the Henny Flynn podcast

The Morning of the Soul (S16E9)

• Henny Flynn • Season 16 • Episode 9

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This episode is a bit of a love letter to mornings. Not the jump-out-of-bed, high-energy kind where we hand ourselves straight over to others and give them our day. 

No. 

This is a paean to that liminal space between sleep and wakefulness. To gifting ourselves slow moments to enjoy the dawning day.

I’m talking about real mornings and the metaphorical ones. The ones that come after a 'dark night' or period of wintering - when the world starts to feel a little more possible again.

I share some reflections on how I learned to reclaim my mornings, during my long healing process a few years ago, and how small shifts helped me effectively rewire how I moved through the day.

There’s also a practice I used to do (and forgot about until recently) that involved silently saying “you are beautiful” to strangers on my commute. Sounds a bit odd, I know, but it was surprisingly moving. I share how this morning practice helped me meet the world with more openness... and showed me some of my own unconscious bias along the way.

As often happens with these solo episodes, this meanders a little - from dark nights of the soul to metaphorical sunrises, via gargoyles in London. 

It finishes with a poem from My Darling Girl that somehow landed in my hand just as I finished recording. It begins 'Settle to the morning', which felt pretty perfect.


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RESOURCES

My darling girl vol. 1 by Henny Flynn https://www.hennyflynn.co.uk/my-darling-girl-vol-2

Wintering by Katherine May https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/wintering-the-power-of-rest-and-retreat-in-difficult-times-katherine-may/3408348?ean=9781846045998

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Speaker 1:

I love mornings. It doesn't necessarily mean that I get up at the crack of dawn and leap out of bed with high energy and rushing into the day. No, for me, it's more this slow release from the night and the gentle entry into the morning that I really love. And today I'd just like to say a few words in praise of the morning, the metaphorical mornings that we experience, and the real mornings. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self-awareness with profound self-compassion. I'm Henny, I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self-love. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes.

Speaker 1:

You worked with a wonderful woman who we were working on a project with a big company delivering some well-being podcasts and training in to support their people, and in a flippant, throwaway comment she turned to me and said well, I know that you don't like mornings, so let's make sure that we start a bit later or something along those lines. And I sort of pulled me up sharp and I looked at her and said what do you mean? I don't like mornings. And she said well, you never want to meet first thing. And I said, oh, oh, no, no, um, I think you might have misunderstood. The reason why I don't want to meet early is not because I don't like mornings, it's because I love mornings and I really want to keep them to myself. And it felt like such a kind of a selfish thing, in a way, but selfish in the best possible use of that word word. Um, you know this, this awareness that I finally had, which was that actually for me to be able to really show up as fully as I could, it was better for me to create, um, the conditions that allowed me to do that. And that, obviously is true for all of us. If we have the opportunity to shape the ways in which we work, then we, you know, would always naturally look to well, what are the things that really really serve me, that help me show up to my fullest capability and capacity?

Speaker 1:

And and for me, that means I don't start work early, but what I do do is I lie in bed and allow my head to drift in that space between sleep and wakefulness, in that space between sleep and wakefulness, and even, as I say that, it feels a little like being in a warm bath, this kind of amniotic fluid of the between state, a liminal space, of course, between the journeying that we do at night in our dream world and the re-entry back into the material world in the morning. And you know, I think at times that period of the day has been filled with rumination for me. And even now there are times when I realise I'm lying in bed and it's almost like my body is preparing to run a race. I feel this sort of forward, upward momentum, upward momentum, the, the pushing up and out as the muscles um respond to cortisol, adrenaline, you know whatever um has triggered that release of those active hormones um. And so then this time of lying in bed becomes an opportunity to see. Oh well, how is it if I bring more ease here, how is it if I take a deeper breath and allow my stomach to unclench, my thighs, calves, hands, feet, all to relax and settle back down into the comfort of the bed. I find that a really beautiful practice, just this noticing when the body is pushing up and out and seeing how it is to relax, to soften in. So this experience of mornings and I've actually just had to close the door because there's a lot of farm activity happening next door to us. But I don't know if you could hear the birds singing. And of course you know bird song in the morning is one of the most comforting sounds that we can hear as humans, because when the birds sing it means that they're safe and so we know that there aren't any predators around, and it helps our central nervous system soften and relax too. It's part of our ancient wiring and it's why it's just such a delicious thing to take a moment and just sit and listen to the birdsong.

