FEP53 Going with the Flow: Cultivating receptivity and calm flexibility

Show Notes:

Rather than setting New Year’s resolutions and diving headfirst to start smashing goals on January 1st, Kathleen and Rochana talk about a more Nature-based approach of first letting go, going within, and going with the flow during the dark days of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere.


True to form, Nature reinforced that lesson for us with the California storms (hello water element) that brought flooding and extended outages, testing our ability to literally go with the flow as this recording had to be rescheduled multiple times.


Learn about some of the essences we use to cultivate receptivity and calm flexibility for a more natural approach to planning and goal setting. Join us in welcoming in the year of the Yin Water Rabbit, which further speaks to the energies of this time.

Audio:

FEP53 Going with the Flow: Cultivating receptivity and calm flexibility

Rather than setting New Year’s resolutions and diving headfirst to start smashing goals on January 1st, Kathleen and Rochana talk about a more Nature-based approach of first letting go, going within, and going with the flow during the dark days of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere.

Video:

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

Show Transcript

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:00:17] Hey, flower friends. We are so happy to be back. Rochana and I are going to be talking about the topic of letting go and letting flow today. We’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice this lately. We’ve had quite an eventful month and had to reschedule our recording of this a few times. So welcome, Rochana. It’s good to be back with you.

Rochana Felde: [00:01:05] It’s so great to actually have internet again so that we can do this. We took December off and had some holiday time, and we were set to begin recording the podcast the first weekend of January. And of course, we in the West Coast in Northern California were hit with probably the biggest storm I’ve ever lived through. It was hurricane force winds, and relentless amounts of water that really wreaked havoc on the drought-stricken trees, especially in this rural part of the county where I live, where trees kind of– there are lots and lots of trees fell and one fell in front of my house. Everything’s okay. There wasn’t any property damage or personal– nobody got hurt. But power lines went down and it was 10, 11 days before those were fixed. And another it was two weeks before the internet line got fixed. And through all that, we didn’t have power. And there was a lot of things that happened that we’re basically just trying to get by and survive and had to reschedule a lot of things.

So, you know, it hit the whole state pretty much in one way or another. And it was interesting because we had this idea, right, of having this podcast talk about letting go. And we were originally thinking of– the thought was about going with the flow instead of trying to make New Year’s resolutions and get things done and going within to really take a step back and find out what it is that we want to connect with ourselves and percolate. And before jumping in and diving in to check off all these lists that the culture wants us to do in the new year and have all these resolutions and make all these immediate changes, right, we wanted to talk about just checking in and centering and letting go and letting go of all of that stress about it. How it hit me was a little bit different, having to just let go of all of the plans that I had to do that and just survive through the storms, and let go of trying to control when I would have the internet and power and all of that. It’s just, you know, nature had to run its course and we just had to hang in there and wait for it.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:03:56] Yeah. It’s been really– these storms have been epic. I’m lucky where I live. I have what I’ve been thinking of as upstream privileges. I’m not in the area where the flooding was happening. So I feel for people who are experiencing that because that is very awful. So I was certainly experiencing the rain and the storms, but I was fortunate to keep my feet above the water. We had a great big tree, Doug Fir come down very near the house, but that was the extent of it. And I was fortunate to keep my power the whole time. So, I can relate. I’ve been there, but I wasn’t there this time. But it’s been really an intense winter for me. Not only was the storm and we had more or less a month of rain, which is, you know, eventually it starts to kind of wear on you, not to see the sun for that long and just the winter in general, it felt like kind of a dark time for me. I was struggling a little bit. I’m feeling much better now that the sun is coming out, and also I’m feeling this stirring. Like you were saying, our initial concept of doing this talk was about that just because the calendar changed to January 1 doesn’t mean you should lunge into creating plans and doing these things and all of that.

And now as we were doing this a few weeks later and we’re getting into the beginning of the Lunar New Year, which frankly for me makes so much more sense than the Gregorian calendar New Year because I do actually feel this stirring. It’s still this quiet time, but I am feeling a little more like I can see a little change on the horizon. I can see some things that I’m a little interested in, that I’m feeling a little spark with. And I am seeing that with my clients also. Talking to people this week I was really seeing the changes that we’d been working on for such long periods of time were really starting to kind of bubble up out of the amorphous into, oh yeah, that’s the direction I’m going in. And yet it’s still not time to make a move.

I have a client I’m working with who’s going to be physically moving across the country, but it’s not time to do that yet. It’s just time to be making plans. And that’s kind of the energetic of this time. It’s a slow start to the year. Just because it’s the Lunar New Year doesn’t mean we treat it the same way as the imaginary, you know, January 1 New Year, where all of a sudden you’re supposed to lose 10 pounds overnight and change all of your habits and like, I don’t know, become an entrepreneur or something in 30 days or less, all of that craziness which doesn’t work and you just end up feeling like a failure. But starting out slowly, starting out planning, this is the time to be perusing the seed catalogs of your life and making plans for the garden that you’re going to plant that comes up in this next period of time, but not today. Just start slowly.

