The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care [Episode #576]

This week’s topic is: The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care

This is such an important topic. We talk about it from many different angles, but I cannot emphasize enough how this lifestyle is really about promoting our own wholeness. And when we feel our wholeness and tap into the truth of who we really are, it eliminates the need to get more attention or to be seen as special.

When we talk about the cornerstones, it’s about wholeness and is the way to feel your best and to live your best life. And yes, to look your best too is to go wider and to become holistic and to focus your energy into all of the cornerstones instead of taking a deep dive into just one of them, such as food.

The cornerstones are food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. A lot of us tend to go into food and body because it’s so physical and so dense, we see it every day versus the emotional spiritual sides, which are actually as impactful. And as we go along the journey, we will see more impactful on all the things that we want to balance, whether it’s our weight, our skin, hormones or our fertility, it’s all really related. And it is an essential part of self care to really, first of all, embody this and to understand that self care is really about that self love, it’s really about treating ourselves as the whole amazing, complete beings that we already are.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Sandra – Texas

What steps did you take to not obsess so much about food and expand into other areas. If I don’t hyper focus on what I eat I gain weight.

Joanna – FL

Hi Kimberly! I know you love your nature walks and yoga but do you think that weight-lifting and other forms of exercise help with mental clarity too?

Karen – North Dakota 

I really enjoyed your podcast with Kelly Gores about the mind-body connection. Can you share a few doable tips on how to start making this connection? I’d love to add this to my daily ritual.

David – Montana

How to be more open-minded when others don’t eat the way I do? Suggestions?

I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU!

There are lots of ways to share your responses or questions about the podcast:

• Comment below
• Connect on Twitter: @_kimberlysnyder
• Follow the conversation on my Instagram
• Comment on my Facebook Page
• Ask a question: mysolluna.com/askkimberly

Be sure to Subscribe to the Podcast and follow me on Soundcloud, so you never miss an episode!

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE

You may be really intrigued by podcasts, but you may just know how to listen or subscribe. It’s very easy, I promise! To listen to more than one episode, and to have it all in a handier way, on your phone or tablet, it’s way better to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.

The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).

LEAVE A REVIEW ON ITUNES

Listeners really respect the views of other listeners, so your response helps people find good material they are interested in! If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends and give us a rating or review. Many thanks in advance.

Inspirational Thought of the Week

The more whole you become, the less you need to be special.

[RESOURCES]

• SBO Probiotics
• Detoxy
• Digestive Enzymes  
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
• Kimberly Snyder’s Books
• Four Cornerstone FREE Guide: Text the word GUIDE to +1-855-741-0602
• Additional resources in transcript

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• The Importance Of Self-Love and Self-Care Practices
• Self-Care to Support Your Purpose with Vaidya Jay
• Advice For Feeling Your Best – Inside and Out!
• Natural Ways to Protect Against Coronavirus and Practice Self-Care

Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne

Fitbit: Fitbit Sense is the advanced health watch that gives you tools to do just that. It’s the world’s first smartwatch with an EDA sensor that can actually indicate your body’s response to stress. Right now, you get a 6-month trial of Premium when you buy Fitbit Sense. With Mother’s Day coming up, this could be a great gift for Mom—or, in the spirit of self-care, buy it for yourself. Visit Fitbit.com and check it out.

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Hey Beauties. And welcome back to our Thursday Q&A Podcast Show where all the questions from our Thursday show come right from you all, right from our beautiful community. And I absolutely love hearing how I can support you. What you’re wondering about, what is going on. And our topic today is The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care. And this is such an important topic. We talk about it from many different angles, but I cannot emphasize enough how this lifestyle is really about promoting our own wholeness. And when we feel our wholeness, when we finally tap into more and more the truth of who we really are, it eliminates the need to try to get more attention or to be seen as special or to all these different manifestations, which are really just all the iterations of not feeling enough underneath it all, not feeling confident, not feeling like we’re good enough. That we’re pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, all these other things.

Really this conversation when we talk about the cornerstones, it is really about wholeness. And I will say it from the rooftops, I will say it a million times, I will say it till I turn blue in the face, but it’s really about, what I truly believe in my heart is the way to feel your best and to live your best life. And yes, to look your best too is to go wider and to become holistic and to focus your energy into all of the cornerstones instead of taking a deep, deep, deep dive into just one of them, such as food.

