Catch + Release

You know what’s so super cool?!  Catching yourself in the process of negative self talk and releasing it.  It sounds so easy, like yeah, I’m into that.  I’ll release the thoughts that aren’t serving me.

The tricky thing is the slippery slope that are our thoughts are not often shouted in our minds.  I think a lot of times our inner mean girl is more a whisper behind our back, literally.  A slow and steady whisper of disapproval, of shame and guilt, that we’ve learned to live and coexist with, but is toxic nonetheless.

For me, I generally have always felt mostly comfortable in my skin.  I’m grateful for my body and I’m grateful for my health.  I’ve pushed my body to the brink with soccer fitness tests all through collegiate and non glamorous semi-pro soccer life, 28 hour shifts in the hospital and unmediated vaginal deliveries of my babies.  These were moments I chose to believe in my innate inner power.  

The moments leading up to and afterward though....

• For the soccer fitness tests:
  • For years after I was done playing I would have anxious dreams in the summer months leading up to what would have been preseason that I wasn’t ready or fit enough... hadn’t trained enough.  
  • My unconscious was showing me that whether I had my cleat behind the starting line anxious and ready for the whistle to blow, and to perform once again, that I had accomplished this.  I was capable of this.  I could claim that I was able to complete these extremely rigorous physical feats.  
  • I could choose to thank my body and rest in this, enjoy what we had been through together instead of always be existing until the next time... always chasing (literally mentally/physically/emotionally) the next goal.  
  • I chose this picture from my Miami glory days to depict this.
• For the rigorous hospital shifts as a Physician
  • After those sleepless 28 hour shifts, I would awaken in the middle of the night at times sweating and replaying a code or critical care scenario as my mind was illustrating to me the need to process the trauma in my own terms as a human.  
  • To give myself credibility, peace and to claim that in that moment I gave everything of my talent, skill and compassion to that patient
• For the births of my babies
  • After the trauma of giving birth (and yes it is traumatic for both Mama and baby) I hold to that....even in its blissful and beautiful, raw and real state.  
  • I loved nothing more than those moments, and am stoked to share my birth stories with you all sometime.  
  • Literally, babies are physiologically wired to feel stressed and the trauma of birth so that they will cry and the air exiting their lungs will give way to the physiological miracle of their cardiopulmonary systems accommodating to extrauterine life.  I could completely go all scientist Anik the geek right now on you as my passionate clinical side is showing, but basically, the breathing clears their lungs of amniotic fluid and it shifts their cardiac circulation which was completely different in utero to one that is compatible with extrauterine life.  This is why Pediatricians are present at C-sections oftentimes as we need to remind the babies that they are born and to get a little feisty and breathe since they maybe didn’t get the memo being gently lifted from Mama’s body as opposed to forced to exit the vaginal canal which is stressful for all involved!  
  • The trauma of birth and the pressure is what intrinsically calls forth our inner Mama beast and that primal mode which knows how to intuitively push! I remember them asking me with my son Cruz if I could hold on pushing because my OB-GYN was on her way from the office.  I looked at the 1st year OB-GYN resident in the room and told her to gown and glove up because I was pushing, this baby was coming!  (My OB did wind up make it in time haha), but I knew that it was time to push and was listening to the nonnegotiable forces within my body.  
  • I had significant bleeding after both deliveries requiring transfusions and extensive tearing repaired with lots of sutures and with my first delivery the stitches weren’t even staying in my tissues because I was so swollen with giving birth so they just packed me with surgical gauze to absorb the continued bleeding and sent my upstairs to the postpartum floor.  
  • My body was not asking me, but demanding of me to validate all that she had just done and performed.  The heroic feat of co-creating life, nurturing and sustaining it and then giving every ounce of physical strength to bring my baby forth into extrauterine life and to reach down with my own two hands and pull them onto my chest.  
  • Both times I was proud of myself, but continued on into the next thing and the next and thinking when would I need to go back to work and how can I do all of this and all the things that occupied my sacred space.  
  • I wanted to stay in the moments with them, and I was in them, and yet the whispers were there.  They remained there in the shame I felt with my diastasis recti and being asked if I’m pregnant, even now 20 months after Cruz’s birth at times by others.  I’ve done pelvic floor therapy, yoga, consistent running, been exclusively plant based for 16 months now.  
  • I’ve completely overhauled the way I now reverently speak life and love into my body.  Admittedly, I initially did the above alterations to my lifestyle with an end game, expecting a result.  I would get back into a size 4 and weigh 133 pounds like in college.  I would rock a swimsuit with a baby on my hip living in Hawai’i like nobody’s business.  And chasing those ideals never served me.  
  • Now, I CHOOSE to honor my body and all it has done and the way it continues to show up for me.  I’m grateful my lifestyle being plant based, as  it provides me with mental clarity and energy like I’ve never experienced before.  I love knowing I'm decreasing inflammation in my body and allowing myself to enjoy the prosperity of my health.  
  • I run because it makes me feel good and I enjoy the harmony of my body accommodating to vigorous exercise.  I do yoga because it’s a way I drop into nurture mode and creativity, a way to honor my spirit.  I am connected to my pelvic floor muscles and all the ways our uterus, urethra, vagina and the surrounding anatomy and muscles support our way of life as females. And it’s fantastic.

