EPISODE 30: [MINDFULNESS] FIND YOUR VOICE
SHOW NOTES
If you’ve grown up in an Asian American household, you might’ve been taught to hold your tongue, to not talk back, to not have an opinion — and definitely not to express it. Yet, when you grow up in this environment, and then you also have to function in the outside world where Western culture focuses on independence and standing out, how do you learn to navigate that? How do you learn to find your own voice.
Today’s mindfulness practice offers four key tips (journaling, breathwork, mantras, and singing) as different ways to achieve the same result: learning how to speak up for yourself.
Greater Good Berkeley article, “How Journaling Can Help You in Hard Times”
More on Throat Chakra Healing
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast. I'm your host, Judy Tsuei and together we'll explore mental and emotional health for Asian Americans, especially breaking through any taboo topics. Like may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today.
I've been getting really good feedback about this week's episodes and about how to really advocate for what it is that you need.
So today's mindfulness practice. We are going to focus on speaking up for yourself and I don't know about you, but I am still in the practice of learning how to do that. I want to take a moment first to thank Daisy for making a donation to support F*ck Saving Face. If you want to do that, you can go to the website, fcksaving face.com without the “u.” Or you can go to patreon.com/f*cksaving face, and you can make a recurring donation there. And there's some awesome benefits as well. I've been hearing from a lot of people who've been reaching out to me to say that they have so many questions that they want to ask, especially after Monday's episodes and when I bring a guest on.
So if this is the case for you, I would love for you to take a moment on your phone or wherever you're listening to this episode. And just send me an email hello@fcksavingface.com. Again, that's “fck” without the “u.” And let me know what your questions are because I plan to host an, ask me anything kind of episode, where I go through whatever it is that you want to know more about.
And as many of you know, if you've been listening, I'm very open, very honest, transparent, and authentic. So I'm happy to answer what it is that has been on your mind or on your heart. I think that for those of us who grew up in an immigrant, Household where it's rooted in a collectivist culture. It can be very difficult to speak up for yourself because you're always taught to think about the greater good.
In contrast, you're also being raised in a Western culture that advocates independence and sees you as wanting to shine bright and demonstrate how you stand out. And those are the virtues. So it can be really conflicting and sometimes it can be really hard to be in that head space of figuring out how to speak up for yourself.
So I like to take a different approach with it, and it's a more energetic and holistic approach. And. Sometimes, if you, I believe approach problems from different viewpoints or different perspectives or, you know, different paths, you have ways to get to the same end result that are more easy or ease-full.
Don't have to be so filled with pressure and conflict or challenge or obstacles. And, you know, you kind of allow these different parts of yourself to come together, to create the result that you want to see. So for today's mindfulness practice, we're going to use mantras and different approaches to learn how to actually use our voice and expressing our truth.
If you're used to being accommodating, it can also be helpful to do a few of the other tips and tools that I'm going to lay out here today. So first not speaking up can play out in a lot of different areas of your life. Maybe it's at work and you're avoiding, you know, having a hard conversation with a colleague or really advocating for a salary increase or whatever it is there.
It can be that, you know, you're having some challenges in your friendships or your relationships and. You're continually sitting with that unsettled feeling rather than speaking up, having the harder, honest conversation that might encourage the other person to have to reflect on some areas of growth for them, or, you know, between the two of you.
It might involve that both of you have things that you can look out. It's hard to really examine the shadow parts of you. So. It could be playing out there. It could even be playing out in that. You know, you're not even being fully honest and open with yourself about the things that you actually truly want to see in your life, the biggest goals that you want to achieve, or just how you genuinely want to feel it can come up in those areas of your life as well.
So the first thing that I would encourage you to do is grab a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil, and actually journal out your thoughts. It might seem really simple, but science has definitely demonstrated that there are so many different valuable benefits from actually writing down what it is that you're going through.
According to Greater Good at Berkeley, which, “go bears!” And there's an article that they published about how journaling works on two different levels. The first one is just disclosing emotions rather than trying to stuff them down. I've always said this whenever I taught a yoga class that it's so essential to get those feelings to move through you.
