3 Things We Dive Into In This Episode:
How to identify unhealthy patterns or behaviors that you (unconsciously) rely on.
Examining why these patterns feel familiar and how to make new, healthier patterns feel familiar too.
Embodiment practices as a tool to stay connected to your body and make aligned choices.
📘Resources
📌Episode Highlights
Unhelpful habits and patterns prevent us from receiving what we want to receive in life. If we can move through our limiting beliefs and create healthier behaviors we open ourselves up to living a life of alignment.
Three Steps to Releasing Unhelpful Habits & Patterns:
Identify the patterns/behaviors that you know you might consider letting go of and ask yourself:
Are you seeking relief from something by engaging in this behavior?
Can you explore and unpack the root of this behavior or belief?
Can you let go of this behavior and move it through your body?
Notice how this pattern feels familiar and create a healthier pattern to replace it and ask yourself:
Why does this feel familiar?
How can I make the healthier choice and make that feel more familiar than the unhelpful behavior you tend to default to?
Are there people in your life who can support you in adopting healthier patterns?
Use embodiment practices to support you in making aligned choices. Consider adopting the below practices:
Breathwork - somatic, alternate nostril breathing, or simply taking a few deep breaths
Slow, mindful stretching and movements
Walking with no music/phone calls, taking note of your surroundings and sounds
Taking your time with meals, pausing between each bite
Sipping beverages slowly while holding the cup with both hands
Thanks for listening! 💖 Stay tuned to my website for more episode updates and other exciting programs and resources.
Transcript
Caitie: Your body is not a project that needs to be fixed. Your body is a tool that is going to help you experience the greatest pleasures of life and live your most aligned life and make decisions and do things that are actually really good for you.
Welcome to Whole, Full, and Alive, a podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself, and be yourself. I'm Caitie Corradino. I'm a registered dietitian nutritionist, a body image coach, and the founder of Full Soul Nutrition, a method that combines nutrition counseling with a powerful toolkit of somatic healing modalities.
I've guided hundreds of clients to freedom with food, their bodies, and every aspect of their lives. I've also been through this healing myself. So on this podcast, I want to help you eat with confidence, embrace your body, form aligned relationships, and create a life that you're in love with. I'll share actionable tools, no bullshit stories and interviews that will remind you why you have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive.
Are you ready? Let's get into it.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full and Alive. I normally invite you to take a deep breath when I start a new episode, but we're kind of like on a fresh start here. We're on the one year anniversary of Whole, Full and Alive, and we are on the first episode that's been released for a little bit. We took a brief hiatus and so I want to do something different.
Let's do something fresh. Let's do something new. Today. I want to encourage you to stretch. So wherever you are joining me from today, hopefully the stretch wouldn't be dangerous with whatever it is you're doing, but I want to encourage you to elongate your spine. Drop your right ear to your right shoulder, get a gentle stretch in the left side of your neck, and then slowly drop your left ear to your left shoulder. Get a gentle stretch in the right side of your neck.
And then maybe if it's accessible to you, you stand up and do a forward fold soft bend in the knees, letting your upper body hang over your lower body. I was doing a forward fold earlier today and I had honestly a little bit of like a come to Jesus moment in my forward fold. I was like, whoa, my body is craving more of this. My hamstrings have been tight. And something about just hanging upside down and letting myself kind of be in stillness and peace. For a moment, I sort of felt like I was in the most peaceful yoga studio ever. Yet I was just standing next to my desk, taking a break from seeing clients, and it just reminded me how powerful stretching is, just how powerful it can be to just get the blood flowing in your body in that way and to show yourself love through stretching. I think fitness culture always tells us that we need to go harder, go home in order to get the blood flowing, in order for movement to count. But stretching is so regulating. We're constantly putting our bodies in positions that they were not designed to be in, right? Like, let's face it, our bodies were not designed evolutionarily/ biologically to be on computers all damn day. And we need to stretch, we need to restore, we need to recover from that. We deserve it. So if you can't take a forward fold, maybe you just bring your arms up over your head for a moment unless you're driving.And yeah, just start this with a stretch and maybe you keep stretching throughout the episode, if that's accessible to you.
But anyway hi. Here we are. We're back after a month hiatus. I am back here on the microphone. The last time I talked to you solo on the microphone was when I was in Greece in May. And now it is July and I am in Lisbon, Portugal. It has been a freaking journey. And I'll talk briefly about how I ended up here in Lisbon.
