Embodied Radiance Podcast

Kelly Gardner
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  • Health & Fitness
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This podcast is all about bringing yoga and life coaching together so you can bridge the gap between what you practice on the mat and how you live your life.

Episodes

  1. 16h ago

    11. Courage: Living What You Know

    Summary: Most of us don't struggle because we don't know enough. We struggle because living what we know costs something. In this episode, we explore what courage actually is — not fearlessness, but the commitment to act when there is a possibility of loss. Drawing on Drew Dudley's definition of courage and the yoga philosophy concept of abhaya, we'll look at what you're really afraid of losing, what staying small is quietly costing you, and why courage is really just self-trust in motion. Plus the slingshot theory — what happens when you commit before the doubt can catch up — and a practice using abhaya mudra to rehearse courage in your own body. Because courage isn't proof that you're fearless. It's proof that something matters more than your fear.  Transcript: In my 20s, I made a decision, and after I committed to it, all the doubts came rolling in. I was working in sales at the time, and I decided to move to Atlanta from Memphis, where I was living, to take over a sales territory there. I didn't have a community waiting for me. I knew exactly two people there, and I was taking what felt like a really big risk. But something in me said it was time for a change. I saw the potential of living in a brand-new city. The company that I worked for said yes, and before I knew it, I was committed to moving almost seven hours away. I told people, I made it real, and then I was flying through the air. I don't know about you, but I have found that sometimes the only way to make a big, courageous move is to launch myself before fear gets a vote. I call it the slingshot. When you slingshot yourself, you pull back, you take aim at something that feels true for you, and you let go before you can overthink it. And then you're already moving, and you have to trust yourself to figure out the landing. Atlanta worked out, but honestly, even if it hadn't, I still would've learned a lot of important things about myself. The point isn't that things turned out with that move. The point is that I trusted what I knew deep down enough to act before doubt talked me out of it. And that's what today is all about, not the absence of fear, but living what you know anyway. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 11. People often tell me they don't know what to do. But when we start talking, they actually do know. They know the conversation they need to have, they know the boundary that needs to be set, they know the decision that needs to be made, they know the dream that is waiting within them. They just don't yet trust themselves enough to live into it. The knowing isn't usually the problem, living it is. Because living what you know almost always costs you something, and that's exactly where courage begins. I love how Drew Dudley defines courage. He says, "Courage is a commitment to taking action when there is a possibility of loss." This view of courage makes it really tangible. It makes it real. It explains immediately why courage feels so uncomfortable, and of course it does. Every courageous decision asks us to risk losing something. We risk losing approval, certainty, comfort, control. It may be an identity we've been living into, a relationship, a version of yourself that other people have come to expect. When we can name what we're actually afraid of losing, our fear starts making sense, and that's very different from believing that our fear means we should stop. But here's what courage also invites us to look at, the cost of not moving. Maybe staying where you are protects you from criticism, but it also costs you authenticity. Maybe staying protects you from disappointing someone else, but it also means disappointing yourself. Maybe staying feels safe right now, but over time, it quietly drains your energy, your creativity, your self-trust, and your joy. There are really two questions worth asking here. The first is, what might I lose if I do this? What's at risk? And the second, and this one is really important to ask, is what is it costing me to stay here? Sometimes the greatest risk isn't in changing, it's in remaining the same. Every courageous choice you make becomes evidence. Evidence that you can survive uncertainty. Evidence that you can disappoint someone else and still be okay. Evidence that your worth isn't dependent on everyone else's approval. Evidence that you can do hard things. We don't build self-trust by thinking about courageous action. We build it by taking action one choice at a time. And that's why I see courage as self-trust in motion. In yoga philosophy, there's a quality called abhaya, often translated as fearlessness, but not the fearlessness of someone who feels nothing. It's the fearlessness of someone who is rooted in something deeper than their fear. They're rooted in their values, their truth, their inner knowing. Abhaya isn't the absence of fear, it's what happens when something matters more than the fear. And that's what we're building here, not fearlessness, but rootedness. Okay, so let's circle back to the slingshot for a moment. I think it's worth naming as a strategy. The slingshot is what happens when you commit before the doubt can fully arrive. You aim at something that feels true for you, you pull back, and you release before doubt gets a vote. And then you're already in the air, and you must trust yourself to figure out the rest. It doesn't always look graceful. Sometimes you are terrified the entire way after you've said yes. Believe me. But you're moving, and movement, even imperfect, scared, uncertain movement, builds the evidence your nervous system needs to trust you. Atlanta was a slingshot for me, just as many of the biggest and most important decisions of my life have been. And they weren't reckless. They were all rooted in deeper knowing. There's a difference. The slingshot works because you have tuned in to the knowing within you. You are acting on something deeper than the fear of risk, and you're trusting yourself as you let courage handle the rest. Courage is something we can practice, like building a muscle, and muscles are built through doing the reps. Instead of simply reflecting on courage, I invite you to rehearse it here for the next few moments. So bring to mind something you've been knowing but not living, just something that's been quietly asking for your attention. It could be something like a habit that you know you want to change, but the risk of discomfort has stopped you. Now I want to introduce you to a gesture from yoga, Abhaya Mudra. A mudra is a hand gesture. To do this mudra, all you'll need to do is bend your right elbow and raise your right hand so that it's up near your right shoulder with your palm facing forward and your fingers extended but relaxed. Your left hand can rest palm up in your lap, or if you're standing, it can just hang by your side. This gesture has been used for thousands of years as a reminder to tap into the courage within. It's like you're taking an oath to yourself to trust your inner knowing and to take action even when it feels risky. You are rooted, you are okay, you can do this. So go ahead and come into Abhaya Mudra and hold that right palm facing forward. Feel what it means to offer this to yourself. Feel the stable base beneath you, and take one slow breath. And now out loud, or in a whisper if that feels better, I invite you to say, "I am going to..." And fill in the blank. Complete that sentence with the thing you've been knowing but not doing. With this mudra, you're making the commitment to yourself to step out in courage. So maybe say it again, a little stronger this time. I am going to... And notice what happens in your body when you say it out loud. That activation you feel, that mix of fear and aliveness, that's courage. That's what it actually feels like. It's not always calm. It's not always certain. But it is fully alive. So that's your rehearsal, and every time you rehearse it, you're building the muscle. You're becoming someone who acts on what she knows. Rehearse it as many times as you need. Courage isn't proof that you're fearless. It's proof that something matters more than your fear, and you are willing to take the risk for yourself. The slingshot works because you've already tapped in to your inner knowing, and now courage is what carries you into the living it. Not perfectly, not without fear, just forward. Next time, we're gonna talk about what happens when you take that courageous step and someone else doesn't like it. Because disapproval tolerance, the ability to stay anchored in yourself when approval isn't guaranteed, that's its own practice. And it's one worth building. Until then, trust what you know, and then let courage carry you. Raise your right hand, commit to yourself, and let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  2. Jul 30

