065 Reclaiming Your Body: The Power of Presence, Yoga, and Emotional Healing

Hello and welcome back to Beyond the Words. I'm your host, Dimple Thakrar, and today’s episode is truly transformative. If you’ve ever experienced an out-of-body sensation or felt the weight of unprocessed trauma, this episode is especially for you. Together, we’ll delve into the power of reconnecting with our bodies, processing deep-seated emotions, and finding healing through practices like yoga, breathwork, and mindful presence. I’m honoured to have you here with me on this journey.

Episode Summary: In this episode, we explore the profound impact of trauma on our bodies and minds, particularly the ways in which we unconsciously disconnect to cope. Drawing from personal experiences, I share insights into how practices like Yin Yoga and mindful breathwork have helped me—and can help you—return to the body and process long-buried emotions. We discuss the importance of staying present in your body, the challenges of facing these emotions, and the incredible liberation that comes from processing them. This episode offers practical tools for reclaiming your body, regaining a sense of safety, and ultimately, experiencing a lighter, healthier, and more joyful life. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Understanding Trauma Responses: Trauma isn’t just about the event itself but how our bodies and minds react to it, often leading to a disconnect from our physical selves.
2. The Power of Presence: Reconnecting with your body through practices like yoga, nature walks, and breathwork is essential for healing and processing stored emotions.
3. Processing Emotions Safely: Allowing yourself to feel sadness, sorrow, or hurt without attaching a story to it helps in releasing these emotions and rewiring your nervous system.
4. Yoga as a Healing Practice: Yin Yoga, in particular, offers a space to stay present in the body, making it possible to process emotions safely and gently.
5. The Physical Impact of Emotional Release: Releasing trapped emotions can lead to physical benefits such as weight loss and reduced tension, promoting overall well-being.
6. Creating a Safe Space: Building a sense of safety within your body through mindfulness and breathwork allows for a deeper connection with yourself, making you less vulnerable to external triggers.

Call to Action: If today’s discussion resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts and stories. Your feedback is what drives this show, and it’s an honour to share this space with you. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who might benefit from it. Together, we can spread healing and connection. Thank you for being here, in your body, with me.

Closing: Thank you for joining me today. It’s been an absolute privilege to share this conversation with you. I hope it brings you peace, healing, and a renewed sense of presence. Until next time, stay safe, stay present, and remember that your body is a safe vessel. God bless.

Dimple Thakrar Resource Links:

Website: https://dimpleglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dimple.thakrar
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dimplethakrar/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Trauma and Out-of-Body Experiences
• 2:53 Defining Trauma: More Than the Event Itself
• 3:58 My Childhood and Early Trauma Responses
• 5:15 The Healing Power of Yoga
• 6:23 What is Yin Yoga?
• 7:38 Staying Present in Your Body
• 9:03 Processing and Releasing Trapped Emotions
• 10:28 Breathwork as a Healing Practice
• 11:53 Physical and Emotional Liberation
• 13:58 Final Thoughts and Closing Reflections

Transcript

Beyond the Words EP65

[00:00:00] Dimple Thakrar: Hello and welcome back to Beyond the Words with me, Dimple Thakrar your host. So today's podcast, oh my gosh, this is for any of you who have ever had or felt an out of body experience. It's also for those of you who have Maybe not even aware that you have out of body experiences, but have experienced some form of trauma growing up.

[00:00:33] Dimple Thakrar: Now, let me explain what I mean by trauma. For some people, it's horrific. It can be really horrific stuff that goes on. And for some people, it can be something that doesn't seem so horrific, but the response to it is big. So it's not necessarily about what you've experienced. And I'm diving straight in by the way today.

[00:00:53] Dimple Thakrar: It's not necessarily, to me, Trauma is not about the thing that traumatized you. So it could be, you had an abusive childhood, or you were raped, or, and all these things are horrific. I'm not undermining them in any way, shape, or form. What I'm talking of is our response to a situation that happened when, and often as children, because our brains aren't developed to know.

