Ep #26: Bridge Work

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Hey, my amazing friends. I am so excited. So, we’ve been doing our Belief Boot Camp because now the membership portal is open, you know, the Integrative Life membership option, I should say. This is the place where we actually come to do the work. It’s the presence portal or the arena, the ring where we are inside with our boxing gloves actually doing the work that we have been training for.

So we’ve been training our brain to understand new ways of thinking, new processes, new understanding. And we’ve begun to unravel some of the conditioning that has been passed onto us for generations and generations, hundreds of years that we’re still doing the same thing even though it no longer serves.

So, what I want to talk to you about today, first of all, is to let you know I am, like, packing up. So I’m looking at my suitcase and it is loaded down. And when I finish this, I will walk out the door. We are heading to Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone, Jackson, Billings. Like, we are heading out to the forest. I want to see some wildlife and nature and trees, you know.

This is where I get so much presence and gathering of more knowledge and, you know, the earth, the land, nature has so much to teach us, really. It’s not about, “I need to go on vacation to put my feet up and have nothing to do.” It’s more about, “I need to go and engage more with actual life, not with systems, not with business, not with planning or figuring anything out.”

And I love road trips, so I’m not on the mercy of the airport or not knowing how much I can pack or how long I have to be gone or when I have to get the flight back home. But instead, load up the vehicle and just walk out the door, take my work on the road with me. So those health and wellness leaders who are itching to bring more of this into your practice, into your life, stick around. I’ll show you exactly how to do it. Anyway, the weather is gorgeous, the sun is out, the humidity is low, everything feels amazing and I’m excited. I’m excited to go see new lands.

Alright, so, what I want to talk about today is bridgework; that hopping in and out of the portal in between the two worlds, in between the soul essence and the physical world, you know, the tangible physical senses, you know, the hear, smell, touch, taste, the things that we see, the things that we create, we produce with our hands, with our body, the tangible earthly stuff, the systems that we have to comply by in order to live in this regulated society. So we have that.

And then we have this other part of us, and that’s this soul-aligned passion-driven purpose-filled – it’s that deep inside, either heartfelt or you’ll feel it in your stomach – but when you tap down into that inner knowing. And the bridgework is how you can you dance – kind of like the shadow work – how can you dance in between the physical and the spiritual realms? So, we are souls. We are having spiritual experience in this human physical body, in the earthly realm, or plane, right?

So the bridge is if you’ve been living all in your head, very logical, very practical minded, you’ve got a lot of education, a lot of systems, a lot of intellectual property, a lot of gathering of information, a lot of how-to, watching other people do it, you take the steps and you’re doing that.

And you’ve been doing it and doing it and doing it and then you wake up one day and there’s this void. This, “Is this all there is?” This moment of, “Wait a minute, I did all the things, I got all the things, I’ve arrived. I make the money. I have the family. What is missing?”

Just so you know, you’ve left that inner part of you out. And I want to help you get in touch with it. That is who you truly are. That’s what came in at infantry, right, that’s where you started off as, this perfect amazing being that was going to evolve into this contribution to the earthly realm, this what do you have, what do you offer, who are you, what is the presence that you represent, you know, that stuff.

And for some of you, you’re all about soul and spirit and woo-woo and living in the ethers and you’ve tapped out of the earthly world. You’ve been hurt or traumatized or had to shut down that physical part because it wasn’t available for you, “I didn’t have the money, I don’t have the resources, there’s no one there, it’s not tangible, I don’t understand.”

And so what we do is we hop out. This is not what we can practically see. But there’s a part of us that goes back to source and gets really deeply connected with the spiritual world, the majestic or the mystical world or the quantum field. You know what I’m talking about; that part of us.

We are all parts of all, so it’s not like there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just however you’ve been conditioned has possibly taken you on one path or the other. Or you’re completely asleep, which means you’re probably not listening to this podcast. In that case, you would not know one from the other. So you either know that the soul spiritual essence is missing in your life right now, you haven’t activated it. Or you know that you’ve been all of that and you need to tap back into the earthly realm.

Either way, today we’re going to talk about the bridge that plays between the two, that connects the two. Say you’re on one side and your kids have swum across or they were born on the other side and you’re like, “Come to momma, get over here.” But you don’t have a way to get to them, like it’s miles and miles apart.

