Becoming an Embodied Feminine Leader with Isabelle Griffith

Catherine A. Wood  09:27

Isabelle, welcome to the podcast. I’m thrilled to have you here today.

10:11

Thank you very much for having me, Katherine. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Catherine A. Wood  10:16

By way of getting started, I’d love to invite you to share your pronouns. And then a little bit about your story. And perhaps what has us here on on this podcast today.

10:29

Yeah, so my pronouns are she and her. And my story, and I’ll try to keep it brief is maybe just starting, and making it real by bringing us back to a moment in time, probably 1230, maybe more long ago, years ago. And it was a story of me sitting on the little bench outside my house, on a work day, sitting there with a cup of tea in my hands. It was a beautiful end of summer’s day in England here where I am. And to anyone passing by, I would have appeared to be having the perfect moment of a quaint, reflective moment with myself. And actually, what was really happening inside me couldn’t have been more different, I felt completely broken. My mind was just a wall full of self criticism, full of judgmental thoughts, and a really difficult place to be with. But of course, it was in my mind, and I couldn’t be anywhere else. And I had a sense that I had no idea how to move forward. So a lot of confusion, and a deep emotional numbness. So not feeling anything as if I was living on an emotional flatline. And, you know, again, as I was sitting there, on that bench with my cup of tea, what came to my mind is, I followed all the blueprints, I’ve ticked all the boxes, I have two beautiful children. And you know, I live in a lovely house, I have a wonderful husband, I’ve had a great career. And I’m in this place of complete despair, and desolation. So the promised land in a way of the blueprint that society hands us, really didn’t happen for me as it doesn’t for a lot of women, and possibly men as well. And so I had no idea how to move forward. And for me, from that moment onwards, what was probably the most helpful modality was yoga. So I began to go to a yoga class every Tuesday, and taught by a lady called Edith and she had a very mindful approach to her yoga teaching. And, and those moments when I was on my yoga mat, I could feel that I was at peace with myself, for that brief moment, I could be with myself, and that was okay. Whereas the rest of the time, my mind was such a hostile place that it was really difficult to be with. And what I know now is that I experienced a really severe burnout. And it took me about 18 months to recover. And through that recovery, I experienced a number of modalities, yoga became a really important part of my life, and probably saved my life in that period. But also that led me to mindfulness that led me then to Cymatics, embodiment, breathwork, and all sorts of modalities that became really supportive. And so as I recovered, I went back to the corporate world where I was before my burnout. But I began to train in all of these modalities. And that’s really what led me to the work that I do today. So I’m a trauma informed somatic coach. And I focus a lot on embodied feminine leadership, and helping women to unwind the inner narratives that are keeping us stressed, anxious, are bands that and really preventing us from inhabiting the fullness of who we can be. So I suppose for me, these modalities and these experiments, although I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, because I think Burnett is still very much misunderstood. This was a doorway, and I really believe in doorways. I think we all presented with doorways at times in our life, and I can look back now gratefully, because that completely reoriented my life, the way that I choose to live the way that I choose to raise my children, and also the work and the impact that I that I choose to have in the world. So this is what led me here talking to you today. And in many ways that I can be grateful for that Burnett for that as well.

Catherine A. Wood  14:29

I am so appreciative to hear that story by way of landing us here because there’s so many themes from your story that I certainly hear a lot in my work and I’m sure you do in yours as well. And you know what you mentioned around burnout. I think it’s really fascinating. I think burnout is so often a doorway to transformation and exponential change for so many, many of us because we do We really reached that breaking point where we can no longer continue living and lifing in the same way that we have. And it can oftentimes just create that powerful. That powerful moment of enough is enough. And it makes me think of something that you and I were chatting about, right before we hit record, which is the importance of the heroines journey in your life, and, and really how that plays out. And I think it plays out over and over again, right, we’re on these kind of break down to break through journeys if we’re committed to our own evolution as human beings. And so I I guess I’m curious, you know, how, really how the heroines journey has is is a part of your work, and at what point you realized that burnout moment being a part of your own heroines journey. And for those of our listeners who aren’t familiar with the hero or the heroines journey, so the origins of actually perhaps you know, more than me is about but my understanding is that the hero’s journey came first written by Joseph Campbell, and then Maureen Murdock adapted Joseph Campbell’s work and wrote the heroines journey to talk about the feminine, feminine identifying perspective, is that your understanding as well?

