Clinical psychologist Dr. Diana Hill joins biomechanist Katy Bowman for an enlightening episode about the delicate balance between setting high expectations and practicing self-compassion, particularly in the realms of movement and mindfulness. Discover how recognizing the constant movements in our lives can lead to intentional responses and holistic well-being. From debunking misconceptions to exploring practical exercises, Katy and Diana offer valuable insights into embracing self-compassion in movement and daily life.
OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
07:45:00 - Choosing, Criticizing, Background Listening (Jump to section)
00:11:40 - Self-Compassion - The New Mindfulness (Jump to section)
00:16:00 - Self-Compassion, Movement, and Affirmation (Jump to section)
21:30:00 - Motivation and Grace (Jump to section)
28:10:00 - The Struggle and Practicing Self-Compassion (Jump to section)
35:15:00 - The Driving Force of Self-Compassion (Jump to section)
40:15:00 - Take Aways (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Preorder Katy’s My Perfect Movement Plan book
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Theme Music)
This is the Move Your DNA podcast, the show where movement science meets your everyday life.
I'm Katy Bowman, biomechanist, author, and someone who talks a lot to myself in my head. All bodies are welcome here. Let's get moving.
(Music fade)
So here on the Move Your DNA podcast, we look at movement from all angles, including how our mind and the thoughts we have relate to the movements we do and don't get. Today, I'm speaking with Diana Hill, PhD, a clinical psychologist, international trainer, and sought-out speaker on acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, and compassion host of the podcast, Wise Effort with Dr. Diana Hill and author of the Self Compassion Daily Journal and the ACT Daily Journal, as well as the upcoming book, Wise Effort. Diana works with organizations and individuals to develop psychological flexibility. So that they can grow fulfilling and impactful lives.
KATY: Welcome to move your DNA, Diana.
DIANA: Thank you, Katy, good to be here.
KATY: I should say welcome back because you've been on the show before - One of my most influential interviews that I did. Because we were talking about getting, getting the ones you love moving more and you gave such a good tidbit there. Do you remember?
DIANA: Oh, well, I just remember you asked me the question of how do we get them on board, and I was like, who's board are you getting them on, Katy?
KATY: That's right. And that was, that was such a great reframing. And then I actually dropped your name and that tidbit in an interview that I did this morning, a parenting interview about parenting spicy, spicy ones, spicy kids. Because that was really helpful to just recognize that we can be on the same board, but the board might not be the board that you thought you were all going to get on together.
DIANA: Exactly. Well, I actually have a question for you around that because you said, I tend to talk to myself a lot in the intro and when you don't feel like you're on board - sometimes it's - we don't feel like we're on board with movement and we're trying to get ourselves on the board of movement, right? What are some of the things that you do in your own head around that, that are helpful or not so helpful?
KATY: Yeah, you know, in preparation for this interview, I was thinking about this morning as just sort of observing myself, and what I have noticed is I have ... I'm constantly, I'm going to use the word criticizing my own efforts as not being good enough. And, I would say maybe evaluate. But I feel like I hold a standard that I can never live up to. I'm never able to do all the things that I had wanted to do because something always inevitably comes up. And so I can see that I have that tendency to criticize or to fall short. I think I fall short. I see myself falling short of this standard that I have just haphazardly come up with, which is everything that I'm supposed to do that's right. But what I am able to do is I think I give myself a lot of grace. Because after I go through that process of seeing myself fall short - so-called fall short - then I'm like, yeah, but you know, you're kind of nailing it in a lot of different ways. You really - look at what you did do. You didn't do everything that you had sort of created this mega list, but you did a lot. And in terms of movement and you even, oh, maybe I did do that class. I taught a whole movement class and I walked to the studio to teach that class, but yet you're still saying that you didn't get all the exercise or the movement that you wanted to that day. So I, I'm able to see that I have the criticism, the critic. And then also that I can have the grace giver at the same time. So that's, that's what it's like in my head a lot.
DIANA: Yeah. It's sort of nuanced, right? Because when we think about kids and [00:04:00] even what the research is around kids that we want to set high expectations. It's actually beneficial to set high expectations. If you set expectations that are too low, you're going to do the minimum, right? Or maybe you won't achieve or strive for the things that you care about or strive for the movement that you want to have in your life. And at the same time, if your expectations are always exceeding your reality ... there's this psychological equation that's thrown around a lot, which is happiness equals reality minus expectations.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: So if expectations are always higher than your reality, you will always feel that feeling of not measuring up or not good enough. And that can erode your motivation over time. And it does sound like it's just a habit for you. Which many of us have habitual patterning from, our early childhood, from our environments, from messaging that we're getting outside of ourselves to always be productive or always be extending ourselves a little bit more than [00:05:00] maybe the reality of how much we can extend ourselves in the moment. But the second side of that is the giving yourself grace. So you're right. That's probably what's preventing you from the pitfall of falling into being completely a-motivated and never wanting to do anything. And for many of us, that's actually where we end up going when we set those high expectations that don't meet our reality.
