Shownotes
What if being present isn’t about learning something new, but noticing what’s already happening inside you? On I Awaken, host Swati and former TV news anchor Leslie Draffin explore what it really means to wake up from autopilot.
Leslie shares how a successful career hid years of anxiety and burnout, why awakening is a spiral rather than a straight climb, and how body-based practices, glimmers and the senses can bring you gently back to now.
About the Guest:
Leslie Draffin spent about 15 years as a television news anchor in the US. Based in Texas, she is now a trauma-informed somatic practitioner who helps high-achieving women reconnect with their bodies and feel more present.
Key Takeaways:
- Awakening isn’t a straight climb; the ups and downs are part of it.
- Spotting a pattern is step one; changing it takes repetition.
- Doom scrolling and a flat “blah” feeling can be signs of autopilot.
- Play and creativity can restore you more than zoning out.
- Collect glimmers: small moments of wonder that prove progress.
- Presence isn’t constant calm; it’s openness to every feeling.
Connect With Leslie Draffin:
Website: https://www.lesliedraffin.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesliedraffin/
TikTok: @lesliedraffin
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRakA_HiNPoVYEB_MYDEs3Q
Podcast, The Light Within: https://www.lesliedraffin.com/podcast-the-light-within
Episode Chapters (approx.):
[00:00] Welcome to I Awaken: the quiet moment before the phone
[01:30] Meet Leslie Draffin: a news anchor’s outer success and inner disconnection
[05:00] Awakening Is a Spiral: why the down days are part of the path
[08:00] Seeing Patterns vs Changing Them: repetition, intention and attention
[11:00] Signs of Autopilot: doom scrolling, comfort shows and the flat blah
[15:00] You Can’t Do Presence Wrong: dropping shame and finding your kind of rest
[18:00] Glimmers and the Five Senses: evidence that it is working
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Transcripts
00:00:08 Swati: There is a small moment in the morning just before we reach for our phones, or start thinking about everything we need to do when we are simply here, we are awake, we are breathing, and for a moment we are not caught up in yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. But most of us move past that moment without even noticing it. What if being more present is not about learning something completely new. What if it's about learning to notice what's already happening within us, instead of constantly getting caught up in everything around us?
00:00:50 Swati: Welcome to your listeners to I awaken. I am Swathi, and this is a space where we slow down, look inward, and explore what it means to become more aware of ourselves and the lives we are living. Today I am joined by Leslie Draffin. Leslie, it's lovely to have you with us.
00:01:13 Leslie Draffin: Thanks for having me, Swathi. It's nice to be here with you.
00:01:16 Swati: Yeah. So before we get into our conversation, I would love for you to introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little about your work and what brought you to this journey.
00:01:27 Leslie Draffin: Absolutely. So my name is Leslie Draffin, and I spent just about fifteen years as a television news anchor here in the States. From the outside, building a very successful career, looking like I had a very successful life. The title, the salary, all the things that I had dreamed of since I was a child. But internally, especially in my thirties, I experienced deep anxiety, burnout, and was increasingly disconnected from myself. And I used things to cope, like alcohol and disordered eating and this constant need to achieve. And so I in twenty nineteen had my spiritual awakening, which really began my exploration of things like meditation and breathwork and somatic healing. At the same time, I was in talk therapy and I had even been prescribed medications at some points in my twenties and early thirties, because I really felt like I had this disconnect between, you know, who I was on the outside and what I was experiencing internally. And I love that the theme of our chat today is about presence, because for me, it was just so difficult to be present in my body. My body did not feel safe. I have a history of being raised in religion. I got herpes at age eighteen right after my first sexual encounter, and so I had a very difficult relationship with my body. Add on to that anorexia, bulimia, and alcohol abuse. And so it was just this perfect storm of disconnection. And what really, for me, started to change my own internal healing journey was understanding that meditation was so mind based. And I was so good at disconnecting from my body that sometimes meditation made that even worse. Yet in the same regard with my ADHD, meditation was also very difficult for me. And so I had to find a way to come back into the body in order to really become present to what the sensations of my body were trying to tell me. And I found that through somatic healing practices and then ultimately through psychedelic medicine as well. And so now for the last four and a half, five years I have been assisting women just like me who look very successful on paper but feel very unhappy, disconnected, um, like something is missing internally navigate how to come back into the body, how to become more present through somatic healing, through somatic and intentional microdosing, and also just connecting to their female body. And so I'm now a trauma informed somatic practitioner. Psychedelic microdosing guide and a somatic trauma healer.