In order that they're not going to get stuck and that you can actually just let them air out and have some breathing room. And so they can move through use who can move on the actual quote from the article that says that so many of us have secret pain or shame that we haven't shared with others, swarming around our brains and images and emotions through writing our pain gets translated into black and white words that exist outside of ourselves.
The article also says that on the thinking level, writing forces us to organize our experiences into a sequence, giving us a chance to examine cause and effect and form a coherent story. So through this process, we're able to gain a little bit of distance, which is also what mindfulness teaches us and then understand things in new ways.
So we might even stumble upon an insight or see that the trauma that upset our beliefs about how life works. That we still can maintain a sense of control over our feelings or over ourselves or better understanding ourselves. This is also I advocate when I work with clients that it's really important to understand the stories that you're telling yourself and then examine whether or not they're actually true so that you can move through and write a new story.
I was just talking about this earlier today that I plan to host a workshop where we get to sit around and examine through the power of writing what these stories are, whether or not they are helping us supporting us, or whether we'd like to write a new one to create a new reality. It took me a very long while to understand that I am not the victim of my circumstances, that I am not the victim to my thoughts.
And I've been working with a life coach. Who's one of my clients and she shared this quote with me, hear me when I say you decide what you want to experience next, you are not a victim to your circumstance. Things don't happen to you. They happen by you. So until you take full responsibility for your life, You'll continue to outsource your life to other people.
I don't know about you, but I don't want anyone else writing my story. If it feels good for you, go grab a journal that really inspires you. You can go out and buy one. I'm a sucker for paper goods store is I will go in and want to buy everything or just, you know, grab a piece of paper or whatever you've got on hand.
And then just take baby steps. You can just journal for a few minutes. You can journal for 10, 15, 20 minutes. You can start with one day. Then a couple of days in a row, maybe a few times a week, whatever it is, it's going to work for you just to give you some space where you can just be stream of consciousness, pouring your thoughts onto the page and allow yourself to do it without judgment.
The same way that we've been practicing throughout these last Fridays, being really mindful and observing and being with the things that are coming up without any judgment or particular viewpoint about it. Now as we move into today's mindfulness practice, I'm going to encourage you to focus on your fifth chakra, which is your throat.
Chakra is called Vissudha. And this anatomically is where your thyroid, your parathyroid, your jaw, your neck, your mouth, your tongue, and your larynx are so to be aligned here. You're not only learning how to speak more clearly and express yourself from this higher, more elevated and aligned form of communication, but you're also practicing, listening and being able to really hear what is being communicated to you.
It's taken me a really long time to learn how to practice communicating authentically to really make it so that everything I write, everything I put out there, however I show up in life is true to who I am in that moment. I can't predict to all be in the future or how I'll feel about that. But in that moment, I'm doing my best to have very truthful.
Verbal conversations and expressions. One of my good friends, Aviv had said to me, during a trip that we took together to Mexico, where he's like, you're just so honest and authentically you, that it can actually be somewhat disarming because there's no pretense with me. I'm not going to try to pretend that I'm something that I'm not or hide anything, because I felt what that guilt and shame of not speaking up feels like.
And I can tell you, it feels way more liberating to be on the other side, but. There is this belief sometimes that it's easier to say what you think the other person wants to hear instead of speaking your truth, that fear of not being accepted or experiencing judgment is a very real fear. And it's something that we each have to learn how to manage or deal with.
So when we're working with the chakras, it's often helpful to work through the three lower chakra. So being able to find that stability and that base, being able to find that kind of connection to community and that creativity. Question before you get to the heart space and this is where things become transmuted.
So the fourth middle chakra, and then moving up to the higher chakra. So here's where you start to speak. And really clearly communicate is where you start to engage your connection to a higher self and find that wisdom and then move into that sense of greater enlightenment. The more balanced two are, the more you can express yourself.
