SPEAKER_05 0:00

It's working perfectly. You just don't like it. Part of why this work is so powerful for men is that it's not narrative-based. You don't have to know the trauma or the stress or the story. We are the only ones who have learned and taught ourselves out of it.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome to the Inner Edge Podcast. My name is Helema Balur. Today's guest is Jenica Mills, and she's a somatic trauma specialist. Welcome.

SPEAKER_05 0:32

Hi, thanks for having me. Oh yeah. So excited. Same here.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Glad to have you. So diving in, what do you do? And who are you?

SPEAKER_05 0:42

Okay. What do I do is a big question.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Right.

SPEAKER_05 0:47

At the root of it, my work is really designed to help people come back to their freedom, to remember their freedom. So I work with individuals, I work with groups, I work with couples, I teach trainings all around this idea that our bodies have an innate knowing of how to be in full expression, about how to live in freedom, about how to be responsive. And we are just figuring out how to unlock patterns that are holding us back from our freedom.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Who doesn't want more freedom, right? Come on. I want it. Yeah, we were to boil it down. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

And give us a so what is a somatic trauma specialist?

SPEAKER_05 1:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

So you're you bring people to freedom. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_05 1:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:51

So soma means body. Yeah. Right. So what we're looking at is the this um work is through the all the frame through the body and the nervous system. So you could think about, you know, psychotherapy is one way to look at um helping ourselves through difficult experiences. You could call it trauma, but as human beings, we also experience prolonged stress. And it turns out that our bodies don't know the difference between a traumatic event and a prolonged stress. It's going to respond similarly throughout that entire continuum.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 2:30

So when we think about traditional psychotherapy, that's more of a top-down approach, meaning we're working with beliefs, we're working with thoughts, we're working with a narrative. When we're talking about somatic trauma recovery or nervous system regulation or nervous system um work, uh, we're talking about a bottom-up approach, meaning we're working with the body's intelligence that it holds, and it holds everything we've ever experienced from the time of their their um they're theorizing from the time of inception, like this organism is holding experience.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:12

And that if that's true, that we're holding every experience, every stress, everything that has happened in some way, shape, or form, if we haven't had the capacity or the ability to um release it. So turns out stressful events and traumatic events, we call them traumatic events, trauma isn't really the event. Trauma is how it lands in us. That if we've never had the opportunity to allow for the body to discharge the the um stress that happened at that time, that we hold it. And that holding is actually what creates what we might call in our culture symptomology.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

In some ways, disease disease. Disease, symptomology, disease. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 4:07

Exactly. So sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, you know, sexual dysfunction, digestive issues, like you name it.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:16

So when we're talking about somatic trauma recovery, we're talking about following, listening to, deeply listening to, and following the intelligence of the body. Because it knows how to guide us through that discharge in order to come back to freedom. It already knows how to do that. Yeah, this is just a deeper, this is just a remembering.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Okay. Okay. That gave me chills. That's cool. Okay. Cool.

SPEAKER_05 4:42

So it's like some somatic is really just body-based recovery work.

unknown 4:47

Great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Okay. I'm sure I want more of this thing. Like I want to be able to remember and connect to that. So before we dive into a little bit more about what it is you do, how you can help, you know, you work with not just men, you work with women. But I'm curious to know how did you get here?

SPEAKER_05 5:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

What was your journey? And then we'll dive into more of like how you help.

SPEAKER_05 5:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:13

Oh, well, so I, like many other people, had incredibly stressful. And turns out later in life I realized very traumatic childhood. Um, really, most of childhood and into adolescence was uh pretty difficult. Um, and so my trajectory in life was somehow I was kind of always geared for um working with people, helping people. At the time I thought like helping people was the thing, right? Like so ego, such like a teenager thing, or like, you know, and fresh into college, help people in my like first women's studies class or whatever. Um and so I was I really felt like uh this is what I was made for was to to be in relationship with um helping, the helping field in some way.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:06

So, you know, as as we learn, any anybody that gets in that field is really doing it to heal themselves.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:14