KATY: And another thing that I have started doing - it's been years that I've been doing this - I have this mental list, you know. And it has things like "save the planet." These really giant, big things that can never really be checked off. So, I've recognized that is I actually make a concrete list, a physical list that is much more manageable. And I have the thing that's in my head that's there all the time. But I also have this external, "look at you", you could put rest. I can put "rest" on my list. You know, like I can be like an hour of doing nothing or an hour of just reading a book or whatever. And that also, I think helps me stay balanced.
DIANA: Mm-hmm. My son has these three - they're called gathas - or little sayings over his bed that are written in calligraphy and one of them says "Solid as a Mountain. And the other one says "I've arrived. I'm home." And then the third one says "Doing nothing is something."
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: I was in his room the other day, cause I was looking for something like a paper that I couldn't find. And, I was reminded that when you're talking about resting and doing nothing, but actually that is something. Sometimes that's the thing that's needed in order to get your kids on board is to actually do less. Do less of the criticizing or critiquing. And sometimes the doing nothing is something which is just notice that huge list of all the aspirations that you have. And then, oh, I can notice them and actually choose to not do them, which is also an act of flexibility. That you can have a list, or you can have a thought, or you can have an expectation and you actually don't have to act on it.
KATY: Yeah, I accept that challenge. I accept that challenge. That's a very nuanced way of looking at autonomy. Because autonomy would be: "I'm making my list, I can choose what I want on there." But it's like the idea of you can make the list and you can also still decide that you don't have to do anything on the list that you yourself created.
DIANA: Right. Or you can have a critical thought and you can choose not to listen to the critical thought.
KATY: Right. Yeah. Now here's a philosophical question. If I have the critical thought and I choose not to listen to it, haven't I already listened to it if I know that it's there? Or is it different than not listening to it? Or sort of like what I tend to do is not really pay any, give it any heed. I hear it, it's sort of like background…
DIANA: Yeah. Yeah. Background. It's sort of like when you go in and get your sandwich and whichever news you don't like is on the big screen, you're not sitting there arguing with the big screen. You're ordering your sandwich. Right? Or you could go sit there and argue with the screen and get all fuming angry at that news channel and hate it and it ruins your whole lunch. So the same thing happens inside of our head. Our mind is constantly producing thoughts. A lot of those thoughts aren't ours. A lot of the thoughts are unhelpful, demotivating, critical, judgmental, pointing out our flaws. And there's a whole evolutionary reason why we have brains and minds that tend to do that. A lot of the thoughts are also designed to try and get us to be part of a group for evolutionary reasons. Right? And sometimes it's helpful to listen to those thoughts sometimes or pay attention to those thoughts. If the news channel starts telling you a tornado is coming, maybe you want to start paying attention to it, right? That there's a benefit to paying attention to some thoughts. But that you're the chooser. And developing the capacity as you are. "I'm noticing that I have this tendency to have these expectations of myself." You're already there. Because you just may be a kind of person that just has big goals, big expectations. You live in this way where you want to do big things and that's wonderful. And then you get to choose whether or not you're going to participate or not in that.
KATY: Well, I like that because I think I am a sort of a big goals person. But that's how not it has to be every single day. You know what I mean? Part of the big goals strategy I'm learning now, sort of as I'm getting older and I've been working on my big goals for longer, it's like, "Oh, part of my successful big goals strategy is just not doing anything today." You know? That's okay.
DIANA: It's something.
KATY: That's what I try to say about movement. You're never not moving.
DIANA: Right.
KATY: So it's that nuance of really looking at it. Everything that you're doing is being done physically in some way. You're sleeping in bed at night. You're sitting in a chair. We would not consider those movements. But you're under a load. They're shaping your skeleton. They're shaping your structure. So what I hear you say is, similarly you can never - you're never not doing.
DIANA: Right.
KATY: You're never not doing. They're all just moments of time that go in [00:10:00] collectively to inform who you are.
DIANA: Right. Or maybe adding to that is you're never not doing, and you can always choose how you're doing. Right? And how you show up in the doing that you're doing. So lying on the floor. Did you see the New York Times article about lying on the floor?
