Summary:

You've learned to receive. You've learned to digest. But can you actually keep what nourishes you? In this episode, we explore the third function of energy — storage — and why so many of us are far better at retaining criticism than kindness, self-doubt than evidence of our own capability. Drawing on the Ayurvedic concept of ojas, the reserves that build through nourishment over time, we'll look at why self-trust isn't just about creating evidence — it's about retaining it. We'll explore how storage can become holding, why you deserve to be nourished by your own life, and how the simple practice of savoring can help nourishment register before you move on to the next thing. Including honest personal stories about the moments when evidence stops feeling available. Because what you've lived, survived, and built doesn't have to disappear. You get to keep it. 

Transcript:

Over the last two episodes, we've been following the movement of energy through the four functions of a chakra. First, we explored receiving. Can I let it in? Then assimilation. Can I digest and transform what I've received? Today, we arrive at the third function, and this one might surprise you a little bit because it's not about taking in more or working harder with what we have.

It's about whether we can actually retain what nourishes us. Think about how this can show up in everyday life. You receive a sweet compliment and can genuinely let it land. You have an insight that changes how you understand yourself. You finish something difficult and feel incredibly capable. You have a day when you feel rested, connected, and like yourself.

And then life creeps in. And the compliment is forgotten, the insight disappears the next time the old pattern gets activated, the accomplishment gets replaced by the next thing you haven't done.

This isn't necessarily a problem with receiving or assimilation. It may be a problem with storage.

Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 18.

Healthy storage isn't about holding onto everything. It's our ability to retain what sustains us.

Let's think about this through the perspective of physical digestion. Your body doesn't digest food and then immediately get rid of all of the nourishment it extracted from it. Some of that nourishment becomes available to support the system. And energetically, we need that same capacity. Every experience has the potential to leave something behind, not just a memory, but a resource, something that becomes part of what we can draw from.

The question is whether those things remain available to us later. Storage isn't about how much we can hold, it's about whether we can retain and access what nourishes us.

The lifestyle science of Ayurveda gives us a concept that I think captures this beautifully, ojas. Ojas is associated with vitality, stability, resilience, and the deeper reserves that develop through nourishment over time.

And that last part matters, over time. One nourishing meal doesn't create lasting reserves. One good night's sleep doesn't create lasting vitality. One meditation doesn't create an endlessly regulated nervous system, as much as I wish it did. And one act of courage doesn't instantly create unshakable self-trust.

But all of these things accumulate. What we repeatedly receive and assimilate can begin to build something within us. We create reserves. Something becomes available that we can draw upon later.

Here's an interesting angle about our storage abilities. We don't seem to be universally bad at storage. We can very clearly remember that criticism someone made 10 years ago, or that mistake that we made, or the embarrassing moment, or the evidence that maybe we're not good enough. Meanwhile, somebody tells us that we're wonderful, and it's gone by lunch.

So the practice isn't only about creating more positive experiences. It's about becoming more intentional about what we allow ourselves to retain. Because what gets stored shapes what feels available to us about ourselves, about what's possible, about what we're capable of.

Every time we move through an experience, we potentially learn something about ourselves. You make a difficult decision and discover that you can handle whatever comes next. You honor a boundary and discover that you can tolerate someone else's disappointment. You try something new and discover that you are more capable than you thought.

Those experiences become evidence, evidence of what you can do, what you can handle, who you're becoming. But that evidence only helps us build self-trust if it remains available to us. If every new challenge makes us forget every other hard thing we've navigated in the past, then we keep approaching our lives as though we're starting from zero, and we're not.

We've lived things. We've learned things. We've practiced things. We've become more skillful. We've discovered things about ourselves that we didn't know before.

Part of self-trust may be learning to retain the evidence of our own lived experience. And that's another way to think about healthy storage. Storage allows yesterday's wisdom to become today's resource.

I think it's also important to say that healthy storage isn't about cramming more into the system. We live in a culture that often tells us more is better. More resources, more knowledge, more preparation, more in reserve. We can easily start to think that the goal of storage is to accumulate as much as possible.

But healthy storage isn't measured by how much we're holding. It's about whether what we're holding actually nourishes and supports us. Whether we have resources available to draw upon when we need them.

And this is where storage is different from the capacity we talked about in episode 13. Capacity is about how much we can hold and maintain- the overall bandwidth of our system. Storage asks a different question: What nourishment and resources are actually available within me?

When we can retain what nourishes us, our functional capacity may even increase because we aren't beginning every experience empty-handed. We have reserves. We have experience and skills, relationships, practices. We have evidence and wisdom. We can draw upon what has already been built.

Like every other function that we've explored, storage can become imbalanced. We don't only retain nourishment. We can also hold on to old identities, old stories, resentment, fear, expectations, and beliefs that may once have served us but no longer do.

And I wanna be clear, the holding on was rarely random. We hold on to old stories because they once made sense of our experience. We hold on to old identities because they once kept us safe or helped us to belong. We hold on to fear because it once protected us. The holding on was protective, and that's worth acknowledging.

But what once protected us can eventually become a weight we carry rather than a resource we draw from. Healthy storage requires discernment about what deserves continued space in our system. For now, we're simply noticing, what am I storing, and is it actually sustaining me?

Like the other functions, storage can get interrupted. I can see this interruption in my own life, too. Even when something goes well, I have had a habit of not quite letting myself even arrive at the finish line before I'm already looking at what comes next. And that's not because I don't care, it's because storing nourishment, actually letting it become a resource I can draw from, is a practice, and it's one I'm still very much in the middle of.

So where might storage be getting interrupted for you? Do you move past nourishment too quickly? Do you discount evidence of your own capability? Do you forget what you know when you're activated? Do you keep seeking something that you've already received? And perhaps most importantly, what have you already built that you keep forgetting you have?

One way we can support healthy storage is through savoring. Savoring simply means staying with a nourishing experience long enough to actually let it register. And I think many of us have absorbed a belief somewhere along the way that allowing ourselves to feel nourished is indulgent, that savoring your own accomplishments is arrogant, that if you let yourself feel good about what you've done, you'll stop growing or become someone who thinks too highly of yourself.

But here's what I wanna offer. You deserve to be nourished by your own life.

Letting evidence of your capability register isn't arrogance, it's accuracy. Savoring a moment of connection or accomplishment doesn't make you lazy or self-satisfied, it makes you someone who is actually present for her own experiences.

Savoring interrupts the habit of moving past nourishment. In savoring, we pause, notice, and feel it in our bodies. We let ourselves experience the satisfaction, connection, pleasure, pride, or nourishment for one more breath. We don't have to cling to the experience. We're simply giving it enough time to land. So can you let it stay long enough to become a resource?

Let's practice. Allow yourself to settle into your body. Notice your breath. Notice the support beneath you. And take a moment to bring to mind one piece of evidence from your life.

It doesn't have to be a giant accomplishment. Maybe it was a moment when you trusted yourself or handled something difficult, when you allowed yourself to receive support, or you acted courageously. Maybe you did something you weren't sure you could do.

Let one moment come to you. Remember it. Where were you What happened? What did you do?

And notice what happens in your body when you don't immediately move past it.

Where within yourself do you feel the knowing of, "I did that"? I know this now. This belongs to my lived experience.

If it feels natural, you can place a hand somewhere on your body where you feel that knowing. Anchor it in. And take a breath. Allow yourself to say, "I get to keep this." Not the moment itself, but the nourishment, the evidence, what you learned, what it showed you about yourself. Let that register.

And then ask, what becomes available to me today when I remember what I've already built? The reserves that I have?

Take another breath here to pause and notice. And then reaffirm for yourself, "I get to keep this."

You can use that statement in the moment of savoring as well. As you're letting it land, as you're fully present, allow yourself to know, "I get to keep this, and this experience can become a resource."

You know, we don't have to start from zero again every single morning. Some of what you've received in your life has nourished you. Some of what you've lived through has taught you. Some of what you practiced has strengthened you, and some of what you've survived has shown you who you are. You get to keep that, and you get to keep the nourishment.

Healthy storage allows what we've received and assimilated to become something we can draw upon. But energy can't only come in, be digested, and be stored. Eventually, energy also needs to move out. Some things need to be expressed. Some things need to be released. And next week, we'll complete the cycle with the fourth function of energy- expression and release.

Until then, notice what you've already built, let yourself keep the nourishment, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

Receiving something is only the beginning. In this episode, we explore the second function of energy — assimilation — and the difference between taking something in and actually being changed by it. Drawing on the Ayurvedic concept of agni, our inner digestive fire, we'll look at why transformation isn't automatic, why more input isn't always more nourishment, and why rest is sometimes the most productive thing you can do. We'll explore what it looks like to under-digest — moving so quickly that nothing gets a chance to land — and what it looks like to over-process, chewing on something long past the point of usefulness. Plus a personal story about why modular learning changed everything, and a somatic practice for noticing what you're still digesting and what might be ready to become wisdom. Because experience itself isn't wisdom. Experience gives us something to digest. And through that digestion, something useful can emerge. 

Transcript:

Last week, we began exploring the four functions of energy: receiving, assimilating, storing, and expressing. And we started with the first question: can you let it in? We talked about healthy receptivity as permeability, being open enough to receive what nourishes us while discerning what we don't wanna let in.

But letting something in is only the beginning because once something enters our system, we have to do something with it. Think about food. Eating doesn't automatically nourish you. Your body has to break it down, sort through it, absorb what it can use, and eventually eliminate what it doesn't need. And energetically, we are doing something very similar all day long with information, experiences, conversations, emotions, and everything else life brings our way.

So today we're moving into the second function of energy, assimilation. What happens to what we receive once it's inside of us? Hey, it's Kelly G, Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 17.

So what is assimilation? Let's take a moment to define this word because I think it's worth being clear about. Digestion is the process. Assimilation is the result. Digestion is what happens when we work with something, when we break it down, sort through it, metabolize it. Assimilation is what happens when something we've taken in actually becomes part of us, when it changes us.

And you can receive something fully, genuinely take it in, without ever assimilating it. You can read the book, take the training, hear the feedback, have the insight. You can nod and say, "Yes, that's true," and still weeks or months later find yourself in the same old patterns making the same old choices and living from the same old stories.

Something has to happen between having the experience and being changed by it. And that middle space, that's assimilation, where we work with what we've received, where we sort and digest and begin to determine what is actually useful, what belongs to us, and what we can release. And eventually, some of what we've received becomes something we can actually use.

Ayurveda gives us a beautiful way of understanding this through agni. The word agni is translated as digestive fire. When we think about digestion, we usually do think about food, and agni is certainly central to how Ayurveda understands physical digestion.

