A short YouTube video by Siobhan Wilcox (Day 20 of a parenting-autism series) where she reflects on how silence—experienced during a yoga class and encouraged in everyday moments—helps her process thoughts and emotions. She contrasts silence with common distractors (radio, TV, music), explains that awareness of thought patterns is necessary to shift stress responses, and issues a challenge for viewers to try periods of silence and share their results. The video ends with contact information and invitations to engage further.
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Day 20 of parenting. Autism, real and raw. Thank you so much for taking the time to come back and join me again today. I wanted to reflect on a thought I was having as I was driving home today from yoga. I got to take a yoga class in around two weeks, so it was really refreshing for my body to really take that time out to do some deep breathing, to challenge myself physically, to lie down, to relax. It was just yummy. It just felt really yummy for the body. But what I reflected on then as I was driving home was, you know, how I was able to process some of my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions while during the yoga class. Because of the silence, frequently we distract ourselves during our day. We have the television going in the background, we have the radio going when we're driving, or some music on when we're driving. And what I've discovered, unless for me personally, it is like a sacred chant in the background or some soft drumming, Native American Indian drumming music, or indigenous tribe drumming music, where it's meant to deepen your relaxation. It's a really nice distractor. It's a way of pulling you out of what you may need to be focusing on and thinking about and acting as a dampener. So many, many years ago, when I studied to be a stress management consultant, one of the challenges we were given was to see if we could spend time in silence. Time in silence when we drove our cars, time in silence when we were at home on our own. Wow. This was a new experience. At the first I was like, you don't think you go, that's easy, yeah. Then your fingers automatically going to push that button as you're driving along so you can sing it away. And not that music is a bad thing. I think music can really shift your energy and I use it a lot at home. But it also can be a distractor when there are things that you need to work through, focus on, or shift emotionally for yourself. So I want to just maybe put that challenge to you and see how you get on with it. See if you can spend a day or two without putting the radio on in the car when you're on your own, obviously when the kids are in there, sometimes it helps to soothe them or keep them calmer. That's all good stuff. But if you're on your own in the car, can you be on your own with yourself comfortably? Can you listen to your thoughts and the thought patterns you're running? Sometimes people think that they're getting much more stressed, they're getting much more anxious, they're not. It's just they're aware of their thoughts, they're aware of the patterns they're running. And until you actually gain awareness, there's nothing you can do to shift the place you're in. Awareness is the key piece in being able to move forward and balancing your body more disengaging from that stress response in your life. So just a thought, a challenge even. Can you do it? Do you do it already? What has been your results? If you already do it and you find it helps, you just share. Inspire other people, help them shift through some of their stuff with your inspiration. I'd love you to share that. I'd love you to share. If you try it and you like it. If you try it and you don't like it, I'd love to hear that too. It's all about co creating together and working as a community to figure out what works, what doesn't work for you and how it helps. So thank you. It's so wonderful to be able to connect with you so frequently. As always, you can email me@siobhan autismexpertsalliance.com I love getting your emails, I love hearing your comments below. And you can like the video, you can share it with other people. That will be wonderful. And you can register for our upcoming teleseries@autism expertsalliance.com I look forward to connecting again very, very soon. Have a wonderful and blessed day.
