October 3, 2025 • 39 mins
What if your life was meant to feel good?
I don’t mean that in a “if you can dream it, you can do it!” kind of a way as much as I mean… what if your life—as it is—was meant to be pleasurable?
What if you could learn to slow down enough to see every single day, every breath, every new opportunity, every inconvenience, every hiccup, even every heartbreak as an absolutely gripping reminder that you get to be here and to experience this?
If you’re like me, it’s not always easy to get there.
But I think it’s worth a try, don’t you?
Come along with me on today’s episode where I discuss this very topic and invite you to practice with me: going slow and finding pleasure in everything.
The two books I mention are below:
Fawning by Dr Ingrid Clayton (Link HERE)
A Rebellion of Care by David Gate (Link HERE)
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's down to let
them out and write them down on cold It's all
about and write your story. Write, write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about a topic that I've been
thinking about a lot lately. Full disclosure, I don't feel
like I have a handle on this topic. I don't
feel like i'm the expert to talk about this topic.
But it's something I've been thinking about a lot because
I've been practicing with this and playing with this not
(00:50):
just in my brain and in the way I'm thinking
about my life, but also in an embodied way. I'm
thinking about this in my yoga practice and really using
my yoga practice as a metaphor or an analogy for
how to work through this issue in my life. And
it feels like as I've been playing with this idea,
lots of different opportunities have come to me to practice
(01:15):
with it and so I want to just introduce this
concept to you. I want to unpack it here with you,
and I want to offer what I'm learning in hopes
that maybe there might be something here for you to
learn as well. Before I dive into that topic, though,
I want to share about a couple of books that
I've been reading that I wholeheartedly recommend. I have been
doing an exceptional amount of reading lately, in part because
(01:37):
I challenged myself to a thirty day screen free September.
I guess, yeah, they're thirty day screen free September. And
before you congratulate me, I did not make it through
the month of September. And I'll explain in just a minute,
but for me, screen free didn't mean never looking at
my smartphone. That is just not possible for me in
my life right now. Small side note, my husband has
(01:58):
traded in his smartphone for a dumb phone, and I
know a couple people in our community have done this.
Where he doesn't have an Apple phone anymore. He has
it's basically like an Android phone that has been whittled
down to only the bare minimum apps that you need
on the phone to function. So there's no email, there's
no social media. There's no Internet app, there's no Safari
(02:18):
or anything. You can't go like search a question or
ask Google any questions. There's no chat, GPT, there's none
of that. But there's maps maybe or like an app
to help you find directions from place to place. There's
a camera, there's music. I think there's like five apps.
It's texting, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's just
a handful of apps. And he has made the switch
(02:40):
to that phone, and it's been so fascinating to watch him.
I don't feel as pulled or called to make that
switch as he does, but it's been fascinating to watch
him how it's changed his behavior with the phone and
with screens, and also like the little roadblocks that we
run into. For example, we were parking in a parking
lot the other day and there's a QR code that
(03:00):
you have to scan to pay for your parking, and
there's no other option to pay for parking. You have
to scan this QR code. And he and I were
both like, well, this is crazy that if you don't
have a smartphone, you can't actually pay for your parking
in the slot. You'd have to find a different spot.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
To park.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's just one example of a handful I could give
you of roadblocks that we've run into with this quote
unquote dumb phone. That we live in a world that
so assumes that everyone has a smartphone that it's become
almost impossible to navigate your reality without one. So that's
just a statement about how in mesh that we've become
with our screens and with our phones. So the concept
(03:36):
of taking a break from our screens, even if it
was five days or fifteen days or thirty days or
whatever it is, actually like it's it takes quite a
bit of effort and discipline and planning in order to
make that happen. And so in my husband's case, he
is using this dumb phone as a way to prevent
himself from scrolling on Reddit or checking his email. Those
are his favorite things to do on his smartphone. And
(03:58):
I decided I was going to take a thirty day
break from screens, which for me meant two things. Number one,
no scrolling on social media. That's a big thing that
I do when I'm overwhelmed or anxious, or when my
head hurts from thinking too hard, or from kids saying
my name, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom too many times
and I'm on overload and I just want to check out.
(04:18):
My big thing that I do is open Instagram and
scroll and you know, try to find like a funny
reel or something interesting to put my brain on. That's
just like a coping mechanism that I have at my
disposals to check Instagram. And so for me, no screens
meant no Instagram and no TV with the small caveat
that my small kids watch. They are allowed to watch
(04:40):
a show a day, so I was going to turn
on the TV for them and my husband. It's football
season and he is a football fan, so there's going
to be football in the house. It wasn't like I
have to leave the room and can't you know, have
my eyes on the screen at all. It was just
more about not doing the thing that I do at
night where I'm so exhausted. All I want to do
is check out and I turn on a show to
not have to think, or sometimes what I do if
(05:02):
my husband's out of town, or even sometimes when he's
not out of town, I will turn on one of
my comfort shows, which usually is Gilmarro's or Friends, as
a way to calm my nervous system so that I
can fall asleep. And I know that sounds crazy to
some people, because some people need like utter darkness or
utter silence to fall asleep. But for me, this has
(05:22):
been true since I was young, like very young, since
I was a teenager. I used to turn on cassette
tapes to fall asleep. I would listen to This is
a throwback, but I don't know if you remember the
Adventures in Odyssey tapes. You would only really know about
this if you grew up in evangelicalism in the nineties.
But Adventures in Odyssey were these cassette tapes where each
(05:42):
side of the cassette tape had like a thirty minute
story with a Christian moral to it that I was
like love. I loved these things. I was like obsessed
and would buy the sets of cassette tapes. They would
come almost like in seasons. So you'd have a set
of cassette tapes that were Adventures in Audits and there'd
be maybe six cassette tapes in the set, and each
(06:04):
cassette tape would have a thirty minute episode on each side.
So what's that twelve episodes inside of a set, And
I would like save up my money beg my parents
ask for my birthday to get a new set of
Adventures and AUSSI tapes, and then I would like, you know,
blow through this set really quickly. This is pre Netflix,
pre binging podcasts, pre smartphones, pre all of it. This
(06:25):
was my binging a podcast, was begging for this set
of Adventures and Aussi tapes and then listening to them
when I fell asleep at night. And I don't know
if that's what did it for me or if there's
something else, but either way, since I was young, since
I was a teenager, when I was in college, I
would always either put headphones in if I had roommates,
(06:47):
or turn on the TV to fall asleep at night.
It's just a habit that's been with me for about
as long as I can remember, and I have gone
through periods of being like I'm going to overcome this habit,
I'm going to get rid of this habit, and I
just always come back to it, almost like a comfort
blank And so I said to Matt at the beginning
of September, I was like, I am going to take
a break from watching shows at night, so you know,
football on in the background, Totally fine. If you want
(07:11):
to watch a show upstairs, but in our bed, we
do have a TV in our bedroom, which is maybe
my first mistake, but in our bedroom, I'm not going
to turn on the TV to fall asleep at night.
I'm just going to choose to take the month of
September off.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I made it halfway through September, and I bumped into
a bunch of health challenges like I talked about on
the last episode, and it was a rough month, to
be honest, and so after a handful of really challenging weeks,
I just finally was like, forget it. Screen challenge is
off and I'm back to scrolling because I just need
a little something to take the edge off of this
(07:47):
difficult month. There's a relationship here to what I want
to talk about today, so I'm going to get into
that in just a minute, but before I do, I
want to introduce a couple of books to you, because,
like I said, I took this screen free challenge. During
my screen free challenge, I was reading like an insane
amount because I wasn't checking out through scrolling or checking
out at night through TV, and so it just opened
(08:08):
all this space for me to a listen to audiobooks,
which I did I don't know, like six or eight
of them in the first two weeks of September, and
then be read other books that have been sitting on
my nightstand forever that I just haven't picked up and
started reading. So two of them that I read that
I want to recommend to you. The first one is
by a woman who I've been following for a really
(08:30):
long time and I've come to love her and just
the way that she communicates and the topics that she
talks about. Her name is doctor Ingrid Clayton, and she
just came out with a book called Fawning, Why the
Need to Please makes us lose ourselves and how to
find our way back. And I keep wanting to call
this her debut book, but it's not her debut books.
(08:50):
She's written a few other books before, and she talks
about that even in the pages of this book. But
maybe this is more accurately described as like her breakout book.
