November 13, 2025 • 44 mins
Understanding your emotions starts with treating sadness, frustration, and anger not as problems, but as instructions.
In this solo episode, Michael explores three everyday emotions—sadness, frustration, and anger—and shows how each one carries a message.
This episode doesn’t tell you to “feel better.” It asks better questions. Why does a heavy mood arrive out of nowhere? Why does a tiny obstacle spark a huge reaction? And what if that surge of heat isn’t “too much,” but a message you haven’t learned to read yet?
Across three familiar emotions—sadness, frustration, anger—you’ll be invited to listen in new ways, try small experiments, and notice what shifts when you don’t rush to fix or perform. No neat answers, just a clearer path: pause, pay attention, and let the body’s signals point to the next right step. If you’re curious about what your feelings are asking for, press play and find out.
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Episode Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:06 What Sadness Signals
00:03:54 Vipassana Story: Missing Someone
00:09:11 Neuroscience of Sadness (ACC/Insula)
00:10:09 Power of Being Witnessed
00:14:27 Numbing & Dorsal Vagal Shutdown
00:16:11 Short Grounding for Sadness
00:18:25 Shifting to Frustration
00:24:01 Prediction Error & Dopamine Dip
00:27:39 When Disagreement Triggers You
00:29:10 Enter Anger: Boundary Energy
00:31:06 Frustration vs. Anger (Definitions)
00:32:37 Escape Room Example
00:35:44 Integrating Questions
00:39:40 Closing Meditation & Mantras
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đź“š Mentions & Resources:
Vipassana meditation (10-day silent retreat)
Neuro notes: ACC/insula, prediction error, dopamine dip
Polyvagal concepts: dorsal vagal shutdown
Michael Henri’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelyoga.pt/
Byron de Marse’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byronyoga/
Going Pro Yoga’s Instagram: https://www.instagram/com/goingproyoga/
The IN Movement Podcast was formerly the Going Pro Yoga Podcast — and before that, the Yoga Teacher Evolution Podcast and the Rat Race Rebellion Podcast. Same mission, evolved name.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello everyone, and welcome backto the Going Pro Yoga podcasts.
So I haven't said that in a while.
And the reason why is because we're actually changing the name
of the podcast. Maybe you caught wind of that
somewhere along the lines, but we are going to be rebranding
the podcast among other things. And I say we because partnering
with, of course, Byron, who's been on the podcast many times.
(00:23):
He's not here today, but he willbe back.
Paul, who's been on the podcast many times, and also Leia, his
wife. And together we have kind of put
together this new brand perspective which allows us to
actually have a space, a physical space here in Bali,
which is really exciting. We're going to have a couple
studios here, ultimately a training center, spa,
(00:45):
restaurant, cool little community space.
So if you are in Bali, somethingto look forward to.
And if you're eventually coming to Bali, also something to look
forward to. Either way, it's connected to
the podcast and therefore we aregoing to be shifting the name to
the In Movement podcast. The In Movement podcast.
We'll break down that meaning later on in the future to
(01:07):
understand a little bit more. I'll kind of wait for Byron to
be here for that one. I'm sure he'll love to
deconstruct that one, but we just want to kind of tease out
and let people know that the name is going to be changing so
that in the future when you're looking for the podcast, that's
not a surprise. So the In Movement podcast
welcome. And today is again a solo
episode. It's just me here.
(01:29):
I felt inspired this morning to talk about a couple emotions
that I've experienced in the last few weeks, particularly
sadness and also moments of frustration, which I think
they're interconnected. And then also anger, which is
actually closely connected to both of those as well.
So how to understand them, how to kind of calm the body, how to
(01:52):
kind of get through that and ultimately respond better in the
world with care. So before we kind of break these
emotions down like we normally do, breaking through with the
definitions, how they actually manifest in her body and what we
can kind of do to create awareness for them.
I always like to give an opportunity for you guys to send
(02:13):
us some love, not just energetically with your thoughts
and positive mind, but ultimately to quantitatively
give us some love by going to the main podcast page, whether
it be on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and find that star
review section and just give us some love.
Apple Podcasts, I think you can actually write something in if
(02:34):
you wanted to write some kind words, that's really cool.
For Spotify, it's just a matter of giving us a star review.
And I think with Spotify, you goto the triple dot and that's how
you can do it for us. Either way, we really, really
appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in
and for being regular listeners.And if you're new to the
podcast, welcome. So today again, we're going to
(02:54):
be breaking down sadness, frustration and anger and really
kind of diving into how these affect us and how they kind of
manifest in through the body. So ultimately, sadness is the
body's response to loss. It's very closely connected to
grief, Like we've actually lost something, changed something, or
(03:15):
some sort of an unmet need has happened.
So it invites us to slow down, to soothe and to support
ourselves during that time. But like all emotions, often
times we might not actually be in the place to experience them.
So if we push them down, push them away, sadness in
(03:37):
particular, we end up feeling a little bit more numb.
So before I kind of break this in further, the reason why this
is coming up for me and the why I got inspired to talk about
this one is my partner Christina.
She went on a Vipassana meditation.
And so if you're familiar with the Vipassana meditation, this
is a 10 day silent retreat whereyou ultimately meditate from or
(04:02):
11:50 hours a day, give or take depending on your commitment
level. So that means no phones, no
communication, no contact for 10days.
And for me who was not in the meditation, I actually had no
communication with her for the 10 days and we've been apart for
(04:24):
longer than 10 days before. Absolutely, I think up to a
month possibly from travelling and moving around.
But this was different. This was different because there
was 0 communication. So everybody likes their space,
right? And for me, the first few days,
the first five days or so were just very much like, this is
nice. You know, I got my own space.
(04:46):
I can come home, I do my own thing.
You know, I don't really have anyone that I need to think
about too much. Even though I did think about
her. I actually sent her messages
everyday so that when she came out of the retreat, she could
see some messages, but I would receive no responses.
In fact, I can see that the messages wouldn't go through
because her phone was off. So after a bit of time, I
(05:08):
started to notice how that was affecting me.
I started to notice like, wow, you know, it's kind of weird.
It's almost like she doesn't exist anymore.
It's almost like she's gone kindof like she died or she like
she's no longer in my life. So after about the fifth day, I
kind of woke up, I think it was the 6th day actually, I started
(05:29):
to wake up and I felt really, really sad.
I didn't know it was sadness at first.
I just felt really off. I actually kind of woke up and
was just like, man, today's not a good day.
I just don't feel great today. But I didn't actually know why,
but a spoiler alert, it was sadness.
I eventually figured that out. Throughout the day, I just was
like wondering like, am I getting sick?
What's going on here? So it was a signal that was
(05:51):
passing through me and I eventually was able to stitch
together to realize that I missed her.
I missed her and I was sad that she wasn't there.
And I started to have this like,experience of, is this what life
would be like if I didn't have her in my life?
Which was a really impactful moment because often times you
(06:12):
don't realize how special something is until it's gone.
So in this moment, you know, having been six or five or six
days where I have had zero communication with her, it kind
of felt like that. It felt like I had lost her.
It felt like she was no longer in my life, which kind of makes
sense why I was feeling sad, butit helped to really validate and
(06:34):
confirm, you know, even though we've been together for 12
years, it didn't I, I know how Ithought I knew how I felt about
her, but this even it, it pushedit even further.
So that sadness was something that was always there, but it
was something that I never actually allowed myself to fully
(06:56):
like think about like, oh, what if, you know, we broke up or
what if we separated or something to this effect.
And because it didn't actually come through just on its own,
this situation allowed, it was just the right parameters to
allow that sadness to come through for me because it felt
like a loss. It felt like some sort of change
(07:21):
now because I allowed myself to feel it.
And, you know, I kind of, I, I kind of got excited because it
made me realize how much I did miss her.
And I continued to send her messages and so on.
And eventually, you know, she came back and I was super
excited to have her back. And it allowed me to kind of
feel this, you know, contrast ofhappiness on the other side of
(07:43):
that sadness, knowing that she would still be there.
But I will admit that there was a part of me that's like, oh,
when she comes back, like, who knows what's going to happen?
