On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, I talk about what it really means to “hold on loosely, but don’t let go” - not just in our relationships with others, but in how we treat ourselves.

I share stories about a band, baby birds and bugs, a fantastic new book, and my own body - to explore why over-controlling, pushing too hard, and demanding “magic fixes” can actually slow down our healing.

We dive into giving ourselves more space, time, and compassion - partly inspired by real life stories and experiences and also by Dr. Sula Windgassen’s new book: It’s All In Your Body…

So that we can baby-bird ourselves with more gentleness, care, and trust in our own natural capacity to heal.

KAREN KENNEY BIO:

Karen Kenney is a writer, speaker, podcaster, certified spiritual mentor, and coach.

She’s known for her dynamic storytelling, her sense of humor, her Boston accent, and her no-bullshit approach to spirituality, self​-development, and transformational change work.

Karen helps people to navigate this whole “being human” experience using a variety of practical tools, personal stories, and universal principles.

She's been a yoga teacher for 25+ years, has been a Thai Yoga Massage practitioner since 2008.

She's also a Gateless Writing Instructor, the creator of WRITE CLUB , and the host of The Karen Kenney Show podcast.

She coaches clients individually in her 1-to-1 program: THE QUEST and in her HEART-TO-HEART DAYS using Voxer. She also leads a group program and community called THE NEST.

CONNECT WITH KAREN:

Website: http://karenkenney.com/

Podcast: https://www.karenkenney.com/podcast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenkenneylive/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KarenKenney

It's the Karen Kenney Show. Hey, you guys,

welcome to the Karen Kenney Show. I'm super duper excited to

be here with you today. And today is like kind of an

interesting episode in that it has to do with a lot of bees,

like the letter B, so it has to do with baby birds and bugs, it

has to do with our bodies, a book, and a band. I swear, I

swear, it's all gonna make sense if you just buckle up for

safety, stick around, find out where all this is going. So, of

course, it's going to start with a couple of stories. Okay, and

I'm going to bring all of these elements together. Remember,

baby birds and bugs are bodies, a book and a band. Okay, but

stay with me. I promise it's gonna make sense. Okay, so I'm a

Gen X kid, right? Like, I'm about to be 58 and so the

millennials are kind of like the group that's like right behind

us. These are the people that were born, I think, from like 81

to whatever, I don't know what that is, 95 or something like

that. Oh my god. Okay, so you know how on the internet people

put up like little memes or they make little graphics with quotes

or whatever, right? And I'll never forget seeing. Oh my god,

I'll never forget seeing, and I'm not going to name names or

do anything like that, but I just remember seeing one day

this person who was a quote unquote coach of some kind, and

they're, they're younger, right, they're in the millennial group,

I don't know their exact age, and they put up a quote, kind of

like making, making it like look like it was their quote, like

it's an original thought, right? And literally, this is what it

said. It said, quote, "Hold on loosely, but don't let go, hold

on loosely but don't let go, right? And I was just like, I

saw it, and I just started. First of all, I was looking

immediately for the attribution, right, to give credit to, like,

who actually, where this phrase and saying actually came from,

but they never did, and right away, like, I go to the comment

section, because I know those of us who are old enough to know

where this quote comes from. Those of us who are old enough,

as soon as we hear that phrase, hold on loosely, but don't let

go, our brain automatically fills in the rest, right? If you

squeeze too tightly, you're going to lose control. So this

was, if you're not aware, if you don't know the band 38 Special,

this was like a huge hit that they had back in like 1981

right? It's like the opening line is like you see it all

around you, good loving gone bad. Oh my god. Okay, so this

person is putting up like this little piece of wisdom, right,

as if it's their original thought, and everybody in the

comments were like, you know, putting the 38 special quotes

into it, like, dude, this is a song from, like, 81 or whatever,

oh my god, it was so freaking funny, but I want to talk about

this, because the essence of this message is, you know, what

this, what this episode is about today, and the song, and I'm

gonna, it's all gonna make sense, the baby birds, the bugs,

whatever. Okay, but it goes on to say this in the song, because

this will come into play later. It says your baby needs someone

to believe in, and then this is the key line, and a whole lot of

space to breathe in, right. So this is all about this concept

of being in a relationship and not being like suffocating, like

yes, be supportive, right, but don't be suffocating, and this

is about in relation to others, like when you're around others,

and this is how a lot of relationships go bad, is people

get weird, or people get jealous, or people try to get

controlling, and they try to control everything, right, but

they, they're too suffocating, it's like too much, and this is

how a lot of relationships can end, right, so see it all around

you, good love and good bad, but okay, so it starts with this

meme in this band of 38 specials saying hold on loosely but don't

let go.