    10. Offloading vs. Integrating: Turning Experience into Wisdom

    Summary: Insight alone doesn't change our lives — integration does. In this episode, we explore the difference between offloading our difficult experiences and truly metabolizing them. We'll look at why the instinct for relief is human and necessary, and why it becomes a problem when it's the end of the process rather than the beginning. Drawing on the yoga philosophy of tapas — the transformative heat of difficult experience — we'll explore what becomes possible when we stop trying to escape the fire and start trusting what it's doing. Including a real story of unexpected job loss, creative possibility, and the wisdom that only became visible on the other side. Because you may not see how an experience is shaping you while you're in it. But something is always taking form. Transcript: In the last episode, we talked about congruence, about becoming more fully yourself and bringing the way you live into greater alignment with what you know is true for you. But knowing what is true for you and actually living from that truth are not always the same thing. You can understand why you keep falling into a certain pattern. You can recognize where it came from. You can even know exactly what you want to do differently and still find yourself doing the same thing again. I know, because I've definitely experienced that more than once. Insight matters, but insight alone doesn't always change us. At some point, what we understand has to become part of how we live. It has to be integrated. And integration doesn't always happen the moment we have the realization. Sometimes life gives us an experience that asks us to sit with what we know, practice it, and allow it to shape us over time. The problem is that when an experience feels painful, disappointing, or really uncomfortable, most of us don't immediately think, "I wonder how this is shaping me?" We just wanna feel better. So today I wanna talk about what we do when we're uncomfortable, the difference between offloading and integrating, and what can happen when we stay with an experience long enough to discover the wisdom inside it. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number 10.​ When something painful happens, a disappointment, a conflict, a loss, a moment that knocks us sideways, our nervous system naturally wants one thing: relief. And that makes complete sense. We are wired to move away from discomfort. So we do what humans do. We replay the conversation trying to make sense of it. We overthink. We stay busy. We jump into fixing mode, or maybe we scroll. We try to make the feeling stop. And none of that makes us bad. It simply makes us human. These are all attempts to reduce emotional pressure, and sometimes they help us get through really difficult moments. But we must recognize that relief and transformation are not the same thing. Relief isn't the problem. Sometimes relief is exactly what our nervous system needs. The problem is when relief becomes the end of the process. When we discharge the discomfort but never return to listen for what it has to teach us. Brené Brown uses the word offloading to describe what happens when we try to discharge uncomfortable emotions without really processing them, and I wanna take that a little bit deeper. Offloading isn't only about venting or deflecting. It can also look incredibly productive. We're thinking about it, talking about it, analyzing it, trying to understand it, but underneath all of that activity, our nervous system is still asking one question: "How do I stop feeling this?" Integration asks something entirely different. It asks, "What is this experience trying to teach me? How do I want this to shape me?" And that shift from how do I escape this to what is this doing in me changes everything. Because instead of trying to get rid of the experience, we begin allowing it to change us. And that's where tapas comes in. In yoga philosophy, tapas is one of the niyamas, the personal practices that support our growth. It's often translated as discipline or effort. But in Deborah Adele's beautiful book, The Yamas and Niyamas, she teaches tapas as the transformative heat of practice that is shaping us, the fire that burns away what no longer serves and forges something new. I love to teach tapas through the lens of resilience. It makes me think of the Japanese saying, "Fall seven, rise eight." Not giving up on yourself- taking one more step even when you cannot see where it leads. A quiet determination to find the value even in hard things that you live through. Especially in the hard things. Difficult experiences are shaping us, and integration allows us to participate in what we become because of those experiences. The practice of tapas isn't pretending it doesn't hurt. It's in trusting that the heat is doing something and staying connected to yourself as you discover what that something might be. Offloading tries to escape the heat. Integration learns how to work with it. I feel like real examples from real life are very helpful, so I wanna share something from my own life here because I feel like that illustrates this better than anything I could teach abstractly. Several years ago, I asked my employer if I could move to part-time in the job that I had, and they told me no. So I did what I felt like I needed to do. I began interviewing at other places, and I actually accepted a new position. So I gave my notice at the job I had been in, and I watched them hire my replacement. I was ready to move on, I felt good about my decision, and then about a week before I was supposed to start the new job, I got a call. The position was being put on hold, and I no longer had a job. I felt really desperate. I felt confused, disappointed, scared, lots of things. I couldn't make sense of it, and I really wanted to fix it, to outrun it, to do anything to stop the swirling emotions I was experiencing. That was the desire to offload it. But I couldn't change the situation, and so ultimately I had to sit in it. Later, I could clearly see that that job would have been a terrible fit for me. I would have been really miserable there. And what felt like a door slamming in my face became part of the fire that shaped and redirected me. It actually cleared a path that I couldn't see yet. After I spent some time sitting with the fear and the disappointment and the confusion, I actually began to get creative, and I pitched an idea that ultimately created a job that I had for years. And I really enjoyed that job. I couldn't see or integrate that wisdom while I was caught in the desperation to make everything okay again. The heat had to do its work first, and I had to remain present enough to respond when a different possibility appeared. That's what integration can look like from the inside, messy and disorienting, and eventually clarifying. When we offload an experience, the story stays centered on what happened, what went wrong, what should have been. When we integrate it, something shifts. The experience doesn't disappear, but our relationship to it changes. It becomes something that shaped us, something that clarified what we value, something that showed us we could survive what we thought we couldn't. The most powerful question I know for this is simply asking, "What do I know now because I lived through this?" Not because what happened was good, not because you chose for it to happen, but because when you allow yourself to be shaped consciously by your experiences, you can gather wisdom even from a path you never would have chosen. And that wisdom, once integrated, it's yours. It becomes part of who you are. You carry it forward with you. It changes how you understand yourself, the choices you make, and the way you show up. I want to invite you into a simple reflection. Bring to mind a recent experience that may not have gone the way you hoped, just something that left you disappointed or unsettled or wanting to make that feeling go away. Take a breath and notice how you were relating to that experience. Were you replaying it in your mind, trying to explain it, trying to fix it or outrun it? Just notice without judgment, bringing it into your awareness. Now notice what happens in your body as you bring that experience to mind. Is there an area that feels tight or tender or wobbly? Can you place a hand there and offer yourself a little support? Now ask yourself, what might be possible if I didn't have to rush away from how this feels? And take another breath. What might this experience be shaping in you? And how do you wanna participate in that shaping? I'm not asking you to force an answer or find a silver lining here. Just allow those questions to simmer in the back of your mind and see what arises. Sometimes the wisdom arrives immediately. Sometimes it comes later. Just let it be there. You don't have to see the whole shape yet to trust that something is still taking form. I don't believe healing is about never having difficult experiences. I think it's about becoming someone who knows how to meet those experiences differently. Someone who knows when to seek relief and when to return and listen more deeply. Someone who can stay connected to herself while the heat forges wisdom. Because that's where transformation happens, not when life stops being hard, but when our relationship with the hard things begins to change. And eventually, living from that wisdom will ask us to step into courage, and that's exactly where we're headed in the next episode. Until then, ask yourself, "What do I know now because I lived through this?" Carry that wisdom with you, and let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  3. Jul 23

    9. Congruence: Becoming More Fully Yourself

    Summary: Have you ever had the feeling that your life looks good on the outside but doesn't quite feel like you? In this episode, we explore congruence — what happens when your inner experience and your outer expression begin to match — and why so many of us learned to live in the gap between who we are and who we think we have to be. Drawing on the yoga principle of satya, we'll look at why the body cannot lie, what incongruence actually costs us, and how embodiment is really just congruence in action. Plus a practice using the human body compass to help you begin hearing your own inner truth — one yes, one no, one honest moment at a time. Authenticity isn't about discovering who you are. It's about remembering. Transcript: Have you ever had the feeling that you're living a life that looks good from the outside, but somehow doesn't quite feel like you? Maybe you've said yes when everything within you was screaming no. Maybe you've smiled when you were really hurting. Or maybe you've become so good at meeting everyone else's expectations that you've lost touch with your own. Most of us know what it feels like to live disconnected from ourselves. And we usually think the answer is to become someone better, to learn more, to heal more, to improve more. But what if the real work isn't in becoming someone else? What if it's becoming more fully yourself? That's what today is all about. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number nine. Congruence is what happens when your inner experience and your outer expression begin to match. When what you feel, what you value, what you believe, and how you actually show up in your life start telling the same story. Congruence isn't perfection, it's alignment. It's living in a way that reflects what is true inside of you. That's what all of this work that we've been doing is pointing us toward. Not becoming someone new, becoming more fully yourself. What's worth understanding is that most of us weren't taught congruence. We were taught how to adapt. "Be nice. Don't rock the boat. Don't be too much. Don't be too loud. Don't disappoint anyone. Fit in." And many of those messages helped us to survive. We've talked about that through the radiant compassion process, how our adaptations were intelligent, protective, and made complete sense given where we came from. But somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, "What feels true for me?" And we started asking, "What will be accepted?" Living in that gap between who you truly are and who you think you have to be is exhausting. And that exhaustion is also information. If you've been feeling tired lately, it might not only be because you're doing too much. It may also be because you're carrying too many versions of yourself. One of the reasons so many people feel chronically tired isn't because they're doing too much, it's because they're carrying too much. They're carrying the weight of performing, of self-monitoring, of constant editing, of trying to predict how others will perceive them, of trying to become an acceptable version to others, of trying to avoid rejection. And all of that takes enormous amounts of energy, energy that could be going toward creating and connecting and contributing to the world in your unique way. Energy that could be going toward actually living. Congruence is freeing, not because life gets easier, but because you stop spending so much of yourself and so much energy trying to manage how you're perceived. You get that energy back, and you can start using it for something that feels real and right for you. People often ask me what embodiment actually is. It's not necessarily a yoga pose or a breathing practice, though those can support embodiment. Embodiment is when who you are authentically shows up in how you move, in what you say, what you choose in how you live. It's not just having information, it's putting it into practice, living into it. Now, in yoga philosophy, there's a concept called satya, and it's often translated as truthfulness. Most people think of satya as, , not lying to others. But there's a deeper practice here in not lying to yourself. Satya means not overriding what you know to be true inside, not silencing what your body is trying to tell you, not ignoring those whispers from your inner wisdom. And here's something I've learned through all of my years of yoga therapy, and coaching, and mental health therapy, and simply paying attention to my own body. Your body is always giving you honest information. Before your mind catches up, before you find the words, your body is already communicating. It's speaking to you through that tightening in your chest or the heaviness in your stomach, through your total loss of energy, or through that sense of expansion. It isn't that your body is telling you exactly what to do in those moments, but it is inviting you to become curious. It's offering you information in the way that it knows how. And the more we learn to listen without immediately dismissing or overriding that information, the more congruent our lives become. Okay, I also want to honestly acknowledge something here. Becoming more congruent in your life isn't always comfortable. Every time we choose an action that is congruent for us, that aligns with our truth, when we show up out in our lives in a way that reflects how we feel inwardly, we become more ourselves. And we risk something. We risk being misunderstood, disappointing someone, a relationship shifting, a boundary being tested. So congruence takes courage. And courage isn't the absence of fear, it's choosing how to show up in alignment with our truth anyway. We'll spend more time with courage in a future episode because it deserves that space. But for now, just know this, every small act of congruence is also an act of courage. Okay, I wanna offer you something a little different in our practice today. We're gonna work with the body directly, because if congruence is about inner and outer matching, the body is where we wanna start. So I invite you, if you're able, to stand up for a moment. If you're not able to stand up, sit up nice and tall. Whether you're standing or sitting, gently shake out your arms and your legs. Just loosen everything up for a few seconds. And then come to a comfortable stance with your feet about hips width apart. Take a slow breath here. , I invite you to say out loud, "My name is," and say your name. And then just notice what happens. Some people notice themselves leaning slightly forward. Some notice themselves pulling back. Some notice absolutely nothing. There's no right answer here. We're simply becoming curious about how our body responds, how our body communicates our truth with us. Now, try saying a name that isn't yours. "My name is," and a false name. And see what happens. Or you can simply alternate by saying, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," and, "No, no, no, no, no." Again, don't worry about getting the right response. Notice what the response from your body is. We're beginning to explore your body's compass. , Bring to mind something in your life where you may have been sensing a quiet incongruence: a situation, a relationship, a pattern, a choice you keep making that doesn't feel quite like you. Find that tall posture and ask yourself a simple yes or no question about the situation. And instead of immediately searching for an answer in your mind, pause. Notice what happens in your body. Maybe you notice tension, maybe ease, maybe resistance, maybe a sway or a lean, maybe nothing at all. Whatever you notice is simply information. And that information may come in a whisper right now, and it may feel really easy to override. But the more you practice listening, the louder and the clearer that message gets. , Most of us begin noticing these signals from our body after we've overridden them, and then eventually we begin noticing them during the moment. And with practice, we can begin noticing before. We can notice the signal from the body before we override it. And that progression, the after- during- before- progression, that's embodiment. That's the practice. Congruence isn't a destination you arrive at all at once. It's a practice. One choice, one moment, one small act of listening to yourself at a time. Insight alone doesn't change our lives. We can have beautiful realizations and still find ourselves slipping back into those old familiar patterns. So I invite you to shake your body out, ask a yes or no question, and listen for that quiet truth that may arise. In the next episode, we're going to explore the difference between offloading our experiences and truly integrating them, because transformation doesn't happen simply because we understand something. It happens when we begin living it. Until then, listen to your body, trust the information it's offering, and let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  4. Jul 16