Rochana Felde: [00:07:14] I love that planting the seed– or what did you say? Planting the seed catalogs or–

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:07:20] This is the time to peruse the seed catalogs.

Rochana Felde: [00:07:23] Peruse the seed catalogs, yes.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:07:23] –and make your plans and make your lists of the seeds that you want to plant this year, but you’re not planting them right now. You’re just planning.

Rochana Felde: [00:07:31] Absolutely. And yeah, you know, I always look to the seasons to guide me. I mean, we have all this pressure coming at us from the culture or different belief systems, right? And everyone has an opinion about what you should be doing and when. And what’s important is you and your opinion. But where do you get it? Like, what guides you? I think a lot of people and a lot of my clients aren’t just sure what they should be doing and think that they’re doing something wrong or they should be doing something different. And it’s to me always a matter of guiding them back inside and guiding them back to connecting with nature and the seasons. And the seasons are what guide me. And then it’s not just your, you know, like the general seasons fall, winter, spring, summer. It’s like, where are you? And, you know, there’s no better example than the rains and the storms that we just had. It’s like when weather is like that, you know, you can’t really do anything. You can’t do much. It’s time to just sit with a candle and read a book and, you know, let things happen and go within when you can. But, you know, don’t push against it, right? Don’t push against it to try to force what you think and perceive your schedule and your to-do list should be based on these outside forces, if possible. I mean, we always have things that we can’t change and we have to deal with that, right? But if it’s something that we do– we can alter or have control over, we kind of look to that and not feel like we’re failures because our life might not look like we think it should look.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:09:25] It is that balancing act, isn’t it?

Rochana Felde: [00:09:28] Yeah, exactly. And just I wanted to mention, too, that, you know, if we were doing that more, we would have a much quieter winter season to begin with, right? Like, our December would be not running around in a frenzy, Christmas shopping, and finishing up all of these end-of-the-year projects that we have end-of-the-year deadlines for, you know, externally imposed on us by perhaps our company or something else. And I worked in corporate America for so long, I can’t even get past not having end-of-the-year deadlines. I give them to myself. It’s so ingrained. And why? It’s like, why do I even do that to myself? I don’t have to report to a board of directors on calendar year deliverables anymore. It really shows me when I step back, how kind of programmed that has been with me. So that’s part of my unlearning too.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:10:41] It is. We do have to unwind these impacts from the culture and recognize when the culture is speaking through us. Whenever we say I should, that’s pretty much a good sign that that’s not your still small voice. I don’t think your still small voice has ever said that you should or must or whatever, do something. You’re right, it is something that it just gets so baked in to our system like, you have to get this done. And like, well, is it the time to do that?

I completely agree with you of feeling the way through what the day is calling for, what this season is calling for. I’m really compelled by the sort of the micro-seasons in the Lunar calendar, what are termed  the chi nodes they change every couple of weeks. And to sort of see like this character of time right now, this is what’s happening, to be able to look at it and learn from these sub-seasons essentially, and we’re still very much in the cold, dark time. We’re nowhere near spring time yet. But things are starting to change, you know? It’s like you’re constantly working within change. And that’s really a challenge when there’s so much outer noise coming at you all the time of all these things that you should be doing, especially when we come into these New Years, we hear, I don’t know about you, the endless newsletters in the inbox of like, oh, I’m doing this and I’m doing this and I’m doing this. I’m like, Oh my God, I’m not there yet at all.

Rochana Felde: [00:12:28] Yeah. And then if you have your own business and you’re looking at marketing and then it’s like, oh, these are all the things I should be doing for the season and for the holidays, for the retail season. And that’s not the kind of looking to the season that we’re talking about either, right?

