Stop Arguing With Your Emotions And Let Them Talk with Sophie Malahieude

Why Emotions Deserve Attention

Today we're exploring what happens when we stop treating emotions as something to control or fix and begin listening to what they may be trying to tell us. My guest shares a body-based approach to emotional balance that can help us move through change, grief, and uncertainty with greater awareness, self-trust, and resilience. So welcome to Connect, Inspire, Create, a podcast exploring meaningful conversations about life, work, creativity, and the ways that we can explore some fresh ideas. Let's slow down just enough to notice what inspires or intrigues us and how these insights can help shape what we create in our lives. I am Carol Clegg, a life coach offering gentle accountability for navigating change, trusting yourself, and creating what comes next. My guests join me from around the world to share insights on how they live, think, and navigate the wonderful challenges of just being a human in our world. So joining me today is Sophie Malayute, an emotional balance guide, yoga mentor, and the author of Beyond Emotions. Stop letting emotions control you and start living with love. Sophie is also the creator of the emotional process, a body-based approach that helps people understand emotions through the body rather than being caught up in overthinking. For more than 28 years, she has studied and taught yoga, Ayurveda, mindfulness, and breath work. Through both her professional work and her personal experiences, Sophie came to understand that intellectual insight alone is not always enough. Sometimes lasting change begins when we learn to notice what the body is already communicating. So, Sophie, welcome.

Oh, welcome, Carol. Very excited to

Kindness Starts With Self-Kindness

be with you.

I think this is going to be such a beautiful, gentle, encouraging topic that we're going to explore as we have this conversation. But before we start exploring emotions and the body, I would love to just introduce my listeners to the person a little bit behind the work that we do. And I'd love to ask you if we were sitting together over coffee, and I had to ask you, who comes to mind when I ask you who has been the kindest to you? Either lately or thinking back, either or what just comes to mind on kindness?

On kindness. Until I reconnect, I reconnected with something bigger than me. And then I was starting to feel better in my body, and I started to be grateful and to thank my body to heal. And I was thanking also the universe to take care of me. And I was also thanking the my mother who is still with me. So I would say that people around me have been kind, but until I was not kind with me, I couldn't see kindness around me. Yeah, I would say that uh the universe.

I know

Why We Learn To Hide Feelings

that you say that emotions don't necessarily resolve in the mind, but in the body. And so I ask you, do you think many of us are just become used to going, I can explain my feelings, and they don't actually slow down and experience and feel it.

Completely, completely. And I think that the the there is different reason reason for that. First, I would say that in our society, we are we grow up and we are taught not to show our emotions. I remember when I was a child, one day I was crying, and my mother came to me and she said, Sophia, it's okay. Uh everything will be fine. I said, I can't wait to be a grown-up. And I was maybe eight years old. And my mother said to me, Why do you want to be a grown-up? Yeah, because the grown-up, they don't cry. And my mother answered to me, we may not cry, doesn't mean that we don't have emotions. And I think that we are trained not to show up our emotion. When a child is angry because something happened, it broke its toy or whatever, we say, Oh, you control yourself. Control yourself. You cannot be angry. And if we could, at the moment of the emotion with a child, ask the child what's going on. What do you feel? It's okay to feel this way. How you can feel it, so the emotion completed cycle.

And I'm going to dig into that with you a little bit later when you talk about that, complete the cycle. But I love what you're saying about feel. Because that is where you're transitioning from, you know, I think we become very skilled because all these words get thrown at us from all directions with mental fitness, mindset, there are these labels that we can put on these emotions, but allowing them actually to move through our body. So I like to think of emotions as messages, and they're trying to communicate something to us. So why do we often label, and I'm guilty of this as well, of oh, that goes in the bad box. Those emotions are bad, and we need to shift them aside. Yes,

Emotions As Messages Not Problems

yes.

So there is many points there, but I would like to start with something is that the human being is not a body or a mind. The human being is body, mind, and spirit. Everything is aligned. When you are happy, you feel it in your body. When you are happy, you probably feel light, you feel hopeful, you have you have appetite, you are you are sleeping well, because there is harmony. Now, when there is a part in our life that is not in harmony with the rest, then emotion can arise. And the emotion, as you mentioned, we say, oh, they are good if it's love, they are bad if it's fear or is anger or sadness. Emotion, they are emotion, they are not good or bad. Let's say I like to make to have this metaphor. If you see fire, fire has a purpose. Purpose of fire is to burn. So depending on the experience we have with the fire, fire warms the food, warms our bones. Yeah, fire is great. But you burn yourself. Oh, fire is is bad. Actually, fire is fire, it is not good or bad. Emotions are the same. So when we feel afraid, when we feel sad, when we feel angry, society said, put a lead on it. They are wrong.

