Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-centered, 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 tuned into the wisdom of the body, this podcast will encourage and support you in healing, strengthening relationships, and developing your inner potential, by accessing your mind-body connection. Please know this podcast is not a substitute for mental health treatment and is not considered psychotherapy. Let’s begin a conversation about what happens when we take a body-centered approach to improving our mental health.
Today’s episode of Insight Mind Body Talk explores yoga therapy with our guest Nikki Cook. Nikki is a yoga therapist. She holds a master’s degree in education counseling and she’s certified as a trauma informed yoga teacher. She specializes in yoga treatment for eating disorders, addiction, and trauma.
Welcome! We’re so excited to have you as a guest.
Thank you. I’m really happy to be here and looking forward to our conversation today.
I’ve been looking forward to it too. I’m grateful you’re here sharing your expertise with our listeners. Today Nikki and I will demystify the practice of yoga, explain what we mean by trauma informed yoga, give you the listener a taste of what you might experience in a yoga therapy session and end our episode with body centered tools for mental wellbeing.
Nikki, you believe yoga is a powerful practice for every person; that it can be any effective component of the healing and recovery process. Let’s start by discussing what is yoga and who can do yoga?
That’s a great question. Lots of people are unsure if they are a good fit for yoga and when we talk a little bit about what yoga is and how we approach it, that oftentimes allow people to see themselves in the practice. Well, yoga can be approached from many different standpoints. It often is a practice where we’re moving our bodies in certain postures and linking movement with breath. That is the physical part of yoga. We also have other components of yoga. There are eight limbs to yoga and the movement portion is really just one of them. We also have yoga philosophy where we talk about different ways of being, which often has to do with treating ourselves with kindness and compassion and treating others with kindness and compassion. There’s another limb that has to do with breath and meditation. It’s much more encompassing than what a lot of people see, maybe when they think about a yoga class at a gym or a studio or see something in a magazine or on TV. There’s a lot that people can access, even if they feel that the physical part may not quite be for them. However, I’d like to challenge that the physical part isn’t for them also, because yoga movement can be as simple as taking a breath in, reaching your arms up and then as you exhale, releasing the arms down. You can do that from anywhere. If you can find the right offering for what you need, you will find that there’s so many different variations that it really is for everybody.
Yeah, a traditional view of yoga, or at least a mainstream view of yoga, is a certain type of person going to a boutique studio or the gym. It’s very body centered in the way that we build strength and increase our flexibility. Maybe that’s as far as it goes, which for some people that’s wonderful and useful. I like how you bring in the other tenants of yoga philosophy into a more holistic lens.
That being said, who’s a primary candidate for yoga therapy?
I would say everybody is. Yeah, absolutely. I think part of it, again, is landing in the right place and finding somebody that either, whether it’s a yoga therapist or yoga teacher, that you feel comfortable with. Once you establish that relationship, then you can really start to explore in a safe way. You know, a lot of people will come to yoga, as you said before, with more of that body focused, physical wellness. This is great. Then along the way, people will start to notice the mental health benefits that they feel. They start to notice that they’re in their bodies in a different way that just feels really good. Then from there, they find that it is this really, you know, holistic approach to wellness. So really. it works for everybody.
Can you explain how that’s different than a regular yoga practice? Yep. Absolutely. There’s definitely crossovers and similarities that you will find in both. For a regular yoga practice, right, that doesn’t have yoga therapy, you’re not working with a yoga therapist. That’s what you typically will find in a studio, in a gym. Everybody is given pretty much the same instruction. Hopefully, some variations and different options. You’re there participating as an individual, but within the group setting, so not a lot of individual attention. You may have a teacher who will be really great and talk to you if you’re new and just check in to see what physical needs you have. So really you are being instructed as part of a group. Yoga therapy, on the other hand, whether it’s individual or it’s group, because we keep our groups pretty small, we start to get to know the person as an individual.
When I start working with somebody, our first appointment, our first session, is mainly discussion with just maybe a little bit of movement. We’ll use different assessment tools to talk about, how is your body right now? Do you have injuries? Do you have concerns? Getting to know the physical needs and also our emotional needs. A lot of times people are looking for different venues, different ways to increase their emotional wellness and emotional stability. So we really talk about how can we also bring that into the work that we do together. Then from there, we create specific goals for you. Like, what do you want to work on? What’s your overall hope? You know, two months from now, where do we hope to be? It’s very collaborative.
I, as a yoga therapist, will be checking in to say, how does that feel on your body? What are you noticing? Is it working? Is it getting us towards that goal that we have today? If so, great. If not, let’s pivot and let’s do something else. So, it not only allows you to be in a situation where you’re getting your individual needs met, but you also are beginning to build those tools and that awareness of what works for me. That makes it so much easier to transition into practicing those skills when you’re not actually in the session, which is our ultimate hope. That we get these tools, and we begin to use them on a daily basis, even when we’re not doing our dedicated yoga practice per se.
That sounds wonderful. And I appreciate the individualized plan because we’re all different. We all have different needs, different nervous systems, different bodies. We’ve all had different life experiences. I appreciate how yoga therapy is also trauma informed. Can you share with our listeners what trauma informed means? How it pertains to yoga therapy.
When we’re talking about trauma informed yoga, we’re talking about working with a yoga therapist or a yoga teacher who has had specific training, not only in how to deliver a trauma informed class or individual session, but also training and knowledge of how trauma affects the nervous system. How trauma affects the body. That is very helpful in determining not only what we teach, but how we teach, and how we work with someone. And when we’re talking about using yoga from a trauma informed perspective, we think about using all of our tools, whether it’s breath work, the postures, the meditation, we’re working on using these tools to help regulate the nervous system and help heal the effects of trauma from a physiological standpoint.
A lot of the effects of trauma show up in the body, show up in the nervous system, so it’s very challenging to talk your way out of a trauma response. If you’re experiencing some anxiety, depression, panic, it’s the nervous system reacting. For example, if we’re noticing that we’re feeling a lot of anxiety, and actually, I had this happen to me yesterday, and I just, I just used it myself. I was on an airplane and there were issues with the airplane, so we had to wait for two hours on the plane for them to determine what was wrong with the plane. Could they fix it? They determined that they could and we eventually were given the go to take off. In the meantime, you’re just sitting there in that small space, waiting and wondering and waiting. Yes. So, you know, I could notice that I was very grateful for my yoga practice and specifically my trauma informed yoga practice at that point in time, because I was able to sit there for the two hours and not have it had too much of an impact on me. Yeah. I noticed the others around me becoming very anxious irregulated. Sure, they’re having threat responses right some want to flee and get out of there, some people may become more irritable, have that fight response and even freeze or shut down, I’m sure there were all sorts of different nervous systems reacting around you. Right, there were, and then I noticed as soon as we were given the go ahead and we started taxiing that my heart started beating a little bit faster. My mind starts going, I hope they really did fix it and, you know, as we’re taking off, all the bumps and everything were affecting me in a different way than they had on my flight down there, simply because of what had just happened. I knew it’d be very difficult to rationalize with myself at that point. Like to think my way through it? To think my way through it. So I said, Nikki, let’s start doing some breathing. The breathing technique that I used was focusing on the length of my exhale and I chose to do that because one of the things that we know about the body and trauma is that if we can have a longer exhale than inhale, it engages our vagus nerve, which is very important in regulating our nervous system. We started feeling calmer, safer. Yeah. Absolutely. And so, I did probably a good five minutes and it worked. I was able to just really settle myself. I was so grateful for that. Just the knowledge of changing our breath, what that can do for us.
I agree. Later we’ll go over the long breath as a skill for listeners if you’re interested in applying that into your life. Nikki’s going to lead us through that in a little bit.
I was reading on goodtherapy.org that yoga can even boost the neurotransmitter GABA, which is important because GABA levels are statistically low in people who experience substance abuse, anxiety, depression. When we think about yoga therapy, who would you say would benefit from this practice?
Well, before the pandemic, I would say the grouping of people that would benefit from yoga therapy or trauma informed therapy was a little bit smaller or focused a bit differently. One thing that I have noticed just talking with a variety of people is since we’ve all navigated a year of this pandemic and we’ve been dealing with really a threat to our safety, it may not always feel like it, but it is the underlying current that we all have. Many of us are really working with dysregulated nervous systems right now and from that standpoint, I think we all could benefit from a yoga practice. Whether it’s individual or group yoga therapy that is taught from that trauma informed perspective where we’re attuned to how to create a sense of safety in either the individual or the group session. So that’s a very broad kind of over sweeping thing to say everybody.
But I think that’s important. We’re all going through a major trauma right now and we won’t even see the effects on our bodies, our minds, until it’s over and it’s not over yet. I appreciate how you’re bringing the yogic philosophy into how we’re coping with the pandemic, as well as how we will treat the effects of the pandemic once things return to normal. Whatever the new normal is.
I think that’s going to take a while as well. I think as people start to go out and do things, it’s going to feel, for example, I was just on a plane that felt odd. Right. Being in an airport with a lot of people that felt strange. So, it’s going to be these small, everyday things that you’re going to want to have additional tools to help cope with the effects of that. We might do more irritable. Right? I mean, it may not show up as we feel anxious at that time, but maybe afterwards. After we come back from the grocery store or whatever outing. We might snap at our kids or partner or whoever and wonder where that came from, right? Having that awareness that it’s normal that we’re going to feel a little bit different and that we’re not alone in that because it’s happening to all of us to varying degrees. I really encourage people to start to explore whether it’s yoga or some other body-based nervous system regulating tools.
I hear what you’re saying, where there are different physiological and psychological aspects that yoga therapy can treat. What about the common concerns of, if people are saying, you know, I’m not flexible. I don’t think this is something I feel comfortable trying. I’ve never done yoga before. How do you calm those first-time jitters?
I let people know that that is probably one of the most common things I hear about concerns of doing yoga. I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible and my response often is, that’s one of the reasons we do yoga, because it increases our flexibility. Right. Also that, again, everybody’s different, that is something I talk about a lot as well. Right. Whether we’re in an individual session or if we’re in a group setting, it’s just human nature, we’re going to look around the room, right. Even if I’m doing it virtually, and wonder why does my body look different than that? There’s so many different reasons and it doesn’t even necessarily have to do with the fact that you’re not flexible enough. Maybe your body just doesn’t do it that way and that’s okay. What we want to do is use the poses to start to find a sense of comfort and ease within the body. Right.
You know another difference for what you might find in yoga therapy and/or teachers that are trauma informed is that we want to give choices because when we’ve experienced trauma, we at some point had some choices taken away from us and that can really be an effect that stays with us. When we can give choices, that can be very empowering to people to safely practice making decisions because it’s for a very brief point in time. Then again, we get that sense of agency, we start to take that back because we notice, ok Nikki gave me three different ways to try this, the second way feels the best to me. The next time we do this, I’m going to do it this way even if somebody next to me is doing it differently, because I know this is what works for me.
And that’s important as a body-centered psychotherapist and fitness trainer, it’s really important to me and all body-centered practitioners that people feel safe in their bodies and that isn’t necessarily where we all start. Sometimes our body is a place that we feel uncomfortable or that we haven’t spent much time in. As we build that relationship with ourselves and we befriend our body and we start considering being friends with our body, these practices that are trauma informed focus much more on tuning in, on feeling empowered, and feeling safe. Absolutely. Absolutely.
When a person is in yoga therapy, how else might a yoga therapist encourage safety through breath, or through listening to the body, or through nervous system regulation?
So again, choices, so, if it’s breathing for example, we’ll try something for a little bit and then I’ll pause and I’ll check in and say, how does that feel? What are you noticing? If that sense of safety doesn’t feel there, we’ll switch and we’ll try something different. It’s important, and it’s the same thing with a posture. What are you noticing right now? Do you feel safe in this? Does it feel comfortable? Do you feel like you want to run out of the room? And just always honoring whatever the response is and knowing that that’s ok, that’s actually one of, like, the gems that we’re going for in the yoga therapy practices is really being able to notice and be in tune with what we’re feeling and then ask ourselves how can I best nurture and attend to this? If we’re doing a balance pose and you’re not feeling safe in that, then we don’t need to be in it right now. We can come back to it. We can do something, a breathing technique or a different posture. You know, something that a lot of people find comforting is child’s pose. We can go into that for a little bit and then when you feel more regulated, more safe, then let’s try that pose again and see what the difference is.
Yeah, it sounds like yoga therapy helps people learn how to respond to what’s happening rather than react to what’s happening in their system.
Yes, I think that’s a great way to put it. Absolutely. And just really honor. There’s a lot of shame and judgment that surrounds our responses to things. Especially if they are responses that we would rather not experience. The anxiety often, depression often. If we’re irritable often, we can react to that in a way where we get upset with ourselves and we wonder, what’s wrong with me, why does this always happen? And then we get very much in our head and we’re very judgmental of ourselves. In that instance what I would offer up is, is it maybe ok to just notice that you’re feeling this and then honor that it’s your body sending you a signal that you need something different than what’s happening right now. And noticing after you honor that, where you are.
I agree. I agree. One of the gems of doing body-centered work is that we can mindfully separate and observe what is happening instead of taking it personally or over identifying with it. Let’s say we move into a different yoga move and our heart starts racing and maybe the initial thought is, I’m anxious. Why am I always anxious? Why can’t I do something fun and new? This always happens to me. I knew I shouldn’t have come. And then, thoughts can continue in that direction. Or, when we step back and observe through the body we can notice, here’s racing heart, here’s feeling clammy. I wonder why my body is responding in this way right now. How can I help it feel safe? How can I be kind? And that’s such a shift, that offering ourselves compassion, one, lights up different areas of our brain than judgement does, and it can help regulate and build that sense of wellbeing. Two, it encourages us, like I said, to stop taking it personally. This isn’t about us. This is the human, or even mammalian experience. It’s our body, or brain, trying to protect us and keep us safe. So then, we have an opportunity of witnessing and then maybe deciding if there’s other things we could do differently to engage that sense of safety and engage that sense of connection and wellbeing.
I myself as a psychotherapist have noticed that it can be very helpful for clients who are in traditional talk therapy to incorporate some form of somatic, which means the body, therapy, such as yoga therapy, trauma informed weightlifting, mindfulness or meditation. In your opinion, how does yoga therapy support somebody who’s maybe feeling stuck or feeling like something’s missing in their care?
That’s a great point, because I would say, the majority of people that find their way to yoga therapy have expressed that they have tried a variety of different talk therapies and it’s been helpful to a certain extent, but they feel stuck. They feel like something’s missing. So, it’s not that that hasn’t been helpful, they just feel like they need something else to complement it, to go with it. Sure.
The leading trauma therapist Bessel van der Kolk, he wrote The Body Keeps the Score. Great book. Excellent book. He also has done a lot of research with a yoga therapist, David Emerson, and they’d done research based, trauma informed yoga to show that yoga from, scientifically proven, that yoga does reduce the effects of trauma. That has led Bessel van der Kolk and other psychotherapists to arrive at is for us to heal trauma we need to have the body involved somehow. Sure. It’s important. It’s part of the healing process, so Bessel van der Kolk will even say that we first need to get into the body and heal from that point before we can start to access more clearly that prefrontal cortex. That thinking part of the brain where that talk therapy usually comes in. I like to let people know that you’re not alone in feeling like something was missing because something has been missing.
Yeah. I’m so appreciating our conversations and for you for sharing your time with us Nikki. Before we end today, let’s revisit what we mentioned earlier about the long breath and maybe even offer a couple more body-centered skills. What do you think?
I think that sounds great. Absolutely. When we can use just a couple of different tools and we can practice them. Hopefully, whoever’s listening can practice along with us. You can start to see that it doesn’t take a whole hour of yoga. Typically, yoga is presented in these hour-long sessions, which that’s lovely, and sometimes it takes three minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes, and we see the shift in how we’re feeling.
So, I think we’ll come back to the breath again to mention that this breathing technique, one of many, focuses on lengthening the exhale. Ok. I say it’s one of many because I want anyone out there who might practice this and feel like it doesn’t shift their nervous system to feeling more calm, more easeful, or maybe even does the opposite, to know that you’re not doing it wrong. This might just not be the breathing technique for you. Ok. And that’s ok. Ok, that’s good to know. We’ll figure out something else. Right, so the way that we want to practice this is we want to breath in through the nose. Just for a comfortable amount, we don’t have to feel like we need to take a huge breath in. And then we exhale out through the mouth and it’s a slow, gentle exhale. We don’t need to feel like we need to really push anything. I sometimes suggest a sigh to go with it or a haaa sound because in addition to the lengthening of the exhale, engaging our vague nerve, engaging our parasympathetic nervous system. That sound also does that as well, ok? When we get to the end of that exhale, we’re going to let the body tell us when we want to take that next breath in.
Thank you for that Nikki. Let’s move into skill #2, movement in breath.
And so, this shows up a lot in many different postures. I’m going to come back to one that I referenced earlier which involves simple arm movements. I do also want to share that there are times, especially when we may be newer to yoga practice and linking movement with breath, that sometimes we might start to feel not necessarily overwhelmed, but feel like we’re focusing too much on that, on getting it right, and it takes us out of the body and into the mind. I always tell people, try to remind them that, if you notice that starting to happen for you, just kind of drop the breathing for a little bit and just do the movement and see how that feels, ok? Ok. One of the reasons we do like to link our movement with our breath is it just increases that mind-body connection. And also, if we have the tendency to have a very busy mind, which many of us do, including myself, when we can link that movement with the breath, it helps us to stay a little bit more present. Again, if we notice that the opposite is happening, we just adjust and do it slightly differently for our needs in that moment. Thank you.
The one with the arms is taking the arms out to the side and when you take a breath in you extend your arms up above your head. Then when you exhale, you begin to release the arms down. It’s just a gentle movement with the breath where you’re extending up on your inhale and your releasing on the exhale. You can determine what a comfortable range of motion is for your body. If extending your arms up above your head doesn’t work because your shoulders hurt or you have an injury, you go to your comfortable range of motion and then you release back down. That is one simple way you can do that.
I appreciate that. Often when I’m working with people and movement as a personal trainer, we all have different ranges, our bodies move differently. What I encourage for those whose bodies are maybe not moving in a pattern that they expected, is that we just meet the body where it’s at. If we push too hard, we’ll just create a threat response. Our bodies will say something isn’t right. There’s pain or there’s an issue here. Then we’re creating a response where our body will want to protect itself instead of feeling safe. I really like that accommodation to that pose.
That moves us into thinking about trauma informed poses. So, when you’re working with a person who is experiencing restriction or perhaps not feeling comfortable in their body, how do you encourage them to change a possible traditional pose into a trauma informed pose?
That’s a great question. One of the examples that I like to use because this seems to be a pose that a lot of people know even if they’re newer to yoga, is the tree pose. It’s a balancing pose. So that’s a pose where we are shifting our weight to one leg, we’re working on lifting the other leg up, arms might be extended as well. It’s a pose that takes a lot of concentration for one thing, which can be a challenge. The other thing is that we’re purposefully introducing instability, right? One of the things that we do hope that happens is that we work on improving our balance because from a physical standpoint, especially as we age, those are very helpful things. I also invite people to consider different intentions of being in that pose. because the tree pose also can produce a sense of grounding and stability as well. When we think about trees rooted into the Earth, right, they’re very grounded, they’re very stable, they’re very connected. If we’re in this posture, I might ask, what are you noticing right now? There’s something that you can shift that might increase the sense of grounding and stability. Maybe what that means is that you have a hand on a chair to help steady you. Maybe you have a hand on the wall. Maybe your back is up against the wall so you have that stability. Maybe both feet are actually on the floor because that’s where you’re feeling most stable today. The invitation is to not only explore different variations that will work for that day, but also explore your intention behind the posture. Trying to use these poses in a different way than maybe what has been traditionally presented in a yoga practice.
That’s great. Thinking about the intention and asking yourself what can I do to bring a sense of safety, connection, empowerment into the pose. That’s wonderful.
Next week, join me and Jeanne Kolker as we take a deeper look at trauma. What is it? What does trauma feel like in the mind, in the body? What type of resources can you, the listener, use to address it?
Thank you again for being here today, Nikki. I’ve so appreciated your time and the gifts that you’ve shared with us.