It’s taken me a long time to tune into and hear the whispers. Now, I celebrate hearing them.  And I allow them so that I can expose them.  They still come.  I haven’t reached any kind of existential meadows where I’m consistently just speaking golden orbs of goodness into my life or anything.  I’m able to come from a place of neutrality, where rather than judging myself for the thoughts that arise, I get curious, fascinated even. And I allow them.  I recognize them and see them.  And then I ask if they’re serving me and why are they here?  What can I learn from them?  In what ways can I re-experience some event or trauma from my past to make peace and validate myself.  

What we RESIST WILL PERSIST.  I feel this so strongly, and in our emotional currents, this is never more true.  The waves of your emotions will continually wash up on your conscious shores that which you haven’t processed, dealt with or faced.  Not to punish you, but to heal you.  Not to re-traumatize you but to prosper you.  Not to offer you harm, but to bring you peace.  Not to put you into a state of fear, but to invite you to a state of freedom.

When you can release that your negative thoughts are bad and wrong and must be quickly dismissed, you will experience freedom.  You will begin to play in the meadows of your mind where all of your emotions are your teachers, and all have a place, all are meant to prosper you.

Your relationship to self will transform, and it will improve your maternal-infant or maternal-child bond as you will be demonstrating to them a healthy way of relating to self and it will be reinforced for your babies throughout their childhood as they watch and witness you being reverent to yourself.  You’ll exist with a lightness that comes from true self acceptance and reverence for your beauty.  Of life as a learning landscape and not as a space to grind and perform and make it to the next goal or body ideal or whatever carrot you’ve dangled out there.

Gaining this perspective is golden.  Releasing that which no longer serves you.

Subtracting to add.  Shedding to Grow.  

We all have limiting beliefs and stories we’ve long held and carried about ourselves that we haven’t challenged, which aren’t true, and which hold us back from living into our dreams and desires, from connecting with our future selves, and from leading our most prosperous lives.  

Abundance and prosperity and alignment with the universe so that all things, ALL THINGS are working out for our highest good is meant to be our default state, our birthright.  

To get to this intersection, we have to choose to cultivate the courage, the bravery, the vulnerability to let go of that which no longer serves us.  It brings fear because we’ve operated this way for so long.  It’s familiar.  But Mama, I’m here to offer that there is so much freedom on the other side of fear.

So. Much.

Start playing around and dancing around in your DNA to catch your thoughts.  Get fascinated.  And then release them if they no longer serve.  

Catch. Release.

Be reverent to your own soul.  Take good care of you.  Practice radical compassion for your gorgeous being.

Say no to things so you can say yes to your priorities.

Aloha,

-Anik