This is really great advice in a lot of ways that we can apply

towards ourselves, right? But what, what made me want to do

this episode is first of all I was thinking about that story.

My sweetie is a professional musician, right? So I will often

try, and I quiz him, like I'll just yell down from up here in

my writing office, and I'll be like, I'll go over the, like,

there's a tiny little balcony right there, and I'll be like,

sweetie, right, like, who's this, and I'll play like two

seconds of a song for him, or whatever, and I'm always

quizzing him, because he freaking knows it's so hard for.

Me to like stump them, you know. Okay, so hold this idea in your

mind, hold on loosely, but don't let go. And I started thinking

about this again, because we live here out in the woods, so

like every time you open the door, especially in the later

hours of the day, something flies in, whether it's a moth,

right, a mosquito, a bug, or whatever, and I try not to kill

anything. I'm gonna do a whole episode on that. I have my

panties in a bunch right now about people killing spiders,

right? Like, I'm like, "Oh, so I'm gonna do a whole podcast at

some point about that, but so whenever something flies into

the house, a lot of let's just say it's a moth, I tried to

rescue them and get to them before Bunchy does, because

Bunchy is not.. I don't even think he.. I don't know if no,

if he'll eat them, but he tries to like step on them and grab

them with his mouth, and I'm like, oh my god, no. But the

thing is, when you're trying to rescue something, when you're

trying to save something, you cannot hold it too tightly, so

if I can capture whether it's a fly or a moth or a bug of some

kind, right, you've got to hold it loosely, but because if you

hold it too tight, you're going to kill it, you're going to

crush its wings, right. So, a lot of times when we think we're

trying to be helpful and it's like, oh, I'm going to grab this

thing and I got to make sure that I get it, you know, I get

it outside, but it's like, if you're not careful, if you're a

little too aggressive in your efforts, then you're going to

cause more harm than you're going to do good, and we do this

to ourselves as well. And when I started thinking about, right,

like the whole song and the band 38 special, and thinking about

the bugs and stuff like that, I was like, a lot of times this is

us in relationship, you know, to like other things, like when

we're, we put too much pressure on other people, we put too much

pressure on the relationship, we put too much pressure on people

to be a certain way, or whatever, and it comes back to

that whole thing, right, your baby needs a whole lot of space

to breathe in, there has to be room for, you know, for them to

be themselves, that's really the heartbeat of that, but when

we're applying it to ourselves, it is so often that we put so

much pressure on ourselves to change, to heal, to figure it

out, to process it. I got to do it, I gotta do it, but the

reality is, is that we also need room and time. We need space,

and we need time to grow, and to change, and to process, and to

heal.

And if we're not careful, and if we put too much pressure on

ourselves, we're actually doing more harm to ourselves than we

are being helpful, and this comes to this idea of the baby

birds, so I remember learning about because we, again, I've

talked about this in the past, like many, many, many episodes

ago, that my sweetie and I, but you know, will often stop if

there's an injured animal, if we see something on the side of the

road, and my sweetie has found a couple of baby birds, like

little birds that needed to be rescued and helped, and the

thing is, again, when you're picking up a bird that has been

hurt, and especially baby birds, you have to hold them in your

hand in such a way that if you cannot hold it too tight, you

got to hold it tight enough to secure it, so it doesn't fall

out of your hand and fall on the ground and get hurt, or

whatever, get injured or more injured. You have to hold it

firmly enough and tightly enough to secure it and to make it

safe, but if you squeeze it too tightly, you're going to harm

it, right? You want it to be, yes, warm and held and secure,

so it feels safe in your hands, but you don't want to suffocate

it. So we want safety, but we do not want suffocation, right?