So um, you know, I got through undergrad and I had my first job as a rape crisis counselor at like the rape age of like 22. Um, and realized at that age, like realized at that time, um, I was becoming highly, highly traumatized by the work I was doing. And recognizing that like it wasn't just the work I was doing, it was actually eliciting responses from my childhood and from my adolescence and from my early adulthood that were like, oh, this is in me, this stress, this response is in me. I didn't even know I was an anxious person. Like that's how, you know, kind of checked out of it I was. Um, and so right around then, I I found yoga. Um, a friend like invited me to yoga class, and it was like, I think, I think the teacher was like 82 years old. It was like in the attic of a restaurant. So we were like hearing like, you know, glasses tinkling and like the the restaurant music and the smells of the whatever Italian food was like wafting up. And it was the first time I think I actually felt something like really, I was a dancer growing up, so I I used my body in many ways um to express myself, but I it was like a in the quiet of a yoga class where we were like, she called it rolling around on the floor. Um that I really felt like, oh, I could come undone if I allow myself to stay here too long. And so I got curious about how the body actually responds to our lives rather than just psychology, right? Like just the story and the the narrative. Yeah. Because something was happening in me. I went to grad school, became a clinical social worker, got deeper and deeper, and somehow in that process, really found um that I was very lucky actually in my first job out of grad school to work for a nonprofit that was really dedicated to somatic recovery. I had no idea, I had no idea what that even really meant. But I it was like, okay, great. And so they really understood, and this would have been like 2004. This is like before we really understood that somatic trauma recovery was best practice. It wasn't best practice at the time.

unknown 8:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 8:44

But they were cutting edge and they were like ahead of the game.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:48

And so it was in that time I actually um was looking for trainings, like what do I want to go study? Because their whole goal was to help us give give us money basically to go get these like cutting edge trainings. So um I did yoga teacher training, and um that that just kind of shifted me in a way, and it started shifting my clients in big ways too. You know, I was a psychotherapy, young psychotherapist, and coming out and like, who am I as a psychotherapist? And I was running these small yoga classes um through my the agency, through the nonprofit, and really finding like we can make big shifts in like 30 minutes of movement that we were not making in our therapeutic sessions. You know, we were talking about feelings and emotions and the narrative, and that's beautiful because we can create a safe relationship, you know, where client clients maybe have never had a safe relationship.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Right.

SPEAKER_05 9:46

So that was really powerful. And then we're still just talking about the narrative.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:51

So it wasn't until we got like into movement that I was like, oh, we can make really big shifts here.

unknown 9:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 9:58

And so um, sort of that same year, I had the serendipitous meeting with the the um founder of trauma releasing exercises, David Burselli. He lived also in Arizona at the time. That's where I got my graduate degree and eventually was working and living. And um, at the time he was selling his book and his DVD. And that's how you that's how you learned how to do trauma releasing exercises. This like really like profound trauma recovery method now. Um, but that's how you did it. You picked up this book um and the DVD, you did it, you learned it, and you could like teach other people with it. It was just like wild. So here I am, like 26 years old or something, 25 years old, and uh running these small groups, um, specifically with sexual assault survivors. That's like our the population that we were working with. And it was like if yoga was like the the first step in, this TRE method was like game changer. And most of my clients were saying, like, this is the first time I I understand what you mean by like embody being in my in my body. Like I didn't know what you meant for like two years in talk therapy.

unknown 11:13

True.