00:04:12 Swati: Thank you for sharing that Leslie. And welcome to I awaken. So Leslie, I think we are, you know, so used to thinking about what comes next that we don't always notice what's happening right now. Like we are planning, worrying, remembering, and trying to keep up with everything. And somewhere in all of that we can lose touch with the moment we are actually living. So I would love to start by exploring what it really means to wake up to the present moment. So when people hear the word awakening, they might imagine something dramatic, like a major spiritual experience or a moment when everything suddenly becomes clear. But what do you think people misunderstand most about what it actually means to awaken?
00:05:08 Leslie Draffin: I think that what you just said is so wonderful, because I do think folks think you're going to have this awakening moment, and then everything is uphill from there. And my work really centers in the fact that you have to descend into the body, into your root wounds, into the shadow, into all of the places in your, your unconscious and subconscious mind and body to untangle all of that mess and then finally rise. And the other thing I think folks think is that it's going to be this uphill, steady slope. Once you sort of have your awakening and then it's just trickling uphill. But just like if you've ever been on a weight loss journey, you have this sort of wobbly line where some days you're up, some days are down, some days are up, some days are down, some days are up. And it's something that I think a lot of us fear the down days. But again, what I often tell clients and what I remind myself about is the spirals that you meet in your journey, the triggers you meet in your journey, the things that you discover when you're down, descending into the body, into the sensations of the body, into your subconscious. All of those things are deep medicine because they show us where we still have places that we can heal, where we still have places that we have, um, hidden stuff about ourselves or unmet needs that we need to, you know, not only look at, but also nurture and nourish. And so I think that the biggest misconception really is that you have an awakening and it's all uphill from there, and then you're just going to keep going until you're suddenly are healed forever. But I really think that in reality, it's this spiral into the body descending into the body that helps us become more and more aware of all the different things that we can look at, look at not that we have to. It's not one of those things where we should be shaming ourselves or judging ourselves, or trying to rush ourselves. But I do think that's the big misconception.
00:07:12 Swati: And sometimes people know that they are living on autopilot. They recognize that they are repeating the same habits, having the same reaction, or moving through their days without, you know, really feeling connected to what they are doing. So in that case, why do you think it's so difficult for us to break out of those patterns, even when we know we want something to change.
00:07:39 Leslie Draffin: Mhm. Yeah. That is a key pillar of the work that I do. It is one of the things I see a lot in self-aware people is this ability to see their patterns. They can, like, watch them happen in real time, and yet they just can't shift them. And that's where reprogramming the brain, rewiring the belief system really comes into play. Because it's one thing to be self-aware. It's another thing to have the ability to change in the moment. And so two things I have found to be very helpful in that is somatic healing. Work with the body where you're not only regulating your nervous system, but you're also rebuilding the connection between the body and the mind. So when you see the pattern, you can pause enough and hopefully steady yourself, ground yourself enough to choose differently in the moment. And that does come with practice. But the other thing that I have found to be so instrumental in assisting people to shift through those self-awareness cues and into actual aligned change is microdosing psychedelics. These teeny tiny amounts of psychedelic medicine are really helpful in assisting with neuroplasticity. So in the brain, they sort of help to quiet a part of the brain called the default mode network, where these deep ingrained beliefs, habits, um, internal programming systems live. And the way that these medicines work is they sort of help your neurons fire differently so that you can rewire the beliefs, the habits, the thoughts, the patterns. And over time with continued repetition, because I always say repetition is very instrumental and necessary for changing anything. Repetition, intention, and attention is the formula I say creates actual change. The repetitions of pausing, of noticing, of feeling into the body. And also, if that's something that you feel interested and aligned with eating little tiny doses of psychedelic medicine to help you continue to on the physical, physiological level of the brain, rewire and break through those habits. That's what I've really noticed to be very helpful for folks, like you said, who are self-aware, and yet they just can't change those patterns yet.
00:10:01 Swati: Yeah. I think many of us can relate to that. So let's bring this into everyday life. Being disconnected from the present doesn't necessarily mean we are, you know, doing something obviously wrong. We might be having dinner with our family while thinking about work, talking to a friend, while worrying about something else, or spending a whole day waiting for the next thing to happen. So what are some everyday signs that we might be, you know, living uh, on autopilot without even realizing it.