KATY: No.
DIANA: There was an article. I was like, they've got to have quoted KATY in this. And they didn't about how there's all these psychologists talking about. Yes. The floor is very grounding. Why we're all on the floor while we're all sitting on the floor, lying on the floor. Anyways, you're choosing to lie on the floor. You're not doing anything. You are lying on the floor. And the same thing with our thoughts that a lot of times there's a messaging that's kind of irks me out there, which is just stop thinking. And back in the eighties, psychologists used to put rubber bands around their client's wrists and then have them snap the rubber band, every single time they had a negative thought about themselves. Right? You can't stop thinking. Our brain is just producing thought. Just like you can't stop hearing. You're just gonna hear sounds. Right? But you get to choose how you respond or what you do. You can do nothing in response to that thought, or you can choose to act in line with what the thought is telling you, the rule or the expectation or the should, or whatever it is.
KATY: So, the journals on self-compassion. I want to ask questions about self-compassion and movement, But, what is the definition? How do you define self-compassion, and how is it different from self-care and any of the other self-words?
DIANA: All the selfies, the self-esteem and self-pity and ...
KATY: Yeah, right. don't really understand the difference.
DIANA: Okay, good. Yeah. So there's a real strong interest in psychology around self-compassion. Now it's sort of the new mindfulness, Katy.
KATY: I know, sorry! That's why I'm having you on.
DIANA: Get on my psychology board. Self-compassion is in. It'll be out in a few years and something else will be in. So self-compassion is - because just as there was a huge amount of research into mindfulness, there's a huge amount of research. There's over 4,000 studies on self-compassion. And what is it? It is, as defined by Kristin Neff, who's one of the lead researchers in self-compassion. It has these three components to it. And the first component has to do with mindfulness - with noticing that you are struggling. You're suffering. You're having a hard time. So one of the difference between self-compassion and self-care is that you can practice self-care all the time. You can go out and, you know, get yourself a nice massage or a foot rub or put essential oils in your room, and you're practicing self-care. Self-compassion has to do with "I'm hurting right now. I'm having a hard time. And how am I going to care for myself?" So with mindfulness, you have the awareness that you're hurting. A lot of us just move through and over our hurt. We try and avoid it, not think about it override it. And then self-compassion, the second component has to do with kindness. So now that you acknowledge that you're hurting or that this is hard, you think about something like movement. This morning I didn't sleep well last night and I have a long day today. A lot of sitting today. And I really wanted to go for a run before I was going to get on this podcast and do my clinical work. And I chose in the morning to sleep a little longer. And then I woke, and then I was like, "Oh, I only have really like 15 minutes". Right? So kindness is not beating myself up for that. Kindness is, "Oh, I'm bummed that I'm not going to get the run in that I wanted to get in". And what could, what actually would be kind to myself that would help me be able to get that need met today? And I ended up doing a walking session for my first client. That was super kind to myself. And I actually told her, "I want to walk."
KATY: hmm.
DIANA: She's like, "great, fine." So kindness has to do with offering yourself the kindness and care when you're hurting. And then the third component of self-compassion has to do with common humanity, which is the understanding that we all struggle. So one of the differences between self-esteem and self-compassion is that with self-esteem, we're trying to elevate ourselves. We're trying to make ourselves better. I have high self-esteem.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: Self-compassion is understanding it's, it's like the opposite of the Lake Wobegon effect. Did you ever listen to that show as a kid?
KATY: No.
DIANA: Where all the women are strong, all the men are above average. Or all the children above average. So it's this effect. This belief that we're all above average. Right? With self-compassion, we're all average. Everybody struggles. Everybody's everybody has a bad night. Everybody doesn't get the movement in that they wanted for the day. That is part of just being human.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: When you see the common humanity that we all struggle, then you feel less alone in it and you have less of that critical self-evaluation. So those are the three components" mindfulness, kindness, and common humanity. At the end of the day, folks that are more self-compassionate end up performing better. They end up moving their bodies more. They end up being more resilient. They end up having like handling setbacks better and have overall better mental health.
KATY: There's so many reasons that people don't get the amount or the type of movement that they want. Let's give an example. Just because I recently moved through an injury. So there was - I feel like there needed to be a lot of self-compassion around that. What would be some examples of what would come up for people and ways to navigate, "My body doesn't feel good or is injured and I want to and I want to be self-compassionate." What does that look like?
