Deeply Well: Anchoring Integrity: Self-Care, Healing, and Personal Power

Debbie Brown. This is where we heal, this is where we transcend. Welcome to today's episode, our final installment of our integrity teaching series this month on the Deeply Well Podcast. So we've really been exploring in this new season a little bit of a new format on how we're going to go through some themes, some understandings, and some of the deeper conversations that we get a chance to sync our teeth into here on this show. So today's episode

is really going to be rooted in some practice. We're going to get into some self inquiry. We're going to go a little bit deeper into some of the ways we've been categorizing how integrity shows up in our lives and we're going to have a felt practice. So if you are not driving, highly recommend grabbing a journal, having it nearby if that feels good, getting comfy, maybe getting something a little savory near you, a little sweet treat, and if you're driving, of course you know how it goes.

You can pop back in anytime you wish to join in on the soul work. Also a quick reminder if you didn't know, every single month we're going to have a little bit of a practice worksheet that goes along with the episodes we're exploring. So on my website Debbie Brown dot com and also through our newsletter, which you can sign up for on the website, you'll get a link to our little PDF packet which will be the soul work that goes along with each month's drop of episodes.

So if you get a chance, it might feel really supportive to utilize that as part of your practice. So let's still catch up. First, I want to fill you guys in on what's been up since we've last talked. I've had some really special teaching experiences, so a lot a lot of those that listen to the show may know, but I am on the board of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, and it is a campus. It is an institute that is in i' readibly close to my heart.

It's been in existence teaching and raising consciousness for over forty eight years, and it's located in ryan Beeck, New York, which is upstate New York, and I typically go a couple times a year, but this is one of the first years in a little while that I didn't do a retreat, and so I didn't get a chance to go up usually in some of the months that I do while the campus is open. But they just created this incredible program there that we got funding for that

is so amazing. It is the Women's Wellness Collective, and we are working with a cohort of twenty women nationally and globally. We have a few out of the country doing incredible work who are going to be deepening their understanding of self care practices and nervous system regulation and supportive bindfulness in a cohort throughout this next year. So this incredible cohort kick off with a week long rest intensive retreat that took place at the Omega Institute, and

so it was really excited about this. It means so much to me, and the chance, I think for these women to deepen in practices over the next year especially is so exciting for me because something I always share is, you know, none of this work it's done in a weekend. We can get our burst of profound inspiration and motivation for our path and for our calling in a weekend.

Absolutely we can have the breakthrough thoughts that change our lives instantaneously, but then we get a chance to deepen our path of mastery by connecting to practice, and practice takes really beautiful slow time to unfold in our lives, to take us past the point of intellectualization into a life experience of embodiment where you are living and breathing who and what you say you are with a lot of ease, a lot of grace, a lot of joy, and so being able to really support this beautiful group

as they are on their pathway of embodiment, which is all in support to their higher purpose and to the community service they do in the world is really special. So I didn't want to miss it. But the way life is set up and scheduling is set up, I couldn't get away to really do a deeper teaching there

for the whole week. So I did a very fast New York turnaround trip, so caught the flight from LA to New York and then took a really gorgeous three hour drive through the leaves changing and falling and the season changing from JFK to Upstate and did that travel back and I was able to stay on campus for about twenty four hours, taught for a few hours of workshop on trauma informed meditation, and it was just I love getting into the fibers of doing deep teach on meditation.