16:29

Yes, yeah. Yeah, I think marine and, you know, I don’t know the depth of marine Murdoch’s reflections, but I think it really was, she studied the hero’s journey and realized that it wasn’t quite the same journey for women. And predominantly, I think the difference is really this, as you said, this moment of realization that the way it’s always been, isn’t aware that it can continue to be because there’s a lack of sustainability in the way we’ve been living. And often it stems from the fact that, and this is perhaps more relevant for women or also for men in the sense of disconnecting, disconnecting from my feminine energy, which we all possess. And so the premise of the heroines journey is really the sense that in the society that we live in today, so many of us women, at some point, begin to disconnect from the feminine essence within us. And we learn to live by a very masculine, and I’m talking energy, not gender, masculine way of being that’s very driven, very forward, very linear, very rules oriented, because that is what society demands. You know, we live in a society that’s commercially driven, that’s, to some extent patriarchal, or, to a great extent, patriarchal. And so as women, we learn to suppress, consciously or unconsciously, these more feminine traits, and this feminine essence that lives within us. And to take a really simple example of my own journey. When I worked in the corporate world, and I was there for 20 years, they were, for most of that journey. I had, at some point, two young children, and my desk would be empty, there were no pictures of my children, I wouldn’t talk about my children at work. I didn’t talk about my personal life, because I felt at the time, particularly the one that I feel the most, that’s most delight for me, as I’m speaking is a time where I was in, in a large team of software developers. And there were probably 60 people in that team. And there were three women, and I was the only one on the leadership team. And I really felt that if I was showing any traits of being emotional, or you know, having a family being human, that would really be detrimental to my career. And yet, what was really interesting is that these men who were my colleagues would often come to me for reassurance on their performance, calibrating how they appear to be if they appear to be confident, but that just couldn’t, you know, I was very consciously avoiding portraying any feminine traits. And so I was that women, you know, I was fairly disconnected from my feminine energy. I was very much in the masculine and I’m what I would describe as a father’s daughter. In fact, you know, I’ve always well, not always, but for a long, long time, looked at the feminine as something that was wild and weak and, and understandable, and stable and really scary. I wanted my life to be, you know, in control, I needed to know what was going to happen. And so that sort of moving away from my feminine essence happened organically. And then this burnout happened because for 20 years, I was all on Google all the time, and then I hit a brick wall. And so the journey of the hearing from there it’s really to choose or not to step into that doorway through the doorway and to descend into her body, to face her shadows and then to be emerge as you know, somebody who’s more fully embodied It who’s been in the liminal space and who’s integrated, the masculine and the feminine so that they live within her in harmony. So it isn’t a case of saying, Well, I was only go, go go gold strengthen, forward, and now I’m going to be floating flowy. And, you know, just wild and unpredictable, it’s really disintegration of all these parts of ourselves that we leave on the table when we dis own our feminine essence. So, you know, maybe the more nurturing, empathic, compassionate parts of us, the parts of ourselves that cyclical and nonlinear, the part of us who operates a little bit differently from a girl’s perspective, and really needs to steal these goals and this vision in her body, to be able to move forward. And again, this is true, regardless of gender. It’s the it’s, you know, it’s the inner balance, the yin and yang coming into that dance. So I hope that helps, to some extent, to find the heroines journey. And to answer your question about when I came to realize this, very late, I came to realize this really late. Certainly, it wasn’t until I came to this work, and an adult more deeply into the masculine and feminine polarity within us that I came through all across the heroines journey. And I realized, this is me, this is exactly what I experienced. And in some ways, I think what Maureen Murdock’s presented us with this, this map of how we can come back to wholeness as women and tap into this power that’s uniquely ours.

Catherine A. Wood  21:39

Wow, so much brilliance there, you know, in the, in the language of the hero’s journey, and they talk about kind of the fall of the hero and the meeting of their own internal and external foes, the language is so aggressive. The words that that that are used to speak to these different points that you meet along the hero’s journey are very kind of masculine to, like you mentioned, and I just so appreciate in your speaking of the heroines journey, how it’s so much more of internal disconnection with self, and then a reconnection with self and how it’s so much more of a welcoming and embodied practice and journey. So I just I love that I’m listening for myself. And I’m, I’m also very much in this process of being more mindful around the words that I use in my own coaching and making sure that they’re really reflecting the, the, the energetic approach that I’m interested in, in creating for clients and being a stand for in the world because I think that our own journeys of growth and transformation, they don’t have to be aggressive and war like they can be embodied and curiosity based and, and a welcoming of expansion and evolution.

