Back On Track Challenge Day 3

Welcome to this day three of our Back on Track challenge.

What we're gonna do today is that we're gonna look at the connection versus disconnection barometer.

So we are going to tune in,

Or I'm gonna guide you actually through a quick tune in meditation and breathing so that you can keep going back to that way to tune in and the connection and disconnection barometer will be something that you can keep for yourself.

So make sure you have a journal,

A pen,

Something to write on.

Make sure that you are finding yourself in a comfortable seated position.

So what I'm doing is that I'm just pulling the chair back and I'm bringing my body closer to the edge of the chair and planting both feet on the earth.

Now,

If you prefer to be seated,

You can do that.

This is just cause I'm sitting at a desk.

So,

Okay,

Roll the shoulders up and back.

We're kind of starting in the body.

And when I do that,

I like to run my hands up and down my thighs,

Just like,

Okay,

I'm touching my body,

I'm here in the now.

And then slowly stop that and look around you in the room that you're in,

Noticing the physical walls,

Maybe through the window,

What you see,

And then looking at your body and noticing how this physical realm that you're in,

You're touching it,

You're grasping it,

It's here.

And then the body,

It's the same thing.

It's this physical vehicle that you have for your life.

And so we're gonna go in there.

When you're ready,

Close your eyes.

And as your eyes are closed,

Start to be aware of any frowning,

Any clenching,

Any tightness in the face,

In the head,

And drop your awareness into the jaw and relax that too.

Drop the tongue,

Have the eyes be held into their orbit,

Having the neck lengthened,

The crown of the head up open towards the sky,

And then relaxing the shoulders away from the ears.

Feel a slight lift in the chest and heart,

And notice the heart beating.

Feel the back of the heart.

Feel the shoulder blades supporting the heart.

Notice the breath here as it moves the belly up and down.

Notice the pace of the breath,

Whether you want to slow down your breath or lengthen the exhale or stay as is,

Make a choice,

And commit to breathing consciously right now.

Feel the seat,

Feel the feet,

Feel the length in your whole spine.

And here I invite you to be aware of the outline of your body.

Since you can draw with your awareness a line around your body,

That is your physicality,

That is your container,

Your vehicle,

Because you are a soul in this body.

Everything outside of this body is external.

Everything inside this body is internal.

Notice how the connection to the physicality of who you are can go through the senses.

So now you can notice the touch sensation of your hands on your thighs,

The touch sensation of the clothing on your skin,

Maybe even the connection of the breath as it moves in through the nostrils,

Having the little hair inside the nose move.

Same with the exhale.

Notice if there's any smells having you be connected to this external world.

Notice if with your mind's eye,

If you can reimagine the four walls of the room that you're in,

The ceiling,

The floor,

And your body's place in that room.

That might be the connection through the eyesight and the memory connection to that external world.

And then the connection with hearing.

Notice any sounds that are the furthest away from you and sounds that are the closest to you.

Maybe the sound of your breath,

You can hear it.

The sound of my voice that keeps you connected to that outer world.

Notice any taste in the mouth,

Even though that is inside the body.

There is something from outside that comes inside your body and allows you to taste it.

Now,

As we draw our awareness in,

Anchor into the heartbeat and really imagine the heart being supported all around.

With space,

Actual physical tissues and veins,

Liquid organs.

And we're gonna take it a step deeper as in the energy space around the heart.

The actual space,

Space that you can't touch.

There is that space around the heart.

This is where we are wanting to connect to.

Notice just the quality of the space around the heart inside your heart.

Inside your body.

And now come up to the head.

Whether thoughts are roaming around like little kids on Christmas morning or on any other holiday that you might celebrate.

Notice the thought activity.

Notice the space in the mind.

Is there space in the mind?

Does the mind feel a little bit blocked or strained?

Without judgment,

Just be aware of that space.

As you now are invited to connect with that space,

With the thoughts inside the mind.

It's like you're opening the door to these thoughts and you're saying,

Hey,

I see you.

I hear you.

I'm holding you.

And I'm working towards loving you,

Thought.

So with the awareness of the mind,

Notice the space.

Notice the quality of the space in the mind.

We don't wanna change anything.

We're just noticing.

And then drop your awareness to the heart again.

And notice how peaceful and calm that space might be for you.

And right now make a decision to stay in the energy of the head for our exercise today,

Or to access the spaciousness,

This peace,

This calm in the heart.

You can try.

Take a deep breath in through the nose,

Out through the mouth.

Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Yeah,

One more time.

Inhale through the nose.

Make space in that whole physical body and exhale.

Now you can choose to keep your eyes closed as I just do a little recap of our days one and two,

Or you can choose to open your eyes and jot down anything that you got right now from your tuning in,

From the connection with the body,

With the space outside of the body and inside the body.

Day one was about exploring the morning routine and how we could be stuck.

We can stay stuck up until now anyway,

In a,

I have to do this.

I should do that.

Well,

Everyone seems to think it's the gratitude way,

Or everyone seems to think it's the yoga way or whatever way.

And it can come to a place where we feel like,

Well,

Wait a minute,

That I'm not being consistent with it.