SPEAKER_05 11:14

And they were having these like really profound experiences with this trauma releasing exercises. So it took me a very short period of time to realize like ding ding. Ding ding ding. I am not a psychotherapist, y'all. I think it was like two and a half years, and I was like, this is the direction I need to move in. So um I actually figured out where Burselli was working in Arizona and applied to where he was working. He was he was working at a neurofeedback company, integrating TRE, this trauma-releasing exercises, into his uh in into the technology. And um I thought, well, I could work at a neurofeedback company to hang out with David Berselli. Cool. So I did. Nice. And um I really got an education that I didn't realize was going to change the trajectory of my whole career and my life, really. He um would hold these DRE classes after work. We because we would work until like 5:30, and then you know, the traffic would be crazy, and he would be like, Whoever wants to hang out and do these sessions in the back room, I'll do them. I'll facilitate this work um every day after after work. So I got to work with him very closely and um have like really profound experiences in my own body. I was peeling away layers of um trauma patterns that I didn't even realize I was holding. And having these really profound experiences as a young person, um, I think like how grateful I am now. Um, but having these really unusual experiences were like um, yeah, earth-shattering, groundbreaking, and also informed me about like who I am as an individual and like what I wanted to be doing in the world. Yeah um and so I worked there for some time. He left. I took his job. I was his assistant for a little while. He left, I took his position, and then a few years later um was when he really got his training going. And um I decided to quit my job and go travel with him and teach certification programs in other countries. We went traveled to Brazil and Costa Rica and all kinds of fun places. And then um at some point in that process, he and I collaborated to create a technique called neurogenic yoga, which is a sister method to trauma-releasing exercises. So um all roads lead to somatic trauma recovery, apparently. But it really came from my own necessity, necessity inside of myself to to find freedom and to move towards um what somehow inside myself I knew there was more possibility. Um and then had just great mentorship and great guidance and and beautiful um the world world-class teachers since then to to guide me. Um uh and so no, teaching trauma-releasing exercises with individuals and groups and um teaching my most of my work is actually um certifying practitioners in trauma releasing exercises in neurogenic yoga. So, this is what I've like dedicated my life to.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Phenomenal. Thank you for the work that you do. I mean, I've known you for a long time, and I think the work that you do is so phenomenal, life-changing. So everybody that I hear that you do that you're working with is just like, oh, she's amazing. She's amazing. So thank you for the work that you do. It's important. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. I love it. What else would I do?

SPEAKER_05 15:19

It's like the best job ever.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Oh, yeah. That's so good. Oh man. Okay. So let's amazing journey. How you've gotten here. And let's how long have you been doing this now?

SPEAKER_05 15:31

Well, so 22 years.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

22 years. Kudo. Wow, hell yeah. Way to go.

SPEAKER_05 15:38

How is that even possible?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Amazing.

SPEAKER_05 15:40

I met Burselli in 2004.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Okay. So if if we were to sort of like go behind the curtain when it comes to the work that you do to help men specifically, what are some of the things that you've seen? Yeah, the transformation that you've seen help men so they can get an idea of like, oh yeah, this is amazing work. Like I want to find a practitioner near me, or I want to reach out to you, whatever that is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:09

Yeah. Well, so, you know, the any coach or therapist or people working with people, um, there's this weird little thing that happens where you have this period of time where it's like the same demographic of person that's coming to you. You know, you're like, oh, it's all people with sleeplessness. And then suddenly it's like every client you have is sleeplessness or like, you know, whatever. You it it just it just goes where you're like, oh yeah, this population keeps coming, and I'm not really sure why. So there was this whole, um, when I went when I got into private practice, there was this whole like three-year period where most of my clients were men.

unknown 16:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 16:47

Like I mean, maybe like 10% of them were women and everybody else, it was all men. And I usually take that as a as a indicator of like this is great research, right? Like, there's something here for me. Um, so what I was what I and and since then there have been times where it's like that too, where it's like, oh, there's all men coming. I think part of why this work is so powerful for men is that um it's not narrative-based. You don't have to know the trauma or the stress or the story, and you don't actually have to tell it to me or to anyone. Because the the narrative, while it's important to us, we're we're story making, storytelling beings, right? Humans like have we've thrived on and mostly learned from storytelling. So it's it's valuable. And most of the time, we don't always know what the story, what story has led us to the pain that we're in. We think we do. Oftentimes we're like, oh yeah, it was that time that you know I fell out of the tree. I don't know. We make whatever your thing is.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:58

