Why Being Present Matters [Episode #444]

This week’s topic is: Why Being Present Matters

Everything affects everything else. This idea of presence and mindfulness, you may associate it with the spiritual aspect of life and our fourth cornerstone. It can actually affect your digestion, your relationships, your health, your immunity and your overall wellbeing.

It’s really interesting when we connect the dots between the different parts of our lives and start to see how interconnected everything is. Like a big root system which gives us a lot of power.

It is very empowering to understand how some of these root issues that we sometimes brush to the side are very impactful and could be a very important key to feeling better, looking your very best and experiencing your best life.

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]

Sancha – United Kingdom

I work with vulnerable children, many of whom have huge social and emotional difficulties. I love my job but as somebody whose very sensitive to energy, I find it difficult to maintain my own around the children and often bring a lot of heaviness negativity home with me. I wonder how can I maintain my own positivity when I’m with them? Or is there a way that I can detach from the energy of the day when I leave?

Sarah – Texas

Every day goes by and I feel like I am not enjoying anything. My mind is often two steps ahead or two steps behind. I go to bed and wake up anxious and it is really affecting my marriage and my personal peace. How can I feel joy with where I am at?

Trish – Kentucky

I can’t stop thinking about my boyfriend’s actions when he’s not with me and it’s affecting my work because I can’t focus. I feel like I’ve been programmed to depend on his every move and just want to be free of this feeling.

Bethany – Florida

I read somewhere that whenever you bite your lip, trip, or other random incidents like this, that “you’re not where you’re at”. As in, you’re not living in the present moment because your mind is elsewhere. What are your thoughts on this?

Inspirational Thought Of The Week

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”  – Eckhart Tolle

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[RESOURCES]

• How to Trick Your Brain with Your Body
• Embracing Change and Finding the Sunrise at the End of it
• Our Body’s Various Elimination Channels, and How to Support Them
• Tap Into The True Power Of Affirmations (Video Tip)
• 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 Cornerstones FREE PDF: Text the word: feelgood (833) 744-0079
• Additional resources in transcript

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• The Tapping Solution With Jessica Ortner & The Amazing Power of Affirmations!
• On Air With Ella & Tips To Boost Your Mood!
• How Meditation Can Improve Performance at Work!
• Combating Stress With Dr. Emily Kiberd & Heavy Metal Detoxification!

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.

Kimberly: Hey Beauties welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast where our topic today is why being present matters. And as we talk about so much on our show, everything affects everything else. So this idea of presence and mindfulness, you may associate very much with the spiritual aspect of life and our fourth cornerstone. But as we’ll get into today, it can actually affect your digestion, very much affects your relationships, your health, your immunity, your wellbeing overall. So I find it really interesting when we start to connect the dots between all the different parts of our lives and we just start to see how interconnected everything is. Like a big root system which gives us a lot of power. It’s very empowering to understand how some of these root issues or things that we sometimes brush to the side are very impactful and could be a very important tool or a key and you feeling better or feeling looking at your very best, just experiencing your best life.

Leave a Review and Subscribe on Itunes

Kimberly: So I love this topic and I think we’ve got some really awesome questions from our amazing community as always, before we dive in, my little shout out to please leave us a review on iTunes. It’s such a great way to support the show you guys. So please take a moment or two out of your day. It could be one sentence and leave us a review. And what it does is it just helps to support the show energetically, which we love to put out. We put a lot of time and energy of course, and keeping it consistent. So it’s a great way to support and help other beauties like yourself, find this information.

Kimberly: And then if you could also subscribe, that would be wonderful for you as a self-care practice, as a way to consistently get positive, uplifting, hopefully very inspiring information that’s practical. But at the same time there’s an energy to it and staying connected to us and the community, which I think can help really keep you on track and it’s just a great support system that we want to offer you. So all that being said, we have our beautiful Katelyn, beautiful soul. She is our general manager of Solluna. She is out there in I think pretty cold New York right now. We are on opposite coasts. Hope you’re bundled up, Kay, drinking some tea while we do this podcast. How are you love?

Katelyn: I’m doing awesome. Yes it is a little bit chilly but it has been unseasonably warm so can’t complain too much this winter so far. But I am nestled in my blanket and my nice cup of ginger tea. Ready to dive into these questions with you guys today.

