SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let's face it, all of our trauma is in connection. So like I understand trauma lives in my body. I understand I need to address this at the level of the nervous system. Now what?

SPEAKER_03 0:11

It seemed like almost like the world was about to explode because of my anger. I'm sitting here with Dr. Summer Nicole, who's a somatic therapist and nervous system educator. And in some circles, she's uh been known as the somatic dominatrix. So she's been going through transition in terms of her work, and we're gonna talk through some uh some things with her and also dive in through an exercise that she's gonna offer us and uh go from there. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you get to where you are?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I would have to start with I started with yoga because I saw I was interested in out of college, and I really like studying the body, and I got really interested to get to the root of people's pain.

unknown 1:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So that led me to getting my doctorate in physical therapy. I only lasted about four years in orthopedics when I realized people's pain is not just physical, there's a massive psychosomatic and nervous system component to people's pain. And in that world, I couldn't address, you know, what was actually there, which was chronic nervous system dysregulation, which really stemmed from unresolved trauma. So I spent, you know, 17 plus years filling in the gaps of what I thought Western science left out. And so that led me to study the nervous system and somatic therapy and the emotional body and trauma resolution and energy work and kundalini and a bunch of things that gave me more of a holistic perspective of actually how can I help someone relieve like suffering and emotional and physical pain because it I saw that it was so connected.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Beautiful. And so the past 17 years, what are some of the things that you've been offering and helping your clients with?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Some of the things that uh people come to me with. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people at this point, I should say, I've treated so many things under the book. A lot of people for a long time coming to me with physical pain. And then I would say, you know, more recently over the last, I would say five years really, coming to me whenever they've reached a plateau with talk therapy. They've sort of been through the ringer of Western medicine. Yeah. And they're like, ugh, okay, like I understand trauma lives in my body. I understand I need to address this at the level of the nervous system. Now what?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

And that's kind of when I get people. And so uh, yeah, so I, you know, have an arsenal, so to speak, of you know, how to address the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual body. And so uh, yeah, at this point, I get a lot of people that they understand those things. They just don't know what's the next step, right? And I get a lot of because I I have a facilitator training for my method, which is called somatic reparenting. And I'll work with practitioners, you know, clinicians and therapists. And a lot of them, you know, wounded healers that have been that have beautiful hearts of service, you know, and they've done so much personal growth work.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

And yet they're still chronically dysregulated in their nervous system and exhausted. And I can relate because I had no idea, you know, about energetic or spiritual or sorry, energetic or physical boundaries. Yeah. When I was a physical therapist, I ended up completely exhausted. And so I love, you know, kind of helping the wounded healer that is, you know, really offering their services from a place of overgiving, of people pleasing, it's kind of from the trauma response or from the dysregulation. And so, you know, for anybody that's a spaceholder, I would say 95% of the work, if not 99% of the work, is showing up in a regulated state because that's when the other person's nervous system, you know, without any conscious thought, that person's nervous system can um co-regulate with yours. And then they feel open and they feel trusting and they feel safe with you. And then their body actually has the potential to heal with you.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Absolutely. So if you were to give us like an idea or an example of having someone come to you who is unregulated, uh, they're either burnt out or not sure exactly what's going on with their body. What is sort of like, what is it, what do you take them through?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Uh I would say no one session looks the same. Um, I can give you sort of a common example of a session, which is or or what people come to me with. A lot of people come to me in a chronic freeze response. And I think this is because I had to learn how to get myself out of a chronic freeze response. I went through a pretty dramatic divorce in 2020, found myself quite frozen, quite rigid, and kind of dove down the rabbit hole of studying all things polyvagal theory, uh, Dr. Stephen Porgis's work, which is the most recent work of most recent research of how we know the nervous system to work. Needed to learn how to unfreeze my own system, uh, needed to get really serious about my own reparenting work. And so I get a lot of people going through massive transitions, whether it's, you know, work, family, home life, divorce, breakup, whatever it is, and their system's really overwhelmed and really in a state of collapse a lot of the time, where there's no energy. They just want to withdraw, they just want to connect, they just want disconnect, they just want to avoid.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

And uh, and they kind of just the excuse is like, I'm just too tired. I don't have the energy for that, you know. And so it's this state in the nervous system I know very well that it's like a chronic to me, like a chronic free state, it's a certain hell to live in.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Because even when we're shut down in that way, we can still be running a lot of anxiety, you know. So it's like, oh, I don't have the energy to move, but I'm still so dysregulated. I feel so dysregulated in my body. And so I get a lot of people in going through massive transitions totally overwhelmed and exhausted and highly distracted. And uh, you know, nine times out of ten, the people that come like that have been giving so much, and people pleasing so much, and self-abandoning so much, and there's so much resistance, um, not resistance, uh, resentment and anger build up, built up in the body. Yeah, repressed, you know, a lot of times since childhood. And eventually, you know, what will bring someone out of a freeze response is to develop a healthy relationship with your anger, which is also to develop a healthy relationship with your power. And I don't know how much you want me to get into the science behind it of like why that is, but it's just that put it really simply, the the freeze state, it is an immobilized state of the nervous system. And if you think of a ladder, this is the autonomic ladder, that's the bottom of the ladder. Say the top of the ladder is a regulated state, ventrovagal state is what it's called. And so to get out of that immobilized state, we actually have to go to the middle of the ladder, which is the sympathetic nervous system. So that's the side of the nervous system that mobilizes our energy. And so that's the side that, you know, we can use our movement, our breath, and our sounds to move energy, right? Yeah, uh, to move energy and get back to a regulated state. It's just that no, none of us were taught how to do this stuff. None of us were. And so uh yeah, it's it's interesting because fight or flight, you know, people that register you know, have more of a default of like an upregulated state, which is like fight or flight. Like you get angry or you just want to run, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Like the only reason, or you're anxious all the time, the only reason that the body registers that as fight or flight is if the body's not sensing safety. However, if we learn through our five senses how to orient the body to safety, that same energy is that mobilizing energy that will make you go for a workout or go for a dance or go for a walk with a friend, you know, that's very productive.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So the only difference is is the body is the body registering safety or not.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

