In short
Motherkind Podcast Episode Summary: If You Want to Become an Instantly More Relaxed Mother - Listen to This, with Nicola Jane Hobbs
Episode Overview This episode features a conversation between host Zoe Blaskey and guest Nicola Jane Hobbs, who discusses the importance of relaxation for mothers and introduces her book, *The Relaxed Woman: Reclaim Rest and Live an Empowered, Joy-Filled Life*. The discussion centers around redefining relaxation as essential and accessible for all mothers, challenging societal norms about productivity, and sharing personal insights on motherhood and matrescence.
Key Themes
- Reframing Relaxation: The discussion emphasizes that relaxation is not a privilege but a necessity for mothers, urging them to challenge the narrative of productivity.
- The Relaxed Woman Archetype: Hobbs explains the concept of the "relaxed woman" as an archetype that exists within every woman, suppressed by societal norms and expectations.
- Cultural Pressures: The podcast addresses the societal pressures that equate productivity with self-worth, leading to feelings of guilt around rest.
- Nervous System Awareness: Understanding how the nervous system affects relaxation and stress responses is a crucial part of the discussion, particularly for new mothers.
Detailed Insights
The Concept of a Relaxed Woman
- Definition: Hobbs discusses the idea that many women have an internalized notion of what it means to be relaxed. She believes this archetype has been suppressed by societal pressures.
- Societal Influence: The pressure to achieve and perform often leads to guilt associated with rest, making relaxation feel like laziness.
Guilt and Its Roots
- Productivity Myths: Hobbs points out that many women feel guilty when taking time for themselves due to ingrained beliefs that equate rest with selfishness.
- Breaking the Rules: She encourages women to recognize that feeling guilty can actually indicate that one is breaking away from harmful societal rules.
The Role of the Nervous System
- Understanding Response to Stress: Hobbs emphasizes that living in a culture of urgency can make slowness feel threatening to the nervous system. Learning to ease into relaxation is vital for mental health, especially during matrescence.
- Moments of Slowness: Incorporating small, deliberate moments of slowness into daily life can help retrain the nervous system to feel safe.
Community and Support
- Importance of Interdependence: Both the host and guest discuss the necessity of community support in motherhood, highlighting that women cannot achieve relaxation alone.
- Role Modeling: Mothers have a profound influence on their children, and creating an environment where rest is normalized teaches future generations the importance of self-care.
Practical Steps to Achieve Relaxation
- Daily Reflection: Hobbs suggests reflecting on daily experiences to identify what feels restorative, even in small ways.
- Integrating Restful Practices: Simple acts like wearing comfortable clothing or enjoying a moment outdoors can help mothers find pockets of rest in their busy lives.
The Shift from Perfectionism
- Accepting Imperfection: Both speakers agree that motherhood often contradicts the ideal of a perfect mother. Embracing the messiness of life can lead to a more fulfilling experience.
- Freedom from Comparison: Recognizing that every mother’s journey is unique helps in alleviating the pressures of comparison.
Conclusion The episode concludes with Hobbs sharing her belief that rest is vital for mothers and should be free from guilt and anxiety. The conversation encourages mothers to embrace their imperfections and redefine their relationship with relaxation, viewing it not just as a luxury, but as a fundamental need for their well-being and that of their families.
Additional Resources
- Pre-order Nicola's Book: *The Relaxed Woman: Reclaim Rest and Live an Empowered, Joy-Filled Life*.
- Follow Nicola Jane Hobbs:
- Website: [nicolajanehobs.com](http://nicolajanehobs.com)
- Instagram: [@nicolajanehobs](https://www.instagram.com/nicolajanehobs)
Call to Action
- Join the Motherkind community on Instagram for inspiration and support: [@zoeblaskey](https://www.instagram.com/zoeblaskey).
- Sign up for the Motherkind mailing list for updates and new episodes.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:07Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of the Motherkind podcast. It is me your host Zoe. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition and this is the show that's going to give you all the tools, expertise and support you need for your life as a mother. What do you think about when I say the words relaxed woman? Do you think about that being a rarity or impossible or privileged? Well this week's expert Nicola Jane Hobbs has written a book called The Relaxed Woman and she is on a mission to not only reframe rest and relaxation as accessible, but also vital. We talk about what real rest is, and it's not just about lying on the sofa doing nothing, although nice as that is, how vital it is for mothers and how to become a more relaxed mother.
