Root & Rise: A Return to Self From Body Control to Embodied Living

In this deeply honest and unfiltered episode, Cori Taylor shares her personal journey from fitness and bodybuilding culture, body control, and identity loss… into a slower, more embodied return to self.

What begins as a story of striving, perfection, and control unfolds into a much deeper truth:

Healing was never about fixing the body.

It was about remembering the self.

Through motherhood, nervous system healing, inner child work, and lived experience, this episode explores what it really means to stop performing life and start being in it again.

In this episode, we explore:

• The pressure to “earn worth” through body control and achievement

• The shift from performance-based living into embodimenT.

• Nervous system regulation as capacity (not perfection)

• Why burnout, looping, and identity crisis are often invitations to go deeper

• Inner child healing and unmet emotional needs

• The difference between “becoming someone new” vs. remembering who you are

• The beginning of Cori’s shift into her new work: Root & Rise

Core Message:

You are not broken.

You are not behind.

You are not meant to keep becoming someone else.

You are meant to remember.

To root into what’s been buried.

And rise into what has always been there.

Guided Practice Included:

This episode ends with a grounding somatic reflection to help you reconnect to your body and ask:

• Where am I rushing past myself?
• What would it feel like to stay here instead of escape?
• Can I let this moment be enough?

Closing Thought:

This is not a program of becoming.

It is a return to being.

