MENOMORPHOSIS

#122: How to Find Flow Again When You’ve Lost Your Spark

• Polly Warren

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Have you ever felt like everything you’re doing is just… off?
Like you’re showing up, ticking the boxes, but the joy, the ease, the you of it all has gone a bit quiet?

In this episode, I’m sharing my own recent experience of feeling misaligned, of ignoring those little nudges, and how that disconnection can ripple through everything, from creativity to confidence.

If you’ve been feeling a bit lost, stuck, or like your spark’s dimmed without quite knowing why—this one’s for you.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

✨ How to recognise when you’re out of alignment (and what that actually feels like day to day)

✨ Why flow disappears when you’re not being true to yourself, even if you’re “doing all the right things”

✨ Gentle ways to start finding your way back to yourself and rekindling your spark

It’s a conversation about tuning back in, getting honest with where you are, and finding your way forward with more lightness and flow.

Download The Breath Check-Up - your FREE guide to understanding how well you're breathing right now.

Download my energising 5 Minute Morning Practice to get your day started in the best way possible.

To find out more about my membership The Inner Space go to: https://www.pollywarren.com/theinnerspace

Email me at: info@pollywarren.com
https://www.pollywarren.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pollywarrencoaching/

Speaker 1:

Are you, like me, riding the roller coaster of midlife and menopause and eager to get back to living your best life? Are you tired of low energy, a short temper and endless self-doubt? Well, it's time to stress less and shine more. It's time to ditch the worry, reclaim your mojo and tap back into the incredible woman you already are, because midlife isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning of becoming more you, more grounded, more radiant, more powerful than ever before. Join me each week for real uplifting conversations to help you feel better, think clearer and live with more joy, purpose and ease, because it's never too late and you're certainly not too old. So whenever you're ready, let the beautiful metamorphosis begin. Hello, hello and welcome back to metamorphosis. I hope you're really well, I hope you've had a good week and I'm back for another solo episode and actually I'm really enjoying these episodes, which wasn't always the case, and actually that is kind of what we're talking about today. We're going to be talking about alignment, about the feeling you have when everything's working and feeling flowy and feeling easy, rather than everything feeling really hard and really difficult. Now, I suppose what really prompted me to talk about this subject was not just because actually I'm enjoying doing these episodes, which feeling a little bit more easy. But if you follow me on social media, you might have also noticed that there's been a little bit of a shift for me recently. I have a real love-hate relationship with social media and sometimes I don't really show up and then other times I show up quite a lot and recently I've been showing up quite a lot more than I have in quite a while. But the big shift has been that I'm actually really enjoying it and this certainly has not been the case.

Speaker 1:

When I first started my Instagram account, which I think was probably about four or five years ago now, I started it because it was all about menopause. I remember putting out that first post and feeling so exposed. It was just like oh my goodness, who am I to talk about this? I remember sharing about my own menopause experience and I really had never done much social media at all before then. But I knew I had something to share and I wanted to help others through their own menopause journey. And, despite the nerves, it felt aligned it. It was vulnerable, yes, but it felt like something I wanted to do. It felt like something that flowed. And then, a little bit, a little while later, in my um Instagram stage, I had this funny phase, which Giles calls my kind of uh am dram moments, where I was really playing around, doing really silly reels and actually having a load of fun with it. And again it felt fun, it felt aligned, and that was when I was really on a mission to educate and raise awareness about menopause before really it was out there. And, you know, without surprise, the content came much more easily because it came from a place of clarity. I knew what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1:

However, last year sort of beginning of last year, maybe a bit of the end of the year before things shifted I was still talking about menopause, but I was also diving deeper into the breathwork side of things. Breathwork had become this really amazing, incredible missing piece of the work that I was doing, especially for the women I was supporting because, as we know, it's just so good at helping with stress, with nervous system regulation, also with easing menopause symptoms actually, and I was becoming really passionate about it. But I also equally felt so confused. What was my mission now? Was I still on the menopause side of things? Was I still a menopause educator? Was I a breathwork coach? Was I both Was I neither. I really felt like, oh my goodness, I don't really know what I'm doing anymore. I felt really confused. It did feel really messy, and when you're not clear on what you're saying or what you're doing, I mean, or who you really are, it kind of shows. And I really felt like all of my ideas just stopped, they just dried up. I had virtually had zero ideas.

