Cultivating A Sense Of Inner Peace

31:21

31:21

Cultivating A Sense Of Inner Peace

by Candice Alessia Berry

Rated

4.9

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

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186

In this episode, we go deep into how to cultivate a sense of inner peace - especially when things are difficult. I take you step by step through my process of slowly unblocking emotions in the body and then move on to the mindset work that can help you reframe your story. I share specific techniques on how to find and release trapped emotions in the body and I also give a few other examples of exercises that you can do to release any stress or chaos that you might be feeling.

Inner Peace Self Care Emotional Release Body Scan Somatic Exercises Journaling Reframing Mindset Stress Relief Emotional Blocks Self Care Priority Journaling Benefits Reframing Thoughts Fun Peace Prayer Playing Prayers Support Systems

Meet your Teacher

Candice Alessia Berry

Florence, Metropolitan City of Florence, Italy

Meet your Teacher

Candice Alessia Berry

Florence, Metropolitan City of Florence, Italy

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast. Today I want to talk about cultivating a sense of inner peace and I'll be totally honest I think that this category I think that this this topic falls under the category of easier said than done. It's definitely obviously possible and with mindset work we can achieve I think pretty much everything pretty much anything but I do think that this one is a bit of a tougher topic especially because it's easier when things are going well right to feel good and to maintain that kind of flow state perhaps or to maintain that inner peace but how do we get there when it counts the most which is when things are you know tough or yeah and like originally I had called this episode like choosing peace and chaos because I think that that is what it it ultimately boils down to it's like this inner inner chaos maybe also external chaos why not like I mean just in general like how do we stay how do we stay healthy how do we stay calm how do we stay peaceful content regardless of what's going on around us and like there's the key regardless of what's going on around us and sometimes and this is the hardest thing I think sometimes regardless of what's going on inside of us because I do think that there's a big difference between external chaos and internal chaos so when we're kind of like I mean unexpected things happen that's life right sorry but what happens when our inner world is also in turmoil and I think I can speak too well to this topic in the last couple of months it has been inner and outer chaos chaos all around chaos everywhere and and like this is the point where you ask me Alaysia how well did you keep your inner peace and that's the part where I tell you not very well thank you because I didn't I just didn't I everything just became really really really complicated and I let the external kind of dictate everything because I think that in the last couple of months since I since I moved and and I would like to preface this by saying that I have moved so many times I've moved more than I think the average person moves in a lifetime only up until now and moving is not pleasant by any means and but I find it usually more difficult from a logistical standpoint than from an emotional standpoint and this time I found it difficult from an emotional standpoint and then after the move and the internal kind of feelings that I was having about the move a series of external things happened basically one right after the other without any kind of pause in between that were just feeding this sense of chaos and turmoil and the problem is is that it was from so many different areas of life and some not even from my own life but from my partner's life that it just became all consuming and I got stuck in this loop of like I want to make a I want to find a solution let's solve one problem but every problem that we have is somehow connected to like another problem that's coming up it's just been like a really hard moment of life but it's also been very difficult to accept that it's been difficult to say okay now it's just a really hard moment and it'll pass we all know it will pass because nothing in life is constant nothing in nature is constant so we know that it will pass but it was really like I was in a point where I just felt like this is going to be it forever like I'm never going to get out of this and like just this constant like negativity like this negative feedback loop and this kind of problem loop of like well one thing is bleeding into another and so it was a lot easier to think about being peaceful versus actually being peaceful and I think that if we are going to have a conversation about inner peace then we need to start not with mindset but with the body so I mean as always the more you care for yourself the better pretty much everything about your life is going to be I genuinely believe that if you are actually showing up for yourself if you are actually taking care of yourself your life is going to be better full stop no matter what is going on because when you are filling your own cup with self-care you have more to give and that was definitely something that I felt quite strongly over the last couple of months was that like I was just really empty there wasn't really anyone or anything that was pouring back into me I work in a service based industry in which I am also giving to people through my work and trying to like even keep up with the podcast obviously at a certain point became impossible because I just felt like I didn't have anything to give and I didn't feel like there was anything that was kind of coming back to me and that is not to place the blame on like people or other situations because I also was really struggling to give myself something to give back to myself