I don't want to, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Um, but you see what I'm saying? Like there's um we usually think we know the story. Sometimes we don't know, sometimes we think we don't know the story. The great thing is we don't have to know the story with a bottom-up approach. All we need is to know that we want something different or more, or um, that there's curiosity. So I think that's a real benefit to anybody, but a lot of a lot of men, because we our culture has not really allowed men to have many feelings, um, to have um uh the the maybe the capacity even to or the desire to communicate feelings that they're having or the narrative that's there or whatever. So I think that's one piece of it. Um so and women love that too. That's not just a men thing, and also I I see the benefit in it um when we're working with really vulnerable parts of ourselves. Um, so and I was thinking about like the the the times that the the kind of the um ways in which men show up into these sessions, and a lot of times what I'm working with is their partners are sending them, right? Their partners are like, hey, I'm gonna give you a reflection of what's happening. So one is that um, you know, their partners are sending them because they're unable to communicate with them, like what their needs are or what they want or what's happening in their lives, or they're shutting down, or um, or they're getting really um amped up and their partners are like, hey, there's something up here. So that's one, you know, one one piece of it is that there's a there's a a um uh a communication piece that's that's kind of missing. Um and a lot of a what of a lot of men are coming to to me for though are things like anxiety, depression, sleeplessness. Um, and also maybe the biggest one is sexual dysfunction. And I'm using air quotes because dysfunction in my world isn't really a thing. We don't really, I don't really pathologize what the body is doing. Um, but I think I I name it that because you you're familiar, people are familiar with that, what that means. So um, and I think that part of why coming to do somatic work is so attractive to people who are experiencing um uh you know uh sexuality that they're not super jazzed with, yeah. Um is because um, again, you don't have to talk about it. We're not talking we're not talking about it necessarily, unless that's something that is um important for people. Um but also that we intrinsically know that intimacy and and arousal really starts here. I I think that we think our um culture wants to tell us it starts out here. But it we really at the heart of it know that it starts here.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah. It starts within, it's not the external. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:12

Yeah, that that be and and part of that is um fortunate because it's true, but part of it's unfortunate because we start to pathologize the things that are happening inside of us. So even calling it dysfunction or a dysregulated nervous system is in my perspective really um an incorrect way of saying, oh, the body doesn't know what it what it's doing. It really does know exactly what it's doing. It's working perfectly. You just don't like it. And it's working perfectly with the information it has.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_05 21:52

Right. So so part of this work is giving it uh the accurate information. Like there's uh most Of our of the things that were coming with anxiety, depression, sleeplessness. I'm naming those because of the biggies, and like sexual dysfunction, uh, digestive issues, all these stress symptoms. So part of why all these symptoms are arising is because our organism doesn't know that the event that happened, right? The stressful event, the prolonged stress, or the traumatic event, it doesn't know that it's over. So because it hasn't gotten to fully discharge the thing, right? Like we've held it for a long period of time. It doesn't know that it doesn't know any different. So it's responding as if the stress is still happening.

unknown 22:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 22:39

So part of part of this is looking at like that's actually an intelligent system that just doesn't know that it's at that there's actual safety. So once it knows that there's safety, then it can come back into homeostasis and um uh be more responsive. So instead of regulating my nervous system or fixing my dysfunction, what we're looking at is just updating the system so that it knows like that there's safety, so that it can be a responsive nervous system, not a regulated nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Okay. Interesting. Question here. Yeah. So how did we get to this place where we're no longer responsive?

SPEAKER_05 23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Right.

