Today I’m welcoming Lieutenant Colonel Shaye Mullen Dyke, a 27-year Air Force Veteran. She is the Creator and Director of YogaFit for Warriors and YogaFit for Warrior Kids.
These trauma informed yoga programs are designed to help and empower anyone struggling with PTSD or unresolved physical and emotional trauma, including yoga teachers, mental health workers, educators, veterans, their families, first responders, and all those who help and love them.
She is also a yoga therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapists and specializes in working with groups and individuals to help process unresolved traumas.
Shaye earned her Master’s in Counseling from the University of Maryland in 2003, while she was in the military and spent a year working directly with veterans returning from the Iraq War. In 2012, she combined her military and counseling experience with her love of yoga into the program she’s in charge of today.
Welcome Shaye.
Well, thanks, Jeanne. That’s a lovely introduction. Now retired Lieutenant Colonel. I retired this past year during the pandemic. It was perfect timing with the transition to being at home. I got to focus on the warriors programming and leading workshops online. It’s been busy, and yet perfectly timed so I could focus on helping people during this difficult time and to help myself.
It may be harder to come out of it than it was to go in because we don’t know. We’re walking out of the cave into a new world. What are the operating instructions? How do I walk and talk and interact with people? We all have some healing to do. Not just people with a diagnosable disorder, like PTSD.
I thought I knew mental health, but it got magnified with everybody dealing with stress. We were dealing with the unknown and the human brain doesn’t like that, it likes to predict. If you can’t produce a story that makes sense in the world, that is, by its definition, a stressful place. Our kids are struggling, I was struggling, everybody became a caregiver, I’m a homeschooler. I work from home and roles changed. In hindsight, the silver lining is we were all going through it together.
Coming out of this year, people are more willing to ask for help because stress and trauma became normalized, and everybody was talking about them. Now it’s more acceptable to say, I’m dealing with some anxiety, some depression. In fact, suicide rates dropped last year but the numbers of phone calls to the suicide hotline quadrupled.
It must’ve been a different experience when you decided to introduce yoga-based programs to military veterans. I’m guessing that there was not as much willingness to address trauma in our troops.
We started creating the Warriors Program in late 2011, 2012, because 22 veterans a day commit suicide.
We saw this dramatic increase in PTSD is because we had this thing called the surge. We sent over 125,000 troops into Iraq and Afghanistan to ‘finish the war.’ We had an enormous amount of troops deployed during the next four to six years. Then, everybody started coming home and that’s where we saw a big shift, not only in PTSD, but things like traumatic brain injuries, TBI.
It was a desperate time in the military. The only paradigm that the military has, because we’re bound by evidence-based research, the Western medical model and insurance model, was cognitive behavioral therapy, which is fantastic, but doesn’t always work well with trauma.
Then, of course pharmaceutical interventions, psycho-pharmaceutical interventions, which are great in some instances, but just a disaster, many times, for PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder.
Military wouldn’t come in and say, I want that pill for PTSD because they wouldn’t really admit it. They would come in and say, I have chronic pain. What you get is an opiate. Then, oh, I can’t sleep doc. Okay, here’s some Trazadone. Oh, I have some anxiety now. Okay, here’s some Valium. I’m having trouble focusing. Here’s some Adderall.
They would walk out, very commonly, with six to 12 medications as cocktail that either made them a zombie or, unfortunately, many overdose deaths and addictions and increased suicidal ideations.
Again, not all drugs are bad, but that was all they had. I knew yoga could help and that’s what gave birth to the Warriors program. That was not sustainable and is actually not helping anybody.
Also, you’re really not open to going to mental health when you’re in active duty because you’re judged for it. We’re trying to get rid of that, but the truth is there’s security clearance concerns. You’re the perceived weak link. You can’t hack it. You can’t cut it. That’s still there. And, that’s just a necessary part of what our military does.
People can come to yoga class and never have to self-identify or say I have PTSD, and yet they come on their mats and heal.
The motto that I live by the credo, ‘You don’t have to talk to heal. You have to feel to heal.’ Healing comes first. Talking may come second. It’s that lack of feeling that’s the problem.
Back in 2012, it wasn’t well accepted, but I knew it could help. Yoga was on every base. I didn’t call my classes, yoga for PTSD, but they knew who I was. We’re still not there but we’ve come a long way.
From what it sounds like you were teaching this to military, not necessarily like in a therapeutic way, but it was therapeutic.
Yeah. I had gotten my master’s in counseling in 2003 and started yoga in 1998 and it finally all came together. I was like, wait a minute, I know yoga could help. I knew it was mental health therapy on the mat but didn’t have the ability to explain how to people, which is really important in the West. We want to know why and the mechanisms that make it healing. We have that now, so it’s an exciting time.
If you have trauma PTSD, you should get on the mat and find a trauma informed yoga teacher or a clinical therapist, like yourself, who specializes in somatic therapies because we know exactly how and why yoga and mindfulness work. It dials into the part of the brain and the nervous system where trauma is stored. The biggest message is you don’t have to feel this way.
For a lot of people, once they hear the science behind it, they’re like, all right, I’ll give it a try. Continuing to talk about our story can be re-triggering and can add to our toxic stress load. When there’s something as accessible as yoga, that takes away the fear of treatment. You leave a yoga class, and you feel good. You might not know why, but you do.
Prolonged exposure therapy. I think for some people it’s been a lifesaver, but in some ways it kind of makes you a declawed cat. It’s a desensitization as opposed to what we do in yoga, which is integration. We’re not trying to get rid of the trauma. That is completely Western, sort of reductionist, cut it out, get rid of it. We don’t believe that. We believe it can be a source of strength. We believe in post-traumatic growth, that trauma is eventually going to be a big strong root system for you. The way out is through, and yoga gives you the skills, the strength, predominantly through breath practice and self-regulation skills. The mindfulness, stay present. Then, when I get triggered, I don’t check out, I don’t disassociate, I don’t go shut down. That’s where the healing happens.
With things like MRIs, we can now see what happens in the brain. A person who disassociates or checks out is re-experiencing, which is not productive. Instead, we trigger a little bit, but we stay present. You’re going to feel it again, you have to. Just like when you stub your toe and hold your breath, eventually you take an inhale. When you stay mindful, you own it, it doesn’t own you. It’s there still, but now you can pull up that experience when you want, and you can retell that story from a place of strength.
What are the unique ways that PTSD shows up in our military?
A lot of people join the military at age 18 because they’re not from the best situations. The average military person has an ACE, adverse childhood experiences, score of four or more. They’re coming in predisposed to PTSD.
If you’ve been through a lot of stress and trauma, one of the responses is fight. We get the fighters. They’ve been fighting their whole lives. They tend to do well, but they’re rewarded for that fight response, and it’s normalized in the military.
That creates complex PTSD. You’ve come in with previous childhood stressors and traumas and I’m going to intentionally traumatize you before we send you to war. It’s one of the few things we know we’re going to do and yet we do nothing to inoculate your nervous system or brain from it even when we know you can. That’s martial arts. That’s Eastern mindfulness, control, resiliency. We don’t do that. We train you to fight and to follow rules. We don’t train you on how to control the weapon of yourself. Control your nervous system through your breath. Control your mind. Some of the special ops and other elite forces get that training, but it should be mandatory at all basic training. Let’s make you do meditation, so we don’t send you unarmed out there to have a traumatic experience and a dysregulated nervous system.
Then, we get mad because you can’t regulate yourself and your emotions. You come home and you’re a hot mess at work, in your family, your finances, your relationships, and we’re surprised? It’s actually quite logical.
For some reason, there’s a barrier about incorporating it as mandatory training. I think it has to do with a lot of people’s notion of yoga as a religion, which it’s not. We need to look at it like training you physically, we’re training your mind. There’s some initiatives, but it’s a slow ship to turn around the whole military.
To answer your question, I think it starts before they even enter and then we traumatize you in basic training. We’ve got to because you’re going to come under fire, and I need to know how you’re going to respond.
When the firefight goes on, I need you to hold your ground and shoot. That is abnormal human mammal behavior. Your first response should be flight because that is the best conservation of metabolic resources to keep you alive and to live another day.
We have to train them over and over again to counter that. That’s a trauma. I have to traumatize you to counter the flight response. Now let’s send you into battle.
Why are rates of PTSD higher for men in the military versus civilian men?
It’s a relationship trauma most of the time that happens because your buddy got blown up next to you. It’s a band of brotherhood. I would die for you if you’re my brother or sister in the military, but I don’t have to like you. I would die for you because we’re here for the greater good. That gives you so much oxytocin. Now, you get blown up or hurt and I feel responsible. It’s a moral injury, that’s much more powerful than any physical injury.
We’re talking about chemical messengers. Oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, is a chemical process that bonds us to one another. PTSD is very much physiological.
You can’t just give somebody a pill to alleviate those symptoms. The body has to be involved and there also has to be a greater meaning. There’s so much to explore. What is the greater good? How do I fit into that?
That brings up an even bigger point. We don’t explore philosophically with our young troops, are you okay with killing somebody? Part of the Warriors Program is reading the story of Arjuna. The warrior is telling his dilemma. He’s darned if he does and darned if he doesn’t. Someone’s got to go out there and fight. Is it okay? Is it okay with my morals.
We didn’t even mention the brain part. They’re 18 to 24 and the brain doesn’t fully develop until after 24. We’ve done great damage to their brains, and they come home, and we go, what’s wrong with you? Again, surprised when we shouldn’t be.
We haven’t had the deep, moral, philosophical discussion about war. We’re just like, do what you’re told and follow orders. They do that and then come home and are like, what does this mean about me? I killed somebody. I was responsible for this.
It really comes from not knowing who they are. That is another benefit of yoga, exploring energetically, emotionally, but also philosophically, who are we? Why are we here? No matter what culture or religious tradition or political standpoint you come from, you are all welcome on the mat. Over time, that’s the inner strength that yoga gives us. That’s resiliency. If you know who you are, then in any given situation, you’re going to know the right thing to do for you. Better to explore that before you’re faced with it. We can avoid some of those moral injuries.
I also believe that we shouldn’t send people to battle until they’re 25. That level of damage to the brain is really tough to undo. Technology has gotten us past World War One brute strength. That’s kind of controversial. I think we should send them to go make peace, build a bridge, Army Corps of Engineers, something medical. We don’t need to put a gun into your hand to go shoot somebody until you’re 25.
We talked about heart rate variability as being an indicator of our flexibility to recover from these catastrophic things.
Heart rate variability is really a measure of the coordination of our nervous system with the autonomic nervous system functioning. You train people on heart rate variability, and it doesn’t lie, it shows if you’re resilient or not. We have a biomarker. Just like physical fitness can be measured, nervous system fitness can be measured. That’s what resilience is. How about that in training?
How about we teach you to train your parasympathetic nervous system, which is where resiliency and awareness and healing come from. I know we have the nickname rest and digest, but it’s much more than that. It’s the calm strength.
You’re either Mr. Miyagi in the fight or you’re John Kreese. His trauma actually made him a dangerous ineffective fighter and morally, look what it did to him. But Mr. Miyagi had resilience. That’s the difference maker. You’re connected constant awareness. You make better decisions, not reactive, scared, or angry decisions. He was calm. He did what he had to do and he’s going to recover faster. It’s not going to affect him as much as somebody who doesn’t have strength in their nervous system.
We have advanced technology inside of us. Stop focusing on the outside. Emotional intelligence is much more powerful. It’s more effective and efficient too to befriend somebody, to collaborate, than it is to fight. It makes a lot more sense. We save fighting for the last resort.
You would think it would make sense financially too, to invest in this sort of training on front and back end so that we don’t have these kids coming back with these significant health problems that are then become a burden on our system.
You have to practice it. You can’t just go through a one-week course on resiliency and I’m good. That’s not going to do it. How about starting your staff meetings with five minutes of mindfulness. De-stigmatize that. Make it normal. Introducing mindful moments in their units and squadrons every time they get together. That’s all it takes. Where we train our muscles in basic training and get stronger. We need to do the same thing with our minds. Mindfulness is so affordable and easy, and it counters the past and future orientation of trauma. It keeps us in the moment.
What about coming back? What can we do to support the military?
