Ep. 4 The Night A Yoga Class Broke Me (Body-Based Healing and the Pressure to Perform Movement)

There were tears driving home from the yoga class. Then dancing in jeans in my living room. If movement has always felt like pressure or performance - like something you're somehow bad at - this episode is for you. I talk about what it looks like when your body finally stops cooperating with what your mind thinks exercise should look like, and what happens when you listen instead.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Intuitive Drop, the place where intuition gets honest and your body finally gets the mic. I'm your host, Leslie Turner, somatic practitioner and intuitive coach. If you're spiritually curious, hungry for clarity, or tired of surface level conversations, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hi, loves. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is about a yoga class I took last week, some tears in my car, a surprisingly emotional conversation with God. Now, when I say God, you change it to universe, source, highest, whatever makes sense, it isn't triggering to you. And a very unexpected moment of intuitive movement in my living room in jeans. So this is a story about the body. It's a story about shame. It's a story about what happens when we stop forcing ourselves to fit into versions of wellness that don't actually feel good. And it's a story about the most surprising relief I've felt in a long, long time. So settle in, take a slow, deep breath, inhale, exhale, and we're going on a little journey. So let me set this scene. A friend of mine invited me to a yoga class, and she said it was mostly deep stretching, nothing hardcore, nothing sweaty, nothing up, down, up, down. And I thought, perfect, because if there's one thing I absolutely despise, it's those sun salutation Olympics, all this stepping forward through your hands or popping up gracefully, like the woodland fairy. I just can't do it. My body laughs in my face every time. Um, and I've been noticing lately that I'm a little more tight, I'm a little stiff, especially my low back and my hips, and my flexibility is basically non-existent. So I said yes, and I thought maybe this will feel good, maybe this is the gentle thing I need. Oh Leslie, sweet, optimistic Leslie. We get into class, the instructor had dimmed the lights, the room was small and cozy, and there was even a Christmas tree in the corner, which I loved. I loved all of that. And within the first few minutes, I realized my body was not on board with this. Even when we started in Shivasana, I could feel my low back, every pose started to hurt, every stretch kind of pinched. Relaxing and breathing kind of sucked, actually. And when everything in your body hurts, you can't really relax into anything. You're just bracing. Breathing becomes a job. Softening feels absolutely impossible. And you start counting the minutes until the class ends. And let me get this straight: it wasn't the teacher, she's lovely. It was my body. And also, it wasn't just deep stretching as promised. It was things started to get a little more up and down, up and down. And uh then the planks came into the mix, and I was I was like, oh no, that's when the real I hate this thing, I hate this thing started. Um, my body was like, nope, absolutely not, get me out of here. And it was all I could do to hold a pose, not look like a dying spider, or run to my car. And of course, of course, this is where the ego shows up. And my ego kindly offered me these phrases pretty much the whole class. You suck at this, everyone else is doing fine, you're the least flexible person in the room, you should be able to do this. This is embarrassing. Why can't you relax like everyone else? Maybe you're just not a yoga person. Super delightful. Uh, the ego, I will call her Mildred, and sometimes you just gotta say, shut up, Mildred. Because the ego doesn't speak in facts, she speaks in familiar. She speaks from memory conditioning and old wounds. She speaks from all the lifelong programs we carry that say, why aren't you trying harder? Push more, prove yourself, don't fall behind. Those survival programs run really, really deep in all of us. And they tell us that effort equals worth, even when the body is begging for tenderness. But when you're in pain and you're trying to breathe and your low back is screaming, you don't have the bandwidth to challenge her. So I let her just talk and run her mouth the whole class. And under all of that, my body had a different message, but I couldn't hear it yet. So the class ended. I'm driving home, it's dark, snow is starting to fall, and I burst into tears. Not sobbing or overly dramatic, just these gentle, quiet tears. And that's when the truth kind of landed in me because I was I was having a conversation with God and I said, What is wrong with me? And this is what came through. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not even bad at yoga. I just need softer, I need slower, I need supported movement, not performative movement. I need practices, practices that nourish my nervous system and not overwhelm it. And it was like this curtain had been ripped open. My body wasn't saying, I suck. She was saying, please stop making me do things that feel like force. And that was the relief. And I went home and I cried in my kitchen and I told my husband what happened, and and as I was processing it all and releasing all of this shame of not being good enough, it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. So the next morning, I dropped my kid off at school, and I had a few minutes when I came home to to myself before I saw clients, and I was sitting there on the couch, letting just the truth from last night settle in. I'm in jeans, I'm a little sore, still a little emotional, and something in me said, move. Not do yoga, not exercise, just move. So I got off the couch, I planted my feet on the living room carpet, and I let myself do these tiny intuitive motions with my arms. Part Tai Chi, part dance, part slow yoga, I guess, part whatever the hell my body wanted to do. And oh my god, it felt incredible. No bracing, no forcing, no comparison, no ego. Just my body leading, maybe for the first time in my adult life. And it felt natural and it felt like me. And in that movement, I realized that I've been avoiding a lot of exercise and movement, not because I'm lazy or uncommitted, but because those forms of exercise I've tried all felt like pressure, performance, and perfection. And my nervous system was had zero desire to live in that world anymore. But this, the movement I was doing, it was intuitive and slow and feminine and somatic. And my body craves this. She didn't need me to try harder, she needed me to listen. And softness doesn't mean that I have to do this forever. Softness doesn't mean weakness. Softness is what heals those old burnout patterns. So you can one day, if you want, step into more of a power, powerful flow, step into strength training, step, take that hit class with a regulated, willing body. But right now, in winter, in crazy Christmas season, softness is my medicine. Softness needs to be my truth. Softness is the doorway back into myself. So what I want you to take from this, if you constantly fail at exercise or routine, if you avoid classes, if you feel shame around what your body can or cannot do, it's truly not that you're bad at this. And it's not that you lack discipline. It's that your body is rejecting something that doesn't feel safe or aligned or supportive. You might not need harder, you might need softer, supported, attuned, nervous system-friendly, body-led and loving. Your body isn't the problem. Your old programming is. And your nervous system is requesting movement that feels like love, not pressure. So yeah, this whole journey from pain to ego to tears to genes to intuitive movement, it kind of cracks something open in me. And it's going to make me, it feels deep because it's going to make me a better practitioner, a better mom, a more regulated human. Because when I meet my body where she is, everything expands beautifully. So if this episode brought something up in you, if you felt, oh my gosh, yeah, that's me, you're not alone. Maybe your body is whispering the same thing mine was. No more force. Bring me softness, bring me back to my body. Thank you for being here with me today. I love you lots. And if you're craving deeper support and want to explore this body-led intuitive way of moving through your inner world, I do a deep dive into your physical and emotional health in my four month container called Expansive Soul, and it's open for January. Follow what your body says, and if she says yes, you'll find the link in my show notes. And I'll see you in the next episode.