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. 

 Until then, take care.