114 ~ How to Stay Present in Real Life Stress

When the mind gets loud and the body goes into alert, thinking harder does not calm anything. Brenda and Catherine guide listeners to slow down. They introduce a gentle body scan practice to shift awareness into regulation. One breath. One sensation. One small shift. These small shifts build trust in the body’s signals.

They share how to use a body scan daily. Before checking a bank balance, during an argument, while parenting, when our inner alarm system fires without a clear cause. Listeners learn what to notice, how to track changes before and after, and simple resources like water, breath, movement, journaling, and truth-telling. Brenda introduces a Qoya movement practice. 

This episode supports anyone who feels tired and wired, stuck in comparison, or unsure how to hear the body. Better choices grow from a rooted place. Stronger relationships grow from presence. A connected body keeps you from self-abandonment.

Episode Highlights
• What a body scan is and why it works
• Signs of dysregulation and the runaway train feeling
• Curiosity and compassion instead of fixing
• Practical cues to track during a scan
• Using the scan during money stress, relationship conflict, and busy days
• Movement and nature as pathways back to yourself
• Ego wants versus true desire
• One percent resourcing and integration
• How regulation deepens intimacy and choice

The upcoming episode #115 will be a toolbox episode, with the full guided body scan practice.

If you resonated with anything that we spoke about today, please subscribe to our podcast, like, share with a fried, rate and review. It is the best way for you to support this podcast. Book a call through the show note links to explore one-to-one support. 

Chapters

• 1:42 Why Body Scans Matter
• 3:45 Dysregulation And The Runaway Train
• 6:20 A Simple, Powerful Awareness Practice
• 9:15 Movement, Nature, And Returning To Self
• 12:40 How To Body Scan In Real Life
• 16:10 Curiosity Over Fixing
• 19:10 Desire Needs A Connected Body

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_00: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12

On the Desire as Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back to the Desire as Medicine podcast. Hello, friends, family, listeners. So happy to be here with you, with the lovely Brenda as well. She is here looking beautiful as always. So we're super psyched today. Today we're bringing something to you that we normally just talk to our clients about, but it felt big enough to bring today. And to like record a full episode just describing what is this thing. And today we're talking about a body scan, what it is, why it matters, and how it helps us regulate and reconnect with ourselves and others, actually. I hear from so many women who say, like, I'm doing all the mindset work, but my body still feels like it's on high alert. Like my vigilance center is just raring. It makes me think of that car alarm. Like whenever there's a storm, all the alarms go bonkers. It's like that's what's happening inside our bodies. Or I hear, I can't even tell what I feel anymore until it explodes. Like people who suppress, especially, like they suppress, suppress, suppress. And the next thing you know, like it's like boom inside of your body, outside of your body. And usually there's some form of like energetic chaos or explosion that happens potentially with a partner or people we're relating to. Brenda, you want to say more about that?

SPEAKER_00: 2:54

Oh my goodness. We hear this all the time with clients. They know they're dysregulated, but they can't seem to get regulated again. And then that's even more upsetting. And then you're on the ride of being upset, and then you get even more upset, and it snowballs. And it's scary and it's exhausting, and it can really take you out. The body can feel like a runaway train. You're like, what is going on over here? And you don't have a map to get back into your body to get back to be regulated so you can feel calm and be in your life. It's hard. It's scary.

SPEAKER_01: 3:35

I love that thought that you just said like, be calm and just be in your life. Like, how good does that feel?

SPEAKER_00: 3:40

It's what we're here for. We're supposed to be in our life, right? And also we're supposed to maybe go out a little bit. Like we are not supposed to have like, let me put it this way: life isn't always going to be so smooth. It's not meant to be really smooth all the time. We're here to experience bumps along the road. Sorry, folks. So we can grow and learn. We're here to evolve. That's what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_01: 4:09

You're so kind. I love the sorry folks. We're here for the bumps along the road. Sorry. So true. I things just happen. Life with life. 50% of the time, it's just gonna suck, right? So today we're going to introduce you to a body scan. And I'm sure plenty of people do body scans and it can be done in so many different ways. We're not going to be speaking about something that is a mind-bending. It doesn't require any external gadgets or, you know, you don't need anything to be able to do this. But it's really powerful. It's simple and powerful. It's basically a guided awareness practice where it helps you reconnect with what's actually happening inside of you. Not to fix it. We're not here to fix anything, just to witness it, just to notice. Like, oh, this is mine. This is happening for me in my body. And I'm going to be introducing you. We're going to eventually record a guided meditation on this. And it's not mine. One of my mentors, Barry Tesla, she wrote, she's the author of The Art of Money. And she introduced this body scan. And out of all the ones that I've done, this has been extremely helpful. And I use it with my clients all the time. So just to give a great shout out to her and her work, she uses it with money. Like, I mean, can we think about a topic that is more dysregulating than money? I mean, I guess health, right? When we when we something's happening in our bodies. I guess there are like health, wealth, relationships, always those top three. Something goes wrong in that arena, and you're like, ah, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't breathe, I feel anxious. Like all these things arise in our physical being where we just want to check out. We feel dysregulated, and it's really hard to stay grounded.

