Hello, this is Sabrina Amina. I'm the host of the feelings pod and this episode is on
restlessness. So let's get into it. As you know, or maybe you don't know, maybe this
is the first time you're listening, so welcome. You know what? One time I heard before we
get into restlessness. One time I heard a nice reframe of, you know, a lot of people
when you speak want to say, um, as you shouldn't say, um, when you're speaking, you know what?
For me, an um is a mindful pause. I like my ums. And if you're just not comfortable with
ums in a podcast, this is not the podcast for you, my friend. This is where we pause
and we think about our feelings and we think about the things we want to say. Um, and I
fully encourage that. And apparently I'm modeling it too. So yes, we will hum, ha, um, and ah
in this podcast. Um, so thanks for tuning in and setting aside judgments about hum, ha,
ums, and ums, I guess. All right. Now that I've gotten that insecurity, you know, aired
out. Oh, if you want to hear more about insecurity, you can just return to my episode on insecurity.
I have some thoughts about that. Um, yeah. All right. Let's get into it. Restlessness.
Okay. So the thing I was going to say before I went into my um, tirade, um, is that I lost
my train of thought and that's okay. That's okay. When I learned how to edit these podcasts,
these, these, these raw moments are not going to stay on the episode. Um, but if you like
them, leave a comment and let me know. Like, no, don't edit your podcasts. Leave them sloppy
and unpolished. We like that. I'm open to any and all feedback really. Even, even, even
if you want to tell me like, what is this? Who are you and what, why are you putting your voice on?
Like if you want to send me criticism, I'll eat that shit up. I, I really will. It's just like
grist for the mill and grist for the mill is like, uh, uh, grist for the mill is an expression that I
started using after I went to a heliotropic breath work retreat with rich silver in, um,
out in California. I just forget the name. Anyway, if you're interested in finding out more about
those kinds of retreats, let me know, but that's not the point. Grist for the mill is just an
expression that rich use during that retreat and it just landed with me because why am I telling you
to send, you know, criticism, even if it's not, you know, super friendly. It's just, it's just
something for me to mull over. It's something for, if it triggers me or brings up something
difficult in me, that's fully my responsibility and I can like explore that, but also, yeah,
be kind. I think, I think you can definitely deliver. You don't have to be kind actually,
you know, you do you, I do me and however we're all mirrors for each other. So however you feel
like showing up is your responsibility and however I respond to the way other folks are
showing up in the world is completely my responsibility. Um, lots of pontification
before getting to the talk about restlessness. So what I initially was trying to say is that
every week on this episode, on, on these episodes, I like to explore an emotion feeling
um, experience in the realm of emotions that has been present alive for me within recent days,
weeks. And that's how I decide on my topics. That's how I feel I can speak most truthfully
on each topic is when I've been recently in touch and exploring the feeling actively. So
yes, restlessness has been coming up for me and I don't know what restlessness looks like for you,
uh, but I invite you to consider how it, how it looks for you. Um, for me, restlessness can show
up as having trouble sleeping. Sometimes my restlessness is I can't sit still. Like I have
to be doing something. Um, I'll have spaciousness in my day, which means, and when I say spaciousness
in my day, it means I have time to myself to do anything I want. And restlessness shows up in
those moments where I can choose to rest and instead I want to do all the things or I have this
sense of guilt about being in spaciousness and not filling that with some kind of task, some kind
of responsibility I feel the need to fulfill. Uh, restlessness shows up in moments where
I have room for rest and feel guilty about resting. Damn.
Yeah. Uh, restlessness also shows up when I'm avoiding myself, when I'm experiencing challenging
difficult feelings and I, I, I don't want to face them cause it's too painful or too scary
or too, I don't know, like just doesn't feel good. So staying busy and distracting myself
is a great way to avoid feelings, but it's certainly not, it's not what I'm about clearly.
Um, I'm curious about feelings, but I also, you know, I'm human and we all have our things around
different emotions and some of them are easier for us to face than others. Uh, I think one of the
emotions that's difficult for me to face is loneliness. Uh, there's another episode about
loneliness. If you want to check back season one, there's an invitation. Um, but yeah, loneliness
is definitely when, when loneliness pops up, my restlessness pops up for sure. Like I'll do anything
to avoid feeling lonely and in, in the past that looked like abandoning my home space or my apartment
or like constantly being out of my home. Um, I remember I was living on my own in my twenties.
Um, and I had an apartment and I never really took the time to like maybe in the beginning
when I first moved in, I did some like nesting and like decorating and all that, but
it was hard for me to live alone. I grew up in a big family. I have five siblings and I,
I shared a room with my sister. Like I didn't have space to myself a lot.
