The Post-Divorce Glow-Up Show

78: Reclaiming the Divorced Body Part 4: Embodiment as a Spiritual Practice (& Farewell)

• Quinn Otrera • Episode 78

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I share why I’m pausing this podcast at Episode 78 and shifting my focus toward women’s healthcare and midwifery. Then I close our Embodiment series by making “spiritual” practical: intuition in plain language, movement that feels safe, tiny rituals that actually fit real life, and a gentle seven-day plan to try right away.

What I cover

  • Why I’m pressing pause and where you’ll still find me (Britta Jo’s Stay or Go community and her Substack; occasional guest spots)
  • What “spiritual” means to me (no dogma, high honesty, body-based presence, and wonder)
  • The difference between spirituality and religion (authority, beliefs, practices, belonging)
  • Four doorways into daily embodied spirituality:
    1. Intuition & “going into myself”
    2. Movement & breath (three-song practice)
    3. Creativity & voice (micro-writing / voice notes)
    4. Nature & awe (awe walks and everyday noticing)
  • Nervous-system first: green/yellow/red as a guide for any practice
  • The RITUAL framework (Rooted in safety • Intention • Tiny • Unique cue • Accountability • Loop it)
  • Obstacles & repairs: loneliness, the inner critic, religious trauma—how I respond without abandoning myself
  • What success actually looks like: softer shoulders, steadier breath, a faster return to “I’m okay,” clearer yes/no

Seven-Day Micro-Plan (recap)

  • Day 1 – Intuition Minute: two physiological sighs + one honest line (“What do I know right now?”)
  • Day 2 – Movement Trio: Arrive → Loosen → Integrate (or one song if that’s all you’ve got)
  • Day 3 – Awe Walk: notice one pattern, one color, one texture; end with one “thank you”
  • Day 4 – Voice Note (5 min): what hurts / what feels good / where is my hope
  • Day 5 – Tiny Altar: one comforting object placed with intention
  • Day 6 – Co-Regulate: time with a safe person/pet; notice before/after
  • Day 7 – Gain Review: what shifted 1% and what I want more of next week


Mentions & references

A gentle ask
If this series helped you, share this episode with a friend who’s rebuilding after divorce.