I think this is the book that she's going to
become known for. And one of the things I love
about this book, aside from just the topic and how
closely it hit to home for me, but one of
the things that I love is watching her progression of
(09:14):
how she got to this place for writing this book.
This is particularly pertinent to you if you're someone who
knows that you have a book in you. You know
you have a book you want to write, but maybe
you have a few books you want to write, and
you're not sure which one to start with, or maybe
you're not sure if you should frame it as a memoir,
like a story driven book, or if you should frame
it as more of a content driven book, like this
book that's teaching someone how to do something. Her progression
(09:37):
for how she got here matches what I know to
be true about almost every other author I've ever worked with.
She started by writing the memoir. She wrote her story first,
she wrapped her brain around her story, healed from writing
her story, came to better understand her story and have
a better perspective of it, and from that process, out
of that process grew this book. Look, which is called fawning.
(10:01):
Fawning is she calls it the fourth F and it's
the fourth F of fight or flight response. So when
we think about a fight or flight response, like a
trauma response, we think either fight or flight or then
A while back, I remember they introduced this idea of freeze.
So is fight flight or freeze, Well, fawning is the
fourth F. It's the fourth way that many people respond
(10:24):
to trauma as a way to self protect inside of
a situation that feels unsafe to them. So, if you're
encountering a situation that feels unsafe to you, you might
have the instinct to fight, like I'm going to fight
this person so that I stay safe. You might have
the instinct to run to flee so that you feel safe.
You might have the instinct to freeze. Maybe that's the
(10:45):
only thing you can do, is just freeze in space
and time, and you don't know what to do, so
you do nothing. That might be your trauma response, or
you might have this fourth F which is called fawning.
And fawning is about I'm using my own words here,
not necessarily hers. Fawning is about learning to flirt almost
with your abuser, to flirt with the scary situation as
(11:09):
a way to diffuse the conflict so that you can
stay safe and stay connected. And I had heard of
fawning before, but when I saw that she was coming
out with this book, I was like, I've heard this
idea of fawning. I definitely resonate with it. I think
this is my trauma response, but I don't know that
much about it, and not that many people have written
about it, and I would love to go deeper. And
(11:30):
so I immediately when I saw she was coming out
with this book, pre ordered a copy. It came in
the mail last week. I devoured it. I'm to be fair,
I'm not all the way through it, but I'm about
four fifths of the way through it, and I'm just
really loving what she has to say. I'm underlining every
other word. I reached out to her on Instagram and
asked if she would come on the podcast. I don't
have that many interviews on the podcast, but I was
(11:51):
just like, Hey, I need her to come talk about
her story of how she developed this concept from her
own writing practice, because her story on that front is
so poignant and I think it's going to resonate with
you on a deep level if you're someone who has
a book to write. So I wanted to come talk
about that, but I also wanted to talk about this
concept of fawning. It's just so fascinating to me that
(12:12):
this is a trauma response and to look at my
behavior in this arena as a trauma response and as
almost like a maladaption. And she's really good about removing
the shame from the language, like even I don't think
she would use the word maladaption. Essentially, it's not your
true self. The part of you that's fawning, the part
of you that's flirting with this scary situation in order
(12:35):
to woo it, in order to diffuse it, is not
your true self. And so if you take that out
of the equation, it begs the question who is the
true self? What is the true self? What do I
really think? What do I really need? What do I
really want? How do I really feel about this situation?
And I think many of us, on whatever level, on
(12:55):
some kind of spectrum, I think many of us, in
particular women in our society, can resonate with this concept
of shape shifting and altering ourselves and turning ourselves into
whatever the situation calls for. Whatever this person, whoever I've
identified as this dangerous person, whatever they're asking from me,
(13:18):
many of us have learned to shape shift so that
we can diffuse those situations, so that we can stay
safe and stay connected. And the question that I'm asking
after reading this book, is what would it look like
if I could peel away those layers and to really
show up as my authentic self and not try to
impress you or to please you or to She differentiates too,
between fawning and people pleasing. There is a difference between
(13:38):
fawning and people pleasing, and between fawning and codependency. And
I really like the differentiation that she makes. So anyways,
if this is something that sounds interesting to you, it's
not necessarily on topic for what I want to talk
about on today's episode. But this is a book that
I've been reading this week and I am obsessed with
it. It's called Fawning, Why they need to Please, makes us
lose ourselves, and how to find our way back by
doctor Ingrid Clayton. I will post a link to this
(14:01):
in the show notes. It's endorsed by so many amazing people,
Laura McCowan, by Nedra Glover Tuab who I love, by
so many more people. So grab a copy of Fawning.
And the second book that I want to talk about
is one that I want to read a little bit
from to set the tone for today's episode. This is
(14:29):
my fault. This has been out for a couple of weeks,
and I really should have recommended this one sooner. My
friend David Gate sent this to me and I got
a little bit of an early copy. I got a
copy before it came out, and it's been sitting on
my nightstand. I just haven't picked it up because I've
been busy checking out to TV, I guess. But I
finally picked it up and was able to read some
(14:50):
of these poems and it's a collection of poetry. David
Gate is an amazing poet. If you don't follow him
already on Instagram, please go just do yourself a favor
and go find him and follow him on a Instagram.
His poetry, his commentary, his substack is amazing. Please just
check him out. But he just released this collection of
poetry called A Rebellion of Care. This came out, I
think in August, and he's such a beautiful poet. He
(15:14):
has such an amazing way with words. I flipped open
immediately to the first poem, this one that I'm going
to read you. There's so many I could read you
from in here, they're all just incredible, But I flipped
open to this first one, and this is what set
me on the path of the topic that I want
to unpack today. In this episode, this poem is called
(15:34):
this is Not a Race, And I'm going to read
this to you, and I just want you to take
it in and then we're going to talk about it.
Wherever you are, just find yourself in space. If you're driving,
don't close your eyes. If you're sitting somewhere and you're
able to close your eyes, close your eyes, take a
few deep breaths, feel where your body is in space.
Maybe put a hand on your heart, a hand on
(15:55):
your belly. If you're on a treadmill, don't close your eyes.
If you're in your car, don't close your eyes. But
if you can take a seat and just find yourself
in space, close your eyes and take this in. This
is not a race. This is not a race, and
you are not a straggler because what you do and
who you date and where you live is not a competition.
(16:15):
All the markers given to you for the story of
your life don't actually exist, but you do, your vibrant
being and precious days. The time is yours, So stroll
through this life no faster than the pace of your pleasure.
I'm going to read it one more time. This is
not a race, and you are not a straggler, because
what you do and who you date and where you
(16:36):
live is not a competition. All the markers given to
you for the story of your life don't actually exist,
but you do, your vibrant being and precious days. The
time is yours, So stroll through this life no faster
than the pace of your pleasure. And I love this
so much, Along with so many of the poems that
(16:58):
David writes. You can tell Poe Oh, It's have to
do so much more embodiment work, I think than nonfiction writers.
It's not that nonfiction writers can't also be embodied, but
poetry just requires a level of embodiment that I don't
think nonfiction writing requires from you. And so when you
read a poem like that, you can't really take it
in through the intellect. When you read any poem, you
(17:19):
can't really take it in through the intellect. Sometimes, you know,
when we sit down to analyze a poem or whatever,
we'll say, like, what do we think this means? Or
let's dig deeper into the meaning of this word or whatever.
But really, in reality, poetry was meant to be heard
and experienced auditorily, like through the ears. It was supposed
to be this auditory experience and a full body experience
(17:41):
at that one that you don't process through the intellect,
but you process in a deeper kind of a way
through maybe the heart, which is why I had you
put a hand on your heart, or maybe through what
is sometimes called the second brain, your belly, which is
why I had you put a hand on your belly.
One hand on heart, one hand on belly. We hear
these words and we process them in a different kind
(18:01):
of way. Maybe it resonates with you in a way
that you don't necessarily understand or couldn't exactly explain, but
it just really speaks to you. And that's the experience
I had when I first read this poem, was this
feeling of like, oh, pleasure, huh, pleasure. How much in
my life have I really allowed myself to experience pleasure,
(18:24):
to slow down enough to experience pleasure? And I started
thinking about this a lot in my yoga practice. This
happens to me all the time, where yoga becomes this
metaphor for the rest of my life. But if you
think about being in a yoga practice where you're moving
through these postures and these poses, and you're doing them
and you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're
(18:44):
trying to do them right and get your alignment right,
get your body in the right space. And that's the
physical part of yoga, right, that's the analogy would compare
to the elements of your life, like where you live,
what your job is, how much you get paid, who
your friends are, how many kids you have, those types
of things. So it's like the details, the hard evidence
in your life. And I just started moving through my
(19:06):
yoga practice, moving through the postures and the poses, asking myself,
is there a way to move through these physical elements
slowly enough that I could find pleasure even in the
most difficult moments. Does this make sense to you? So
it's like you're holding a plank and every muscle in
your body is engaged in a plank in a yoga class.