The cornerstones are food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. A lot of us tend to go into food and body because it’s so physical and so dense, we see it every day versus the emotional spiritual sides, which are actually as impactful. And as we go along the journey, we will see more impactful on all the things that we want to balance, whether it’s our weight or our skin or hormones or our fertility, it’s all really related. And it is an essential part of self care to really, first of all, embody this and to understand self care is really about that self love, it’s really about treating ourselves as the whole amazing, complete beings that we already are.

As you can probably tell, I’m so excited for our show today. We’re going to take a deep dive, we’re going to talk about all the different aspects of living this lifestyle and of the four cornerstones. Let’s get right into it today otherwise I will keep going and this is not meant to be a solocast today. This is meant to be the community show. I want to hear again, about what is coming right from the hearts of all of you guys.

Question #1 around the topic of: The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care:  What steps did you take to not obsess so much about food and expand into other areas? If I don’t hyper-focus on what I eat, I gain weight.

The first question comes from Sandra who lives in Texas and she writes, “What steps did you take to not obsess so much about food and expand into other areas? If I don’t hyper-focus on what I eat, I gain weight.” Ah, so this is a really amazing starting point. Sandra, thank you so much for your question. I completely understand you. I felt like I was exactly in the same boat as you. And I will say that what was essential for me to really understand in my journey to health and healing and wellness and really mastering, I would say self mastery of food in my body. That’s one area I still am working a lot with my emotions and my feelings and my spiritual practice. My meditations keeps getting stronger and stronger. I think that process continues to unravel and get deeper throughout our lifetime. But I am really connected to myself in a way that I wasn’t a few years ago, but that gets deeper.

But the self mastery I would say has come in the physical cornerstones with taking care of my body and my diet. And it wasn’t like this in the beginning. I like you, Sandra, was obsessed and I did feel that if I didn’t micromanage my food, I would end up gaining weight, I would get fat, I would get cellulite, I would get flabby, all these different things. I just want to remind you that often the way, the best solution to the problem is not found in the same sphere of consciousness. It’s not found in the same system as the actual problem. We need to go outside. We need to think in a different way. We need to have a different perspective. And so this has been demonstrated in history in many different ways, in many different accounts, in politics, in biological lab experiments where suddenly, we hear this, the researcher decided to try a vastly different experiment and came up with something that he’d been looking for or, drastically changing our communication tactics with certain people, whatever it is, we need to find a different solution away from the problem.

When it comes to food, if we keep going down the same route, which for me was trying to be more efficient with managing calories. I was sneaking in, eating foods and sneaking in ways that would slash calories, like cooking methods that would cut back on calories or using one piece of bread instead of two to cut less carbs or whatever. But all of those mechanisms are still part of the same system. It’s still buying into this idea of calorie counting as the end all be all when it comes to our bodies. For me, Sandra, when I left that system of thinking, that’s when I started to heal. And what I mean by that was I took a wider approach.

You really see a difference between my second book and my third book, my second book was still all about food. I was in that system, The Beauty Detox Foods, I was reading, researching everything was food, food, food and something happened to my brain. Something happened to myself, my level of growth between the second and the third book and Beauty Detox Power came out and it was still emerging, but it was like, oh the deeper parts of ourselves, the emotions and the mental part. And this is profound. This has a huge impact on our bodies and hormones and our digestive system. Then it started to link in my brain. This has a big impact on your weight and you’re not even looking at this stuff, you’re just focusing on your food. That was the beginning of me starting to understand that as whole beings, food is only one component. And for me, the way my brain works, Sandra, I like to see it, to an extent.

I would experiment on my own body, I would read research studies, but I started to see in my own body, the more I let go of obsessing over the numbers, the more I was in the now moment, the less I needed food in general, the less I relied on food to shift my moods, the less I had food cravings and the less rigid I was in an ironic way. Sure, there might’ve been little fluctuations, but I just started being so present that over time, it really just started to heal itself. When I got caught up in it during that period, when I started to fall back into, oh, well let me just track this again. Or maybe I did eat too much. It was sort of three steps forward, one step back kind of thing and I was still in that system and I still had that mentality up until some years ago. Well, I better do two yoga sessions a day because maybe I need to work out more of these calories or whatever it was. I was still in the system of numbers.