Speaker 1:

Everything I tried to post on social media felt a little bit forced. It really felt like I was wading through treacle. It really felt like I was wading through treacle. I was not enjoying it. I felt really stuck, and I'm looking back now I can see that I was just not quite in alignment. The menopause stuff felt like not in alignment because I had sort of shifted and I was a bit. I was a bit tired of talking always, always, always about menopause and yet I didn't feel like I had the confidence yet to share loads of stuff about breathwork, because I was still learning, I didn't know if anyone was even interested in that and so what I was sharing just didn't really feel true to me anymore and there was no flow. It was just sort of this resistance and it was not enjoyable. It really felt like I was stuck in this like gooey, messy middle.

Speaker 1:

However, more recently and actually this is really very recently I feel like it's shifted again. I've again got, I've suddenly got ideas again and I have this want to post and I'm feeling inspired and I'm feeling energized and way more in flow with myself, in sync with myself. And one of the coaches I work with said something the other day to me that really landed and I cause I was saying, oh my gosh, it's amazing how everything just feels much easier. Suddenly, everything feels like it's flowing. I've got ideas, it feels fun. And she just said to me well, it's because you're aligned, polly, you're speaking your truth and, yes, honestly, she was spot on. That's exactly what it is and that's what I want to explore in today's episode that feeling of misalignment and then kind of that feeling of alignment. So that feeling of misalignment is, you know, when you're not in flow, when you are out of sync with yourself, when things feel off but you're ignoring the signs or you're overriding your inner voice. Maybe you're doing what you think you should be doing, you're ticking the boxes, you're showing up, but it all feels really heavy and you just feel really disconnected from it all.

Speaker 1:

I can think of many moments like that in my life. The first one that really springs to mind is when I had my tuition business after I finished teaching in schools. It was a franchise business and, if I'm honest, I didn't really do enough research into the actual methods of this franchise business before I actually bought into it. I was so desperate to get out of schools that I just kind of went yes, this looks great, I really want to run my own business. So I bought this business and it was only when I was being shown by them in the training at the beginning of this franchise business, the methodology of the way that they, they, they did things, I realized that this was not at all in line with the way I wanted to teach children. It was their way, was very, very much learning by rote, by repetition, and it was really, really boring. And it was totally the opposite way to how I was trained as a teacher in schools. You know we're trying to be as child friendly as focus, trying to make the lessons as engaging as possible. So because it felt really so wrong, I ended up trying to change it and you know I went to them. I said this is not a great way of teaching. This is really boring. And in fact they were great. They actually encouraged me and they paid me. And in fact they were great. They actually encouraged me and they paid me. The franchise paid me to say, right, if you don't think like this, write a whole load of new materials. So I did, and oh my God, that nearly killed me, but I did it and they paid me. Well, and it was great, and the way that I wrote the new materials was much more in line with the national curriculum and the ways in which schools taught.

Speaker 1:

However, despite all of my efforts and my gosh, it was an effort I just felt like I was constantly battling against the old school way of doing things. There was, I think, 150 franchisees in this franchise and they were all used to teaching and doing it the old way. So I'd sit in these meetings and just they were almost all this resistance to this new way of doing things. So I just was like you know what? I don't think it's ever really going to to change. I just found it all really, really draining and actually really boring and not really me. So I stuck with it for a good few years.

