Somatic Healing Explained - How to Release Stored Trauma with Liz Tenuto

0:00Speaker 1:If there was one thing you wanted people to take away from this podcast about sematic healing, what would it be?

0:05Speaker 2:Your body isn't broken, it's just trying to protect you.

0:09Speaker 1:Liz Tanuto is a sematic practitioner and trauma educator, also known online as the work Out, which her new Bookshares has signature movement protocols and practical tools that help her and her students cover from childhood abuse, domestic violence, and chronic illness.

0:23Speaker 2:I think for a long time, we've had this break fixed mentality where it's like, my lower back hurts, it must be the chair I'm sitting in. I'm going to go buy a new chair. I was really trying all these different things to just fix the pain. I didn't realize it took me a long time to discover that there was a whole emotional layer underneath it. You're really just trying to reconnect your mind and body.

0:44Speaker 1:And who do you think would benefit from sematic healing.

0:46Speaker 2:I personally discovered it because I had gone through a lot of trauma, and I had really bad insomnia and had tried a lot of other modalities that weren't really working for me. So a lot of people initially find somatics from trauma or from like autoimmune conditions or some sort of physical condition that they're having a really hard time with.

1:07Speaker 1:I'm Radivlukiah, and on my podcast A Really Good Cry, we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space for raw, un fielded conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together. Liz, thank you so much for being here.

1:24Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.

1:26Speaker 1:I've been following your content for such a long time now, and I was just saying this to you, but I feel like I need to say it to everyone. The way that you create your content and the way that you share the work that you do in somatic healing, it's so easily accessible. You make it feel so much simpler than the way that you think it would be, and you just find a way to make it digestible and easy. So thank you so much for the work that you do.

1:47Speaker 2:Thank you. I really appreciate that.

1:49Speaker 1:I wanted to just start off by asking you what sematic healing is. I feel like we hear it, but I don't know if the people really know the breakdown of what it actually means.

1:57Speaker 2:Yeah, that's such a great question. Soma literally translates it's the Greek word for a body, and somatic exercises are these really tiny micro movements that you can do in bed or on the floor that really stress out of your body, release tension out of your body. Some of them regulate your nervous systems, some of them release trauma out of your body.

2:20Speaker 1:Okay, And so does it originate from? Where is the origin of somatic heating from?

2:25Speaker 2:Yeah? So I would say it's rooted in ancient cultures, like ultimately, and then in the nineteen seventies, this guy named Thomas Hannah used the word somatics for the first time. Okay, but there was a lot of research before that in terms of how emotions are connected to your physicality and your muscle tension. That's kind of paved the way and set the foundation for somatics. But as of the nineteen seventies is really when the field was born, and a lot of neuroscience research has been done to kind of substantiate the science behind the mind, body and emotional connection.

3:09Speaker 1:And who do you think would benefit from somatic healing?

3:13Speaker 2:I would say anyone who feels stressed. Okay, I personally discovered it because I had gone through a lot of trauma and I had really bad insomnia and had tried a lot of other modalities that weren't really working for me. So a lot of people initially find somatics from trauma or from like autoimmune conditions or some sort of physical condition that they're having a really hard time with. Yeah, but anyone who feels stressed out can benefit.

3:41Speaker 1:What are some of the benefits that you have found in doing it yourself and recognizing some of the patients that you've helped and treated.

3:49Speaker 2:Deep restorative sleep, so you really get that restoration that happens when you get a full night sleep, which is kind of the foundation of a lot of your health. I would say just being able to handle stress with more ease without it taking you into overwhelm or taking you into a shutdown state. So it kind of helps you stay connected and stay grounded to yourself. And I would just say like physical relaxation, like feeling like you're not tense all the time, not feeling like you're not feeling like you're clenching your job right right, not feeling like you're clenching your body which just makes everything so much more relaxing.

4:31Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. I feel like everyone needs that.

4:33Speaker 2:Yeah yeah.

4:35Speaker 1:Now you mentioned how you came into this through trauma that you'd been through. How did you find trauma showed up in your physical body or that you've seen other people? Where does it show up in the body? How does it show up?

4:48Speaker 2:How does it manifest There can be a lot of different what I call like flavors of manifestations. For some people it's sleep issues, for other people it's chronic pain. Some people have unexplained issues. Gut issues are quite common, stomach aches are quite common. And then you can also have kind of unexplained physical pain that's not from an injury or an accident that's just not really going away, whether it's headaches or migraines, or if it's you know, lower back pain that's not going away, or neck pain neck tension that you can't really figure out.

