body mind spirit Archives

You Can’t Outsmart Your Nervous System: The Power of Feeling, Moving, and Befriending Your Emotions

December 20, 2024

Emotions: Your Body’s Inner Compass

Emotions are energy in motion—e-motion—designed to flow naturally through your body. They’re not problems to fix or weaknesses to overcome; they’re your body’s way of communicating its needs, signaling safety or threat, and helping you process the world.

Even emotions like anger, sadness, grief, or shame—often labeled as “bad” or “unacceptable”—aren’t flaws. They’re evolutionary tools meant to guide and protect you. The challenge arises when we interrupt this natural flow, either by overthinking or suppressing them, leaving emotions stuck in the body.

Why Humans Are Stuck in Their Heads

For most of human history, humans lived in small, tight-knit communities. Like other mammals, we’re wired for connection and belonging—this wasn’t just a luxury; it was key to survival. Being part of a group ensured safety, resources, and emotional support. Feeling seen, understood, and cared for regulated our nervous systems and helped us thrive.

But as we shifted away from communal living during the agricultural revolution, hyper-individualism and isolation replaced connection and cooperation. Productivity, ownership, and competition took center stage, pulling us away from the natural rhythms of life and into a state of constant doing.

This shift disrupted more than our social fabric—it rewired our nervous systems. When connection is absent, our body perceives it as danger. As Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory explains, social connection activates the ventral vagal system, which supports calm, safety, and compassion. Without it, we default to survival states like fight, flight, freeze, fawn,, or shutdown, cutting ourselves off from others and even from ourselves.