It's just such an extraordinarily powerful subject matter, not just for expansion of consciousness, but for truly truly deep, deep deep healing on a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual level. So that's my jam. So that's what I was doing for the last week or so since we've been together. And one of the things that I loved that I think really ties into this episode especially is I've been trying to find ways in this season. This is a it's a pretty full season for me in a lot

a lot of ways. It's a full season career wise, it's a full season in my motherhood and in the spaces that my son is now moving into and his development and full season with friendships and with family, and so being able to find more time to reset my own nervous system. I've had to get really creative with that. And so when I went to Upstate New York, something that I knew I only had twenty four hours and

I would be working for some of that time. But I also knew that, like listen, there's no service up here, so let me not even try to do anything that has to do with the internet with my phone, and really soak up every free hour you get here before you get on this nine hour journey home and feel good. And so I was able to get really full nights of sleep, and my little cabin slept the whole night through which my dear God, did my brain and soul need that. And then after I taught, I just took

a walk. I just walked and walked and walked, and I had some somatic and kind of sensory practices going where because all the leaves were falling, I would slowly walk in piles of leaves to hear the crunch underneath my feet, and I just kind of walked myself circle over and over for like twenty minutes listening to that slow crunch and you know, like that forest medicine. Oh my god, delicious and pink noise, which is one of my favorite sounds to work with, especially when I need

some extra rest, is really rooted in. One of the layers of sound is the sound of leaves crunching. So that was really yummy. Another thing that I love to do while I'm out there. So this campus is about two hundred and fifty acres. It's like in the forest, you got cabins, it's the trees, all the things. But because I live in la I don't really get the chance to go take long walks in the dark. Right It wouldn't necessarily be the wise thing for me to do in my neighborhood late at night is to walk

around alone in the dark. So it's not something I really get to do, but it's something that I love. So when I'm a place that I can do that. A personal practice I have with myself is noticing how I feel within my body and within my sense of protection over time by monitoring kind of taking these slow dark walks by myself whenever I get the chance. So that was something that I loved doing on the campus.

So before I went to bed, walked outside, laid on the grass, stargazed, paryed, meditated, listened to the crickets and the ambient noise, took really really really deep, beautiful breaths, and then walked around and kind of the pitch black on a trail and noticed how safe I felt, and it was really special, and instantaneously I felt my shift back into peace, and I felt just so many weeks and weeks of a lot of high intensity and day to day life stress just really roll off of my

shoulders and it's carried me through and it just reminded me of the power of even when you have limited time to take care of yourself, if you choose to have deep presence with yourself as you're caring for yourself, even those little moments can really ring throughout your life for days, for weeks. And you know, I'm like a week removed from that experience and I'm still feeling like really high energy. I have a lot of vitality, My

brain feels super clear, my heart feels really open. So if anyone needed that, just a reminder, even if you only have thirty minutes every two weeks, do it, do it? Do it, you'll have a response, but it's important that you stay deeply present in it. So don't get distracted, don't let yourself pour into other thoughts that you could think at any other time. Just stay with it, stay

with it, and let it really serve you. So one of the things that I noticed after we release some of the clips of this EPP, we have been getting such amazing feedback and it's been really dope because a lot of you that have been connecting to these episodes are giving a lot of detail on how you're experiencing it, which for me as a teacher is so helpful. I'm always like, oh, wow, yeah, so that's where it took you where, that's you know, where you were able to

take yourself. And so one of the comments that I was reading on one of the clips that we posted, I just loved because I would have never even thought of it this way. But someone shared that from listening to the series so far, they had this kind of click, this aha moment around they had previously always looked as it at integrity as who you are towards other people. So maybe a little bit of that kind of martyrdom program that we see all things or that bigger person programming.

It's how you were showing up for others powerfully and you know, with dignity, with your integrity, And they shared that from listening to the episodes, they're understanding they're making that bridge of connection. That choosing to work on yourself, right, choosing to regulate your emotions, choosing to break your patterns and your systems, choosing to heal, choosing to really dedicate yourself to a daily practice like meditation or self care,

that is what is having integrity for your self. And so the loop of integrity is not complete if we're only showing up with it for others and we're not showing up with it for self, that in fact is avoidance. That's the way that we continue to feed this loop and this false belief that there is somehow, this righteousness or this reward that is coming for always exasperating yourself for others but not looking to meet your own needs in the same way. And it's it's a very sophisticated

way that especially the best healers can avoid themselves. Right. It's this idea that no, it's because I do for others, but it's really because it might be triggering that you haven't learned how to be slow and patient with yourself, or it's triggering to realize that maybe no one has met your needs yet and so you're still having to