Thank you for having me. It was lovely to have this opportunity to share some information that hopefully resonates with some of our listeners out there.
Yeah. Yeah. Me too. I hope it does too.
Speaking of, if someone’s interested in yoga therapy, either individually or in a group setting, what’s happening at Insight? What can they look forward to? How can they get connected to you?
Good question. We always have a lot of different options, different variations, depending on what works for you, works for your schedule. To get more information, you can always visit our website https://insightmadison.com/. It has a list of our weekly drop-in classes. If you’re interested in our individual yoga therapy, you can send me an email, [email protected]. You also can call the office and they’ll get you in touch with me where we can have a conversation, just to start to explore to see if it’s something that’s of interest to you. We also offer specialty yoga therapy groups in addition to what we consider weekly drop-in classes. Yoga for stress and trauma healing. That is a 5–6-week series where we dive a little bit more deeply. We explore some meditation, some breathwork, some postures like you often would but we have opportunities for discussion if people want to engage in that. We do journaling. It’s just a little bit deeper dive. I’ll be offering that starting in May. If that’s something that’s of interest to you, again you can contact me directly. We can chat a little bit more about that and go from there.
Great. That sounds wonderful.
Well, thanks again Nikki, it’s always so good to see your face even if it’s virtual. I agree, it’s so good to see you too, thanks. Alright, take care. You too.
Thank you again for joining us on Insight Mind Body Talk, a body centered mental health podcast. We hope today’s episode encouraged and supported you in learning new skills and strengthening your mind-body connection. Please join us next week as we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing. Until then, take care.
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 your 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 1-on-1 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 well-being.
Let’s pick up where we left off, learning more about how we make our bodies feel safe. We’re going to keep talking about our nervous system’s response to threat. Let’s hear more from Jess about her perspective as a trained sensorimotor psychotherapist. Take it away, Jess.
Thanks Jeanne. I’m a sensorimotor psychotherapist. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is a body centered talking therapy developed by Pat Ogden. As a sensorimotor therapist, I approach treatment using the body’s experience as the primary entry point in trauma therapy rather than the events, thoughts, or feelings. By attending to how the body’s processing information, and then looking at how the body, the mind, the emotions, and thoughts all come together we can start to treat the whole person.
So, when we think about our nervous system, our brain, the symptoms we’re experiencing, the trauma related symptoms that can be activated in our body. When we do a body centered approach, we actually just give space to treating the effects of trauma or the effects of the difficulties we’re experiencing versus the events.
I think that can be really healing. There’s so much research out there about mindful separation, that observing sense of self. When we observe we can create space and healing can happen in that space. We don’t need to revisit events repetitively. We can heal just through being present with the body and helping the body process out what maybe got stuck at one point or another.
And that’s, I think, what’s so important too. When I do yoga, when I work with people, even in small groups, it’s a healing environment for so many reasons but also in this intangible way that we don’t necessarily see. The nervous system can re-tune itself over time in ways that we can’t even script. Right, so we just create the space for it and the healing happens in these ways, we can’t necessarily describe them, but it is so powerful. It is. That co-regulation, we would call it you know, in our therapist minds, when we feel safe and tune in together that shifts our nervous system’s response and if I was going to give any sort of suggestion or tip for someone thinking about their nervous system, well if this is possible, where do I even begin, right? I would say spend time feeling safe. Who makes you feel safe? What things in your life make you feel safe? What are some things you do that you feel safe and calm? Where can you go? Or even the act of calling upon a memory where you felt safe. Being safe is just, it can be very healing. It can be so supportive and regulating. So, I would start there. I think that’s great.
We’re kind of going into the idea of talking about different practices that are trauma-informed, body-centered. When we’re talking about polyvagal and sensorimotor and the act of creating safety for ourself. What are some trauma informed practices you think can help create mind-body connection, this, this healing?
I usually start people with the breath. Yeah. It’s so simple. Right? It’s so simple. We’re all doing it. You know, we’ve been doing it since the moment we were born, but it’s something that is very connected to the systems, to the state. You were talking about, when we’re in a sympathetic state, how do we know? Well, of course we don’t really know our blood pressure is increasing. We might feel our heart racing a little bit, but we can definitely tell if we’re hyperventilating. We know when we’re hyperventilating. Yeah. So pretty clear. Yeah. We can start there and start to do a mindful exercise of noticing the breath, just watching the breath and maybe lengthening out the exhale. Maybe just starting there, just a little bit longer exhale, which taps into our diaphragm, which is a very sympathetic part of our body. Right. And then we can start to get into the parasympathetic nervous system with that polyvagal, that vagus nerve, that’s innervating our viscera below the diaphragm, that can get us into a much more relaxed state if we’re able to be present with the breath. That’s usually where I start people. It’s just, let’s practice breathing.
Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Just to clarify, when we’re talking about sympathetic, it is this activation of the system we have to mobilize to decrease the threat. Then, talking about parasympathetic or ventral vagal, that is more when we feel safe and connected and calm.
Even taking that a little further, I think that a lot of practitioners are starting to use body centered approaches. We’ve talked about meditation. You’ve talked about yoga therapy. Next week, we’re going to have Nikki Cook on here. She is a yoga therapist and a phenomenal practitioner. We’ll get much more into that next week, but can you explain a little bit about what yoga therapy is?
Absolutely. Yoga therapy is typically working one-on-one with somebody where, a lot like in psychotherapy, there’s an assessment where we want to know what’s going on in the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body, and the spiritual body. If you have an imbalance in your body physically, we’ll see that.
We’ll also look at how that’s affecting your breath and your movement patterns. Often with depression, we see people who are kind of closed, their shoulders might round up, they might be kind of protecting their heart space. We call that closed heart syndrome. That’s a Bo Forbes term. She’s a psychologist and yoga therapist as well. Then we start to work on finding a balance. We’re not going to blow the lid off something and open people up. We do that through creating a safe space, allowing people to make choices and take action that corrects whatever imbalance they have.
We work to get people in the present moment. Trauma is very past and future oriented. It’s got us thinking about the past or it’s got us worried about the future. When we tap into the present moment, we do that in our bodies, and we can do that either individually or in groups. We really think that group energy is very healing.
Yoga classes are therapeutic just in themselves without any special tricks, honestly, because it’s rhythmic. It’s soothing. In trauma-informed yoga, we’re in an inclusive environment so, we’re all in this together. It’s very connected. We’re creating a space where we can heal in our bodies by tapping into some discomfort. Yoga should be a little bit uncomfortable. You know, we might move into a lunge or a downward facing dog, something that requires strength and requires awareness and requires a little discomfort. We breathe through that and tolerate it and then move into the opposite. Action. Something that feels powerful, that maybe feels relaxing. We’re really letting people embody their whole experience, just in maybe a half hour, 45 minutes, or an hour yoga practice. It truly is where the healing happens.