5:22Speaker 1:Yeah. I we recently shared this on our page on Instagram of the body map and where different emotions show up. I just wondering if you share a little bit on that, is there truth to it? And how do you wear in the body do different emotions end up showing up.

5:37Speaker 2:Yeah, that's such a great study. So there are patterns of different emotional responses that kind of get stored what we call get stored in different parts of your body. In the throat, it's very connected to like lack of like not feeling like you have a voice. So perhaps you've experienced some sort of injustice or you've been like shut down over and over again and you feel like you can't really speak up. Jaw tends to be like your boundaries have been crossed. You're angry about something and not in a bad way, like really valid anger. Hips tend to be more like betrayal or trauma.

6:16Speaker 1:So many different places in the body. Yeah, it's incredible, though. It's incredible to see that emotion body connection. And sometimes you don't realize it, like, oh, we're just exhausted and we're tired, and we think about everything being on the physical plane. It's like my foot's hurting because I've been walking too much. But no, maybe it's walking. Maybe it's hurting because I'm carrying too much load emotionally, And it's difficult to remember that on a daily basis.

6:40Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really difficult to remember that. And I think you know, I think for a long time we've had this break fixed mentality where it's like, my lower back hurts, it must be the chair I'm sitting in. Yeah, I'm going to go buy a new chair, right exactly. And then you're like, wait, the chair didn't fix it, which is what I experienced with my own insomnia and my own chronic pain for a while too. And I was really trying all these different things to just fix the pain, and then I didn't. I didn't realize. It took me a long time to discover that there was a whole emotional layer underneath it.

7:12Speaker 1:What's the difference then, between sematic work or sematic work and doing yoga yoga postures?

7:18Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say there's different goals. So yoga, from what I know about it is, you know, very rooted in spirituality, and the postures are kind of and the poses are kind of a way to deepen your spiritual connection, deepen your connection to yourself. The postures work on a muscular level, whereas somatics, there is no spiritual component to somatics. It's really just about for me, it's about re establishing a sense of agency in the body. So you have this like choice of how you do the exercises. There's no correct or incorrect way to do them, and you're not really trying to go deeper necessarily. You're really just trying to reconnect your mind and body so that neither are feeling shut down or kind of dissociated.

8:14Speaker 1:I remember when I studied, when I did my yoga teach training, they talked about how breath is the anchor between your mind and your body to bring you back into presence. And from what I'm hearing, somatic healing sounds like practices to bring you back into the present moment, like to constantly bring your body and your mind back into one place.

8:32Speaker 2:Absolutely.

8:33Speaker 1:What are some if people are doing trying to incorporate sematic healing into their day. Are there three different types of exercise you could share with us or movements that you could share with us that are easiest to do?

8:44Speaker 2:Yeah, so one? Do you want to do one together?

8:47Speaker 1:Yeah?

8:48Speaker 2:Okay, great, we can stay sitting like this. We'll just uncross our legs and then just move this slightly so you can go ahead and take your right hand and grab a hold of your right ear pretty firmly, and if at any point your arm gets tired, just rest. You want to have a nice firm pull on the ear, and you're going to open and close your mouth a couple times. It looks kind of strange, it's.

9:10Speaker 1:Part of the good things do.

9:11Speaker 2:Yeah, it's part of the fun. And then we'll just bring that to a rest for a moment. This is a vagus nerve exercise, so it'll give you a little more energy. And then the next step of this is getting that same hold with your ear, so you're using your right hand to grab firmly, pull up slightly, and then in the laziest way possible, you're just going to dip your ear a little right to left.

9:34Speaker 1:Oh my, next tent.

9:36Speaker 2:That's okay, And then you want to see how unclenched can your job be as you do this? And then how lazy can you be as you do this movement?

9:44Speaker 1:Pretty wed is staying when moving the headside to side.

9:46Speaker 2:Yes, and then we'll just go ahead and rest for a moment. And it takes like twenty to thirty seconds to kind of feel the effect, but you might feel like a little sprinkly feeling on the right side of your and it should make you feel slightly more energized. Okay, and so then you know, if we were doing this in a class format, we would repeat it on the same the other side, which we can do after we finish. Yeah, yeah, together. But that's one quick exercise that you can do. I do that before meetings all the time.