Right.

Actually, they are not wrong. They are messaging, knocking at the door of the of the mind, it's a hey, you know what? There is something here. You need to pay attention. Pay attention. And you know, um, I like to uh to always uh start with anger because anger it's it's an emotion that every everyone uh can understand. Emotion, anger, it it's so when we're angry, there is a message that we don't want to listen, or we have to to give. Again, example one day the the children they were playing in the street, my younger, my children, they were about eight, ten years ago, uh, and ten years old. A little boy came through the street not paying attention to the cars. And I saw the car and I saw the child. And my first impulse impulse was to scream, call the boy to me and say, Come right here. And I was really kind of angry, telling him he has to pay attention, there was a car, he could have been eaten and hurt, and so at that moment, my anger had a purpose, purpose of education for this little boy. So at some other point, and it it happened regularly with people that are very close to me, when they say to me something and I feel angry inside, I said, okay, where is my anger coming from? Is it something that maybe I can improve in me? Is it the ego that's coming up and then no no, you are wrong, you are wrong, and and I am right. So then then anger pop up. It's uh it's a it's a practice to observe the emotion, feel the emotion. Every emotion expressed differently in the body. Usually, when you have you are angry, you can sweat, you can be red, the heart is beating faster. When you are sad, maybe you feel more like you might cry and you feel like you have no strengths, you don't have appetite. It's it's also the way that emotion is expressing itself in the body. So instead of labeling, yeah, it's they are wrong, it's a shame, or I regret, then let's feel it and name it. I feel sadness. What is this sadness for? Interesting thing about sadness is that usually sadness is uh linked with the past, something that is not there anymore, and still we want it, so there is sadness. If you are happy, yeah, you feel it also in the in the body. So we we don't really pay attention of the the emotions that bring light and joy, and we label the other uh they are bad. But again, if you think of fire, all together, yeah, they have a purpose, and and they they and and when we start to uh when we start to pay attention of the body, and we start to pay attention of what we feel, we say, okay, so maybe I can pose. And when you pose, you gain clarity. Because when you pose, you are in the present moment. What do I feel? What does it mean for?

Yeah, giving it some recognition. What do you? I mean, uh a lot of people, and I know that I'm guilty of this as well, is when we we suppress that feeling, we we try to override

When Suppressed Grief Hits The Body

it. What happens in our body? What happens to ourselves?

Well, I have a beautiful story again to tell about that. Because it it uh every human being um receives the message in different ways. I can explain what the way it felt and can share with other people I was working with. 10 years ago, my mother passed away, and I thought I was grieving. But four months after she passed away, I started to have difficulty to breathe properly. When I was going up the stairs, I was short of breath. And I didn't understand, I was healthy, didn't endure myself, was practicing yoga, breathing meditation. So I didn't understand what was happening. And until one day, I went to see my uh yoga mentor and I explained to her that everything was fine and the choice of my children, my husband, and uh and I was grieving fine my mother, just that I cannot breathe. And she said to me, You know, Sophie, that we hold grief in the lungs. And I look at her and say, Of course I know. Of course I know, because I had studied that in yoga and mindfulness, is that the lungs that they are rooting with they relate with the spiritual heart, and when we are hurting, energy gets stuck. Because in addition of understanding that emotion are messages, think of emotion as energy. Everything is energy, our thoughts are energy, the food we eat is energy, the sun has energy, everything has energy, and so have emotion. So an emotion that we receive in my example was grieving my mother. I didn't know what to do with it. So I was I was thinking, every time I was thinking of my mother, I was repeating myself, I'm fine, mom, I'm fine. And it was a little, little kind of a habit, little you know, mindset that I had. I was not fine. And so the emotion, because the emotion was not processed, the emotion didn't complete its cycle, then it got stuck, and the first place it gets stuck, it's in the body. Physical aspect of emotion gets stuck in the body. So in my case, it was grief, it was in my lungs. And when I came back, I was driving back from seeing my uh my mentor that, okay, Sophie, you didn't grieve. You thought you were grieving, telling you positive thought, but actually you didn't grieve at all. And who wants to grieve when there is pain? Right? It's it's it's the first step regarding grief, but regarding any emotion. Okay, I have to face anger, I have to face sadness, I have to face fear. But so we start there. And when I was okay, I'm going to start there, I'm just going to open my mind and see what is going on. And that the way I visualize that, I open the door, okay, I am grieving my mom. The first emotion that came was anger. And I understood why I was closing the door right away. Who wants to be angry at someone you loved and passed away?

