From Overwhelm to Ease
From Overwhelm to Ease Podcast teaches you how to:
✓ Develop healthy cravings
✓ Get on your meditation practice
✓ How to Easily Clean up your act
My overwhelm story is probably a little like yours.
I was raised as a typical middle class American kid. Balancing sports, school, and friends I learned how to prioritize what needed to get done to get into a good college. I was a competitive east coast soccer goalie trying to get into the best college, and be popular and cool and ALL that. You get the picture.
In the super college I went to I was in a culture of having to prioritize my awareness big time. I continued with collegiate soccer and academics and there wasn’t any emphasis on how to take care of your body, or how to balance your mind, or how to have a connection to a bigger connection. I was trained in overwhelm and to take on more than is possible to handle.
Which leads to the theme for today’s podcast: From Overwhelm to Ease. It’s the same theme for the October Yogidetox -so if you’re registered I definitely want you to listen.
If you experience any of these 3 realities, then you’ll get a lot out of this podcast:
- Body Fatigue
- Mental Fatigue
- Spiritual Asynchronicity
Listen. Bring a journal. Experience a shift.
How this Podcast Workshop Works
I’m not going to add more things for you to do. I’m not going to verbally harass you up for not taking better care of yourself, and not living into the truth of what you know. I’m going to simply bring your awareness into a bigger context for the problem. This workshop – from Overwhelm to Ease is going to be super beneficial to you , and maybe even those your life affects. And at the end I’ll tell you how I can support you in really making a shift from overwhelm to Ease.
This Overwhelm Workshop is for you ….
1. If you get that life is busy … and that is not going away.
2. If you know your body habits aren’t in line with what you really want to experience in your body
3. If you want to shift your relationship to your day-to-day life, from out of overwhelm and into an easeful, receptive, and co-create experience
4. If you simply want deeper sleep
5. If you want to crave healthier foods, healthier routines, and healthier conversations
6. If you want to engage in more meaningful relationships
7. If you want your life to matter
8. If you want to wake up – not just to your potential, but to a deeper perspective to live your own life
9. Parents or leaders who want to prepare the younger generation how to handle massive stimulation and an intense global experience from a place of deep connectivity and an open ease.
This Overwhelm Workshop is not for you:
1. If you consider yourself a victim of your day-to-day life
2. If you are looking for a pill and a bill or an herb and a blurb
3. If you don’t want to take responsibility for your moods, your mind, or your body habits
4. If you who blame other people or events for your inner physical, mental, emotional or inter-relational experience.
5. If you’re ok with putting things off and suffering the consequences
OK – now that you know if you’re it or not… let’s continue.
The Overwhelm Problem
We haven’t been taught how to thrive in an increasingly intense, hyper stimulated, and “busy” culture. In school we were taught quantitative information. We weren’t taught about qualitative living. If we were typical, we also didn’t receive this at home. I went over this in the 5 kosha Hygiene video in the free Ayurveda training (yogahealer.com/ayurveda-training). We don’t’ know how to take care of our bodies. We don’t know how to take care of our minds.
We don’t know how to take care of our relationships. We have too many options. Some of us also have too much stuff. And we yet keep buying more stuff. Some of us have too much on our schedule. Some of us have poor habits and techniques for winding down. We don’t schedule time for nothing. We don’t know how to create periods of less-going-on.
We don’t know how to schedule and commit to spiritual -growth phases. We experience a shallow, limited perspective of who we are, of what is important in life. And when this gets really out of sync we may get sick, or we go on a shopping spree, or we pick a fight. We don’t know how to create conscious culture that nourishes the body habits we want to get deeply rooted in. We are swept up in a momentum that is out of sync, and going in the wrong direction with what we desire in our core Self.
Statistics of Overwhelm
If you know the stats -you get a sense that this is not a personal problem. Overwhelm is a cultural norm – and its getting worse, not better. Once you realize you are being swept up by cultural bad habits – it’s easier to consciously extract yourself and surround yourself by a better culture.