DIANA: Right. Well, a lot of us know how to do it for other people. We have a hard time doing it for ourselves. So just in asking that question, listeners probably know how to do that. Like when your kid is having a hard day and they don't want to go to school because they're afraid about going to school. Or when your kid doesn't want to get up and go out on a bike ride again because they fell on the bike. Right. What, is the compassionate statement? What is the critical statement and what is the passive? Right? So a more passive statement, which would be just sort of letting them off the hook. Letting yourself off the hook. You don't need to move your body. You're going through an injury, Katy. Just get on the couch, lie down, take a rest for a few months. And that isn't a compassionate response because what I know about you is that your body loves to move and you love to move. Right?
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: And the critical response would be, "I can't believe this. You're not going to meet the expectation that you have for yourself. Here you are a leader in movement and you're not moving. What are people going to think? You're such a fraud." We all have that voice, right? The third response, a compassionate response, would be responding to yourself the way you would your kid or your best friend, or someone maybe who's responded to you in a kind way. What would you tell your friend if they were in a situation where they're injured?
KATY: Well, I mean, I think it's sort of what I tell, you know, people who write in to ask me too, 'cause I feel like we're all friends. It's like, "Well, what are some ways that you can move your body that allows you to rest this particular area so that that area is getting what it needs, but then you're also getting the movement that you want." It might not look exactly the same and that's that psychological flexibility piece, I think, that you're always bringing, Diana, to the conversation, but it can look different. You can still be nourishing yourself through movement, but the way that you're going to get the movement will look a little bit differently.
DIANA: Right. And so what you're doing there is you're doing one aspect of self-compassion, which is giving some kind, caring, common humanity kind of statements. Like, "Well, you could try this or you could try this." Another important part of it, which I actually think kind of comes first is the mindfulness part, the understanding part [00:18:00] of "You really hurt. It must really suck, Katy, that..."
KATY: I'm terrible at that. I am not - I just really have a hard time affirming their, and affirming my own suffering.
DIANA: Validation.
KATY: Yeah, right. Okay, so next to my Post-it for hanging, I need to put a Post-it for affirming suffering.
DIANA: Yeah, validate suffering.
KATY: Validate.
DIANA: When I trained in psychology, they did this really basic model of moving between acceptance and change. When anybody is getting really resistant to change, you move into acceptance and validation. It's understandable. This is hard for you. You love movement so much. And here you are injured. Tell me about how crappy it is to be injured. I want to know, and I want to feel it. I want to get it. And then when you feel validated, then you start to feel more open to the change, to the suggestions. And there's lots of ways you can move your body when you're injured. But even with our own selves, if we don't validate ourselves and we just expect ourselves to change, we're going to do that same kind of little bit of resistance. So compassion has that component as well of the mindfulness, acknowledging that you're having a hard time, the kindness, and then the common humanity - We all, we all struggle.
KATY: Or we're all injured. We've all gone through an injury, you know.
DIANA: We've all gone through an injury.
KATY: That's part of being human, you're gonna go through an injury.
DIANA: Yeah. And so for some people, that kind of self-talk works really well. Some of my clients respond really well to, "Could you write a letter to yourself as if you were writing a letter to a best friend?" And these are a lot of the interventions that they do in psychological research. They have people you know, write as if a good friend is writing to you, or speak as if a good friend is speaking to you, or write down self-compassionate statements. I'm actually not one of those folks. Cognitive interventions don't work super well for me. I often say if your head is the problem and you're trying to use your head to solve the problem, it may not work so well. So for others, self-compassion is just bringing feelings of warmth to the part of you that hurts. Or feelings of care. And sometimes that can be actually physical touch, like putting your hand on your heart or on your cheek when you're having a hard time or you're struggling. Or maybe, say you don't want to move because you have shame about your body or embarrassment. Sometimes with injuries maybe you're going to go to, to a class and you're not going to do everything because you're thinking, as this instructor says, "modify" and you're mortified that you're modifying. So bringing some, you know, "I'm just going to bring a caring, warm, encouraging inner feeling towards myself when I walk into that class", or maybe "I'm going to adopt a compassionate posture with this balance of being encouraging and strong in my spine and my back and being open-hearted in my chest and my shoulders and then really loving in my eyes. nd I'm just going to embody this compassionate posture and I'm going to walk into that difficult thing from that space." So there's also more body-based ways if the cognitive stuff doesn't work.
KATY: Can you do both?
DIANA: And you can do both.
KATY: Well, where could we use more self-compassion around moving our bodies full stop? Qe talked about injury, but like, what about motivation? Or what about all the other things that come up for people where they're not giving themselves a lot of grace when it comes to them moving?