1:03I absolutely love this episode. I learned so much and it's really made me think about some simple switches, both in my mindset and in my actions that can help me feel less stressed and more relaxed and how powerful important that is not only for me but also for my family and my children I think you're gonna love this one here it is I'd like to take this moment to thank our headline sponsor Wild Nutrition who are offering MotherKind listeners 50 % off for the first three months when I was pregnant with my first 10 years ago I asked a few nutritionist friends what's the best pregnancy supplement and they all said the same thing wild nutrition so I listened and these incredible supplements have kept me feeling great through two pregnancies starting this podcast writing a book a relocation and everything in between for the last decade so it's magical to me that I now get to tell you about this incredible woman founded brand every week.
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2:41Just go to wildnutrition.com forward slash Motherkind to get started. That's wildnutrition.com forward slash Motherkind so you can feel a difference yourselves. Start 2026 rooted in wellness. T's and C's apply. Nicola, I first came across your work, I think like millions of other days with your viral post about being a relaxed woman. And I wondered, what is it, do you think about those two words together and your work on being a relaxed woman that just so caught the attention of so many women? I think as I've been doing my research into women's relationship with rest and relaxation, and we talked about the archetype of the relaxed women, what came up is that there is something within us that recognizes this archetype of the relaxed woman as if she lives in all of us but has been suppressed beneath kind of decades of societal pressures and unrealistic expectations and patriarchal conditioning and I think as that kind of post showed is that we're yearning for that deep down and sometimes just saying those two words together relaxed and women it begins to awaken her and inspire us to want to move towards a slightly different way of living.
4:02Why is it so rare, do you think? Because you write at the start, I've never met a relaxed woman. And I think I was thinking, gosh, that's so right. That is so right. I've met women who have pockets of relaxation, but not throughout her days. It's very rare to see that embodied relaxed woman why why is that I think it's a combination of factors and and this is what came up in my research as well is that we live in this society that is obsessed with productivity and how much we can achieve and how well we can perform and I think we've internalized those capitalist patriarchal values without ever really pausing to reflect on whether they are in line with what we want from our lives as women and as mothers.
4:58And I think kind of in having those dominant values in society, we then also internalize the myth that relaxation is lazy and it's selfish. And I think as women, we are terrified of being called lazy and selfish. And so we therefore never relax. And then I guess it's a ripple effect if we don't see other women resting and relaxing and honoring their needs, then that can be really difficult to do so for ourselves because we see it as something that is wrong or something that we're going to be shamed for. And like you said, as I was growing up, I kind of never saw women who were relaxed or who were at ease.
5:41A lot of the women in my life were, they were busy, they were productive, they were high achieving and they were also stressed and exhausted and I think as an early teenager girl I looked at womanhood and I thought is is that what it means to be a woman that everyone is just stressed and exhausted the whole time and I didn't really realize there was another way of being. What is the other way? So when I was about 14, 15 I read Women Who Run With Wolves. Have you read it? Yeah. It's behind me somewhere. Yeah, it's such a beautiful, powerful book. And in it, Clarissa Pinkola Esther writes about the archetype of the wild woman.
6:26And so for me, that really awakened this curiosity into maybe there are these other ways of being and this sense of, OK, if everyone, if a lot of the women I know are stressed and exhausted, then what is the opposite of that? and this essence of kind of the relaxed woman started coming through. And I remember probably in my early 20s, I started, I was caught up very much in that achievement productivity culture. And every so often, I would just hear this kind of little voice inside, which I now kind of think of as the relaxed woman archetype, just saying, relax, sweetheart, take a breath, it's safe to slow down it's safe to rest and so I think that Relaxed Woman she does live within us and she manifests slightly different for each of us and to me it's really about feeling safe and at home in our bodies and in the world and it's I guess it's a mode of being a way of being where we've untangled our sense of worth from our productivity and we can rest without guilt and anxiety and we live by our values and we honor our needs rather than simply absorbing the the values and the demands of what society is asking of us and I think I fell in love with the with the concept of the relaxed women even more when um I love looking at the origins of words And the origin of relaxed comes from the old French word, relaxia, which means to release, to liberate and to set free.