    8. Compassionate Responsibility: What Do I Choose Now?

    Summary: You've seen yourself clearly, made sense of your patterns, and released what you no longer need to carry. Now comes the final step of the Radiant Compassion Process — and perhaps the most powerful one. In this episode, we explore compassionate responsibility: the difference between carrying a wound and carrying a choice, between self-blame and authorship, between a wound story and a wisdom story. We'll look at what it means to truly integrate what you've learned — not just understand it, but live from it — and why the stories we keep rehearsing shape the reality our nervous system prepares for. Plus a complete walkthrough of all four steps of the Radiant Compassion Process, including the wisdom step, so you leave with a tool you can return to again and again. You didn't write the first chapters. But you get to write what comes next. Transcript: Over the last three episodes, we've moved through the radiant compassion process. We began by learning to see ourselves without judgment in compassionate awareness, and then learned how to understand our patterns instead of condemning them with compassionate understanding. And in the last episode, we explored what it means to honor what protected us and to let it go with grace through compassionate release. Today, we arrive at the final step of the radiant compassion process, compassionate responsibility. And this is the step that ties everything together because once we've seen, understood, and released, there's one question left: what do I choose now? This is where healing becomes authorship, and this is where your story begins to change. Hey, it's Kelly G, your radiance coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number eight. Responsibility is not the same as blame. Blame asks, "Whose fault was this?" And it keeps us looking backward, tied to the story, and searching for who to hold accountable, even when that someone is ourselves. Responsibility asks something different. Its question is, "What do I do now?" Most of us didn't choose the patterns that we adapted to, the roles we learned to play, the beliefs we absorbed before we were old enough to question them, but we do get to decide what happens next. That's the difference between carrying a wound and carrying a choice. Blame traps you as a character in a story someone else wrote, and when you pick up the pen and become the author, it doesn't erase what happened. It doesn't pretend the chapters before this one didn't shape you. But it means you are no longer just living out the plot you inherited. You're writing what comes next. Owning your story doesn't have to mean self-blame. It's stepping into your power to write the ending, and that distinction changes everything about how we move forward. Many of us know our wound story very well. We know what hurt, what shaped us, what formed us into who we became, and that matters. But healing asks us to do something more. Not to erase the wound story, but to gather the wisdom from it. To ask, "What did this teach me? What did I learn about myself? About life? About love, boundaries, strength, and truth?" This is the wisdom story, the story that doesn't deny what happened, but doesn't stop there either. And I wanna be clear about something. This isn't about forcing a silver lining onto everything that's happened to you. We're not skipping over the wound to get to some tidy lesson. That's bypassing, and it doesn't actually heal anything. But there is a question worth asking once you've truly seen and understood and released something. And that question is, "What did this make possible?" Even if you wish it hadn't happened. Not because the hard thing was good, but because you are allowed to find the wisdom inside it without pretending the hard part wasn't hard. There's a difference between having insight and integrating the wisdom of it into your life. Insight says, "I understand why I do this." And we talked about that in episode six, Making It Make Sense. But when we can build on that insight, we can move into integration, which says, "I am living differently now as a result." Integration means we begin living from what we've learned, not only from what we've survived. It means we begin relating to ourselves and the world differently. This is where our wisdom becomes embodied. So compassionate responsibility asks, "What is mine to do now? What choices are available to me now? What truths do I know now? What boundaries do I need now? What support do I want now?" You may not have written the first chapters of your story, but whether you realize it or not, you are participating in what comes next, and that matters. Your life changes when you can see that. Compassionate responsibility asks, "What story do I want to live from now?" Not perform, not force, but live from. And I wanna make this real with an example from my own life. So lately, I have noticed a subtle pattern in my thinking. When something doesn't go the way I planned or a frustration pops up, my mind automatically says, "Of course." And at first, that may sound pretty harmless, but when I got really curious about this, I realized how much was packed into those two words. What it really means is, "Of course this is happening to me." And I can see now how that keeps me in a victim perspective in my life. It reinforces the idea that life is happening to me instead of me being in relationship with it. It reinforces the belief that if things don't go smoothly or according to plan, something has gone wrong. And underneath that is an even deeper belief: that my wellbeing depends on life cooperating with me; that discomfort, challenge, inconvenience, or uncertainty shouldn't be happening. So here's how I move through all of the steps of the radiant compassion process and how I did it with this pattern. Okay, so step number one, compassionate awareness. I notice the pattern. My mind says, "Of course," and that's okay. No judgment, just seeing it. And then step two, compassionate understanding. When I get curious, I can see that this pattern developed as a way of making sense of frustration quickly, and it was modeled for me. It gives me a familiar story to organize around. It protects me from uncertainty by turning discomfort into something known. And underneath it is this old belief that if I do everything right, life should cooperate, and that makes sense. Step three, compassionate release. When I really see it, I realize that what I'm ready to release isn't just the frustration, it's the belief that life owes me smoothness in order for me to be okay. So I thank that pattern. Thank you for trying to make hard things feel understandable. Thank you for trying to protect me from uncertainty. Thank you for trying to give me a sense of control when things feel really unpredictable. But for now, I'm moving on. So I breathe in through the front of my heart, out through the back of my heart, and I envision that pattern behind me. And then I look for the wisdom. I ask, "What is this teaching me?" And what I know now is that life does not have to go according to plan for me to be okay. Challenge is not punishment. Discomfort isn't danger. Inconvenience is not personal. And that's the wisdom. That is what will shift my experience in any given moment. And so from there, I move into the final step of compassionate responsibility by asking, "So what do I choose now?" I choose to remember that life is not happening to me. Life is just happening, and I am strong enough to meet it in any given moment. So that's the whole process, the four steps. Not perfect, not polished, but a practice. And what I hope you can hear in all of this is that the stories we repeat matter. Because over time, the stories we keep rehearsing become the reality our nervous system prepares for. Those stories shape what feels familiar, what feels possible, and what feels safe. Not because your past isn't real, but because your nervous system organizes around what it expects. And if the story you keep rehearsing sounds like, "I'm not enough, I always get left behind, I have to do it all myself, I can't trust myself," your life is going to keep organizing around those expectations, not because they're true, but because they've become practiced. And that's why compassionate responsibility matters, because it asks, "What story do I want to live from now?" And it empowers you into the choices that you have. So now I wanna invite you to walk through these steps yourself. Think of something, not your biggest wound necessarily, not your deepest story, but something alive, something that you are experiencing right now in your life: a pattern, a thought, a recent moment, a reaction, something that you've noticed. And start with compassionate awareness, seeing it. So say, "I blank, and that's okay." So here are some examples. "I blew up, and that's okay. I shut down in that moment, and that's okay. I over explained myself, and that's okay." This interrupts shame. Next, move to compassionate understanding. Name the pattern or the old story underneath what you just saw, and then add in, "And that makes sense." So here are some examples: "It touched that old story that I have to prove how smart I am, and that makes sense." "Oh, that brought up the fear that conflict means I'll be left, and that makes sense." So look for that story that supports the pattern, state it, and add on, "And that makes sense." This interrupts the habit of self-judgment and self-attack. And then move to compassionate release. I can let it go. So see it, see yourself in it, in that pattern, feel into it. Thank it. Acknowledge how it served you. Thank you for all of the ways that it may have protected you or helped you. And then say, "But for now, I'm moving on." Take a breath in through the front of your heart, out through the back of your heart, and visualize it behind you. This interrupts your holding onto it. And then find the wisdom in it. So ask, "What do I know

