https://www.patreon.com/EarthandWater

Beginning –

Discussing Kirsten’s last name “Wild” and how she chose it for herself.

We’re often told as children to “tone it down”, “hush” and all sorts of “make yourself small and quiet” types of things. Reclaiming our inner “wild” means discovering the raw, untamed version of you that is your authentic self.

The word “wild” gets a bad rep for being disruptive, problematic and chaotically rude (amongst many other undesirable terms). Here though, we use it to describe the truest self, free and uncontained by the stifling boxes society and culture work so hard to confine us to.

We are a part of nature and a lot of our problems are caused by the disconnection we’ve created between us and the natural world.

Many of us don’t know how to control our inner ‘wild’ without suppression because suppression is the only tool we’ve ever been given to navigate ourselves and the massive emotions that come with the complexities of being human. This can lead to outbursts, emotional dysregulation, depressive states and even sickness.

6:35 –

I completely shut down as a child because my neurodivergence created a rift about social settings, interactions and constructs that I just didn’t understand. This had me in trouble constantly and confused at why. Not understanding why everyone was always having such strong reactions to the things I said and did, the only way I could find to keep myself “good” and safe was to be still and quiet.

Embracing your inner wild doesn’t mean causing chaos or doing whatever we want. It means breaking open the locks to the you that was born into this natural world and allowing that version of you to let go of the cage and chains that were placed on you as a child to ‘encourage’ conformity. It’s freeing yourself from the judgements and expectations of others.

Some who may be considered wild are more creating chaos from an unhealed trauma inside of them. True human nature when healed is caring, kind and compassionate. Anything counter to that is coming from an unhealed place within involving a wide variety of possible reasons. Be it personal trauma, generational trauma, or other.

Hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people.

11:30 –

All we can do is lead by example by working on ourselves. A lot of our discomfort comes from wishing people would be / say / do / choose / etc differently than what they do. Our attachment to the way other people choose to live their lives.

We have to hold our standards to ourselves. It’s a lifelong journey. You can’t really tell anyone anything, especially through anger and force, all you can do is show them. It’s painful for many to know that through living your authentic truth, some people in your life may fall away.

Everyone is a hurt child trying to navigate an impossibly hard existence due to the way the world was created for us.

13:55 –

S.H.E.D. method

Many people want to start checking in with themselves but aren’t sure where to begin. Kirsten’s S.H.E.D. method helps you learn how to get started.

• S – Sensations – Checking in with our physical body
• H – Heart – Checking in with our emotions today
• E – Energy – What is our energy level today? Checking in with the breath
• D – Dialogue – What inner words / thoughts are you having with yourself today?

People get hung up on words but words are a human construct. The universe and our bodies speak in energy which is more a direction of intent.It takes 7 positive interactions to erase 1 negative interaction. When applying this to our bodies, we need to be sure we’re noticing when our bodies feel good. Most of us only pay attention to our bodies when something is wrong and that builds the narrative of having a “bad” body.

You don’t want to label things as “good” or “bad”. Especially when applied to yourself. Nor do we want to berate ourselves for missing the desired mark. We notice it, bring awareness to it and then try again. This repeated effort of “I’ll do better next time” is what all of the work here is. Noticing where you’re falling short of your desired outcomes and then trying again next time.

21:45 –

Our minds work in 5D, giving us the ability to think about 18 different things simultaneously which can be really overwhelming very quickly. Journaling helps us straighten things out and organize complexities so as to see that things are not as overwhelming as they feel.

Most of our stress is created in our minds. We’ll be stressing over something that we have to do tomorrow and we have to take a pause and look at it with a “Is there anything I can do about it today?” no. “Is stressing about it now helping the situation?” no. Then recalibrating ourselves to more or less forget about it today and focus on the moment at hand. Tomorrow’s problems are for tomorrow’s you.

Journaling helps us to keep track of what works and doesn’t work for us so that when life gets busy and we forget, we can come back to our notes on what helped us in the past.

31:35 –

We think we don’t have time for things but it’s all about setting our priorities. Knowing our priorities, holding to them and allowing them to be flexible when they need to be.

Spending 3+ hours meditating, practicing yoga, journaling, etc sounds great but it’s not really practical for every day or most people ever. It’s more detrimental to say you’re going to do something and then not following through rather than allowing yourself the flexibility to show up for yourself however that looks today.

Hold the intention of wanting to show up for yourself and then allow the space around nonrigidity for it to come through however it does. If that’s only 5 minutes today, 1 hour tomorrow and then 10 minutes the next then that’s perfectly fine. Work in what you can where you can.

You can have awareness in any moment and that’s all meditation is. Trying your best to make the best decision you can when each arises. Practicing the pause in order to create space to develop the muscle memory of responding rather than reacting.

It’s a practice because the situation and how we react to it will always reoccur but the practice will help us handle the situation a little bit better each time until it’s effecting us very little or not at all. We get better at handling the situation and our emotions tied to it just like practice at anything makes us better.

42:40 –

The amount of healing we have to do is directly correlated to how old we are. If we’re 30, we have 30 years of crap to sort through. Plus our parents and grandparents ‘crap’ that was passed down to us. Each little thing we heal means less that we pass on to the next generation.

We’re all struggling. Once you really understand that, compassion, forgiveness, understanding, healing, gratitude, etc, insert all of the words, becomes easier and more innate.

We tie our identity to the things that happened to us in the past and we often times live our lives with those damaging stories looming over us every day. Reliving these stories so often reinforces the damage that was done.

Moving on and healing means detaching ourselves from those stories as something that happened to us but not something that defines us. Creating space between your life now and the things that happened to you in the past until they become less and less important. With their diminishing impact, we can learn to live our lives separate from them.

We get to chose who we are in every moment. There is no director of your movie outside of yourself. Have fun with your character. Be someone different every day if you like. Take it to extremes and decide you’re a fairy and go roll around in the meadow by the bubbling brook. Turn into a viking to hit your daily workouts with the fierce power of a warrior.

Literally whatever helps you find peace, happiness and comfort in this mess of a world that is life.
About Our Guest:

Kirsten is a lifelong yogi who reconnected to her WILD and listened to her intuition to leave an unhealthy, co-dependent marriage and go from spending mindless days on the couch to living her best life full of adventure hiking mountains, rock climbing, and even jumping out of an airplane–all while solo-traveling full time and living out of her vehicle. She now helps women reclaim THEIR Wild to feel aligned in their body, mind, and heart to live their own dreams through her signature method Wild Brave Yoga.

Links:
Join the Wild Women Collective: https://wildbraveyoga.com/wildwoman
Instagram: https://instagram.com/wildwandering.life
website: