Dear Choose Happy Community,

If you’ve been feeling exhausted, tense, or mentally drained, this teaching offers an important insight. Neuroscience shows that negative self-talk activates the same stress response as real physical danger. In other words, when we attack ourselves with our thoughts, the body believes it’s under threat. Energy begins to return when we notice the pattern and choose to stop. Self-kindness is not weakness—it’s a powerful way to restore vitality.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“They say that if a car is about to hit your body physically, that activates the same regions in the brain and the same cascade of stress responses that is activated by negative self-talk, like being about to be run over by a car, like in imminent danger of being run over by a car. Negative self-talk has the same consequences in your brain in terms of creating the stress response, in terms of creating sort of this, physical unease, but also emotional unease, but also mental unease. ”And so there’s a tremendous benefit, if I have been engaging in negative self-talk, to just say to myself, ‘I’m going to stop, I’m going to drop that.’

“And then also, this is really interesting as well. So one of the researchers, he doesn’t say that it’s negative self-talk, he says it’s self-attacking. He says like, that’s actually what you’re doing, you’re practicing self-attacking if you’re engaging in negative self-talk.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

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