A remembering of who you’ve always been beneath survival, expectation, and noise.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Watch Sunsets with me. I'm your host, Corey Taylor. I am so excited that you are here. I'm a mom of four, and I am a was big into fitness and bodybuilding, competing, trying to control my body, thinking that if I could just morph my body into what the world viewed as worthy, then I would feel worthy. And along that journey, I realized that it was never about me trying to control my food. It was never about the actual like physical body that I was searching for, but it was about everything that was going on within myself and how I truly felt about myself and these stories I kept replaying and looping in of what worthy meant. And I thought I had to prove myself in order to show the world that I mattered. And once I realized that I could root deeply in myself and come back to the essence of who I am and remember who I've always been and rise into her, not having to be her, not having to do this long list of checklists of everything everybody says, but truly connecting deeper to myself so I could be more present and energized and connected in life. That's when everything started clicking. That's when I truly, truly was able to not feel like I was looping in the body image control and my eating disorder and the story of did I even deserve to be here walking around on this earth and was able to truly root and rise without running, without feeling like I was spiraling, without getting lost in everything. And this is what this podcast is for. This is for the woman who feels like she's checking off the list, she's doing all the things. She's like, I hired a fitness coach, I hired this, I hired that coach, and I still just feel like I'm checking out the list and doing everything perfectly, but still not feeling like myself, still feeling very lost. I can like see her, who they're telling me to become on the other side, but I just can't reach her. I can't get there. This is a remembering. This is a return to the playful, the whimsical, the that little girl who already knew there was no need to prove. She just was the embodiment of her. And that leads me into where I'm headed and what I'm doing, and that I have been really just pausing everything. I've paused really showing up on Instagram because it felt very performative. I felt like I was trying to perform and prove. And anytime I start feeling like, okay, I'm doing this to perform and prove, I know it's out of alignment. I know that it's me being unauthentic, and I know it's me searching for something outside of me that only me and my connection with like God and myself can truly build and fill. Because everything we do, we're searching for a feeling. And I was searching for this feeling of like I'm worthy. Look at me. Like I'm trying to prove, like, look at guys, I'm worthy. Like, I'm doing this and I'm doing this. Isn't this cool? Don't you want to be a part of it? And I'm so tired of that at like proving that chat GPT, that non-human connection, that's sort of the beautifulness of what social media gets to be, which is just real human connection. I mean, obviously, like in-person connection is deeper, and we need that in-person connection, but just there's so much just needing to prove, and just everybody posting basically the same thing because everything's getting put put into chat GPT and everything feeling so disconnected, and I couldn't anymore. And I was like, I can't do this. My soul was cringing, my heart was cringing, and I was just feeling very drained, and like all the life force energy was just being drained out of me because I love creating, and I love creating from my heart space and not from this need to perform or that it needs to look a certain way, and I love just expressing, and so I've been like, okay, God, what do I need to kind of like strip away? What do I need to kind of like allow to kind of move through me and transmute it into what actually needs to be here? And I kept getting the same message: return to your roots, return to the roots of who you are, don't be ashamed of who you are. Stop thinking that these beautiful gifts that I've given you are ridiculous and pointless and weird and and just truly trust what I've given you and where I'm leading you. And that's scary because it is a I feel like it's a un It's like I'm having to Sorry, my dog is barking and I'm getting distracted. And here's some real rawness for you. Um, I don't ever really have an outline for when I come on these podcasts. I've no I've said that before, and I sort of just like sit down and start talking, and I I just connect with my heart and with God. I'm like, hey, whatever is meant to come out, just allow it to. Whenever it's meant to reach and touch, allow it to. And I was feeling this kind of almost like identity crisis of like, oh my gosh, like, not again, not another deep identity crisis. And I was like, no, pause. This time you know how to hold it. This time you have capacity to, you know, because life doesn't just get to stop when we're like crap, I'm feeling so untethered and I don't know anymore. I mean, I'm still a mom. I still get to be a mom. And so it's like when I start spiraling, my whole family can feel it. When I start dropping my energy, my whole family can feel it. And then I start losing the capacity for what truly matters, which have it, which is having energy and life force energy pulsating through me so I could hold space for my kids, so I could be there fully for my kids, so I could be in this life. And so I realized that I just gotta pause and strip everything away. And even though there were some things that I like truly loved, and I was like, but I love this. You know, it wasn't like these things that I was kind of like allowing to kind of like release and transmute were things that were like horrible. They were things that I truly like enjoyed and valued, but they were no longer like truly aligned, they were no longer allowing me to be me. It was sort of putting me back into a box and I was like, I can't, I cannot go back into the box. I have fought so hard to come out of the box and to allow the light to touch me again and to infuse my whole body that going back into the box and looping again into my people pleaser and into my like, well, this I guess is what it has to be felt so constricting. So what I did is I paused and I was like, okay, what brings me true nourishment? I started moving my body again from a place of just deep connection, of like connecting to her, of the gift that she is. I started taking time again to stretch at night, to put my music on, and to feel my body at night when I was stretching, and I would breathe with her and just allow the breath to connect me deeper. I added in so much more play, play and presence and connection into my day. Play with my four-year-old, laughing with my older kids, um, dancing more, just being in life more, more being in the doing. When I was washing dishes, instead of being frustrated and trying to be like, I have to rush past this and rush past this, which creates more nervous system urgency and nervous system collapse. I was like, how much more present can I be in this moment so I can truly be here so I can go and do the next thing that I get to do? And I stopped trying to force my life to fit into what other people said that it should look like. And I paused and was like, hey, what truly nourishes me? What truly allows me, even though sometimes it's hard to show up in these things that we know nourish us, such as sometimes it's hard, you know, to like get to the gym when you know that it nourishes you and to move your body daily, you know, because life and it's like, okay, how can I release the pressure of this and just truly go and move and connect