Talking about it more. The military has been used for social change for a long time and I believe we can use the military for good. You may not teach military directly, but you are educating your communities. Start at the schools, go teach to kids. Let’s introduce this earlier. I would challenge all yoga teachers or mental health therapists to articulate how it works. I love polyvagal theory. Teach Vagus Nerve. Teach mindfulness. Teach about the triune brain. Teach about the medial prefrontal cortex. Talk about the fight, flight, freeze response. Talk about how breath practices hack into our nervous system. People want to know why.
Another big problem with PTSD that we don’t have a good answer for in Western medicine is anxiety and hypervigilance. You know, things like tapping, The Emotional Freedom Technique is a body-based intervention that costs you nothing. Turn your Apple watch on and start tapping. Watch what your HRV does. It goes up every single time. The science behind it is clear.
When you’re stressed and traumatized your brain is listening to the emergency broadcast system. It can only tell one story at a time. Tapping is like giving it a different signal, different channels. Then it can’t tell the same anxiety story. You’re recalibrating slowly over time. Bringing people back into homeostasis.
We have things out there that are easy, everybody can do them, and affordable. There’s an app for it. There’s a YouTube video for it. I will put information on heart rate variability and the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is tapping, in our show notes and also a link to YogaFit and Warriors Trainings.
If somebody is interested in doing some of this yoga teaching or just learning more at YogaFit, Shaye has created this amazing program. I’m a trainer for YogaFit and I believe, very deeply, that this is part of our answer. This is our healing.
Here we are 2021, Warriors launched in 2013, just for the military. Now, it’s expanded way beyond that. I have military and military spouses, mental health professionals, yoga teachers, educators, parents at home, people have been through trauma–All are welcome. I think, look at what the military did for us. They’re the reason it’s here. So much gratitude for our military and what they do for us on a daily basis.
Keep following what you love right now. There’s a reason you’re doing what you’ve been doing. There’s a reason you’ve had your specific trauma. You’ve got to find that reason.
For those that don’t know YogaFit, you can come to us not knowing anything about yoga. We speak yoga, but we also speak Western science. It’s medicine. In fact, it’s really effective medicine.
I think all yoga teachers need to be trauma informed. Your words have an impact on someone’s mind. We have an energetic signature that we bring with us, and you can’t fake it. I’ve seen so much damage done by teachers who triggered people unintentionally. We have to do our own work. We have to be grounded in our own experience in order to hold that healing space for another person. We train ourselves to be able to be regulated so that we can hold that space.
We have a good group of military that comes to our studio through Team RWB. It’s very much community. Of course people get triggered, but they know they’re in a safe place because of the community that they’ve established and just the work that we’ve done at Insight as trauma informed yoga teachers to be regulated for them.
Whatever we can do to get the word out there to everybody and let them know that they have hope. We don’t have to stay in this place. Someone does care about you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. We would love it.
Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-based mental health podcast.
Today’s episode is an introduction to eating disorders; why they’re a real concern and a real illness, the impact an eating disorder has on a person, and strategies for coping and recovery.
If you start to feel triggered by this information, please stop reading and, if you feel ready, pick up where you left off. If you identify with any of this information, please reach out to a therapist, contact your doctor, or tell someone you trust that you need help.
Our guest today is Alison Manley. Alison is a Licensed Professional Counselor, specializing in the treatment of eating disorders and trauma. She currently works at Northern Roots Therapy Center, a small private practice clinic in Madison, Wisconsin.
She is trained in many therapeutic modalities, including acceptance and commitment therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, also known as EMDR, family-based treatment and has specialized training in working with individuals affected by childhood trauma and neglect.
Ali aligns with the Health at Every Size principles and incorporates them into her work with her clients. Along with other aspects of intersectional social justice, she has worked in community mental health and private practice outpatient centers and has an extensive background and training in the treatment of eating disorders.
Ali is currently in the process of earning her Certified Eating Disorder Specialist credential through the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals. As someone with lived experience, recovering from an eating disorder, Ali is passionate that recovery is possible for her clients and their loved ones.
Ali, thank you for being here today. Thank you, Jess. I’m so delighted to be here with you today.
I’m so passionate about working with eating disorder recovery. It’s a very complex issue. Eating disorders have the highest morbidity and mortality rate of any mental illness. I believe that full recovery is possible, so I’m really excited to talk about this today.
How would you explain what is happening when someone has an eating disorder?
The simplest way to describe what an eating disorder is that it’s about someone’s relationship with food, their body, movement and themselves. Sometimes we get stuck on eating disorders being all about the food. While food and nourishment are an important aspect of our health, it’s also about our sense of self-worth, who we are, and all of the complicated things that happen when our relationship with food and body and movement and self is interrupted or disturbed.
Who’s affected by eating disorders?
Eating disorders aren’t a choice. They aren’t only effecting, cis-gender, heterosexual, affluent, thin, white women. In fact, eating disorders affect trans and gender non-conforming individuals at about four times the rate that we see with cis gender. Eating disorders don’t discriminate. They can affect someone of any age, any ethnicity and background. It’s also important to acknowledge that everyone experiences an eating disorder differently. People don’t fit well into neat little diagnostic boxes and it’s also common for someone to move across diagnosis.
That said I can speak to some of the more common types of eating disorders.
There’s anorexia nervosa, which is really characterized by restriction, limiting one’s food intake, having lots of rules and rigidity around food and movement. Also, being in an energy deficit, not taking in enough nourishment to adequately feed one’s body, often being at a weight that is below where one’s body is healthy. It’s important to acknowledge that is not just BMI. Someone can be in a quote unquote, higher BMI, and they can still be below the weight where their body is going to be healthiest, where they’re not going to be in an energy deficit.
Then there’s bulimia nervosa which is often seen when someone experiences a loss of control with eating and binge eating, which we might describe as eating more food than one might normally at a meal or in a sitting and following that meal by using compensatory or purging behaviors could be vomiting, abuse of laxatives or diuretics, or over-exercising with the idea that the eating disorder wants someone to quote unquote undo.
Binge eating has its own criteria as well, binge eating disorder, correct? Correct. Binge eating disorder is quite common. It is when an individual is often eating beyond the point of physical fullness or satiation, similarly to bulemia nervosa, there’s a loss of control and often a strong sense of guilt and shame.
The difference between binge eating disorder and bulemia nervosa is that with binge eating disorder, often an individual isn’t following that binge with purging or compensating behaviors.
I want to acknowledge that often there’s co-occurring mental health disorders with an eating disorder as well, for example, anxiety or depression. We can often see eating disorders as a way of trying to cope with underlying anxiety, depression, trauma, that’s showing up in the body or the mind.
That is such a truth and so important to keep in mind if you’re someone that’s treating someone with an eating disorder, if you’re someone that’s suffering yourself, or if you’re a family member. It isn’t as simple as looking at the symptoms and finding fixes for them. There’s often a lot of doubt, a lot of pain and a lot more that’s coming up when we’re working on eating disorder recovery.
Today is a brief introduction to this topic, we’ll have you back to explore specific aspects of eating disorders because they are so complex.
What do you feel is the difference between eating for health and wellness versus shifting or evolving into an eating disorder?
The difference between eating for health and wellness versus what might be an indication that someone’s starting to experience an eating disorder. One of the things that I look at is what is driving choices that we’re making with food and movement.
If we think about the experience someone might have with an eating disorder, there can often be so much anxiety and fear that underlays the food choices or the movement that they’re participating in. One thing that I would first check in with is intention. What’s my intention. Am I doing this because this food is nourishing me? It helps me feel sustained. I enjoy it. Or am I choosing this food or this form of movement because I’m trying to change my body. I’m trying to shrink my body. I’m trying to feel good enough.
We can think about eating disorders, disordered eating, and quote unquote normal or healthy eating on a continuum. I think about what’s the impact that someone’s experiencing with their relationship with food or their body or movement. For instance, are you going out on a run in the evening because you like the way that it helps you feel stronger, it helps you move your body and release some stress? I think that many of us would say that sounds like a fine choice.
However, if you’re going on a run because there’s an inner critic that’s really yelling at you for the pizza that you ate that day and maybe you’re a friend has invited you to spend some time with them in the evening but you’re saying no to that because there’s so much fear and anxiety about gaining weight, that might be more what we’re talking about with disordered eating.
We both believe it is essential to have a team. For example, a registered dietician who specializes in eating disorders or a physician who has experience treating eating disorders, because of physical health concerns.
Because of their complexity, because there are so many different pieces going on with the body, the brain, relationships, anxiety, trauma, we really need a bare minimum therapist, dietician, and primary care provider on a treatment team. Other team members could be family members, psychiatrists, friends, coaches, occupational therapists. Knowing there are so many different pieces, we really need someone with specialty in a lot of those different areas for someone to get good care.
Speaking about the dietitian piece specifically, many people with eating disorders hesitate at the idea of working with a dietician. They’ve got lots of food info and yet they still may have some quite rigid or unhealthy relationships with food. I like to think of dieticians at times as nutrition therapists, the person that’s saying eat this, don’t eat that. Working with a dietician allows someone to explore their beliefs about food, about weight and health to learn about fullness and hunger and metabolism. It’s not just having someone provide ‘here’s what you eat’, but really working on the why and the how, because our bodies are impacted by being in a state of nourishment or energy deficit. It’s really important to have a team member that’s helping someone out with that piece in their recovery.
What exactly can happen to a body as a result of restricting food, purging, binge eating, or even just being hyper-focused on very specific, good foods or healthy foods.
Eating disorders are not only emotional or mental health condition, but they impact our physical health. How so?
I’ll draw from someone’s work that I’ve found so helpful. Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani is the author of the book, Sick Enough. It details the medical complications that can happen with an eating disorder and what happens to our bodies when eating disorder behaviors are affecting us.
She describes what she likes to call the cave person brain. We’re biologically wired to defend ourselves against starvation. Historically, when our mammal brains and bodies were exposed to famine, that part of our brain responded to keep us alive.
When we’re in an energy deficit, our body temperature can drop down because our brain and body don’t want to spend any extra calories or energy keeping our peripheral limbs warm. We’ll get cold hands and feet. Also, a slowed heart rate because their body is really slowing down in response to starvation. We might see lower blood pressure and slowed digestion.
If someone is really limiting their food intake, the digestive tract slows down, so when we eat, we get really full, really fast. We can get constipated and have lots of GI side effects. One other thing that I’ll mention is that we’re less playful. We’re less spontaneous. We become more rigid, more serious, and anxious, more obsessed with food. There just isn’t a capacity in the body to play because when we’re under threat, it’s about survival.
Purging through vomiting, diuretics, laxatives are not effective ways to prevent the absorption of calories. Purging can also be really dangerous. It can cause electrolyte imbalance, which can put us at risk for cardiac problems, heart attack, chronic dehydration and kidney failure.
Another consequence of under nourishment or restriction can be loss of bone density. This is particularly important for individuals in their teens or say early twenties. If someone who is able to menstruate is not getting their period as a result of restriction, that lowering of estrogen can mean that bone density is less protected. Someone that’s 18 could have the bone density of a 70-year-old. I want to highlight this because a lot of medical consequences of eating disorders can be reversed, but we cannot recover bone density.
Let’s talk about negative body image. What would you suggest to help someone alleviate the critical voice or negative body image?
I think, just calling out diet culture. Starting with what is diet culture? Where has this come from and where have you gotten these messages in the first place?
We could say that it is a system of beliefs that equates thinness to health and weight loss to higher status, more happiness, or more love. It also demonizes certain foods and activities, even rest. Diet culture oppresses people who don’t fit the narrow view of beauty and health.
Another way I bring this into work with clients is talking about body image on a continuum. If you imagine a timeline, on one end is body hate or body loathing. On the other side you have body positivity or body liberation. Then, there’s all of this in between space.
We might think about this next place on the continuum as a place of body respect, where we are tolerating our bodies and taking care of them, even if we don’t like them. If I’m looking down at my tummy and there’s a voice that’s loudly saying that is not okay, I still make a choice to nourish myself. Body respect is about how we treat our bodies even if we’re not in a place of liking how they look.
Moving along the continuum, we’ve got body acceptance. Body acceptance, is a place of still having some conflicts with what I see in the mirror, but I’m not trying to change my body.
Accepting that maybe my body needs to be here in order for me to recover from an eating disorder or to continue living a fulfilling life.