But the idea of agni is bigger than food. We also have to digest our experiences, our emotions, our thoughts, the information that is constantly coming in, the changes we're experiencing in our lives.

Agni is about transformation. Something comes in one form and through digestion becomes something else. In terms of our four functions, agni is what helps us move from receiving something to actually assimilating it.

Food becomes nourishment. Experience can become wisdom. Information can become knowledge. Challenge can become resilience. But it doesn't happen automatically, and that's an important point to note. Transformation requires digestion, and digestion requires time, space, and the right conditions.

Just as our physical digestion can become imbalanced, our capacity to digest and assimilate experiences can also get knocked out of balance. We can take in more than we're able to process, move through things too quickly, or keep working something long after we've gotten what we need from it.

Okay, so I've given you the example before that I love learning. Give me a new book, a new framework, a new idea, a podcast, obviously, and I am genuinely happy. There are times when new information creates real energy for me. It sparks ideas, opens possibilities, really gets things moving.

But I also know the point where information stops being useful. I can feel myself move from focused and inspired to completely scattered and overwhelmed. At some point, I don't need more coming in. I need time to digest what I've already taken in.

I actually made a conscious choice about this in my own training as a yoga teacher. Rather than doing a traditional 200-hour train-it-all-together-at-once type training, weeks of immersive back-to-back content, I chose programming that was offered in modules spread out over time with space between each one. I knew that was going to work better for me, and the difference that made in how I actually learned and integrated the material was significant.

Each module gave me something to take away and live with, to practice, to teach, to notice in my own body and in my own life. And by the time the next module arrived, I had actually digested what came before it, and that meant I could more easily receive the next piece of information fully.

That's learn and integrate, learn and integrate. Not just learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. There has to be space between the inputs for something to happen with what has already been received, and I think that rhythm, input followed by space followed by more input, is actually how we're designed to assimilate, not just in formal training but in our lives.

And this is particularly challenging right now because we have almost unlimited access to input. There is always another book, another podcast, another expert, another answer. We can keep receiving without ever giving ourselves time to assimilate at all. At some point the system has to have space to digest.

This is one of the reasons rest matters in ways that have nothing to do with being tired. Sometimes there isn't anything you need to do with it immediately. A walk, movement, sleep, quiet time, or simply allowing our nervous systems to settle is part of the assimilation process.

In fact, sometimes trying harder to process something is the very thing that interrupts assimilation. We keep poking at the experience and analyzing it and explaining it and trying to extract the lesson before it's ready to be extracted. What we actually need is to give the system enough space to do exactly what it already knows how to do.

We can also under-digest. We can move from one experience to the next without giving anything time to land. Experience, next thing, information, next thing, conversation, next thing. Nothing gets a chance to become useful because we never slow down enough to let it.

And then there's over-processing. Replaying the conversation 12 times. Journaling about the journaling. Analyzing why we reacted the way we did, and then analyzing our analysis. Becoming convinced that if we just think about it a little bit longer, we'll arrive at the perfect meaning.

There's a difference between digesting an experience and chewing on it forever. Digestion involves working with something and then allowing the process to continue even without our supervision. There is some trust involved in assimilation. Trusting that not everything has to be figured out in the moment that we experience it.

In episode 10, we talked about the difference between offloading and integrating our experiences, and I asked the question in that episode, "What do I know now because I lived through this?" Assimilation is the energetic mechanism underneath that question.

Experience itself isn't wisdom. Experience gives us something to digest, and through that digestion, something useful can emerge. Not necessarily a silver lining or a tidy lesson, but a knowing. I know myself differently now. I know what I need. I know what matters to me. I know I can survive something I wasn't sure that I could. That's assimilation. Something happened, you allowed yourself to experience it, you worked through it, and something became available to you that wasn't available before.

So if the larger question for this series is, "Where is energy getting interrupted in its movement through me?", Today we can make that question more specific: Where is assimilation getting interrupted?

Maybe you're taking in more than you have time to digest. Maybe you're moving so quickly that nothing gets a chance to settle. Or maybe you're working so hard to understand something that you're not allowing the process to happen without your supervision. And maybe there's something you've already experienced that is ready to become wisdom, and you haven't stopped long enough to notice what you know now.

All right, so let's practice. If it's available to you, allow yourself to settle into your body, into a comfortable position, and notice the support beneath you, the furniture, the floor, the earth.

And then notice your breath.

And now bring to mind one thing you've taken in recently. You can keep it really simple. It might be something you learned, a conversation you had, something someone said to you, an experience you've been having, or an idea that's been lighting you up. Choose something that feels workable in this moment.

Now, notice what happens in your body as you bring it to mind. You don't need to figure anything out yet. Just notice where in your body you feel it. Maybe there's a sensation like tightness or warmth or heaviness or movement. Maybe nothing particularly noticeable happens at all. Let your body respond however it responds.

Now take a breath and ask yourself, "What am I still digesting here?" You don't have to manufacture an answer. Just notice what comes.

And then ask, what feels useful or nourishing here? It could be an insight, a truth, something you learned about yourself. Just notice what has emerged through the experience.

And then ask, is there anything here that doesn't need to come with me? It could be an assumption. It could be someone else's opinion, an old story or an expectation, something that simply isn't yours. And you don't have to force it out, just recognize it.

Okay, take another breath and finally ask, "What do I know now because of what I received?"

Let the answer be small. It doesn't have to transform your life. Maybe there isn't even an answer yet. Maybe the most honest answer here is, "I'm still digesting." And that counts, too.

Take one more breath and let yourself feel whatever is here without needing to keep working on it. Notice what it feels like to allow the process to continue without your supervision. Your mind-body system knows exactly what to do.

We take in so much over the course of a day, a week, a lifetime. But receiving something doesn't automatically make it nourishing. We need the capacity to digest, to sort, to transform, to recognize what is useful, and to allow what isn't to move through. So this week, before you reach for the next book, the next answer, the next piece of information, ask yourself, "What am I still digesting?" Maybe give it a little room.

Because once we've received something and assimilated it, another question arises: Can I keep what nourishes me? That's where we're going next, and it's the third function of energy: storage.

So until then, give yourself some space to digest what life has already given you, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

Energy is moving through you constantly — but can you actually let it in? In this episode, we begin a four-part series inspired by Anodea Judith's work on the four functions of a chakra: receiving, assimilating, storing, and expressing. Starting with the first function, we explore why healthy receiving isn't passive, why being more open isn't the goal, and why the real practice is becoming more discerning about what we allow to reach us. We'll look at the difference between a wall and a membrane, why we sometimes filter out the very things that would nourish us, and how your inhale is already showing you that your body knows how to receive. Drawing on the yoga concept of prana, this episode invites you to stop reaching for more and become available to what is already here. Because sometimes what you've been looking for has already arrived.

Transcript:

For the last few episodes, we've been talking about energy. We started with capacity. How much can I actually hold? Then energetic discernment. What state am I in, and what do I need right now? And last week, energetic stewardship. Where am I putting the energy I have, and what am I cultivating with it?

Today, we're continuing to talk about energy, but I wanna shift the conversation just a little bit. We've been exploring our relationship with energy, and now I wanna look more closely at how energy actually moves through us.

Everything in our universe is made up of energy. Our bodies and everything else are built from little vibrating cells of energy.

And we are constantly exchanging energy with the world around us. What we take in, what we do, who we're with, what we experience, all of these things have an impact on our energy all day long.

Today, we're focusing on the fact that we have to be able to receive energy. You receive energy all day long through your senses. You receive information. You receive nourishment, support, ideas, connection. Life is constantly offering us something to receive, and receiving is one of the fundamental ways energy moves through us.

So today, I want to explore the question: Can you let it in?

Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number 16.

This episode begins a four-part series inspired by the four functions of a chakra based on the work by Anodea Judith in her book Charge and the Energy Body.

When we look at the chakras as living energy centers rather than just seven places in our body, there are four functions that I find really useful for understanding how energy moves through us.

We receive, we assimilate or digest what we receive, we store what is useful, and we express or release energy back out into the world. So receive, assimilate, store, express.

These aren't four completely separate things. They're parts of a living cycle. Energy comes in. We process it once it is inside of us. Some of it becomes part of us, and some of it moves back out. When energy gets interrupted somewhere in that cycle, we can feel it.

So throughout this series, I want us to keep coming back to one larger question. Where is energy getting interrupted in its movement through you?

Today, we're starting with receiving energy.

I think we often imagine receiving as passive. Someone gives, we receive. Something comes toward us, we take it in. But healthy receiving is actually an active, energetic process because receiving requires some degree of openness.

You can be surrounded by support and not feel supported. You can be deeply loved and have a hard time letting yourself feel loved. Someone can tell you something wonderful about yourself, and you can dismiss it before it ever has a chance to land. You can be standing in the middle of an absolutely gorgeous sunset while thinking about the email you forgot to send. The experience is available, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're receiving it.

And I encourage you to resist using this as an opportunity to judge yourself. We're not gonna turn receiving into one more thing we're supposed to be good at.

There are really good reasons we learn to filter what comes in. Our nervous systems are constantly determining what deserves our attention. Our experiences teach us what feels safe to open toward and what doesn't. Our boundaries help us decide what belongs inside our lives and what doesn't.

So being as open as possible isn't really the goal. Discernment is. Because being able to receive does not mean being open to absolutely everything.

I like to think of healthy receiving as permeability, not a wall and not a wide open door. Something more like a membrane maybe. Some things are allowed through and some things aren't. Imagine if you received absolutely everything available to you, every opinion, every request, every notification, emotional state, and piece of information asking for your attention.

That isn't receptivity. That's overwhelm. And in the world we live in, there is almost no limit to what we could receive.

So healthy receiving requires us to be able to ask, "What am I available to receive, and what do I choose not to let in?"

This is where receiving and boundaries belong in the same conversation.

A healthy boundary lets in what feels good, safe, and healthy for us. Thanks to Melissa Urban for this definition. And it keeps out what feels bad, unsafe, and unhealthy. A boundary isn't always a way to keep the world out. Sometimes a boundary is what makes it possible for us to safely open.

I know if I can say no, my yes can become more genuine. If I know I don't have to take in every single opinion, I can become more available to feedback that I actually trust. If I know that I can close the door, I don't have to be afraid of opening it.

Healthy receptivity isn't only about becoming more open. It's about becoming more discerning about what we open to.

And then there's the other side of receiving. Sometimes we've gotten so good at filtering that we also filter out what might actually nourish us. We may filter out support, affection, recognition, opportunity.