Your Body Remembers What Your Mind Can’t: Implicit Memories and Somatic Healing

December 2, 2024

When it comes to stress and trauma, your body is like that friend who remembers every awkward detail about the time you tripped in high school—except it doesn’t just remember the moments; it stores them. Whether it’s a knot in your stomach when someone raises their voice or a sudden freeze when you’re overwhelmed, your body holds onto experiences, even when your brain decides to hit the “forget” button. Your brain is like that overprotective friend who means well but ends up creating chaos. It’s always either reliving the past—“Remember that embarrassing thing you said in 2008? Let’s cringe about it for hours!”—or trying to predict the future—“What if everything goes wrong? Let’s panic just in case!” This isn’t malicious. Your brain is just doing its job: protecting you. It’s scanning for threats, thanks to its trusty negativity bias, which is like having a personal alarm system set to “paranoia.” It remembers all the bad stuff to keep you safe and adapts to the environment around you. But here’s the catch: instead of hanging out in the real world, your brain often keeps you stuck in a virtual reality of worst-case scenarios and past disasters. Meanwhile, your body is over here like, “Hey, I’m in the present moment! Wanna join me?” When the brain and body stop communicating, though, it’s bad news. Research shows that this disconnection can lead to chronic stress, emotional dysregulation, and even physical health issues like inflammation and heart disease (Van der Kolk, 2014; Chrousos, 2009). The brain might be busy replaying past failures or imagining future catastrophes, but without feedback from the body, it can’t accurately gauge what’s happening right now. That’s like trying to navigate with a broken GPS—it’s just guesswork. The thing is, your body is your true bestie(even though in all reality our brain is part of our body too lol). It’s always working to help you survive, adapt, and even thrive. But if your mind is running the show solo, you end up disconnected from your body’s wisdom, stuck in a loop of overthinking, and missing what’s actually happening right now. To sum it up: Your brain’s a bit of a drama queen, but your body? Total grounding MVP. And when they’re on speaking terms, magic happens—you heal, grow, and actually enjoy the ride. Now to the topic of trauma, which thanks to new science isnt viewed as just the experience but what happens inside of us as a result. From the perspective of psychobiology trauma is an interrupted stress response and all the creative ways we adapt to protect ourselves as a result of the wound that happened. So it’s not like they used to think that trauma is just a psychological wound, it doesn’t just live in our memories, sometimes we actually have no memory or words for what happened; it’s imprinted in our posture, movements, physiological responses, and the way we perceive ourselves and navigate the world. Chronic stress or early attachment wounds—like inconsistent care, abuse or chronic emotional misattunemets—shape how we hold ourselves. Leaning forward might signal a drive to please or seek connection, collapsing inward could reflect defeat or helplessness, while moving against others, with a rigid, defensive posture, may guard against harm. These patterns are not flaws—they’re adaptations your body developed to keep you safe in the moment – only what was helpful back then often becomes the root of our issues as adults. So the process of soamtic healing is finding ways to let the body, the nervous system, know that right now we are safe enough. When the body does not feel safe aka survival mode, we cannot fully take in new information, experience, connect socially, or engage in life in adaptive ways , only reacting in protective ways – survival comes first. The Body as a Keeper of Memory This is why early life adversity leaves such a profound mark. Our baby nervous system is constantly scanning the enviroment, learning, and adapting all In the name of survival. The memories might not live in your conscious mind, but they exist in your body as implicit memories (and subconscious)—the unspoken sensations, automatic reactions, imagery, and emotions that pop up seemingly out of nowhere. As Dr. Pat Ogden says: “The body remembers what the mind forgets.” A traumatic event—especially in early childhood—signals your brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) floods your body with stress hormones, while the rational thinking brain (prefrontal cortex) is not yet fully developed to help you process what’s happening. In infancy and early childhood, the hippocampus is still maturing, which means it cannot effectively organize experiences into cohesive narratives. Instead, these experiences are stored as fragmented bits—sensations, images, or physical reactions—without clear context or a sense of time. As the brain develops later in life, traumatic experiences may still overwhelm the hippocampus, especially if the nervous system is already dysregulated from earlier stress or attachment disruptions. This can result in a similar fragmented storage of memories, with emotions and body sensations remaining disconnected from the conscious, logical understanding of events. It’s also crucial to acknowledge how our identity, privilege, and intersections with systemic oppression influence the ways trauma impacts us. Factors like race, gender, class, disability, and sexual orientation shape both the types of traumatic experiences we might face and the resources available to us for healing.As humans we all have the same needs of physical resources like food, water, and shelter, but we also all need to feel safety, belonging, and dignity and unfortunately these resources are not distributed equally. For individuals from marginalized communities, trauma is often not a singular event but an ongoing experience rooted in systemic inequalities, discrimination, and generational oppression. The chronic nature of this trauma can keep the nervous system in a persistent state of survival, further complicating the healing process. Recognizing these dynamics ensures that trauma-informed care is inclusive, equitable, and responsive to the diverse ways trauma shows up in our bodies and lives. These body-based memories linger, influencing how you respond to…
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I don’t get angry I grow a tumor instead