  5. Jul 9

    7. Compassionate Release: The Grief of Becoming

    Summary: Awareness and understanding are powerful — but sometimes what follows is something we don't expect: grief. In this episode, step three of the Radiant Compassion Process, we explore what it means to release the patterns, roles, and identities we built to survive — not by rejecting them, but by honoring them. We'll look at why grief is part of becoming, how the need to fit in shaped so much of who we learned to be, and why release is often quieter and more tender than we imagine. Plus a compassionate release ritual to guide you through letting go with grace. You are allowed to grow beyond what once kept you safe. And you are allowed to become someone new without betraying who you had to be. Transcript: Over the last two episodes, we've been making our way through the first half of the radiant compassion process, learning to meet ourselves with compassion as we step into who we're becoming. We began with compassionate awareness, the art of seeing ourselves without judgment. Then we moved into compassionate understanding, making our patterns make sense. And with that came acceptance. Not approval, just allowing what is true to be true. And when we can do that, when we can truly see, understand, and accept ourselves, sometimes something else arises. And it's something we don't always expect: grief. Grief for what shaped us, grief for what we needed and didn't receive, grief for the parts of ourselves we set aside in order to earn approval or to stay safe, grief for the identities we built just to survive. Understanding doesn't mean we have to keep carrying all of it. Sometimes understanding is exactly what allows us to finally let go. So today, we move into step three of the radiant compassion process: compassionate release. Hey, it's Kelly G, a radiance coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number seven. Compassionate release is not about rejecting who you've been. It's not about deciding that your coping strategies were wrong or shaming the parts of yourself that learned to survive the way that they did. Release begins with honoring, honoring what protected you, honoring what helped you get here. Before we can let go of anything with real grace, we have to acknowledge: this mattered. This served a purpose. This got me through. That acknowledgment is what makes release compassionate rather than just another form of self-rejection dressed up as growth. I want to acknowledge something directly here. So much of real healing includes grief, and grief isn't only about losing someone you love. Grief shows up in the healing process in ways we don't always recognize or give ourselves permission to feel. Sometimes grief looks like finally seeing how much energy survival required and feeling the weight of that for the first time. Sometimes it's recognizing how long you've been abandoning yourself in ways that were so familiar they felt normal. Sometimes it's simply the ache of outgrowing something that once kept you safe. And when that grief arises, we often wanna push past it. We want to rush. We want to get to the growth part, the healed part, the after. But grief isn't an obstacle to becoming. Grief is part of becoming. It acknowledges and clears what was never fully felt. It makes space for what's real, and what we don't grieve has a way of quietly traveling with us into what comes next. Many of the identities we built were built around one of our most fundamental human needs, the need to belong. We needed to know we were safe, to feel connected and loved and enough. And so we learned, often very early, who we needed to be to try to make that happen. But here's the thing, what most of us were actually taught was how to fit in, and fitting in is not the same as belonging. Fitting in asks you to change who you are in order to be accepted. True belonging never requires that. But when we're young and dependent, we don't know the difference. We just know what keeps us safe and connected, and so we adapted, we fit in, and we called it belonging, and that makes sense. Maybe you became the easy one, the strong one, the responsible one, the peacekeeper, the one who never needed too much, and those roles worked at that time. They kept things stable. They kept you connected. But when we start to release those identities, it can feel terrifying because on some level, the nervous system still believes that how you are seen is what keeps you safe. And if you stop being who you have always been, your nervous system doesn't yet know what comes next. That fear is real, and it deserves compassion, too. It's not resistance to growth. It's a nervous system that learned that you had to earn approval and acceptance. It learned to equate how you showed up with safety, and now it needs to be shown, gently and over time, that you are safe enough to shift that. Compassionate release asks a simple but profound question: What am I carrying that I no longer need? What role, what belief, what expectation, what protective pattern has been running so long it just feels like me, but maybe it isn't? And can I trust that I'm safe enough now to begin letting it go? Not all at once, just a little. Just enough to create some space. Because release is often quieter and way less dramatic than we imagine. Sometimes it looks like not explaining yourself when you feel the urge to, letting someone misunderstand you without rushing to fix it, not over-functioning when you could let someone else carry their own weight, resting when you've been taught that rest has to be earned. Maybe it's saying no or asking for help or letting yourself actually need something. These are releases, too. Small, tender, real ones. I wanna guide you through a ritual that I created several years ago as a way of releasing old habits, identities, patterns, and protections in a compassionate way. And what I love about this ritual is that it honors the full journey, not just the letting go part, but the seeing, understanding, honoring, and then releasing. So I invite you to practice with me. If you're able, go ahead and close your eyes. Take a breath here, and bring to mind the thing that you're ready to release. Maybe it's a habit or a pattern, an emotional response, an identity, a behavior, or a role. Let that arise, and picture yourself in that pattern, in that role, in that habit. Whatever it is, see it clearly in front of you. And once you do, I invite you to say to it, "I see you." And then just take a few breaths here. Really turning toward it. Not avoiding, not fixing or changing, just seeing it clearly. And now say to it, "Thank you for everything you have done for me." And let yourself acknowledge what it gave you, how it helped, how it protected, how it soothed, how it kept you safe. And once you've acknowledged that, then say, "But for now, I am moving on." And now take a breath in and feel that breath flowing in through the front of your heart. And as you exhale, feel that breath flow out through the back of your heart. And again, breathe in through the front of the heart and out through the back. And one more time, in through the front, and on this exhale, I invite you to say, "I release you." And visualize what you're releasing gently moving behind you. Not erased, not destroyed, not denied, just no longer in front of you, no longer leading. And then if it feels supportive, imagine the space before you. Open, clear, available. A space for possibility. And just allow that space to be there. Take one more breath here. And when you're ready, open your eyes. You can do this ritual as many times as you need with the same thing or with different things that you're releasing. If you repeat this ritual again and again with the same thing, it doesn't mean you failed to let go. It may simply mean you are releasing something that your system has carried for a really long time. I invite you to keep this recording handy so that you can come back as many times as you need. Compassionate awareness helped us to see. Compassionate understanding helped us to make sense of what we found. And compassionate release helps us to let go with appreciation and with grace. Not because what we're releasing was wrong, but because we're allowed to grow beyond it. We're allowed to become someone new without betraying who we had to be. Next time we move into the final step of the radiant compassion process, compassionate responsibility. The step where we stop asking who you had to be and start asking who you want to become now. So until then, honor what shaped you, grieve what you're releasing, and trust what's emerging. And as always, let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  6. Jul 2