Speaker 1:

I made a good little business down here in Brighton, but ultimately the way of doing things, it just I just found it so heavy. It drained me and actually the business itself. It was great working with the children, but actually the putting together of the work for them it was very admin heavy and I just dreaded the days I had to do that and eventually I got someone else to someone to do it for me, but they were just, it was still. It was. There was all these signs that this just wasn't right for me, it wasn't aligned for me, and yeah, so that's why I stopped that. And it took a while, though, for me to realize that. And the same thing really happened with my menopause work. When I started the work, I was so, and it took a while, though, for me to realise that. And the same thing really happened with my menopause work. When I started the work, I was so excited about it. It was exactly what I wanted to do, because there was so there wasn't much out there. I was on this mission, but again, after several years of talking about menopause on this podcast, on social media, with clients, it was all great, and again I got the nudges that it wasn't, again quite what I wanted to do, and anyway, I feel like there's so many people now doing that work. Um, and that's kind of led me to where I am.

Speaker 1:

Part of me has always thought my god, is it because I can't stick at things? Do I sort of have this self-sabotage button which goes right? You've done that, now on to the next, but I am choosing to think it's actually about, and I think that's okay. I think we can constantly switch and move around, but at the same time, I think it's so important to feel like the thing you are doing is really aligned with your values, with who you are, with your core essence. So today, that's what we're going to be talking about those moments of misalignment, how to spot them, how to listen to the whispers before they become screams and how to gently start coming back home to yourself. And often this isn't coming back to a physical place, but that grounded, aligned inner space where you feel satisfied, where you feel fulfilled, where things just feel enjoyable and easy and flowy. We're all born with this incredible inner compass. It's our intuition, our knowing, our truth. You might want to call it your soul, your gut feeling, your essence, whatever words feel right for you. But we've all got this incredible inner compass.

Speaker 1:

And then, you know, life happens. We grow up absorbing all these messages from our parents, from our teachers, from our friends, from our society, about who we should be, how we should look, how we should act, what we should want. You know, everyone tells you oh, you've got to be nice, you've got to be helpful, don't rock the boat. Oh, don't cry. You know, make sure you're happy, put others first. And we do, we adapt, that's what we all do. We become the good girl, the high achiever, we become the person who takes care of everybody, the one who holds it, it all together, and we take the job we think we should take or we behave in the way we think we should behave.

Speaker 1:

And ultimately, what we're doing is we're learning to hide our own feelings. We learn to dismiss those inner nudges, those gentle whispers that say you, you know, this doesn't really feel right, because we're just too busy doing what's expected of us. We're overriding our needs over and over again, until after a while, what happens? Well, we can't really hear those nudges, those feelings, those whispers anymore. And somewhere in all of that, that's when we lose touch with our inner spark, that little part of us that's truly us, that's the wise, the creative, the deeply intuitive part of us that knows what truly lights us up, us, that knows what truly lights us up, what brings us joy, what feels like real truth in our bones. And this is, as I really have discovered.

Speaker 1:

It's so common for so many of us who've spent particularly who've spent years showing up for everyone else, raising families and building careers, supporting others. We're doing all the things and from the outside it really does look like we're absolutely nailing it, but inside of us there's often this quiet ache, this sort of restlessness ache, this sort of restlessness and that question going over and over again. You know that question of is this, it? Is this what I signed up for? You may well have heard me talk about this on this podcast before, and particularly in the first ever episode when this was the Positive Perimenopause podcast. I definitely talked about this because this, when I was struggling with perimenopause in my early 40s, that was the question that just kept coming up again and again.

Speaker 1:

And sometimes it can show up as a real numb feeling, a feeling of disconnection, like life's happening around you but not kind of through you. Or maybe it shows up as just feeling really flat, uninspired, a bit like the colour's been drained out of the things that really used to excite you. It might be that there's this kind of constant pressure in your chest, a heaviness in your shoulders and a real tightness in your jaw, but what you do? You just carry on, because that's just what we've always done. And, interestingly, now I know so much about how we breathe. It's amazing how our breathing also changes when we feel like this. It's such a sign For a start. Our breathing can become much more shallow, much more rushed. Sometimes you can catch yourself holding your breath without even realising it. It's a bit like your body's bracing for something, but you don't even know what.

