#81: The Art of Listening to Thoughts Through Journaling

The goal of journaling is to write to yourself; to let your conscious self know and understand what you have been trying to avoid in life on an unconscious level.

In today's episode you'll learn:

1. Seven types of journaling to help you get get unstuck
2. Why journaling is essential to your health and flowing with life
3. How to know what type of journaling to use and when

Journaling impacts mental, physical and spiritual health.  It allows you to mentally and emotionally release things from the past and gain clarity around direction forward in life.  All this while improving physiological functions of the body like your immune system, blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate variability and breathing rate.

Grab the full show notes and resources at www.cairnyogawellness.com/podcast81 and subscribe and listen wherever you catch your podcasts: 

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Resources:
Getting Unstuck Through Journaling Thought Joggers
How We Feel App (Android)
How We Feel App (iPhone)


More Episodes Like This One:
#26: Tapping into Your Creative Self
#42: Your Vacation is No Different
#72: Stop Overwhelm: The 1 Thing Your To-do List is Missing

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Transcript

Cathy: 0:00

The goal of journaling is actually to write to yourself, to let your conscious self know and understand what you've been trying to avoid in life on an unconscious level. In today's episode you'll learn seven types of journaling to help you get unstuck. Why journaling is essential to your health and flowing with life and how to know what type of journaling to use and when. Hey friends. Welcome back to the show. This is episode 81 of the health, harmony, and happiness with Kathy podcast. I hope that you are all enjoying your summer. I know that I am, and I can't believe it's already nearly the middle of July. It's about this time of year that you might start to realize that even though you might be spending time, Doing things physically and being outside and being active and engaging with others and maybe playing with your kids a bit more, going on walks or bike rides, doing things that keep your body physically active. You might start to realize that you have forgotten to connect so much with. Your inner self. This is a common thing this time of year, at least. I notice it almost every year when I get into this place of doing and thriving, which is quite honestly the energy of summer, the energy of summer is all about putting yourself out there and connecting, remember. So it's about being active and actually blooming and thriving in your element. And for most of us, I think that means that we are doing, at least if you're anything like me, it means that you're being active. And that is absolutely great. It's wonderful. And it's needed because it's in alignment with the season. That we are in. But it also means that we forget to be introspective and we forget to actually tune into our inner self. And what it's needing the most. You might even forget to check in with your feelings and emotions and for some of you. That may be something that you don't ever do. And that's okay. That's absolutely. Okay. But if you stay on this journey long enough with me, it's something that you might actually start doing. In fact, my husband and I recently started using a great app and I am not receiving any sort of financial kickback for this or anything. It's just a wonderful app that. Um, we found actually, because one of my clients told me about it and we had been using a different app. But she came across this app and it is absolutely wonderful. So you know who you are out there. Thank you so much for sharing this one with us. I will put a link to it in the show notes, but the app is called how we feel and you can set prompts so that it prompts you to check in throughout the day with how you're feeling. And then you can also share those feelings with someone else or with your friends, because you can connect on the app and, and create friends. Now you don't have to do that part of it, but what it has allowed my husband and I to do is to make sure that we are pausing throughout the day. To check in with our feelings and emotions, share them with the other person. And then it gives us some sort of, um, way to connect, even if we're not connecting verbally throughout the course of our day, while we're at work. But it also gives us some insight into what each of us is experiencing so that when we do our daily connection, when we get home from work at the end of the day, We have something to talk about or we can bring those feelings up if it's something that maybe someone would want to talk about. So it's a beautiful nudge to turn inward and I will, once again, I'll put that link in. In the episode so that you can go out and check it out if you want it as well. Totally free and you can get it on apple or Android, which is the beautiful thing, because it's, it's from like a nonprofit that puts it out there and they've got education tools on. Learning about your emotions and feelings and that kind of stuff in with it as well. So it is a very great resource. Like I said, I'm not getting any sort of financial kickback or anything from it. It's just a great app. I love it. And I want to share it with you since we are talking about pausing and checking in with ourselves today in this time, when it's a bunch of outward energy as summer is, and it should be because that is the energy of summer. We often forget to tune inward and sometimes that can leave us feeling stuck. And not in the flow or maybe that you're flowing so much outwardly you forget to tune in and actually ask your inner guidance, what it is she's needing, what it is he's needing. And. How to move forward, connecting both your inner and your outer world, your masculine and your feminine side. So this episode is all about doing just that. It is about journaling and using journaling to flow. Now, for