Lily Isobel

Sorry to break it to you, but life will never stop trying to pull us out of ourselves.

Regulation and groundedness are, of course, excellent resource points.

but….the more we hold that as the goal and this place we think we need get to, the more shame we end up carrying every time we do get pulled…

and we do
we will
….we’re human.

The body is always responding to life as life arrives. So this is where we want to focus: the return.

How quick can we notice when we’ve gone?
How long does it take us to come back?
Can we come back at all without fully losing ourselves?

When life throws something big, and it will, and it is currently for many of us…it’s throwing really big stuff… it’s ok that we won’t always have the capacity to meet it from steady ground.

Sometimes we’ll meet it from the four-year-old or from a place that learned to manage everything, learned to people please or from the old patterns that keeps telling us its safer than being in the present.

And that’s ok!
We want to focus on the return.
The real flex is coming back.

Finding those micro-awareness moments of “I’ve gone” and then work on coming back and anchor in.

:: with breath
:: with a hand on the chest
:: with feet on the floor

We will still get pulled, we will still spiral, we will still lose it some days but the return will stop taking days > hours> minutes, and then when you arent even noticing it starts happening all on its own.

Life will continue to test us in ways unimaginable, and we are not failing if we get rocked by it, we are simply always returning and trusting that self that knows the way home.

That is where the truth of who we are waits and where the real change happens.

Notes from a recovering intensity addict.

This topic gets me, because I have lived it deeply. My friends joke about it openly how I both love, and am always doing something really intense. And it’s true.

My nervous system has always sought it out because chaos and intensity have always felt normal for me. For a long time I was chasing to feel something ~ to feel alive ~ because I had mastered the art of dissociation.

It’s taken a long time to finally understand that what I was searching for in the next big experience was something the next big experience was never going to give me…

That aliveness already lived inside of me.

It was always there. I was just moving too fast and running too hard to feel it.

So this is what I build my work around now, and the spaces I create. Rather than pushing for release, it’s focussed on how to slow down and remember that there has never actually been anything missing.

The most profound healing and transformation I have witnessed both in myself and in others has come not from the biggest experience, but from coming back, again and again, to what already lives within us.

That is where the truth of who we are waits and where the real change happens.

At some point we all get to a place where what we’ve been living through, tolerating, allowing, cant be held in the same way anymore.

If you are waiting for the right moment, waiting for permission, waiting to be chosen, stuck listening to the internal chatter that has been holding you back, there is a point that comes where we start to say ~ no more.

This is your signal that capacity is starting to grow.

Our nervous system is wanting to expand so that we can begin to hold more of ourselves. and somehow with that comes with holding less of everyone else. Less fixing. Less tolerating. Less bu****it. Less time wasters. 

I don’t know if it comes with age or with experience or fatigue of having previously constantly oursourcing ourselves where we reach this point of ~ I can’t do this anymore.

This is the moment in which we are both expanding and meeting the edges of our patterns. 

Exapansion and contraction are one of the same ~ there is relationship between the two happening on all levels. One folds in to the other and then the space opens back up.

When we meet the edges of these patterns and become open to understanding them. When we sit with them. Learn from them. Integrate them. We stretch, and in that stretching, things start to fall away. That’s our capacity widening.

We dont have to push or try to force, we just realise at some point, there is more space underneath where there used to be the contraction :: holding :: clenching :: bracing :: defending :: armouring :: gripping. 

That’s not always a release or catharsis or even always a letting go. That’s not the goal.

And however that begins to land for you, whether it’s upholding a boundary that was impossible to do so before, and you might not even realise you’re already doing it.

Later you may realise that what we allowed ourselves to be drained by, simply doesn’t take up that space anymore. What used to pull us in somehow doesn’t anymore.

Beneath this, this stretching, this capacity expansion is simply a slowly drawing back in to our center :: in to truth :: and in to authenticity.

It’s the path of how we return home.

~ New moon in ta**us notes ~

Isn’t it curious how the mind loves to create detail and story?

We’re always sense making and filling in the gaps. Searching for face, story, meaning, the why, the how ~ projecting the story, making meaning, allocating identity and attaching emotion.

The mind cannot tolerate being with the unknown for very long. 

