Meeting Yourself
The Studio: an actionable practice to navigate your own guided self-inquiry
My last essay, You are more the moment you stop trying to become more , asked you to stop measuring.
In that space, we explored three ideas:
1. that worth is not something you have but something you are,
2. that the body must live truth before the mind can be convinced,
3. that beneath the endless act of measuring yourself is a compassionate observer that was there all along
The first essay names the architecture. Here, we look at where it's running in your life, and we start the actual work.
Part one is a somatic audit. You’ll identify what exists in your life that you feel, on some level, shouldn’t and you’ll move past the story about it into the felt sense.
Part two is a targeted EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping sequence that will change your orientation toward it.
PART ONE
A somatic audit is not a list of stressors, complaints, or things to fix. The goal is not to analyze your life but to learn how to observe your experience.
It is an awareness diagnostic that helps you navigate beyond the stuff happening in your life and shifts awareness to what’s happening inside you in response to it.
Its purpose is to identify where the nervous system is holding tension, resistance, threat, or effort that has become so familiar it is no longer consciously noticed.
We begin here.
STEP ONE: IDENTIFY
Sit for 5–10 minutes in a quiet space, with no phone, and the tools to write what you find by hand.
Ask yourself:
What feels like it shouldn’t be here?
What exists in my life that subconsciously I feel shouldn’t?
Then slow down and scan sensations, not thoughts.
Name it without editing yourself.
Not what you want to change. Not your goals or your plans. But what exists in your life that you feel shouldn’t…
What is in your actual life right now that produces an unsettling sense of wrongness like it doesn’t belong?
This can be a relationship, a habit, a job, a version of yourself, a feeling you keep having, a pattern that keeps showing up.
Write whatever arrives first. You can refine it, but start raw.
Take your time and sit with the feeling of it rather than the obvious answer you think you should give. It’s normal to initially answer from your thoughts, but this question is asking about something deeper.
You can think something is fine while still feeling tension, frustration, fear, or discomfort around it.
That’s why this question is harder than it looks. The mind wants to explain, justify, or solve. Instead, the goal is to simply notice what your nervous system is reacting to. Not the story about it, but the reaction itself.
The most common resistance is answering from the head instead of the body.
A few common scenarios:
A. You might start explaining and telling stories. You might try to justify why something exists by analyzing and trying to solve it.
It’s normal to answer with what you think should bother you rather than what actually does.
B. Or you might minimize your reaction.
“It doesn’t really bother me.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“I’ve accepted it.”
Yet your attention keeps returning to it.
C. You might immediately jump to external circumstances:
“My job.”
“My finances.”
“My relationship.”
When the question is really asking: What are you internally resisting right now?
A useful sign that resistance is present is when there is a strong urge to explain, defend, fix, or get rid of something.
The honest answers are often much simpler than expected. For example:
This constriction when I wake up and remember the day ahead.
This urge to disappear into scrolling the moment I feel even slightly overwhelmed.
This sense of internal resistance when I think about responding to messages or demands.
This bracing whenever I imagine showing up fully as myself.
Most people don’t actually struggle to find the answer. They struggle with allowing it by layering explanations.
STEP TWO: INHABIT
Close your eyes for a moment. Bring to mind what you just named.
Ask yourself:
Where does it live in my body?
Don’t try to locate in your mind. Just feel into and explore where in the body something shifts when you search for it
A tightening in the chest. A hollow in the stomach. A weight on the shoulders. A restricting in the throat. There is no wrong answer. The body is always responding, even when the mind says “I’m fine.”
Ask:
Where do I feel it?
Describe the location and what it actually feels like. Do not try to describe what it means, just record how it feels, just the raw sensation.
It may be in one place or multiple places as the body rarely experiences things in a single location. Let yourself map it without simplifying it.
Ask:
How long has this sensation been familiar?
Is this new? Has it been years? As long as you can remember? Only recently?
Once you’ve located where it shows up in the body, there’s one more question that does most of the work in this practice.
The next move is the one most people skip.
The rest of this practice is available to paid subscribers inside The Studio, a paid practice space of Strong + Sovereign. Subscribe below to unlock the full audit + tapping sequence.