8:05And so I think this sense of freedom is really at the heart of being a relaxed woman. I love that. And it's so true what you say about rest and guilt, particularly for mothers, I think. Why is that? Why do we feel so guilty for sitting down even for five minutes with a hot cup of tea and leaving the dishes or not worrying about the laundry or that work email or whatever it is? What is at the root of that guilt? I think we feel guilty when we feel that we've done something wrong. And a lot of these feelings of guilt are related to breaking rules that we've internalized from society. So if the rule that we've internalized is you should always be productive and you should always be doing, and then all of a sudden we're resting and we're breaking that rule, then it's actually really normal and for guilt to arise because we've broken that rule but it's not a sign that we've done something wrong and I often say to women like often feeling guilty is a sign that you're doing something right because you're breaking these patriarchal rules that you've internalized and so sometimes feeling guilty is a sign that we need to relax more and over time those feelings of guilt will begin to soften as we untangle.
9:28Often I imagine it almost as a not untangling as we untangle, rest from guilt and begin to reweave it with joy. Yeah, it's true. I talk about guilt sometimes is really growth, but we call it guilt because it feels so uncomfortable. It's definitely, untangle is definitely the right word with guilt, I think. And I think I love in the book how you weave in nervous system, because this is something that I really experienced. And I want to talk to you about your experience of matrescence, because you are thick in your matrescence at the moment with an 11 month old. I sort of ran into my matrescence.
10:04Like I was that typical high achieving, you know, corporate woman. And I remember the slowness and the stillness, particularly of the fourth trimester, those first three months, my nervous system did not know what to do with that. And I found myself of sort of busying myself, I was going to like three baby classes a day. I realized, oh my gosh, I've just, my nervous system has been on that sort of busyness, got to keep going. And I'm just replacing all of the work with now the kind of work of going to baby classes and cleaning. I mean, there was a lot to do, but I noticed that I felt more comfortable in that busyness than in the stillness.
10:46I now know that was because my nervous system was completely alien to my nervous system to sit with my boobs out for 12 hours on the sofa, you know, breastfeeding and watching TV and just sort of chilling out. Can you explain how important it is for us to stand the nervous system when we think about wanting to become more of a relaxed woman? Yeah, I mean, I can completely relate to what you say. I think when we've been living in this, we live in a culture of urgency and so our nervous systems are very used to this very busy always on the go lifestyles and if we've spent our lives rushing slowness can feel so unfamiliar to our nervous system that it feels like a threat not because it is a threat or because it is unsafe but just because it's unfamiliar and I think sometimes with when we have a baby and with our matrescence we're thrown into such a shift in lifestyle that we don't have time almost to teach our nervous systems very gently that slowness and stillness are safe and so we find ourselves kind of ping ponging back into that super busy mode whereas if maybe we're working with a therapist or we're of work beginning to understand and tend to our nervous systems on our own we we begin to make these changes a lot more slowly and a lot more gently and kind of weave these moments of slowness into our days whereas in matricence and with a baby everything happens so suddenly and it's like a whole culture shock that we have to adapt to which i think in itself puts our nervous system into a state of threat and hypervigilance, which then makes slowing down even harder.
12:33But I think it's, I guess the advice I would give to other women who find themselves in kind of a similar situation to you is to begin to weave moments of slowness into your day. So it could be as simple as slowing down your breathing and being really conscious about that, or slowing down your speech or slowing down when you're taking the washing out the washing machine and things like that. Just so we keep sending these signals of safeness to our nervous system when we're telling it, slowness is safe. I absolutely love that because it's so true. Like I can walk down the stairs or I can pelt it down the stairs, you know, and both send a message to my nervous system, don't they?
13:16How has your matrescence been? So my little boy is now 11 months old, so I'm still very new to motherhood. For me, I think the word that would describe it at the beginning, and maybe even now, is disorientating. I think I'd spent so much of my life focused on other things. And I don't think no matter how much you read or how many other mothers you speak to nothing can really prepare you for that entire shift in identity and lifestyle and it has helped me to I would say relax even more and to really embody what I write in the book because I wrote the book whilst I was pregnant and then I edited it once I'd had my son so it was quite interesting to look back on how how my ideas had kind of evolved and shifted and and now I very much feel like I'm living the research that I did where women some of the key phrases that women said to me were they have no time to rest and no place to to rest and I think in these early stages of motherhood that is how it feels and I suppose we have to be a bit more creative about rest and thinking about how often in motherhood rest is seen as a privilege and unfortunately the society we live in is that rest has become a privilege which it shouldn't be because it's also a biological necessity but if we can expand our idea of rest what rest is beyond lying on a sofa which I think other doctors and psychologists like Sandra Dalton-Smith has done really beautifully in her seven ways of resting and Stuart Shank has done in his work on self-regulation and looking at different domains of stress and rest but if we can expand our sense of what rest is the way I define it is anything that makes our nervous system feel safe enough to switch our stress response off it becomes more accessible so like for me just wearing some comfy trousers with loose waistbands became something that felt restorative because it wasn't placing any more demands on me when I was already sleep deprived and nursing a baby.
