In this guided talk, Susie Taaffe invites listeners to quiet mental chatter and reconnect with their heart’s intuition. She begins by emphasizing belly breathing as a primary tool for emotional support, explaining how deep diaphragmatic breaths can calm the nervous system. Susie contrasts the mind’s habit of over‑thinking and catastrophizing with the heart’s quieter, instinctual guidance, sharing a personal story where a discounted pork shoulder arrived with a decorative bow—a moment she interprets as the universe answering a question about dinner. She expands this idea, likening human fear responses to animal survival instincts, and argues that modern anxiety stems from the brain treating everyday stressors as life‑threatening, keeping the body in chronic fight‑or‑flight. To counter this, she proposes “rewiring” the nervous system by deliberately shifting decision‑making from the head to the heart, illustrated with a beach‑cove discovery that occurred when she followed her heart’s direction rather than the most direct route. Susie offers a simple practice: breathe, play a calming playlist, and dedicate at least 30 minutes to a heart‑led activity, encouraging listeners to shed the “shoulds” of productivity. She also touches on inner‑child work, affirming that self‑worth is innate and not tied to external achievements, reinforcing this with a statistic that each person’s birth is a 1‑in‑400‑trillion miracle. The session concludes with a call to breathe, feel into the heart, and honor oneself as a miracle.
Chapters
Hello everyone, welcome to the Susie Unshaped sessions. I'm obviously Susie and I am here to talk all things about coming— like about removing all the things that prevent you from coming home to your heart. So, um, I just want everyone to take a deep breath. Someone taught me when you take the breath, actually breathe into your belly. Like, I know that seems trivial, but When you actually think about breathing into your belly, it's sort of— because sometimes it gets stuck up here and we need to breathe deep down into us. So breathe into your belly when you're breathing. And breathing is your number one go-to for anything where you need extra emotional support. Um, so I was on here yesterday talking about fear and anxiety and what to do when it hits you and how to move through it. And, um, Um, I also, uh, was playing a little game, and the little game was how to get out of our heads and come back into our hearts and let our intuition and our, um, well, the universe guide us a little bit more instead of us, our human brains, trying to think our way through things. So I want to tell you a little funny story. Um, I did that yesterday afternoon. It was after— yes, it was after the live stream I did. And I thought, okay, I'll have a little play with this. I said, okay, we need food for dinner. I'm on a really tight budget at the moment. So meat is sort of something you have to be really careful with and ration and find good quality meat that is at a good price. So I was like, okay, universe, I am just going to leave it up to you. You tell me what we are having for dinner, or you tell me where I'm going to find this anyway. So it said to go to this one grocery store. I went to the grocery store, um, and then I walked around the areas of the meat I would often buy. The chicken, sometimes they have it on special and I get that. And nope, no chicken was on special. I was okay, okay. I just perused and there actually wasn't a lot of meat on special today. And I was like, I had that little bit of doubt crept in. I just took a breath and said, no, I've asked them to show me and they're going to show me. So I walked along and then there was one piece of meat on special. It was a really lovely big piece of pork shoulder, like big, huge, and it was at a really good price. And now for the funny part, I was like, okay, maybe this is it. And then what I noticed, which I hadn't noticed because I was looking at the price, it literally had one of those gold Christmas like present bows on top of it. Like, I was like, okay, that is pretty funny. The universe not only found me what I was going to be eating, um, but it had put a bow on, like a, like a wrapping, like a present bow on the top of it. And I did look around, I noticed a few other pieces had the present bow, but this particular thing, which was definitely for me, they led me to it. Um, I was just absolutely laughing with them. So That is like evidence that you can use your gut and listen in your heart. Call it intuition, call it the universe talking to you. Like, we are all connected to a much greater thing than these human minds think that we're like. We think that this is us, but really our mind is not who we are. Like, our mind is something to keep us safe, and it does a great job of that. Keeps us safe here in, in on Earth, in this human body, in this human existence. Um, and I was, um, talking yesterday about the conversation I had with my kids about whether we think birds and squirrels or animals in general, whether they have thoughts. And so I did a bit of research and they don't have philosophical thoughts. So, um, I thought that was like, so they don't ponder things. They, they live for survival basically. They have instinctive thoughts. So it must be more of like a, I'm hungry, I've got to find the seed. Or, and I don't even think they think I'm hungry, they feel they're hungry. And then their body goes into, okay, when I feel this, I do this. When I feel that, I do that. And then it made me think this morning about fear and anxiety and what I think our humans— so I think our bodies are actually conditioned in our hearts to treat fear the same way as a bird or a squirrel. But our problem is that our mind is processing inputs into life-threatening fears. So if you think about it, so say, um, say it's around finances. Well, say let's talk about food, the meat. I, I need meat to feed me and the kids and they, uh, to survive. So When you get a notification, like a big bill come in or something, all of a sudden your mind processes that. It's like, okay, now I won't have the money to buy the food that I need for us to survive. So it's our brain has— we need to reprogram the thinking part to not treat every little trigger as a life or death situation. So we need to separate our human brain and our animal instincts. Mm-hmm. So that our body isn't constantly going into