From Reaction to Awareness: How Meditation Changed My Life

Meditation has been one of the most powerful tools in my life. It's helped me navigate stress, pressure, motherhood, and uncertainty, and it's something I often wish I had discovered a decade earlier during my performance career.

In this episode, I share how meditation transformed my relationship with stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. I used to think meditation was about clearing my mind. What I've learned is that it's really about creating awareness—and in that awareness, we have the power to make a choice.

That shift from reaction to awareness has supported me through high-pressure performance jobs, postpartum seasons, and the beautiful chaos of raising three children. I also share how this practice has changed my parenting, allowing me to stay more calm, present, and grounded when emotions run high.

If you've ever struggled with anxiety, stress, overstimulation, or racing thoughts, this episode offers practical tools you can begin using today. I guide you through a simple meditation designed to help regulate your nervous system, cultivate gratitude, set an intention for your day, and create space for more peace, presence, and possibility.

I'm also so excited to open enrollment for upcoming online meditation and movement classes! I'd love to have you join us live or catch the replay! Book your class here: https://tynesteckleinartdesigns.com/shop/ols/products/meditation--movement-zoom-class

Thank you so much for being here! If you are enjoying the show, it would mean so much if you please follow Essence Embodied, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a rating and review! Thank you!

You can keep up with Tyne on instagram here:

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View her website here:

https://tynesteckleinartdesigns.com/

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I'd like to say a massive thank you to my editor and dear friend, Nikki Dalonzo, for supporting me on this journey! 

Transcript

Why Meditation Matters To Me

Tyne Stecklein 0:00

Welcome back to Essence Embodied by Tyne Stecklein. I'm your host and I am so grateful that you're here with me today. If you're new to the show, welcome. If you're returning, it's so nice to have you back. Today we are talking about meditation. This tool has been so profound in my life over the last few years, and honestly, it's something I wish that I had discovered sooner. Let's dive right in. I

Pressure, Rejection, And Overthinking

Tyne Stecklein 0:24

spent most of my performance career without the tool or the knowledge of meditation. I was constantly going to high-pressure auditions for TV shows, for films, backup dancing for artists, and I didn't have this tool in my pocket. Be it the comparison that I was facing or the rejection or the high pressure situations that I was in when I did book jobs, I wish that I would have had something to help bring awareness to what was going on in my mind. For years I spent so much energy overthinking, worrying, stressing. And honestly, I don't think that I would have booked more jobs if I had the tool of meditation. I just think I would have enjoyed my exact same journey more. I think that I would have been more present and at ease during it. So no matter who you are or what your path looks like, whether you're a performer like me or a mother like me juggling all of the things, I hope that this episode can help you feel a little bit more grounded and maybe inspired to create your own meditation practice. I'm also going to share with you about a few online classes that I have coming up. If you enjoyed today's episode and you want to dive deeper into meditation with me. My mentor, Dr. Mark Holmes, was what I would call a master meditator, meaning he has spent and devoted so much of his life to meditation. And I really wanted to learn from him. And I kept saying, Teach me how to meditate because I cannot clear the thoughts of my mind. I cannot clear the noise. Now I know that meditation is not about clearing all of the noise because that's impossible. Our brain does what it does, which is to keep us safe and to think about things. I now have the understanding that meditation is more about bringing awareness to what is going on in our mind so that we can make choices. Choices about how we handle a situation, choices about what we say next, choices about how we react. The idea of being aware of what is happening in our mind during a focused meditation or during your day, during your life, that is the key. That is what we are talking about today.

