To welcome in the new year, I’m covering some liberatory practices that you can incorporate into your life for a more expansive year. There are three words and a phrase that I’m using to guide my intentions and decisions in 2023 – unapologetic, unbothered, soft, and #ScrubFree. In this episode, I unpack what all of that means to me and how I plan on channeling that energy in all areas of my life.
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As always, you’re invited to take what resonates for you and ditch anything that doesn’t!
In episode 411 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:
- (2:00) The interconnected nature of expansion and acceptance
- (3:47) How do we know if the work that we’re doing on ourselves is really contributing to collective healing and liberation?
- (6:58) Why I love the saying, “May this be for the benefit of all beings”
- (12:58) Tapping into the expanded expression and embodiment of being unapologetic
- (13:36) The different layers of unbothered and how it differs from triggerable
- (16:58) Recognizing where I want to soften my edges and let go of things that aren’t mine to hold
- (21:36) Applying a #ScrubFree policy to every area of my life
- (24:32) Developing genuine self-awareness, especially around how you label yourself
- (27:28) What to expect from the next couple of episodes
Slide into my DMs on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethdialto/
Resources mentioned by Elizabeth in the episode:
- Episode 374. My 2022 Mystical Initiation
- Check out AM/PM rituals
- Sacred Embodiment Specialist (SES) Training
- Email us with questions or feedback.
Don’t miss an episode of The Embodied Podcast.
Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:
- If you want a real liberatory practice, stop second guessing yourself. Choose to espouse the belief that if you made a choice, it was the right one.
- I think it’s fascinating and not coincidental that in my life, my biggest illnesses, injuries, and health issues have been things that are either caused, connected or related to holding too much, pushing too much, or lifting too much – physically, emotionally, and energetically.
- Part of being unbothered is minding my business and only focusing on what’s mine to focus on. I’m just not engaging with stuff that there’s no friggin point in engaging with anymore.
- It’s so important to ask, what’s my part in this? Not everything is always other people’s fault.
- Anything that we’re going to sit back here and use as a way of engaging with other people, we also have to use it as a way of engaging with ourselves.
How was this episode for you?
Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!
About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto
Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.
If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussions on Instagram here.
Transcript for Episode 411 “Liberatory Practices For An Expansive Year – Part I“:
Elizabeth DiAlto 00:00
How do we know if the work that we’re doing on ourselves is really contributing and also really for collective healing and liberation? Well, if you zoom out and look on it and look at it rather, the benefits, the ripple effects of the work that you’re doing, goes beyond you and are actually immeasurable.
Elizabeth DiAlto 00:27
Hello, everybody, welcome to the first embody podcast episode of 2023. We are back, we are going into year number eight of this podcast. I’m super excited about that. And to kick off the year, I want to talk about liberatory practices for an expansive year. Now, no matter how you’re feeling about going into this new year, if you’re like, off to the races and feeling excited and hopeful, and there’s momentum, and cool things are happening, if you’re dragging your ass into this year, and not feeling like doing anything, or something in between, everything we talked about today is stuff that you’ll be able to put into your own context, your own life, whatever experiences you’re having right now. So just make sure you’re listening with your, this is for me, in whatever way it’s for me ears, and not the, what’s wrong with me, I should be more excited, blah, blah, blah, all that crap, right?
Elizabeth DiAlto 01:34
Wherever you are, is exactly where you should be. And I know that’s hard to accept sometimes when we’d rather be somewhere else. But we know this, we can all reflect back and look back at times in our lives, when we didn’t know why whatever was happening was happening, and it fucking sucked. And then later on, we’re like, Oh, damn, I actually really needed that experience. So I just, I want you to come into the year part of expansion is acceptance. You know, we talk about acceptance in the self love framework in the context of self acceptance.