Speaker 1:

And I truly believe that at midlife, when we're experiencing hormonal shifts, at perimenopause, it's almost like the rosy tinted glasses that estrogen gives us up until this point just disappears, and so these feelings get bigger and louder. And I know, when I felt like this, I felt so guilty about it. I felt guilty for needing the space that I was craving, guilty for wanting more, because actually nothing was really particularly wrong. I had so much to be grateful for and yet there was this constant stirring inside that there just had to be more than this. But the truth is that inner dissonance, that misalignment, it's not just in your head, it lives in your body. Your nervous system feels it, your relationships feel it. It's a bit like your system is quietly waving these red flags.

Speaker 1:

And that's when things like you know the red flags of the heaviness, the grumpiness, the heaviness, the grumpiness, the mood swings, that real sense of dissatisfaction and feeling so stuck and uninspired like I was when my creativity totally dried up with social media. And what I now know is this feeling isn't you being ungrateful, it's your soul, your inner compass, calling you to come back in alignment with yourself, to realign with who you truly are. When we're not living in alignment with who we really are, it just it shows up. It's as simple as that. There are signs and I know that when I felt like this, I just kept so busy, because any sort of stillness can feel really uncomfortable, because subconsciously you're avoiding those feelings, those off feelings, those dissatisfaction feelings, those disconnected feelings. But however hard you try, underneath all of it, that sense that something's missing, it just doesn't go away until you address it. It's a bit like wearing a mask that no longer fits and you're just smiling through your gritted teeth saying yes, I'm fine. But when you're absolutely anything but so, what do you do? You pour your energy into everything and everyone else showing up for the world and you leave yourself last on the list yet again.

Speaker 1:

One way I tried to fix it all was to sign up to literally every program under the sun, to read every self-help book out there, to try all the wellness hacks and don't get me wrong, I love all these things, but I was searching. I was definitely searching for something outside of myself and for others that might look like you know, booking lots of holidays, buying really nice cars, wanting the bigger house, wanting the stuff Again, looking for things outside of yourself. But the truth is these things most of them, they're surface level and if we're not willing to go inward, they're just distractions. They distract us, but they don't reconnect us to ourselves, because what we're actually craving isn't more, it's kind of more of us, it's us. That's what we're craving.

Speaker 1:

We need to find a way to actually hear what's going on beneath the surface, within us, and it's not about fixing ourselves. It's about finally making space to know ourselves, to honour what's always been quietly waiting for us beneath the noise, and this is why I truly believe breathwork is so powerful, because it's such a great way to bring us right back into the body, right back to our truth. The breath doesn't lie. When we learn to breathe consciously, we create space to feel, to listen, to recognise our uniqueness. It's so easy to get swept along by the pace of life. It's so easy to get swept along by the pace of life.

Speaker 1:

I was, and still are to some extent so guilty of this. I never stopped long enough to create any sort of internal space to actually notice what was going on inside of me, and I honestly believe that perimenopause hit me so hard because I was so detached from my body that I'd been ignoring all of the warning signs for so long. I just was not connected to myself at all, I wasn't listening, and eventually I realised okay, I've got to do. I've got to do something quiet, I've got to do something for my mind. So I signed up to this course with the Brighton Buddhist Centre and, oh my goodness, it was the most boring thing I've ever done. I probably would actually really enjoy it now, but at the time I just wasn't ready for it. In each of the sessions I either fell asleep or I just couldn't stop just wanting it to finish. So I didn't really get very far with that.

