Knowledge Flow & Flourish

I knew my stress was through the roof if yoga and meditation didn’t even put a dent in it. I could feel my throat tensing up and a little lump of burning tears pooling at the bottom of my jaw. My poor husband has known something has been off all week, asking me what was going on but I didn’t know yet.

If you work in the tech space, you’re likely experiencing a frenetic pace, trying to keep up with the change of AI technology, how we might adopt it into our everyday work to be more productive, how to build and sell our products in a cost-effective way to compete with the market, how to know the right lingo of the day to sound like you know what you’re talking about, how to keep relevancy as you see news of mass layoffs in an economy possibly on the brink of recession.

These days feel tough and different. I personally have been feeling the mounting pressure to keep going faster and faster, providing for my family, living up to expectations. I am in midlife which means an added bonus of additional symptoms, like migraines, 4am wakeup calls, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog. Oh, the joys.

We recently had a “wellness day,” which I started off with my morning yoga practice and meditation, focused on abundance and stress reduction. Ironically, I felt more stressed afterwards as I logged into my work environment to tie up some loose ends as quickly as possible before heading over to my acupuncture appointment that I moved earlier to accommodate other family obligations.

My acupuncturist is magical. She listened… a true gift for any of us these days as everyone is buried in their phones and work trying to move faster or focused on their own worries. What a relief it is to have someone listen. I remembered why I spent the past 2 years learning how to be a professional coach. Your presence & listening is one of the greatest gifts you can offer someone in your life.

She offered me… Maybe your underlying constitution of emotion is sadness. Huh… maybe this is true. This feeling does appear every time I slow down and listen to myself, perhaps a longing for my truth. 4am wakeup calls signify working through grief, figuring out meaning. Your spirit is calling… Oh!

I received a treatment to help me see the big picture and drop into my heart, to feel it somatically. Oh yes, the heart.

What came up? That lump in my throat often equates to sadness but is also a sign of overwhelm and stress, of me breaking my own boundaries and feeling resentment towards myself and others.

Dropping into my heart at first felt tender and a remembrance, and then… a feeling of vastness and possibility, of a ground of joy that is always present but so easily masked and pushed away with too much thinking, resistance. A feeling that only appears with allowance and receiving. Abundance.

And then what happened? I realized I haven’t had time to myself, to listen to myself and nourish my own spirit. I remembered that I have sensitivity and am attuned to people and their spirits, that there is something special there that I continue to push away when the noise of immediate demands drown it out.

As life continues to push us to pick up the pace, to become more artificial and robotic, how do we continue to spend time with our true human selves, our true spirits, and to nourish ourselves?

For me, it’s quiet time, reflection, talking with a friend or coach who listens, movement, appreciation, breathing, hugs.

How do you spend time with yourself to nourish your spirit? And how do you care for others? How do you remember who you are?

I’ve chosen to keep this post untouched by AI and edited by the human heart and hands. I believe we need to hear each others’ truly expressed human voices. Let us not lose that.