DIANA: Yeah. So when we think about the barriers to movement, and they do fall under the categories of things: like I'm not motivated. There's a category of barriers that have to do with it's uncomfortable. I don't like to. It's uncomfortable to sweat. It's uncomfortable to do my PT exercises. I have a client who just went through knee surgery. It is so uncomfortable to straighten your knee after you've been through knee surgery. It was excruciating, right? Another barrier can be shame or embarrassment. I'm starting an exercise program again, and I'm in a larger body and I'm walking into a yoga class and everyone is in a very ... I don't feel included here. You know, or another barrier could have to do with other people kind of feeling like they're blocking you. Right? So a lot of the barriers actually are not only the sedentary environment that we live in. A lot of the barriers are invisible psychological ones. And psychological flexibility skills can help with a lot of those, but self-compassion can help with a lot of those too. So for example, if you're that person that has shame or embarrassment, or there's stigma. Right? You may not get the external reinforcement that you are hoping for in the environments that we're in. And you can acknowledge that shame within yourself and you can bring compassion and warmth and care and speak to yourself in a different way and be that encouraging inner voice that you need. Or bring in the voice of somebody else that has been encouraging to you that maybe isn't present in the room, but you can bring in Katy's voice in your mind or somebody else's voice in your mind. And use that as an inner resource to help you with some of those barriers.
KATY: Do you think writing your journal of helping other people with their self-compassion is an act of compassion? When you're writing a book like this, do you feel like it's an act of compassion that's compelling you to write?
DIANA: The way the journal came about - one is I use a lot of compassion in my practice - but the way the journal came about actually was I was in a workshop with the owner of the publishing company that published my journal. And I was in a therapy workshop where we were supposed to - imagine this - share with the person sitting next to us (who happened to be the publisher of my book) share it with a person next to you an experience in your early childhood or early on in your life that you have still continue to have a lot of shame and embarrassment around. And then that person - your person sitting next to you who is a therapist is supposed to model compassion and help you develop self-compassion. And so I shared my most embarrassing, shameful, disgusting, "Oh, no if anyone knew" experience with him, and then he shared it back with me. And after the end of that exchange of feeling so much compassion for him, and then he had so much compassion for me. And then we both had compassion for ourselves. He looked at me and he said, "I think you should write a book on this."
KATY: Nice.
DIANA: ...on self-compassion. And that sort of led me to this journey of, okay, well, what does it actually look like? And there is some research on journaling that if you are just journaling about your problems, you may dig yourself deeper in your problems. Having a guided journal that helps sort of direct you in a certain direction can help you get out of your problems and also helps you individualize your process. Much like your book, My Perfect Movement Plan. It's more individualized, right? Because you're just, you're co-creating it, you're co-designing it.
KATY: Yeah. I think that there's so much revealed in answering the questions. Because I think ...write down all the reasons you're not moving that ... I don't know how helpful that is. But I do think sort of going through and teaching this little aspect of movement and then having them evaluate it in their own life and coming up with their own solutions in that moment when they've sat down and decided to write, you know, not type it into an app, but write it out because there's research that shows that the brain is a lot easier making changes when that writing, actual physical writing process happens, which I thought was really interesting. So, yeah, it's, it's the same. That, this journaling, the guided journaling, guided journaling ...
DIANA: Heavily guided. I teach meditation on Insight Timer. And then I teach meditation in person. And if you were to come sit in my meditation class - I don't give you too long with yourself.
KATY: Yeah.
DIANA: Cause I know where you're going to go and I don't need you to stay there that long. Right? I'll bring you back. So the heavily guided is giving you a day, like say, for example, one of the exercises that I do around compassion and the body is having your body write a letter to you. What is it like to have been your body? And with my clients, sometimes I won't even do the body. I'll just do like a body part.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: Like tell me if your esophagus were to write you a letter - and this would be like a client that maybe struggled with bulimia - if your esophagus were to write you a letter, what would they want to tell you about what it's been like to be your esophagus? And you really listen. So this is the first practice of compassion, right? Listen and validate. Like, I hear you, esophagus. It's been hard, it's been hard to be my esophagus.
KATY: Hmm-hmm
DIANA: And then you get a chance to write a letter back to your body or write a letter back to that body part, and that letter back includes things like, "I'm sorry." Includes things like, "Here are my commitments to you." "Here's my commitment to you today, esophagus, of how I'm going to treat you differently." Right? I'm going to drink some warm tea or whatever it is, or I'm going to appreciate you a little bit more that you're still around. Those are the sort of concrete practices of compassion that can really start to transform the way that you relate to yourself,
KATY: Mm-hmm. Do you find that self-compassion is hard? Is it a hard skill to learn? Are there, you know, are there people who can take it up more easily than others? Is it just practice?