Postpartum Life And Finding Calm

Tyne Stecklein 2:38

So the concept of meditation was more formally introduced to me actually after I had my first child. I'm a mom of three, and I'm still in the entertainment and performing industry. When I had my first child, I went back to work after six weeks, I believe. I did a TV show for Fred Talikson dancing on Goliath. I was postpartum, breastfeeding, not really sure how I was gonna do the mom and the performer thing, but I was making it work. The idea of meditation was introduced to me, and even though I didn't understand the full benefits of it at the time, what it did do was give me a little bit of calm and ease. And I kept working after that TV show and auditioning, and I was under pressure physically and mentally and breastfeeding and not sure how to navigate it all. And it's not that meditation suddenly changed my life, but it was a tool that helped me return to myself. You see, even though I love performing and speaking with you here, I'm also an introvert and I need time for myself, and I need time to reconnect to my thoughts, and that is what meditation was able to do. I booked this awesome job when my first kid was a year old, and we were working for a few months on this TV show, and we were partnering and we were dancing in heels and we were shooting very long days, 12-hour, longer days sometimes. It was amazing, and it was also so physically and mentally taxing. I was also still breastfeeding, so I was pumping on our breaks, which is also exerting extra energy and calories and nutrients. Thankfully, I had had this little meditation practice that I had been working with because I was able to find the awareness that during the lunch break, instead of being social with the other dancers who were wonderful, I needed time for myself and not time to overanalyze how tired I was and that my feet had blisters and were gonna start bleeding before the end of the day, or that that take didn't go as well as I wanted to, or that we were about to shoot the hardest scene and I didn't have any energy left, or that I wasn't home with my baby who I was really missing, but I was so grateful for the job. Instead of doing that with my time and my thoughts, I found my meditation practice. And don't worry, if you do not have a meditation practice of your own, I'm gonna walk you through something super simple in a few moments. That

Parenting Big Feelings With Regulation

Tyne Stecklein 5:01

child that I was referring to is now seven and a half. So I've been working with meditation for quite a few years at this point. And what I can say is that I feel like I am a completely different parent than I was with my first. He got all of my attention and my love, but he also got a version of me that was a little burned out and not sure how to navigate at all. I certainly do not do parenthood perfect with a second or a third kid. And in fact, some days I feel like I am back to square one and I know nothing. But I can say that meditation has given me the awareness to know how to make choices in the moments. In the moments where my child is frustrated and melting down, and naturally I want to do the same. I have more awareness to make a choice in that moment. Let's give an example. I have the most amazing kid who has such high emotions. When he is happy, it is the happiest you've ever seen a child in your life. And when he is mad, it's scary, let's be honest. I used to feel like it was my job to fix his emotions when he was mad or sad. And I couldn't even separate myself from him. I would get so tangled up in his emotions that we were both then in this elevated emotional state. No one was regulated, and I didn't know how to help him. Now I'm able to regulate myself a little bit more so that I can see that he is hurting, that he needs time, that he needs space, and most importantly, he needs a regulated parent who is calm, who is present, who is in the moment with him, just being there through the difficult. Not trying to fix it, not trying to change it, just aware of it and ready to help him when he wants to move out of it. I find that the calmer I am, when I'm the centered example, it's much easier for him to center himself. But when I let my emotions become massive too, then we are both in this elevated state and it takes so much longer to come back home to ourselves. I notice that I'm able to catch either my frustration or my children's frustration sooner. I'm able to recognize when someone is overstimulated. I can use my breath before I respond. Finding my breath using breath work, which we'll talk about when we do our little mini meditation. Finding your breath in elevated moments or honestly in any moment of the day, allowing yourself to take time to find your inhale and your exhale before you respond is honestly the most powerful free tool that we always have at our disposal. It is pretty insane how helpful your breath alone can be. I also feel that I'm able to be more present for the ordinary moments. And I try to let the small things stay small. Because really, when we think about the things that happen in a day, how many of them are worth letting ourselves get rattled over? Very few. But when we don't have that practice that can bring us back home, it makes things big or small feel like our world is closing in on us. So, really, what meditation has done for me is help me observe myself. It's helped me become the observer of my thoughts. Before I had this consistent practice, I felt like life was happening to me. Now I feel like I can watch myself move through life and that I have enough awareness of what's happening with my thoughts and in my mind that I can make a choice. And the choice, and it feels so much better to make a choice from a centered place than to react from a dysregulated place. If I could give my younger self, the new performer, some advice, I don't think it would be to be more confident, to work harder, to put myself out there, to network more. I think it would be to learn to come home to myself and to recognize what I need in the moment. Okay, so with all of that said, let's dive into a mini meditation.