SPEAKER_05 23:27

Yeah, it's great. The theory, the running theory, is that we have a built-in mechanism for contracting whenever things aren't safe, whenever there's an actual safe, an actual threat or a perceived threat, that we have this natural thing that will nobody, you know, nobody taught you like if, hey, if you hear a loud sound, do this. Right? That just happens. So the the theory is if we do this, then we must also have a natural mechanism to bring us back into homeostasis. The the the running theory in somatic recovery, whether it's TRE or neurogenic yoga or somatic experiencing or whatever, any of these bottom-up approaches, is that the the mechanism to bring us back into homeostasis is actually completing the thing that didn't get completed at the time of the around of the arousal in the nervous system. So why wouldn't it get completed at the time?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:31

We learn at about one and a half that it ain't cool to be in big process in our bodies. So we get explicit information and we get implicit information from our parents, the overculture, um somebody at in line at the grocery store, that if you are not in control of yourself, our culture doesn't like that at all. We perceive it as you know, sick or um annoying or scary or um weak. So we get messages very early on in life. Like think about the two-year-old at the grocery store.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Or just thinking that, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:18

Losing their shit. I want the cereal box.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah, I want the cereal box, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 25:26

So if you think about, I mean, I can feel in my body what that felt like at that little, right? They are sweating, they are snotting, they are crying, they are embodied, they are shaking. Sometimes they're on the floor doing like uh-uh-uh, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah, totally like stomping the floor, like yeah, going at it.

SPEAKER_05 25:46

Yeah, that's an extreme version of it. Imagine that. And then what does their parents say?

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Calm down. Stop throwing a tantrum, like look what you're doing, get it together.

SPEAKER_05 26:00

Yeah, my mom used to say, wait till we get in the car. But then she would never do any later.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Oh, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_05 26:07

But she would say just the threat of saying that or the look in my dad's eye. Yeah, it would be enough, right? So, what has to happen to that little system in with that information is I'm not going to be loved, accepted, or um belong. This is not okay. So we actually start to develop musculature that contracts anytime we get the the cue to release that held tension pattern.

unknown 26:40

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

So it's just a habit. We formed a habit of like, oh wait, that's not safe. Oh, that's not safe.

unknown 26:47

Oh man.

SPEAKER_05 26:47

We are the we all animals are designed with these mechanisms of contraction and shaking for release. Every every mammal. We are the only ones who have learned and taught ourselves out of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Damn.

SPEAKER_05 27:05

So then we are the only ones, right? Like with PTSD, really, truly. I mean, there's question about domesticated animals, but but that's because of us. We've done that to them. So it's not like they're poor little faults. We're medicating them, we're doing all kinds of things. Um, so we're we're we've been trained out of it, essentially. But the great news is we are such plastic beings, and we and this organism, I mean, what it has done to get to this point, no matter how many years you're you've been on this planet, what it has done to help you to just survive to get to this moment is incredible. Right. All those nervous system states that you know we demonize, you know, um in our culture, you know, like fight or flight bad. Oh, fight or flight good, sympathetic nervous system good, like so good, so important. Um, that these are these are natural states of our beingness, and that we have figured out ways to compress and constrict and contract, and because of this plasticity, it can relearn. It's just sitting there, it's just idle, right? It's just the potential of it is always there. So it's just remembering that we can that we can allow for it to move. And you know, there's so much work out there around somatics, and and um I just think this part is important because if you're sitting there with like, yeah, I've done somatics. The the the aspects of this particular work is the the gem is the involuntary process of it. The involuntary shaking, tremoring, unwinding, the allowing. Um, it can take on so many different forms. You know, you could you could Google trauma-releasing exercises and watch uh, you know, hundreds of different ways that the body will do this, this um process of of releasing tension and trauma. And what it all has in common is that it's involuntary. What's so cool? Am I going too far? No, this is amazing. Keep going. How much time do we have? Um, what's what's uh so cool about it is that it is designed to happen at the time of an arousal, right? Like that's the you know, it should have happened, should have. Um, if if our little beings had never been told, like, no, no, don't do. That um it is meant to do that at the time of the experience. But because it's so intelligent, it has held that pattern, that when you re-elicit this involuntary shaking movement, unwinding again, it will remember and it will complete that thing that it didn't get to complete at the time.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Okay. So if they've held 20 years worth of stuff, which how what order is it? That's that's the crazy thing about it.