Someone compliments you, and you immediately explain why it isn't true. "You did such a great job." "Well, I had a lot of help." "I really appreciate you." "Oh, it was really nothing. Anybody would have done it." Something was offered, and instead of allowing it to enter, you may send it right back.

We don't necessarily do this consciously. Sometimes receiving feels really vulnerable. Receiving means allowing ourselves to be affected. Something gets through the membrane. Something reaches us, and for a moment, we aren't completely in control of what happens next.

If I let your kindness in, I might feel something. If I let myself acknowledge how beautiful this moment is, I have to slow down long enough to experience it. If I receive support, I might have to loosen my grip on the belief that I should be able to do everything myself. And if I receive this opportunity, I might have to acknowledge that I actually want it.

Receiving asks us to let something reach us, and sometimes that requires more courage than we realize.

There's a very simple way to experience receiving right now. It's your inhale. You don't have to earn the inhale. You don't have to prove that you've been productive enough to deserve it. You don't have to figure out how to manufacture it. The breath arrives, and your body receives it.

So wherever you are right now, just notice your next inhale. Don't make it bigger. Don't turn this into a breathing exercise that you have to do right. Just notice something is coming in, and your body knows exactly how to receive it.

And then notice the exhale. Something moves out, and another inhale comes. Another opportunity to receive. Receiving, releasing. Receiving, releasing.

This exchange is happening all day long, and I think there's something really beautiful about remembering that receiving isn't foreign to us. Your body has been practicing it since the moment you were born.

In yoga, we talk about prana as life force energy. And while prana is often associated with breath, it's bigger than the breath. Prana is the vitality moving through life. We are not closed systems generating all of our energy from somewhere inside ourselves. We are constantly in exchange with life, and that exchange asks something of us.

Can I recognize what nourishes me? Can I make myself available to it? Can I let it actually reach me? And can I discern what doesn't belong?

That is healthy receptivity. Not closed, not indiscriminately open, but available and discerning.

So let's practice this. If it's available to you, allow yourself to come into a comfortable position. And before we do anything else, notice what is already supporting you, the chair, the floor, the ground beneath you. Something is holding your weight right now. See if you can let yourself receive a little more of that support, not by collapsing, just by noticing that you don't have to hold it all up yourself.

Now notice your breath. Rather than pulling the inhale in, see if you can let the inhale arrive. Receive it and release. And then again, let the breath come to you. Receive and release.

Now notice what else is already here. A sound, a sensation, a temperature of the air against your skin. You don't have to search for anything, just let the experience come to you. Notice what it's like to be receptive without reaching.

And now if it feels okay, bring to mind something nourishing that is already present in your life. Maybe it's someone who loves you, something kind someone has said, a place where you feel at ease, a moment of true connection, something you're proud of. Whatever it is, you can let it be simple. You don't need to analyze it.

And now just notice what happens when you allow yourself to receive it. Can you let it come a little closer? Can you let it land somewhere in your body? And if you notice yourself deflecting it, questioning it, minimizing it, or trying to move on quickly, just notice. That's also information. You don't have to force yourself to open.

And then ask, where is receiving getting interrupted? And then, what is already available to me that I could allow myself to receive a little more fully?

Let whatever comes up be enough.

Take one more inhale here. Receive and exhale. Release.

Receiving doesn't mean opening yourself to everything, and it doesn't mean becoming better at accepting every offer, every opinion, opportunity, or demand on your energy. Healthy receiving is discerning. It's permeable. It allows nourishment in while still honoring your boundaries. And sometimes the practice isn't in finding more, it's in allowing ourselves to fully receive what is already here.

So this week, I invite you to experiment with asking yourself, "What is already here that I haven't fully received?" And then see if you can let it in just a little bit more.

Because receiving something is only the beginning. Once something enters our system, something has to happen with it. We have to digest it, assimilate it, figure out what becomes part of us and what doesn't, and that's where we're heading next.

So until then, keep noticing what life is offering to you, let yourself receive what feels nourishing, and let your life shine

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

You've learned how much you can hold. You've learned to read the quality of your energy. Now it's time to do something with that awareness. In this episode, we explore energetic stewardship — the practice of consciously directing your energy toward what you want to cultivate. Through the yoga teaching of brahmacharya and the framework of the koshas, we'll look at the three ways we use energy: spending on the ordinary requirements of life, replenishing what we've used, and investing in what we want to grow. Plus why the return on an investment doesn't always come back in the form you expected, why investment-only living is just as unsustainable as spending without replenishing, and a guided practice returning to the movie theater — this time to actually make a choice. Because energetic stewardship isn't about perfectly managing your life. It's about consciously participating in it.

Transcript:

Over the last few episodes, we've been building a relationship with our energy from the inside out.

First, we talked about capacity. How much can I actually hold and maintain? And then last time, we talked about energetic discernment. What state am I in, and what do I need right now? Today, we're adding the next layer. What am I doing with the energy I have? Because energy is a resource, and like any resource, we can use it unconsciously, or we can learn to steward it.

That's what I wanna talk about today. Not protecting your energy from everything, not hoarding it, not trying to eliminate anything that requires effort. Stewarding it. Consciously deciding what deserves this precious resource and what you want your use of it to create.

Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number 15.

Energy is meant to be used. That might sound obvious, but I think it's worth saying because somewhere in the conversation about protecting our energy and tending to our capacity, it can start to feel like the goal is to use as little energy as possible, like energy is something fragile that we're supposed to guard.

But you spend energy living your life: making dinner, doing laundry, working, driving, answering emails, taking care of people, making decisions, having conversations. All of these things use energy, and that's not a problem. It's life.

Energetic stewardship isn't about trying to stop spending energy. It's about becoming more conscious of the different ways we're using it. And I think there are three that are particularly useful to look at: spending, replenishing, and investing.

Spending is the energy required to live your life. Replenishing restores energy that you've used. And investing uses energy now in service of something you want to cultivate. All three matter.

So let's start with spending. Sometimes you spend energy because something simply needs to be done. The laundry isn't necessarily an investment in your personal evolution, you just need clean underwear. And I actually think it's important to say that because not everything has to have a deeper purpose. Sometimes life simply requires energy from us.

Then there's replenishing. This consists of things like sleep and rest, nourishing food, quiet time, play, connection, whatever actually restores your system. Replenishing helps refill the resource you've been spending.

And finally, investing. Investing asks us to put energy towards something now because we wanna cultivate something over time. If we're building strength or health, skills, confidence, when we're using creativity, building connection, self-trust, a greater capacity, all of these things ask us to invest energy now for that return in the future.

And here's what makes investing tricky. Investments often require energy before they do return anything. Exercise requires energy. Learning requires energy. Having the hard conversation requires energy. Creating or building something requires energy. Setting a boundary can require a tremendous amount of energy.

So if our only measure is, "Did this make me feel more energized?" we can make some decisions that won't move us toward what we want in the long run. The better question then becomes, "What am I cultivating with the energy I'm using?"

So this brings us back once again to the yoga teaching of brahmacharya. We've been deepening this idea over the last few episodes. First, I honor my capacity has limits. We saw brahmacharya as allocation of resources, and that we have a specific amount of resources before we need to replenish.

Then I learned to recognize my energetic state and what I may need to come back toward balance. And now I choose how I direct the energy that I have. That's stewardship, and stewardship is different than control.

We're not gonna perfectly optimize every single ounce of energy that we have. Some weeks life simply asks more from us. Sometimes we don't get to choose how every bit of energy is spent. Sometimes our investment doesn't create the return we hoped for.

But we can become more intentional about our overall relationship with this precious resource we have within us. When we start to focus on questions like, "Where is my energy going? What is restoring it? And what am I actively choosing to cultivate with my energy?" we become effective stewards of this resource.

Yoga gives us an additional framework that I think is also very useful for us to look at here, and that's the koshas. The koshas are often described as five layers of our being. They are a map of who we are. There's the physical layer, your body; the energetic layer, which is your life force energy, and very closely tied to your emotions; the mental layer, made up of your thoughts and the stories that you tell yourself; the wisdom layer, where we can tap into discernment and intuition and our deeper knowing; and the spiritual layer, which is associated with connection, meaning, and bliss, that sense of wholeness or being a part of something larger than yourself.

And these aren't five separate little compartments. They affect and interact with one another constantly. They're all within us, which means we can spend energy in one layer and receive a return somewhere else, and I think that's where the idea of investment becomes even more interesting.

Maybe you spend physical energy taking a walk. Yes, you're investing in your physical body, but perhaps what you receive is mental clarity. Maybe your thoughts settle. Maybe you can hear your inner voice a little more clearly. Maybe the idea you've been trying to force suddenly arrives. The investment crossed layers.

Or maybe you spend emotional energy having a difficult conversation. You might be exhausted afterward, but what did you cultivate? Greater intimacy? Congruence? A stronger boundary? Evidence that you can trust yourself to say what needs to be said? That is all evidence of a return.

Maybe you spend mental energy learning something new. The obvious return might be knowledge or a skill, but perhaps what you really gain is feeling confident, self-assured, possibility, a clearer sense of purpose.

And maybe you spend an afternoon helping someone else. That might cost physical and emotional energy, while the return you receive is connection and meaning. The return doesn't have to come back in the same form in which you spent the energy, and that matters. Because sometimes the things most worth our energy are not the things that immediately make us feel more energized.

There's another important piece here. Calling something an investment doesn't mean you're guaranteed the outcome that you want. You can invest deeply in a relationship and still have it end. You can invest in a business idea that doesn't work out. You can spend months learning something and then decide it is not for you. You can take a courageous risk and still get a no. That doesn't automatically mean the energy was wasted.

Sometimes the return is different from what we expected. Maybe the relationship taught you what you need. Maybe the business showed you what you're capable of. Maybe discovering what isn't for you helped to clarify what is. And maybe that no that you got built evidence that you can survive rejection and still stay connected to yourself.

We don't always get to control the return. Energetic stewardship isn't about guaranteed outcomes. It's choosing what you believe is worthy of cultivation and choosing how you relate to yourself once the result arrives.

And I don't want you leaving this episode thinking spending bad, investing good. It's not that simple. Sometimes you just have to do the laundry. Sometimes your family needs something. Sometimes your job requires more than you expected. Sometimes life costs energy, and that's why replenishing matters so much too.

Because if you're constantly investing, if you are spending but never restoring yourself, that's creating an energetic debt. And if all you ever do is replenish but never invest, you may feel rested but not necessarily be building toward anything that truly matters to you. So this isn't about finding a perfect ratio, it's about becoming conscious of the balance that works for you in this moment, in this hour, this day, this time of your life.

So I invite you to tune in. What are you spending energy on? What is replenishing your energy? And what are you investing your energy in? And does the way you're using your energy reflect what matters to you? That's stewardship.

