The Lazy Genius Podcast - Bonus: How to Listen to Your Body with Dr. Hillary McBride

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

In this bonus episode, Hillary talks about why our bodies aren’t what we look like, how to engage with our bodies in healing ways, and what it means to exist with pain and tension and let it make us more of who we are. Also, her voice is like honey butter. She is just the best. Helpful Companion Links The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary McBride Find Hillary online and on Instagram Episode 157: What Does It Mean to Take Care of Yourself? Episode 217: Let’s Talk About Your Body, Part One Episode 218: Let’s Talk About Your Body, Part Two Episode 230: How to Feel Like a Person with Aundi Kolber This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hi there, you're listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is a very special bonus episode, a conversation with Dr. Hilary McBride. You might be familiar with Hillary from her time as one of the hosts of the liturgists podcasts or from her own podcast, other people's problems. But she has written a book that I think is essential reading for being a human. It's

called the wisdom of your body. And it is a transformative, kind, empowering message about what it means to live in your body. In this episode, Hillary talks about why our bodies aren't what we look like, how to engage with our bodies in healing ways, and what it means to exist with pain and tension and let it make us more of who we are. Also, her voice is, it's like honey butter. She's just the best. So please enjoy this bonus episode with Dr. Hilary McBride. Hello, Hillary. Hello, Kendra. Oh, my goodness. So good to be with you. It's so fun when interviews start like we haven't been talking for 10 minutes already.

But that was off the record stuff. Yes, it was. That was all of the, I was going to say the juicy stuff. But I don't want anyone to feel like they're missing out. It was the boring stuff. It was the boring stuff. Nothing important happened. We saved all the good stuff for this interview. Indeed, we did. I did a survey recently and asked people, like, who they follow. There are not as many people who know who you are. Oh, great. And I'm so excited about because you guys, Hillary's the best. So would you just tell us a little about who you are in your work? Well, I have to say that my plan for my life, which is to create public work but remain unknown, is going well so far. I don't know that this is how the publishers like to, you know, kind of work with an author, but I would love to write books and then disappear or disappear completely. So I'm going to have to

grieve being introduced to your audience because it will, I'm just joking. No, this is wonderful. I'm going to meet all of you and be introduced to you into your lives through the sound ways of this interview. I'm a registered psychologist, which means that I do a bunch of things. I I do therapy, I teach, I research, I write. But really, I think the reason I'm a psychologist, because I'm really interested in being a person. I'm interested in people. I'm so curious about what it means to be human. And I'm on this quest, I think like many of us to figure out, how do we do this? How do we do this? And what are the points where it goes wrong and what can we do about that? And how come there isn't very much to tell us how to stay with what's good and be with that and really

kind of hone in on the wonderful, beautiful parts of being human in a way that helps resource us when when things are hard. So I am, I am human. I am interested in being human. I'm interested in your experience of being human. And in particular, this really vital slice to that, which is how we are in bodies as human. We are not just these astral projections or cloud bubbles or thought bubbles that float above bodies. But we have flesh. We have flesh. We are We have joints and longings and aches and illness and vibrancy and joy. And we want to fist pump in the air when things are going well and dance at weddings. And that is somehow really important to being human.

So that's a big part of the slice of my work. Did you know that one of the main titles that I pitched the Lacey Genius Way to Be was how to be a person? Oh, brilliant. Because it's like, I just know how to do that. No. Enter Kendra. No, inter, a lot of people who, but I think we're so, we're also, maybe desperate isn't the right

word, perhaps in certain seasons we're desperate for it. But it feels like it's the most basic thing, like just how to be a person in the world. And yet it's so deeply complicated in many ways. And one of the things that I really love about, like you said, this particular slice of your work in talking about the body and embodiment is it is, uh, would you agree a misunderstood understanding we have a we have like a pretty wildly flawed perspective on our own bodies and I learned a lot of that just from your work that you put into the world and then disappear from like just on Instagram and stuff but in your in your book the wisdom of your body which is so beautiful and helpful and kind and smart and all of these