We’ve got body appreciation after that. This is where we’re really expressing gratitude for what our bodies allow us to do. I might have appreciation that my arms can reach the top shelf of my cupboard, or my legs can carry me across the room. Body appreciation is honoring the function of our bodies and centering on our values and how appreciation for our bodies can allow us to further connect with them.
Finally, we have body positivity, body liberation or body love. This is a place where we’re enjoying the body that we have. We’re not beating ourselves up, trying to change, or giving ourselves flack for changes that happen naturally with aging or pregnancy or what have you. We’re in a place of gratitude and compassion. We’re not internalizing cultural pressure to be perfect. We’re celebrating body diversity, that there is such a broad range of bodies that aren’t commonly depicted in the beauty ideal.
Talking about body image on a continuum makes it much more reachable and accessible.
We don’t have to constantly be in a place of loving every square inch of our body. It is okay to move up and down this continuum and we can be in a place of body respect or body neutrality.
We don’t have to get to body love or liberation, and that also needs to be honored.
I see eating disorder recovery as challenging our own inner critic or internalized oppressor. We can describe the eating disorder voice as the inner dialogue that’s going on and when we’re thinking about food. What am I going to eat? How much movement have I done?
For many people, the eating disorder voice can start out with something as simple as, I’m going to try and eat a little bit healthier, or I’m going to try and move more. As someone gets further into their eating disorder that voice can become really loud, really unforgiving, and really mean.
How does one begin to work with that voice?
I draw from a few different models and approaches. I love bringing in parts work or IFS and exploring where did this part show up? What is its job? What might it be afraid of? I also bring in a model from Carolyn Costin’s work. She’s the author of Eight Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder. She talks about making a distinction between the eating disorder and the healthy self. And recognizing that an individual suffering from an eating disorder, isn’t their eating disorder. They are much more complicated as a person and that’s just a part of them.
It reminds me of narrative therapy. The person is not the problem they’re experiencing.
We can often over identify with these parts and start to internalize and believe that that critical voice is our truth. That it is who we are.
For some people, eating disorder thoughts are ego-syntonic, what do you mean I have this eating disorder? For other people, it can be a relief to say, that’s not me, but I’m sick of this.
It can help to start to pay attention to what that voice is saying. Maybe notice if there are certain themes. Be curious about where those rules have come from and work on strengthening your healthy self.
In parts work, all parts are welcome. We consider that the eating disorder part has an important role and some really important things to say, that often go back to dealing with anxiety or attachment or trauma. We don’t want to demonize this part, but we also don’t want to get too enamored with it either. All of our parts have a positive intention. They’re almost always trying to bring safety and regulation and decrease distress. When we tell parts, they’re not wanted that doesn’t make them go away. It often creates a lot of internal conflict and distress. It’s not the part that has to go away, but maybe their method of trying to help.
If we can be curious about this part, we can identify that eating disorder behaviors are a way of coping and we need ways to cope. We don’t want to take away someone’s coping skills and give them nothing in its place.
If we’re working on strengthening someone’s healthy self, rather than reaching out to this eating disorder part, can we reach out to someone else? Can we practice that connection? That can be a path to healing.
The mind-body connection is an extremely important aspect of eating disorder treatment and reintegrating mind and body and healing that relationship it can be transformative.
What ways can a person begin to bridge the gap and heal that mind-body relationship?
Eating disorders are dissociative in nature. It’s a way for us to disconnect from our bodies and live as much as possible in our heads with the rules and criticism. In some ways, that can mean we experience less pain, less distress. At the same time, we’re disconnected from ourselves, from our body and our feelings. Life gets gray and dull.
One place we might start is by practicing awareness of our state. Am I hungry? How do I know? What might that tell me? We can build an understanding that our body can be a resource and a place of wisdom. Polyvagal Theory, watching the autonomic state shifts. Deb Dana said that the first step is noticing. When we can notice what’s happening in the system, we can engage with it versus it consuming us. Mindful awareness is often the first step.
Another thing that comes to mind in healing the relationship between the mind and body is the concept of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is a way of approaching food choices and eating that focuses on honoring our hunger and our fullness cues, rather than what our head or eating disorder voice or diet culture are saying. It may not be the starting place but more of an end goal.
How does a person start to begin to reconnect with their body through movement?
Principles from Health at Every Size can be really helpful. Health at Every Size or HAES is a non-diet paradigm that focuses on health and instead of diet or weight. With HAES we’re understanding that fat is not equal to unhealthy, thin is not equal to healthy and weight is not equated with success or worth or health or status.
One of the HAES principles is life enhancing movement. What movement is someone able to engage in with their body? Will this movement help with my feelings about myself? With my physical health? A good guide can be focusing on how does it feel when you engage in that movement rather than how many reps did I do? How many calories did I burn? Am I feeling embodied? Am I enjoying this? That’s what I hope to see with someone that’s really in a place of joyful movement or life enhancing movement, as opposed to exercise that might be more connected to an eating disorder rule or behavior. We’re looking at movement as a place of joy and connection to oneself.
A lot of body positivity or liberation goes back to the sixties and fat activism. There is a lot of labor that’s been done to fight for this liberation. We’re really trying to honor the experiences of all sorts of individuals; those that have been oppressed, that are differently abled, that are in queer bodies and black and brown bodies. Actively challenging the belief that we can only like or love our bodies if we’re aligning with the ideal that’s really rooted in white supremacy, capitalism, and ableism is central to the healing of our body image.
Thank you for all the wisdom you have shared with us today. This has been a pleasure.
Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-based mental health podcast. We’re your hosts, Jessica Warpula Schultz and Jeanne Kolker. Whether you’ve tried everything to feel better and something is still missing or you’ve already discovered the wisdom of the body. This podcast will encourage and support you in healing old wounds, strengthening relationships, and developing your inner potential- all by accessing the mind body connection.
Please know, while we’re excited to share and grow together. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for mental health treatment. It doesn’t replace the one-on-one relationship you have with a qualified healthcare professional and is not considered psychotherapy.
Thanks Jess. And thank you for listening. Now, let’s begin a conversation about what happens when we take an integrative approach to improving our wellbeing.
Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk. I’m your host, Jessica Warpula Schultz. Today. My guest, Amanda Bauer from Forrest coaching and studios. And I talk about running. Running is a great way to move the body and connect to something deeper with it. I often hear runners talk about feelings of freedom, lowered stress, increased clarity and creativity.
even if they’re running alone runners describe a deeper sense of connection to others. World sounds pretty amazing. What I also hear from runners is that it’s a difficult sport, injuries are common and running is something you can only do for so long before those injuries start to add up and you have to choose between the sport you love and making things worse, or just stopping altogether.
Often people keep running and that’s why I’m so glad Amanda is here today. Amanda’s going to share new ways to experience running. She’ll give tips on breathing correctly, assessing the neurological connection between breath and your running pattern, tips on listening to your body in order to increase sport longevity, and increasing your understanding of your body as something that is empowering, strong and safe.
Amanda is a certified oxygen advantage, coach breathing, running, and kettlebells expert amanda specializes in coaching, recreational runners, as well as any client looking to bring ease and comfort to their everyday lives.
She offers sessions both virtually as well as in-person through Forrest coaching and students. No forest coaching located just off the Capitol square Madison. Wisconsin happens to be one of my favorite studios in town because they believe in trauma informed fitness training. They work to create an inclusive environment for all bodies.
And you’ll never experience that no pain, no gain then is best calories in calories out. Bullshit prescribed by the diet and fitness industry. You’ll find real people with excellent training who can help you reach your health goals in a way that supports the whole person. So welcome, Amanda. Thank you so much for being here today.
Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. Let’s get straight into it. I know that Madison is a big running community. I know running is a sport internationally, probably one of the most popular sports, I would assume because there’s easy access to it.
You just need a pair of shoes. It’s affordable. There’s a large community around it. What brought you to Rome? You’re exactly right. It is definitely one of the most popular sports. What brought me to running was, oh boy, that is a, that’s a loaded question. When I was in high school grade school, my, let me tell you a story.
So back up a little bit I heard my phone ring. I was maybe like four or five years old running around the house chasing my older sister, loved her, wanted to be her. And she answered the phone. She said, yes, I’ll love to, I’ll be there soon. And it was her friend asking her to come and play soccer with her.
They needed another person on the soccer team and I wanted to do what my sister did. So what did I do? I tagged along and. 12 years later ODP programs torn meniscus guy, there were all sorts of injuries, sprained ankles, a broken wrist. I despised soccer. It was the worst.
It was just this, team sport where everybody was pitted against other people and it was just. It was really hard emotionally to try to be there and support others. Where I felt the blame quite often, if a goal went by, I was like, oh, keeper. I stopped playing sports. I stopped working out.
I had a period of very unhealthy eating unhealthy movement practices. And then some things changed and one day I just. Decided to go on like a one minute run a one minute walk. And by the end of the month, I ran my very first 5k with my dog. Very important to me. And there’s like maybe 30 people in this race and we got second in our age group.
Okay, cool. It’s possible, but there’s just something about an entire, an entire community that is there to support you instead of look down on you for it. Getting that extra minute faster. So that me to running was really that sense that it is an internal and something that’s very internal, but externally motivated.
So if I can explain that a little bit better, you have an entire community around you, but really you’re only battling with yourself and supporting yourself inside when you’re on the run. It was my introverted extroverted personality. Yeah. Identify with that. I often have told previous people I’ve worked with, or, I’ve often told people that for me, I don’t need to hear who’s faster.
I don’t need to hear who did more burpees before I got there. I don’t, that doesn’t motivate me at all. And often for me, at least it creates a little bit of shutdown because then I get in my head about it. But if I. I’m looking and thinking about what I’ve done and how I can improve and how I work to become more efficient or better at something that’s very motivating to me and then doing that within a community.
So that internal, external, I like the way you phrase that. So maybe that’s why a lot of people enjoy running perhaps is that it meets both the external person’s needs. The timing they liked to competition. They like to see where they place. They like the community, but also for people who are more introverts, maybe it’s just a really beautiful way to connect to themselves and build a relationship with themselves.
Exactly. There are so many people. I know that hate going to gyms because they don’t like looking at yourself. If you can’t really look at yourself when you’re running, so yeah, that’s a really good point. You just got to look at all the beautiful nature. At least if you’re outside, right?
So you are a neuro biomechanical running coach. What does that mean? From forest coaching studios, that is what we do. We look at things from a brain-based perspective. So in simple terms, we take what happens to us. Our brain integrates that decides what’s happening and it gives us an output.
So from a neuro biomechanical sense, how your foot strike is approaching the ground, hitting the ground and pulling off the sides, your speed it, despite the sides. Yeah. Rate of exertion decides how fast you’re going to breathe and taking not only into account your foot strike, but what you’re seeing, how fast things are coming by you your relationship to Really like the heat that’s around you, the chill that’s around you.
So from the neuro biomechanical aspect, it’s not, it is not training from a sense of how fast are you going? And we get faster by just continuing to increase mileage and increasing your speed. But we look at four. Perfect form. And we look at how you’re interacting with the environment and how your brain is deciding on that interaction to create a greater and better output to keep you safer.
When you feel safer, you are able to perform at a higher. Agreed. And that’s something that we’re starting to hear more about. And research is starting to show that when athletes feel safe or they’re relaxed, they have optimal results versus utilizing stress to get the system to go faster, the system to improve.
I love how Forest Coaching brings that in. It was one of the first places I ever heard about that theory, which then started me on my own journey. Investigating the polyvagal theory and working with Forest Coaching. It changed even how I interacted with clients who experienced trauma as a psychotherapist, this idea that our brain is really involved in all the choices we make.
So when you approach, when you coach someone on running, how does that, what does that look like? How do you start. I’m stuck. I don’t start with gate. I start with breathing absolutely. First. The first thing that you do when you enter this world is you take a breath and that’s the last thing that you do.
So from that perspective, You breathe thousands and thousands of times a day. And when you’re running really the biggest limiting factor is can you control your breathing, controlling your breathing controls a lot about the safety mechanisms that’s in your brain. I will assess breathing patterns to make sure that breathing patterns are functional.
And after that, we’ll really assess gates after that, because the fascinating thing about gates and running is you can tell a lot about someone’s brain. Hard thing about it is that oftentimes you think, oh you’re just landing on your heels. So land on the balls of your feet instead, and pronate do this, do that.