October 1, 2024

That was a quote from Gabor Mate’s book “When the body says NO”, which highlighted his findings as a physician working in palliative care, addressing all The similarities in groups of people with certain dus-eases like cancer or auto-immune. And as I read this book, I recognized myself and intuitively felt it in my gut as being true for me, as someone who was diagnosed with cancer 7 years ago. Gabor goes on to explain that new science has been showing us that the repression of anger is a major risk factor for disease because it increases physiological stress on the WHOLE organism. In other words, holding this energy of anger inside stresses out our whole body. In our dominat culture it’s commonly thought that getting angry is what causes us stress,you know “good vibes only” and all that.. and sure it does in the moment, but it’s the interrupted stress response and unexperienced anger that is the PROBLEM. Anger isn’t our enemy, it’s our friend. Anger, is what is meant to warn us when we are unsafe, it’s a cue to set boundaries and claim our space. Anger is a wise messenger that lets us know when we’re let down because our needs aren’t being met, and when to ROAR and stick up for ourselves. Anger signals about our passions and desires. Anger keeps us SAFE, from real or perceived threat. Sometimes the threat lives on in our body from early childhood wounds, and so anger can be a fierce protector of these more vulnerable younger parts of us. Anger is a life force, our smpathetic nervous system, our SURVIVAL. Many of us have grown up thinking that anger is something BAD, impolite, a burden, shameful, sinful, violent, dangerous, or that it’s just “too much”. This can sometimes stem from early life attachmet wounds, trauma, OR it can be caused by all the conditioning, socialization, and gender training by our dominat culture aka “how to be a good cultured human”. But the truth is anger is an essential human mammal emotion, like could you imagine a bear not having it? Do you think a mama bear will stop to ask her friend if she should get angry at the wolf that’s trying to scare her cubs? No she instictively will react and protect, unfortuently most of us humans have disconnected from these impulses, our instincts, our biology, our wise animal body and are living up in our HEADS. Often times anger is also something that as women and other marginalized communities we have learned to bury deep within,to mask, to hold in, while painting a fake smile on our face and appeasing in order to stay safe. What a genius survival skill, AND at the same time this unexpressed anger (survival stress) is making us SICK. But how can we feel safe enough to feel + express it in a world that is NOT SAFE for us to be authentic? So it’s no wonder that women are twice as likely to have PTSD than men. That African American women are three times more likely to develop lupus than white women. That Native Americans have the highest rates of substance use disorders compared to other ethnic groups. This is more than genes and homrones, it’s the impact of living in this toxic culture we have created as a species. Anger is a life-force. It’s something all life holds within itself. It’s what makes a seed grow into a flower and a puppy into a dog. It gives us energy to grow and move forward in life. This life force of anger isn’t just something “bad” or evil like violence and rage as many of us may have been taught early on, it’s on a continuum. Rage and violence is actually what often happens if we’ve been hurt and internalized it, if we weren’t safe enough to express ourselves, to experience the emotion and be mirrored back, to make a boundary, have autonomy or choice. That’s when we start to turn it in on ourselves like I did for most of my life, and eventually externalizing, exploding, and projecting it outwards. The first step of reclaiming our birthright of this healthy aggression and life force is to start to arrive back in our body and learn to speak it’s language – slowly and intentionally. You might notice, what happens when you get angry? Do you tend to override it by taking deep breaths, by plastering a smile on your face, by going up into your head and thinking about it, or saying you are “fine” if someone asks you what’s wrong? What would it be like to instead take a SACRED PAUSE (if it’s safe to do so) to notice and feel this healthy aggression, this life force activating inside you as it is? Is there tingling, tensing, a faster breath maybe? How do you know its anger? And would you need in this moment to feel safe enough to connect to and express it? What wants to happen next? Is there a movement or a sound that wants to come out? What would it be like to follow that impulse? 🙂

THE SHADOW SIDE OF SELF-CARE… АКА ТОХІС ENTITLEMENT

September 19, 2024

We all know the importance of self-care, especially in our dominant culture that tends to push us towards constant productivity + external rewards, often leaving us feeling guilty to slow down, rest, feel pleasure and take time for ourselves… BUT IS THERE A FLIP SIDE TO THIS? When we see ourselves as Separate, it can be natural to feel threatened by “others” and to focus on only “me and my healing” which can sometimes move from helpful, towards the shadow side of hyper-individualism, ego inflation, and toxic entitlement. This isn’t something “bad” or evil, it’s how we adapted and once LEARNED to protect ourselves. it makes so much sense. And at the same time, if want to truly feel safe, connecting to our body, nature, other humans, and feeling that we BELONG here is necessary. as mammals we are wired for survival through connection. So once we start to feel safe enough in our body, it could be supportive to start to remember our INTERCONNECTEDNESS with all life or like Pando which is the worlds largest living organism with an estimated 47,000 stems that appear as individual trees, but are connected by a root system that spans 106 acres. each of its stems has the same genes and it’s huge interconnected root system coordinates energy production, defense and regeneration. Collectively we have forgotten what our ancestors have always known, we are not seperate but part of this larger ecosystem web of life. Feeling seperate is the source of our pain, fears, and urge to dominate and control as a species, realizing our interconnectedness with all of life can be a path towards collective healing and a hope for a brighter future for ALL. If forest ecosystems can thrive based on cooperation and support, why can’t we humans do the same?

relationships are HARD…AND can also be an opportunity to heal our deepest wounds

September 5, 2024

Intimate relationships can be a sacred portal into healing these past emotional wounds of our younger self aka the inner child.