Kimberly: Yeah. This idea about being present is something that I think we all should, it’s a wonderful thing to focus on because everything I’ve ever learned about The Power of Now, quoting Eckhart Tolle and all the yogis and all the teachers in quantum physics and the scientists. Just talks about our perspective of time and the past and the future aren’t really here. And so the more we are anchored in the now, the more we benefit from a health perspective, from a stress perspective, we can help dissolve worry. We can just feel a lot better. Now it’s a lot of times it’s easier said than done, so we’ll go into some tips and strategies about it today. But again, I think it’s a really important aspect of wellness to pay attention to for sure.

Question 1: I work with vulnerable children, many of whom have huge social and emotional difficulties. I love my job, but as somebody who’s very sensitive to energy, I find it difficult to maintain my own around the children and often bring a lot of heaviness and negativity home with me. I wonder how I can maintain my own positivity when I’m with them or is there a way I can detach from the energy of the day when I leave?

Katelyn: 100% a lot of times we go, even right now, you might be listening to this podcast, but you’re thinking about what you have to do at work or going to the gym or have a fight with your boyfriend or lingering on the past. “Oh, I wish it was the weekend.” It’s things like that. So I agree. I’m just kind of diving in and making presence of practice, which we’ll see what answers you have. We’ll dive into our first question from Sanchia and she’s in the UK. “I work with vulnerable children, many of whom have huge social and emotional difficulties. I love my job, but as somebody who’s very sensitive to energy, I find it difficult to maintain my own around the children and often bring a lot of heaviness and negativity home with me. I wonder how I can maintain my own positivity when I’m with them or is there a way I can detach from the energy of the day when I leave?”

Kimberly: Sanchia, thank you so much for your question and thank you for the beautiful work that you’re doing in the world. I can imagine that working with vulnerable children is rewarding but also has a heart tugging, sometimes heaviness as you put it to it, when you see what these little angels have been through at such a young age. So I just want to acknowledge first of all your work and the fact that you give so much energy and love. So thank you. Now back to your question, it sounds like you are an empath and you are very sensitive to other people’s energy. I totally understand this. I am an empath as well. I consider myself an empath and when I would work with certain clients and there were times where I would live with clients or really be around them a lot, I feel like I too would absorb a lot of heaviness and bring it home.

Kimberly: And it was until I really learned to work with energy. I felt like it really affected me and I started to get fatigued. Now I wouldn’t say it was chronic fatigue, but it was just like a sleepiness. And I found this was the time where I started to actually overeat at night. This is just a few years ago and I wasn’t gaining tons and tons of weight, but I definitely put on some more weight and I feel like I was trying to insulate my energy and my feelings through food. So I wasn’t dealing with it in the healthiest way at first. So what I say about this is what I started to do and I used to do this when I would teach yoga as well is when I leave people or situations and I give them my all, and it sounds like you give your all is I cut cords.

Kimberly: So we say that especially quantum physics shows this, that everything is pulsating energy and there’s intention and there’s an actual reality to everything that we do. So when I say cut chords, I actually physically do it with my arms and I imagine it energetically happening. And I do it in front of my stomach and I actually do it behind in the back at my lower back, which is where some energy healers says, where a lot of energy attaches. So I just send love and I say, “Okay, see you next time. I’m not taking any of your stuff. You keep your stuff, I’ll be with me. It’s all good. I’m cutting this energy right now.” And then I just imagine all the energetic cords, which I imagine is literally like cords, white light, whatever you want to imagine it as and then I cut them and I could feel this like severance and I do it like I said in the front, in the back.

Kimberly: So you could do it once you get in your car from your job or right when you walk out the door and just have that emotional, very conscious intentional way of saying, “Okay, I’m leaving my work here and when I go home it’s going to be different.” I’m going to not have this energy like this is here and that’s there. Then when you go home right away you can take a shower and this was a way I would also cleanse my energy and I would also imagine besides cutting the cords that there is white light coming down from the showers and just water, but it was kind of sloughing off all the little energy attachments as well as stress from the day, everything was just coming off me and going down the drain and getting recycled. So it was just coming off little attachments, little hooks, cords, whatever it was, was coming off my body.

