Heart 2 Talk Podcast
Through an audio diary approach, I will share pages by having conversations amongst insightful people on health, wellness, beauty, spirituality, family and personal stories that inspire. Talks that come from the heart.
Heart 2 Talk Podcast
Tools for Self-Love and Compassion with Mireille Nashimoto
Mireille Nashimoto is the creator of Dance for Life Movement and Healing Arts. She is also a certified EFT coach and mindful movement instructor, that enjoys working with both adults and children. She is a life long dancer and has been passionate about holistic health for 20 years. She strives to live a life that is in balance in mind, body, and soul, as well as with the earth. In this episode Mireille will share tools on how you can embrace self-love and compassion in your life.
Website: www.adanceforlifemovement.com
Instagram and Facebook handles: @adanceforlife
Hey guys. Welcome to Heart to Talk the podcast. I am your host Teresa Caesar, and you are listening to episode 55. A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life. Christopher k Germer. We all try our very best even become masters at hiding, denying, avoiding, and discarding those unfavorable parts of ourselves, our shadows. We beat ourselves up more than we high five ourselves. We focus on our losses more than our wins. We remain stuck in the past, regrets, guilt, and in the what ifs. This keeps us in an unconscious cycle of self loathing and sabotage, and essentially drains our life force energy. While I have discovered the cure, the solution, and that is to embrace self love and compassion as often as possible, as there is no limit when it comes to grace, isn't that a relief? Research on self-love and compassion has proven that this powerful practice assists with improving health, relationships, motivation, performance, self confidence, self fulfillment, resilience, and Emotional balance. You may be asking how, where do I start practicing this self-love and compassion that brings me to today's amazing guest, Mireille Nashimoto Mireille is coming on to share with us tools for self-love and compassion, as well as her incredible wisdom. Now, a little bit more about Mireille. She is a certified EFT coach. And a mindful movement instructor she's a lifelong dancer and strives to live a life that is in balance in mind, body, and soul as well as with the earth. She has been an advocate for sustainable living ever since she began having children for they have inspired the desire to leave the planet thriving for the future generations to come creating healthy and safe spaces for all walks of life is her mission, and she loves bringing people together in. Friends. I bring to you my conversation with my favorite EFT coach and movement instructor. I'm so excited because we have an incredible topic. Tools for self love and compassion, which I think we all, are in need of. Right. But before we dive into that, introduce us to who you are and how you became who you are today.
Mireille:My name is Midday Nato and I am a mother of four beautiful young ladies. I'm a dancer. I'm passionate about sustainability, holistic health. I've performed dance. I've taught dance, and, worked in the world of holistic health through massage therapy, in the past, but currently. Putting together an EFT practice, which is under the umbrella of holistic health. Just another tool, to help guide people through, changes, finding their inner truth, their inner voice, rewiring. Beliefs or patterns that may not be serving them anymore. and so the way I got to be in this place now, has really been catalyzed by being a mom and a woman in this world. And there was a time where, As a mother, I was really trying to juggle the balance of, being a good mom game, being a partner, trying to, fulfill the expectations that there are in our society of what it means to be a woman and having passions of my own. And so, I came to a point where I was feeling challenged and it was a bit of a dark time for me, and I came across eft. So EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and it's, a very simple practice of tapping on acupressure points on the body while you talk through how you're feeling. And, It was such a game changer for me. it gave me such a relief and it gave me a space to say what I was really feeling, cuz I think often I was conditioned, which many of us are to bypass what we really feel so that we can just show up and do what's expected of us and, through just various, patterns or family dynamics I learned to stuff my feelings and to put them in the back burner. And so EFT really gave me the space to allow myself to bring those feelings out, bring them to the surface. And from that place, I really started getting in touch with, on a new level of who I am, what my truth is, and, putting back the pieces of building my own self-compassion and love through that practice.
Theresa:That is amazing. And I feel like we all can relate to what you just said I'm in this space, I do the work and I'm still learning how to honor what I really feel You explain to us what EFT means, why you're doing this, but what is your mission?
Mireille:My mission is to be a guide and to hold space for those who are ready and want to tap into their truths and who might be feeling, that they're in a space in life where they might have a sense of what they want, but maybe they're feeling blocked. And, Unsure of how to move beyond that, and so, I just wanna hold space for people to find their truth and to encourage them that it is safe to feel what they feel and to love unconditionally their process and where they are. And I think the more that, we do that, the more things will naturally unfold for us in our lives. I really love this analogy that my. EFT teacher and mentor gives is the image of an iceberg. And if you think of an iceberg, what you see on the surface of the water above is only 10% of what that iceberg, the body of that iceberg actually is, right. So underneath the surface of the water is 90% of this iceberg. And so we compare our consciousness to an iceberg. What we are conscious of is really only 10% of what's really going on, and our subconscious is that 90%. What I've learned through EFT is that it's really the subconscious that's running the show. And so the more that we can get in touch with what is going on in that subconscious mind, then we can start to put the pieces together and live a life that's more in consciousness of who we are, what we desire. And so really, that is my mission. To. Reinforce the message that our bodies and our minds are gifts. They really are incredible, incredible, mechanisms for great creation. And so I love supporting people in getting in touch with our bodies and our minds and, how we can really create a bridge between the mine and the body to work in cohesion. So that we can create a life that's fulfilling and dynamic and that we feel really good about
Theresa:So when people hear the words like self love and compassion, they think, Oh, maybe spa day, I'm gonna give myself self love. Or they think I'm gonna tell myself positive affirmations, but how would you really define what you've come to learn? Self love and compassion mean to.