[00:01:23] Dimple Thakrar: We we don't make sense of it in a mature way, so we fight, freeze, or flee. And, so what I want to talk about today is this trauma response that often happens in our formative years. And now, just as a disclaimer, I'm not somebody who is so called trauma informed. However, I have a deep understanding of it and a deep awareness of it through my channel.

[00:01:58] Dimple Thakrar: And the more I become aware of it, the more I channel. And I want to take you back to my life to help you understand what I'm talking about. So many of you and I spoke a lot about it. And for those of you don't know, I was raised in a very , physically abusive uh, household. I was never physically abused.

[00:02:21] Dimple Thakrar: I was the only one that wasn't, but everybody else was, and it was considered the norm of how to deal with your family and keep everybody in line. I know that my mum was physically abused while carrying me, so I hold those traumas, or I did, in my body, and so what I want to share with you is This whole piece on how we survive these things unconsciously and how it can either be helpful or unhelpful and it can take decades, for things to be revealed because we bury them.

[00:03:04] Dimple Thakrar: I was at yoga the other day and some of you that know this, I have been practicing yoga properly now for about four months and because I used to dance with it I can't be like, yogurt is for old ladies with grey hair. It's not going to keep them strong and fit and well and What, the truth of that, decades of doing that, the truth of it is I am not old, but I'm a lady with grey hair now.

[00:03:36] Dimple Thakrar: And what I've realised is that yoga comes to you when the teacher that's aligned with you comes to you. And so I have this fabulous teacher who is incredible. It's called yoga 1 UK, something like that. We'll put the link in the show notes. But Andy is an incredible teacher and I was doing Yin Yoga.

[00:04:05] Dimple Thakrar: And for those of you who don't know what Yin Yoga is, it's a slower form of yoga where you hold the poses for a lot longer. And it requires you to be in your body. I'm Let me just explain what I mean by outer body and in body, just as a side note for those of you who aren't familiar with it. When you're in your body, you are present in it.

[00:04:28] Dimple Thakrar: Your soul is in it. You can feel your body. You're experiencing your physical physicality, your body, and for many people who have experienced or responded to a traumatic event in their lives when they were growing up. We have an innate way of fight, freeze or flee. And for some of us, we mastered the art of fleeing, not physically, but through our souls.

[00:05:02] Dimple Thakrar: So it will appear like we are numb to the pain because we're not in body. We're actually experiencing it outside the body, so some of you will have flashbacks of the trauma as if you're watching it. And I have many of those memories as a child. Like bird's eye view, and I want to put a disclaimer in here.

[00:05:26] Dimple Thakrar: Obviously, if you are experiencing something like that, go get help. If this conversation is disturbing, you turn this off now. What I do encourage for those of you who are ready to hear this, is that this will be really helpful in helping you get back into body. And the reason getting back into body is so important is because when we're out of body, It feels safer out of body.

[00:05:58] Dimple Thakrar: The problem is when you're in body, you are then in a place I have found where you're in constant fight, flee or freeze, where your nervous system is agitated because you're like, where do I go? What do I do? Oh, let me come out. It's easier. And so what I noticed in yoga the other day was that I went into child's pose And I've noticed with this yin yoga, I can't stay in the poses for long.

[00:06:28] Dimple Thakrar: My breath starts to, I get, starts to panic. And it's because it requires you to be present in body. So if you haven't processed the emotions that your body felt in that traumatic time, because you were out of body, you'll be reminded in something like yoga that requires you to be present in body. And it's not a bad thing to process those feelings in a safe way.

[00:06:59] Dimple Thakrar: So what do I mean by processing? I mean without a story, just feeling the sadness, feeling the sorrow, not necessarily the fear, but the emotion before that. You can detach from the fear and just feel the sadness or the sorrow or the hurt and then allow it to dissipate out of your body. And the way you do that is you then focus on your breath.

[00:07:31] Dimple Thakrar: Because what you find is when we've been out of body for so long, we stop breathing. We hold our breath. And then there's a big sigh. Oh, that's usually a sign that you've been holding your breath. Or that your breathing is irregular. This is why breathwork is so important. This is why I walk in nature.