00:10:40 Leslie Draffin: You know, I think a major one right now is doomscrolling. I think, um, it's and I do it myself sometimes when I'm feeling deeply dysregulated, watching comfort shows on your streaming service, Netflix or whatever it is something you already know what's going to happen, but you keep reaching for it. That is one sign also that I see in people who have ADHD and anxiety. They want that familiarity. But while you're doing that, you're also on your phone, multiple screens at one time. The other thing is just having this internal sense of blah, like nothing really feels that great, but nothing may feel that bad for me. That's a deep sign of autopilot, which I think what's also interesting is autopilot. Low level depression and burnout are all places within the nervous system that are collapsed. That's freeze. That is fine. That's functional freeze. And so what's also interesting to know is that so often those places of autopilot, the places of depression and burnout happen after extended states of chronic stress. And so one thing that lots of folks may think would help that is more rest. And what's interesting is about this autopilot, about feelings of burnout, feelings of overwhelm, feelings of depression, is that more rest in the way that we usually think about rest, which is maybe laying in bed, watching TV, being on your phone. Physical rest may not actually be very helpful, because sometimes what you need is a restful activity that also brings energy, play, and creativity being two of the fantastic ones. And so if you're somebody who is listening to this and you're thinking, oh, wow, that sounds like me. What I would invite you to do is find a way to reconnect to what your inner child loved. It's fall here in the States. And so for me, that's baking, that's art. That's, you know, making my own candles, things that feel like they're getting your body involved where you're not just zoning out. And yet it can feel very restful as well.
00:12:48 Swati: And what happens when someone tries to be present but find themselves overthinking it or feeling like they are not doing it properly?
00:13:00 Leslie Draffin: Yeah, I think that what happens so often is shame is self-judgment. Um, and that vibration is so. Combative to what true presence is. You know, I certainly oh my gosh, in the beginning of my journey, I literally got trained to be a meditation teacher because I found it so difficult to meditate. I'm like, well, if I want to do this right, then I should pay for the certification and really learn how to do it. And so again, if you're feeling like you're not doing it right, then maybe the first thing is maybe you're doing it in a way that you feel. Is like, I'm trying to figure out the words. You might be feeling like you're not doing it right because you are trying something that might not necessarily be for you right now. And so we, we look so often at, like I said before, rest as taking a nap, rest as just watching a TV show or vegging out. And what might be your restful activity could be reading or writing poetry or singing or painting or decorating, you know, your room in a different way. So I would just say, if you're thinking about yourself in this journey as, um, having trouble doing it, right. Everyone's journey is individual to them. And there's really so many different ways to be present that I don't think you can do it wrong. The only way you're going to do it wrong is by judging and shaming yourself, because you're not living up to whatever it is you think you see on the internet, or in the books, or on the podcasts, or whatever it may be.
00:14:40 Swati: Yeah, I think that's reassuring because even something like presents can become another expectations we put on ourselves. And I think we start judging whether we are calm enough or focused enough, and suddenly we are back in our heads again. And maybe the practice is simply to notice that happening without making it another thing to criticize ourselves for. And of course, even when we start becoming more aware, there are, you know, still going to be days when life takes over. We get stressed, we become distracted, and we find ourselves slipping back into old habits. Sometimes we might even feel like we have lost the sense of connection we were beginning to develop. So in that case, how do you encourage people to work through those moments without feeling like they have somehow lost their progress?
00:15:44 Leslie Draffin: Um, I think that's such a good question. You know, like we said before, folks often think that they have an awakening and it's all uphill from there. But you have to think about this like that. Like, I don't know what it's called, but when you have a heart rate monitor on like an EKG and it's up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. The ups and the downs are evidence. They're nothing more than that. And so if you find that you're on a day that's low, when you're feeling like you have this story in your head, oh my gosh, I'm not being present. Oh, I see myself doomscrolling. Oh, I'm noticing that this and this and this is happening. I'm noticing I'm very worried about the future or very stuck in the past. That is simply evidence. That is it. And what's interesting, because we could go two ways on this. I'll have two ways of thinking about this. The first part is what's interesting is that your brain is built to affirm your belief system by gathering evidence to back it all up. And so if what you're saying to yourself is, oh, I'm not doing this right. I'm sliding back. All those things I had been doing before aren't actually working. Wow, I'm bad at this. Your brain is going to start to look for more of that and confirm that thought. When you start to shift all of that into this is simply evidence. And if I have evidence that it's not working, where can I find evidence that it is? The solid first evidence is that you are just aware. You are aware that you're not as present as you were. And so again, what I would recommend, and this is something that I give to clients, start looking for evidence that it is working. You can write it in the notes app on your phone. You can manufacture evidence. By that I mean you can start to look for what's called glimmers. Glimmers are an anchor into the present moment through. Like moments of wow, moments of wonder, moments of whimsy. And so there are spontaneous glimmers, and then there are planned glimmers. A planned glimmer could be, you know, a girl's night out, or it could be, um, making a like a sweet bread or something. Making your favorite dish spontaneous could be this epic sunrise that I saw this morning that was super yellow and orange, or the sunset or a butterfly outside my window. What those moments do is they make you pause. They make you off and say, oh, wow. And what it does to the nervous system is it helps you find that place of peace and safety. But in the brain, it starts to show your reticular activating system. That's always scanning for validation of your belief systems. Hey, it's actually working. Look, I am more present. Look at all the things I noticed today. And so I think eventually it can help to, you know, elevate those dips that can happen. The other thing that I would suggest too, while we're kind of on this topic and it's similar to glimmers, is that sometimes when we are in this place of, oh, I don't feel like I'm doing this right. What can help is to connect with the senses. The senses of the body, sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. I call them five senses play. You can pick something to excite one or two senses. You can pick something to excite all five. But that can assist you in feeling present through the pathway of pleasure. Pleasure is one pathway into the present moment. Pain is another. And so I'm not going to be out there prescribing you pain. What I am going to prescribe is can you, you know, light your favorite candle? Can you put on the perfume that you wait and only use for date night? Can you wear something that feels super luxurious on your skin, or have a morning of stretching or going for a walk? Connecting to sensation, trusting that the more you connect with that, the more present you will become. And then using those as evidence again, evidence to to trick your brain Into continuing to see all of the good signs that it is working around you.