It’s like what’s happening outside your window, outside your door, what is nature telling you? And it is amazing when the sun comes out after three weeks of dark, cloudy, rainy days and the wind dies down after having such intensity, and the feeling, I mean, I think you can all understand that feeling you get, that sun coming out and the day is brightening up. And, you know, if you hear a bird sing or see a plant starting to come back to life after its winter dormancy and that feeling that I feel when I see those things, that’s the feeling that’s coming up inside of me, right? And it’s just this slow time. And maybe it’s just my roots are still underground, or maybe we’re still a little bit dormant, but it’s the slow emerging. It’s kind of gathering those forces, gathering that Yin energy, and getting ready for that bursting forth. But it’s not really time yet to do that bursting forth.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:13:59] Completely. And also recognizing the character of this year. This is the Yin Water Rabbit Year. And in strong contrast to a Tiger year previous, the Rabbit energy is there are bursts of energy for sure. I mean we’ve all seen rabbits run, but that’s not mostly what they’re doing most of the time. They’re mostly very calm and, you know, nibbling away and then they go into their burrows. So, really connecting to this quality of not only is it a Rabbit year, but it’s a Yin Water Rabbit Year. So really taking good care of our deep resources, spending as much time in our burrows as we can manage, and taking care of that, of those deep Yin forces that are our longevity. The culture wants us to go out and burnout and be completely fried by the time we’re, I don’t know, 25 or whatever. But that’s not a sustainable thing clearly. We’ve all kind of recognized that over time. And learning to work within the energies that you have, it’s certainly been a learning curve for me. I certainly hit that wall in my thirties of like, oh, this is what burnout feels like. This is what adrenal fatigue feels like. And it’s really constantly kind of a struggle to figure out like, how much energy do I have and how am I spending it? And that’s really a lesson for this year of going deep and figuring out, okay, what’s really important? What should I be spending my energies on, and what is not important for me to do?

Rochana Felde: [00:15:46] That’s so fascinating. The Yin, I’ve heard it also called like the Black Water Rabbit or Yin Water Rabbit Year. And I’m just learning about that, so it’s really fascinating. But I also like to look at the sun sign astrology.  What are we in? We are just emerging from Capricorn into Aquarius. And so now at the end of– we’re at the end of January and I’m starting to feel that Aquarius energy of imagination and visualization. That piece of it, it’s firing me up in my visioning. And so this is a great time, this is a really great time to go with that energy for fantasizing, visioning, imagining what you would like for your future, where you would like to go, what you would like to do, and to spend time with that. So, you know, on top of that, gathering your resources and going within time of January, now really giving a thought and attention to the imaginary forces that can help you, that can help guide your planning, is it’s perfect for that right now.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:17:15] And that Aquarian energy is not in the trenches like doing the things. The Aquarian energy is this 30,000-foot view of back over here and looking down and going like, how would this be better? How could I make this better? Envisioning the future in ways that could make things better, and what things are not working and what things are working. But that energy is not in the trenches like fixing things. The energetic right now is evaluating and seeing what can be done about it. And then the energy will shift into actually doing something about it. But right now, we’re still, it’s like we’re all coming together in this concept of that, this is a moment to be looking, evaluating, but not actually digging and making actual physical changes. I like how it’s kind of all coming together in all these different ways.

We do have this deep discomfort culturally with just being with things. We want to rush right to the fix phase, you know, and this is something that I certainly see in client work where it’s like, there’s this programming, like I’m feeling this thing, but I want to feel this thing. It’s like, well, okay, but we need to really explore this thing and see where it’s coming from before we can even consider where we change it because when you just try to change something without understanding the underlying pattern, you’re kind of going to end up playing Whac-A-Mole because you’re just going to be changing this and then you’re going to change that and nothing ever really– because you haven’t really met the challenge. Does that make sense? I’m kind of going on a little bit of tangent here, but I think it’s kind of interesting and kind of appropriate for this season where we’re doing these explorations.

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I’m really glad that we had this time together to talk about this concept of slowing down and letting go and going with the flow. So I hope that you, dear listener, have enjoyed listening in and we hope that you will share this podcast with people that you love, that you care about, that you think might benefit from hearing about this. We’d also love to hear from you about what you’re interested in and what your curiosities are because we’d love to be able to serve you even better. And if you let us know what you’re interested in and what you want to hear about, we would love to do podcasts based on that. So we have really enjoyed being with you today and we look forward to being in your ears sometime in the near future.

Rochana Felde: [00:48:58] It’s been great as usual, and I’m so glad to be back with you, Kathleen, and back on the saddle with the podcast and just going with the flow.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:49:10] There we go.

Rochana Felde: [00:49:11] Bye-bye now.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:49:12] Until next time.

Rochana Felde: [00:49:20] Hey there, lovely listeners. I’d like to ask, are you a member of our Patreon community? Putting out these episodes is a labor of love for us, but there are production costs. One of those costs is using a transcription service to transcribe each episode. And we’d love to do this because it provides accessibility to those who are hearing-impaired, and we’ve had feedback about how important this service is for them. For as little as $3 a month, you can help support this effort as well as gain access to the full transcripts of all our episodes. To sign up, simply go to patreon.com/thefloweressencepodcast. You can also help us by sharing the episodes or our posts on social media. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at The Flower Essence Podcast. And thank you to all our current, past, and future patrons. We appreciate you so much. 

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:50:35] This podcast is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not physicians and do not diagnose, prescribe, or treat medical conditions. Please consult with your own physician or healthcare practitioner regarding the suggestions and recommendations made by the hosts and guests of The Flower Essence Podcast.

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