Kimberly: And I would just feel refreshed when I got out of the shower. I would feel just kind of energetically clean. And it also is just a great way to get the day off you and then you can hopefully be in a different energy in a different state when you’re with your kids, when you’re with your family, when you’re home. I also think it’s powerful to change your clothes, to take your shoes off before you get in your house, kind of to leave the day away. So you’re just surrounding yourself with a very different environment. And that includes, again, showering, changing. Make yourself a cup of hot tea, get back into your body, something warm is going to feel really grounding. A ginger tea would be wonderful just to feel the power of your circulation in your body and connect with that.

Kimberly: So I also had an interesting conversation at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago or I guess over a month ago now with Dr. Bernard Beckwith, Michael Bernard Beckwith the Reverend who is in The Secret and he has some wonderful books and we talked about this idea about being energetically sensitive. And he said at first you start out and you protect and you put yourself in a white bubble and you do all these things. He’s like, but as you go on, you just strengthen your own energy so much with meditation, with just amplifying up your own energy through breathing practices, pranayama that you get to the point where other people’s energy starts to affect you less and less.

Kimberly: And that has also been part of my personal experience where in the beginning, like I said, I would just feel so trained being around other people to the point where I couldn’t be around other people that much and I cut out a lot of client work. And I’ve maintained and amplified my own spiritual practice and done the breathing and the meditation twice a day and grounded a lot. My energy and I’m outside a lot. And of course here in our community we eat a lot of earthy foods and foods grown in the earth, which I think is grounding.

Kimberly: So I do find myself less energetically sensitive to other people because my energy is so strong, think about vibration. Think about again, physics, when your energy is really strong, you become the one that’s conducting the energy more than receiving it. So when you shake someone’s hand, you can pass on higher vibration if you’re coming from stronger energy. So I think those practical tools that I mentioned, Sanchei will hopefully help you, especially just emotionally, mentally go into a different state. So you can be really present with your children and your family, but I would also say to work on the meditations and we have free ones, we offer you over at mysolluna.com. Work on your own energy so you strengthen yourself in any situation.

Katelyn: Yes, and we’ll link to where you can get those meditations into the show notes or you can head over to mysolluna.com and check them out there as well.

Kimberly: Thank you, Kay.

Katelyn: Yes, always good to share where the resources are because not everybody knows and may have not heard that we have our website and we’re at mysolluna as well as the podcast. If you’re new to listening, we have so much to offer way beyond this podcast over on mysolluna.com from recipes to vlogs on health topics and so much more. So definitely check it out if you haven’t head over there and sign up for our newsletter as well to not miss out on our weekly communications.

Kimberly: Awesome, Kay.

Question 2: Every day goes by and I feel like I’m not enjoying anything. My mind is often two steps ahead or two steps behind. I go to bed and wake up anxious and it’s really affecting my marriage and my personal peace. How can I feel joy with where I am at?

Katelyn: Yeah, of course. All right. Let’s see what Sarah from Texas is thinking. “Every day goes by and I feel like I’m not enjoying anything. My mind is often two steps ahead or two steps behind. I go to bed and wake up anxious and it’s really affecting my marriage and my personal peace. How can I feel joy with where I am at?”

Kimberly: Sarah, thank you so much for your question, beauty, and I sent you a big hug over in Texas. I wonder what city you’re in. I’ve probably spent the most time in Houston and Dallas, but of course I’ve been to Austin and San Antonio and other places, but just a vibrant part of the world of course. Very passionate people. So sending you a big hug over there. And back to your question. This goes back to what we were initially talking about, about being in the past or the present and when we’re in the past we’re usually over-analyzing, which means, “Oh, I should’ve done this stuff or I should’ve done this better.”

Kimberly: And over analyzing often leads to guilt and shame. “I didn’t do this well enough or again, I should have done more.” And we know that guilt and shame are very negative, low energy vibrations. And then if we’re projecting into the future, which isn’t here yet, we go the other way. We say, “Oh well what if this happens?” And it’s all the what if scenarios and this could happen and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then we live in an energy field of anxiety where we are basically drowning in all the thoughts of potentiality that aren’t here. So it’s a recipe for, as you said, Sarah, not really enjoying our life because we can only enjoy things in the now. And when we’re in the now and we’re truly in the now, it means that we’re in the present, we’re in our bodies, so we’re having an embodied experience. We’re actually experiencing the taste of the food, the smell of the flowers, the joy of being in a conversation with someone or where we are just simply feeling air on your skin.

Kimberly: And when we really dial into the present moment, it’s amazing how we don’t need that much to be happy, has been my experience. I’ve stripped back a lot in my life and simplified a lot so that I can be more present. And I used to shop a lot more. I used to spend a lot more money on clothes. It used to be a bigger deal to me to eat out more and just do more stuff, I think. I was always like, “Oh, what am I going to do?” Let me fulfill my plans and I just find that now I don’t need that much. And I know if I can get there and then you can get there, Sarah, we can all get there because we all have that ability, I think to strip back into this moment.

Kimberly: Now it doesn’t mean it’s easy. There’s easy and there’s simple and to get there we need to develop a practice. This is what the yogis have always taught. This idea of a practice, dinacharya ideally practice means as human beings that consistency and that work is what gets us to where we want to be. We can’t just turn on the switch. Our society’s very much magic button, magic pill. Here’s the answer. This one thing, and it really is about a developing a practice, Sarah. So the morning routine that we talk about is a very powerful practice because even the days where you find yourself dragging yourself out of bed or you don’t feel in your highest energy, when you do your practice day in and day out, it starts to put you in a flow.

Kimberly: And if you started doing it automatically. It will shift your energy and it know that you’re getting into a routine that is positive and beneficial and it can really start to change your mindset, your emotions, your energy, your physicality. And it’s very powerful. Now this is something that’s talked about in yoga and is a huge part of aryuveda. Aryuveda is so much about self-care and pretty much everything in aryuveda that you’re meant to do is practices. So it’s not something I just do once here and there. It’s continual. And this is what I’ve been talking about since the beauty detox solution. This idea that how you eat most of the time is going to dictate how you look and how you feel. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about okay once in a while I’m going to do a big cleanse, but it’s how are we eating day in and day out.

Kimberly: And then from when that book was written, which was back in 2011 I’ve expanded it so much into our four cornerstones, which is where I want to go with you, Sarah. I want you to think about what practices can you do to nurture yourself to feel that joy across your life. So again, our cornerstones for true beauty, our food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. So let me give you an example with the morning routine that I recommend to put you in that flow. Number one, you wake up, you drink hot water with lemon, you drink room temperature, water. When you start to get hungry, you drink a glowing green smoothie. So we’ve covered the food part and you’re already starting to nurture yourself, nourish yourself, and nurture yourself and give yourself a ton of vitamins and a ton of fiber, which is great for gut health.

Kimberly: Oh, and also take your SBO probiotics. So some of them they sort of fall into body. So you’re taking something that’s nurturing your body health. Now we don’t recommend a ton of supplements, but that’s the one I do recommend across the board. Now you can go in the bathroom, wash your face, use good skincare products. We of course have our feel good skincare products, which are nontoxic, high-performance, just prepare a little bit. There’s a waking up process, I think in putting water on your face. And then if you can carve out and plan your morning to carve out an extra, even if it’s 10 minutes, five, 10 minutes, go into your spot. For me is just on my bed at this point, and breathe and meditate. You can do one of our free guided meditations or any other one, get into your body and get into the moment, into the present moment before you get on social media, before you get into work, before you get into whatever with your husband, have that time for yourself and get into your body.

Kimberly: And then if you have another moment or two or five, do a little bit of journaling. I think about, I write down, I start off by writing what I’m grateful for, which is also a great way to bring positivity and joy and energy to this moment. It could be little things like, I’m so grateful I have running water to wash my face and I’m so grateful for this warm bed. So just bring in the gratitude and then I think about my intentions for the day. Or you can reflect, you can write how you’re feeling. Just a little bit of free form writing I think is for the emotional cornerstone, really positive. So this whole little routine you’re wrapped up, could take as little as 10, 15 minutes. But again that’s a solid practice, Sarah to get into. And these practices you could do an evening routine.

Kimberly: We have a lot of information on more on that on the site. You could have little mini routines throughout the day, but I find we all need anchors and touch points and it’s easy to get in our head and it’s really easy to get mired in the past or the present. But the practices consistently, again at least in the morning, but hopefully during the day and at the end of the day don’t have to be long. But it could be like some inspirational reading you do in the middle of the day or a lunch or a nature walk you do from the park for 10 minutes just to get some fresh air and at the end of the day an elixir, you make yourself a little meditation. These are what keep us grounded and more in the present because what happens is that if we don’t do practices, we just get swept up in the media and social media and the emails and the conversations and we can lose ourselves.