I, of course, fully believe in the one-on-one. I think that therapeutic relationship, that interpersonal process that we create in our yoga therapy is very healing. But also, it’s incomplete if there’s not some sort of group practice as well and that’s why we offer that at Insight and other places do as well.
Yeah. I can really appreciate that. There are many yoga therapists out there, trauma informed yoga therapists, and there are so many wonderful psychotherapists as well. It makes me really appreciate the idea of yoga therapy as a complement to traditional talk therapy where there’s parts of ourselves who maybe need our story to be heard and supported. When we look at our thoughts and feelings through a modality like trauma informed weightlifting or meditation or yoga therapy, we can tap into that body centered approach. Really, however someone’s path to healing happens, I think the important part is we remember there’s wisdom in the body. There’s so much to learn and they all can be connected in whatever way feels safe, whatever works best for us. Agreed.
As a marriage and family therapist, I talk a lot about the different systems in place that impact an individual. When you’re thinking about the different external conditions a person may be experiencing, what do you talk about with your clients? How do you honor what’s happening around us as well as what’s happening within us? Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s really come to the fore in the last year. Obviously, we’ve had to process a lot of societal trauma because we’ve had to adjust the way that we treat people. Now we’re doing tele-health in order to contribute to the greater good so that we’re protecting people from the dangers of a pandemic. So, we’re working on, you know, how we fit into that society and how we can use these tools to heal even as we’re experiencing this collective trauma. We’re not going to know for years; the impact of this pandemic and we’re seeing it so acutely right now at Insight.
Also, everything that we’ve gone through politically in the last year. We’ve been dealing with the systemic oppression of people of color. We’re dealing with just so much distress and imbalance in our world because of racism, sexism, classism, and we want to honor that in our treatment as well. The nervous system is very much affected by that too, so when we think about childhood trauma, we think about those who may not have the privilege of therapy and connection and yoga and all those things in childhood or even in adulthood. We have to look at that. We have to honor that. That’s why at Insight, we really believe in cultural humility and yoga for all. We do monthly pre-karma classes just to try to get access for people. We provide yoga therapy through our comprehensive community services here in Madison, which is a program that allows consumers with Medicaid to have access to different types of therapy. What we’d call skill development. We do our best to serve from this place of real cultural humility and inclusion. We welcome all. The LGBTQ population. We really want to try to help people understand that systems of oppression affect the nervous system and that we cannot necessarily individually change those systems. We’re working on it, of course, in our own way, but we want to make sure that people have tools and understand that their system is responding to something that is insidious and intangible and that story follows state, right? We’re in this state and then we create a story around it. Well, with a lot of these isms, racism, sexism, classism, ableism, we’ve been told a story and we can work to heal our state and shift that story. If that makes sense.
Mmhm, I think you’re right. I think it’s very important as a white cis-gendered female straight therapist that I create an environment that allows clients to be seen and heard in the way of honoring when we work through the mind-body connection. There are factors that have influenced clients for years, if not their life, if not through multiple generations. Honoring there’s such a thing as transgenerational trauma and systemic oppressors people are experiencing are real and truly do influence their mind and body. Different things like trauma that can happen in the medical system, fatphobia, look and sizeism, transphobia, heterosexism, different systemic oppressors, and not just following the one size fits all strategy to health and healing. Honoring a lot of people along the way have caused harm and it’s our job to be accountable to that and do what we can best do to help serve people. Be allies instead of being part of the problem.
That’s where we use our tools of empathy and being able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and approach with curiosity and no judgment. We want to approach from a place of humility, to try to understand what that person is going through and help them to regulate their nervous system by getting regulated in our own. We can only do that if we are curious, if we’re open, if we’re willing to just be humble to that person’s experience. It’s a very powerful way to help shift people into a state of healing. I agree.
We’ve had such a wonderful conversation about the mind-body experience and our mental health. I’d like to share a little bit of information for our listeners on how they can begin to perhaps, honor their mind-body connection. Begin exploring how the wisdom of the body is present with them. What do you think, Jeanne? Yeah, absolutely. I always encourage people to begin with a little bit of meditation. You know, oftentimes people are scared off and they say, “I can’t meditate. I can’t clear my mind. What are you nuts?”. That’s a really hard thing for people to do and especially now we know, when our traumas are stuck in our body, we cannot just be in stillness, in quiet, in darkness, and feel safe.
So, I typically ask people to just give themselves five minutes a day to do a somatic based meditation. That might mean just feeling the soles of your feet as they touch the floor. Yeah. Maybe feeling your chair underneath your seat and maybe just maybe counting your breath. Maybe counting five breaths. Just to start to introduce a relationship with the body in a very incremental and safe way. I often suggest starting slow, bringing in compassion, tapping into that innate wisdom held within the body.
Wherever you’re at in your relationship to your body, whether you’re feeling this is a place you want to be, or because of past injury or illness or current medical conditions it’s maybe a little scary or even dysregulating to be present in your body, I think have an attitude of befriending. It can be a big leap, you know? If we ask someone to say, “Let’s start to honor the wisdom of your body. Can you say that? I honor the wisdom of my body.” That’s a lot for people to say. I might even start slower and softer and say, “I am willing to consider someday honoring the wisdom of my body.” It’s a leap for some of us who’ve felt unsafe in our bodies or who have that adversarial relationship that unfortunately media, society, messaging has fostered. We can’t just suddenly go to “Oh, we’re friends now”. Yeah. Yeah, but maybe we can start to consider the possibility that someday, maybe, we could be friends with our body.
When someone’s ready to begin that relationship, I encourage them to start observing, observing our mind-body experience. As you talked about, noticing the breath, even being aware of if there’s any tension in our bodies, or what physical sensations we’re experiencing. Listening and observing can start helping us shift from being consumed by the body’s experience or feeling overwhelmed by the body’s experience to engaging with it differently. I think that starts to create a level of safety within. Absolutely.
I have loved having this conversation with you, Jeanne. This has been such a pleasure. Thanks Jess. I have nothing but gratitude. I am so excited for this opportunity to share. So, thank you so much for organizing this. Of course. Thank you.
Join us next week on Insight Mind Body Talk as we explore yoga therapy with our guest Nikki Cook. Nikki is a trauma informed yoga therapist. Nikki will demystify the practice of yoga, explain trauma informed yoga, and give you a taste of what you might experience in a yoga therapy session. Offering body centered tools for mental wellbeing.
Thank you again for joining us on Insight Mind Body Talk, a body centered mental health podcast.
We’re your hosts, Jeanne. And Jess! Please join us next week as we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing.
(Jess and Jeanne) Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-centered mental health podcast. We’re your hosts, Jess Warpula Schultz, and Jeanne Kolker. Whether you’ve tried everything to feel better and something is still missing, or you’re already tuned into the wisdom of the body, this podcast will encourage and support you in healing, strengthening relationships, and developing your inner potential by accessing your mind-body connection. Please know, this podcast is not a substitute for mental health treatment and is not considered psychotherapy. Let’s begin a conversation about what happens when we take a body centered approach to improving our mental health.