some of you, you might think, ah, I hate journaling. I'm shutting this podcast episode off right now. I don't want to listen to it. But stop. I want to nudge you to keep listening, because there are simple ways that you can invite journaling into your life. That will actually help you begin to flow and get the stuck out of you so that you can, um, feel like you're in flow. Journaling was one of the first tools that I think I ever used growing up to begin to flow and I didn't even realize that was what was happening. It was just a way for me to begin to process my feelings and emotions, even if at that time in my life, I likely wasn't naming my feelings, maybe I was a little bit. But. It was a way that I could process the day. And so I would generally tend to journal in the evening. Now, speaking of flow. Journaling could also be one of the things, one of the disciplines that for those of you who might be pretty rigid, whenever you start a discipline or a habit, it could be one of the things that you need to remember to encourage yourself to flow with instead of making it become a task that has to be done every single day because it absolutely doesn't have to be a task that's done every day. That's when you have to tune into your inner guidance and then go from there. Decide am I needing to journal today? Or am I not? In the beginning, you might actually have to make yourself sit down and journal, but once you start and once you begin to cultivate that habit, It's one of those things where you could get trapped in feeling like it has to be done every day. And I want to invite you to release that need. Release that mindset. Because it absolutely isn't, perhaps there's a day where it's just not in the cards for you to journal and that's okay. That's absolutely. Okay. So it's about finding that balance between the flow and the rigidity of habits or of disciplines. In allowing journaling to invite flow versus allowing it to become just another task or another thing on your to-do list. It's something that you want to come to freely and naturally. And sitting down with an empty notebook and a pen might not actually feel like it could invite flow, but rest assured, I'm going to share with you a few ways today that you might be able to simply invite journaling into your life. There are a lot of other types of journaling out there. These are just the types that I have used and have found great success in. And I actually didn't even realize that they were types of journaling until I sat down and started thinking about it and naming them. They're the ones I've realized to help me get unstuck and tune back into myself so that I can understand myself a little bit more and can continue to flow with my time, energy and focus. And I hope they will help you understand yourself a little bit more as well. That being said, if another type of journaling works well for you. Awesome. And if it does maybe even share it in the comments of this podcast. In the book, the body keeps the score by Bessel van der Kolk. He wrote. When you write to yourself, you don't have to worry about other people's judgment. You just listen to your own thoughts and let their flow takeover. Later when you reread what you wrote, you often discover surprising truths. I couldn't agree more. And that is exactly why I wanted to share my journal techniques with you so that you can maybe experience this as well. Once I started researching journaling a bit more, science actually showed me why I felt so good after I did journal as a kid from a young age, and then anytime I did pick up my journal and pen and begin writing as I have to this day. Journaling actually has scientific benefits to your health. Which is a very cool thing. And there's been one guy who's done quite a lot of research on journaling and his name is Dr. James Pennebaker. He is the one who did a lot of this research and he actually did it with. Um, trauma victims. So a lot of the stuff that's out there on journaling research, which, who geeks out on that, apparently I do. Um, Is based on people who have had traumatic events in their life, or maybe who have suffered from PTSD. We all have traumas in our life, whether they are the little daily traumas or the little T traumas as I call them, or the big T traumas, like the big events that maybe shifted the whole way that we exist in this world. No matter if you think of yourself as having trauma in your life, it's likely that you probably do, even if it's in small ways. So the journaling research that came out of the work that he did is. No different. It is absolutely just as beneficial to you as a human. So one of the first things I want to point out. When considering research on journaling is how it helps the mental health. It allows you to release things from your past and actually gain clarity. By journaling, you can resolve past experiences. You can identify and place emotions with past or present moment experiences. Because you can work through those experiences and gain a bigger understanding of what they are. It helps you almost zoom out and look at them through a different lens. It helps you understand why maybe you feel a certain way because you begin to process on paper what's being hidden in your unconscious mind, or what's maybe even being hidden in your conscious mind you just don't want to actually admit it. But when you put it out on paper, no one else has to read it. It's to no one else's eyes or judgment. Absolutely no one else's judgment and only for someone else's eyes. If you choose to share it with them. But journaling. Helps you sort out the events and confront and understand experiences that you've had so that you can organize and process your thoughts around them without judgment, as I said. In terms of mental health. It also helps you have a more positive outlook because it is getting the stuff out of your brain and helping you process it. So that you can begin to think more clearly. And have a positive outlook and it's just shown that those were, some of the outcomes or