DIANA: Yeah, it's harder for some people than others. If you think about - one way I think about our development is like those wooden Russian dolls. The smallest little doll is like your brain. Some brains are more critical and more sticky than others. You know, like an OCD brain. If you actually look at the, you know, what's happening in a brain of somebody who has OCD, it's a little different. The brain's going to look a little different or a brain of somebody that has had a history of anorexia. It's going to look a little different. So you may come into the world with a brain that is more, a little bit more hyper-critical or alert to mistakes. And then we have our early childhood environments where we start to learn how we speak to ourselves by how people were spoken to us. So we have these early childhood experiences that teach us to start critiquing ourselves, or we watch our parents or our caregivers and how did they relate. How, like listeners can think about, how did my parent relate to themselves around moving their bodies? Did they shame themselves? Did they berate themselves? Or did they just sort of completely just like, make fun of themselves? And maybe they never shamed you or never made fun of you, but you watched your parents do it. And what you see, you know ...what was that line? Do I do as I say, not what I do.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: Well, that's not psychology. You learn what your parents do, not what they said. Right? So then we have that. And then we have another layer of our, our context that we're in. Context of discrimination, oppression, context of sedentary, sedentarism, context of individualism that can tend to lead to more kind of that separation of, "I need to be better than or worse than". And we also live in an environment that makes a lot of money off of us not liking ourselves. Sells us a lot of things. So all those things together can create, for some people, making it a little bit harder to develop self-compassion.
KATY: How do you think working on self-compassion would help people with movement? Getting exercise, movement as a lifestyle. Like what's the relationship between those two?
DIANA: So from the research, I think I said this earlier, we know that people that have higher levels of compassion are more likely to move. Why? In part because movement is not always comfortable. Movement is not always the easiest choice. And because we have all this self-critical, you know, types of barriers that can come in or a-motivation to move, having self-compassion is caring for yourself. An analogy might be, my son has taken up mountain biking and I remember, so when he came home from his big, first big crash and he had gravel all over - stuck in his elbows. Right? So if you think about what's the most compassionate move there with somebody who has gravel in their elbows. Maybe for you, the gravel in your elbows has to do with "I need to get movement started again. And it's, it's really uncomfortable for me." The most compassionate move is actually to go in and clean out the gravel.
KATY: Hmm.
DIANA: Right? And it's uncomfortable to do that. But to leave the gravel in, or to not move your body is actually not the most compassionate move. And a lot of us think that ... In the beginning of the book, the first chapter that I work on with folks is your fears of self-compassion. And there's a whole assessment, like an assessment on fears of self-compassion: "What are you afraid of if you were more self-compassionate?" A lot of people may be afraid if I'm more self-compassionate, then I'll just lie on the couch all day.
KATY: Hmm.
DIANA: Or if I'm more self-compassionate, I'll lose my motivation to move my body. And actually, the opposite is...
KATY: That's because their primary way of motivation is not being self-compassionate. So it's like you're diffusing basically their whole energetic system. If I don't have the sort of self-loathing or idealism or whatever, then I don't know how to get moving without it.
DIANA: I don't know how to get moving unless I'm like that critical coach that I had in whatever, third grade.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: Right. That made me like do burpees and counted them and put the number on the board. Whatever that is. Yeah. And so that would be like saying if you were a more compassionate parent, then you just won't clean out the gravel of your kid's arm.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: Actually, no. You're going to clean out the gravel, but the way you clean out the gravel is not that you're going to get the scrub brush and say, "brace for it, kid."
KATY: Right.
DIANA: You're going to say, this is hard. I love you so much. And I know that as we do this, it's going to help you. It's going to get better. And having that kind of kind, compassionate, more kind of a part of our nervous system that's designed to tend and befriend towards ourself actually does motivate us to do things. It's just a different type of motivation than the motivation that's activating our threat system.
KATY: Well, I can barely hear the words that you're saying right now, because all I can think of is a memory of my family trying to dig a big splinter out of ... I sat on a teeter-totter - on a wood teeter totter - and slid and got a two-inch wood splinter that was in and no one affirmed for me. No one came in and said, "This must be horrible for you. Wow!" Right. You know what I mean? So I wonder how many people have not had sort of this compassionate model modeled for them because no one affirmed it. And then basically there was a lot of digging around with, you know, "stop your squirming" or you know what I mean?
DIANA: Right.