Katelyn: 100% and I definitely understand where you’re coming from. Sarah, anybody else who’s listening that has that anxiousness in them. I definitely have struggled with that personally with my perfectionism and never feeling like I get enough done in the day. And just one tip I’ll add on from what Kimberly was saying is with going to bed, when we’ve talked about this before, is writing, I write things down. So if I feel like I was hanging out with my fiancé the other night and he’s like, “What’s wrong with you?” And I’m like, “I just can’t relax. There’s so much going on, I have so much to do.”

Katelyn: And he’s like, “Well you should be done for the day.” And I’m like, “No.” And so I went in the bedroom and I just took out my journal and I just wrote down everything that was in my head, all the thoughts that kept braiding me and I wrote them down and I was like closed it and I was like, “First thing tomorrow I have my priority lesson, just pick it up tomorrow.” Because I already felt burnt out for the day and that helped me a lot.

Katelyn: Where this allows me to know I have it written down, I’m going to get it done, but it’s just not going to happen in this moment. So I think when you have those anxious feelings, whether you’re trying to go to sleep or when you wake up, I would feel like, “Oh my day’s already off track.” You’re not in a good mood. As Kimberly mentioned, I started incorporating like getting up an hour earlier and then you don’t have that pressure. As you said it is nice to have time to wash your face, write in your journal, take your supplements. I started a ritual and then it makes me feel more grounded versus like I would just get up and be right on my phone and that does create a little bit more chaos. So just from a personal stand point, I wanted to add that on for you Sarah and beauties that are listening that you can implement these changes if I can. And Kimberly has and it’s just making it a priority.

Kimberly: Thank you for sharing that, Kay and that practice of dumping before you go to bed because I think that helps sleep and when we sleep too, we feel so much better. And I think the more you pause and you look at your feelings like that and you have them written down, it helps you start to separate from them, right? Because then you can take a step back and evaluate and be like, “Oh there’s my mind going again.” And you’re not so entwined with them. Or at least that’s my experience when I can kind of look at them and I’m like, “Wow. Yeah, I’m really obsessing again.”

Kimberly: Because our mind doesn’t get feedback on itself all the time. That’s what I learned from doing the neurofeedback. Our brain has feedback loops for our nervous system and our circulation and all the organs in our body we get feedback, oh like make the body warmer or create more red blood cells or whatever. But the brain doesn’t really get feedback on itself so we have to carve that out. Which is why Kay, like you said, I think journaling can be such a powerful practice.

Katelyn: It’s a free space. Sometimes when we text a friend or we’re doing these dumps like you might feel a certain way or I overshared like the journal is just like a safe place you could really say anything or write anything and it’s just for you and your own release, which feels good.

Kimberly: Love, love. Thank you, Kay.

Break

Katelyn: All right Beauties. Well, speaking of taking a little break here, we’re going to let Kimberly take one and then we’ll be back and she’ll answer the last two questions.

Kimberly: All right, Beauties, we are back from our short break and we have two more questions for you guys on this very important topic of presence and why it really does matter. I hope you guys are starting to see that already as we have gone about the show, but here we go, Kay with two more questions.

Question 3: I can’t stop thinking about my boyfriend’s actions when he’s not with me and it’s affecting my work because I can’t focus. I feel like I’ve been programmed to depend on him and his every move and I just want to be free from this feeling.

Katelyn: Yes. Let’s see. So Trish from Kentucky writes, “I can’t stop thinking about my boyfriend’s actions when he’s not with me and it’s affecting my work because I can’t focus. I feel like I’ve been programmed to depend on him and his every move and I just want to be free from this feeling.”

Kimberly: Oh Trish, thank you so much for sharing, beauty. I appreciate you being in our community and being so open with us. When I hear your question, I think about the first thing that comes into my head is this idea of projection and when we are unrooted in ourselves, I think it’s easy to project onto something else that we think is going to make us feel better or be our savior of sorts. Right? So for me it used to be food and I would depend on food to make myself feel better and I would eat and eat and stuff myself because I wasn’t really processing my feelings. And this is back in high school and then I would end up making myself throw up, bulimia, into a pot is what I would do actually like a kitchen pot and I would hide it under the bed.