to sorry to pour into myself and so I think that self-care is pivotal to mindset work and there is you can't you cannot remove one from the other and when we're talking about mindset work we're also not talking about it in a sense where we negate the body or we remove the body from the discussion right like I very very very much believe in like somatic exercises and being able to like find emotions in the body but there is a power for me in particular and perhaps for you who listens to this podcast there is a power in being able to name things in being able to engage the mind with what the body is experiencing it's not enough for me to be in the body I need to kind of have that why I need to recognize and understand why and then be able to reframe things on a logical level working alongside the body okay but today we're starting with the body because I think that if there is external chaos and you're trying to create internal peace or even external internal chaos but in any case we're trying to cultivate inner peace I think that it needs to be the place where we start because we do tend to carry you know a lot of trapped emotions in the body and we tend to in very difficult moments negate ourselves we tend to put ourselves on the back burner and treat ourselves badly because we feel maybe like we don't have the time or the energy or the resources to invest in ourselves when these moments are really hard and I think that's really common because if you feel like you're empty it feels really hard to be able to then pour back into yourself but it's it's so fundamental and this came into like really sharp relief just like a couple of days ago because I I'm gonna get back to that actually it came into sharp relief in a couple of days ago and I'll explain why after I talk about this so I want to start by having a really really honest conversation what is the state of your body so what I mean by that is how often do you move now I'm not talking about like HIIT or some kind of extraneous whatever workout it doesn't matter but how often do you move are you walking you know are you are you literally just putting one foot in front of the other and like kind of moving your body on a daily basis so many of us you know like in the tech world we work in front of a computer like we sit a lot during the day and there isn't necessarily that time to move but emotions again I've said this on other episodes of the podcast emotions are energy in motion and I did not coin that I don't know who it came from I've heard Tony Robbins say it but I don't know if it came from him but I think that's so true because when we're able to move our body our bodies sorry when we're able to move our bodies and just kind of especially if you can do that outside in nature like that's I think double fold but when we move our bodies even if it's walking like a brisk walk we are able to begin to move the energy within our body right and that energy can be anything it can be really good emotions that we're moving through the body it can also be this release of like negative emotions so are you moving your body are you giving yourself an opportunity to release the pent-up energy whatever that might be and then from a mindset perspective I would say like name it because that always helps me so like for example I'm going to go for a walk but like because I really want to move this frustration because there's power for me personally in naming it in saying that thing right so I'm going to move because I want to move this frustration this anger this disappointment this irritation this whatever this heaviness and that's also something that I really noticed over the last couple of months because I've been running not super consistently but when I like have started and then kind of stopped and then started again one thing that's been really consistent with me is I've felt extremely physically heavy and I am not a heavy person I don't tend towards like heaviness in that sense in the physical sense but like I felt like I was running with cement boots and it just was awful it was the worst feeling like this just whole body tiredness whole body heaviness and and not really being able to to shake that on the first like couple of runs and then obviously as the more that you keep moving the more that you stick with it the easier it becomes and the more you're able to kind of with every step loosen that loosen those emotions and like really let them go really release them it's so powerful so that like sense of heaviness that you have that's emotional it can be released through the physical right it doesn't have to be released through mindset work it doesn't have to be released through like journaling or whatever although it also can be yes like and there's two sides to that because like I've been journaling this whole time it's been invaluable too to me it's like one of the tools that I go back to the most often because I just feel like I can say things and like the longer I journal for the clearer I get and the more I unlock something that maybe I didn't understand it really helps me to put it into like a different context or see it from a different point of view so moving on from like the moving aspect of your body but how well are you eating that's the next piece like what are you putting into your body are you drinking enough water and all of these things are like basic basic human needs and you would be surprised how often we deny ourselves these things right and it's not about perfection in terms of eating like this is not about dieting this is not about this is not about trying to lose weight or or whatever but it really is about nourishment like how are you taking care of your physical vessel via food and that would include to me eating things are alive so what I mean by that is not necessarily meat for who like whoever doesn't vibe with that that's totally fine um and I'm not like a big meat