15:40And I think it's about experimenting in the different seasons of our lives so that we can discover and rediscover what we find restful and restorative. Yeah, I think I'm really glad you said that because I think so many people just think about resting as, as you say, kind of lying around doing nothing or sleep. And I think neither of those feel particularly accessible, especially in the first five, six years of matricence and motherhood, like no way. And so I love that you talk about anything that turns off the stress response, because then, you know, taking the buggy out for a walk and hearing the bird song feels, okay, I'm actually resting now.
16:18I'm actually resting now. It's just such a powerful reframe. You mentioned about the biological necessity of rest. And I wondered if you could dive into that to anyone who kind of needs that case made to them as to why finding these pockets of rest more might be beneficial to them and to their their family and children yeah so so i often think of stress is anything that is asking our body to expend energy to meet that need so a stress a stressor could be a threat or a challenge but it's taking resources and it's depleting us and so then we need these experiences of rest and we can think of rest as both a practice in terms of like you said going for a walk and listening to the birds or nourishing ourselves with nice food or spending time with people that feel supportive but we can also see rest as the state of our nervous system the state where we are in physiologically where our inner resources are restored and that then allows us to cope with the challenges and the stresses of everyday life and if we don't have those moments of rest and sometimes it's it is just a deep breath it is just a second where our stress response is switched off and our resources can begin to restore and those resources can be things like our neurotransmitters things like glucose and that's when we hit burnout when we don't have those pockets of rest that we can weave into our lives to help us cope with the stresses that inevitably we all will face and how important is it for our children because I know something that really changed this for me was learning about mirror neurons and actually the quickest way to help my two-year-old at the time through a tantrum was actually to have a regulated system myself because I thought it was about learning the right word to say to her and actually is that I can say the right word but if I'm dysregulated nothing's going to really cut through can you share more about that and how especially for mothers it's so important that we do learn and find ways to get that more regulated system yeah so I think one thing that's come up for me in motherhood is just how intertwined we all are like you say kind of nervous system to nervous system we are always resonating off each other and that for many women is what motivates us to begin this relaxed women journey and what motivates us to rest is becoming aware of the impact our nervous system is having on those around us I know one thing that when I was pregnant and when my son was born was that I began to think about how I do not want to be remembered as a woman who was always exhausted and I think if we look at what not just our nervous system but what we're role modeling to our children that as well can be a really powerful motivator for us to begin resting and relaxing because a lot of what our children learn when they're very little, what they learn about the world and what they learn about relationships and how to take care of themselves is absorbed very implicitly and very subconsciously.
19:43So if our children can see us resting, if they can see us as relaxed mothers, resting, honouring our bodies, trusting ourselves and asking for help, whatever it is that helps us feel relaxed and free, then that becomes normal for them. And so our daughters grow up seeing women resting and knowing that that's healthy and that's natural. And our sons grow up knowing that it's healthy and natural for women to rest and it's not their responsibility to do it all and carry the mother load on their own.
20:23what did your research show about interdependence and community because i think that's probably the big missing piece of the puzzle that we haven't spoken about yet because if you are on your own and you don't have any support the reality is you are going to have to be really really busy all the time because there's so much to do particularly in this economic climate so how important is community and support in order to get to the place where you do feel more like a relaxed woman? I don't think we can become relaxed women alone and in the same sense I don't think we can mother alone we're not our brains are social brains and they are more at rest when we are with loved ones than when we were on our own so they don't have to work as hard bioenergetically to regulate our emotions when we are with people who see us and support us than when we are on our own and so I think one of the most important things in becoming a relaxed woman in preventing burnout in mothers which I think is so common is is having our village and having our support network and research shows it doesn't need to be huge having three people who generally care about us and see us and support us is enough and I think sometimes actually that's in this um like you said socioeconomic climate even that can be difficult to come by but I think that is really at the heart of becoming a relaxed woman is that we have to do it together and research has shown that you might have come across this research as well that as a cultural value.