Amazing. So if I were to come to you, uh dysregulated, you would help me find discover my emotions, feel my anger, and tune into finding safety. Is that is that correct? Yeah. In some ways, like simplified. I'm I'm simplified.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Super simplified, and and uh it's one example of like what a yes, a session could look like. And um, when I was taking myself through my own healing, yeah, and and unfreezing my own nervous system and studying Dr. Stephen Porgis's work with who created polyvagal theory, I found this, his protocol called the safe and sound protocol. And so it is an acoustic intervention for the vagus nerves. You have to put the over-the-ear headphones on, and it is a neural exercise that increases capacity and resilience in the nervous system. So, not just like music, I'm trying to calm myself down, but actually a neural exercise that puts a progressive demand little by little on the system to increase capacity and resilience. And so I was the moment I found it, I was like, I'm taking that provider training because I need it. Yeah. And then uh, and then I just started to implement it into my online programs. And I just saw every single person that went through the safe and sound protocol, their progress just accelerated like this. And so it's like brings the physiology back to a baseline of safety, helps the nervous system basically optimize its ability to regulate itself. And it's meant to be paired with some other therapy. So a lot of times I'll I'll pair it with my method, which is called somatic reparenting, because it just helps people process whatever unresolved trauma is there that maybe they've been avoiding for many years because they think that's gonna overwhelm me, you know, or those emotions are gonna, it's gonna be too much for my system. Or so it helps people to, you know, go through what they need to process without so much overwhelm and collapse. And so I often will work with people over like a minimum of five weeks so that I can slowly take them through that process uh at the same time going through the somatic work.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Nice. One of the yeah, one of the things through my own personal growth that I noticed was uh when I came across uh, I wouldn't call it a new emotion, but when I first started feeling my emotions, it seemed so grand, right? And it seemed like almost like the world was about to explode because of my anger. And right, or whatever emotion that I was trying to tap into at the moment, until I started to little by little play with it, and it eventually got smaller and smaller. So I think that for people to realize that our emotions are big when we if we haven't tapped into them, and they're not as damaging or I would say as as fearful as we might think, if we have the right tools, like some of the tools that you mentioned, to be able to go and access them little by little.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yes. And I would say one of the biggest things for me over the last five years is I've uh I teach a it's a feminine embodiment practice called S Factor.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

And it's it's a super I also teach it to men, though, because it's epic. Um, and it's like the best somatic therapy I found. And uh and and with with S Factor, it's like how can I identify my emotional experience and then match that with my somatic expression? And in that it creates congruency, right? Congruency of okay, what I feel, what my actions match my words, right? My energy matches my words. So how do I, how do I become congruent? Which a lot of people with unresolved trauma have a lot of incongruency, right? Yeah. And so S Factor, it was like gold to me, teaching me, oh, like I can, I can work through my anger at the same time, I can orient myself to pleasurable sensation in the body. And it's just through it, looks like nonlinear movement, think like really, really slow, wave, circle, spirals in the body, slows the body way down. And then in that, you know, maybe it feels like a really nice neck stretch, you know, and you can orient to that, but at the same time, you know, I'm using muscle exertion and kind of letting the anger burn through my muscles.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

And I remember when I was taught that, I was like, oh, that is so relieving because I think I've been exhausting myself trying to like process like my lineage of anger or something for so long. And it just, I decided some years ago, it's like, we just don't have to, we don't have to heal with so much intensity. And I just decided, I was like, I'm not, I'm just done doing this with so much intensity. Yeah. And started to just orient myself to how can we do this through play and pleasure and joy and delight? Because the nervous system actually learns way, way faster through play anyway.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

How do you so uh when you say intensity, I'm I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, like yelling and screaming, right? Is that what you mean by intensity?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

It could be it could be intense anger, it could also be any sort of intense emotional experience, you know, it could be intense grief, right? Like if you're experiencing a lot of grief, you could process that grief in a very dysregulated way, that where you're collapsed and it's taking over you and you takes you into depression, right? And that's like a freeze response. Or, you know, you could build capacity to be with the part of you that feels that way sometimes, which is often the inner child, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

And we could process grief in a regulated way where, you know, it's um it's not collapsing me, it's not overwhelming me. I'm not throwing the second dart on myself, like, oh, you're wrong for feeling this way, or it's bad that you feel sad. Um, I think that's honestly half my work is how do we normalize the full emotional range of being human from pain to pleasure? Because whether it's you know, sympathetic charge in the body or erotic charge in the body, the nervous system needs capacity for both.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Absolutely. Yeah. Uh would you say that when we are can we express anger in a regulated way where we're not going over the edge where it's yeah, we we sort of become dysregulated and we sort of like uh disassociate. How how do how would you stay for some of the guys out there, if they wanted to express their anger, how would you recommend they stay in a regulated place where they're expressing their anger versus going over the edge, or let's just say any emotion, actually, not just anger. But I feel like a lot of the guys are connected more to the emotion of anger. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And and a lot of men tend to have that default of upregulation of fight or flight in the system. So it's a good example to use for men. Uh and so, yes, if you're repressing anger, eventually that just means you're suppressing sympathetic charge in the body. And eventually the body's gonna become overwhelmed and kind of head towards that freeze response, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

So already, if I'm using my movement, my breath, and my sounds to express my anger in a healthy way, I'm making my way kind of up that autonomic ladder to a regulated state, you could say. So the best thing to do, and this is my this is my personal opinion, this is what I also learned in S Factor is to put it into your muscles, like anger specifically. So get yourself in a you know half lower down into a push up and hold and you know, just start like whatever the whatever the emotion feels like, match the sound to it.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

And or maybe it's a uh wall sit, you know, and just like or a squat and just like come in and just like put the burn of anger into your muscles, you know. And so as long as you're and this can be a little bit different for everybody, but let's say, well, here I'll ask you. So when you feel angry, yeah, what's the somatic urge in your body typically?