Shadow work for women

August 22, 2024

Be sexy but don’t be a slut. Lose weight, but be curvy. Be vulnerable, but don’t show emotion. Be confident, but don’t be a bitch. Be authentic, but don’t show too much. Be ready to please, but don’t give your power away. Be smart, but not too smart. Be natural, but shave your body hair. Be strong, but stay soft. Be bold, but stay silent. Be original, but don’t be too much. Be tame, but also a freak. To be a lady they said… Impossible. Here’s some thoughts about how we can come into a life of wholeness + authenticity as women👇 When we embrace our shadow and befriend our body, we start to unravel the conditioning + break free from all these societal “norms” and “shoulds” of the “role” of a woman. These layers of programming keep us stuck and disconnected from what’s raw, real, and authentically ours – the intelligence of our animal body + the intuition of our heart, in other words the wisdom of our authentic embodied Self. These rules and impossible expectations create inner pressure, cycles of self-doubt, protective fragmentation, nervous system dysregulation and dis-ease. It’s no wonder that 80% of people with autoimmune are women, or that we are twice as likely to develop PTSD. Somatic shadow work invites us to get compassionately curious and courageously vulnerable, feeling into what we’ve been taught to ignore- our inner voice and the felt sense of our wise animal body. This is where embodied transformation begins. It’s a journey of being guided by sacred rage, confronting our hidden fears, and allowing ourselves to grieve unmet needs and wounds. This makes space for contacting our deepest desires, the wisdom of our body, and bringing home those orphaned parts of Self we may have once hidden to belong, be loved, to stay safe and connected. It’s in our human animal nature to share, care, and belong to our herd, and at the same time, fitting in to a toxic tight little distorted BOX is not the same thing as truly belonging to an embracing community, just for being you. You belong here just as you are. You belong for being YOU. There’s nothing you have to do, to prove your worth. It’s ok to disappoint others sometimes, so you can tend and befriend your SELF. When we begin to untangle these emotional wounds and unravel the societal shoulds, we step into a life of wholeness, liberation, authenticity, and deep self intimacy + enoughness. We begin to accept ourselves fully, just as we are without the need to be externally validated – that’s freedom🩷 What parts of you are wanting to be witnessed? What might you need to feel safe enough to express + give them voice? check out this video that always brings me to tears on YouTube shine light on your shadow, start your somatic coaching journey explore all my offerings

