The Story You Tell Yourself Shapes All Your Interactions

Every day you play through a list of stories about your relationships, your job, your family, how you see the world, and how others see you. This self-talk has the power to cast doubt about your value and others you interact with. Some of these stories you’ve been telling yourself for so long that finding a bridge out of them seems impossible.

You are human and you are a good person –a person with flaws who’s made mistakes, but nothing too crazy. You are worthy of love and forgiveness. And if you believe this is true about yourself then wouldn’t it make sense that others feel this way about themselves too? Yet we hold others to these high standards of unforgivable actions that they did or said five maybe ten years ago. Since then they have grown, just like you.

The stories you tell yourself about other people or situations in your life trap you and them into a past identity that might not even be true.

Let’s say you had a conversation with your boss three years ago where you felt disrespected. Since then you have been playing a story in your head about what happened. Then every time you need to meet with her you have in your mind that it’s not going to go well and she’s going to say something to offend you and you begin to wonder if you should even bother bringing it up. In your mind, it’s clear she doesn’t like you anyway.

All of this might only be true in your head. In your boss’s mind, she might have just been commenting on a project as a matter of fact, and it was you who took offense to it. Not her being offensive. She might have noticed that over the years you have been cold with her and it’s been reflecting in your work. Then the story she begins to tell herself is that you are an uninterested employee and she begins to treat you as such. Passing you over for promotions and opportunities.

Two stories from two minds spawning from one conversation.

We are all a Collection of Stories

We all have a history of events that have shaped our lives. To you, a friend canceling your dinner date might spring up thoughts of getting left behind in the lunchroom at school. This is your story, not the truth. To your friend, who’s canceling, the story might be that his anxiety is too much and he’s certain it’s a courtesy dinner you didn’t want to go on anyway.

Communication is so important because we are often unclear about the story someone is telling themselves.

It’s important for each of us to remember that we are the thinker of our thoughts, but we are not our thoughts.

We think things that aren’t true all the time. Very often we know they aren’t true but get stuck in a loop based on past beliefs about ourselves, the world, and those whose behavior we know so well.

Once you become aware of these stories you can begin challenging them. I don’t mean replacing the negative with positive or finding the silver lining. No, I’m talking about finding ways to make peace with the story so it no longer has control over your life. This can be done by trying to see things from the other perspective.

A lot of our self-talk is negative and assumes the worst about other’s intentions. How many times have you known the way a conversation was going to go before you even had it? This is because you are looking for those signs and clues that prove your story is true.

Challenging your stories

What if you decided to share with others the story you tell yourself? This might sound scary, and it can be. But here’s the rub…

The stories you tell yourself that keep you trapped in negative self beliefs about your worthiness of love are having a profound effect on your body.

The power of your thoughts can literally show you a future that is worthy of you or trap you into a life you don’t even want to wake up to. Your thoughts shape your environment and how you interact with the world.

When your story is seen from the lens of

Discomfort
Everyone out to get you
Your belief that you are not worthy of more

Then that is what you get. These thoughts end up harboring space in your body.

When you feel attacked, or scared, or misunderstood, your body is acting from a fight or flight response. It’s impossible for you to digest food, sleep, or allow your heart to open to love when you are stuck here. This, in turn, brings on inflammation in the body because you are not processing food, or nourishing the body with rest. You become tight and rigid. Your back starts to hurt, your shoulders get tense, and the issues start to compound.

What are the stories you’re telling yourself that are unhealthy?

That you aren’t smart because of the time in second grade you were humiliated at the school spelling B.
That you are ugly because of teasing from the girls in middle school.
That you are unworthy of love because your heart got broken in 10th grade.
That you can’t hold down a job because you changed careers at 27 and 32.
That you are camera shy because you wear a size 16.
That your opinion doesn’t matter because it’s unpopular.
That you don’t deserve money because you didn’t go to college.

What is the root of your story? And is it worth holding onto as truth? Ask yourself: what’s the benefit of staying with these stories?

The truth is most of us can remember an insult thrown at us in elementary school from some kid whose name we can’t even remember, but don’t hear all the compliments showered in our direction daily.

It’s a matter of what you chose to focus on.

Breathwork is a great tool for shifting that focus. It offers an opportunity to step outside the clutter in our mind, stop the stories in their tracks, and begin a new conversation.

Because most of our self-talk is negative and because this negative self-talk pushes our nervous system into the fight or flight mood, I recommend starting by lowering your heart rate variability (HRV). This helps your nervous system to be balanced and flexible. This can be accomplished by slow mindful breathing, which lowers the number of heartbeats per minute and guides you into a rest and digest state.

5×5 Breathing.

This coherent breathing pattern is great for slowing your thoughts and helping you feel more relaxed.

