THE SOUL PRACTICE Join Anne on this life-changing journey into your mind, body & spirit as she shares the science and steps of the SOUL Practice to Listen Deeply and Heal What Hurts.
Free your mind from the chaotic junk keeping you stuck in busyness, people-pleasing and playing small. Let go of shame, pain and old beliefs.
Explore how to tune into your body, where memories can influence your behavior in ways you don't realize.
Understand your old beliefs, patterns and habits with curiosity and compassion
and let them go….
Step into love. Love for yourself, your worthiness, your true self. Listen to your inner wisdom.
Feel the flow of Divine Love awakening your spirit and aligning you with your highest self.
Hear what is calling to you now - those wisps and dreams and visions - and allow your highest good to emerge, your new present and future to unfold.
Yes, yes and yes!
Discover your authentic self, let go of old beliefs and habits that hurt you, unleash the greatest power, purpose, peace and love you have inside.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. – Rumi
With Listening Deeply and the SOUL practice, dissolve those barriers to love and move towards the highest version of yourself here, now, today.
The SOUL Practice
At the end of this episode, Anne leads a 15 minute guided SOUL Practice.
S = sitting, settling and sifting through your thoughts
O = open-hearted awareness for your feelings, emotions and sensations in your body
U = understanding, leaning in with curiosity and compassion
L = letting go, love for you and divine Love
Practice Listening Deeply daily and allow SOUL steps to take you on your own life-changing journey.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Listening Deeply as a practice
We all have hurts. And amazingness inside.
By learning how to listen deeply to your true self, you can stop people pleasing, playing small and shrinking. You can blossom.
You are all three: mind, body and spirit.
You have a spirit that energizes and animates you.
Listening Deeply allows you to live at a much wider and deeper perspective so your life and your choices become much richer and more meaningful.
One of my favorite quotes from Gandhi is "Happiness is when what you think, say, and do are in harmony"
Feel the kind of love that feels warm, good, nourishing—that many of us growing up never experienced.
Listening Deeply has allowed me to cure my "love deficit"
Self-love is not arrogance, it's not pride. It's your birthright.
Shift your perspective. Instead of being in the midst of the chaos, become the observer.
Not only can you see a single thought, you can see your whole thought system.
Through this practice of Listening Deeply, you will become free to be who you really are.
The science of Listening Deeply
Most of us are so wired all the time. We don't even know what real rest is.
Slowing your breathing, enables your stress hormones to calm down. Your body enters a state called rest and relax, calm coherence, which is profoundly healing.
When you enter into a very deep kind of meditation, there's a chemical that can be released in your brain that creates this feeling of oneness, like a cosmic runner's high.
Your body holds memories. Not just your brain.
The stress response in your body can influence what you are thinking and how you're acting without you being aware.
Studies show that 90 to 95% of the time we are operating on autopilot.
Because of neuroplasticity, you can learn new habits. You can develop new grooves in your brain.
When you feel love, it changes the chemistry in your body, changes your outlook.
Let go of old beliefs
When your purpose, your power, your actions, all line up, you move you forward to get you out of living in the past and into living a future that you really want to live.
As you offload the old, you feel lighter, peppier, energized because you are directing your life—not your old beliefs, old experiences, old thought patterns, old crabby voices from your past.
You are not a victim of the past.
You are an active, aware participant in your own present and your own future.
Energy follows insight.
When you clear out the old and you get really focused on the new, good things start to happen,
You have power and choice.
Heal what hurts
Understand and investigate your thoughts and feelings. Lean in with curiosity and compassion.
How you see yourself today is shaped by what people told you in your past even years ago.
You are an adult and you can look back and you can say ouch, that hurt, no wonder I feel sad. That was a sucky thing that happened.
You can have compassion for yourself.
You are worthy of getting the help that you need and deserve.
What feelings need to be felt by you today?
You need to feel to heal.
What thoughts need to be listened to you today?
Be patient with yourself
Listening deeply is a practice. This isn't like a 15 minute once and done Eureka moment.
We are survivalists. We hold onto old behavior patterns because at a certain time in your life, they helped you and kept you safe.
Thank your thoughts and feelings for having the courage to come up and show you what you need to see.
Your worthiness, your graciousness, your smartness, your uniqueness is who you are. This is at the very center of your being.
You are what existed before those old crappy layers and voices started to take up residence.
Allow yourself to bathe in and receive that cosmic love.
Allow yourself to feel that you are part of this expansive cosmic universal flow that is pulling you towards your highest good.
Tune in to what is calling to you now.
By practicing listening deeply, the pathways in your brain will form and it will all get easier. You will come to know yourself.
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
[00:00:30] Listening deeply as a daily practice can change your life.
[00:03:00] Defining listening deeply.
[00:04:02] Research on the importance of connecting with your physiology. Your body holds memories.
[00:04:50] How the stress response in your body influences how you're acting.
[00:09:54] Listening deeply can be used to heal love deficits.
[00:10:30] Self-love is not arrogance, it's not pride. It's your birthright. And it's a game changer.
[00:14:10] The science behind listening deeply. Thanks to neuroplasticity you can learn new habits.
[00:15:00] Studies show that 90 to 95% of the time we are operating on autopilot. It's like we have this mind numbness. We're not even present.
[00:17:20] Slowing your breathing enables your stress hormones to come down. Your heart rate slows down, your body enters a state called rest and relax which is profoundly healing.
[00:18:26] The cat and the red dot
[00:19:00] We chase red dots all the time in our minds. We're chasing memories down memory lane. We're chasing worries into the future. We're chasing our to do list.
[00:19:50] The voice in our head
The SOUL Practice step-by-step
S = sitting, settling, sifting your thoughts
[00:24:50] S stands for getting settled. Settling your body, getting comfortable.
[00:25:20] setting aside 10 or 15 minutes.
[00:26:00] You might want to have a journal handy
O = open-hearted awareness
[00:28:40] O is for open hearted awareness. Creating an awareness of what you're feeling.
[00:31:27] Body scan.
[00:32:40] What feelings need to be felt by you today?
[00:37:20] Allow yourself to see yourself, allowing your old stories to unfold.
U = understanding with curiosity & compassion
[00:37:32] U is for understanding, allow yourself to investigate, to lean in with curiosity and compassion, to see what is behind your thoughts.
[00:40:10] Experts say you need to feel to heal.
[00:40:50] You can have compassion for yourself.
[00:42:30] You are worthy of getting the help that you need, the help that you deserve.
[00:45:10] You're not a victim of the past. You are an active, aware participant in your own present and your own future.
L = letting go, love and divine Love
[00:45:20] L is for letting go.
[00:48:00] When you get clear, when you clear out the old and you get really focused on the new, good things start to happen,
[00:48:27] You're not stuck. You have power, choice. Agency.
[01:03:08] You will know [01:03:10] what you need.
Quick SOUL recap
[01:04:00] S for settling down and sifting through your thoughts. O, for open-hearted awareness into what you are feeling. U for understanding, leaning in with curiosity and compassion, L for letting go of old beliefs and patterns. Holding yourself with love.
[01:04:50] SOUL Practice begins….
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BOOKS mentioned in the episode
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer
You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Hunter
So glad you are here. Thank you for listening.
xxoo Anne
More information at AnneAlexander.com