But what I found was simultaneously you may feel like you have to keep going with paying attention to food and that’s okay until you’re really ready to drop it. But simultaneously I encourage you, Sandra, to go into your meditation practice, to take a really deep dive, to focus on the other cornerstones, to focus on your emotional well being and your mental health, to notice when you’re comparing yourself, to notice when you’re relying on external people or any form of external validation to give you a sense of your own identity. How much outside of us is dictating how we feel about ourself and just start to notice and start to take steps in the other cornerstones.

Yes, you may be tracking your weight, but for me, my obsession started to wane when I started to understand self massage and getting into a good sleep pattern and doing some stretching before bed, taking digestive enzymes, all the different ways that we honor our body. And then I got really into journaling and I committed to it as part of my emotional wellbeing practice. And that really helped. But what helped me most of all was connecting back in because that being that is your essential essence, who you are underneath doesn’t need to get so caught up in food. She will understand how to take care of herself. She will slip sometimes, she will want more of that chocolate, like we all want, or the french fries or whatever it is. But at the same time, she will start to get a much better sense of her aliveness and of her truth.

And the more we anchor into who we are, who we really are, all this stuff like obsessions with food, obsessions with having more, whether it’s designer purses or friends or whatever it is, it starts to naturally drop away without having to beat it down with a hammer and focus only on it. It starts to just chip away and fall away on its own because we don’t give it all of our power. Instead, we focus our energy into the other areas of who we are and of life. And there’s this incredible regulation process that happens when we do that. I encourage you, Sandra, like I said, take a deep dive in your meditation, practice, check out some of our tools and the other cornerstones, the right supplements. We have sleep information, movement information, yoga information, as far as awesomeness. Free guided meditations over on the Solluna app and journaling exercises.

And we also have our Solluna Circle, which is really our community for supporting each other, especially in the emotional wellbeing space and the spiritual space. We meet every month on Zoom and there’s daily tips and discussion and it’s beautiful and just a real sisterhood. I encourage you to check that out, Sandra, if you’re feeling the urge for that, but in either case, just remind yourself, take a deep breath, be compassionate with yourself, especially around the food, but really it’s more about just breathing and being truly present and going wider with yourself care instead of deeper into food. Just try to just put some of that beautiful energy into the other cornerstones and watch what continues to unfold for you. Thank you, my love, for being part of our community, sending you so much love out there in Texas.

Question #2 around the topic of: The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care: Hi Kimberly. I know you love your nature walks and yoga, but do you think that weightlifting and other forms of exercise help with mental clarity too?

Okay. Our next question comes from Joanna and she lives in Florida. She writes, “Hi Kimberly. I know you love your nature walks and yoga, but do you think that weightlifting and other forms of exercise help with mental clarity too? Oh my gosh. Joanna, thank you so much for your question. I do not think that there is one right way to move your body. If you’re asking this question, Joanna, I think that you probably are drawn to the lifting weights and maybe CrossFit or some kind of endurance or HIIT workout or something like that and I think that is beautiful. I think it’s really about being authentic to your body.

My husband three times a week works out with his trainer and me and the children sometimes go down there in the mornings and it’s hilarious. He does kind of functional fitness. He called it CrossFit, whatever it is. And he has this part where he does the rowing machine and Bubby will run around the circle being like, “Papa’s making the wind, he’s making the wind.” And the baby starts laughing and we all just kind of cheer him on and it just feels beautiful. And for my husband, he just gets out all this stress and you need to lift those big weights and you could feel like it just makes him feel his power and his strength and it’s really great for his mental clarity.

I bring this up, Joanna, to say, if you’re authentically called to a form of exercise, absolutely, truly go with that. I was so into running for a while, especially in college, but it had nothing to do with feeling the runner’s high or just feeling my body, if I’m being totally honest as I am now, because it doesn’t matter. There’s no reason not to be, it’s years later. The only reason I really ran was to burn calories and to stay thin. I didn’t love running. I felt like I was pounding my knees. I felt like I had to really work up the motivation. Sure, when I was done with a long run I’d be like, I did it, but it was more excitement that I didn’t have to run anymore. I didn’t like it. Underneath it authentically, it wasn’t serving me as far as making me feel good. I was doing it for one very narrow, specific purpose.