10:18Speaker 1:Amazing. You mentioned the vegus nerve. Yeah, tell us a little bit about the vegus nerve and how it impacts us.

10:24Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the longest cranial nerve in your body. It runs from the base of your brainstem all the way down into your stomach. If your vegas nerve is kind of shut down, you'll feel like emotionally numb. You'll have a hard time getting out of bed. You'll feel really low energy, your limbs will feel heavy, you may not be able to cry, you may be like responding to people with one word answers, kind of like after you finish all your tasks, you may just like kind of collapse and watch Netflix or just like be so tired.

10:57Speaker 2:So the vegus nerve really, when you restimulate vegas nerve, it really helps bring you back into your baseline. It really helps regulate your nervous system and give you more energy. And you can normally do that if you practice for like ten minutes a day, you can normally restimulate your vegus nerve and like fifteen to thirty days.

11:16Speaker 1:Oh wow, yeah, so that was an exercise for that. Are there any is the breath work involved in somatic healing as well?

11:23Speaker 2:There can be breath work involved in somatic healing. There are different schools of somatics. I personally don't teach breath work, but there are there can be breathwork involved.

11:35Speaker 1:I know sometimes I've seen online when I'm watching people do somatic healing, and obviously there's small clips, but sometimes it can be quite aggressive and it can look a little bit scary. Talk me through the movements that's you know, it almost looks like involuntary bodily movements that people are having or the type of energetic experiences that look like they're unexplainable.

11:55Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So there is a thing called a neurogenic which is like this involuntary shaking that can happen in your body. And essentially, if you've ever been in like a really scary situation, you may have noticed that your body shakes. And for a lot of people, we have this cognitive override where we can like subconsciously stop the shaking because we don't want to look bizarre, like, especially in public, if you're really scared, you don't want to be shaking. But the shaking actually finalizes your biological stress response.

12:28Speaker 2:So dogs, after they get scared, they'll shake their body right, and animals do this, and that's why doctor Peter Levine talks about like he's one of the founders of somatics. He talks about how animals don't get PTSD, and part of this theory has to do with the neurogenic genic tremor. So there are exercises that you can do it within somatics that gently recreate this neurogenic tremor in your body. So you'll do an exercise and you'll start to shake.

12:58Speaker 2:Oftentimes when that happens, you'll also start to cry and you get like this big release emotionally and physically. You've finalized your biological stress response, and then you're no longer really stuck in that stress physiology in the same way, but with somatics, I always kind of advise people like, you don't want to have like a super intense cathartic experiment the release itself can be kind of intense and cathartic for some people, but if someone's guiding you into it in a really intense cathartic way, that's not the best, right, Okay, Yeah, so you want to kind of work incrementally. For me, I don't even talk to people about the release until like eighteen sessions in. Yeah, so you kind of want to make sure that you've released habitual tension out of your body, that you feel safe again in your body before you start to take it into this big release moment.

13:53Speaker 1:So there are all these there are different exercises to stimulate or release different parts in your body. And so would you normally what would a session look like, could go through head to toe, or you'd focus on specific areas.

14:03Speaker 2:I kind of focus on first. I start with these really gentle rocking exercises, bilateral stimulation, different ways of releasing habitual tension out of different body parts. I personally start with the hips because it's kind of the main center of movement and it's also one of the strongest parts of your body. So rather than starting with some more like the neck that's really tender and people can kind of injure themselves, you want to start with the strongest part of the body and start there so that people stay safe. Then I normally go into the jaw and do some jaw releasing. And the jaw and the hips are connected through your fascia, so that's quite nice. Like normally if people have tight hips, they also have a clenched jaw.

14:51Speaker 1:Oh interesting, Yeah.

14:52Speaker 2:They kind of go hand in hand, and those are kind of the two first responders to stress in your body. You're so as muscle will clench up, which is a muscle that runs from your diaphragm into your greater trocanter which is near your groin, and then your jaw will also clench and this is just part of your fight or flight response.

15:13Speaker 1:Wow.

15:14Speaker 2:Yeah. So I start with those two parts of the body release ten, and then I start releasing tension in the shoulders as well, and then I start moving into more releasing exercises. So I do like a soas release, and we do a stress release and a trauma release. And then at the end of the journey that I teach is more integration, so that you're not just like leaving people after this big release early moment that we're reintegrating it so that you know, everything's kind of complete.