SPEAKER_00: 6:06

Amen. It can be really hard. And you really hit the nail on the head when you said about awareness. We're not here to fix anything. There's nothing to fix. It's about becoming more aware. And so I that's what I love about the body scan is that it slows you down. It's a giant pause. And you can, we we use it all the time. You and I both use it in coaching, meditation, breath work. And it's great to give a client language for what's going on in your body. This is everything. And we're not taught this. So we are all becoming re-educated on how to deal with the difficult things when life gets lithing, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01: 6:52

Yeah, I'm even thinking about, you know, you have a different practice that you do with your clients, COIA, which is a movement practice to just be in your body. There are so many different ways to do it. I mean, I know that clients will say to me, like, I don't even know what I'm looking for. Like, what am I noticing or what am I feeling for? Right. And that's the point. Like, we don't have to do it perfectly. We just have to be curious and start to lean towards the tool that we enjoy that works for us, right?

SPEAKER_00: 7:20

Absolutely. And I love that you brought up KOI because I do teach KOIA-inspired movement. It's wonderful because it's based on the idea that through movement, we remember, we come back to ourselves and that we are like nature. And we talk about that a lot on this podcast because it's just true. We are part of nature and we're always changing. We are wise, we are wild, we are free. And how do we get back to our essence? And let's face it, we live in a world where we are comparing ourselves mostly on social media and on TV. When I was growing up, it was magazines. We're comparing ourselves to what other people are doing. And the the older I get and the more I learn about people and myself, we're so very different. We're wired so differently. So the whole practice is just coming back to ourselves. How can you come back to yourself? And that's what we're here bringing you today.

SPEAKER_01: 8:19

So excited. Um you you use these magic words. That's what I want to call it, like coming back to ourselves. Every time we put our attention outside of ourselves, whether it's for validation or what do I do next, every time we sort of lean on something else to find our power or our answer, our clarity. Unfortunately, the further away we get from ourselves, feeling disconnected is the worst. The body scan can really help you just come back, come back to yourself. So you could be in a conversation with a partner, you could be getting your kids ready for dinner, you could be preparing your kids to have dinner, you could be getting ready to look at your bank balances, you could be doing any of the above, um, or something else. Pick yours. And really the body checking is pause, listen and notice. Feel what sensations are happening for you in your body, what emotions are coming up for you? Are you feeling tingling? Are you feeling heat? Are you feeling chills? Goosebumps? Are you feeling flat? Can you feel anything? Can you feel the saliva in your mouth? Can you not? Does your tongue feel swollen? Does your body feel swollen? Like all the different sensations that can be felt and sensed by our senses. The state of our breath. Are we breathing shallow? Are we breathing fully? Emotions. Emotions are tricky because sometimes it comes with thoughts, right? I'm depressed, I'm sad, I'm happy, I'm angry. So we take them with a grain of salt. We just notice and we're not fixing. I'm angry. Oh, I don't want to be angry. Let me not be angry. I'm this, I don't want to be that. Let's none of that. We just noticing. What's the thought? And then when you have these flying thoughts like bats or birds, just let them pass. We are only gathering that data. We're just noticing. We just want the information, the cues. Because these are the things that they're like keys. They're gonna open up access that allow us to go deeper with ourselves. So we just have to be open and curious. We want to let ourselves get in there, get into the body, and we, whatever we notice, we want to dose it with curiosity and compassion. Like, hello, anxiety, money story, money pattern, money shame, or relationship story, relationship pattern, health story, health shame. Like, who are you? What's there? What are these thoughts telling me? What do you have to say? And we just breathe through it while pouring as much compassion as possible onto it, as much curiosity as possible, and just letting ourselves feel like what sensations do I feel? Paying attention to what did I notice before I started doing this? What am I noticing during? What am I noticing after this interaction with myself? And ultimately we're going to repeat, repeat, repeat as many times as we can. Whenever we are just simply feeling off, we want to get to the place where we can ask ourselves, how can I just be 1% more resourced in just listening? Like, can I hear what's going to help me get 1% more resourced? Do I just need to take a few more breaths and be still? Do I potentially need to journal my thoughts? Do I potentially need a glass of water, warm water, tea? Do I need to say my truth to someone? Speak my truth to someone? Do I just need to check in with someone I love and tell them that I love them? The variation is just endless, right, Brenda? Like what we could actually need to get resource in that moment.