Mireille:self love and compassion to me is really being able to hold space for ourselves without judgment, through all of our experiences, and to realize at the end of the day, we're the ones who live with our choices and that there really is no getting it wrong. We never miss what is meant for us. And so if we can view our own experience from that lens and soften that inner gaze, then mm, I love that it allows the feeling of more safety to really live life and, So yes, self-love and compassion. It's, it's holding ourselves in the highest regards. Maybe let go ideas of perfection, that we are right spirits living in this human experience and in that human experience. We are gonna have all kinds of ups and downs and shifts and, and that's just a part of it. So the more that we can embrace that and love it, the easier it gets.
Theresa:Oh, I agree with you. And it's really like liberation, right?
Mireille:Oh yeah, absolutely. It's freedom I mean, that's one of the things that I hold very dear in my heart. Freedom. because then from there we have room and space in our consciousness in what we wanna create. We let go of limitations. Yeah. Freedom.
Theresa:Oh, I love that. so what are some ways or tips that you can give us to tap into that self love and compassion?
Mireille:so the first thing I would suggest is, creating a space at the beginning of the day. Before you start to go into all the things to do on the list, even if it's five minutes, right, just to get in touch with the body, whether it's stretching, breathing, whatever feels good and then, I love just tapping Tapping is another way to refer to eft. So it's not tap dancing, it's tapping on the, your pressure points. to kind of get the brain and the body working together. and this practice I have started implementing and it's really helped me, especially as a busy mother who, an entrepreneur, where, you know, there's a lot of things to do in a day and so. In the past, I used to wake up and start rolling into all the things I gotta do and not really feeling embodied or really present fully or happy as I was moving through the day. So this, short five minutes has really changed things for me where I feel like, okay, I've given the time and space for myself to tap in, tune in, turn on. Be present. So that would be my first tip. And then the other thing I would say is, you could incorporate into that time or another time in your day, start to check in and really allow yourself that time to say how you really feel. You know, even if it's, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling frustrated, or I don't know, I'm not really feeling happy right now, whatever it is. And giving yourself time to vent it out. And that's what I love about the EFT practice is, we do it in stages where we like to gauge things on a SUD scale, which is how much is it affecting you at the moment? On a scale of zero to 10, right? Or 10 is really, really charged. Zero is, you're fine. So if your suds level is a seven or above, then you're pretty charged. And so it's hard to. Try to reframe or, bring in affirmations if you're still really feeling charged, emotionally. So just being honest. And then there's no judgment too, right? It's real. That's where the self-love and compassion comes in. We just meet ourselves exactly where we are, and being honest, really, really honest as you're tapping on the points and. I find that just giving ourselves that permission to say what really, really feel. And then from there, if you're feeling like that SUD scale is coming down, then you can start to engage in possibilities. So this is where what we call bridging the gap. You're on the bridge between where you were really charged versus where you wanna be headed. And it's okay, you can see both ends. It's okay if you're not totally ready, but maybe you're ready to explore the possibilities. And so you would incorporate phrases like, Maybe when I'm ready, or perhaps, you know, what, if. I felt differently about this, or I could see this in a new way, but again, it's really honoring where we are with, with no judgment, unconditional love, self-compassion, And so that's where EFT has been so powerful for me as a tool to, yes, you can dive really deep and go through, something called parts of self healing work where you tune into maybe some patterns that you picked up from when you were a child. and they were all for, you know, purposes of protection and survival. It served a purpose at a time. But as we go through life, then we kind of develop what we call the wounded warrior. So it's like this, almost like a shield or armor part of ourselves because of that, her inner child that we wanna protect that. And so we create shields and which also served a purpose at a time. But as you go through life, we start to realize, okay, those modes of operating no longer serve us. So EFT is a wonderful way to tap into, okay, where do those patterns come from? And with very a lot of love and grace and patience to allow those parts of ourselves to have a voice, to feel safe. And when we're ready. we can choose to let them go and allow that wise woman or inner wise human to shine through. tap being is also a wonderful way to manifest things. When we get to that space of, coming down that emotional scale, then we're ready to start creating and, and so there's so much potential with this practice. That's what I love about it. But the final tip I really recommend and maybe some of you have heard this, there's a healing prayer, a Hawaiian healing prayer, and it's very simple. It's where you're saying to yourself or someone you love. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. And so a practice that I've done and that I would highly recommend is to write a love letter to your body with the, this, structure of the prayer. So where you start with, I'm sorry. Right. Maybe for all the times that I've neglected you, for all the times that I put you last, for all the times that I told you you were ugly, please forgive me for all the times that I pressured you to be something more than you are or whatever it is for you, you fill in the blank and then you move through to Thank you. Yeah, thank you for always being there for me, even when I haven't liked you. Thank you for, supporting me each and every day, walking through this life, and then I love you. And so this is a really powerful practice for many women, any human, but especially women because there's so much pressure for us to be a certain way, to look a certain way, especially when it comes to body. and we don't realize how much it's so subconscious. It's a subconscious, thought pattern of how much we put ourselves down. And that's something. Through this process, I realized, even for me, as much as I felt like, Oh, you know, I'm pretty healthy and I have a pretty good mindset, but then there were times I would catch myself when I'd like pass a mirror and look at myself and then have this negative thought like, Oh, I, I don't like something about what I see. And then I started to really catch myself like, Wow, okay. And again, maybe in the past I would've beat myself up for thinking that way or felt bad, but this is where the self love and compassion comes in and just being Okay. All right, I hear you. I hear that. That's what you're thinking. That's okay. And. What is there to explore there?