Now, as you mentioned, Joanna, I love my nature walks. I do them every day. I come in and out of the asanas. For four years now, since I know it clear as day because there was a very clear point where my asana practice dropped off and that’s when my mom passed away. And I felt that I needed to ground my body. Being on the mat, I wasn’t feeling it anymore at that time so I started being barefoot for at least an hour a day and I go to the beach and I walk on the beach and that gave me a lot. I felt the dynamic movement in my body. I started to feel connected again. I was here. Those of us that have been through intense grief, we know that it can be very disorienting. It just feels like confusion and we’re just trying to remake our way in the world, especially without someone that we’re quite close to.

Anyways, authentically I got into these walks and now I live in the mountains and I do them in the mountains every day. And it really, I like to feel dynamic. I like to feel my body moving. I like to feel the sunlight on my skin and the birds chirping and looking at the different trees and the plants. I’m really grateful I live here in California and Southern California there is a huge amount of diversity where I live, which is in the Santa Monica mountains, outside of Los Angeles. It’s very rural where I live and I really, really love my walks and it gives me a lot.

I would encourage you, Joanna and all of you Beauties listening to this, to really be honest with yourself, what feels good in my body? When you could say, “Hey, I do that Peloton bike workout and I feel like a million bucks while I’m doing it, after I do it,” whatever, or I love lifting weights, I feel strength and I feel empowered in my life. Or hey, I just like stretching and doing some walks and I feel really gentle with myself and that feels good. No right answer, no wrong answer. But when it comes to self care and the cornerstones, which is our theme today, it’s really about that checking in. And it’s really about honoring yourself as the most important relationship in your life.

We’re going to have a podcast interview, actually this Monday with Dr. Shefali Tsabary and she talks about this. She talks about being sovereign over yourself and I love that. This idea that we continue to check in day in and day out with ourselves, with our bodies, with our feelings, with our emotions, with how we feel about something, how we feel about a certain situation, how we feel about a certain food, how that food feels in our body. This constant checking in, which is something that most of us aren’t actually used to, but this is really the crux of true self care. It means that we become embodied. We become, there’s no of these like mental chat games, like oh, I really want to eat this, but this diet told me to eat this, but that doesn’t really feel right to me. Huh, do I really need that much protein? Or should I be putting a stick of butter in my coffee? Or whatever it is.

It’s really this checking in over and over again and checking in with our bodies. And when it comes to this specific question, which is about exercise and movement, remember that it’s, we are dynamic and so by nature, our movements will continue to be dynamic and to unfold over time and to shift daily or weekly or seasonally. And that’s okay. And so just keep that checking in process, Joanna. And if it feels great to your mental clarity to do the weightlifting and maybe one day you want to do swimming or whatever it is, go with that, go with it. And the more you follow that, the more the voice of your inner soul and your body will become more and more clear.

Break

All right. I love these questions so far, my loves. I’m going to take a short break and when I get back, I will have two more questions for you all on this important topic of the four cornerstones and self care.

Question #3 around the topic of: The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care: I really enjoyed your podcast with Kelly Gores about the mind body connection. Can you share a few doable tips on how to make this connection? I’d love to add this to my daily ritual.

All right my loves, we are back from our break. We have two more questions for you amazing beauties and we’re going to jump right in. The first one comes from Karen. She lives in North Dakota and she writes, “I really enjoyed your podcast with Kelly Gores about the mind body connection. Can you share a few doable tips on how to make this connection? I’d love to add this to my daily ritual.” This is a really great, I love your question back, Karen. Lots of love to you over there in North Carolina, sorry North Dakota. North Carolina, North Dakota, I was thinking about North Carolina actually this morning, randomly. My mind randomly went there because a good friend of mine lives there. And so I was just thinking about life there right now versus life in California, just how things are different. And I actually do know some people from North Dakota and I know that there’s so much beauty out there in that land. It’s really, there’s some real sacred land, I know there’s a lot of native American history there. Anyways, sending you lots of love Karen to North Dakota.