You know, there was a story thatkind of played into my head a
little bit about like, if she was in this meditation for 10
days, you know, who knows what kind of thoughts came through
for her. And maybe she was feeling
(08:03):
different in different ways about life.
And, you know, she wanted to change things herself.
So I started to create a story that, you know, maybe she will
leave me, maybe this, you know, maybe this is what it's going to
feel like. And I have to prepare myself for
it. And, you know, there's a whole
conversation of attachment there, of course.
But ultimately none of that happened.
She came back and it was a beautiful experience, that kind
(08:25):
of reconnect. But I'm really grateful that I
was able to go through my own process while she was going
through her process. And so this sense of sadness
that I experienced made me really start to think about, you
know, how often do we actually allow ourselves to feel sad?
(08:47):
And is it only whenever the sadness is so strong, so heavy,
that it forces itself upon us and then, you know, tears come
through and so on? Or is it that we never actually
allow ourselves to slow down enough to actually create enough
awareness, enough peace to allowsadness to come through?
(09:11):
So the interesting thing about sadness is, you know, we can go
into the neuroscience and the, the yogic perspective, and I'm
sure we'll do a little bit of that.
But the thing that's really important is how within your
body you have these systems, these, these nervous, nervous
network systems and call them, Imean, I'll just tell them, tell
(09:32):
you what they're called. And you know, you can digest
them in your own way. But the ACC, the anterior
cingulate cortex in this insula process, this kind of felt sense
within your body, which is ultimately your nervous system,
meaning that social soothing andtears can downshift part of your
(09:55):
body's stress response in the body.
You can call it cortisol if you want.
So I'll say that again, social soothing and tears can downshift
your cortisol or stress response.
So what does that mean? Social soothing means being
witnessed. Being witnessed when you feel
(10:17):
the sadness or the tears. So if you have experienced this
before where you feel sadness onyour own in your room or by
yourself, yeah, there's a certain amount of relief that
happens there. Absolutely.
But there's so much more relief that happens.
There's so much more letting go or downshifting in your nervous
(10:39):
system or you're just these systems in your body whenever
you're being witnessed through this sadness, when you're
sharing this sadness with someone else.
So one of the things that we do in our teacher trainings is we
allow an opportunity for people to share things.
And I'm sure you know, if if you've been in a teacher
(11:01):
training before, you're probablyfamiliar with us to some degree.
There's a lot of sharing that happens.
And often times there is some moments of sadness and other
emotions that come through. And it's really powerful for a
lot of people to experience this.
And the thing that they're experiencing is the witnessing,
being witnessed while experiencing that emotion.
(11:23):
That's what's kind of happening within this like neural network
in our system, the social soothing, the support, the being
witnessed by other people while you're also experiencing that
sadness, the tears or whatever it might be.
That really hurts if it really starts to shift your chemistry.
And it can be very, very healing.
(11:45):
So those situations, those, let's say, groups of people that
allow that to happen can be obviously not always around, but
just knowing that if there is someone in your life who can
hold space in such a way to allow the sadness or these
feelings to come through can be super, super powerful.
(12:06):
And us, most of us, I think are as facilitators in life, we're
just humans who can relate to other humans.
Holding space for other people is kind of a skill that we
should all have and that is ultimately to allow ourselves to
witness other people when they're experiencing certain
emotions and particularly sadness.
I know for myself, whenever I was experiencing or sorry, not
(12:29):
what I was experiencing, but when I was watching someone or
witnessing someone else feel sad, whether it be my partner
Christina, or someone else who was just crying, I would just
get so uncomfortable and I wouldjust be like, Oh my God, they're
crying, What do I do? And I didn't really know how to
hold space. I didn't know.
I thought I had to do something.I thought I had to, you know,
(12:50):
say something and, you know, we could deconstruct that and like,
why that all happens. But at the end of the day, I
think it's because I wasn't connected to my own sadness.
I'd never actually allowed myself to feel sad.
And I didn't know what it felt like to kind of be in that
person's perspective. So I hadn't really developed my
empathy skills very well in thatparticular, let's say, emotional
(13:13):
state. So I kind of avoided it, or I
tried to avoid it, or I would just kind of go blank and I
would just sit there and be uncomfortable.
So I was kind of holding space, but uncomfortably holding space.
Either way, I eventually learnedthat I didn't have to do
anything. It wasn't a matter about doing
anything. It was just a matter of
witnessing the person, just being able to see them for who
(13:35):
they are and to see how real what they were doing or what
they were experiencing was. So think about that for
yourself. The power of witnessing, the
power of noticing and holding space for someone is not about
trying to fix them or to do anything besides just actually
just being there. That's really where the power
is. So this sadness is ultimately
(13:58):
something that is asking us for acknowledgement, some
gentleness, some time and some contact, some contact.
Ultimately that witnessing. And again, if we kind of avoid
this experience, we didn't allowourselves to feel it, then
there's going to be this numbness that's happens within
(14:19):
our system, this protective shutting down when we feel or
when feeling would feel kind of overwhelming.
And we have this dorsal vagal response.
And if you remember, dorsal vagal, dorsal vagal is the down
shifting, too far down shifting of your nervous system, which is
more about trying to conserve energy.
(14:39):
It's trying to self preserve, but it's also leading to things
like depression and so on. In fact, grief or sadness can
lead to things like depression, victimhood, self pity,
hopelessness, blame, of course, unhappiness.
(15:02):
And then it can also lead to sickness by holding on to this
pain or holding on to this emotional, let's say, turmoil
within our system. And a lot of us can feel sadness
for different reasons, and we all process it in different
ways. But at the end of the day,
allowing ourselves to process itand being witnessed with someone
who we feel safe with or maybe agroup of people or an experience
(15:27):
where we can be witnessed, that's really where the healing
happens there. OK, So if you started to notice
anything that came through for you or maybe your brain's
starting to wonder a little bit about like your own sadness and
things that you might be sad about.
I mean, you know, I'm not reallyable to witness you per SE here,
(15:49):
but I will help to at least downshift you to some degree.
So what you can do is recognize first of all, that sadness is
not about failure. It's and it's not anything about
trying to hide it because it's abad thing.
We actually want to allow it to be felt.
(16:11):
And the way that we do this is through length and exhalation to
allow us to regulate and allow our prefrontal cortex to kind of
come back online so that we can have more balance within our
nervous system. So you can place your hand on
your heart or place your hand onyour sternum, if you will, one
(16:31):
on your belly, if you have it available to you.
If you're just sitting, if you're just kind of, you know,
doing something else, then that's fine.
Just maybe take a moment. You can place your hands down or
just take a moment to just be with yourself, taking a breath
in and sighing out the mouth andremembering that if you do feel
(16:54):
sadness. So if there is sadness that's
shying away somewhere underneaththat, it's nothing that needs to
be fixed. It's just something that exists
there and then in the right opportunity, in the right
moment, it can be felt. And knowing that it's OK to be
(17:17):
witnessed. In fact, it's powerful to be
witnessed when we experience sadness in front of someone
else. So we're not going to spend too
(17:39):
much time here. This isn't really what this
podcast is about to process our own individual sadness, but more
of a way of just kind of prepping and priming ourselves
to recognize that that is something that we can do and we
can find opportunities to do it.Find the right people or the
right environments in which we can regulate, experience, feel,
(18:01):
share those things so that we don't need to carry it around.
It's such a burden and it can lead to all those things that I
was mentioning before the depression, the victimhood, self
pity, blame, unhappiness, sickness, disease in the body.
We don't need that. So finding opportunities to let
(18:21):
go of that is going to make a huge difference.
OK, so let's shift gears, downshift gears to talking about
frustration and anger. Now, I've talked about these on
the podcast before, but I just notice, I notice frustration
seems to be my, my core emotional response.
(18:44):
I was going to say reaction, butI think I'm enough aware to
notice that when it happens, I can respond and split instead of
reacting from frustration. And if you're familiar with
human design, I'm a generator. And I think my, my, I don't know
if it's called your favorite emotion or your, your emotion to
respond when, let's say things are not lined up, you usually
(19:09):
have a particular emotion. Mine is frustration.
Maybe you know what yours is as well.