KATY: Just, I feel like there's going to be a lot of people who are like, "I am not familiar with this model at all."
DIANA: And I will make the link that you said at the beginning of our conversation. And that's the hardest thing for me.
KATY: Sure. Right. And I mean,
DIANA: Is to do that. Yeah.
KATY: There's not a lot of people in my regular work or home life that I think have that practice of affirming. So I'm going to need the same tool. This is me hearing something that maybe other people are hearing, like, "How would I remind myself to do this movement or whatever?" Like I'm going to have to figure out some strategy for reminding myself the steps. Like physically writing the steps down and sort of going through practice.
DIANA: It's exactly what you do all the time, Katy. Because most people automatically do things around sedentary behavior without - it's just automatic because no one showed them that there's another option to sit in a different way. To sit on the floor or to, you know, walk and do therapy. Right? Like no one taught ... I'll tell you, no one showed me that in school, but now I'm doing it. So how did I do that? What we do in the journal as well in the very beginning is to take a conscious look at how well is it working for you to do it the way that you're doing it. What are the costs of criticizing yourself? Sure. Maybe you're getting yourself up and going out in the morning at 5 a.m. to do your CrossFit or whatever you're doing. But are there costs to that? Does it feel the way you want it to feel? Are you able to connect your movement to your values when you're doing it because it's just a should? As opposed to a want or something that you see is bigger than just you? And when you look at the costs, then you can also start to look at, there's a possibility of doing this differently. That you can be motivated to move and not have it be motivated by a threatening critical voice.
KATY: Right. So, that was my next question. For the person who is afraid of getting rid of these non-compassionate ways of motivation. What is the motivation? What's the motivation language of self-compassion? Is it self-love? What is the driving force then of compassion - self-compassion?
DIANA: The driving force of self-compassion is that you, you care about yourself ...
KATY: Right. Okay, so ...
DIANA: ... in the same way, the driving force of compassion for your kids is you care about your kids. You don't do all this stuff that you do for your kids just cause you should.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: You do it cause you care about them. So having that same driving force of "I deeply care about my well-being". And add another layer to that: "I deeply care about my wellbeing because when I care for my wellbeing, I can better show up for the people that I love and be a better carer of others' wellbeing." So after the whole self-compassion thing, with this publisher saying, you should write a book on self-compassion, I actually came back to the publisher and said, I don't wanna write a book on self-compassion. I wanna write a book on compassion. Because it doesn't end with the self. And we live in a world where there's way too much self-ing happening.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: All these self-ings, right? Although self-compassion in its original teachings and it's deeper contemplative teachings always was part of a flow: A flow of caring for yourself so that you can care for others, giving and receiving. And seeing that those are interconnected, interdependent. There is no separation between you caring for yourself and caring for others. Because when you care for yourself when you care for your body, then you are better able to be available, to be of service. And that can be a deep motivator. If we start to get out of that kind of I'm just pushing myself to get to some end point.
KATY: So I feel like I move from - I just care about my, my body and myself. And this is best for me and I can show up better for everyone. Like I have that. But I also have a lot of "shoulds" around movement too. How do you reconcile both of those things at the same time? I feel like the "shoulds" can sometimes help me overcome some of those environmental or psychological barriers - why I would maybe opt not to move or make the more movement-rich choice. But I also feel like it's not a negative thing for me. So how do you have those at the same time?
DIANA: You absolutely can hold both. And that's what psychological flexibility is. Because sometimes "shoulds" are shorthand ways that you figured out, "Okay. When I, when I move my body in this way, it really works for me". So that I've sort of developed this as like a shorthand "should". Now, if you hold it too tightly and it becomes a strong "should" that your grip is too tight that you end up being inflexible with it, then I would say you need to take a look at that should. Right?
KATY: Right.
DIANA: Should you brush your teeth twice a day? Yeah, you should. But that's a different kind of "should-ing" on yourself or different kind of should then like, "You know, well, you should exercise for 30 minutes, at least 30 minutes, three to five times a week". Right? That has a different quality to it. And psychological flexibility - I mean, we even have to get flexible with the idea that having a "should" is bad ...
KATY: Yeah.
DIANA: ... you know? Because it all depends on the function of the should. If the should helps you care for yourself, which is one of your values, then hold on to the should hold it lightly. Use it. If the should makes you feel like you're more rigid, more inflexible, or you have this negative aftertaste where you're getting really self-focused then it may not be the best should for you.
KATY: Yeah. Okay. Well, then that flexibility piece...
DIANA: Yeah, and maybe you could call it something else besides should. Just say this is a guideline that I follow for myself.