It’s very difficult to train. Especially with how many thousands of times you take steps. So instead of telling an athlete we need to stop landing on your heels. It’s more of creating safer drills and creating a safer space. Brain and the body to actually want to land correctly. So as not to heel strike your heel striking, you’re often putting undue pressure on the knee often leads to either shin splints or it band syndrome put those in quotes reasons.
And those are really just ways for your body. Your brain to tell you something doesn’t feel safe here, not interacting with the environment. I want you to sit down if you’ve ever experienced runner runners, Naples. That’s pretty much why I don’t run is because I have this. This is why I dislike running.
When I’m not on a podcast, I use stronger words to talk about it, but I used to do a half marathon here, five case there, and then my right knee always gets all puffy and icky and I just don’t want to do it. And after you sit down, how does your knee feel? Gosh, I haven’t ran in a really long time.
I know that when I get up, it feels really stiff and sore. I don’t, what do you mean when I sit down? Just that it feels better. Runner’s knee. I get this quite often and you’ll find this a lot with recreational runners is that we’ll run. And then our knees will feel really weak and we’re like, oh, I just need to sit down and you sit down for a little bit and you stand up.
You’re fine. It’s very similar to when you’re on a boat near, maybe under you’re rocking around and you go into, I feel nauseous and you go and look at the hurricane. You go and look at the horizon, your uppy Downy, Oregon’s your balance. Oregon’s then feel like they know where they are in space, so it can create a better input into your brain, which makes you feel a little bit less wonky, a little less nauseous.
That’s just creating a change. So what is runner’s knee aside from your brain requesting a change? It doesn’t feel safe anymore in this room. So it’s going to ask you to sit down. So as a coach, I would say at what point in your run, where are you experiencing this? And if you were experiencing this super quick into your run, how was your warmup?
Do we need to create safer input mechanisms around your knees? Maybe around your feet, maybe around your hips, maybe your hips aren’t extending well enough. You’re pulling isn’t good. So we really look at these different. I guess injuries or issues or chronic issues. And instead of giving you strength drills to strengthen your glute minimus, glute medius, to prevent it band syndrome, we look at why is this occurring in the first place and is it occurring because your feet aren’t mobile.
So that’s the approach that we use. I love that. Yeah, it totally does. I know. When I worked with Annie and I met with you a couple of times as well. One of the running drills you gave me was to, run thinking about it and then run thinking about someone I love and then run a lap, thinking about my form and then run a lap, thinking about something that I love doing and to really.
Start to tell my brain, give it some of those messages of happiness and joy and safety as you’re working on this so that you decrease that threat response. Because for me, it comes back again, to those survival responses that our body naturally will do. So when, tell me about this, thinking about talking about first response.
I’ve experienced this other clients I’ve worked with have experienced this. Why do some people experience increase in anxiety, incur panic sensations while running or intense cardiovascular exercise? Or are you ready to get really nerdy? Yes. That’s where I’m asking you. Bring it up. Now, depending upon the individual, obviously there’s definitely individual considerations may not apply to everybody, but in general, if you think about where the diaphragm is and where the heart is, so the heart sits right on that diaphragm, as you inhale that diaphragm descend.
And the heart has more space. So if it has more space thinking about the blood that is in that heart, the pressure is a little bit lower, which sends signals to your brain stem to increase your respiration rate. When the diaphragm a sense comes up with your exhale, the heart gets a little bit, has less space, so it has a little bit more pressure.
So the brainstem and then says let’s decrease the respiration rate. As you are running, you need to regulate your breathing pattern in and out. If you were constantly trying to suck that air in, yes, that shallow breathing, you have that constant decreased or increased area.
For the heart. So the brainstem is then saying, keep breathing harder, keep breathing faster. We need to regulate our blood pressure. We need to regulate how much oxygen is in our system. Like we’re not getting the greatest like optimal, like functioning, which is again, threat. There’s a threat, right?
Why something changed? Homeostasis is where the body wants to stay. So in that moment, if you’re panicking, if you’re over-breathing, if you’re breathing in too much and you’re not expelling enough, you’re not exhaling your heart rates going through the roof, which obviously is not safe. So that sends signals out saying, Hey, let’s stop for a little bit.
Let’s regulate our breathing. Let’s calm down so that, Nope. No catastrophe happens. What about levels? What about CO2 levels during that? So as far as that goes to you, you have all of this oxygen that’s coming in Carbon dioxide is what we need in our system in order to. Get the oxygen into the working cells. carbon dioxide and oxygen are partners and they need to maintain a certain level in your system when you’re over oxygen.
Yeah. There’s no mechanism to get oxygen into your working cells, into your brain, into your lung cells and to your muscles, because there’s so much oxygen.
It’s like the blood gets filled with oxygen and another threat and it’s not moving into ourselves, another threat and that shallow breathing that often accompanies anyone in a survival response of S flee fight. Or anyone with anxiety often we breathe through our chest. Say we have, can you tell that someone here might have anxiety?
So you breathe through your chest a lot, or even your throat, which without that big diaphragmatic breath, you’re not getting the CO2 into yourself, which is another. The accumulation of the carbon dioxide. So if you do not have that proper buildup of carbon dioxide, if we are over oxygenating, we are not actually utilizing that oxygen and it’s not getting to our working cells
It’s it’s this unload offload kind of mechanism, you’re one of the first people to ever talk to me about carbon.
Dioxide as much as oxygen, all you ever hear in like popular vernacular is oxygen. I don’t think we’re thinking about the exhale nearly as much as we should or what even happens in between. Gosh, that’s just fascinating to me. So I know you have a drill for this, that people can try a breathing drill two and a half minutes long to help balance that offload and onload that oxygen and that CO2 distribution.
Hey, I do, especially, it’s an emergency panic attack. Drill. Try not to do this while you are running, but sit down and it’s very simple. Breathe in you breathe out. You’re gonna hold your breath on an exhale for a count of five. After that five, you’re going to resume breathing for about 10 seconds.
Normal in normal, out through the nose. After 10 seconds, you will exhale and hold your breath for another five seconds. And you’ll repeat that for about two and a half minutes. So it’s about 10 cycles. So the pattern is normal breathing for 10 seconds and exhale nose only. Okay. Yes. I could go into an entire diatribe and an entire podcast about why nasal breathing is more important than mouth breathing, but that’s next time.
Yeah. So in through your nose, out through your nose, normal breathing for about 10 seconds, exhale, creates a calming effect. Yeah. Activates the parasympathetic nervous system helps ground helps regulate that. Getting calm or just thinking. I love it. So try, that can practice. It sounds like at any time, probably easier, like you said to practice when you’re not running, but it will have the effect of starting to teach your body where diaphragm.
How to breathe correctly, how to regulate, which is wonderful for anything in life, any exactly. And let’s see, while you’re running, what you can think of is just extend your exhale. Ah, okay. And then while you’re running, extend your exhale. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for that. Let’s move to longevity of sport.
So listening to your body sustainability. We talked about at the start of this podcast, how, I think when there’s, when someone loves running, they’re going to run their entire life. I’ve never met someone who stops running. Oh yeah. This has been good. I think I’m going to move on, try something new, y’all are dedicated to this mind body experience.
So how does someone increase the longevity? So increase their ability to do it well for as long as they can. And that again is going to be so individual. But I think the important thing to note is that we do have community here, especially in Madison, which is absolutely amazing, but we always want to be at every single run.
We don’t want to have a DNF. And. It’s our community. So if we miss out on a run, we miss out on a group setting. So in my opinion, the best way to increase the longevity of your sport is to first of all, get your breathing in order second, listen to your body and really take good care to create perfect form through.
Not running on injury, right? So we’re not actually allowing ourselves to run during injury because the only thing that does during injury and pain is if we’re running through pain, we’re running through injuries, it teaches us to expect it. And so if we expect that to happen, especially with your brain, if we think of it from a neuro neurological aspect, if.
Our brains really rely on prediction. They can predict what happens if we run on a sprained ankle, we know what’s going to happen. It’s going to hurt a little bit. That’s fine. It’ll be great. And then your output is really going to be changing. Your stride so that pain doesn’t occur. And so you’re going to make up for that by instead of putting a much pressure on that right.
Ankle, because you’ve sprained that right ankle. You’re going to put a little bit more on the left. What’s going to happen. You’re going to start to create some weird things that are going to happen with that left hip. That’s going to travel all the way up to that right shoulder. And you now have gone from, instead of, yeah.
Resting and really doing a really good job of creating good input in that right ankle. You’ve now created a neck injury on your upper spine, and now you have a stiff neck and probably around its spine and running is going to be probably pretty painful. So it’s correcting those bad habits when you find them making sure that you’re not ignoring those little aches and pains.
But you’re understanding why they’re there and trying to create a safer I say for understanding around, around them and around your body, how can someone prehab, what does that look like? Can you explain the idea of pre having in order to avoid injury?
Of course. And I think most runners will understand that. Getting through your strength work. It is absolutely doing that. And it is also. Creating good distibular and balanced inputs. It is understanding that you can’t just run every single day without squatting a couple of days without working on your core and having some of your runs be slower than other runs.
And rehabbing to me is really having just a really good cross training program. There’s a reason why all of us running coaches around Madison tell people that they need to have a cross training program. Running is a beautiful, wonderful, magical thing, but it is not resistance training. You are not strengthening and creating a plasticity through a lot of your tendons and muscles and all that good stuff.
Because you do have that repetitive nature out of it. Brains love the novel. They love doing different things and creating new programs around it. So from a neurological perspective, if all you do is run, your brain is wired to make that lazier to make it easier. It creates shortcuts around it. Thanks brain.
Yeah. Thanks for being so awesome and smart and fast, but written your signature. And I don’t know about you, but my signature just looks like an X hi, that’s fine. I’ve done it so often when I was a little girl, I took painstaking like strokes. But you could see it and I practice it, made it perfect.
And now it’s just whatever. So I think that the same thing can be said about running is that if we just look at it from, oh, I just am going to go for a run and not actively practice, maybe a couple strides at a time, beginning of the run, middle of the run. End of the run. Where’s my foot landing. Am I.
Leaning forward. Where are my eyes? Are they on the horizon? And I’m breathing my regulating my breathing. So practicing drills and practicing your strength training program, honestly, pretty simple. That’s great. No, keep it simple. And yet. It’s nuanced. It’s still complex in my opinion. What about the misconception? And I hear this a lot and I guess I have a voice in my head that agrees that running will lead no matter what it leads to injury. For example, I’ve often said when people say, oh, do you run? I’m , no,
I like my knees. I think that’s one of my favorite ways to explain why I don’t run. I like my knees the way they are. So what are your thoughts on it?. I have some problems with that.
The biggest problem is. Let’s take your example. So you’re creating that story in your head. Oh, if I do this, it’s going to lead to injury it’s this idea, this output that our conscious brain puts towards something, because something in your unconscious centers doesn’t feel safe with running, and that’s fine.
You do not have to love running, but if you do love running and then it’s something that you want to do into your eighties. And there are people. That run into their eighties and run the Boston marathon every single year, which is amazing. And it does not have to lead to injury, especially if you take care to practice your form, you can think about, you’ve got athletes that squat, they love squatting. They love the Olympic squat lift and their snatches, and they set up.
Perfectly every single time they take care to practice their other lifts that will assist with the safety of their lift, because what is that heavy lifting? But every time form is key. If your form is right, if your form is off for a one rep max squat, you will likely be slightly hurt some place. If we, as runners looked at running the same way that we look at our strength training, I think we would be far better.
Instead of just going, ah, it’s fine. I can heel strike or just be lazy and running during this sprint. I just need to get through it. Or you are beat you’re exhausted and you just, that probably getting through that last one K last half, half a mile, you are maybe running on your runner’s knee.
Walk it sit down, do a drill. Don’t force it.
Can you talk a little bit more about working on skills and and how skills can increase safety? Not only biomechanically, but also just emotionally what other thing, what are other things people can do on your own without a coach, things that you can do are really good ankle mobility drills, specifically love to say this lunges. So the angle that you have between the top of your foot and your.
How can you make that feel really safe your toes as well? There are pulling drills that I would recommend. I can talk a million years, but along this stuff, but oftentimes if you can think about running in a little kitty pool, if you’re just running in place, if you are kicking the water in a way that the water actually leaves the pool behind.
You are pushing down and backwards and you’re not running very efficiently. You’re not pulling the ground with you to run forward. So instead you can think about pulling your heel to your butt, do your took us, if you will. Lovely lady that I work with and is teaches me and it hilarious anyways.