Just like in relationships, you want to be supportive, but you

don't want to be suffocating. So we need to baby bird ourselves

sometimes, right? We need to learn how to hold on in such a

way where it's like I talk about this sometimes when we're giving

feedback to somebody, or we're setting a boundary with

somebody, or we have to have a difficult conversation with

somebody, and we're like, "Ah, this is going to be wicked

awkward, and I don't know how I'm gonna do this, you know,

it's like, how can I have this conversation, and I kind of

think about it like this. It's like, we want to be loving but

firm, so we want to be nurturing, we want to be

nourishing, we want to be caring, but we also want to be

firm, and we want to have good boundaries, and we want to be

not like, what's the word I'm looking for, not swept up in our

emotions. We want to be a little bit more rational, or maybe,

maybe the better word is like pragmatic. Do you know what I'm

saying? We want to be relational, but we don't want to

be like, we don't want to come out of the gate wicked hot,

right? Like, that's what I always say. Let's say, when

we're trying to. Neck with people, we're trying to set a

boundary, or to have a conversation, or to give you

know feedback, loving but firm. And so there is a really great

case for going gently, right? Don't hold too tight, hold on

loosely, but don't let go, you know what I'm saying, and it

made me also think, so now we have the band, and we have we

have the bugs and the baby birds, and I don't know what

I'll call this episode, maybe I'll call it baby birding

ourselves, right, because I think so often when we're trying

to heal something, and whether it's a physical ailment, right,

like oh, I tweak my back or I hurt my knee or my foot, my

ankle, whatever the thing is, right. We just want to feel

better, and we want it to heal fast. We want it to heal quick.

We want it to get it over with. It's like, what can I do? Should

I ice it? Should I do this? Should I take it? You know,

should I take some Advil? Should I do this? Should I? Should I

stretch it? Like, we're like, I don't want to feel this way

anymore, and I want results now, like fast. And we do that

physically to our bodies, but we also do it to ourselves

emotionally. So, let's say, because we cannot separate the

mind and the body, they are always affecting one another,

right?

And when we look at things like chronic pain, or we look at

things like long-term conditions, when we look at

things like everything from like migraines to urinary, urinary

afflictions, right, or conditions, IBS, irritable bowel

syndrome, etc. anxiety, right, when we have these things that

tend to stick around for a long time, that they're no longer

just acute moments, that they become chronic. We get a little

fed up, we get a little tired of feeling exhausted, or feeling

uncomfortable in our own bodies, or feeling anxious, or feeling

scared, or whatever, whatever the symptoms that come up in

your body are, and we tend to try to force things, we tend to

respond in a way where we're not very kind to ourselves. And how

do I say this? The medical profession are not always

trained also in being gentle with us and really knowing how

to listen or having good bedside manna, right, and stuff like

that. So, there's a fantastic book. Here's the book pot that

I'm reading that I love. I've recommended it to several people

already, and it's by Dr. Sula Wingasen, and it's called It's

All in Your Body. I'm holding the book up right now. It's such

a cool cover. So, it's called It's All in Your Body, and it

says a practical road map to healing through the mind body

connection, and the title is in response to she had some chronic

stuff going on, and so many, and I can tell you this, as somebody

who has IBS, how many times, or I should say, somebody who is

healing from, and you know, navigating my IBS symptoms and

stuff, are like 1000 times better than they used to be, but

I still have flare-ups, and I still have incidents, you know.

But right on the back of this book, she says the thing that so

many of us have been told so many times, that it's all in our

head, and this book is the premise of says it's not all in

your head, and she talks about whether you suffer from burnout,

long-term fatigue, IBS, chronic pain, and trauma, or mystery

symptoms. Dr. Sulla uses the mind-body social model of

psychotherapy to help you understand what's happening in

your body and to take practical positive steps forward, so you

guys, I recommend this book. It's really fascinating. It's

really interesting, and you learn so much about how your

body affects your mind and how your mind affects your body. And

why I want to talk about this is like in this idea of like baby

birding ourselves, or when you're picking up a bug that you

want, or you know that you want to help, and let it heal, but we

don't want to do harm to it. We have to kind of take the same

approach to our own health and healing, right. And I made a

note to myself here, it says we also need this approach towards

ourselves for our health and our healing, and even also I'm going

to add, as a writer, your creativity and your craft,

because sometimes we hold on to an idea and we insist on playing

it out, whether this is in your business too, you've seen it

before, when something just isn't working and you're so

attached to something being a particular way, so you keep

trying to make it work, and you keep trying to do the marketing

for a thing, and you keep, like, whether it's working with a

human being, like a partner, whether it's implementing a

marketing plan, or trying to do a program, or a project, or

whatever. Sometimes, if we hold on too tight, there's no room

for the thing to take its natural progression of growth or

expansion, or, you know.