    6. Compassionate Understanding: Making It Make Sense

    Summary: Kelly G introduces step two of the Radiant Compassion process—compassionate understanding—building on last week’s compassionate awareness (seeing yourself without judgment). She explains that personal patterns like people-pleasing, perfectionism, overworking, withdrawing, conflict avoidance, or hyper-independence are rarely random and are often protective nervous-system strategies developed to survive, belong, stay safe, or stay connected, especially when parts of the self weren’t welcomed. Over time these adaptations become automated identities (e.g., the responsible one, achiever, caretaker), which can be confused with essence and limit future possibility. Compassionate understanding asks “Of course I do this—what happened that made this make sense?” and pairs understanding with acceptance (acknowledging what’s true without approval) using the practice “and that makes sense,” as a bridge from shame to clarity, acceptance, and choice. She closes by previewing step three, compassionate release, in the next episode. 00:00 From Awareness to Why 02:08 Patterns Are Protective 03:11 Adaptation vs Identity 04:45 Of Course It Makes Sense 05:32 Acceptance Not Resignation 06:50 And That Makes Sense 07:56 Guided Reflection Practice 09:45 Closing and Next Steps Transcript: Last week we began the radiant compassion process with compassionate awareness, the art of seeing yourself without judgment. And for many of us, that alone can be revolutionary, because most of us were taught to evaluate ourselves long before we were ever taught how to understand ourselves. But once we begin to see clearly, a natural question starts to arise: Why am I like this? Why do I keep reacting this way? Why do I shut down here? Why do I overexplain, over-function, overthink? Why do I keep repeating the same patterns even when I know better? And often, the moment we ask those questions, judgment comes rushing back in. Today, I wanna offer you something different. What if your patterns aren't random? What if they make sense? What if the ways you learned to protect yourself, to belong, to stay safe, or to stay connected were intelligent adaptations? Not flaws or failures, but adaptations. Today we're moving into step two of the radiant compassion process, compassionate understanding, making it make sense. Hey, it's Kelly G, your radiance coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number six.   One of the most important things I've learned in providing services through therapy, coaching, yoga, and in my own healing is this: patterns are rarely random. They're usually protective. The ways that we people-please, perfect, prove, overwork, the ways that we stay quiet, try to manage other people's emotions, avoid conflict, or stay hyper independent... these aren't character defects. They're often strategies. Strategies our nervous system learned to help us survive, to help us belong, to avoid pain, to stay more connected, to feel safe. And if you grew up in environments where certain parts of you weren't fully welcomed, your system adapted. Of course it did. That's not weakness, it's wisdom. Over time, these strategies stop being choices. They become automated, and they start feeling like who we are, and this is where identity forms. Maybe you became the responsible one or the easy one, the achiever, the caretaker, the peacekeeper, the strong one. And maybe these roles were rewarded. They may have kept things stable and helped you to feel safe, needed, or loved. But adaptation is not the same as essence, and many of us confuse who we had to become with who we truly are. And this is important, because healing often asks us to know the difference. So much of what we believe about ourselves comes from the past. Who are you? How do you know who you are? How do you know what you're capable of? Most of us answer those questions by referencing what has already happened, what we've been through, what we've been told, what's been reinforced. But the past is not always the best predictor of possibility, and if we stay overly identified with our past adaptations, our future often stays very small. Compassionate understanding says this: "Of course I do this," and what happened that made this make sense? That inquiry changes everything because it moves us out of shame and into understanding. It helps us stop fighting ourselves. It lets us hold our patterns with more honesty and more tenderness. Not to excuse harm or to avoid accountability, but to create the conditions for healing, because you can't release what you can't see or what you don't understand, and you can't transform what you keep condemning. There's something I wanna offer that often gets skipped over in our rush toward change, and that's acceptance. Not approval, not resignation, not giving up or staying stuck. Acceptance is simply acknowledging what is true right now without arguing with it. "This is who I learned to be. This is what I learned to believe. This is how I protected myself. This is what hurt. And for this moment, I can let that be true." So much of our suffering doesn't come from the pain itself. It comes from the shame that we feel about the pain, the judgment about the pattern, the exhausting fight with what is already happening inside of us, and acceptance softens that fight. Here's what I found. Understanding helps us make sense of ourselves, but acceptance helps us stop fighting reality. And when we stop fighting against ourselves, when we finally put down that sword, we create space for something entirely new to emerge. This is where the "and that's okay" practice from the last episode finds its deeper roots. Because in episode five, we used it to soften self-judgment in the moment, and here we're taking it just a little bit further. When you find a pattern, a way that you adapted, an identity you grew into, a strategy your nervous system learned, try adding these four words: "and that makes sense." "I learned to people-please, and that makes sense. I became the strong one who never asks for help, and that makes sense. I shrink when I feel criticized, and that makes sense." Not as a permanent story, not as an excuse, but as a moment of acceptance that allows you to see clearly without the noise of self-condemnation getting in the way. That's the bridge from understanding to acceptance, from acceptance to choice. So I wanna offer you a reflection here. Take a moment and think of one pattern you've noticed in yourself lately. Just ask your mind. I'm sure it will have ideas. It may be overthinking or people-pleasing, withdrawing, proving, overworking, or shutting down. Once you think of that pattern, once you choose one, take a breath and ask yourself, "What might this pattern have once helped me to do? Did it help me to stay safe? To stay loved? To stay connected?" Just notice. No fixing, no changing, just understanding. And then whatever you find, add these four words: "And that makes sense." I learned to go along and never speak up, and that makes sense. I became the one who held it all together, and that makes sense. I shut down when I feel overwhelmed, and that makes sense. Let yourself stay there for just a moment. Because often underneath our patterns is a need that never fully got met, and meeting that with understanding instead of judgment, that's compassionate understanding. That's the bridge that can change the entire relationship you have with yourself. There's nothing wrong with you. You adapted, and that makes sense. Compassionate awareness helped us to see. Compassionate understanding helps us make sense of what we find, and acceptance helps us to stop fighting against it. When we stop fighting ourselves, we create the space for something new, something real, something that's actually ours. In the next episode, we move into step three of the radiant compassion process, which is compassionate release. It's all about what happens when we begin to let go of the roles and the stories and the protections that we no longer need. So until next time, I invite you to practice understanding yourself before trying to change anything because your patterns make sense, and so do you. Until then, let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  7. Jun 25

    5. Compassionate Awareness: The Art of Seeing Without Judgment

    Summary: Most of us were never taught to see ourselves clearly — we were taught to evaluate, judge, and measure against a standard we didn't choose. In this episode, we begin the Radiant Compassion Process — a four-part framework for returning to yourself by meeting yourself with compassion instead of criticism. Step one is compassionate awareness: the ability to see yourself clearly without weaponizing what you find. Drawing on witness consciousness, svadhyaya, and a disarmingly simple four-word practice, this episode invites you to stop prosecuting yourself and start being your own best friend. Because nothing real can grow from a foundation of self-attack — but everything becomes possible when you're finally on your own side. Transcript: Have you ever paused to reflect on something that happened, something you said, something you did, a choice that you made, and almost immediately found yourself judging it, replaying it, questioning it, and running through a mental checklist of everything you did wrong and everything you could have done differently? There's an art to seeing yourself clearly, and most of us were never taught it. We were taught how to evaluate ourselves, judge ourselves, compare ourselves, improve ourselves, but not how to simply notice ourselves with honesty, curiosity, and compassion. And that's where this work begins. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number five. Back in episode three, we talked about witness consciousness, the part of us that can see our thoughts without being swept away by them. And I introduced WAIT as the tool that wakes that witness up. Today, we're gonna take that one step further, because once we can see what our mind is doing, the real question is, can we see it without immediately turning it into a problem and using it against ourselves? Today, we're beginning something I'm really excited to share with you. Over the next four episodes, we're going on a journey together. It's what I'm calling the radiant compassion process. It's a four-part framework for returning to yourself by meeting yourself with compassion instead of criticism. We'll move through four steps, and they build on each other. First, we're gonna learn how to see ourselves clearly, then understand how we got here, then release what we've been carrying, and finally, choose who we want to be now. Today is step one, and it sets the foundation for all the rest. It's called compassionate awareness. Most of us were never taught to look at ourselves with curiosity. We were taught to evaluate ourselves, to measure, assess, and judge against a standard that was handed to us by the world around us before we were old enough to question it. And here's the tricky part. That standard is really vague. It shifts. It's never quite clearly defined for us. We just know what we feel like when we assume we've fallen short of it, which may be a lot of the time. So we end up running a constant internal audit against a moving target, and we can never really win. That is not self-awareness. That's programmed self-surveillance dressed up as self-improvement. When we look at ourselves only through the lens of evaluation, of right or wrong, we don't actually see ourselves clearly. We see a verdict. And when everything we find becomes evidence for or against us, we stop being curious. We stop learning, we stop growing, because we're too busy defending or prosecuting. Compassionate awareness is the ability to see ourselves clearly without weaponizing what we find. This isn't bypassing what's there or pretending that everything's fine. It's stepping into that neutral witness perspective, seeing clearly, and staying curious long enough to actually understand what we're seeing before assigning any meaning to it. Self-judgment sees and immediately evaluates. Compassionate awareness sees and stays curious. Compassionate awareness can look like noticing your chest tighten when someone disappoints you, noticing your jaw clench when you feel criticized, noticing the urge to explain yourself, prove yourself, or make yourself smaller. Maybe it's even noticing the familiar roles you step into of the fixer or the peacekeeper, the over-functioner, or the one who always holds it together. The practice isn't to judge what you find, it's to stay with it long enough to see it clearly. The difference is in what you do with it the moment you find it. It's resisting the urge to make it mean something about you based on that vague standard. Think about how you would respond if a good friend came to you and expressed all of her doubts and thoughts about how she could have done things differently in a situation. Would you immediately start to cross-examine her pain or collect evidence against her? Would you build a case for why she should have known better? Of course not. You would listen. You would see her clearly and stay with her in it. Compassionate awareness is learning to be that friend to yourself. In yoga philosophy, svadhyaya is the practice of self-study, turning the lens of awareness inward with honesty and curiosity in order to remember who we really are. Compassionate awareness is svadhyaya in its most essential form, seeing clearly without self-attack, studying ourselves in the way that a wise and loving teacher would, with genuine interest and without an agenda. This is also where the witness consciousness does her deepest work. The witness isn't just watching thoughts. She's watching us watch ourselves. She's the part of us that notices the moment curiosity turns into criticism. When we've moved from seeing to prosecuting. And the moment we notice that shift, that's compassionate awareness in action. We don't have to be perfect at this. We just have to be willing to notice. Now, here's what I know from years of working with my own brain and with other people. You cannot change what you cannot see. And you cannot truly see what you are constantly evaluating. The judgment gets in the way of the clarity, and it also gets in the way of the permission to be human, too. Compassionate awareness creates the conditions for real change, not because it's soft or easy or let things slide, but because it's honest. When we can see ourselves clearly without the noise of self-criticism, we finally have accurate information, and accurate information is where choice begins. So I wanna share a practice that I use with myself, and it is incredibly simple, but don't let that fool you. It really does work. The next time your mind offers you a thought that could be a judgment, comparison, criticism, maybe about something you did or something you said or something you are, I want you to try adding these few words to the end of it: "And that's okay." "I'm really struggling right now, and that's okay." "I don't have this figured out yet, and that's okay." "I got triggered and reacted in a way that I am not proud of, and that's okay." Notice what happens when you add those words. Not as a bypass, not pretending that it doesn't matter, but as a moment of permission to see without immediately prosecuting. That's compassionate awareness. That's the witness at work. Okay, so let's try it right now. Think of one thing that you've experienced today or recently that your mind has a judgment about. Go ahead and say it out loud or in your head and add, "And that's okay." Just notice what shifts in your body. Maybe your shoulders soften. Maybe your breath deepens just a little bit. Or maybe you feel resistance. Maybe nothing shifts at all, and that's okay, too. And if adding, "And that's okay," feels hard at first, try asking yourself, "What would I say to a friend who just told me this?" And just start there. That's your compassionate awareness voice. She already knows what to do. So this is the beginning. Not fixing, not changing, not improving. Just seeing, clearly and kindly, because nothing real can grow from a foundation of self-attack. But so much can grow from honest, compassionate self-awareness. That's svadhyaya. That's the witness. That's compassionate awareness. And that's you finally on your own side. So until next time, I invite you to practice being your own friend, seeing yourself clearly, and being kind about what you find. And let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  8. Jun 18