Kimberly: I don’t know if I told you this, Kay, it was very thought out, we hide it and then I would wait until the middle of the night when no one is asleep and then I would dump it in the bathroom. Because I knew if I was doing it in the bathroom somebody in my family would hear me. So anyways it was because when you write that you’re depending on his move, you’re kind of projecting your, your happiness on your power or on another human or my case if it was food a lot. But either way, it means like we are just pushing it out and thinking that something else we need something versus I enjoy being with this person and I choose to be with this person and we’re partners versus I need them.

Kimberly: And unfortunately what I found this always leads to unhealthy behavior. So in my case, eating disorders, when we put that power, it’s like misplaced power. It’s not where the power comes from. So it means an unhealthy relationship with food or with your boyfriend it means unhealthy obsession and thinking about what he’s doing versus going on with your own life. So this is the process of taking back your power, Trish and recognizing and realizing that you are enough as you are, you’re beautiful as you are and you are the source of your own happiness and you have the power, not your boyfriends.

Kimberly: And the more we start to get to that point where you realize you don’t have to obsess about him, like that’s not the way to keep someone close. It can actually push them away. Then you start to relax more into the relationship, I think and into yourself and it can actually develop a lot more intimacy and he will feel that he’s not trying to be controlled or that you’re not trying to push or pull and that will probably feel a lot better to him energetically as well. So how is it that we get to that point where we feel our wholeness?

Kimberly: Again, I talked about this a lot, but I think it really works. The four cornerstones. So Trish, look at your life do the practice we always recommend, which is write down the cornerstones or draw an actual square on your paper, food, body, emotions, spirituality, and see what is lacking. Again, for a lot of us, it’s in the emotional and spiritual category, but you do want to make sure as a foundation that you’re eating well, that you’re feeling stabilized in your body, that you’re getting enough B vitamins and protein and especially a mega three fats so that your brain is stabilized. There is a connection between a lack of a mega three fats and depression, for instance. So we need to make sure the foundation is there. I do recommend taking an algae based DHA EPA supplement. If you don’t feel like you’re getting enough chia seeds or flax seeds or green veggies, you know the source of a lot of these amazing nutrients.

Kimberly: I do recommend drinking the GGS. I do recommend checking out our Solluna recipes. You want to make sure from a physical standpoint you are nourishing yourself and then body-wise I want to make sure you’re getting enough activity and enough circulation, enough fresh air, hiking, walking, exercising, doing yoga. Really take care of your body and of course take your SBO probiotics because there is a connection between gut health and moods and emotions. From an emotional standpoint. I mean this is a tricky one to untangle as Kay and I were just talking about journaling. Sometimes we don’t have a safe space to share our feelings. Sometimes that’s how we tend to get obsessed with feelings and thoughts I think in our head is when, which it’s just us with ourselves and it becomes like that monkey mind that the Zen Buddhist talk about where we just get into thought loopholes and like, “What is he doing? Why didn’t he call me? What’s he doing? Is he doing something bad?”

Kimberly: Versus really putting things down on paper or having someone to share with. We also have our Solluna circle community, which is a safe space to share. But I think that’s that mental health aspect. And Kay and I are believers in therapists and I talked to a healer all the time, healer, therapist, person. So I think having whether you find a professional or a trusted friend or journaling, processing your feelings and letting yourself feel your feelings so they don’t get repressed or projected out is very powerful. And then the spiritual cornerstone, spiritual growth, breathing, pranayama, there’s a reason that that is such a important aspect of true yoga. It’s not just the asanas and the poses, but when we work with the breath, we’re working with our life force energy, our prana, which has a big effect on our focus and our immunity and our energy and our ability to stay calm.

Kimberly: And that leads to also deeper meditations where we can start to take back that power. I was talking to Trisha, instead of being like, “I need this guy to be happy. If he breaks up with me or something happens, I’m going to be depressed.” No, no, no, no, no, no. You choose to be together and you enjoy each other, but ultimately you are responsible for your happiness and so much of that happiness, that true joy I have found comes from self-realization and knowing yourself. So if you can just do incorporate some more time to breathe and be by yourself, Trish, doing a meditation, a led meditation, morning and night, even if it’s five minutes. Then will start to reawaken you to yourself, I think, which is what my experience of meditation has been. And again, we have all these free guided ones for you guys can check out the website, then you won’t put so much on him because that’s a lot of pressure.