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Uh it goes into my hand. It goes into your hands, like the fists. Yeah, and I see you. So I like clenching my fists. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Okay, so we always want to follow like the somatic urge of the body, right? So for you, you're like you feel your literally your hands starting to come into a fist. So you would let that happen. And then is it like you're needing to punch something? You're wanting to push away, you're wanting to say no, whatever it is. Yeah, give yourself a safe space to do that, whether it's on the pillow or the bed. Um, a great thing is if you have, you know, a co-regulator with you and you can, you know, put hands on each other's shoulders and then it gives you something to push up against. You're just matching each other's resistance. That's that's a really good way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Uh, but yeah, it's always following the somatic urge of the body. And so whatever that is for you, because think of like trauma is an incomplete response of the nervous system. So all the times you didn't get to fight back, all the times you didn't get to run away, you know. So when those triggers come up, tuning into sensation in your body, because sensation is how our nervous system communicates to us. And then following, okay, okay, I have a sensation. Okay, it's in my hands. I feel tension. Okay, I'm wanting to literally make fists, right? Yeah. And so it's like you can make a fist so much that your arms start to shake like this. Oh, yeah. And then big breaths in. And what does that anger sound like? You know, whatever it is. Yeah. I tend to go in kind of like a big cat energy. This sort of gutter all, like growl comes out in me, like you could hiss, whatever it is, whatever your, whatever you would say, like your frustration, your irritation, your rage, your anger, whatever it sounds like, can you match that feeling to a sound at the same time you're going through letting your body follow through with the somatic urge?

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Beautiful. Uh, and just a note for our listeners and our viewers, like making sure that you do this in a safe space. Like, let's, you know, uh doing it in an environment where uh the people around you know what you're doing. Yeah. So you're not triggering them and you're not, yeah, yeah, you're not, you know, dysregulating their nervous system now.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, I have a funny example about that because when I was going through my divorce, it's literally waking up like 10 out of 10 anger, just like, my God, like there's so much energy in my body. Like, what do I do with all this energy? And I lived, you know, people lived very close around me. And I'm like, people are gonna think I'm like absolutely in distress if I go into this. And so all I knew to do is living on the north shore of Kauai at the time. And so I would go to my favorite beach, Tunnels Beach, and I would just go under, I would go into the ocean, I would take a big breath, and I would go under the water and I would just scream and like, you know, swap my arms under the water. I'd come up, exhale, going to the water, leg under the water, and I would literally just do it till exhaustion. Yeah, which I don't recommend. You don't have to do it that way. Um, and then I would just go collapse on the floor on the beach, you know, with my womb until I was it was I did it for like five months. Like I was it's all like all I knew to do with myself. And to I'm a bit of a mermaid, and so the ocean's very sacred to me. And so the ocean's also this really beautiful container, you know, for you when you feel, yeah, totally at your wit's end, so to speak, and like there is no containment, or who was containing you is no longer around, you know. It's like, and uh, so yeah, it was a beautiful example. So if you are in that kind of space where it's like, how where would I ever be able to do this? One is under the water, a pool, a hot tub, a bath if you don't have access to the ocean. And then the second is uh in a in your car. So close the doors, all the windows are up, maybe you put some angry music on, and then just go for it, you know, and and let yourself, even like when you know somebody pisses you off on the road or something, don't just swallow it down, just be let it out, like in that moment, you know, whether it's like you are like the cussing or you know, hitting your steering wheel, like actually do that. It's it's healthy, you know, you're not hurting anybody, you're just moving the energy.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I I do the uh I hold the steering wheel while I'm driving. And when I'm angry, I'll like shake the steering wheel really hard on the such a good release. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

And it's just more and more, it's like the the thing that's gonna give anyone anyone sustainable change in the nervous system is building this responsiveness in the nervous system. Because when we've had a lot of unresolved trauma, we've been chronically dysregulated, it's like the nervous system gets stuck in these states of freeze or stuck in states of fight or flight. And so the dysregulation itself isn't a problem. But if we get stuck there, it's a problem because there's no system of the body that can heal if we're chronically chronically dysregulated. So you're talking digestion, muscles and joints, the brain. You know, your sleep will be affected. It's the whole, your entire, every system of the body is affected. And so I always like to emphasize that with people don't get down on yourself if you go into freezer, you go into fight or flight, you go into a fun response. Like it's not a problem as long as you don't get stuck there.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

The name of the game is building responsiveness and you could say flexibility in the nervous system to be able to go in and out of these states.

SPEAKER_03 22:30

How would you recommend someone, first and foremost, notice? Because I think the first step for a lot of a lot of us, especially men, is to notice, hey, I am going into fight or flight. I am going into, you know, the freeze. So how would you say that they would they would be able to tune into their body well enough to recognize, oh yeah, that's where I'm at?

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Yeah, this is like the main thing that I teach people for sure. Um, and so I would say, well, let me ask you, when you go into fight or flight, is it mostly what's the emotion? Is it is it mostly anger or like frustration? Yeah, frustration. So I'd ask you, like, how do you know in your body that you're angry?

SPEAKER_03 23:09

How do I know in my body?

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Through physical sensation.

SPEAKER_03 23:13

Uh I'd say my belly's really tight.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Um I'm noticing my jaw wanting to like clench. Uh-huh. So my jaw.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yep. Uh tension in the belly and the jaw. What else?

SPEAKER_03 23:27

Um I feel very distant from my heart. I'm not really connected to my heart.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Um and is the heart rate elevated?