Before I do, I want to address the break. I want to address the reason I decided not to record an episode for a month. And honestly, I am looking to break a toxic cycle that I have. I have a toxic trait. That cycle is that I tend to work really hard and a lot and live really hard and in a very go go go dynamic, constantly on the move kind of a way. And this is a great thing because I am super enthusiastic and passionate about my work and I am super enthusiastic and passionate about life and talking to my friends constantly and traveling every chance I get and just really living.
So I know that it's beautiful that in some ways I am able to and willing to work as much as I do and that I'm able to and willing to live as much as I do. However, I tend to say no to nothing. I talk about boundaries all the time and I'm constantly evolving with them and I'm way better than I used to be. However, on the whole, I still do struggle to say no. And so I repeat this cycle where I'm working a lot, frequently in many different ways, and then just living, constantly with people, talking to people, traveling with people, going to events, going to things, and I end up in a place where my brain feels mushy and my body feels crunchy. That is the best way to describe it. And I don't necessarily hermit when this happens. I do keep going.
But I don't feel like the best and most aligned version of myself by any means. And I know that I can be a kinder, more aligned, healthier person if I wasn't feeling that way. And I don't want to keep pushing through a mushy brain and a crunchy body. I want to feel consistently like my tank is full. So, yeah, basically, let's say once every five months, I go into this mushy brain, crunchy body. I'm sick of it. And I know it's the thing that's blocking me from receiving what I said I wanted to receive at the beginning of this year.
If you listen to the podcast, I talked about my personal New Year's resolution, my personal word of the year, and that was ease. And I really want to relax more so that I can give and receive the most, not like the most quantity wise, but I want to relax more so that I can give the most high quality version of myself to people and receive what I want to receive. I think that my pattern of living too hard and working too hard at the same time always has really blocked me from receiving what I want to receive. If someone was to hand me some of the things that I crave, which one of them is a sense of ease and another one of them is like a partner in a great relationship.
If someone was to hand me these things, I wouldn't be able to accept them because I'm too busy working really, really hard and living really, really hard the whole time. This is like my baggage, so to speak. And I encourage you to think about what is the thing that you would have to put down in order to accept what you want to receive this year. What is it that you're holding on to? Is it a cycle like mine, a behavioral cycle, a burnout cycle, a lack of boundaries? Is it a habit? And I encourage you to ask this to yourself in a really compassionate way, not in a I'm a problem and I need to be fixed kind of a way. But in a I need to be kinder to myself so that I can receive what I want to receive. And I need to be kinder to myself so that I can be the most kind to other people.
And I'm encouraging you to ask yourself this question because that's what I'm going to talk about on today's episode. I'm going to talk about what I've learned as I try to break up with this cycle, with this habit I have of working the hardest and living the hardest that I possibly can.
And so I'm going to share what I've learned over the past month being off from the pod, and I'm going to share some tools and tips that I think you can apply to anything that you're trying to break up with right now. Anything that you're trying to put down right now. So that's the agenda for today. That is what we will be talking about today, is how can you start to put down that thing that you know you've got to put down in order to receive what you want to receive.
But before we get into that, let me give you some personal update, a little context as to why I am in Lisbon right now. So last time I recorded an episode, it was about changing your mind. I had just changed my mind about something, about a relationship that I was in, and I broke up with my boyfriend in Athens, and I was meant to go back to London with him after that, but because we broke up, I changed my mind and traveled around Greece for a little bit longer.
So I traveled around Greece for the rest of May, and then after Greece, I popped back into London for a hot minute, like 48 hours, and then went to New Jersey and visited family. Then I went to Denver, Colorado, where, if you remember, I had a permanent home base there for a little bit, and I ended my lease in Denver on June 7, and I sold and got rid of most of my belongings at that point. And so most of what I owned stayed in Colorado and was distributed throughout Facebook Marketplace, which is a great app. I love it. I also met so many cool people who bought my stuff you know, because people who buy your stuff, I guess, are similar people to you. They have similar tastes. So that was a cool experience.
Flew back to New York City, where I stayed for about a little less than three weeks, and I got to see so many clients in person there. A lot of my clients are based in Manhattan, because that's where I was based for ten years, and it was really amazing to see so many of my clients in person and also went to my cousin's wedding. And then from there, I officially went to Europe again, this time with no return flight.
And my first stop in Europe was a little less than three weeks in London. And London was a place I really wanted to go because that's where my ex boyfriend was from. And that's where I was also really planning to move. Not only to be with my ex, but because I was really seriously looking into beginning a PhD program there, talking to professors there, very much starting to sprinkle some notes of interest into academia there, and was thinking maybe that's something I wanted to do. So went and spent a little less than three weeks in London, had an amazing experience, and also decided at the end of my time there that I'm not feeling ready to do my PhD yet.