In the case of bodies healing, and so I love this book for a

lot of different reasons, and I want to share something that she

says, because I know for myself, like right now I'm back in the

gym, right, and my sweetie and I have been going to the gym, and

sometimes you feel like you're starting at ground zero again,

you're like, oh God, I'm feeling just a little mushy, I'm getting

a little older, like, blah blah blah, and your self-talk might

not always be, you know, so great, but for me, I understand

that I have restarted, like, building muscle, you know, so

many times in my life, because for a time, you know, I was

really into lifting and stuff, and then I found yoga, and then

I was really into yoga, and I had to like getting back in the

gym, like rebuilding muscle for strength was like, because yoga

strength is a little bit different, right, than having

like, how do I say it, it's just a different kind of strength.

So, when you're trying to like really build muscle and put on

muscle, it's like a different approach, right? Of course, is

hopefully you can imagine what I'm saying, and but you can be

really discouraging, and you can be really hot on yourself if

you're used to, quote unquote, looking a certain way, or

feeling a certain way, or just not wanting to look or feel the

way that you feel. Let's say you're somebody who has anxiety,

and you're like, I just want to stop feeling like this, and you

will go balls to the wall, trying everything you can to

just eradicate this feeling inside of you. Right, that is

not a.. that is not going gently. It's the same thing in

the gym. You can go into the gym, and you can push, push,

push, push, push too hard, too fast, too soon. You don't give

your body and your muscles, enough time to recuperate, and

you end up doing more harm than you are helpful in doing good.

You know what I mean. So, in Dr. Sulu's book, she's something

she's talking about, about this, and she says, so when you think

about going back to that quote, right, hold on loosely, but

don't let go. Part of that is about not trying to control

everything, not trying to control the other person, not

trying to control the relationship, and not trying to

control the outcomes. And when it comes to our health, when it

comes to our well-being, whether that's your physical health or

your mental health, or whatever, we sometimes have a way,

especially if we've been dealing with something for a really long

time, and we just don't understand why the symptoms

aren't changing, and again, whether that's anxiety or

depression or tummy aches or having to run to the bathroom,

you know, or what, the 1001 ways the body can go squirrely, you

know what I mean, and so here's something that she wrote that I

think it's really, really fantastic. She's like, she's

talking about how sometimes you feel like frustrated because

you're like things aren't changing as fast as you would

like, and she says, you know, sometimes your sense of control

may fluctuate every day. You have a distinct show. She says

there's a distinct feeling of quote, I'm going to master

this, so I'm going to redouble all my efforts, and then that

turns into these extremes, right? And then you fall away

into what's the point, nothing seems to work, and she says

these kind of thoughts underpin the all or nothing patterns that

we tend to fall into as humans, and we do see this right, so the

quote, like, hold on loosely, but don't let go. It's this idea

of moderation, it's this idea of approaching things gently, of

not flip-flopping from those two extremes, like, oh, I went to

the gym, like, for a month every day, and like, nothing happened.

It's like, yeah, nothing happened, probably because your

muscles didn't get a chance to recuperate. There were no rest

days. You weren't eating that great, right? And you were

exhausted, right? You just like broken down. You broke down a

lot of muscle. You didn't build it because you weren't. You, you

went two balls to the wall, right? You did not. You did not

go gently towards yourself.

And so she says, right here in this next piece, this next

passage, she says, let's right now make an intention to find

the middle ground. The middle ground is powerful, so instead

of grasping for complete certainty and control, try to

embrace what feels empowering now. So, rather than over

committing to test the extent of your control, try taking things

gradually with curiosity and an openness to learn, so that goes

back to this idea of right needing a whole lot of space to

breathe in, we need to have room to be curious, to try things, to

make mistakes, to get back up, we want, don't want the feeling

of suffocation on ourselves. We want supportive measures. We

want to try things right. We want to find that middle ground.