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Uh yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Like maybe a faster heartbeat.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Yes, faster heartbeat. And my physical body feels hot. There's some heat. Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

So it's literally just taking, this is particularly for men, but women too, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Taking all of our mental energy. Everything in the world like takes us into our mind here and up and out of the body. And so taking all the mental energy and literally breathing it in and down into awareness of somatic sensation, meaning physical sensation. And so I would ask you the same thing if you had like chronic anxiety. Well, how do you even know that you're anxious? Because a lot of people just go into the mind, I'm anxious, and this is why, and this is the story, and da-da-da. And then they just ruminate on the story. But the main thing to remember, if you don't remember anything else I say, remember that uh your state precedes your story. So, meaning the physiological state of our nervous system in the body precedes the story.

unknown 24:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

And so those of us that get stuck in the racing thoughts or the rumination or like the obsession, right? They get stuck, you get stuck in the narrative, you have to address the body first. Because when we're in a defensive state, you know, a survival state, the mind is going to be oriented towards negativity, towards worst-case scenario, right? Yeah. And so if we can address the body, okay, what do I need to do with my body? Maybe it's going for a walk, you know, maybe it's going to a kickboxing class or at least some anger, whatever it is. Whatever, how do however I can get my body to a regulated state, that is going to change my emotions and the thoughts.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Absolutely. Yeah. I uh I go to a somatic therapist, I have a somatic therapist. Amazing, amazing human. I love him so much. Uh he always, uh, whenever he I would say something, like when I'm like, ah, life is XYZ. This is, you know, just about life. Like things suck today. And then he'd be like, all right, cool, just go ahead and feel your body. Like he'd like to make me breathe a few times. And then all of a sudden I noticed the thoughts start to shift. And I'm like, life is pretty good, actually. Like within five minutes. So it's pretty, pretty epic that you can change your state so easily once you're able to tune into it.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

And one of the things that changes their state the quickest is actually just coming into connection with another human who's regulated in their nervous system. Yeah. So I imagine your somatic therapist, you know, is comes in in a regulated state and it happens so fast in our own nervous system, your nervous system starts to enter into his co-regulation.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

You know, and it's one of the quickest ways, you know, to get us out of dysregulation is to come into connection. And uh particularly with somebody that's regulated. And it's interesting because particularly in a freeze response, it's the last thing we want to do.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

I mean, I can say that. Like I, well, I was just absolutely did not want to bring myself into connection. I've really been into a lot of isolation. I was living on Kauai, but not just on the remote island in the most remote part of the most remote island called it, it's called deep country. And I really like isolated myself when I was in that chronic freeze response because I didn't feel safe. Yeah. I didn't feel safer on people. And so yeah, so it's one of the, if I would have known what I know now, you know, back then I would have gotten myself, you know, kind of down the road a little bit quicker, bringing myself consciously into connection, letting people hold me through the massive process I was going through, letting people support me, you know, through the massive process that I was going through. But it was a lot of um, you know, trauma with different people, men and women and and um, you know, betrayal and all this stuff. And so it was just I didn't trust. I didn't, I didn't feel safe that I didn't know at the time. One of the most healing things for me is to keep receiving new imprints of safe connection with men, with women, but in that chronic freeze, it's the last thing you want to do because it's nobody feels safe, you know, feels safe around people. And so I I've been saying this a lot lately, which is like we can do all this trauma work and you know, emotional release work and energy work on ourselves. But what the nervous system needs very consistently to heal is new imprints of safe connection with other humans.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

Yeah, agreed. So community. Uh especially, you know, I love that you said new imprints is the idea behind like when I was in my 20s, I drink a lot, go to the bars, right? And at some point in my life, something changed where I was like, I don't want to drink anymore. And so whenever I would go out with those guy friends, it would just be really weird because they'd be drinking and I wouldn't. So basically I had to find new friends. So I had to say goodbye to them and move on. So in some ways, you might need to find new people. You might need to go find new friends who can who you can find new imprinting that's a lot more safer and able to find they can meet you where you're at now.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Yes. Yeah. I mean, particularly if you're just around friends that you're just repeating your story over and over again. And like that's the way that you're connecting, because that typically just brings us into more and more dysregulation. Uh, and like it's just I yeah, it happened for me. I see it happen for every client I've worked with, which is when you really choose to go in and do, you know, the deep psychosomatic work, you know, of healing your nervous system and rewiring some of these really deep, you know, core wounds. When you really start to do that work, inevitably you're two things like inevitably your life force energy is just gonna start to run more and more because you've just released all this old energy, which then is going to change your vibration, it's gonna change your frequency, right? And so then the people that you resonated with before, right, are it's just gonna be a miss. You know, it's just like you're like, oh wait, I don't really feel like I can connect with them as much, or ruptures will happen, right? Where uh, you know, people are sort of slowly like drawn out of your life, like for whatever reason. And I certainly went through that, you know, um, a couple big like friendship ruptures. I remember before leaving the island, and it was, but I had to remember, uh I remembered it and intuitive was like about a year before it happened, she's like your friend group is gonna get small. And you're you're meant to let that happen so that new people that are more in alignment with you can come in. And I'm just seeing that now. This is like a year later. I'm just seeing that now, but it's it's a big trust fall whenever what you're experiencing, experiencing is like ruptures and what feels like a lot of loss, you know, in your life. But now, you know, a year later, I can I can see, oh, I I kind of needed to be pulled out a bit, you know, from certain dynamics because people were still in their trauma loops and actually my energy was being siphoned. And so now I can see it, it makes sense to me now. But a lot of times when you're going through that process, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And it just feels awful. And it feels like a lot of grief and a lot of loss, and like, what the heck is actually like happening here? And uh yeah, a lot of times when everything is just blowing up and it's everything's kind of being uprooted, it's kind of like you have to be obnoxiously trusting. Because what else are you gonna do? You're just gonna like resist life, you know, life lifing you. It's just like, I'm just gonna be so obnoxiously trusting and like lean into faith that this is like leading me to more alignment. And that oftentimes that looks like a lot of death and loss.

unknown 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

I love that you said that, like uh a lot of trust. Uh, did you notice a sense of identity shift as well along that journey? Was that part of your experience?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

How do you mean?