15:43Speaker 1:Are they? Is it something that I recommend people do every single day.

15:47Speaker 2:I do them about six days a week. Yeah, and I only do like five minutes sometimes ten per day, depending on what I'm doing. For example, in the car on the way here, I was doing a couple exercises to just relax and you know, not feel anxious totally. Yeah, and it depends, you know, for people if you've gone through more in your life or you are currently living in a really stressful phase of life. They're so great to do every day. Other people who want to just like have this experience of reconnecting to their body and regulating their nervous system can do them for a shorter amount of time, like like thirty to sixty day journey and then you know, just use as needed.

16:31Speaker 1:Yeah. Are there certain types of movements that we do, you know, whether it's workouts or yeah, the types of workouts that we do that can negatively impact our nervous system or you know, because you think movement is movement and it's always good for you, but are there certain types of movement that you wouldn't recommend for someone who's feeling quite anxious?

16:51Speaker 2:Yeah? I would say high and super high intensity exercise atally caring that. Yeah, if you're already stressed, and you're already disregulated, or you feel constant anxiety or constant overwhelmed, you're really just introducing another stressor into your life. So you want to do low to mid intensity exercise if you feel that way. And it's not that you can't ever get to the place of doing high intensity exercise. You just want to work your body incrementally and slowly to get there. So some people that I would coach would like be like I went to a hit class after not working out for COVID, Like they didn't work out the whole pandemic and then they went back to a HIT class and they're like and then I got injured, And I'm like, right, because you just threw your well intentioned They just threw their body into this really intense experience.

17:48Speaker 2:But you can't get there. You just want to start. It's like Goldilock, you know, like you want to start in the middle and then or you know, low intensity and then work your way.

17:58Speaker 1:Yeah, when you were going through healing your own trauma that you'd been through, were there any other supportive therapies or treatments that you had done that also helped in your journey. Yeah.

18:10Speaker 2:Absolutely. I love emdr Okay, which also uses bilateral stimulation, mostly with your eyes. It can sometimes be done with sound. It's another bottom up regulation tool, bottom up processing tool for trauma. Talk therapy is considered a top down processing tool for trauma. I also really love talk therapy. It took me a little while to find the exact type that worked the best for me, But for me IFS, which stands for Internal Family Systems, Yes, has been really amazing.

18:45Speaker 1:I had Gabbie Bernstein on the podcast and she recently wrote a book on internal family systems, and it was so amazing because she said she actually didn't realize that she had a specific trauma until a few years ago, where she did it internal family system and she realized that she'd been abused when she was younger, and she had no idea, and it unlocked a part of her that she had obviously suppressed or kind of put aside. But I've heard that it can be such a powerful tool.

19:14Speaker 2:Yeah, it's incredibly powerful, and I think it's a lot more effective for people who've experienced trauma than other types like cognitive behavioral therapy, and a lot of people who've experienced really intense trauma when they're younger get kind of a dissociative amnesia because it's essentially it's too much to process, so you just kind of shut down and you can't remember it until you get your body to the place that you feel safe enough.

19:42Speaker 1:Is that disassociation? Oh yeah, yeah, I feel like that's a common symptom. Well, I don't even know call it a symptom, but a common response to trauma. And I guess could you explain that a little bit why that happens.

19:55Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, When your a nervous system gets too overwhelmed into a protective response called freeze. Some people experience it as functional freeze, or you can go into like a full shutdown, so there's a spectrum. Functional freeze is when you can still get all of your tasks done during the day. You might even be really successful at work with your family, but then when you come home at night you just crash and collapse. And then freeze is a little bit more extreme, where you're like can barely get out of bed, and then full shut down is almost like catatonic, where you are not talking anymore, you're barely eating. And those are different levels of severity of the freeze response. But ultimately, when you experience the freeze response, your body turns off and your brain turns off the non essential functions. So that's part of the reason why people will get gut issues, because for some reason, your body doesn't think that it needs its gut to survive.

20:58Speaker 2:This is very evolution. Nervous systems are very old, yeah, and haven't quite cut up to modern society yet. But also you will lose some ability to remember, yes, and it's just protective.

21:14Speaker 1:Yeah, of course.

21:15Speaker 2:Yeah.

