Moving Beyond Ego
Moving Beyond Ego
Podcast Summary
Some conversations do not just inform you. They change you. They land somewhere deeper than the mind and ripple through the body, the breath, and the tender spaces between thoughts. That is what this episode felt like. A remembering. A homecoming. Moving Beyond Ego is not a concept to analyze. It is a living and breathing practice that unfolds each time we catch ourselves in the middle of a trigger, soften into pain, or place a loving hand on the body and ask what is really here.
In this episode, I sat down with Louise to explore the quiet yet radical path of stepping out of ego and into presence. We spoke honestly, not as teachers, but as humans, about the ways we have armored ourselves, how grief became a guide, and how the body continues to be our wisest teacher. This was not a conversation about perfection or enlightenment. It was about the daily, messy, and beautiful work of returning to the self beneath the story. The one who breathes. The one who feels. The one who loves without condition.
Understanding and Moving Beyond the Ego
So often, the ego is painted as the enemy, a part of us to eliminate, transcend, or battle. I have come to see it more gently, as a protective mechanism that formed in response to pain, rejection, and fear. The ego tries to keep us safe by controlling how we are seen, by defending our worth, and by holding tightly to certainty. It is not wrong. It is simply tired and often misguided. When we learn to recognize its patterns, the defensiveness, the blame, the tightening around being right, we begin to move behind it. Not through rejection, but through reverent witnessing.
In this episode, Louise and I spoke about the sacred pause, the breath between trigger and reaction, where we reconnect with our true self, the part of us that sees with love. The soul does not defend itself. It does not fight for validation. It exists in a quiet field of enoughness. When we pause long enough to notice the ego in action, we are no longer fused with it. We can smile at its efforts, thank it for trying to protect us, and choose presence instead. This returning, again and again, becomes the path. We do not transcend ego all at once. We build a loving relationship with the part of us that is scared. And that changes everything.
Working with Emotional Pain as a Path to Awakening
Pain, for me, has always been a doorway. Sometimes it arrives reluctantly, sometimes profoundly, but it is always real. In this episode, we spoke about the raw and unfiltered kind of pain that strips away performance and brings us to our knees. The pain of loss, like saying goodbye to my beloved horse or holding my father in his final days, does not ask for solutions. It asks for presence. When we stop resisting pain, stop intellectualizing it, or trying to rush past it, something subtle and powerful happens. We feel. And in feeling, we awaken.
Emotional pain, when met with reverence, becomes holy ground. We shared how it is not the pain itself that creates suffering, but the resistance to it. The bracing, the avoidance, the belief that we should not be feeling this way. When we give ourselves permission to fully inhabit grief, anger, or heartbreak, the pain begins to move. It speaks. It teaches. Often, it reveals the part of us that most needs love. This work is not about fixing. It is about remembering. The wound becomes a portal. From that space, we do not merely survive our emotions. We integrate them. We become more human and more soul at the same time.
Embodied Awareness and the Role of the Body in Healing
If there is one thing I trust above all else, it is the body. The body holds stories the mind has forgotten. It pulses with intuition, truth, and memory, even when we are not listening. In this episode, Louise and I returned to this sacred truth, that healing happens through the body, not around it. We spoke about how pain lives not only in our thoughts, but in our tissues, our bellies, and our breath. The way home is never to bypass, but to gently arrive again and again with breath and presence.
Embodiment, to me, is not about mastering postures or achieving calm. It is about becoming a safe place for your sensations. When I feel tightness in my chest, trembling in my gut, or constriction in my throat, I have learned to ask what these sensations are holding for me. Through practices such as yoga, conscious touch, breathwork, or even stillness, we allow the body to express and release. It is not always graceful. Sometimes it is messy, tearful, or primal. But it is honest. And that honesty is what sets us free. When we stop abandoning our bodies, we discover that the body was never the problem. It was always the portal.
Conclusion
If you take anything from this episode, let it be this. You are not here to be perfect, fixed, or flawless. You are here to feel. To unravel. To breathe through your becoming. The ego will rise. Pain will come. And yet, none of it defines you. What defines you is your willingness to return to the breath, to the body, and to the truth beneath the noise. That returning is the work. That presence is the freedom.
As we closed this conversation, what lingered for me was not something that was said, but something that was felt. A softness. A spaciousness. A sense that something had been released simply by being seen. This is the medicine of honest dialogue and embodied truth. My hope is that you walk away from this episode not with more ideas, but with more compassion. Compassion for your story, your pain, and the wisdom your body carries. You do not have to rush your healing. You only have to stay with it, one breath at a time.