And she says, you know, that openness to learn and listen to

this. She says the benefits of people's openness, or a

patient's openness, the. Far outweigh the often temporary

relief of fast tracking of trying to do everything all at

once, right, and she says this openness, this openness, this is

how you make your mind and body feel safe from that place of

safety, everything you wish to achieve comes easier, so, so,

some, so many times we think, well, if I just double down, if

I just fast track, right? So we are not baby birding ourselves,

we.. I don't know what the opposite of that would be. We

would be like adult, I don't even know how to do it, opposite

of that, but we put way too much pressure on ourselves, we're

squeezing way too tightly, and it's when you squeeze too

tightly, as the words of 38 special tells us, that's when

you lose control. When you're trying to over control

everything is when things shit goes out of control, things just

go kooky monkeys. If you have ever been an over controlling

person trying to control everything, you know how that

shit ends. You know that it does not end well for us, right.

Double a men hands. I'm like, I should be in the, the, you know,

when people say they're recovering Catholics, I'm like,

I'm a recovering over controller wanting to control everything.

Okay. And then I love it. I love this line too. So this is from

chapter four again of Dr. Sula Win Gaston's book, it's all in

your body, just a little, just a little snippet. She says she's

talking about her condition, she had a bladder condition, and

she's talking about how, and I think you can apply this to

anything, whether it's my marriage isn't going well, I'm

having headaches, like whatever the situation is, right? Listen

to this, she goes, although day by day I was highly functional,

there were times I'd rage or despair breaking down in tears

as I wonder why I wondered why things weren't changing when I

was trying so hard. Oh my god, have you ever felt that way? I

can tell you, as somebody who had her first IBS attack at 15,

I tried everything under the sun. You have no idea, and I

would try so hard, so hard, right, to control things and to

fix things, and to do take this supplement and try that diet,

and like, do all these different things to try and help myself.

And you would get so frustrated when you'd be like, but I'm

trying so hard, and it's not changing. And she says, "This

listen. She says, "I wondered why things weren't changing when

I was trying so hard. I was still fixated on the magic fix.

The fact that all my endeavors were falling short of magically

fixing things was causing immense stress and bodily

reactivity. This is so important. I'm going to reread

it, because I really want you to hear this. Listen, the fact that

all my endeavors were falling short of magically fixing things

was causing immense stress and bodily reactivity. She goes on

to say it was a year or two later, having been immersed in

my PhD in research role, learning about the

transformative effects of pacing, that's that time thing

of pacing and acceptance, that's that space thing, whilst

continuing my mindfulness practices. She goes, it was

through the transformative effects of pacing and acceptance

that I mastered the balance of pacing my efforts to nourish my

body while letting go of what I could not control.

