Welcome to the twelfth episode of Season Three of Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. On this episode I interview Monique Beaver, Psychologist and Yoga Facilitator.

In this episode Monique discusses mindful movement to connect the mind and body and what it means to cultivate emotional sovereignty.

Want to keep in touch? Head to @drkaitlin on Instagram or @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook to connect.

What is covered in this episode:

>>When we’re too focused on what is going on in our minds, we can become disconnected from our bodies. We may be creating more stress hormones, increasing our cortisol, adrenaline, and other processes without being aware of it.

>>There are many opportunities to mindfully move your body in different ways outside of yoga, such as Trauma-Sensitive Kickboxing

>>Body-based therapies bring gentleness and compassion to what our bodies are communicating.

>>Having compassion towards how our body may be reacting by reminding ourselves that it is responding in a way to keep us safe.

>>Emotional Sovereignty is about choosing how long it reacts for and bringing responses into it by not labelling our emotions as good or bad and being in tune with what our bodies may need.

>>Our emotions can be allies instead of enemies when we use them to inform us of our values, direction, and possible boundaries that need to be set and using that information to inform our actions and our lives moving forward

>>Previous research has found that Emotional Sensory Experiences are only meant to last up to 90 seconds. Adding a narrative or judgement on top of our emotional experiences leads to resistance and pain.

Links Discussed

• www.mindfullycurious.org
• @mindfully.curious on Instagram
• @mindfullycurious on Facebook
• Download Monique’s Free Trauma Sensitive Yoga Audio

You’ll find a copy of the Episode Transcript below.

Transcript

Monique Beaver: Our body will go into these protective modes as a way to restore balance. So, there’s always going to be a point where our body wants to come back to a more homeostatic or balanced state again, which is that window. So part of it is developing evidence and trust that this idea of what goes up must come down, that we’re gonna find a level ground again.

Intro: You’re listening to the Wisdom for Wellbeing podcast, the show that blends science and heart to bring you evidence-based tips and tricks for cultivating a healthy, wealthy, and meaningful life. Now, here’s your host, therapist, Yogi, and fellow full life balancer, Dr Kaitlin Harkess.

Kaitlin Harkess: Hi there, welcome back to Wisdom for Wellbeing. Today, I am sitting down with Monique Beaver to talk about yoga, psychology, and what it means to cultivate emotional sovereignty. Monique was originally trained as a psychologist yet always felt there was something missing in therapy when sitting talking to people. Hence, her training, led her to a more body orientated, movement-based practice. So she started incorporating somatic-based therapies, emotional release practices and trauma-sensitive yoga. In 2018, after completing her yoga training with Embodied Flow, she created her business, Mindfully Curious, to encompass a holistic approach to therapy and healing. She offers both individual psychology sessions, as well as group and individual trauma-sensitive yoga sessions with a particular focus on embodied movement practices, shadow work and moving from surviving to thriving within one’s own body. Her mission is to really help others understand and remember their true authentic selves as it is only through conditioning and experiences that this has become in shadow. Monique states that there is always such a humbling and heart-opening experience when she can co-create with a fellow human to find something that works for them. This is essentially supporting them to create, find their own internal resources, and to heal from within, coming home into one’s body. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to Monique and come through this conversation with us to a place where you might then be reflecting on what are your internal resources and how can you heal from the bottom up?

Kaitlin Harkess: Monique, welcome to Wisdom for Wellbeing. I am delighted to be sitting down with you this morning, and to be having this wonderful conversation around mind, body, yoga, psychology and all the things. Thank you for making the space.

Monique Beaver: No worries. Thank you for having me. I’m really pumped to have this conversation as well.

Kaitlin Harkess: Oh it’s a delight, you know, we’re so aligned on a lot of I guess points that we’re really interested in and curiosities we have and curiosity is something that comes up a lot in the work that you’re doing. Would you mind maybe just sharing a little bit with listeners about who you are and what you’ve been up to?