Doing a PhD is something that I have a desire to do because I do ultimately want to study the framework I've created at Full Soul Nutrition in some way. I really want to study embodiment practices and breath work integrated with nutrition counseling as a legitimate treatment for eating disorders, body dysmorphia, things like that. And I just feel really passionately about potentially doing that in an academic setting, and so I will maybe likely, possibly go back and do my PhD one day. But I decided that right now I'm actually going to put that on ice, because I feel like it doesn't feel like the most true thing for me right now. It doesn't feel like the thing I legitimately, fully authentically want to do right now.
Right now, it feels like it would have been convenient to do it if I was going to remain dating my London based boyfriend, of course. And it also would have been something that fed my ego a little bit. So I'm like, until my PhD doesn't feel egoic, and until I feel really confident that I certainly want to live in London sans, my ex partner there. I'm not going to do it yet. So closed out my time in London, and from there came here to Lisbon.
And as soon as I arrived here in Lisbon, which was about two and a half weeks ago, I've been feeling really free and really like, I want to land here. And I had a sublet, very serendipitously fall into place here. One of my friends who I just met when I was in Greece in May, lives here in Lisbon with her husband, and they are traveling all summer, and they offered for me to sublet their place. And so I'm here in their place until late September.
So that's that. And I will continue to post fun tidbits and stories and things about that on my Instagram and probably talk more about it here. But that's where I've landed. That's how I ended up here in Lisbon. Well, Belém, which is a little bit outside of Lisbon, which is nice because it's very quiet here, except for the baby that lives in the apartment above me. So you might get a little taste of what it's like to live below new parents on this podcast. I was really trying to wait until I was certain that the baby had calmed down to record, but I don't know that the baby really calms down for more than like, 30-40 minutes. So anyway, that's another little housekeeping thing before I get into the meat of this episode.
And of course, one more thing before I fully dive into it is that I have space for new one on one counseling clients opening up in the fall. So if you would like to get on the waitlist to work together one on one, please, please hit the link in my show notes to apply for one on one counseling. In my one on one counseling services, I integrate nutrition counseling with a toolkit of somatic healing modalities like breathwork, stretching, movement, and more to really help you feed yourself, feel yourself, and be yourself. You can learn more about my services fullsoulnutrition.com, and you can always stay tuned on my social media for other group offerings, workshop offerings. More things are in the pipeline, so I'm really excited for that.
Let's get into the meat of today's episode. Here we go. How do you put down the thing that you got to put down so that you can pick up the thing that you want to pick up?
Here's what I've learned as I've tried to put down my balls to the wall way of living and way of working. I have had to ask myself, when I feel the urge to do do do, either through work or through life, I've had to ask myself, am I seeking relief from a limiting belief or from something by continuing to engage in this pattern?
This is an important question to ask yourself at the top. When you're doing the thing that you know you no longer want to do, what purpose is it serving? Is it giving you relief from something? And does that something need to be explored?
For me, I found that constantly burning the candle at both ends in some ways gives me relief from this core belief that was unfortunately embedded in my biology as a child, that I am, like, a bad person and need to earn my worth.
And I have to prove that I deserve rest, and I have to prove that I deserve the things that I have in my life. And I've run up against this a lot while I've been traveling because I do feel like I am living a lifestyle that a lot of people would love to live. I know there's a lot of people who would not like to live my lifestyle, and I've been thinking about that lately too. I'm like, I'm sure there are so many people who are like, why the fuck would you want to live out of a suitcase and be somewhere new constantly? And I know this is not like, the most appealing thing. It's not like the pinnacle of pinnacles for everyone.
And I do know for a lot of people, especially a lot of creative entrepreneurs like myself, they would like to be traveling as much as I'm traveling. And I feel so grateful that I've had opportunities fall into place that have been affordable and accessible for me. And I feel like I have to prove that I deserve this by constantly working as much as possible and then constantly showing up for my friends, being there as much as possible, talking to people on the phone, answering every phone call, answering every text message.
And so I know that by continuing to engage in this pattern, I'm getting some relief from that limiting belief I have that I don't deserve this unless I really, really earn it, or maybe just that I don't deserve this period. And so I've had to sit with the uncomfortable truth that I still sometimes struggle with feelings of worthiness on a deeper level. And it's important for me to nurture myself and figure out at what age did I get that belief embedded into my body and how can I start to move that out of my body, move that out of my brain, move that out of my psyche, shake that belief loose from me so that I no longer need relief from it. And I no longer need to engage in this behavior of constantly overworking and over-living to get relief from it.