For some of you, it’s just a little short swim or it’s just a little boat ride, or maybe get in a kayak. For others, we might need to build the Golden Gate Bridge. For some, we may just need to take a ferry, hop on, grab, connect. So wherever you are, just from me saying this, you’re going to kind of have an understanding of how far that is. And there are going to be others who have tapped into the soul essence part and have tapped into the physical essence. And so that means you’re already the soul-inspired or passion-driven or purpose-filled divinely connected being and you have the physical world, but the thing that is lacking is the integration of the two, how can I be both? How can I serve more of the spiritual being in the earthly realm, vice versa, how can I bring more of the earthly stuff in too?

So does that make sense? So you have three or four different stages depending on where you are. Because this is a podcast and I’m speaking to a group, I don’t want to leave anyone out, okay. So what we’re learning is how to be you. And it’s a bit unfamiliar and it’s a bit awkward because it’s kind of like when mom’s like, “You’re 28 years old, it’s time to get the heck out of here. Go, bye.” And you’re like, I don’t know what to do, I don’t understand. It’s like, no, boo, it’s time to go, it’s time to grow up. You’ve got to get out of here. And they’re just like, “I wasn’t ready.” Kind of like that.

So here’s the thing; when you said, “I want more,” when you recognized something was missing, when you saw other people were doing it and you felt that yearning within you, you asked for this. So just so you know, once you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, “Uh-oh, now I can’t go back. I can’t go back to the suffering and doing things the way everyone else told me that didn’t work for me. And I’m not quite sure what going forward looks like. Now what?”

For me, it felt like I was a fawn who was just birthed in the pasture, with wobbly legs, like I was trying to find my grounding. I was trying to gather my resources, like, what just happened? And I’ve turned around and I’ve just been dropped there, right? Like, given birth, and then just by yourself.

So it’s like, there’s grass, there’s some little yellow flowers, there’s a squirrel and a bird and some trees. I can see the forest. Oh, there’s a stream. Uh-oh, there’s no fence. There’s no boundaries. There’s no restrictions. Think of like Bambi, like, is all of this mine? Can I go and play anywhere I want?

And some little animals, little creatures, or people will come along the path and kind of, like, take you along with them. And you get to experiment and decide and experience. And that’s what I’m offering you today. Like, I’m just kind of showing up on the way while you’re wobbly-legged. It feels a little – wonky is the word that I like to use.

It’s unfamiliar, like okay I’m no longer stuck in my mom’s belly. I’m no longer in the boundary of the fenced-in area. Like, I suddenly have all of this opportunity, all these possibilities, and it’s endless. I can have anything. I can wander off into the forest. Am I safe? I don’t know if I’m safe. This doesn’t feel really safe. That’s what your mind is going to tell you. That’s what your brain is going to tell you; you better watch out, something may happen. That’s just your brain doing your job. It’s totally fine.

So, can you see the analogy? I’ll give you one more. I love to talk about trees and roots and being grounded and evolving and expanding. So it’s like we are all a tree in the forest. We are a variety. And when the tree grows and evolves, when it starts to expand, its trunk gets wider. But then you can imagine, the bark around the tree is really tight and compressed.

In earlier episodes, I talked about this, when the energy is bottlenecked. So what happens is as we want to expand and grow beyond our environment, that’s when the fence comes down. That’s when the bark busts open. That’s where things start pushing away so that we can have more space to grow, so that the trunk of the tree can expand. Because what’s happened is we’ve become more of the you-self instead of the not-you-self.

We’ve become more of the essence. And the essence is so much bigger than you are. It needs that space to grow and evolve, so it feels like breaking down barriers. Oftentimes, it’s barriers in the heart. So the bridge is more of the heartfelt living, heartfelt practice.

So imagine, it’s that little liberated dance and flow and ease. And then the heart just expands, expands, expands. It gets a little luscious and juicy and it drops judgment and it quits condemning and it quits beating yourself up and expecting the impossible from others and it just opens up to love, kind of like when you look at a newborn baby or a little puppy, like oh my god, I just want to stick my nose right there underneath there ear in the crook of their neck… Just little fat baby cheeks, right, like that love.

That innocent vulnerable ability to feel all of the heart expand and open love, that’s the bridge. And because we have experiences that have scared us, we want to close that off. We’re not so sure we can go all the way across the bridge, and so we kind of play between the two sides. We go back into the spiritual world where we’re really open and expansive, and then we’re like, “I can see this coming, I know where this is going, I’ve seen people like her before.”

You kind of start going back into the closed world, back into the physical realm where you have to keep your eyes on alert, be looking with your head, you know. It’s like your mind is always going, making sure to protect you. And then you’re like, “You know what, I’m feeling a little risqué today so I’m going to take a little walk out on the bridge and I’m going to start moving towards – let me open my heart just a tiny bit. Let me just feel into this.” And we push the edge and see how much we can open and expand.

