10. How to Unlock Your Body’s Innate Healing Power Through Rest with Mette Flindt

In this episode, we delve into Mette’s personal journey, and how she shifted her mindset from blaming external elements for her “stress” to acknowledging responsibility for herself.

She shares with us the importance of practices like rest and grounding so that we can create more peace in our bodies. And how we can use it to help ourselves heal.

This episode will give you a beautiful boost of inspiration to make rest a bigger part of your life!

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About Mette
A holistic life coach dedicated to support you in becoming a Super Happy Super Human

• Follow her on Instagram at @dare_to_rest

About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

• @andi.matthies on Instagram
• Be a guest on the podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi M: Hey, beautiful human. I have a great episode for you this week. I sit down with the gorgeous Mette Flindt, and Mette is a holistic life coach who helps us become super happy super humans. In this episode, Mette and I dive into her personal journey and how she has shifted her mindset from blaming those external elements that have caused her stress in her life to really acknowledge and take responsibility of that for herself.

And then through rest, really cultivate this sense of incredible peace and healing within her body. I do want to say that Mette does share her experiences with mental health, so I just encourage you to feel into this before listening. And please don't forget to leave a review if you love it so that we can make sure that it reaches everyone who needs this story. 

Mette, welcome to Body Diaries. It is such a pleasure to have you here today.

Mette Flindt: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Andi M: Oh, me too. So I am so excited to dive in today. I know you've had a really interesting journey with your body, so that is the perfect place for us to start today. What has your journey with your body been like?

Mette Flindt: Okay. So we have to go quite far back like 10, 15 years. I was. I was a very high performing person, like wanted to do everything in no time, the classic, always being busy andI saw my body as the machine, the vehicle that was going to get me there, but I didn't really care about the state of the machine.

it just had to follow along. I could fuel it with whatever, and I just expected it to just always be working at its peak state, but that just wasn't the case. So I I was a healthy person. Like I did a lot of exercise and I ate what I believed at that stage was healthy.

But I never really had the perspective of. My body is more than just a physical being. So what I did was I pushed so hard for so many years. I had a dream that I wanted to be a CEO or CFO by the age of 30. So I just pushed and pushed and I worked and worked.

I didn't sleep. And I kept doing all these very masculine training exercises, all very high performance driven all the time. And yeah, to no one's surprise, eventually that clashed. And I remember one morning. Sitting in my kitchen feeling like there was just a fog all around me.

And then I got up, ready to do the dishes. It was early morning. I was going to go for work. And then I just collapsed on the kitchen floor. The tears just started streaming down my face. And I said to my husband, then boyfriend I can't do this anymore. And then my whole world just collapsed. And prior to that.

I had so many severe symptoms of stress. But at that stage in my journey, I had no idea about the mind body connection. So just to give you an idea of what the symptoms was, I had cystitis, more or less, ongoingly eventually it's just,I just called my doctor and he was like, oh, again, and then he just prescribed me the medicine, no need to go there and just like to prove that I was actually ill.

He was just like, okay, the symptoms, you're just going to get it. I had, I think it's called tendinitis, like inflammation in my wrist all the time. Sometimes I wasn't even able to punch on a keyboard. It was just, it was so painful. So my body was like so inflamed, like ridiculously inflamed.

I had very high amounts of pains when I had my period. And I did a lot of CrossFit at that time. And I just always got injuries and always on the left side of my body, like the feminine side. Yeah. And I had all the tensions on the right side, like neck, shoulder issues, all the things.

 But I never, ever thought that it was like a sign of stress. I just thought that my body was not working the way I wanted it to. And then I just got so angry with it and then I pushed harder. 

Andi M: I find it really interesting how you describe your relationship with your body at the time as this machine to get you there, and that you're in this masculine, high performing energy constantly. And I guess I'm not surprised when you talk then about the issues showing up on the feminine side of the body.

So I was just really wondering, where do you think that came from? Where did that drive to be in the masculine energy and this machine type viewpoint of your body? Where did that start?

