026 - Finding Fulfillment by Listening Within
How do you listen within? How do you begin to center yourself and hear the deeper messages trying to come from within you?
These are questions I have asked myself many times over the years. On my personal journey toward an authentic connection to my innermost self, I have taken many paths. Some were more difficult than others. Some were not as helpful as others. Some require little effort, and some require significant effort. On my personal journey, I realized the “right path” is not always linear or clear. Perhaps many of you are struggling to find the right path toward an authentic connection and cannot seem to find a path that feels aligned with your goal.
On today’s walk, I pull from my years of academic and experiential education to share with you a few ways to start this practice and navigate your journey toward an authentic connection with your innermost self by giving you some guidance that worked for me in the hope that the lessons I’ve learned on my journey to an authentic self will help you find the path to yours.
In This Episode
(01:18) - My journey to finding paths for tuning in to your inner voice
(02:43) - Listen within by learning how to listen through your body and to your body
(06:01) - Listen within by learning how to listen to and under your emotions
(11:18) - Listen within by learning how to listen to your heart
(17:14) - Listen within by learning how to listen to what needs to be expressed
(19:32) - Automatic writing helps you pour out your stream of consciousness and connect to your higher self
(21:48) - Circling gives you permission to sit with and express what needs to be expressed at that moment
(24:41) - You have to sink beneath the mind chatter.
Notable Quotes
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“What’s important here is to recognize that the body is always talking to us through sensations - through feelings, even those feelings of tension and stress. The body is trying to communicate with you and the body holds extraordinary intelligence and wisdom that it’s trying to bring to the surface. We’ve got to slow down long enough and bring our awareness to it. So to spend time to really begin to feel into whatever it is that is present within your body. To feel for where there is comfort and where there is discomfort; where there is ease and where there is strain. Where do you feel expanded and where do you feel constricted, whatever that might be. It might even be a little knot in your muscles. It might be a creak in your neck. It could be any number of different things. But just take time to scan the body and get present to what is there right now.”
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“The heart communicates best when it is in what is called a coherent state...meaning a natural, peaceful, balanced rhythm that allows our body to be in a more restorative and generative state of being…When we are in this state, there is a different level of fluid connection between the heart and the brain. They are coherent. They are in balance. And, therefore, they are communicating more fluidly and intuitively and not as many distractions are getting in the way. Which is why we wanna ask the questions in this type of a present state - a coherent state. So to ask questions like this: “what is it that you are truly longing for? What sorrow do you feel for the world, your family, or your communities? What joy or beauty or love do you feel for the world, your family, loved ones, or community? What do you wish for me to see, to feel, or to know? What is it that you know that I need most right now? What might most support me at this time?” And you can even ask your heart, “What would you ask of me? What would you have me do?” You can ask any number of questions of your heart that can take you deeper and deeper into your experience.”
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Luke (00:24):
Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart-centered guests each week, as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul and with something bigger than ourselves. Now let's go on this walk.
Hello there everyone, and welcome to On This Walk. We're gonna start dropping some little personal episodes as well as some learning episodes as we go throughout the course of our walk together. And one of those themes that if you've been tuning in throughout the kind of the journey that we've been on, one of the themes that you are probably familiar with at this point is myself and a lot of our guests continually bring you back to this idea of really listening within. How is it that we truly begin to start to center in and hear the deeper messages that are trying to come from within us, from within our heart, from within our soul, from within our intuition, and really begin to use that as a different form of guidance within our lives so that we can get into that depth to really connect to our innermost self, that inner teacher, inner voice as we have also talked about it as.
And so I wanted to take today's time together to actually share with you a few ways that you could start this practice of really beginning to listen within. These are starting points, a lot of these for me have arisen out of meditation and my journey with meditation in a lot of different forms. So not just meditation through the forms of things like transcendental meditation or mindfulness meditation, but also through somatic work, also through some breath work. It's also through a lot of things I learned in beginning to study things like neuroscience, polyvagal theory, something I'm gonna talk about with the HeartMath Institute as well. So this is kind of multifaceted as to all the different ways that my meditation practice have informed how it is that I'm able to listen and tune in to that inner voice. And so I'm gonna offer you these ways for you to begin to build this practice.