(Jess) Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk. Today’s episode is the first part of a conversation between myself and my cohost Jeanne Kolker. We began exploring the mind-body connection and how we can improve our mental health by listening to the wisdom of the body. Jeanne, I’m excited to share this adventure with you.
(Jeanne) Thanks Jess. It’s really wonderful to be here. I appreciate your passion for this. I think that’s how we found each other. After all these years, we’ve known each other for quite some time.
(Jess) We have, we have. Our listeners might not know this, but Jeanne and I met, maybe 10 years ago, volunteering at Briarpatch Youth Services here in Madison. And now the universe has brought us body-centered minds back together.
(Jeanne) Yes. Yeah. I think it was meant to be okay. I agree. I agree.
(Jess) So today we get to have a conversation about how the mind and body are connected. What causes the mind body to disconnect at times and why our lives are richer when we take a mind-body perspective to mental health. Let’s begin by talking about “What does the body have to do with problems?”. Often when we’re thinking about the difficulties we experience in life and the things that we’re working through, it may not come to the forefront of our thought process. That the body’s actually also involved and that there’s an innate wisdom there that we can tap into. How would you describe how the body gets involved in those difficulties that we experience in life?
(Jeanne) Yeah, that’s a great question. Just, I think, our medical model typically looks at things just from a symptom perspective, right? So, you’ve got a broken arm, you go to the doctor, and you get it set. You’ve got symptoms of depression and anxiety. You go and you talk about it, right? And it’s, it’s very separate. But we know that’s not the case. Our bodies are where we experience life, and we have to go through the body door in order to really work on healing our whole person. Our thoughts, our emotions, and our physical self too, is all is connected in that way. And I think that it’s emerging, you know, obviously we’re here standing on the shoulders of a lot of recent research from all sorts of sources that are proving sematic approaches are evidence-based. They are the way to heal a lot of what we would call problems. Right? It’s not necessarily just talking about what’s going on in our lives. That doesn’t necessarily help us heal. We actually have to embody it. We have to create safety in our bodies in order to heal whatever traumas we’ve experienced. And we might not even think, “Oh, I don’t have trauma” but we all have some. You know, yeah. Just walking around in the world is traumatic sometimes.
(Jess)I totally agree. Yes. I often say that I used to tell people that I was a trauma therapist and then it dawned on me one day that actually every therapist is a trauma therapist because every person we’ve all, if you’re human, you’ve experienced some form of trauma at some point. And it’s not just our mind or our brain, that experiences that, our body’s always with us. It’s always a part of the initial event and it’s also a part of the solution. So, I love that as a marriage and family therapist, we talk a lot about how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you think of a family system. How all of those interactions come together to create a family, you think about the body, the mind, the brain, digestive system, you know, everything–our muscles, bones, how it all comes together to create this holistic system. I really like how you’re considering how the body is the key to healing. I believe that to as a body-based therapist. Jeanne, from your perspective, as a licensed professional counselor, a yoga teacher, a yoga therapist, how have you witnessed the healing capacity of the wisdom of the body?
(Jeanne) Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question that I could talk about for hours. You, you know, our ultimate goal in therapy and in our own lives is empowerment, right? We want to be empowered to make choices that support our growth, our health, to be empowered, to own the things that we’ve done, that we’re carrying, that have been done to us. To be able to really be in a space of making choices that support our growth. And somatic treatments and yoga, when we talk about somatic treatments, that’s the body, right? That’s just a fancy word for the body. Yep. Somatic treatments. They help us reconnect to our bodies and that’s where then we can regain a sense of control. Because when we’ve experienced trauma, it’s the ultimate lack of control. It’s the ultimate lack of choice. It’s, it’s an overwhelming thing that has stolen our ability to make choices and to take action in an empowered way. So, we use yoga, I use yoga, especially. I feel like it’s just, it’s the treatment that resonates with me. It is. It is the medicine that I have found the most useful in my own experience. I have a lot of history with yoga because it is something that’s been very resonant for me in my healing journey. When I was a child, I was sick a lot. I had a lot of physical issues and it turned out I had an autoimmune disease that was very rare in little kids. And it was misdiagnosed and I just, I spent a lot of my childhood sick and in a body that I couldn’t trust. I couldn’t do what everybody else was doing. There was no way for me to even do any physical exercise. My body just wouldn’t support it. So, I developed this really unhealthy relationship with exercise. It felt like punishment. It felt like danger because my body wasn’t equipped to do it. And I healed, you know, eventually as I grew. And I didn’t really start to heal until I stepped on a yoga mat and started to actually pay attention to the cues and the signals in my body. It was not something that I had ever learned before through no fault of anyone’s. It’s just, it wasn’t a relationship that was able to develop. I found a lot of healing for myself through yoga, and I wanted to share that with people. And of course, you start teaching yoga. That’s what you do. Right. You know, you do personal training. I became a fitness instructor. I saw how it was helping people. And I don’t mean that I’m not helping them develop a six-pack abs.
(Jess) Right, right. Yup.
(Jeanne) It was, I’d see people in my classes crying at the end of class or coming up and saying something. Something happened in that class. Something shifted for me. So, I really wanted to be able to do that work one-on-one and the tools of yoga are so powerful. They helped me so much and it’s not just the physical poses. It’s the breath work. It’s the mind body connection. It’s the philosophy, yoga really is a psychology of mind. If we dig deep, if we, if we pay attention, if we, if we find the safe space to heal. And that’s why Insight is so important to me. We’re showing people that yoga is a trauma-informed intervention that has evidence behind it. It’s being studied. Right. We know meditation is evidence-based practice. All of these things come together. And the body is the setting. We have to understand what’s happening in our bodies and change our relationship with our bodies in order to heal. And we can only do that if we have a safe space to do so. So, when somebody works with me or somebody works with you, Jess, the first thing we do, right? Safety, sacred space. Long answer to that question.