23:11

Yeah. And to me, that that is embodied feminine leadership, you know, it’s, it’s this journey, that’s tender, as you’re describing it, it’s not necessarily a journey that’s goal driven, and forward and harsh. It’s, it’s a very tender journey of reclamation, you know, reclaiming our inner experience, and the parts of ourselves that we’ve disconnected from maybe the parts of us that we deliberately disconnected from because they didn’t belong in the persona that we were trying to portray, they didn’t fit in, and then finding through that journey, a renewed sense of inner authority. You know, that sense of self sovereignty, I know how I’m feeling I’m in touch with my embodied experience. And I make decisions from that place, bringing online both my cognitive and somatic intelligence, the wisdom of my body, but also my brilliant mind. So it’s, for me, it’s a real journey of reclamation. And, and I think it may be worth touching on the word leadership as well, because we often think of leadership as something that that belongs in corporates, settings in organizations that come with a title and a suit. And, you know, all of these ways that leadership has been portrayed. And for me, when we talk about embodied feminine leadership, it’s much more about a quality of being and who we choosing to be. And it’s a mother with her child is an embodied feminine leader. I mean, is that a more beautiful embodied style of leadership? A teacher with the children that they impart knowledge to and that they really open how their minds open It’s, and yes, it might be also somebody in the corporate world trying to lead a team towards the goals. But it comes from a place of being heart centered, authentic, grounded in ourselves. And with certain qualities that are also tender, you know, we can be strong and fierce and compassionate. We can be nurturing and boundaries. So I think the polarity holding is really important there. It’s one.

Catherine A. Wood  25:28

You know, I think, as I was listening to you, I was just imagining that, I think many of my listeners would find a challenge with this idea of I don’t have to be goals oriented, or I don’t have to be driven by my, you know, milestones and my objectives, that there’s actually another way, and that not only is there another way, but that there’s also another approach that can be equally if not more successful, that their approach doesn’t have to be at the expense of their bottom line, or their their success. And so I guess I’m curious. How can how can we have it all as embodied feminine leaders?

26:19

Well, I think it’s important to make a distinction. You know, I think being an embodied feminine leader doesn’t mean we don’t have goals, I think it means we approach them from a slightly different perspective. And I think part of that is our quality of being in the doing in how do we do what we do, it’s not necessarily that we don’t aim for goals, it’s maybe that we hold them less tight. And that we, you know, it’s almost like opening a fist a little bit and giving a little bit of space for uncertainty for change, for fluidity and flexibility to happen. Because ultimately, we never know what might happen. So there’s a quality of well, you know, maybe this particular milestone isn’t going to happen. And that will be oriented towards this completely other way of approaching the project. And that’s, that’s okay. So there’s a quality of fluidity, there’s also a quality of bringing a bit of beingness in the doing. Again, if I take a personal example, when before I’ve learnt as I am, I used to leave home at 730 in the morning, come back at 730. At night, I had young children, and my whole life was almost managed in an Excel spreadsheet, and I was go go go all the time. So I would come home from work at 730 at night, and I was really conscious of the fact that I needed to put my children to bed, and I had this window before, everything would fall apart and the children will be overtired. And so I would walk in, I wouldn’t take a moment before opening the door to center myself or to just take a breath, I would walk in still with that energy of having commuted arrive at home, I wouldn’t even take my coat off, or my shoes off, I would walk straight in the kitchen and I would start cooking. And I look back on that version of myself with a lot of compassion, but also a huge amount of sadness, because I could have so easily placed my hand on the door handle, taken a breath, and walked in with a completely different quality of being, I could have taken an extra moment to hug my children. And we talked about the fact they’re not teenagers, I can’t tell you how, how much I would give to open a little dough to go back there and to do it differently. And I would take my coat off and welcome myself home. And that would have completely shifted the whole evening. And I think that’s true for the way we do work too. You know, we don’t have to be all tensed up against the goal, there can be a sense of striving within with a sense of softening on the outside. And that’s sometimes an exercise that I that I invite people to do really sensing that the inner body can be moving up and striving but there’s a softening around the antibody. And that’s what I’m talking about. So that’s a simple way of of looking at it, you know, and how can we bring a little bit of flow, knowing that sometimes doing is really helpful, and sometimes being is, is what’s needed. So being in that quality of doing in those moments with my children is not so helpful. And equally, sometimes that work I need to be in, in doing so it’s finding that flow. And again, that harmony between masculine and feminine, the fire and the water, you know, the grounding in the earth and the creativity in the air. So it’s just coming to these moments of choice. And taking a pause and asking ourselves, you know, what’s needed here? And what do I want to embody? Rather than saying, let’s, you know, Let’s float and see what happens. I hope this helps a little