So that bridgework is the work that I do with clients. It’s settling the nervous system long enough to be able to get a taste of that open luscious soft ooey-gooey vulnerable… So imagine the fawn when it looks out at the yellow flowers and the green grass and here comes the cardinal and the squirrel. It’s like, it’s just light and easy and it just wants to, like, take these little steps and kind of just glide through the pasture.

Compare that to when it’s looking behind it and it’s trying to stay solid and steady and it’s scared, like it doesn’t know, it’s unfamiliar and its legs are shaking and where do I go, what do I do, there’s no one here… Can you see the two? You’re comparing those two worlds; the wonky world to the liberated and light world.

So with that said, when we look at it as the trees and the forest, there’s not one that’s better than the other. There’s not one that’s more advanced. There might be a tree that’s taller and wider and the roots grow deeper, and there might be one that’s kind of having a hard time taking off. And there might be another that was just born.

If you drop the judgment and the comparison, there is no right or wrong. There is no advance. It just is. Because that tree that’s super tall, 80, 90 feet tall in the redwoods or whatever could be vulnerable and susceptible to old age. And the new teeny tiny one could have all of the hope and the excitement of many, many, many years to come. And either one could be struck by lightning.

Things just happen. Life happens. But what’s important is that your roots are planted in fertile ground. So when you’re looking at your environments that you plant your roots in your belief system, the thing that is tangible, the thing that nourishes you, look at the quality of what you are planting your mind and your thoughts and your beliefs and what are you investing in?

Are you investing in the impossibilities? Are you investing in possibilities? Are you investing in hopelessness or in hope? Are you investing in detriment or in inspiration? Like, think about where your roots are planed or where your feet are grounded. What do you invest your beliefs in? Where are you planted at? And are you willing to create this bridge where you can start experiencing something new, something different, something more, even though it means the old bark will have to fall away. You may have to spend time in the pasture, growing strength in your legs that are feeling a little wonky and a little unfamiliar.

Are you willing to experience the shedding of the old program as you’re downloading the new program? Are you willing to spend more time on the bridge and less time in one world or the other, or maybe equaling them out, or maybe just beginning to open up? Which one is it for you?

How do you see life? Do you see it happening to you? Do you see, like, everything happens to me, of course it would happen to me, well of course I would be left here all alone and abandoned in the pasture, of course my bark would start breaking, my bark always breaks, I can’t keep it contained, it just keeps falling off of my body, my bark keeps separating and breaking and chipping away?

Or, do you look at it as new progress, I am opening and expanding to more and I’m willing to allow this to crack open, I’m willing to strengthen my legs and get them solidly placed and grounded and I’m willing to go for some little walks until I’m ready to go for some little runs, until I’m maybe brave enough to go into the forest and follow the stream?

Just experiment with it and play around and ask yourself the question, where are you planted right now? Where is your belief system grounded in? Because where you spend your time thinking is where you’re going to continue going. And so if you keep recreating the old, then you’re going to stay right here where you are.

And if you’re listening to this then the chances are you’re really trying to create better health, maybe better wealth, better relationships. Maybe you’re trying to figure out how to create more impact, that you have something amazing to share with the world that’s been trying to evolve and erupt from within you. And maybe it’s time, you know.

We’re on the brink of all of these planetary alignments and shifts and just some beautiful things changing, you know. One person might look at it as looking at CNN and Fox and making it all about bad stuff and the world coming to an end and politics and all of this, I don’t know, I don’t go there so whatever you want to call it.

And then someone else may look at it and go, “Wow, it’s so great that someone is rubbing the edges and pushing the edges and exposing all of these things so that this trauma can finally come up for a different outcome and be healed.”

So how do you look at things, the things that are happening in the world, something negative and scary and detrimental and hell-like, or are they happening for a purpose or a reason even bigger and broader than all of us so that everyone can evolve?

I’ve heard this with politics so often, that trump representing the women and sexual traumas and all of this stuff. But what it’s done is it’s created a beautiful opportunity for those women to come and speak up and to heal those old wounds so that this beautiful essence can erupt from beyond them because it’s been hiding in the shadow.

Hiding that story in the shadow and being ashamed is actually what’s preventing that part from evolving. And so, it’s such a beautiful thing when we’ve got these exterior issues knocking on doors and pushing edges and waking people up and getting them to speak up. And so what’s happening is these old traumas and triggers and emotions are starting to be rattled in the physical body.

