http://www.rebeccasrestfulyoga.com/

Rebecca's Restful Yoga, 133 The West Mall, Unit #8, Toronto, ON (2025)

02/06/2025

Having and showing empathy for others is a power move.

When you speak to others from a caring place, it can shift the dynamic, creating space for connection where before there were only hardened walls of fear, hurt and anger.

Nevertheless, empathy is draining. Here's why:

Why #1: When you show empathy for someone, the sensitive mirror neurons in your brain are picking up on their emotions, essentially allowing you to feel the same things they feel. This can feel very intense and overwhelming.

Why #2: When you feel emotionally overwhelmed, your sympathetic nervous system will kick on, pumping cortisol through your veins.

Why #3: Prolonged sympathetic nervous system activation will leave you emotionally exhausted and physically drained. This is why caregivers eventually burn out.

So, does this mean we can't show care to others? That by empathizing with them, we only bring damage to ourselves?

Not if we offer them compassion instead. Compassion is different from empathy in key ways.

Here are a few:

1. With compassion, you are not absorbing the emotions of others like a sponge. Instead, you generate a feeling of warmth, love and calm within yourself. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which nourishes and heals.

2. When you show compassion for others, oxytocin is released. This is the hormone responsible for feelings of connection, trust and well-being. Compassion makes you feel good.

3. Compassion allows you to maintain boundaries. You are not taking on the emotions of others, but are staying in a grounded place where your energy is preserved. This makes compassion empowering rather than draining.

How can we shift from empathy to compassion?

When you notice yourself absorbing the emotions of others, remind yourself that you don't have to take on their pain. Their burden is not yours to bear. To make someone feel better, all you have to do is stay in a grounded place and open your heart to them.

02/05/2025

On friendship...

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”

– Walter Winchell

“A friend is someone who makes you laugh when you think you’ll never smile again.”

– Unknown

"The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness.....that is a friend who cares".

– Henri Nouwen

"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives".

~ Euripides

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship".

~ Thomas Aquinas

02/03/2025

It's so easy to feel frustrated when you have a chronic illness.

Even the simplest tasks can feel impossible, and it's very easy to be critical of yourself and lose self-esteem. But what if you could view your illness as a learning experience instead? What if you could see it as an opportunity for growth?

For the growth of kindness towards yourself.

Here are 5 ways to reframe your experience with kindness, so you can heal:

Reframe #1: You don't have a lack of willpower, and you're not weak. Give yourself a pat on the back just for surviving. You're still here, holding on, and that is an incredible achievement.

Reframe #2: You are still making progress. Today, that progress may look like: drinking enough water, or allowing yourself to rest. You are learning to take care of yourself. That itself is progress.

Reframe #3: Your exercise for the day can be deep breathing. It doesn't have to be anything strenuous. Deep breathing will still shift your nervous system profoundly, and in a positive direction. You can even practice it while lying down, if you like. It still counts.

Reframe #4: Your illness isn't something you need to conquer, and fighting it will only drain precious resources. Focus instead on allowing. Allow yourself to rest. Allow others to take care of you. Allow yourself to be loved as you are.

Reframe #5: Your words to yourself matter very much. Being critical of yourself will not help you to heal. Talk to yourself as you would to a dear friend. Remind yourself that you're doing your best, that it's OK to rest, and that you are valuable, whole and worthy, just as you are.

Having a chronic illness is tough. But being tough on yourself is likely part of the reason you got here.

Now is the time to learn softness. Your body needs you to be kind.

02/02/2025

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves". ~ Viktor Frankl

I am currently struggling to understand the great wave of cruelty in the new presidential administration in the US.

Mass deportations, the attempt to defund federal support programs, growing tariff wars around the world - all to hurt people. For that is the expressed intention: to hurt people who don't deserve help. To hurt people who are "taking too much".

How that "deservedness" is determined is based on emotion, not actual fact.