SPEAKER_00: 12:32

It is endless. And I love the curiosity that you're bringing to this, the permission for curiosity. So often we think we have to do something about everything, that we have to take action on everything, or we have to be in motion all the time and fixing problems. And what we're suggesting here is a slowing down and a pausing to just be with yourself and just get curious. And this is a priceless practice because there is no substitute or nothing better than knowing your own body and understanding your own body and knowing how to be sovereign in that way and just be curious, that is priceless in this world. If you want to have more money, better relationships, a career that you love, whatever it is that you're doing, even if you're just walking down the street, knowing your body and what's happening in your body is everything. So we're really talking about this practice as a reconnection to yourself. Because let's face it, we live in a world where we really haven't been taught to be connected to our bodies. We live in a world where we are generally disconnected from our bodies. And it's painful. It is painful to be disconnected from yourself. I've lived that pain. I've seen my clients live that pain. And the practice of getting back into connection with yourself is everything. It's everything. So we're really excited about this. And you might be thinking, a body scan. I can't sit for that long. My mind will never stop racing. Or I don't even know what I'm supposed to notice. How do I even know what I'm supposed to notice? What if I don't do it right? This isn't about being a monk or doing anything perfectly. We're just suggesting to reconnect with yourself. Learn to listen to your body. How can you listen to your body just a little bit more?

SPEAKER_01: 15:13

I love your passion around this. Like how passionate you are about being in connection with your body. It had me think about other things. I mean, this is a desire as medicine podcast, and we do help people reconnect with their desires. It's really hard to be connected to your desire if you're not connected to your body. Desire often, when we're not connected to our body, shows up as ego desires, right? Like what would look good in the world, what shiny thing we think will add value to us as humans, so that we can be liked, loved, wanted, so that we can shape shift into being more palatable for someone, for a group of someones, for family, for friends, for our partners. The more connected we are with ourselves, the harder it is to abandon ourselves. Because we can just hear the, hey, where are you going? What are you doing? Why are you doing that for? Why are you shape shifting like that? Nope. Come back. Remember, you're tired. You shouldn't be overextending. You shouldn't be, and it's a lot easier to hear when you're connected with yourself. You said you've felt that pain when you're not connected to your body. I've felt the pain when I would be around loved ones and I could feel like there was a disconnect. And I thought that in order for me to get more connected to this other person or other people, to have deeper friendships and relationships required more intimacy, but it had to slow that down and have more intimacy with myself. Like be in stillness with self more often. And not just in meditation, not where I'm creating a blank slate. More of scanning, like what's happening with me right now? Like where am I at? And this is what we want to invite you to do with us. We're going to be recording this, but we wanted to give you a real in-depth explanation of why it matters. Like and how this actually ultimately helps us regulate because we're checking in with what can I do to to have myself feel even one percent better? And that one percent, I know it sounds small, but it's actually really helpful, right, Brenda? Like so funny.

SPEAKER_00: 17:46

It's so helpful. What I've experienced and what I've seen my clients experience is when we go one percent at a time, we learn how to integrate it into our bodies and our lives, and then we get to keep it. So giant peak experiences where you're like, oh my God, I found the gold. This is it, my whole life is different. That's harder to integrate over time, but a little bit over time, one step at a time, baby steps, that's that's really something that I can get on board with because I think that's how it really works in our bodies. You know, spirit world is quick and fast, earth work and body is slower. And this beautiful practice of reconnecting with yourself. What's more important than that? What is more important than that? It's your your connection with yourself is the basis for everything in your life. We want you to have what you want in your life. That's what we're here for. Catherine and I want to have what we want in our life. We're in this practice. We are in this practice, and the more you can be with yourself, the more you can be with ready, those big desires.

SPEAKER_01: 19:10

Amen. Amen. Thanks so much for reminding us that we need time for integration. And that 1% does make it a lot easier. It helps us. Quantum leaping, the idea of quantum leaping is so delicious, but the slow incremental baby steps really ensure that we're becoming the people that we need to become along the way. It's so much more sustainable. And for bodies that are already in fight or flight, it's so much gentler. It's a lot easier to hold that level of receptivity when you're just sort of incrementally growing. And if you're curious about what it looks like to work with us more deeply, Brenda and I do this kind of work. Like we both support women one-to-one to build more emotional sobriety. And we definitely have these practices to help you embody who you're becoming a baby step at a time. You can find our links in the show notes to book a call with us to explore what it's like to do this kind of nervous system work where you can transform your relationship to yourself. Please look out for the next drop of the actual body scan and the meditation that we're going to be dropping. If you resonated with anything that we spoke about today, please subscribe to our podcast, like, share, rate. It is the best way for you to support our work. Thank you so much for tuning in. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00: 20:49

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 20:53

Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.