(Jess) No, I love it. It reminds me a little bit of my story and my experience with becoming a body centered practitioner in that, I started having panic attacks when I was in the fifth grade. And I didn’t even know what they were. I didn’t even know that I should be telling my mom. I think I told her when I was like 30 something years old and she was really surprised. And in my brain, my, my “little me” just kind of adjusted around it. I tapped into my body, not even knowing when I started feeling panicky or overwhelmed and if I was at home, I went outside and I opened the screen door and it was cold, I’m from Minnesota, so, it’s usually kind of cold and I would take these deep breaths and I would feel the cold air on my face. Who knew that I was using the temperature to shift my nervous system, that I was using the long breath out to regulate and feel safe again. I had my own experience with exercise where I tried it, I would try out for teams and I would join, I’d be super excited and then I would quit a week or two into it. And so, it started being this narrative that I was a quitter or that I couldn’t handle it, a little bit of a shame story started right around that experience. But what I now know, is that I was experiencing somatic symptoms. That very much felt overwhelmed and very much felt like panic. And I didn’t have the capacity to tolerate them yet. So, I did what was best for my little me. I had a great survival system. I decided not to do that anymore. And, but, you know, then of course, finding my own wonderful therapist as a young adult and beginning to observe my thoughts and my feelings that naturally transitioned to this area of knowing something was missing, that I wanted to observe my body and be present with my body and explore this full holistic healing. The whole self-feeling integrated and healed. And I found weightlifting. And what didn’t happen when I lifted weights was that I didn’t get overwhelmed. I didn’t get trauma related triggers and cues of panic. It’s very mindful there’s a lot of weight on your body. So, when you, push out energy through your system, it’s controlled and regulated. It helped me build my tolerance to feeling distressed because it was so structured. It was like here’s five more pounds. I will be safe. I even have a spotter it became this way of increasing my capacity to tolerate things that were overwhelming.
(Jeanne) Yeah, that’s a beautiful story. You really befriended yourself in a very powerful way. Weightlifting is very grounding, right? Because it’s like gravity, there’s the weight that’s really pulling you down, but then you’re also discharging your energy with it too. And just taking control. That’s wonderful.
(Jess) Yeah. I love it. Let’s talk a little bit more when I say mind, what do you think about mind within the mind body?
(Jeanne) I think about our thoughts, it’s our emotions. I tend to think about, like I said, yoga is a psychology of mind, and the ultimate purpose of yoga is to still the fluctuations of the mind. To still the “monkey mind”, the Citta vritti in Sanskrit.
(Jess) Great. I like that. That’s the monkey mind. It’s chatter.
(Jeanne) Yeah, it’s our chatter. It’s that thought? You know, body, you know, he’s really seen that as like a sheath, a layer of our being our mental being has a texture and a tangible quality to it. So, it’s our thoughts, our emotions, the way that we experience our world, it’s something that is constructed for us in childhood. And then we either live through that construction or we kind of reconstructed as we, go through life and mature.
(Jess) Yeah. When I think about the mind, it’s more our thoughts, feelings, memories. How we shape our identity, our sense of consciousness, who we are as a person. You know, that is our mind. When we talk about the brain, I shift more into, it’s a part of the body and there’s different parts of the brain. And they influence the different systems in our body, our nervous system, your digestive system, hormones, all sorts of different parts of the body. When you’re working with clients or even today, having our listeners hear more about this mind, body connection how would you describe what the brain is and its role in mind, body healing?
(Jeanne) So, it depends on really where we’re at in therapy, but I do, I like to do a lot of psychoeducation and I have my little brain model that’ll get out and show people the lobes the different structures of the brain that operate in trauma. How they’re so connected to the body’s response. Then we talk a lot about the thinker, the thoughts happen in the brain, right? They’re neurons that are firing, but then we also have the observer, right. The witness to the thinker. And so that’s often where I’ll take people to more understand that mind, who’s watching the thoughts, is there a compassionate witness there that we can tap into? And unless we start noticing that observing mind, you’re talking about noticing, we may be really confused about why our body is reacting the way our body’s reacting.
(Jess) Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just that automatic. When people will say, I have no idea why I reacted that way. Of course, not because it’s something was triggered and stuck in your nervous system.
(Jeanne) Yeah.
(Jess) Yeah, and something I remind clients about mindfulness. I love to remind myself this; the ancient brain wins it’s been around a lot longer. Let’s not take it personally that we get hijacked and shifted into our reptilian brain, whose job is to just help us survive the next 10 seconds. And then the next 10 seconds, it’s not a personal failure on our part that we’re overwhelmed, or we shift into survival mode. It’s really natural. And when we can observe it, we can engage with it very differently versus feeling like it’s consuming.
(Jeanne) Yes.
(Jess) Let’s transition into talking about how the mind body connection influences our mental health. How would you explain this connection, this powerful experience, this integration of both our mind, our brain, and our body? How does that influence thoughts? Emotions? Behaviors?
(Jeanne) Well, just like you were explaining, we live in our lizard brain and our reptile brain. And we tend to react to certain things and then not understand necessarily why we’re reacting that way. And, you know, nobody says, “Well, I want to be really depressed today.” Yeah, “I want to, I want to have a hard time getting out of bed.” “I want to not have joy in the things that I normally take joy in”. Yeah, no, we don’t choose this. And I think that’s a big part of what’s so brilliant about somatic therapies is there is no room for stigma whatsoever. Mental wellness is not a choice. We don’t have any of this. And there are so many categories of medications that work on the brain. If mental wellness were a choice, then those medications wouldn’t work. So, we have learned so much about it. What happens in our brains that cause these symptoms, anxiety, depression, compulsion addiction? We now know that there are so many chemical messengers involved in that and those chemical messengers don’t exist just in your prefrontal cortex. Right. Neurotransmitters. Hormones, that’s in the body. So, our bodies are the key because we’re talking about, you know, serotonin, dopamine, GABA, which these are all neurotransmitters that affect our mood, and they are all affected by what’s happening in our bodies. The serotonin is produced in our guts. It’s not just produced in our brain. Tap into that. We have to use the pathways between brain and body, like the vagus nerve, which I know we’ll be talking about a lot on this cast. Yeah. Those nerves are the key, that’s the pathway between mind and body. And we cannot just work on one part. We can’t just work on the structures in the brain. We can absolutely use cognitive techniques to identify our thoughts. We can use talk therapy. Insight therapy is so important. To be able to process this with another person but we can only do that when our body feels safe with that other person Yeah. So, it’s, it’s all connected.
(Jess) It is, I was just reading an article by Dr. Kelly McGonigal. She also has a book I found really transformative. It’s called “Neuroscience for Change.” She was talking about if you think about how the mind body are connected, our hormones, right? Our endocrine system, our hormones influence our thoughts and feelings. I work with a lot of women. Especially in their mid-thirties to fifties, there’s a lot of different shifts in how they think, how they feel what’s happening to them, because hormones are really changing. Or if you have a teenager who, or an adolescent who’s growing and changing. Earlier you talked about the gut, right? The neurotransmitters, we’re learning so much about our biome. Mental health is connected to gut health. And there’s the reasons why we say I have a gut feeling about something. There are messengers happening all over in our body and right now in the middle of the pandemic the social isolation and worrying about our health and wellbeing, even our immune system, it’s really responding to stress.