Right, so think about this: if you're somebody who wants to

make a change, whether it's an identity change, a habitual

change, a change in your body, a change with your anxiety, some

sort of transformation thing, personal development, spiritual,

physical, mental, whatever it is. Right, we have to understand

that gradual change gets the job done, as Linda Ty says, right,

the great teacher and storyteller and trauma

therapist, right, Linda Tai says sip, sip, sip, sip, or all the

episodes I've done on the Kaizen philosophy, one tiny small

change, gradual change is enough, it gets the job done, we

think it needs to come hot, it needs to come fast, we got to

make it swift, we got to, I want it now, because we've suffered

for a long time, whether it's in a relationship or with physical

symptoms or with anxiety, or whatever the thing is, it's like

we need room and time to grow, change, process, and heal. We

cannot grip too tightly. We must baby bird ourselves. We must do

a gentle approach, not everything. What I did, an

episode a couple of, whatever, weeks ago, maybe a month ago,

and I said, in the spiritual practice, in spiritual life,

every amount of effort counts, even the smallest, tiniest

efforts count, as long as we're trying. As long as we're trying

to experiment and explore and be curious and stay open and not so

fixated and not so tight and not so controlling, right, we go

into over control, we go into criticisms, criticism, we go

into urgency, we go into unkindness and harshness towards

ourselves, especially, it's like, what's wrong with me? Why

isn't this changing? Why can't I fix this? Why can't I figure

this out? Why does.. and I try to tell clients that I've worked

with in spiritual mentoring, look, it took you 3040, 5060,

whatever years to get here, to get this way, to create these

patterns, these habits, these conditions, this way of

thinking, these beliefs, this identity. It does not change

overnight. And I've always said that's why I don't make promises

to people, right? In marketing, they're always like, what's the

promise? How are they going to be different? What are they

going to get from this? I'm like, look, I cannot determine

the safe pace for this person, meaning like, I can't give you,

I can't write a script and a prescription and say, oh, in

three weeks you're gonna not be anxious anymore. This shit takes

time. We learned a lot of things over the years, and it takes

time to unlearn, but the good news is, is that we can unlearn,

we can loosen our grip a little bit right, and here's another

thing that's really, really interesting that I learned from

Dr. Sula and from other people too, like Melissa Tiers and

other teachers about neuroscience, but they actually

have done what's called neuro imaging, and the research and

neuro imaging, right, literally like looking at your brain and

stuff like that, is that when you respond to yourself

reassuringly, and reassuringly, that might sound like, oh, it's

okay, you're gonna figure it out, like, yeah, that sucked,

but we're gonna get there. Let's see what we can do when you

respond to yourself reassuringly, not clenching, not

gripping, not forcing, not being mean, right, not insisting that

it's this way, the only way, right now. Magic fixes. I want

the cure, right? When you respond to yourself

reassuringly, she says this. It activates identifiable,

identifiable neural pathways that are distinct from when we

respond critically, so how many times? So the other day, like I

did something, and I said to myself, you know, well, that was

stupid, and I just stopped myself immediately, and I said,

no, it wasn't stupid, you're just human, and you're allowed

to make a mistake. I will tell you that that feels 1000 times

better in my body and in my head and in my gut than me calling

myself stupid, calling myself an idiot. So, the way that we talk

to ourselves, it really does make a physiological difference,

like your body, the way we think affects our body.

Our body is also always sending messages up to our brain, so our

brain and our bodies are so intertwined, and for so many

years, so many people have been told it's all in your head, but

it's not, it's also all in your body. Okay, so listen to this:

self-critical responses activate threat processing circuitry in

you. Think about that. Self-critical responses activate

in your brain and in your body physiologically threat

processing circuitry, but self-assurance activates

soothing circuitry. So, when we practice compassion towards

ourselves, you are literally helping the immune system.

You're helping to, let's see, it says the more practice of

compassion, the more protected the inflammatory response to

stresses is. So, the more that we practice being gentle with

ourselves, being kind to ourselves, baby birding

ourselves, right, the power of being gentle with ourselves

literally has a physical effect on our body. So this is just

really big, right? I just want to talk about this because I

know so many of us are so hot on ourselves and we demand so much

of ourselves in our bodies, and when things aren't changing, and

things are uncomfortable, and we're just so sick of feeling a

particular way, or thinking a particular way, and we want

change now, we forget, like we get kooky, we become like, you

know, like cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and we get a little like

intense, and we start to insist that things change now, and this

is just not how things change, so we want to hold on loosely.

We don't want to lose a grip, right? Don't let go, but like we

need to hold on a little bit loosely. There are times when we

do need to totally let go, because we've become obsessed,

and it becomes a little. Bit too much, you know what I'm saying.