I don't think, or maybe I did. Probably not enough intentional space to myself where I could
just do my own thing. Or you know what? I did have space to myself, but there was always somebody
around. Like I didn't have to be alone. So living alone forced me to kind of
face these feelings of, of loneliness, which is scary. Who wants to be alone? I mean, I mean,
I mean, some people do, I guess, but being alone is a, is a, an area of challenge for me to this day.
But I've gotten way, I've gotten way better at it because I get curious about my feelings. I'm in
therapy. Um, I, I do that. I do the work. I do the internal work. And even when we do the work,
the restlessness, the discomfort, the pain, the loneliness, the depression, the anxiety, the fear,
it all shows up. So how can we be with all of it in a more self loving way?
And for me, that's about curiosity. Oh wow. I'm just talking about all my past episodes.
Yeah. Go back and check my episode about curiosity. This is certainly not planned or intentional.
It's just where the direction is going today. So yeah, being curious about our emotions,
instead of shutting them down or running away from them or distracting ourselves from them,
is ultimately the most self loving thing you can do instead of, and, and this is not a conscious
process, right? So that's why the practice of mindfulness is so powerful because before a
mindfulness practice, fear might come up and you may not have this conscious awareness of the fear.
And maybe your defense mechanism for fear is anger. So you'll get really angry if somebody
scares you for whatever reason. And maybe you'll like get into like a fight response.
Some people will fight, but some people like will get into a snap judgment and just
get into a fight response and make poor decisions because of a lack of awareness of your emotional
state. So the purpose of mindfulness really helps us not only to slow down and breathe
and build awareness of our inner world, but also it gives us this beautiful soft cushion of space
to make a choice. So instead of reacting in us in a moment of rage or anger, we're responding.
You're like, Oh, shoot, that was scary. And instead of going, I felt that fear in my body,
like mindfulness allows you to locate where the emotion lives in the body. Because maybe you
know this or maybe you don't, but emotion is a physiological experience. It's not just this
thing that we have in our head, right? So the beauty of mindfulness really is you tune into the breath.
You notice the breath. What is the quality of your breath in this moment? Is it shallow? Is it
slow and deep? Is it rapid? Your breath can tell you a lot about where you're at in this moment.
So yeah, just take a moment in this moment. If you're not driving or if you have the ability
to just close your eyes for a moment and tune into your breath, just notice it.
And oftentimes just bringing attention to the breath,
you give more space for it. Or perhaps you allow it to slow down, perhaps you allow it to deepen.
Yeah, I think the world would be a better place if all of us could remember
something so simple as taking a brief pause to tune into the breath.
Mindfulness also gives us a space to explore our physical body, the sensations in the body.
That's why I love doing body scans on these episodes. Body scans are beautiful because it
gets us out of the thinking mind and into the sensations of the body. It allows us to notice
what's happening physiologically, like what's happening in any space, in any of the spaces,
from my head to my toes. Is there tension? Is there softness? Is there a feeling of
expansiveness? Is there a feeling of pain or restriction? Is there any discomfort? Is there ease?
So doing a brief body scan and noticing the parts of the head, neck, shoulders,
your upper arms, your forearms, your hands, your fingers, your heart, your chest,
your belly, your hips, your thighs, your knees, your calves and shins, your ankles,
your feet and your toes. Doing a brief scan of all of these parts of the body tunes you into
this present moment. That's the other important magic piece of mindfulness is being fully present,
fully alive in this moment, in this infinite, never-ending present moment.
There's magic right here right now. Whatever you're looking for, you'll find it right here right now.
If you allow for it, mindfulness also allows us to explore our thoughts and be mindful of our
thoughts and have an awareness of that never-ending dialogue that kind of runs through our mind
constantly. Some people refer to it as the monkey mind or that feeling of not being able to stop
thinking, not being able to shut it off. That's also a symptom of our restlessness.
If you do experience the restlessness, I recommend finding time and space for
a mindfulness practice, especially something body-based, like the breath or body is most
accessible, I find, for beginners. Finally, mindfulness allows us to build our awareness of emotions.
That's what I'm here to talk about on this podcast. It really is my life's work to
do a deep dive into my emotional life using the tool of mindfulness.
Being mindful about my restlessness allowed me this week to just slow down and be like,
okay, yeah, I have a quiet moment to myself right now. I don't have to do the dishes right now.
That's okay. It's okay for me to rest. It's okay for me to sit with myself. It's okay for me to just
journal. No, I don't have to listen to another podcast. No, I don't have to learn something new.
I can just be exactly as I am. I can be exactly who I am in this moment.
