It will not surprise any of my long time listeners to know that I was getting coached regarding feeling frustrated that editing THIS podcast wasn't easy. So ding ding ding if you are stuck in the spiral of frustration of things not feeling easy you are not alone. Let's unpack how that feels in our body and why pursuing easy actually makes things harder. Ease is a learnable skill we can practice and apply to any situation. And once I got over laughing at myself for my very meta and oh so human experience, I was able to ask myself, what are the thoughts, feelings and actions that will help bring ease to this process. I'm very happy to be bringing this essential and underrated skill to share with you.
It will not surprise any of my long time listeners to know that I was getting coached regarding feeling frustrated that editing THIS podcast wasn't easy. So ding ding ding if you are stuck in the spiral of frustration of things not feeling easy you are not alone. Let's unpack how that feels in our body and why pursuing easy actually makes things harder.
Ease is a learnable skill we can practice and apply to any situation. And once I got over laughing at myself for my very meta and oh so human experience, I was able to ask myself, what are the thoughts, feelings and actions that will help bring ease to this process. I'm very happy to be bringing this essential and underrated skill to share with you.
Gene Kelly in Singing In The Rain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swloMVFALXw
[00:00:00] Welcome to the curiosity cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker, hypnotist trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder fat human on planet earth here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity so you can feel more better Transcribed more of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live.
[00:00:39] A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can complement your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:55] Hello, my feelers and healers. It's Deb. Thank you so much to everyone who has reached out with such love and caring after my father's passing. I absolutely appreciate and, and love you. I feel unbelievably held and cared for by every single comment. Thank you so much. It's been a real gift to get to share some of this experience with you.
[00:01:25] So one of the benefits of being a sensitive person is that themes tend to stand out when I'm working and sometimes I get this weird psychic thing where a client and I will be talking about something and then the next thing I open in my email, or the next thing I look at in my Social media is exactly the message that we were talking about.
[00:01:50] That's really fun. So sometimes my clients end up with little like bonus, Oh my God, this meme popped up, just after our conversation or, Oh, here's this like podcast on hidden mind that really goes into more detail about what we were talking about. So there is this flow of doing this work and, when I've got these kind of receptors open different themes pop out and information, comes to me so that I can share it with you and share it with my clients.
[00:02:23] Lately I've had a number of people talking about wanting this work to be easy. And feeling frustrated that it is not easy or being afraid of something like a physical activity not being easy. And there is kind of a lot of fear around something being difficult.
[00:02:47] And I get it. And I think wanting things to be easy is a mistake. And it's an understandable mistake. So I want to, in this episode, talk about the idea of ease versus easy. So hang with me for a second here. So for me, this year is the year of building my relational model of mind body work. I'm starting with a relational model of being in relationship.
[00:03:20] So that's what a relational model to me means. So I'm starting with being in relationship with my business. So I'm bringing in elements of parts work, gentle neuroplasticity and speaking through and with my body versus controlling and commanding my mind and body to behave or look in certain ways.
[00:03:41] So, I am wanting to build a home. That I don't have to abandon. Even as I wrote this, when I wrote these notes, I started feeling a swell of loving kindness, kind of sigh of finally a sense of, Hey, I have been waiting for you all my life. My goal is to create a home for this incredible vitality that I have and building the relationship with creating a business that I don't feel bossed around by.
[00:04:17] Or one that I abandon and then feel all the feelings that come along with that, that kind of lack of trust, that kind of self judgment. So dropping perfectionism for curiosity and what's relevant for this conversation is finding and amplifying ease. Versus fighting for easy mind body pain reprocessing, emotional well being, and stress reduction is not easy.
[00:04:52] I think it's best to say that out loud, but not being easy doesn't mean that it's hard. And I think the most important thing is that it doesn't require exhausting effort. First, I want you to know that you aren't alone in any kind of confusion or overwhelm, whether it's about your symptoms or whether it's about this process.
[00:05:16] It's not linear. What I've come to learn is that underneath all the information and science and practices, the heart of this work is about relationships, our relationship to ourselves when we are both hurting and when we are healing. It all starts with listening. It all starts with learning to listen and notice the different flavors of sensations.
[00:05:44] Anxiety has a particular kind of embodied experience and so does ease. And it's different for everyone and similar. Anxiety might come with subconsciously held body tension, shallow breathing, fluttery or pounding heartbeat, a swampy head, and ease can be really subtle. Sometimes it's the feeling of not feeling, the absence of anxiety feelings.