Maybe it's frustration also. But ultimately frustration is
blocked goal energy. It's kind of like mobilized, but
also kind of stuck. And that's kind of how I feel
actually when I'm feeling frustrated sometimes.
(19:30):
But often times when I feel frustrated and I have like a
recent example, which I won't get into the semantic details
too much, but I always try to catch myself, like when I'm
frustrated with something, it's not always just with myself.
Sometimes it's actually when there's other people around.
And it could be related to communication.
In fact, that's what my example is, is related to communication.
(19:54):
When I'm trying to talk to someone, or I'm trying to
explain something to somebody orI'm trying to ask for something
and it's not quite getting through.
You know, it's not being fully understood on the other side or
I'm not getting the response back that I want or I'm not
getting. You know, it's there's just
there's some sort of disconnect happening there that be that
seems to build frustration with me quite a bit, which is a
(20:17):
little unfortunate. So before I became a little bit
more self aware of my own patterns and frustration in
particular, I would kind of wallow in it a little bit, kind
of sit with it a little too longand kind of hold on to the
frustration, kind of like the sadness thing, but in a
different way. And ultimately kind of blocked
(20:38):
me. It stopped me from kind of
moving on to the next thing or just to move on in general.
And I would always kind of feel as though the frustration was
coming from possibly the other person or the thing that I was
doing or some sort of external means.
But the reality is, is the frustration that I was
(21:00):
experiencing, and this is probably very closely connected
to frustration is something for you, is that I was actually just
frustrated with myself in a variety of different ways.
One in particular with this communication is that I'm kind
of frustrated that I'm not able to communicate clearly what I
want or what I'm trying to say to this person.
(21:20):
And even though it's not coming through on the other side, it's
not their fault. It's not that they're making me
frustrated. It's that that I'm just, you
know, needing to try to maybe communicate a little bit better.
I need to try to do it in a different way so that it could
be understood. And that's a tricky one.
That's a tricky one because the frustration itself can be
(21:42):
something that can really build up over time and it just feels
like it's the other person or the other thing, the task.
This is a frustrating task because I can't go through it,
but often times it's because I just, you just don't know how to
do it quite yet. So to me, this one is a lot
about having self compassion andnot judging yourself.
First of all, it's actually about recognizing where the
(22:05):
frustration is coming from. Now, chances are there's some
sort of pattern or condition that was earned or gained
possibly from our biological parents.
I know for sure that mine was passed on from my father to some
degree. But I also know that, you know,
(22:25):
especially through human design,that's just something that's
probably part of my core system.It's, you know, we all
experience all the emotions, butfrustration for me for some
reason just seems to be a littlebit more on the availability
list, if you want to call it that way.
So frustration can kind of come through in different way, in
different feelings to me. You can sometimes feel like a
(22:46):
buzzing, you know, your jaw can kind of tighten, can kind of
notice your breath starts to become a little bit more
shallow. And you're have this urgency to
kind of like, you know, react, ultimately refine the plan to
try to like, do something in a different way so that you can
(23:07):
kind of get across what you wantto get across.
But this frustration, which is kind of stopping us from being
able to move on, is mostly happening because of how it
changes our neurological responses in our body.
(23:28):
So within our nervous system, ultimately, when we are trying
to do something, we have some sort of expectation or what we
would call like a prediction of what was likely going to happen.
Like if I say this thing, then I'll get some sort of response.
And if I don't get that response, then that might be
frustrating, right? Or if I'm trying to do this task
(23:50):
and it's not quite completing inthe way that I want it to
complete, even though I was expecting it that it would, then
what I was predicting to happen didn't quite happen.
So in your body, in your nervoussystem, you have this thing
called the prediction error. Ultimately, when your body is
trying to or your nervous systemis trying to do something, it's
(24:11):
going to have some sort of played out game plan of what
should likely happen. And whenever that doesn't
happen, we get what we call prediction error, which actually
triggers A dopamine dip, a sag, a drop.
And it kind of causes this basically tense feeling in our
(24:34):
system. And it says ultimately to our
ACC system, which is basically saying nothing's or something's
not working properly. And it's asking for adjustment.
It's asking for something that needs to happen differently, a
different strategy, clear communication, a new pacing or
something like that. But if we don't recognize that
(24:58):
that's what it's trying to tell us.
If we don't recognize that that's what it's trying to tell
us, then we might just sit in the frustration itself.
We might sit in that dopamine dip or that drop because that
air just it kind of like tweaks us.
So I've I've also seen this on other people a little bit more
(25:19):
so now as well, because now thatI understand it within myself, I
notice it in other people, you know, whether it be teaching and
lectures or having certain conversations about things.
And when someone doesn't agree with you, this is kind of where
this comes through. Someone doesn't agree with you
or they have a different opinionabout something and they're
sharing something or you're sharing something and there's a
(25:42):
disconnect between what is, let's say, the opinion of the
topic. If that other person is
expecting or predicting that this is going to kind of be
smooth with the conversation, orI'm going to share this thing
and they're going to absorb whatI'm going to say, but they
don't. Then that kind of creates this
(26:03):
again, this prediction error. And then they kind of get a
little bit like, oh, I don't, this feeling is a little like, I
don't like this feeling and thisfeeling must be coming because
they're doing it, you know, they're not agreeing with me or
they're not, they're not in alignment with what I'm
communicating. So that can really 'cause
turmoil within the system. But again, it's not so much
(26:24):
about they are causing that in your system.
It's more so your system is not predicting accurately what is
the true reality. It isn't actually predicting the
truth. It's trying to control the
truth, is trying to say like, ifthat's not happening, that I
(26:45):
need to like convince them otherwise or I need to like, get
upset with them so that they recognize that this is what it
needs to be as opposed to just being like, oh, OK, yeah, we
have a difference of opinions or, you know, you see it
differently than I do and that'sOK too.
You know, maybe you start to getcurious about like, why they see
it that way, for example. So yeah, I'm not going to get
(27:06):
into the example too much of what I'm thinking about, but I
just, I'm kind of tapping into the energy of some of these
conversations that I've had. And I've noticed how other
people get frustrated whenever that prediction or that
expectation of conversation doesn't quite go according to
the way that they might have thought.
And maybe you can relate to thisin your own way.
(27:29):
So ultimately we want to recognize when we're feeling
frustrated. We want to recognize when that
comes through and not get too caught up in it.
You know, if we start to allow ourselves to get triggered too
much and we start to become reactive and we allow that
frustration to come through, eventually it could turn into
(27:52):
something worse, which would be like anger.
So those are the two emotions that really started to come
through for me in the last few weeks for a variety of different
reasons, like I was sharing and they felt kind of closely
connected. But ultimately the thing that
was recognizable to me is that you just start to need to be
(28:16):
aware when you're feeling these things, and it's really hard to
notice when you're feeling thesethings.
Sadness or frustration. Frustration is a little bit more
obvious, I think, to notice sadness.
In my experience, sadness doesn't come through so easily.
It's almost like it's kind of sitting at Bay.
(28:36):
It's kind of behind there. Sadness seems to be able to come
through when I find more stillness and peace, meditation
and I actually like go to placesof, you know, senses of loss, if
you will. Whereas frustration might just
show its face in a moment because of that prediction error
that might come through in conversation or tasks or what
(28:59):
have you. So hopefully that's somewhat
helpful and relatable for you tokind of like tune into those
sensations and when they might happen for you.
So let's bring in anger a littlebit more and talk about it in
such a way like what is it like?How is it related to these
conversations? So I do have a couple notes.
(29:20):
Let's see if I can find it in mybook here.
So anger often comes out of righteousness or fear or
judgement that arises when people feel they have been
wronged or haven't gotten what they want.
So you can see how that connectsto frustration.
(29:41):
So rather than taking responsibility, they often will
brain blame others or blame something else, which again
sounds very similar to frustration.
Anger gives people a false senseof power, making them feel
justified to criticize, put down, hate, or resent others.
Angry people feel the right to fight to hurt someone or to
(30:05):
treat people badly. On the other hand, anger can be
a catalyst for change and transformation, fueling your
passion, excitement, and enthusiasm.
So if something in your life is not working and you are angry,
this anger offers an opportunityfor you to see and free yourself
from your ailment, such as perhaps depression or
(30:27):
powerlessness, feeling overwhelmed and so on.
