Tender Revolution Ep. 8: The Magic Yes

Welcome to The Tender Revolution.

I'm Katherine Liggett.

In today's episode,

I want to share a technique with you that's so disarmingly simple that you might doubt that it works at all.

But in my own life,

It's played an absolutely pivotal role in my healing journey.

And that is the magic yes.

So as famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung said once,

What we resist persists.

The things that we really don't want to feel,

Don't want to experience,

That we wish to turn away from,

Are exactly the things that will continue to control our lives from underground in our psyches,

From the unconscious.

So such an important and often overlooked part of the healing journey is allowing and allowing exactly that that you most want to push away.

For me,

This is absolutely the heart of shadow work is the courage that we must have to turn towards our pain,

Our suffering,

The things that we most want to hide about ourselves,

Our life,

Our experience.

I was going live on Insight Timer,

The app,

The other day,

Which I am often on and go live frequently on.

And I was guiding a shadow work journey there.

And at the end,

Someone said,

I still feel sad.

How do I change that?

And I told her,

You change it by putting your hands on your heart,

Taking a deep breath,

And feel as sad as you possibly can feel.

And she said,

But isn't the point to change that isn't the point to not be sad anymore.

And I said,

The point is to accept what's here 100% and only then will it change.

But we'll never change what we wish to change by trying to push it away,

By trying to change it by making it go away.

So I want to dive in very quickly today to a visceral experience for you of what I'm talking about.

So just for a moment,

And this will just be a quick tune in for now.

Close your eyes if you can.

And we'll do an experiment here.

As you breathe and tune into your body sensation,

Bring the energy and the word no into your whole body.

No.

And name how that feels.

No.

For most people,

It's a shutting down,

Contraction,

Tightening.

To say no is to push away.

And pushing away is the energy of fear.

And now give yourself a little shake to release that energy of no.

And we'll try the other pole here.

So close your eyes again.

And now breathe and bring the energy of yes into your whole body.

Yes.

Notice how that feels.

Yes.

For most people,

It's expansive.

Feels like each cell in your body is opening,

Allowing.

Yes.

So if you wish you can open the eyes and come back and just reflect on how that might affect the energy in your body at any given time.

Think about how it might affect how an emotion which is just energy in motion is able to pass through to move all the way through you or not.

Because if you're feeling something,

But there's the energy of no in your system,

You can imagine it like it's in a container that's closed.

There's nowhere for it to go.

It's stuck.

And so when we have the energy of no in us very frequently when we're caught up in negative thoughts and beliefs and worry,

Emotions don't easily pass through us and we do stay stuck.

Because we can't move emotions to our body,

Our lives stay stuck.

We stay in circumstances that aren't in our highest good,

For example,

Or in relationships that don't uplift us like they're supposed to.

So the more we can have yes within us,

No matter what,

No matter what is happening,

The more easily life will flow through you.

And you'll be able to live in your highest and best good.

Now I have to make a note here that saying yes to whatever's arising absolutely does not mean that you tolerate abuse.

It does not mean that you put up with violence,

With oppression.

I've made this mistake in my personal life,

By the way.

I was in an abusive relationship for a short while.

And what I did is I believed that I could fix things by fixing myself by somehow going within and doing enough shadow work,

Enough healing on myself,

That things would be different and the abuse would shift or that my partner would heal and thus the abuse would stop.

And so I would go within and do all of this acceptance work and yes work.

And the reality was I was just abusing myself because I wasn't removing myself from the harmful situation that my gut told me was happening.

So I really ask you here to be exquisitely honest with yourself and follow your gut because we do not want to misuse and abuse this technique to tolerate abuse and oppression in your life.

So if you feel you are a survivor of that,

Please use these techniques yes,

To help you open to the emotions in your body,

But take very concrete action to change your circumstances and remove yourself from any situation that is harmful for you.

That being said,

Let's come on back to the beautiful energy of yes.

I use this practice in the deepest and darkest times in my postpartum year when I was suffering from acute chronic insomnia and felt absolutely torn apart and ragged each and every day,

All day while caring for my infant.

When I would feel the lowest and I didn't know what else to do,

That's when this technique came to me,

That the only thing for me to do was to sit in yes and to simply see what would happen if I accepted all of this,

All of this feeling right here and right now and breathe into it.

And no,

It didn't make it go away,

But that's not the point.

The point is that I opened so much that I became porous and fluid and because I wasn't resisting the pain,

I wasn't suffering around it.

And that's a principle that is ancient.

I know it from Buddhism,

That human suffering comes from our resistance to what we experience.

So this concept of yes and the magic thereof is absolutely not new.

It's just a new way of thinking about it.

So let's dive right into our exploration for today.

Find a place that's private and comfortable where you can sit for the next 10 or so minutes and really experience sensation and feeling.

When you arrive here,

Connect to your breath,

Beginning with the inhales into your belly,

Opening the pelvic floor,

Rooting down,

Feeling the heaviness,

The mass of your body right here.

And at the same time,

Feeling the tallness in your spine,

Even if you're lying down.

And I'd like you to bring into your awareness now an experience that's difficult for you,

That you feel like you'd rather not have,

That you're pushing away.

Really breathe into it.

Notice the sensations in your body as you bring yourself into this experience and name what's here.

Do you feel the no that's in your body surrounding this?

What is the effect on your emotional energy to have this no within you?

How does it make you feel?

Do you like yourself when you are in this state of no?

Is this who you truly are?

Breathing so much compassion for yourself now into this no,

Knowing that of course you don't want to experience this.

Nobody would.

It's completely okay and understandable that you are in the energy of no surrounding this.

If you like,

You can bring one or both hands to your heart.

Just really feel that compassion that this is okay.

There's nothing wrong to say no to what's so natural to resist.

And you have a choice here about how you want to feel,

How you want to live.

So at the same time that you hold all of this compassion for yourself,

I invite you now to bring a whole hearted and full body yes to exactly what you're feeling right now.

Yes.

Breathing just like you're blowing embers of a fire with each breath,

Feeling that yes ignite within you.

Feeling that yes,

Overcome all of your body,

All of your energy with a beautiful opening.

Yes.

Notice if there's any part of you that resists saying yes to what's here and simply hold that perhaps with your own physical hands on your heart,

Hold that alongside your yes.

Say yes to that too.

Yes to this resistance to allowing.

Yes.

Filling every corner of your body,

Every cell with this yes.

Noticing is there any small corner of your body that still needs the energy of this affirmation,

This total allowing using your breath to bring yes to all of the corners of you.

And now simply notice how you feel.

Do you like yourself here?

When we rest in yes,

We rest in alignment with our highest self.

We rest in the perfect flow of life through us.

So when you're ready,

We'll slowly come back keeping this beautiful energy of opening and allowing within you.

So when you're ready,

Open your eyes now and come back.

I invite you to have fun with this experiment in small moments throughout your day.

Noticing the no that comes up in your body and experimenting with what if I brought yes right here and filled myself with it.

Taking a few breaths just throughout your day of yes.

At the same time,

Not gaslighting yourself with this,

Of course,

But also holding all of that compassion for why you've said no.

You are big enough to hold it all.

It's not about denying any part of you.

It's about adding and saying yes to all of you.

Thank you so much.