Okay, so for today's practice, we're going back to your movie theater. If you're able, I invite you to close your eyes and take a few full, deep breaths here.

And then envision your movie theater. A couple of episodes ago, I invited you to stand in your theater and notice what was filling the seats, things like your work, relationships, responsibilities, your worries and your dreams, decisions that need to be made, things you're creating, things you're carrying.

And you didn't move anything yet, you just noticed what was filling the seats. So now I invite you to look around your theater and allow your attention to land on one thing that's taking up meaningful capacity right now. Don't overthink it. Let that seat call to you, or maybe an entire row, but just let it get your attention.

Notice what it is. And before you decide anything about it, notice where you experience it in yourself. Does this feel like it's primarily taking up space in your physical body, your energy and your emotions, your mental world of thoughts and stories? Is it in your wisdom layer? Perhaps something you're discerning or trying to trust yourself around. Or maybe it shows up in your sense of connection, meaning, and spirit. It may touch more than one, and that's okay. Just notice where you feel its presence most strongly within you.

Now, we've recognized what seat in the theater wants our attention, where the energy of what's in that seat lands in our mind-body system, in our koshas, in our layers. And now, let's look at this through the lens of stewardship. I invite you to ask yourself, "Is this something I'm spending energy on because life simply requires it?" Maybe it is.

Not everything is going to give us a big return back. Sometimes we spend energy because we're living a life, and the return is that we're living a life. Now, ask, "Is this replenishing me? Does something about this restore energy for me? Does it restore connection, vitality, clarity, or meaning?" Just notice.

And finally ask: is this something I'm choosing to invest in? Am I giving it energy now because of what I want to cultivate through it? Remember, it doesn't have to fit perfectly into one category. Something can require spending and still be an investment. Something can replenish one layer of you while requiring energy from another layer. Just notice what feels true for you, and take another breath.

And now we're gonna do what we haven't done in your theater yet. You're gonna make a decision. Ask yourself, "Knowing what I know now, how do I want to steward my energy around what is in this seat?"

Maybe the answer is, "I'm willing to keep spending energy here because this is a part of my life that I've chosen." Maybe something like, "I need more replenishment to support what this is asking of me." Or maybe, "Yes, this is worthy of my investment." Or you may realize, "I don't wanna keep giving this as much energy as I have been."

There's no need to force an answer. Notice what you know.

And then finally ask, what is one small choice that would reflect what I know here?

Maybe you don't remove anything from the theater. Maybe you give it fewer seats if it's been taking up a whole row. Maybe you consciously decide that something deserves more seats than it's had. Maybe you realize that if you're going to keep giving energy to one part of your life, you need to reserve a seat for something that replenishes you. And maybe you simply change your relationship with what's already here.

See yourself making that adjustment in your theater. Switch seats around if you need to. Open up some space. Give something more room. Let the theater reflect the choice you're making about your own energy.

And take a breath. Notice what happens in your body as you look at the theater now. You don't have to redesign the whole thing today. We're just focusing on one seat, one choice, one conscious decision about where your energy goes.

Take one more breath and carry that choice with you, not as a plan to execute perfectly, as a direction you're moving in. That's energetic stewardship.

Your energy is precious, but precious doesn't mean it's fragile. It's meant to move. It's meant to be spent on the ordinary requirements of living your life. It's meant to be replenished so that you have something to draw from, and it's meant to be invested in the people, practices, dreams, and experiences you want to cultivate. That's energetic stewardship. Not perfectly managing your life- consciously choosing.

And now that we've spent three episodes exploring how much energy we can hold, how to recognize the energetic state we're in, and how to steward the energy we have, we're ready to ask a different question: how does energy actually move through us?

And that's where we're headed next. We're going to explore four functions of energy: receiving, digesting, storing, and expressing. And we're gonna begin with the first. Can you receive what is available to you?

So until then, notice where you're spending, give yourself permission to replenish, and choose what you want to invest in. And let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary: Most of us are really good at overriding ourselves. We ask what we should do long before we ask what we actually need. In this episode, we explore energetic discernment — the practice of learning to read your own energy so you can respond to yourself more wisely. Drawing on the yoga philosophy framework of the three gunas — rajas, tamas, and sattva — we'll look at the living qualities of energy moving through you throughout any given day, why none of them are inherently good or bad, and how noticing what state you're in changes everything about how you care for yourself. Plus your breath as a real-time energy indicator and a personal story about what happens when something you love becomes too much of a good thing. Because energetic discernment isn't controlling your energy. It's knowing it.

Transcript:

In the last episode, we talked about capacity, how much you can hold and maintain, and why tending to it matters. I asked you to imagine your capacity like a movie theater, to look around at everything sitting in the seats right now. That includes your work, your relationships, your responsibilities, your worries and your dreams, your emotions, the decisions that you still need to make, and to simply notice how full your theater currently is.

And you didn't kick anyone out yet. We're still not kicking anyone out today. Because before we start making decisions about where our energy goes, I think there's another important skill to be built. We need to learn how to read our own energy, asking ourselves questions like, "What energy state am I in right now? What is happening inside of me? And what might I actually need?" This is energetic discernment.

And I think of discernment a little bit like getting to know a new friend. When you're getting to know someone, you pay attention. You start to learn what lights them up and what overwhelms them. You learn when they need encouragement and when they need some space. You learn when maybe they want to rest and be still, and when they want movement and action. You learn them.

Energetic discernment is learning yourself in the same way. Not who you were six months ago, not who you think you should be, not what someone else says you should need. You as you are right now.

Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number 14.

I think a lot of us are really good at overriding ourselves. We tend to ask what we should do before asking what we need. We're tired, but there's more to do. We're overstimulated, but we pick up our phone and take in more. We're feeling stuck and heavy, but we sit when what we might actually need is to get up and move.

We ask ourselves questions like, "What should I do? What's next on the list? What would be more productive? What do other people need from me or expect from me?"

And we can go through an entire day responding to those questions without ever stopping to check in and ask, "What is happening inside of me right now, and what does my system need?"

Those energetic discernment questions create a pause so that we can check in with what is best for us in that moment. And yoga gives us a really useful framework for understanding what we find there. It's the framework of the gunas.

The gunas are three living qualities of energy present throughout nature and throughout us. They are rajas, tamas, and sattva, and these are sometimes taught in a way that creates a hierarchy. Sattva is good, rajas not quite as good, tamas is bad. But that misses something really important, the fact that we have all three within us and we need all three. These are living energies constantly moving and interacting with one another.

So let's look at them. Rajas is the energy of movement, activation, stimulation, passion, drive. It helps us to build momentum. It gets us moving. Rajas helps us to create, act, initiate, pursue, change. You need rajas to get off the couch and do something, and sometimes you need more of that type of energy.

Then there's tamas. Tamas is heaviness, stillness, stability, grounding, inertia. Tamas slows us down, and again, that isn't inherently bad. We need the energy of tamas to be able to be still enough to sleep. We need enough stability to stay grounded. Sometimes the ability to stop, become still, and do absolutely nothing is exactly what our system needs.

And then there's sattva. Sattva is clarity, balance, harmony, and presence. Sattva isn't necessarily high energy. It's not necessarily excitement. It's more like a sense of coherence. You're here, you're clear, you're connected. There's an ease and steadiness to your energy when you're in a sattvic state. All three of these qualities are moving through us every day, all day.

The practice isn't to eliminate rajas and tamas so that we can become perfectly sattvic people. The practice is to notice what's here, respect that we have all three within us, and move toward the energy that would be most beneficial in any given moment. They all serve us.

So do you ever check in with which energetic state you're in? Think about how different you can feel throughout a single day. Maybe you wake up feeling heavy. You don't wanna get moving. Your thoughts feel slow. Your body just wants to stay exactly where it is. There may be tamasic energy present.

And then a few hours later, you're working. Your brain is firing. You're moving from one thing to another. You're answering messages, making decisions, getting things done. There's rajasic energy there.

And maybe later on, you go for a walk outside. Something settles. Your mind clears. You feel more present in your body. You can hear your thoughts clearly. There's sattvic energy present there.

These moments are all simply states that we are in, and states change. They move. They don't mean that anything has gone wrong. But where this awareness becomes useful is when we stop trying to respond to every state in exactly the same way.

If I'm feeling heavy, stagnant, and stuck in tamas, maybe what I need is movement, music, a walk, a conversation, something that brings in a little rajas and gets the energy moving.

But if I've been going, going, going all day, if I've been working and thinking and talking and consuming and producing, and my mind is racing and my body can't settle, I probably don't need more stimulation or more movement. More rajas isn't necessarily the medicine for excess rajas. Maybe I need to slow down. Maybe I need to quiet. Maybe I need grounding. Maybe I need to put the phone down.

The question isn't how do I get rid of the state? It's what would support greater balance in me right now? And that is discernment.

One of the easiest ways to begin noticing your energetic state is something that you're already doing all day long: breathing.

Your breath is constantly responding to your experience. Think about what happens in your breath when you're startled. Think about your breath when you're excited or anxious or concentrating really hard on something or deeply relaxed. Your breath changes.

Sometimes it may be fast, sometimes shallow. Maybe you're holding it. Maybe you suddenly take a huge sigh, or maybe your breath becomes slow and heavy or quiet and spacious. Your breath is information.

And I don't wanna turn this into another set of rules. Fast breath doesn't automatically mean rajas. Slow breath doesn't automatically mean tamas. A deep breath doesn't mean, "Congratulations, you have officially achieved sattva." Human beings are much more interesting and complex than that.

Instead, what I invite you to practice noticing is simply, what is my breath doing right now? And then, what about my body? Do I feel activated? Do I feel heavy? Do I feel clear and spacious? Do I feel restless or braced? Do I wanna move? Do I wanna just curl up? Do I wanna take in more? Do I desperately need less?

You don't have to interpret every signal perfectly. You're just learning the language here.

What I think is really important, and that I invite you to recognize, is that your answers are always allowed to change, and they will as you change. Something that feels sattvic for you right now may not feel sattvic at all in six months. Something that brought you the exact rajasic activation you needed during one season of your life may eventually become over-stimulating. And something that once felt really heavy or stagnant may become the stillness and grounding your system desperately needs in another season.

The gunas are living energies, and you are a living system. You are made of energy. You are changing. Your life is changing. Your capacity is changing. Your nervous system is changing. So energetic discernment isn't creating a permanent list of what's good for you. It's staying in relationship with yourself closely enough to know what's true right now.