However, if it's protracted, anger drains energy in life
force. Long term anger can leave a
person feeling fatigued, frail, unhappy and worn out.
And of course, unresolved anger can contribute to so many
(30:49):
challenges in the body. One of the main ones in common
ones is inflammation, sinusitis.It can lead to cancers,
pneumonia, ulcers, lots of things like this.
Now if I turn to frustration, let's just kind of have a look
at what I it says in this book about frustration.
So frustration is one of the most common emotions.
(31:11):
It has an element of impatience,struggle, suffering and
irritation. So often people become
frustrated when things aren't flowing their way, when they
feel a situation should be different than it is, or when
they have to wait for something to happen.
(31:32):
So they're very different, but they're super close together,
frustration and anger. So long term frustration becomes
aggression, irritation, inflammation and attack.
And again, you can see how they're very much connected
there. So in its positive role,
frustration might be the drivingforce you need to change the way
you are living your life. And that's what we talked about
(31:55):
before, how the frustration can be a sign to help us recognize
that maybe the way that we're communicating or doing this is
not quite working and it's not happening in such a way that we
are hoping, expecting or predicting it to unfold.
So allowing that frustration to kind of happen, pass and then
(32:16):
coming back at it, you know, allowing us to actually be like,
OK, well, that wasn't working orthat the way I said that didn't
work or the way I'm doing this didn't work.
So why get frustrated about it? Well, I'll feel the frustration
because it's good to feel it. But then ultimately, let's come
back at it with a different strategy.
In fact, I have one more exampleto share about this.
I just popped into my head. I went to an escape room a few
(32:40):
days ago. I don't know if you guys are
familiar with an escape room, but it's basically you go into a
place and you have like real life puzzles.
You're in a room and you need tofigure out puzzles or clues to
try to escape the room. And usually there's some sort of
theme. And this theme was what was the
theme? It was like a pharaoh theme,
(33:01):
like an Egyptian theme. And it was pretty cool.
You know, it was a cool experience.
But when we got through the first, I think 2 puzzles or the
2 rooms and then the third room,we, we struggled to figure out
the puzzle. And I noticed that because we
went through the 1st puzzle and the second puzzle relatively,
not want to say easily, but we went through them pretty like
(33:22):
pretty well within like 15 or 20minutes.
The third puzzle wasn't going sosmoothly.
So our, you know, prediction error was kind of kicking in and
I could tell and I could notice myself.
But also other people are just getting really frustrated.
And it was almost like blaming the room, blaming the system,
blaming the people that made thegame that it wasn't, that it was
(33:46):
stupid. You know, it was stupid.
This, this puzzle doesn't make any sense.
This is stupid. And I was just thinking about
it. And I was like, oh, I was like,
this is so much frustration in the room right now.
And eventually, you know, you have a little walkie-talkie.
You can kind of call on the person and say, hey, like, what?
Give us some hints and give us some hints.
And then they were giving hints.And the hints weren't helpful.
And that was building more frustration and building more
(34:08):
frustration because they're expecting, you know, some
results, They're expecting some change.
They're expecting to get out of the room.
And I'm sure the fact that you're, you know, trapped in
this room added to some of the stress level.
And then eventually, you know, they came through and the guy
came in, turned on the light andexplained how the puzzle worked.
And then there was this, like, moment of relief where everyone
was like, oh, oh, OK, I see now.Which was kind of funny.
(34:34):
But like, you know, the way thatthat kind of unfolded, I was
thinking about it afterwards andbeing like, well, if we would
have just taken the time to be like, OK, what we're doing isn't
working. We need to look at it a
different way. We need to find a different
strategy. And then maybe we would be able
to see a different way to unlockthis puzzle.
(34:56):
And this can be related to work stuff.
This can be related to any typesof challenges and problems that
we face in life, whether it be communication or tasks for, for,
for our job. It's like if something's not
quite working, it's probably because we haven't, right?
We haven't found the right strategy to approach it yet.
So sometimes taking space away or kind of being like, OK, I
(35:18):
need to, I need to get away fromwhat I was trying to do or what
I think I need to do and then try something different.
And then from that you might actually find that relief, that
ability to kind of move through it and then find peace on the
other side. So I thought that was a pretty
interesting example as well. So let's kind of integrate and
(35:40):
kind of bring this all home. So here's a couple questions to
sit with for yourself. So where in your life is sadness
asking you to be with it? Not to fix it, but just to be
(36:01):
with it, just to feel something.If that might feel like a loss
or something that you feel sad about, you don't necessarily
have to dive too deep into it now, but just start to leave a
little bookmark if something's coming through of where or what
(36:23):
in your life might require a bitof that attention.
And then, you know, bookmark that.
Bookmark that for later. You know, you can go sit in
meditation and go journal about it, sit with a little bit later,
and then let's just kind of shift to frustration.
Where is frustration asking for a different strategy or a
(36:45):
different pace maybe currently or in the past?
Remembering that frustration often just requires a different
approach to be able to move through it.
(37:08):
So see if you can catch yourselfwith that one when frustration
comes through and give yourself grace and compassion to
recognize that. Maybe I just need to look at
this a different way. And then the last one, anger.
Where is anger asking me to nameit and protect that boundary?
(37:33):
Because anger is boundary energy.
It's a surge of your sympatheticactivation to protect value, to
protect time, your body, or somesort of truth.
The request is protection and clarity.
So if you can name that line, that line and act without harm
(37:58):
or without aggression, then we might be able to move through
and move past that anger. So maybe there is something that
feels like almost a combination of not quite frustration, but a
little bit stronger than frustration.
So something that might be angering you or has angered you
(38:19):
in the past. So bookmark that one for later
as well. So whether you feel these on a
regular basis or you don't, either way, if you do feel them
a lot, that doesn't mean you're emotional, doesn't mean that you
(38:41):
are, you know, unregulated or unbalanced.
The reality is, is we are all emotional beings and we all have
moments of being unbalanced and dysregulated.
We're all uniquely and exquisitely informed, and when
we allow ourselves to be informed by these energies,
(39:01):
these emotions that come throughand allows us to find that inner
wisdom. So letting sadness soften when
it's hard, letting frustration sharpen what is vague and
looking at things in a differentway.
Letting anger guard what is sacred, but ultimately allow
(39:22):
ourselves to feel, regulate, andrespond.
That is where we find the strength within these emotional
messages. So let's just take a grounding
moment, little meditative momenthere.
Plant your feet on the ground. Or you know, take a moment to
(39:43):
just stop. If you're driving or something
like that, then that might be a difficult thing to do, but just
take a moment to just sit for a moment.
You can close your eyes if you want, but just start to connect
with your own breath. Inhaling through the nose and
(40:07):
exhaling through the mouth. Now for sadness.
The mantra can be I can let it move.
(40:30):
I can let it move because sadness wants to move but
doesn't want to feel stuck. We want to be able to feel, not
be numb for frustration. When you inhale, hold your
(40:59):
breath and then exhale for long frustration, the mantra can be I
can adjust and then holds and let it go.
(41:25):
So noticing whenever that frustration comes through, that
tension might build like a hold that you can always adjust, you
can always make a change, come out at a different way.
(41:45):
And then for anger, strong insulation, strong inhalation
and even longer exhalation, unclenching the jaw, softening
the hands, softening the shoulders.
(42:10):
The mantra being I protect with clarity.
Anger is allowing me to protect with clarity, naming and
protecting a boundary. Ultimately, bringing these all
(42:39):
together to say that I am safe to feel.
I'm ready and steady to choose. I'm safe to feel that I'm ready
(43:02):
and steady to choose. To let it move, to allow myself
to just or to protect with clarity.
All right, thank you for going through that process with me
today. Thank you for tuning in today.
(43:22):
Next week we will TuneIn. I think Byron will be joining us
and we'll continue some new fun conversations.
Otherwise, if you have any questions, you can reach out to
me personally on Instagram seemsto be the best way to do that.
Otherwise, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, best
of your week, and we'll speak toyou soon.
Take care for now. Before you go, let me tell you
about the Going proyoga.com platform.