Kimberly: Like you make me happy and I need you. Like I said, that doesn’t feel great to the other person. And I have done that in the past. I think I’ve gotten really like I remember even my college boyfriend, it was just unhealthy, so much him and me together. So I’ve definitely done it in other relationships too. And then the more I’ve gone on, I work on it just letting my partner have more freedom because I know that feels good to me and the more I become the shelter for myself, I don’t again ‘need’ them as much. So it loosens all that pressure.

Katelyn: Yeah. I think this is something a lot of people go through with relationships whenever, if it’s the onset or you’ve been together for a while, your lives become more intertwined. And some people, I know for me, I’ve definitely lost myself along the way at different stages in relationships and I’ve always felt the most grounded as you were mentioning, Kay, when we work on ourselves and we find things we like to do and we make our own plans independent of our partner. And it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy our time with them, but a lot of times I would be really dependent, “Oh I need my boyfriend to do this with me. Or it’s not as fun without him.” And I would just really almost be like suffocating to the person where it’s like, “Oh, I actually just learned, I like being with myself and doing things just for me. And I can enjoy the relationship, but it’s not like I’m okay without it too.” And I think when you get to that point, as Kimberly mentioned, it really is a lot healthier and you actually can have those deeper relationships as she mentioned.

Katelyn: So I think it’s normal. I’ve definitely went through it myself. I’ve had tons of girlfriends that have gone through it. So it’s just kind of, you’re obviously acknowledging it by writing in this question to us and just taking action to feel better and more present with your life.

Kimberly: So thank you for pointing that out, Kay because I think it’s so easy especially like as teenagers and we kind of go into that tendency and then we can get into it for a long time. “I’m defined by my boyfriend and I need him to be happy or my husband or whatever.” But like you said, it’s really not the truth and it’s really not how life has to be. And I feel so like my husband is very independent and I’m very independent and we don’t do everything together actually. He has to go to New York for business once a month and then he sees his friends there and he rides a motorcycle and he takes a long trip sometimes.

Kimberly: And I have a lot of girl time and I do a lot of women’s circles and mom’s stuff, so I actually feel so much better having my own thing too. But again, this came about through working on myself and having that processing emotionally and the spiritual tie with myself. Otherwise I might feel a lot more jealous or like, “What are you doing?” But then again, it never works to try to control the other person more. The best way to get over is working on ourselves and being more comfortable with ourselves.

Question 4: I read somewhere that whenever you bite your lip trip or other random incidents like this, that you’re not where you’re at in this, you’re not living in the present moment because your mind’s somewhere else. What is your thought on this?

Katelyn: So true. Okay. Let’s see for our last question from Bethany who’s living in lovely Florida. “I read somewhere that whenever you bite your lip trip or other random incidents like this, that you’re not where you’re at in this, you’re not living in the present moment because your mind’s somewhere else. What is your thought on this?”

Kimberly: Bethany, thank you so much for your question. I think this is a really awesome, interesting question. And this gets a little bit philosophical. So there are different theories about accidents or like you said, just little incidences that could happen. Like you trip or something breaks or you drop something and some will say that it is perhaps because you weren’t being present. Some will say because there’s a lot going on in your head or something like chaotic energy and it creates ripples because everything is so interconnected and it could result in an incident happening or even an accident happening. And this people will say, “Oh accidents are always completely random because there’s an energy involved.” And some people will say of course there’s free will. But there’s also some karmically laid out things that could happen in our life.

Kimberly: My teacher Dharma Metro used to say that he used to say there’s when you die or when you choose to die, it’s kind of ordained karmically. So there’s a lot of different beliefs around this idea. I think sometimes Bethany, if I’m eating really fast, and I guess you could say it’s not really being present because I’m really hungry, I’ll bite my lip. Sometimes things happen and sometimes I am hiking and I’m so present with looking at the beautiful trees that I’ll trip. So I don’t know if I agree with like, “Oh, it means you’re completely elsewhere.” What if we’re so in the moment that we forget some of the little things like our lip or a rock on the road. I think I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.

Kimberly: I think it’s more how do you feel? We know when we’re being present and we know when we’re like, “Oh my gosh, where was I for 10 or 20 minutes? I don’t remember a single thing I just read.” You ever had that experience, Kay where you’re reading a book and you’re really thinking about something else and you’re not really reading the book.

Katelyn: Oh yeah.

Kimberly: Or you’re having a conversation with someone and you’re like [crosstalk 00:39:49].

