With chronic illness comes a feeling of never being enough.  Never showing up to your life ‘enough’, not being energetic ‘enough’ never giving anything ‘enough’ effort, never trying hard ‘enough’ to heal (because surely, if you were, you’d be ‘healed’ right?!  What are you missing? What else should you be doing? 🤔!!)

The idea that we’re not enough, that we need fixing, that we’re somehow broken, keeps us bound to the chronic illness struggle.

How would things change for you if you started to believe that you are enough.  That everything you need, you already have.  What would you let go of? What would you stop chasing?

I first met Lucy in one of her Yoga classes, and she was a shining light at the end of a long search for a yoga teacher I clicked with.

Lucy wears a few different hats.  As I’ve mentioned, she’s a yoga teacher, but she’s also a meditation facilitator, retreat hostess and her most important hat of all; dog Mama to Elsie. 

What ties all of these roles together is her love of creating space for people to B R E A T H & take a sweet moment to themselves. Her teaching style is non-dogmatic & playful (and I LOVE it!)  Her motto is that life is often serious enough, so why not enjoy the precious time you take to yourself?

LISTEN HERE:

WHERE TO FIND LUCY

Instagram - @lucyvictoriajacksonyoga

Website - www.lucyvictoriajackson.com 

OTHER LINKS

Here’s the link for the Jameela Jamil podcast episode Lucy talks about

Here’s the link to Kallie Schutt’s website, who Lucy credits a lot of her learning around yoga and the colonial history, to.

EPISODE NOTES:

TW - discussion about self-harm and emotionally abusive relationship (26.47)

5:13 - Sitting in the present - sometimes with pain and discomfort - and being ‘enough' just as you are.

7:36 - Acceptance. Everything and everyone that tells you not to accept yourself, and that you need ‘more’ to be worthy.

08:34 - “Everything I need I already have”, and the unhappiness that comes with the opposite of that.

10:49 - Getting behind the ‘why?’

13:00 - How can you find happiness and acceptance when all the pain and rejecting and hatred [of yourself] is true? 

14:42 - Where to go when that becomes really hard, and when the more ‘unhelpful’ thoughts take over.

16:35 - The role society has to play in us becoming unhappy with, or unaccepting of, ourselves, and how that can get in the way of healing.  Or conversely, how going against these ‘ideals’ and going your own way can be conducive to healing

26:04 - Mental health, depression and anxiety. CBT and changing thought patterns.

26:47 - TW, discussion about self harm

28:07 - TW, discussion about emotionally abusive relationship

31:49 - End of TW

33:21 - Numbness, shutting down and self-preservation/protection.

34:55 - What Yoga means to Lucy and how the whole meaning of it has helped her on her journey.

38:25 - On defining Yoga for herself; the colonisation/cultural appropriation of Yoga

45:18 - Context, the performative nature of Yoga and healing, and how isolation of these things plays into a more (mainstream and western) ‘acceptable’ palette.