(19:29):
You're pressing into the earth. You're doming through your upper back,
your legs are engaged, your kneecaps are lifted and locked,
your heels are up high over your toes. You know
you're pushing the earth away. You're making more space between
you and the earth. Every single muscle in your body
is engaged. Is there a way to make that feel good?
(19:50):
Is there a way to be in this posture, to
be in this pose in a way that is pleasurable?
And this is a question that I've been exploring and
thinking about and something I want to bring into even
how I'm teaching this month in October, teaching yoga, that is,
is how to make this work for me? Like how
to have the physical elements of my life, the physical
(20:10):
elements of my practice that I may or may not
be able to change. You know, some of the things
in my life I can change. You could break off
your relationship, you could move to a new place, you
could sell your house, you could buy a new house.
And then sometimes those elements we can't change. There are
many elements that we can't change. You have parents that
are your parents no matter what you you know. You
could maybe not talk to them, but they're still your parents.
(20:32):
You have siblings that are your siblings no matter what
you choose to do about it. You have maybe a
place that you live that you can't move from for
reasons that are out of your control. Maybe you have
a job that you can't leave for reasons that are
out of your control. So you have these elements in
your life, some of which are changeable, some of which
are unchangeable. But how can we move through our life
in a way that is pleasurable? How can we move
(20:55):
through slowly enough, at the pace of our own pleasure.
The time is yours, So stroll through the life no
faster than the pace of your pleasure. This is not
a race, and you are not a straggler because what
you do, and who you date and where you live
is not a competition. All the markers given to you
for the story of your life don't actually exist, but
you do. You exist, your vibrant being and precious days.
(21:17):
The time is yours, So stroll through this life no
faster than the pace of your pleasure. Now that I'm
thinking about this, there is a connection here to the
concept of fawning, this other book that I'm recommending, because
I think when we are operating from that survival mechanism
of fawning, we don't even realize, but we are actually
(21:40):
moving through our lives for the sake of the pleasure
of others. In fact, those of us who operate from
this survival mechanism of fawning, I don't think have even
stopped to think about like what brings me pleasure as
I've been thinking about this concept of pleasure, I mean,
I associate pleasure with sexuality. I think, I think I
think the minute that I hear that word, it almost
(22:02):
like my evangelical upbringing kind of like rises up and
is like, that's not necessarily that I think it's a
bad word, But I think in my body, I feel
that it's a topic that we just simply don't discuss.
And what a disservice that I'm doing to myself that
I think this is a topic that we don't discuss
and that pleasure could only be about sexual pleasure. There
(22:22):
are so many other ways that pleasure can come to
us through through all of the senses, through food, through
you know, yeah, our sense of smell, our sense of taste,
or sense of touch, through a soft blanket, through a
pet laying heavy across our laps, through the feeling of
our child's cheek pressed up next to our cheek. So
(22:43):
many amazing ways that pleasure can come into our lives.
And one of the reasons that this topic kind of
grabbed my attention is because, like I talked about in
last week's episode. I had a handful of weeks in
September where pleasure would have been the last word I
would have used to describe those weeks. There were a
(23:04):
few weeks where well, I lost a pregnancy, for one,
like I talked about in that episode. You can go
back and listen to it if you missed it. And
then on the heels of losing the pregnancy, there were
a few health issues that cropped up, and I was
in the hospital a couple of times. And this is
when the thirty day screen fast just evolved. I'm sitting
in the hospital alone, going I'm just gonna squirrel Instagram.
(23:26):
That's just what's gonna happen right now. And I just
started thinking to myself, like I actually started questioning my
motive for doing the thirty day screen free time. And
I said to Matt at one point, I was just like,
what's the harm in falling asleep? To friends? Like why
am I trying to ring all every last drop of
(23:48):
pleasure out of my life? Like this is a thing
for me that is a completely benign habit that is
hurting nobody. It's really not hurting my sleep. I know
that they say you shouldn't watch screens before you go
to bed, But it really doesn't hurt my sleep. I
sleep fine, and especially when Matt's gone, it provides me
that measure of comfort and security that I need to
fall asleep. It's like a little bit of extra noise
(24:10):
in the house. I'm not hearing every barking dog or
every footstep or whatever that happens, and it just gives
me that little bit of pleasure that I need, the
little bit of comfort that I need. It's like a
security blanket. And when I think about my young kids
who are five and almost four, I'm like, what if
I just snatched their little security blankets out of their
hands and was like, you're too old for this. You
(24:32):
don't need this, you know? I mean, is there some
truth to the fact that at five they probably could
sleep without a security blanket? But who would ever want
to do that to a five year old? And I
started to see this pattern of behavior in me where
I'm always trying to reach the next level of growth,
or always trying to like, you know, clean out the
(24:54):
impurities of my life or whatever. I don't even know.
I'm not sure what that is, but that sometimes I
think in doing that, I'm like ringing every last drop
of pleasure out of my life. And I'm reading this
poem feeling it in every pore of my body, going like,
what would it be like to actually move through my
life for the sake of pleasure? To move through my
(25:15):
life not thinking about how can I make everybody else okay?
But how can I experience these elements of my life,
some of which are unchangeable, some of which are changeable,
and those that are changeable I always have the option
to change, but experience these more fixed elements of my
life and find a way to experience them with a
(25:38):
bit of lightness in my step, with a smile on
my face. And reading the Fawning book, I started to
think like, I don't know how many days of my life,
Like if I went through every day that I've been
on planet Earth, how many days of my life have
I moved through for the sake of my own pleasure
versus for the sake of keeping everything calm out there
(26:00):
so that I can feel calm in here. And you know,
I've done a ton of work. I've been in so
much therapy, I've done trauma work, I've done emdr I've
been to week long therapy camps. I've done group therapy,
individual therapy, couples therapy, all the therapy I have. I've
done yoga, I've done breath work. I've done meditation. I've
(26:20):
done hour and thirty minute long meditations two hours a
day sometimes before I had kids. I've done so many things.
I've read so many self help books. And I'm reading
this fawning book going I wonder how many days of
my life I have really lived from a place of
joy and pleasure that I've really lived from, like the
depths of my guts for happiness, joy, personal fulfillment, pleasure.
(26:43):
There's a part of me that box at that that
things like you shouldn't get to do that, nobody gets
to do that, nobody gets to live for personal pleasure.
Like how selfish could that be? So there's an element
of the selfish kind of that story that I've been
told that living or my own personal pleasure is selfish.
And then there's also this element of fawning that in
(27:04):
order for me to feel safe, And this is what
I took away from reading this book, and I'm in
the second half nowur she talks about unfawning and teaches
you strategies for unfawning. But what I learned from the
first half of the book is like I have moved
to the world thinking if I can just keep everyone
out there calm and okay, then I will be okay.
And that has been my survival strategy and all of
(27:25):
my energy and attention virtually. I mean, I'm trying to
think of, like, how many days in my life maybe
did I live for me, like for my own sake,
instead of to keep everyone else calm so that I
can be calm. This coving mechanism, by the way, has
become a lot more complicated now having more human beings
living in my house, even though I live with a
(27:46):
husband and a partner in my life who is actually
extremely calm. Like that his set point. It's how he
came into the world. He's just a very calm human being.
He's an enneagram nine. He's a torus, if that means
anything to you. He's like very grounded, super earthy. He
is calm as calm as calm can be. It takes
a lot to rile him up. He has the longest views,
(28:08):
and so he and I make a great partnership because
I don't have to do a lot of work to
keep him calm, because he stays calm. But when I
think about my first marriage, and one of the reasons
why it imploded on itself is it was extremely toxic.
But the toxicity, I think a lot came from him
being unstable and volatile and me using all of my energy,
(28:30):
like every last ounce of my energy and then some
to constantly be trying to quell the storm. And so
what would it look like if I just stopped trying
to quell the storm and started trying to focus on
what brings me joy? What do I want, what do
I like, what brings me pleasure, what brings me alive?