From StatisticBrain.com here are a few reminders of what is happening today in America (which like it or not seems to be trendsetter for world culture):
- Percent of people who regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress : 77 %
- Regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress : 73 %
- Feel they are living with extreme stress: 33 %
- Feel their stress has increased over the past five years: 48 %
- Cited money and work as the leading cause of their stress 76 %
- Reported lying awake at night due to stress 48 %
- Percent of American adults experience a sleep problem a few nights per week: 62 %
Top Causes of Stress in the U.S.
- Job Pressure: Co-Worker Tension, Bosses, Work Overload
- Money: Loss of Job, Reduced Retirement, Medical Expenses
- Health: Health Crisis, Terminal or Chronic Illness
- Relationships: Divorce, Death of Spouse, Arguments with Friends, Loneliness
- Poor Nutrition: Inadequate Nutrition, Caffeine, Processed Foods, Refined Sugars
- Media Overload: Television, Radio, Internet, E-Mail, Social Networking
- Sleep Deprivation: Inability to release adrenaline and other stress hormones
And one last relevant statistic: the amount of time we spend watching t.v.: close to 3 hours a day. The amount of time we spend in “religious or spiritual activities” about 15 minutes a day. And I’d say that is a stretch.
The Path from Overwhelm to Ease
The secret is to set aside a period of time, bi-annually, to uplevel your habits. If you live with other people, and you can do this together it will be more powerful and you’ll build more momentum. If you live with other people, and they don’t want to do it, your personal momentum will start to have an impact.
This is so important for you to know because the momentum cycle that you are currently in reflects your past body habits and day-to-day choices. If you want your future body habits and day-to-day choices to be different, you need to:
1) stop off your current train
2) take a look around
3) decide where you really want to end up
4) get on that train
In other words – you need to reevaluate the direction and momentum of where you are currently headed. You need to take the time to decide where you actually want to end up. And you need to take action to go in that direction.
Deciding where to go is only part of it. The hard part is actually getting in place the support you need to build momentum in the new and improved direction. (As a side note, if you live with other people who are unsupportive of the new direction, then you’ll need to be particularly skillful in getting the support you actually need to make a sustained shift.!)
The Workshop Exercise:
Let’s do a little exercise together. Get out a pen and paper. Write down:
What body habits are not serving you (1-3, in order of negative impact)
Examples- like eating on the run, eating a late dinner, over eating, snacking, emotional eating, skipping oil massage, not exercising enough, not getting enough sleep
What mental habits are not serving you (1-3, in order of negative impact)
Examples: skipping meditation, spending too much time on the computer, not being disciplined about screen time, watching too much t.v. or movies. or whatever you watch., indulging your awareness in old emotional patterns.
What relational habits are not serving you (1-3, in order of negative impact)
Examples: eating what is everyone else wants to eat instead of what you would prepare for yourself, indulging in less than evolutionary conversations. not talking about what really matters most, avoiding difficult conversations that would change your reality, not meeting your own deeper needs first – and blaming it on others
Out of Overwhelm Action Steps
What you need to change these things in 5 tips:
1. get a guide
2. get a support community
3. be held accountable
4. change the conversations you are in from victim-conversations to co-creative conversations
5. make 1 change at a time -the Kaizen approach
It takes a village to make a shift. It really does. Whether the shift is meditating. Changing your eating routines. Me and my family always to a group-based detox to uplevel our habits. To talk about what is most important. To isolate and discard outdated habits and routines our family has fallen into… or that we have fallen into with each other. The Yogidetox brings together a community…. at the leading edge. And we become a conscious evolutionary culture. There is personal and family support. It’s unlike another course out there.
Who will influence your momentum? Will you get the support you need to shift from Overwhelm into Ease? I can… but you have to register for us to work together. I know you’ll love it. We’re going in deep. We’re letting go of the surface. We’re establishing an ease-ful relationship to life. You probably need this. And yes, it’s the theme for the October Yogidetox.
Click here to sign up for the October Yogidetox.
