My Favourite Inner Transformation Practice

This week's newsletter is different.

Take a slow, gentle breath, grab a cuppa, open a journal

...whatever helps you settle in.

And thank you for being here.

We're going to talk about some sticky, painful, transformative, beautiful stuff.

The not-for-the-faint-hearted path of: being true to yourself

...and how tricky that actually is, until you start implementing a few key things.

Why you're unconsciously limiting your truth and honesty

You want more truth, but your subconscious thinks truth is unsafe.

If experience has shown you that being true and honest can lead to threats to your wellbeing, it will be so difficult not to lie, or omit the full truth.

Because your subconscious desperately wants to protect you in this moment, even if that creates the risk of worse conflict later (within, or with others).

So, unknowingly, in our attempts to avoid conflict, we often end up magnetising more of it.
It's a destructive win-lose cycle, where no outcome is truly generative and life giving, and where our attempts to be safe create more harm, which then further intensify our escapism.

This is actually a very normal pattern which can help us when we're in an unsafe environment, where the people around us are behaving in volatile and irrational way. To be safe, we try to chameleon ourselves and fit in with the behaviour around us.

I've experienced this first hand. We all have, to varying degrees.

To heal, it's vital we heal the fractured relationship between our subconscious with our conscious mind.

We need to witness, understand and forgive ourselves for doing our best with the tools that were handed to us (or, within the delusions we inherited). We need to release shame about what we did when we felt we had no other option, so that we can allow ourselves to see the new, better options that now exist.

A simple example of this:

"Deep down, I need to tell my partner _____ but I really don't want to, even though it's killing me, because I'm scared they'll react badly".

Clearly at some point in the past, you were open and vulnerable with your parent/caregiver (or partner), and they reacted. You felt their fear, shame or anger and internalised that as your own fault, because you couldn't possibly risk conflict with them. You needed them too much.

So now, who you think your partner is, is actually just a projection (or reflection) of the internalised dynamic you're familiar with. And if you treat them as such, you're unconsciously manipulating your perceptions of each-other and will struggle to be free of this pattern.

What happens is, rather than supporting their (and your) ability to choose to interact a new way, you are so fearful of the expected response that you magnetise it. Like a role-play you're both stuck in. They'll seem like the villain, but actually, you're just projecting your internalised villain onto them. And they won't budge, because they may be doing exactly what you're doing... and projecting their internalised villain onto you.

You're both doing your best.
You both need to realise that love can exist between you even in the absence of answers. Even in the uncertainty.

If your partner isn't seeing this, good. They're helping YOU see it. Do it for you. Become love, for you.

The truth is, we never actually know how anyone will react to our expression. We just think we, because we know how other people have reacted in the past. So, when you say you're afraid that your partner will react "badly" what you're really saying is you're afraid they'll react in a way that you won't know how to handle, which will cause YOU to react badly.

That's okay. You can't own their reaction, but you can A) gain relating skills and B) become so good at processing stress that you won't react to their (or your) reactions in the way your past self would have.

You can develop a deep trust in your capacity, like a martial artist who is so highly confident in their ability that their calmness and poise means they rarely actually need to fight.
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The one essential ingredient in re-wiring yourself

Stress Mastery: Practice being more loving the harder things get (stress mastery)

Find something that burns, and is incredibly hard without being dangerous. I use a horse stance or a wall squat to do this. I know that my legs will burn like hell. I know that my breathing will start to quicken, and that I'll shake. I also know it won't kill me, and that I can practice introducing loving awareness with the pain that I'm feeling in my muscles.

What you need to build is the capacity to tolerate pain without running away (dissociating) or clenching up (guarding).

This looks like:

• Mindfulness of thoughts and release of mental narratives

• Insistence on seeing it through with sincerity to train the spirit

• Releasing excessive muscle tone to allow the sensation to meet you, rather than trying to lock it into your body

For a guided practice in this, watch this video.​

There are 6 stances in the video.

You don't have to do them all, but make sure you see it through until the Horse Stance - it's not far into the clip.

Or, follow along, pausing as you need when you want to switch legs.

Yeah, inner transformation isn't for the faint of heart.

Gotta be brave.

But the reward is meeting your true self.

I love you.