SPEAKER_05 30:18

I love this question so much. This is like everybody's question. It's a great mystery. Actually, we don't know. And in the big picture, it doesn't matter. Right. The organism isn't linear like we think it is.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Or mental, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:35

Yeah, it's not cataloging those things necessarily chronologically, it's holding them and it's building on some of those patterns, even. So some you might be going, like, oh yeah, I have I I I have a whole left side thing. I I separated my left shoulder, I broke my left hip, I broke my left foot, everything's on my left side. Weird. All my traumas are on my left side. We can create a pattern. One incident can actually create a pattern for many different kinds of traumas on in that same area, in that same way, in that same place. So the the body doesn't necessarily need to know, we don't need to know what what order in which things are are releasing. What we trust is that because this is a procedural organism, meaning it's not gonna do anything that's not functional, that it's going to release the tension pattern, whatever needs to happen first, it's gonna do that for its healing, for its optimal homeostasis.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 31:42

Exactly. So this the you know, you lay you you come down to do this process one day, and it could be the stress from yesterday. You come down to do it the next day, and it could be the thing from when you were 10 years old.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Cool.

SPEAKER_05 31:54

You come and and and you probably won't know which one's which. Usually people are like, I don't know what this is. Right that's happening. I'm not super sure, but like it's happening, and okay, cool. We don't necessarily need to know what it's attached to. Sometimes people do. Sometimes they're like, oh wow, this is this is I for whatever reason, I am really feeling like this is um like that time that um I stood up in front of my third grade class and everybody was laughing at me. I had no idea that impacted me like this. And that's the you know, so they you might have content that comes along with it. You may never have content that comes along with it, you may never have emotion attached to it. You could have emotion attached to it, but you may never. It's really um so it's doing its thing. And if it's and if it's um surfacing emotion, then it's there for your process. It's there for your integration. If it's surfacing memory or visuals or set sense of smell or sense of taste or touch, it's there for your processing. But it's these are not things that we we don't have to come into the process going, I'm going to release the thing at 10 years old. Or like, I really want to recover from my divorce. Great. And your body knows best its intelligence is gonna guide us to exactly what it needs to release today in order to be, yeah, optimal is maybe a great word towards freedom. That's I think that's the way I like my perspective is like how much freedom. It's just looking for freedom.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

That's okay. So if I when a guy comes to you who let's specifically say has uh you know sexual dysfunction, let's just say, right? So he is in essence coming to you for something. Is is is the work that you do when you you know do the trauma release with him, how how does it like how many sessions, like how does it work where he's all of a sudden like, oh I don't really, I can I can have sex with my partner again. Yay! Like how does that all work?

SPEAKER_05 34:14

Yeah, it's great. So part of you know why I'm coming back to like anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, sexual dysfunction, digestive issues, those are kind of the key um, you know, those are the things that we notice usually first with prolonged stress or trauma, right? With unresolved trauma. Those are kind of the main ones. And part of that is because the system, when we have um an uh a prolonged stress or a trauma, what's gonna happen if if it didn't get to discharge, what's gonna happen is it's gonna start to your nerve, it's very intelligent. So it starts to slow some of the survivors, it activates the survival in the nervous system and the body, but it's gonna start to slow the things that are unnecessary for survival. And some the most the the top three of those are your digestion, yeah, your sexual arousal, and your immunity. Those three things aren't necessary for quick survival. Those are necessary for long-term survival, sure. But when we're in a you know, fight, flight, freeze, nervous system arousal state, all of those things slow down. Thankfully, because we, you know, if there was a real threat, an actual threat, we don't want energy going towards those things because we want all of our energy to go to survival. So if you think about um most of us living in stress or these unresolved traumas that we're talking about, over time, if your system is still running as if there's survival, then digestion, uh, you know, immunity and sexual function are going to be still like dampened or turned off, low, not priority. So what starts to happen as we as we give the body this uh the discharging all of this energy, it starts to get the message that the threat is over.

unknown 36:24

Got it.

