How to Stop Making Decisions From Your Head

Most of us have been taught to make decisions from our heads. But when we're at a crossroads and the mind spins, analyses, and contradicts itself, it can leave us paralysed. This episode introduces Somatic Decision Making: a framework for learning to read the body as a decision-making instrument. Melissa walks through why we stopped trusting ourselves in childhood, how societal conditioning replaced body wisdom with external validation, and what it takes to build it back. It includes a guided somatic practice listeners can use immediately, and an invitation to begin on the smallest decisions of daily life.(00:00) Knowing what you want, but stuck (02:36) How we were taught to force (05:47) The two parts pulling against you (08:41) Surrender is not giving up (10:31) Guided practice: yes or no (13:44) Letting the body move (15:32) Start with what you want to eatDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideDiscover Melissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

In this reparenting coaching session, a new mother arrives full of creative fire with nowhere to put it. Through inner child work, she reconnects with a version of herself at 18 months old who was joyful, bossy, and completely sure of who she was. She discovers the grief of how that part of her was shut down, not just by her parents, but by institutions and cultural conditioning that told her she was too much. The session reveals how becoming a mother has intensified her old patterns of emotional suppression, and how her phone has become a way to numb the feelings she no longer has a container for. She leaves with a commitment to tend her own fire so she can model fullness rather than smallness for her daughter.00:00) "I was shamed for being bossy" (02:13) "I have so much fire in me" (02:58) The word that comes up is shame (06:18) An old protective part (10:03) Meeting the inner child (13:07) Shamed for having strong ideas (16:19) "I love how bossy you are" (21:21) Hestia, and keeping your fire alive (25:04) The phone, and the overwhelm (30:16) "I'm still not doing enough" (39:11) Work that feels aligned (45:45) The three month experiment (49:18) The Motherload, and what's nextTrain to be a coach yourself with Mindful Talent, the academy Melissa trained with and still mentors on https://www.mindfultalent.co.uk/a/2148314900/VqDec2dUDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideDiscover Melissa's signature programme Reparent Your Inner Child: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildExplore the Motherload group programme: ⁠melissamaouris.com/reparenting-motherloadContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

What happens when you stop trying to fit yourself into systems that were never designed for your brain and start building a life around who you actually are? In this conversation, Calli Popham, a yoga teacher, TRE practitioner, and mother of two shares her journey from growing up in a bus in France with an undiagnosed ADHD mother who self-medicated with cannabis, to decades of masking through alcohol and chameleon-like people-pleasing, to the moment when motherhood blew the lid off all her coping strategies. We explore what neurodiversity actually is (and isn't), the staggering statistic that by age ten a neurodiverse child has received 20,000 more negative messages about themselves than their neurotypical peers, what it took to give up alcohol after a breast cancer scare, and why her sobriety turned out to be one of the most powerful acts of reparenting in her life. This is an episode about three generations of masking, and what becomes possible when you finally take it off.(00:00) "20,000 more negative messages" (00:48) Meet Callie (02:09) What she does in the world (04:14) When did you first realise (05:13) Learning her nervous system (06:10) Why school was so hard (07:38) "The wheels came off" (08:08) Relief, then grief (09:23) Leaving corporate for yoga (10:35) "Attention deficit" is wrong (11:50) India, and everyone's story (12:32) The divided brain (13:17) Neurodiversity as evolution (14:42) Justice sensitivity, and activism (16:31) What the school system gets wrong (18:11) Why she'd choose a Steiner school (18:58) 20,000 negative messages by ten (19:50) Reminding them how brilliant they are (20:46) Emotional regulation (22:06) The chameleon in her twenties (22:56) Her mum, and the red bus (24:45) Movement is non-negotiable (25:41) Asking to go to school at seven (27:17) Primary school, then secondary (28:21) Pulling back before rejection (28:54) Othering, and what we project (30:59) What she'd tell her teenage self (31:48) Glastonbury, and rave culture (32:39) Belonging on the dance floor (33:17) Giving up alcohol (34:01) When it stopped fitting her (36:40) The breast cancer scare (37:49) Instead of pouring a glass (38:51) More present with her kids (40:25) Who is she without the mask (41:03) The alcohol was the mask (42:00) The energetic transference (42:37) Soft front, strong back (45:18) Her vision for the world (46:31) Wake the hell up (48:20) Where to find Callie (50:01) Embodiment as liberation (50:54) What stayed with me (51:52) Feedback, and what's nextDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideDiscover Melissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child. Find out more here: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected]/@melissamaourisinstagram.com/reparenting.coachDiscover Calli Popham: ⁠⁠calliyoga.co.uk⁠Music by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

Ask a child how they are and you'll usually hear with good or fine. Most of us still answer that way, because we have learned to explain our feelings rather than feel them. In this episode Melissa walks through the three pillars of her reparenting methodology, unlearn, attune and play, and shows how each one traces back to being taught not to feel. She looks at how the pressure to be good and compliant keeps us small, and keeps us quiet about what is wrong in the world. She explains how our feelings were met with logic until we moved out of the body and into the mind. Then she offers the two core questions of reparenting, what do I feel and what do I need, and guides you through a practice to meet them in your own body.(00:00) "Good. Fine." And the real answer(01:26) Unlearn, Attune, Play(02:38) The good girl, and staying quiet(03:27) Your body knows first(04:26) "Don't cry": taught not to feel(04:58) A story is not a feeling(06:30) Why play is the point(07:27) The two core questions(08:47) "I don't know what I need"(10:17) Guided practice: feel and need(16:02) Using this every dayDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideDiscover Melissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

