EP43 Becs Steele: The Freedom of Releasing Expectations

Explicit content warning

10/04/21 • 74 min

We spoke with Rewilding Guide and Registered Nutritional Therapist, Becs Steele, about her tumultuous experiences with pregnancy, due to a rare genetic disease, and how looking back she can see now that her expectations about what her life was supposed to be like were adding to her anxiety. This exacerbated her health issues. During the years of trying for a second child, Becs suffered from several health conditions including autoimmune thyroid, endometriosis, rosacea, and anxiety. She now pinpoints them as symptoms of the stress she was going through.
Upon learning about the understanding behind the Rewilding metaphor, Becs saw that expectations about life are really just made up. And yet she recognizes that she and so many others can get so stuck on these expectations and obsess about reaching them. For Becs, reaching her goal meant enduring very traumatic pregnancies, which she does not regret at all as she now has two beautiful children. But reflecting on her experience, she can see now how she was not aware earlier that she was going to be OK regardless of outcomes.
Becs also reflects with us about how stuck we get when we try to control our experience and our emotions. If we can soften around our feelings, and make space for them, they move through us more gracefully than when we attempt to stuff them down. This goes hand in hand with not beating ourselves up for not being "spiritual enough" or using spirituality as a measuring stick to beat ourselves up with. Instead, we can be with the full breadth of the human experience, and allow our grief to heal naturally.

Show Notes
Translocation: a type of chromosomal abnormality in which a chromosome breaks and a portion of it attaches to a different chromosome. This can result in stillbirths or severe disabilities.
Bird by Bird: a documentary about Anne Lamott where she beautifully describes how being open to grief doesn't mean we won't have a scar, but it will heal cleanly.
Becs Steele helps people who experience anxiety or depression to have more personal freedom in body, mind, and spirit. As a registered Nutritional Therapist, she is constantly discovering the power of the mind and body connection. She brings clients to their present moment experience to uncover what is keeping them stuck. Using nutrition in combination with coaching she witnesses clients have big shifts in their bodies and minds.
Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.
Episode 43 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Previous Episode

EP42 Angus Ross & Rohini Ross: Cultivating Desire

Rohini and Angus talk about the journey they've been on with desire and intimacy in their marriage and their reflections on, and insights around, how they overcame the challenges they experienced in the past.
At the beginning of their relationship, sexual desire was spontaneous and Rohini had no issue matching Angus' libido. But as time went on, and as intimacy and comfort ramped up, she found her sexual desire waning. This made her feel self-conscious and wonder if there was something wrong with her. When she became aware of this understanding, found herself feeling more relaxed and at ease in herself. One of the byproducts of this was she found herself more present and able to enjoy sexual intimacy. She saw she didn't need to fix anything to help her experience more desire, she just needed to relax. She experienced for herself desire can be cultivated.
Angus' initial response to Rohini's lack of desire was to question his manhood and feel insecure. He realized with time that he was blaming her for the way he felt. Rohini not matching his libido was something he was taking personally. This blame and pressure further perpetuated Rohini's dwindling desire for sex. Once Angus saw this for what it was, that he was reacting to his own insecurity, he was able to take the pressure off and meet Rohini where she was. This in turn made helped Rohini to feel more open.
This episode explores:

How noticing that we're caught up allows us to naturally relax and open to pleasure
Turning inward rather than outward when experiencing less desire can help us rekindle desire
How sexual intimacy can be a doorway to experiencing the divine

Show notes
Michelin Star Ranking System: how the finest dining restaurants are ranked, from 1 lowest to 3 exceptional. Also a way Angus almost stumbled into ranking his and Rohini's sex.
Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm: one of the resources Rohini turned to during the lack of desire insecurity phase
Ted Talk Masturbation is the New Meditation: self-explanatory but made Angus feel a bit prickly when Rohini brought it up.
Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.
Episode 42 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Next Episode

EP44 Angus Ross & Rohini Ross: Embodying Our Full Experience

Angus and Rohini talk about the healing power of embodying the full human experience, or put another way, the full breadth of human emotions. They each reflect on how they used to turn to coping mechanisms to avoid their more painful emotions, but these strategies just made the experience more difficult and had a negative impact on their relationship. Their coping mechanisms tended to push the other away.
It's in resisting our emotional experience that we suffer. As Sydney Banks, the man whose teachings inspired ours, said: "if the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world." The fear-based thoughts we have about our emotional experience is what paralyzes us.
For example, Angus shares about his fear of heights and how once he saw the role his thinking was playing in magnifying that fear, he was able to just feel the emotion and still approach the activity involving the heights (like riding a roller coaster). Letting himself feel the fear instead of being stuck in the thoughts about the fear, allows him to still take part and ultimately enjoy the activity.
Embracing our emotional experience, without judgement of ourselves, also allows us to experience deeper connection with others. It is difficult to have an authentic experience with someone else if we are "white-knuckling" our way through our own emotional experience. If we aren't being authentic then we aren't being vulnerable -- and our relationships require vulnerability for there to be true connection.
This episode explores:

Resisting our emotions causes suffering
Being with our emotions is authentic and supports connection
Letting go of control is actually the most pleasurable choice
The healing power of experiencing all of our emotions

Show Notes
Knott's Berry Farm: "California's Best Theme Park" and where Angus rode a rollercoaster eyes-wide-open, screaming like a baby

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.
Episode 44 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Rewilding Love - EP43 Becs Steele: The Freedom of Releasing Expectations

Transcript

Angus Ross (4s):
Welcome to Rewilding Love. This season is with a couple on the brink of divorce.
Rohini Ross (13s):
This is episode number 43 an interview with Becs Steele.
Becs Steele (18s):
I can be happy with whatever my life circumstances are.
Angus Ross (22s):
The themes that really pop out for me are how we build up our expectations and this tendency to worry that they're not going to be fulfilled
Becs Steele (32s):
Getting pregnant for me. So this is a blessi