Now, as I mentioned these ways, what I also wanna bring to your attention is that there may be paths that I'm gonna go into that are gonna feel more resonant to you or feel more aligned for you to start with. Perfect. Use that as your access point, use that as your starting point so you don't have to use all four of these. They're not one is better than the other. It's truly whatever it is that begins to open things up and work for you, I'm bringing them to you in a way that I learned as kind of a progression for myself of what worked. And so I wanna offer it to you in that regard. So the first, the first way of really beginning to listen within that I want to invite you to try is to listen through the body. And so what's important here is to recognize that the body is always talking to us through sensations, through feelings, even those feelings of tension and stress.
The body is trying to communicate with you and the body holds extraordinary intelligence and wisdom that it's trying to bring to the surface. But we've gotta slow down long enough and bring our awareness to it. So to spend time to really begin to feel into whatever it is that is present within your body to feel for where there is comfort and where there is discomfort, where there is ease and where there is strain, where do you feel expanded and where do you feel constricted, whatever that might be. It might even be a little knot in your muscles, it might be a creak in your neck, it could be any number of different things. But just take time to scan the body and get present to what is there right now. The next part of this is don't try to change it. So this is not about trying to release that tension or release that pressure right now.
We'll get there. It's gonna be a actually a natural byproduct of just going through this process, but for now it's actually about just being with whatever is there, so that once you find a spot such as that tension that might be in your neck or that pain that might be in your knee, as you bring your awareness to it, see if you can begin to sense even more of its qualities. So with your eyes closed, begin to feel into does this spot that I am noticing, that I'm bringing my awareness to, does it have a shape? Does it have a color? Does it seem to move in any way? Does it vibrate? Does it pulse? Maybe it has a temperature. Is it cool or is it warm? And just use your imagination to feel for any other qualities that may be there and to just be with whatever it is that begins to surface, to notice it, to witness it, to begin to acknowledge what it is that's beginning to surface.
And as you have begun to notice and bring your awareness to whatever these qualities happen to be, then what you're gonna do is to begin to see what messages start to arise so that once you're in connection with these different parts, you've noticed the different qualities almost as if you were sitting across from them or sitting with them as they are within you. It then gives you that chance to say, well, what is it that you're trying to draw my attention to? What is it that you wish for me to notice? If there is tension there, what is it that is creating this tension that I might be able to help you with? Maybe just simply what is it that you need or how is it that I can nurture what is being brought to my awareness or attention through this spot? Begin to create those types of questions as well as types of dialogue.
And that will allow the messages of what your body is sensing to begin to rise up in you. And so this is about listening through the body and listening to the body as you do so. Now, the next way that I want to introduce you to is listening to and under your emotions. Okay? So listening to and under your emotions because all too often we let our emotions just completely flood through unnoticed or certainly unconsciously, or we get stuck in them and we get stuck in attached to the narratives that those emotions want to attach us to, right? That they want us connected to and caught within that narrative that's running over and over and over again. Well, so instead what we wanna do is we want to attend to our emotions, meaning we wanna bring our attention, we wanna bring our awareness to them and observe them to be able to truly acknowledge them and understand maybe a bit of what's really going on underneath the surface of them.
So to do that, begin to number one, feel for the emotion that's there and you can identify it. You can label the emotion just to place a name on the emotion that you are connecting to at that particular moment in time. You can also begin to see where is this emotion rising from within your body? Because very often emotions feel like they come up within us as well as then through and out of us. So where is this emotion? Does it feel like it's really kind of stuck in your head? Probably not actually an emotion then, but it's sometimes it happens. Or do you feel like something is like right here inside of your throat? Do you feel like something is rising up from your stomach or from your gut or from your solar plexus? Is it coming all the way up from your toes?
Where does that emotion seem to rise up? This allows you to get more and more present with the emotion and now feel, as that emotion rises, feel for what else is there too meaning to feel for what other emotion and feelings are also with the first one that presents, because rarely do we only have one emotion at any given experience. Now there is, yes, there is going to be a dominant emotion, the one that is drawing most of our attention as to what wants, you know, what wants to be noticed inside of our field. But more often than not, the first or the predominant emotion that's there is actually laying on top of other more subtle emotions. One of the examples is that for me, and I know for many individuals that I have coached and guided at different times, is that anger was very often something that covered up grief or sorrow or even feelings of powerlessness or helplessness.
Anger was their defense mechanism. It was one of the things that came out to try to take back control of a given situation when they didn't feel like they had that control. And so being able to look underneath the dominant emotion and just begin to feel for what else might be there. So now, see if you can just let these emotions begin to move around as however they need to within you, but without creating or attaching to any story. Because our mind wants to connect a story and narrative to any of the emotions that we feel. Part of our mind is it's the sense maker and it wants to assign meaning to absolutely everything. And whenever it feels something going on inside of your body, then it wants to create a story to let you know this is why you're feeling this. And it, it gives you a narrative.