[00:06:16] But when we seek out what is it? It is a feeling of spaciousness, curiosity, a flow, or a sense of lubrication, like a drawer that opens easily, and even like one of those soft close drawers that slides back gently and is not jarring. It might have a touch of confidence, the belief that something is achievable, a deep down sense of, I've got this.
[00:06:47] Maybe ease is a sense of being in the moment and not linking whatever is happening now to a fear of future or fear of future failure. And I've mentioned this before on this podcast about a conversation I had with Alan Gordon from the Pain Psychology Center about noticing that I was very high stakes about my process.
[00:07:12] And Nicole Sachs might refer to this lowering the stakes as holding it all loosely. And I want to affirm that yes, it is kind of annoying to have someone tell you to hold your pain loosely or to lower the stakes. And I love Nicole Sachs and Alan Gordon. And in those moments, I can understand the urge to want to punch them in the face.
[00:07:37] So if you have the same urge to want to punch me in the face, I understand because it's like, yeah, stop telling me that what I'm experiencing that is alarming, isn't as urgent as a five alarm fire. But that is the work that is about holding true to yes, I am suffering in this moment and I can practice ease.
[00:08:02] Evoke it in the face of uncertainty and continue to drop into ease as a guiding light for how we can tend to the fear parts at the same time as teaching our body that there is no tiger chasing us at this moment, and that urgency and catastrophizing are also learned conditioned responses that we are learning to unlearn. And the opposite of urgency and catastrophizing is ease.
[00:08:35] There's talk of TMS personalities in many mind body practices. Dr. Sarno identified commonalities in those he helped in his practice. And my take on this is to notice what feels true to you. Can you see yourself reflected in these? personality types, and some of them are perfectionist or goodest or people pleaser, and I'll link to an article that goes through the eight personality traits of TMS.
[00:09:11] But it's not a diagnosis. And since his time, we've also discovered different neurotypes and a more nuanced understanding of trauma. Some people are more wired for sensitivity, and that might then cause someone to develop a personality trait in order to survive in a world that is very loud, bright, fast moving, and overwhelming.
[00:09:38] I'm pretty agnostic with this stuff. To me, it's about learning to be able to reflect gently and with less and less judgment. My own responses. In order to get more and more of this quality of ease while also expanding my life and not shrinking it.
[00:09:59] So let's get into the definitions of easy and ease. Easy is causing or involving little difficulty or discomfort, requiring or indicating little effort, thought or reflection, not difficult to endure or undergo free from pain, annoyance, or anxiety felt or attained to readily, naturally, and spontaneously. And then ease is to free from something that pains disquiet or burdens to lessen the pressure or tension of, especially by slackening. Lifting or shifting to become less intense, vigorous, or engaged, become moderate, usually used with an up or off, like easing up or easing off, to act in a less harsh manner, to apply less pressure.
[00:11:09] So see how the word ease is such a powerful state to practice. It's not kind of externally driven like this is easy or this is hard, right? Ease is a skill, right? It's not a math test. It's the quality of attention we bring to doing anything. Whether that's something we've done a million times or something that is challenging and new.
[00:11:41] And reminder, we need challenge to grow. Our body requires stress. To learn to adapt and respond. Our system doesn't actually respond to easy. Easy, might be the rest and digest place of our nervous system, but only when it's like true, easy, not a fear of something not being easy AKA of fear of being things, being hard, or requiring effort.
[00:12:12] It's one of the bad math equations that often comes with perfectionism or people who are very driven. Right, there's a certain kind of reward that comes with effort. It's certainly socially conditioned that when we work hard that we are rewarded. And so then there becomes this belief that change requires more effort and harder effort.
[00:12:39] And because many of us have been told that we are lazy, and maybe we even subconsciously agree on some level, that we pre defeat ourselves with this equation that change only comes from doing more and working harder. But it's not true. Just like we know it's not true in the actual physical world of working out, our muscles grow post effort.
[00:13:05] They repair during the healing phase. And we need both effort and ease for adaptive change. Effort only creates diminished returns, physical and mental exhaustion And a kind of internal punishment that reinforces painful self disconnection. And boy, we don't need any more of that. When I think of ease, the image that comes to mind is Gene Kelly in that famous scene from Singing in the Rain, and I'll link to it, and I want you to watch it.
[00:13:44] Notice how relaxed he is. How his body moves when he leaps up onto the lamppost, his walking movement with the swinging umbrella, like he hasn't a care in the world. And when I was having difficulty walking, I would notice my internal monologue. Worrying that walking was going to be hard and get harder, worrying that I wasn't going to be able to do it in the future.