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Hello, lover. I have some good news and some other news. So let's start with the other news. This, this episode right now is the final episode of this podcast for the time being. This is episode 78, and my girls are so sad. It's not six, seven. And for those of you with Gen Alpha kids, you know what I mean? And for those of you who don't understand the reference, just ignore it. It's, it's actually really stupid, but it's a thing. A few weeks ago I read a book called Invisible Labor by. Rachel Summer Stein about C-sections, and it reignited my drive to pursue my education as a midwife with more passion and purpose and constraint. I am a deeply curious woman, so. I collect books and ideas and projects. I am so curious and sometimes I take on more than I should because of that curiosity and because I can, I have a high capacity for life. But I have decided I want to focus my energy and attention more deliberately on women's healthcare. And to do that, I am going to walk away from my focus on women's mental healthcare. You can still find me inside Brita Joe's Stair Go Community. And I will be a guest on occasion as she invites me on her podcast. I will link to the community and her substack. I'm in both of those places. I'm also on social media, though I am very, very inactive, as in I post maybe once a year on my divorce anniversary to say how great my life is. So. So that is of interest to you. You have places you can find me. This may be goodbye. And for that, I just wanna say thank you. Now the good news. Is that you and I have walked a long way together, not just in the podcast in general, but also in this series on embodiment. We started a few weeks ago with part one coming home to your body. Part two. We talked about learning her language of safety. Part three, we talked about reclaiming pleasure, touch, and boundaries. And today we're going to weave it all together. We are talking embodiment as a spiritual practice intuition. Movement meaning creativity, tiny rituals that make your life feel like yours again. So it's not some practice that's out there, but how you live. And again, we're going to revisit what Hillary McBride said about our bodies. Our bodies are not problems to be solved. They're homes to be tended. when I talk about spiritual embodiment, I am not here for dogma. I am 0% religious, but I do consider my spiritual life one of the most fun and funny, and sexy, and fulfilling and connected parts of my life. I want to begin by defining terms because I want you to understand what I'm talking about and what I'm not talking about. As you know, I was raised as a Mormon and I lived in that world for almost 50 years, so you may be questioning what the hell does she mean by spiritual, especially when I describe it as fun and funny and sexy and fulfilling and connected. So spiritual for me means. I'm in real relationship with my deepest values, my present moment body, as well as the larger web of life, which is so mysterious to me. The fact that we are on this planet. I am incredibly curious about how our consciousness came to be. Now, for me, this does not require belief in a deity. It requires curiosity and an openness to the mystery of us existing. It's how I meet myself and the world around me, the people in it, as well as nature and experience with awareness and meaning and care on purpose. I want to tell you a little bit about how I think it differs from religion. Now it can include it for those of you who feel like you are religious and spiritual, but it doesn't require it. So first of all is the source of authority within religions, at least in the one I was raised in. There is tradition and scripture and clergy, and in my religion it was all a bunch of dudes. But spiritual for me is a lived experience. It's conscience and embodied wisdom, and yes, you can draw on tradition if that nourishes you. Next is required beliefs. Within Mormonism, there are definitely some lines drawn, and you are interviewed by dudes asking, do you believe this thing in order for you to participate in certain rituals? So religions usually ask for you to believe in very specific things, but spiritual. Asks for honesty about what do you think? How do you feel? What is true for you here and now? Next are the practices. Religious practices are usually set by the community and within Mormonism, again, a bunch of dudes, but for spiritual practices, we. Choose to align our life with our values. That is the practice of spirituality. We do this through breath and movement and service, and silence, and art and awe of being alive, and then finally belonging Religion often means belonging to a specific group. Within Mormonism, it was cut up into these geographical areas, and that's how they decided who was in which congregation. But spiritual means belonging, first of all, to yourself while honoring connection to your chosen family. To other people, to nature and to reality as it is. So for my atheist friends, here's an atheist friendly translation. Spirituality is a disciplined way of living by your values staying present in your body. And approaching meaning through wonder and beauty and love and truth and responsibility. No supernatural beliefs required. So spirituality to me means that I live awake, at least I try to aligned with my values present in my body, connected to something larger than my ego. And whether you call that God or nature or love or simply consciousness or this reality. That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about your spiritual life, because I am here for the daily lived relationship with my body, my values and the mystery that holds me spiritual embodiment is simply I meet myself in this body on purpose. We still lead with safety. Even in spiritual practices, maybe especially in spiritual practices. So remember from the last episode when we talked about the green, yellow, and red, it applies to spiritual life too. If a practice spikes your nervous system, you get to slow down. You get to choose a softer