In this live session, Susie Taaffe, founder of the anti‑shapewear brand Scanties, shares a personal story of a recent injury that served as a wake‑up call to listen more deeply to her heart. She explains the philosophy behind anti‑shapewear—rejecting uncomfortable, compressive garments in favor of comfort and self‑acceptance—and expands the concept to "emotional shapewear," the negative inner narratives that constrain us. Susie leads a brief breathing exercise to illustrate how proper breath connects us to heart‑centered listening. She then recounts technical difficulties she faced while editing a meditation recording, using the experience as a metaphor for recognizing when a path isn’t working and the need for redirection. A conversation with her friend Anna about a negative gym environment reinforces this lesson, suggesting practical pivots (e.g., switching class times). She references Mercury retrograde as an astrological cue to pay attention to subtle signs. The talk concludes with a call for listeners to notice when things feel off, to pivot toward a better fit, and a personal sign‑off as she heads to her daughter’s basketball game.
Chapters
Hello, welcome everyone to Susie Unshaped. I am new to the live industry, but I am showing up here because I know in my heart that I need to. So yes, it is actually terrifying and I will get better at it. So thank you all for putting up with me as I learn the ropes on how to successfully deliver one of these. Um, I still don't really know where to look or Um, things like that. But I did come on live the other day because the universe, if you weren't here, gave me a very large message with a broken and dislocated finger that I wasn't sharing my creativity, um, from my heart, basically. Um, and so that is why I'm committing now to show up, to share more from my heart, and to help you to dig in to what your heart is actually saying to you. And let us get out of this a little bit. Um, a little bit about me. I am Susie Taaffe. I founded the brand Scanties, which I am calling anti-shapewear because, um, I have decided to start an anti-shapewear movement because I believe that everyone is beautiful as they are. And I think we're calling it, aren't we? We're calling time on, um, being told to squish into things That are 2 sizes too small. And for what? How does it make you feel when you are in something that's uncomfortable? If anything, if you're in anything that's uncomfortable, it makes you feel awful. So we are canceling shapewear. And what I found in my journey is I just thought I was creating a pair of underwear that was super comfortable, smooth lines, um, without the compression. So I thought I was doing that, but really what I was doing is turning off the negative thought pattern that goes on in our head when we feel like we're not enough. So that can happen a million different ways. And so I've now been able to expand, um, Scanty Zanty Shapewear to include the physical product, but also to include the emotional tools that help us to remove all the emotional shapewear that is in our lives that we don't even know that we're wearing. So that is the little voice in your head that says, oh, I should do this, or I really should do that. Oh gosh, I really need to go to that, but I don't want to. That's the voice. That's the emotional shapewear. That's all of the things that actually don't feel good in your heart. So I am on a mission to help you to listen to that. And I have titled this, um, live as, are you listening? Like, are you really listening? Like, the universe smacked me in the face with this. And it wasn't just this, it was like, I've got black bruises up my arm if you can see that. I've got bruises on my hands, on my knees, everywhere. And what I noticed was in the days afterwards, I was like, yeah, okay, I got the message. But We are so conditioned to think from here that we don't even notice the signs when we're being given them. So I was trying to— yesterday on my live, I was talking about how I was going to then try, um, to record a live meditation. For me, meditation is a huge tool to remove the— no, not to remove anything, actually. It's a huge tool to just connect back in here. So, I love meditations with music. Some people like them without, but Beautiful music, deep breathing. Like we could all just take a couple of deep breaths now actually. So breathe in and breathe into your belly like deep, deep down. We all breathe too high up here and if you're not breathing properly you can't listen. Not here, here. You can't listen with your heart. So breathe into your belly and a big breath out and then breathe into your belly again. And a big breath out. And then one more time. And a big breath out. And I know that was random, and I probably should have done that at the beginning, and I probably will in future incorporate that into the beginning. But as I said, I'm learning, so thank you for putting up with my learnings. But what I noticed was I was trying— I said that I was gonna— so I recorded a meditation, I put the music through the sound big like sound system. And I noticed that when I replayed it, it was awful. It was distorted. It wasn't working. It, um, it didn't work basically. So, um, I then was like trying to download it and upload it into Canva. I had another one, a meditation that I wanted to release for you. And a normal process that I would use in Canva to edit them and move it around, it wasn't working. Like the buttons weren't working. Things weren't like I've done this quite a few times now, my Wings of Hope program. I record meditations all the time and release them. And so I've done this a million times and it still wasn't working. And instead, I kept trying to bang the round peg into the square hole. I was banging it and banging it and banging it. And I had completely forgotten my lesson of like, it wasn't working. If something's not working, We're being told something. It's not the right direction. It's like, I love the saying that redirection— no, rejection is just redirection. So if you get rejection in any form, it's actually a sign saying that's not the right way to do this. So it means you need to shift and move into another angle and see. And what is meant to be will be easy. So I hadn't listened to my lesson, which was, if it's not working, that's not the path. So, and that's for lots of things. I actually was talking with my lovely friend Anna, who sat with me in the hospital while we sorted all of this out, and she watched all the gory stuff and I did not. And we were talking about, she was at a gym class and she just joined this new gym, and there was a kind of annoying person that was really negative and, and just negative, negative moaning, basically. Well, like, you know, those, the moaning, groaning. Um, type people. And so I thought about that, and, and Anna was sort of like, how do I manage this? And like, we were making plans, or she could go up to the front of the class, she could try and like wedge herself in somewhere else. And then later that night, I was actually thinking about this same lesson. It's like, if it doesn't feel good, it means you, you, you're the one in control to change something. So I had the epiphany to Anna. I was like, Maybe you're not supposed to be at the 5 AM class. Maybe this is the universe telling you you can actually go to the 6 AM class, which is a double win. Like, you don't need to— you can sleep for an extra hour longer and try the 6 AM class and see if that feels better. Like, that— like, it might just flow. And so it's sort of like giving us a guide. If that doesn't feel good, to try something else. So I'm— so the same goes for tech. And I know Mercury is retrograde at the moment, but I think we need to listen to the little signs. If the button's not working on it, then maybe it's not the right thing to do. So just maybe, um, that's my job for you today is to reflect and notice things. Notice where things aren't working. And if you're doing a me and trying to jam the square peg into the round hole, like hammering it harder, Still won't make it fit. So maybe we need to go in another direction that might have a round hole to go— a round hole and a round peg to go into it. So I'm going to leave you with that thought and just notice in your lives where that might pop up, because I think sometimes we might be doing this the hard way and we're being shown there's an easier way, but we're not listening. So I'm going to leave that to you. I'm going to take my own advice. And now I'm off to watch my daughter's basketball game. So I hope you have a lovely day and goodbye. I love you all. It's not ending. I'm still learning this.