We're insisting, we're obsessing, we're forcing, and

that's not it. We need to remember, we need room and time

to grow, we need room and time to change, we need room and

time, space and time to heal. And it goes back to that whole

thing, right? Your baby needs someone to believe in, you need

to believe in yourself. You need to believe in your body. You

need to believe in your smarty pants brain, that there is a

natural capacity for healing, and a lot of times we are the

thing that is getting in the way. We don't do it on purpose,

and it totally makes sense why we do these things, but

hopefully you'll remember this line, right? Your baby needs

someone to believe in, and a whole lot of space to breathe

in. We need to give ourselves space to, you know, figure these

things out, to practice these things, to stay curious, and to

stay open. We need to baby bird ourselves. So, I hope this has

been helpful in some way. Maybe it's a message that you needed

to hear. I know it's a message I needed to be reminded of. Maybe

it's something that will be helpful to a cousin or a friend

or a sweetie or a co-worker, or whatever. If you just know

somebody who's really hard on themselves or somebody who puts

way too much pressure on themselves, and when we do that,

here's the thing: when we have a tendency to like put a lot of

pressure on things, we also tend to put a lot of pressure on

ourselves, but also other people, and we can be really

hard on other people, but we can also be like wicked, wicked,

wicked hard on ourselves, and we don't want to do that, we want

to be creating circuitry in our brain that sends like loving

messages, healing messages to the body, and vice versa. Okay,

so I hope this has been helpful. I hope it made sense. We brought

together baby birds and bugs, we brought together our bodies, a

book, and a band. We somehow did it, you guys. We did it. So I

hope this was helpful to you. I appreciate you. Also, just in

terms of other things that are going on, because I always like

to let you guys keep you guys in the loop of the shenanigans that

I'm up to. We just had another fantastic Wright Club on

Saturday. It was so, so, so good.

If you're somebody who lives local to New Hampshire, and you

can live by care, like Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine,

right, you can travel, travel to Concord, New Hampshire. For this

summer, we're going to keep doing Write Club in person. It's

generative. It's a half day generative writing workshop.

It's a four hour workshop. It's so fantastic. It's at a

beautiful space, the 11th Letter Writing Gallery. We have just

been having such a fantastic time doing it, and I would love

to have you join, join us, even if you're not.. what's the word

I want to use? I don't want to say confident, but maybe you

suspect that you're a writer, maybe you're somebody that jots

down notes on napkins, or maybe you're somebody that journals,

or you have a story to tell. You've always dreamed of writing

a book, whatever it is, right? I hope you come check out Write

Club at some point, and just know everything I'm talking

about. You can always find it online on my website at Karen

Kenney K E N N E y.com There's always the NES, which is my

spiritual mentoring group and community. Those folks are

fantastic. I love them so much. We meet online every every two

weeks, so like twice a month we meet online, and a lot of what

goes on in the NES is kind of like what happens on the

podcast, is we talk to each other, I do some mentoring and

coaching, I share stories, I share ideas, we follow, we go

through a set of modules and lessons that are jumping off

points, but it's just like, basically, it's like group

coaching is what is really helping happening in a really

beautiful community, of course, I always work one to one, and

then locally I also do a yoga class. I do yoga classes and

private yoga and Thai yoga massage, so I do all kinds of

stuff, and I'm also writing my book. Speaking of books, I'm

also writing my book, so all kinds of shenanigans. And if you

want to know how to find out what's happening, just sign up.

You're not going to get a bunch of crazy emails, right? You're

going to get this podcast in your inbox on Thursday mornings,

and then you'll also hear from me when I have an offer or

something that I think might be helpful, and that's the thing

with my emails - I don't write just to write, I send when I

have something that I think is like my offerings, anything that

I create are like little love letters from my hat to yours, so

people might call them marketing emails or sales emails,

whatever. I don't think of them that way. I'm literally saying,

hey, I created this cool thing because I needed it, or at least

at one point, or now I know it's helpful and beneficial. I've

seen it have really great results, and I'm offering it.

I'm literally just offering it to people and inviting people to

come join me. So, I'm not super salesy, I'm just like, here's

what we're doing, come join us. I think it's fun. I hope you

come. Right, that's kind of how it is. So you can just go to

Karen kenney.com backslash sign up, and that's it. And come see

us, come hang out with us, come spend some time together in

person. It would be wicked fun. All right, you guys, one more

time. Here's the book, Dr. Sula Wingasen. It's all in your body,

it's so fantastic. Like I said, I've been referring it to

people. I'm going to do a post about it on social media soon,

too. But I have found it - I'm finding it wicked helpful. Just

re what's reaffirming some things that I've learned before,

reminding me of some things, and also teaching me some new ways

of looking at things, and I always love getting a new point

of view. Okay, that's it. Wherever you go in the world,

whether it's the rest of your day, your week, whatever, right?

Wherever you go, may you leave the animals and the other people

and yourself and the planet, the trees, the rocks, the rivers,

the environment better than how you first found it. Wherever you

go, may you and your presence and your energy and your love

and your baby birding, your gentleness, may it be a

blessing. Bye.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show. I really

love spending some time together. Now, if you dig the

show or know someone that could benefit from this episode,

please share it with them and help me to spread the good word

and the love, and if you want to be in the know about all of my

upcoming shenanigans, head on over to Karen kenney.com/sign up

and join my list. It'll be wicked fun to stay in touch.

Bye.