Mette Flindt: Ooh, that's a big question. Of course we have all the conditioning from our society. We have to work hard to be a success. But I think we can blame the conditioning from our environment, our external environment. But there's also all these internal things. And I guess one of the things for me is I'm a little sister.

And I also, I started school early. So I was always the youngest one. I felt like in myself that I had to prove. That I was good enough or the best to be allowed to be where I was. I was, I always had someone to live up to and it wasn't someone else who imposed this on me. It was just my feeling of, I have to do that in order to be worthy and to be loved and to be allowed where I was placed.

So I guess that's where it came from. And when you are an ambitious person who have a lot of dreams, it's just, you also have this inner fire that's just gonna drive you. And it's amazing to have that drive. But you also need, it's like you have this fire, but you need to regulate it somehow.

 we don't wanna let it burn out, but we don't let it wanna let it go everywhere. So for me it was also very much just my experience of being in the world, of how I wanted to prove that I was good enough to be in the world.

Andi M: I can relate to that so much. Particularly that need to want to be permitted and to relate in the world. That stems back such a long way for me as well. Do you have distinct memories as a child of that showing up?

Mette Flindt: I don't think I have particular memories but I really do think it comes back to this the sisterhood boon of always comparing to my older sister. I felt and I love her. She's my one and all. But I really felt She was the good kid. She was the one who, and it's fun actually, because if you ask her, she'll tell the same story, just opposite about me, and I guess that's what we all feel.

 that sisterhood wound, but I was like she was so good. My parents loved her. She didn't make all the fuss and all the noise that I did because I was a loud kid. So I thought that was the pose, the way I was supposed to be. And also like the whole way we praise each other is always we praise each other for our doing and all our accomplishments, but never for our being.

And if that's the only way you've received love, of course, that's just what you're going to do to get more. So I guess that's the reason I don't really have that particular, just one point where I was like this is where it showed up. It's just, it was a general feeling.

Andi M: I love how you just mentioned there about seeking that praise, like using praise as a receiver of love. And it's interesting, these Early conditionings end up being stress triggers for us later on, which brings us back to what you were talking about before with stress and the impact on your body. And so I'd love to get deeper into what has stress been like for you?

Okay. So yeah, of course there's the whole, the physical aspect of stress with all the inflammation and the inability to sleep and all the things. I also completely lost my ability to focus. It was so hard for me to concentrate and whenever I spoke, I could stop like mid sentence and not even knowing what I was saying.

Mette Flindt: And I was unable to finish the sentence. I completely lost everything. So it's also very much like you could say a mental block for your full expression. And of course there's also the emotional side. 15 years ago, I was a person who never ever cried. I thought crying was weakness.

 I guess that comes back to I had a mother who used tears. As I experienced it as like a manipulation tool when I grew up. So I was just like. No tears. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that person. So I never cried.

But when I got that severe stress, I just, cried for two weeks full. I felt like all the crying I hadn't done my entire life. it was coming out of me. It was so crazy. So stress is also very much impacting us. Emotionally, of course but when I had the stress, I wasn't even able to feel anything.

 I was actually, I was just numb. I couldn't feel the fact that I felt unworthy or anything. I was just completely empty. So there really was no connection to the deeper aspects of myself. That's actually pretty scary, because that is actually also what stress does to us. It numbs us, and in order to, if you don't have the severe stress, but you can't do anything like fully mobilized, but then what stress also does to us that in order to try to feel something, and we actually need, we need more extreme input To be able to feel something.

And that's also horrible as well. And that means that we'll push harder. We'll be a little bit more provocative. We manipulate a little bit more, and we push other people's buttons. Because we get so addicted to that stress feeling in our bodies. That known feeling of just, at least I know what this is.

So yeah, stress is just... Let's do everything we can to avoid it in our life. At least, in the large scale.

Andi M: I love that you've just talked there about this addiction that we get to stress. And even if it's not an external addiction that we're aware of, there's that internal state of stress that our bodies become addicted to and therefore are constantly trying to generate that.

How did you see your body starting to generate stress to feed this addiction, Whether it was external or internal.

Mette Flindt: So for me at that stage, it was external for sure. As I said, I had no connection to my emotional body. I was just head on. So what I did is I always busied myself with everything. I did a full time job where I worked like 50, 60 hours a week. And on top of that, I was taking a university degree like part time.