(43:44):
This is an online learning platform that is suited for
anyone who's interested in learning about yoga.
Whether you've done a 200 hour teacher training and you want to
supplement your own learning andcontinue to educate yourself and
grow, or you just are getting started with yoga.
You're interested in the topic and you want to learn more about
it. We have all the resources that
are available for you. Whether it's learning more about
queuing, yoga poses, sequencing,creating classes, the yoga
(44:08):
philosophy and the lifestyle, ormaybe you're interested in the
anatomy and the Physiology and learning more about the body, we
have so much to offer for you. And right now you can go check
it out for free for seven days. And if you like it and you want
to continue as a member, right now we're doing a special offer
for our podcast listeners where you can sign up for an extra 20%
(44:28):
off. So upon registration, make sure
to go down to that coupon code and push in Podcast Special 20.
Again, that's Podcast Special 20.
That'll give you 20% off the membership.
So if you're interested in that,I would not delay and I'd go
check it out today because we'reonly offering this to the 1st 30
users. Again, Podcast Special 20.
(44:50):
Go check it out goingproyoga.com.
Hello everyone, and welcome backto the Going Pro Yoga podcasts.
So I haven't said that in a while.
And the reason why is because we're actually changing the name
of the podcast. Maybe you caught wind of that
somewhere along the lines, but we are going to be rebranding
the podcast among other things. And I say we because partnering
with, of course, Byron, who's been on the podcast many times.
(00:23):
He's not here today, but he willbe back.
Paul, who's been on the podcast many times, and also Leia, his
wife. And together we have kind of put
together this new brand perspective which allows us to
actually have a space, a physical space here in Bali,
which is really exciting. We're going to have a couple
studios here, ultimately a training center, spa,
(00:45):
restaurant, cool little community space.
So if you are in Bali, somethingto look forward to.
And if you're eventually coming to Bali, also something to look
forward to. Either way, it's connected to
the podcast and therefore we aregoing to be shifting the name to
the In Movement podcast. The In Movement podcast.
We'll break down that meaning later on in the future to
(01:07):
understand a little bit more. I'll kind of wait for Byron to
be here for that one. I'm sure he'll love to
deconstruct that one, but we just want to kind of tease out
and let people know that the name is going to be changing so
that in the future when you're looking for the podcast, that's
not a surprise. So the In Movement podcast
welcome. And today is again a solo
episode. It's just me here.
(01:29):
I felt inspired this morning to talk about a couple emotions
that I've experienced in the last few weeks, particularly
sadness and also moments of frustration, which I think
they're interconnected. And then also anger, which is
actually closely connected to both of those as well.
So how to understand them, how to kind of calm the body, how to
(01:52):
kind of get through that and ultimately respond better in the
world with care. So before we kind of break these
emotions down like we normally do, breaking through with the
definitions, how they actually manifest in her body and what we
can kind of do to create awareness for them.
I always like to give an opportunity for you guys to send
(02:13):
us some love, not just energetically with your thoughts
and positive mind, but ultimately to quantitatively
give us some love by going to the main podcast page, whether
it be on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and find that star
review section and just give us some love.
Apple Podcasts, I think you can actually write something in if
(02:34):
you wanted to write some kind words, that's really cool.
For Spotify, it's just a matter of giving us a star review.
And I think with Spotify, you goto the triple dot and that's how
you can do it for us. Either way, we really, really
appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in
and for being regular listeners.And if you're new to the
podcast, welcome. So today again, we're going to
(02:54):
be breaking down sadness, frustration and anger and really
kind of diving into how these affect us and how they kind of
manifest in through the body. So ultimately, sadness is the
body's response to loss. It's very closely connected to
grief, Like we've actually lost something, changed something, or
(03:15):
some sort of an unmet need has happened.
So it invites us to slow down, to soothe and to support
ourselves during that time. But like all emotions, often
times we might not actually be in the place to experience them.
So if we push them down, push them away, sadness in
(03:37):
particular, we end up feeling a little bit more numb.
So before I kind of break this in further, the reason why this
is coming up for me and the why I got inspired to talk about
this one is my partner Christina.
She went on a Vipassana meditation.
And so if you're familiar with the Vipassana meditation, this
is a 10 day silent retreat whereyou ultimately meditate from or
(04:02):
11:50 hours a day, give or take depending on your commitment
level. So that means no phones, no
communication, no contact for 10days.
And for me who was not in the meditation, I actually had no
communication with her for the 10 days and we've been apart for
(04:24):
longer than 10 days before. Absolutely, I think up to a
month possibly from travelling and moving around.
But this was different. This was different because there
was 0 communication. So everybody likes their space,
right? And for me, the first few days,
the first five days or so were just very much like, this is
nice. You know, I got my own space.
(04:46):
I can come home, I do my own thing.
You know, I don't really have anyone that I need to think
about too much. Even though I did think about
her. I actually sent her messages
everyday so that when she came out of the retreat, she could
see some messages, but I would receive no responses.
In fact, I can see that the messages wouldn't go through
because her phone was off. So after a bit of time, I
(05:08):
started to notice how that was affecting me.
I started to notice like, wow, you know, it's kind of weird.
It's almost like she doesn't exist anymore.
It's almost like she's gone kindof like she died or she like
she's no longer in my life. So after about the fifth day, I
kind of woke up, I think it was the 6th day actually, I started
(05:29):
to wake up and I felt really, really sad.
I didn't know it was sadness at first.
I just felt really off. I actually kind of woke up and
was just like, man, today's not a good day.
I just don't feel great today. But I didn't actually know why,
but a spoiler alert, it was sadness.
I eventually figured that out. Throughout the day, I just was
like wondering like, am I getting sick?
What's going on here? So it was a signal that was
(05:51):
passing through me and I eventually was able to stitch
together to realize that I missed her.
I missed her and I was sad that she wasn't there.
And I started to have this like,experience of, is this what life
would be like if I didn't have her in my life?
Which was a really impactful moment because often times you
(06:12):
don't realize how special something is until it's gone.
So in this moment, you know, having been six or five or six
days where I have had zero communication with her, it kind
of felt like that. It felt like I had lost her.
It felt like she was no longer in my life, which kind of makes
sense why I was feeling sad, butit helped to really validate and
(06:34):
confirm, you know, even though we've been together for 12
years, it didn't I, I know how Ithought I knew how I felt about
her, but this even it, it pushedit even further.
So that sadness was something that was always there, but it
was something that I never actually allowed myself to fully
(06:56):
like think about like, oh, what if, you know, we broke up or
what if we separated or something to this effect.
And because it didn't actually come through just on its own,
this situation allowed, it was just the right parameters to
allow that sadness to come through for me because it felt
like a loss. It felt like some sort of change
(07:21):
now because I allowed myself to feel it.
And, you know, I kind of, I, I kind of got excited because it
made me realize how much I did miss her.
And I continued to send her messages and so on.
And eventually, you know, she came back and I was super
excited to have her back. And it allowed me to kind of
feel this, you know, contrast ofhappiness on the other side of
(07:43):
that sadness, knowing that she would still be there.
But I will admit that there was a part of me that's like, oh,
when she comes back, like, who knows what's going to happen?
You know, there was a story thatkind of played into my head a
little bit about like, if she was in this meditation for 10
days, you know, who knows what kind of thoughts came through
for her. And maybe she was feeling
(08:03):
different in different ways about life.
And, you know, she wanted to change things herself.
So I started to create a story that, you know, maybe she will
leave me, maybe this, you know, maybe this is what it's going to
feel like. And I have to prepare myself for
it. And, you know, there's a whole
conversation of attachment there, of course.
But ultimately none of that happened.
She came back and it was a beautiful experience, that kind
(08:25):
of reconnect. But I'm really grateful that I
was able to go through my own process while she was going
through her process. And so this sense of sadness
that I experienced made me really start to think about, you
know, how often do we actually allow ourselves to feel sad?
(08:47):
And is it only whenever the sadness is so strong, so heavy,
that it forces itself upon us and then, you know, tears come
through and so on? Or is it that we never actually
allow ourselves to slow down enough to actually create enough
awareness, enough peace to allowsadness to come through?