And that's why this connects so beautifully back to brahmacharya. Last time we talked about brahmacharya in the perspective of the right use of energy. But the right use of energy requires discernment. It requires knowing yourself well enough to recognize, "What energetic state am I in, and what would support me right now?"

I see this in my own life all the time with learning. I love learning. I love to take in new information and see new perspectives. Give me a book, a new idea, a podcast, a new framework, a new way of understanding something, and I can feel myself come alive.

Learning can create a beautiful amount of Rajas for me. Ideas start moving, connections start happening, I wanna create, I wanna teach, I wanna know more. And that can be exactly the energy that I need, until it isn't.

Because there's also a point where I can start to recognize that I'm taking in more than I can actually do anything with. I can't let one idea settle because I've already reached for the next one. The thing itself hasn't changed. I still love learning, but my energetic state has changed, and now what supports me might be the opposite of taking in more.

Maybe I need some quiet or to move my body, to sit down and watch a mindless TV show, or to have a conversation with someone. Sometimes it's cooking dinner, walking outside, letting what I've already taken in settle. And that's discernment.

It's not asking, "Is learning good for me or bad for me?" It's asking, "What do I need right now?" Or even, "How much do I need right now?"

Okay, so let's put it to practice. You don't need to revisit your theater today. We're not looking at everything you're holding. We're looking at you. So wherever you are, if you're able, I invite you to close your eyes and to take a breath. And before you try to change anything, simply notice the breath that's already happening in your body. How are you breathing? Fast or slow? Deep or shallow? Does it feel smooth or jagged? There's nothing to fix. Right now we're just noticing.

Now shift your attention to your body. What does your energy feel like in your body right now? Do you feel activated? Restless? Does it feel like things are moving quickly inside? Do you feel driven to do, solve, fix, go, accomplish? If so, there may be Rajasic energy present.

Or do you feel heavy, slow or grounded right now? Does it feel tired within you? Do you want to become still or withdraw? There could be Tamasic energy present.

Or perhaps there's a real sense of clarity inside, presence, steadiness, connectedness. Maybe there's Sattvic energy present.

And maybe it's not clear what you feel at all, and that's okay too. These energies overlap and they move, they shift all throughout the day. You're not trying to diagnose yourself here. You're just practicing noticing your own energy.

So now I invite you to ask, "What would support greater balance in me right now?" Maybe it's to shift your breath. Maybe it's to change your posture. Maybe it's recognizing that you need movement or rest. Maybe it's less stimulation, more connection. Maybe you just need something to eat or some time outside. Maybe you need to finish something or maybe you just need to stop. I invite you to avoid asking what you should need, and really ask what feels true for you.

So take another breath here, and notice what it feels like to respond to yourself from this gentle awareness of what you actually need. This is energetic discernment, not controlling your energy, but getting to know it.

Okay, so capacity asks, "How much am I holding?" Energetic discernment asks, "What type of energy am I in, and what do I need right now?"

And next time, we're gonna talk about energetic stewardship, how we spend, replenish, and invest our energy, and how we consciously direct this precious resource toward what we wanna cultivate.

So for today, check in with the energetic state that you're in and ask, "What's here? What's going on? What do I need? What would create greater balance for me right now?" So until next time, I invite you to listen, to learn yourself, and to let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

We live in a culture that celebrates doing more, handling more, and needing less. But what happens when we perform beyond our capacity for too long? In this episode, we explore what capacity actually is, what it looks like when we've exceeded it, and why tending to it is one of the most countercultural — and necessary — practices we can embrace. Through the lens of the yoga principle of brahmacharya, we'll look at capacity not as a fixed limit but as a living system that grows through tending rather than pushing. Including a personal story of burnout, the signs that your system is asking for attention, and a guided practice using the movie theater metaphor to help you get an honest picture of what you're currently holding. Because just because you can doesn't mean you should. 

Transcript:

We live in a culture that teaches us a very specific perspective about what it means to be capable, productive, and valuable. And we receive it in messages that sound something like this: "Do more. Handle more. Be more. Never stop. Never slow down. Never need too much. Rest is laziness. Limits are weakness, and saying no is selfish. Oh, and if you're tired, well, just push through because everyone else is tired, too."

Most of us absorb these messages so early on and so completely that we stopped questioning them. We learned to perform beyond our capacity, saying yes when our whole body was screaming no, taking on more because we could, without ever stopping to ask whether we should.

And here's what I've learned the hard way. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Today we're talking about capacity, what it actually is, what happens when we ignore it, and how to start tending to it like the precious resource that it is.

Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number 13

Capacity is about how much you can hold and maintain. I really like to think about capacity like a movie theater. Every theater has a limited number of seats, and that limit isn't a flaw in its design, it's a feature. It exists for safety, for functionality, for the experience to actually work the way it's meant to.

And your capacity works the same way. Internally, you have a finite number of seats in your theater, and those seats can be filled with all kinds of things: your commitments, your relationships, your emotions, your obligations, your mental load, your unprocessed experiences, your worries, your grief, your to-do list, even your dreams and the things that you're excited about.

Here's something we sometimes forget: good things take up capacity, too. Starting a new job can be wonderful and still take up capacity. Travel can be exciting and still take up capacity. Creating something you love can be deeply fulfilling and still take up capacity.

Capacity isn't a measure of whether something is good or bad. It's simply an honest measure of what your system is currently holding and working to maintain.

And when every seat in your internal theater is full, and especially when people are standing in the aisles and sitting in the floor, the system stops functioning as well.

Things get missed, small frustrations feel big, and decisions become harder. You may have less patience, less creativity, less ability to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting.

And here's another thing. Until some of those seats become available, there is nowhere for something new to sit. There is no space for more responsibility. But there is also no space for rest, no space for joy, for creativity, for connection. There's no space for the things that you actually want to hold. You may technically be able to cram one more person into that theater, but that really doesn't mean that you should.

Several years ago, I was pushing through and functioning way beyond my capacity, and I told myself a story that you may be familiar with. Things like, "I'm fine. You know what? I'll sleep when I'm dead. I can handle this. I should be able to handle this. This is just how it is right now."

But my body knew differently. Before work, I was having panic attacks. At night, I was drinking way more than I should, not because I wanted to, but because I needed something to try to help me wind down. I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep. My digestion was a mess. My skin was a mess.

My body was sending signals in every possible direction, and I was doing everything I could to manage or ignore the symptoms instead of listening to what they were telling me.

I was holding way more than I could sustainably maintain. My doctor started talking to me about an autoimmune disorder diagnosis. And whether or not every symptom could be traced directly back to stress, what became impossible for me to ignore was that my body was struggling. I was struggling. I couldn't continue in this way.

My body had been asking for my attention for a long time, and I hadn't been listening. In fact, I was programmed not to listen. But here's what's really important: there were so many signs before I got to that point, and there often are.

Maybe your body starts to speak louder. Maybe your patience starts to get shorter. Maybe your creativity and your joy disappear. Maybe everything starts feeling harder than it should.

None of those are signs that there's something wrong with you, that you're doing it wrong. They may simply be signals that you are living beyond your capacity, and they deserve to be listened to.

There's something that happens when we consistently exceed our capacity. We begin living in what I think of as energetic debt. We're spending more energy than we're replenishing.

And just like financial debt, we can sometimes do that for a while. We borrow from tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes and we borrow again. But eventually, something comes due. We'll explore this concept more over the next few episodes. But for right now, I invite you to simply notice, are you living within your current energetic means?

Because our culture doesn't encourage us to explore that question at all. It celebrates the person who sleeps the least, works the most, needs the least support, and somehow keeps saying yes.

Yoga offers us a different perspective. In yoga philosophy, there's a concept called brahmacharya. It's often translated as moderation, but I really like to think of it as the right use of energy. It's the allocation of your energetic resources. It's not deprivation or restriction. It's stewardship. How are you using your energy? How are you taking care of your energy?

Recognizing that your vital energy is a resource and becoming more conscious of how you use it, that is one of the most valuable things you can do.

And just because you have energy available doesn't mean it's wise to spend it all, or to spend it in ways that are enforced from external expectations. Just because you're capable of carrying something doesn't mean that carrying it is the best use of your capacity.

That's brahmacharya. It's discernment about how we use our energy.

Now, here's something else that's really helpful to know. Capacity isn't fixed. The amount you can hold today is not necessarily the amount you'll be able to hold forever. But capacity grows through tending, through care, not through constantly overriding it.

Think about physical fitness. You don't build strength by exercising as hard as you possibly can every single day without resting. Eventually you'll break down if that's the way you go about it. Muscles grow through a cycle: exertion, recovery, adaptation. The recovery isn't getting in the way of the training, the recovery is part of the training.

I think our emotional, mental, and energetic capacity works in much the same way. Rest isn't the opposite of growth. Recovery isn't evidence that you're weak or lazy. Replenishment isn't something that you earn after you've finally done enough. These are part of how we build a system capable of meeting more of life without losing ourselves inside of it.

And I wanna speak directly to burnout for a moment because I know many people have experienced it, myself included. Sometimes after burnout we begin telling ourselves another story. "Maybe my capacity is just small. Maybe I'm fragile. Maybe I can't handle very much."

And the fear of burning out again can make us want to protect ourselves so carefully that we start living smaller than we actually are. But experiencing burnout doesn't necessarily mean you have a small or fragile capacity. It may simply mean you have been carrying more than your system could sustainably hold for much too long.

Maybe you were overriding your signals, maybe there wasn't enough recovery, maybe you didn't have enough support. Maybe you just didn't have the awareness or the permission to tend to yourself along the way. And that's very different from deciding, "I can't handle much."

Expanding capacity isn't about proving how much you can carry. It isn't about pushing harder or taking on more before you're ready. It's about developing a relationship with your own system, your body, your mind, your intuition, your energy, so that you know what's manageable for you right now. So that you can hold what you're currently carrying more sustainably.

And so that when life does add more, because life will, you have the awareness and the tools to meet it without burning out, without losing yourself, without breaking down. The goal isn't a bigger load. It's a more honest, responsive, and sustainable relationship with the load you're currently carrying.

Okay, I wanna bring you back to the movie theater analogy for our practice today. So if you're able, I invite you to find a comfortable position and to close your eyes for a moment. Take a breath here and imagine your internal theater. Picture all of the seats in front of you and begin noticing what is sitting in every seat right now.

Work, relationships, responsibilities, decisions you need to make, something you're worried about, something you're grieving, a project that's unfinished, maybe something you're really excited about, a dream you're unfolding or working toward, a change that's happening in your life. Just notice.

You don't need to decide whether any of these things should be there or not. Don't try to rearrange the theater. Don't worry about kicking anybody out. Just look.