Monique Beaver: Yeah sure. So I’m predominantly a Psychologist and a Yoga Facilitator. So I run my own business in South Sydney and so I am kind of half in the online space and half in person so it’s nice to have a combination of the two and predominantly, yes, my the name of my business is Mindfully Curious and you’re exactly right. This essence of curiosity has been this guiding light for the work I do for quite some time now. And this idea that with curiosity, if we’re able to tap into that skill and that notion, it’s quite the opposite to fear. And I still remember, I have no idea who it was, but one of my mentors or within reading always said that if you can harness curiosity, it leaves, less room for fear to exist and so the work I do is predominantly with women who have experienced trauma and trauma being, you know, on quite a scale. So really, I defined trauma as anything that is confusing, scary, distressing, or upsetting to someone. So there’s quite a big gauge of what that can look like for each person. And so, yeah, I predominantly work with women who have experienced trauma and I often find that there is a lot of stress and burnout going on in their life. So whether it’s within the family unit, whether it’s their work and they’re at this stage, where maybe that people-pleasing or rescuing mode is no longer working for them and things just aren’t really their life isn’t quite matching up with their values. And so obviously I have the traditional talk therapy aspect of the work I do, but then it’s also been such a privilege and an exploration to bring in more movement and body-based therapies. So, specifically, mindfulness skills, yoga-based practices, more kind of ancient traditions around dancing, shaking, moving, that kind of stuff.

Kaitlin Harkess: Why do you think that is? Like, this is this is such an interesting area because you particularly mentioned like trauma, which can be such an embodied experience, and we know with, with trauma that we experience in our lives. I mean, particularly something like, post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the, the experiences that is common is that it’s felt physically. It’s this physical experience. So, it makes sense to me that yoga kind of comes into the picture. But would you mind talking us through, you know what this mind/body connection is generally? Maybe not even just trauma.

Monique Beaver: Yeah, absolutely. So mind-body connection, yeah, my head and I feel like it’s self-explanatory, connecting mind and body but always, like every single time I do an interview. Everyone’s like, can you tell me about the mind-body connection? I always go back and I’m like, yes, yes. How do I define this further? So it’s clearly something that I think because it is such a felt sense, particularly for myself to then put it in words, I find it quite difficult, but the mind-body connection I mean, when I think back through my training, particularly in Psychology, a lot of it, was this, what we call this top-down approach. So this idea of change your thoughts, that’ll change your feelings, that’ll change your body and your actions and we use this idea. So we call it cognitive behavioural therapy, right, as you would be aware of. So how your thoughts and feelings affect your behaviours. What I would find though, with that form of therapy was that, people would then get into these mind conflicts of challenging their thoughts, and that critical voice would just get louder. And every time you challenge a thought, you know, there’d be another thought to challenge it back. And so, again, we would just be all up in the head and we’d be completely disconnected from the fact that that’s creating more stress hormones in our body and increase in cortisol, adrenaline, and all these other processes would be happening without our awareness, and then I would have people coming in being like, I’m so frustrated. I’m doing the challenging talking stuff, but it’s not working. And I think for me quite intuitively, I have a background in dance and movement. And so growing up, again, I never really had the words for it. It was just this experience that when I went to the dance class, you know, my overthinking type A personality brain would just stop and I would walk out going, ah I was just able to focus on movement and on the teacher and on my body for an hour and now I feel great and I didn’t really know what that was until, yeah, I started more being in this yoga with the world and starting to put language to this body-based stuff. So a lot of my training was in this top-down, you know, change your thoughts to affect the rest of your body. And I started being really curious in what we call this bottom-up approach. So this idea of, if you start to work with the body, its sensations, rather than getting caught in the stories of what’s going on, how that can actually start to affect change in a different way. And particularly, yeah, if we’re looking at trauma, you know, a lot of the time, yes, with post-traumatic stress disorder whether it’s a single incident event, or it’s more complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So, obviously, there’s multiple events or situations that have occurred over time, so that’s often people who have experienced things like childhood emotional neglect, or multiple incidences of abuse, domestic violence, things like that. It would often be this feeling of being triggered, there would be sensations in the body that couldn’t be explained or images that would flash into people’s heads and it wouldn’t necessarily be this situation led to this and so it would feel quite chaotic for people and so when I started doing more trauma-sensitive yoga and working with a lady called Shirley Hicks from Trauma Sensitive Yoga Australia, this idea of really being present with the person to work with what sensations were happening in the moment. So I think there’s a place for stories. Yeah, there’s a place for stories but I think we can also get caught in the trap of stories and if we’re caught in stories all the time this is where that mind-body disconnect can happen. We’re too much in our head.

