Why Stress Feels So Normal (and How to Shift It) with Lydia Knight

Stress can feel so normal that we forget there’s another way to live. In this episode of The Empowered & Embodied Show, Kim Romain and Louise Neil sit down with Lydia Knight -- author, executive coach, and founder of The She Center. We explore why our brains and bodies can get stuck in cycles of stress, burnout, and perfectionism and unpack how shame thrives in secrecy, why “stress feels like home,” and what it really takes to create safety, belonging, and authenticity within ourselves.

This conversation offers gentle, practical insights on letting go of old patterns, shifting your “emotional home,” and building a more centered way of leading and living. If you’ve ever wondered why stress keeps pulling you back, or how to move toward peace without pushing harder, this episode is for you.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Stress and burnout can feel familiar, but they don’t have to be home.
• Curiosity is the antidote to self-judgment.
• Psychological safety starts within.
• All emotions matter; they’re the full music of being human.
• Healing is about letting go, not efforting.
• Self-trust grows through practice, not perfection.

Key moments in this episode:

00:00 – Welcome & Introductions

01:35 – The Journey of Authenticity and Leadership

04:39 – Understanding Shame and Its Impact

07:16 – The Process of Healing and Centering

12:42 – Creating Psychological Safety Within

13:28 – The Role of Emotions in Authenticity

16:13 – Curiosity vs. Judgment in Self-Discovery

19:24 – The Complexity of Human Experience

25:30 – The Pendulum of Healing and Letting Go

27:20 – Building Trust and Safety in Ourselves

31:48 – Celebrating Progress and Emotional Homes

39:16 – The Power of Community and Support

43:25 – The She Center and Its Mission

46:18 – Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Connect with Lydia Knight:

Website: https://theshecenter.org/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lydia-knight-tsc/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshecenter

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theshecenter

TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@theshecenter

Join Kim at the Drop the Mic UnSummit - Sept 15-18, 2025.
https://dropthemic.teachery.co/buy?a=nYpjqnTp

Join a circle of changemakers committed to leading with purpose, presence and ease inside Kim's Rising Visionaries mentorship program.

Reclaim your career and confidence during midlife through Louise's Rise & Redefine program.

If you’re loving this show, come check out the Feminist Podcasters Collective, where creators like us are uplifting diverse voices and driving meaningful change. If you’re looking for new shows to fill your feed, head to https://feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything we have to offer.

Transcript

The Empowered & Embodied Show

Episode Title: Why Stress Feels So Normal (and How to Shift It) with Lydia Knight

Episode Number: 175

Released On: September 2, 2025

Hosts: Kim Romain and Louise

Guest: Lydia Knight, founder and CEO of The She Center

[ 0:01:35 ] Kim Romain: Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Empowered and Embodied show. I am one of your co-hosts as always, Kim Romain, joined by my lovely co-host.

[ 0:01:46 ] Louise: That's me, the other co-host, Louise. Joined by all, we have a wonderful guest today. I'm so excited.

[ 0:01:52 ] Lydia Knight: And this is Lydia Knight, thank you for saying that, wonderful guest.

[ 0:01:57 ] Kim Romain: Lydia, we are so thrilled to have you here. So, Lydia Knight is a paradigm shifting author, speaker, and executive coach. Her memoir Split chronicles her deprogramming from indoctrination. Well, her new book, and I believe I have the right title here, The Centered Leader, is that the new book?

[ 0:02:14 ] Lydia Knight: So The Centered Leader is out, celebrating that and then Thought Leader is going to be our upcoming book.

[ 0:02:20 ] Kim Romain: Is the upcoming. Okay. That's what I thought. So The Centered Leader is, is out. And then the Thought Leader is coming out. As founder and CEO of The She Center, a top 2% woman owned business globally. Lydia's innovative work has been featured on numerous media outlets. A cult survivor doing exceptionally well, Lydia's work empowers women to create their own path to freedom. We are so excited to have this conversation and to just see where it goes.

[ 0:02:48 ] Lydia Knight: So happy to be here and thank you for that beautiful intro and yeah, there's so much fun.

[ 0:02:48 ] Louise: Yeah.

[ 0:02:52 ] Kim Romain: Yeah. And well, I'm fascinated by all three of these books because I feel like they share different, not just different parts of what you want to support others with, but also parts of yourself.

[ 0:03:06 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, 100%. I would say that the mission of The She Center, we really believe that a better world for women is a better world for everyone. I think that's just so, so clear. So how we do leadership and The Centered Leader and coming from a centered place is really important. And I know that, I mean, both of you here are part of this incredible mission and having the kinds of conversations that we would want to be having authentically all over the world. And Split was the story that was my deepest, darkest secret for my whole life. I didn't start telling that story till really like a year ago publicly. It was something that I hid and it's been such an incredible experience to be deeply authentic with my own story and to see the power of that in other people's lives, other women's lives. So it's really a beautiful process.