out of nourishment? How can I like truly be in tune with the food that I'm eating and how it's making me feel? Not because somebody said I needed to eat this way, but how is it feeling in my body? How did I come back in tune with the magic and the whimsical side of me, the playful side, the deeply rooted and connected side? And then things just started to kind of release that needed to release and fall away, and so much more aliveness and injuries started returning to my body. But not before the collapse and the breakdown, you know, not before the like untethering of like everything's kind of feels shaky again. Feels like I'm having to root deeper into myself, feels like I'm I'm being buried again. But what I know is every time you feel like you're being buried, what if it's just you taking deeper roots to bloom more rooted and connected and energized into the remembering of who you've always been, to that deep remembering of you. And so that's a shift. I am shifting heavily out of fitness coaching, health coaching, as opposed to just like you know, your workouts and your nutrition, and deep into this deeper essence and connection and remembering of why we're actually here, and a return to understanding yourself more deeper, so you have the capacity when it feels like life is falling apart and it feels like all these untethering, uprooting things are coming. You have the capacity to root so deep into your knowing and your remembering that you don't lose yourself again and again and again and again. But you root deeper and you find yourself more quickly than you would have in the past. You remember more quickly, you're able to like feel the discomfort and the the pain and the the hard that comes with this life, the duality of this life, without it feeling like it just overtakes you into like a doom of darkness for days on end where you're not scared to hold capacity for the dark and for the heavy. So you can more fully feel the aliveness and energy of life. And I feel like this is what's missing in the health and wellness industry, the checking off your box, the well, why didn't you get your workout in? You you know, type deal to where it's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I need to prove myself, I have to prove myself, to where it's like, ooh, let me breathe and root deeper into okay, why? What is underneath that of I constantly just put my workouts on the back burner, the my movement connecting to myself? Not the I have to check off my list, and if I don't, I'm gonna feel panicky, but the like the capacity to hold it, the capacity to feel the goodness in life again and allow it in and create experiences that show your body that it's safe to. And the capacity to hold the hard pieces and turn to them with such love and gentleness and grace that have been kind of like ruminating in you. I've really been turning to there's been different versions that I've over the years have just turned to and like held gently and healed, but lately it's been middle school Corey who felt like she didn't belong, who felt like she would never be good enough, who felt like who felt so alone who was just trying to like find herself in a world that told her that she had to be this way, and she knew deep down that Corey, the middle school Corey, who where I feel like some of this has stemmed from of my deep healing of where I started being like, okay, I have to look a certain way, I have to prove myself, I have to constantly be on guard of what's what are people saying, what do people think about me? How can I like make sure that I never feel hurt again? And I've been walking with her and holding her and just giving her that gentleness and that love that she she never got. I was actually working with one of my clients and we went heavily into this with her healing, to where she realized that there was this moment when she had gained some weight, and she was starting to feel a little bit more uncomfortable because we all have, I feel like, this place where we're like we feel our best, and that's basically our body saying, like, this is this is it, this is the yummy part of us, and it's evolving and changing. But she she had something said to her when she was like starting to gain weight to where she just realized, like, my gosh, I'm not worthy of love anymore. Like, because I put on a little bit of weight in this stressful time and I didn't know how to hold life because she was young and she was in high school, and she was like, I gotta start controlling my food and be very hyper-focused on how much am I eating, I gotta like overrun myself, overwork myself to where I make sure that I never have to feel this feeling again of feeling unworthy. And by controlling my body and this food, I won't ever have to feel that way. But she still felt empty because she was doing all these things out of force and out of this place of like I have to, and and I'm not worthy. And once we realized that what she needed in that moment was somebody to be like, hey, you've been going through a lot. It's okay that that this is the space you're in, and and you don't have to stay here, but you're worthy still, and you're loved still, and you're held still, and together we're gonna build capacity to hold this and to move through this, and you will feel that light come in again, on again. And so this is the beautiful work. I am shifting into root and rise, this transformative program. There is a car driving by. I am outside and it's very loud. I'm in my backyard, um, laying out in the sunshine, feeling the earth beneath me, just connecting to Mother Earth because I feel like we have lost our connection to the earth. And why is it so loud? We've lost our connection just to the earth and to we're not separate from nature. And I feel like we think that we are. And the minute that we can start learning from Mother Earth, this earth that God gave us, God literally created the earth for us to be fully in experience of it in this life, anyways. So, yeah, that's the work I'm doing now. Um, that was a little side note of this. Is why this is real and raw. And if you're craving real, raw humanness again and not some chat GPT or what's the right answer I need to say, what's the performative way? How is this gonna be more? How is this gonna be more? What is that word? Oh, like to where people are like, ooh, I wanna like, I wanna listen to this. How is it gonna, you know, the algorithm's going to pick it up more because it's showing of what we think that we want when in reality we really want to just be felt and seen fully in the essence of who we are and remember the essence of who we are and feel deeper into who we are and feel deeper connected and energized in life. Anyways, so Root and Rise is my program that we will be starting. I'm okay, July. God literally just told me July. In July, we'll be starting Root and Rise, and it's going to be a transformative program where where you learn deep about yourself, where we go deep into the roots of what's what's there, what what have you been looping in? And build capacity and such love and grace to hold that pain, to look at it, to touch it, to walk with with her, to walk with it without running away. And by doing this, you build more capacity in your life to actually feel life again. Because there were moments where I was like, I guess this is how life's supposed to feel. People say this is it, I guess I'm happy, I guess I should say I'm happy. But the minute that I went and I uh touched the darkness and I held space for the darkness without getting lost in it, because there is a a a way to to learn how to be more remembered and embodied without getting lost in it. And walked with it all and invited all parts of me to the table, I could feel life again. Like literally, like my eyes looked different, my face