Start by sitting in a comfortable seated position or laying flat on your back. If you are in a chair, move your back away from any support and place your feet hip-width apart and plant them onto the floor.
Inhale through your nose for 5 seconds.
Notice the natural pause at the top of the inhale.
Exhale through the nose for 5 seconds.
Notice the natural pause at the bottom of the exhale.
Repeat this cycle for 3-5 minutes or a minimum of 10 rounds.

After you go through this simple and effective breathing pattern, review the story you’re currently obsessing over and see if you can approach it from a calmer state. Look for the best-case scenario. They must be believable to you, but this is where the work begins; when your body is relaxed and your mind is clear.

My incredible journey towards finding my breath

Take your practice to the next level with breathwork

Hot, sweaty, fast-paced vinyasa classes fill up all day every day. It’s clear why. When you’re moving your body and raising your heartbeat you can feel the workout aspect of your yoga practice. It feels good to sweat it out, but it’s not the only way to practice yoga. In fact, very often a slower more mindful practice is the key to a deeper connection with self.

When I started on my yoga journey over six years ago, I had a very different idea of what I was getting into. I thought the more sweat the better. I believed that forcing my body into a variety of binds was the goal. I didn’t consider myself a real practitioner because I couldn’t do a headstand. Then one day I accidentally found myself in a yin class. I was immediately attracted to the slow steady holds. Grateful for the opportunity to focus on my breath and actively use it to work into the shape. As I laid in Shavasana at the end of the hour I knew I had stumbled upon something special.

Slow movement connecting first with the breath

It became clear over the following year that the yoga high I was chasing was my breath. What really attracted me about yin was the gift of diving inward using my breath to explore my body. In my regular yoga classes, there’s a lot of talk about breath, but I constantly found it to be treated as more of an afterthought. As someone who struggles with identifying her right from her left, I found the teachers’ instructions to be too fast for my twisted body to follow. I would lose my breath constantly and stumble along the way.

Yin helped me realize that the world of yoga is much bigger than a hot, fast and sweaty practice; and I was hooked.

Once my eyes were opened to the power of breath, I began to find new doors to help guide me further. Before long I was practicing Kundalini a couple of times a week and meditating every morning.

This encouraged me to get others involved as I opened up to the experience. I had a message for the world. This secret world within the walls of Hatha yoga that no one was talking about. I started inviting everyone I knew to come to try this breath-focused practice. It was common to hear people make statements about not being flexible enough to do yoga. I kept going back to this idea that is common in our collective mind that…

Yoga is for the flexible
Yoga is sweaty
Yoga is hard
Yoga is for the young
Yoga is for a certain body type

I understood this pushback because I had felt this too.

The Journey into Breath Begins

I began to ask my teachers more about the breath and where I could go to learn about it? No one really had an answer. I finally asked one of my teachers if she knew of any breathwork classes and she said she’d never heard of such a thing, explaining that all yoga is breathwork. This drove me to dive deeper: if all yoga is breathwork why is it treated as an afterthought? I decided to become a yoga teacher and start introducing others to more subtle, slow, mindful yoga, using the breath as the focus.

Determined to identify and assist those, like me, who were looking for something more mindful, I continued my journey into breath by becoming a breathcoach. Leading me further down the path of true transformation. Not only educating myself on the subtle joys of conscious breathing, but learning the powerful science behind it.

Working at a hot yoga studio I sometimes feel like a second-rate teacher because I don’t teach Hatha or Vinyasa. They seem to be the classes that everyone is gravitating to, yet I have zero desire to teach that kind of yoga. When I show up on my mat I am looking to go deep within. I’m looking to practice a moving meditation. As I twist and turn I want to move slowly, feeling every move along the way. I want to breathe through the tension, not rush to my final expression.

Busy Vinyasa classes will twist you up and spit you out.

These yoga practices are beneficial, and I encourage you to try them out. Perhaps you find, like me, that you are not attracted to the fast pace feel of these intense workouts. Come give subtle, slow, mindful yoga and breathwork a try. Big impact awaits those willing to breathe through the discomfort and come out whole on the other side.

The World of Slow, Mindful Practice is on the Rise

My classes continue to grow as I become more focused on the breath. Everyone is looking for a deeper connection to self and a way to heal from the inside. Utilizing a more slow, mindful practice is key. Learning how to balance your nervous system and optimize your brain through the breath is something we all have access to. The flexibility required is only in your mind, which is sometimes harder to accomplish and 10 times more rewarding.

It’s amazing to watch students who’ve been practicing for years jump leaps and bounds by switching their focus to their breath. I love hearing about all the ways breath continues to transform people’s lives on and off the mat. Just last week a student excitedly shared with me that she ran her first 5k that morning without stopping once. Proclaiming “This breath stuff really works!”

Breath has helped me find meaning in my existence and it is becoming my privilege to share what I’ve learned with you. Where this journey will take me next I don’t know, but I do know my breath will continue to guide that experience in an ever-present flow of giving and receiving.

Month: July 2021

How the conversations in our head can falsely shape our worldview.