SPEAKER_03 31:34

Uh, because the the way that I the way that what I'm hearing you say is the way the experiences that I've had that have taken me to uh, you know, find new community or be with new people, yeah, it felt like my mental state identity had to also shift, which was really, really hard to be like, this is not who I am anymore. I'm somebody else. And being in like sort of that like mystery of like, I don't know who the fuck I am anymore.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Yeah. Yeah. I would say for sure. Yes. And uh as far as yeah, personally, but also professionally. Yes. I'm this is just I get my life path is that you know, I see a lot of a lot of people they they stick with one thing and that's what they do their whole life. That just hasn't been my experience in like going from like yoga teacher to physical therapist to somatic therapist to you know, trauma healer to energy healer, like all these things. And then, you know, now I'm playing in the world of you know, power dynamics and healing trauma with conscious kink, you know, I'm like, wow, like okay, I didn't had no idea. Alice is gonna like lead me here. Um, but because I can see the therapeutics of all these roles, you know, and so there's an underlier, like for me, of like I always, always have wanted to really get to the root of suffering and get to the root of pain that in a way that makes a sustainable change like in someone's body. So there is like a common thread in my own way of like all these different things that I do.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

But uh, but yes, like it's for me, it's it's been, yeah, both personally and professionally like an identity shift. Cause even like personally, it just like I think that's why the last I got to San Diego in July. I had been in Kauai for 10 years. And it was like up until about three or four weeks ago, it was so heavy in my chest. So it was like a lot of processing a lot of grief and heartbreak and just landed as a lot of loss in my body.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

And yeah, having to let go of the part of me that had this very safe island bubble that was very comforting that I associated with safety.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

And did a lot of healing on that island. And uh coming to realize, like, whoa, actually, there's a moment where the safety became limiting. And I started to say, I started to say to people, I'm too comfortable. I feel like I'm too comfortable. I need to be pushing my edges, I need to be stretched, like I need to be in my uncomfortable zone because I'm not growing. And I could feel my brain was just like, I need out of this sameness, even though it's literally heaven on earth, heaven on earth there. Yeah, it's uh I had a friend say, like, yeah, it's heaven on earth here, but there's a reason that we leave heaven. And she's like, contrast. Wow, yes, right, contrast. And so, you know, letting the letting go of this identity of like, you know, having this island home that I know I can go collapse in nature for days and weeks at a time and be perfectly happy mermaiding around. To oh, I need to actually get out of this sort of self-imposed bubble. You know, it feels like being relocated to share my gifts in a way of like why I had to leave. But yeah, letting go of this part of me that like needed to stay safe on the island, that knowing no matter where I am, I have the capacity to access safety.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Yeah, that's beautiful. So now that you have and you've been here for a year, or no, six months since July. Can you share a little bit about so all you sort of mentioned it, but a little like what I'm noticing is that you're going through a transition, stepping into something new. Uh, what is the thread that you're holding uh with all these and what what is it that's exciting you about the thing that you're embarking on right now?

SPEAKER_00 35:25

I would say the thread is embodiment, taking people from dissociation to presence in the body. And the thread is increasing capacity, meaning strengthening the nervous system so that the nervous system can handle life, can handle the ups and downs of life without overwhelm and without collapse. I'll pause there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

Uh so for the guys out there, like how what is what is it that they might tune into uh whenever what with what you're saying uh in terms of like collapse and like something, maybe something's not going well in their life. Like, can you share a little bit more about uh how they can yeah, how how they can use your sort of like uh modality or what you're sharing to better their life?

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Well, it just depends on like what they're working with. So if it's like, you know, uh we were talking earlier about like what are these common sort of you know, core wounds and things that show up for men of in life of like I don't I don't feel good enough or I'm afraid to be seen, or whatever the core wounds are. I mean, you can name so many of them, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Um, depending on what your history of trauma is, you know. Right. Um, so whatever those those core wounds are that show up, it's like how is it impacting your life and how is it showing up in your body? So that's the main thing to get people to understand is like there's no separation between your subconscious mind and your inner child and your nervous system and your attachment style and how you show up in a relationship is all, you know, one and the same. And so there's like a thread of um, you know, whenever I say increase in capacity in the nervous system, you know, for men that I'll just speak to relationships because it's such a big one, which is, you know, how are you showing up? Are you how are you showing up in relationship? Are your relationships healthy? You know, um, looking at like very practically, am I showing up, particularly? I mean, this could be family, friend relationships, romantic relationships. Am I showing up from my wounded little boy that needs external love or validation or is trying to heal his mother wounds, you know? Or am I showing up? Have I done, you know, the work, the deeper work to show up from my healthy man?