(09:11):
So the interesting thing about sadness is, you know, we can go
into the neuroscience and the, the yogic perspective, and I'm
sure we'll do a little bit of that.
But the thing that's really important is how within your
body you have these systems, these, these nervous, nervous
network systems and call them, Imean, I'll just tell them, tell
(09:32):
you what they're called. And you know, you can digest
them in your own way. But the ACC, the anterior
cingulate cortex in this insula process, this kind of felt sense
within your body, which is ultimately your nervous system,
meaning that social soothing andtears can downshift part of your
(09:55):
body's stress response in the body.
You can call it cortisol if you want.
So I'll say that again, social soothing and tears can downshift
your cortisol or stress response.
So what does that mean? Social soothing means being
witnessed. Being witnessed when you feel
(10:17):
the sadness or the tears. So if you have experienced this
before where you feel sadness onyour own in your room or by
yourself, yeah, there's a certain amount of relief that
happens there. Absolutely.
But there's so much more relief that happens.
There's so much more letting go or downshifting in your nervous
(10:39):
system or you're just these systems in your body whenever
you're being witnessed through this sadness, when you're
sharing this sadness with someone else.
So one of the things that we do in our teacher trainings is we
allow an opportunity for people to share things.
And I'm sure you know, if if you've been in a teacher
(11:01):
training before, you're probablyfamiliar with us to some degree.
There's a lot of sharing that happens.
And often times there is some moments of sadness and other
emotions that come through. And it's really powerful for a
lot of people to experience this.
And the thing that they're experiencing is the witnessing,
being witnessed while experiencing that emotion.
(11:23):
That's what's kind of happening within this like neural network
in our system, the social soothing, the support, the being
witnessed by other people while you're also experiencing that
sadness, the tears or whatever it might be.
That really hurts if it really starts to shift your chemistry.
And it can be very, very healing.
(11:45):
So those situations, those, let's say, groups of people that
allow that to happen can be obviously not always around, but
just knowing that if there is someone in your life who can
hold space in such a way to allow the sadness or these
feelings to come through can be super, super powerful.
(12:06):
And us, most of us, I think are as facilitators in life, we're
just humans who can relate to other humans.
Holding space for other people is kind of a skill that we
should all have and that is ultimately to allow ourselves to
witness other people when they're experiencing certain
emotions and particularly sadness.
I know for myself, whenever I was experiencing or sorry, not
(12:29):
what I was experiencing, but when I was watching someone or
witnessing someone else feel sad, whether it be my partner
Christina, or someone else who was just crying, I would just
get so uncomfortable and I wouldjust be like, Oh my God, they're
crying, What do I do? And I didn't really know how to
hold space. I didn't know.
I thought I had to do something.I thought I had to, you know,
(12:50):
say something and, you know, we could deconstruct that and like,
why that all happens. But at the end of the day, I
think it's because I wasn't connected to my own sadness.
I'd never actually allowed myself to feel sad.
And I didn't know what it felt like to kind of be in that
person's perspective. So I hadn't really developed my
empathy skills very well in thatparticular, let's say, emotional
(13:13):
state. So I kind of avoided it, or I
tried to avoid it, or I would just kind of go blank and I
would just sit there and be uncomfortable.
So I was kind of holding space, but uncomfortably holding space.
Either way, I eventually learnedthat I didn't have to do
anything. It wasn't a matter about doing
anything. It was just a matter of
witnessing the person, just being able to see them for who
(13:35):
they are and to see how real what they were doing or what
they were experiencing was. So think about that for
yourself. The power of witnessing, the
power of noticing and holding space for someone is not about
trying to fix them or to do anything besides just actually
just being there. That's really where the power
is. So this sadness is ultimately
(13:58):
something that is asking us for acknowledgement, some
gentleness, some time and some contact, some contact.
Ultimately that witnessing. And again, if we kind of avoid
this experience, we didn't allowourselves to feel it, then
there's going to be this numbness that's happens within
(14:19):
our system, this protective shutting down when we feel or
when feeling would feel kind of overwhelming.
And we have this dorsal vagal response.
And if you remember, dorsal vagal, dorsal vagal is the down
shifting, too far down shifting of your nervous system, which is
more about trying to conserve energy.
(14:39):
It's trying to self preserve, but it's also leading to things
like depression and so on. In fact, grief or sadness can
lead to things like depression, victimhood, self pity,
hopelessness, blame, of course, unhappiness.
(15:02):
And then it can also lead to sickness by holding on to this
pain or holding on to this emotional, let's say, turmoil
within our system. And a lot of us can feel sadness
for different reasons, and we all process it in different
ways. But at the end of the day,
allowing ourselves to process itand being witnessed with someone
who we feel safe with or maybe agroup of people or an experience
(15:27):
where we can be witnessed, that's really where the healing
happens there. OK, So if you started to notice
anything that came through for you or maybe your brain's
starting to wonder a little bit about like your own sadness and
things that you might be sad about.
I mean, you know, I'm not reallyable to witness you per SE here,
(15:49):
but I will help to at least downshift you to some degree.
So what you can do is recognize first of all, that sadness is
not about failure. It's and it's not anything about
trying to hide it because it's abad thing.
We actually want to allow it to be felt.
(16:11):
And the way that we do this is through length and exhalation to
allow us to regulate and allow our prefrontal cortex to kind of
come back online so that we can have more balance within our
nervous system. So you can place your hand on
your heart or place your hand onyour sternum, if you will, one
(16:31):
on your belly, if you have it available to you.
If you're just sitting, if you're just kind of, you know,
doing something else, then that's fine.
Just maybe take a moment. You can place your hands down or
just take a moment to just be with yourself, taking a breath
in and sighing out the mouth andremembering that if you do feel
(16:54):
sadness. So if there is sadness that's
shying away somewhere underneaththat, it's nothing that needs to
be fixed. It's just something that exists
there and then in the right opportunity, in the right
moment, it can be felt. And knowing that it's OK to be
(17:17):
witnessed. In fact, it's powerful to be
witnessed when we experience sadness in front of someone
else. So we're not going to spend too
(17:39):
much time here. This isn't really what this
podcast is about to process our own individual sadness, but more
of a way of just kind of prepping and priming ourselves
to recognize that that is something that we can do and we
can find opportunities to do it.Find the right people or the
right environments in which we can regulate, experience, feel,
(18:01):
share those things so that we don't need to carry it around.
It's such a burden and it can lead to all those things that I
was mentioning before the depression, the victimhood, self
pity, blame, unhappiness, sickness, disease in the body.
We don't need that. So finding opportunities to let
(18:21):
go of that is going to make a huge difference.
OK, so let's shift gears, downshift gears to talking about
frustration and anger. Now, I've talked about these on
the podcast before, but I just notice, I notice frustration
seems to be my, my core emotional response.
(18:44):
I was going to say reaction, butI think I'm enough aware to
notice that when it happens, I can respond and split instead of
reacting from frustration. And if you're familiar with
human design, I'm a generator. And I think my, my, I don't know
if it's called your favorite emotion or your, your emotion to
respond when, let's say things are not lined up, you usually
(19:09):
have a particular emotion. Mine is frustration.
Maybe you know what yours is as well.
Maybe it's frustration also. But ultimately frustration is
blocked goal energy. It's kind of like mobilized, but
also kind of stuck. And that's kind of how I feel
actually when I'm feeling frustrated sometimes.
(19:30):
But often times when I feel frustrated and I have like a
recent example, which I won't get into the semantic details
too much, but I always try to catch myself, like when I'm
frustrated with something, it's not always just with myself.
Sometimes it's actually when there's other people around.
And it could be related to communication.
In fact, that's what my example is, is related to communication.
(19:54):
When I'm trying to talk to someone, or I'm trying to
explain something to somebody orI'm trying to ask for something
and it's not quite getting through.
You know, it's not being fully understood on the other side or
I'm not getting the response back that I want or I'm not
getting. You know, it's there's just
there's some sort of disconnect happening there that be that
seems to build frustration with me quite a bit, which is a
(20:17):
little unfortunate. So before I became a little bit
more self aware of my own patterns and frustration in
particular, I would kind of wallow in it a little bit, kind
of sit with it a little too longand kind of hold on to the
frustration, kind of like the sadness thing, but in a
different way. And ultimately kind of blocked
(20:38):
me. It stopped me from kind of
moving on to the next thing or just to move on in general.
