lied to you. It has told you many lies, right, men and women are the same. That's a lie. Uh, women, you know women can. They're the same as men. Complete lie. Uh, women can do everything. Complete lie, right, like, what makes you valuable is how much you spill out an excel spreadsheet for some dickhead in a corporation.

Speaker 2:

I've never seen that provide meaning in a woman's life. You know, it's great to have women in the workforce because you can tax the shit out of them at the stake and raise their children and brainwash them. But in terms of actual satisfaction, I don't. Most women I know are satisfied. You know, there's some percentage who are career women, but not that many. Yeah, to be honest women, but not that many. Yeah, to be honest, four fifths at least.

Speaker 2:

That would be, as my girlfriend says, I want to have, I want a partner that's rich enough that I can unsuccessfully run a boutique coffee shop. Right, they might like a part-time job doing something fun, but they don't really. They don't want you, don't want to work how I work, like there's no. Like I had a girlfriend that stayed with me and she saw how I work and she's like let's take a break. And I'm like I don't have time to go to the toilet today. Yeah, like you don't want to work like this, this would kill you and it's it's. You don't want to work on the front lines in the war in Ukraine. You don't want to work down a coal mine. You don't want to work as a plumber. Even so, it's like let's get real. Let's get real.

Speaker 2:

What's actually good for the nervous system of most women? And there are exceptions, you know. There's some great academics. I know who are women. There's some kick-ass business women. I know who are women. The women I know in ukraine are some of the strongest, coolest women you can imagine and their nervous systems are fundamentally different than men's. Like that. That's been my conclusion doing embodied work for the last 20 years there's.

Speaker 1:

There's this constant frame and it's it's not even boss babe culture, but there's something similar that happened. You know how diet culture has now become like health culture, but it's kind of the same thing in a different language. The same thing has happened with boss babe culture, which is now that it's these. There's this literal culture in the coaching world at least, where they're these millionaire mothers and but like they're, they're showing a very feminine lifestyle while like raising their babies and running of six figure, seven figure, multiple business.

Speaker 2:

You can have it all. That's the lie, right.

Speaker 1:

You can. You can have it all, but now. But now there's an addition of you can have it all and you can do it without burning out and you can do it while having this slow, peaceful, easy life. And I'm in the first five years of my business. I'm raising babies while I'm building this and I have my own set of what I'm doing. But I look at that and so many of their stories are. They had the businesses that they built burning out and now that they have the money, they're working five hours a week.

Speaker 2:

Now that they have the destroyed, themselves making it happen. I mean, you know, I'm the same. I worked for 10 years, in a way that absolutely destroyed me and I'm way more suited to this modernity than most women are just nervous system wise yeah typologically, you know, and it absolutely destroyed me.

Speaker 2:

At a certain point I had a burnout, you know. I had trauma from ukraine, absolute exhaustion, and it's like you know. Now I'm sitting on a certain reputation. I've got the books on amazon and I get invited places and it's pretty cool, you know, like it's norwegian, icf, international coach federation yesterday, and berlin, berlin this weekend. But that's all based on 10 years of really crazy hard work and I wouldn't wish that on many people. You have to be talented, work your ass off and be lucky to make a business work, and there are coffee shops in my town that don't open until 10 am because they're middle-class women who don't need the money running them, and good luck to them. But you know that's not a business, that's a hobby. So it's like if I want a coffee at 8 am and you can't be bothered to get out of bed because you're tired, it's not going to happen. So yeah, make your choices.

Speaker 1:

I'm just giggling at picturing women. Listening to half of them are going to feel immense relief. Yes, someone told me permission and some people are going to be so pissed because we want to be able to. I think manifest is the word that, like people always use. It's like you can do this. It's like here's your perfect strategy to create this and I'm just sitting over here like it. Is it like? Is this what's really happening? Is this how it really feels? Is this how you built this? Because how you maintain something is very different than how you build something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a lie. You're being lied to, and women lie to themselves, they lie to each other, and society definitely lies to them to sell them stuff, and no one likes anyone who tells the truth. But you know what? I'm off Tinder, it doesn't matter, so fuck it, you know so. Uh, you know it's like most of your listeners aren't gonna buy my courses anyway, so it's all good, I can just just tell the truth.

Speaker 2:

You know, this is what we gotta do in this weird post-truth world. We've just gotta society's turned into a weird death cult, and part of that death cult is suppressing mothers. You know like motherhood is the most beautiful, powerful thing in the world and society that, spiritually, every culture of the world has always said that and known that, and suppressing motherhood is absolute. Saying anyone who thinks their one is a woman, uh, shitting on mothers generally, the birth rate in america and britain is well below replacement at this point, so it's like we need mass migration just to kind of keep the keep capitalism going at this point, which destroys communities. You know my family immigrants, so I don't blame individuals, but it's not sustainable on a societal level. And uh, yeah, the weird death cult of post-modernity.