Yeah. It's interesting that you use that word because you and I chatted before this, and I mentioned having lost my son at 22 to a distracted driver. And I mentioned the distracted driver because I also want listeners who are listening to put their phone down while they're driving. But that anger that I felt, and it wasn't at him so much, but it was at everything, and not recognizing it in the process. And it I I say it cost me years, it cost me years of healing. And I know that my son, you know, wouldn't have wanted that, but it was a process that I had to go to look for, like you. You've got to recognize the fact that, you know, and and the emotions will come through, even the anger at the person that has left. Yes, yes, and that's okay. You know, we have so much pressure on us. I'd love for you to explain this completed cycle, because what does that mean when an emotion has to complete its

Completing The Emotional Cycle

cycle?

Okay. When we feel an emotion, it has a message. Quick example: you are driving your car, and there is a dog crossing, and so you have to break to avoid an accident. So you see the the dog, there is an impulse, there is fear, and you break. And then after the dog is going away. So you start again your car and you drive and you excel. Emotion, completed cycle. Emotion told you there were a danger, you avoid the danger, and then you're fine. So you can let go, you take two or three breaths, it's over. When we have an emotion that is stronger, like losing someone, or you know, uh have a sense of a feeling of injustice or abandonment or betrayal, uh, some example. So if we don't go to the root of what we feel, then it's it's going to attach itself in the body, it's going to create a mind pattern, habit, and somehow it isn't complete its cycle because you didn't go to the root of it to release it and and heal.

Yeah, that's the important word there. Yeah.

So just to finish the the cycle, for example, when I was grieving my mother, what I realized that pure grieving brings us in so many different places. And well, you you are unfortunately you you understand grief as well. For me, grieving my mother, it was removing the anger, removing the sadness, removing the fear, and then realizing that for all those years, and pay attention to what I was I'm going to say, all those years I was trying to be the woman I thought my mother wanted me to be. So when I was 47 and I realized that all my life I am not being myself because I was trying to please not someone who asked me to be different, but something that I thought she wanted me to be. So that was my journey through grief. But this journey can be taken with any emotion that is bothering you in your life if you have you know anger management issues, if you are always sad, if you are always anxious, if you are always stressed for no reason. There is something that, okay, deep down, what is it telling me? And I think so. It depends of the circumstance and it depends on the person. It's important to reestablish self-confidence in ourselves. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I think. Whatever the journey you go, whatever the journey you go.

Yeah. Yeah.

Self-Trust Through The Emotional Process

So I'd love that brings me to let's talk about self-trust because I think that is so powerful. Um, it's almost a sort of thinking of it as all these emotions, keeping these emotions in this part, and now you lift the lid up and you let them come up and land on the table, and have more compassion for yourself and trust because you're an amazing human being, you've come this far in life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we we look for so many outside resources to trust. Let me trust this one, let me trust that one, and it's we have it right here inside ourselves. So I'd love for you to just walk us through, you know, what does self-trust look like when you work with your clients?