(29:00):
Taking this into my yoga practice, when you walk into
a yoga class, you have a teacher who's going to
walk you through a flow. You don't get to choose
your own flow. You're doing the flow with a community
of people, and teachers will emphasize this. You are allowed
to make the flow work for you. You can drop out
at any point, You can take child's pose. At our
particular studio, almost every teacher at the beginning of class
(29:21):
will offer you that reminder that you can track with
yourself and at any point if you lose your breath.
You can return to the mat, you can go back
to a child's post you can modify every posture, you
can make it easier or harder or whatever you need
to do. And so that is always available for you.
But the fact of the matter is that the flow
that the teacher is presenting is in many ways fixed,
(29:42):
similar to how the elements of our lives are sometimes fixed.
It's nuanced here. I'm not trying to say you can't
make changes in your life, because you can. And yet
you're born to the parents that you're born to, You're
born in the financial situation that you're born into, You're
born with the looks that you're born with, I'm born
with the body that you're born with. I mean, there's
(30:02):
just some things about our life that we can't change,
or even if we could change them, wouldn't necessarily make
us any happier. And so what I'm offering here, or
what I'm practicing with, is to say, you walk into
this yoga class, you walk into this life, and there
are elements of it that are fixed. You're moving through
a flow that you did not choose. And the question
(30:23):
that I'm asking myself is can I move through that
fixed flow. Can I move through the elements of my
life that I cannot alter or change or fix? Can
I move through them with enough stillness and slowness to
find pleasure in every single aspect even if it's not
what I would have picked. Because I think a lot
(30:44):
of times and this is the paradigm shift that I'm
working with. And I'm not an expert here, and I
don't have this all figured out, but I'm playing with
this in my life. Even if I could manufacture my
life exactly how I wanted it from nothing, And I
think this is a lot of times. How like manifestation
is taught in the self help world, is just like
manifest your perfect reality. It's like, even if you could
(31:07):
do that, what if your experience of that quote unquote
perfect reality would be no different than your experience of
the now because you'd be seeing it through the same
exact lens that you're looking through this experience at You're
looking through a lens. And you know you've heard the
term rose colored glasses. It's like, if the lens is blue,
it looks blue to you. Whether doesn't matter what color
(31:28):
it is, whether it's black or white or gray or
yellow or it always just looks blue. And so what
if we could approach the fixed elements of our lives
instead of going like, how can I manifest this and
change and fix it and make it better and actually
just go okay, How can I engage with the fixed
elements of this practice and find slowness and find breath
(31:51):
and find joy and find freakin pleasure in every single
element of this, even the things that don't go my way,
even the things that freaking her, even the things that
are frustrating, even the roadblocks, all of it, Like, how
can I breathe a little deeper and find pleasure in
every single aspect of it and stop measuring myself against
(32:12):
people who are different than me? And you know, I
think one of the mental traps that a lot of
us get caught in is like the comparison is the
thief of joy, this idea that someone else's life because
they have the thing that I want, they're probably happier
than I am. And I'm just here to contest I
don't think that they are. I mean, if they are
happier than you, it's not because of the thing that
they have. It's because they've cultivated joy even in the
(32:36):
midst of circumstances that may not be what they would
have picked. You can find someone who's rich and find
someone who's poor who have equal amounts of joy. You
can find someone with ten kids and someone with zero
kids who have equal amounts of joy name dichotomy. You
can find people on opposite ends of the spectrum who
have equal amounts of joy or equal amounts of pain.
You can find someone rich and someone poor who have
(32:58):
equal amounts of pain, frustration, and a same sense of
lack on both sides of that coin as well. And
so this is what I'm playing with and when I'm
practicing in the month of October, and I'm going to
bring it into the yoga room, and I'm going to
bring it here, and I'm going to bring it on Instagram.
This concept of moving a little slower, of breathing a
(33:19):
little deeper, and of finding a way to find meaning
and pleasure, enjoy even in times that might be otherwise
categorized as painful. There's this concept that I've heard of.
I have never experienced this, and I think it's fairly rare,
(33:40):
but a concept of the orgasmic birth, This idea that
some women experience contractions and the pain of childbirth as orgasmic,
there's almost like a sense of pleasure inside of the
pain and listen. I think this orgasmic birth situation is
extremely rare. I don't think that it's something that we
(34:01):
should expect to happen to us, Like if you're a
person who's a birthing age and planning I'm giving birth.
I don't think it would be helpful to anybody to
go into childbirth thinking I'm going to have an orgasmic birth.
And I'm certainly not suggesting that, as the metaphor goes,
that we are dishonest with ourselves or dishonest with other
people about how something feels. I think if it hurts,
(34:21):
we should say it hurts. So in a yoga class,
I would say, if a posture hurts, back out of it.
If you're feeling pain, back out of it. If what
you're doing is not if it doesn't feel good, that's
your body's signal telling you something's wrong. It's time to
move in a different kind of a way. And so
(34:41):
finding these adaptations for ourselves, finding a way to be
in the process of our lives that isn't always horrifying
and painful and terrifying, And isn't about looking out there
trying to make everyone else calm, But it's more about
asking what would it be like for me to move
through this in a way that actually feels good to me? Like,
how can I move through my day in a way
(35:03):
that feels good to me today? It's going to be
different every single day. You know, there are some days
where I can do splits on the right side. I
almost never can do it on the left side. But
some days I can do splits on the right side.
Other days I can't. The difference between one day and
another is it doesn't who knows, who knows, and who cares.
But the point is not to hurt yourself trying to
(35:24):
move into the position or move through the position, but
to use the flow that is offered to you, to
use the immovable circumstances that are offered to you and
find a way to move through them with some measure
of fluidity and some measure of pleasure and some measure
of joy. And I would say, you know, again, this
is not about being dishonest about how something actually feels.
(35:46):
If it doesn't feel good, I think we should say
this hurts so It's not like toxic positivity, like just
say it feels good, just tell everyone like this is
I'm in sheer joy. You know, I don't think it's
about that. I think it's about asking ourselves what would
it take for me to experience exactly the same thing
I'm experiencing, but to find some little bit of joy
(36:07):
in it. I think if it's two percent more joy
than we had yesterday, then we're on the right track,
and maybe two percent more joy the day after that.
And another thing I know to be true is that
pain and loss and heartbreak carves out more space for joy.
So even if you're in a period of time in
life right now where you are at the end of
(36:29):
your rope and you think like there's just no way
there is no joy in my life right now, Like
I'm just being literally scooped out. I'm like at the
bottom of the barrel. If that's you right now, just
know it's opening up more space for joy. Can there
be an in hell as big as the exale? Can
you take in as much joy as the despair that
(36:51):
you breathed out? And you know, when I think about
this poem by David Gate, this is not a race
and you are not a straggler because what you do
and who you date and where you live is not
a competition. All the markers given to you for the
story of your life don't actually exist, but you do
your vibrant being in precious days. The time is yours.
So stroll through this life no faster than the pace
(37:13):
of your pleasure. When I think about this piece, it's
a reminder that a big reason that we are not
in joy is because we're just simply moving too fast.
I really believe that that we're moving too quickly through
our lives to really take in all the joy that's
there for us. So this is something that I want
to do differently in my life and in my days,
(37:33):
and in my yoga classes, in my practice. I want
to start moving a little more slowly, taking in a
little more breath, making the inhals as long as the exhils,
taking in as much joy as despair that I'm breathing out,
and believing that life was meant to be pleasurable, life
was meant to be enjoyable. Suffering is inevitable. I believe that.
(37:54):
I mean, I've moved through, like I said, I've done
all this work I've moved through every I feel like
I've tried on every line of self help and therapy
and whatever. And one thing conclusion that I've come to
is that I think suffering is inevitable in life, that
there's no way for you to live this human experience
and avoid suffering. So I don't think that the human
(38:15):
experience is all about joy. I just think it's as
much about joy as it is about pain. It has
to be. It's as much about pleasure as it is
about pain. And so if your pleasure in your life
is not matching your pain, then ask yourself, what might
it look like for me to open to more joy?
What might it look for me to open to more pleasure?
(38:36):
I hope there's something from this that you can take
away for yourself, just something to meditate on or something
to think about, even if the only thing is that
you go purchase Fawning by doctor Ingrid Clayton and A
Rebellion of Care by David Gaate, this collection of poems.
These books are both absolutely worth owning. The collection of poetry.
You need to have this in physical form, It's just yeah,
bar none, You've got to have it in physical form.
