Catherine Haylock Yoga

Discouraging thoughts don't show up when you're doing the small, familiar things. They turn up the moment something feels too big, when you're looking up at a mountain wondering how on earth you'll climb it.

The brain's first job isn't to make us happy, it's to keep us safe. It does that by trying to predict everything that could go wrong, and it reaches back to our past for the nearest old failure and holds it up as proof. “You couldn't then, so you can't now.”

The catch is the brain can't tell real danger from the merely unfamiliar, both signal threat. So at the exact moment something asks for courage, the voice gets loudest.

Those thoughts aren't a fault in you. They're the brain doing its job, a little too well.

Seeing that clearly is where the work starts, not with silencing the voice, but with no longer taking it at its word.

The work isn't to stop the thoughts. That's the misunderstanding that keeps us stuck for years, trying to think positively, trying to silence the voice, treating it as a personal failing every time it comes back.

It always comes back, that's what minds do.

The thoughts aren't the enemy. It's believing them that gets us into trouble.
A discouraging thought is only telling us we've reached the edge of our comfort zone, exactly where growth happens – if we let it.

We don't have to silence it, we just stop taking it at its word.

When I notice it, I tell my brain: “thank you brain for trying to protect me, but I'm ready to feel the discomfort and let it move through me.”

Simple, and it works. Every time you do it, you’re handing the brain new evidence: it's ok to feel discomfort, ok to let it move through, ok to change. Do it often enough and the voice eases on its own.

Where in your life is the voice talking you out of something right now?

When we manage to catch the mind in the act, even a second or two earlier than usual, we get a sense that we're not simply at its mercy. That we have some influence over what happens next.

Most of us already know how to calm ourselves down. We can do some breathing, sit for a meditation, go for a walk, and it helps while it's quiet.

The harder part is what happens once the quiet is gone. An email comes in, or a conversation goes somewhere we didn't expect, and we're straight back in the same loops, turning it over, working out how it might all go wrong.

What I've become most interested in over the last few years is what we can do in that moment, while life is still going on around us, so we don't get pulled in quite so far or for quite so long.

✨ That's what I want to explore in this workshop:
"Get out of your head – what to do when calming down isn't enough"

👉 Saturday 27th June, 10am – 11.30am UK time
Online, live, no recording, £15

There'll be some teaching, a little reflection, a few simple practices, and time to notice your own patterns. You don't need any experience with yoga or meditation to come.
It's a starting point, not the whole of the work, but ninety minutes is enough to feel that something else is possible.

Find out more here: https://catherinehaylock.com/mini-workshop-get-out-of-your-head/ 💛

We often hear: calm the mind, and everything follows.

But sometimes the mind is too full to be calmed directly.

A breathing exercise works in the moment, but the calm doesn't last. And "just notice your thoughts" feels like one more thing we're not doing.

In those moments, we don't need to calm the mind, we need to see it first.

Write a few sentences about what's actually going on.

Not the story, not how you feel about it, not a reliving of what happened. Just what's been triggered in you, without adding more narrative to it.

A few questions that can help:
✨ What am I telling myself right now about myself?
✨ What's fact, and what's the story my mind is adding to it?
✨ What am I assuming is true that I haven't actually checked?

Most emotions are triggered by thoughts. Getting a bit of clarity on the thoughts creates space. And once there's space, the simpler practices become possible again, a yoga nidra, a breathing exercise, nothing fancy.

Slowly slowly, calming the body starts to calm the thoughts too.

The reorder is small, but it can get you out of the loop.

There's a strange comfort in watching something emotional on TV.

You laugh, you cry and you feel the suspension. But the moment you switch it off, the emotions are gone.
Because they weren’t yours.

Borrowed feelings give us the impression of being alive without asking anything of us, it's safe.

Unlike our own emotions, which don't dissolve, which can't just be switched off, which we often don't want to feel.

You avoid stillness at all costs.

You know practices that could help, but you don’t do it.

I wrote about what actually helps, and what to try when the usual practices are out of reach.

It's my first piece on Substack 🤗

If you want to read more, sign up to my Substack.
https://substack.com/

So much of life happens on autopilot.
A thought appears.
An emotion follows.
And before we realise it, we’re already reacting.

Thursday evening 15th Jan, I’m teaching a free live session on noticing that moment more clearly.
To recognise the pause before reaction takes over.

🗓 Thursday 15 January
⏰ 7pm BST
💻 Live on Zoom (with replay)

You’re very welcome to join me. 🤗

⬆️ Link in bio to ‘save your spot’.