Back to this question, the mind body connection. You might see that I challenged Kelly in my interview with her about this term. Sometimes I like to challenge these terms, if you guys have noticed that are used every day and I’m like, wait a minute, that doesn’t really mean that. This whole, for instance, you are what you eat. That’s not really true. We are what we digest. You can eat a bunch of food, but if you don’t have the correct digestive enzymes, if you don’t chew well enough or all these different factors, you’re low in hydrochloric acid, all these different things, you’re not actually going to absorb that food. A lot of it will actually pass through your GI tract. We’re what we digest.

And when I started talking The Beauty Detox Solution, I was like, well detoxing isn’t just doing a random cleanse here and there. It’s actually priming your detoxification organs and supporting them so that you’re releasing more of this biological waste and this chemical warfare that our systems are under day in and day out, regularly. And the word beauty I challenged, I’m like, beauty isn’t really about the shape of our features, which is some arbitrary agreement that society comes to every few years because then it keeps shifting and changing. Real beauty is how connected we are to our essence, to our soul that shines out of your eyes, that radiates out like a fire. And that’s the real beauty that people will be drawn to consistently, no matter what size you are, how old you get, that’s the real beauty.

And so, with this question I say, hmm, connection. Even the word connection implies two separate entities that are fused at different juncture points. Imagine you are gluing two chopsticks together. Now they’re connected. You may glue one at the top and the bottom so those are the connection points. what I don’t like about this term mind body connection is it implies that the body and the mind are separate in the first place and that they’re connected at different places. To me, they’re not really connected. They’re one loophole system. And the more I go along, the more I a 100,000% really believe this. This is fundamental teaching in Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, all these ancient practices is you can’t really divorce one or the other from the other.

But I really liked interning at the Aryuvedic Clinic with Vijajay, I would sit in on the client meetings and he would always ask, take the pulse of a patient, look at their tongue, ask basic questions. And then he would ask about mental health and stress and what was going on. And there would be herbs, there would be lifestyle prescriptions and there would often be a mantra or a chant that would go with his protocols. To me, it’s really treating that person with the wholeness that they are. It was embodying the cornerstones into each and every single client patient meeting that he was having with them. And so I will say that first of all, to me, it’s stepping back and saying, “It’s not just connected, but it’s all intertwined.” And really understanding this is the part where at a certain point, I think we’re all going to cross over into understanding this.

And it’s okay, wherever you are in your journey. I wasn’t there for a long time, but I can say after all these years in self work, I have crossed over into understanding that the emotional and spiritual cornerstones are, I’ll say it. I’ll say it, okay? They’re more important than the food and the body ones. They’re all important and sometimes in the journey, we need to focus more on one or the other. But as we go along, we realize that our reality is really shaped by our thoughts. Our reality shapes the reasons that we struggle with food choices, the reasons that we see a situation as stressful, reactive and we get riled up. Our emotion, and that affects our hormones. It depletes us, it ages us. It affects our ability to conceive healthily. Top of mind for me, because I’m finally wrapping up our pregnancy course. It’s coming guys, it’s coming.

Really caring I would say to step back and to understand really on a fundamental level that everything is completely intertwined. And to honor that and it’s not just some woo woo concept or this nice thing we say, the mind and body are connected, but actually to start seeing ourselves beyond that. Beyond just the mind or the body’s different parts, but to see the overarching wholeness that we are. Karen is this essence. She has a body. She eats. She has a mind. And she has this essence, this unchangeable part of Karen.

Doable tips on how to start making this connection, I think it’s important to check in with your body regularly because your body will give you information about your emotions and your feelings and it will be the pathway to healing a lot of those triggers and deep, deep patterns that we all have. What I recommend is in the morning, and you can do this throughout the day, you follow our morning practice. Which is hot water with lemon, GGS, Solluna SBO probiotics, meditation and journaling. You can do them in different order. I meditate first, usually and I journal sometimes after or a little bit later, but I always journal.

And at that point, you can do this practice of checking in with your body. And it’s going to feel a little funny at first, but what you do is you sit, you can do it different ways, but this is what I do. I sit and it could happen instantly. It could happen over a few moments. I just do a scan from the top of my head to the bottom and I notice when I’m holding onto, what I’m feeling. Whether it’s tightness in my shoulders or in my chest, I notice if I’m holding onto anything from the day before and I just start to feel into my body. And I just start, I breathe into that spot until I start to create more circulation and lightness in that spot.
And what this does is it starts to really, you start to understand that your body has information, that your mind, your thinking mind can’t really give you really, really wise valuable information about holding, about patterns, about letting go, about vitality. The more you just start to check in with your body and it’s important to do this as well if you get a food craving or if somebody says something to your face or in social media that you don’t really like or you see an image on social media that jars you in some way or you’re like, ugh. For whatever it is, you can just sit close your eyes, do that scan again and just really feel what it’s brought up into your body.