How full is your theater right now? Are there plenty of empty seats? Is it comfortably full? Is every seat taken? Are there people standing in the aisles? Are you trying to squeeze one more thing in because you technically can?

Just take a breath and notice what happens in your body as you look at your theater And now ask yourself, "What is my actual capacity right now?" Not, what should I be able to handle? Not, what could I force myself to handle? Not, what does everyone else seem to be handling? What can I sustainably hold right now?

Just listen. No judgment. You don't have to fix anything today. You don't even have to know what needs to leave. Awareness is the first step because before we decide what needs to change, we need an honest picture of what's already here.

And maybe today, the only thing you need to know is, "My theater is full," or, "Hmm, I actually have more space than I realized," or maybe, " I've been letting people stand in the aisles for a very long time."

Whatever you notice, let it simply be information. No judgment, just honesty. Because tending to your capacity begins with telling yourself the truth about it.

Taking care of your capacity isn't a luxury. It isn't selfishness. It isn't weakness. It's how you stay present and responsive to your life. It's how you stay connected to yourself and to the people and the work that matter most to you. Our culture will keep telling you to do more, to need less, to push through, but you get to decide whether that's the story you wanna keep living.

Just because you can carry something doesn't mean you should, and just because you can squeeze one more thing into the theater doesn't mean there's actually room for it. Next time, we're gonna take this a step further, and we're gonna start looking at what's sitting in those seats by asking a different question: "is this giving me energy or is it draining it?"

Not so that we can eliminate everything difficult from our lives, but so that we can get more honest about what our lives are actually asking of us energetically.

Until then, take a look at your theater, honor the seats that you have, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

Most of us don't just fear disapproval — we preemptively manage it. In the words we soften, the hedges we add, the apologies we offer before anyone has even reacted. In this episode, we explore disapproval tolerance — the ability to stay anchored in yourself while being imperfectly perceived — and why it shows up both before and after the courageous act. Drawing on Tara Mohr's research on the language of self-diminishment, a personal story of holding steady when disapproval actually arrived, and the yoga principle of sthira, we'll look at what it means to stay rooted in your own truth even when someone else's reaction is trying to pull you off center. Plus a grounding practice using the four corners of the foot to help you feel what disapproval tolerance actually feels like in your body. Because someone else's discomfort isn't evidence that you've done something wrong. Sometimes it's simply evidence that you've honored what you know to be true. 

Transcript:

Have you ever had something important to say, but before you even said it, you were already making edits? Already softening it, already rehearsing how to phrase it just right so that they wouldn't be upset, already preparing your apology for the reaction you hadn't even received yet? Maybe you added a "just" to the front of it.

"I just wanted to say..." Maybe you opened with something like, "I could be wrong, but..." or, "I'm sorry to bother you, but..." Or maybe you talked yourself out of saying anything at all. And then there are other moments, they may feel more rare, where something in you just holds, where someone expresses disappointment or frustration or tries to make you feel guilty for a choice you made, and instead of collapsing, you stay.

You don't know exactly where it comes from, but something in you doesn't move. Both of those experiences, the preemptive editing and the unexpected steadiness, are telling you something about disapproval tolerance, and today we're gonna explore both. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 12.

Many of the women I work with tell me they're afraid of visibility, afraid of being seen, of putting themselves out there. But when we go a little deeper, what they're actually afraid of isn't visibility itself. It's what visibility might cost them. Someone misunderstanding them, someone judging them, someone being disappointed, someone pulling away.

And underneath all of it is something really human. The fact that we are wired for connection. Disapproval feels threatening because on some level it always has been, and so we learn to avoid it. Of course we did.

So here's how I've come to think of it. Disapproval tolerance is the ability to stay rooted in yourself while being imperfectly or even painfully perceived. It's not the ability to stop caring what anyone thinks. That's not the goal, and it shouldn't be. Disapproval tolerance is the ability to remain connected to your own truth even when someone else's reaction feels like it's trying to pull you off center.

Disapproval avoidance shows up before anyone has even reacted, and disapproval tolerance comes in after they have. So let's look at both.

The first place disapproval avoidance shows up is in our language long before anyone has actually disapproved of us. I wanna credit Tara Moore's work in her book Playing Big for this teaching because it really helped me understand how this shows up for us.

Think about how many times you've started a sentence with, "I just." "I just wanted to check in. I'm just wondering. I just think maybe..." Or something like, "You know, this might be a silly question, but..." Or, "I'm no expert, but..." "I could be wrong, but..."

Tara Moore talks about these kinds of phrases as hedges. They're ways that we soften or qualify what we're saying. And once you start listening for them, you may be surprised by how often they actually show up in your own talk. They're preemptive apologies for taking up space, attempts to soften the blow of our own voice before anyone has even had a chance to react.

What's happening underneath all of that softening is this: our nervous system is trying to manage a disapproval that we haven't received yet. It's running a prediction that they may not like this and then editing accordingly.

And it connects directly to what we talked about in episode nine with congruence. When you hedge and soften and pre-apologize, your inner truth and your outer expression aren't matching, so you're showing up in incongruence, in real time, in your own words. Disapproval tolerance is what allows you to come back to a congruent state.

And then there are moments when disapproval actually arrives, when someone expresses frustration or disappointment or tries to guilt you into a different choice.

So I wanna share a story from my life here. Years ago, in my early 20s, I was managing a hair salon, and one of the owners had been training me for about a year, and looking back, I think she really had plans for me to eventually take over so she could step away.

But I had reached a point there where I felt like I learned all I was gonna learn, and an opportunity arose for me to become a sales rep for a beauty supply company. Something that felt really exciting and growth-oriented and more aligned with an adventure of getting out of one building all day long and exploring what the world had to offer.

So I interviewed, and I got the job, and then I had to make the call to my boss. I already had a really strong feeling that she was gonna be unhappy with my decision. I thought about how to soften it, how to phrase it, how to make it easier for her, but eventually, I just had to pick up the phone and tell her.

And she was definitely upset. She let me know very clearly that she felt like I was letting her down, that she had invested in me, and that I owed her. And the more she talked, something in me became more and more steady.

I remember sitting down on my bed in my little apartment and saying something to her along the lines of, "I am so grateful for everything that you've taught me, and I'm really sorry that you feel that way, but I am not responsible for making you happy or obligated to stay because you don't like my decision. I am responsible for making the decisions that feel best for me and for making myself happy."

I wasn't unkind, I wasn't aggressive, but I didn't collapse. I didn't over-explain, and I didn't take responsibility for her reaction. Honestly, I have no idea where that rootedness came from in that moment. I wasn't working with any framework. I didn't have language for disapproval tolerance, but something in me recognized that she was trying to make her disappointment my responsibility, and I knew somewhere deep inside that I wasn't responsible for it.

What surprised me most wasn't that she was upset. I expected that. What really surprised me was that I could survive someone else's disappointment without abandoning myself. I could stay in that discomfort, and that's probably why I remember that experience so clearly, because I was surprised by that in myself.

Someone else's discomfort isn't automatic evidence that you've done something wrong. Sometimes it's simply evidence that you've honored what you know to be true for you.

What I've come to realize is that both of these moments are asking us the same question, "Can I stay connected to myself when approval isn't guaranteed?"

Before we speak, we often try to manage someone else's reaction before it even happens. And after we speak, we often feel responsible for managing the reaction that we do get.

Either way, our attention leaves us. It goes outward to what they might think, how they might feel, whether they're okay, whether they still like us, if they're disappointed.

And somewhere in all of that, we quietly stop asking the only question we actually have control over, "Am I still connected to myself, to my truth, to what is right for me?" And that's the real practice. Not convincing everyone to understand you, not eliminating the fear, not making sure that everyone else approves. Simply staying with yourself.

Because someone else's feelings are not yours to manage. I'm gonna repeat that. Someone else's feelings aren't yours to manage. Their feelings matter. They deserve compassion, but their experience is not yours to carry. Your responsibility is to tell your truth as kindly and clearly as you can, and their responsibility is to manage what they choose to do with it.

This is disapproval tolerance. Not hardening yourself against other people's reactions, not pretending you don't care. Simply remaining connected to yourself while allowing someone else to have their experience.

Yoga has a beautiful word for this capacity, Sthira. It means steadiness. Not rigidity or stubbornness, just steadiness. The kind of stability that doesn't require life to become easier for you to remain rooted. The kind of stability that lets you stay connected to yourself while the world around you is having its own experience. And the beautiful thing about Sthira is that it can be practiced. It can be built. It's like a muscle you can strengthen, not through willpower, but through building evidence.

Every time you say the thing without the hedge, you build evidence. Every time you hold your ground when someone pushes back, you build evidence. Every time you let someone be disappointed without making it your responsibility, you build evidence. Evidence that you can handle being imperfectly perceived, evidence that disapproval doesn't destroy you, evidence that you are safe enough to be seen as you actually are.

And over time, your nervous system begins to experience and expect something different. It begins expecting that you'll stay with yourself, that you can maintain, that you can regulate. And slowly being yourself starts to feel safer than performing for approval.

Okay, so let's bring this into the body because disapproval tolerance isn't just a mindset, it's a somatic experience. And before we can stay rooted in ourselves emotionally, it helps to know what feeling rooted feels like in our physical bodies.

So if you're able, I invite you to come to a standing position. Place your feet about hips width apart, and begin by bringing awareness to your feet. You can do this standing or seated. With standing, you're gonna be able to feel the pressure just a little bit more.

Press down into the knuckle where your big toes meet your foot, and then press down into the knuckle where your little toes meet your foot. Now press down into the inside edge of each heel, and then the outside edge of each heel.

Feel all four points connecting you to the support beneath you. Now gently plant the pads of your toes into the floor without gripping too hard. See if you can lightly lift through the center of your foot, through your arch, creating a sense of rootedness, support, and spaciousness. And take a long, slow, full breath in and out here.

Now, once your feet are rooted, imagine that you're trying to gently slide your feet away from one another, pressing out without actually letting them move, and you should feel your legs engage as you do this.

Feel the strength that begins to rise up from the ground. This isn't rigidity. This is rootedness. It's Sthira in your body.

Now stay here. Keep that feeling in your legs, in your feet. Feel the ground beneath you. Now bring to mind a situation where maybe you edit yourself, where you soften your message, you pre-apologize for your own voice. Or a moment where someone has expressed disappointment in you and you felt yourself start to collapse.

Notice what happens inside you as you bring that moment to mind. There could be a tightening, an urge to shrink, a feeling of uncertainty. You don't need to do anything with it. Just become aware of it.

And now come back to your feet. Press into all four corners. Gently lift through the arches. Feel the quiet strength as you're pressing your feet away from each other even as they're rooted. Feel that strength rising from the ground up within you.