words, one of the things that I personally was like, oh, yeah, was that our body is not only about appearance, which is so basic to say out loud. I'm like, well, of course it's not. And yet it's the first thing and often the only thing we think about. Yeah. So when I was reading your book, you gave a metaphor for what it means to live in your body and then to live where you're only thinking about the appearance of your body. And it was about, you called it living on the front lawn. And I would love for you to just sort of explain to us perhaps using that metaphor why the body is not just about appearance. Sure. So if you imagine your body to be a home, a home that you have lived in your whole life that belongs to you is yours to decorate and experience and

you know, celebrate and also have celebration in when we think about what we do in our homes. We have parties. And we, you know, we also cry on the couch with our best friend because something is really hard for us. It's all of this, you know, the highs and the lows are anchored around this particular point, this home. And if we think about our body as a home, for many of us, we were born into this home, but we learned, we learned to leave.

We were wooed out of it to live on the front lawn to, to live our body. and to live our lives really on the sidewalk looking at the house. And so when we can stretch the metaphor as far as we want, really to say, we start to look at other people's houses and we go, you know, they've got really great decor on the trim. And oh, but, you know, my, you know, my house is creaking. And maybe if I just tweak these things and it could look like my neighbors. And we really move into a position of objectifying our bodies.

We leave the inner felt experience. of being a body to see appearance of our body as the main way of orienting towards ourselves in the world or orienting towards our body. And so when I say to people, and this is kind of like a punchline of my book, really, like you are your body and anything or anyone that has convinced you otherwise is wrong, but maybe trying to help you, but it's wrong. It's not true information. When I say that to people, there is for many people in inflammatory response because we have thought of our bodies as our appearance. So when I say you are your body, what people hear is you are how you look. And for many people who have been trying to circumnavigate how they look or in particular the conflict they have internally about how they look or the shame about that being told, you are your body feels deeply painful.

and maybe like it traps them into an appearance that they are in conflict with. But what I'm actually trying to adjust in saying that you or your body is that you are more than what the house looks like on the outside. In fact, from most of us, we don't even really see the outside of our house except for a few moments a day when we're coming or going. And maybe we go, oh, that's how I know that it's my house. Like when we're driving up the street, we know to turn into the driveway because we see all the signs. It's identified because of its visual markers as being ours, but it's kind of,

it's the inside that is meant to house our existence. So coming back onto the inside, one is actually a way to create safety for ourselves. It's a way to feel like we have shelter in a world where there is, you know, storms and like night and day and we want privacy, really to think about moving back into our home as a way to protect ourselves and create an environment within ourselves worth living in. But two, and here's what I find really interesting, the research on embodiment or coming back into yourself as a body, we might say, if we're using this metaphor, living inside your house again, is actually a way to inoculate us against bad body image. So if we have shame about how we look, if we have struggle with our appearance, instead of trying to

just change how we look or change how we feel about how we look, moving inside the house, moving back into our bodies is actually a way for us to remember that there is so much more to us, so much more to our bodies than just how we look in a way that actually is shown empirically to protect us against the stories that are lobbied against us and our body image or whatever our neighbor is doing with the, you know, kind of the outside of their house, so to speak. What would you say to people who have been living on the front lawn for so long that they don't even really know how to go inside the house anymore? Right. Like is there a, because this is a this is an audience that really loves like checklists and formulas by default

and we are all learning together to start small and to be kind in that process and that a lot of things cannot be systemized cannot be mechanized. So is there a practical small first step that anyone who's listening can take if they're like, oh, what you're saying, that sort of makes sense. That's a new thought for me. I'm definitely on the front lawn. I can't even find the door anymore. Right. What do they?

What do they do? Uh-huh. Okay. So the first thing is, and I'm imagining that this will land for some people and not for others. The reason we leave our bodies is not because our bodies were ever bad, but we weren't told how to stay in our bodies in a safe, connected, attuned way where it wouldn't overwhelm us.