21:15Speaker 1:Your mind kind of like just boxes things up and puts them aside so you don't have to deal with them. What happens to the nervous system during panic attacks because that kind of feels like the opposite of dissociation, where you're really just feeling everything in your body totally.

21:28Speaker 2:Panic attacks are like sympathetic activation of the nervous system, which is like your nervous system can go off, which would be like this shut down state, and then it can get kind of stuck in on which is more like fight flight, okay, And the panic attack is essentially like a really extreme version of that sympathetic activation where you get so activated that your body has to discharge some energy, and that's where the panic attack comes in.

21:57Speaker 1:Are there any simple somatic tools that people can use if they're experiencing a panic attack.

22:02Speaker 2:During the panic attack itself, get low to the ground and as slow of a way as you can, and place your hand on your body, just in any way to ground yourself, hand on heart if you can, and just stay there for a moment after the panic attack. When you feel more safer, once you've gotten home, you can lay in bed on your stomach and place your hands, stack your hands on top of each other, make a diamond with your arms and place your forehead on the top of your hands, and you can take your hips right left in like this gentle even rhythm, kind of medium speed. This is part of bilateral stimulation. It'll help bring your body back into a more regulated state. But I would suggest after a panic attack doing that hip blocking for like a minute before you go to bed.

22:53Speaker 1:They feel like really manageable tools to be able to incorporate. Yeah, what are the things that you think people are doing every single day that's causing like minded dysregulation? Like in an average person. What are the things that we're doing in our day that you're like, we need to do less of that?

23:08Speaker 2:Not going outside?

23:10Speaker 1:Yes, so true.

23:11Speaker 2:The big one. Not moving at all is another big one, And I get I get that the reason why it's happening. You know, we're all a lot more tech based now. Our lifestyles have changed a lot, even with AI. Our life has changed a lot in the last couple of years, and everything's getting more tech dependent. But I think as we're doing that, we can't stop our bodies from moving because not moving just has this domino effect on your health. You know, the phone can be problematic, but I feel like it's so far gone already, Like.

23:50Speaker 1:How many more times can we tell people people find out?

23:52Speaker 2:Yeah, like I can't. I can't in good confidence tell people to put their phone down because I just feel like it's part of our life style now. But we can do things, like, you know, anything that's more sensual, where if you're cooking, like that's a really great way of like experiencing your senses. If you're going outside, you're like smelling the sounds, you're hearing the birds, you're feeling the sun on your skin. Movement is also this great way of connecting to your senses so and connecting to how you feel on the inside.

24:27Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that that tip of connecting back to your senses because I feel like those are the things that can bring you back into the present moment. And that's really what you're trying to do, right You're trying to constantly bring yourself back, bring yourself back. If you've been on your phone, try and connect back to your senses, if you've your mind's wondering, if you feel anxious, just do something, smell something, please, something that brings you back into this present moment. And the more moments you can have throughout the day, even if you've had a lot of moments where you feel like you've not been present in your body at least these are the little anchors that bring you back in. Yeah, I think those are really import And Yeah, I have a racing mind often, so I use breath work a lot for my resets throughout the day. Do you have like a thing that you do as like a two minute nervous system reset to just get you back into focus. Is breathwork involved in in that practice?

25:18Speaker 2:Or I don't really do that much breath work I'm really focused on movement, and I have nothing against work, but I do this little tapping.

25:27Speaker 1:I was gonna ask, Yeah, this just.

25:30Speaker 2:On my thighs. Or you can cross your arms, cross your wrists over your chest and tap right left and I do it for like about a minute, medium pressure, medium pace, And that is bilateral stimulation, which helps me reset.

25:46Speaker 1:I love tapping, like yeah, it helps to remind you that you're in your body, yes, Like yeah.

25:53Speaker 2:Because we sometimes just kind of like leave our bodies for a moment exactly. Yeah.

25:59Speaker 1:So obviously this is called a really good cry. And you mentioned that you love crying.

26:02Speaker 2:I love crying.

26:03Speaker 1:Give me the load, give me the breakdown of Like why is crying so therapeutic? Because honestly, sometimes I will be feeling so heavy, whether it's energetically physically, my head's hurting, and as soon as I cry, I'm like brand new. Yeah, taught me through that a little bit.