eater necessarily either but really like fruits and vegetables like how much of your diet is alive how much of your diet is something that comes from the earth versus something that comes from a box because that is so important like what we put in our body is so important and we take it for granted and another thing that came up now while I was talking about this is like how are you breathing because there's another thing that we often deny ourselves and I know I'm so guilty of this like holding my breath because I'm stressed or holding my breath because I'm like in in having an intense emotion of some kind and like that is gonna be a huge game changer as well so like can you take some time and like remind yourself on a daily basis to take a deep breath and like really getting back into the body in a really healthy way so then it becomes the next step is how are you moving through these emotions so besides the running the eating well and all are running sorry moving and eating well and you know taking deep breaths are you feeling this kind of stuckness in your body and if so where are you able to identify where in your body you feel these emotions and are you able to release them so everybody is different everybody's gonna have their preferred technique I mean even journaling is an option for this but one thing that I would do I would encourage you to do is to like get it's I don't want to say it's like a meditation because I feel like it's more involved than that but get into a sort of comfortable or meditative state by taking a few breaths and then doing a scan through your body so from I like to go from my head to my feet and then just like really like running your attention through the different parts of your body and really paying attention in this case to where you tend to hold tension where are you most tight because that's probably where your trapped emotions are okay so my tightness is in my shoulders and my neck I tend to hold trapped emotions in my chest area I really feel that like if I can if I close my eyes and I just like really dive in via the breath to my chest area I can feel a ton of energy there and it's almost like I get a tingling in my nose when I do that and I know that there's something that's trying to get out um you know through the the lens of like yoga and and that world we are apparently we hold a lot of trapped relationships and emotions from relationships in our hips which if you think about it from a sexual point of view makes a lot of sense so where is it in your body that you feel these trapped emotions and can you just sit with them maybe identify them if that helps you but really just sit with that feeling like sit in your hips sit in your lower back sit in your jaw sit in your third eye or your scalp or sit in your chest and just be there with whatever it is that you're feeling with whatever whatever that sensation is probably an unpleasant one I'm just going to be honest probably not a great one if it's if it's a trapped emotion it's probably not a positive one um and just allowing yourself to be there with the discomfort because often doing that is enough to begin to move things around and really help it to release now if you are doing the trifecta of all of these things meaning if you are moving your body and you're eating healthy and you're journaling and you're getting into this like sort of meditative state and you're really being present in your body and you're allowing whatever is in you to come up already that is going to change pretty much everything it's going to make things so much simpler for you because you're already starting to move that energy around and once energy gets in motion it becomes easier and easier for it to just continue to flow if that makes sense so you're really opening like the floodgates here which could be you know an intense experience if this is something that you've never done before right and that's something to be mindful of because sometimes we are not ready to go that deep sometimes we are not ready to be with the entirety of the emotion in which case pick and choose what you're doing and kind of come at it piecemeal like go at it one one bit at a time instead of diving straight in and like doing all the things at once right like maybe you start by walking and that starts to just kind of loosen things up and then maybe you take on journaling and you kind of go through like whatever you're feeling and like and it can be as simple as like I'm feeling really crappy today I feel really frustrated I'm not sure why but there's this and there's that and just kind of getting it out as much as you can and then when you're ready going into the the identifying and releasing emotions in the body because that one is going to be the one that I think is most visceral that's going to be the one that gives you the most like intense kind of reaction then the next thing I would say is do you have a support system that you can go to to say these things like I always call them like the hard conversations like can you say the hard thing to somebody can you say I'm really struggling I feel terrible I'm unhappy this isn't working this isn't what I want is there a safe space in your life where you can go where you can have these kind of conversations to really get the thing whatever it is out of you right because all of this like where we started talking about inner peace and basically what I've described to you is in some ways of a gentle perhaps but still emotional exorcism right like we are talking about exercising the which is funny because like also movement but but also exercising as in like getting the the negativity out via all these different these different tools because inner peace is inside us it's already within us right we have that natural state of peace and it just kind of gets covered by the layers of garbage sometimes and like our trapped emotions and like the stories