And sometimes when we've had experiences that were otherwise overwhelming, those showed up in a physiological way. It was loud. There was so much sensation. There was terror. There was overwhelm. And so we learned that our body is unsafe, kind of an unsafe place to be in. So it's very important to recognize that there, for many of us, are very good reasons why we left the inside of the house because it was violent and intense in there. and we learn to live on the front lawn because although exposed to the elements and reductive of

the complexity of being human at times might have been safer. So I want to suggest that as we approximate living inside the house again, that we do so in a really gentle, slow, kind of compassionate, curious, thoughtful way, not busting down the front door, not shaming ourselves for like, kind of circling the perimeter, but really giving ourselves time to go up and just put our hands on the shingles, so to speak, oh, that's, that's the house. And I'm closer. And maybe I don't have as many raindrops fall on me as I, you know, shimmy up against the side of this house. So what that looks like practically is can we, can we start to get closer, even if it's a very small way? And what that might mean is maybe we put our hands on our bodies.

You go, oh, yeah, this, this is my home. And maybe it just starts by gently, you know, touching our own belly or putting our hands on our chest or holding our hands together, just making contact with ourselves in a way that is kind and gentle and reminds us to slow down and sense. So that's one piece of it. Another thought that I have, if we're trying to operationalize this, is you're probably going to want to go into a house if you also know that there's good things in there, not just all the reasons that you left.

So what are the reasons why we go into the house? And this is my list, but I encourage people to make their own. Joy, vitality, connection, presence, pleasure, sensuality, maybe even a sense of fullness. ultimately connecting to intuition and wisdom, being able to care for ourselves better. So maybe making a list, because even though that's still an intellectual exercise, we know, like Frankel and Nietzsche have said this, you know, in so many different places, when there is a why, we can get through anyhow. When we have the reason to go towards ourselves as a body, it will make it so much easier of what we find inside feels a little foreign or what unfamiliar or it's uncomfortable.

And then I think maybe the next option would be put your, put your ear up against the front door. And you might hear that there's music playing inside. You might hear that there is a dance that you're being invited into. And maybe the kind of, again, the practical application of that is starting to notice like, do I have hunger or fullness cues? Am I tired? Do I, do I want to go to bed? Is there something inside of me that wants to move right now? can I listen to that? And even if I don't know how to do something about it, because I'm, you know, really in this highly structured way of existing where I, you know, eat at certain times or I go to bed later than I should because I need to stay up and do all the things. Like, maybe we can't actually engage, but we can start listening and we can start paying attention

to the information to decide later what to do with it. One of the things I've learned from, from your work is to pay attention to the information. information that my body is trying to tell me. And as early as yesterday, I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed by a personal situation. And I didn't know where to begin. You know, we all have those situations in our last where we're like, this is so complicated. This is so complex. I don't even know how I feel about this. And whenever we feel some sort of, rise or swell within us that actually does feel we feel it physically somehow that my tendency for 40 years has been to push that down right because you don't know what's going to happen

if you let that swell continue right and so i have learned from you that paying attention to that is a it's a cue it's an information It's information. It's your body saying, hey, this matters. Let's pay attention to this. And so yesterday, I spent some time because I'm a verbal processor, but I didn't really have anyone in that moment to actually verbally process it with. I'm not even kidding. You have a baby and you live in another country across like the continent. And I was like, should I call Hillary? Can I call Hillary? Yes. I really did. Because I needed to verbally process it. But at the same time, sometimes I use verbal processing as an excuse to not sit with myself and difficult things. And so I pulled out a,