[ 0:03:55 ] Louise: Yeah, Kim and I were actually just talking about this on the weekend or late last week around like finding our own voice and being able to kind of put that out there. How do we, I don't want to say embrace our trauma, but like how do we like really allow it to be part of who we are? We push that away a lot, right? We push away our traumas, we push away those things that feel uncomfortable. And so like finding a way to bring all of us to the table, to leadership, to our business can be something that we struggle with a lot.

[ 0:04:39 ] Lydia Knight: Absolutely, and especially at first, right? Because shame really thrives in secrecy. So if we feel shame about something like, is a part of my story that I don't want to tell anyone else, then we really have this almost like visceral feeling of I'm not safe if anyone else knew about this. And the moment that we break through with someone who's trusted, someone who can receive our story, and we know there isn't judgment there, like there's discernment there for sure. But as soon as we break through to I'm authentically sharing. It's incredible for our brain and our nervous system and our souls to just understand, not only did I live through it, like I'm here to tell the tale, it didn't actually kill me, but there's also this beautiful safety and empowerment that we feel of how good it really feels to share all of us and to still be received by the person who's listening and us as like, it's still me, just an even more authentic version of me.

[ 0:05:34 ] Louise: Yeah. Well, and I think we fight that. We fight this authentic version of ourselves so much. I know for me, it's been like trying throughout my whole, my leadership, my career, all of that stuff I did pre-business owner. I did try to fit myself into a box. I did try to like, very much in all kinds of ways. So it's not just about like these big stories that are a part of us that we push. There's also these little pieces of us that I think we push to the bottom or push back as well. And we keep trying over and over again to fit ourselves in this box that's been created, we think for us, but really not for us at all.

[ 0:06:19 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, and so often against us, right? It's part of perpetuating a system that is not for us and is not really good for anyone, but keeps things the same as they have been for so long. And a really cool part of the journey and a question that we get a lot because we work with identifying the thought patterns that drive our behavior. And when we start getting in touch with our thoughts, this question inevitably comes up is, well, I'm hearing all of this stuff going on in my brain, right? What is my intuition? What is my authenticity? What is the chatter that's just been created of people telling me how I should have been? And to be able to discern those different voices, sort of like at the beginning of our discussion, we all said our names so that all of you listening can be like, I recognize whose voice is who. We have that process in our own minds. And we can develop the skill of recognizing this is my intuition. This is my higher self. This is my authenticity. Recognizing our authenticity is a really important part of that process.

[ 0:07:16 ] Kim Romain: I want to take us back to that word shame that you used though, right? Because fast forward, absolutely this is where we get to. It's where we're able to discern which voice is which and which voice can guide us and lead us. If we go back to that place of, I'm having these thoughts, I'm having all of this happening to me, around me, as part of me, it's, it's this really physically, somatically, whatever word you want to put in there, it is overwhelming and it floods us, particularly when we have that shame coming in where it is now we've created a lifelong narrative that there's something wrong with me or I did something wrong to create this instance in my life. And so how do we go from that place steeped in that place? where I know I've been, know, right, Louise, you and I have talked about, you've been, and Lydia, from your story, I know you've been there, right, and so many of our listeners, how do we go from that place to where we want to be, to where we have that ability to discern those different voices?

[ 0:08:29 ] Lydia Knight: That's a beautiful question because it takes courage. That first step absolutely takes courage because it feels very scary. And one of the best first steps is to admit our own stories to ourselves. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves that aren't true all day, every day. And when we have that inkling of, actually I think this is something that is true about me. Like I think I am more powerful than I think. I think that maybe I'm good enough despite what's happened. Even if we don't fully believe it, we get these sparks that are almost like this ancient wisdom within ourselves. Like I might actually be good enough. We all have those moments. And to instead of pushing those away, to take a moment and admit our authenticity to ourselves, even if we don't fully believe it, but try it on. That creates safety. To find communities with other people that are working with the same sort of topics that we are, the thing that makes us feel different or not good enough, and to meet other people because we have such a generosity when we hear someone else's story, right? It's like, well, it's my shameful story, but if someone else is going through the same thing and they're telling it, then it's like, ⁓ of course you're good enough, of course you're lovable. And we start hearing those words generously given to someone else, and we start understanding they're true to ourselves. So admitting our own stories to ourselves, being in community with people who are moving through the same thing so that we feel all our stories in other people. And then also having events or like going to places or healing modalities or I'll give you a quick example. So we do this in-person experience, like three days long called deprogram. And on day one, we're bringing something that makes us feel shame, that is holding us back, that is limiting. And everyone's crying and everyone is their body language is hunched over and they're like, you know, I've been suffering. This has been causing suffering for decades. By day three, everyone is laughing about it together. Like, I can't believe I believed that about myself. That was only like 72 hours ago. So it can be a very quick change, but to start feeling the difference where we can be laughing at it, where we can have humor or lightness around it, is a really good signal to ourselves that we're working through it, that we've shared it with ourselves and others enough. And that tends to be those first steps that give us more courage every step along the way.