Speaker 2:

I think, though, people are seeing through it, you know. I think that people are realizing the lies are kind of getting silly, like you know. You know so it was when jk rowling spoke up about some of this stuff a few years ago. She had a really hard time, but I think now people are realizing she was right and you know, she was on the side of women and I see a lot of women realizing this now and frankly, I think the men let the women down that we didn't stand up to the bullshit and, um, for some people are very invested in it and there will be hysterical people with blue hair emailing you from the bay area after this, and that's fine. They can, you know, manifest some calm and go succumb their nervous system. But most women that what I see, that I say this is my point of view. I could be wrong often.

Speaker 1:

It's a relief, it's just a relief to hear it yeah, well, and also there there's something I just want to say. There's something powerful in the way that you show up and I really appreciate it of you. Know, I'm thinking of my husband who, like, used to trigger the hell out of me because he told the truth. And how dare he, you know, when I'm a people pleaser and I'm this codependent, and then he has the audacity to just tell the truth about what he's thinking or how he sees the world. It was just like it offended me and I've learned to like appreciate how healthy and good and wonderful that is. And I see that in you of this healthy, I think this like healthy masculine energy that I really, I really appreciate and I think a lot of women will feel very empowered by, because I think I even hate the word empowered, because I think women are so used to. I need you to give me permission. I need you to tell me how powerful I am and I don't.

Speaker 1:

I don't see you coddling that. I don't see you playing to this whole story of women or mothers being in this role where they need your permission. Somehow You're saying like you already had it. It's the feeling I get. Those aren't words that you said, but like that's the feeling I get of like well, no, women need to be talked to, like they're not dumb. And can we not pinkwash personal growth for you and healing and make it seem like it has to be this cutesy thing, like when you were saying it's dark. It's like, yeah, no, please talk about the darkness, please bring it, because I think women are starting to get sick of this act of personal growth being shiny and happy and good all the time and like wait, no, that's, that's only part of the human experience yeah, that makes makes total sense.

Speaker 2:

Thank you that. I want to get you on my podcast. Actually, I think you've got good things to say. So you're super welcome, Rebecca. We'll set that up afterwards.

Speaker 1:

This has been such a good conversation and I'm dying to know what resonates with people, and I'm so excited to hear.

Speaker 2:

Good luck, good luck. Have fun with that.

Speaker 1:

No, I loved this conversation. There was so many like I'm excited to go back and listen and be like wait, what was that he said? I feel like you are such a wealth of the way you see things and the way you you explain things is so different, and I think that's what's so beautiful, is something like you know, I've heard a lot. I've heard a lot. I've been in the growth and healing and therapy and all of that world for a long time, so at some point you were like, oh, I've heard it.

Speaker 2:

Most of what you're hearing is memes. So I don't mean the pictures that are funny. Most of what you're hearing is people replicating things that sound good, like neurons that fire together, wire together. It's like bitch that just rhymes. You know it's like. It's like stirring with a knife causes strife. I mean, it's just, it's just mimetic, it's just sticky, it just pleases you by agreeing with what's already in your brain. You know it doesn't actually have any meaning and it hasn't been reality tested on the sharp edge.

Speaker 2:

So I just say to listeners, when you're, when you're listening to people, is this person, does they know this stuff really, like I don't know? Anna lebke I mentioned earlier, she's fantastic, she knows her stuff and she knows it scientifically, but she also knows it like, um, experientially. She's worked with addicts for many, many years and you can you can tell if people have actually kind of pressure tested stuff or if they're just replicating some. You know, vulnerability is the essence of female leadership. That's just fucking words, that's all it is. So you can hear the difference I just want to give you.

Speaker 1:

I just want to like, I want to do another podcast with you, but I just want to sit here and let you just talk that's the irish superpower.

Speaker 2:

I just talk at people.

Speaker 1:

It's totally antisocial I I love the way you talk and communicate. I felt great with it. It was it felt great socially. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:

Rebecca, I'm not trying to upset anyone. You know like I do poke and provoke a little bit, but honestly, like my granddad fought on D-Day, right, my friends are fighting on the front lines of Ukraine. If I talk to the trauma team there, I can hear artillery in the background. Some days, right, they're brave Speaking the truth to people who might make a mean tweet about you if they don't like it. That's not brave. Ok, this is pretty low level courage if this is all I have to do to be considered brave these days. So, yeah, speak the truth, even if your voice shakes. I think we've realized now the cancel culture mob are traumatized Muppets and we should not be letting traumatized Muppets run the world.

Speaker 1:

I feel like we just end there. Boom. That's the clip for social media. That's the Do it.

Speaker 2:

You see, your brain is parasitized. It thinks in social media clips. This is what happens to us.

Speaker 1:

I know, but it's true, and we think in these social media clips and not in real tested life, and I think people are finally getting sick of that. I think people, hopefully, are finally getting on social media and realizing like, just because you can make a reel doesn't mean you can apply this in real life.

