The Nourished Woman with Keri Marino

From Autopilot to Aliveness: The Practice of Really Being Here

• Keri Marino • Episode 25

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A giant teddy bear of a golden doodle and a 4 a.m. cuddle sparked a conversation about what it really means to live with presence. We follow that thread from a messy, sweet living room moment into the deeper work of choosing curiosity and intimacy with ourselves—on the mat, in your breath, and in the small decisions that shape your relationships. Along the way, we explore how the brain leans on prediction, why presence takes energy, and how autopilot can dull your connection unless you consciously return to the here and now.

You’ll hear a grounded, practical take on mindfulness as lived peace, not a concept. We talk about noticing personal “tells” like hovering tears, quick irritability, or the urge to numb—signals that it’s time to tune in.

 From there, we offer gentle practices you can try today: hand-to-heart breathing, a page of honest journaling, restorative shapes that let the floor hold you, and simple chanting to reorient the nervous system. Fear is welcomed as part of your sacred range; when acknowledged, it gives information instead of running the show.

We also open a window into The Nourished Woman method and why somatic yoga therapy supports high-functioning, heart-led women who carry so much for others. Intimacy with self expands intimacy with partners, kids, friends, and even the land you live on. 

By the end, you’ll feel invited to see with fresh eyes, soften the edges of anxiety, and choose a kinder pace that lets love move through your day.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Nourished Woman Podcast, a space for women who've been doing the work to grow and heal and are ready to feel good again, body, mind, and soul. I'm your host, Carrie Marino, somatic yoga therapist of over 16 years, mentor and mama of three. I help women like you fall in love with how yoga makes you feel, alchemize the hard things you've been through, and experience more pleasure and aliveness in your body and relationships. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in. I just know I can't survive without mystic. As part of today's episode, I want to tell you a little story about something that just happened in my life. And it's that we adopted a dog yesterday. So after many months of considering and soul searching and looking for dogs and exploring, we adopted a four-year-old chocolate brown golden doodle. And he's a big boy. He's 75 pounds. I've never had a dog that size, but my husband really wanted a larger dog. And we've been going through the experience the past 24 hours or so of just getting to know this new being in our lives and being present with him and being curious about who he is and how he moves and what he likes and what he doesn't like. And so far I've learned that he is truly a giant teddy bear. He is a serious cuddler. He wants to lay all over your body and hug you and just barrel his sweet, fuzzy self into you. I've learned that he really loves to play frisbee, like loves to play frisbee. And that when he drinks water, it kind of dribbles everywhere. Makes a bit of a mess on the floor. And I think that what's relevant about this experience of being present and curious and intimate with a new love in our lives is that really all of us are doing that every single day, and every single time you sit for meditation or you do your breathwork practice or you do your yoga practice. There's an intimacy involved, and there's a presence and a curiosity that's there, and that we have the opportunity to give ourselves over to that process. So this morning I woke up early because Loki, our new dog, was just a little unsettled. The person that we adopted him from has like lives way out in the country on four acres of land. And then my family, we live in a suburban neighborhood. So it's like, you know, we've got a third of an acre, but we've got our neighbors, there's a fire truck that drove by in the middle of the night. You can hear lots more noise from people where we live. And that's new for him. So Loki was around four o'clock in the morning just kind of trolling the house. And that woke me up. And so as I'm sitting there with him on the couch, and he's got his big teddy bear body laid up against mine, he's like on his back, belly up, you know, just snuggling his head into my hand. I'm just looking at him and you can feel the tenderness of that moment and the connection of that moment. And I think that sometimes we don't appreciate that enough. How presence and curiosity and connection in real time is such a doorway into love and into deepened relationships with yourself and with the people that you interact with and your pet and your home and the land you live on. I know for me there's also been this sort of beautiful experience of seeing my children and my husband also fall in love with our new dog and seeing their presence and curiosity and connection with him grow as well. And so I think that sometimes when we when we're really honest with ourselves, if you're really honest with yourself, it's easy to get in a groove and to just kind of keep repeating the same sorts of behaviors. Literally the way your brain is set up and your vision is set up is to notice contrast. So I was in a a yoga training last year, and we were learning about neuroscience in yoga, and I learned that pretty much 90% of what you see, you're actually not seeing. It's like an image in your mind. And so your brain's really only like seeing with fresh eyes about 10% of what you're seeing. And it's particularly like the contrast. You're gonna see things that are different, you're gonna see movement, you're gonna notice things that you need to pay attention to. And a big part of this is that your eyes are actually a huge consumer of energy. Like they, it takes massive amounts of energy to see. And so this all kind of ties back in because if we're if you're wanting to live a mindful life, if you're wanting to live a life where peace is not a construct, but it is something that you feel in your heart and you know in your bones, and you see in your closest relationships, and you just live your life from that whole, centered, peaceful, gracious, connected, divine place, then I think that a huge part of it is really your capacity and your choice to be present and curious and intimate. And when you get into those grooves in your life where you're just kind of like you're in that 90%, you're in the image of your life in your mind, and maybe you're not seeing as clearly, maybe you're not attuned into the subtle beauty and gifts and the sorrow and the anguish and the anxiety that comes from just living a messy, beautiful, raw, real human life, then you'll miss, you'll miss it. And I know