22:01Individualism plays a larger role in parental burnout than any other factor, including socioeconomic inequalities and how many children we have. And I think that really highlights how if we can begin to build communities where women come together and rest together and mother together, that can really begin to change things. How have you found building your village in the last 11 months challenging but also really humbling I think in realizing that maybe the people who you didn't think would support you are there in terms of the neighbors you bump into that say I've been there too and with their kids with their grandkids they tell you stories and then it gives you that sense of I'm not alone in this and so I think it's not necessarily that we need a village who can take our children so that we can have a break because often that's not what we need what we need is people that can mother with us and people that can remind us that what we're going through is is normal and they've been there and they've come through it and you will sleep again eventually and those kind of things that I think we have an idea of what the village would look like and what we'd like it to look like and actually there are so many people that can support us in ways that we didn't expect and even having those really small interactions can feel really restorative and that's what I found is that it doesn't have to be these big huge shifts it can be the tiny little bottom-up changes in society that can really help women begin to relax and begin to feel safe enough to relax in their bodies and in the world.
23:55You keep mentioning safety. Tell me more about that. How does someone know that they feel unsafe? And that's what's blocking them from becoming a relaxed woman. So, safeness is really at the heart, I think, of becoming a relaxed woman, both it's safeness and freedom. I think many of the women I spoke to have been in this state of chronic stress for so long that they actually don't know how it feels in their bodies to feel safe. And often when I work with women, well, that is the foundation of what we do is beginning to think about when was the last time that you felt present in your body? When was the last time your muscles felt at ease or you could potter and pottering I think is a is a brilliant way of of realizing okay I have it's safe for me to have time to do things that have no goal and also I think we safeness can feel like the way we breathe the way our our muscles feel the way we interact with each other how our self-talk is and it takes time to realize okay the there are moments in my lives where I do experience this and how can I begin to enlarge them and expand them because for a lot of us it takes trial and error to know what is it that helps me feel safe what is it that helps switch my stress response off and for some people what might feel relaxing is going to get their nails done whereas for other people that feel might feel like an incredibly stressful experience by the time they've organized child care and found a salon that is within walking distance and things like that and so I think it does take trial and error to realize what is it that we find restorative and what an in the body level makes us feel safe enough for our stress response to switch up yeah it's just challenging to do that so challenging isn't it?
25:56When you've got the constraint of maybe having to get childcare, it's like, I'm not going to get childcare, you know, and it's not going to, it's not going to, it's so difficult. I feel like there's just this real challenge in matrescence, which is that never before have we needed more that kind of safety and that regulation. And yet never before has it been harder to access if we, if it's a new skill, you've got any insights on that, how you can make this, if this is a new skill that you're looking to build with kind of little time or childcare, how would someone do that? I love how you also see rest as a skill.
26:33I think it is, if we see it as a skill, it takes the pressure of ourselves because it helps us realise that when we begin, we might not be very good at it. And there might be some anxiety and guilt that arises. And in matrescence, because it's such a sensitive period in the sense of our brains are so open to rewiring like this is the perfect time actually to begin practicing rest and to begin exploring and playing with other ways of being in the world and so in terms of rest I think one of the what can be really helpful is almost at the end of the day just take a very brief moment don't have to journal or anything.
27:16Pre-matrescence, I used to love journaling. During matrescence, you know, since I've had a baby, I think I've journaled. I can count the number of times I've journaled on one hand. But I think just taking a brief moment to reflect on what's felt restorative for me today. And that could be something as simple as like, I've got a really beautiful blossom tree that I see outside my window from my neighbor's garden. And just taking a moment to look at that can feel really healing and almost like that just gives me a sense of expansion and a sense of ease and a sense of peace so that I try to now do every day and then also things like wearing really nice socks or having a scented candle and things that we can weave into our days that don't take us away from our kids but that can feel nourishing to do alongside them and even with them.