Recently, Caroline Kennedy wrote a letter to the US senate, urging them to reject the nomination of her cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary because "he used to stuff baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed his pet hawks". This revelation caused not a ripple of concern among Republicans.

In mid 2024, Republican Governor Kristi Noem released a memoir in which she bragged about shooting a 14 month old dog in a gravel pit because it couldn't be trained. "I hated that dog," she wrote, and then used the same occasion to also shoot a goat she didn't like, leaving it wounded and writhing on the ground while she went back to her truck to retrieve more ammunition so she could finish the job.

It's not just that these stories are cruel and distasteful.

It's that they are a deliberate broadcasting of a lack of empathy. Empathy, it would seem, is no longer in. In order to be seen as strong and capable, one must be hard, callous, and careless with other people's lives.

"Do not commit the sin of empathy," posted Ben Garrett on X. This comment was reposted by 11,000 people and approved by another 5,000. Garrett is no mere citizen. He's a Deacon at Refuge Church in Ogden, UT.

What on Earth is happening?

Exactly how and when did cruelty become a virtue?

Viktor Frankl, the famous psychologist and author, who endured 3 years at Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps during World War II, observed countless acts of cruelty during his stay there. It wasn't just the guards. Many inmates also used brutal force, theft, and betrayal in order to save themselves: "We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - we know: the best of us did not return," Frankl wrote.

But in the midst of all that chaos, he also made his most famous observation: we have a choice in how we respond.

I hope we respond wisely.

Image: Prof. Dr. Franz Vesely, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons

01/29/2025

Let's face it, you don't know what's going on inside other people's heads most of the time.

You can take a good guess, but more often than not, your guess will be wrong. Worse, it will be more a reflection of what's going on inside your own head than the person you're trying to understand.

That's why "Maybe You Should Talk To Someone" by Lori Gottlieb is such an interesting read.

She shows you relatable people in a moment of crisis, and then invites you to watch as she helps them change and grow.

In her book, we meet a narcissist whose insults are a defense against his own pain, a cancer patient who needs help dying, and a lonely divorcee whose feelings of guilt prevent her from feeling happy.

Through the lens of each of these patients, we learn about human nature, and we also see deeper truths about ourselves.

Here are 10 nuggets:

Lesson #1: There's something likeable in everyone.

Lesson #2: The reason you think you're upset is not the real reason you're upset. There's always something deeper going on.

Lesson #3: Change and loss go together. People generally don't change until they've lost something.

Lesson #4: There's a purpose behind everything we do, and mostly, that purpose is to protect ourselves. We'll do anything to avoid pain.

Lesson #5: Forgive yourself for past mistakes, even if the people you've hurt cannot. Humility is a fertile place for change, and a doorway to greater connection.

Lesson #6: Don't judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as a map. They point to the truth.

Lesson #7: Happiness can be found in any situation, but you have to look for it.

Lesson #8: The three most romantic words aren't "I love you", they're "I understand you".

Lesson #9: Anger is a mask for deeper and more submerged feelings like fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, sadness, or insecurity. Once you can tolerate these deeper feelings, your anger will disperse.

Lesson #10: Follow your envy. It shows you what you want.

If you're at all interested in the deeper currents of human nature, this book gives you a ringside view. You'll be thinking about these people and their stories long after the book is done.

Image by ChatGPT Image Creator

01/24/2025

Emily is a good daughter.

She stops by her mother's house every week to see what she needs. She cleans up the parts of the house that her mother can't tend to, and she listens to all her complaints, enduring the occasional passive-aggressive insult. She does this because she feels she owes it to her mother after all her mother has done for her.

Is there a problem here?

Emily is viewing her relationship with her mother as a transaction, rather than a connection. The truth is, Emily doesn't "owe" her mother anything. She deserves to live a big, full life of her own.

Emily's mother sacrificed her own goals and dreams, her energy and vitality, perhaps even enduring abuse as she raised her children.

But that is -her- pain.

And why it is called a Mother Wound.

Emily can keep herself small, serve her mother, and unhappily endure her abuse, but it will never erase that pain.