Speaker 1:

And of course there's also the other aspect of mornings, which is something that I'm sure you've come across this relatively recent research of how important it is that we get sunlight into our eyes each morning. I've seen sort of differing reports, but you know, sort of 15, 20 minutes of sunlight is so important for all aspects of our sort of mental and physical health. As far as I could see, it seems to be, you know, a bit of a kind of wonder experience really that it helps us in so many ways. I think it helps our immune system, it helps our mental faculties, it helps settle our body and of course it helps our eyesight too. I mean, this is sunlight, not staring at the and of course it helps our eyesight too. Um, I mean, this is sunlight, not staring at the sun, of course, but sunlight without, um, you know, rather than uh, sort of, you know, staring at a screen or being in artificial light. Um, so, you know, there are all these wonderful benefits of the morning and and I think this time of year feels like morning, um for many of us, it's a time when we feel more inspired to get up in the morning, um, to get up early, maybe, and and have that bit of time in the dawning sunshine, listening to the birds, maybe your first warm drink sitting outside, or something along those lines.

Speaker 1:

And spring in the calendar, you know, in this seasonal calendar, it feels like this is the morning of the year. So if we've come through winter, the darkness of the year. So if we've come through winter, the darkness of the night, we come into spring. This time of morning awakening, you know the metaphors abound and this sort of energy that we have, you know we, we're really familiar with this concept of spring cleaning. You know, getting ready, energizing ourselves into, you know, preparation for the rest of the year, just as in the morning we're preparing for the rest of the day, and that feels, you know, again, almost like the sort of sap rising within us, just as um sap rises in a tree or a plant, um, and you know. And then we have summer, which is like the, the sort of midday, the early afternoon, and into autumn, the evening of the year, and then back round into winter and the night, and even the movement of the sun echoes this, doesn't it? You know, the sun is higher in the day in the summer, than it is in the winter. So, you know, there are lots of beautiful metaphors here.

Speaker 1:

And there's another one which has occurred to me. If you listen to some of the podcast episodes from earlier in this season, you'll know that I've shared very candidly an experience that I have had recently of going through a dark night of the soul, and there was also the incredibly beautiful conversation that I had with Aislinn Mustan as well, who spoke very vulnerably about her deep experience of her dark night of the soul. And my reflection has been you know that we, we use this term wintering now from, uh, partly from that beautiful book that came out recently, um, but also, I think it's something that we all innately understand that during winter we do winter um as a verb rather than a noun we hunker down, we um, you know, pull up the drawbridge and lower the blinds and uh, we settle in and um, and so it can feel like that when we're going through a challenging emotional state or um, uh, you know, sort of psychological state where we're um experiencing, uh, complexity in a in our inner world. Um, maybe, maybe it's not something that we can immediately explain, you know, anyone who's experienced um highs and lows will understand what I mean by this. You know, these times where um, it's like our system um wants us to winter, for whatever reason, um, we come into a place where maybe the world feels darker, harsher, more complicated to navigate I don't know if you can hear Ronnie chipping in in the background there um, and you know. And then, as we come through um, things feel different. Now, sometimes we navigate our way through these times of wintering with the support of a therapist or or someone like me. You know, someone who supports us with this deep compassion and enables us to um, to explore and navigate what we've um, what we're experiencing in a way that supports us to move through it. Um, maybe, maybe we wake up one day and it just feels like things have settled back into place again, the flood of hormones has shifted and the world feels lighter, brighter and we feel more able to navigate it.