SPEAKER_05 36:25

And that's all through hormone. That's it's a whole nother part of the science that I don't I shouldn't probably get into here because it would we'd be here forever. But suffice it to say, like if you think about that arousal and the then this and the system turning on for survival, that's like hot, right? That's inflammation. And inflammation in our system is really important because it's what gets us into survival. However, if it doesn't get the message that we need to cool it down because the threat is gone, it just stays in this inflamed, like hyper-arousal state. So as we start to discharge this tension, these tension patterns, um, the system starts to get the correct message that there's enough safety, it's all it's looking for is enough safety to start to bring on the those systems that were that were dampened or shut off to start to bring those on. So it, you know, this question of like how long does it take? I've seen people in a couple sessions be like, there's different things happening. Like in a in a session, somebody's belly starts to rumble because their digestion turns on. It's like that's happening pretty quickly. Or in a session, maybe they start to start feel aroused for the first time in a really long time. That's pretty quick. Um, so that's not everybody, but that can happen in just a few short sessions. Um, the the the work is to really, you know, this is something that is us. We're we don't we don't tremor because we're broken or we're traumatized or we're sick. We tremor because we're alive. So it is a part of us. It is a um like a innate um uh function. So it's not like how many sessions do we do, it's more like how do I start to develop a relationship with the the natural way of being that my body already knows how to do. And so these sessions are are basically like reminders. They're these moments where we can remind the body that this is the way towards freedom. Um, and how do we do that safely? A lot of it is a lot of those sessions are really like helping us to stay in our window of capacity with, you know, we can call it many different things, but the I'm okay with what's happening, right? Because we we don't want to get outside of that during any kind of trauma recovery. That's actually like pretty much all somatic recovery is titration, it's small bites that are digestible. So the sessions aren't the thing. I mean, they they're great because they're reminding your body and you're being witnessed. Hello, best science ever, co-regulation. Yeah, like we are so designed for relating and being in relationship with one another and for witnessing each other. That that's huge, but it's the that's the catalyst for creating and developing your own relationship with this innate knowing that's just laying there waiting for you to be with it. So it it can help us to move through old patterns, old stresses, and it also allows for us to have a much more robust, much more responsive nervous system for dealing with the rest of life, right? Because we do this work and it's like, what, you're never gonna be traumatized again. You're not you're never gonna have a big big event, you're never gonna have like stress again. Like, no, that's not how that works. But now you have a relationship with your body that you don't have to hold on to those stresses, those traumas, those events now for 20 more years. You're automatically in relationship with it. It's happening naturally, and you you can feel like, oh, I have a great example is um, you know, you have uh uh an argument with a partner, and you're like, oh, I can feel in inside of me this charge from this argument. That's not just a story. We have a somatic a body response that's happening because of that charge. And we can either hold it, or if we've developed this relationship, we can let it move. And it will and it will do that automatically if you reignite it. You don't have to, you know, think a whole lot about it.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

And when you say it'll start learning, like it'll start knowing, yeah, is it because one of the things with TRE it's it's the shaking, right? The the body shaking. Right. Does it automatically then start to shake? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So it naturally just knows that, hey, listen, like I've learned, like, let's shake this off.

SPEAKER_05 41:17

Totally. Yeah. I mean, a peek behind the curtains.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:21

Right before we started this. Right. I was like, I have so much adrenaline pumping. I had like a day, you know, leading up to being here. And I could feel it. I could feel like all of this like tension from the hours that led up to getting here. And then before you turned on the cameras, I'm like, I just need to shake. I just need to like stand here and shake. And you know, I could have held that, but I know that I couldn't be in relationship with you like this if I had. I I could have gotten through this and we could have probably had a great conversation, but I wouldn't have been had the capacity to like actually be in relationship with what's real if I hadn't like allowed that because it was here, I could feel it. So I have to still have choice.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Yeah. Which I which I appreciated you doing because I it was fun to join in and actually do it. Cause yeah, because I've actually been doing this as well for for a few weeks now for some reason. And I'm naturally like, I want to do this, like, so I'm like either laying down or I'm like standing and I'm shaking. And I've definitely seen a profound change uh in terms of like how my body holds itself and my mental state. Uh and so having you do it like today before the podcast, I was like, oh yeah, this should be like my thing before everybody. Like, what am I? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:41

What are we even doing? What are we doing class?