Kaitlin Harkess: It makes so much sense to me, doesn’t it? You mentioned you know your type-A personality switched off. We all know what it is and it’s something that is really interesting because our society really values this, doesn’t it? Our society values doing. So we’re actually really taught that doing is an effective thing to do, so even when it might be disconnecting us from something that’s going on, you know, when we throw ourselves into our business or our studies and might be doing so, in a way that is actually avoidant or disconnected, we can actually get a lot of positive feedback for that which can kind of reinforce the behaviour and actually maybe doesn’t help us with the healing and the deep feelings that are sitting underneath it so it’s interesting that suddenly, you know, you found yourself in this space where for the period of that dance class, your mind was present on what was happening in the body and present. And, you know, you mentioned that you were curious about it, and I was sitting there using my labeling voice going, oh mindfulness, this is where the name comes from, Mindfully Curious.

Monique Beaver: Not that I knew that at the time but.

Kaitlin Harkess: But how interesting that, that the physical body was your way into mindfulness and here when you’re describing people who are experiencing this sense of chaos and almost distrust in their bodies that there’s these reactions, these experiences that happen that at unexpected times, that in actuality, we can kind of use a safe way of moving, of connecting, to build that mindfulness when sitting and closing our eyes and doing a traditional meditation might actually be a scary unsafe place at this point in time.

Monique Beaver: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think with mindfulness, you know, that idea of being in the present moment and being aware of whether it’s your thoughts or sensations at the time, there’s there’s such a wide spectrum of what mindfulness can be. And yet people hear mindfulness or meditation and of course, immediately think of sitting closed eyes or that kind of thing. I think particularly, if we think about anxiety and stress, there’s often a lot of you know, charge to that. I talk a lot to people about this idea of the window of tolerance and how we want to be in this clear, calm, collected space, particularly from nervous system, but often we’re on the edges of that window or we’re up in that hyperarousal. So, the lots of energy, anxiety, agitation, anger, all of that kind of stuff or we have the opposite. So the hypoarousal, the shutdown. You know the freezing, the fatigued, the disconnect really. And so for me that that space of hyperarousal was a lot more familiar and at least in those early days and so this idea of sitting still wasn’t overly available for me. Now, I can say I love being in that still space but it certainly wasn’t my go-to in the beginning and and a lot of my clients reflective that as well. And so, yeah, this idea that something like trauma-sensitive yoga, which is still a very gentle practice, you know, it’s not like a yoga practice where you’re going in and you’re doing all the shapes and you’re working up a sweat like it’s nothing like that. It is much, much slower and gentle, but it does allow people to not freeze in that space of, oh gosh, I have to be with what is, you know, and this idea of choosing where your attention goes. I find has been really helpful with this, yeah, cultivating these mindfulness skills as well. Because it means people can choose how much of that I guess distress as you mentioned that they want to sit with because we actually don’t have to sit with it if we don’t want to.

Kaitlin Harkess: So this is this is an avenue through to healing, isn’t it? Like opening up little bit by little bit into the sensation, the experience and the movement allows us to do that. It gives us these different focal points. These different experiences and yes, any listeners who are going, oh yeah, yoga is like like standing on your head and doing the splits in the air and levitating or whatever photos are on Instagram. I think that’s a really important point, Monique, that it’s actually a gentle entry point so that anyone can access this body-based mindfulness practice, this movement, this healing. Yeah, and it’s something really interesting even in the last six months or so, I’ve actually started partnering with a lady down in Melbourne, George Verry, and she does trauma-sensitive kickboxing and so that’s been super cool to see those same principles that I utilise within trauma-sensitive yoga, but for those people who still feel like that’s maybe even too slow for them to start off with, people are starting with say more of that kickboxing style and then moving into more of that yoga space. So I think this is the beauty of these movement and body-based techniques, you know, whether it’s for stress, burnout, trauma. This idea that there are so many entry points into it and I think, you know, Australia’s probably been a bit further behind in body-based techniques but there is certainly, you know, that is starting to build more momentum now and I think it’s going to be really exciting, you know, over the next five to ten years to see where this all leads.