[ 0:10:57 ] Kim Romain: Yeah. I think it's, it's so interesting because people, think also want, right, they want that quick fix. They want to be able to get to that laughter and be like, it's all healed. And the reality is, is sure the healing has begun and the healing isn't complete, right? When we get to that place of lightness, that's, we're beginning. Now we can start. And, ⁓ it, it reminds me of Louise when, when you and I first met. We were in a group and the question that we were all asked to answer was, let me see if I get this right, is if you really knew me, you'd know that. And we had to fill in the blank. And so it was one of those moments where it was like, well, I could tell you if you really knew me, you'd know that I was born in Massachusetts. That's really not something that is a challenging thing for me to say, but right. If you really knew me, you'd know that I went through bankruptcy. That's a conversation that we don't normally have. Right? We don't normally put out there, hey, I had some financial problems because that, there's shame that comes with that. But for me to be able to say that, for me to be able to bring that in and to, like you said, find that place of lightness, now I don't have that emotional anchor into that because it's just a thing. It's no longer a story I tell myself about that thing.

[ 0:12:23 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, that's a great point. It's no longer the story you tell yourself. It's just more objective. It's like, this is part of who I am. There isn't an emotional charge or an emotional trigger around it. Another great neuroscience way to recognize that you feel differently about that because of the emotions that come up when you're able to share it again.

[ 0:12:42 ] Louise: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You were talking, Lydia, about creating the safety within ourselves, right? And we talk a lot about psychological safety out there. What does a psychologically safe workplace look like, environment, relationship? We talk about what that is. And yet, when we bring that idea inside of us, how do we create our own psychological safety? It really is about this ability to detach some of the not just the story but the emotion that comes along with with some of those facts that have happened in our past and then we can really start to just be in it without being charged or triggered by.

[ 0:12:42 ] Kim Romain: That's so huge.

[ 0:13:28 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, all that internal psychological safety, like, ⁓ that's such a beautiful concept to look at. Like, I want that for every person in the world. An analogy that we talk about is emotions being like notes on the piano. And the most beautiful music and your most beautiful expression comes when you have all of the notes. But if you're like, I don't like how this note sounds, and I don't like how this note feels, and you just start, like, popping the keys off of the piano, you can still play some songs, but you're really limited in that expression. And one way that we create that psychological safety, a great way to start is emotionally, where we have an embracing of whatever emotions are coming up. Instead of, I'm happy, that's fine, you can stay. I'm angry, that's bad, I have to find some way to not be angry, is a way to communicate to ourselves like, we're not safe to be us because that range of emotion is so beautifully human and authentic. So when we start embracing and validating and creating space for whatever emotions come up for us, there's that psychological safety that gets created. And we start having an expression of our authenticity that wasn't available when our brains and our nervous system is like, ⁓ no, we'll only be accepted if it's like this. To have that battle be over within us, that's the really good stuff happens from there. Yeah.

[ 0:14:53 ] Kim Romain: Right? It is. So two things that I heard in there that I wanted to pull through. One is no judgment. Right? It's an emotion is an emotion is an emotion. I like she talking about emotions is just energy and motion. There is no judgment. And by the way, there's more than three. I feel like people boil it down to like three to six emotions and that's it. ⁓ And, and that aspect of allowing ourselves to find ourselves in the process. So it's, it's the playing of the notes. I love, I love how you were talking about that because it's, it's finding your own music and your own rhythm because each of us is going to experience, I could say sad and we have a general sense. Everybody listening, all of us have a general sense of what sad is, but I feel sad differently than you feel sad. So how we actually experience it, the notes that we play, even though we're naming that thing, we're experiencing it so differently. And so creating an internal dialogue in terms of what the fullness of our human experience is, and then allowing ourselves to within community or with another individual that we feel trust, that we trust, allows us to really understand what that symphony is that we're creating.

[ 0:16:13 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, so good. And a question that comes up in this discussion, and just I know this is gonna be in your minds listening, so I'll just tell you now. So how do I stop judging myself? Like how do I stop judging those emotions? And the first thing is to accept that judgment. When you notice the judgment coming up, you're like, hello, judgment, welcome in, right? Because we have judgment about our judgment. So first you just welcome it in. And then the other piece is that curiosity and judgment. It's very hard for those two things to exist at the same time. So as soon as we feel the judgment coming up, give it space, validate it, enjoy it, because it's got its own music, its own notes, and then get curious about it in a really kind, curious way. And you'll find that the judgment just isn't existing anymore because now you're in curiosity. And we can do this toward ourselves and other people. Getting curious is one of the most beautiful, harmonious ways to keep on going in our authenticity with ourselves and with others.