meet your own And that's so understandable. It's just so understandable, but it's not the path to full wholeness and healing, and I think each of us deserve that, and so just reading that, reading that connection and reading that feedback was really special. So I think the beautiful soul that shared it and everyone else that's been sharing feedback, and especially from a community standpoint, it's so helpful as a group for us all to be able to hear a

multitude of experiences and a multitude of breakthrough thoughts. It also led me to realizing an area where I had to tighten up in my own integrity, my own personal integrity and so care in the last couple of weeks,

and that has been around. So I'm someone that for the vast majority of my life has lived with chronic illness and chronic pain, and to varying degrees, I've been in a season in the last several years where it has been the lightest load I've ever had, and I am extraordinarily grateful for the way my relationship to a

very high pain tolerance has changed. And I also think, as someone who's just always been a leader in my own life and incredibly independent, I have a very high tolerance for emotional and physical pain, and so I have to really stay on myself to take good care of myself or I just won't notice when I let myself

slowly fall apart. And so something I've been working through is that in the last few months, I've been having a little bit of flare ups and I've been moving through them, but I've also just been really busy, and everything else in life has been really good. And I got in this last couple of weeks I found out that I have tendonitis in one of my shoulders. And I have never had tendonitis before. I don't know if anyone else has ever had it. I don't like it

at all, Like I am not efin with tendinitis. I am offended by tendonitis, Like it is so painful, and not having use of that limb for myself has been IOPA nine and incredibly challenging, and so I'm just kind of walking around and my arm is in like true chicken wing fashion, Like I've just been able to kind of hold it pin to my side and kind of like hold my solar plexus. But it's it's interesting, you know, trying to do all the things that you need to do.

And so I found myself, you know, a little bit frustrated with that and just kind of frustrated at having to plow through the day being in so much pain because I was taking you know, the the ibuprofens and all the things, and I wasn't having a change. So I was just feeling frustrated. And I got back home and I looked around my house and I looked at the life that I created for myself, a life that really supports my nervous system and supports my health. I

have a lot of biohacking stuff everywhere. I do constant self care. I cold plunge SANA, I use PMF, I use infrared lights, I have frequency sounds. And I kind of had to just take a deep breath and laugh at myself because I realized that I have all of this at my disposal and I hadn't yet used any

of it to care for this injury. And so it was just a reminder of how even when we have gotten to places where we are so diligent with ourselves and maybe so much in our personal integrity or in deep alignment with our bodies and the way that we care for ourselves, sometimes we can get distracted and blink and forget. And so I hope this episode also serves as a reminder to reconnect to a practice that maybe you just haven't had time for lately and consider if

it would serve you or not. So I spent an evening after I put my son to bed a couple hours where I did my sauna. I did epsom salt bath, of course, did infrared light directly on my shoulder, did a little bit of cupping, and the pain like went away by fifty percent immediately. So yeah, that was my beautiful reminder of making sure and evaluating and bringing up for a review that I stay in integrity with myself and with my own body as I share practices for

you to do the same deeply. Well, well, all right, let's dive into today's episode. This is our final episode deepening in our understandings of intego. We are gearing up for a moment in American history, global history where we're going to notice that more and more in the world. We're just a couple weeks out from election. I really want to encourage anyone who isn't to please register to vote. Please please please register to vote. Please vote, Please vote,

please vote. Please consider integrity as you vote. I'm very, very, very excited to cast my ballot for Kamala Harris. That is my personal decision. That is what feels most closely aligned to my beliefs and to what I think can bring about what is necessary in the world right now. And I'm so excited to do it, so grateful to

be alive in this time. And I think, no matter what happens in the world, no matter what happens with any of this, no matter what no matter what happens in the greater government or the things that we watch on TV, it's still about who we are individually and as a community, in smaller action, in smaller detail, in every day of life. And I think integrity is a profound guiding point for that. So let's talk about, you know, some of the ways that integrity is actually an agent

for deep healing and for change. We've already explored kind of definably what it can be in the various facets of who we are and in our lives. But let's talk about integrity as a way to actually reclaim your power when you're on a healing journey. I love this.