Inviting the body into coaching: the power of integrative somatic coaching

May 17, 2024

what the heck does somatic mean anyway? The word somatic comes from the Greek word soma meaning the body. The term “somatics” was first coined by Thomas Hannah in the 1970’s, however long before this kind of mind-body work cam about in the “west”, ancient and indigenous lineages have long known about it and it’s importance. So I would like to just pause here for a moment and recognize that somatics are heavily influence by eastern, indigenous, and shamanic cultures but often over looked, culturally-appropriated and not given their proper credit. So from a social justice, anti-racist, and trauma-informed point of view you could say that the term somatics is the product of white washing and colonization. The idea of the embodiment is nothing new. Our ancestors have been dancing, singing, connecting, growing, and healing through different mind-body-spirit rituals since we were expressing ourselves through drawings in caves. It all changed around the time Decartes said “I think therefor I am”, and the mind and brain sat up on a pedestal. We started to disregard the body as a tool or machine, and the spirit was thrown away along with it. Welcome to the era of disembodiment. Today there isn’t just one but many different somatic frameworks, lineages, and modalities, and even though they are different they all agree in the importance of including the body in our life and connecting to all of it’s inherent wisdom, intuition, and instinct. In general, somatics is the study and practice of the mind and body working together to enhance the human experience though inner dialogue with the emergent wisdom and implicit cellular memory, meaning unconscious body memories. It’s a process of self discovery, self awareness, and cultivating the sense of interception, in other words learning to speak the language of the body from the inside out. zooming out From a holistic perspective, our soma includes not just our animal body, but also our mind, and perhaps even the spirit. So the soma isn’t just the biological body, it is the whole, complex, living organism. This includes the conscious and unconscious mind and all of its thoughts, beliefs, internal narratives, imagery, and symbols, as well as the body’s sensations, feelings, emotions, and nervous system states. The thing is, our soma doesn’t live in a vacuum. We are biopsychosocial beings, meaning besides the biology and psychology, there is also the in between relational world. And so all of these things and our life experiences literally “shape” us, the shape of our body, our actions and non actions, our relationship to our Self, to other people, to the world around us. And so this somatic shape of ours also holds our learned behaviours, automatic embodied habits, relational strategies, societal “norms”, masks, survival roles, protective parts, younger child parts, and many different adaptive patterns living and running our life from the shadows. If we were to zoom out a bit more we might recognise that besides the obvious impact of family dynamics and other close relationships on our soma, there are also the cultural and collective layers. So depending on where we are born we may inherit certain beliefs, norms and traditions. If we zoom out even more we might recognize how somatics also invite us to look at the impact of systems and institutions that operate in our westernized dominant culture. And depending on what you look life, your ability, your skin color, your income, your gender, your sexual orientation, you will have less privilege and be set up to suffer more injustice and oppression. And if again we zoom even further out we are invited to look at the collective, environmental and perhaps even spiritual landscapes. Here we might see that our soma is also shaped by our ancestors, all their lived experiences, and the history of the culture we were raised in (intergenerational trauma and resilience). We could also see that our relationship to the planet, nature, the animals and plants also reflects in how we are shaped. After all we are made from the same stuff as all other living beings on this planet, and yet many of us forget and treat nature as something to conquer and dominate. And if this is in your belief, our soma to many people is also tied into the energetic, ethereal and spiritual realms, but that’s a whole other long topic. set up your free discovery call! inviting the body into coaching Most coaching out there centres around mindset, beliefs and story but understanding something alone often isn’t enough to create embodied transformation. Somatic approaches are gaining popularity over the last 15 years because they can bring about positive transformation more quickly – via the nervous system. A whopping 80% of the information that travels to the brain comes from the body via the vagus nerve and only 20% of the information travels from the brain to the body. Much of the western world has become disembodied, putting the mind on a pedestal, but when were disconnected from our body, we lose out on important information , which is sent from the body to our conscious mind. Neuroscience studies have shown that the brain and body are interwoven – we cannot change one without the other. Ancient and indigenous traditions have always understood the importance of inner work, the transformational potential of repetitive movement on the body and the impact it has on the mind. The good news is through neroplasticity we can reprogram the brain, rewire the nervous system and reshape the body, not only during the activity but in all areas of our life. This is embodied transformation, When we are using our felt sense, parts of the brain responsible for emotional processing, self-awareness, and interception (inner felt sense) come online, which means we tap into the possibility of embodied transformation of neurophysiological, emotional, and postural patterns. When we work only cognitively (with story, mindset, beliefs and other content) this isn’t possible. my approach to somatic coaching My personal approach to Somatic Coaching is trauma-informed and integrative, which means I do not…
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the body-mind connection and why it’s important on every level