And then, guess what happens next; you’re pretty much physically taken down and things start going wrong, and this is when illness and disease and cancer and all of these things start happening, when we don’t pay attention to the thing that’s trying to come up within us when we could just start building the blocks to the bridge to get to the other side. You could just be okay with knowing that the bark is going to peel away, it’s going to crack open. When you ask to evolve, to expand, to grow, to heal, to become, to truly figure out who it is that you truly are, not the part of you that someone else told you how to be but the part of you that’s dying to live.

Like, for me, I didn’t realize, years ago when I was in school, I didn’t pay attention in geography or in history because I was so poor, I was like, I’m never going to go anyway, I don’t need to know this. I swear to you, I turned all of that off. I would pass my test, but I didn’t retain any of the information. And I was never a kid.

I had the hardest time. And even I see this with my grandkids; it’s so hard to understand kids playing and what they find so fun I find silly and I’m so serious and I don’t understand it, but it’s because I never got to experience being a kid. I didn’t have birthday parties or special occasions or big Christmases or any of that stuff.

I remember buying myself my first birthday cake with my babysitting money. It was white and I walked to the store and bought it. I remember that. So it was crazy unfamiliar for me to believe I could travel, to believe that I could have more, to believe I am worthy of celebrating my birthday, I am worthy of being someone.

Like, darn it, I also am a creation of god, just as all of you are, every single one of us. It doesn’t matter how anyone else sees it, there’s no reason for comparison, no one is better than the other. No one is better than the other. I don’t care how much money you have. I don’t care how many people love you. I don’t care how many kids you have or how many you don’t have. It does not matter.

What matters is that you are you and you are sharing that expression of your soul essence with the world, that we are all being the reflectors and the mirrors for other people to grow and evolve, for us to all be connected, for us all to love unconditionally and to have empathy, compassion, understanding. And if all of this ridiculous political fight is to create more of that, then great. We want that.

Instead of being afraid and feeling unsafe like you’re out in the pasture with wobbly legs, just see it as growth. See it as something beautiful and amazing and be willing to open your heart. Be willing to go across the bridge or begin to even just build the bridge. The bridgework is the inner work. It’s bringing the pieces back so that you can put them into place and to create that bridge to go across that drawbridge. It’s the connector, the connector from one to the other so that we can be in integration, can be connected.

And eventually, that will be more familiar. It won’t be so awkward and so unfamiliar. Think about the first time you did anything, like the first time you put on roller skates or the first time you rode a bike or the first time you went for a run, Lord, have mercy. We don’t look so cute, but we eventually strengthen our way as we continue to do it. So we become more comfortable in the uncomfortable, and so it goes right back to the same process. Choose what you want more of and then commit to it. Go all in. Be ready for it and then cultivate it as if it already were so.

So, I’ve cultivated my new life of travel and teaching and creating the platform and the membership and the coach training so that I can – I personally can only take this work so far by myself, but I can train lots of people that can train lots of people and get the work out there, where they can do the bridgework and the inner work and they maybe need to understand it in the way that I express it and I explain it.

So, it doesn’t mean everybody else is doing it so you can’t. It doesn’t. We’re all an individual expression. We’re all an individual expression of this work, of the work, of humanity. We’re all trying to figure this out, guys. We’re all trying to figure it out.

And I invite you to be willing to allow the heart to open, start integrating this heart-centered practice, this new way of living, of shedding the old systems so that you can create this new way, originality of who you are, who you were always meant to be before the world told you what to be.

Alright, I can’t wait to share with you how this trip goes and what we see and what we experience. I may even have to do an episode from on the road because we are taking off and I don’t know how long we’re going to be gone. Alright, have a great week.

If you want to take this work a little bit deeper, I invite you to come into the Integrative Life membership where we are doing week by week breaking this down, new concepts, and then we apply it and then we integrate it in your life.

You get coaching with me. It’s the only way you can get coaching with me, unless you’re doing private or coach training. And so it’s a way that I’m able to offer more coaching in a container that’s very affordable. It’s only $39 a month. And this is a great beautiful community of people who are truly doing the work.

We have mentors and some of the coaches that I’ve trained are in there. It’s just a beautiful thing. I invite you to come and join us. If not, just hang out here, keep learning until you’re ready. You can get the book on the website, on Amazon if you want and you prefer just starting here, or you can join the free Integrative Life coach group. Alright, until next week…

Thanks for listening to this episode of Integrative Life Coach Training for Health and Wellness Practitioners! If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to mind body integration, head over to KimGuillory.com to download your Stability First Meditation today.