This doesn't work for me.

It doesn't feel like I'm actually getting results.

I feel,

Yeah,

It's just not working for me.

So we explored one of the 15 steps that I have practiced when I lived in Nepal and when I came back from Nepal.

And what I invited you to tune into was that you can give meaning to anything.

And so you get to choose to tune in to how you feel and make a decision.

Okay,

Am I going to sit and force myself to journal every day because habit to do it every day is what I should do.

But then you're realizing that you're just forcing yourself.

You're not respecting yourself.

You're not being honest with yourself,

But you're making meaning that the journaling is the only way.

Well,

This isn't supportive for you.

So we're looking at another way to make self-care your own daily practice because self-care is a lifestyle.

Self-care is not just this one thing you do or this extensive time you take out for yourself.

Self-care is the way you treat yourself.

And that brought us to day two,

Which was all about the five layers of the self.

So it's not only about treating how we treat our body with what we eat,

With the exercise we give the body.

It's also about how kind are we in the mind?

How judgmental are we in the mind?

What happens up there that we would like to soften and release anxiety and de-stress perhaps?

So when we looked at being kind to ourselves with our morning routine,

With getting back on track,

And we see that there are five layers of the self,

We can go,

Wow,

I don't have to do it only this specific one way.

And I can remember that I'm whole,

I am a whole.

I am these five layers.

And my soul self is that connection with the heart that has me make decisions to get back on track in alignment with who I really am.

On day two,

We looked at,

Okay,

What has prevented you up until now to feel knocked off track throughout the day,

Whether other people's energies or other people's emotions,

Or you feeling your heart palpitations rise and you're like,

Oh my gosh,

I have to say yes,

But really I wanna say no.

We looked at,

Wait,

You can actually tune in to that inner body indicator.

You can tune into what's happening and do I wanna give weight to that?

Now,

A question I asked you at the end of the session on day two was,

Is there an energy or a quality that you want to anchor into or anchor with so that whenever you go out into the world and you're about to make decisions and you're about to interact with others,

You can remember that,

Wait a minute,

That's the way I wanna feel.

That's the thing that will bring me to feel alive.

And so from that place,

Now we get to play on day three of,

Okay,

Am I in the disconnected?

Do I feel disconnected from that place of how I wanna feel?

Or do I feel connected to how I wanna feel?

And that will be your alignment to being back on track.

Here's what we're gonna play with today.

I invite you to take a big piece of paper or anywhere that you are writing your notes down right now and to one end will be disconnect.

You can write disconnected,

Disconnect,

Out of alignment.

And then on the other side,

You'll write connected and in alignment,

Tuned in or out of tune.

If you remember in the meditation that we did,

The outside world,

The walls,

The views,

The physical body,

And then we actually had our awareness draw an outline of the body with the mind's eye so that you could feel like this is a container.

This 3D body shape is a container for the soul to flow through,

For these emotions to flow through.

And then my thoughts get stuck in here,

Emotions get stuck everywhere.

Yep.

And we get to remember that the energy of our words,

Of our thoughts,

Of our boundaries that we set,

That can be,

We can choose to have that energy be in alignment or be out of alignment so that we can honor the soul layer of ourselves.

You can close your eyes,

Just kind of explore what would it look like for you to be disconnected and what would it look like for you to be connected?

And just a little tip,

If you want,

You can remember the five layers of the self and you can ask the same question for each layer.

We are actually looking at,

As of now,

Okay?

We're not looking at,

Well,

Up until now,

It's looked like this.

You can,

And what I'm offering up is that my thought and my guess is that what feels disconnected will be a mirror to how you've been operating up until now.

So we're kind of gonna answer that question at the same time.

So what does it look like moving now,

Like the decision you're making as of now,

What does it look like to feel connected and disconnected?

I'm gonna give you like four minutes so that you can just really tune in,

Take that time to do the work and ask yourself,

What does it look like to feel connected and disconnected?

And you can ask the same question for each layer.

What does it look like to feel connected and disconnected?

Before preparing this Back on Track challenge,

I asked what feeling and being disconnected looks like for some of my clients,

Because I had a feeling that it would actually serve you because you might feel very similar to them.

Feeling disconnected for them is really when they are saying yes,

When they actually wanna say no.

So in a more tangible,

In the world,

What that looks like is,

Well,

I am disconnected when I am saying yes,

Instead of saying no.

And often it will feel like there is this connection and there is this heart palpitation,

There is this heat,

There's the sweat that's rising in the body.

It feels like,

Oh my gosh,

My boundaries are gonna be breached.

It feels like my boundaries are not respected.

Disconnected also is when all these external circumstances like what has you be knocked off,

Like derailed,

Off track,

Out of sync,

Disconnected,

That would be all these external circumstances of emotionally of coworkers,

Of other people's emotions,

Other people's energies,

And actually letting them in,

Like if they were,

Instead of them sucking your positive energy,

It's like you're a sponge and you just sucking it all in.

This external world and everything that's around you is coming into that physicality,

Into this body.

So that could also be tangibly disconnected.