And so I always kept myself busy. I was afraid of just. Being in stillness, because I felt like I wasted my time, and if I wasn't doing, I wasn't worthy I felt so bored, if I just sat down doing nothing, I was like, I'll never get this moment back, I have to do something, I have to perform, I have to be someone for some, For someone, even for myself.

 And it wasn't only on my job that I was like a high performer. It was also in all my relationships. So with my friends, I was always the one like arranging the parties, like planning for vacations. It was everywhere. And I was shit. I was so bad at receiving help because I was like, if someone wants to help me.

Then I'm not capable for myself. So I suffered from that lonely wolf syndrome for sure.

Andi M: Oh my goodness. I can relate to your story so much, particularly the filling, filling the gaps, filling the moments, filling it with busyness. You mentioned boredom there, but I'm wondering, did you also have the element of who am I if I don't have others around? And who am I if I'm not doing something?

Cause I know that is cropped up a lot in those moments for me in the past, where it's like, Well, I don't want to be alone, or I don't want to have nothing on because then I have to actually address some of these questions that are floating around in my 

Mette Flindt: recognize that as well, for sure. But I'm actually not sure at that stage in my life that I was even aware that I was. I was scared of the stillness for that reason. but for me, it was just like a constant need for doing or for being with other people because just being me wasn't enough.

So I always saw that I needed to be with someone or I had to do something in order to just feel again, like good enough to be alive. And I was like, if other people watching me and I was just all alone, what would they think about me? It's just. Oh, it was such a horrible place to be that, that we can't be alone with ourselves and we might not even recognize the fact that we are afraid of being alone because we have internal things to process.

That's actually the worst part. 

Andi M: It's interesting how it's such a process to actually become aware of how we're feeling about things. We often just go into these automatic programs and behaviors, like we were talking about, filling it with things, filling it with people, because we're not actually aware enough to Know what's really going on underneath.

So I'm really fascinated to know when was that turning point for you? When did it start to shift from the acting and the behaving in that certain way to having that realization of, Oh, actually, I think this is what's going on and this is what I need to do to start moving through it. 

Mette Flindt: So my actual stress process was actually when I look back again, I'm like, how did I even get out of it? As I had all this stress, I totally denied it. I didn't want to show the world that I had stress. So of course, I didn't go to work and I wasn't working for six months, but I was still finishing my university degree.

And I was still doing a lot of other things, but I felt so, so horrible inside. So at that stage, actuallyyou could say I had this huge awakening of Shit, something's wrong with me. But it took me years to allow myself to go into the process. So if you can say the whole stress episode and just like trying to make sure that my body wasn't completely locking down took me like six to 12 months.

But after that, I spent two, three years just being so freaking scared that I was going to end up there again because I hadn't gotten the tools. So I spent so much time in my life just deep in fear. 

When we have all these survival emotions, then we're unable to like to raise our awareness and see ourselves from a different perspective. And I guess that's also a big issue like when we come back from work, like people expect us to be well. But really this is where the journey starts, if even there and then we can move forward.

So for me, it took so long time to, to allow myself to get to that phase. And it really was when I started going deep, I've always practiced yoga or. Always for a very long time, but when I actually allowed myself to go deep into the yoga philosophy, the anatomy, then I really saw this awakening of the mind body in a new way.

It wasn't just I have a head and a body. I saw the whole collaboration. I was like, Whoa, this is where it starts. And that was actually my catalyst to understanding. What had happened to me back then? And then it just moved from there. Going forward. Raising the awareness, understanding all the wounds, and all these things that we've been talking about.

What were the drivers that got me there? Because when I had stress, I was just looking for the one reason. Why did it happen? What was the key thing? And who gave me stress? Because I actually saw it as something outside of me. And I guess that's the whole ego journey, right? That it's so much easier to point at other people, give other people the reason for why we feel the way we feel.

So that awareness process of taking it in and saying, okay, so I made this happen. This came from me. It's a journey. Of course, it can go fast. And I was definitely not fast in that process because I was so afraid of killing my ego, the person who was this high performance person who could do everything, anything in the shortest amount of time.