KATY: Yeah, but I feel like it lives with a lot of other guidelines. You know, I had the same quandary this morning, I feel like my sleep is not there. And I also really want to move cause the whole day will go better. But I chose sleep instead because I felt like sleep would nourish me more. And then I will figure out some way to get movement outside of the way that I had imagined it, you know, the first thing in the morning that, that didn't happen. So...
DIANA: Right. Right, exactly. And sometimes that kind of flexibility of holding on to the intention. Right? But then being flexible in how that intention is lived out.
KATY: Okay, well, anything else that you want to leave with our listeners about self-compassion and movement? I mean, I feel like you've already given a lot of practical things that people could do, but if there was a shorthand for remembering or one thing that everyone could do?
DIANA: Mm-hmm.
KATY: For me, it's going to be affirm. My takeaway right now is I'm going to practice affirming everything that comes. I do it for my children, but it doesn't come naturally for me to do it to another adult. And why? It's because I feel like whenever I try to make a call to change something with a credit card or a phone company that they're always affirming and it feels patronizing. Like I feel like it's like a diffusing and it's not coming from a sincere "Oh, I understand that us not doing it the way we said we would do it is stressful for you". I feel that affirming aggravates me. So I tend to not do it for adults.
DIANA: Yeah. It sounds like what's important for you is for it to be authentic.
KATY: Yeah.
DIANA: Like a true validation. And so in order to do that it may benefit to listen more deeply.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: To find the kernel of what somebody is saying that you can affirm.
KATY: Right.
DIANA: Or the kernel in yourself. Like, even if it's tiny, the kernel in yourself that you can affirm. Don't make it fake.
KATY: Yeah. It's not a script. These aren't steps...
DIANA: It's not a script. Don't make it saccharine. Don't make it fake. Cause you're good at reading fake. So that's why it doesn't feel good when the person on the other line is ...
KATY: I'm like when a grown-up tells me that. It's just like, calm down. Calm down. You know? I'm like, ah!
DIANA: Yeah.
KATY: It infuriates me.
DIANA: Yeah, yeah. So, maybe that's a little bit to leave listeners with is that all of this begins with awareness. And it doesn't mean you have to sit on a cushion to be aware. Right? Having an awareness practice where you're just turning your eye in from time to time and just checking in with what's happening in your internal wilderness. Right? Like, what's happening in here? What, what am I feeling? What thoughts are going on? What things am I not tending to physically? Turn that one eye in. And then turn an eye out as well. Like, what's happening around me? What do people need? What are they feeling? What's not being tended to? And some of us may have more of a tendency to always have our eyes out and not going in. And then the flip side is true too. Like sometimes we're so inner-focused, we need to turn our eyes out from time to time. So just practicing a little bit more awareness, what is needed here, what hurts. And then the second part of that is kindness and common humanity.
KATY: Where can people learn more from you?
DIANA: Well, I have a podcast: Wise Effort Podcast that you can check out. And my website, Dr. Diana Hill. And I have a lot of meditations on Insight Timer, which is a place where if people want to do a highly guided meditation, you can find those there.
KATY: Tell me about Wise Effort really fast, because I love the title. So Wise Effort is a forthcoming book, yes?
DIANA: Forthcoming. Yeah. Wise Effort - I'm super excited about it because it's about how to identify what matters for you. How to take your energy, your precious energy, and put it in the places that matter. Similar to you, Katy, in that I'm like a high-performing, high-achieving kind of person. And for much of my life, I have taken my high, achieving, high-performing self, and I've performed myself into burnout or performed myself into, "I just don't want to do it anymore. I'm out. I give up." Right? And with a little bit more nuance, you can identify what your values are - what really matters to you - and put that energy in those places so that it's more of rewarding, more intrinsically rewarding. It feeds energy back to you.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: And then you can also learn to savor the good and take rests that are not - like you talk - about junk food rests - that are actually truly nourishing rests that are aligned with your values too.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DIANA: And that's what Wise Effort is about - Putting your energy in the places that matter to you and savoring the good along the way. And it's all based on science and contemplative practice and neuroscience and all that.
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KATY: Love it. Can't wait for that one too. Well, thanks for joining me today. Really appreciate you talking with us.
DIANA: Thank you, Katy. Good to talk with you.
Hi. My name is Susanna from Florence, Montana. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, a podcast about movement. We hope you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. Our theme music was performed by Dan MacCormack. This podcast is produced by Brock Armstrong and is transcribed by Annette Yen. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to audio. And find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com.
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