But unfortunately, that narrative very often will trap you inside of it because it draws you into the details, it draws you into the context. And the next thing you know, that's the only thing that you can see. It's the only explanation that you have is opposed to allowing things to begin to arise within you more organically, more naturally, or more intuitively. And so be aware that the narrative wants to attach the who, what, and how and why of whatever it is that you happen to be feeling. It wants to give you the explanation for the moment if you wanna hold that off and just feel, like physically feel the way in which the emotions are moving through you. And instead, do your best to continually let the story go and return to the emotion and how it feels in the body. You may need to do this a whole bunch of times.
You may need to keep bringing your attention back and back again to the emotions and the feelings that are there. And that's okay. The mind does that, it wanders, it tries to attach things as we just talked about, but just keep building that muscle of refocusing your attention on the emotion, the emotions that happen to be there. Now, once you have been present with them, once you have created a space to feel them beginning to move around, now you can begin to interact with them a little bit differently. And it's the same thing. Now you can begin to dialogue and you can begin to ask questions of the emotions that are there. So it may be things such as, what is it that you're really looking to draw my attention to at this time? What are you hoping that I'll become aware of? What is it that I haven't been seeing or attending to that you are raising my attention at this time?
So you'd begin to interact with your emotions and even ask them, what's underneath this? What is it that maybe you're covering up? What is it that you don't want me to see? These are all questions that will lead you deeper into the messages that are actually underneath and hidden within the emotions that you are experiencing. Now, let's talk about another way, a third way. And this is about listening to your heart. This is one, I will be honest with you, it took quite a while for me to be able to, to do this. For me, my gateway needed to be in through the body because it, a) moved me out of the mind and it gave me something very focused and physical to be able to look at and focus on and hold my attention. I then was able to learn how to use that level of focus to work with my emotional state and the different emotions that I was going through at any given time.
But ultimately, when I started to drop in more deeply, it was the messages and the intuition that I was receiving from the heart that had and held some the most profound wisdom and direction and guidance for my life. And so this is not, when I say listen to your heart, this doesn't mean to just go with whatever you really want kind of thing. That's not what we're talking about. As I mentioned, this takes time to be able to really consciously engage and understand the wisdom that your heart holds and is trying to express for you and to you. So how we get there is through a few paths, but I wanna mention two. And what that does is, number one is what do we need to do? So the first path is what do we need to do, which is actually through the body to connect to the heart.
And then we need to begin changing our questions and the dialogue that we can get ourselves into. The heart communicates, just as it functions, it communicates best when it is in what is called a coherent state, meaning a natural, peaceful, balanced rhythm that allows our body to be in a more restorative and generative state of being. The HeartMath Institute, which is where I learned so much more about this, has been pioneering this work of heart coherence for decades. And it's a great resource for diving in much deeper into what I'm beginning to share with you guys. So HeartMath Institute is a great resource to check out, but essentially we can use multiple methods, and I'm gonna talk about breathing and gratitude to be able to move ourselves out of our nervous system's sympathetic or stress response, and into our parasympathetic system or regenerative response. And we do this by a few different methods.
But first, and the easiest and most effective way to make this shift into a coherent state, into your parasympathetic system is simply through conscious or mindful breathing. Because our breath actually is connected to our nervous system response. And so when we take a conscious or mindful breath, and what I mean by that is to deliberately bring your awareness to your breath and allow it to slow and deepen into a peaceful, relaxing rhythm. This is the quickest way to shift and support coherence. It calms everything down in the body, it slows everything down, and it allows your heart to get into a coherent state, a much smoother equal rhythm. And that's something you can check out further with the HeartMath Institute. Now, next, as you begin to do this, as you begin to drop into that more peaceful and relaxed state through just very rhythmic, balanced breathing, the next thing that you want to be able to do is to introduce a feeling of gratitude into your heart, into your heart center, into your chest.
So even recalling just one thing that you are deeply, deeply grateful for and connected to, allow that to fill you up, to feel those feelings of gratitude and focus that gratitude, focus that feeling right here in the warmth of your heart. And this will help support or even further stabilize that coherent state of the heart as you have begun to drop into it. And so now, as you drop into this deeper and more peaceful presence, now you can start to bring in some of those heart-centered questions that I was alluding to before. And I'm gonna give you quite a few of them in just a second. When we're in this state, there is a different level of fluid connection between the heart and the brain. They are coherent, they are in balance, and therefore they're communicating much more fluidly and intuitively and not as many distractions are getting in the way, which is why we wanna ask the questions in this type of a present state and a coherent state.