26:19Speaker 2:Absolutely. So crying is a reset for your nervous system. So if you're crying from an emotional reason, it brings you back into regulation. Essentially, what can happen for people is you get that sympathetic activation where your the stress is building up in your body, and crying is this release. It also releases oxytocin, which is a feel good hormone, and it just that's why you feel so good after you cry.

26:48Speaker 1:Wow. So interesting that even though crying feels sad, it releases a happy hormone giving your body after afterwards. Yeah, no idea that it does that. Yeah, okay, so we do all these cry and why do you why do people find it difficult to cry? Sometimes? I first like, I really cry, Well, I haven't cried in years, Yeah, and I can't relate, and I'm like, wow, what did that? What does that feel like?

27:09Speaker 2:Yeah? I had about like ten years where I couldn't lie. Wow, which I was like, and I was much younger at the time, and I was very worried that there was something like quote unquote wrong with me, which if you're experiencing this, there's nothing wrong with you. Just so you know, it's a very normal protective response. But it does have to do with that freeze response in your nervous system where you're more shut down, so you're more emotionally numb, and ultimately, your your body doesn't feel like it has like the resources for emotional expression. It doesn't have the capacity for emotional expression.

27:44Speaker 1:It's like if I shed one tear, all of them, all of the tiers can come out. Yeah.

27:48Speaker 2:Yeah, And for me when I experienced that, even like when my grandma passed away, I was not crying and I was like, what is wrong? What is going on?

27:57Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard. I remember my friend when someone passed in her family. I went to her and I gave her huggy. She said, don't hug me because I'm just going to end up crying. Yeah. It's like, don't ask me if I'm okay, otherwise I'm going to end up crying. And so I think it's it's this feeling of I'm not ready to release just yet. I don't need to be comforted to. I want to protect myself. And then when I'm ready and my body feels ready or my mind feels ready, I'll release.

28:22Speaker 2:Yeah. I think women too, like we don't give ourselves enough credit for like how much we hold it down, right, Like a lot of us have great careers and a lot of us are kind of like the head of the household, and we do hold it down. And I think a lot of us are kind of operating in this place where we're like forced into hyper independence in a way, and it can be really hard to be vulnerable in that state and cry in that state because you're kind of concerned, like is everything going to fall apart if I let myself cry. I'm personally a big fan of crying in public.

28:58Speaker 1:Yeah, cry on planes all the time?

29:01Speaker 2:Yes, like you know, not for me, not like a huge cry. But if I lived in New York for a while and I would see people cry on the subway all the time, yeah, and no one, no one.

29:13Speaker 1:No one. Yeah, I'd be like walking around New York loss like crying my eyes out, like so sad because I just moved there and I was feeling a bit lonely, like snotty and literally.

29:23Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, totally fine, totally fine.

29:26Speaker 1:That's oblivious.

29:27Speaker 2:Yeah, that's where I learned that crying in public was completely okay.

29:31Speaker 1:I'd love to be going to relationships a little bit because obviously when people have been through some sort of trauma, especially sexual trauma, it were really difficult to trust again trust their body in another relationship and create a connection. Could you speak to that a little bit, or speak to anybody who's been through that?

29:48Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I think there's an emotional component, and then I also think that there's a physical component that we don't always think about. So in terms of getting physically intimate with someone again, your body can get kind of stuck in like a bracing pattern. If you've experienced sexual trauma. Sexual trauma. We don't really acknowledge this, but it's like a capital T trauma. It is not a light trauma. It's just so frequent and it happens to so many women that we kind of just go on with our lives, probably without enough healing after it. Not everyone, but for me when I experienced it, like not enough healing right after it. That can cause your body to get stuck in this bracing pattern or in this holding pattern. You might feel really hyper vigilant where you're like constantly scanning, and so when you're in a relationship, it's really hard to reconnect to feeling relaxed and intimacy you've been through that, because even though mentally you know that this person is a different person, I am consenting to this and I want this to happen, it can your body can just be kind of stuck in this place, like kind of

31:00Speaker 2:PTSD place or yeah, or like a stress physiology, and I think that that for a lot of people is the missing link in their healing and in their ability to re establish that vulnerability and that connection with someone. And then there's the emotional component where it just takes longer to trust someone. You might need to move a little bit slower, you might need to have more validation, more assurance to be able to really feel like we're partners and to fall in love again. You're just more cautious and rightfully so of course, yeah, of course.