And this is just a practice. I’m going to leave you with that one, Karen, because it’s, it’s pretty simple and it’s pretty doable. And at first you might be like, mmm, didn’t get much there. Uh, it’s always the same kind of feeling in my heart or my stomach, but I promise you, the more you keep going back into your body for information, you will start to have a much deeper sense of depth and understanding about your mind and your feelings and your patterns and you will start to regulate your experience. You will start to regulate your day and what you’ve put energy into and you will start to regulate, oh, my mind was telling me all these fears or these lies or I felt fearful so I wanted to say yes to this situation, even though I didn’t want to go to that event or whatever it is, you will start to, into it better what is best for you as a whole individual, Karen, the more you keep checking in with your body.

Like I said, really quick and simple. You can meditate. You go up into the astral, go into your third eye. Again, we have led meditations over on the app. Just the Solluna by Kimberly Snyder app in the App Store or over at mysolluna.com. And then besides that, I want you to just feel your body and just scan it. Look around, feel into it and then pause in the areas that feel tight or notice what happens to make your breath get fast. Notice what happens when you get a clenched feeling in your belly or wherever it is. Just breathe. Breathe and then afterwards you can go back until logical, rational thinking mind, okay, I need to do this. Or oh, that was silly that that got me again. That’s not really anything to be upset about.

But sit in your body first and just start to notice all the wisdom that your body has to give you. When I started doing this, Karen, is when I really started to integrate the four cornerstones as far as oh, these in the past would have been situations that would have really knocked me off my diet. I would have felt not great. I would have gone in the kitchen, I would have eaten a bunch of stuff I didn’t feel good about, like a whole container of coconut ice cream. Or yes, the pretzels perpetually seem to be in rotation or whatever. Ate a whole loaf of sourdough bread, which I did, not a whole loaf, but I had half a loaf not so long ago and I didn’t really feel that great afterwards.

That does happen and sometimes it happens and I don’t beat myself up so much about it, but when I start to really feel my body and the messages it gives me because our mind can trip us up so much and make us feel that we’re justified in a certain thing, or oh, we deserve this treat. Or, hey, that person wronged me. Shouldn’t dah, dah, dah. We bypass all that when we just go into the body and we just start to feel and process and we become the masters of ourself and that’s a really powerful place to come from. We’ll continue to talk more and more about this topic. This is a big one. We also address this a lot in the Circle, just real body awareness. And we do practices there. If you’re interested in the Solluna Circle, as I mentioned earlier, that’s also on the app, Karen. Thank you so much for your question, my love. Sending you lots and lots of love.

Question #4 around the topic of: The Four Cornerstones and Self-Care: How do you be more open minded when others don’t eat the way I do, suggestions.

All right. The next question comes from David and he lives in Montana and he writes, “How do you be more open minded when others don’t eat the way I do, suggestions.” I love this question, David, this again fits in so well with our four cornerstones for self care. I want you to step back for a moment, David, and I want you to ask yourself, why does it bother you if someone doesn’t believe in the way that you eat? Or they don’t believe in your rationale? Are they eat completely different? Just sit with that for a moment. Why does that bother me? Why does it bother me?

It used to bother me too. And when I started digging down underneath the surface, first it’d be like, okay, well of course, family members and people around, we want them to be healthy and we want them to live long, healthy lives and we have a vested interest in keeping them around. Put that aside for a moment. Let’s just say, it’s like somebody, outer circles or friends or acquaintances or even loved ones, whatever it is. What I started to find when I really sat with myself and I started digging deeper and deeper beneath the surface was it means, this is the story I was telling myself it meant. If someone doesn’t eat the way I eat, it means they don’t agree with me. And if they don’t agree with me, it means that they’re not really listening to me or they’re not getting it. All this information, all these stories like how can they not see it?