space, a gentler, wider doorway. So quick story. After my divorce, I had been out of Mormonism for almost a year. I decided I wanted to develop more of a spiritual practice in my life and I decided to try to meditate, and I tried to do that the same way I approached some of my practices within Mormonism by telling myself, I really should do this. I should be spending time in this way. And I don't know if you've ever shit on yourself, but for me. It doesn't work. Like bullying myself into stillness, absolutely backfired. I would be so physically tense, my heart racing, my brain spinning, but I could check it off the list like I did it, and that was not presence, that was punishment on a yoga mat. But when I swapped, pushing myself to do something that. Someone else, probably a dude told me I should do, and I just swapped it for two slow breaths and a 62nd sway. While I held myself and butterfly tapped on my arms, my body started to say, okay. I can slow down, I can do that. So sister, we start where we are and we do what we can. If you carry religious trauma, I want you to hear me. You have absolute permission to keep what heals and release anything that harms you in a spiritual. Slash religious practice. Depending on where you are right now, you do not have to use old words that bruise your mouth. You can choose a new language that actually fits your soul. Everything in your spiritual life gets to be custom made for you. The North Star for everything today is I want a life that feels like mine in my body. Not lived for someone else, a life that feels like mine. as I thought about this, I have discovered four doorways into the sacred, and these are tiny and they are doable. So their intuition and prayer, movement and breath, creativity and voice and nature and awe. I want to talk to you a little bit about each one of those. My mom asked me this week if I pray, because I made some comment about praying and, and I didn't even catch myself. so when she asked me, do you pray? I said, oh, no, I don't. With no hesitation and full belief in that yet, if by prayer she means do I think about people I love and I wish the best for them, do they weigh on my heart? Yes. Then I guess I do pray for them, but if she means, do I address a God like Zeus or Odin or Jesus to grant my wishes and Forgive me of my sins, then no, I don't pray. So you do what works for you. That is not a word that I use for what I do. Going into myself is something that I do say, or needing to connect with my intuition, but not prayer. Prayer is a word that bruises my mouth, so I will sit or stand. When I'm working on intuition, going into myself, two physiological size. Remember that's inhale through your nose all the way in a deep breath, and then when you feel like you can't breathe in anymore, you just sniff in a little bit more on the top and exhale, long mouth, exhale out. And I do a couple of those. Then I whisper one honest sentence, and this could be a sentence that I have read in a poem, maybe something by Rumi or Bell Hooks. Plain truth counts. If you like poetry like I do, you can use a line like that, and then I ask myself a question, what do I know right now? Or another beautiful question, what would love have me do next? So as an example, I once asked myself, what do I know when I was facing something really challenging this week? And the thing that came to mind was. Get a glass of water. Somebody's got to be an adult here and you are it. That was not what I wanted to hear, but it's what I needed to hear. So I did both. I got some water and I just dealt with the stuff that was ahead of me and my day softened, and I grew in confidence because, I mean, I totally crushed it. I would love to share the story, but I. I'm not going to, but guidance shows up in simple ways before it shows up in grand ways. Liz Gilbert is, she's the author known for books like, eat, pray, love, big Magic, and All the Way to the River. I adore her. I think she's incredibly wise and I look to her for wisdom in my life. I. She also has a Substack newsletter, and I think it's called Letters From Love. She writes, and sometimes other people write just once a week an essay answering the question, what would love have me do? What would love have me know? And I'll link it in the show notes. It's such a beautiful experience connecting with people all over the world in that way and gaining insight from their. Insights, their intuition or personal revelation, as my Mormon self would say, and this may be useful as a type of scripture for you, another Mormon word, or as I like to say, truth telling in your own life. Okay? Number two. Approach this. This is our second doorway, is movement and breath. And for this, I want you to pick three songs. I want you to pick one song that is slow, one song that can help loosen you up a little bit more, and then a. Third song that can draw you in, and maybe you have some ideas of what kinds of songs those are. You can also search for somatic embodiment playlists, and they have some beautiful music that just feels good and. Resonant with the body. So track one, I call arrive, and this is slow, and I sway and I rock my weight from heel to toe. I roll my shoulders, I stretch. Just noticing my body and then. As track two comes on, I loosen up. That's where my hips get into it, my spine, my arms. I give my exhales a sound, if that feels good. And then track three. I just call integrate, hand to heart, hand to belly. And just keep saying, I am here. Here I am. I am here in this body. Here I am. And if the music feels loud to your system, and I use that intentionally, if it feels loud, not if it sounds loud, but if it feels loud to your system. Turn it off, turn it down, slow it down. Maybe just try breathing. Many women have a hard time seeing themselves move to music and stay embodied because we have lived for fucking years. Performing for the Male Gaze. Worried about how we look to someone outside of ourselves. So in this case, if this is you. I suggest you get a sleep mask or you close your eyes and you