Elizabeth DiAlto 02:10
But acceptance in and of itself is such an important important aspect of healing and liberation, and expansion. Because when we can’t accept something, the way it is, will often spend a lot of brain power, emotional power and a lot of energy fighting it, right, just analyzing it, picking it apart, pulling it apart, criticizing it, criticizing ourselves. And that is just such a wasted investment of your precious energy, your precious power, your precious personal resources. So let’s not do that this year. Part of expansion is also efficient and effective use of our energy, our resources, our power, our life force.
Elizabeth DiAlto 03:02
And what I mean when I say liberatory liberatory is anything that contributes to liberation. And whenever I talk about liberation, I’m always talking about two things. There’s the soul liberation, which some of you have been listening to this podcast for a long time. So you know, whenever I say self, I mean, so those things are interchangeable on the show. So if we’re talking about self love, it’s the soul. And it includes right, it’s the human and the divine aspects of ourself, it’s really, the whole self has to include the soul self. So we’re talking about self and soul liberation, but then, of course, collective liberation. And there’s a really important distinction that I want to make here.
Elizabeth DiAlto 03:47
How do we know if the work that we’re doing on ourselves, is really contributing, and also really for collective healing and liberation? Well, if you zoom out and look on it, and look at it, rather, the benefits, the ripple effects of the work that you’re doing, goes beyond you and are actually immeasurable. And you could also really draw a pretty clear line to how it contributes to collective healing and liberation. And this isn’t about a justification.
Elizabeth DiAlto 04:22
This is about making logical sense and intuitive sense. Let me give you an example. For me to live by myself, and to not have children. making those choices in my life allows me to have the time space energy, the joy, the freedom to do everything that I do here. Right? So what might look like a selfish choice in some people’s opinions and some people’s small minds, to live by myself or to not have children or not also not really want to be in a relationship either. Because maybe those people wouldn’t want that. For me, those are the things that give me the space. And we’re gonna talk about space in this episode to, to do the things that I do which contribute to collective healing, liberation expansion.
Elizabeth DiAlto 05:14
And I also need to always remind people, if you’re listening to the show, that you don’t have to be a coach, you don’t have to be a healer, you don’t have to be a writer, you could be a person with a job, a corporate job, you could bag groceries, you could do Uber Eats, you could you know, anything, you could be a lawyer, you could be a doctor, you could be someone who works in entertainment, you know, there’s, there’s so many millions of jobs and roles and important things that people do that keep the world running, that support other people. This is why being collective minded is so important. Because day in and day out choices we make affects so much more than just us. It might seem like it’s only about us, but it’s really going to ripple into other people’s lives and other situations and experiences. So there’s just a difference, though, obviously, there’s that inherent, we’re all interconnected, what we choose for ourselves is going to impact other people in some way, shape, or form. But then there’s also just the powerful, loving and compassionate intention that whatever we do for ourselves, also be considerate towards others, and also contributes to collective healing and liberation. When we use the word contribute, I also have to emphasize a point, which is this isn’t about giving the most or doing the most or being super productive or perfect, or getting it right or doing it right. It’s just this really responsible awareness. It’s this emotionally mature spiritually, and energetically responsible awareness, that the work that you’re doing on yourself and your own life is having ripple effects that some of them might be tangible and obvious to you, some of them might not be right.
Elizabeth DiAlto 06:58
But if your intention is May this be for the benefit of all beings, which I love that saying for the benefit of all beings, if you bring that energy to what you do, what also starts to happen is you will be guided towards choices, you will be made aware of choices, choices will open up for you that perhaps you hadn’t considered before, perhaps you hadn’t realized were available to you before, and in a lot of ways will be much more aligned for that higher intention, that higher intention that includes all beings, not just yourself, because there are certainly some choices that we can all make that really would only benefit ourselves. And what’s important about this is that we understand that there’s a difference between self sacrifice, doing things to our own detriment, right? Because it’s also not for collective healing, good liberation, or expansion and joy. If it hurts you in the process, if it requires you to deny yourself, abandon yourself, betray yourself, harm yourself, because you’re a part of the collective too, right?