Yes, and there is a very important aspect in self-trust, is that we uh we we understand through our observing ourselves that we have the resources we need. It doesn't mean that we we don't look for support from the outside. For example, healing is coming from a place of connection. So, in my emotion process, we start by assessing where we are, what we feel, how we can breathe and understand our breath just to come back in the present moment. We suffer when we think of the past or when we project in the future. We cannot change the past, we cannot predict the future, we can live in the present moment. So we feel in the body, we breathe, we stay in the present moment. That's the first phase of the process, processing emotion. There is a place of self-inquiry. Self-inquiry, we can do it alone, but sometimes it's it's it's easier to talk with someone, talk with a friend, talk with a therapist, talk with a coach. And so self-inquiry that you know what, I feel angry all the time, every time. And so I feel it in my shoulder, I feel it in my lower back, I feel it I have a headache, I cannot digest properly. Whatever anger is showing up physically in the body. I observe that. And then when you are curious, you observe that it happened maybe every so and so often when you meet a person, when you are going to work, when I don't know, when so first you assess, second, you come back in the present moment, then you are curious with self-inquiry, and naturally the two last will help the emotion to um to complete the cycle. Is that when you go to the root, there is a place of surrender and forgiveness. Forgiveness is not something, okay, you know, I decided I forgive you. Forgiveness is a process, yes, it's a process to arrive at this place. Oh, I am serving who I am serving when I hold on that pain, when I hold on that past, when I hold on this emotion, I can let it go. I understand what this is coming from. And particularly, and I'm I'm going just to finish after, but particularly when we deal with past events, losing someone in the past, or a trauma in the past, or I don't know, a car accident in the past. When we we come and we go to the root, oh, this is when it happened, and we we can start to understand that it's uh you know it's it's a business, it's my business because I put myself in this in this situation, or is that the business of the universe? You know, sometimes you you go outside, there is a hole on on the street, and you you fill in the hole. You know, you can be mad at your at your neighbor, you can be mad at uh at the universe, but hey, you know, it is as it is. So, and you can be mad at yourself, but it doesn't change anything. And so when we go to the root and we make peace with the root, then coming uh the next and the final stage, connection. When the emotion you you assess the emotion, you feel the emotion, you are curious about the emotion, you make peace with the emotion, you reconnect, and that's the beauty of any emotion you are feeling. You are really connecting with yourself, you are reconnecting with people around you, you are reconnecting with something bigger, can be the universe, can be God, it can be Buddha, and you feel whole again, body, mind, and spirit. So emotion is a message, it's an energy, it has a cycle to complete, like everything is life.

So that is just so important, just that thought of bringing that connection in and releasing and stepping into the possibility, so having curiosity and exploring as opposed to keeping the lid on

A Simple Daily Awareness Practice

it. So Sophie, I'd love to ask you if somebody listening to our conversation today and thank you because you have shared some gems, what's one gentle, meaningful step that they could take immediately? What would you invite them to focus on?

I would uh invite them off becoming observant of their life. So let's say tomorrow you listen to this podcast, and tomorrow you say, Oh, I'm just going to pay attention of what I feel. And so pay attention when you are sitting for your breakfast, how do I feel? You are to meet a friend when you sit at the table and you say hi to your friend. What do I feel? When you are driving, what do I feel? Not to fix, not to change, to observe.

Yeah.

And this mindfulness of the moment is when you want to get started to be curious.

Yeah, I love that. An awareness. It's almost sort of tuning and learning how to be aware. Yeah.

So and I would just add is that sometimes, okay, well, that's fine, but I'm going to forget. So I don't know, take a little uh object, maybe a little stone, a little something, and you will call it your mindfulness little stone, and you you put it in your pocket or somewhere on you. And every time you touch the the the little stone, say, How do we feel right now? I feel stressed. Okay, I understand. I feel stressed. And later on, when you empty your pocket in the evening, how do you I feel relaxed? Okay, I feel relaxed. So, yeah.

Lovely reminders.

There we go.

Free Reset Guide And Closing

So for my listeners, Sophie has created a free guided practice called the three-step emotion reset, which is what she's been sharing with us, designed to help you to reconnect with your body and allow emotions to move through you. So, Sophie, I have that at your website backslash emotion. So I'll put that in the show notes. So I really appreciate what you've shared today, and just that you know, emotional balance is not about control. No, it's about exploring and getting curious. So I have the the place to get that free guide. Then, of course, I have other places that people can connect with you. Your website, I have your profile for LinkedIn, and I have Instagram. Is there anywhere else that people can find you that we should pop in the notes?

I am also on Facebook. Good, okay. Yeah, and I also a best way to discover more about this work is to go on Amazon and look for my book Beyond Emotions.

Yes, yes. I was going to mention your book that to make sure people look out that Sophie is the author of Beyond Emotions, and she very gracefully shared a copy with me that I had just started and was just thrilled with just the beginning. So look for that copy on Amazon. And thank you, Sophie. Thank you for being with me. Thank you, Carol. So to my listeners, thank you for listening to Connect, Inspire, Create. And life doesn't always unfold the way we imagine. We all find ourselves navigating change, uncertainty, loss, or simply wondering what comes next. And as a life coach, I believe in gentle accountability, learning to trust ourselves, take the next step, and continuing to create a meaningful life in a way that feels right for us. So you can connect with me on LinkedIn at CarolClink.com or stop by my website. So once again, thanks to those that are here and listening. And thanks for spending time with us today. And until the next time, stay curious, trust yourself, and keep creating what comes next.