Today's short episode I share with you the getting curious practice I used the other night to help me release the tension of my week + travel day and help me fall asleep. Getting curious, learning how and learning to use as your first response can be a total game changer. It breaks the pain behaviors and habituated responses that perpetuate pain. Let me help you learn how to do something new. It's simple and effective.
Today's short episode I share with you the getting curious practice I used the other night to help me release the tension of my week + travel day and help me fall asleep. Getting curious, learning how and learning to use as your first response can be a total game changer. It breaks the pain behaviors and habituated responses that perpetuate pain. Let me help you learn how to do something new. It's simple and effective.
Here's a little article about neuroplasticity and curiosity for some encouragement.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-reboot/202311/the-psychology-and-neuroscience-of-curiosity
[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.
[00:00:29] So you can feel more better. More of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live. A quick disclaimer. This podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:56] Hello, feelers and healers. Welcome to the curiosity cure podcast. I am your host, Deb Malkin, and I have so much to say, and I've not been here with you for a few weeks. So I apologize. But there's so many podcasts. Did you know that there's so many episodes that you could listen to and re listen to because as we know neuroplasticity requires repetition.
[00:01:27] So I want you to commit to listening and re listening to episodes, especially ones that resonate with you, ones that teach you skills like somatic tracking or the hypnotic somatic tracking. Just put them on. I even had somebody comment in my Instagram the other day that they just put the podcast on and listen to my voice.
[00:01:55] And then that alone helps them feel better. So there's no wrong way to do this. There's no wrong way to approach mind body healing. The key is to approach, right? When we think about approaching, we think about moving towards. No speed required. So many updates. I have a brand new website. It looks amazing. I'm so excited to tell you more about it. Thank you, Design Remedy. And thank you, Megan Senior, for my amazing photos. It's like having the right outfit makes you really want to go out.
[00:02:36] Having the right website makes me really want to share more. And it's not that the website's doing that. It's that I feel congruent, I feel seen, I feel excited to share, that there are all these parts of me that are in alignment.
[00:02:53] So today I want to share just a tiny short practice, speaking of in alignment, that I did last night.
[00:03:01] So I had a kind of stressful week dealing with some elder care stuff and, traveling. You know, I kind of meta, meta wise knew everything was going to be fine and then navigating like I had to go to the DMV, you know. So there's lots of little moments with little unknowns and, and not my own timeframe and a to do list that had a certain kind of urgency with it.
[00:03:32] And so when I got home last night, and I was laying in bed, my body felt tense. And in the parts where they were tense, there was pain, and I could start to feel my brain swirl around and, and think about, Oh, what did I do? And what did I hurt? And, you know, the beauty of being a mind body practitioner is you can kind of interrupt that narrative and just let it go almost like a letting go of the string of a helium balloon. Um, and let's just assume that it's not bad for the environment, right? So just letting go of something that can just float away. So I let go of that story and it just floated away and I came back to feeling my body.
[00:04:26] Laying on my bed. Reminding myself that, hey, I'm in my bed. That stuff that had happened is in the past. That was yesterday's news. So right now, here I am feeling safe, feeling relaxed, not going into tomorrow, just being right there right now in my today body in this moment. And already with that, bringing myself back to that present moment, I can start to feel things shift and relax.
[00:05:07] Then I did a traditional somatic tracking practice. So I just got curious about what I was feeling. So I sensed into my upper back and I just got curious and I said, okay, what's here? What's here for me to notice? Not wanting to understand why, not trying to rush it away and getting curious in a way where when I would feel a sensation and maybe a color came to me or a shape, I said, can that be even brighter?
[00:05:49] Can I go in even deeper with even more curiosity? Just to see what there is to notice. I'm not analyzing it. I'm just amplifying this quality of relaxed curiosity, paradoxically, often when I would go in for more curiosity, whatever I was feeling curious about changed or disappeared. It almost felt like being inside a magic trick.
[00:06:26] And then inevitably a new sensation would pop up, almost like a kid in a classroom raising its hand, being like, look at, look at me, pay attention to me. And so I would bring my attention, that curious awareness that, Hmm, I wonder what there is to notice over here, I would bring that. What is there to notice energy over there. Went into my right glute and then I just went in with my attention and my curiosity without fear, without panic. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was, it was something like, you know, and this is said inside my own mind, something like, Hey, whatever is here, I'm listening and can you soften? And I don't remember even what happened because I fell asleep which is great because that was my goal.
[00:07:29] So I think I felt things shift and move and change and colors come and shapes come. And as I was doing this practice, just inviting my body to relax, to release, to release the stress of this past week. Release any worry about this upcoming weekend and just be with me.
[00:07:57] I was like, Hey body, I want to be right here, right now with you and I want you to be right here and right now with me. Not gonna try to force you to do anything. I'm not gonna try to make you get better. I'm just gonna be with you and a bear witness. Sometimes when I'm in That energy, that state, an emotion will rise up and kind of go through its cycle.
[00:08:35] It will rise up, it will be felt, and it will ebb away, like The most perfect wave in an ocean. And if you're at the ocean and you're watching the waves, it's really fun to watch them crest, like come in and crest and break and flow onto the shore and then retreat and flow back. There's nothing. unusual about that at all.
[00:09:07] We're so used to the rhythm, but when we think about it in regards to emotions or sensations, we don't really have that same kind of framework. So I want to invite you to just witness whatever's happening inside of you like a wave.
[00:09:28] And I think I feel inspired to do another podcast about can we make it bigger? I'm not going to do that right now. So not just yet, but in the future we'll talk about that invitation. Can I make this feeling bigger? We'll be able to apply it in all different kinds of ways. But the most important part of this story is that I met myself in the moment and that I didn't resist what I was feeling.
[00:10:06] I didn't name it as bad. I didn't shame myself for having it. I witnessed how I was feeling and then I fell asleep. And then I woke up in the morning feeling like that was left then. And then of course I woke up in the morning being human, feeling things, thinking about my day. But there was a lightness to it.
[00:10:32] There wasn't a sense of a hangover. And isn't that wonderful to not feel a hangover of what you had felt the day before. That's a practice that I'm excited to share with you. Watching your sensations like a wave. and just meeting them with curiosity and kindness. Thank you so much for listening and going on this short little practice journey with me.
[00:11:02] I've definitely been trying to approach both my own practice and my work in a bite sized, this is more than enough kind of approach. I definitely am working on rewriting my all or nothing, habituated patterns. And going into this is more than enough. Just knowing this, knowing how to do what we just did together, is more than enough.
[00:11:31] It is neuroplasticity. It is a way of meeting and attuning and attending to ourselves in a way that we haven't before.
[00:11:41] So thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy practicing on your own. Please feel free to revisit this practice as often as you want. And I'm excited to share with you that my knee is feeling all better. A hundred percent better. 99. 99 percent better. Sometimes don't like to say a hundred percent. But it is feeling so much better and it's only been two months from what I thought was possibly a torn meniscus, whether or not it was, or it is, I don't really care because how I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty great. I am trusting my steps, my strides, I'm trusting myself, my body, my ability to move. And did I say I was trusting my strength? I'm going to say that one again, trusting my strength. And so I will share more about that as well on my next podcast, the curiosity cure.
[00:12:44] Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.