This emotionally disconnected could also look like being a rock or a volcano when you gather all of these emotions inside of your body and you're pushing them down.

That can also look like lack of communication,

Not being honest,

The communication with yourself,

The communication with others.

And so when it comes to being emotional,

When it acts as that emotional layer,

It can look like,

Yeah,

I'm not wanting to open the door to grief,

Sadness,

Anything that would be quote unquote negative because I just wanna feel the joy.

So that can be also an indication of disconnect.

For the mind,

Disconnected could also be that,

Oh,

Well,

Instead of shutting the door to the emotions,

Now it's like opening the door to all the anxiety and all the worry and all the what ifs.

What if this and what if that?

That could be also an indication of,

Wait a minute,

I'm feeling disconnected because I'm letting all these thoughts drive me around.

In other words,

Disconnected for me anyways is when I lead with the head,

When I go with what makes sense,

When I think,

Well,

This is the most logical thing to do.

That for me is disconnected.

What I got was I am making powerful decisions to realign with my heart.

So being in connected or in sync in the tangible mind level way could be,

Wait a minute,

I am not gonna let these thoughts of fear and doubt and negative what ifs,

And I'm actually gonna empowerfully choose,

What if this works out?

What if I can live the life that is most joyous?

What if I'm not letting even financial circumstances you know,

Oh,

But I'm already paying this and I'm already paying that,

But I want to get back on track,

But I'm not gonna let myself be supported because of all these external circumstances.

That could totally be an indication of disconnect.

So connected with the mind would be,

I am letting the mind think,

And I'm using the mind as a tool for putting in practice,

Putting things like doing things,

You know,

Having plans and bringing birthing projects into the world,

The mind is our tool for that,

One of the tools.

And making a powerful choice to not let the negative what ifs and change them to positive what ifs can also be a super connected indication.

When it comes to the body,

We also got eating junk food and feeling guilty about it would be a way of being disconnected.

Whereas being connected,

You could still eat junk food and feel like you're loving on your body.

So the physical layer of being connected could be,

Wait,

I'm actually gonna do something that feels good for my body.

Instead of going for a 10 mile run,

I actually feel like doing some stretches today.

That can be a way of connection.

When it comes to being emotional and that third layer of the self,

There is a way to let the emotions come like a river.

The river flows above the bumps of the rocks and the river will trickle and slow down in some places and then will rush in other places,

But it's also natural and flowy.

So to be connected at the emotional level can look like that,

Like,

Okay,

I'm gonna let them flow in,

I'm gonna sit.

For example,

This morning,

I was feeling both the pendulum of the tune in barometer.

I was feeling excited and so happy.

And I was also feeling a little disappointment.

And I found myself,

The first thing I found myself going,

No,

No,

It's the positive what ifs.

You get to go straight to the happy,

Straight to the excitement.

And then my heart spoke,

No,

Wait a minute.

You get to feel the disappointment.

You get to just be,

It took 0.

3 seconds.

It was super quick of like,

Okay,

0.

3 minutes,

30,

Not a lot of seconds of just being in the body,

Being with the disappointment for just the moment.

And what that did is that it's not getting lodged somewhere in my body.

It flowed out so that I can access the happy and the excitement for real.

It's not a knockoff.

It's not a,

I'm not being a bubbly,

Fake face of excitement and joy.

I'm actually truly happy,

Excited,

And joyful instead of feeling like the disappointment had to not be heard.

The next question that I have for you is,

If you were a fly on the wall in your life,

A beautiful bird,

Choose the bird you want or the insect you like,

Close your eyes and really allow yourself to visualize the view that this bird or insect has of you and receive the vision.

As I ask you questions,

There will be a little bit of silence so that you can really tune into your breath,

Tune into the moment,

And just notice without judgment or without any specific goal other than be in this experience of yourself from the bird's point of view,

From the insect's point of view,

Like that fly on the wall.

Let yourself be guided here.

Immerse yourself in this beautiful visualization.

What are you actually doing?

How are you moving your body?

What thoughts are in your mind?

What is your relationship with your emotions?

What's your boundaries like?

And how's your connection to your soul,

To your divinity,

To who you really are?

Do you see any specific actions that you take throughout the day?

Do you see any specific decisions that you make?

Do you see who you attract and who you spend time with?

And what about support?

Are you supported or do you feel like you're still at it alone?

Notice and then just take a moment to write down what does that being see for you just so that you can be honest with what's possible.

And then we're gonna look at,

Okay,

Is there anything,

Any resistance,

Anything that's preventing that from actually being what you embody?

So just take a moment to write out that scenario of what we would see.

Well,

From now on,

You get to make a decision because now you know what it's like to know that soul.

You got curious with it.

And if what you've got from the three days of the Back on Track Challenge are all that you needed,

Great.

And if you want more coaching questions,

You can also get my top five coaching questions to help you get back on track by going to my website through my teacher's profile here on Insight Timer.

I appreciate you so much.

It takes courage and a brave heart to look within.

And I'm so honored to have you by my side and I'm so excited to see the possibility that you are choosing for yourself.

So thank you.

Much love.