[ 0:17:11 ] Kim Romain: We were just talking about acceptance.

[ 0:17:11 ] Louise: Yeah, we were. Yeah. curiosity is a superpower. Absolutely. When we can use that, hold that, really explore what's going on inside of us, but also with the outside world. Like, you're right, if we have more curiosity, then we can't judge in the way, in a way that is maybe harmful, right? I often think judgment too, it gets a bad rap. Judgment is good. Judgment helps us make good decisions. It helps us, right? Like bring in information and data that we have. And it often gets a bad rap a little bit too, I think in that, right? It's seen as a negative emotion too.

[ 0:18:01 ] Kim Romain: Chomping at the vent. No, you're talking about discernment!

[ 0:18:04 ] Lydia Knight: And this is the magic of being accepting of our current experience. Because if we put a label on it of like judgment bad, then we're trying to push it away. But if it's like judgment curious, there is discernment in this judgment. There are gifts to this judgment. There are benefits of this judgment. And we start getting the benefits of whatever our current experience is when we're in a state of curiosity. It's so fun. We can nerd out on this all day.

[ 0:18:29 ] Kim Romain: It is so fun.

[ 0:18:30 ] Louise: So I'm curious a little bit, Lydia and Kim both, is that, so we started talking about how words are, like they're put out there and we make assumptions when we use these words, especially around emotions, that we know how they present in other people. How have you seen that detachment or how do we detach from that so that we can kind of be with someone in those emotions and not say, well, I know how you feel, right? Like that's the key piece of like empathy. I know how you feel. So I'm empathetic. And it's like, we feel differently. We just talked about that. We can have the same word for things, but it presents differently. It feels differently. So how do we use this and the words and really boil that down to being useful?

[ 0:19:24 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, okay, so I have an incredible partner. His name is Steele and he was a professor, he's a feminist, and he's just like this amazing writer and he's amazing. And he's someone who has absolutely examined his privilege and toxic masculinity that he, you know, was socialized with. And he asks the most beautiful question that I think gets at this so well, is if you are describing how you feel, like I'm sad or this thing happened or whatever it is. He will with curiosity, which I think is another important key to this is like the theme of what we're talking about. He'll with curiosity, he'll ask, he'll be like, what was that experience like for you? What does that feel like for you? He's not making an assumption of like, I know how that feels, or let me focus on myself instead of you, or let me tell you how to fix it because I know your experience. It's really from a place of curiosity of like, ⁓ asking. Like if we want to know how, it's different to really ask and find out what is sadness like for you? What is your experience right now like? And then it's a gift for that other person to be able to examine that and describe that. It's a wonderful feeling.

[ 0:20:42 ] Kim Romain: That's an invitation that most people don't have, I don't think have the capacity yet. They haven't built the capacity to even know that they have access to ask those questions. Because I see people all the time wanting to get there, wanting to get to that place of, I do want to know what's going on with you. I don't even know that I know how, like not just know how to ask it, but it's, don't know if that's the thing that I'm supposed to be doing here, right? It's so hard for us. We are complex. Human beings are complex. If we just lived in our own little bubbles, in our own little worlds, it would still be complex. And then we're bumping up against all these other people and we partner with these other people and we try and have conversations with these other people. Now it's all fucking complex. Like the whole thing, everywhere, messy complex, messy complexity. So we're in our minds, we're trying to figure out what we're experiencing in that moment. We notice somebody else who is either expressing something from the past or is having something happening in the moment. We need to be able to access, and I'm pointing to my head here, but I think it's not here. I mean, I know it's not here for most of us. It's not in our brains. It's dropping out of our brains and stopping processing the moment from that place and processing from the moment from a place of presence, which in my mind, irony there, in my mind is about our bodies. It is about dropping out of our heads and into our bodies so we can be fully present with and in dialogue. And I'm going to go back to the, are complex and we're also having an experience with that individual. So it's that dance of, and this is where I said, like we haven't, so many people haven't built that capacity yet because that dance is where we get caught. We get caught in trying to figure out where do I fit in here? Do I fit in here? Should I fit in here? And we're still processing our stuff and losing that aspect of presence with each other.

[ 0:22:55 ] Lydia Knight: Hmm, absolutely. And this is why part of what we repeatedly say in our community is the world is a better place when you are centered. When you know how to be present and center yourself, you can have a conversation where it's about that other person, where you're actually listening, where instead of everything they're saying turns into the complexity of what that does to you and what that triggers in you and what stories it brings up for you, that it is actually about the person that you're interacting with and listening to. So I think one of the best ways to start practicing the skill is to practice centering ourselves in that present place. Kim, I love how you like point into your forehead with like, yeah, I think it's in the body, but you pointed to the mind. Fun little neuroscience nerding out here is the forehead behind there is the prefrontal cortex. That's the part of our brain that we're in when we drop into our body, when we're present. It's our lower brain, like the back sort of lizard brain, we call it the chatter brain in our community. That that's the part of our brain that we're in when we're like, can't even hear the other person because we're having so much come up for ourselves. So it's interesting you pointed to the right part of your brain to drop into your body to be present.

