You can soften here

The moment you realize you’re off center can sting and not because you drifted, but because you start judging yourself for drifting. I’m back after a few weeks away, and I wanted to record a short, honest reset about what the practice really looks like in real life: you tighten, you react, you lose the thread, and then you get to choose your way back.

I talk about the familiar gap between awareness and action. We often know we’re not feeling clear, grounded, or in the flow, yet we still spiral into frustration. Drawing from yoga, mindfulness, and A Course in Miracles, I share the one question that keeps helping me unwind the inner knot: “Am I willing to see this differently?” It’s simple, but it creates space between a trigger and a reaction, between a shallow breath and a full one, between bracing in the body and softening into truth.

We also zoom out to the bigger frame: perfection isn’t the goal. Returning is. Pain can be purification, and even the hard moments can be used for learning when we stop lingering in them and start meeting them with willingness. I share practical ways to return throughout the day, including breath, journaling, and support tools from the ARC program built around the 365 lessons of A Course in Miracles.

If you’re ready to come back to center with more speed and more kindness, listen now, share it with a friend who’s been stuck in a cycle, and leave a review so more people can find the practice.

Transcript

When You Stop Staying With Practice

A Question That Unwinds The Knot

Returning Faster With Simple Tools

Program Invite And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Greetings, greetings, welcome back to a return to center. Welcome to you, dear listener, and also welcome back to me. It has been a few weeks where I have been absent from our time together, and that has had a purpose. And instead of getting into all the nitty-gritty, only to say that I am delighted to be back with you. I had some travel, I had a teacher training begin. Got lots of cool stuff happening here at It's Yoga in Toledo. And I'm just actually really glad to be back in this space. I love to podcast. I love to press go and just let it riff. I do have a little structure and I do have some intention for today. And really, it's about noticing the moments in life when you don't stay with your practice. You know, like you don't stay with the things that make you happy. You don't stay in the idea that everything is happening for you. You slip into judgment or regret or reaction. And this is just something that I don't know, friends. I'm thinking it's just going to be a part of life. I'm really feeling that no matter how many years I'm on my mat or how many years I've studied a Course in Miracles, all of the journaling, all of the self-reflection, all of the deep shadow work, you know, all of the things that we do to improve and to become more and more of our authentic selves, yes, it pays off. And yes, it gets easier. But I do think that there's this absence almost of awareness. It's like we have the awareness. We know that we're not feeling totally centered and confident and clear and, you know, in the flow. But it's not necessarily that we don't have the awareness because we do. It's that on one hand, we get frustrated, at least I know this for myself. I get frustrated when I'm not in my happy place or I'm not in my zone, or if I feel scattered, or all those things. And that is an indication that I and potentially you have stepped into self-judgment. And this is what I want to talk about today. We have the awareness. We can see that there is a slip, there is a frustration, there is a feeling of heaviness or negative thinking. And then there's judgment around that. And what I think is even more essential in this journey as we continue to notice that, you know, there are some things that they they just keep coming up again, you know, these same cycles that we really embrace this statement. And if you've been with me on this journey, you know this statement because it really is everything. Comes from a Course in Miracles, and it says, Am I willing to see this differently? And when you add that statement to your awareness, it does the healing work. It starts to kind of unwind. Have you ever, here's an example, have you ever had a necklace that got all knotted up? And it's really, once it gets like that, it's really hard to kind of, you know, it's an intricate type process where you've got to slowly undo each knot and it can take time. But that statement to me is the process of unpacking, of unwinding those knots in the necklace, in the chokehold that we often feel ourselves in. When there's a trigger, and instead of a pause, there's a reaction. When you know it would be a great idea to take a breath, but you don't. When something tightens in your body and you follow it and tighten deeper instead of looking to see what is that about and how can I rest. These are the moments that this work is actually about. It's not about perfection, it's not about not having hard times or tightening in the body or reactions or holding your breath. It's not about not having those moments because those moments are purifying. You know, in this context, we talk a lot about how pain is a purification process. And if we subscribe to this idea that everything in life is happening for us, then even those difficult times are happening for us. From the course perspective, the Holy Spirit can use everything for our learning. So the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it at the end of the day is being used for the good. But there are times when we we're just done with it. Like you just want to set down the repetitive cycles, you want to stop reacting, you want to show up in a relationship differently. And that's where our statement of willingness to see things differently can really start to show us what that looks like. And that's really what the work in ARC is all about, in a return to center. I'll talk more about that later. But here's the truth, friends. I know you can see when you've shifted, and I know you know when you're off center. But here's the thing that I really want for you to consider. It's not about never leaving, it is about how quickly and how honestly you return again and again until returning becomes natural. It becomes your feedback, it becomes your default. It's not that we don't have hard times, it's just we choose to step into the willingness to see it differently, to see it bigger, and we do it faster, we marinate less in the pain, we don't avoid the pain, but we certainly don't linger in the pain. We get in, we figure out what it's about, we take a few deep breaths, we might journal, you might listen to a podcast, you might, if you're in the ARC program, go in and put on a meditation. You might dig into one of the tools or one of the lessons on tolerance or gentleness or joy. These are the things that we want to be able to quicken in our lives, our willingness to return to that centered place every day throughout the day, where only love is real. Really happy to be with you today on this quick and short podcast. We have the link here to a return to center, and I would love for you to look at it. I would love for you to DM me, email me, let me know if you have any questions. We are really excited about this program, especially the 365 lessons in a course in miracles. There's many videos and emails that you get every day. And even if you just read the email, that counts as a step in that direction towards center. So I'm wishing you a beautiful day and much love. Bye for now.