draw yourself inward and you keep the movement for yourself not to be seen by others. So it can be in a dark space, it can be out of the sight of mirrors or windows. This is for you. And I am so sorry that you live in a world where you have probably been for the consumption of others and not for yourself. But this aspect of coming home to ourselves and using this time of spiritual growth of embodiment, it is key to welcoming you back home. The next doorway, creativity and voice. I want to invite you to free write or speak to yourself in a voice memo, and it can be so messy. It can be hilarious, it can be sad, it can be you repeating over and over again. I don't know what to say, but you could also answer some questions. You can look up lists of questions of what to ask someone on a first date, and you can answer them for yourself. My. Question that I ask myself is usually something about where am I right now? Because I'm usually somewhere in the past or somewhere in the future and just asking me to check in with where am I? And having my ears hear my voice ask that question brings me back. Or I might ask, where does it hurt? Especially if I'm dealing with something challenging or. Where does it feel expansive? Where's the glow? And that's usually in my stomach, both the hurt and the glow. Sometimes it's in my hips or my head. I want to offer you an optional framework, three lines only. Line one is noticing a body sensation. Line two is a feeling word, something to describe what's happening in your body in that very specific place. And line three is one kind instruction to yourself. I'm going to give you three examples that I have written down. So the first one is My heart hurt. Be gentle. My second one is my stomach butterflies, go have some fun. My third, my head spinning, sit in grass and lean against the tree, and just having the opportunity to create something with my voice or writing something with my hands can draw me back to myself. And the fourth door to open embodied spirituality is nature and awe. I love to go out in this beautiful fall weather in Tucson during the summer. I have to go out really early before it gets too hot, and in the winter I have to hit it just right and I still have to bundle up because we still get cold here. But I love to go on what's called an awe walk, a WE walk, and I try to notice. One pattern, one color, one texture. If you've ever lived in the desert, it can seem rather desolate. I do live in a beautiful neighborhood and everyone is required to have a tree in their front yard, which I love. It gives us a little bit of green. It's also a little bit messy, and desert trees are not. As beautiful as some of my preferred trees, but as I have taken these awe walks and noticing the textures, the patterns, the colors, what once looked. Monochrome and consistently brown. I started to see something new, something I hadn't noticed before, and it's that simple. That's it. And then at the end of my walk close with a simple thank you, When we express gratitude both to ourselves or just to. creation, whatever you want. It nudges our nervous system towards safety and it gives us that sense of meaning that can be fuel for our life. Now, if you can't go outside, you can look out a window and name something that you can see near, mid and far. Just let your eyes stretch and notice, explore, and if you're not allergic, you could fill your home with plants live or fake. I have fake plants inside and I have live plants outside. One of the healing aspects of creating your own spiritual life is in creating rituals. I consider a ritual, tiny things that I can repeat, and so I use ritual as the framework where R is rooted in safety. I is intention, T is tiny, U is unique. QA is accountability. An L. Is loop. So R rooted in safety is that I always begin any kind of embodiment ritual with breath. I begin with a downshift, two physiological size. I want to orient, I want to draw myself into the present. Make sure that I'm green, not yellow. If I'm yellow, if I'm feeling a little bit off, I have to. Figure out what do I need? What are the boundaries? Do I need to slow down? Is it just not time? And if it's red, we just skip it. It's always rooted in safety. You deserve to feel safe. And then I is intention just having one sentence. I want to feel grounded. My intention is to be present. T for Tiny, it's short. It's 30 seconds to 10 minutes. That's enough. It's consistency over intensity. It's consistency over drama. We wanna build these spaces into your life that fit in your life, not build your life around it. And then U is a unique cue, a candle. A song, a bracelet, a scent. We wanna train your body to recognize, oh, this practice is a safe thing. We are going into ritual. Ritual is not just a religious thing, it is a human thing. Think of all of the non-religious rituals that humans do. And then A is accountability. I am big on accountability. Of even just checking something off of a list, ticking in a box, put a sticker on your calendar, but saying, I showed up or texting a friend or a coach, report to a therapist. But having accountability, something that's not just in your head and then l is loop it, which means to attach your action to an existing habit. So. After coffee or before a shower, or right after I turn off the lights. So for example, my loop is before I sit down to work, I downshift two sides. I sit down, I write at least one line in my journal, set my intention, and then if my day ambushes me because you know, life happens. I still took a moment. To meet myself. So let's talk about that when life happens. Let's talk about obstacles and repairs. So sometimes we are in a space of deep loneliness. Life after divorce is both challenging and beautiful in the ways that we get to meet ourselves. So if you are in a well of loneliness, The best way I have found out is to co-regulate on purpose. That means connection with a friend, a pet, or a tree, and noticing how you feel before how you feel after a lot of us get in our heads. This is the inner critic, and