Elizabeth DiAlto 08:11
So we are building our muscles here in the School of sacred embodiment. And always bringing our awareness back to that we are part of a big human family. And the choices that we make in our own lives have ripple effects, they affect other people, they affect us. And sometimes, the discernment on what choice to make can come from that lens. does this benefit all beings? Does this feel like the highest choice to support my higher intention, which is of course to liberate my own soul to liberate my own self, to get my ego in check to have healthier relationship to my self, my body to others work, whatever, these systems, all the things, and how’s that affecting other people, other people around me, and this is not about codependency This is not about making our choices so that other people will be comfortable or so that anyone will love or like us or recognize us or praise us. These are just points of consideration. Okay? You all know this about me, if you’ve been listening for a while, I’m always looking at the real macro perspective, and then bring it down into the micro decisions and choices that we can make. So that we can contribute to the best of our ability to the macro to the collective.
Elizabeth DiAlto 09:30
And again, that doesn’t mean you can’t mess things up. It doesn’t mean you won’t do harm. It doesn’t mean that there are going to be choices sometimes that don’t feel impossible, or just hard, right? Sometimes. Sometimes there’s many good choices to choose from, and you’re like, I don’t know which one. And when that’s the case, I like to walk into things with the perspective of I can’t mess this up. If this is happening, it’s what needs to happen. If this is what I chose was the right choice. This also talks about saving time, you want to save time If you’re out there listening to this, and you’re someone who typically second guesses yourself, this is freedom right here, you want a real laboratory practice, stop second guessing yourself. Choose to espouse the belief that if I made that choice, it was the right choice. You might not like the outcome, right? Something can be a right choice and create an outcome that you didn’t want, or something cannot go the way you wanted it to go, but still have been the correct choice. Because it moved you in the direction you didn’t know you needed to go in.
Elizabeth DiAlto 10:36
And this brings us back to where I started the episode. That is the practice of acceptance, acceptance is one of the most liberatory practices, because again, it just saves us time, saves us time, from beating ourselves up second guessing ourselves, over analyzing shit getting stuck in the mental machinations and mechanics of this or that or why or how we’re needing to understand things that perhaps we’re not meant to understand, or perhaps aren’t understandable just yet. Life is constantly unfolding in so many layers and so many dimensions in so many ways. And things are so complex, that one of the big ways to simplify is to accept that that is how things are. That is like one of the principles of living on the earth plane is there’s a lot of complexity, there’s a lot of paradox, a lot of things can be true at the same time that appear to conflict with each other. And yet, it’s all in service to something bigger, or something greater. And the more acceptance we can have, the more peace we can have. The more equanimity that we can have around these things is really huge.
Elizabeth DiAlto 11:49
So some of you, I’m sure pick a word for the year, or maybe words for the year. I’m such a word person that I always have anywhere from two to four words for the year. And this year. My words are there’s three words in a phrase, unapologetic, unbothered, soft. And then hashtag scrub free. And I’m going to explain this. A Greg. So yeah. So unapologetic, what’s interesting about this, as most people would look at me, that’s something people call me regularly. And I am quite unapologetic. But there was just a next level of it, an expanded expression and embodiment of it that was really calling to me towards the end of 2022. So I picked unapologetic and I’m excited to expand into that in whatever way is meant for me this year like that was a very specific just called me like this is the one unapologetic unbothered. Some of you have heard me say this in other episodes over the years, one of my biggest goals in life is to be just extremely unbothered. What did I say in the feeling and dealing workshop? Chronically unbothered. That might be a book someday, chronically on bothered, right. And again, that doesn’t mean doesn’t mean that nothing will ever upset me ever again, that’s not the goal. It’s just about for the most part, nothing can really knock me off my game. Nothing can really disrupt me, or really discombobulate disorient me to any kind of detrimental degree, right? Only to the degree to which of helping me to see that there’s something present for me to address and work on.