I could not let her die.

Andi M: Oh my goodness. That killing of the ego and the fear of that is familiar for me. 

And I also. I really felt a hit as well when you were talking about binding the blame or finding the external reason for the stress.

 So I'm interested to know, how did that start to shift for you? To go from the external blame and that fear of killing off who you were, which was blaming the external stresses, to really start going, actually, I think this is coming from in here and here is this nugget of where it's coming from.

Mette Flindt: So again, that was a process. I don't have that one particular moment where that happened. I realized that I'm the sole creator of my life. And the more time I spend in victim mode blaming other people, the more of my life I waste. And as I said initially that's one of my key things.

Time is such an important thing for me. I don't want to waste my time. So it really just was the awakening that like, shit, yeah, things can happen to me, but I get to decide how I want to respond. I get to decide what happens from here. I get to set the boundaries. I get to leave people alone to say you can't be in my life or to have the conversations with them.

But what I also realized in that process was I was missing so many tools. I didn't know how to do boundaries. I didn't know how to do the kind, loving communication. I even realized I wasn't sure I was able to love at some stage. So I had so many things while I was like... Shit, I don't even know how to be a human.

I know how to do all the doing. I know how to be the machine, to be acting, to be performing, to do everything. I could just do that with closed eyes. But the actual humanness, just interrelating in a way that felt good to me and the other person, I needed to learn that. And that's actually how I dived into the whole personal development space, because I was like, shit, I'm an adult human.

I don't know how to be a human. Help!

Andi M: Oh my goodness, I love that so much. 

 One of the things that you said earlier that I want to go back to and ask you on is This feeling of I'm going to end up there again. That feeling I really know is there's been lots of challenges in my life, whether it's the bulimia or the binge eating or the periods of depression that I went through, or even just some of that sort of self loathing and self doubt that we often fall back into.

Every now and then that thought will come back into my head of, Oh my goodness, I'm back there again. I'm just wondering if that still comes up for you. And when it does that fear of going back or being dragged back, how do you manage that? And how do you move through that now?

Mette Flindt: So that actually doesn't come up for me anymore. And it feels wrong even to just be saying that but I am so grounded and centered in myself now that I know my boundaries. I know what I'm capable of and in the whole taking my responsibility back to myself, I also realized like I don't need to be carrying this fear anymore because I can always say stop. And that's just, that was a huge shift for me. And again, it wasn't that one magic thing I did. And then that's how I felt. I decided that I'm not going to be the person who carries this fear anymore. Of course I can feel fearful, but I actually don't feel fearful that I will ever get stressed again.

And that's just such a calming, soothing, nurturing, loving thing to be able to say for myself. Because I know that I'll never get there. Because I know my body, I know my symptoms, I know my mind. And in, in knowing myself as well, I'll never allow myself to feel that bad ever again. And how I do this, because I still want to answer your question is of course I always make sure that I ground myself.

I'm connected to myself and I have a practice of just like checking in with myself. How am I feeling? 

I can just build a practice that helps ensure that I'm always on track. And of course there are deviations, but I'll never allow myself to go all the way back into my stress hole or a depression or whatever it is.

I've had depressions as well. It's just. My life is so much more worth than that, and I'll never ever allow myself to get there.

Andi M: I love that. And it's really interesting that you talk about grounding in terms of nothing has happened. But actually that's exactly what has happened. And it's interesting how sometimes we're trying to move in or we're trying to shift ourselves into these optimistic, positive, overly gushy kind of energetic states.

Whereas what's actually really important is getting that grounding, getting that base, getting that steadfastness so that we know within ourselves that we're actually not slipping back. It's just a thought that's popping into our minds, a little fear that we can then quickly nurture and talk to alleviate.

I'd love to learn a little bit more about your grounding practice, what that looks like, how you found it, and when you tend to use that the most.

Mette Flindt: Of course. Grounding for me can be very different. It's actually really funny. I once met a wonderful lady who just, she felt my energy, my vibe and my fire. And she was like, You are never going to grow roots anywhere. And I just remember feeling so bad. I was like, what? Do I have to grow roots?