So take one more slow breath here. And from this place, rooted in yourself, ask, "What would it feel like to speak from here?" Not harshly or defensively, just honestly, as yourself.

You can imagine that situation that you've already experienced being rooted here, or you can envision a future experience. You're building the muscle memory to come into this rootedness anytime you need it. That's the practice. And every time you return here to your feet, to your breath, to this quiet steadiness that is available within you, you're teaching your nervous system something new- that you can stay connected to yourself even when someone else doesn't approve.

Disapproval tolerance isn't about convincing everyone to agree with you. It isn't about becoming someone who never cares what other people think. It's about becoming someone who no longer abandons herself in order to avoid someone else's discomfort. Whether that shows up as dropping the hedge before you've spoken or holding steady when someone tries to make their reaction your responsibility, the practice is the same.

That's disapproval tolerance. And every time you practice it, you become a little more free. So until next time, feel your feet, trust your truth, stay rooted in yourself, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

Most of us don't struggle because we don't know enough. We struggle because living what we know costs something. In this episode, we explore what courage actually is — not fearlessness, but the commitment to act when there is a possibility of loss. Drawing on Drew Dudley's definition of courage and the yoga philosophy concept of abhaya, we'll look at what you're really afraid of losing, what staying small is quietly costing you, and why courage is really just self-trust in motion. Plus the slingshot theory — what happens when you commit before the doubt can catch up — and a practice using abhaya mudra to rehearse courage in your own body. Because courage isn't proof that you're fearless. It's proof that something matters more than your fear. 

Transcript:

In my 20s, I made a decision, and after I committed to it, all the doubts came rolling in. I was working in sales at the time, and I decided to move to Atlanta from Memphis, where I was living, to take over a sales territory there. I didn't have a community waiting for me. I knew exactly two people there, and I was taking what felt like a really big risk.

But something in me said it was time for a change. I saw the potential of living in a brand-new city. The company that I worked for said yes, and before I knew it, I was committed to moving almost seven hours away. I told people, I made it real, and then I was flying through the air.

I don't know about you, but I have found that sometimes the only way to make a big, courageous move is to launch myself before fear gets a vote. I call it the slingshot.

When you slingshot yourself, you pull back, you take aim at something that feels true for you, and you let go before you can overthink it. And then you're already moving, and you have to trust yourself to figure out the landing.

Atlanta worked out, but honestly, even if it hadn't, I still would've learned a lot of important things about myself. The point isn't that things turned out with that move. The point is that I trusted what I knew deep down enough to act before doubt talked me out of it. And that's what today is all about, not the absence of fear, but living what you know anyway.

Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 11.

People often tell me they don't know what to do. But when we start talking, they actually do know. They know the conversation they need to have, they know the boundary that needs to be set, they know the decision that needs to be made, they know the dream that is waiting within them. They just don't yet trust themselves enough to live into it.

The knowing isn't usually the problem, living it is. Because living what you know almost always costs you something, and that's exactly where courage begins.

I love how Drew Dudley defines courage. He says, "Courage is a commitment to taking action when there is a possibility of loss." This view of courage makes it really tangible. It makes it real. It explains immediately why courage feels so uncomfortable, and of course it does.

Every courageous decision asks us to risk losing something. We risk losing approval, certainty, comfort, control. It may be an identity we've been living into, a relationship, a version of yourself that other people have come to expect.

When we can name what we're actually afraid of losing, our fear starts making sense, and that's very different from believing that our fear means we should stop.

But here's what courage also invites us to look at, the cost of not moving. Maybe staying where you are protects you from criticism, but it also costs you authenticity. Maybe staying protects you from disappointing someone else, but it also means disappointing yourself. Maybe staying feels safe right now, but over time, it quietly drains your energy, your creativity, your self-trust, and your joy.

There are really two questions worth asking here. The first is, what might I lose if I do this? What's at risk? And the second, and this one is really important to ask, is what is it costing me to stay here? Sometimes the greatest risk isn't in changing, it's in remaining the same.

Every courageous choice you make becomes evidence. Evidence that you can survive uncertainty. Evidence that you can disappoint someone else and still be okay. Evidence that your worth isn't dependent on everyone else's approval. Evidence that you can do hard things.

We don't build self-trust by thinking about courageous action. We build it by taking action one choice at a time. And that's why I see courage as self-trust in motion.

In yoga philosophy, there's a quality called abhaya, often translated as fearlessness, but not the fearlessness of someone who feels nothing. It's the fearlessness of someone who is rooted in something deeper than their fear. They're rooted in their values, their truth, their inner knowing. Abhaya isn't the absence of fear, it's what happens when something matters more than the fear. And that's what we're building here, not fearlessness, but rootedness.

Okay, so let's circle back to the slingshot for a moment. I think it's worth naming as a strategy. The slingshot is what happens when you commit before the doubt can fully arrive. You aim at something that feels true for you, you pull back, and you release before doubt gets a vote. And then you're already in the air, and you must trust yourself to figure out the rest.

It doesn't always look graceful. Sometimes you are terrified the entire way after you've said yes. Believe me. But you're moving, and movement, even imperfect, scared, uncertain movement, builds the evidence your nervous system needs to trust you.

Atlanta was a slingshot for me, just as many of the biggest and most important decisions of my life have been. And they weren't reckless. They were all rooted in deeper knowing. There's a difference. The slingshot works because you have tuned in to the knowing within you.

You are acting on something deeper than the fear of risk, and you're trusting yourself as you let courage handle the rest.

Courage is something we can practice, like building a muscle, and muscles are built through doing the reps. Instead of simply reflecting on courage, I invite you to rehearse it here for the next few moments.

So bring to mind something you've been knowing but not living, just something that's been quietly asking for your attention. It could be something like a habit that you know you want to change, but the risk of discomfort has stopped you.

Now I want to introduce you to a gesture from yoga, Abhaya Mudra. A mudra is a hand gesture. To do this mudra, all you'll need to do is bend your right elbow and raise your right hand so that it's up near your right shoulder with your palm facing forward and your fingers extended but relaxed.

Your left hand can rest palm up in your lap, or if you're standing, it can just hang by your side. This gesture has been used for thousands of years as a reminder to tap into the courage within. It's like you're taking an oath to yourself to trust your inner knowing and to take action even when it feels risky.

You are rooted, you are okay, you can do this. So go ahead and come into Abhaya Mudra and hold that right palm facing forward. Feel what it means to offer this to yourself. Feel the stable base beneath you, and take one slow breath.

And now out loud, or in a whisper if that feels better, I invite you to say, "I am going to..." And fill in the blank. Complete that sentence with the thing you've been knowing but not doing. With this mudra, you're making the commitment to yourself to step out in courage. So maybe say it again, a little stronger this time. I am going to... And notice what happens in your body when you say it out loud.

That activation you feel, that mix of fear and aliveness, that's courage. That's what it actually feels like. It's not always calm. It's not always certain. But it is fully alive. So that's your rehearsal, and every time you rehearse it, you're building the muscle. You're becoming someone who acts on what she knows. Rehearse it as many times as you need.

Courage isn't proof that you're fearless. It's proof that something matters more than your fear, and you are willing to take the risk for yourself. The slingshot works because you've already tapped in to your inner knowing, and now courage is what carries you into the living it. Not perfectly, not without fear, just forward.

Next time, we're gonna talk about what happens when you take that courageous step and someone else doesn't like it. Because disapproval tolerance, the ability to stay anchored in yourself when approval isn't guaranteed, that's its own practice. And it's one worth building.

Until then, trust what you know, and then let courage carry you. Raise your right hand, commit to yourself, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

Insight alone doesn't change our lives — integration does. In this episode, we explore the difference between offloading our difficult experiences and truly metabolizing them. We'll look at why the instinct for relief is human and necessary, and why it becomes a problem when it's the end of the process rather than the beginning. Drawing on the yoga philosophy of tapas — the transformative heat of difficult experience — we'll explore what becomes possible when we stop trying to escape the fire and start trusting what it's doing. Including a real story of unexpected job loss, creative possibility, and the wisdom that only became visible on the other side. Because you may not see how an experience is shaping you while you're in it. But something is always taking form.

Transcript:

In the last episode, we talked about congruence, about becoming more fully yourself and bringing the way you live into greater alignment with what you know is true for you. But knowing what is true for you and actually living from that truth are not always the same thing.

You can understand why you keep falling into a certain pattern. You can recognize where it came from. You can even know exactly what you want to do differently and still find yourself doing the same thing again. I know, because I've definitely experienced that more than once.

Insight matters, but insight alone doesn't always change us. At some point, what we understand has to become part of how we live. It has to be integrated. And integration doesn't always happen the moment we have the realization. Sometimes life gives us an experience that asks us to sit with what we know, practice it, and allow it to shape us over time.

The problem is that when an experience feels painful, disappointing, or really uncomfortable, most of us don't immediately think, "I wonder how this is shaping me?" We just wanna feel better.

So today I wanna talk about what we do when we're uncomfortable, the difference between offloading and integrating, and what can happen when we stay with an experience long enough to discover the wisdom inside it. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 10.​

When something painful happens, a disappointment, a conflict, a loss, a moment that knocks us sideways, our nervous system naturally wants one thing: relief. And that makes complete sense.

We are wired to move away from discomfort. So we do what humans do. We replay the conversation trying to make sense of it. We overthink. We stay busy. We jump into fixing mode, or maybe we scroll. We try to make the feeling stop.

And none of that makes us bad. It simply makes us human. These are all attempts to reduce emotional pressure, and sometimes they help us get through really difficult moments.

But we must recognize that relief and transformation are not the same thing. Relief isn't the problem. Sometimes relief is exactly what our nervous system needs. The problem is when relief becomes the end of the process. When we discharge the discomfort but never return to listen for what it has to teach us.

Brené Brown uses the word offloading to describe what happens when we try to discharge uncomfortable emotions without really processing them, and I wanna take that a little bit deeper.

Offloading isn't only about venting or deflecting. It can also look incredibly productive. We're thinking about it, talking about it, analyzing it, trying to understand it, but underneath all of that activity, our nervous system is still asking one question: "How do I stop feeling this?"

Integration asks something entirely different. It asks, "What is this experience trying to teach me? How do I want this to shape me?" And that shift from how do I escape this to what is this doing in me changes everything. Because instead of trying to get rid of the experience, we begin allowing it to change us.

And that's where tapas comes in. In yoga philosophy, tapas is one of the niyamas, the personal practices that support our growth. It's often translated as discipline or effort. But in Deborah Adele's beautiful book, The Yamas and Niyamas, she teaches tapas as the transformative heat of practice that is shaping us, the fire that burns away what no longer serves and forges something new.