[ 0:24:09 ] Kim Romain: Yep, yep, yep. It fascinates me. So we've been watching House, House MD, the show from the early aughts. Our daughter, our 15-year-old just started getting into it. So we've been watching that a lot lately. And the number of things that, the number of conversations they have around what is or is not happening in someone's brain, and I'm watching them from my world, saying, y'all are over complicated. Like, I know you're trying to like spitball all of these options that are out there, but you now have way over complicated. And it always happens when they come back to this place of the simplest answer is the correct answer. I'm like, yes, because you all just over complicated that. And I think that's what we do with each other. We do that in conversation, but we also do that with ourselves with this idea of centering. I know my clients are all the time. They're like, what do I need to do? I'm like, not much. It doesn't take much, but we think it does take much to center ourselves. It really, it's fascinating to me how scary, and I get it because for a lot of us, our bodies aren't safe. They don't feel safe yet. So going back to right, even the beginning of the conversation of finding that place of safety, how do we even begin to start now creating the safety in our body so we can center ourselves?

[ 0:25:30 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, and we call it chatter, right? These thought patterns that hold us back. But I'll share a common piece of chatter that comes up for people in the centering conversation is there's something else I need to do or be or master before I can center myself. Like, I need to learn how to be safe in my body. I need to work through all my past stories. I need to. And I'll give you a visual that helps us to understand what centering actually is. So we talk about the shape of a healing journey, which is the shape of how a pendulum moves. So we're off center, we're on one side, and then we let go of it. So let's say we're in a toxic relationship, we're off center. When we let go of that, there is a momentum that swings us back to still being off center, but on the other side. It's a reaction to where we came from. And that's actually a really healthy place to be, because that's where we get to do our deprogramming, and that's where we get to know our authenticity. But it goes from, I'm in this relationship to I will never love again. Sure, like spend a moment there, because that's probably a valid reaction to where you came from. But it's not where you want to live. Where you want to live is centered. So if you're not constantly swinging back and forth on a pendulum, it's more about letting go than doing something more. So you react, and then you learn to let go and let go and let go, and you naturally, organically come back to center. When you think of a pendulum, center is the place where there is no effort. It is effortless forever at that centered place. And that's where the authenticity and the joy and the beautiful life of our dreams happens and our dream relationships and authentic love, if we're talking about the relationship pendulum, right? So much of centering is you can learn skills to do this. You can understand how to do this effectively, but it's a process of letting go and letting go and letting go so we don't keep swinging back and forth.

[ 0:27:20 ] Louise: Goosebumps. That's acceptance, right? Like that is, that's what that core is, is that it's this ability to continually do that. This isn't a one and done kind of thing, right? This is like, and I love that analogy, that visual that you shared Lydia, because it is absolutely a continuing of letting go so that you get to come to this centered place and then you get to do it again and then you get to do it again and again and again and like there's so much there's so much joy in that for me like when I think about that it doesn't feel like laborious and like like like I'm gonna continue like going through these self-help books and I'm gonna keep improving and doing all of this personal development and then it's like no it's like It's this ability to fully trust, right? Like when you're on that swing, you gotta fully trust that you are gonna stay on it when you're at the top and you're gonna fully trust that it's going to swing you, right? And it's this trust that we build within ourselves that by letting go, we don't smash into the sand at the bottom of the swing, right? By letting go, we actually get to enjoy the swing itself. And we get to keep doing that over and over again. Yeah, I love that because it is about an acceptance and only through that can we then start building our trust within ourselves, right? That's a key ingredient to being safe is that trust piece. And by letting go, we actually get to build that trust within ourselves because we know what's gonna happen, but we have to do it. We have to do it first.

[ 0:29:13 ] Kim Romain: I just kept hearing, weeee.

[ 0:29:13 ] Lydia Knight: Yes.

[ 0:29:15 ] Louise: Weee!

[ 0:29:20 ] Lydia Knight: That's so great. Thank you for everything that you added to that visual. Because it's just like, yes, yes, and yes. And if there's any chatter that comes up of, then to be centered, I need to learn how to trust myself. No. You need to be in the process. And through the process, then you have these beautiful moments where you're like, I don't know exactly when it was, but I trust myself now. It's a looking back, and it's a realizing. I kept on being in the process. I kept on letting go. And at some point I learned to trust myself.