00:19:42 Swati: And what would you say to someone who feels like they are trying to become more present, but is not noticing any major change in their life?
00:19:54 Leslie Draffin: I would first ask, what are you hoping your life will look like? Because sometimes folks think that being present means they're going to be calm all the time. And so my first question is, is that what you're trying to get? Do you feel like you need your life to be more peaceful and calm? So first, assessing where they are hoping to go and then reminding them that being present is not about being calm all the time. In fact, I think that being present is being open to all the ranges of emotions we can possibly feel. And so if your idea is that presence equals calm, then that's the first thing to debunk, because I think present means you're open to excitement. You're, you're open to sadness. You're open to anger. You're open to bliss. You're open to whimsy, to wonder, to the wow factor. And then if you can change that part of what being present means for you, I bet you will find that you're more present than you think you are. Because if all we're doing is chasing a sense of calm, of course it can feel like on the days that are a little bit nuts. Oh, it's not working. But I would also say that sometimes we're chasing a sense of calm because we're also secretly burnt out, depressed, dysregulated, or overwhelmed. And we think that's the medicine that will help us in reality, the medicine that's going to help those states where we do want more inner peace, we want more groundedness, might be movement, might be putting on your favorite song and dancing for five minutes. That's my personal favorite. Might be eating something super sour. It might be, you know, making something beautiful to look at, uh, bouquet of flowers or something. So just first figure out what it is that you're hoping your life will look like. And then second, know that chasing calm is not the thing that equals presence. Presence is being open to all the possibilities around you and being able to notice them when they're there in front of your face.
00:21:49 Swati: Yeah, that's comforting way to look at it. And we can't expect ourselves, you know, to be completely present. Every moment of every day. Life will distract us and old habits will return. But perhaps the important thing isn't never drifting away. It's just about learning that we can return whenever we notice.
00:22:14 Leslie Draffin: Mhm.
00:22:15 Swati: Perfect. Maybe awakening is not about reaching a point where we are always calm, always aware, or always in control. Maybe it's about becoming a little more willing to notice us lives as they are happening. Even when things are messy, uncertain, or uncomfortable. Leslie, thank you so much for being part of this conversation and for sharing your perspective with us.
00:22:42 Leslie Draffin: Thanks for having me.
00:22:43 Swati: Yeah. So before we wrap up, where can our listeners find you, connect with you or learn more about your work?
00:22:50 Leslie Draffin: Of course. So I'm on social media, Instagram and TikTok at Leslie Draffin. And if you've been listening to this conversation and you would like a somatic practice to help assist you in becoming a little bit more present, I'd love to give you my shift method, which is a free nine minute somatic ritual that includes journaling, breathwork, and movement, as well as playlists that are perfectly timed to help you move through it, and an e-book to assist you in understanding why it works. Um, two thousand five hundred plus people have used it, and that's a really lovely way for folks to try something new, especially if meditation isn't really feeling like it's working for you and you want something that's going to feel a little bit more active. The shift method can be really helpful, and I will give that to Swathi for the show notes.
00:23:35 Swati: Yeah. Thank you once again, Leslie. And to everyone listening. You don't have to wait for the perfect moment to become more present. You can begin right where you are in the next conversation you have, in the next breath you take, or in the in that small moment when you realize your mind has wandered and gently bring it back. You don't have to get it right every time. You just have to keep noticing. I am Swati, and this has been I awaken.
