Warrior Work with Natalie NatNat Bedard: Navigating Emotions with Breath and Compassion

Guest Natalie Bedard, a meditation and breath practitioner who goes by "Nat Nat" and I have a wide ranging chat in Sept 2024 on quite a few meditation, spiritual and healing topics. (With the assistance of ai writing this,) key highlights include:

1. NatNat's Journey with Meditation: Natalie shares her story about facing serious health issues, including lesions in her brain stem and cerebellum, which led her to discover meditation, starting with Transcendental Meditation (TM) and evolving into a breath-centered Vipassana practice. Her meditation helped her process trauma and navigate the complexities of solo parenting three boys.
2. Healing Through Breath and Meditation: Natalie emphasizes the importance of breath as a meditation object and how it allowed her to reconnect with her vulnerability. She discusses how meditation facilitates emotional awareness and somatic healing, helping individuals to process authentic emotions like anger and fear.
3. Challenges in Parenting and Meditation: Natalie talks about integrating meditation into her daily life while raising young twin boys, turning parenting into a spiritual practice. She learned to regulate her nervous system amidst the chaos and distractions of daily life, helping her children develop emotional intelligence.
4. Emotional Intelligence and Trauma: The discussion delves into the challenges people face in expressing authentic emotions. Natalie highlights the need to feel and understand anger, sadness, and fear, framing them as protective mechanisms. She stresses that healing involves befriending these emotions rather than suppressing them.
5. Warrior Work and Radical Compassion: Natalie calls meditation and emotional healing "warrior work," requiring dedication and compassion for oneself. She stresses that these practices are not about quieting the mind but learning to navigate emotions and thoughts with awareness.

NatNat also leads a guided meditation, focusing on breath awareness, grounding the listener in the present moment, and releasing control. We also talk about trauma and she addresses this from lived experience.

Overall, the podcast covers themes of emotional healing, trauma processing, the intersection of parenting and spirituality, and the deep, transformative power of breath and meditation practices.

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