When we find ourselves in challenging situations, when we're triggered, especially when we're on a healing journey and we're redeveloping our relationship to self and others, it can be really easy to feel sometimes like our sovereignty or our autonomy

is being challenged. As we grow that self confidence, as we grow that personal autonomy and the sovereignty which is you being the leader of your life and of your soul, the triggering aspect of kind of recalibrating our life and inviting in new relationships and new people and shedding other ones can sometimes really affect the way we come into

personal choice. And so with integrity as the guiding post our personal values, it becomes a really powerful way to actually grow our aora, grow our personal power, grow our magnetism, grow our healing, and also grow our boundaries and our protective forces of the bs that we get to keep out of our lives. Because we have this force field of personal integrity around us, So staying true to our

values is what really helps with that. It's one of the most powerful ways to reclaim a sense of control in our lives and to rebalance and harmonize the way we're experiencing other people and the way we're experiencing our work. So when we're in integrity, we reclaim the power to navigate life on our terms, even in situations that can feel disempowering, right, because in life that's not necessarily going to cease. We're on a planet with nine billion people.

We get to do as much to stay on our path as we can and keep our connection to God really strong and pure. But we're also interacting with nine billion other incarnated souls who have all of their own spiritual curriculum, and I don't necessarily know that any of that will ever get less challenging, less irritating, less confusing. But we are in command of self, and so that

is always a great equalizer for our experience. And so when we're in integrity, we can really reclaim the power again to navigate life on our terms, even in situations that feel hard, that feel disempowering. We can stand firm in our personal truth and we can stand firm in our authenticity. So a way to kind of ask invite that into this lens of what we're discussing is consider asking yourself, where in my life do I need to

reclaim my power? And when we're using the word power, it's important to see how you even view and define that because it doesn't necessarily mean aggrandizing power or dominating power. It means dignified power, It means honest power, integral power. So where do you need to reclaim your power, your true authenticity and sense of self and self respect in your life? And how can you do so in a way that's an alignment with what your deepest value, use and desires are. So I hope we're kind of like

really tracking this thought process right. So we have our deep values, our core sense of belief, our desires to belong. Then we have our desires for what we want in this life and who we want to be, and then we bring that thread over to the way we live in integrity and utilize our wisdom, and all of those things happening at one time is what brings us into a state of personal mastery, a state of wholeness, a state of transcendence. Of our life's circumstances and our wounds

and our traumas. But it's kind of all of that in a multifaceted way moving through you to have the intended results and the intended experience and purpose. So thinking about integrity from the standpoint of our healing process. Healing can be a really fragile and tender thing. It is not at all uncommon to feel bitterness or disappointment along that path. In fact, I encourage it. Sometimes give yourself

a chance to feel angry when it naturally arises. Do it in a way that keeps you safe and keeps other people safe, but do it in a way that it can be felt and expressed, especially if that is something you historically have not been allowed to express or have not allowed yourself to express. Now. If you're on the other end of this spectrum and that is an area where you may have been leaning into a lot more and getting angry a lot more, that may not be what you need to do now, but if you haven't,

you might want to consider that. And integrity personally is about allowing ourselves to feel those emotions without letting them dictate our actions, harden our hearts. It helps us build emotional and spiritual bandwidth in our lives. So rather than striving for perfection, it's really important, it's impossible, don't attempt it. Remember that healing is a journey, of course, it's not

a destination. And the more that we can hold space for our own humanity, the more that we can stay in alignment with what our truth is, stay on mission, stay on assignment, and as we heal, we strengthen our capacity to live even more deeply in integrity and get have even more depth of intimacy with the people that are in our lives. Little soul work for today on this episode, and again you can download that PDF and our newsletter and also on my website in the podcast