that for you and for me and every woman who listens to this podcast, that you love the way yoga makes you feel and that you've tasted through your practice and probably through some other things too. Like maybe some really amazing walks in nature, or moments of sitting on the beach, or during really powerful moments of connection with another human being, where you're seen and you're held and you feel loved and supported, and you can give that to that person as well, where they're emotionally available to receive that, where they can be open and intimate with you. And I like sexual intimacy, sure, but like many layers of intimacy. And we all know how good that feels. You know how good that feels. And I bet even as you're just listening to me talk to you about this today, you probably already have some images coming up, some memories coming up of when you've felt this goodness in the past. And if you do, then I just want to encourage you to pause if you can and maybe lay a hand over your heart and a hand over your belly and take a handful of really slow breaths and just be present again with that feeling and really let that feeling take up space within your body. Because the reality is there's actually nothing wrong with you kind of living in the 90% and like getting into the groove and showing up in your life in a consistent and steady way. And also, if you're not balancing that with really conscious practice and space making for you to be intimate with yourself and to feel the full range of what you're feeling and to acknowledge yourself and to turn that presence and curiosity and connection inwardly, then you're kind of missing out. And I think that you there are ripple effects to that. I I kind of like I wanted to call them consequences, but I don't love that idea because it puts a negative spin on it. And it may be negative. Like you might be having negative consequences in relationship if you're not tending to yourself in this way, if you're not really having this kind of intimacy with yourself that I'm talking about some of those negative results, those ripple effects could be finding yourself wanting to numb out in some way and avoiding practices that feel good to you. Like maybe you're avoiding your yoga practice right now. No shame, just you know, acknowledging that that's real, right? Sometimes we avoid things that we know work for us and we love and we care about. It could be that you find yourself maybe a little less patient with the people in your life or feeling overwhelmed and tired more often. Whatever it is, I think it's very important to be able to notice what your tells are. Those tells are those signs and signals from within and from life that it's time to tune in. It's time to really make room to feel and to be with yourself. So if you've been in one of those grooves, which we all get there, I noticed in myself last week that I had these tears that kept wanting to come out. But then I would just kind of like I would, they would try to come out at inopportune times. Like I'm in the middle of the car line trying to pick up my kids, or I'm in the middle of cooking dinner and I just get hit with some emotion. And it wasn't really a time short of taking some breaths and acknowledging it, where I could really like be with that pain, that emotional pain that was surfacing and the fear that was coming up. And so I reached a point where I just the the tells were there and I was able to listen to myself and to witness that I was kind of wanting to avoid doing some things that I know are really helpful for me, like really intentionally making room to process my emotions. And so I made some time for that. And I wrote in my journal, and I I really let myself identify those different areas where I was just feeling deeply afraid. And I know like sometimes we make fear out to be something that we're not supposed to have. And I I think that that's bullshit. You're allowed to be afraid, you're allowed to have worry or uncertainty. It's just part of your whole sacred range. And also when you're not present and curious and connected with yourself and making that time and space to process your emotions or to bring yourself back into your body and into your breath and into your soul, then that fear kind of gets to run the show, or that anxiety gets to run the show, or those habits that keep you from seeing run the show. And I know that that's not what you want. I know that you, as the spiritual, heart-led, good woman that you are, I know that you want to be operating from your intuition and from your highest self, and in a deep reverence and appreciation for the everyday sacred gift that is your life. I know that that's what you want for yourself. And I also know that your yoga practice is so much more for you than a physical practice. It is a doorway in, it is a sacred return to your wholeness in the present moment. And I want to give you this audacious invitation to deepen your practice. And inside of my method, the Nourished Woman Sanctuary, the somatic yoga therapy that I offer, know that emotions are a big part of that because as women, we are taught to prioritize looking outside of ourselves and taking the emotional temperature of the people around us and being the caretakers of the world and the nurturers of the world. And I know pretty much every woman in my practice is a very high-functioning woman. You are probably doing so many things for so many people, and that's so great about you. And also, this is why we need the yoga practice, right? Like this is why we need the meditation. This is why we need the breath work. This is why we need the chanting, this is why we need that inner compass that our yoga practice can give us, is so that we can continue to anchor yourself back in to presence and curiosity and connection and intimacy with yourself in real time. And then again and again and again. And I can tell you that after taking that time to journal and meditate and do some restorative yoga on my emotions the other day, it totally opened up who I got to be for my kids. It totally opened up who I could be for my husband. I went from sort of an angsty version of me towards more of a peaceful version of me. And I know that you and your dogs and everyone in your life appreciates it because intimacy with yourself opens up intimacy with others and what a gift that is. Thank you so much for listening to the Nourished Woman podcast. I would love to hear what resonated with you and what you're carrying with you out into your life. Send me a message on Instagram at theNourished Woman or even in my email. Your messages really mean the world to me, so don't be shy. The beautiful music that you're hearing is by Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band. You can find them on all streaming platforms. I'll see you next week for another episode.