Unconsciously, Emily may be thinking these things:

- I feel guilty when I go after my own dreams because I am reminded of my mother's sadness

- my own suffering honours what my mother had to endure

- I can accept my mother's insults because I know she had a hard life

No matter what she does, Emily will never be able to heal her mother's wound. Only her mother can do that - by confronting and accepting the painful sacrifices she's had to make. And her mother will never be able to do that if Emily continues to take on that pain as her own.

If Emily's situation mimics your own, know that the sacrifice is over. Your life belongs to you now.

If you'd like to honour your mother, don't do it by staying small. Honour her sacrifice by living your biggest, happiest, most authentic life possible.

This is how the Mother Wound is healed.

Image: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Dülmen, Fröbelstraße, Mohn am Feldrand -- 2021 -- 9174” / CC BY-SA 4.0For print products: Dietmar Rabich / https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

01/21/2025

Do you feel like your mother doesn't really see you?

Do you have difficulty communicating with her, as if your message often gets lost in translation?

Do you question your perceptions when you're around her?

You are struggling with a Mother Wound. 👇👇

01/20/2025

Are you easily triggered?

Do your emotions spill over easily when you want to remain calm?

You've got some feelings to process.

Here's how to release them and cleanse your spirit. 👇👇

01/19/2025

What makes humans so powerful?

How have we become such dominant species?

I can tell you, it's not our ability to fight.

(Image: Mike McMillan/USFS, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

01/18/2025

Here's a statement that can change your life:

People do well -if they can-.

So often, we blame people for not doing well in life. We call them lazy, or unmotivated, or uncooperative. And then we punish them for not doing what we want them to do.

But no one wants to do poorly in life.

No one wants to feel like they suck.

Dr. Stuart Ablon, founder and director of Think: Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital, has found that when kids are having difficulties in school, it's not because they're not trying. It's usually because they are lacking in a specific skill - like emotional regulation, or problem solving. If you help them with this skill, their progress will suddenly skyrocket.

The same is true of adults.

It's not a lack of motivation that keeps them stuck.

Rather than blame them, judge them, or criticize them, consider becoming curious. Put yourself in their shoes and see if you can identify the roadblock that's keeping them from success. And then, work with them until they can push past it.

Collaborate with people who are struggling.

Awaken your curiosity and empathy.

People will do well -when they can-.

Image: lavnatalia, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

01/17/2025

Sometimes, difficult experiences offer us the most transformative teachings.

Here's what CFS taught me:

Image: Noodle snacks, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

01/16/2025

Grounding exercises are so powerful.

I love breathing exercises and have relied on them a lot to calm myself, but when you add a grounding component to it, the benefits are so much greater. It's almost magical in its ability to bring you back inside your body.

What is a grounding exercise?

It's when you focus on the parts of your body that are being supported, such as your hips as you sit in your chair, or the bottoms of your feet as they touch the floor. As you do this, make sure you really feel into the sensations beneath you - the warmth, the firmness, the surety.

I recently heard about a great exercise for reducing stress and anxiety while listening to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, a Harvard trained physician specializing in stress management, was the guest, and she talked about doing this exercise whenever she feels overwhelmed. She does it when she's just about to enter a patient's room. Or, while preparing dinner in the evenings, or brushing her teeth before bed.

The exercise is called: Stop. Breathe. Be.

The first step is to simply stop for a moment. Secondly, pause and become aware of your breathing. Finally, practice "being" by pushing your feet into the ground for a moment.

Try it.

It works so well at reducing stress because anxiety is a future-focused emotion. You tend to get stuck in your head. By breathing deeply and grounding through your feet, you are drawing your energy out of your head and back into your body so you are firmly the present moment.

I've been trying this little exercise over the last few days and have found it much more beneficial than simply breathing by itself. The extra grounding step at the end really helps to bring me back into my body.

Try it the next time you feel anxious or overwhelmed and tell me what you think.

Image: Darius Bashar on Unsplash.

Rebecca's Restful Yoga

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