In ways that are authentic to you and the more imbalanced your throat chakra is, the more you might find yourself moving into dishonesty, even gossiping or manipulative behavior. One of my favorite things to do is to chant mantras or listened to them. I've always been fascinated by them, whether that was the Buddhist monks in the temples that we went to growing up, hearing Gregorian, monks, chanting, whatever it is, there's something that's very soothing to me about listening to mantras on repeat, especially with words that don't necessarily have any specific meaning to me that I can't attach a meaning to.
So the sound for the fifth chakra is home. If it feels good for you right now, you can take a deep breath with me and a deep exhale,
another deep inhale,
a deep exhale, and then we'll just chant. This sound hum. Three times inhale and on the exhale, begin to chat.
so keeping your lips closed, has he reached the end of the hum sound taking another deep breath in
And observe how it feels. We'll do it one more time breathing in
So if you want, you can pause this episode and continue to do this at your own pace with your own breath, for as long as you want. Using this seed sound to help open up and balance your throat chakra, remembering that I said that there are multiple ways for you to approach your goal, to get to where you want to be.
And if your goal is being able to speak up with more clarity and more truth and authenticity, I believe that using mantras is one of the ways to do that. I am a super big fan of breathwork. So the next thing that we're going to do to help open up your throat chakra is some lion's breath. If you've never done this in a yoga class, that can actually be a lot of fun.
It's an opportunity for you to get a little bit silly for you to let go of inhibition. And so when we would do this in yoga class, I would often encourage people to do it when they're in downward dog. So they're not facing anybody else really facing the back of the room, maybe, but we'll take another deep breath in whenever you're ready.
And this time as you exhale, you're going to stick out your tongue and say, you're trying to get the tip of your tongue to touch the bottom of your chin. Open up your eyes wide and just sign it all out and even make like a like lions were kind of sound. So take another deep breath in, open up your mouth and sidle out.
One more deep breath in,
open up your mouth side. Allow it can be really silly here. So again, you can pause the podcast through this as often as you want. I do this with my daughter. It's a lot of fun taps into some joyful feelings, even while you're learning how to strengthen your voice. And the last way that I'm going to recommend that you take a different approach to really strengthening your ability to communicate is through singing.
So one of my friends, when she walks on the beach, she'll put on headphones, she'll put on her favorite pop songs and she'll just walk down the beach, singing. Because the headphones are in, she doesn't really pay attention to whether or not anybody else is listening to her or however, her voice sounds.
And it's a wonderful way to just open up that space to really hear your voice being expressed, whether or not you can carry a tune that doesn't really matter. This is all designed to help you overcome blockages and singing launches is also something similar, but you can sing in the shower. You can sing in the car, you can sing in your own room.
Whatever it is putting on your favorite songs, even if you're singing nothing at all, even if it's nonsensical and you're just making your own sound song up, or you can even hum humming is a wonderful way to get your vagus nerve going to regulate your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest or digest.
It's got such a wonderful meditative effect that even helps you balance out your breath. So wherever you can, I encourage you to just sing. All the tools and tips that I offer. I always say that they're just part of your repertoire. You're going to pull them out if they fit when you need them. And sometimes something that works right now, won't work again in the future or vice versa.
So it's really up to you to learn how to master yourself. Your thoughts, your physical space, and to become more and more aligned to who it is that you want to be, the goals that you want to achieve, or just the path that you want to move down. So I would love to hear how all of these practices are working for you.
You can email me directly. Hello, fuck. Saving face. As I mentioned earlier, Or you can find me on social media. The Instagram is fuck saving face. We've got a Facebook page as well, and he can send me a message. I would love to know how these practices are showing up in your life, how they are hopefully benefiting you.
How you're pulling them in when you need them, what kind of changes you're experiencing, or just any thoughts that you might have about, you know, where you are and what you'd like to see more of and what topics that you wish would be covered so that we can really redefine what it means to be Asian in America today.
Thank you so much for listening and see you next week.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked it to heard and know someone in your life who might also benefit from hearing this episode, please feel free to share it with them. Also, if you'd like to support our show, you can make a one-time donation fcksavingface.com. Or, you can make a recurring donation at patreon.com/fcksavingface. That's “fck” without the “u.” Subscribe today to stay tuned for all future episodes.