Kaitlin Harkess: Such an interesting point, isn’t it? To do what works. You know, if yoga is not you’re thing, you don’t have to do yoga, you know. If kickboxing is your jam, there’s opportunities there. You know, some people might be hiking in nature and just learning these principles of connection and how, how we utilise them in our healing. So Monique, when we describe this experience of the mind-body connection, what’s happening? How we can access, you know, gentle healing through mindful movement, whatever form it is. Why do you think that this is so important you know, for people generally but I know you do work a lot with women as well. Why do you think that this this movement practice is so important in in our healing, in our evolution?

Monique Beaver: I think we have taught to be a lot in our head and we have taught to being taught to rationalise a lot of things and we see this a lot come up with that people-pleasing and that rescuer mode. If I do X Y Z, then I’ll feel okay. If I do this this and this then I will have that love and validation from the people around me. And so we get caught in these thinking traps essentially that we’re hoping for a certain outcome, but when we are disconnected from our body, we then start to ignore the messages our body is sending us because we go oh just one more. I’ll just do an extra hour here or I’ll just do a few more days here. I’ll just do this extra task. All the while, we could be getting subtle messages from our body that we’re not doing okay. And so often, I will talk to people about this people-pleasing or rescuing mode so this idea that we are ignoring ourselves in order to look after the people around us. And I will often have people present to me who are starting to notice, you know, chronic fatigue or physical ailments that are happening that they’ve gone to GP’s and, you know, doctors and haven’t been able to explain what’s going on. And then we start to tap into what their stories are, maybe around stress and anxiety and it starts to come up that potentially, there’s a disconnection from their body, that their body’s trying to give them messages that one, they’re not even noticing or two. They just don’t know how to interpret. And so this people-pleasing mode is often kind of that I guess that big alarm bell that there’s probably going to be a disconnect from our own needs and wants.

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s really interesting, isn’t it that that something that looks functional on the surface and we talked earlier about how Type A, busy doing can look really functional but also continuously prioritising other people’s needs can look really kind or it can look really dedicated and it actually could be a way of disconnecting again and again from what’s going on under the surface for us and pull us further and further away from our own healing. That’s, it’s interesting that someone’s identity, you know, probably we all fall into this trap at different points in times. But our identity could be based on them that self-sacrificing and our sense of right or, you know, the importance of taking care of ourselves can feel really perhaps icky for lack of being able to find a more scientific word.

Monique Beaver: Totally. Yeah and you know, someone I worked closely with last year, one of my mentors, she talked about this as the celebration timeline. And this idea that as we’re growing up, we are celebrated for things that maybe aren’t like truly authentically us. So definitely this idea of, you know, being the type A personality, the doer, the go-getter, definitely the self-sacrifice people-pleasing mode. You’re always looking after your younger sister or you’re always, you know, being the help for other people. So we’re celebrating these essences of the person that may not be truly them. It’s just that reinforcement over time, where a child’s like, oh well, you know, Mom and Dad are telling me I’m doing the good thing, so that must be the right thing. And then as we get into our adulthood and we start to experience things like stress, burnout, disconnection, we then start to question around. Okay? There may be things that went wrong per se, you know, in my life growing up but then it’s also what are the things that were celebrated as right that maybe don’t feel inherently true for me anymore? And this comes up a lot, a lot with women and this people-pleasing mode for sure.

Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah and for carers, I imagine, you know, like people who are in different caring roles, whether it’s in a household or in different vocations. So I know you use the terminology emotional sovereignty and that that’s kind of where we’re working towards, like taking this. So would you mind just describing that and, and how we, as, as individuals can cultivate this sense of emotional sovereignty.