tab Debi brown dot com. Little soul work that I would love to share with everyone today I think could really be rooted in a beautiful breathwork practice. We have shared quite a few promptings around integrity on this episode, on past episodes and also in our soul Work journal. And a way to integrate what we're thinking about, what we're writing down and how we actually live it is by bringing it into our bodies. And so breath work can be a way to really anchor everything that you

may have been exploring internally in this last month. So I want you to set a timer on your phone, or you may have like a little clock in the kitchen. However you like to do it for about five minutes to focus on and really lose yourself in a conscious breath work practice. Create the container for yourself before you settle into doing this. So before you lock into that five minutes, I want you to make sure you come into a space that maybe feels a little more quiet,

a little less distracting. Having access to a lowlit area or a place with more natural light could feel great. If it's possible, Stay away from fluorescent lights, stay away from bright lighting, and find someplace that feels a little more soothing to your body and your brain and your heart. If it feels good, maybe invite some other elements in and light a candle, maybe light a piece of stage

to really cleanse the energy in that area. I would say I wouldn't necessarily recommend lighting a piece of incense because doing the breath work and taking in all that smoke if you don't have a lot of ventilation, could actually create a little hardship in the practice and you give you some coughs, and then I want you to sit down and really center in to a comfortable seated position. Let the seat of your body melt into whatever is beneath you, let your shoulders relax and fall, let your

jaw feel really loose and relaxed. Taking a few deep breaths to get ground did just start letting it all come down your shoulders. And as you do this practice, I want you to let any emotions arise as you really think about and connect to the way that you have observed integrity or not in others, in any of the ways or examples or circumstances that you have observed integrity or not in yourself, and anything any particular curriculum that is uniquely your own that comes up for you

when we have this conversation. Just let yourself open that container here. You don't even have to think about anything specific, but just let yourself open the door and let it in the room with you. So whether grief, joy, frustration arises, notice it, it's up for a review. Gently feel it, breathe in it, release it. And then after you do this session, I want you to journal about what came up and how you want to look to be with

what you observed moving forward. It's a process. Explore these thoughts over the next week, the next month, the next season, maybe give yourself the fall in the winter, the next year, couple of years, however long it's present, so the charge really lessens. Be with it, review it, experiment with it, and in this five minute breathwork practice, let yourself connect to a releasing breath so that can look like deep

inhale in through your nose. If it's possible, you'd hold it at the top for a few seconds one, two, three, four, five, release through your mouth, let your body fall as you do, really let it be fully expressed, and do that over and over and over again for a few minutes, and then connect to the peace that begins to submerge after that. M M D. As always, thank you for joining me. This episode can be listened to in all the places you listen to podcasts, and it can also be viewed

on YouTube. Go to Debbie Brown Wellbeing and you can watch videos for every single episode. I'm in my beautiful workshop where I work out of, I create out of, I see some beautiful souls out of, so you'll see me in this room. If you connect that way and another thing, our merch is officially live. Big shout out to everyone that's already been sending in photos wearing our shirts.

Our Healer shirt has been a big fave. We have our Deeply Well shirt, we have our Surprise Me god t shirt, we have our Healer hat, and we also have our Seeker hat. So if you haven't yet, I hope that you fall in love with it and connect to a few pieces from this limited collection to wrap the Deeply Well podcast, make some great Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas gifts too. All Right, until I see you again, Thank you so much for joining. I'm Debbie Brown. This

is Deeply Well Now mistay. Content presented on Deeply Wells serves solely for educational and informational purposes. It should not be considered a replacement for personalized medical or mental health guidance and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, it is advisable to consult with your healthcare provider or health team for any specific concerns or questions that you may have. Connect with me on social at Debbie Brown.

That's Twitter and Instagram, or you can go to my website Debbie Brown. Dot com and if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget. Please rate, review, and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network. It's produced by Jacqueis Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown. The beautiful Soundbath you heard That's by Jarrelen Glass from

Crystal Cadence. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.