And I would always kind of feel as though the frustration was
coming from possibly the other person or the thing that I was
doing or some sort of external means.
But the reality is, is the frustration that I was
(21:00):
experiencing, and this is probably very closely connected
to frustration is something for you, is that I was actually just
frustrated with myself in a variety of different ways.
One in particular with this communication is that I'm kind
of frustrated that I'm not able to communicate clearly what I
want or what I'm trying to say to this person.
(21:20):
And even though it's not coming through on the other side, it's
not their fault. It's not that they're making me
frustrated. It's that that I'm just, you
know, needing to try to maybe communicate a little bit better.
I need to try to do it in a different way so that it could
be understood. And that's a tricky one.
That's a tricky one because the frustration itself can be
(21:42):
something that can really build up over time and it just feels
like it's the other person or the other thing, the task.
This is a frustrating task because I can't go through it,
but often times it's because I just, you just don't know how to
do it quite yet. So to me, this one is a lot
about having self compassion andnot judging yourself.
First of all, it's actually about recognizing where the
(22:05):
frustration is coming from. Now, chances are there's some
sort of pattern or condition that was earned or gained
possibly from our biological parents.
I know for sure that mine was passed on from my father to some
degree. But I also know that, you know,
(22:25):
especially through human design,that's just something that's
probably part of my core system.It's, you know, we all
experience all the emotions, butfrustration for me for some
reason just seems to be a littlebit more on the availability
list, if you want to call it that way.
So frustration can kind of come through in different way, in
different feelings to me. You can sometimes feel like a
(22:46):
buzzing, you know, your jaw can kind of tighten, can kind of
notice your breath starts to become a little bit more
shallow. And you're have this urgency to
kind of like, you know, react, ultimately refine the plan to
try to like, do something in a different way so that you can
(23:07):
kind of get across what you wantto get across.
But this frustration, which is kind of stopping us from being
able to move on, is mostly happening because of how it
changes our neurological responses in our body.
(23:28):
So within our nervous system, ultimately, when we are trying
to do something, we have some sort of expectation or what we
would call like a prediction of what was likely going to happen.
Like if I say this thing, then I'll get some sort of response.
And if I don't get that response, then that might be
frustrating, right? Or if I'm trying to do this task
(23:50):
and it's not quite completing inthe way that I want it to
complete, even though I was expecting it that it would, then
what I was predicting to happen didn't quite happen.
So in your body, in your nervoussystem, you have this thing
called the prediction error. Ultimately, when your body is
trying to or your nervous systemis trying to do something, it's
(24:11):
going to have some sort of played out game plan of what
should likely happen. And whenever that doesn't
happen, we get what we call prediction error, which actually
triggers A dopamine dip, a sag, a drop.
And it kind of causes this basically tense feeling in our
(24:34):
system. And it says ultimately to our
ACC system, which is basically saying nothing's or something's
not working properly. And it's asking for adjustment.
It's asking for something that needs to happen differently, a
different strategy, clear communication, a new pacing or
something like that. But if we don't recognize that
(24:58):
that's what it's trying to tell us.
If we don't recognize that that's what it's trying to tell
us, then we might just sit in the frustration itself.
We might sit in that dopamine dip or that drop because that
air just it kind of like tweaks us.
So I've I've also seen this on other people a little bit more
(25:19):
so now as well, because now thatI understand it within myself, I
notice it in other people, you know, whether it be teaching and
lectures or having certain conversations about things.
And when someone doesn't agree with you, this is kind of where
this comes through. Someone doesn't agree with you
or they have a different opinionabout something and they're
sharing something or you're sharing something and there's a
(25:42):
disconnect between what is, let's say, the opinion of the
topic. If that other person is
expecting or predicting that this is going to kind of be
smooth with the conversation, orI'm going to share this thing
and they're going to absorb whatI'm going to say, but they
don't. Then that kind of creates this
(26:03):
again, this prediction error. And then they kind of get a
little bit like, oh, I don't, this feeling is a little like, I
don't like this feeling and thisfeeling must be coming because
they're doing it, you know, they're not agreeing with me or
they're not, they're not in alignment with what I'm
communicating. So that can really 'cause
turmoil within the system. But again, it's not so much
(26:24):
about they are causing that in your system.
It's more so your system is not predicting accurately what is
the true reality. It isn't actually predicting the
truth. It's trying to control the
truth, is trying to say like, ifthat's not happening, that I
(26:45):
need to like convince them otherwise or I need to like, get
upset with them so that they recognize that this is what it
needs to be as opposed to just being like, oh, OK, yeah, we
have a difference of opinions or, you know, you see it
differently than I do and that'sOK too.
You know, maybe you start to getcurious about like, why they see
it that way, for example. So yeah, I'm not going to get
(27:06):
into the example too much of what I'm thinking about, but I
just, I'm kind of tapping into the energy of some of these
conversations that I've had. And I've noticed how other
people get frustrated whenever that prediction or that
expectation of conversation doesn't quite go according to
the way that they might have thought.
And maybe you can relate to thisin your own way.
(27:29):
So ultimately we want to recognize when we're feeling
frustrated. We want to recognize when that
comes through and not get too caught up in it.
You know, if we start to allow ourselves to get triggered too
much and we start to become reactive and we allow that
frustration to come through, eventually it could turn into
(27:52):
something worse, which would be like anger.
So those are the two emotions that really started to come
through for me in the last few weeks for a variety of different
reasons, like I was sharing and they felt kind of closely
connected. But ultimately the thing that
was recognizable to me is that you just start to need to be
(28:16):
aware when you're feeling these things, and it's really hard to
notice when you're feeling thesethings.
Sadness or frustration. Frustration is a little bit more
obvious, I think, to notice sadness.
In my experience, sadness doesn't come through so easily.
It's almost like it's kind of sitting at Bay.
(28:36):
It's kind of behind there. Sadness seems to be able to come
through when I find more stillness and peace, meditation
and I actually like go to placesof, you know, senses of loss, if
you will. Whereas frustration might just
show its face in a moment because of that prediction error
that might come through in conversation or tasks or what
(28:59):
have you. So hopefully that's somewhat
helpful and relatable for you tokind of like tune into those
sensations and when they might happen for you.
So let's bring in anger a littlebit more and talk about it in
such a way like what is it like?How is it related to these
conversations? So I do have a couple notes.
(29:20):
Let's see if I can find it in mybook here.
So anger often comes out of righteousness or fear or
judgement that arises when people feel they have been
wronged or haven't gotten what they want.
So you can see how that connectsto frustration.
(29:41):
So rather than taking responsibility, they often will
brain blame others or blame something else, which again
sounds very similar to frustration.
Anger gives people a false senseof power, making them feel
justified to criticize, put down, hate, or resent others.
Angry people feel the right to fight to hurt someone or to
(30:05):
treat people badly. On the other hand, anger can be
a catalyst for change and transformation, fueling your
passion, excitement, and enthusiasm.
So if something in your life is not working and you are angry,
this anger offers an opportunityfor you to see and free yourself
from your ailment, such as perhaps depression or
(30:27):
powerlessness, feeling overwhelmed and so on.
However, if it's protracted, anger drains energy in life
force. Long term anger can leave a
person feeling fatigued, frail, unhappy and worn out.
And of course, unresolved anger can contribute to so many
(30:49):
challenges in the body. One of the main ones in common
ones is inflammation, sinusitis.It can lead to cancers,
pneumonia, ulcers, lots of things like this.
Now if I turn to frustration, let's just kind of have a look
at what I it says in this book about frustration.
So frustration is one of the most common emotions.
(31:11):
It has an element of impatience,struggle, suffering and
irritation. So often people become
frustrated when things aren't flowing their way, when they
feel a situation should be different than it is, or when
they have to wait for something to happen.
(31:32):
So they're very different, but they're super close together,
frustration and anger. So long term frustration becomes
aggression, irritation, inflammation and attack.