In this Reparenting coaching session, Melissa works with a mother of two who moved abroad for her partner's career and slowly lost her own sense of purpose. Now she's on the edge of a major life change and keen to return to her work as a midwife. Yet something keeps pulling her back: the memory of a little girl who cried herself to sleep every night because her mum was never home. This session moves through the fear of repeating generational patterns, the nervous system's inherited busyness response, and what it really looks like to reparent yourself in the ordinary moments of motherhood.(00:00) She stopped knowing what she wanted (02:32) The vision: midwifery (05:26) Feeling like a failure (08:36) Her grandma was her rock (10:16) Polystyrene up the nose (12:50) The factory, and the fear (17:01) The busyness pattern (19:32) "Sit down. You've done enough." (23:39) What she needs from her partner (31:42) A hard morning with her son (37:38) "I'm not in a race anymore" (45:46) What this session showed me (47:19) The Motherload, and a masterclassTrain to be a coach yourself with Mindful Talent, the academy Melissa trained with and still mentors on https://www.mindfultalent.co.uk/a/2148314900/VqDec2dUDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideExplore 1:1 reparenting coaching https://www.melissamaouris.com/workwithme Explore the Motherload group programme: ⁠melissamaouris.com/reparenting-motherloadDiscover Melissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

Grief coach Tanya Wilkinson has navigated some of the most profound losses a person can face, from the identity death of leaving a career in Formula One, to losing her daughter halfway through pregnancy. In this conversation, Tanya shares how each grief deepened her capacity for presence, and how she learned to hold it all rather than fix or rush through it. We explore how Western culture has severed our connection to the honouring of death, what different cultural traditions can teach us about grieving with our whole bodies, and why the simplest act of reparenting might just be sitting with someone in their pain and listening.(00:00) A promise of presence (01:58) Meet Tanya Wilkinson (03:33) Leaving F1, and a miscarriage (05:28) The needle that named it (08:01) How to hold someone through change (10:08) Collective grief (14:42) A family that didn't speak of death (16:35) Losing their daughter (18:24) Grief as love (21:24) A birth and a death plan (27:17) The haka, and the woodland burial (36:30) The hedgehog in the garden (42:33) If we all honoured grief (46:38) Going deeper, and what stayed with meDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideDiscover Melissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child for those wanting to discover reparenting on their own terms. Find out more here: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaBDiscover Tanya Wilkinson: tanyawilkinson.co.ukFollow Tanya on Instagram: instagram.com/tanyawilkinson_Death on the Daily: youtube.com/@deathonthedaily

In this personal solo episode, Melissa shares the story that shaped her own reparenting journey. Beginning with the visceral grief of watching the Gaza conflict unfold while pregnant with her second daughter, she traces the moment her work became a mission rather than a career. She moves through her childhood, the loss of her father, the numbing years, the spiritual awakening in South America, and the two very different portals of becoming a mother. She discusses what it felt like when the system failed her and connects that experience to the structural reality facing parents everywhere. This is an unpolished version of her story that traces the arc of why reparenting is essential for us all.(00:00) Why reparenting (00:40) The grief that changed my purpose (02:26) Children are here to shape us (03:09) We are an alloparenting species (03:54) Burnout, and loneliness (04:34) Why reparenting matters (05:23) Cyprus, 1974, and the body (06:13) Divorced when I was seven (06:51) Becoming the good girl (07:23) Eldest daughter, needing nothing (08:07) Finding the dance music scene (08:45) Perfectionism, and fast success (09:29) The breakdown that opened the portal (11:03) The ayahuasca ceremony (12:18) Coaching, and a broken wrist (13:36) The daughter who cracked me open (14:46) A different postpartum (15:44) When the savings ran out (16:39) What we carry through the family line (17:57) Free guideDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideDiscover Melissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child for those wanting to discover reparenting on their own terms. Find out more here: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

The Reparenting podcast returns after a pause for Melissa's second maternity leave. In this season update, she names the cultural pressure to bounce back and why she chose not to, introduces the new Series 3 format (live coaching sessions, guest conversations, solo teaching), and shares the UNLEARN. ATTUNE. PLAY. methodology that runs through the season. Welcome back to listeners old and new.In this conversation:(00:00) What reparenting is (00:42) Why I paused, and the ego death (01:36) Unlearn, Attune, PlayDownload the FREE Reparenting Method and try it for yourself: mailchi.mp/melissamaouris/reparenting-guideMelissa's signature self guided programme Reparent Your Inner Child is for those wanting to discover reparenting on their own terms. Find out more here: melissamaouris.com/reparentyourinnerchildContact Melissa on [email protected] her Substack: substack.com/@melissamaourisFollow her on Instagram: instagram.com/reparenting.coachMusic by Dan Bentley: open.spotify.com/artist/5Jad8EYEgZO60ruLawAUaB

Melissa talks through how reparenting can help us overcome money blocks in this episode.To dive deeper with Reparenting you can download Melissa's free Reparenting guide hereGet updates on future events and programmes from Melissa at www.melissamaouris.comIf you found this episode helpful, or would like to discuss the topics of any episode in more detail you can contact Melissa at [email protected] or message her on IGwww.instagram.com/melissamaourisThis podcast is hosted by Melissa MaourisWith music by Dan Bentley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melissa answers a listener question in today’s episode. To send your own question for the show please either send an audio or text message to [email protected] To dive deeper with Reparenting you can download Melissa's free Master Your Blocks with Reparenting workbook hereGet updates on future events and programmes from Melissa at www.melissamaouris.comIf you found this episode helpful, or would like to discuss the topics of any episode in more detail you can contact Melissa at [email protected] or message her on IG www.instagram.com/melissamaourisThis podcast is hosted by Melissa MaourisProduced and edited by Emma TindallWith music by Dan Bentley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.