some of the, um, byproducts of journaling. In a physical sense. Journaling actually helps the physical body too, which is a very cool thing. Uh, it can strengthen your immune system because you are processing the stress of life. When you actually sit down and journal. If you're journaling about things that are stressful or traumatic. And it even has these subtle physiological changes in your body. Dr. Pennebaker discovered they, they tracked blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, body temperature. And all of these things had significant positive changes in both the immediate and long-term, which is pretty cool. So it can lower blood pressure just by beginning to process your thoughts on paper. So it's a super good reason to sit down and put a pen to paper. Journaling helps you get in touch with those deeper places inside your brain so that you can process the information. And. When I say it gets in touch with those deeper places, it might actually be that it brings you back to being the person or at least being in the mental and emotional state that you were in. In the moment of the instance that you might be journaling about. So if you're processing a stressful event, it might bring you back in your body might actually start to have those physiological changes where your heart rate starts to increase. You might start crying. You might feel tension somewhere in your body. All of those things begin to happen when you do some self inquiry and tune into a specific stressful event or traumatic event that you might be. Experiencing. So. Any time, you start to process something on paper. You have the tendency to bring yourself back to that moment in time. And what that does is it communicates with your body when your brain can see it going out on the paper, it communicates with your brain and your body that it's leaving your presence. It's leaving your energetic awareness and your state because it's going down on paper. And something about that just makes your brain process things a little bit differently. I've talked to you guys about that in the, um, list taking. List-making episode that I did a few episodes back. If you haven't listened to that one yet. Head back and check that one out when this one's over, but something about putting pen to paper. Allows your brain to process it a little bit differently. I mentioned that it helps you get in touch with these deeper places inside your brain. You can also. Access those deeper places in your brain by using your nondominant hand to journal. Versus your dominant hand. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment, but that's one way that you can get in touch with kind of this inner child or inner self that might be in you, which is pretty, pretty cool. Onto the seven types of journaling that help you get unstuck. The first type of journaling that I'm going to tell you about is probably my favorite type of journaling. And it is what I call stream of consciousness, journaling. This is where you set a timer for 15 to 30 minutes, or you can go longer if you want. I just tend to find that 30 minutes is, um, is, is a fair amount to get, to get enough out of your brain. Now sometimes. If you're really on a roll that 30 minutes goes by really quickly and you end up writing for longer. So again, there's an opportunity to invite flow and not rigidity. Unless of course you are on a time schedule and you have other things to do, then stick with your. Stick with your timer and, and trust that whatever came out onto the paper is what was supposed to come out. But back to stream of consciousness, journaling. You basically write whatever comes to mind. Now, sitting down with a blank notebook and a pen. Seems a little bit. Intimidating to you. Here's my tip. Just begin to write the first thing that you are thinking and let it lead to whatever comes next. So that first sentence might simply be."I don't really know what to write. I'm sitting here with a blank piece of paper in front of me, and now I have to write whatever comes to mind. Oh, I hear the dog barking outside. I wonder what I'm going to have for breakfast. I wonder how this morning is going to go. What do I need to do today?". That jumble of thoughts that just came out of my mind is what stream of consciousness journaling is all about. What stream of consciousness journaling does, is it invites your mind to play freely. And we know that play is important. We know that's an extremely important part of life. And the energetic rhythms is that we rest and play because it invites not only creativity, but it allows your mind to flow instead of get stuck in the rigidity or wormhole of only going in one direction. It gives your mind freedom and flexibility instead And 10 out of 10 times, if I sit down and have an issue. And I do stream of consciousness journaling, or I have something that I'm trying to work through. I come up with either a solution or a list of potential solutions or options or ways that I can move through it. So many of my projects, worksheets, podcast episodes have been birthed through stream of consciousness, journaling, and that's I guess why it's my favorite. Because once you allow your mind to just go, wherever it goes, You can tap into the higher state of who you are and brilliant things will come out on paper. You just have to be able to not limit yourself. And begin to, to judge what you put on paper. When you do stream of consciousness, journaling, it's important that you don't cross anything out or erase anything that you've started writing, because it's just your brain's way of. Actually putting things out on paper, it's like, kind of like when you mix words around by accident. If you. Put a word on the paper that you don't think was supposed to come out. Just trust that it was supposed to come out. It needed to come out in that order, even if it didn't make any sense. That stream of consciousness, journaling, and quite honestly, Oftentimes my stream of consciousness, journaling turns into a conversation with God where