(38:58):
So order the physical copy and fawning. If you're someone
who likes to listen to audiobooks, I love listening to audiobooks,
but I prefer listening to memoirs on audio, and I
prefer content driven books to be in hand so that
I can underline. I just really like to underline and
highlight the various places that are speaking to me. But
do whatever works for you. I'm going to link the
(39:18):
hardcover copy of both of these books in the show
notes so that you can go grab a copy if
you'd like, and I will see you back next week.
I want to write your story podcast. Thanks for listening,
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's down to let
them out and write them down on cold It's all
about and write your story. Write, write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about a topic that I've been
thinking about a lot lately. Full disclosure, I don't feel
like I have a handle on this topic. I don't
feel like i'm the expert to talk about this topic.
But it's something I've been thinking about a lot because
I've been practicing with this and playing with this not
(00:50):
just in my brain and in the way I'm thinking
about my life, but also in an embodied way. I'm
thinking about this in my yoga practice and really using
my yoga practice as a metaphor or an analogy for
how to work through this issue in my life. And
it feels like as I've been playing with this idea,
lots of different opportunities have come to me to practice
(01:15):
with it and so I want to just introduce this
concept to you. I want to unpack it here with you,
and I want to offer what I'm learning in hopes
that maybe there might be something here for you to
learn as well. Before I dive into that topic, though,
I want to share about a couple of books that
I've been reading that I wholeheartedly recommend. I have been
doing an exceptional amount of reading lately, in part because
(01:37):
I challenged myself to a thirty day screen free September.
I guess, yeah, they're thirty day screen free September. And
before you congratulate me, I did not make it through
the month of September. And I'll explain in just a minute,
but for me, screen free didn't mean never looking at
my smartphone. That is just not possible for me in
my life right now. Small side note, my husband has
(01:58):
traded in his smartphone for a dumb phone, and I
know a couple people in our community have done this.
Where he doesn't have an Apple phone anymore. He has
it's basically like an Android phone that has been whittled
down to only the bare minimum apps that you need
on the phone to function. So there's no email, there's
no social media. There's no Internet app, there's no Safari
(02:18):
or anything. You can't go like search a question or
ask Google any questions. There's no chat, GPT, there's none
of that. But there's maps maybe or like an app
to help you find directions from place to place. There's
a camera, there's music. I think there's like five apps.
It's texting, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's just
a handful of apps. And he has made the switch
(02:40):
to that phone, and it's been so fascinating to watch him.
I don't feel as pulled or called to make that
switch as he does, but it's been fascinating to watch
him how it's changed his behavior with the phone and
with screens, and also like the little roadblocks that we
run into. For example, we were parking in a parking
lot the other day and there's a QR code that
(03:00):
you have to scan to pay for your parking, and
there's no other option to pay for parking. You have
to scan this QR code. And he and I were
both like, well, this is crazy that if you don't
have a smartphone, you can't actually pay for your parking
in the slot. You'd have to find a different spot.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
To park.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's just one example of a handful I could give
you of roadblocks that we've run into with this quote
unquote dumb phone. That we live in a world that
so assumes that everyone has a smartphone that it's become
almost impossible to navigate your reality without one. So that's
just a statement about how in mesh that we've become
with our screens and with our phones. So the concept
(03:36):
of taking a break from our screens, even if it
was five days or fifteen days or thirty days or
whatever it is, actually like it's it takes quite a
bit of effort and discipline and planning in order to
make that happen. And so in my husband's case, he
is using this dumb phone as a way to prevent
himself from scrolling on Reddit or checking his email. Those
are his favorite things to do on his smartphone. And
(03:58):
I decided I was going to take a thirty day
break from screens, which for me meant two things. Number one,
no scrolling on social media. That's a big thing that
I do when I'm overwhelmed or anxious, or when my
head hurts from thinking too hard, or from kids saying
my name, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom too many times
and I'm on overload and I just want to check out.
(04:18):
My big thing that I do is open Instagram and
scroll and you know, try to find like a funny
reel or something interesting to put my brain on. That's
just like a coping mechanism that I have at my
disposals to check Instagram. And so for me, no screens
meant no Instagram and no TV with the small caveat
that my small kids watch. They are allowed to watch
(04:40):
a show a day, so I was going to turn
on the TV for them and my husband. It's football
season and he is a football fan, so there's going
to be football in the house. It wasn't like I
have to leave the room and can't you know, have
my eyes on the screen at all. It was just
more about not doing the thing that I do at
night where I'm so exhausted. All I want to do
is check out and I turn on a show to
not have to think, or sometimes what I do if
(05:02):
my husband's out of town, or even sometimes when he's
not out of town, I will turn on one of
my comfort shows, which usually is Gilmarro's or Friends, as
a way to calm my nervous system so that I
can fall asleep. And I know that sounds crazy to
some people, because some people need like utter darkness or
utter silence to fall asleep. But for me, this has
(05:22):
been true since I was young, like very young, since
I was a teenager. I used to turn on cassette
tapes to fall asleep. I would listen to This is
a throwback, but I don't know if you remember the
Adventures in Odyssey tapes. You would only really know about
this if you grew up in evangelicalism in the nineties.
But Adventures in Odyssey were these cassette tapes where each
(05:42):
side of the cassette tape had like a thirty minute
story with a Christian moral to it that I was
like love. I loved these things. I was like obsessed
and would buy the sets of cassette tapes. They would
come almost like in seasons. So you'd have a set
of cassette tapes that were Adventures in Audits and there'd
be maybe six cassette tapes in the set, and each
(06:04):
cassette tape would have a thirty minute episode on each side.
So what's that twelve episodes inside of a set, And
I would like save up my money beg my parents
ask for my birthday to get a new set of
Adventures and AUSSI tapes, and then I would like, you know,
blow through this set really quickly. This is pre Netflix,
pre binging podcasts, pre smartphones, pre all of it. This
(06:25):
was my binging a podcast, was begging for this set
of Adventures and Aussi tapes and then listening to them
when I fell asleep at night. And I don't know
if that's what did it for me or if there's
something else, but either way, since I was young, since
I was a teenager, when I was in college, I
would always either put headphones in if I had roommates,
(06:47):
or turn on the TV to fall asleep at night.
It's just a habit that's been with me for about
as long as I can remember, and I have gone
through periods of being like I'm going to overcome this habit,
I'm going to get rid of this habit, and I
just always come back to it, almost like a comfort
blank And so I said to Matt at the beginning
of September, I was like, I am going to take
a break from watching shows at night, so you know,
football on in the background, Totally fine. If you want
(07:11):
to watch a show upstairs, but in our bed, we
do have a TV in our bedroom, which is maybe
my first mistake, but in our bedroom, I'm not going
to turn on the TV to fall asleep at night.
I'm just going to choose to take the month of
September off.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I made it halfway through September, and I bumped into
a bunch of health challenges like I talked about on
the last episode, and it was a rough month, to
be honest, and so after a handful of really challenging weeks,
I just finally was like, forget it. Screen challenge is
off and I'm back to scrolling because I just need
a little something to take the edge off of this
(07:47):
difficult month. There's a relationship here to what I want
to talk about today, so I'm going to get into
that in just a minute, but before I do, I
want to introduce a couple of books to you, because,
like I said, I took this screen free challenge. During
my screen free challenge, I was reading like an insane
amount because I wasn't checking out through scrolling or checking
out at night through TV, and so it just opened
(08:08):
all this space for me to a listen to audiobooks,
which I did I don't know, like six or eight
of them in the first two weeks of September, and
then be read other books that have been sitting on
my nightstand forever that I just haven't picked up and
started reading. So two of them that I read that
I want to recommend to you. The first one is
by a woman who I've been following for a really
(08:30):
long time and I've come to love her and just
the way that she communicates and the topics that she
talks about. Her name is doctor Ingrid Clayton, and she
just came out with a book called Fawning, Why the
Need to Please makes us lose ourselves and how to
find our way back. And I keep wanting to call
this her debut book, but it's not her debut books.
(08:50):
She's written a few other books before, and she talks
about that even in the pages of this book. But
maybe this is more accurately described as like her breakout book.
I think this is the book that she's going to
become known for. And one of the things I love
about this book, aside from just the topic and how
closely it hit to home for me, but one of
the things that I love is watching her progression of
(09:14):
how she got to this place for writing this book.
This is particularly pertinent to you if you're someone who
knows that you have a book in you. You know
you have a book you want to write, but maybe
you have a few books you want to write, and
you're not sure which one to start with, or maybe
you're not sure if you should frame it as a memoir,
like a story driven book, or if you should frame
it as more of a content driven book, like this
book that's teaching someone how to do something. Her progression
(09:37):
for how she got here matches what I know to
be true about almost every other author I've ever worked with.