SPEAKER_03 37:53

Beautiful. I love that. And so we want Dr. Summer to lead us through something uh that'll allow you to uh learn what it feels like to experience something. Like this is one of my goals for sort of this podcast is that it's not just talk, it's experiential. So, can you share a little bit about what the experience is that you're planning on offering on this? And then then we can dive into it.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Sure. So I was telling you this earlier, like it came to me a while ago, whereas like if level one is inner child work and reparenting, level two is reclaiming erotic innocence. How do I show up like in my erotic energy? How do I contain my erotic energy? How do I learn how to direct that energy? So, for the purposes of this podcast, we're working on level one, which is uh I'm gonna take you through a somatic reparenting meditation, which is the method I created to heal myself during my divorce, and uh and just ended up creating a whole method around it to take people through developmental stages of trauma. And so it's literally just gonna, it's gonna look and feel like a guided meditation of taking you through, and we're gonna name on name a couple of these two to three of these core wounds that we spoke to that are really common for men. So going with whatever the thing is that shows up for you know the listener a lot. And then what are the emotions you feel around that? Where does that live in your body, right? Uh, when was the earliest you could remember feeling that? So basically just taking you to an experience of getting you connected to the emotion you feel, where that lives in your body, and then walking you through just a very simple dialogue with your inner child so that you can understand what that wounded inner child, right? That it's like it's like a part that is like emotionally frozen in time. You can understand what does that part feel, what does that part need, you know, and how can I begin to meet that need myself so that it's not coming out in all these sideways ways in my relationships, right? So it's all of this work, it's it to me, it's like a pathway to self-love, but it's also to understand uh what are my unmet needs? And and you know, it's interesting because different parts of our inner child have different defaults of the nervous system, right? Like you might have a really pissed off, like angry teenager inside you that is like full fight response, you know, and then you might have like, you know, an eight-year-old that feels very abandoned and frozen, you know, and so it just depends on like what's showing up, you know, in your life. And uh it's to me, it's it it is like this pathway to self-love and and compassion for yourself because when we're doing this type of work, you we need a lot of compassion for ourselves, you know, for our caregivers, for everyone else, you know. We we need a lot of compassion. And so it's just a I'm a very practical therapist, and so to me it's a it's a very practical way to get one connected to their emotion and into their body and into okay, here's how you actually talk to this little one inside that might be screaming at you for your attention, you know, because they will just get typically louder and louder if you keep ignoring them, you know, and and self-abandonment is codependency, right? So ways in which we leave, betray, and abandon ourselves. So all that looks like people pleasing, it looks like being the fixer, it looks like not having any boundaries, you know, if that sounds familiar to any of you. So it's is really uh I also tend to attract a lot of, you know, codependency, um, clients that are trying to unwind codependency. That's what I needed to unwind, you know, was all the ways in which I abandoned myself and ended up so depleted because of it. And all the ways in which I gave my power and trust over to somebody else instead of listening to my own intuition and my own power and my own body. And so a lot of this work is like, okay, how do I learn how to stop bulldozing over my nervous system? Yes, you know, and how do I really start to understand like what my body's trying to tell me in any given moment? Because I can say this with a lot of confidence after 20 plus years in the healing and therapy world, the body has is so intelligent, it has its own wisdom. And we just weren't taught like how to access the body's wisdom. It's its own organism organism, it has its own consciousness. You can have a dialogue with it and think of the body. Uh, I believe it's Joe Dispenza that says this the body is the unconscious mind. And so it's basically a method, somatic reparenting is a method to communicate with your unconscious mind. Because all this work is about bringing what's unconscious to the light, you know, and into your conscious awareness, so it's not running the show.

SPEAKER_03 42:45

Right. Beautiful. So this exercise, so Dr. Summer's gonna go into the exercise. And I'm what I'm planning on doing is while it's on this podcast and this video, I'm also gonna extrapolate it so it'll be separate. So if you've watched this uh podcast, you can also just uh do the exercise on its own. So why don't we have you go ahead and lead us through that?