So to ask questions like this, what is it that you are truly longing for? What sorrow do you feel for the world, your family or your communities? What joy or beauty or love do you feel for the world, your family, loved ones or community? What do you wish for me to see, to feel or to know? What is it that you know that I need most right now? What might most support me at this time? And you can even ask your heart, what would you ask of me? What would you have me do? You can ask any number of questions of your heart that will take you deeper and deeper into your experience. You can even ask your heart, how is it that I can open more into love? How is it that I can open more into trust? Another big issue, your heart will begin to show you the way.
But what I will say is that you need to take time and be spacious with this process. Give the heart time to share with you whatever it wishes to convey. You can do this through a regular weekly practice. You can also choose to do it whenever you're going through a time with greater uncertainty or ambiguity or even stress. And when you learn to tap into your heart's wisdom and guidance, it's like this whole new dimension of life is being revealed to you. Whole new paths and possibilities and perspectives that you never knew were always there. And it's your heart's wisdom and heart's guidance that's gonna lead you there. Now the last way of listen within that I want to share with you today is around listening to what needs to be expressed. And the reason why I'm going here is that as we begin to feel into what does it mean to really truly listen within and to develop that strength within ourselves, it's important that we then learn how to translate that into expression.
Because that's where you really begin to connect your inner world to how you are able to share with those that are in your life. And this is one of the reasons why you've heard me as well as guests talk so often about circling because circling is this beautiful collective mindfulness-based practice that has us deepen into our expression and really learn how to put what's going on within us into words and be able to express that, to be able to truly be able to see it and feel it and know it as if it was right there in front of us. And so as Parker Palmer has said about circling cause I want you to think about it this way, when we talk about listening within to then be able to express is that circling and how we participate as a practitioner within the circle is that we actually practice by hearing someone into speech.
Think about that for a moment. Hearing someone into speech, to be so present with them, to be so attentive to them, to be so spacious with them, that it gives them the room to be able to begin to express, to speak that which is deepest within them, that which needs to be seen or witnessed at this time. And so very often what we express, it's only what's been racing through our brains and our immediate awareness. And yet there is this deeper current that runs within us that is longing to be seen and heard. All the other ways that I've mentioned, help us begin to get more present to this space, to get more present to that deeper inner current that's running. And so we can begin to hear beneath the usual mind chatter. And so as we step into this deeper current, creating a space for expressing it outwardly further strengthens our connection to it.
That's one of the reasons why we wanna develop this practice. And the two best ways that I know how to do this is through automatic writing and through circling. And so in automatic writing, let me speak to that first. In automatic writing, it's just allowing that stream of consciousness to pour out of you onto paper or into audio or video, whatever media is gonna ultimately work for you. I prefer writing because it slows me down a bit in the process. It makes it more intentional for me, but it's being able to pour out that stream of consciousness when you are in that deeper, more connected state. You can also prompt this writing with reflective questions. You know, a lot of the types of questions that have already asked, you know, asked you or or said and shared with you as part of our episode today, our time together today.
You can also even structure it as a dialogue between you and your higher self or your innermost self, your soul. Literally write it out as if it was a screenplay. So that you're just allowing yourself to feel into what is it that needs to be conveyed today? What is it that needs to rise? What is it that needs to be seen? What is it that needs to be expressed? You can begin by even ask, what is most alive in me today? What do I feel the most today? And allow yourself to begin to express from that place and use any of these ways of journaling that I've mentioned to you, whether it's just allowing the stream of consciousness, whether it is dialoguing with that deeper part of yourself, or whether it is giving yourself an initial guiding question that helps you begin this reflection, this introspection process.
The key is you really want to just allow the words to begin to flow out of you. And through pen and onto paper as it were, allow pauses to surface when they naturally occur. Don't worry about the next thing, just allow that to be a moment that you sit in stillness. Just allow the emptiness that is there in that moment, that's okay. And then see what begins to emerge. See what begins to arise in that empty space so you don't have to force the next thing to come, just wait for it and see what begins to emerge. And then keep going because ultimately you do need to give enough space. You do need to keep going long enough so that you get past those initial words and you truly sink into that deeper stream of what wants to be expressed and witnessed. Now the other way that I mentioned in terms of learning how to listen for what needs to be expressed is through the process of circling.