Monique Beaver: Yeah, I think that thinking of this word sovereignty, I feel like it’s becoming a bit more of like the next buzzword at the moment. You know, we all go through those phases. Mindfulness was the word a few years ago. Now, kind of more that embodiment stuff and being in the body is buzz and I feel like this sovereignty word is going to come up more and more. And really sovereignty is this idea of this self-governing state, like, literally if you go into divine sovereignty on Google, that’s what it’s going to give you. And so, when we’re talking about emotional sovereignty, we’re talking about this idea of how we can feel empowered and self-governing in regards to our emotions. So, you know, for for a lot, if not, most of us, we have grown up, hearing emotions, being good or bad. We’re hearing things like, you know, boys shouldn’t cry, you know, don’t be a baby, anger’s bad, you know, we have all these rules I guess around emotions and putting them into categories and it has left people very fearful of feeling emotions. I mean that’s part of that mind-body disconnect, right, is going actually, I can’t feel that. That’s a bad thing, oh god if I feel anger, oh, there must be something wrong with me, I’m a bad person. And so part of emotional sovereignty is providing that education, that one, all emotions are normal and totally valid, you know again, emotions are another portal to you know whether you call it, your soul, your authenticity, your true mind-body connection. You know, emotions become another portal into that place. And so emotional sovereignty is really yet learning to understand emotions and what they are, you know, and actually being able to label them not as good or bad but just being able to separate, you know, when I feel sadness, what are the sensations that come up in my body versus when I feel anxious or stressed or happy, joyful, excited, you know, and so a lot of the work is actually there again around being curious around, huh? What’s this sensation? You know, and not getting too caught up in the stories of what an emotion has meant previously but actually just what it feels like in the present moment. And so emotional sovereignty is one really identifying this but then also looking at, how can, how can that emotion inform me of my values, direction, maybe boundaries I need to set and then using that emotion as information to then inform our actions and our life moving forward. And this this is kind of the crux of what I do is how we can transform, you know how emotional literacy and have different conversations about emotions that actually they get to be our ally and not our enemy.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s incredibly powerful, you know, allyship, moving forward in our lives and feeling like, because emotions are very much a sensory experience aren’t they? They’re embodied, they’re felt in the body. So in order to have emotions as allies, we need to be okay with what’s happening physiologically under our skin, so to speak.

Monique Beaver: Absolutely, and you know what we know is that, you know, from the research and emotional sensory experiences are only meant to last up to 90 seconds and so the problem as humans is that we have these emotional experiences, but then we add all these stories and thoughts to it, like, oh no, that thing’s happening, I’ve got to try and get rid of it, ah just suppress it. And then all of a sudden this supposed 90-second experience could last for hours and hours or days and days. So, again, that mindfulness practice of noticing, I’m having a felt sense experience but I’m also putting a story or maybe a judgment on top of it. That’s what’s going to lead to resistance and pain. So how we can start almost separating those those two levels between the in the moment sensory experience versus the story and the judgment we might be putting on top of it.

Kaitlin Harkess: Yep. So parsing them apart so yeah motion for instance might be uncomfortable and might almost label an experience as painful but that extra layer suffering doesn’t necessarily need to exist.

Monique Beaver: Totally. I think it’s Christopher Germer, he’s a guy in the self-compassion world talks about pain times resistance equals suffering and I think that is just such a beautiful and coherent way of talking about it because pain is hard enough let alone when we then put resistance on top of it as well.

Kaitlin Harkess: So how can we use, you know, mindful movement, yoga practices, mindful boxing, kickboxing, whatever it is to sort of support us then in, in moving forward with this, you know, process where could listeners maybe start?

Monique Beaver: Yeah, sure. And it really is that curiosity piece, you know, when people come in to see me one of the first things we talked about is that window of tolerance theory that I spoke of before noticing, okay, well actually just before we even go to that, it might literally be wherever you are right now being like am I aware of my body? You know, that’s one of the first things I’ll ask people when they come to see me. Are you aware of your body? And some people be like, yeah, of course I am. What do you mean? And other people are, like, are like, I don’t know. And it can give us a really good indication of yeah, well, what does it even mean to be in my body? So again, that curiosity piece of, okay, well, as you’re sitting wherever you are, or maybe you’re going for a walk wherever you find yourself, you know, are you aware of your feet on the floor? Your sit bones, are you aware of maybe your heart beating? Have you thought of your breath? You know, are your muscles feeling tense? Or are they okay today? You know, and so it’s not this big amazing new strategy that we’re cultivating. It’s actually very subtle and it’s this subtle stuff that can actually be the most powerful. Because we can’t change anything unless we first notice it.