So I actually think it's super important like to understand that, that grounding doesn't necessarily mean stillness and that we just stay in one place. Because some people actually think that, and that we have to sit still. And I'm a manifesting generator. So I am all about the fire and doing all the different things.

So I don't have one particular practice. I make sure that I have time to do a grounding practice. And then on the day I feel into what is it? Sometimes it's yoga. Sometimes it's just earthing, like putting my feet in the grass, in the sand, whatever I have available, hugging a tree.

Sometimes it's breathwork, sometimes it's just like deep journaling, be chanting, or it could, sometimes it's just like talking to another person who is spiritually awakened, who knows about these things. So for me, it can be. Anything. And I just love that because I hate routines. And I know a lot of people feel that way as well.

So let's not get stuck on the idea that we have to do just one thing to ground us. We have to find multiple things. That can help us depending on our mood, depending on where we are, because sometimes it could be a long practice and other times it's just like three deep breaths and then I'm good. So for me, it's super, super important that we have a lot of different tools that can help us depending on where we are and how stressed the state we are in, because stress is all around us everywhere. We just need to find a way to regulate and ground ourselves to balance it out.

Andi M: I love that so much. And I can really relate because I'm a generator as well. So moving, traveling, I spend a lot of time traveling and taking my business into different countries overseas and having a practice that isn't formulaic and routine and has to follow an ABC is so critical. So I'm so glad that you shared that because quite often.

We think that we need to have the same routine every single day and the same visualizations and the same types of practices. But some of the things that you've just touched on there, whether it's breathwork, whether it's toes in the sand, or even a conversation with someone who's on the same frequency.

I love that. And how we can pick and mix and bring into our day. The thing that our body is calling for and is right for how we're feeling in that moment. That's beautiful. I love that so much.

Mette Flindt: I also think that like, it's super important to put this aspect on it as well, that some days we need a long practice and other days we need nothing. Most people are like, I want to get out of the hamster wheel or whatever people prefer to call it dropping the autopilot. but then make sure that the things you do that you love.

Don't make them into a habit that feels like another thing on your to do list that just has to be checked off. Like, how can you make it fun and available for yourself so that you can actually take pleasure as you do it? And that is really important in your grounding, spiritual, whatever you want to call it, practice.

It's just, it has to be something that feels alive and makes you feel good. So also not like feeling bad like, oh shit, I don't have time to do an hour of yoga today. No, but maybe you have five minutes to do breath work, or maybe you have five minutes to like put your feet in the grass or in the sand or whatever like, what can you do for yourself that's manageable so that you actually still connect to yourself and not always having to put things on The highest standard always sometimes life happens and then we just adapt. 

balance isn't something you find, it's something you create. And that is actually one of the things that it differs. Life differs every day, no two days are the same. So we have to be able to just adapt as we go along.

Andi M: Yeah, I love that. And that is a perfect segue for me to ask you, your brand is Dare to Rest. So I'd love to dive into Dare to Rest. What does that mean? What does that entail? And how do we start to embody that? Because Often we don't give ourselves permission to rest. It is seen as a laziness or it is seen as something that is against our productivity and our need to keep validating ourselves in this world.

So I would love to get your take on that.

Mette Flindt: Yes, so it's actually really fun. I started dare to rest as just being like teaching yoga. And I started that five years ago and the name just came to me and I've had doubts about everything in my business ever since. But never the name. it just, it works. So it's really fun. First of all, I want to say Dare to Rest isn't just about the physical rest.

It's also the whole, we have to learn how to rest in ourselves. So really it's like, it's the physical, it's the emotional and it's the mental aspect as well of being able to, to know who we are. And in my business, I work with different like awareness tools of finding back to ourselves. I love human design.

I'm also a numerologist, so I use that as like, a structure to finding our way back to who we are. Because the fun thing is, and I guess you know human design as wellit's not like new knowledge when we have those readings.it's a remembering of, holy shit, yes, this is who I am.

