On being brave enough to tell yourself the truth and why that brings you peace

Sometimes what you need most is just to pause and be deeply honest with yourself about what you're feeling and where you are in your life. It's brave work, it's vulnerable and it's a game changer. 

In this short episode, yoga therapist and yoga teacher Keri Marino talks about why honesty with yourself is the foundation of self-trust, why you avoid it and what specific yogic practices can help you find clarity without being critical of yourself or getting to in the weeds of analysis. 

It closes with an invitation to do a journaling practice so save that prompt for later or grab a journal and pen to apply this in real time. 

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Next steps ⬇️

Grab a free yoga practice to Come Home to Your Body

-> https://kerimarino.eo.page/comehome

Start a consistent daily yoga practice in Daily Devotion - 21 days of 10 minute yoga practices plus email support to keep you on track

-> https://thenourishedwoman.heymarvelous.com/product/92272/lessons

Curious about working with Keri 1:1 - learn more about her sessions in person and online

-> https://www.kerimarino.com/get-11-support.html

Help spread the word. If this episode resonated, share it with a friend and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Connect with Keri or learn more about her offerings at www.KeriMarino.com  and on instagram @the_nourished_woman

A gentle note: The Nourished Woman Podcast is educational and not a substitute for medical or mental health care. Please listen to your body and consult your provider when needed.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 1:45

The truth is, it's really easy

Acknowledging the Patterns

SPEAKER_00 1:47

to just get caught up in the flow of life, to focus on doing all the things that you need to do, or if you're like me and you're incredibly driven, to just focus on that next thing that you know you want to be working on or moving towards. And the reality is, is that this pattern of keeping it moving and this pattern of focusing on the next thing is really robbing you of something important. And I think part of it is just presence. I know there are times when I'm with my children who are the most important things to me on earth, besides my husband and myself and some other key people. Like these kids mean everything to me. And sometimes I just struggle to be

Struggling to Present and Feel at Peace

SPEAKER_00 2:29

present with them because I'm thinking of what's next, and I'm working on problems in my head and the background, and I think that's okay. And I'm not placing judgment on myself or on you if you identify with struggling with that. But I think also it's robbing us of the ability to feel ease in the moment. And I think that there's a cause, there's a reason sometimes that we get into those grooves, especially if it feels like it's becoming a habit. And I think the reality is, is that we're struggling with that because there's a place that you're not listening to yourself underneath, a quiet inner knowing that you're not taking the time to actually pause and think through and contemplate and understand or write in your journal about, or just frankly acknowledge with yourself, because I don't know about you, but it feels like there's just an overwhelming amount of input at all times, especially if you're somebody that uses social media or AI or works in an environment where people are giving you a lot of feedback. There's just so much input all the time, more than one human being could ever process. And I think that what our yoga practice can do, what it has the capacity to do, is to be able for us to turn the dial down on all of that noise we have pratyahara,

Self-Honesty as a Radically Helpful Practice

SPEAKER_00 3:55

and it's this pratyahara is this relationship with self where we go inward, where we look inward for nourishment and knowing and connection. And I think that this is something that is so important because I see women across the spectrum that are really early in their yoga practice or early in their work to grow and heal. And I see women that are very far down the line. And I think that one thing that stays constant all the way through is this need to pause and tell yourself truth and to have self-honesty and to look inward and to name the different experiences and thoughts that you're having and the different things that you're struggling with and the different things that you want and you don't yet have, and to just have a level of self-honesty that is frankly like more potent and powerful than you could ever imagine. Like if you want nervous system dysregulation and peace, try self-honesty and yoga. So let's talk about what self-honesty actually is. And so the way that I would define that is that you're in an active relationship with your self-love, that you're willing to listen, you're willing to pause and acknowledge how you actually feel and what you're thinking about, and you're willing to look at the question beneath the question. So if one question you're having, for example, is how do I get to this goal that I have for my money or for my marriage or for this or for that? Like, what's underneath the question? What's underneath the urgency or the angst or anxiety that you're feeling or the stress that you're feeling? What's the question underneath the question? And so what I'm talking about here is really being a curious inner witness and being able to practice swadhyaya, which is the ability to look inward, to have honest, genuine self-study that you're doing, where you're not in analysis mode. You're not trying to tie everything back to past trauma, or you're not trying to quantify that actually everything is okay. I had one of my current therapists, she said something to me really insightful when I was in the middle of doing some trauma recovery work with her. And she said that nobody comes to therapy saying that they had a bad childhood for the most part. Like we're all kind of justifying that things are okay. When in my case, there was a lot of really complicated stuff that happened in my childhood that I needed to unpack. And that story that everything was okay was actually kind of limiting me from seeing the truth. So, self-honesty is asking you to get outside of the stories that you tell yourself, to get into your into your own relationship with yourself and to be a curious inner witness. And if you're like, okay, inner witness, what do sh what does she mean? What I mean by that is in touch with your soul, basically, like to boil it all down. I want you to be in touch with your soul and with your intuition and with the neutral part of you that has the capacity to observe what your experiences are in your physical body, your experience of being in the present moment and in the environment, your experience of noticing the thoughts and emotions that you're having, the perspective and the patterns that you keep going into, and also knowing that you are more than that. And so just being in relationship to honesty with yourself, I think is so crucial. And I think it is something that is becoming more and more important because in a lot of for my audience that's in the US, and you're like middle class, lower middle class, middle class, somewhere in that range, which is the majority of my listeners here, there's a stretch that's happening, a very real stretch for a lot of people of resources being extended during our current political climate. And for the parents out there, a lot of you are experiencing a real shortage of childcare. There's a stretch. And so the more stretched and stressed a person is, the less time you're gonna feel that you have to do this kind of self-honesty work, to sit and journal, to roll out the mat, to do meditation, to be able to go within. You're gonna feel like those are not useful practices. I had a yoga therapy client at like share, very honest, that she needed me to help her with her mindset because she was having trouble even just like believing that these practices held enough value to do them, which I appreciate her honesty, right? And I think we can all relate to that a little bit. And also being radically honest with yourself, taking time to actually name and process how you feel and what you're struggling with, and just to practice satya, right? The truth, the real truth with yourself is so strengthening in your sense of self. I had another client ask me one time, how do I trust myself? I've heard this client again and again. This, my love, is part of how you trust yourself with a capital S, whole self. It's by being in this active, curious relationship and exploring truth. And I think the reality is we avoid this a lot. And I also do this. I am not a perfect person. I am