[ 0:29:49 ] Kim Romain: There's that moment when you feel centered that all of a sudden you go, this is what it is. And I didn't have to effort to get here.

[ 0:29:59 ] Lydia Knight: Yes.

[ 0:30:01 ] Kim Romain: That's the thing that I think is fascinating that I've experienced myself, but I've also seen in my clients and others that I know it's that place of recognizing, that's the thing. That's where it is. Yeah.

[ 0:30:14 ] Lydia Knight: Absolutely. And then you have a reference for what that feels like. And with our earlier conversation about emotions, you said, Kim, we don't have like three, six emotions. We're complex beings. And we tend to develop this emotional home of the emotions that are usually a handful that we practice every day. And you can change that emotional home. Like if you have an emotional home of stress, you can create an emotional home of gratitude and peace. And you can do that in a predictable process way. And having that reference for like, this is it. That's what it feels like to be centered. You can practice that and create that as your default. Like we have so much power as human beings to create our own experience in life.

[ 0:30:57 ] Kim Romain: Just had this conversation with my 15 year old this morning. Right? She's working on this idea of, she deals with anxiety, her mom deals with anxiety, her dad deals with like a human being, we deal with anxiety. And so the conversation this morning is she's trying to figure out what do I have control over? What do I not have control over? What do I have control over? What do I not have control over? So she gave me a list of things that she legit had control over. And I was like, and what else? because she had been spinning in some of her thoughts and she hadn't yet gotten to that place of recognizing, wait, there's another possibility available to me here. And once she found that, that was again, like that pendulum was like, she was done with the wee, wee. She got to that centering point and she went, and you can actually see like the shoulders drop and the breath is there and it's like, you're there.

[ 0:31:48 ] Lydia Knight: 100%. And I'm like cheering for your 15-year-old and be like, yes, like you, like it's so empowered to find that next piece. And I'm sure that, I mean, Kim, with your clients, we've seen this, you know, over thousands of clients since, you know, 9,000 clients since 2010. Like in this transformation, you see it over and over and over where one part of having community or having a good coach or having good mentor is someone just like you did with your 15-year-old, Kim, of they can hear you and they can see what else and they can ask you in a kind curious way, what else? And you can find those blind spots where you're like, I thought this was the cap of how empowered I was. there's more. Like that's how we change the world is being able to support each other that way and being community that way.

[ 0:32:33 ] Kim Romain: and just like the 15 year old, the resistance is thick with some, myself included. But I want to also normalize that, right? Because again, it's beautiful when it clicks and being asked those questions from a loving, compassionate person who's holding space from you can also sometimes, the resistance can be thick because you're not there yet. And that's okay. Right? That person will still be there and will hold that space for you when you are.

[ 0:32:55 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah. 100%. And that's that safety that we talked about where that's what makes a good coach and a good mentor is someone that can, one, ask you in a way that it brings down that resistance, because they know how human beings work, and then to create that safety, because it's the repeated, I was resistant, and I worked through it, and now I'm more empowered, and I'm still just as loved as I was before.

[ 0:33:21 ] Louise: Yeah, yeah, it's practice. It's practice. We need to do it over and over again, so that it becomes something that is part of us. That authenticity word, right, is really about discovering what are those pieces that are a part of us and being able to shine a light on them so that we can bring them forward in a way that feels really good. Yeah, I love this. I love this conversation. I actually want to go find a swing. I want to go to a playground and I want to sit on a swing. I'm going to want to know like, what does that feel like? Because I feel like, right? Like Kim, you talk about getting in your body and getting out of your head when you're on that swing and you get the little like butterflies, right? You're going too high, you're going higher, you go to higher and you have the butterflies. And it's like, yeah, that's the, that's a place I want to connect to. That's a place where I feel like there's this untapped resource of information and data and feelings and emotions and all kinds of things. Just sit there and it's just waiting for me to tap into it and start bringing it forward into my life.

[ 0:34:32 ] Lydia Knight: That's so good. I love how you have that seeking after the physical experience. Now I'm like seeing you on the swing, like so, so good. So when you're having your physical swing experience, like in real life, one thing to notice is the compulsion of what we have practiced in keeping the momentum going back and forth, how we move our legs so that we're gonna keep on swinging higher. And something that comes up so often is that because that pendulum swing, the we, like you talked about, right, Kim, that it feels so good to break free and have that healing experience. Sometimes we will feel the compulsion to keep on swinging, to keep on having something to react to. So it's a practice to overcome that. Let's keep on swinging and to come to a centered place because it's not what we're we're usually most practiced in. We're most practiced in being reactive.