Kaitlin Harkess: And in that noticing then, you know, when you describe for instance, the modes earlier that we might move towards, is it noticing then specific profiles? Specific ways? Our body might shift when we jump into those modes and then kind of backtracking, is that kind of the, I guess the opportunity to take different steps?

Monique Beaver: Yeah. So it’s it is it is that opportunity to be curious around, yeah, do I feel like I’m clear, calm, and in that window? Or is it that I feel a bit on my edges today? Or is it that I’m, I’m already feeling like, I’m at a volcanic stage, or maybe like more of that iceberg shut down stage again, that curiosity that we’re just labelling, we’re not putting judgment on it, because here’s the thing, it’s not bad to be in any of those modes. All of those modes help us cope. They have for many of us kept us alive and safe over the years. So, it’s not like we’re saying that volcanic state or that iceberg state is bad. It’s beautiful. It’s your body protecting you. It’s doing exactly what it’s meant to do without you even directing it to do that. That’s that’s body wisdom. This is the stuff that it’s just beautiful and it gets me so excited. But then, yes, once we recognize that we can start to look at, well, am I okay with being in this state? Because if you are, great, let’s keep hanging out here. You know, it was only yesterday, I had said to one of my clients she was in that really shut down space and you know, we had the conversation. Do you feel like you want to keep being in this shutdown space or would you want to bring your body back online a bit more? And she said, actually just need to hang out here for a bit. This feels really protective for me right now. Beautiful. So let’s hang out here and then we just keep checking in. And here’s the thing, our body will go into these protective modes as a way to restore balance. So, there’s always going to be a point where our body wants to come back to a more homeostatic or balanced state again, which is that window. So part of it is developing evidence and trust that this idea of what goes up must come down, you know, we’re gonna find a level ground again. And so, yes, it is being curious and saying, am I aware of my body? Secondly, it’s looking at am I in my window or am I feeling on the edges or out of it? And then thirdly, am I okay just being there, if yes, excellent, let’s keep hanging out there and if not, how can I start that? Start to move back towards my window and so this could be things like yes, if you’re in quite a heightened state you know you might use some muscle relaxation, you might take a few breaths. You know, anything that does feel calming or soothing for the system, and that’s something to explore and work out because that’s going to be, of course, individual for everyone. And then if we’re in more of that shutdown state and we maybe want to come back online, it might be doing things like, maybe even just taking your hands and touching the different parts of your body, it might be feeling your feet on the ground. You know it might be going outside if it’s windy to feel the air on your face. So you know stamping you know, there’s lots of different ways to bring our body back up as well. So it’s really about creating a toolbox that’s going to be individual for each person.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s really empowering. So it’s noticing what’s going on in our bodies. And then from there we can decide where we’re at and what we would find most effective for the moment whether it’s staying where we’re at, that’s working for us or whether it’s shifting our state and then pulling from our toolbox. And if we don’t yet have a toolbox, you gave some brilliant ideas of like things to try, where to start, but listeners, grab your journals and you know, do some reflection. Checking in number one, how you’re traveling, how you’re going. But also if you are feeling hyper so like very highly aroused, a hypo, kind of like, but slow sluggish, disconnected, dissociated whatever it may be, just bringing yourself back up. Start thinking, what kind of works for you so that you can tap back into yourself and chances are, it’s not just telling ourselves, I want to feel better, it’s doing some things, changing our state. Hey as much as we might self-soothe and use some compassion around where we’re at.

Monique Beaver: Yeah, absolutely. And this, you know, I think the beauty of this is, depending on where we are in our life, this toolbox gets to change. We’re going to grab more tools as we go. There’s going to be time. So I’ll actually that’s totally not feeling right for me today but this is going to feel right and I think the it’s really about this idea of bringing, yes the curiosity, but also this idea of choice. You know when we’re stressed, we’re burnt out, maybe we’re experiencing trauma symptoms, whatever it looks like, it often feels so reactive and it feels so out of our control and what I love about this way of working with body-based therapies, is that one, there is that gentleness and that compassion towards how our body is reacting, because it’s going to react, I mean, it’s there to keep us safe. But then the difference is that we can choose how long it reacts for and then start to bring responses into it. So it feels more in our control and yeah, again this idea of emotional sovereignty and this feeling of empowerment to come back and go, where am I at? And what do I need right now?