    4. Take It Back: The Power of Permission

    Summary: Have you been waiting for someone to tell you that you're ready? In this episode, we explore the yoga principle of asteya — non-stealing — and turn it inward to examine the surprising ways we steal from ourselves through self-imposed limits and inherited conditioning. We'll look at how the culturescape taught us that permission lives outside of us, and how to take it back. Using Brené Brown's powerful permission slip practice, you'll leave this episode with a tool to reclaim your own authority and start giving yourself the permission you've been waiting for. The power was always yours.  Transcript: Have you ever found yourself waiting to feel ready? Waiting to believe that you know enough, that you do enough, that you are enough before you finally allow yourself to fully show up? Waiting for some invisible force to tap you on the shoulder and say, "Okay, now you're ready. You have permission." Today we're talking about permission, who has it, who gave it away, and how to take it back. Hey, it's Kelly G, Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number four. Okay, so in episode two I talked a little bit about how we absorb stories and conditioning from the world around us, and all of that started way before we were old enough to question the conditioning, to question the stories that we were being taught. There was no choice. We were born into many of these stories. One of the most pervasive stories that is impressioned upon us is that power lives outside of us, that someone or something else gets to decide when we're ready, when we're enough, when we have permission to use our voice, to take up space, to want what we want, to show up fully in our lives. And the tricky part is we don't even know who it is we're waiting on. There's no face, no name, no specific person, just this vague sense that someone somewhere out there hasn't said yes yet. That's our cultural conditioning at work within us. And I did this for years. I kept waiting to know enough, like somewhere out there was an entity, a committee, some authority that was going to eventually declare me ready to put myself out there in the world. So I kept learning and growing and preparing, and the permission never came, because it was never theirs to give. One of the foundational ethical principles of yoga is the yama asteya. It's traditionally understood as non-stealing, and typically from the perspective of stealing from others. But what about how we steal from ourselves? Because every time we shrink to make other people more comfortable, every time we wait for permission that was always ours to give, every time we talk ourselves out of wanting what we actually want, we're stealing from ourselves. We're stealing from our own potential, our own joy, our own life. And this can look like not speaking up so that others can feel more comfortable, or waiting until you are convinced you know enough to finally show up and put yourself out there, or not letting yourself want what you truly want, or even putting yourself last so consistently that you forget you're even on the list. Asteya asks us to stop stealing from others and from ourselves. And the first step is recognizing where the theft is happening. This is also the niyama svadhyaya in action, which is self-study, turning the lens inward and getting really honest about where we've been giving our own power away. We'll be coming back to svadhyaya a lot because it lives underneath almost everything we're gonna talk about here. Let me tell you about one of my most favorite tools that I use for myself and that I recommend and use with my clients. Brene Brown introduced me to the idea of permission slips, and it quickly became one that I used very frequently, and still do. The concept is super simple, and it is super powerful. It is this idea that you can give yourself the permission that you've been waiting for someone else to grant you. All you do is use the sentence stem, "I give myself permission to..." It works so well and on a deep and subconscious level because it pulls the subconscious limit into your conscious mind. The moment you say, "I give myself permission to take up space," or, "I give myself permission to not have it all figured out yet," you realize two things simultaneously. Number one, that you were waiting on that permission, and number two, that you always had the authority to give it to yourself. So this is asteya and svadhyaya working together. You're studying yourself honestly and reclaiming what was always yours, taking your power back when you see the limits that you've been living according to. In the last episode, I talked about the witness consciousness, the part of you that can see. The witness can see where you've been waiting, can see where you've been stealing from yourself. I'm not pointing this out to bring up shame or blame or judgment or criticism. This is stepping into that part of ourselves that can see the patterns so that we have a choice to change them, and permission slips are a really accessible tool to be able to do something about those limits. Okay, so I wanna invite you to try it right now wherever you are. You don't have to think too hard about it. Just complete this sentence out loud or in your head right now: I give myself permission to... And just let whatever arises, arise. Whatever comes up, that's your wisdom. That's the witness telling you something. You can do that anytime, anywhere. You can also take this into a deeper practice. When you have a few moments, and literally you can set a timer for three minutes if you'd like, or two. It doesn't have to take long. But when you have a few moments, sit down with a piece of paper and just let it flow. At the top of your paper write, "I give myself permission to..." And then just see what comes. Don't edit, don't judge. There's no need to second-guess, just let it flow. Just write. You might surprise yourself. When you do this, this can be around a specific thing, like an upcoming meeting or an event, or maybe it's for a specific timeframe, like, okay, for today I give myself permission to... Or it can be more general, something that you've been wrestling with or some limit that you see that comes up frequently for you. And if you're not sure where to start, just get curious. Where have I been waiting to step up in my life? Where have I been waiting to take action? Where have I been waiting to know enough or to feel enough? What have I been telling myself I'm not ready for? So I want you to remember that there is no committee, there is no entity waiting to declare that you are ready. The permission was always yours. It has always been yours. Every time you give it to yourself, you are taking back what you were programmed to believe didn't belong to you, but it really has all along. So this is how you take your power back, one permission slip at a time. Give it a try. Let me know what you think. So until next time, give yourself permission. Keep practicing. I'm practicing right along with you. And let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  9. Jun 11