I pulled out a notebook and I just started to write process with pen and paper and process whatever was coming out. And I know, I tried to pay attention to when my body had a sensation that was approaching that overwhelm. Right. That felt like, and I, it feels like, and it's the same feeling every time, Every single time. You know, it's like, it feels like there's a dull, like a blunt saw, like in the middle of my chest. And then someone is like pushing out my eyeballs from behind. And so as I was processing, there were certain things that I wrote that did not elicit

that feeling. Ah. And then that I kind of expected to, like it was interesting. And then I even wrote, I even wrote in my notes, oh, saw an eyes. there it is there's the saw and eyes like i actually kept writing saw and eyes incredible it was really funny but it helped me actually zone in on the real maybe not real that's not the right word but the the foundational fears of the situation right because all that i was experiencing was real but it all was kind of holding equal urgency in my processing that's why it felt so overwhelming

because i didn't know which thread to pull right and as i was sitting there And listening to what my body was telling me, I was able to name these two significant pieces of this very elaborate puzzle that were the deeper fears of the situation and work through those and sit with those and allow them to kind of like crest, you know, and go, oh, okay. And to tell myself, hey, we're okay. You're doing okay. Oh, my goodness. And so anyway, all that to say, I would not have been able to do that with, without.

you. But going back to what you were saying, like putting your hands, when you said go up and put your hands on the shingles, put your ear against the door, I think for people who have been on the front lawn for so long that even that invitation feels really metaphorically foreign. It's like, I don't even know what that means. And so just as wanting to share that as a practical example of when you said hunger cues and sleep cues and just paying attention to the. literal physical sensations that are happening. You even said in your book, and I thought it was, it was so profound, you were talking about hunger. And you said, how would you describe how your hunger feels? How would you tell someone who didn't know what hunger was, what it feels like?

And I was like, that's a one thing I've ever heard. Which is interesting because what that does actually is it tells us that there is an intuition to that. There is an intuitiveness to recognizing what hunger is. Right. You don't know how to say it, but we know what it feels like. So even that kind of thing, like putting words to how you feel when you're hungry, putting words to what you experience in your body when you put your hand on your chest. Like that's sort of the practical, to me, that's sort of the practical representation of

putting your ear against the door. Yeah. And the subtext of what you're saying here too is that emotion is a physiological process, Whereas for many of us, we've learned to believe that emotion is the label, the cognitive label we put on. It's the word. It's how we identify it. It's still kind of happening cerebrally up in, kind of up in our mind. And yet we're missing all of the stuff that tells us that that's the label that fits.

Or for hunger, for example, right? We're missing, how do we know what hunger feels like, even though many of us are good at labeling at hungry? We're missing all of that information and being able to, to sink. into our skin in a way that allows us to feel from the inside out yields so much information because these emotions, they come with sensation patterns that have like motivational tendencies. So emotion is meant to compel us to go towards something or away from something or it's meant to tell us, stop, pay attention, get more information. But if we aren't, if we aren't connecting to what's

actually happening our body, then we're missing how all of that is interwoven with safety, our wisdom, and ultimately who we are, how we know ourselves. Because while there is some some universality and emotion, like you and I have both felt fear, the things that we feel fear about are different based on our lived experience. And so when we know emotion, it actually takes us towards ourselves. It takes us towards what is it that we need to stay safe? What is it we need in order to thrive and flourish. How do we connect? What has hurt us before?

What do we want? But being unable to be with those feelings leaves us in a way fragmented from ourselves. So dropping out of our heads to feel those sensations in our body. I mean, gosh, your description and the viscerality of that is, it's poignant. And I think a really good example of how many of us maybe feel like our inner experience is foreign to us and how we need, we need to actually get kind of technical about it. What is that sensation? What does it feel like? What do I liken it to? And what does it tell me about what parts in my story need to be paid attention to? Because for me, emotion feels like

like the bolding of a text or like a highlighter. It doesn't necessarily tell me like if I should do that very thing, follow that impulse. But it tells me pay attention to that. because it tells you something about you. We'll be right back. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast.

Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. I was going to say something else to try to drive that home better. And then you said it's like it bolds the text. And it's like, oh, that's way better than I was going to say. That's exactly what it is.