Theresa:Those are some great tips How can we find the resources or what do you have for our listeners to be able to, start doing some tapping
Mireille:You can find me both on Facebook and Instagram the tags are a dance for life on both and I actually have, videos that are a basic tapping guide so you can just watch the video and follow along. And I show the different parts of the body that we tap on, and I even have a video there. For the love letter to the body that ho ho, just as a, as an example guide. and Website. It's, uh, dance for life movement.com and all my offerings. Are there ways to contact me?
Theresa:I love it. I'm so glad that you introduced me to the world of eft. And it's just another tool for us, and sky's the limit, right? Is there anything else that you wanted to mention in regards to your work, self-love and compassion,
Mireille:yeah. what's really important to, to realize is that our body always follows our thoughts, and if we can realize that, then we can understand why, maybe certain physical conditions or ailments manifest, often is because, our subconscious mind is speaking to our body and our body is believing that subconscious mind, right? So the more that we can bring awareness to that and invite more consciousness in that space, you'll start to re notice and realize that our bodies starts to shift as well. It's really amazing. And it just to reiterate that our bodies and our minds are such an amazing gift. I think we've only tapped into a very small fraction of the potential that we have, in our own mechanisms. And last, like you said, the sky's limit,
Theresa:I love it. Per tradition, we're gonna close up the episode with three ending questions that I have for you. And the first one, what is your favorite book?
Mireille:there's a lot of great books, but right now my top is a book called The Body Keeps the Score. and author is bessel Vander Col. And he is, a doctor psychologist. And it's all about how, trauma reshapes the brain and the body. And it was really helpful for me to read this because of the work that I do to have more understanding and compassion for those who have gone through very intense experiences in their lives and why they might view or act in certain ways. But through the book also, he shows how there are so many modalities to help rewire our brain neuroplasticity. And that through that we can shift, those trauma responses to something, where we can be more open and really go towards the life that we want. And so, yeah, it was quite a, a great read for me.
Theresa:Oh, thank you for it. I wrote it down All right. In the next question, what is your favorite?
Mireille:so my favorite quote is by the tallest philosopher named Lazu, which says, Nature does not hurry yet. Everything is accomplished. And what I love about this quote is that it really reminds us that. Everything is happening in divine timing everything's happening in balance and. Humans we're part of nature. And so it's no different for us. And I think sometimes as humans, we get caught up in trying to overthink, overdue. and we really put a lot of pressure and, to get things done. if we can just step back and. Allow ourselves to be in the divine flow of things, that things will happen. Whatever's meant for us will will happen.
Theresa:I love that quote. Or in the last one, what inspires you?
Mireille:to piggyback on that quote, nature, nature inspires me. I'm a big advocate for sustainability and looking at the rhythms of nature and modeling living life according to how nature. Runs herself. And yes, there's how we, you know, build structures or how we, use the resources of the planet. I mean, that's a part of it, but I see it also beyond that is, Us humans are part of nature and what it means to be a sustainable human beyond the physical means is also. How we walk through life and how we carry ourselves, the beliefs and thought patterns we're bringing into each and every interaction. are we, managing our energy in a balanced way so that, that's also part of sustainability to me. And so it kind of ties into all this work that I'm so passionate about. And so, having children and wanting to see. Them live in a world that's beautiful, thriving, sustaining really inspires me to do this work and to leave a legacy that can go through time and, create bonds that are strong and beautiful, filled with love and compassion.
Theresa:Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I do hope that you enjoyed my conversation with Mireille Nashimoto and that you're, ready to embrace self love and compassion Reminder, please be sure to download rate and share this podcast with all your friends and family. Also, find me on Instagram and Facebook for updates on other projects I'm working on in future podcast episodes. Otherwise, friends, I'll be back in two weeks.