[00:07:51] Dimple Thakrar: This is why I dip my feet in cold water in the stream. Because all these things keep you in body. They reboot your nervous system to feel safe. To feel. Chilly feel. Instead of burying it down. So what happened in child's pose? Because my hips were open. All the emotions that I shoved down as a child that I hadn't processed.

[00:08:22] Dimple Thakrar: I hadn't allowed myself to feel because I was so busy being out of body, and because I was present in body, and then I'd regulated my breath, the emotions came up. Floods and floods of tears. I didn't know where or why or what. I didn't need to know.

[00:08:43] Dimple Thakrar: And then the memories of childhood, but from a different place, from an adult version of me. So I could process it in a different way.

[00:08:53] Dimple Thakrar: So I just observed the emotions within me and allowed them to come through and it was such a liberating process because for the first time in a long time I was in body feeling it. I wasn't pushing it down with food. I wasn't distracting myself. I wasn't shouting or screaming. I was in body processing it and the wildest thing happened afterwards was that I was able to stay in child's pose which you would think would be a very easy pose.

[00:09:29] Dimple Thakrar: It was very painful for me. It became comfortable so I rewired what child's pose meant to me because I used to go in child's pose when I was scared as a child to hide and make myself small. And what happened was, as a result, I ended up releasing all that, and at the same time, learning that I no longer have to make myself small to be safe.

[00:09:58] Dimple Thakrar: I'm safe in this body now. Nobody's attacking me or my family. We're safe. I'm fully protected because I was able to reprogram my nervous system with the adult version of me to know that child's pose is safe, to know that I can attach to breath,

[00:10:22] Dimple Thakrar: and as long as I'm breathing, I'm safe.

[00:10:25] Dimple Thakrar: And being aware of all of this requires you to stay in body. And the way we do this is regular practices that require you to be in body. Yoga, nature, hot and cold showers and therapy. Breath work. Noticing any of your senses every time. And I'm just lifting a cup of tea here now, and as I drink this tea, I'm going to witness the flavours and the sensations as they go through my body.

[00:11:04] Dimple Thakrar: It's actually a form of deep presence, deep acceptance. And deep trust that your body is a safe vessel. And when you do this, nothing else matters. Nothing.

[00:11:23] Dimple Thakrar: Everything falls away. Because nobody can touch you. Nobody can trigger you. Nobody can ruin you because all is love. Because your body's safe. You're in love with your body. And I really have this strong intuition that this conversation will be so freeing for so many women who have been wanting to lose weight.

[00:11:46] Dimple Thakrar: Because weight gain is through many reasons and one of them is the inability to process all the emotions that are stuck in your body. And so your body gets bigger and bigger because where else is the emotion supposed to go? And also a lot of the time it's everybody else's. So this form of clearing can actually not only be freeing and lighter emotionally and energetically but also physically.

[00:12:20] Dimple Thakrar: So it's a great weight loss hack.

[00:12:22] Dimple Thakrar: Because you end up with space, less tension, less need for disease to occur.

[00:12:30] Dimple Thakrar: Movement is another one. When you move your body, just like in yoga, walking in nature, being in water, swimming is huge for our health in terms of releasing any disease.

[00:12:47] Dimple Thakrar: I would love to know, for those of you that this transmission feels aligned with, I would love to hear your feedback. I would love to hear your stories. I would love to hear how this resonates with you. It's my greatest wish and desire. It's the reason I do this work. When I hear those stories, I light up.

[00:13:12] Dimple Thakrar: And if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe. Please subscribe. The more people that subscribe, the more people that get to see this. The more people that get out. The more people that get to hear this. the more people that get helped. You get to help somebody else in the subscription and the like and the follow.

[00:13:32] Dimple Thakrar: It's been an absolute privilege to serve you today. I hope you have the most incredible day. Thank you so much for your time, energy and efforts and presence in body. God bless.