Catherine A. Wood  29:47

bit. It’s brilliant, and I was even just appreciating as you and I were speaking. I noticed both of us. Our shoulders were up and they rolled back and down. Yep, And it, it reminds me of where we started this conversation talking about yoga, because I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I became trained as a Kundalini Yoga Instructor in 2020. And that was really about the time that I started owning being an empath, and I highly sensitive and I completely changed my, my model of business, I launched my mastermind during that time, I ended two business partnerships, which felt out of alignment for me, and it was a real awakening for me. So while you know, my journey, and I entrants into coaching, didn’t start through Cymatics. When I came to Kundalini Yoga, that was a real exponential growth moment for me in my, in my decade of being in business, and, and I, it doesn’t strike me as a coincidence, it strikes me as, of course, of course, when you became more attuned with your body and the wisdom of your body, that you would become more attuned with your intuition and what feels right and appropriate, and the path for you. And so, I guess I’m curious around this concept of being an embodied feminine leader. And whether it’s possible, without being attuned to this to the Cymatics, being attuned to your body’s wisdom, like, are they mutually exclusive? Are they mutually necessary? Is it one in the same? Is it different? And also, for my audience that may not even know or not, you know, really not be familiar with the world of Cymatics? I’d love for you to share even a little bit more about what does that even mean? What is it Yeah, to be some thematically attuned?

31:59

Yes, well, being somatically, attuned, and this is my interpretation. And, you know, they might be many others, but being somatically attuned is, is practicing what we might call embodied presence, an embodied presence means that we are attuned to the sensations, the currents, the emotions, the fluctuations of our body, we know that a lot of that a lot of intelligence and not about wisdom, a lot of the conversation between our brain and our body comes actually from the body to the brain, we also know that the body is just like the mind the collection of all of our previous experiences, and the experiences of seven, eight generations before us. So the body has a huge amount of knowledge and wisdom. The problem is that we’re very upwardly attuned in our society today. So we’re very much cognitively driven, we think we plan we strategize we organize, that was all me. And so we kind of forget the wisdom and the sensations that are happening in our body. We are also very accurately attuned, particularly as women. So how is everyone else doing? What are their needs? How can I make them happy, and again, we lose touch with that. So somatic, I can’t remember the word that you use, but somatic awareness is really what’s happening within my body in this moment, what am I noticing, you know, and we are so out of touch with it, that sometimes we’ll work through lunch without knowing we haven’t eaten, we burn out, because we haven’t listened to these cues, constantly saying, I’m so exhausted, please stop. You know, there’s a part of us that’s driving and forward and, and ambitious, and that’s wonderful. And then there’s a part of us, that’s just saying I can’t. And so somatic awareness is really going downward and inwards. And becoming aware of the sensations in our body and yoga can be for many of us a portal into that, because we are invited to notice the sensations in our body as we move and how they shift and change. And this is also why it was such a moment of respite for me, because finally I could be with my body and in my body. And so from there, I embodied feminine leadership. Well, the embodied piece is really two things. And this to me, there’s three key pillars for embodied feminine leadership, this nervous system capacity, and that’s because we’re a couple of reasons. One is, for many of us, the body holds our memories, which is wonderful, and gives us a lot of insight but can also be a really difficult place to be. And so with that, creating capacity and without creating a place of regulation within our body, it can be a very tender place to be in so the first point is really to learn to be anchored in our body in a way that’s safe. And we do this through and nervous system regulation, really understanding another system. And then the second piece is embodied presence now that we’ve got that sense of safety, and we can expand our capacity to feel safe in more discomfort, we can be in our body more easily. And that feels a bit more easeful. And from there to what you were saying earlier, we can become attuned to the signals the intelligence that lies in our body. And then we can lead from that. So leading from these choice points of what is my body telling me, you know, it might just be as simple as how am I feeling? And what do I need to begin with. But to take a bigger example, I was working recently with a client who was I’ve worked with her for a period of time, and she came to me because she had anxiety attacks, and she was burnt out. And now she’s really in that place of self leadership. And she came to us session saying, I think I want to talk about moving to another to another city in my country. And as we dived more, away from this, this what I want, how can we set the different steps to is this really what I want? What is my body really telling me about this, what she really desired and was yearning for was companionship and finding someone that can be a life companion, that was completely independent from the place she was in. But she associated that place with perhaps those opportunities. And so that opens up a completely different exploration of what’s possible. And that’s a little flavor of embodied feminine leadership, just really nervous system capacity, because we can’t expand beyond our nervous system, being attuned to what our body is saying, and noticing the richness of what’s present, and then leading from there, and creating our own flavor of leadership, which we talked about, I think, before we came on the call really, as Empath how important it is to listen to what our body is saying, because that might not be what everything else is pointing us towards. But perhaps what everything else is pointing us towards isn’t what’s right for us. And to be honest, I think that’s true for everyone.