28:11Yeah, I love that. And I think that's the reframe that we need really, because I think when we think about rest and nervous system work as something we have to do separate from our children or separate from our other work, it's just impossible, isn't it? Whereas I think when we can think about it as something that integrates into all the other things that we're doing, how could I do this podcast in a relaxed way? How could I do my next task, which is making lunch in a more relaxed way. I love that idea because I think it suddenly becomes a really accessible intention as opposed to something that feels kind of privileged and out of reach.
28:48Yeah. And I actually, I often ask myself if I'm in a situation where it feels a little bit stressful or I don't really know the right thing to do, or even like you say, something like making lunch, I'll often ask myself, what would a relaxed woman do? and I find that question is enough to just awaken this archetype within me and it might not be that anything shifts necessarily from there from the outside but it's more my experience of making a sandwich becomes more enjoyable or sweeping up the uneaten food that my son's thrown on the floor becomes something that is is not necessarily a chore but it's actually more of a practice in okay how can I embody this more relaxed way of being in the world as I'm doing the stuff that I would have to be doing anyway that's it isn't it because otherwise it does become too privileged it's like I'm not going to have an hour off to rest but I can do all the things that I've got to do on my plate in a more relaxed present embodied way I do that all the time as well I find myself kind of juggling multiple things and I say to myself just one thing at a time, just one thing at a time.
30:03And that really helps me as simple as, you know, I'm trying to get the snacks out and answer a WhatsApp. I'm like, what am I doing? Like just one thing at a time really helped. That's the way that I embody that, the relaxed woman that I think is wanting more and more to come to the fore in my life. I think that really highlights as well what you were saying, almost like we touched on earlier, that bi-directional relationship between rushing or multitasking and stress in the sense of when we're stressed we tend to feel that sense of urgency in our bodies and then we rush and that simultaneously then that rushing sends a signal to our nervous system that the present moment isn't safe and so it increases our stress even more and then the opposite can also be true in that slowness and safeness are bi-directional So by slowing down, by doing one thing at a time, that sends a signal to our nervous system that this moment is safe.
30:59There's nothing we need to run away from. There are no threats. We can be fully present and embodied here. Yeah, especially when you're in a stressful situation. It's so tempting, like that first kind of baby class and yours is the one that's screaming and it's all just going wrong. It's so tempting to respond to those with that kind of frantic energy, which always makes the whole thing much worse. It would be such a good muscle to have in matricence of doing the opposite, which is I'm just going to slow everything down. And I do remember, I remember it so vividly the first time that this made experiential sense to me and I did it.
31:39And I literally saw in front of my eyes, my toddler calm. It was just mind blowing to me. I was like, okay, I've read about this in all the books, but now I'm actually seeing it in front of me that I've calmed. I've just taken a breath and thought, you know what, it's okay. And she instantly calmed in front of me. It's just, you have to experience it experientially almost to grasp the power of it. I'm not sure it ever gets, you ever get tired of it. It almost always seems magical that, wow, we have this impact on one another without saying a word. and our kids are constantly picking up on what's going on for us which I think in one sense can feel like pressure but also if we do take more of a relaxed playful kind of understanding of it it feels like magic to me sometimes the way that my son responds to how I am and equally the way I respond to how he is it's like a dance almost yeah it's true it's so true and I think we can get to take the pressure off by knowing that we do this very imperfectly it's like one in ten you might catch a relaxed response it's still massive it's still a huge win yeah and I think for me that this is what's come up is actually being a relaxed mother is probably the opposite of being a perfect mother and it is very much accepting that I'm gonna mess up and that's okay and nothing terrible is going to happen and I think again if we can reawaken or awaken this archetype of the relaxed mother it really it offers another way of being for women to step into rather than this perfect mother kind of superwoman role which I think matrescence has really highlighted for me is completely impossible and I think for me there's definitely been I don't know I think there is a quiet grief that hits when you accept you are not superwoman and that you can't do it all and also there's a deep relief that you no longer have to try to and so I think as we as we collectively can move away from this superwoman perfect mother way of being, it feels like this deep exhale where we're all allowed to relax.
34:06We're all allowed to be imperfect and we don't have to hold ourselves or one another to these unrealistic expectations of perfection. Even as you're saying those words, I can just feel the relaxation in my nervous system. It's so beautiful. What in your experience are the biggest blockers you mentioned perfectionism I think that's a huge one I also think linking our kind of worth and productivity is huge what are the some of the big blocks that you see from people getting to that place as you were just so beautifully describing it which is the relaxed mother who can let things go a bit imperfectly or let things be undone and it and it doesn't it doesn't bother her in the same way that perhaps it used to?