[00:14:14] Because it was difficult now. My brain would start to spin out into worries about the future. What will my life look like? And that is amplification of fear and future threat. So I decided the response was to relax into a movement of ease. What does it look like when striding is easy? Like that image of Gene Kelly.
[00:14:37] Or the embodiment of a relaxed stroll on a boardwalk. Hands in my pocket. Feeling secure with every step. And sometimes I had to do that visually in my imagination before my body would connect the dots of not rushing, not efforting, evoking ease and noticing when it felt hard or scary. And then asking myself, what do I need to think?
[00:15:07] Feel or do to relax back into the feeling of ease. That inner dialogue is essential because we don't often know how to respond different than our usual conditioned responses because our brain will always maintain or will always lead with a strategy that works. And I wrote works with. Quotes, air quotes, and you can't see my little fingers go.
[00:15:34] Because the brain's mission is to keep us alive, not happy, not relaxed, not easeful, but alive. And if you have a habitual pattern of taking action when prompted by fear, panic, cortisol, urgency, self judgment, or whatever, it will maintain that strategy until a new pathway or pathways are built. There's no judgment needed for change, only the willingness to have curiosity and the bravery to interrupt old patterns when you become aware of them. At any moment we can take a breath and pause. Any moment we can notice we are moving faster than feel safe and slow down. Any moment we can ease back into action when we realize we've checked out.
[00:16:24] Any moment we can do an activity like the backwards spin and notice, Hey. Am I feeling a spin in my body? Let me try to take it out of myself, back it up, slow it down, and then bring it back inside. Assume that your current patterns and strategies are meeting a need. Now how can that need be met in another way that allows your body to sink into a sense of innate safety?
[00:16:56] Most recently, I cleaned out my dad's house to get it ready to be sold, and it was a lot of work. Thankfully, my sister and nephews came to help and I gave myself a timeframe and a goal of completing it in 10 days. I didn't want this experience to be awful where I burned out and hurt myself.
[00:17:15] I knew that evoking ease in this process was going to be the key to making this safe for my emotional and physical body. I looked at my tasks like a puzzle and I thought, if I want to get X done, what are all the steps I need to take to make that possible? Like if I wanted to compile the donations, I needed to create a staging area.
[00:17:37] So I moved the dining room table and made a place where everything that was going to be donated would live. And then I needed to have things to put the donations in, which were often the things that were also being donated. When I treated it like a puzzle that I knew I would be able to solve, my body relaxed, and when I encountered things we were donating, I knew where they needed to be.
[00:18:01] I created the ease by making decisions, taking big tasks, and breaking them into smaller pieces, and by believing that no matter what, I will get this job done. Which I did. I also celebrated it as I did it. which really helped with my feeling of overwhelm. I wrote my to do lists on post it notes and then scratched them off when I completed each one, and it felt really great to look at the list that had more and more and more things crossed off.
[00:18:33] I also tended to my body. I made sure to get sleep. I ate. I knew that I was going to be moving my body a lot and prepared my mind with inviting in aches and pains without worry. It was okay for them to be there because I was physically doing a lot. I started the week with getting a massage, and I got into the pool one day that felt really great.
[00:18:57] If I needed a pause, I paused, but my whole demeanor was that of inviting in ease, fun, and joy in this big task. And sure, I had all the other feelings too, but the one day that I went to the dump, I treated it like a grand adventure. Each car of belongings that got donated, I wish them farewell and imagine them being useful for so many others.
[00:19:25] The moments I got deep into picking off the stuck sticky parts that was under a rug in the bathroom became a really pleasurable fixation that I did while listening to a favorite show. Cultivating ease is a dynamic process, and it's not hard. But it requires building that self loving awareness and curiosity that is essential for healing.
[00:19:51] Can you imagine building this out even more so that even conflict can have a sense of ease? Ease is a cornerstone of self trust. It can be as simple as the message, I don't know what's going to happen, but I trust that I'll figure it out.
[00:20:09] I've figured out everything I've learned so far. Making mistakes and being willing to love ourselves through them is also an important piece. Like the other day, we had snow and I ran out of salt for the sidewalk and I chose to try cat litter instead. And while it did keep the sidewalk from being slippery, it also meant that everyone was tracking cat litter into the building.
[00:20:35] You know, I could feel some shame for making the wrong choice arising, but decided that I don't wanna shame myself for making a decision and trying something out. Now I have a lot more information, and I was able to dig out my car the next day, go to the store and get salt and a new shovel that made pushing away the remaining cat litter easier, and now I have ample salt for the next time it snows, and I will be better prepared in the future. Cleaning up my error didn't require me to take an emotional hit.