    3. WAIT: The Art of Catching Your Thoughts

    Summary: Your mind is always talking — the question is whether you're listening. In this episode, we explore witness consciousness through Yoga Sutra 1.3 and introduce WAIT — a simple, playful acronym that activates your inner witness and interrupts the autopilot of the mind. You'll learn why you are not your thoughts, and how one simple question can change your relationship with your own mind. Awareness is always the first step — and now you have a tool to get there. Transcript: Have you ever found yourself stuck replaying an interaction with someone or thinking about something you did over and over and over? Or maybe you found yourself in a spiral of worry in the middle of what- if palooza? In the last episode, I introduced the idea of the stories in our mind, and today I wanna give you the simplest possible tool to interrupt those stories. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance Podcast, episode number three. In the last episode, we talked about the fact that our mind defaults to old stories and conditioning when we aren't paying attention to it. It is going to try to pull up thoughts that we have had over and over because that doesn't use any energy at all. We are wired for the path of least resistance. And I also mentioned in the last episode that it is possible to change our thoughts, and it is, but before you can change anything, you actually have to see what is happening. You have to be able to see what your mind is doing. You can't work with what you can't see. If you are doing something without conscious awareness of it, you're not going to consciously do anything to change it. So awareness is always the first step. Now, if we take ourselves back once again to the Yoga Sutras, the traditional texts of yoga philosophy, Sutra 1.3 tells us that beneath all of the noise in our mind, there is a part of us that can simply witness what is happening. That part of us doesn't react. It doesn't judge. It doesn't get swept away. It just watches. And in yoga, this is what we call the witness consciousness. It's the part of you that can be aware of what your mind is doing without automatically believing your thoughts, without automatically identifying with what you're thinking or getting swept away by what's happening in your mind. Most of us spend most of our lives inside our thoughts. We are identified by them. We are run by them. We can even be convinced that we are our thoughts. But the witness consciousness within us reminds us that you are not your thoughts. You are the one who can watch them. You are the one who can tune in and see what your mind is doing, what patterns are there, what habits your mind has. And this distinction is everything. Okay, so let's go back to the intro of the episode. I mentioned that I was gonna introduce a really simple tool for noticing your thoughts. So in my own practice of working to notice what my mind is doing behind my back, outside of my conscious awareness, I was using the question, "What am I thinking? What am I thinking?" And one day, I remember exactly, I was sitting in my car tuning in, and I just said it really slowly, "What am I thinking?" And all of a sudden, I noticed the acronym W.A.I.T., W.A.I.T. And I thought, "Oh, this is perfect." It's a little playful. It's simple. It's really easy to remember. I wasn't trying to create a tool. I just noticed that when I asked myself the question, "What am I thinking?" it had a way of snapping me back into awareness, and I could shorten that down into this simple tool using the acronym W.A.I.T. And honestly, sometimes what really works in my mind is to step into a smartass tone to really snap myself out of what my mind is doing. So sometimes it sounds like, "Wait. Wait." Like, "Wait just a minute." And it really brings me into the moment to pause, to tune in. So W.A.I.T. stands for what am I thinking. That is the entire tool. It is the one question that activates the witness consciousness, that part of you that can see your thoughts without believing them, without buying into them, or getting swept away with them, and W.A.I.T. Is how you wake that part of you up. So this question, "What am I thinking?" does two things simultaneously. It interrupts the autopilot or the spiral that your mind may be in. In other words, it interrupts the regularly scheduled programming, and it creates a moment of curiosity. And in that moment, you're not judging the thought, you're not trying to fix it, you're not shaming yourself for having it. The point is really just to become aware of it. Become aware of what your mind is doing: the patterns, the habits that your mind has when we're not watching. In yoga philosophy, the practice of returning again and again without judgment, without frustration, that is the real work. Not the practice of having no thoughts, the practice of returning as many times as you need. And every time you use "wait," you are practicing. Every single time. You are stepping in to the witness consciousness that can help you become aware. Now, once you're there, you wanna stay in curiosity rather than trying to fix it. Awareness is the win for right now. When you ask, "What am I thinking?" and you tune in, you might find worry, you might find an old story, you might find a thought you really don't love having or that you didn't even realize you were having, and you don't have to do anything with it right now. Just knowing it's there, just seeing it is enough. That is the witness doing her work. Change is possible, and this is where it starts: with awareness, and without rushing to do the next step yet. We wanna stay in awareness first. Okay, so let's try it right now. Wherever you are, driving, walking, folding laundry, just pause for a second and ask yourself, "Wait, what am I thinking?" And just notice what's there. Not good or bad, not right or wrong. Just become the witness. Get curious about what your mind is doing. Can you see the thought without becoming it? Without getting swept away with it? And that's it. That's the whole practice. You can use this anytime, anywhere. The moment you realize you're spiraling, or you're checked out, or you just feel a little off, wait and check in. It just takes about three seconds. And over time, this can really change your relationship with your own mind. So remember, you are not your thoughts. You are the one who can watch them. And now you have a tool to remind you of that anytime, anywhere. Until next time, practice returning and let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  10. Jun 3

    2. Mind Your Mind: The Story You Are Living

    Summary: You've been living inside a story — and chances are, you didn't write it. In this episode, we explore Yoga Sutra 1.2 and the connection between your thoughts, your feelings, and the results you're creating in your life. You'll learn why the mind defaults to old conditioning, why story isn't the enemy, and how leading with the heart changes everything. Awareness of your thoughts is always the first step — and that's exactly where we begin. Transcript: Most of us were never taught to question our thoughts. We just inherited them and started living according to those thoughts as if they were proven facts. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number two.  In the first episode, we talked about the power of presence, how the now practice is a way that we can return to being present in this moment. Notice, open, wow. So here's what becomes possible once we're actually here. We can start to tune into the stories in our mind and get curious about how those stories are shaping everything. The stories that are playing in our mind are made up of thoughts, and today we're gonna talk about what your mind is doing, why it's doing it, and how we can work with it instead of being unconsciously run by it. And this is where yoga and life coaching meet in a really powerful way. So let's go back to the traditional text of yoga philosophy, the Yoga Sutras. And if we look at Sutra 1.2, it tells us that the overarching purpose of yoga is to still the fluctuations in the mind. The long-term goal here is to create peace in our minds. Now, our minds are always moving. They're generating thoughts and stories and reactions, but even more frequently than that, they're recalling thoughts that we've had previously, especially thoughts that we've had a lot of times. Our minds are recalling stories that we've been taught, that we've heard over and over, the subconscious messages that we've received through advertising and through entertainment. Yoga isn't telling us that the point is to stop the mind or to have no thoughts. And in fact, this is a common misconception that frustrates a lot of people when they're trying to learn to meditate. Because the mind has thoughts, the mind pulls up stories, the mind runs all over and notices things. It's constantly processing so much information. So when we sit down to meditate and there are still thoughts, that doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. That's a whole other conversation, but it stems from this misnomer that we should be able to just have big periods of no thoughts at all. So the point isn't to just have no thoughts. The point is to no longer be unconsciously ruled by conditioned patterns in your mind. The work is to begin to notice what your mind is doing so that you can then choose. This is the basis of living your yoga practice, and it turns out life coaching has tools that can support exactly this. The mat gives us the space to open ourselves to this practice, to meet ourselves just as we are from a place of loving acceptance. And coaching gives us tools to dig in with curiosity when we're off the mat and in our real lives. So in our minds, when we start noticing what's happening, we're gonna see that there is a process that occurs. In any given situation, we're gonna find ourselves in a circumstance, an interaction. Whatever it is in that moment, our mind is going to have a thought about what we're experiencing. That thought is then going to influence how we feel. And as humans, we are feeling beings, even if we're not sure or we don't recognize that we are. We are very much driven by how we want to feel or avoiding how we don't want to feel. So those feelings then create our actions. They drive our actions. We either do something or we do nothing. Either way, that creates a result in our life. And this process happens all throughout the day, over and over and over, without our conscious awareness if we're not looking for it, and it all begins with a thought. And when we don't tune into our mind, it's going to default to old patterns, inherited stories and beliefs, conditioning that was chosen for us by the world around us. And spoiler alert, allowing your mind to unconsciously run using stories that you didn't choose for yourself can cause a lot of problems. Those problems are what I call mind drama, not as a judgment, but as a description. The mind doing what minds do when they're left unattended. And to conserve energy, your mind is going to use messages that you have absorbed from your family, from schooling, from our culture, from religion, from media and entertainment... and those can become your default story. Until we choose to tune in and see what stories our mind is telling us, most of us are living out a narrative that we never consciously chose for ourselves. When we're living according to a narrative that we didn't choose for ourselves, it gets in the way of our remembering who we truly are. It gets in the way of our ability to show up in the world from a place of authenticity and creativity. It can block our power and our ability to make the impact that we believe we can make in the world. Now, stories aren't the problem, but unconscious stories are. Remember, stories are just made up of thoughts, and the human brain is a meaning-making machine. We understand the world through stories. We connect through stories to ourselves and to others. And the thoughts that we have, the stories that we tell ourselves impact every single relationship that we are in with others, with the world around us, and with ourselves. Many of these stories are not our own. They are stories that we were born into, and they're full of expectations and rules that we didn't create. And those expectations and rules subconsciously direct how we live our lives. But when we start to notice and take control of those stories, we can also use our thoughts, use our stories to create safety and impact and healing. The goal isn't to erase the stories, it's to become the author of them, and that means that we must also be open to the possibility that we can change our thoughts. As we start minding our minds, I wanna offer one other important guideline. We must also tap into the wisdom of our hearts to lead the way. The mind is such a powerful tool, but wisdom lives in both places. When we bring our heart into this process, we move out of the mind's analysis and into deeper embodied wisdom, something more integrated, more whole. What we're after here is what I'm calling compassionate responsibility, taking ownership of what our mind is doing and creating without using what we find against ourselves. Shame and blame are not helpful here. We're gonna come back to this concept of compassionate responsibility in a future episode because it deserves its own real space. But for now, I invite you to hold it as this intention, curiosity over criticism when we're noticing the stories we're telling ourselves. So let's take a moment to tune in to a simple thought awareness practice. I want to invite you into the now practice to set yourself up in this moment. Notice what's happening. Notice where your mind is. Come into this moment. Open your posture. Open your body, your mind with a full breath in and out. And then wow yourself. Think of one thing that is working for you in your life right now. Now, from there, I invite you to bring to mind something, anything in your life right now that feels a little stuck or heavy, a little frustrating, something that is rubbing against you And then get curious and ask yourself, "What is the story you're telling yourself about this situation?" Not the facts necessarily, but the meaning you're making of what's happening As you do that, I invite you to just notice. No fixing, no judging, no blame or shame. You're just gathering information here, looking at what's happening And finally from here, place your hand on your heart and ask yourself, "Is this story mine, or did I absorb it or inherit it?" "Does this story move me forward or is it keeping me stuck?" You don't have to have the answer to those questions right now. I invite you to just let them live in you, and this can be the beginning of starting to notice, getting curious about the stories that your mind offers to you as you move throughout the day. And doing that from a place of compassion without blaming or shaming or shoulding or criticizing yourself for anything that you see. This is the practice, to notice, open and breathe, to be your own friend as you unwind the patterns that may be guiding your life that you didn't even choose. Yoga Sutra 1.2 tells us that yoga is about what we do with the mind. And now you have a coaching lens to support that because awareness of your thoughts is where everything begins to shift. Thanks for tuning in. And until next time, I invite you to keep minding your mind with the support of your heart. It's all a practice in letting your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