And again, you can see how they're very much connected
there. So in its positive role,
frustration might be the drivingforce you need to change the way
you are living your life. And that's what we talked about
(31:55):
before, how the frustration can be a sign to help us recognize
that maybe the way that we're communicating or doing this is
not quite working and it's not happening in such a way that we
are hoping, expecting or predicting it to unfold.
So allowing that frustration to kind of happen, pass and then
(32:16):
coming back at it, you know, allowing us to actually be like,
OK, well, that wasn't working orthat the way I said that didn't
work or the way I'm doing this didn't work.
So why get frustrated about it? Well, I'll feel the frustration
because it's good to feel it. But then ultimately, let's come
back at it with a different strategy.
In fact, I have one more exampleto share about this.
I just popped into my head. I went to an escape room a few
(32:40):
days ago. I don't know if you guys are
familiar with an escape room, but it's basically you go into a
place and you have like real life puzzles.
You're in a room and you need tofigure out puzzles or clues to
try to escape the room. And usually there's some sort of
theme. And this theme was what was the
theme? It was like a pharaoh theme,
(33:01):
like an Egyptian theme. And it was pretty cool.
You know, it was a cool experience.
But when we got through the first, I think 2 puzzles or the
2 rooms and then the third room,we, we struggled to figure out
the puzzle. And I noticed that because we
went through the 1st puzzle and the second puzzle relatively,
not want to say easily, but we went through them pretty like
(33:22):
pretty well within like 15 or 20minutes.
The third puzzle wasn't going sosmoothly.
So our, you know, prediction error was kind of kicking in and
I could tell and I could notice myself.
But also other people are just getting really frustrated.
And it was almost like blaming the room, blaming the system,
blaming the people that made thegame that it wasn't, that it was
(33:46):
stupid. You know, it was stupid.
This, this puzzle doesn't make any sense.
This is stupid. And I was just thinking about
it. And I was like, oh, I was like,
this is so much frustration in the room right now.
And eventually, you know, you have a little walkie-talkie.
You can kind of call on the person and say, hey, like, what?
Give us some hints and give us some hints.
And then they were giving hints.And the hints weren't helpful.
And that was building more frustration and building more
(34:08):
frustration because they're expecting, you know, some
results, They're expecting some change.
They're expecting to get out of the room.
And I'm sure the fact that you're, you know, trapped in
this room added to some of the stress level.
And then eventually, you know, they came through and the guy
came in, turned on the light andexplained how the puzzle worked.
And then there was this, like, moment of relief where everyone
was like, oh, oh, OK, I see now.Which was kind of funny.
(34:34):
But like, you know, the way thatthat kind of unfolded, I was
thinking about it afterwards andbeing like, well, if we would
have just taken the time to be like, OK, what we're doing isn't
working. We need to look at it a
different way. We need to find a different
strategy. And then maybe we would be able
to see a different way to unlockthis puzzle.
(34:56):
And this can be related to work stuff.
This can be related to any typesof challenges and problems that
we face in life, whether it be communication or tasks for, for,
for our job. It's like if something's not
quite working, it's probably because we haven't, right?
We haven't found the right strategy to approach it yet.
So sometimes taking space away or kind of being like, OK, I
(35:18):
need to, I need to get away fromwhat I was trying to do or what
I think I need to do and then try something different.
And then from that you might actually find that relief, that
ability to kind of move through it and then find peace on the
other side. So I thought that was a pretty
interesting example as well. So let's kind of integrate and
(35:40):
kind of bring this all home. So here's a couple questions to
sit with for yourself. So where in your life is sadness
asking you to be with it? Not to fix it, but just to be
(36:01):
with it, just to feel something.If that might feel like a loss
or something that you feel sad about, you don't necessarily
have to dive too deep into it now, but just start to leave a
little bookmark if something's coming through of where or what
(36:23):
in your life might require a bitof that attention.
And then, you know, bookmark that.
Bookmark that for later. You know, you can go sit in
meditation and go journal about it, sit with a little bit later,
and then let's just kind of shift to frustration.
Where is frustration asking for a different strategy or a
(36:45):
different pace maybe currently or in the past?
Remembering that frustration often just requires a different
approach to be able to move through it.
(37:08):
So see if you can catch yourselfwith that one when frustration
comes through and give yourself grace and compassion to
recognize that. Maybe I just need to look at
this a different way. And then the last one, anger.
Where is anger asking me to nameit and protect that boundary?
(37:33):
Because anger is boundary energy.
It's a surge of your sympatheticactivation to protect value, to
protect time, your body, or somesort of truth.
The request is protection and clarity.
So if you can name that line, that line and act without harm
(37:58):
or without aggression, then we might be able to move through
and move past that anger. So maybe there is something that
feels like almost a combination of not quite frustration, but a
little bit stronger than frustration.
So something that might be angering you or has angered you
(38:19):
in the past. So bookmark that one for later
as well. So whether you feel these on a
regular basis or you don't, either way, if you do feel them
a lot, that doesn't mean you're emotional, doesn't mean that you
(38:41):
are, you know, unregulated or unbalanced.
The reality is, is we are all emotional beings and we all have
moments of being unbalanced and dysregulated.
We're all uniquely and exquisitely informed, and when
we allow ourselves to be informed by these energies,
(39:01):
these emotions that come throughand allows us to find that inner
wisdom. So letting sadness soften when
it's hard, letting frustration sharpen what is vague and
looking at things in a differentway.
Letting anger guard what is sacred, but ultimately allow
(39:22):
ourselves to feel, regulate, andrespond.
That is where we find the strength within these emotional
messages. So let's just take a grounding
moment, little meditative momenthere.
Plant your feet on the ground. Or you know, take a moment to
(39:43):
just stop. If you're driving or something
like that, then that might be a difficult thing to do, but just
take a moment to just sit for a moment.
You can close your eyes if you want, but just start to connect
with your own breath. Inhaling through the nose and
(40:07):
exhaling through the mouth. Now for sadness.
The mantra can be I can let it move.
(40:30):
I can let it move because sadness wants to move but
doesn't want to feel stuck. We want to be able to feel, not
be numb for frustration. When you inhale, hold your
(40:59):
breath and then exhale for long frustration, the mantra can be I
can adjust and then holds and let it go.
(41:25):
So noticing whenever that frustration comes through, that
tension might build like a hold that you can always adjust, you
can always make a change, come out at a different way.
(41:45):
And then for anger, strong insulation, strong inhalation
and even longer exhalation, unclenching the jaw, softening
the hands, softening the shoulders.
(42:10):
The mantra being I protect with clarity.
Anger is allowing me to protect with clarity, naming and
protecting a boundary. Ultimately, bringing these all
(42:39):
together to say that I am safe to feel.
I'm ready and steady to choose. I'm safe to feel that I'm ready
(43:02):
and steady to choose. To let it move, to allow myself
to just or to protect with clarity.
All right, thank you for going through that process with me
today. Thank you for tuning in today.
(43:22):
Next week we will TuneIn. I think Byron will be joining us
and we'll continue some new fun conversations.
Otherwise, if you have any questions, you can reach out to
me personally on Instagram seemsto be the best way to do that.
Otherwise, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, best
of your week, and we'll speak toyou soon.
Take care for now. Before you go, let me tell you
about the Going proyoga.com platform.
(43:44):
This is an online learning platform that is suited for
anyone who's interested in learning about yoga.
Whether you've done a 200 hour teacher training and you want to
supplement your own learning andcontinue to educate yourself and
grow, or you just are getting started with yoga.
You're interested in the topic and you want to learn more about
it. We have all the resources that
are available for you. Whether it's learning more about
queuing, yoga poses, sequencing,creating classes, the yoga
(44:08):
philosophy and the lifestyle, ormaybe you're interested in the
anatomy and the Physiology and learning more about the body, we
have so much to offer for you. And right now you can go check
it out for free for seven days. And if you like it and you want
to continue as a member, right now we're doing a special offer
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off. So upon registration, make sure
to go down to that coupon code and push in Podcast Special 20.
Again, that's Podcast Special 20.
That'll give you 20% off the membership.
So if you're interested in that,I would not delay and I'd go
check it out today because we'reonly offering this to the 1st 30
users. Again, Podcast Special 20.
(44:50):
Go check it out goingproyoga.com.
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