this. Well, this fight or flight is the is the I think the biological term. I don't know if it's called biological term or what it is, but anyway, it's a fight or flight. So you're getting all these inputs, and your body is like your body is literally translating them as gonna die, gonna die, gonna die, gonna die. So I remember even hearing like a relationship expert. it talk about, um, between men and women, how something they do, like it might be something like not replying to a text message or like something as little as that or something, who knows what it is, not taking the bins out. And as a female, we actually translate that through, we filter it through our little process system and it means gonna die, not gonna be protected, gonna die. So you can see where our human brain is is translating all of these inputs into gonna die. So we need to rewire our nervous system so that we don't allow every little input— like, no wonder we're exhausted, no wonder we're like crippled with fear and anxiety, because our bodies are processing all of these inputs as basically, as it filters down, gonna die. So we are on heightened Alert all the time because our bodies feel like they're going to die. I don't know. There's like I don't know if this is right or not, but it's just what I was pondering and thinking about after the conversation about birds and squirrels having thoughts and and then fear. And do birds feel fear? And yeah, if a bigger bird that they know can kill them is swooping down on them, birds I assume feel fear, and then their body goes instinctively into. Probably flight mode, and they're out of there. So I think that's why if you can go to—I put the sunset I visited yesterday—and see the magic in the world, and remember that there is magic all around us at all times, and we're not just about to die all the time. And a little funny story: I said I was going to go to the beach yesterday, and I was inviting you to. Try this out. And that's where you ask your heart, not your head, which is trying to figure things out, where do I want to go? And my heart said at the end of the street, instead of going straight down to the end of my street where the beach is, it said go left. And so we ended up entering the beach, um, in just one street over. So there's pathways down to the beach at the end of all the streets, and we entered in. One street over. And oh my God, this little tiny cove was just magical. It had a big rocky outcrop and rocks in the sand and another rocky outcrop there with like— it was just magical. And if I had entered up just one over, you miss all of that and you just see sort of a big rock jutting out. So I probably wouldn't have walked up and over that, but my heart told me, no, let's go down one and we're going to go down there. And then when I walked in, I was like, Oh my God, this is my new favorite place. It's this tiny little, like, I think probably only about maybe 20 meters wide, maybe 30 meters. Um, I don't know what that is in feet. Um, and it was just this little secluded, gorgeous little alcove that I wouldn't have found if I'd just gone where my mind would have told me the direct route to go to. So I do, um, want you to really try and play with this, uh, Just stop trying, like, just— and you can just do it for a little bit. Donate yourself, as we've said, donating because you are the worthy cause that needs the gift. Um, half an hour to have a play with this and try to get in touch with our hearts again and not thinking from our minds so much. And who knows, you might find a new special little park or a, like, a new little track you didn't know existed or a new little cove or A piece of— a big piece of pork with a present bow literally on the top. Like, here you go, we designed this especially for you. You told us to show you what was for dinner, and there you go. So I think it's just, um, a nice little practice. So anyway, that is it for me today. Number 1, breathe in, breathe out. Number 2, get yourself a good playlist. Number three, donate yourself some time to just have a play with getting out of our heads and back into our hearts. So it's so hard. I know. I'll just jump in. I know it's so hard, and especially like I am so guilty, guilty, guilty of this, which is we are programmed to be productive. We are programmed with all these shoulds. Oh. I can't go to the beach to watch the sunset because I should be doing this. I should be, yeah, I should be tidying the house. I should be mopping the floor. I should, there's so many shoulds. But what, do I want to do that? And I know sometimes you're gonna have to do it eventually, but there might be a better time when your body actually feels like wanting to do it. So I just think peeling off those layers of the shoulds and getting back into the heart and back into feeding what actually makes us feel fulfilled from within. So we're not looking for all these external gratification and instant gratification, external validation, because we know how to nurture ourselves from within our hearts and within our bodies. So I think that that is the key. And that's what I'm so passionate about because Once we come back into our hearts and really connect— and I did another, I did a like linking back into your inner child and your inner self, and I did a little process, um, I'll link it below, the process to come back inside and give that neglected part of you— and it might have been since you were 5 or 6 years old. a big hug and love them and see them and tell them they're worthy. And they're not— their worthiness does not come from a tidy house, a clean floor. You are worthy without doing anything. You are worthy by just being, um, by just being here. You are a miracle. Now I've forgotten the statistic again, but I think there's like a 1 in 400 trillion chance That you were even born. So if that doesn't tell you you're a miracle in itself, then I don't know what will. One in four hundred trillion. I'm pretty sure they did all the calculations of all the different biological things that had to go right, etc., etc., and it came into one in four hundred trillion. So you are a miracle. You are amazing. Let's just practice turning this off. Let's just switch it off for a second. Breathe, and then feel into our hearts and donate yourself 30 minutes to do something that your heart wants. Okay, I'm gonna leave you with that. I love you all. Goodbye. Big love. Bye.