looked different, water felt different, smells felt different, the sunshine felt different, hearing my kids laugh felt different. And so this is for the woman who feels like she's doing all the things. She's checking off the list, she's like, I'm doing my workouts, I'm eating how I'm supposed to. She's like, I'm I think I'm doing this right. I'm I'm forcing a morning routine, I'm forcing this, I'm doing this. They say I'm supposed to become her, and to become her, I just like be her, but I don't even know who the freak she is. And I just I don't know. It's a remembering. I don't feel like we're meant to like constantly be like, I have to become her, I have to become her. It's like, no, can we remember her? Can you remember all these parts of us who one carried us to this point, who protected us, who was there from us, and then also remember her, the essence who's already in you. She's rooted deep, and she's ready to rise with you. We just gotta like let her connect to her, remember her. And it's gonna be a beautiful, beautiful just journey with other women who are ready to stop just looping, stop uh feeling like I'm constantly just like bleeding on those who who didn't even hurt me that I just can't stop, like I can't get out of this loop because we'll keep repeating the loop until we truly learn what we need to and truly nourish what's there. How much more nourishment can you bring to every area of your life? What truly nourishes it you? Do you know? Do you actually know what nourishment feels like in your life and in your body? How much more presence can you bring in the doing, more being in the doing? How much more can you just fully be in this experience of life, capacity for it all? Because that's what nervous system regulation is, is having capacity to feel and hold the duality of life. It's not always being calm. It's when we need to be activated and we need to be up, we can. And then we're able to regulate and come back into balance. And when we need to be kind of more lower in the rest and digest, we can. And then we need energy and get back to come up again, we can't. So it's understanding that and knowing when you're feeling off and out of alignment. Okay, what do I need to do to bring renourishment here so I can feel and remember and come back? So that is I'm even thinking of changing my podcast name to uh root and rise instead of Watch Sunset with me. The art of remembering, Root and Rise, the art of remembering. Ah like I I always describe it too as like there's so many art pie like we have so many beautiful art pieces that we've created over the years of our journey. Can we take time to just look back and honor them all and be with them all? And so before we go, I really want to kind of just leave with you just what Root and Rise actually is. Root and Rise, the art of remembering, is not another program to fix you. It's not another thing to perform, achieve, or try and get right. It's a return. A return to the parts of you that have been buried under survival, under expectations, under the quiet pressure to become someone. You were never meant to force yourself into being. We weren't we weren't meant to be like always like, okay, I have to, I have to remember, I have to remember. And disconnecting from the very essence of who we are, the presence of life, the feeling parts of life. We were never meant to just live from the neck up without actually fully experiencing them, experiencing this life. We root into places we've avoided. The stories, the emotions, the patterns, the younger versions of us who were just trying to be loved safe and enough, not to stay there, but to finally hold them with enough presence that they don't have to run your life anymore. We're not just going to talk about them. We're going to actually be an experience with them, create new experiences with them so they know that you can allow the beauty of life to come in again. And then from that rooted place, we rise, not into a different person, but into the truth of who you've always been underneath all of it. More grounded, more present, more alive, not performing life, but actually being in it. This is nervous system work. This is emotional work. This is embodied healing. But more than anything, it's a remembrance. And if anything in this episode Is landing in your body right now. I don't want you to rush past it. I want to leave you with something simple, something you can take with you today. Not to master, but to practice coming home to yourself. And so while this loud car is driving by, Marison, take a moment. And I invite you to place your hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. And take a slow breath in and a longer breath out. And if you feel like maybe closing your eyes just to connect deeper, or just looking around you and noticing you in this moment in this life. Just take another breath and out a long exhale. Maybe you soften your shoulders a little bit. Maybe you truly start feeling what's here. Maybe you actually notice your body and you haven't noticed her in a while. And I want you just to kind of be with this question. Where am I trying to rush past myself right now? Not to fix it, not to judge it, just notice it. Like, where are you trying to just be like, okay, if I could just like rush past this and get here, then I'll feel good again. If I could just like do this and do this, then I'll feel good again. Where are you rushing? And then what would it feel like to root here instead of trying to escape? To root here instead of trying to go to your normal, maybe like pattern. What you normally loop in when things start to feel chaotic, what you normally loop in when you start to feel this feeling that you're feeling. Maybe it's your tiredness, maybe it's your emotions, maybe it's the moment you're in right now. What would it feel like to just be here instead of try to escape? And then just acknowledge this. I don't have to become someone new. I get to remember who I am. And let that be enough for today. You don't have to become someone new. You get to remember who you are. Not a transformation you force, just a returning. Because this is how we begin to change our lives. Not by becoming more, but be but by becoming back. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. I feel like this podcast was probably all over the place. It was probably um, hopefully you got something out of it. Hopefully you felt that deep reminder, that deep remembering of you don't have to keep forcing and searching, and you right here, you're whole, you're enough. It's just time to remember her. It's time to root deeper, it's time to rise with all parts of us. You are loved beyond words. If you take anything from this, because there was a time when I did not feel deeply loved from myself or from it was it was hard. It was hard to find love. You are loved beyond words. I'm so proud of you. And if you're interested in my root and rise program, The Art of Remembering, I will have it.

unknown 25:27

Can you watch the movie?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Just message me on Instagram. I have my Watch Sunsets with Me podcast page. I also have my my just normal Instagram page. Just message me and just be like, I listen to your podcast. I really want in on the wait list for the root and rise, the art of awakening. And I am so excited and it would be honored to work with you and to walk this journey with you and to just finally hold space for you to just root deeper into your remembering and to watch you rise so you can truly feel this life. Create experiences to allow it to feel yummy and delightful and good again. Because it gets to be so magical and beautiful. All right. Thank you for being here with me. And until next time, don't forget to pause, take a moment to breathe, and watch the sunset.