So if the water drops vertically down, as you’re pulling in, you’re leaning forward, that’s a great trail. Get into a kiddie pool and retrain your gate so that you’re pulling through your hamstring, pulling through your glutes instead of kicking back, and then you have to have a harder dry and your drive forward.
You’re pulling up with your knees and your core. If you’re pulling up with your knees in your quads, your legs are going to start burning way faster and your hamstrings are meant for endurance as are your calf. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me more about the toes. What is a drill to help get to know your toes? Oh I liked scrunching and I also liked picking up pens and pencils with your toes.
And there’s also the beauty of it. Skin stim. Touch is a good. Making sure that adding sensory to your toes, like touching your toes, telling your brain here, my toes. Hello toes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Not just with your hands, but also with maybe a paintbrush or a tissue or poke at it and you want to get all nerdy.
It has a lot to do with the structures in your brain, too. The sensory cortex that tells you where things are, which sits just behind where you can move things. So you have to touch things before you can actually move them or know how to move them. So with feet specifically, it does have a lot of touch.
And how important are your toes when you’re running? Like how much do they matter? Oh, Yes, the answer is yes. Yes. They matter a lot. Imagine having your big, your great toe. Imagine breaking it and attempting to walk. And if you don’t have. A good understanding of where your toes are.
Cause they, they push off through the ground through that great toe, your little toe, whatever. It’s a little toe and I’ve run on toes where I didn’t realize that they were even broken, probably should have, but the same thing is very true. Every other structure in your body, right? If you have a broken finger, running’s going to not be terribly difficult, but you’re still going to come and probably feel that.
I remember when I was in October, I had my teeth, I had my wisdom teeth pulled and attempting to run three weeks. After that, I had a massive headache. It was awful. You’re relearning your body. You’re relearning what can move and what doesn’t move. So the importance of your feet and your toes it’s your relationship with how fast you’re going?
Your relationship with how much force you’re putting in through the ground is you’re pulling off and landing and the unconscious input that your feet and your toes give to your brain while you’re running. There’s huge millions and million of drills, or a really cool way to maybe start working on something different, wake your brain up around, running and do something different.
I hear you talk about stride and I can imagine how that would start to feel a little overwhelming because of all the different nuances. But I could handle scrunching my toes around things every day. I could handle trying to pick up pencils and get to know those toes and see how it changes on my own.
Yeah. And are there other things you choose, just make sure that you can actually wiggle your toes in your shoes. So I want to tie those so tight. Okay. So shoes, toe drills. This conversation has been really interesting to me, Amanda, thank you for being here. And as we wrap up, are there any other habits that someone could work on your eyes where you are looking while you’re running while you’re doing things is so important, oftentimes.
Runners tend to look down at their feet instead of out at the horizon and your body wants to go where it looks. If you’re looking to the left, oftentimes you turned to the left. So giving yourself some good eye droves like what’s an hydro look far away often, especially if you’re on your computer.
Yeah. Yeah. I we’re only looking in one place all day long. And then I drove could be just to look out. 20 feet away for 20 seconds and hold that because we have so many different muscles in our eyes that we’re only using maybe a couple of them to look at these screens all day there’s a great beat. One that I often find helps when people have tight hips. So you stick your thumb about an arm’s distance away from you. You look directly at your thumb, keep your head where it is, and then draw that then down and to the side, keeping your eyes on it.
Hold your gaze there. Close your eyes. Bring it back to the Midland. And repeat it a couple of times on each side,
that particular drill, keeping your heads, get still training those muscles in your eyes. First of all, to see, without moving the head to perceive what’s down in that site, while you’re running, that’s pretty important to see your sides, your hips as well, why it affects your hips. Again, I could go into. The neurological science-y kind of connections back there.
But for some reason I find that works very well for a lot of my runners that have issues with their hips or tight knees or it band issues. Okay. I like that. And my instinct is thinking about how you’re right, when the head moves, the body moves. And if you’re looking down, you’ve got that slight curve of the back.
Maybe, the system, isn’t quite sure what’s going on. Things tighten up to protect and practicing. Allowing your brain to know you can look down and I’ll keeping the head up. Just probably increases safety, right? You want to let your body know you’re safe as often as possible and scanning the environment while maintaining that relaxed posture sounds like it would be really helpful.
Exactly. Very cool. You are a wealth of knowledge, Amanda. I really appreciate it. And I think people will get a lot from this information. Thank you. Very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. To wrap up, take what you learn out into your world, listening to your body, listen to your brain while you’re training, practice, those breathing drills.
Practice those tow drills. And remember, try not to run on injury, allow your body to heal so that it doesn’t learn how to run on an injury. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks again. Thanks for F orest Coaching for sharing you with us today. I really thank you so much.
Thank you again for joining us on Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-centered mental health podcast. We hope today’s episode was empowering and supported you in strengthening your mind-body connection We’re your hosts Jeanne and Jess. Please join us again as we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing. Until then, take care.
Today’s episode is “The Coming In of Coming Out” and my guest is Alexander Einsman, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Alexander, pronouns he/him/his, is a psychotherapist practicing in Madison, Wisconsin at Harmonia Madison center for psychotherapy.
In addition to treating anxiety and depression in adults, teens, and couples, he specializes in psychodynamic therapy, focused around LGBTQIA identity, the Queer shame-pride continuum, and trauma. Alex relies on several treatment modalities in his practice, including ego state or parts therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, also known as EMDR and clinical hypnosis. He also mentors and offers his clients the same mind-body connection he practices, derived from yoga, meditation, and hypnosis.
Alex graduated with a BA from the University of Wisconsin Madison and he received his MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, where he researched protective factors for queer youth development.
He completed his clinical internship at Briarpatch Youth Services, a Dane county nonprofit offering teen and family counseling and a youth shelter for at-risk youth. He has published columns and articles on therapy and psychology in Our Lives Magazine and the Wisconsin State Journal.
Alex, I am so happy you are here.
We have been therapy friends for quite a while. We met at Briarpatch Youth Services when you were doing your clinical internship and I was working in street outreach as an AmeriCorps member. We were driving around to schools and also providing therapy at the center itself. I remember it being a really meaningful time for me, learning from you and practicing our work together.
Today, we’re here to talk about The Coming In of Coming Out. What does that mean?
It’s language that came up for me as we were talking about this episode and thinking about the process of pride and shame for members of the LGBTQIA+ community or the Queer community as we’ll refer to moving forward.
We think of coming out as language that’s pretty common which, in a way, represents a step away from shame to pride. Oftentimes coming out is focused on seeking that external acceptance or validation, which is so important when we have any aspect of identity that we feel could be shameful or bad.
In parallel, for many people who identify as part of this community, there’s a process of coming inward. Even when we come out, there’s still this process of internally connecting. Most people who have had an aspect of their identity that they’ve hidden, or felt shame about, have experienced a disconnection within the self.
The coming in of coming out refers to how we can come inward and move toward ourselves even if we’re not getting the type of external acceptance that we want. We create a coming toward the self, ultimately showing up as a whole person.
Let’s talk more about the continuum between pride and shame.
First, Alex, what does pride mean to you?
Pride to me has really expanded in my own experience and definition and has changed throughout my development as a as a young person, a young gay man in this world.
I first experienced and thought of pride as the opportunity to be out in this world and to show who I am or who we are without any apology. Basically, to show up in a way that we can be seen and accepted. The way that’s expanded for me, and I think for many people, is that I realized that the coming inward of pride was something that was really necessary. I love the celebration and the embracement, but over time I’ve thought about pride more as how can I show up for myself and for others in the community?
Both a connection outward and inward.
It reminds me of some ways of Dr. Kristin Neff’s work in self-compassion. She talks about how we need tender self-compassion as well as fierce self-compassion.
There’s this balance of energies to create wholeness where there’s the tender self-compassion of accepting ourselves to alleviate suffering and working on that inner healing. The coming in. And there’s also the fierce self-compassion of taking action to alleviate suffering; protecting yourself, drawing boundaries, providing for yourself, saying yes to your own needs, connecting with your community, and learning how to grow and change within the world.
What you’re describing is this delicate balance. If we have too much of one and not enough of the other, that can shape whether we’re there for our whole self or feeling as though our full self is being nurtured.
That is such a great perspective and I love that idea of the balance between being fierce, which is often necessary, and tender.
Fierce self-compassionate has such a great ring to it. It reminds me of the original nation of pride. If we look back at Stonewall, the idea to fiercely push back against police brutality to members of the Queer community was just necessary. And also, that inward process of providing gentler self-compassion inside. That’s a lovely, expansive way of looking at it.
Alex, you said pride is ideally the absence of shame. What did you mean by that?
I really see and conceptualize pride as the antithesis to shame. When we’re stuck in shame it can be really hard to feel prideful or engage in pride. I also want to acknowledge that there is a continuum between pride and shame that offers a sense of freedom. Things don’t have to be either/or. They can be both. Pride on that continuum connects the lightness to the darkness or the connection to the disconnection. It can be helpful to think about those terms together. That allows us to really look at our own experience of shame, whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, and find ways to explore pride in a personal way, collectively and individually.
Shame is the belief that something is wrong with who we are. A sense of unworthiness. In your clinical opinion, how does shame manifest itself within the context of queer identities?
Shame is really a universal experience. It’s one of our ways of coping.
When I think about shame within the context of queer identity, I think a lot about the internal and external rejection of self and how we often think about shame as something that is learned in both overt and covert messages throughout our development.
When we think about queer identity, there can be overt attacks with language and even mixed into our language. For example, the use of gay when referring to something bad, wrong, or different. These attacks are pretty ingrained into our language.
Shame can also be manifested silently. Something that’s not talked about at all. We get these messages that like, Ooh, there is, there is something bad about that.
Often, when I’m describing shame to clients, it’s about the dichotomy between guilt and shame, something that comes from Brene Brown’s work. Guilt being, I did something that I feel badly about versus shame being, I am bad as a person. There’s something wrong with me. Possibly even something that can’t be fixed.
Shame is the internalization of a lot of these negative messages and can often come as an explanation too. As a young human in this world, if I’m not cared for and loved the way I ideally should be, or worse, if I experience abuse or trauma, shame can be the explanation. There must be something wrong with me that caused this.
I think that’s why within the queer community it can be so challenging to navigate from there is something wrong with me to a place of pride or even fierce pride or fierce compassion. This is me and I welcome this.
It reminds me of Janina Fisher’s book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors. She talks about how when we experience trauma, and I think about chronic shame as a very significant trauma, the messages we get, even just from society, are misrecognition, not being seen clearly, not being loved as we are. They can start are early as infancy and our brains aren’t fully formed until we’re 24.
Often when we experience trauma, we’re not in the front of our brain, our prefrontal cortex. Because of that, we don’t have concrete memories to later go back to later to understand what happened. We’re left with these body memories or emotions. Sometimes what’s left are feelings of shame or confusion or low self-worth. That becomes the narrative, simply because our brain was offline, and our hippocampus didn’t make a memory. We can’t pinpoint that the person was wrong to do that. It wasn’t about me. We just have residual emotion, which sometimes becomes a shame narrative.
We then believe the narrative. One way we can challenge these narratives of shame and fight this story that there’s something wrong with us or that we’re unworthy is by looking at it with curiosity. What was my brain doing? What was my brain experiencing? Can I see if my brain decided it was my fault because the only data it has is leftover residual emotion?
What you’re saying reminds me of how shame in its origin, is very concrete. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s about good or bad, right or wrong. Very concrete thinking.
What you described in the process of exploring our personal definition of pride is really an expansion of that entire story and perspective. It’s looking at, yeah, there was a lot going on there. Maybe realizing that that shame goes far back. When we look at sexuality or gender, a lot of times we realize there’s an early awareness of this pivotal aspect of identity that is going to be rejected or hurt or harmed.
That brings me to Polyvagal Theory. I was watching a Ted Talk by Crystal Rasmussen, A Queer Journey From Shame to Self-love. Crystal referenced that at certain points safety was more important than curing shame.
When we think about the language of being in the closet, what we’re describing is hiding. One of our oldest forms of survival, our most powerful, is the freeze or kind of hide response.