Catherine A. Wood  37:05

Absolutely. There’s so many things I want to respond to, in what you’ve shared. But the the theme that feels just the most powerful is this, this idea of nervous system regulation, because this is something I’ve been reflecting on a lot in my work. And I perhaps you know, I love working in groups, and I facilitate masterminds and something I’ve really come to appreciate is that there is this concept, there is this idea in a group where there’s emotional safety and psychological safety, that CO regulation is possible that our nervous systems can be co regulated through being in a group where there’s psychological safety and something I’ve just been reflecting on, is that when we can’t regulate our nervous systems on our own, but we can find that experience in, in community in values aligned groups, that it can actually allow us to connect with our own not only internal wisdom, but also the the depths of what we want, in a way that I haven’t experienced. Often. And I’m curious, you know, if you’re, if you’ve done any research on CO regulation in groups of nervous systems, and what your own, what your own thoughts are around, how for empaths and heart centered leaders how how being in community is actually a really powerful structure.

38:49

Absolutely, I so love this. I think being in communities critical, particularly if we’re choosing a path that is maybe more embodied, that maybe doesn’t require that we go all forward, that that reflects a choice of living, or creating a life that’s our own. And that’s uniquely ours, because that isn’t easy. So I think it’s important for us just to marinate within that. Within that’s, I don’t know, I don’t know what the word is. But within that essence of, you know, here, we do our own thing here, we are open to being authentic here, we can drop the masks, we can drop the shoulds we can drop the facade, and we can be ourselves and have really open and authentic conversations and how rare that is in our everyday life. So I think just for that it’s such a beautiful experience to be in community. And then also, to your point, a bad co regulation. You know, we know that our nervous systems are constantly in resonance with each other. And we might have experienced that simply by walking into a room argument has just erupted and noticing that something isn’t quite right, even if we have no other information. So being in the presence of other people who are regulating and regulated is hugely important because we live in a world that’s not fit for human consumption, as I always say it’s a nervous system is constantly triggered. And sometimes we can self regulate. But sometimes we need that CO regulation. And it’s so wonderful to have these anchoring moments in our weeks or months, where we can come back and CO regulation. So you know, from a nervous system perspective, we know that that that is critical. And we also know that it’s sort of a dance between both because the more regulated we are, the more prone we are to tending and befriending, and to going towards each other to engage and to collaborate. And equally, the more we are in these collaborations and CO regulation places, the more we can regulate our nervous system. So it’s a beautiful dance. And I think the world today really needs that, you know, if only we were all more regulated, we would live in a very different world. And that sense of CO regulation and community is one of the four anchors that I talk about, again, when I talk about embodied feminine leadership, it’s anchoring in ourselves first, really finding that embodied presence and what’s happening within me. And can I cultivate that sand fantasy and be in my inner authority, anchoring in community with each other. And then anchoring in deeper, yearnings in a deeper truth in a deeper meaning in what is it that I really want to create here, what’s pulling my heart forward, and then anchoring in mystery, and leaving space for flow and leaving space to trust the unfolding of life? Because ultimately, we never know. So I think these spaces that you creating for you know, masterminding and COVID Galatian is so so critical. So important.