A Simple Mini Meditation You Can Use

Tyne Stecklein 9:05

If you are driving, please do not close your eyes. But if you are in a space where you can get comfortable and you want to close your eyes, I absolutely encourage you to do so. If you're sitting, it's nice to have back support, or you can lie down. This is just gonna be a super simple intro into how I like to meditate, especially being a busy mom of three. I don't have a lot of time, so this is just how I tend to start my day or find a moment in the middle of my day when I might be feeling rattled to bring me back home. You can place a hand on your stomach, on your heart, palms open, whatever feels comfortable for you. You can close your eyes, you can keep them open. I want you to just notice how you feel. And when I say that, I mean for myself, I feel that my shoulder has a little bit of pain this morning. So I notice that. Do I feel drained? Do I feel frustrated? Do I feel excited? And then don't place judgment on how you feel. Just bring that awareness to it. You can also then bring awareness to the fact that this thought does not define you or have to control the rest of your day. Think about what else you might want to bring in. And also know that we can be two things at once. So I can feel tired, but maybe that means I just want to also bring in ease. Instead of moving through everything else I have to do today, feeling exhausted. Maybe I want to be easeful with myself. Now let's find our breath. I'm not gonna tell you to inhale for four and exhale for six. I want you to find a breath that feels comfortable for you. It's the worst if you are at a yoga class or listening to a meditation and they are counting a breath that feels, and then you feel frazzled because you don't have that much breath left. So for me, the most helpful thing is to just find a long inhale and try to find a longer exhale. And I don't put too much weight or pressure into how long I'm counting that. I'm just trying to slow my breathing down. We're so busy, we get to where we're just living in a little bit of an elevated stress state during the day. And we just want to slow our breathing so we tell our body we are safe in this moment. So keep noticing your breath, keep finding your inhale, finding your exhale. And at any time during this, if you notice your thoughts are going to any other place, your to-do list, the fact that you hate meditation, why are you still then listening to this podcast episode? Anywhere else your mind is going, that's okay. Just bring awareness to it and then bring it back. Bring it back to your breath. Bring it back to your inhale, and then feeling a longer exhale. I then like to bring in something I'm grateful for. And this can be anything. This can be the roof over my head, the food that I was able to put on the table this morning, or something really big and exciting that's happening in my life. But anything that I am grateful for today. From this place of gratitude, now I like to ask myself, how can I be of service today? How can I be there for someone today? And last thing, I invite myself to be open to miracles today, to incredible possibilities. Not thinking about what could go wrong, but instead what could go right today. I remind myself what I want to bring in. And I even picture what that looks like. Truthfully, after I record this podcast episode, I have a lot of errands and things that I have to get done. I want to bring in ease. Ease looks a lot better than stress, anxiety, or feeling depleted. And that will finish up our mini meditation for this episode. So again,

Classes, Replays, And A Review Ask

Tyne Stecklein 13:28

what we're doing, we're just bringing awareness to our mind. And it's not about meditating and not having any thought. The point of the meditation is to be aware of your thoughts. And the more that you do this in meditation, the more that you will be able to do it in your daily life. You will be able to be aware of what's happening in front of you and what thoughts are going through your mind and therefore how you want to react and respond. You get to make a choice instead of a snap reaction that then might not feel like the choice you wanted to make for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, I am going to be hosting some meditation and light movement classes online soon. When I say movement, I don't mean dancing. This is not for dancers only. I mean just moving through our body, moving through stiffness, a little bit of stretching. It'll feel really good, really easeful, hopefully really restorative. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, there are links below to book these classes, and I would love to see you there. If you can't join us live, don't worry. We will record the session and I can send those to you. If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast or you are enjoying the podcast in general, I can't tell you how much it would mean if you left me a written review and a five-star rating. I'm so passionate about this and growing it. And the way that I can do that is by helping more people discover it. And if you didn't know, new podcasts are discovered when they get ratings and reviews. That's how it works. So if you would consider taking the time to leave one for me today, it would mean so much. Thanks for being here. This is Essence Embodied by Tyne Stecklein. And I hope you go out into the world today and embody your unique essence.