When we access that dorsal vagal reaction. Sometimes people have the idea of pride that’s very concrete, you come out and then you’re good. I really agree with Crystal, and it really resonates in working with youth, that safety is the most important. If you are an environment or a contact or situation where you could be unsafe by coming out, then you may choose not to. That may be one of the best choices that you have, particularly because all around the world, people with queer identities are still victimized and targeted and attacked. We’ve made so much progress and there is still so much to be made.
Thinking about the aspect of safety within hiding can de-stigmatize it a little bit. Sometimes we can get down on ourselves for being in the closet, or the longer we stay in it can be harder to come out. To really look at that from a survival lens, what you’re doing to surviving. Then, how can we look at our internal and external environment and understand, how can I safely do this? How can I engage in pride? That can come in a lot of different forms. But just validating that that is an appropriate human response to survival.
How else do you see shame manifest behaviorally?
I personally think that within a lot of different mental health symptoms, shame is the underlying fuel. We can see shame influence the experience of depression, of anxiety. We can see it manifest in a hyper-focus on the body or a hyper-focus on what we do with our bodies. It’s really quite fascinating, the myriad of ways that our psyches can cope with shame, this deep disconnection.
In preparing for our talk, I had my own experience of shame that brought some awareness to me that I wasn’t consciously aware of. I noticed myself procrastinating on preparing for this. When I sat with that and tried to connect with what part of me was feeling that resistance, I realized that it was a teenage part of me that had really procrastinated on accepting an aspect of my identity.
I came out in my teen years, but at that point there had already been several years where I knew this thing about me and did everything I could to avoid it.
It was fascinating for me to realize, I have been out for a couple decades and truly, honestly, fully embrace myself and think that I feel no shame, but also underneath the surface, the idea of coming and talking outside of the therapy relationship, which is pretty intimate and confidential, just to speak to queer identity and my own experience, I really noticed that young, closeted part of me and had a really interesting experience with connecting with that and reminding that part that there are other resources here and this is something we’re choosing to do. This is about sharing and ideally helping other people and not so much about performance or the perception of rejection. It was fascinating to uncover a bit of shame hanging out in there.
Sharing that part of your story really exemplifies how we work with shame. As you were talking, I saw you put your hand over your heart for a few moments when you were speaking to that part. As a therapist, I hear compassionate-self energy going towards that younger part who is feeling scared or apprehensive or unsure. Being present and soothing and gentle and kind and allowing that part to share its fears and concerns. At the same time, supporting it in moving forward in a way that is healing.
I find that for myself and for many people, that more than one truth can exist at the same time. We can have come out and feel tons of pride about who we are and our queer identity and a lot of times those younger parts are still there. The idea of pride being like, how can we really show up for those inside parts that may still get scared. How can we shift that?
I tapped into lots of self-compassion but what I didn’t mention is that prior to that, there was a different framework. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? To shift, to change and to be like, wait a minute, what part of me is this coming from? How can I really show up for that part of myself? For this part of myself, offering a sense of choice was quite powerful and soothing.
With humans in general, but particularly with our queer community, it’s really about showing up for that teen or young part. There are so many things that happen early in life that really impact and imprint on us. Around teen years we’re coming to awareness of some aspects of sexuality or gender identity. It happens at different times for different people. Maybe think about, what was that like for me? When did I start to know about that? How did I cope at the time? Could that still be occurring in some ways in life?
Outreach, LGBTQ+ Community Center’s hosting Madison’s third annual Magic Pride Festival as a sort of virtual/live hybrid event this month, August 22nd, 1-5pm.
We’ve started talking about ways in which people can make pride celebrations more personal, even more, intra-personal, the relationship with the self.
What are some different ways to help people celebrate pride within themselves as well as with their community?
Outward celebration within the community is so powerful for many people because it offers that opportunity to co-regulate with others and to just be seen and have fun. That outward and external expression of pride can be really fun and is often a necessary part for people.
When we think about pride in a more expansive way, we can look at ‘how can I make this more personal?’ The example I gave was identifying with the part of myself that may have still been holding a little bit of shame and showing up for that part of myself. Essentially, we’re talking about self-acceptance.
So much of what causes us to hide and feel shame is the perception or actual experience of rejection. Without even realizing it, we end up rejecting those parts of ourselves. Showing up for those parts of ourselves with a sense of pride can often relate to engaging in first recognition, right? The identification that there is a part of me that still feels that.
I really like the concept of healthy multiplicity. We can have many parts of ourselves, and we should. Using that awareness to witness those aspects of pride and shame within us. Writing is a purely powerful tool for that. It’s about being present and offering witness to something.
You can journal with your parts. Identify that part and then from that self-energy, an Internal Family Systems technique, the self-healing aspect that we all have within, communicate with those younger parts or that part who feels shame. Journaling back and forth sometimes opens things up and builds that relationship. That’s where I think a lot of that healing can happen.
Journaling puts us in the front of our brain. If we look at it neurologically, we’re in our prefrontal cortex, we’re not reliving the shame. It gives us space to work with the shame and communicate with the parts of ourselves that might be holding shame. Writing is often an expression of goodwill towards parts of ourselves and an expression of ‘I see you and I’m here with you.’ We want to look at the original wounds, often rejection or trauma, and provide something else. Sometimes that can come with writing.
Music can also be really powerful. Sometimes I’ll throw on some music. What does that part of myself want? Do I want to have a dance party to my favorite song in my house? Do I want to dance with other people? Maybe I’ll throw on music from that time in my life, some 90s. It can be really fun. Just the idea of playing. That could be at a celebration or out in a park meeting with friends.
Ultimately focusing on that idea of reconnection in some way. Shame, at the end of the day, is a relational wound and there’s a relationship we can build upon within ourselves.
Alex, thank you so much for shifting the perspective. Not only can someone heal through relationships with others, but also sharing what a person can do to facilitate internal pride.
Often throughout the day we can have awareness of that. If we feel a sense of shame come up. I often describe shame as this invisible emotion that can camouflage itself in different ways, sometimes we’re aware of it, sometimes we’re not. There’s often a pretty somatic experience to it. We can feel that response. Feeling your gut, your face might flush, maybe our shoulders roll in, tension.
If you think about it, it almost makes our body contract. It’s a pulling in. What better way to survive in hiding than to close our bodies. The shoulders come forward, we get smaller in an attempt to protect. If we notice those feelings or shifts in our body, we can bring awareness to that, expand our body, open those arms a little bit, and, or even just acknowledge that feeling or that part. I’m here with you. I see you. Sometimes even just acknowledgement can be a really powerful experience.
Thinking about the body on a continuum as well. We roll our shoulders in because we’re protecting our organs, the most vulnerable aspect of our system. It’s so natural for all of us to pull in, but maybe completely sitting up and exposing ourselves feels like too much.
Perhaps someone can practice with opening up with only one hand while putting the other arm across their waist and then noticing if they’re feeling safe. Can we bring compassion to that area of the body? Building that relationship with those parts that are often pushed away because we hold this trauma in our bodies. When we can acknowledge and feel it in our system, we become more fully present, more fully whole. The mind and body are so inherently connected.
We can heal by movement and for so many of the members of the queer community, a big aspect of the healing journey is working with the body. If anyone’s not ready to sit down and talk with the therapist, you might find a similar amount of healing by engaging in movement-based techniques.
It can be really powerful because we’re no longer hunched over protecting our organs in survival if we’re expanding, if we’re doing yoga, walking, dancing. Ecstatic dance can be a really cool and powerful way for people to embrace themselves and feel a sense of pride.
Thank you so much, Alex. Until next time, take care.
Today, we want to share all of the voices that make Insight tick. We want to give a voice to everyone; therapists, case managers, and support staff. So, we asked them four questions.
What helps you get out of your head and into your body?
What have you learned from your work in mental health that you wish everyone knew?
What or who inspires you? How do you get motivated?
If you had a theme song that played every time you showed up for work, what would it be?
This has been such an entertaining project. We work as a team, we’re friends and colleagues. We know each other very well, but I was surprised and humbled to learn more about the beautiful humans that make Insight such a special place to be.
Before we start, Jess would like you to know this episode is being recorded in her car in a park in Madison so you may hear some beautiful rain sprinkling down on the roof.
Abby Kearns:
Hi, my name is Abby. I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Parent Coach at Insight.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is taking off my shoes and socks and feeling the surface underneath my feet. It reminds me that I’m rooted right now.
I wish that everyone knew that intense feelings don’t last forever. Oftentimes big feelings or super intense emotions feel like they’re lasting forever. In reality they only last a few seconds or a few minutes. If you can ride them out and pay attention to the shift in your body, it will change.
Who or whom inspires me or motivates me. I generally keep two people in mind at all times. They’re usually women and people that I know. In the pandemic, I often would think of my grandma who lived in Germany and went through World War II. I look up people in my life, and then I often look to sometimes celebrities or other people. Presently, Glennon Doyle, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Laundry are just a few.
If I had a theme song that I played every time I showed up to work, it would be, This Is Me from The Greatest Showman. I think that every client should listen to the song and pay attention to the lyrics in it.
Awesome. I love that song. I love it too, so much.
Victoria Ellington-Deitz:
Hi, yeah, I’m Victoria and I am a Mental Health Counselor and Body Centered Therapist here at Insight Counseling and Wellness.
First, a body scan. Turning my attention inward and noticing the sensations or what I find in my body. Also, connection with another being or an element like in nature. Listening to the birds. Looking out at a tree. The last thing is asking myself, how am I doing? Asking inward and actually listening to the answer. I think that’s a really important part.
What I’ve learned from my work in mental health that I wish to pass on to everyone is that mental health counseling actually works. Therapy works. One can actually overcome mental health symptoms. I’ve seen it over and over again. In the meantime, we can live fulfilling lives as we process and heal.
What inspires me and motivates me is the good in all of us. I actually see it every day working with the humans I work with.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be Trusty and True by Damien Rice. When I work, when I’m with others, I want to invite the whole of everyone and celebrate what’s working and heal what needs healing and attend to what needs to be attended to. The song is about that.
Matt Herrmann:
Hi, I’m Matt. I’m an LPC I T at Insight Counseling and Wellness.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is really anything that is sports related. Playing basketball. Going for bike rides. I love throwing frisbee. Anything that can help me get into that flow state.
One thing that I’ve learned that I wish everybody in the world knew is that it’s okay to not be okay. I think it’s the most fundamental piece. We’re human beings with human problems. It’s okay to not be okay.
Something that really inspires me and motivates me is my family more than anything. I just have a wonderful family that’s been very supportive throughout my whole life and I just want to do well and be well.
If I had a theme song that showed up every time I came to work, it’d probably be Never Going To Give You Up because it’s fun and it makes me smile and I kind of can’t help but laugh every time I hear it.
That’s awesome.
Lynn Hyland:
Hi, I’m Lynn Hyland. I am a Clinical Psychologist.
What really helps me get out of my head into my body is Body Pump. It’s a class for weightlifting and I just spend time focusing on each muscle group as I lift because the Body Pump does it in different muscle groups. It is my mindfulness break about three times a week, and I found that that’s the best way to get out of my mind.
What I learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew is that most everyone fears that they are not normal or that they’re crazy, but almost everyone is normal and not crazy. You look at others from outside their brains. You don’t know what they are thinking, but their behavior says they’re okay, nice, happy, whatever. From inside your brain, your thoughts are not okay. Not nice, not happy, not whatever you assume they aren’t having the same thoughts, so you think that you are abnormal or crazy or not nice or whatever. Believe me. Everyone has similar thoughts. You are all normal.
Who inspires me the most are my children. My son Taz is a positive force, so positive with so much care for others. My daughter Will, is prepared to fight for others. They inspire me even when they’re making me crazy.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be I’m All Right by Kenny Loggins. When I get to work, it’s all about the clients and not me. So, anything in my life that might be bothering me needs to be set aside. As the song says, don’t nobody worry about me.
Kelly Kendricks:
Hi, I’m Kelly Kendricks and I’m an LPC IT.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is listening to music which will eventually lead to me singing, which will eventually lead to me dancing. People who know me well say, oh, he’s singing. Watch out the Disney show is about to begin. Singing is very regulating because it activates your Vagus Nerve.
What I’ve learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew is that it’s a good thing for everyone. There’s a stigma about mental health. You go to a doctor for a physical need. You should see someone for a mental need. I wish everybody knew that and knew that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with finding someone to talk to.