And it's so empowering To be reminded, of who is it that I am because we can get so lost in all the competition and all the doing and all the things and all the achieving. So it's just, it's so amazing to have these tools to help ourselves back. And of course, if you look at the more physical aspects of rest I talk a lot about breath work, about how to regulate your nervous system.

I talk about sleep as well. I'm actually a sleep coach. When I was ill, I slept, and the period prior to that, I slept four or five hours per night. And I just told myself like, I'm a person who doesn't need sleep. Yes, I was wrong. So sleep is super, super important. And I love to talk about sleep.

I have a self study program called Mastering Sleep that you can take anytime where people like really learn to understand the benefits of sleep because it's a body first approach in Dare to Rest. We have to make sure that our bodies are safe and well.

If we're not feeling physically well, we have one dream, that is to feel good, and when our body is well, then we can feel all of our dreams. 

So, a body first approach. And then we work with the more like emotional aspects and some of the things that you and I have been talking about as well, all these different wounds, the traumas that we're carrying, the emotional trauma that we're carrying.

And then, of course, I also want to help empower people, like give them the tools for learning how to communicate, how to set boundaries, how to open up to the fact that everything is energy. It's so mind blowing sometimes and our logic mind just really wants to resist it. And again, it's our egos who's taking the charge. but there's just so much more to us than what the eye can see.

Andi M: I love that so much. I think the first thing that you said around the remembering is so beautiful because we are more than just the experience that we've had. In this particular lifetime, there is a remembering of our ancestral energy that sits in our DNA. There's the remembering of our past experiences, as well as the remembering of our potential that we're yet to step into.

Mette Flindt: So that's incredibly powerful to start doing the practices that help us remember and then reconnect. And reintegrate back into that and then step into our full potential.And if we round back to the praise we talked about initially, that's actually where a lot of people get lost, myself included, because if we get praised for doing things that don't come natural to us then we tend to do those things more often than we just were bound to a life in struggle.

And like, why? If we can do what we're naturally good at, Why not follow that path? It's just, yeah, again, and that's another aspect of the rest. We have to learn to rest in the abilities that just come natural to us. And that's the whole remembering piece of who we are.

Andi M: The abilities that come natural to us. I love that. And resting in that. Can you dive a little bit more into that for us? What does resting in our natural abilities look like?

Mette Flindt: It doesn't look like anything. It feels like something. it feels like peace. It feels like being in your true self, like the whole pushing and prodding and trying, like having to perform to be someone. You can just let go of that because it's natural. It feels right. It feels,peaceful.

When we allow ourselves to align with all the things that come natural to us, we get more energy to grow ourselves in other areas. So all the energy we normally spend on trying to be someone we're not is all of a sudden released.

And then we can actually do more. And that's one of the things I talk about a lot as well. It's like, how do we step into this moreness of life, like more love, more joy, more, whatever we want, success, whatever it is. So that's also a part of the whole equation.

I really resonate with what you said there. And I guess a lot of people spend so much time trying to figure out what are those natural abilities that I'm meant to be? So in your work and in your experience, how does someone start to unpack and understand that when we're conditioned to kind of poke and prod, and make ourselves to be these things that either society expects of us, or we expect of ourselves.

 First of all, I really do love these awareness tools, like human design, numerology, astrology, whatever you prefer. It helps us just to see where we, who we are, but one thing is it's the knowledge.

The next step is actually integrating it into our life. Because again, it's our logical mind is like, Oh, I know, yes, but it has to come all the way down. So what I want to help people do is first to get the awareness and then you integrate it. And how you do that, you practice, and you can do that yourself. But if we are in an environment where everyone, everything else stays the same, it's just so hard for us to change as well. And that's really where the whole coaching aspect comes in that having someone who sees us. For who we are without our past. it's so powerful because then we can actually lean into the change, into the new person that we want to be.

And in saying that I'm not like, you have to get a coach in order to succeed. it makes it so much easier. And coming back to the ease part, a lot of people have resistance on getting this help because. It's less, they or what they do will be less worthy because they got the help, as I talked about earlier as well.

So, so even though we are progressing in our development, it's the same issues that we're just going to see over and over again, just in different areas. buT really, in order to get these, this awareness and leaning into ease is. We have to do the inner work and no matter how you do it, it can be in silence.