Elizabeth DiAlto 13:36
And we can look at unbothered in different layers, phases and stages, different categories and areas of life. Another way to think about unbothered is on triggerable. It’s funny because I had an experience over the break, where someone missed a deadline for something, they messaged us about it asking if we can make an exception. And before we were able to get back to them, they just went ahead and use the link in an email and let themselves into something before we said yes or no. And for me, that was a boundary violation. I wasn’t triggered about it. They sent an email and they said, Oh, I have the link still work. So I just used it. And I just let them know, you know, hey, so and so that’s not how it works. I’m gonna have to remove you from the thing, you’re more than welcome to rejoin next time we open it. And I did say, you know, and I have to say, it rubbed me the wrong way that you went ahead and let yourself into something before waiting to hear from us about whether or not we were open to making an exception. And this person wrote back in an email like a whole paragraph about I understand why you’re triggered and this and that, and, you know, all this other stuff. And I wasn’t triggered I was just it’s a boundary violation. When I say rubbed me the wrong way. It just it felt off. I was like, we could make this exception and you Know what we might have. But because of the way that person went ahead and took it upon themselves to enter a container without me or someone on my team saying yes or no to their request that did not sit well with me. And so there’s just a difference.
Elizabeth DiAlto 15:16
You know, we live in this age of Instagram therapy and all this advice that we constantly see. Not everything is a trigger. You know, not everything hijacks the nervous system. Some things, we just don’t like how it feels some things can just rub us the wrong way. Some things could just not be okay with us. And it’s not a whole big thing, not a shadow. It’s not a projection. It’s not something we need to unpack. It just literally is what it is. And personally, one of the things I’ve learned over the years and this goes under being unbothered is I just don’t question my intuition. Right? If something feels off, or something feels funny to me, something rubs me the wrong way. I’m like, Ah, that’s not okay with me. Right? That’s just discernment. So being unbothered is about that. It’s not blowing things out of proportion, not needing to make all this meaning even this exchange with this woman, it was slightly agitating, but you know, she wasn’t being an asshole or anything. She wasn’t being unkind. She just, and if anything, she might have just been being a little overzealous. You know, maybe she was being entitled, I don’t know, because I don’t know her. And part of being unbothered is I don’t need to know. I don’t need to like, make up details and stories and analyze her or anything like that. And in her response to us, she was kind of doing that a little bit, which is why I was like, alright, you know, this actually seems like it was the right choice. Because I’m just not interested in engaging with that, right? And part of being unbothered is also minding my business, only focusing on what’s mine to focus on. And again, just not engaging with stuff that there’s no friggin point in engaging with.
Elizabeth DiAlto 16:58
So we have unapologetic, we have unbothered, and then there’s soft, because something for me, and as I’m recording this episode, it is Monday, January 9, this episode will be live next Monday, the 16th. A year ago today, I was in the hospital waiting to have my gallbladder removed. And 10 Nope, more than that. Man was like 18 years ago now. 2005, January 2005. Isn’t that funny? The only two major surgeries I’ve ever had in my life have both happened in January, freaking Capricorn season taken me out. Hmm. So January 2005, I had a hernia surgery, my senior year of college, January 2022, I had my gallbladder removed. And if there’s any chronic issue that I’ve had for literally as long as I can remember, which has actually been really exacerbated lately, to the point that it’s inhibiting my movement in some ways, it’s lower back issues. And I recently had an x ray and MRI about it and found out a couple things like some disconcert tissue stuff going on. But there’s also a very, very, very mild minor bit of scoliosis in my lumbar spine. And I just think it’s fascinating and not coincidental that in my life, my biggest illnesses, injuries, health issues have been things that are either caused, connected or related to or exacerbated by holding too much, pushing too much, lifting too much. And those are literal, physical things. Also, holding isn’t just about like holding physical weight, but emotional things, things that weren’t mine to hold, or holding things for too long. And even think about you know, in college when I got the hernia, part of it was because I was so hyper independent back then. And I would sometimes move myself in and out of the dorms like I remember my junior year of college, carrying like a big ass TV, you know, we have these great sleek flat TVs now.