Because it's not directive in an actionable way. It is simply like it's an arrow paying attention. It's like, hey, look at this. Just look at this. And when we and it takes practice. I think that's really important too, to just to be really gentle in that process of you might not have this profound moment the first time that you start to try to listen to your body and all these different things. Like it's it's like rebuilding a relationship. Like you use the word

fragmented. Yeah, that we're kind of trying to rebuild that. So anyway, that was so good. There was something else that you, another metaphor that you had in your book that I thought was so helpful, especially for this audience. And it is. is a concept that you call the second arrow. And I would just love for, you would say it a lot better than, a lot better than I will. But I will, I did pull out your book and it's like highlighted so aggressively. It's really funny. And I kept changing my pen.

And so it looks like someone who was not really, it's like in every room of my house. I just grab whatever right in you toes. Oh, kind of. Thank you. But you, you were talking about how the, The first arrow is you say we get an injury, we get sick, we face a loss, we struggle with a disease, and that is the first arrow. In some ways, it's something that is done to us out of our control.

Right, right. Something that happens. Yes. And then you say, but we are the ones who shoot the second arrow. The second arrow is shot when we add to our own pain and suffering by how we talk to ourselves and others about what is happening with us. Yes. So can you, I feel like that is, I think a lot of people listening just went, oh, man. Right. I have a quiver of second to arrows. Right. And third and fourth and fifth. Yes. So I'll start by saying this is not something that I made up. This is a Buddhist principle. And so it's something that you can read lots about and find other places. If you want to dig into it more, this is not something that I've, you know, T-M'd. It is, it's so important to recognize that there is a normative degree of pain in our existence of being

human. And that that's not actually something that we need to escape from or be rescued from, although many of us have not learned or been supported about in how to how to be with the pain of being human. So when the pain of being human presents itself, you know, someone we love dies, when there's an illness, when we get a cancer diagnosis, when there's an injury, when you lose your job, I mean, it could be any number of things. Your kid gets sick. There's a natural disaster. I mean, a pandemic.

Let's just throw that in the mix here. And we have these things happen in our life as a means of at times feeling responsible for them and trying to really shame our way into change, shame our way or criticize our way out of our suffering to give ourselves the illusion that we have more power than we do. we beat ourselves up. We bring in another element to kind of hopefully create enough pressure that helps us get away from the suffering that we had as if we're responsible for it. So the thing that happens is the first arrow, as you identified, but how we respond to ourselves about it is the second arrow. So if somebody, I just say if I wake up and I'm in pain, my body is in pain

because of something I did or I'm sick or whatnot, shaming ourselves, adding to the injury by shooting ourselves again, that's the second arrow and that's something that we're responsible for. We can't necessarily always change what happens with the first arrow, but the second arrow is something that we can be responsible for. And many of us have learned, like I said, to respond to our pain in a way that adds more pain to it. It's like we we don't know how to turn compassion towards ourselves because maybe on some level we think, you know, then I'm going to be lazy, right? Or then I'm going to be ineffective or then more horrible things are going to happen. But if I, you know, really up the ante and squeeze myself and

add more criticism and shame, then I can, what, stop the pandemic from happening or, you're like, you know, change the diagnosis or like bring that loved one back. Like it's, it's the second arrow has a function for us, but it's ineffective and kind of adds to our suffering. So what we want to try to do is recognize that there are hurts that happen, but instead of adding more pain to them, we come to those hurts with kindness, with tenderness, with nurturance as a way of supporting ourselves through them, as a way of healing and helping ourselves be kind. And it's, I think this, like I'm kind of alluding to it with my last statement there, but it's really genuinely hard to be deeply compassionate with other people and their suffering.

we can't also do that for ourselves. There tends to be this parallel process between kind of what we fuel ourselves with or how we talk to ourselves and what we ultimately believe about other people in their pain too. And so I think that when we turn towards our own suffering with kindness and compassion and curiosity, what we're doing is we're building the foundation for a more just and loving world, that it is not just about us healing ourselves, but ultimately telling a new story. about being human and offering creating a well of kindness inside of ourselves that it can then spill out into other people when we see their suffering too that is like the entire that's the that's the more concise version of the whole 13th chapter of my book the lazy genius way because that's the

final principle is to be kind to yourself and and i i didn't realize how much i personally for so long had been hamstringing my ability to be with people in their hurt and without judgment, without trying to fix it because I was always judging my own stuff. I was always trying to fix my own problems. Like it is, it's, it's a, it's almost like a muscle that we develop. And it's such a strange thing that we all so much want to connect with other people. We want to be there for the people that we love. And it is hard to sit with people in difficult situations. It is. And at the same time, we're using this muscle that we desire to have, but it is so deeply atrophied because we never use it on ourselves. And then we're like, this is uncomfortable.