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Okay, I'm gonna set my timer here. So you'll find a comfortable position, either seated with your feet on the ground, or you can be in a cross-legged position, is totally fine. And closing your eyes, hands in your lap, and take a deep breath in, fill up your belly, fill up your ribs and chest, exhale, make a sound. Undo again. Belly, ribs, chest, fill up, sigh it out, and one more like that, breathing in. Hold it at the top, sip in through a straw, hold it. Exhale, side out. And then just follow my count. Inhale through your nose for four, three, two, one. Hold it at the top. Four, three, two, one. Exhale your air. Four, three, two, one. Hold it at the bottom. Four, three, two, one. Inhale, four, three, two, one. Hold it. Four. Three. Two. One. Exhale. Four. Three. Two. One. Hold it at the bottom. Four. Three. Two. One. Last one. Inhale for four. Three. Two. One. Hold it at the top. Four. Three. Two. One. Exhale your air. Four. Three. Two. One. Hold it at the bottom. Four. Three. Two. One. Take a deep breath in. Sigh it out. And as if you could begin to inhale all of your mental energy, all of your energy, all of your spirit in through the crown of your head to the level of your heart. As you exhale, send this energy down to your root. Take a couple breaths like that, where you're inhaling into the crown, to the heart, and as you exhale, send this energy down towards the base of your spine. And allow your consciousness to be at the base of your spine, and then see or feel a grounding cord from the base of your spine, sending it down into the core of the earth, past all the surface, the rocks and layers, into the crystalline core, and just for a moment connecting to the essence of Mother Earth. Connecting to an essence of anchoring, of safety, of support. Might even feel your sitting bones or your feet get a little heavier. And then inhale this energy back up, up your grounding cord. You can even imagine it coming up your feet and up your legs into the low belly, and just take a couple breaths like that, drawing it up from the core of the earth all the way up your grounding cord and your legs into your belly. Let it consolidate there for a moment. And then continue to breathe that energy up your central channel, breathe it up along the front of your spinal column to the top middle of your head. And then just visualizing a golden sphere of light opening just above your head, opening up the crown chakra. Tuning in now to the highest point in the universe you can perceive. And this is into the realm of your spiritual team. So just for a moment, calling on any beings that you see as support for you. This could be guides or angels, could be loved ones or ancestors, asking for their clarity and their guidance. Take a deep breath. And just see them, feel them surrounding you on all sides. And as you feel ready, beginning to breathe that divine energy down, breathe it down now, back to the top middle of the head, back to the crown. And then continue to breathe it down the center of the brain, the center of the throat, and the center of the heart. And once you get to the heart, take a big breath, expand your heart chakra in all directions, taking a moment to connect to the part of yourself that knows exactly how to hold you with unconditional love, with compassion, and with non-judgment. So what I would like you to tune into is that pattern of not feeling good enough or feeling unworthy that might be most prominent for you, or it might be feeling confused in connection, like I don't know what I'm doing. Or maybe it's this really self-critical, judgmental part of yourself, that really harsh inner critic. Whatever that thing is that shows up for you, I want you to just call upon that pattern. And so if you had something recent that triggered, let's say the feeling of not feeling good enough, or triggered confusion, or triggered self-criticism, you can call upon that recent scenario, but once you can feel it in the body, just let the story go. Just take a couple breaths and feel into that. Okay, with this thing that happens for me, this pattern that happens for me, what emotions do I feel? See if you can get a couple emotional adjectives that describe what it is you feel with this pattern that shows up for you sometimes. And just continue to breathe and feel into it. Always getting better at breathing and feeling at the same time. And then once you have the emotion or emotions that you're working with, as if you could swan dive into those emotions with your breath, with your focus, with your intention, begin to breathe and feel and amplify them for about 30 seconds. Ready? Good. And then again, just a sense of curiosity. You're just gonna ask the body, body, where do I hold this? Where do I hold this emotion or these emotions in my body? And just see what comes to the forefront of your awareness. Okay, and then hone in on the primary location that feels most prominent for you. Even if you get a couple locations, hone in on the primary one that's most relevant to this intention you're working with. Put your awareness there. Get as many details as you can about that location. Is it more towards the front or back of the body? Is it more right or left or central? Does it feel superficial or deep? Might even have the size or shape or color of what you see or feel there that represents what is being held there. Putting all your awareness on that physical location. To the best of your ability, begin to, as you focus on that physical location, breathe and feel into the emotions that you're working with. I'm gonna give you about 30 seconds here. Breathe and feel the best of your ability the emotions you're working with while focused on the physical location of where it's held. Ready? Go. And if you get more than one age, please go to the earliest one. Good. And just see how your inner child comes in. Get as many details as you can about what they look like, what they're wearing, if they're inside or outside, if they're alone or anyone else is around. Take your current adult self right there next to this version of your inner child. Just get down at their level. And in the most authentic way that you can, just let them know that you're there and that you'd love to connect with them. Ask them if that's okay. And then see if you can get eye contact with them. If they're at all hesitant to connect with you, just let them know that that's okay. That we're gonna take this at their pace. If you're able to get eye contact with them, just say, I'd love to know how you're feeling right now. How are you feeling? Take a breath, receive them, and then mirror back exactly what you just heard them say. I hear you, you're feeling this, and then you'll ask, what do you need right now? And then once they tell you what they need, just mirror back exactly what they just told you that they need. And then I'll give you a couple of minutes for this. But I want you to just take a few minutes and imagine meeting this need. Just let time slow down, let everything else fall away, and just be so present with this part of your inner child. So if they want to be held, you can even wrap your own hands around your arms. Whatever the need is, if they want to play, imagine playing with them. Whatever the need is, just imagine with all of your presence meeting this need and just being so present with them and breathing with them. That you'd intuitively like to say to your inner child all of your wisdom and experience as an adult, you can go ahead and do that now. Take a deep breath, just really receiving them. And then just feel into your current energy body. Your throat, your heart, your solar plexus, your sacral chakra, all of your energy centers, and just ask yourself where do I feel strong to hold my inner child that sometimes feels this way. And you can even place your hands on that area. And just in your own way, letting your inner child know, this is where I feel really strong to hold you. This is where I will always come back to you. Even when I get busy adulting, I will always find my way back to you. And thank you so much for connecting with me, being willing to talk with me. And anything else you'd like to say to close that part of the conversation, letting them know that you'll be back to check in on them. Take a deep breath. Good. And once you've closed that piece of the conversation, you'll just repeat out loud after me. Just say, I now call all parts of my spirit, power, and energy back into my physical body. And breathe in through your crown, through your navel point. Exhale this energy down to your root and to your feet. And then again from the core of your being, I now call all parts of my spirit, power, and energy back into my physical body. And breathe in to your crown, into your navel point. Exhale this energy down your legs and down the bottoms of your feet. Send it out like roots, as deep as you can get into the core of the earth. Just take an extra inhale and exhale here just to descend the energy all the way down. And then one more time, like you mean it. I now call all parts of my spirit, power, and energy back into my physical body. And breathe in. Exhale this energy down, send it out your feet like roots, as deep and as wide and as far reaching as you can see or feel those roots go, and to the core of the earth, and just connecting you back in to present moment awareness, to your physical body, to a sense of groundedness, and just connecting to what you feel now, whether it's more equilibrium or homeostasis or joy or more clarity, whatever it is. I want you to take 30 seconds. So I want you to for 30 seconds savor and expand and imprint this feeling into your body. Do it by taking some deep breaths here for the next 30 seconds. Ready, go. Letting this feeling expand through your breath and your physical body and in your auric field. Understanding you have this power to make your energy bigger, take up a little more space. One, two, three. Open your eyes, just let them blink open. Don't look at the screen if you're on one. Just take your uh neck, look to the left, rotate to the right a couple times, back and forth, and then does any movements your body intuitively wants to do, feel free to stretch. Make noises, grab some water, and coming back as you're ready. So often they just want to be held. Yeah, and they just want your presence more times than not.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:16

So sweet, I feel so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:20

And then because you wanted me to keep it at 20 minutes, I cut it a little bit short, but there you can you all can do this in your own way now that you know how to connect. Um is the one one piece is asking the inner child. Would you like for me to check in on you regularly? And then you get them, you know, this is usually like it's like, okay, well, um, how often would you like that to happen? And then get really specific. Like they can tell you the uh number of days a week, how many minutes a day? If it's like a ridiculous request, like sometimes when you start this word. The inner child can be quite needy.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:02