Who or what inspires or motivates me? Well, actually I try to keep going and try to make myself a better person, make myself better at the things that I want to do, whether it’s work, whether it’s play. If it’s my writing, if it’s singing and dancing and theater, I actually inspire myself. It’s like, I can do better and that makes me want to keep going.
Awesome. I love that because for each of us to find a part of ourselves that inspires us is just as important as looking to external sources.
If I had a theme song to play every time I showed up for work, it would be My Shot from the musical Hamilton, because I feel that I am young, scrappy and hungry, and I am not throwing away my shot. There’s an opportunity for something each day and life is just a lot shorter than you think it is. I like to take my shot every single day.
Very cool. Thank you.
Joe Lambert:
Hey, I’m Joe Lambert with Insight Counseling and Wellness. I’m an LPC and a C SAC, which means Clinical Substance Abuse Counselor.
What helps me get out of my head and more into my body? I have discovered pinball in the last year, during the pandemic. It takes me from my worries into something that I have to use my senses for. I have hand-eye coordination and I have to pay attention to different prompts with dings and bells and whistles and sounds and multiple flippers and multiple objectives throughout the board.
What I have learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew is how important it is to take care of yourself. So many people spend so much time and energy on things for the house or things for the kids or things for the job or things with family. All those things are important, but if you’re not there for yourself, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, then you can’t be as present for those other people in your life.
What inspires me, motivates me? Different kinds of artists in different kinds of fields, people that are purposeful and don’t care about critics. I think of Bob Dylan, as an artist, his words inspire me. I think of Bill Murray’s actions and popping into different places, not listening to those external voices and judgments, but getting the most out of what you want to bring to the world. Those kinds of people.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be I’ve Saved The World Today by the Eurythmics. Something about Annie’s lyrics, I really identify with. Look it up. Hey, Hey, I’ve saved the world today.
Elyse Laing:
Hi, I’m Elyse and I am an LPC and work with children, adolescents, and families.
What helps get me out of my head is playing and snuggling with my dogs and my son. I’m also really into sensory stimulation, so if I’m really stuck in my head, I’ll mix it up and do something to kind of shock my sensory system.
What I’ve learned from working in the mental health field that I wish other people knew is it’s okay to be selfish with your time and energy. And, if something is bothering you, speak out rather than shoving it down only to burst later
Who inspires me? My son inspires me. He’s been through so much in his short life and through it all, he’s the happiest, most easy-going little human I’ve ever met.
My theme song that would play every time I showed up for work would be Shake It Off by Taylor Swift, because I’m all about empowering clients to be themselves and embracing it regardless of what other people think.
Kate Lauth:
Hi, my name is Kate.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is stretching and breathing. I like to feel the floor, roll my neck, reach my arms up above my head, give my jaw and my neck a little massage and take some deep breaths.
What I’ve learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew is that people are almost always doing their best. A little empathy goes a long way. Every behavior is an attempt to meet a need and every person possesses the innate capacity for healing.
There are so many people who inspire me. My family, especially my mom. There are so many family members in my immediate and extended family who are passionate, fierce, and bright. They’re lawyers, doctors, social workers, teachers, environmental activists. It’s really amazing. I’m also inspired by many leaders in the field of mental health and wellness and spiritual development like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Brene Brown, Esther Perel, Terry Walls, Pat Ogden, Cheryl Strayed, and 70 Selassie to name a few.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be, This Girl Is On Fire by Alicia Keys. I can’t listen to that song and not feel pumped up.
Ann Lewis:
Hi, my name is Ann. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor.
When I want to get out of my head and into my body, I just stretch. What I love about stretching is that you can do it anywhere and it’s not a special skill. I can reach my hands up to the sky or I can roll my shoulders and bend from side to side. It’s so simple, but there’s nothing like it to quickly get me out of my head and into my body.
I learned so many things in my work in mental health, but one of the big things that I’d love to tell everybody in the world is that you’re responsible for your own feelings. It’s a game changer.
I’m inspired by the people I work with every day in so many ways. But the person who inspires me every single day is my mother. After a head-on collision in her forties, she had to relearn everything from holding your head up to reading a book. This was an exhausting process. She never fully recovered. She couldn’t go back to teaching because of the limitation she had. She had only been a teacher for about five years as she got into teaching later in life. This happened during the Vietnam War and as a military wife, she was in a military hospital with young soldiers who had been injured. She had so much compassion for them. Once she recovered as much as she could, she tutored many students and became a lifeline to these students’ parents. She showed me every day how to lead a good life in spite of what life throws at you.
I couldn’t think of a theme song but my sister asked the question of my nephews and they said that my theme song would be Defying Gravity from Wicked. I’m really not quite sure what they were thinking.
Have you heard that song before? Oh, that’s beautiful that they picked that for you. That says a lot about how they feel about you.
Emily Natera:
Hi, I’m Emily Natera. I’m an LPC at Insight.
Some of the things that help me get out of my head and into my body; if it needs to be kind of quick and dirty I use EFT tapping from Emotional Freedom Technique. The whole purpose is to create some healing and some changing of the energy in your own body. For me, I use two tapping spots. I tap on the inside of my eyebrows, and I tap under my eyes. About six to eight taps with two fingers repeatedly until I kind of feel that release. And that’s the easiest and quickest way for me to get out of my head and get grounded again.
That is so cool. I’m going to research that when I get home and figure out how to tap. I love it.
It’s a whole thing, there are nine tapping spots. You’re supposed to do it in a specific order. You do a frame. You change your thoughts. For me, honestly, it’s like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, whoosh.
There are some things that I’ve learned working in mental health, it’s really hard to pick just one, but I think the most important thing is that it’s okay to ask for help. Not only is it okay to ask for help, but it’s connection and relationship. That’s what actually cultivates an environment for growth and change. Isolation is what creates an environment where your struggles get amplified. To ask for help is actually a sign of deep care and compassion for yourself and strength to recognize, I can’t do this alone We’re humans and none of us can do it alone. The other thing that is really important is that people aren’t defined by a moment in time. One action, one choice, one feeling, isn’t the thing that’s going to define your forever. The only thing that’s constant is change. We have the ability to reinvent ourselves, to reinvent our very sense of being, at any time.
It’s so important to remember that, too. I completely agree. We all need to hear that and be reminded of that. I recognize this is probably a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason.
My goal every morning is to leave my little corner of the world a little bit better, a little bit brighter, a little bit happier. Anything I can do in my little corner of the world to know that I made a difference, that’s kind of the end goal, right?
Tara Rollins:
Hi, I’m Tara Rollins. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and a board-certified Dance Movement Therapist.
My favorite thing to do to get out of my head into my body is to either do some yoga poses or watch a yoga video. Do some stretching, get outside for a walk or, my ultimate favorite, turning on music and dancing.
One of the things that I’ve learned being part of the mental health field that I wish everyone would know is that there isn’t one method or technique that works for everyone. Usually, the best intervention is a creative blend of techniques. Everyone can benefit from having a safe person to listen to them and make them feel heard and understood. Going to therapy or getting other forms of mental health support doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you. It means that you’re taking good care of yourself because you deserve to have a happy and fulfilling life.
I am motivated and inspired every day by my clients who work so hard to work through so many amazing challenges in their lives and keep showing up every week to see me. I’m also really inspired by the people in helping professions who have stepped up to help us all during COVID-19.
If I had to have a theme song playing every time I walked into a room, that would be just awesome. It would probably be Side Pony by Lake Street Dive because they are my favorite band and I listen to them all the time to make me smile. Also, the song is about having fun, being silly and just living your life.
Hey, it’s Jeanne here. If you have ever met Tara Rollins, you know Side Pony is the perfect song for her. Check it out on the Spotify playlist that accompanies this podcast.
Full disclosure at this point in our recording, we had some computer issues so from here on out, we had each person record their answers.
Catherine Wooddell:
First is Catherine Wooddell. One of our talented Case Managers.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is listening to music with kitchen dancing and good smells like sniffing my lemon verbena plant. I love the smell of lemon verbena.
What I have learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew is that people are made of their experiences. When you are honored with even a small piece of someone’s story, if you listen closely, everything about them and where they are will make sense. If you can listen closely enough to really hear where they’ve been.
What or who inspires or motivates me? I’m going to go with something a little bit historical. Sojourner Truth’s story about how she escaped slavery. She was in a county in New York where slavery was legal. It was legal county by county at that time in that state. A couple of counties over it was not legal and she knew that. One day she said that she heard Jesus speak to her. For me, it doesn’t really matter who or what you name it. She felt what some people might think of as intuition that right now was the moment to go. At the time she had a baby girl with her and she went and got her daughter and took off running. She just took off and she kept going until she was in a free county and then she was free with her baby. What she did next was she sued a white man for selling her son across state lines, because that was illegal. Slavery was legal where he was enslaved, was legal to enslave somebody, but selling him across state lines was illegal. So she sued and she became the first black person to sue a white man. When she won and she got her son his freedom and I think that’s amazing.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be Nina Simone, Feeling Good. Giving people the justice of being heard as I’m able to do in my work gives me life.
Maureen Grosse:
Hi, my name is Maureen Grosse and I’m a Yoga Therapist at Insight Counseling and Wellness.
What helps me to get out of my head and into my body is my morning practice of grounding. I put one hand on my belly and one hand on my chest, and then I just breathe. First, I start off noticing how my body moves. I just imagine my breath filling up my belly, front and back, and my chest, front and back, all the way up and follow it back down. Then I tend to visualize myself as a tree growing roots into the ground and reaching my branches to the sun for light and energy. When I get dysregulated or stressed during the day, I can recall myself as a tree with a few breaths to just ground and connect. Since I do it every morning, it’s pretty easy for me to access it in times of distress.
One of the many things I’ve learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew, honestly, it seems so simple, but it’s just to breathe. If we could all learn how to use our breath as a tool. It’s so powerful. I had an experience with my son when he was two that took me from sheer panic to a grounded sense of ease and peace and it was all because of my breath. I’ve seen this work with clients time and time again. Once people experience it or get it, it’s like a light bulb that goes on and they have their own superpower.
The thing that inspires me or motivates me the most is to see people who are living on purpose, who are living intentionally. It doesn’t have to be an activity that I’m passionate about, but to see other people living intentionally in ways that feed their passions, when I see someone in tune with their passion and living it, it inspires me to do the same with my own passions.
I don’t really have a theme song, but I do, honestly, have what I call a morning mix and a happy bomb playlist. I have Spotify and I made a morning mix playlist that I play every morning. I kind of dance and move and get my vibe right. It kind of shifts and moves any stagnant energy and kind of helps me just focus on positive things. Then I’m able to put myself in a better place for others. I always listened to that on my way to work.
Kylie Taylor:
My name is Kylie.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is yoga. I had no idea how disconnected from my body I was until I started and I’ll feel forever grateful for yoga in my life.
What I’ve learned from my work in mental health, that I wish everybody else in the world knew is that we’re all a lot more alike than we are different. So many of us struggle with the same things. I think if we all tried to be more understanding and listened, so other people felt heard, we would realize this and could avoid a lot of strife
In terms of what inspires or motivates me, that would be music. It has the ability to make me cry, gives me goosebumps and makes me feel alive.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be a tie between Foo Fighters, Times Like These, because it reminds me that there are times of renewal and growth and also, JJ Grey and Mofro, The Sun is Shining Down because it reminds me to be eternally grateful for all the wonderful things in my life.
Nikki Cook:
My name is Nikki Cook.
Something that helps me to get out of my head and into my body is being outside, especially when the sun is out and just feeling the warmth of the sun on my body. It immediately takes me into that body space where I’m starting to notice what my body feels like. Another thing that is helpful to me, that I can do at any time is a breathing technique where I focus on lengthening my exhale. When we lengthen our exhale, we engage the part of our nervous system that helps to invite more calm and ease in. Then by connecting with that movement of the breath, you can really feel it in the body. So again, that’s inhale through the nose and then a slow gentle exhale out through the mouth, helps to lengthen that exhale.
Something that I’ve learned from my work in mental health that I wish everyone else would be aware of is that mental and physical health are not separate. They are intertwined and it’s equally important for us to attend to both. We can have improvement in our wellbeing and in our lives that we wish for so much. We might schedule our yearly physicals and our check-in with our doctors and our dentists. It’s also important to take time to check in with a mental health professional so that you are getting that support that you need as well.