Speaker 1:

I then tried guided meditation on different apps, because there was absolutely no way I could try and meditate on my own. But even then my mind would just be elsewhere. Within seconds I'd be thinking about everything and anything else and often when I finished I just didn't notice any difference whatsoever. I felt no difference and because of that then I just couldn't stick with it because I was like, well, there's no point with this. But it was when I discovered breath work that things really started to shift. That's when I finally kind of got it. I got what all this meditation business was all about. I realised that when you breathe intentionally, you can actually get out of your head and into your body. It's like the breath becomes this anchor. It's like a, a bridge, because if you're living and this is what a lot of people don't tell you if you're constantly living in a state of high alert, which majority of us are, we're busy, we're. We kind of got a low, we've got low level stress, which really is kind of chronic stress, we're all.

Speaker 1:

Our nervous system is always slightly in that fight or flight mode If we're in that state, just stopping and relaxing doesn't always feel accessible. It can actually feel really uncomfortable because it is so alien to your nervous system. Your nervous system adapts to being always a little bit on in your sympathetic part of side of your nervous system. Your nervous system adapts to being always a little bit on in your sympathetic part of side of your nervous system. And I know, for me as someone who naturally leans towards doing stuff and achieving stuff, I've always found active decompression easier than passive relaxation. So I would class something like breathwork as active decompression, because you're actually doing something.

Speaker 1:

Meditation often felt like a struggle, not because I was doing it wrong, but because my nervous system wasn't ready for stillness, and that's not really a flaw, it's just a reflection of how the nervous system adapts over time. You know, honestly, when you've been running at high speed for years, your body becomes more comfortable. In those states of high arousal it's like your system forgets how to slow down and it creates something called autonomic rigidity where, shifting into your rest and digest mode, it just feels totally foreign. But to come back home to yourself, to hear your intuition, to feel your inner world, you need to be able to regulate that system in a way that works for you. And yes, you do need to calm down into that rest or digest state, otherwise you're going to just stay in that stress response and over time, you know, if you're in that stress response, it's going to really impact every system in your body blood sugar regulation, which will lead to a whole host of different issues you know, not least weight gain, immune function, hormonal balance, even your, your ability to think clearly and creatively. So this is why breathwork is so bloody amazing because it acts as a bridge between the active and the passive states. So you can engage your body in a way that still feels like you're doing something, because you are.

Speaker 1:

But the magic is you're also activating the parasympathetic nervous system. You're soothing your system from the inside out. It's literally like a remote control for your nervous system. So you can use it to down regulate, which most of us need, but actually sometimes you can use it to up regulate, which sometimes some of us need to shift up in and feel a bit more energized. So it's that real shift between the sympathetic the fight or flight and the parasympathetic, the rest or digest states, depending on what you need in that moment.

Speaker 1:

And then it goes a little bit deeper than that as well. When we breathe, in certain ways, we can actually switch off the logical thinking brain for a while. We can access deeper levels of ourselves, beneath the stories, the beliefs, beneath the conditioning that we have. It's in this space that you reconnect with your true essence, with your uniqueness, with your magic. That is when we you know, breath can be so powerful. And, yes, those are probably more advanced breath patterns, but it doesn't take much at all to the you, beneath the roles, beneath the shoulds, starts to emerge and it almost feels like a remembering, a returning back to who you truly are. Our breath isn't just a physical act. It really does. It's amazing. It really does mirror our kind of inner world. The way we breathe carries so much of our emotional history, our stress, our trauma, our joy.

Speaker 1:

If you think about all of the times in your life where, for example, you've held back the giggles oh my gosh, so many times when you were in a position where you're not meant to laugh, but all you want to do is laugh and you hold back, what do you do? You hold your breath. If you think about all the times that you've held back the tears, uh, and you know you, you're in a you. All you want to do is cry. And because you can't, you're in a work meeting or you someone's told you, oh, don't cry. And you're holding back your tears again, what do you do? You hold your breath, and so what happens is these patterns get held in our system and it's only when we can breathe in a certain way that those patterns get released. Quite honestly, it always makes me laugh because quite a lot of people, when they do their first breathwork session with me, a lot of people end up crying and they're like God, I don't know why. I don't know why I cried, but it's because it's just a releasing of all of those patterns. It just kind of comes out and it feels so cathartic, it feels good and it's not like you're going to really explode, but it's just a bubbling up of all those emotions and out they come. And when we learn to work with it, not against it, that is when we learn to work with it, not against it. That is when we begin to really clear space to release what we've been holding, consciously or not. And it's in that space, that's when you truly begin to feel your magic again.