January 12, 2024

The body-mind connection is powerful and it’s actually the link between your thoughts and your feelings and emotions, shaping how you think, feel, emote, sense and act. It’s like a constant exchange of info between your mind and body- not that they are separate anyway =) I’m sure you’ve noticed that physical state often if not always affects your thoughts, and your thoughts can impact how you feel. For instance, changing your posture from a contracted position to a more open and expansive one can actually boost your confidence and shift your mindset. It’s a two-way street. “if you don’t know how to say no, your body will say it for you through physical illnesses.” Understanding how our thoughts and emotions affect our body is crucial. More and more, people recognize that our mental well-being can deeply influence our physical health. Experts like Dr. Gabor Maté support this idea, shedding light on the vital mind-body connection. how they communicate Your mind and body talk to each other in two ways: the body sends messages to the brain, and the brain sends messages to the body. This chatting involves chemicals like hormones and neurotransmitters, and it also happens through the Vagus Nerve. About 80% of the messages going up to your brain come from the body! emotions adjust not only our mental, but also our bodily states. this image is from a 2013 study that focused on where people experience different emotions in the body. This research constituted the first “map” that illustrated how our emotions and our body are linked through sensations. You can learn more in the video below. body-mind integration “The goal of mind-body techniques is to regulate the stress response system so that balance and equilibrium can be maintained and sustained, to restore prefrontal cortex activity, to decrease amygdala activity, and to restore the normal activity of the HPA axis and locus ceruleus-sympathetic nervous system” (Selhub, 2007, p. 5) In other words, integrating the body + mind makes us more present, regulated, feeling safe and whole. Sensitivity as a superpower 🦸‍♀️ Most of us are living in this disembodied capitalist culture that actually rewards us for being disconnected from our body and from our feelings deeming it as “strong” and “keeping it together” , because this numbing and suppressing is what allows us to be more “productive”. But it takes true strength and courage to show up as your most authentic and vulnerable Self, showing that soft under belly as opposed to all the masks and armour we may wear. And it makes sense that our genius body-mind may adapted this way to self-protect if we’ve been hurt in the past, but the truth is not feeing and expressing our true feelings doesnt mean that they go away – they live on inside of us and keep on building up like a pressure cooker, impacting our whole system and down the line can actually contribute to increased stress, anxiety, and emotional turmoil to name a few. Embracing our emotions and feelings is an act of self-love and it’s exactly what these exiled vulnerable parts of us may actually need – to be seen, heard, acknowledged and validated – and until this happens, this unconscious shadow aspect of our ✨Self✨ will continue pulling our strings behind the curtains. ✨it’s important to know that if we’ve disconnected from feeling, there’s a good reason behind it and most often it’s to stay safe. A trauma-informed approach to this reconnection is to go SLOW and be gentle, because we’re not going for overwhelm here ♥️✨ overwhelm in our nervous system is how trauma happens. So it’s not about jumping head on, “sucking it up”, getting rid of, or quickly fixing these vulnerable parts of us but becoming WHOLE – or realising that you always have been whole in the first place- by coming home to your Self and gently shining our light of awareness on them, feeling into what it is they are actually communicating and need in this moment- that is integration. This is why working with the wisdom of the soma (body-mind) and ✨all our inner parts✨ is important, it’s a sacred portal into deeper insight, wellbeing, and embodied transformation ♥️ So the next time you notice you are feeling all the feels perhaps ask yourself: what are these feelings telling me? Does this emotion feel familiar? What does this part if me need in this moment? And maybe all it needs is a little sacred pause to just be with it, as it is, however it is ♥️ and if it feels authentic, maybe take a moment to celebrate yourSelf for feeling safe enough to notice and express this feeling in the first place! That’s big stuff <3 ancient wisdom meets modern science Science is just catching up to these ancient truths, that the body-mind connection is important on many levels, not only in physical and mental health but also the spiritual. Here’s some ways you can integrate and strengthen this connection: Embodiment practices Somatic coaching mindful yoga Shadow work Somatic parts work Embodied mindfulness Trauma sensitive yoga (TCTSY) intuitive movement sensual dance qui gong yoga nidra learning about your nervous system states spending time in nature creative expression “only you know what’s best for you” If you’re feeling called to start exploring the wisdom of your soma (body-mind) with my guidance and support, contact me HERE to learn about my 1:1 trauma-informed somatic coaching container for women or HERE to get your free consultation about TCTSY, the world’s only scientifically validated trauma healing model of yoga.

Stop shaming your shame!