Speaker 2:

I've had like over 600 guests on my podcast, right, and it's such a privilege. I absolutely fucking love it. It's really all the top trauma people. It's great. I love that. I can talk to them. Some of them I become friends with. Afterwards it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

But this there's definitely been a wave of like influencers who came through instagram and my pa was like, yeah, they've got 200 000 followers, get them on. They're talking about narcissism. And then they were like a massive narcissist themselves, right, or trauma people that have never experienced anything hard in life. It's, it's kind of weird. But this is also let's finish positively.

Speaker 2:

I think we live in the worst time to be alive spiritually. So we are the least spiritually successful culture in human history the, the imprisonment rates in the states, the suicide rates child suicide is a thing the drug addiction rates, the suicide rates, the deaths of despair. Generally we are spiritual losers. But we're also the luckiest culture to be alive like. We're materialistically way better off and things have dipped a little bit the last few years. But like I live like a king. My ancestors were irish peasant farmers starving and fighting off the vikings. You know it's like we.

Speaker 2:

I can have these cool people on my podcast. People can listen to your podcast. They can get all this what we? We live in place, where we have so much information, we can take the piss out of the people we don't like. You know I used to have to fucking walk to the library to get a book out on the one psychologist in the bookshop. You know it's like we live in an amazing time and it's all a fucking joke. You're a black basketball player. I'm just a kid, who does? You know? I'm the kid from the British equivalent of Alabama who doesn't know what he's talking about. So no one should take this seriously. It's beautiful. We have the best opportunity human beings have ever had, and it's all a joke anyway.

Speaker 1:

I love that's.

Speaker 1:

There's something to me about you know so, the podcast that you had listened to and you said you had listened that's Luis Mojica, and one of the things I worked with him as a mentor and one of the things he talked about is like, think about the people you want to work with, and I was like I love working with, like deep spiritual thinkers, but I was thinking of something I was like but they also have to be sarcastic. They also have to be able to take a sense of humor, because I don't know how to be able to take a sense of humor because I don't know how to be human or spiritual or do this quote unquote healing work or whatever the hell that means. I don't know how to do that without making memes. I don't know how to do that without making dark jokes, because, like that, that is a part of it to me, it's like it's grounded and rooted in taking myself in life way too seriously and also not seriously at all, like remembering that, like none of this is I don't know, it's all temporary.

Speaker 2:

Humor is way more important than people think. Humor is actually the lead edge of the zeitgeist, the sort of group culture, mind you know, sort of Hegelian term. Humor is how we move forward as a species. It's like why comedians are often saying the most interesting things that can't quite be said. Humor's up and down regulation. Humor's got a magic to it. Humor's a way of making the unbearable bearable. Humor's how we think we can think in jokes before we can think logically.

Speaker 2:

So like, yes, it's a problem. A lot of americans aren't very funny, you know, particularly the therapists from california. It's, it's a real problem. They're too sincere. So, um, yeah, no, you've got some great stand-up, though in america, so bringing, and when they went after the comedians I was like okay, things are getting bad now because they they perform a sort of shamanic function, humor's way. This is a very anglo-irish perspective, but humor's way more important than most people think. And and if you are interviewing for therapists, you know, get them to tell you a dick joke, and if they can't tell you a good dick joke, then definitely don't.

Speaker 1:

That makes them uncomfortable, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's like yeah, that makes them uncomfortable. The shit I get up to is no way going to fly. So, we're just rambling. Now Should we wrap this up?

Speaker 1:

Yes, thank you so much for being here. Now should we wrap this up? Yes, thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation so much. Where can people find you? I highly recommend your instagram. It's just really good quality content, also good memes. I was checking out your website the other day. I'm super fascinated with the work you're doing with men and young boys. I I hope you write the book and get it published I have written the book.

Speaker 2:

It won't get published. It'll have to be self-published so people can find me on Grindr. I know that's just in my dreams. I I'm talking to my gay mate.

Speaker 1:

Earlier I was like I started nodding and then I was like I'm not.

Speaker 2:

I'm not gay, but if I was I would win it. I would so win it if I was gay, like I'm teaching in Berlin tomorrow, so with the whole, I'm teaching with the gay community. So that's why I'm thinking about that. No, not Grindr. Embodimentunlimitedcom. We have coaching courses that are actually relatively sensible. Amazon, the embodiment podcast all basically just put Mark Walsh embodiment into the internet and sensible and unsensible things will come back.

Speaker 1:

I love it and we'll have your links below. Thank you so.

Speaker 2:

So I love it and we'll have your links below Thank you so so much for being here. Brecker Ibis doesn't get canceled.

Speaker 1:

Thanks. Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Make sure you have subscribed below so that you see all of the upcoming podcasts that are coming soon. I hope you take today's episode and you take one aha moment, one small, tangible piece of work that you can bring into your life, to get your hands a little dirty, to get your skin in the game. Don't forget to take up audacious space in your life. If this podcast moved you, if it inspired you, if it encouraged you, please do me a favor and leave a review, send an episode to a friend. This helps the show gain more traction. It helps us to support more moms, more women, and that's what we're doing here. So I hope you have an awesome day, take really good care of yourself and I'll see you next time.

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