Catherine A. Wood  42:07

Yeah, I love I love that. It’s kind of like these topics that just emerge from your knowing, right? It’s not from your intellect or your research. It’s just from your felt experience. It’s something that I’ve been sitting on a lot, and I, I just wanted to, I wanted to share this story, because it’s maybe divine timing, but I just finished yesterday, the recording of this, this workshop on embodied leadership at the Strozzi Institute, which is a Are you familiar with it? In the US? It’s okay. So it was, it was an embodiment workshop, and she was having us personify these two experiences these two polarities, that we, that we really are, are experiencing in our life and really kind of, you know, taking the posture of each of those polarities, and perhaps just the distinct, you know, emotional sense in the felt sense in the, you know, how are your shoulders? And how are your hands? And how do you feel and what thoughts come to mind. And the polarity that I was holding was the experience of being self employed, and becoming a mom, which is something I’m really sitting with right now. And, and there for me, when I was sitting in the, in the, in the Gosh, I don’t even know which one, it was probably a little bit of both. There was just this experience of feeling kind of attached, you know, like, this feeling of fear and nervousness, and, you know, how do I hold both of these polarities as true? How do I become both in this next chapter for me, and something that I was really present to, is that sometimes when we embody what we’re feeling intellectually, we, we gain some more levity around how we’re showing up because, you know, attachment being attached to results and being attached to outcomes is something that comes up a whole lot in my line of work working with ambitious empaths. And, you know, it’s just like this physical sensation of being attached. Right, it’s like, your shoulders are up and your face is shrunk and you’re gripping your hands and you could just imagine how that would actually show up in your, in your level of activity and actions and, and really just kind of the experience of what might be available differently when you’re you to use your words you said flow, or connected with really that sense of trust and surrender and and very much what I imagine your work is about. So I just love this reminder that sometimes connecting with what we’re experiencing, or what we’re thinking about, on an somatic level can help us not take ourselves seriously, which I would love a heaping dose of right now.

45:24

Yes, yeah. It’s interesting, isn’t it how taking the shape of that experience, and accentuating it a little bit for effect can make us realize just what it does to us, and how, you know, whatever we are realizing that the insight that we gain that we can’t gain just from thinking about it, I’ve had a similar experience, and budding perfectionism. And to me, it’s this forward, and again, all contracted, and then flow. And it’s a completely different experience. And, and I think that that’s a practice of holding polarity and coming to blend both, and see where that leads. It’s really, really powerful. And I wanted to pick up on the word that you use, which is trust. And I think that is the key. It’s trusting ourselves. But it’s also the opposite of that control for me is trusting that the natural unfolding will happen, whether we are contracted against what’s happening or not. And so practicing trust is letting life happen. And then focusing on you know, what role to play. But practicing trust is really challenging. And for me, that’s a huge part of the journey. Can I trust that what I’m doing is enough, can I trust that what my body is telling me is right, can I trust that it will be okay, if I don’t keep pushing or controlling? You know, it’s yeah, that’s for me, that’s a central practice. And that’s probably the one of the hardest pieces of of coming to this work of no loosening a little bit and creating a bit of space for life to happen. And when we do that, sometimes we realize that, without having done that, we would have missed a turn. That’s now opened up a whole new world. And so there’s beauty and it’s one, but it’s definitely a practice.

Catherine A. Wood  47:29

Yeah. Well, I am sensing, we’re going to have to continue this conversation because there’s so much more I wanted to chat with you about with the differences between the masculine and the feminine. But thank you so much for today. This was deeply inspiring and thought provoking for me and and I appreciate the just beautiful energy you brought to the call. As we wrap for today, I’d love to invite you to share what do you what is supported you in becoming a prosperous Empath, what’s made the difference?

48:04

I think, by now, all your listeners will know that yoga was a huge part of that. And I would say, you know, yoga and mindfulness were really critical at that particularly difficult time. And where I’m finding myself in now one tool that I’m finding really nourishing and helpful is yoga nidra, which is sometimes talked about as non sleep deep rest, I like to call it yoga nidra, because that’s really the roots of where it came from. And what I love about it, and I, I trained in a particular type of yoga nidra called daring to rest. And what I love about it is that it invites us to hold this polarity. So there’s a particular moment within the yoga nidra where we are invited to hold polarities. And for me, that has been such a powerful experience embodied experiments of how we can bring these two together, but in a very gentle way. And there’s also a part of the experience of the yoga nidra, where we invite you to connect with that Council of Women. And that just makes my heart thing. So that’s been hugely powerful in the past couple of years. So I wanted to say that, because that’s a new discovery for some of your listeners.

Catherine A. Wood  49:16

I love that we started this conversation talking about burnout, and we’re ending this conversation talking about embodied practices that support us in rest. And just Yeah, so much wisdom. Thank you so much, Isabel. Oh,

49:34

thank you for having me with such a lovely conversation. Thank you, Katherine.