Speaker 1:

And for me, my reflection on this whole theme of mourning is that that then feels like a mourning of the soul, and I kind of feel as though this phrase might be something that we can start to introduce. You know, we're very familiar with this concept of the dark night of the soul, and so what about the mourning of the dark night of the soul? And so what about the morning of the soul? And as I say those words I mean I don't know if you can hear, but you know my voice I feel lighter, I've definitely got a smile on my face and it feels there is a natural warmth, a natural energy to that. And I find it has been really helpful as I've come through my own experience of wintering and the evening the night time rather and into this time of morning, because it has reminded me not to rush. So you see, there is a thread here, roll the way back to the beginning. It has reminded me not to rush, not to rush into suddenly getting really busy or to put pressure on myself to be really productive in some way, or to have to stride out into the world with, you know, high energy and you know a song in my voice and spring in my step. But to remember that actually, for me, I love mornings, and I love mornings when they are languid. I love mornings when I allow myself the time to settle in to what it is that I most wish to be doing with my day.

Speaker 1:

Now, of course, we all have constraints on our time. We all have tasks that have to be done, maybe we have a place of work that we have to get to, maybe we have meetings that we have to attend, and and there are moments and maybe they are micro moments, but there are moments before all of that where we can just take a second to breathe and to allow ourselves to really enjoy that feeling. Now, if we're able to, maybe we can extend that moment out to a few moments. Or maybe we can control how our diary gets filled in some way, gets filled in some way. Perhaps it's possible to start work a little bit later, or to not have our first meeting at, you know, eight o'clock in the morning, which is what I used to do. You know. This understanding of how important mornings are for me has been really vital as part of my own healing journey, and I do recognize that now I do the work that I do and it means that I have far greater control over how I use my time.

Speaker 1:

But even when I was first going through my long healing process, from when I had my last burnout, I still went back and worked in that same corporate city environment. But I was able to put some things in place that really transformed the way that I experienced my mornings and I kind of wanted to talk about this really on the metaphorical level of the morning, of the soul, and the really practical level too. So often I had to still get the same very early train. I was in London before kind of eight o'clock often, with an hour's train commute and a 20 minute drive to the train station, and so I would start to play with things. I would stand in a different place on the train platform than the place where I had stood for years before. So I consciously disrupted my own patterns in a way that I was able to observe myself with love. So initially I was observing my discomfort with it and just letting myself know that I was still safe. It was okay to do it, and I was able to do it with a, with a warm smile toward myself. I'd sit in a different carriage. I started to have chats with people only if they wanted to. I think when I got off the train, I would experiment with walking to the office through a different route.

Speaker 1:

I worked in the city in London, and it's an incredibly beautiful, architecturally interesting part of London, and I would take tiny little cut through alleys and I also started to look up rather than down, if you. You know, when you are in a crowd of people, so often people's eyes are downward, either at their phone, or downward at the pavement, or resolutely staring at a fixed point ahead, so they're not catching anybody's eye or seeing anybody. So I started to look up. I started to look right up at the sky to see the slices of blue between the buildings, and then I started to notice architectural features like gargoyles peering out from the corners of buildings that had just been forgotten. Um, I then came to a point where I started to experiment with something which might feel possible. It might feel really challenging, uh, depending on on where you're at right now, but, um, I would experiment with, um, seeing people. Um, and maybe that doesn't sound quite so radical, but it can feel quite radical when you're used to being in a crowd and ignoring everybody.

Speaker 1:

I would see people really, really notice their faces with love, and I started a little experiment with myself where I would see their faces and I would say to myself or to them energetically to them, you are beautiful. I started to see them through the eyes of their parents or the people that loved them the most, to feel how is it to stand in the shoes of someone that I have never met and gaze at someone I have never met before and simply say those easy, simple words, but with such heartfelt emotion behind them? I never said it out loud, I only ever said it to myself, but energetically. I like to think it sent a certain ripple out into the world, and I'd actually forgotten about this practice until quite recently, and I haven't been in a crowd for a while, but it is something that I'm going to return to, um, and I'd love to know, uh, if you experiment with it, what it feels like for you.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that I found which was particularly challenging about it was when my eye landed on someone that I might ordinarily have averted my gaze from so someone who maybe was appearing with a more sort of complex or aggressive or challenging or lost kind of energy, and it was with those people that I found the exercise to be particularly beautiful, actually because it showed me some of my bias. That's the trouble with bias, of course so often it's unconscious, we don't even know it's there. It showed me some of my bias. It was confrontational for me in that I had to address that and really feel into what is making me want to sort of glance my eye over them rather than follow this practice. And it enabled me, very gently and with deep compassion toward myself and to the people that I was carrying out this experiment, with unwitting participants in this experiment. It enabled me to deepen that practice in a way that I hadn't really understood was going to become available to me when I first started. It was such a whim when I began and it became such a powerful practice.