[ 0:35:24 ] Kim Romain: I love, love, love, love, love that you shared that because one of the things that I realized about myself as I got older is as much as I enjoy the big swing, and I'm actually thinking about like going to an amusement park and when you sit on like the dragon ship or whatever that goes up and down and it's kind of like a gigantic swing, and it's fun and it's thrilling, but when it starts to slow down and you start to find yourself come back, there's a release that comes with it. Yeah, release is the right word that I want to use there. Cause I was like, it's not a relief. Like I get the relief in the, in the either side of the pendulum, the release, the fullness of the letting go comes once it slowed down and comes to center again. But I didn't realize that until I was much older. I just was enjoying going back and forth.

[ 0:36:07 ] Lydia Knight: Mm-hmm. And there is an important part about that, right? You know, that's the swinging, the reaction to the letting go. There is a lot of authenticity we discover there, but the rest is artificial, right? It's like the first momentum, all right, that's part of it. The rest that we create is an artificial, like, well, I'm gonna keep on reacting to it. And it's interesting because, you know, as we have clients celebrate that every year they're like, I didn't know my life could be any better. And then it just kept on getting better. And I didn't even know to even want this. That journey, something that comes up, it's like, my life is better than it's ever been. And I'm so happy. And I have a new emotional home. But nothing quite feels as exciting when I came to you at first and I was in crisis. I was in burnout or I had an eating disorder. Whatever the big problem they were fixing in the first couple of months, like, it doesn't feel as exciting. I'm like, good. because it feels exciting to get out of the burning building. But if you keep on going back into the burning building, because it was so exciting to get out, you're never going to be building the house that you actually want to live in. And that doesn't feel as exciting. It's a practice. It's a brick by brick. And it's a way better life than continuing to run into the burning building. But it's not as thrilling.

[ 0:37:25 ] Kim Romain: Yeah. Well, because you're just, you're, feeding an addiction. You're feeding that drug of that cortisol rush of like, woof, right? I need this. I need this. I need this. And it is so interesting. Like I, for a long time, during my healing journey, it was, is this, is this it? Is this like, am I boring now? And then I realized, I'm so not boring, but I'm also not living at either end of the spectrum. Like that is, do I experience it? Sure. And I even said, as we were coming into this recording, I'm like, it is a day and life is lifing. And I am feeling a little bit of that wee, wee. Not having quite as much fun in it, but it's there. And now at this point, it's so funny, I don't want to be in that anymore. Now I want to be in that place of when I experience it, I keep going back to, I'm so glad I have so many friends in the somatic world. I'm like, send me your best videos because it's like I can do it for myself and it's so much easier when there's somebody supporting us. And so asking for that help to say, I am feeling right, those rushes and that's not my home. My home is that place, that centered place. And what a beautiful gift that you're giving to folks to say, that's actually what you're trying to build here.

[ 0:38:26 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah. 100%. And it really is such a beautiful thing to recognize. Because even on like a neurological level, when you're like, this doesn't feel good because I'm so used to being centered. That is my emotional home. When it feels uncomfortable, you're like, I literally have different neurological connections now. I have a different brain. I have a brain of someone who is calm instead of anxious all the time. It doesn't mean that we don't have moments of anxiety, but it's not our addiction or our everyday or our emotional home. And it's a huge celebration, even though it's uncomfortable. It's like, it's uncomfortable because I'm not used to this. I'm so glad I'm not used to this.

[ 0:39:16 ] Kim Romain: So each of us are having these types of conversations with our clients and our communities in right here. Why do you think people aren't having conversations like this out in the world?

[ 0:39:25 ] Lydia Knight: I think they are more and more.

[ 0:39:27 ] Kim Romain: Mmm, good.

[ 0:39:30 ] Lydia Knight: I think that these kinds of conversations are not ones that get clicks because they're not inflammatory headlines that get paid for ad spend. And I do believe that when you're in this sort of like grassroots, like working with clients and talking with friends and building community, these conversations are happening more and more. So that's my belief. I think we need to have even more of them. And that's why I'm so glad that you're promoting this here. And we're modeling this, we're part of this. Beautiful. It's happening more and more, and more and more people are seeking it. And I think it's happening. And I think it's making a difference. And I think that the established system that doesn't serve any of us, that we're all living in right now, has a really big incentive to make us believe that we are alone in having these conversations.

[ 0:40:21 ] Louise: Yeah, there's so much power that comes when we come back to, right? Come back to ourselves, come back to community and start to recognize what that power really is. Shows up in all kinds of places and spaces, right? In our lives, in our relationships, in the work that we do, in the businesses that we build, all of that, when we can come back to understanding, I say this all the time, like who are we as a driver, right? We're on a road trip, who are we as the driver, what kind of trip are we on, and how do we continue to build those things, those communities, and continue to have those conversations so that everyone can feel more empowered in their journeys.

[ 0:41:04 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah, love that.

[ 0:41:05 ] Kim Romain: So what are the takeaways that we want to make sure that the people who are listening are taking with them? What do we want to highlight and circle and put neon signs around?