[00:21:07] It was, in fact, a great time to practice being kind to myself, even though I made a messy mistake that I wished that I hadn't. And now this may not seem like a big deal to you, but in the past, an experience like this might have taken me out for days with shame or caused a symptom flare. And I want to be, and I am becoming the kind of person who is able to make mistakes. And not make them mean anything significant about who I am as a person. Coming off of cleaning out my dad's house and getting it ready to be sold really showed me how capable I am of getting things done. Was it perfect? No. It doesn't need to be perfect to be done. That information led me to find the energy to meet the snow situation with ease.
[00:21:59] Oh, right. I know how to solve problems and get this done. And I'm not worried that it's going to be hard. I can bring ease to anything, even things that are hard or require effort. Shoveling requires effort, but it's not urgent. And when I allow myself to go at my pace and ask for help if needed, or find the many different ways a problem can be solved, my habitual patterns relax and I become more than I've been before.
[00:22:33] I don't need to do things like I've done in the past. Sometimes when we are in stressful experiences, our brain will serve us a memory of something that felt hard as a way to say, Hey, I didn't like that experience. And if we take it at face value, we might misinterpret that brain activity, that brain offering as something we need to avoid versus something we can get curious about and relate to differently.
[00:23:01] Our brain is always trying to help us. It is on our side. As I mentioned in my last episode, my brain offered me so many opportunities for corrective experiences and memory reconsolidation between my mother's and father's deaths. At this time, I healed a lot of trauma and anticipatory fear. I'm really blown away at how different this experience was from the last one.
[00:23:30] And it was because I understood this fundamental concept that ease is an embodied emotional experience that is a learnable skill that I can practice. My past difficult experience was a guide into having a new, better experience this time. It wasn't something to be avoided or feared, but to be met with love and compassion and curiosity.
[00:24:00] Ease requires honesty about dis ease, about fear, about worry, about whatever feels hard. What doesn't work for ease is suppression, wishful thinking, self gaslighting. There is a difference between everything's okay when it feels so not okay. And the feeling that comes with, I've lived through hard things in the past and when I slow down and remember that I know a lot, I can figure out the next smallest step.
[00:24:36] And that goes for doing mind body work. Dr. Sarno delivered a lecture as his main treatment protocol. So this is about taking in and applying new information. A new approach or a new way of listening to and talking to ourselves, to our body, to our sensations, to our heart, to our young self and to our future self.
[00:25:01] But it all happens in our today body and today brain as there is no other. What we do right now becomes our predictive code for tomorrow. Ease can become a part of you. In a way that you have never experienced before. Start today. Start with what you're feeling and reverse engineer your sense of expanding more and more into ease.
[00:25:29] What might it be like to feel ease when walking up or down the stairs? Even if it's hard, or it hurts a little bit, or it's scary. What might standing with ease feel like? If standing has been difficult in the past, what happens in your life when you're able to go from 30 seconds to 5 minutes of standing?
[00:25:56] I have a client now who's able to do up to 20 minutes of movement when before 2 minutes felt impossible. When we expand our capacity in all the ways that it means emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, relational, ease, and openness has more room to be. We have more space to be ourselves. It takes effort to change, but effort doesn't mean you're broken.
[00:26:28] Like needing effort doesn't mean you did something wrong. Or that it's not sustainable. Effort is where desire and action meet. It's the toddler who is in pursuit of the toy, and by their pursuit, learns to walk. Let's remember those kid days where we cheered and celebrated every bit of learning. Or we were cheered and celebrated by others for every bit of learning.
[00:26:58] Now we're going to have to be our own adult and kid selves. Or, you know, I am cheering for you. So we are reinforcing for ourselves that our brains are dynamic and are shaped by what and how we attend to the demands in our life. I am cheering you on. I am there holding the vision of ease for you. Right now, every day just notice what feels like ease and ask yourself, what am I thinking, feeling? Or doing that is creating this experience for me. And if you're curious about working with a coach trained in PRT, which is Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Integrative Medical Hypnosis, Life coaching, body work, radical embodiment that's helped me and many others rewire their physical emotional pain and distress.
[00:27:54] Please reach out and book a curiosity call and we can talk more about what working together might look and feel like because I am on your side and I'm here holding that belief in change for you is possible. So stay tuned for more from me, Pain Coach Deb, creator of this podcast, The Curiosity Cure.
[00:28:15] Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful, wonderful day.