And I know this is something that shows up for a lot of my clients when it comes to their limiting beliefs around their bodies and their body shape and size, right? Like if exercising too much is the pattern that you're looking to break free from, often exercise is serving as a band aid for body image issues. It's serving as a subtle form of relief, instant relief from body image anxiety. And it's so important to get to the roots of that body image anxiety rather than constantly using this destructive behavior as a way to seek relief from that.
It also comes up for a lot of my clients who find themselves getting in romantic relationships that aren't really a good fit for them. And I've talked about this a bit on the pod before. Are you throwing yourself into relationships that aren't totally a good fit? Because any relationship feels like a form of relief from something. It feels like a form of relief from the belief that you're not enough or that your body is not enough.
So what is the limiting belief that you're trying to get relief from? And instead of engaging in the bad habit, the thing that you're trying to let go of as a form of relief, can you dig deeper into it with a trusted person, with a counselor, with a therapist? Maybe go to an embodiment facilitator, like a breathwork facilitator or someone who really can hold space for you to try to shake that limiting belief loose from you? This is certainly something that I do with a lot of clients too.
So that's one thing is what's the reason you're doing the thing that you can't stop doing. Number two is ask yourself, how is this pattern feeling familiar? And how can I make a healthier pattern feel familiar?
So working really hard and living really hard feels chaotic, feels like a constant roller coaster. It feels like a constant thrill. It feels like constant overdrive. It feels like a high speed train. And that pattern has become very familiar to me in a lot of ways throughout the course of my life. Just by nature of some things from my childhood, some unpredictable things that happened in my childhood that made my childhood feel a little bit like a high speed train.
And also it felt familiar to me because of people that I've been in long term partnership with in the past. They've made me feel like a high speed train. And so, of course, working really hard and living really hard feels familiar to me, not only because I'd done it forever, but because it mirrors a lot of what I experienced as a kid. It mirrors also the approach that both of my caretakers took to life absolutely, fully, completely. And it's mirrored a lot of experiences that I've had. So I'm really accustomed to it. It feels cozy and it feels familiar. And when I don't work to the maximum and live to the maximum, that feels unfamiliar, it feels uncomfortable.
And so I really had to confront the fact that the reason work hard, live hard feels so familiar to me is because of the way my life's been up to this point. And I have to make an effort to create a new energy in my life that supports the new pattern that I want to engage in. So I need to make sure that I am in relationships, not only romantic relationships, but also friendships and working relationships that have a sense of steadiness and ease and not always maxing out to them.
I need to make sure that I practice yoga and meditation or breathwork or something that's just a little bit slower because something about me is that I also love to dance and I love dance cardio. So a lot of my workouts also mirror this work hard, live hard kind of thing. I do very much explosive workouts. I was teaching like CrossFit when I was in Denver, and I've had to really consciously practice slower movement as a way of making my system more comfortable and familiar with slowing down.
And I've had to in the moments when I've had to sit with the discomfort of not going, going, going constantly. Like, it feels like an uncomfortable thing for me, sincerely. I've had to reach out for support, and I feel really, really grateful that I have support in my life, not only in the form of my personal relationships and friendships, but I also have a business coach, Brianna Campos, Body Image with Bri. She was on the pod about a year ago.
She helps me with my workflow and she helps me unpack my limiting beliefs around the need to grind and worthiness and so many really important things. And so she's been someone that I've had in my pocket constantly that has helped me really anchor and in the moments when I'm feeling uncomfortable because of how unfamiliar it is for me to slow down, she's been there for me. And we can't underestimate the importance of connections and relationships.
We live in a world of self help, self this, self that. And I'm seeing a movement on Instagram right now that's kind of like a pushback to this idea of main character energy. And I love that because, yes, main character energy, yes, live your best life. Yes, you're amazing and easy does it with that. Because we ultimately need relationships. We ultimately need a support network to help us with this stuff, to help us feel more comfortable in an unfamiliar pattern, to help us feel more comfortable living in a new way, or rather, to help us feel safe amidst discomfort because it's not going to feel comfortable right away.
I constantly say to clients, and I said this on the last episode that I did solo too, just because something's uncomfortable doesn't mean it's wrong. It means it's new. And so we need support networks, people who can nurture us and nourish us while we are learning to feel safe amidst discomfort.