November 9, 2023

Often times feelings of shame and trauma can be intertwined so it would make sense that if we feel shame, we might want to get rid of it, perceiving it as something “bad”. But does this vilifying and shaming actually get rid of shame? We live in a culture that is obsessed with self-improvement and productivity which can often promote this ill treatment of parts of ourselves. When we are constantly being bombarded with “5 ways to get healthy” or “ do this to optimise your wellbeing”, it could be hard to not feel like you’re doing something wrong. As a person with complex trauma who grew up with parents who had their own unresolved wounds and trauma, I’ve always had a way of being that was really harsh on myself. But as I move forward on this 17th year of my healing journey, I’m able to be more and more compassionate, kind and curious to myself and yes, even to all those pesky parts of me which I always hated. From my own experience and from folks I’ve worked with I found that it is quite common to want to get rid of these shameful parts in hopes that it will bring some sort of resolution, perhaps resulting in more self-love, trauma resolution or healing and/or transforming deeply ingrained patterns, behaviors, strategies or conditioned tendencies. Then there’s those of us who might rather just pretend we don’t have any shame, detaching from our body so we don’t have to feel any of it. Either way, this kind of approach usually just continues the spiral of inner chaos and shaming the shame like a dog chasing it’s own tail. If we look at this from a somatic trauma-informed lense, what could sometimes happen is that trauma freezes these wounded parts of us in the past. And these frozen often times younger parts of us hold on to beliefs ( I am broken, It is always my fault) and emotions ( shame, fear, grief, unworthiness). It is quite normal that we don’t want to feel this pain of the past, so our soma ( nervous system and body-mind as a living organism) does it’s job of self-protection and works hard to keep all those parts hidden or exiled. This is where we might avoid by distracting ourselves with work or other “busyness”, ignore, numb out and detach from feeling our body, or shame ourselves – cue the inner critic or perfectionist part- which has become quite a prevalent way of being in our modern industrialised “western” world. We may think that by exiling these parts we will finally not have to feel any pain, discomfort, or distress by avoiding overwhelming emotions, bodily sensations, memories or beliefs. But the truth is this won’t make it all go away, it all just gets suppressed and thrown into a pressure cooker inside us just waiting to explode like a two year old having a temper tantrum. Healing and transformation only come once we start to acknowledge, accept, validate and love all those parts that we keep locked away in the basement. This is integration and the process of whole-ing! It’s kind of like having a little puppy, it may try to get your attention by chewing on your shoe or barking at you a million times until you notice them and play with them. These younger parts that live inside us are just like that puppy, just waiting to be seen, heard, and witnessed. Thanks to studies on conscious and love-centred parenting and we now know that scolding and other fear-based coercive punishing of children (and puppies) only increases levels of fear and anxiety, so why would we want to repeat the same thing to ourselves? In my own personal somatic parts practice as well as while working with clients, I have adopted the belief that “there are no bad parts” and that they all have wisdom. Which comes from a humanist perspective as well ad the Internal Family Systems framework conceptualised by Dr. Richard Swartz. Through somatic awareness, sensing and feeling, and embodiment insight and integration we can learn to listen to and separate all these parts of ourselves from our Highest Self or Self energy, and this concept actually which actually originates from ancient and indigenous traditions like Buddhism and Yoga. It can be counterintuitive to view these exiled parts that are perhaps “lazy”, “unhealthy”, or even “self-destructive” ( like the shamed parts, the critical part, the addictive part, the people pleaser part) as wise, but have you ever considered that they may have been helpful, or maybe even saved your life, at some point? It makes sense that we may hate them if they have caused us suffering and destruction, but often times they came into being to help us survive a difficult expereience(s) and have good intentions. When our basic human needs of safety, belonging and dignity aren’t being met, our genius nervous system figures out ways to adapt so we can get those needs met! I used to really hate my inner critic. I viewed it as my mothers voice, that was mean, aggressive, constantly pushing me harder and judging me. I can see now that originally this critical part was meant for good, as a first generation Polish-American immigrant I wanted to make my parents proud. I thought that if I only worked hard enough, got the best grades and became totally perfect, finally my parents and everyone around me would accept me and I wouldn’t feel so alone. We moved around a lot and I went through 3 schools in the first five years of elementary school. My parents were constantly at work trying to make sure I had a better future, and I was left feeling all alone and like I didn’t belong anywhere. Of course this inner critic part came into existence, it wanted to help feel belonging, worthy and safe! Over time this critical part started to make me more and more anxious,…
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Stress in itself isn’t bad!