Someone, or a group of people, that inspire me, motivate me, are my three teenage daughters, especially over this past year+ in the pandemic. I have seen them navigate so many difficult situations, loss of so many important milestones, graduations, proms, homecoming, that really important time with friends at this time on your life. They’ve continued to move through these challenges with grace while also creating some space to really grieve and feel that disappointment. It’s been so helpful for me to see them do that. It’s given me permission to do that as well.
Janet Cassidy:
Hi, my name is Janet. I am the Office Manager at Insight.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is anything to do with nature. I spend a lot of time outside; winter, summer, spring, fall. I find laying on the ground and connecting to the earth always brings me back to where I need to be.
One of the things that I’ve learned from my work in mental health is when I started this job, I really thought that trauma was something that only could be defined by the police being called or something really horrific. By starting this, I realized that being bullied in school is trauma or being bullied by a parent. It was really eye opening for me because my background is not educationally in mental health. That was actually quite amazing for me to discover for myself. It’s like, wow, I really can say I did not like being bullied and it affected me my whole life and that’s okay.
Who inspires me or motivates me. There’s just so many people that I see out in the world now that can inspire and motivate me. I really enjoy the generation I like to call them the Tiktok generation. They just have done some incredible things through the pandemic and just been so clever. It gives me hope for the future. I get motivated by just knowing that the world is out there for me to see. I like to go out and travel, see the world. Every culture motivates me. Every country. And, of course, nature does all the time. It keeps me going because it keeps me curious and exploring.
If I had a theme song that would play every time I showed up for work, what I thought originally was God Save The Queen, but I don’t know. Under Pressure keeps coming to mind. I don’t totally feel huge pressure, but it’s just something that came to mind. And there you have it.
Julie Ann Orenstein:
Julie Ann Orenstein, another one of our super fabulous Case Managers.
Something that really helps me get out of my head and into my body is box breathing. When I box breathe, I like to close my eyes, I breathe in through my nose while counting to four slowly, then hold my breath inside while counting, again slowly, to four, then I began to slowly exhale for four seconds. I repeat this about three times. I love box breathing because it is a powerful, yet simple technique that really helps to clear my mind and relax my body.
Something I’ve learned from my work in mental health that I wish everybody else in the world knew is the most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
I am motivated and inspired by the folks that I work with, their strength, resiliency, and dedication to accomplishing their goals.
If I had a theme song that played every time I showed up for work, it would be You’ve Got A Friend by Carol King because well, friendships and Carol King are everything.
Jason Klein:
Hi, I’m Jason, the VP here at Insight.
What helps me get out of my head and into my body is being out in nature, especially fly fishing. We’re lucky enough here in Southern Wisconsin to have some great streams for trout and it’s a sport that combines both your mind and your body, and you have to be in the moment. It can be tremendously frustrating at times, but it can also be really rewarding. Even in the worst-case scenario, you can’t catch anything that day, you’re out in nature, you’re got to bubbling stream, you’ve got birds, you’ve got deer. It’s almost always a win.
What I’ve learned from working in mental health is just how much energy and empathy and skill goes into the mental health business. All of our therapists here at Insight are just so invested in their clients. It’s probably not just us, it’s everyone in the mental health industry. It’s something you don’t fake.
What inspires me is anyone who is creative, especially when it comes to the visual arts. My background is in graphic design and art so whenever I see printmakers or woodworkers, the things out there that people are doing are just incredible. It doesn’t have to be a grandiose project; just little things can be quite outstanding.
As far as a song I’m going to go with Billy Braggs, “Handyman Blues” mostly because when I’m not doing the payroll or the website, I’m the one who gets the phone call that the fax machine is broken or the doors are stuck. So, a little bit of irony there.
Ariyanna Toth:
Hi, this is Ariyanna.
Whatever helps me get out of my head and into my body is heat. Especially living here in Wisconsin. Anything that is a hot temperature, whether it’s a hot shower or hot bath, even just running my hands under hot water during the day. A heating pad, a heated blanket, you name it, I have it. It’s just one of those ways that really gets me back in my body and grounded.
What I have learned from my work in mental health is that everything is temporary. It’s easy to get stuck in a moment and think that that moment is going to be forever, that emotion is going to be forever. What I’ve learned in this field is that emotions never stay. Things are so temporary. Just let the moment pass because anything could be possible for that next month.
The person that inspires me the most is my grandma. She was raised in India in the early 1930s, 1940s and wasn’t allowed to have an education as a woman. She fought to study on her own and fought to get an education for herself and ended up getting her master’s and working as a chemist. It’s a reminder to myself as a grad student, of how we take a lot of things for granted and how much privilege there is in just these little things.
Angela Schueffner:
Next step is Angela Schueffner, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and the leader of Insights, A Team.
What helps you get out of your head and into your body? I use the five senses, grounding a lot. Pushing my heels into the ground feeling any sensations on my skin or the body. What do I taste? What do I smell? What do I hear? What do I see? As well as any sensory input, strong sensory input like ice, to really bring attention to the body.
What have you learned from your work in mental health that you wish everyone else in the world knew? There’s a lot of getting stuck in, why am I doing this, what is wrong with me or the frustration with ourselves, as well as others, rather than understanding that we, and everyone, are behaving in ways that we’ve learned, that we’ve needed to, that has served us in some way, or that we just had to based on the people around us at the time. Other than getting stuck in the frustration, thinking about where we learned that and focusing on how we want to respond now. Meeting ourselves with compassion and then shifting into, now I am safe. How do I want to respond? Focusing on the now presencing self and the now.
What or whom inspires motivates you? I would definitely say my kids. Seeing the obvious impact day-to-day that I have, in that my own behaviors, language, interactions, are reflected in them. That causes me to continually reflect on what I want for them as well as the world and their impact on it and their relationships. Then, seeing how the shifts that I make show up in them and change their interactions. How I interact with other people, I see them interacting with other people in similar ways and thinking about what I want for them and the world. Knowing that each person has a vast impact, unknown how each interaction, not knowing what the impact will be. So really motivating me to do my own work and my own healing and being really intentional in my interactions.
My theme song. I guess I will just have to go with the random song that seems to just always pop up in my head whenever I’m trying to get things done and not knowing where it came from or exactly why. It is the A-Team. I do not understand why, but I’m going to go with that.
Tammi Zine:
Next step is Tammi Zine, a Licensed Professional Counselor here at Insight.
What I like to do when I’m in my head and not in my body is what’s called 5, 5, 5. That is five things that I see in the room or the environment around me, then five things that I hear, whether it’s in the room or outside of the room, and then five neutral sensations that are in my body, such as the temperature of my hands or the top of my head or my heartbeat. That really can help bring me back. The other thing that I like to do is a grounding technique where I feel my feet on the Earth, really focus on them, and then I lift my toes and I anchor those heels into the ground and feel that connection. Then, I slowly move to where my toes are on the ground and my heels are up. Then, I place my foot flat on the ground. That can also really help me focus and be more in my body.
What I’ve learned in the mental health field that I wish everybody else in the world knew…that is a difficult question for me to answer because I think the mental health field is always changing. I’ve been in the field now for 20 years and it has changed. It continues to evolve. There’s still so much that we don’t know. In fact, the more I’m in this field, the more I want to learn and discover. I do think that we all have a unique healing inside of us and we can learn to access this in lots of different ways. We can learn to validate our own pain story. We can heal. Recovery is possible.
When I think about who inspires me or motivates me, honestly, it’s my clients. I know how much courage it can take to walk through that clinic door and then to open up potentially other scary or painful doors. I get to work in a field where I get to witness all the ways that people are amazing and I truly am honored when someone chooses me as a guide to walk with them on a part of that healing journey.
Finally, it’s time for Jess and I to weigh in, take it away
Jessica Warpula Schultz:
Hi, my name is Jessica. I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Sensory Motor Psychotherapy, and I’m also the co-host of Insight Mind Body Talk.
When I went to get out of my head and into my body, I lift weights. I feel really strong. I feel powerful. Not only that, but when I’m lifting, I have to be really mindful because of previous injuries. Also, because of breath, what it does is really shift me out of my thoughts. I don’t have room for worry. I don’t have room for self-judgment. I just have to notice my rib cage expanding to ensure that I’m getting a great diaphragmatic breath. I have to ground my feet and push through the floor. I have to watch to make sure my shoulder and my arms are moving in a way that supports my body. I feel really strong and amazing. I think that anything that helps you feel that amazing is something you should practice as often as possible.
When I think about what I’ve learned from being a therapist and that they wish everyone else in the world knew is our nervous system is so powerful. We have something called the autonomic nervous system. It uses neuroception to continually scan our internal experience, our external environment, as well as the nervous systems of people around us. Always scanning for threat. What happens is anytime there is a danger or even something that feels like a life threat, or is a life threat, our nervous system and brain respond so fast, faster than we could ever even think to come up with a response. Our bodies have this amazing system that protects us. We either flee. We have a fight response, attachment cry, we’ll befriend the threat. Maybe we’ll freeze, maybe we’ll shut down or collapse. While those responses have a negative stigma to them, they’re actually beautiful way to ensure our survival and often has nothing to do with us. When I learned about the autonomic nervous system and how it was shaped throughout my lifetime. When I learned I could shape it to respond in a new way and I could shape that system to feel safe more often, it was a real game changer for me. In the work I’ve done, it’s been a game changer for some of my clients.
What inspires me and motivates me. That’s a really hard one. I think I have the type of brain that finds inspiration wherever I go. I have always felt like there’s something more and that I’ve got to find it. I have a hungry mind. People though, people that inspire me. There’s professional inspirations, such as my colleagues. I love working at Insight. Especially the clients that I work with, the vulnerability and courage displayed on a daily basis. I often end my day feeling so grateful to even have been witness, let alone a guide, on the journeys of the people that I’ve worked with. I feel very privileged to be a therapist, very honored. Personally, what inspires me? I think the rule breakers. The people who break intergenerational patterns, the people who create a voice for themselves. The people who stand up for others, the ones who believe that it’s their responsibility to help change the world. That can look different on every person. I think about the musician on the Ani DiFranco, one of the loves of my life and how much her music has changed who I am. My partner who grows and challenges himself and checks his implicit bias and wants more for himself and for us and for the world. Lastly, the women in my life, I often go to them for support and for guidance. I don’t know what I would do without them.
If I had a theme song that played every time I entered a room, it would depend on my mood and what I’m doing. Of course, got to have some Lizzo “Feeling Good” “Soulmate”. When I’m moving my body, Carrie Underwood’s song Champion makes me feel like I’m kick ass and so strong. Lastly, Meghan Trainer has this really fun song called “Bad-Ass Woman” that for me, epitomizes I’m more than a body. I am a voice and a heart and a soul and a mind.
Jeanne Kolker:
It’s Jeannie again.
When I need to get out of my head and into my body, I go upside down. Just getting my head below my heart shifts my system. It could be something as simple as reaching down to touch my toes in a forward fold. Maybe I go into a downward facing dog or a child’s pose wherever I am, or even a headstand if I’m feeling saucy. Some physical change of perspective is usually all I need to reset myself.
Something that I wish everyone knew. Something that I’ve learned in therapy, is that we are so resilient. Humans are so strong, and we need to be reminded daily of how epically awesome we are. I’ve seen people endure so much pain and transform that pain into growth. I’m constantly inspired every day by my clients, my team, and my friends and family.
Speaking of my family, I am so motivated and energized by them. My parents worked so hard every day to give me this amazing gift, this life that I’m living intentionally to try to help as many people as I can in my little corner of the world. So, I thank my family for continuing to serve as motivation for me every day.
If I had a theme song for every day that I show up at work, I’m going to reach back into the archives back to my days of karaoke dive bars in downtown Dubuque, Iowa. My favorite song to sing was “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. When I show up for work with my clients and my team, I want everyone to hear the message that they will survive. As Gloria sings, I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give, and I’ll survive. It’s necessary to be reminded of our power and our resilience plus its disco and I just dare you not to dance.
And that’s all folks. I hope you enjoyed hearing all of our voices.
If you want to find that Spotify playlist of all of our theme songs, head over to Insightmadison.com/podcast.
Thank you again for joining us on insight, mind, body talk, a body centered mental health podcast. We hope today’s episode was empowering and supported you in strengthening your mind, body connection.
We’re your hosts, Jeanne and Jess, please join us again as we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing.