I am. Talking. And. Expressing my frustrations expressing my needs. My wants. All of those things. And then listening for that response. So this leads into the second type of journaling, which is journaling with God or journaling with the universe. It's just basically having a conversation with God, having a conversation with the universe and it's kind of the back and forth. This might feel like it's a conversation with yourself. But really it's that conversation of that, that inner light and that inner guidance inside of you, which I like to think of as the voice of God. So the second type of journaling is journaling with God. The third type of journaling, because it's very similar to that. Second type is prayer journaling. this is what differentiates this from journaling with God, is that you're making a specific request or asking for direction or guidance and, or praying over a specific person. And then you're trusting that God will answer it. You're releasing control over it, releasing attachment to it. And trusting that it will be answered. No, it might not always be answered in the way that you want. Uh, or the way that you're hoping, but just putting it out there. And then letting go of it. Kind of an offset of. Prayer journaling is. Praying in color. Or doodle. Journaling. Which I think these are both worth mentioning. And so I'll just mention them here. I've done instances in my life where I have. Um, Use different colored markers or colored pens or colored pencils and just kind of doodled and prayed. And so I've, I've written words, phrases, and then I've colored around them or written around them. And this is probably one that, um, I could invite more of into my life because I used to be a very creative, artsy person. And I've kind of shut that side of me down in a sense of. Creating art or creating art pieces or scrapbooking or anything like that. Those are all things that I've done in my past. And I really enjoyed them, but I haven't done them so much in my adult life. Now I do sit down and color with my kids, which is great, but it's not just freestyle drawing. And that opens up a whole different side of the brain, but you can do that with prayer journaling. And it's called praying in color. You're simply making your prayer requests by writing them and by drawing about them. On a piece of paper. So that's a great one. That's worth mentioning. It's not one that I do all the time. Um, but prayer journaling is definitely one, but the, the praying in color or the doodle journaling it's just kind of an offset of that. With prayer, journaling and journaling with God. Whatever way you do it, there's not a right or wrong, and you don't have to be specific in the way that you do it. And those two types might blend into each other and they might even blend into that stream of consciousness. Journaling. But either way, you're simply inviting God to be a part of what comes to your mind. And you're inviting. God's presence to be in whatever you are doing. And I think that's just a beautiful reminder and way to be intentional about journaling. The next type of journaling would be using journal prompts. Journal prompts can be self inquiry. So questions that you have specifically that you're seeking answers to from your unconscious mind or from your inner child. They could be a Bible verse that you are journaling around or writing about and your reflections on it. It could be an affirmation that you are taking deeper or going a little bit deeper with and exploring what that actually means to you. Journal prompts are a wonderful way to get started with journaling. Also, if you feel like sitting down with a blank piece of paper is a little bit too intimidating. If you've got a prompt to help you begin to explore it makes it a little bit easier sometimes. And that then turns into stream of consciousness, journaling, which is also a beautiful thing. And you know, all of these journaling types, they kind of bleed into each other, which is. A beautiful, beautiful thing. But if you start with the intention of doing one and it turns into something else, that's okay. Some examples of journal prompts, which I will include in the handout for this episode. Could be things like what positive thing is trying to come from this? Or what is my physical body telling me about this problem or issue? What do I really want? What do I most need right now?" Those are all questions that I regularly use to get the conversation going in my mind between whether it's my inner child and my adult self or my inner protector and my inner guidance. It's just all things to get your mind going. One of the things that journal prompts is also really helpful for is getting in touch with your inner child, as I mentioned. And the way to do this is to use nondominant hand journaling. So you would write the question in your dominant hand, that's kind of your adult self hand. But then with your non-dominant hand, you write the response as sloppy and as messy as it is. It's almost like it's your mind's way of letting your inner child be the one who is responding and eventually with time, believe it or not, your non-dominant handwriting does improve. And it begins to kind of grow up, which is kind of a cool thing. Journal prompts are a great way to simply get started with journaling and to begin to get unstuck. I mentioned affirmations when I was talking about journal prompts. And this is another type of journaling that I use pretty regularly. It's affirmation journaling. A couple of ways of doing this. The first and simplest way would be to just. Take the affirmations that you're working with, whatever they may be. And if you need ideas on those, check out my Instagram page. Scroll back quite a bit. I used to post them weekly. And just begin working with those affirmations by writing them down line after line. Repeatedly. Something about writing them repeatedly. It's kind of like in the old, old days, whatever, if somebody was got doing something in school and they had to go up and write it on the