August 7, 2023

It’s what happens in our nervous system as a result of the stress response not completing that causes issues. Stress gets a bad rep, but in all actuality, without it we wouldn’t get far in life 🙈 The stress response is a product of evolution that gives us energy and helps us survive when we are in a life threatening situation. It helps you jump out of the way of a speeding car, to run away from a wild animal, and even to do things like yoga or exercise. Stressors (stressful situations) and body tension of all different kinds and sizes are part of every day life. Just the right amount of stress will give us the energy to mobilise and do all the things. However, if there is too much of this “survival energy” and the cycle doesn’t complete, it could lead to physical and mental burnout. Which is why it’s really important to understand what goes on inside the body and how to take care of yourself so that this stress and tension isn’t part of your everyday reality. Stress and stressors Stressors are all the things that bring us stress aka turn on the stress response in our soma (body-mind organism). Sometimes this happens because of a life threatening event, sometimes because of a series of events (like chronic abuse, neglect or systemic oppression), and other times the stressor may be your boss, partner, parent or your inner critical part – the nervous system doesn’t discriminate it just reacts to protect you, it can’t tell if the threat is real or “in your head” so to speak. Stress is what happens in your body. IT’s the neurophysiological process that happens in your body-mind organism when you feel you are in danger. Sometimes this gets called the fight- flight- freeze responses, but basically your heart starts to beat faster, your body gets flooded with different chemicals (like adrenaline), your muscles tighten, the blood goes into your limbs and your body shuts down the functioning of certain systems (like immunity and digestion) – all to get you ready to SURVIVE. It’s in the nervous system So not the stress that’s “bad” but the dysregulation of the nervous system that could happen if this cycle gets interrupted. Its important to understand that this stress response happens automatically in a split second. Evolutionarily this helped our ancestors survive when they encountered a wild animal. There’s no time to think about it, it doesn’t happen in our “wise mind” (the prefrontal cortex), it happens in the older parts of our brain that react instinctually. In modern times we may not have wild animals lurking behind the corner but our nervous system still treats all the threats we come across in life, both little ad big, as if it was a tiger stadning on our path. Then and now. Getting this cycle “unstuck” is nuance and highly personal, but one things for certain, getting that energy to move through the body, mobilization, will complete the cycle. Often times we may think that dealing with the stressor is the solution. “If my job is stressful, I’ll just find a new one” or “If my partner just stops doing this thing I hate, I won’t be so stressed”. Getting rid of the stressor may work temporarily, but it’s not the same as letting the stress cycle complete. all that energy still lives inside the body. Imagine how much energy it takes to run away from a tiger, that’s how much energy may be inside just wanting to be expressed! Just because we no longer see the threat it doesn’t mean that the body instantaneously just shut off the alarm system. The sympathetic part of the nervous system is still actively creating all the ENERGY you need to protect yourself. And once you mobilize and use up all that energy and you are in safety, a flexible nervous system will gradually go through the there parts of the cycle ( rest, digest and restoration) and your body will return back to baseline or homeostasis. Our ancestors mobilised and used this energy naturally because the threats were constant and real, in the sense that there were wild animals and things to run away from. Today the threats are often psychological which doesn’t make them any less real by the way, and not to mention when one stressor finishes another one usually starts- rushing to work, paying bills, ruptures in relationships- so the chances that we will encounter stressful situations again are certain – its part of our human experience. Completing the cycle. Not letting this survival energy get stuck in our body, instead mobilising it and getting it to pass through and express is an important step in completing the cycle and coming back to safety- homeostasis. It may seem obvious, but what would you do if you saw a tiger? You’d run! Imagine how much of that energy might be coursing through your body wanting to be expressed. Ever wondered why your jaw, shoulders and face are so tight even after doing all that yoga? Your body is still getting ready. So what should you do to get that energy moving? Well MOVE! It can be any movement really from running, exercising, dancing yoga, or cleaning your house, but the important thing to keep in mind here is that you are not using your mind =) but you drop into your body, FEEL and you do it with intention. When we’re running from a tiger we aren’t doing a beautiful choreography, so we aren’t thinking about it or performing. Getting this stuck energy moving involves connecting to your intuition, to sensing, feeling, being and getting weird with it. It means following your body’s innate impulses to jump, draw, paint, shake, stretch, walk, contract, expand, run, make noises, breathe, tremor, twist, twirl, dance to your favourite song or whatever! And good news, this doesn’t have to be an hour long strenuous workout, just move your body…
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