Yet we cause so much suffering through the speed at which we interpret ourselves, each other, and the world around us.

We don’t need to abandon meaning but can we let meaning coming from a deeper place? Beneath the patterns?

The body has always known the shape of things before the mind assigns its meaning. It’s nuanced. It is always sensing. Always feeling ~ physically, emotionally and energetically.

A return to the body builds our capacity to sense before analysing :: feel before interpreting :: and notice what lives in the body, before the mind attaches narrative. Coming back into relationship with the body as source of information.

And whilst this type of listening takes time, it is built through the willingness to keep returning, stretching our bandwidth to meet the edges (^capacity) and leaning into trust of what is alive within us.

Overtime, the gradual alignment between what we feel, sense, need, and how we choose to move through life, begins to emerge.

Are we ready to let the body answer first?
::
::
Can we pause and sense rather than jump to analyse? 

Can we sit in the unknown space and feel the essence, the qualities, the textures, without needing to know all the detail? 

Can we be curious enough to allow truth to emerge beneath the projection?

Hit a 🧡 if this lands.

May we all find space…

space where we can sit together
space where we can connect to one another

space so that we can gently learn how to return to ourselves
to our breath
our body
to the earth beneath us, and to sky above us

and in that space, may we remember how to be here

here together
alive
breathing.

~
Ceremony, breath and sound with at .h0me.

We’ve made the breath into a tool.
Which means we’ve stopped actually listening to it.

But the breath is already shaped by everything we’ve lived.

Every experience from birth influences how we breathe.
Every moment of holding.
Every time the body had to adapt.
Every time we abandoned. 
Every time something wasn’t fully felt or moved.
It’s all held there.

In the breath, in the body and in the biofield.

So when we go straight in trying to change the breath, we miss what it’s already showing us.

What if the practice isn’t to do anything to the breath, but to listen instead first?

To meet the breath where it is,
before trying to take it somewhere else.

For me, that’s where the work begins…
Not in technique or modality.

But in relationship.

Does this resonate with you?
Tell me in the comments if it does! 🧡🧡

Womb work isn’t soft or surface level.

It asks us to really, really start listening and witnessing the body and ourselves.

To notice where you’re abandoning and silencing yourself.
To notice where you disconnect.
To become aware of everything you’ve been holding.

It asks for honesty.

It calls you into deeper self inquiry.
Deeper into intimacy with ourselves.
Deeper into connection with the earth, with what’s unfolding around us, with each other.

It’s work that so many resist because it asks us to stay present.

It asks us to stop performing.
Stop pushing.
Stop overriding.

There is pain held in our wombs. So much pain. Grief, trauma, fear :: personal, ancestral, collective.

It’s no surprise that there is a feeling of being disconnected from our power.

This is the work we’re being asked to do now. To find our way back - back to the body :: back to the earth :: back to the ways that have long been forgotten.

So we can stand in our complexity, in the tension of it all, allowing all of the both/ands to exist.

This is a time to remember.

🌀 Return of the Womb returns on 2nd May 🌙🫶🏼❤️

Sele enquiry through the heart, womb and breath.

Cacao & blue lotus ritual • womb wisdom and cyclical living • somatic and embodied practices • self womb and abdominal massage • breathwork • rebozo holding • self enquiry • sharing

Tickets in bio and DM me or .divine.aura.doula for more info or questions. 🤎

SCENT OF THE SOUL

A 3-day immersion weaving ancestral plant and herbal medicine, ceremony, breathwork, somatics & embodiment.

This immersion explores both the practical and embodied aspects of herbal medicine and essential oils. You’ll learn about herbal actions and energetics, aromatic alchemy, essential oils, and edible cosmetics. You will also be guided and supported through breathwork, somatic practices, meditation, sound, and ceremony to support deeper connection with both the plants and yourself.

Working closely with Apothecary’s oils and herbal medicines, we will explore how plant wisdom is received through the body — via the nervous system, the breath, and the tissues — to support the physical, emotional, subtle and energetic.

📆 5–7 Feb (11am-5pm)
📍 Yoke Goa | Agonda | South Goa
🌿 DM for more details + registration

www.ygeiax.com
www.lilyisobel.com

.isobel_