Speaker 1:

Um, also just one last note on that. It can be tiring, um, just to flag that. So you know I was very mindful not to uh kind of force myself into a position where I kind of had to do it all the time. I would just sort of say, right between here and Blackfriars I will, I will do the you are beautiful practice. So you know, there were a number of things that I did, and then I would arrive at my office and my day would begin, and even through the day I would weave in some of these practices, these same practices that I share with you on the podcast. You know my hand on my heart, taking a deep breath, gazing out of the window for a moment just to catch my breath so many things that I wove in through my day and it just makes me think.

Speaker 1:

Actually, if you're finding yourself struggling with, you know, this experience of maybe maybe you work in the city, maybe maybe there's something there that you've sensed gosh, I really need to bring in some different techniques, some different tools to support me as I move through this part of my life, as I am with this part of my life, and you would like some support, some guidance, then please do reach out. I would be honoured to work with you and to help you find your way, your best way of experiencing your mornings and the rest of your day, in order to really enable you to move through life in a way that feels most true for you, and not with that tension in the body, the pushing up and out that I mentioned before. So, um, so this is one of those episodes um, I've been talking to you with my eyes shut and just sort of allowing the words to come. I hope that this has been of use for you in some way. Um, it's been a wonderful reminder for me of, um, some of those practices that, um, I used to do. And, you know, for two years I stayed in that environment, really really putting all of this, putting my money where my mouth is, literally, and putting all of this into practice. And you know, I think that's one of the reasons why I'm, I feel, such a strong advocate for these self-compassion practices, because I've seen firsthand the difference that they can make.

Speaker 1:

And you know, it is not about waving a magic wand and suddenly everything is okay. It's about really noticing where have we got control, where have we got these opportunities to really change our experience? And for me it all begins in the morning. So, my darlings, I am sending you so much and if you do want to connect with me, I'm going to put a link into the show notes to book in for a discovery call with me. It's completely free, it's an hour.

Speaker 1:

It gives you an opportunity to really understand what it is that you would love to change, because quite often that's the hard part is actually knowing what is it that we love to change, because quite often that's the hard part is actually knowing what is it that we want to change. Where, where is it that we want to head to? Often we just have this feeling deep inside I I know that something is wrong or I know that something needs to change, but I don't know what, and that can lead to us feeling really stuck. So in that hour together we can explore that. You can also ask me any questions you might have about how it is to work together.

Speaker 1:

Um, as someone who listens to the podcast, you'll have some sense of what I'm like, I think. But, um, fundamentally it's about support and challenge, and those two words are really, really crucial to this process. And it's about really enabling you to deepen this self-awareness, because without self-awareness we cannot change. So to deepen this self-awareness with profound self-compassion. And when we have a framework of self-compassion, change becomes so much more possible and for me, it becomes real and lasting. So, all right, I'm gonna say goodbye again. Oh so much love, sending you a hug and a wave.

Speaker 1:

This is turning into one of those phone calls where you know I have to say no, you put the phone down first. And then you say no, you put the phone down first. So just before you do put the phone down, I randomly opened my Darling Girl. This is volume two, and I do love it. I can't remember writing any of these poems, but at one point I wrote a poem about the morning and how perfect that it should have landed in my hand just as I'm doing this recording with you. So here it is Settle to the morning, bring your soul home from its midnight flight. Rise when you wake, slip from the covers, make friends with the dawn, hold this moment, sense every part and only then begin. Thank you,