that we're telling ourselves about what's going on and and all of that right so can you talk to somebody about this and then like as another outlet to just get it out just to get it out of the body right like to remove the chaos to remove the external factors the internal noise and whatever and just say the hard thing out loud because that's also going to be a game changer and then another part that I would say that I think is still maybe more physical is are you playing and are you having fun like are you enjoying your life because that's a big one and it's something that for me was definitely missing over the last four months like I um I went to my friend's birthday party and this last week and it was in a context that I would have bet money I would not have enjoyed being in and it is the most fun that I've had in like the last four months and I think that is really telling because if I'm having if I've had the most fun in the last four months in a situation in which I would have previously told you I wouldn't have even enjoyed myself really then that is very telling about the situation that I have found myself in for the last four months it's it's it's it's problematic this this discussion it's great that I enjoyed myself and that I had that opportunity to like have some lightness but given the circumstances it means I'm like we're talking like I'm at a low level here if this is like what is something that's like really really fun and that sounds like a bad idea a bad attitude and to a certain extent it is but I'm really really really incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to go and do this because it was incredibly freeing and it unlocked a lot of it unlocked a lot of things for me and then like just a couple of days ago like I decided to um like re-watch one of my favorite shows and then of course like every show has a podcast now so then I listened to the the podcast episode for that um for that episode of the tv show and like just the best decision I've made in like the longest time like such a good decision because I did something that was like just for me that was pure escapism it was just to enjoy myself I just wanted to enjoy myself there was no like learning behind it and I wasn't trying to distract myself which is really important because not that there's necessarily something wrong sometimes we need to distract ourselves it's it's there's a reason why it's a coping method or coping mechanism sorry but in this case I wasn't doing that it wasn't about distraction it was just about pure enjoyment like I just I want to watch this I want to watch the podcast I want to like enjoy this moment of like kind of nostalgia and like taking me back to my teen years and stuff like that and it was really really good it was really juicy and I just I'm super glad that I made that decision because all of these things coming together are so powerful right because I've been doing all of the things that I just said I've been moving my body I've been talking to friends I've been trying to eat a little bit better you know I've been trying to incorporate more play and fun especially in like the last week and so like all of that is like cultivating within me this lightness and it's just it's it's really good it's really juicy so we've kind of dealt with the body side of things so how can we then move into like the mindset thing the mindset side of things so what story are you telling yourself about this kind of situation like whatever chaos or conflict you have in your life whatever problems are arising or challenges or whatever what story are you telling yourself about them because I'll be honest after four months of like the same emotions and problem after problem like it's been raining problems over here it was literally just like becoming like almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where I was just feeling like this is literally never going to end like I'm never going to be able to get out of this I'm never going to feel differently and it was kind of like I mean very extreme that was a it's a very extreme story but it was definitely the story that I was telling myself and um and it took like sort of like this this external shake-up of like the birthday party and that like intense shift of energy in addition to like the physical movement that I've been doing to like really get me out of that state and it just like it felt so good to be there like it felt so good to like be at a place of like fun and lightness and and all of those things and so like having that external experience really helped me be like okay this isn't the whole story and actually this is more what I this is more of what I need I need more lightness I need more play I need more fun I'm not really approaching my life with that attitude so like rewriting that story like okay you know I'm allowed to have fun like I'm allowed to do things for me I'm allowed to do things just because I want to um I don't need to solve all of the problems of the world or like my life or my relationship or whatever right like I I'm allowed to just be and I'm allowed to just have fun so like re rewriting the story that I was telling myself about what this situation is and what it means right because we are meaning makers as humans we are constantly saying that like this means this or that means that or giving like so creating some kind of external story about something that's happening and not maybe fully being with with things the way they are because we're always viewing them through our our the lens of our perspective we can't take that away right um and then beyond these things like so beyond the body beyond the mindset stuff what else can you do I think that if you are in a position where meditating feels good meditating always helps to cultivate a sense of inner peace because it connects you with that piece that you have already inside of you like with that quiet kind