Why You Avoid It

SPEAKER_00 9:53

still a work in progress, so don't ever think that I've got it all figured out because I just frankly don't. And I avoid this too. And I think that we avoid this work, frankly, because it is uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to sit with your truthiest truth and acknowledge them. It can bring you up against edges of emotions that aren't fun to feel, like shame or questions like why am I behaving that way? Why am I making that choice? Like, what's going on with me that I'm putting myself in that position? And what are the impacts and ripple effects of whatever I'm choosing to do or not do? That radical honesty is uncomfortable. And that radical honesty could be like avoiding having a conversation with yourself and being like, I'm avoiding that. It could be avoiding knowing something that you know, but once you let yourself actually name it out loud or see it out loud, it means you're gonna need to do something about it, or it might make you feel a higher level emotion than you're feeling comfortable with. It can be confronting. And oftentimes this work is uncomfortable because it shows us that we've been engaging in a way of being that is out of alignment with how we want to be and how we see ourselves, and that can stir up shame, and that can stir up grief, and that can stir up a whole host of just sadness and feelings of loss because we understand that living this way has kept us from our own fullest expression or from deeper connections or from financial ease or whatever it is. And so I want to just like normalize that it's very natural and so human of you to avoid doing this radical truth-telling work with yourself. And also once you know that, you can have a lot of compassion with yourself around it. Because there's just there's no need to judge yourself about it. It's not, I don't know that that's very helpful. I think what is perhaps helpful is to say, what kind of woman do I want to be? And do I want to be the kind of woman who knows herself deeply and trusts herself? Okay, if I want to be that kind of woman, then this is the kind of work that I'm going to do and I'm going to choose to do this more often. And the more often you do it, the more you're wiring up the neural pathways, it becomes easier to do it. And even if it is easy for you to do, you can still slip into patterns of avoidance in moments when you're feeling stretched and life is full, or there's lots of transitions and change, or there's just stress going on. Like it's just

How to Trust Yourself More and Do this Work

SPEAKER_00 12:48

being human is being human is being human. And you are that and I am that. So this practice of being honest with yourself, of naming truths, of looking at them without trying to like psychoanalyze it all to the nth degree, but just to like have a real sense of understanding of where you are is really important because it is a trust-building practice. You are building trust with yourself. When you can tell yourself the truth, even the small truths, and then make choices from those truths, even small, insignificant seeming actions that you can take, or larger shifts and breakthroughs that you can take, your nervous system, your psyche, your spirit is illuminating that you can be trusted and that your truth is your truth, is your truth, is your truth, which for so many of us as women, that's not something that's really been fostered and developed in us. It's and not just women, like people, right? But I speak to the female perspective because that's my focus here in the nourished woman. But you could apply this to anyone. And sometimes our very love and acceptance and belonging has been contraindicated to the truth. And so I just want you to know that this, I believe, is in fact incredibly healing, that it can be things that help you on your trauma recovery journey if you're on one, because you are building honesty and you are building trust and you are building action in relationship with yourself. And I think that this can be so incredibly liberating. One honest truth that you sit with and acknowledge and act on is worth a hundred messages from social media or AI or a friend. Like I you have the answers inside of you on so many different levels. If this episode is resonating with you, if you are seeing yourself in some of this pattern of avoidance and desire, and maybe you're even one of those wonderful women, you're probably are, because I think we all are who kind of dance in and out of this. Like sometimes you're really being honest and truthful with yourself, and sometimes you're more in avoidance, and sometimes you're really sitting with those truths, and sometimes you're just kind of busy and caught up in life. This is an invitation to come back, to come back, to come back, to come back. And so I have a journaling prompt for you that I want you to consider playing with, and it's to free write on this question. The truth as I know it is, that sentence, the truth as I know it is. Write on that topic, set a timer if you want to, give yourself five to ten minutes just to write out some of your truths right now and explore your innermost self and what's going on there. And then after you do that, I want to encourage you to do something that really brings you into your body, whether it's putting a hand on your heart and your belly and taking some slow breaths, whether it is going out in nature and taking a moment to meditate and connect with nature, or maybe it's rolling out your yoga mat. This work matters. This is the work that I teach my one-to-one clients to do over and over again. This is the work that I continue to come to with myself. Part of why I'm sharing this episode with you is because I found myself last night in a pattern of avoidance and in the action of coming back to my own truth. So know that we're all here working on it together, me included. Let me know how this episode landed. I truly love hearing from you all. So send me a message or an email and just tell me what little nuggets of wisdom stood out for you. It makes it easy for me to keep showing up when I am hearing about your experiences and how you relate to all this. Bye for now, love. I'll see you in the next episode.