This is uncomfortable. I don't know what to do. And we start to panic. And then we say things that we all say the wrong things. We all say things that we have to apologize for later. but we I know for me I felt like I was consistently saying the wrong thing out of protection for myself because I didn't know how to be with people when things were hard because I didn't know how to be with myself when things were hard. And so I just, I really love the simplicity of self compassion and being kind to yourself. And that can happen in kind of slow drips in less consequential ways, you know, not sitting with a friend or a family member who just had a cancer diagnosis, but maybe when you, like me, pull up to a three-way stop at a busy

target shopping center and you yell at someone because they don't know how to use the three-way stop. And then to go, okay, like to take a deep breath and go, they are a person, I'm a person, this does not matter as much, like, you know, whatever it is. The other day, this is, my kids, know how much I hate this three always stop because the other day my 10 year old he said mom do you want to go around the back way so that you can skip the three stop and i was like bless you my sweet ben i was like you're so smart buddy let's do that let's not even put mommy in a situation where she's going to have to exercise so compassion for making a bad call that reminds me of that parable like you know i walked down the street i found the hole i walked on the street i saw on the

hole. I walk down the street. I see the hole. I fall on the hole. I walk down the street. I try to walk around it. I follow in the hole. I walk down another street. Just pick a different street. It's just different street. But that we can actually pick different streets kindly that are simpler and like I said, less consequential. Like you don't have dinner. You don't know what dinner's going to be at 5.30. Yeah. Like don't be yourself all up about that. Right. Just pull out hot dogs. It's going to be okay. You know, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, And the more that you practice that kindness in those smaller spaces, the less foreign it feels when you're in the more complicated ones.

Well, let's flip this on its head, too, and think about if what's happening internally is spilling out, then it gives us a kind of a legend, like I think of a legend on a map, to understand why some of the people who hurt us treat us the way that they do. because they're also showing us what it's like internally for them. So if somebody is really, really cruel for us and they're the one yelling at us at the three-way stop at Target, then we can look at that and we can easily go, out, like, oh, that's about me. Or say, oh, I wonder if that's how they talk to themselves inside, too. Like, oh, I think that they're just showing me that inside hasn't always been a safe place for them to be, too.

And then when we kind of have in this kind of psychedelic way, the spin out where we see those people, you know, connected to the people who raised them and the people who raised them and the people who raise them, we see, oh, this person who's yelling at us at, you know, in the grocery store or, you know, is being cruel to us on Twitter or whatever the thing is. Like, oh, they're doing the thing that was done to them. Oh, and all of a sudden it's easier to engender compassion. Like, no wonder they're treating me this way because this is the way they were treated and they didn't deserve that. And no, it's not my responsibility to fix them. But I can see that I don't have to add, here it is, the second arrow to this situation. I can add compassion to them and to me.

Because this is just one of those things where hurt is playing out in life and not necessarily, you know, a proof of my badness. That here is this person who is interoperable. acting with me because it's the only way that they know how, but I don't have to beat myself up about it. You're so smart. Oh, I love that you're like, wait, what? You're so good at words and making things make sense. Oh, I feel like you were really, really doing the heavy lifting today. I was like, oh, you said it, you said it better than I did. There was actually, well, see, I don't need to second error myself. At one point, I did kind of, um, when I was saying, you were, saying words. And I was like, I love that I'm trying to carry on a conversation with this doctor,