of knowing part of you um I think that for those who are like you know predisposed or interested in praying is also incredible for this because praying becomes this almost like release this letting go this surrendering of like what's going on um in another episode I talked about Change Me Prayers by Tasha Silver which are always my favorites like you know just change me into somebody who can release all of this negativity change me into somebody who who can see this from another perspective change me into somebody who is willing to just let go and like yeah let go and let God or let universe or whatever right like use whatever terminology works for you but I think that there is massive massive power in praying in terms of this like you know finding peace be by letting go by surrendering by inviting the divine and inviting the universe or God or Buddha or whoever it is that you align with whatever by inviting in your higher power and just kind of saying like I've tried this I have beaten down the door of this problem I am not getting anywhere um I really need your help so like holler at your girl if you can um yeah I just that's like really powerful and I know that some people won't resonate without it all and like listen take what resonates and leave the rest and if nothing resonates okay I'm sorry but you know that's also an option like maybe none of this makes sense to you but try to find like the pearl in all of this like trying to find the thing that resonates with you that you can somehow turn into into power or into change or into you know peace for yourself right take whatever it is that you that resonates with you and then elaborate on that and then you know find another teacher and see what they say about peace and elaborate on that and always taking all of these pieces and making them your own because everything needs to be filtered through the lens of you because nobody knows you better than you right so just to recap what would we do to cultivate inner peace okay we're going to start with the body this time not mindset so we're doubling down on self-care whatever that looks like for you I've been reading a lot lately because like reading for me is just it's everything um it's it's one of the most relaxing activities for me and and I've just been allowing myself to like read like a really wide variety of novels like from different genres and I've really been enjoying myself with that so you know like what what does self-care look like for you like what does that what feels good for you I've also been giving myself permission to sit a lot in the sun because like that really is something that's energizing when I get when I get a tan I feel better I feel more vital I feel like I look look better which makes me feel better obviously so yeah just doubling down on self-care then really getting in touch with the state of your body like where are you at how are you feeling and then you know from there like how are you moving your body like how often are you moving your body and what are you doing to move your body and what could you shift to do to move your body maybe a little bit more or in a different way to help you like move through those emotions how well are you eating and are you eating things that are alive so are you eating a lot of like fruits and vegetables are you are you eating things that are more like that or are you eating more processed boxed foods right so keeping that in mind and keeping in mind that it's not about perfection I still eat chocolate I still have ice cream I still love it all like balance how are you moving through your emotions so are you able to tap into your your body and feel your emotions there are you journaling are you doing tapping for example like EFT the emotional freedom technique are you doing kundalini yoga are you dancing are you singing like how are you moving these emotions through your body in a very real way do you have a safe space and someone to talk to right because that's massive that's super super important are you playing and having fun are you enjoying your life in some small way right and then the bonus of that being like you know after we've done all these body things the mindset work comes in what story was I telling myself right and we want to come at the mindset work after we've moved through these emotions a little bit in our body because it gets us that clarity so it's going to be a lot easier to identify what the mindset issue is when we've kind of shook up the emotions within the body right the energy within the body so what story have I been telling myself is this true does this serve me what do I want the story to be how can I rewrite that and then going from there and then as a bonus like the things that tend to create the inner peace the fastest I think are meditating and praying so really getting into that meditative state allowing yourself to calm down tapping into the inner peace within you that exists all the time that you always have access to even if it doesn't feel like you do and then praying as a way to like release and let go and surrender that was our little recap so thank you for being here thank you for listening to me I so appreciate you you have literally no idea so so grateful if you liked this episode I would love to hear what you thought if you want me to cover a specific topic you can also drop that like in the comments like that would mean a lot to me I think that'd be really fun to try and create something like specific for for you guys something that like really resonates or that's on your heart so if that's something you're interested then yeah please let me know otherwise like rate subscribe and all of that good stuff share the love if you feel called to and yeah just take care of you and know that you are peace at your core and you know until next time I hope you have an amazing weekend and I'll see you on the next episode of the podcast ciao