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s lovely and almost primal, you know, you watch little kids and they can go from like zero to a hundred in 20 seconds and then they’re back again, you know? And you mentioned like the life of an emotion being 90 seconds. You know, there’s something to be learned from that and of course our toolbox and our experience changes over time, but maybe we can also tap back into that side of ourselves that has those big experiences, accepts them for what they are and and learn the skills to let go, more gently, more kindly if that’s where we’re at and what’s effective for us in those moments.

Monique Beaver: And I think, as well like, you know we’re talking about the people-pleasing modes before, I find that this is such a nice portal into reclaiming that self-sovereignty as well. You know, like if we’ve been in that people-pleasing mode and we’re disconnected from ourselves before we even try to effect change with another. Whether that’s, you know, being more assertive and using our voice, whether that’s setting boundary is, you know, whatever that looks like. It’s really hard for us to effect change effectively if we’re not connected to ourselves. So this idea of we don’t have to go, you know, if we’ve identified relating patterns that are maybe no longer serving us as we would like them to rather than just going straight out into the world and trying to change all those patterns, we can actually start, you know, within ourselves. It doesn’t have to be this thing that everyone is privy to right now. We can I was going to say small steps that, you know, this doesn’t always feel like a small step, you know, for some people tuning into the body is much, much more scary than, you know, associating with the outside world. So I really want to acknowledge that as well, but to cultivate and to begin to cultivate that safety in our body, can be a really helpful step when we then are starting to affect change now in lines.

Kaitlin Harkess: And people are like perking up, they’re interested in the like this all make sense. I mean it’s such a beautiful concept, isn’t it to be able to start from within and then move move outwards? Where can listeners connect with you? Where are you at?

Monique Beaver: Sure so you can mostly find me hanging out on Instagram. So I’m @mindfuly.curious I also have my website and mindfullycurious.org, and yeah, they’re probably the main spaces actually. I do have a Facebook page but usually if you’re going to the Instagram, you’re probably going to get around the same content anyway. So pick and choose what vice you prefer. Yeah and the best way for people to contact me individually is through my email which can be found at my website.

Kaitlin Harkess: And listeners, I will put links to all of this in the show notes so it’s easy for you to follow up if you’re driving or just don’t have a pen and paper right now. Monique, thank you so much for taking the time to talk us through, I think one of the most important areas when we speak about psychology is, is what’s happening in our bodies as well. So thank you for the amazing work that you’re doing the healing and sharing this framework with us today.

Monique Beaver: Thank you so much for having me and I want to say, just before we go, I mean, if anyone is interested, I’ll send Kaitlin the link to a free trauma-sensitive yoga audio that you guys can download and have a play with this stuff if that’s something of interest to you.

Kaitlin Harkess: Beautiful, yes, I’ll put those links in the show notes as well, so that you can tap in and dive a little bit deeper with Monique.

Monique Beaver: Beautiful, thanks for having me.

Kaitlin Harkess: My pleasure.

Kaitlin Harkess: Thank you so much for joining us here today. I hope that this conversation inspired you to move towards cultivating a state of emotional sovereignty and utilising movement practices along the way whether it is kickboxing, yoga, hiking, biking, whatever brings you to a state of mindful awareness, and perhaps a state of flow. Please join us again, next fortnight. So again the episodes are rolling out fortnightly right now and of course head on over to @drkaitlin on Instagram, on Facebook to connect as well as @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook. Looking forward to connecting with you, jumping into those earbuds soon. All right. Bye for now.

Outro: Thanks for joining us this week on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. Please visit drkaitlin.com to connect, find show notes, other episodes, and to subscribe. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show we’d appreciate a rating or perhaps simply tell a friend about the show. Wisdom for Wellbeing is not a substitute for professional, individualised, mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact 000, your local emergency number if you are outside of Australia, or attend your local hospital ED.