Speaker 1:

Another really important and really enjoyable way to ignite that spark within you is to follow your joy. We've all got so bloody serious about life and it can be so easy to forget how to have fun. So this is about thinking of what makes you feel truly alive, what lights up your soul. And if you can't think of anything, think back to when you were a child. What did you love? Because the chances are you probably still love it. One thing I've recently started doing again is playing the piano, which I remember doing as a child, particularly when I was a bit pissed off with life. It always would cheer me up and it's really bringing me so much joy. So, yes, tap into what you love and do more of it, because it will make you feel so good. And it kind of that's when you're in your full alignment, when you're in those flowy bits. Another time I feel like that actually, which is a bit ridiculous Well, it's not ridiculous at all, but it's if I'm on the dance floor. I bloody love dancing. I'm not a particularly good dancer, but when I'm on the dance floor I just feel happy, I feel like I haven't got a care in the world and it's something that, yeah, I love, love, love to do so.

Speaker 1:

If there's something you've always said you'd love to do more of, or something that you want to do and you've never done, make time for it. Find a way to move towards that thing. So, if it's like you wanted to write a book, start now, just do it. If you want to dance more, go and dance now, just do it. If you want to dance more, go and dance. So, yes, if there's a whisper inside you, or maybe it is turned into a loud shout, then that means that there is just so much more for you. So that is your inner wisdom, your knowing. It's a sign of your aliveness and it just means go and find it, because it's going to make you feel so good and it's exciting when you think about it like that, and that's exactly why I created the inner space.

Speaker 1:

So it's not just a membership. It's a place to reconnect with your breath, with your body, with you, a time to sort of go inwards. It's about really living in alignment with who you really are. So so often during um, a practice, you get this incredible sense of, of space, of peace, to really connect with that part of you, that unique essence they're really. There's nothing like it. And, yes, there is a short meditation following the breath pattern we do, but it's so lovely because by that point you're in such a place of stillness it kind of almost feels quite blissful. And, yes, you get the time and the space to explore what it means to be you beneath the noise, beneath the roles, beneath the shoulds. It's a real space for tuning back in.

Speaker 1:

So if you're looking for more, for clarity, for calm or just simply a space where you can take off the mask and just be, just be you, come and have a free session, honestly, no strings attached. Come and experience it for yourself. But if that's not for you, it's not for everybody. My invitation for you today is just check in with yourself, just literally take a breath in through your nose and just ask yourself is there that nagging feeling inside you? And if there is, what is it you need? What's it trying to say to you? What have you been too busy to hear? You don't need all the answers right now. Just the willingness to listen is a first powerful step. And then taking one small action towards getting a little bit quieter and connecting inwards and feeling into what it is you know ultimately is going to help you feel more in alignment with yourself.

Speaker 1:

I really hope that this has made some sort of sense and hasn't been too gabbly and out there and a bit too woo woo. I really do feel. For me, this has been such a massive part of feeling like I do today. I had no idea of any of this stuff for so many years and it's only since I've been doing this sort of work that this has become something I'm so desperate to share with as many people as possible. And maybe this is something you've already very aware of, but it's so important because ultimately, it's it's the, it's the journey. It's the journey. It's the pathway to true happiness and to true peace and fulfillment.

Speaker 1:

If you have enjoyed this episode, please do feel free to subscribe to rate review. It really does help this podcast. Thank you so much for listening, particularly if you've got to the end. It means so much to me. You can find me on the end. It means so much to me. You can find me on instagram at polyboroncoaching, or you can come over to my website, polyboroncom, if you want to sign up for your inner space session. All the details are in the show notes. Have a wonderful rest of the week. Take lots of care, lots of love. Bye.