She started by writing the memoir. She wrote her story first,
she wrapped her brain around her story, healed from writing
her story, came to better understand her story and have
a better perspective of it, and from that process, out
of that process grew this book. Look, which is called fawning.
(10:01):
Fawning is she calls it the fourth F and it's
the fourth F of fight or flight response. So when
we think about a fight or flight response, like a
trauma response, we think either fight or flight or then
A while back, I remember they introduced this idea of freeze.
So is fight flight or freeze, Well, fawning is the
fourth F. It's the fourth way that many people respond
(10:24):
to trauma as a way to self protect inside of
a situation that feels unsafe to them. So, if you're
encountering a situation that feels unsafe to you, you might
have the instinct to fight, like I'm going to fight
this person so that I stay safe. You might have
the instinct to run to flee so that you feel safe.
You might have the instinct to freeze. Maybe that's the
(10:45):
only thing you can do, is just freeze in space
and time, and you don't know what to do, so
you do nothing. That might be your trauma response, or
you might have this fourth F which is called fawning.
And fawning is about I'm using my own words here,
not necessarily hers. Fawning is about learning to flirt almost
with your abuser, to flirt with the scary situation as
(11:09):
a way to diffuse the conflict so that you can
stay safe and stay connected. And I had heard of
fawning before, but when I saw that she was coming
out with this book, I was like, I've heard this
idea of fawning. I definitely resonate with it. I think
this is my trauma response, but I don't know that
much about it, and not that many people have written
about it, and I would love to go deeper. And
(11:30):
so I immediately when I saw she was coming out
with this book, pre ordered a copy. It came in
the mail last week. I devoured it. I'm to be fair,
I'm not all the way through it, but I'm about
four fifths of the way through it, and I'm just
really loving what she has to say. I'm underlining every
other word. I reached out to her on Instagram and
asked if she would come on the podcast. I don't
have that many interviews on the podcast, but I was
(11:51):
just like, Hey, I need her to come talk about
her story of how she developed this concept from her
own writing practice, because her story on that front is
so poignant and I think it's going to resonate with
you on a deep level if you're someone who has
a book to write. So I wanted to come talk
about that, but I also wanted to talk about this
concept of fawning. It's just so fascinating to me that
(12:12):
this is a trauma response and to look at my
behavior in this arena as a trauma response and as
almost like a maladaption. And she's really good about removing
the shame from the language, like even I don't think
she would use the word maladaption. Essentially, it's not your
true self. The part of you that's fawning, the part
of you that's flirting with this scary situation in order
(12:35):
to woo it, in order to diffuse it, is not
your true self. And so if you take that out
of the equation, it begs the question who is the
true self? What is the true self? What do I
really think? What do I really need? What do I
really want? How do I really feel about this situation?
And I think many of us, on whatever level, on
(12:55):
some kind of spectrum, I think many of us, in
particular women in our society, can resonate with this concept
of shape shifting and altering ourselves and turning ourselves into
whatever the situation calls for. Whatever this person, whoever I've
identified as this dangerous person, whatever they're asking from me,
(13:18):
many of us have learned to shape shift so that
we can diffuse those situations, so that we can stay
safe and stay connected. And the question that I'm asking
after reading this book, is what would it look like
if I could peel away those layers and to really
show up as my authentic self and not try to
impress you or to please you or to She differentiates too,
between fawning and people pleasing. There is a difference between
(13:38):
fawning and people pleasing, and between fawning and codependency. And
I really like the differentiation that she makes. So anyways,
if this is something that sounds interesting to you, it's
not necessarily on topic for what I want to talk
about on today's episode. But this is a book that
I've been reading this week and I am obsessed with
it. It's called Fawning, Why they need to Please, makes us
lose ourselves, and how to find our way back by
doctor Ingrid Clayton. I will post a link to this
(14:01):
in the show notes. It's endorsed by so many amazing people,
Laura McCowan, by Nedra Glover Tuab who I love, by
so many more people. So grab a copy of Fawning.
And the second book that I want to talk about
is one that I want to read a little bit
from to set the tone for today's episode. This is
(14:29):
my fault. This has been out for a couple of weeks,
and I really should have recommended this one sooner. My
friend David Gate sent this to me and I got
a little bit of an early copy. I got a
copy before it came out, and it's been sitting on
my nightstand. I just haven't picked it up because I've
been busy checking out to TV, I guess. But I
finally picked it up and was able to read some
(14:50):
of these poems and it's a collection of poetry. David
Gate is an amazing poet. If you don't follow him
already on Instagram, please go just do yourself a favor
and go find him and follow him on a Instagram.
His poetry, his commentary, his substack is amazing. Please just
check him out. But he just released this collection of
poetry called A Rebellion of Care. This came out, I
think in August, and he's such a beautiful poet. He
(15:14):
has such an amazing way with words. I flipped open
immediately to the first poem, this one that I'm going
to read you. There's so many I could read you
from in here, they're all just incredible, But I flipped
open to this first one, and this is what set
me on the path of the topic that I want
to unpack today. In this episode, this poem is called
(15:34):
this is Not a Race, And I'm going to read
this to you, and I just want you to take
it in and then we're going to talk about it.
Wherever you are, just find yourself in space. If you're driving,
don't close your eyes. If you're sitting somewhere and you're
able to close your eyes, close your eyes, take a
few deep breaths, feel where your body is in space.
Maybe put a hand on your heart, a hand on
(15:55):
your belly. If you're on a treadmill, don't close your eyes.
If you're in your car, don't close your eyes. But
if you can take a seat and just find yourself
in space, close your eyes and take this in. This
is not a race. This is not a race, and
you are not a straggler because what you do and
who you date and where you live is not a competition.
(16:15):
All the markers given to you for the story of
your life don't actually exist, but you do, your vibrant
being and precious days. The time is yours, So stroll
through this life no faster than the pace of your pleasure.
I'm going to read it one more time. This is
not a race, and you are not a straggler, because
what you do and who you date and where you
(16:36):
live is not a competition. All the markers given to
you for the story of your life don't actually exist,
but you do, your vibrant being and precious days. The
time is yours, So stroll through this life no faster
than the pace of your pleasure. And I love this
so much, Along with so many of the poems that
(16:58):
David writes. You can tell Poe Oh, It's have to
do so much more embodiment work, I think than nonfiction writers.
It's not that nonfiction writers can't also be embodied, but
poetry just requires a level of embodiment that I don't
think nonfiction writing requires from you. And so when you
read a poem like that, you can't really take it
in through the intellect. When you read any poem, you
(17:19):
can't really take it in through the intellect. Sometimes, you know,
when we sit down to analyze a poem or whatever,
we'll say, like, what do we think this means? Or
let's dig deeper into the meaning of this word or whatever.
But really, in reality, poetry was meant to be heard
and experienced auditorily, like through the ears. It was supposed
to be this auditory experience and a full body experience
(17:41):
at that one that you don't process through the intellect,
but you process in a deeper kind of a way
through maybe the heart, which is why I had you
put a hand on your heart, or maybe through what
is sometimes called the second brain, your belly, which is
why I had you put a hand on your belly.
One hand on heart, one hand on belly. We hear
these words and we process them in a different kind
(18:01):
of way. Maybe it resonates with you in a way
that you don't necessarily understand or couldn't exactly explain, but
it just really speaks to you. And that's the experience
I had when I first read this poem, was this
feeling of like, oh, pleasure, huh, pleasure. How much in
my life have I really allowed myself to experience pleasure,
(18:24):
to slow down enough to experience pleasure? And I started
thinking about this a lot in my yoga practice. This
happens to me all the time, where yoga becomes this
metaphor for the rest of my life. But if you
think about being in a yoga practice where you're moving
through these postures and these poses, and you're doing them
and you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're
(18:44):
trying to do them right and get your alignment right,
get your body in the right space. And that's the
physical part of yoga, right, that's the analogy would compare
to the elements of your life, like where you live,
what your job is, how much you get paid, who
your friends are, how many kids you have, those types
of things. So it's like the details, the hard evidence
in your life. And I just started moving through my
(19:06):
yoga practice, moving through the postures and the poses, asking myself,
is there a way to move through these physical elements
slowly enough that I could find pleasure even in the
most difficult moments. Does this make sense to you? So
it's like you're holding a plank and every muscle in
your body is engaged in a plank in a yoga class.