when my inner critic is going off on me, when I'm trying to do a spiritual practice, I reply with sensation and a boundary. So I might notice tight chest, and then my boundary is we're slowing down. And then I do 30 seconds with my hand on my heart. I'm here to meet that inner critic. She does not have to shut up. She does not have to go anywhere. I am here to meet her where she is. Now for those of you who have religious trauma, I want you to keep those parts that feel like love to you and set down parts that shrink you or shame you. Rename practices so that they feel like yours. instead of prayer, you can call it a check-in instead of an altar. You can call it your comfort corner, or this is where I honor my past or my ancestors, or whatever your practice is. But you get to reclaim and rename those parts of you that have been bruised a natural part of going through a divorce and divorcing and building a new life is grieving your past. Whether you're grieving your decision to have married that person in the first place, grieving, putting up with things that you shouldn't have or grieving the divorce itself. So when you check in with yourself and there's a lot of grief. Your light is probably yellow or red. And yellow means we shorten the ritual or we lower the volume, or we switch doorways. The point is tending to yourself, not performing for yourself or anyone else. So when I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed when life is happening, I say a couple of different things I might say I'm not going to do my full practice, but I will meet myself for the next minute, or I might say thank you body. I am going to choose the gentlest version. It's okay to be really, really gentle with yourself. So what does success look like in an embodied spiritual practice? It is so subtle. It looks like softer shoulders, easier breath, a quicker return to a sense of safety. A clarity of your full-bodied yes. Or a full-bodied no. It looks like more self-compassion. It looks like you have been tending your house instead of trying to solve a problem. That's it. And I want to remind you that frequency consistency beats intensity. A quiet practice repeated daily will change you more than a monthly spiritual bootcamp We're going to just weave these strands of awe movement. Creativity and intuition into your life, and it will be there to hold you when life. Feels like a lot. So as we've done with the past episodes, I wanna give you a seven day plan. You can play with it, make it your own. So day one, an intuition minute, just two physiological size. Plus asking yourself what do I know right now? And then write down one honest line. That's it, and you will be amazed if you do this consistently. What do I know right now? You will be inspired with how your body shows up for you. You'll receive the physiological responses, start tune tuning into those as well as some pretty amazing things that your mind will come up with. And then day two. Movement Trio. So it's the three songs. One is Arrive, next is Move, and three is integrate. Now, if that is too much, that takes me 10 to 12 minutes, depending on the length of the songs. If that is too much, try one song. If having your eyes opened feels weird, close them, cover them. The point is to feel the music and feel your body. Day three is the ah, walk 10 minutes, notice a pattern, notice a color, notice a texture, and then offer one. Thank you for something that delighted you. Day four, a voice note, a five minute ramble. Tell yourself what hurts right now. What feels really good right now? Where is your hope right now? And just talk to yourself. These voice notes will become treasures for you as you continue to grow in your practice. Day five. Tiny altar. Choose one comforting object, a stone, a leaf, a photo, a candle, and place it someplace where it's meaningful. Brita Jo, when I went to her retreat, she gifted me some beautiful rocks. I was so excited when I got home to place that on my altar. It reminds me of her. It reminds me of our connection, and every time I add something to that space, it's meaningful to me and I get to change it up if I want to. So you can start that little gathering meaningful place for yourself. Day six co-regulate. Have tea with a safe person or quiet time with a pet. But notice your intention is to co-regulate, which means that you get to down-regulate, hopefully, or you get to use your yummy regulation if you have good regulation in the moment to help someone else. But notice how you feel before and after. Day seven is the gap and the gain. So the gap is looking at how far. You have to go to have a full on embodied spiritual practice, and that's not where we're going to look. We're going to look at the gain. We're going to look at how far you've come What was the experience like of that intuition minute or that movement trio or the walk or the voice note or adding something to an altar or co-regulating? How far did you come and then ask yourself and just journal four or five lines, what shifted 1%? And what do I want more of next week? And then pick your doorway and let that be enough. In this series, we have walked this beautiful arc from home to safety, to sovereignty, to the sacred. When your body says, I am here, safety stops being a theory, and it starts being your lived experience. When you practice boundaries, you are no. Grows deep roots and you're, yes, it grows enormous wings when you meet yourself on purpose, ordinary moments become really beautifully holy and sacred, and not because someone else said so, not because the dudes said they should, but because you felt it. You are embodied. Place your hand on your heart. Inhale, exhale. Oh my friends, thank you for taking this journey with me on this podcast. The adventure of post-divorce Life. Oh my God, I love it. I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. So girlfriend, remember, you are the most important person in your life. You deserve to be treated with the. Utmost love and care, especially by yourself. I will see you when I see you.