I love to teach tapas through the lens of resilience. It makes me think of the Japanese saying, "Fall seven, rise eight." Not giving up on yourself- taking one more step even when you cannot see where it leads. A quiet determination to find the value even in hard things that you live through. Especially in the hard things.

Difficult experiences are shaping us, and integration allows us to participate in what we become because of those experiences.

The practice of tapas isn't pretending it doesn't hurt. It's in trusting that the heat is doing something and staying connected to yourself as you discover what that something might be. Offloading tries to escape the heat. Integration learns how to work with it.

I feel like real examples from real life are very helpful, so I wanna share something from my own life here because I feel like that illustrates this better than anything I could teach abstractly.

Several years ago, I asked my employer if I could move to part-time in the job that I had, and they told me no. So I did what I felt like I needed to do. I began interviewing at other places, and I actually accepted a new position. So I gave my notice at the job I had been in, and I watched them hire my replacement.

I was ready to move on, I felt good about my decision, and then about a week before I was supposed to start the new job, I got a call. The position was being put on hold, and I no longer had a job. I felt really desperate. I felt confused, disappointed, scared, lots of things. I couldn't make sense of it, and I really wanted to fix it, to outrun it, to do anything to stop the swirling emotions I was experiencing. That was the desire to offload it.

But I couldn't change the situation, and so ultimately I had to sit in it. Later, I could clearly see that that job would have been a terrible fit for me. I would have been really miserable there. And what felt like a door slamming in my face became part of the fire that shaped and redirected me. It actually cleared a path that I couldn't see yet.

After I spent some time sitting with the fear and the disappointment and the confusion, I actually began to get creative, and I pitched an idea that ultimately created a job that I had for years. And I really enjoyed that job.

I couldn't see or integrate that wisdom while I was caught in the desperation to make everything okay again. The heat had to do its work first, and I had to remain present enough to respond when a different possibility appeared. That's what integration can look like from the inside, messy and disorienting, and eventually clarifying.

When we offload an experience, the story stays centered on what happened, what went wrong, what should have been. When we integrate it, something shifts. The experience doesn't disappear, but our relationship to it changes.

It becomes something that shaped us, something that clarified what we value, something that showed us we could survive what we thought we couldn't.

The most powerful question I know for this is simply asking, "What do I know now because I lived through this?" Not because what happened was good, not because you chose for it to happen, but because when you allow yourself to be shaped consciously by your experiences, you can gather wisdom even from a path you never would have chosen.

And that wisdom, once integrated, it's yours. It becomes part of who you are. You carry it forward with you. It changes how you understand yourself, the choices you make, and the way you show up.

I want to invite you into a simple reflection. Bring to mind a recent experience that may not have gone the way you hoped, just something that left you disappointed or unsettled or wanting to make that feeling go away.

Take a breath and notice how you were relating to that experience. Were you replaying it in your mind, trying to explain it, trying to fix it or outrun it? Just notice without judgment, bringing it into your awareness.

Now notice what happens in your body as you bring that experience to mind. Is there an area that feels tight or tender or wobbly? Can you place a hand there and offer yourself a little support?

Now ask yourself, what might be possible if I didn't have to rush away from how this feels? And take another breath. What might this experience be shaping in you? And how do you wanna participate in that shaping?

I'm not asking you to force an answer or find a silver lining here. Just allow those questions to simmer in the back of your mind and see what arises.

Sometimes the wisdom arrives immediately. Sometimes it comes later. Just let it be there. You don't have to see the whole shape yet to trust that something is still taking form.

I don't believe healing is about never having difficult experiences. I think it's about becoming someone who knows how to meet those experiences differently. Someone who knows when to seek relief and when to return and listen more deeply. Someone who can stay connected to herself while the heat forges wisdom. Because that's where transformation happens, not when life stops being hard, but when our relationship with the hard things begins to change.

And eventually, living from that wisdom will ask us to step into courage, and that's exactly where we're headed in the next episode.

Until then, ask yourself, "What do I know now because I lived through this?" Carry that wisdom with you, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com

Summary:

Have you ever had the feeling that your life looks good on the outside but doesn't quite feel like you? In this episode, we explore congruence — what happens when your inner experience and your outer expression begin to match — and why so many of us learned to live in the gap between who we are and who we think we have to be. Drawing on the yoga principle of satya, we'll look at why the body cannot lie, what incongruence actually costs us, and how embodiment is really just congruence in action. Plus a practice using the human body compass to help you begin hearing your own inner truth — one yes, one no, one honest moment at a time. Authenticity isn't about discovering who you are. It's about remembering.

Transcript:

Have you ever had the feeling that you're living a life that looks good from the outside, but somehow doesn't quite feel like you? Maybe you've said yes when everything within you was screaming no. Maybe you've smiled when you were really hurting. Or maybe you've become so good at meeting everyone else's expectations that you've lost touch with your own.

Most of us know what it feels like to live disconnected from ourselves. And we usually think the answer is to become someone better, to learn more, to heal more, to improve more. But what if the real work isn't in becoming someone else? What if it's becoming more fully yourself?

That's what today is all about. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number nine.

Congruence is what happens when your inner experience and your outer expression begin to match. When what you feel, what you value, what you believe, and how you actually show up in your life start telling the same story. Congruence isn't perfection, it's alignment. It's living in a way that reflects what is true inside of you.

That's what all of this work that we've been doing is pointing us toward. Not becoming someone new, becoming more fully yourself.

What's worth understanding is that most of us weren't taught congruence. We were taught how to adapt. "Be nice. Don't rock the boat. Don't be too much. Don't be too loud. Don't disappoint anyone. Fit in."

And many of those messages helped us to survive. We've talked about that through the radiant compassion process, how our adaptations were intelligent, protective, and made complete sense given where we came from. But somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, "What feels true for me?"

And we started asking, "What will be accepted?" Living in that gap between who you truly are and who you think you have to be is exhausting. And that exhaustion is also information. If you've been feeling tired lately, it might not only be because you're doing too much. It may also be because you're carrying too many versions of yourself.

One of the reasons so many people feel chronically tired isn't because they're doing too much, it's because they're carrying too much. They're carrying the weight of performing, of self-monitoring, of constant editing, of trying to predict how others will perceive them, of trying to become an acceptable version to others, of trying to avoid rejection.

And all of that takes enormous amounts of energy, energy that could be going toward creating and connecting and contributing to the world in your unique way. Energy that could be going toward actually living. Congruence is freeing, not because life gets easier, but because you stop spending so much of yourself and so much energy trying to manage how you're perceived.

You get that energy back, and you can start using it for something that feels real and right for you.

People often ask me what embodiment actually is. It's not necessarily a yoga pose or a breathing practice, though those can support embodiment. Embodiment is when who you are authentically shows up in how you move, in what you say, what you choose in how you live. It's not just having information, it's putting it into practice, living into it.

Now, in yoga philosophy, there's a concept called satya, and it's often translated as truthfulness. Most people think of satya as, , not lying to others. But there's a deeper practice here in not lying to yourself. Satya means not overriding what you know to be true inside, not silencing what your body is trying to tell you, not ignoring those whispers from your inner wisdom.

And here's something I've learned through all of my years of yoga therapy, and coaching, and mental health therapy, and simply paying attention to my own body. Your body is always giving you honest information. Before your mind catches up, before you find the words, your body is already communicating. It's speaking to you through that tightening in your chest or the heaviness in your stomach, through your total loss of energy, or through that sense of expansion.

It isn't that your body is telling you exactly what to do in those moments, but it is inviting you to become curious. It's offering you information in the way that it knows how. And the more we learn to listen without immediately dismissing or overriding that information, the more congruent our lives become.

Okay, I also want to honestly acknowledge something here. Becoming more congruent in your life isn't always comfortable. Every time we choose an action that is congruent for us, that aligns with our truth, when we show up out in our lives in a way that reflects how we feel inwardly, we become more ourselves.

And we risk something. We risk being misunderstood, disappointing someone, a relationship shifting, a boundary being tested. So congruence takes courage. And courage isn't the absence of fear, it's choosing how to show up in alignment with our truth anyway. We'll spend more time with courage in a future episode because it deserves that space. But for now, just know this, every small act of congruence is also an act of courage.

Okay, I wanna offer you something a little different in our practice today. We're gonna work with the body directly, because if congruence is about inner and outer matching, the body is where we wanna start.

So I invite you, if you're able, to stand up for a moment. If you're not able to stand up, sit up nice and tall. Whether you're standing or sitting, gently shake out your arms and your legs. Just loosen everything up for a few seconds. And then come to a comfortable stance with your feet about hips width apart. Take a slow breath here.

, I invite you to say out loud, "My name is," and say your name. And then just notice what happens. Some people notice themselves leaning slightly forward. Some notice themselves pulling back. Some notice absolutely nothing. There's no right answer here. We're simply becoming curious about how our body responds, how our body communicates our truth with us.

Now, try saying a name that isn't yours. "My name is," and a false name. And see what happens. Or you can simply alternate by saying, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," and, "No, no, no, no, no." Again, don't worry about getting the right response. Notice what the response from your body is. We're beginning to explore your body's compass.

, Bring to mind something in your life where you may have been sensing a quiet incongruence: a situation, a relationship, a pattern, a choice you keep making that doesn't feel quite like you. Find that tall posture and ask yourself a simple yes or no question about the situation.

And instead of immediately searching for an answer in your mind, pause. Notice what happens in your body. Maybe you notice tension, maybe ease, maybe resistance, maybe a sway or a lean, maybe nothing at all.

Whatever you notice is simply information. And that information may come in a whisper right now, and it may feel really easy to override. But the more you practice listening, the louder and the clearer that message gets.

, Most of us begin noticing these signals from our body after we've overridden them, and then eventually we begin noticing them during the moment. And with practice, we can begin noticing before. We can notice the signal from the body before we override it.

And that progression, the after- during- before- progression, that's embodiment. That's the practice.

Congruence isn't a destination you arrive at all at once. It's a practice. One choice, one moment, one small act of listening to yourself at a time.

Insight alone doesn't change our lives. We can have beautiful realizations and still find ourselves slipping back into those old familiar patterns. So I invite you to shake your body out, ask a yes or no question, and listen for that quiet truth that may arise.

In the next episode, we're going to explore the difference between offloading our experiences and truly integrating them, because transformation doesn't happen simply because we understand something. It happens when we begin living it. Until then, listen to your body, trust the information it's offering, and let your life shine.

Music Written and Performed by Rory Gardner

www.yourradiantsoul.com