(Jess) Let’s talk about the polyvagal theory we get so excited about – we get so excited about the polyvagal theory. I saw this D.O. in Madison, and he actually, my vagus nerve was tight on the right side…Oh, yes, it’s fantastic. I should get him on this podcast. I won’t say his name. Cause I don’t know if he’s accepting new clients. He’s awesome. So, he’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to work on your vagus nerve”. And I was like, “It’s my favorite nerve!” And he laughs out loud. I’m like, “No, I’m serious”. He has no idea what I do or who I am. But he said that my right side of my vagus nerve was tight. And he actually through multiple different sessions, relaxed it, and I have felt such a decrease in activation since that modality. It’s, it’s really phenomenal, but that was a side note, everybody. So, vagus nerve, polyvagal theory. Why don’t you begin by explaining Jeanne? That’d be great.
(Jeanne) Absolutely. The polyvagal theory came about in the 90s. A guy named Dr. Stephen Porges started to write about this nerve. It’s our 10th cranial nerve. So, think about the cranium. It’s right at the base of the skull there. And it’s called the vagus nerve after the Latin “vagabond” or Vagrant for wander, it’s a wandering nerve. It is huge, right? It’s basically the brain and its root system.
(Jess) When you look at it, that’s a great way. I never thought to describe it that way.
(Jeanne) Yup. Yeah. And it, it runs all the way down into her viscera, so right. Like we were talking about the gut brain. It enervates our digestion, it also has a branch that innervates, through our respiration and our heart. Then a more advanced or a newer branch of the vagus that enervates our face or throat, the social engagement system.
(Jess) This has been a real game changer for those of us in the world of body centered therapy. This, this wandering nerve and that there’s so many different pathways our body communicates with our brain pain. There’s many more pathways that go from the body up into the brain than from the brain down through into the body. And in traditional talk therapy, which I completely agree, there’s such a place for it, can be very healing but often traditional talk therapy does what we call top-down processing. Where we’re processing through the front of our brains, where we’re logical. We can think, we’re human. Decision-making cognitive capacities are online. But if you think about the Vegas nerve. That’s connected to all of our organs. It’s the highway that connects the brain to everything the body’s experiencing. How communication is really happening in our bodies, there is way more information coming up through the body.
(Jess) The polyvagal theory for me it is one of the key concepts I review with clients. And that I’ve even found in my own healing to be really transformational. I love thinking about how my nervous system comes online and is helping shape my experience. Because when we talk about de-stigmatizing mental health, often we associate our problems or difficulties with who we are like personally. And when we look at the polyvagal theory and we bring our body online, the polyvagal theory says, “Hey, your body is actually doing really cool things to keep you safe, to protect you. It’s communicating to you. Every mammal does this, you think that your neighbor doesn’t have, you know, a nervous system? They do.” If you think who you see on social media is calm all the time, they’re not. Even watch our pets. You can start seeing everybody’s nervous system. Okay. Everyone, I liken it to, this is a side tangent, which maybe I’ll let everybody listen in on how my brain works. I liken it to the matrix when Neo has that moment where he starts seeing these ones and zeros come down and suddenly like everything opens up and there’s just so much more information. And he’s really tapped in. That’s how I feel about watching the nervous system, because suddenly there’s reasons for things that don’t have to do with personal failure or success. It really has to do with this beautiful system. Since in utero, that’s helping us stay safe. And we get to work with it. So that’s how I feel about the polyvagal theory.
(Jeanne)It’s a beautiful thing. It removes the judgment, the shame, and we get to go back and look – we were we made to feel safe when we were little kids? Did we have a face that we could look at and see love? Could we see ourselves reflected in another person’s eyes where we’ve seen and heard and held, and we can start there and recognize how impactful those early experiences in our bodies are. And then start to recognize that we are not broken. We can work with the system to correct things that have maybe not been serving us through no fault of our own.
(Jess) It helps to remove that sense of shame. I agree. The nervous system can be shaped. The brain is plastic. There are things we can do when we bring the body into treatment. That can shape the response. It’s natural for our nervous system to shift into a flee or a fight response, or even shutting down. There’s no shame in that that’s natural, but we can help that system leave those responses sooner. Or not kind of ping pong back and forth between anxiety or depression responses but go to what we call ventral vagal where we feel connected and safe. The goal isn’t to not feel stressed or not have those responses, it’s just to more easily go back to feeling safe afterwards and more easily go back to feeling connected to who we are. And we can shape that. That’s possible.
(Jeanne) That’s very powerful.
(Jess) We’re going to pause the conversation here. We hope today’s discussion brought new insight into your understanding of the mind body connection. Please listen to episode 3, as we finish setting the stage for why our lives are so much richer, when we take an integrative approach to mental health.
(Jeanne) Thank you again for joining us on Insight Mind Body Talk, a body centered mental health podcast.
(Jess) We hope today’s episode encouraged and supported you in learning new skills and strengthening your mind-body connection.
(Jeanne) We’re your hosts, Jeanne,
(Jess) and Jess.
(Jeanne) Please join us next week as we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing.
Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-centered mental health podcast. We’re so happy you found us. My name is Jessica Warpula Schultz, but you can call me Jess. I’m a body-centered psychotherapist and a certified fitness trainer at Insight Counseling and Wellness. And my name is Jeanne Kolker. I’m a body centered professional counselor, yoga teacher and therapist, and owner of Insight Counseling and Wellness. Jess and I have dedicated our careers to the pursuit of providing holistic body-based trauma, informed mental health care, which is why we’re excited to be your hosts each week on Insight Mind Body Talk. You’re going to hear a lot about how the mind body connection works. There’ll be episodes where we focus completely on the body, anatomy, exercise, nutritional intake, medical conditions, injury, and other areas of physical health or times when we explore your brain and neurology, the nervous system and your fight flight or freeze responses.
Because this is a body centered mental health podcast, we’ll discuss different mental health disorders and how listeners can use body-centered interventions to improve symptoms, mental, emotional, and physiological. No body brain topic is off limits because it’s all connected. Yes, it’s all connected. That’s why Insight Mind Body Talk will include relevant information about other health topics such as sleep, nutrition, substance use, relationships, boundaries, work, life balance, culture, local, current events, and more all through the lens of the mind-body connection.
Whether you’ve tried everything to feel better in something is still missing or you’re already tuned into the wisdom of the body. We think you’re going to feel at home here. You can be comfortable knowing we’ll be sharing insight and information, not from strangers, but from local friends. Guidance from some of the best practitioners Madison and the Midwest has to offer. I’m so excited.
This body-centered mental health podcast is brought to you by Insight Counseling and Wellness. We’re a holistic outpatient, mental health clinic proudly located in Madison, Wisconsin, dedicated to providing care that addresses the whole person. You’ll find that our clinic is an LGBTQ friendly, culturally humble and strengths-based environment.
Join us in our next episode where Jess and Jeanne will fill you in on exactly how the mind and body are connected. And why our lives are so much richer. When we take an integrative approach to our mental health.
Thank you again for joining us on insight, mind, body talk, a body centered mental health podcast. We’re your hosts, Jeanne and Jess, please join us next week. As we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing until then take care.