[ 0:41:14 ] Lydia Knight: I love that. I would say that you are always empowered to make a choice, to be in curiosity around whatever authentically comes up for you, emotionally or otherwise. We can just give it some curiosity, give it some space, makes all the difference. That the healing journey and coming back to center is more about letting go than doing more. Those are some of I mean, I keep going, but what came up for you?

[ 0:41:39 ] Kim Romain: I love it. Beautiful.

[ 0:41:39 ] Louise: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yes, and all of those things, right? That just the the whole the whole pendulum and the whole like visual and idea of like, how do we come back to self? How do we come back to center? And that's where where that is, right? The bottom of the pendulum, the pendulum, the letting go and the acceptance and the and what that what that really feels like in my body, like really grounded and then coming from that place. And now what? Now what do I get to do when I'm from that place? How do I step into that? I love that.

[ 0:42:20 ] Kim Romain: Yeah, I'm taking away swings and pianos.

[ 0:42:22 ] Lydia Knight: It's perfect. The old piano swing.

[ 0:42:22 ] Kim Romain: Swings and pianos.

[ 0:42:26 ] Louise: Hahaha!

[ 0:42:26 ] Kim Romain: The old piano swing, right? Because we are creating our own symphony. And so to allow ourselves to have, right? It's like, want to even go one step further with the piano to like go to one of those organs that's like, has all the multiple levels of all the keys that you get to play with and the buttons and the levers and all that. So that is absolutely something that I'm taking away. I really want to make sure that people heard because you have more than six emotions. You really, really do.

[ 0:42:55 ] Lydia Knight: Promise, Yeah.

[ 0:42:55 ] Kim Romain: Promise. Play them all. And it's finding those place where it starts to feel safe to experience the language around it. Because you already are feeling all of those things. You just don't have the language for it, and that's okay. And then the swings, it's this beautiful idea of, I still love swings. And understanding that part of my love of swings is finding that place where I get to just be in them.

[ 0:43:11 ] Lydia Knight: Yeah.

[ 0:43:25 ] Louise: So, Lydia, can you let our folks know where they can find you, connect with you, hear more of this juicy, juicy stuff you love to share in the world?

[ 0:43:34 ] Lydia Knight: Yes. So I believe that these kinds of conversations, that's how we change the world. And what our vision is and what might be out already by the time you're listening to this, because we're getting very close, is that we have an app coming out that is woman owned, woman developed. There are no ads. There are principles that we are sharing for that no one used to learn about for under $7,000. They were very high ticket because they're highly effective, taught to executives for the last 14 years. And we have decided to put them on this app for free for every woman in the world. And those who aren't women as well are welcome. But we believe that one of the best chances we have in changing the world and making it a place we want to be is to uplift women and their wisdom and their leadership and their influence. And so we're going to have the She Center app that will be free and open where we're going to be sharing these principles and encouraging women to gather with their communities in she circles and to be learning and discussing and rising together as they have conversations like we've had today about the very principles that are most effective to come back to center. So that is available. You'll be able to find that along with other, you know, upcoming events and beautiful things happening and great resources at theshecenter.org forward slash podcast. And a fun little neuroscience hack is your brain really pays attention to celebration. So as soon as you type in theshecenter.org forward slash podcast, and you see the page come up, like literally do a little happy dance, like where it just by yourself and your living room where it'd be like, yeah, I went there because you went from hearing a conversation passively, I hope it's been wonderful, but passively hearing it to now you're taking action. You're moving your body, you're typing in a URL, you're going to the page. And so you've taken it to the point of action and it's great to reinforce that in your brain. So a fun little neuroscience bonus tip as well.

[ 0:45:34 ] Kim Romain: I love it. so fun, so fun. And what a gift. What a gift that you're giving to the world with this app because, yeah, I can just, I can see the ripples already.

[ 0:45:46 ] Lydia Knight: We're so excited. This has been my healing journey of deprogramming from capitalism, where we're like, all right, what if we were just in a place where we just gave a lot and just see what happens? And I don't know what's going to happen, but we're doing it.

[ 0:45:51 ] Kim Romain: ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. You are not alone, my friend, in that journey. I will say probably 80% of my clients are like, I just want to focus on giving and we'll just see what happens. And we're holding the space for that and just seeing what happens.

[ 0:46:10 ] Lydia Knight: I love that. Yeah, it's happening. It's rising.

[ 0:46:16 ] Kim Romain: It's. Yeah. Yes.

[ 0:46:18 ] Louise: Thanks Lydia, thanks Kim, thanks listener for joining us today. I had a swinging good time.

[ 0:46:25 ] Kim Romain: Aww, buh da boom chh.

[ 0:46:27 ] Louise: Thanks, everyone. Take care.

[ 0:46:29 ] Kim Romain: Bye for now.