board so many times it's kind of the same thought process behind that. But. Just a reminder, the affirmation is a positive statement of what you want to be embodying in your life or living in your life at that moment. So it's stated in the present moment, not in the future. Not as I hope this will happen. It is stated right now in the present moment. So one that you could use is"I am calm and relaxed. My mind is at peace." And you would write that over and over time and time again. Just allowing it to soak into your mind. You might also take that same affirmation. And as I said, a moment ago in journal prompts, you might begin to break that affirmation down and kind of disassemble it and consider what that actually means to you and what that might look like in your life. What it might look like, what it might sound like, what it might feel like in your life. Affirmation journaling is a simple way to begin journaling because you're literally just taking a sentence and writing it over and over again. And affirmation of something that you want to be living in your life. And believing in your life and it might be more than one sentence and those sentences might shift and morph as you journal with them. Allow that flow to take place. And the last two types of journaling that I'm going to mention are both types of journaling, that invite reflection. The first one is gratitude journaling or keeping a blessings journal. This is something I started to do long ago. And it's really pretty simple at the end of the day or at the beginning, if you choose. You reflect back on what blessings you notice throughout your day. These could be simple things, or these could be big complex things. Remember that anything in life can be. A blessing. I recommend choosing one to three things and simply listing them out in the beginning. If you feel called to journal deeper on what one of those bullet points. Or blessings is then you have that opportunity to do that. It invites your mind to go deeper with any of the blessings that you might recall or write down. I keep a completely separate blessings journal and no other writing goes in that journal, except my blessings. Then I can easily look back from past years and see and recall what my blessings are because I keep them pretty short. Sometimes, like I said, I journal further on them, but still it's not pages upon pages of what that blessing is about. It's just little reminders of this actually happened. And this is why this is a blessing for me today. And then finally the last type of journaling that I find helpful in getting unstuck is reflection journaling. This is where you sit down and reflect on what's gone well or what you need guidance on, what prayers you have. Uh, it's the reflection on life stuff, your challenges, your successes, or what needs to change. This type of journaling is good to do. Not only at the end of the year before you start a new year. But it's also great to do at the end of each project that you do or event that you host. I try to do this type of journaling after I host events, workshops classes. Um, because it just allows my mind to bring some closure to an event. And that's kind of the same thing with blessings or gratitude journaling as well. It brings closure in your mind to something. When I do blessings journaling at the end of the day, it brings closure to the end of the day and helps me to give thanks for those blessings in my life. Reflection journaling is much the same. You could do it at the end of the day. You could do it at the end of the month. You can do it at the end of the quarter, whatever it may be. It's just allowing yourself to bring closure to something. So that you can set intentions for the upcoming cycle. Reflections are typically done in the fourth phase of the energetic rhythm cycle or the life cycle of anything. It's kind of the way that we end things. We celebrate. We harvest, we draw in, we reflect. So that the very next phase of the cycle, you can begin to set intentions. Those are the seven types of journaling. Check out the handout that I have created and included in this episode so that you can use it if you need a little help with getting started with journaling. Sometimes we don't always know what to write about as I've mentioned. And if you have a handout that tells you, oh, you could do this type of journaling or this type of journaling, it might just give you some inspiration and get your mind going with how that could be helpful. Following a journaling session, you might feel lighter or more free, or you might have a dip in mood for a short time after, depending on what you were journaling about. Either way, it usually helps relieve some strain or stuck feelings or energy that may have been living inside of you so that you can indeed see the bigger picture. If you're journaling about something that you want to let go of, it might be helpful to burn, throw out or shred, whatever it is you wrote, giving it more, a sense of finality and release from yourself. And this is something that I always encourage clients to do when they're doing a, their monthly releasing ritual or considering what they want to let go of. To write it on a little piece of paper and then burn it and get rid of it. Something about that process just helps release it from your energy. Here's some things to remember as we wrap up today. It doesn't matter what you write about. No one else is going to be reading or judging it. Start with something simple, like keeping a blessings journal or writing out affirmations or using one or two journal prompts to get your mind going. And then watch the flow begin to return to your life. As you naturally invite a positive outlook to happen from giving your brain a chance to process, whatever may be causing stress in your mind. I'm Cathy Struecker, and you've been listening to health, harmony, and happiness with Cathy, helping you find and use the rhythms around you in all you do. Cheers to cultivating your own version of health harmony and happiness in your life