31:38Speaker 1:How do people tell the difference between having just really good chemistry with someone and being trauma bonded, Because I feel like sometimes they can for some reason feel very confusing or not knowing the difference.

31:50Speaker 2:I would say the pacing of it is a really good indicator. So if you like immediately share your whole life story and you know you're instantly like connected, and then the relationship moves really quickly, that is probably a sign of a trauma bond, Whereas if you move more gradually and like it takes a little bit more time for some of that more vulnerable stuff to come out, then it's generally a really healthy, solid foundation. I was in a narcissistic marriage, got divorced, and I took a year off of dating, and when I started dating again, I asked my therapist for advice because I was like, how much do I share about this? I don't want to not share about it at all, but I also don't want to like come off like, you know, date one, date two, disclosing this information. And my therapist told me, like, you don't have to talk about it right away, you know, take your time and establish a connection first. And if someone asks you about a past relationship that was really difficult for you, you can say, I was in a relationship that was difficult and I've learned a lot from it, And that's a really great way of just introducing that

33:13Speaker 2:something may have happened and I've done some work afterwards to be able to move on.

33:20Speaker 1:That must have been so difficult. How long were you in that relationship? Was it a long marriage that you were in.

33:24Speaker 2:We were married for three years, Okay? Yeah.

33:27Speaker 1:Did it take quite a while and a lot of healing afterwards to help you get into dating in another relationship?

33:34Speaker 2:Yeah, it took. I took a full year off of dating and then even finding a new partner took some time, and my current partner and I have been together for three and a half years. We just moved in together. Okay, so it's been a very slow, steady build and she's been very supportive of me and just has given me a lot of space, which is like very attractive, so lovely.

34:01Speaker 1:But also like taking it slow. It's just at least, you know, it's like the steady pace and all of that feels good to your nervous system after you've been through something that's so intense, and so I feel like that probably felt a lot safer and a lot more manageable than getting too fast, too deep into something. Yeah, you have your book When the Body Speaks. We've got it up here right now. Tell us a little bit about it, what brought you to write it, and what can people expect from the book.

34:28Speaker 2:Yeah, So Somatox has kind of historically been books about somatics have historically been written by older men who are researchers and doctors. So that the Body Keeps the Score by doctor Bessel vai Ercolk. There's Waking This Tiger by doctor Peter Levine. And both of these books are like really important and seminal foundational for the field, and my publisher really wanted me to write a book because they kind of see me as the next chapter of somatics survivor.

35:01Speaker 2:I'm someone who's been through all of that, and I do talk about my story more publicly, so they see that it's very relatable. I'm a millennial woman, so they kind of want this new face of somatics, how it can be more relatable to modern culture.

35:20Speaker 1:Yeah, what kind of things do you cover in your book?

35:22Speaker 2:There's three parts. Part one is my story and how I discovered somatics. Part two is ten of my students' stories, and through their stories, we also illustrate the science of how stress and trauma gets stored in your body and nervous system dysregulation and hormonal imbalances that happen as a result of that. And then part three are my favorite, like little mini routines nice for sleep, gut issues, anger release, stress release, and there are photos and explanations of the exercises and parts.

35:59Speaker 1:Amazing, really simple but so useful. Yeah, if there was one thing you wanted people to take away from this podcast about somatic healing, what would it be? What would you want them to know.

36:09Speaker 2:Your body isn't broken. It's just trying to protect you. So if you're experiencing long term pain, or if you can't sleep well, or if you feel constantly bloated, or you have a random food allergy that you can't figure out with the doctor, your body's not broken and you won't stay stuck in that place. You just need to find a way to get it back to its baseline and get it out of its stress response.

36:36Speaker 1:Yeah, so, I know sometimes when you're going through things, it can feels so permanent, Yes, And to know that things are temporary and that you can move through them. It just sometimes you just need a little bit of hope, Like you need someone to say that to you, Yeah, to remind you that, Okay, this chronic pain, this hair loss is, whatever it is, it's possible to heal as possible for it, and it's not just through the conventional way. Sometimes we get told no wrong so many you know, people that you're told to trust, and then you realize that there might be other pasts or other routes to help heal that issue.

37:10Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely, Thank you so much, Thank you so much.

37:13Speaker 1:This is amazing. Thank you for all your wonderful tips and everybody go grab when the body speaks. How somatic healing sets you free.

37:21Speaker 2:Thanks, thank you,