Katelyn: You don’t hear anything they say. Yeah.

Kimberly: Yeah, you’re like mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative) but then you’re not really there. So I think this is where you self-monitor and you can be your own teacher to yourself in your own parameter when you’re being present or not instead of these generalities. And it’s nothing to feel guilt or shame about or beat yourself up about. But when you aren’t being present, you could work to take a deep breath or two and bring it back, pull it back to the present moment and just check in and keep checking in. And I think that’s the important thing here is just being aware consistently of where your mind is. And the breath again, is a powerful practice. You could do it, just two breaths, three breaths in the moment and reset as many times as you want to during the day.

Katelyn: Yeah. And I think this goes back to how we always talk about how multitasking isn’t a thing and to focus on one task at a time and reminds me a lot of meditation when you go to try to meditate and the thoughts are coming in, right? Like when you’re first learning to meditate and they just keep coming in and it’s like am I present or I’m not really actually present to like my body and sitting and trying to meditate. It’s like the thoughts are constantly storming in. So as you’ve mentioned throughout the show, just really creating that practice and it just takes time and awareness that sometimes we can’t help it. Right. There might be a lot going on, a lot in your head, but we just can be aware of what’s distracting us. Like, “I’m a little distracted today or I’m having trouble focusing, but I acknowledge that and it’s because of this.” And then we at least have that understanding. It’s not like we don’t know what’s going on, but we’re just working through it.

Kimberly: Exactly.

Thought of the Week

Katelyn: So with that Kay, is there anything that comes to mind to wrap up the show for our quote of the week?

Kimberly: Yes. So I have a fitting quote for us today that does come from the great teacher of presence in the modern day Eckhart Tolle. And he writes, “All true artists, whether they know it or not create from a place of no mind from inner stillness.” So I think that we are all in our own way, artists of our lives. We are creating our lives every day, every moment. So in a sense we are artists and we can bring creativity and really manifest what we want through our power, through our energy. So I love this quote because this idea of when we’d like the peak things that we are creating, whether it’s an amazing recipe and we’re using our intuition with the food or, Kay, I know you do painting and craft work or just something you might say to your child and the way that you can love them or your partner or whatever.

Kimberly: There’s a million ways that we express art and creativity. We know when we’re doing something, we’re like, “Wow, I did that. That was amazing.” We’re coming from a place where we’re not over analyzing and we’re not in the past or the future. And there’s a stillness and in that deep, deep, deep stillness, which is inside all of us, it’s like when the ripples on the lake still, there’s a place underneath our thoughts, the real us, which doesn’t change and shift and is always calm and is always that’s the true beauty. That’s the light of the soul. That’s who we really are.

Kimberly: The more we just cultivate these practices, like we talked about today, like being still, breathing, doing a guided meditation. Even if it’s for five or 10 minutes, we can access that place more of stillness and we can create from that place. We can create our life from that place. And what Trisha was talking about create more stable, healthy, balanced relationships and more of every other aspect of our life. So I think we can all access that place. I think the pathway to accessing it is through these practices and keeping them part of our life, whether we’re not going to be perfect, we may not do them every day, but we want to do them as regularly as possible and that’s how we start to shift our lives and take the power back.

Katelyn: Amazing. Such a great way to wrap up today’s show. Obviously a lot of these topics we talk about could go on for a lot longer than we have in just one episode. That’s why we have so many resources over on mysolluna.com as we’ve talked about that you guys can check out and also on today’s show notes we’ll link to articles and other podcasts that may be relevant to these topics if you want to dig deeper. And also we are still collecting questions. We’re always collecting questions, so please make sure you’re still submitting them over at mysolluna.com/askkimberly and that’s where I’ll review the questions and hopefully we’ll air them on an upcoming show for you.

Kimberly: Awesome, Kay. Well, thank you so much love for organizing the podcast and gathering the questions. Beauties, thank you so much for tuning in. I love our community. I’m so grateful that we’re all connected and supporting each other. I mean, what would life be if we were just isolated and stumbling along our way. I think we’re here really to share what’s helped us, what works for us, and just help each other. So thank you for being part of our community. And as Kay mentioned, please take advantage of all of our offerings on the website and through social and check out the blogs and the other podcasts. We are here, we are listening. We love you. We will see you back here Monday for our next interview podcast. Till then take care and so much love.