It can be meditation. It can be in getting these different readings. It could be having the coach. It could be joining different develop personal development programs. There's so many things to do. You just have to do something different than what we did yesterday in order to get a new result.

I love your advice around coaching. And I know that some of the significant shifts that I've made in my lifetime have been working with others. Often when we're on this spiritual journey and we have tools, we do a lot of the recoding, a lot of the healing work on ourselves. And that is incredibly powerful, but often we hit those thresholds where either our energetics or our mind just can't quite get into without the... conditioning of the baggage. 

Andi M: And So I want to loop back into your journey with your body. What is your relationship with your body now that you've done all this work look like now? And how has that shifted? And are there any areas that you're still moving through with a vision for how you want to have a relationship with your body moving forward?

Mette Flindt: Yes. So all the work I've done, I still do. Of course, as I said, it's it's on a different stage, like a spiral, like we, we go up, but it's the same things that we meet on and on. And I have deviances in my energy and how my body feels. But the way I approach it it's so much different.

When something was wrong with my body, I was like, what did I do that caused this? Or what external thing happened? And now I'm like, okay so, so what is it that I'm feeling? And I'm not saying of course, we can have some sort of immediate trauma that can impact our bodies, but most often it's not. So, so it really is What am I feeling? What can be causing this is super, super important to me. I also don't shame my body for not being in perfect shape. I used to do that either if it's like excess weight or if I have pain or if it's just low energy. I was just, I got so angry and frustrated with myself, like, why?

Why do I have this pain? Why can't I just, and now I'm like, okay. Let's breathe. Let's just sit for a while. I rested myself. Ask what's wrong? What can I do? And sometimes it's just like time. Sometimes all our body needs is love or attention or freaking break or more sleep, whatever. So I really have rather than just like being focused on finding the external thing that kind of okay, how can we improve together?

So it's not me and my body. Two separate things. Now it's just, we're an entity. So I've really built a relationship where I'm able to tap into my body and say, What do you want? And then my job is to give it what it needs. So, so That is the huge shift. And of course, also, the whole, as we talked about the grounding practice.

Checking in with myself on an ongoing basis is actually what helps my body feel safe in my relationship. It knows that I'm there, it knows that I'm not going to shame it or hate it. Though of course, I'm a human, I sometimes still hate myself and I sometimes shame myself. But it's just at such a smaller scale, so it feels good now.

Andi M: My body is happy about me and I'm happy about my body. Oh my goodness, that is such music to my ears, particularly someone who has been in that shame cycle in the past. And there's some beautiful tips there that you've just shared on how to come back into that sense of self love. So I want to ask you, if there's anyone listening who wants to connect with you, to go deeper into some of these tips that you've shared and work with you ongoing, what are some of the things that you're running at the moment that we might be able to hook into?

So if you want to follow my work, I'm most active on Instagram. That's dare underscore to underscore rest, 

Mette Flindt: And 

 I have different programs running all the time. Some are very mindset focused, some are very body focused. And of course, there's also always possible to reach out and ask if one on one coaching is a thing.

So multiple ways of getting in touch with me and working with me. And I love having more people in my world. So feel very welcome.

Andi M: Absolutely. It sounds magical, I am definitely going to drop the links to that in the show notes so that everyone can connect with you. And if. Rest is something that you've challenged with.I definitely recommend that you reach out and connect with Mette when that feels good because rest, as she said, is so, so important, particularly In reconnecting with ourselves and then being able to step into our full potential.

So Mette, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for diving into some of the challenges that you've had on your journey. I really appreciate you going into that and sharing all of the learnings that you've had. It's been such a delight to chat with you today.

Mette Flindt: It was so nice to be here. Thank you so much.

And this is such a beautiful conversation with Mette. If you feel drawn to work with her further, please do connect with her on Instagram at dare_to_rest. And as always, if you're feeling curious. Or the pull to explore what working with me could look like. I do encourage you just drop me a message on Instagram at @andi.matthies, and we can dive into a no pressure chat around what it is that you're craving and how we could potentially do that together.

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.