(19:29):
You're pressing into the earth. You're doming through your upper back,
your legs are engaged, your kneecaps are lifted and locked,
your heels are up high over your toes. You know
you're pushing the earth away. You're making more space between
you and the earth. Every single muscle in your body
is engaged. Is there a way to make that feel good?
(19:50):
Is there a way to be in this posture, to
be in this pose in a way that is pleasurable?
And this is a question that I've been exploring and
thinking about and something I want to bring into even
how I'm teaching this month in October, teaching yoga, that is,
is how to make this work for me? Like how
to have the physical elements of my life, the physical
(20:10):
elements of my practice that I may or may not
be able to change. You know, some of the things
in my life I can change. You could break off
your relationship, you could move to a new place, you
could sell your house, you could buy a new house.
And then sometimes those elements we can't change. There are
many elements that we can't change. You have parents that
are your parents no matter what you you know. You
could maybe not talk to them, but they're still your parents.
(20:32):
You have siblings that are your siblings no matter what
you choose to do about it. You have maybe a
place that you live that you can't move from for
reasons that are out of your control. Maybe you have
a job that you can't leave for reasons that are
out of your control. So you have these elements in
your life, some of which are changeable, some of which
are unchangeable. But how can we move through our life
in a way that is pleasurable? How can we move
(20:55):
through slowly enough, at the pace of our own pleasure.
The time is yours, So stroll through the life no
faster than the pace of your pleasure. This is not
a race, and you are not a straggler because what
you do, and who you date and where you live
is not a competition. All the markers given to you
for the story of your life don't actually exist, but
you do. You exist, your vibrant being and precious days.
(21:17):
The time is yours, So stroll through this life no
faster than the pace of your pleasure. Now that I'm
thinking about this, there is a connection here to the
concept of fawning, this other book that I'm recommending, because
I think when we are operating from that survival mechanism
of fawning, we don't even realize, but we are actually
(21:40):
moving through our lives for the sake of the pleasure
of others. In fact, those of us who operate from
this survival mechanism of fawning, I don't think have even
stopped to think about like what brings me pleasure as
I've been thinking about this concept of pleasure, I mean,
I associate pleasure with sexuality. I think, I think I
think the minute that I hear that word, it almost
(22:02):
like my evangelical upbringing kind of like rises up and
is like, that's not necessarily that I think it's a
bad word, But I think in my body, I feel
that it's a topic that we just simply don't discuss.
And what a disservice that I'm doing to myself that
I think this is a topic that we don't discuss
and that pleasure could only be about sexual pleasure. There
(22:22):
are so many other ways that pleasure can come to
us through through all of the senses, through food, through
you know, yeah, our sense of smell, our sense of taste,
or sense of touch, through a soft blanket, through a
pet laying heavy across our laps, through the feeling of
our child's cheek pressed up next to our cheek. So
(22:43):
many amazing ways that pleasure can come into our lives.
And one of the reasons that this topic kind of
grabbed my attention is because, like I talked about in
last week's episode. I had a handful of weeks in
September where pleasure would have been the last word I
would have used to describe those weeks. There were a
(23:04):
few weeks where well, I lost a pregnancy, for one,
like I talked about in that episode. You can go
back and listen to it if you missed it. And
then on the heels of losing the pregnancy, there were
a few health issues that cropped up, and I was
in the hospital a couple of times. And this is
when the thirty day screen fast just evolved. I'm sitting
in the hospital alone, going I'm just gonna squirrel Instagram.
(23:26):
That's just what's gonna happen right now. And I just
started thinking to myself, like I actually started questioning my
motive for doing the thirty day screen free time. And
I said to Matt at one point, I was just like,
what's the harm in falling asleep? To friends? Like why
am I trying to ring all every last drop of
(23:48):
pleasure out of my life? Like this is a thing
for me that is a completely benign habit that is
hurting nobody. It's really not hurting my sleep. I know
that they say you shouldn't watch screens before you go
to bed, But it really doesn't hurt my sleep. I
sleep fine, and especially when Matt's gone, it provides me
that measure of comfort and security that I need to
fall asleep. It's like a little bit of extra noise
(24:10):
in the house. I'm not hearing every barking dog or
every footstep or whatever that happens, and it just gives
me that little bit of pleasure that I need, the
little bit of comfort that I need. It's like a
security blanket. And when I think about my young kids
who are five and almost four, I'm like, what if
I just snatched their little security blankets out of their
hands and was like, you're too old for this. You
(24:32):
don't need this, you know? I mean, is there some
truth to the fact that at five they probably could
sleep without a security blanket? But who would ever want
to do that to a five year old? And I
started to see this pattern of behavior in me where
I'm always trying to reach the next level of growth,
or always trying to like, you know, clean out the
(24:54):
impurities of my life or whatever. I don't even know.
I'm not sure what that is, but that sometimes I
think in doing that, I'm like ringing every last drop
of pleasure out of my life. And I'm reading this
poem feeling it in every pore of my body, going like,
what would it be like to actually move through my
life for the sake of pleasure? To move through my
(25:15):
life not thinking about how can I make everybody else okay?
But how can I experience these elements of my life,
some of which are unchangeable, some of which are changeable,
and those that are changeable I always have the option
to change, but experience these more fixed elements of my
life and find a way to experience them with a
(25:38):
bit of lightness in my step, with a smile on
my face. And reading the Fawning book, I started to
think like, I don't know how many days of my life,
Like if I went through every day that I've been
on planet Earth, how many days of my life have
I moved through for the sake of my own pleasure
versus for the sake of keeping everything calm out there
(26:00):
so that I can feel calm in here. And you know,
I've done a ton of work. I've been in so
much therapy, I've done trauma work, I've done emdr I've
been to week long therapy camps. I've done group therapy,
individual therapy, couples therapy, all the therapy I have. I've
done yoga, I've done breath work. I've done meditation. I've
(26:20):
done hour and thirty minute long meditations two hours a
day sometimes before I had kids. I've done so many things.
I've read so many self help books. And I'm reading
this fawning book going I wonder how many days of
my life I have really lived from a place of
joy and pleasure that I've really lived from, like the
depths of my guts for happiness, joy, personal fulfillment, pleasure.
(26:43):
There's a part of me that box at that that
things like you shouldn't get to do that, nobody gets
to do that, nobody gets to live for personal pleasure.
Like how selfish could that be? So there's an element
of the selfish kind of that story that I've been
told that living or my own personal pleasure is selfish.
And then there's also this element of fawning that in
(27:04):
order for me to feel safe, And this is what
I took away from reading this book, and I'm in
the second half nowur she talks about unfawning and teaches
you strategies for unfawning. But what I learned from the
first half of the book is like I have moved
to the world thinking if I can just keep everyone
out there calm and okay, then I will be okay.
And that has been my survival strategy and all of
(27:25):
my energy and attention virtually. I mean, I'm trying to
think of, like, how many days in my life maybe
did I live for me, like for my own sake,
instead of to keep everyone else calm so that I
can be calm. This coving mechanism, by the way, has
become a lot more complicated now having more human beings
living in my house, even though I live with a
(27:46):
husband and a partner in my life who is actually
extremely calm. Like that his set point. It's how he
came into the world. He's just a very calm human being.
He's an enneagram nine. He's a torus, if that means
anything to you. He's like very grounded, super earthy. He
is calm as calm as calm can be. It takes
a lot to rile him up. He has the longest views,
(28:08):
and so he and I make a great partnership because
I don't have to do a lot of work to
keep him calm, because he stays calm. But when I
think about my first marriage, and one of the reasons
why it imploded on itself is it was extremely toxic.
But the toxicity, I think a lot came from him
being unstable and volatile and me using all of my energy,
(28:30):
like every last ounce of my energy and then some
to constantly be trying to quell the storm. And so
what would it look like if I just stopped trying
to quell the storm and started trying to focus on
what brings me joy? What do I want, what do
I like, what brings me pleasure, what brings me alive?
(29:00):
Taking this into my yoga practice, when you walk into
a yoga class, you have a teacher who's going to
walk you through a flow. You don't get to choose
your own flow. You're doing the flow with a community
of people, and teachers will emphasize this. You are allowed
to make the flow work for you. You can drop out
at any point, You can take child's pose. At our
particular studio, almost every teacher at the beginning of class
(29:21):
will offer you that reminder that you can track with
yourself and at any point if you lose your breath.