Elizabeth DiAlto 19:05
But those of you who’ve been around for awhile, you remember these big, chunky heavy ass TVs we used to have. I’m not carrying one of those myself up two flights of steps. What were they doing, you know, but I could do it. Right and so soft. For me, the word soft is about just that hard edge on me. That made me want to do things myself, not receive support, not trust people to support me. feel attached to being able to do it myself, not need people. That to me is hard in the sense of not just being rigid and tough. But also it creates challenge and difficulty. It makes things harder. And so what are the big black Things of the gallbladder experience last year. And we’ll link in the show notes. If you want to check out that episode, I did an episode after that, because it was quite a mystical experience through it, and on the other end of it, but part of that softening was I have an Oregon removed, like, I needed help. I couldn’t I physically I had stitches in my belly. And some of you who have had stitches in your belly. No, you don’t realize how the core is a huge part of every single movement, like how hard it is to function when there’s something impaired in the midsection. So having stitches in my belly was was a big deal. I couldn’t eat like getting up and down, it couldn’t even sleep in my bed or lay on my couch had to get a lift chair. So many I had to accept and ask for a lot of help during that recovery. And that really initiated me into a period of softening, unlike anything I’ve had before. And I just want to keep going on that because it actually feels so good. It feels so good.
Elizabeth DiAlto 21:03
And I’m 39 this year, I’ll turn 40 in September. And then it just feels like you know, nines are completion numbers, right before you start the new cycle. And I do really intentionally there’s a lot of things in 39 that I’m wanting to wrap up, clean up, integrate and reorient so that I’m not dragging some stuff from my 30s into my 40s that I really don’t need to that no longer serves me. And so softening is a big part of that.
Elizabeth DiAlto 21:36
And then the fourth thing, the hashtag no scrubs are not no scrubs, but scrub free. And it’s 1,000% head nod to the TLC song no scrubs. In that song, they’re talking about no scrubs being in a dating context. But in my context, this year, it’s being scrub free is in every area of life. And I just I love the word scrub like what scrubby behavior, right? Any low level, immature behavior, inconsiderate, rude, selfish, shitty, like scrubby behavior is all of those things, right? And again, to tap back into unbothered, when people are behaving in these ways, I don’t need to make them bad or wrong, I don’t need to make a whole fucking story about it. I just feel like I’m just dealing with the scrubby behavior. And so really in my life, seeing with a much sharper, and a much keener eye, where I have still been allowing scrubby behavior and treatment into my life. Because most of us have heard that saying you teach people how to treat you. If I am bothered, if something is actually going to bother me. There’s something in there that I have said yes to that I have tolerated right? That I have agreed to or that I have participated in. So important to ask, you know, what’s, what’s my part in this? Not everything is always other people’s fault. Sometimes other people do bear the brunt of the responsibility. But we’re co creating everything out here, we always have our own side of the street to consider. And so scrub free is just a reminder to me, because I had a lot of this last year I weeded a lot of this out. And again, I just want to bring it to the next level, I want to be more pristine with it and more exquisite with it more refined around what I engage with what I allow into my life, what I tolerate. And so scrub free is about that it’s cleaning up, you know the other thing, when I say it, I think of the image if any of you have ever seen, excuse me the cleaning solution that is called Scrubbing Bubbles. There’s like a picture of a sponge, and it has eyes and a face, and then all the little like sudsy bubbles on the label of the cleaning solution. And yeah, I’m imagining that little sponge just working its way through my life, cleaning up all the impacts of the scrubby stuff. And then of course it’s on me to write to watch my own scrubby behavior, because we talk about this on the show all the time.
Elizabeth DiAlto 24:13
Anything that we’re going to sit back here and use as a way of engaging with other people, we also have to use it as a way of engaging with ourselves. We also have to look at ourselves and be like we are or how do I do this right maybe we don’t you know there’s certain things we don’t do. We’ve gotten over we’ve gotten beyond me, don’t do them.