with this amazing therapist. Like I know what I'm talking about. And then I was like, you know what? It's okay. I've had lived experiences. I have been told it was a very healing moment. Actually, I had a therapist, Andy Culver, who was on the show last year. And she said that my work was trauma informed. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like that was such a truly like healing. redemptive thing for her to say. And so anyway, so that was one of the things I just had to stop. Like, no, I don't know. You can, you can have this, you can have this conversation. Oh, Candity. Yes. Oh, my goodness. What a treat for me to learn from you. And there's something, as you know, writing a book and putting it into the world, when people interact with it and

like kind of launch it back to you in a way, you see things that you didn't see even as you were writing it. And so I want to say, not only are you allowed to have this conversation, thank you for teaching me. Thank you for teaching me about this work, about what matters about it, about how it lands for you, about the areas that I can expand on even more. I feel grateful for how I've learned from you in this conversation. That's very, very kind. So you guys, Hillary is living in a cave. She will not talk to any of us again.

And you can read her book. I'm kidding. But the book is called The Wisdom of Your Body by Dr. Hilary McBride. And it really is one of those slow, digestible, like you're going to want to take your time with it. Like I was founding myself zipping through and then stopped zipping. So I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to zip here. I want to sit with this. There's just so much help in there that your metaphors are so good.

I wrote, I've just made a list of many of them. they're just used to like defenses or like winter coats. Thoughts are like blossoms on a flower. Like there were all of the front lawn one. There were all these things that just help help this sort of large, often overwhelming concept of self-awareness and therapy. And when people say the phrase doing the work, you know, that if you've never done that kind of work, it's hard to know where to begin.

Right. And it can feel very academic. it can feel very overwhelming. It can feel almost in many ways very disembodied because it's just information being given to you. And so I just love how human you've made this book with with the use of metaphor, with just your own personal stories, which are really beautifully written and very vulnerably shared. And so it's just a delightful tool, everyone, this book. Gosh, thank you so much. The wisdom of your body, finding healing, wholeness and connection through embodied living. Thank you, Kendra. Thank you for your kindness. And I think,

I mean, you captured really what I want is, is not for this to be another intellectual exercise, another book to kind of amass knowledge that stays in our already overly saturated brains. And I want it to be an invitation to come home to yourself. I want it to be an invitation for us all to be re-inhabiting our bodies in a way that allows us to be safe with ourselves, gentle and loving towards the people around us, connected to the earth, ultimately moving into a position or space in our lives where we are flourishing because we are more whole than when we started. And that doesn't necessarily happen by memorizing some things that happen in a book. So I really hope that whoever you are as you're listening to this, when the book finds its way to

that you do read it slowly and you listen, kind of like Kendra was doing with her journaling exercise, you notice what happens in your body as you're reading. And you think of that as really good information that you can get used to get to know yourself better instead of just a way to know my ideas more. I want for you to be returned to yourself. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Hillary. And I highly, highly encourage you to get her both. the wisdom of your body. It is something I will return to again and again as I learn more about what it means to live in my body as I am in a way that's whole and expansive and living in the house, not just in the front yard. If you would like to dig even more into this topic about

your body, its appearance, its existence, a few other episodes we might want to listen to are episodes 217 and 218, a two-part episode series called Let's Talk About Your Body. episode 157 called What Does It Mean to Take Care of Yourself? And episode 230, How to Feel Like a Person with Andy Colber, which was another conversation with another therapist focused on our relationship with stress. All of those are great episodes if you want to go a little deeper in your earbuds, but please check out Hillary's book, The Wisdom of Your Body. If you enjoy this podcast and you have never left a review on Apple Podcasts, would you

consider doing that? Reviews, as you know, help new listeners discover the the show. But the biggest thing, the biggest thing that you all so often do is share these episodes with your real life people. I see a lot of you share episodes on your socials, which I deeply appreciate. It is amazing. Please thank you for doing that and continue to do that. But also, I get so many DMs that say something like, my friend has been telling me about your podcast for weeks and I finally started listening and I'm loving it. A lot of you are that friend, hounding your other friends to listen to the show or read the book or whatever. And I am just immensely

grateful. So thank you for that. All right. Until next time. be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. We'll see you on Monday. If you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.