You can return to the mat, you can go back
to a child's post you can modify every posture, you
can make it easier or harder or whatever you need
to do. And so that is always available for you.
But the fact of the matter is that the flow
that the teacher is presenting is in many ways fixed,
(29:42):
similar to how the elements of our lives are sometimes fixed.
It's nuanced here. I'm not trying to say you can't
make changes in your life, because you can. And yet
you're born to the parents that you're born to, You're
born in the financial situation that you're born into, You're
born with the looks that you're born with, I'm born
with the body that you're born with. I mean, there's
(30:02):
just some things about our life that we can't change,
or even if we could change them, wouldn't necessarily make
us any happier. And so what I'm offering here, or
what I'm practicing with, is to say, you walk into
this yoga class, you walk into this life, and there
are elements of it that are fixed. You're moving through
a flow that you did not choose. And the question
(30:23):
that I'm asking myself is can I move through that
fixed flow. Can I move through the elements of my
life that I cannot alter or change or fix? Can
I move through them with enough stillness and slowness to
find pleasure in every single aspect even if it's not
what I would have picked. Because I think a lot
(30:44):
of times and this is the paradigm shift that I'm
working with. And I'm not an expert here, and I
don't have this all figured out, but I'm playing with
this in my life. Even if I could manufacture my
life exactly how I wanted it from nothing, And I
think this is a lot of times. How like manifestation
is taught in the self help world, is just like
manifest your perfect reality. It's like, even if you could
(31:07):
do that, what if your experience of that quote unquote
perfect reality would be no different than your experience of
the now because you'd be seeing it through the same
exact lens that you're looking through this experience at You're
looking through a lens. And you know you've heard the
term rose colored glasses. It's like, if the lens is blue,
it looks blue to you. Whether doesn't matter what color
(31:28):
it is, whether it's black or white or gray or
yellow or it always just looks blue. And so what
if we could approach the fixed elements of our lives
instead of going like, how can I manifest this and
change and fix it and make it better and actually
just go okay, How can I engage with the fixed
elements of this practice and find slowness and find breath
(31:51):
and find joy and find freakin pleasure in every single
element of this, even the things that don't go my way,
even the things that freaking her, even the things that
are frustrating, even the roadblocks, all of it, Like, how
can I breathe a little deeper and find pleasure in
every single aspect of it and stop measuring myself against
(32:12):
people who are different than me? And you know, I
think one of the mental traps that a lot of
us get caught in is like the comparison is the
thief of joy, this idea that someone else's life because
they have the thing that I want, they're probably happier
than I am. And I'm just here to contest I
don't think that they are. I mean, if they are
happier than you, it's not because of the thing that
they have. It's because they've cultivated joy even in the
(32:36):
midst of circumstances that may not be what they would
have picked. You can find someone who's rich and find
someone who's poor who have equal amounts of joy. You
can find someone with ten kids and someone with zero
kids who have equal amounts of joy name dichotomy. You
can find people on opposite ends of the spectrum who
have equal amounts of joy or equal amounts of pain.
You can find someone rich and someone poor who have
(32:58):
equal amounts of pain, frustration, and a same sense of
lack on both sides of that coin as well. And
so this is what I'm playing with and when I'm
practicing in the month of October, and I'm going to
bring it into the yoga room, and I'm going to
bring it here, and I'm going to bring it on Instagram.
This concept of moving a little slower, of breathing a
(33:19):
little deeper, and of finding a way to find meaning
and pleasure, enjoy even in times that might be otherwise
categorized as painful. There's this concept that I've heard of.
I have never experienced this, and I think it's fairly rare,
(33:40):
but a concept of the orgasmic birth, This idea that
some women experience contractions and the pain of childbirth as orgasmic,
there's almost like a sense of pleasure inside of the
pain and listen. I think this orgasmic birth situation is
extremely rare. I don't think that it's something that we
(34:01):
should expect to happen to us, Like if you're a
person who's a birthing age and planning I'm giving birth.
I don't think it would be helpful to anybody to
go into childbirth thinking I'm going to have an orgasmic birth.
And I'm certainly not suggesting that, as the metaphor goes,
that we are dishonest with ourselves or dishonest with other
people about how something feels. I think if it hurts,
(34:21):
we should say it hurts. So in a yoga class,
I would say, if a posture hurts, back out of it.
If you're feeling pain, back out of it. If what
you're doing is not if it doesn't feel good, that's
your body's signal telling you something's wrong. It's time to
move in a different kind of a way. And so
(34:41):
finding these adaptations for ourselves, finding a way to be
in the process of our lives that isn't always horrifying
and painful and terrifying, And isn't about looking out there
trying to make everyone else calm, But it's more about
asking what would it be like for me to move
through this in a way that actually feels good to me? Like,
how can I move through my day in a way
(35:03):
that feels good to me today? It's going to be
different every single day. You know, there are some days
where I can do splits on the right side. I
almost never can do it on the left side. But
some days I can do splits on the right side.
Other days I can't. The difference between one day and
another is it doesn't who knows, who knows, and who cares.
But the point is not to hurt yourself trying to
(35:24):
move into the position or move through the position, but
to use the flow that is offered to you, to
use the immovable circumstances that are offered to you and
find a way to move through them with some measure
of fluidity and some measure of pleasure and some measure
of joy. And I would say, you know, again, this
is not about being dishonest about how something actually feels.
(35:46):
If it doesn't feel good, I think we should say
this hurts so It's not like toxic positivity, like just
say it feels good, just tell everyone like this is
I'm in sheer joy. You know, I don't think it's
about that. I think it's about asking ourselves what would
it take for me to experience exactly the same thing
I'm experiencing, but to find some little bit of joy
(36:07):
in it. I think if it's two percent more joy
than we had yesterday, then we're on the right track,
and maybe two percent more joy the day after that.
And another thing I know to be true is that
pain and loss and heartbreak carves out more space for joy.
So even if you're in a period of time in
life right now where you are at the end of
(36:29):
your rope and you think like there's just no way
there is no joy in my life right now, Like
I'm just being literally scooped out. I'm like at the
bottom of the barrel. If that's you right now, just
know it's opening up more space for joy. Can there
be an in hell as big as the exale? Can
you take in as much joy as the despair that
(36:51):
you breathed out? And you know, when I think about
this poem by David Gate, this is not a race
and you are not a straggler because what you do
and who you date and where you live is not
a competition. All the markers given to you for the
story of your life don't actually exist, but you do
your vibrant being in precious days. The time is yours.
So stroll through this life no faster than the pace
(37:13):
of your pleasure. When I think about this piece, it's
a reminder that a big reason that we are not
in joy is because we're just simply moving too fast.
I really believe that that we're moving too quickly through
our lives to really take in all the joy that's
there for us. So this is something that I want
to do differently in my life and in my days,
(37:33):
and in my yoga classes, in my practice. I want
to start moving a little more slowly, taking in a
little more breath, making the inhals as long as the exhils,
taking in as much joy as despair that I'm breathing out,
and believing that life was meant to be pleasurable, life
was meant to be enjoyable. Suffering is inevitable. I believe that.
(37:54):
I mean, I've moved through, like I said, I've done
all this work I've moved through every I feel like
I've tried on every line of self help and therapy
and whatever. And one thing conclusion that I've come to
is that I think suffering is inevitable in life, that
there's no way for you to live this human experience
and avoid suffering. So I don't think that the human
(38:15):
experience is all about joy. I just think it's as
much about joy as it is about pain. It has
to be. It's as much about pleasure as it is
about pain. And so if your pleasure in your life
is not matching your pain, then ask yourself, what might
it look like for me to open to more joy?
What might it look for me to open to more pleasure?
(38:36):
I hope there's something from this that you can take
away for yourself, just something to meditate on or something
to think about, even if the only thing is that
you go purchase Fawning by doctor Ingrid Clayton and A
Rebellion of Care by David Gaate, this collection of poems.
These books are both absolutely worth owning. The collection of poetry.
You need to have this in physical form, It's just yeah,
bar none, You've got to have it in physical form.
(38:58):
So order the physical copy and fawning. If you're someone
who likes to listen to audiobooks, I love listening to audiobooks,
but I prefer listening to memoirs on audio, and I
prefer content driven books to be in hand so that
I can underline. I just really like to underline and
highlight the various places that are speaking to me. But
do whatever works for you. I'm going to link the
(39:18):
hardcover copy of both of these books in the show
notes so that you can go grab a copy if
you'd like, and I will see you back next week.
I want to write your story podcast. Thanks for listening,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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