Elizabeth DiAlto 24:32
But then there’s certain things where we have to go cool I’m where am I doing this? Or am I doing this anywhere in my life? And there’s something I want to emphasize on that to the where am i Or am I even that’s what I was trying to say where am I? Or am I even this matters because some people are still operating in that law of attraction mindset of if you spot it, you get added or having as an indicator of wanting, or, like attracts like. And that’s just not always true. You know, that’s just not always how things work. So just because you’re experiencing something doesn’t mean that you do that too. You might be experiencing it because you need to handle it differently. Right? There might be some other reason for that, right? So when I say where am I? Or am I even, that is just a reminder to you to get out of that this means that thing? Well, if I’m experiencing this, I must be doing it. No, it just doesn’t always work that way. And it is possible to heal beyond that it is possible to be in your own life living in the paradigm of us know how it is anymore. This is one of the things I love about healing and liberation work that we get to get to places and be like, No, that’s not I don’t do that anymore. Right. Like relapse could be possible. Right? Like I think about this in terms of codependency sometimes giving the right circumstances. Anyone can, you know, go back to an old codependent behavior or, you know, make a codependent choice here and there, especially if you’re tired or grieving or super depleted or stretched thin. But it’s possible to just be like, Well, I’m not codependent anymore. You don’t have to call yourself a recovering codependent. It’s just like, No, I’m not anymore. Every once in a while, given the right circumstances, I might fall back into that for a second. But I know how to get myself out. And it’s just not the norm. So the way we label ourselves and the way we regard ourselves, this stuff really matters.
Elizabeth DiAlto 26:32
So where am I? Or am I even right? Because where am I assumes that you’re definitely doing it? Am I even looks at it with curiosity and goes, am I even doing this? Is that the thing? Or maybe isn’t not. And to me, all those things go together, you could probably see right? How they connect being unapologetic, unbothered soft, and that scrub free living. So these are all laboratory practices. I know I didn’t do them in like, here’s number one, here’s number two, because that’s not necessarily how my brain works. And I also I didn’t write down any notes for this episode, other than liberatory practices for an expansive year. This was really just straight refun.
Elizabeth DiAlto 27:15
So I hope you enjoyed that. Our next two podcast episodes are also going to be short solo episodes. And we’ll bring interviews in in the month of February. This is part of my practice of easing into the year.
Elizabeth DiAlto 27:28
And this is what we’re gonna talk about next week, we’re going to continue in this vein of liberatory practices for an expansive year. And I’ve really been focusing on the word expansive lately, because it doesn’t necessarily mean productive doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make more money or be more successful. Or it could, it could mean those things. But expansion is something that you get to invite into your life and experience in your life in whatever way you want to it could be an expansion of consciousness, and expansion of compassion, expansion of your energy, expansion of love expansion of perspective, or, you know, there’s so many different ways to invite expansion into your life, it could be making more money, it could be expanding into a different role in your life and your relationships and your career. There’s just so many different ways we can look at expansion. So when I say liberatory practices for an expansive year, how you want the year to be expansive is up to you. Or you could just have you know, the blanket of desiring expansion, and then letting life show you where it wants to co create the expansion with you. So we’re gonna dig into that in a couple other ways over these next two solo episodes here in January.
Elizabeth DiAlto 28:51
So thank you so much for listening. If you love to the episode, obviously share it on social media, tag me up, write a post about it, let your friends know, you know, all the things. And wherever you listen to the podcast, if you haven’t left us a review, I think that still helps. So please go ahead and leave us a review somewhere. Whether it’s Spotify, iTunes, again, wherever the hell else you listen to podcasts. We love the show so much. Thank
Elizabeth DiAlto 29:17
you. I’m so excited to be back winter break was restful and rejuvenating in all the ways that I really needed. I’m so glad I took that time and that we are easing into the new year here because in the northern hemisphere, it’s winter. This is not a get off to the races, time of year for me, and I love not allowing myself to cave into that pressure. So this is also your invitation to not allow yourself to cave to that pressure either or to just find a way of engaging with the pressure that is really loving, really respectful, really honoring of yourself. So thanks again, everybody. We’ll be back next week and I’ll talk to you later.