And so circling is usually done in a collective setting. So it's usually done with what could be. It could be just actually with one or two other people, or it could be something that is done with a group of maybe five, six or seven. And in this, usually what we're doing is we are giving ourselves permission to take enough space to sit with what needs to be shared in this moment, what needs to be witnessed, what needs to be expressed. And so in those moments, and usually circles do have some guiding or reflective questions that may support this process. Again, I've given you a whole slew of them throughout the course of this particular episode. And what we do is allow someone as they have their time to be able to share, they may take a pause, they may be able to connect more deeply within themselves in that space and that stillness for a moment, maybe it is that they feel into, what is it that my heart needs to express?
What is it that I feel like I need to express from the deepest part of me? Or something that feels like it's rising? And then they'll sit in silence for a moment. They'll allow whatever it is that needs to begin to rise, to rise. And then they will begin to put it into words. This is what feels alive for me today. This is what feels like it needs to be expressed. This is what feels like I haven't been willing to acknowledge or see right now. And they allow that stream of consciousness to begin to pour through them. And they're doing it not only as a form of expression for themselves, but they know that this space is being held by other individuals that will accept all that comes, that will acknowledge all that comes, that will see them for not just who they are, but what they're experiencing at this moment as well, so that they can be present with them and offer their presence to whoever it is that is doing the sharing, the expressing at that time.
Now, when we are in what I really truly consider to be such a sacred space with others where they are allowing us that room to be able to express that witch is deepest within us, it allows us to begin to embody, to integrate, to feel, to see and become so much of the wisdom that we are beginning to connect to in that space. Because we have learned to not only listen within, but to begin to actually integrate that into the experience of who we are and how we decide to show up in life. So today I wanted to share with you just these initial ways there are more, but these initial ways of being able to begin listening within, to be able to listen in for that deeper, inner voice that exists inside every single one of us. It's recognition though, that to get there, we need to sink beneath the mind chatter.
We need to sink beneath the usual ruminations that the mind and the ego wish to offer us. We need to get beneath those thoughts. These are ways that help you get beneath those thoughts so you can get into that deeper current of expression, that deeper current of consciousness that runs through you. And you can allow that inner teacher, that inner guide, that inner voice begin to truly emerge. And these are ways that will help you build that practice and strengthen that connection. So you can hear that direction, you can hear that guidance, that wisdom more clearly than ever before. I can tell you this is one of the most fundamental and important things that I do within my life. And I need to continually make sure that I am taking space on my calendar to use these practices and to be with myself and be with that inner space and that inner voice in such a way as we can be in harmony and in imbalance with one another.
The more I've done it, the more peace, the more fulfillment, the more joy has come into my life because I feel so much more connected to the authenticity, the congruency, the realness, the wholeness of who it is that I am. And I feel like I've gotten to know myself more than ever before, as clear as ever before. And it also, interestingly enough, has given me a great deal of confidence because I'm now less likely to rely on all of the input that's going on around me. And I don't mean getting knowledge and gaining perspectives, but I'm not looking for advice. I'm not looking for opinions. I'm not worried about what other people are going to think or say or notice that I should have done it this way or should have done it that way because there is such resonance and connection that is built to this inner voice, which is an inner knowing.
And when you develop the strength of that channel, the strength of that connection, you can move forward with, I'll say it as confidence, but it's more than confidence. You move forward with just this ease in knowing that this is the path, the resonant path that I am meant to be taking at this time. So I wanna invite you to use all of these practices, try them out, see which are the ones that really speak to you and work with the energy, the design that you happen to have. If you need any support in doing this, never hesitate to reach out to me. But I really strongly encourage you to bring your questions specific to this, to the On This Walk community, which you can find on Facebook. So if you're on Facebook, just look up the On This Walk Podcast community or even just go to onthiswalk.com.
You'll see the community button there on the website. Click there and get into the group and bring your experiences, bring your questions to the group and to the community because that's where it's meant to be. We're meant to walk together. This is not a solo journey. We're meant to support each other as we do it. Also always be on the lookout. I'm starting up a variety of different circles. We're actually just completing a men's circle that I was doing. We've got more circles that are gonna be coming up in the coming months on a variety of different topics, including balance and peace that really take you deep within this learning to listen within type of process and methodology with a partner that I'm working with. And so I encourage you to check out all that is unfolding to strengthen these practices. But in the meantime, you don't need anything else. You need just the practices that I've shared with you today to get started and I encourage you to do so. Once again, thank you for being here on this walk, and I thank you so much for being on the journey with me.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com and click on Community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join. Until we go on this walk again, I'm Luke Iorio. Be well.