So that's the second thing is how does this pattern that you're trying to break free from feel familiar, acknowledge the ways in which other aspects of your life kind of mirror this pattern? And how can you make changes to make different aspects of your life, mirror this pattern and process things that may have happened to you earlier in life that sort of made this pattern the normal thing for you. And as you try to sit with the discomfort of changing the pattern, reach out to supports, reach out to a therapist, reach out to a coach, reach out to me. I'm here for you. You are not alone. We cannot go through life alone.
And then the third thing I've learned is important when you're trying to put down the thing that's preventing you from receiving the thing that you really want is the importance of embodiment.
Meaning really, really being in your body. Making sure that you take time to live from the neck down, not just living your entire life in your head, making sure that you do things that help you feel like you really are in your body. Your body is not a project that needs to be fixed. Your body is a tool that is going to help you experience the greatest pleasures of life and live your most aligned life and make decisions and do things that are actually really good for you.
If you're living your life in your body, if you're really taking time to feel your shoulders and your arms and your legs and your belly and your feet, you're going to have a much harder time doing things that are bad for you. The more I practice embodiment practices like breathwork, slower stretching, slower forms of movement, even just going on a walk, eating meals slowly, all these things that force you to just drop into your body are embodiment practices. The more I do these things, the more I can't stand to do something that's toxic for me. The more I feel completely out of alignment when I do this work hard, live hard thing. Because now that I'm not avoiding my body or ignoring my body anymore, my body is talking to me and it is saying, Caitie, what the fuck? We cannot work a twelve hour day and then go out with our friends. We cannot travel to another country next week. We need to stay put for at least three weeks.
When I'm embodied it's so difficult to stay in a pattern that's misaligned or bad for me. And like I said at the top of the episode this morning, I did a forward fold and I felt so good. I felt so at peace. It was such a moment of being in my body. And when I sat back down at my desk after that forward fold, I was able to just make a little bit more balanced and intuitive decisions. And an hour that I had set aside to write a newsletter became an hour that I actually walked to the grocery store to get some food because I realized I needed a little bit more things to be able to make a balanced meal for myself tonight.
And when you are in your body, it becomes a lot harder to engage in toxic patterns, becomes a lot harder to stay in bad relationships. Your body just starts talking to you. Your body becomes a tool that tells you when you're out of alignment. It's just like when if you're embodied, you're not going to be able to be on a diet. You're not going to be able to practice really restrictive, rigid eating behaviors, right? Because when you're listening to your body, your body's like, I want carbs. Your body's like, I want variety. Your body's like, I want delicious foods. Embodiment practices are an essential piece of breaking a cycle. Definitely true for breaking free from dieting. Definitely true for breaking free from bad relationships. Definitely true for me in breaking free from my burnout cycle.
So I hope that these three things resonate with you. This got a short list today. Sometimes I share like, five to ten things, but today's list is just three things.
Number one, ask yourself, are you seeking relief from something by engaging in this behavior or this thing that you know you got to let go of? And if there's something, a limiting belief that you're seeking relief from, can you start to really explore that and unpack that? Where does that come from? How can you let that go? How can you shake that loose?
Number two is notice how this pattern, this thing that you're trying to let go of, feels familiar, and why does it feel familiar? And how can you make the healthier choice, the healthier thing, a healthier life, feel more familiar? And part of that's going to require support and other people.
And then number three is practicing embodiment. Because when you're in your body, it's hard to live in a way that is disrespectful to your body, because your body's going to talk to you and your body always tells the truth.
So with that, we're back whole, full, and alive every other week. One solo episode, one guest episode every month. I can't believe it has been a year on the microphone. Thank you so much for supporting this show, for listening to this show, for tuning into what we talk about on this show.
Please don't forget that I love hearing from you. You can email me. caitie@fullsoulnutrition.com.
You can DM me. @caitie.c.rd on instagram. You can leave a five star review if y ou enjoyed this episode on Apple or Spotify, it's really helpful. And if anything you heard in the show resonated with you, maybe share it with someone. You never know whose perspective you could be changing in a really positive way, whose life you can be altering in a really positive way by sharing. And maybe share the show with someone as well, if that feels like it resonates for you.
So grateful that you're here. I'm so grateful to be back. And, yeah, as we move forward, let me know what you want to hear on this show. I'm here for you, and I'm here for me because I love what I do and I love working. I love talking to you. And above that, I really am here for you. I really want to help you feed yourself, feel yourself, and be yourself and remind you that you have what you need within you to feel whole, full, and alive.
See you next time.
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