And then it would keep trickling down to, oh, well maybe they don’t think I’m worth listening to. Maybe they don’t think I’m smart. Or sometimes it’d be judgment. Oh, well, this person isn’t educated. Maybe this person doesn’t know that much. Maybe this person hasn’t watched that documentary, whatever it is. And at the end of the day, David, what our job is, is to be the sovereign masters of ourselves and to progress towards the highest growth human that we can be. And part of that means we let people be where they are and we are where we are. And we light up where we are and we lead by example, yes. But moreover, the more whole we are, the less we care what other people are doing in the first place. We may want to, okay, here’s some information about this. And maybe this is interesting for you, but we don’t feel attachment to it. Anytime we feel that, ooh, that clinginess of I want you to see it my way, that’s control at play and that is attachment.

And so we don’t want to get caught up in that attachment because attachment is a losing game. Ultimately, everybody has free will, us included and everybody else. And if we try to really put our control on someone’s free will, they’re just not going to react the way we want them to. They’re not going to do it because it’s not where they are yet. So part of this self care and really finding the balance with the four cornerstones is pulling back your energy. David, I can tell, even by your question, you’re probably using a lot of energy and trying to convince people or biting your tongue and being annoyed that they’re not eating the way you’re eating. So I encourage you to pull that energy back into your sovereign self. And to remember you are responsible for yourself, food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth, you’re not responsible for anyone else.

And so what you do in those moments in that you feel they’re judging us or the anger or whatever it is, the annoyance, is just pull it back in, remind yourself that everybody is equal in their ability to choose what feels right to them in their present reality, and their present state of consciousness, wherever they are. And to bring softness and love and compassion to everybody, including to yourself in that situation and to meditate. Because again, of all the cornerstones, the fourth one, spiritual growth. The more we feel connected to ourselves, the less we care so much about the external world. The external world is moving. It’s going to come and go. People are where they are. And if we constantly get annoyed by what’s going on outside of us, then we do not have a real hold on inner peace and inner peace is something that we want to grow, and honor and maintain.

And so it just means every time this comes up and you’re looking out, we’re like, why are they eating this way? They’re not eating like me, call your energy back in, pull it in, pull it into yourself and keep yourself focused on yourself and your highest self. And on your wholeness and nurture that. And by virtue of you showing up so whole and powerful in the world, maybe people will be interested in knowing what you’re doing. And maybe some of them may eat the way that you eat. And maybe they don’t. And either way that’s okay too. But I can promise you this, the more that you focus on the cornerstones and the more you do your work, the less you will care what other people are doing. And I can say that from personal experience and it is liberating and it is amazing. And it is a huge, huge way to really feel free.

Thought of the Week

All right, my loves. I absolutely loved all of your questions today on this topic. Four cornerstones for true self care. I want to leave you with one quote of the week. It is the more whole you become the less you need to be special. Huh? So I wanted to throw this in because self care is really to me about honoring this amazing essence inside of you. And in the beginning, when we are on our life journey, when we are not connected, fully connecting to this essence, sometimes we want to be shiny and pretty and special and have people notice us. But ultimately all those behaviors are about behaviors and that’s okay. Listen, I like it when people read my books and we like it when people say we’re cute or whatever, but ultimately self care is nurturing ourselves back to wholeness.

And when we get to that place of true wholeness, we don’t need to try to be special because we know that we are already. And everybody is special already. So we’re ordinary and we’re extraordinary at the same time. And so what drops away is the constant running around trying to earn the seen-ness, the special-ness. We just be ourselves, we embody it and we step into our true power. So I’ll leave it with you again. The more whole you become, the less you need to be “special.” You are already whole, and therefore you are already special and completely unique.

All right, my loves, I’ll leave you with that one. I love you so much. We will be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. We have a really good one coming up for you next week. As always, check out our resources over at mysolluna.com, our hub for all things, [inaudible] where you can also leave future questions for Q&A podcasts in the future. All our community shows over there. There’s a link. And also please check out our Solluna by Kimberly Snyder app, which is amazing. We just launched it a few months ago and I absolutely love it. I love the chats in there. There’s a membership chat for the Solluna Circle, and then there is a public chat or a general chat as well that you’ll see. Also, the meditations, the recipes, everything is easy to find on the app. So sending you so much love my beauties. I will see you soon. Till then take great care. And again, so much love.