Uh, and in that you have to sort of there can be a negotiation that happens of like, I hear you, you're wanting it every day, all day. And what's doable for me is this, you know, and so you have a little compromise about what that is, and maybe it ends up being three or four days a week for five to twenty minutes at a time, and then you ask them, okay, great, got it. Now, how? How do you want me to check in with you? And you let them tell you. And so it's very specific, you know. Sometimes it's more play, sometimes it's more nature, sometimes it's just check in with me right before you go to bed, or sometimes it's just do it in your morning meditation, you know. So you just let them tell you. And so that's one piece that makes it really practical of like bringing this work into your life of how you begin to integrate your inner child, you know, into your life so that you're consistently meeting the need.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:53

Amazing. Uh, what have you so just so they sort of are aware of like what they could see happen in their life with if they continue doing this? Like, what are some of the things that you've seen uh that you know, either yourself or your the people that you've taught, like what are some of the things that you've seen happen for them in their life?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Um, I would say, oh I'll just use myself as an example, uh, which is, you know, really getting me out of uh being so anxiously attached, you know, which just means grasping, you know, and needing from others and um reaching for this sense of like reassurance and external validation from other people, which can come out in a lot of different ways, a lot of sideways ways, right? Um, which is a self-abandoning behavior, right? And so it's uh what I really see, like if I were to really like zoom out and sum it up, it's energy conservation. It's like because most people come to me and they're exhausted because they're just like, I just absolutely can't. Like can't keep doing whatever I'm doing because it's exhausting me. I feel depleted, I'm overwhelmed, I'm anxious all the time, I'm super distracted, whatever it is, you know. Um, and so it's it's really it's like developing uh a healthy adult, you know, and it's to me, reparenting work is how do I develop this healthy feminine, like healthy mother, divine mother inside of myself, but also this healthy masculine, divine masculine inside of myself because we all have both, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:30

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:31

And yeah, there for me, it was like I actually needed to develop a healthy masculine inside myself because I didn't have any imprint of what that was as a kid. And so it looked like me like not knowing anything about boundaries. I didn't know how to create a container for myself, you know? And so for me, developing healthy masculine was becoming absolutely unwilling to keep putting my inner child into toxic dynamics. It became so clear. I was like, oh, I'm so tired. Um, and it's yeah, it's like in creating boundary for myself. Yeah, I am unwilling. I'm it's a hard no for me at this point to engage with this unhealthy dynamic, you know, with this toxic person or toxic dynamic or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:24

And then um creating some sort of containment for my massive feminine emotions. It's like, I'm like, how do I? Because I was always like wanting him to hold it, you know, like or or deal with my massive emotional intensity whenever like I didn't know how to contain it myself. It's this it's a practice of like, how do I learn how to contain my own chaos? So I'm not expecting this person to do it for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

You know, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:51

And so yeah, it's like that that healthy masculine for me was a big deal. It was a big deal. Uh, because it's what it's like drew a hard line in the sand for me around I'm unwilling to keep putting my inner child through this. I can see how every time I come into connection with this person, it completely dysregulates me. And I'm just unwilling to keep throwing my my inner child in this dynamic. And so that to me is healthy masculine, you know, developing healthy boundaries, uh, a sense of containment, some sort of structure for yourself where you can deal with yourself. And sometimes that's like creating a men's group or women's group, or you know, so it's also how do I bring myself into connection to receive, you know, the support I really need because I know that my nervous system needs to heal in connection because let's face it, all of our trauma was in connection. So we need to heal in connection.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:46

Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to doing this work, uh, where can they find you and work with you if they wanted to? They're like, oh, I want to work with Dr. Summer. Where would they find it?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:58

Yeah. Um, I'm pretty active on Instagram, which is uh D-R underscore Summer, S-O-M-E-R underscore Nicole. Uh I'm you can send me you know text or audio through there, then I can it's easy for me to get back. And then my website is Soma, S O M A Healing Collective.com.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:19

Beautiful. And the way that you spell her summer is S-O-M-E-R, just so you know. Yeah. Yeah. Um it's gonna be all in the stuff in the description, so you can find it there as well. And yeah, so we're also gonna do a longer exercise and QA with her in the men's community. So join then. Don't know when we're gonna do it, but we're gonna do it. And uh yeah, thank you so much. You're welcome. This was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:46

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:47

Absolutely. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, uh, you're a great podcaster, speaker. You had a lot of fun to yeah, just fun to share and talk through with you. Yeah, and uh supporting it's so important. Thank you for the work that you do supporting people uh come into a regulated state and find freedom in in their life.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:06

Yeah, yeah, all about liberation, going from survival mode to creation mode, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:11

Yeah. Any last words you'd like to leave the audience with?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

I mean, I think that that was kind of my last words. It's like this is all about going from survival mode to creation mode. Because when we're stuck in a chronic survival state, we're in a defensive state, and we can't access creative solutions or positive outcomes in the mind. And so that's the importance of the work is how do I get myself out of chronic survival so that I can access my life force energy, my creative energy, which is also my sexual energy, so that I can do what I'm here to do in the world, what my soul's here to do, so that I can do that thing, so I can create the thing that my soul's here to do. And so to do that, we need to be out of survival mode. And we kind of need all hands on deck, you know? And so, yeah, it's about getting people also in a place where you can access joy and beauty and pleasure again, you know, because when you've been stuck in those states for so long, it's very easy to be oriented towards negativity. And so a lot of this work is is yeah, orienting ourselves to delight and pleasure and joy again, you know, because we've been so dysregulated for so long. And so it's it changes everything. I see like the nervous system work, it changes everything. Your relationship with your body, your relationship with yourself, and then your relationships with other people.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:34

Absolutely. Beautiful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:37

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:38

Goodbye for now.