34:54I think part of it is the way that we've been brought up to please others. I think for a lot of us, that separates us from what feels intuitive. And I think when we are intuitive, we can be more relaxed so that that people pleasing way of being is a huge barrier in that we are always thinking about how other people are seeing us, whether they like us, whether we are proving ourselves to them, rather than actually being present and embodied and relaxed and thinking about, okay, how can I express my values in the way that I mother, instead of always internalizing what society says we should be like.
35:39And I also think shame can be quite a big thing in beginning to rest and relax because for decades or since we were little girls, we've been taught about how having needs is shameful. And so honoring those needs for rest and relaxation and for help can become subconsciously entangled with shame. And it's only as we begin doing those things and seeing other women doing those things that we can untangle our relaxation, our rest, our intuitive way of mothering from shame. Yeah, it's true. It's true. And there's actually so much crossover between our worlds and our work. I talk about the three Ps in matricence, which is pleasing, proving, and perfectionism.
36:25And as you were speaking, I was thinking about the mother who gets back from hospital, you know, kind of injured from birth, exhausted, has guests over and is running around making tea and, you know, drinks and feeding everyone. I was really thinking about that mother when you were talking about the opposite of that which is you know being brave enough to break some of those those rules and those beliefs that we've had about pleasing and what we have to do and what our role is and it's interesting I think when we when we stop striving for this or to prove ourselves it we it gives us the freedom to begin asking what kind of mother do I want to be?
37:06And what kind of motherhood do I want? And often I think what we discover is the things we want for our children in their childhood is also what we need as mothers in our motherhood, whether that's slowness and ease and peace or adventure and more wildness. It's often because we are so intertwined, we are our motherhoods and our children's childhoods are so awakened, can awaken so much in us that we didn't, we didn't realize we needed until we had our children. It's so true. That was my experience, which is why I started this whole platform. What's something that you've discovered you need or realized about yourself and your matricence that surprised you?
37:55I think more, just more fun. I think growing up, like at some point on the way to womanhood all that playtime and that fun got squeezed out and everything became about proving and productivity and performance and having my son like the best moments are just when we're having fun when we're making a mess and I'd say I messiness maybe is also something that I didn't realize I needed and that I enjoy so much and the phrase that often comes to mind now is as a mother is a lot of motherhood is about relaxing into the chaos and there's something really beautiful and quite liberating about that and for me motherhood has liberated me I think a lot from my perfectionism partly I think because when you're so exhausted actually you don't have the capacity for things to be perfect anymore but also because that's not something I want to role model to my baby that he needs to be perfect in order to be lovable like for me that doesn't that doesn't sit right like I want I want him to know that he can be messy and imperfect and he will still be loved and so I really try and role model that myself yeah it's beautiful it's so interesting as well because lots of the same realizations came to me it's fascinating I always ask the same question at the end which is if you could give just one gift to all the mothers in the world, what would that one gift be and why?
39:29It would have to be the gift of rest and the gift of rest free from guilt and anxiety because as I've researched it, I just realised that this is what mothers need and this is what women need is a safe place to rest. That's beautiful. Thank you. And is the book, people can pre-order the book now? Yes, the book is available for pre-order now and comes out on the 1st of July. Amazing. And where can people find you and your work? My website is just my name, which is nicolajanehobs.com. And on Instagram, again, just my name, nicolajanehobs, and also therelaxwomen.com. You can find out more about the book and a few other different offerings on there as well.
40:18incredible thank you I've absolutely loved this conversation thank you so much for coming on thank you for having me
From the publisher
What do you think when you see the words, 'relaxed woman'? Do you think of it as being a rarity, or impossible, or perhaps privileged? Well this week's guest, Nicola Jane Hobbs, is on a mission to reframe rest and relaxation as not only accessible but also vital. She joins us today to talk about what real rest is, how important it is, and how you can become a more relaxed mother.
Pre-order your copy of Nicola's book: The Relaxed Woman: Reclaim rest and live an empowered, joy-filled life.
Click Here to order your copy of 'Motherkind: A New way to thrive in a world of endless expectations’
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