Listening to your body and knowing what you want from life
How I found purpose through a need for connection
“We’re all just walking each other home”
How are you? Have you given yourself a break today? Listened to your body’s needs? Or perhaps got on with your day, prioritising everything but yourself?
There’s no shame if it’s the latter; I totally get it.
When I started working for myself a few years ago, I would spend long days (and often evenings) at my laptop, no longer having colleagues to talk to. Being a writer, my time would largely be spent churning out words at a screen, save for the occasional Zoom with a client every once in a blue moon. Usually at the start of a project.
Oh, and it was the pandemic. So, I’m sure you can relate to that sense of isolation.
Finding deeper connection on the first breathwork and meditation retreat I ever attended, Wales 2021
When life went back to ‘normal’ around 2021, I realised freelancing as a writer, spending my working life with mostly my laptop for company, wasn’t my ultimate goal. It wasn’t the whole picture, anyway; I still love writing. But I have a funny relationship with work (I know, who doesn’t); largely characterised by an ADHD-tinted ‘all or nothing’ approach.
I would feel paralysed to start new tasks, feeling like I’d never be able to produce work as perfect as I wanted it to be, then kicking myself for being nowhere near as productive as I’d hoped. (I have recently realised how hellish my school/university years must have been, as I’ve been starting to fall back into these habits with my college coursework for my counselling training.) Once I got going with tasks, however, I would become addicted to the feeling of productivity. To-do list box-ticking became my high. I would hyperfocus for huge swathes of time, totally neglecting my body’s needs; sleep, food, wee breaks, you name it.
The self-awareness took a while, but there was a growing realisation that I was mainly finding validation and dopamine through my work, feeling I actively lived to work, which had arisen from losing a job right at the start of the pandemic (before I even started it) and feeling like a complete failure for months. And deep down, I could tell there was this small, distant feeling of pride at saying how busy I was, while also feeling totally bored of hearing myself say it.
I took on as many projects as possible, with the reckless white-knuckling through my working week taking its toll. I’d spent a decade working in corporate environments before going self-employed, constantly feeling like a square peg in a round hole due to my ADHD (then undiagnosed; the penny never even dropped that I was neurodivergent until I was in my mid-thirties).
I needed an outlet for stress, to get more from life outside of work and to start looking after myself more. I discovered breathwork, meditation and started to go on consciousness-themed retreats in Wales (I also made a mental health podcast). The disconnection I’d felt for years was dissipating; I was no longer afraid to be in silence with my own thoughts.
I was connecting with other people like never before (I can’t believe now how much my mind was blown that I’d spent a weekend getting to know new people, staying up late round a campfire, without any alcohol involved). And I was also connecting to myself more deeply, which helped me to start listening to myself and find out what I really wanted from life.
I started hearing myself saying in my head (or maybe it came from deep in my gut), I need to be in more rooms of connection.
I didn’t know that I wanted to work in somatics; I never considered becoming a breathwork facilitator until the opportunity came up in 2022 to train in Mexico with one of Gabor Mate’s mentees.
I just knew I had to keep following my intuition. I didn’t know what it would look like, but I knew I needed to be in more rooms of connection. Deep, meaningful, yet unforced, organic connection. With lovely people, just wanting more from this one special life. Wanting more for themselves. Being fully present in sacred spaces of community, nobody having to mask, just being themselves and really seeing each other, too.
I stood in my breathwork class in Manchester this morning, looking out with a full heart at exactly what I just described. I thought of the beautiful Ram Dass quote, We're all just walking each other home.
I love people. I love being in rooms of connection. I feel so lucky that I now get to enjoy this. Feeling so inspired by people’s loving commitment to themselves and tender compassion for each other.
Because what I wanted for me, I want for you too. I want this level of connection for all of us.
Hope to connect with you soon, wherever that may be.
Starting my breathwork training in Mexico 2 years ago
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