That takes a lot of presence of mind. It takes a lot of self-awareness to notice when
our actions are a way of escaping. We're actually kind of trained to do that. I've worked in
public education for almost close to 15 years now. We teach it in school. We're just like,
do, do, do, produce, produce, produce. There are real consequences for not doing all the time.
We punish kids with grades. Maybe that sounds harsh, but I think one of my biggest challenges
with school is this obsession with grades that we instill in our kids. It's totally on us.
It's totally on us that we feed this system that is completely based on this extrinsic motivation,
like motivating our youth by holding this grade above their heads and saying, oh,
well, if you don't do this, if you don't jump through these hoops, then you're not good enough.
You don't get the A. You don't get the gold star. Oh, it's just, it's infuriating.
Like, it's, yes, I understand, and maybe I'm going off a little bit on a tangent here, but
yes, it's important to offer feedback to help students grow.
But I think this singular focus on grades is damaging, and it does lead to this kind of anxiety
and restlessness that I see in my students. So I think it's really important for us to
build awareness around our own restlessness, around our own the activation of our own nervous
systems so that we can allow, oh my, I got to turn off these notifications. Sorry about that.
Yeah, so like building awareness of our restlessness so that we can
slow down so we can create more easeful lives. Things don't have to be hard all the time. I feel
like that's another thing we teach everybody is like, oh, it's not worth it if it's not hard,
or like you have to work hard for every single achievement. Like, maybe not, maybe you're just
good at something and things come easily to you, and that's, it's as simple as that. Like, why is that
less valuable than something that you're hustling and grinding for?
Again, like it's
a message that we send, like, nothing can be easy. It's not okay to rest. Don't rest.
Oh, this, this restlessness topic is bringing up a lot in me. Excuse me.
Yeah, I'm curious to hear like how it's landing for you. Where do you
notice restlessness? Do you notice it at all? Like, now that you're kind of listening to this and
thinking about it, are there times where you feel like you can't allow yourself rest?
I think I'll stop there for now, and let's get into our mindfulness practice for today. And
since I talked a bit about body scans, I'm going to guide you through the gentle body scan. Again,
as always, if you're not able to practice in this moment, you can always pause and return to the
episode later. So I invite you to find an easeful position where your body feels rested and supported
and start tuning into the breath, just noticing it.
And doing like a general scan of the body to see if anything is particularly
alive and pronounced and giving any of those spaces attention and warmth and ease.
Take a deep breath in and let it go.
And as you settle more and more into the body and feel the weight of gravity holding you in place,
bring your attention to the crown of your head.
Notice your forehead and your third eye that's spot right between your eyebrows. Let it rest.
Imagine all of the muscles around your eyes softening,
kind of just letting your eyeballs fall back into their sockets,
allowing all expression to leave your face, taking a deep breath in.
Let it go.
Noticing the jaw, allowing any tension to soften and release with the breath.
Noticing the neck and the shoulders, allowing the shoulders really to melt down the back
and imagining the head is as light as a feather as your head kind of floats toward the clouds
and your shoulders melt down the back.
Finding ease in this place. Take a deep breath in. Let it go.
Noticing the shoulders, noticing the upper arms,
noticing your forearms, noticing your hands, noticing all 10 fingers.
Take a moment to rub the hands together, create a little bit of friction between the hands and
warmth. And when you feel ready, you can place the hands over the heart space.
Breathe into this space. Take a deep breath in.
Let it go.
Take two more breaths in the heart space.
Let it go.
Take a deep breath in.
And let it go.
Release the hands and bring your attention and awareness to the abdomen, the belly.
Notice the breath expanding your abdomen and releasing.
Notice your hips.
Notice where your body has contact with whatever support there is beneath it. Perhaps you're in a
chair or you're lying down. Maybe you're on the floor or on a cushion. Just notice where your
body has contact with the support beneath it.
Notice the legs, the thighs.
Notice your knees.
Notice your shins. Take a deep breath in.
Let it go.
Notice the calves.
Notice the feet, the ankles, your toes.
And as we close this practice, imagine drawing your breath up from the very bottoms of your
feet and allowing that breath to travel all the way back up through the body,
all the way up to the crown of the head. And when you exhale, allow that breath to travel back down
the body, down from the head, all the way down to your feet, back into the ground. Take a deep breath in.
And exhale.
Taking a moment to sit in this silence and stillness,
sending yourself a little bit of love and care and gratitude for allowing yourself this moment of
breath. When you feel ready, you can let the eyes gently open. Notice the space that you're in.
Let your gaze land on something that gives you a sense of ease, something that feels good to look at.
Thank you so much for practicing with me today. Thank you for listening.
And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend. Have a great day.