  11. Jun 3

    1. Begin NOW: The Practice of Presence

    Summary:Something brought you here today — maybe a quiet ache for more meaning, more ease, more of yourself. In this episode, we explore Yoga Sutra 1.1 and the transformative power of presence, and I introduce the NOW practice — a simple three-step awareness tool you can use anywhere to return to yourself. Because awareness is where your power lives, and it always begins right here, right now. Transcript: Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number one. Something brought you here today. Whatever it was, maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was the desire to learn or the ache for something more, or just wanting to learn more about how to live into your yoga. Whatever the reason was, I want you to know that you are in the right place. The transformative power of yoga and life coaching has changed my life, and it is my intention here to bring those two things together so that you can close the gap between what you practice on the mat and how you actually live your life. Along the way, we're going to explore what can get in the way, the programming, the patterns, the stories of perfecting and proving, the things that you've been carrying that maybe weren't yours to carry. But we're also gonna explore what becomes possible when you begin to shift all of that. So this is really about learning to live from a place of authenticity, feeling good in being yourself, and from that place, knowing that you can let go of unhelpful conditioning and create more meaning and joy and purpose and connection in your life. We have lots to look at, lots to explore. We'll be spending time with things like what your mind is doing, what embodiment means and how to practice it, what happens in your nervous system and how you can support it, feeling your emotions. And along the way, we're going to be building this foundation of self-trust. Hi, I'm Kelly Gardner or KellyG, and I am your radiance coach. I'm a trauma therapist turned life and leadership coach and a yoga therapist. And I've spent many years working with women who are very wise and deeply committed to their own growth, but also feel like there is still something missing. This podcast is my hope to support you if that is your experience, and I'm so glad you're here. Before we really dive in, I want you to do something with me right now, just a quick now practice. So first, notice where your body is in space. Notice any signals or sensations that your body is telling you. Next, I invite you to open your posture. That may mean lengthening up through your spine or widening out by dropping the shoulders down. And then open your body and your mind with a nice, full, big breath in and out. And finally, I invite you to take a moment to wow yourself by noticing something good in this moment. Anything, big or small, something that is working Okay. So this was a practice in bringing you to the now, into this moment. So now, let's continue on. We'll come back to that. In the Yoga Sutras, which are the traditional foundational texts of yoga philosophy, the first phrase that opens up the Sutras is pretty simple. That phrase is, "And now, the exposition of yoga." Now the information of what yoga is. And there's something really powerful about the fact that the Sutras open with the word now. Because yoga works in relationship with this moment. Not yesterday, not when you're finally ready, not once you have perfected it or fixed yourself, but right now. The time for yoga is now. The practice of being in the now invites us into awareness, into presence, being fully here, right here, right now in this moment, mind and body in the same place. When we lean into this type of mindful awareness, it then opens us up to the choices that we have. Without awareness, change is completely up to chance. If we're not aware, we're not gonna do anything to change it. Now, most of us in our lives have been trained into lots of ways to not live in the now, to in fact kind of be anywhere but now. We've learned lots of ways to distract and to numb out, and to be too busy to recognize what we're feeling or thinking, what we're experiencing in the now. In our conditioning, we can live for approval that we haven't received yet, or we can really put things on hold, waiting until we're calmer or more prepared or thinner or whatever that ideal is. We've been taught in many ways that who we are right now in this moment isn't quite enough. So awareness of the present moment isn't just a mindfulness practice. It's really an act of reclamation, coming back to ourselves so that we can choose how to move forward. Now, everything that you've experienced up to this very moment has led you to now. And whether your path has felt beautiful or really painful and messy, or joyful and exciting, or a mix of all of the above, you are here. And when you are present and aware, you have the power to choose how to move forward. You have the power to choose who you're going to become next. You have the power to create whatever it is that you want for yourself, for your life, for your future self. So the time is now. When we're disconnected from the present moment, we can tend to live inside automatic reactions. We can live on autopilot. We can live according to someone else's rules and expectations and old conditioning that doesn't actually serve us. Or we can find ourselves living in a nervous system that is bracing based on survival and protection. But awareness interrupts the autopilot. Awareness reorients us to ourselves in this moment, and it gives us the power to intentionally choose what's next. Awareness is one of the most foundational practices of yoga and life coaching. It's a tool of discovery, and what you are discovering is yourself. When we come into awareness, when we come into the present moment, our mind gets clearer. We're fully here with what is happening in the moment. And from that place, we are more resourceful and more creative and more powerful in how we respond to life. So practicing awareness doesn't necessarily mean we're immediately trying to fix or change ourselves. We're really just gathering information. But because of our conditioning, many of us have learned to turn anything we notice, any awareness, into criticism and self-criticism. Awareness is not meant to become another weapon for you to use against yourself. It means noticing, learning, without judging, without holding what we find against ourselves. It's about being willing to turn inward, see what is there, and be with it long enough to gain clarity. It's noticing, witnessing, and becoming curious instead of automatically becoming critical. When we notice, we can tune into our intuition, our inner wisdom, and what our body is telling us. The purpose of awareness is not to judge ourselves, but to become informed so that we can choose. If we aren't aware, that choice isn't there. If we always start with awareness, we can intentionally plan what we do next. We can intentionally plan our lives and who we are and how we experience our days. Every moment gives us another opportunity to begin again. And now, let's practice again. So I want to formally introduce you to an acronym that I have been using to help with the practice of being present right now, and the acronym uses the word now: notice, open, and wow. So let's practice. The N stands for notice. This means noticing when you aren't present in the moment, when you're spiraling out, when your mind is a million miles away. So it may be you notice that you are trying to win an argument in your head, or you are replaying a situation over and over and over. Or maybe you notice that you are what-ifing and worst case scenario-ing what could happen in the future. When you notice, bring yourself into your body. Notice where your body is in space, the environment around you, and what your body is doing. The O stands for open. Once you've noticed and brought yourself into your body, we want to open our posture. So open your posture by maybe lengthening up through the spine or rolling the shoulders back and down. And then open your mind and your body with a full breath in and out. Breathing in, taking up more space as your ribs widen out, breathing out completely. This brings us into a space of possibility. And the W stands for wow. Find one thing that is working or going well in this moment, no matter how big or small. This may be something that you really enjoy, something you're grateful for, something you're appreciating. This is a way to let your nervous system know that right now in this moment, something is okay, and that's enough. This recognition, wowing yourself with good that is available, changes your energy, and from there you can move forward in a really intentional way. So I invite you to take a big breath here. Notice where your body is in space. Open your posture. Take up more space physically. Take a big breath in and out, and wow yourself with the good that is available. Find one thing that is going right. Now take a moment to notice what shifted, even slightly, as you did that. This practice brings us into presence, into awareness right now. And from that mindful awareness, we have more power than we do when we are on autopilot. So I invite you, as you move through your day, get curious about what changes when you return to now. Bring yourself back to the moment. What would change if presence became your practice? If your mind starts replaying the past or spiraling to the future, if you notice that your mind is somewhere other than where your body is, come back to the now practice. Notice, open, wow. And then you can move forward from there. Radiance isn't about shining for everyone else. It's what happens when you come back to yourself, and that's what we're building here. So until next time, come back to now and let your life shine. Music by Rory Gardner www.yourradiantsoul.com

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About

This podcast is all about bringing yoga and life coaching together so you can bridge the gap between what you practice on the mat and how you live your life.

Information

  • Creator
    Kelly Gardner
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    11
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Your Radiant Soul All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    Embodied Radiance Podcast