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 42:45

Yeah. But I mean, it's true, it's true. I'm thinking about this time. Um, you know, I I have given myself permission to for this to just be its thing, you know, you're it's your life's work, so you better actually be doing it. Um, so I've gotten over the whole like being in public and letting it happen and thing. And I had this like really stressful flight situation one time. I was like going into Australia and I almost missed my flight. It was a whole thing. I mean, you can you can imagine. And I got onto the flight, and there was a guy like two seats over from me, and he he didn't speak English. I didn't find realize that until later, but um, and I just kind of put my seat back and I'm like, I'm really sorry, but I have to do this. And I just sat there and just shook and just cried and shook.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

I mean, I was quiet. I wasn't like, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_05 43:38

You we can contain it, we can control it. And it was like the whole day just fell away. And I was like, okay, now I have like a 16 hour flight, but whatever, you know. I it, you know, it's it's um it's a gift, and we can it it. We can safely access it. It's in authority of you.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

When it comes to so you mentioned sort of the four symptoms. Right? Yeah. What what can some of the guys how can they allow themselves to be like, I should go do this work? What are some things that you can sort of encourage them to be like, listen, just give it a try. Like experience it, explore it. This might actually be your life, your life could change for the better. Encourage them in a way of like.

SPEAKER_05 44:46

Yeah. So um I think this is important for for people. That um you have always been in control of this. You have learned how to control this. For I think the biggest fear is I'm gonna like come in and lose it. You know, I'm gonna lose control. And we are we value control in this culture like more than most things. That I'm gonna lose control, that I'm not gonna um that it's gonna be super vulnerable, that I'm going to um touch into something that I'm not going to like, that uh I'm gonna be witnessed by this person, I'm gonna look stupid, I'm gonna look silly. I mean, all the things, like all those things so much, yeah, all of that. Um that uh because you have had control of this your whole life and you have the capacity to um stop it, that the the process of it is is also yours. It's there's not like a um, okay, come in and you're just gonna shake it all off, right? It's it's happening, all happening right now. That you get to develop the the relationship with it that you want to develop with it, that in in this work, it should never feel overwhelming, that it should never feel um too scary, it should never feel too exposing. Meaning, um, the this is not something that we're gonna go come in and go like, oh, there's your trauma. Go 12 out of 10, baby. Let's blow it up, right? That is not this. Yeah, this is does it feel okay? Can I be with what's happening, whether it's physical or emotional or story or image or whatever? Um, and uh can I also deeply listen to my no if if it's not okay for me? If if can I give myself permission to be like, you know what, not that much today. So I think there's this idea of what it is that's like it's not necessarily cathartic. It's not necessarily the kid on the grocery store. We we did a bad job of saying, like, you're gonna be like a kid on the grocery store floor. It's not that.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:12

We're accessing it. It turns out that this mechanism is accessible if your nervous system is in high, high arousal, right? It's gonna come up naturally in that way. Um, or it's supposed to if we if we haven't totally trained ourselves out of it. Um, but it turns out when we're really relaxed and we're feeling safe enough, it will also surface. So this isn't something we're doing to you. This is something that when we feel safe enough, it's going to arise and we have complete control over it. And you you get to be with as much of as what feels right in any given circumstance, in every any given day. And that's actually correct. That's actually the way because slow with the nervous system is actually fast. Trauma was too fast, too much, too soon. So we know that somatic trauma recovery is just the right amount, just the right speed, just enough. So I think if we're talking about like how could we encourage people to um come in, like what can we give them? It's uh how much freedom do you want in your life? I mean, I keep saying freedom, but like uh what other better word is there? How much uh how I mean we we talk a lot, I don't know, and especially in our work about authenticity. That what word has completely lost any meaning at this point, but you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:44

And to me, authenticity simply means um, you know, can I experience the full palette of what there is to experience here as a human being?

unknown 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:58

So so a lot of times this stress response and and the trauma response kind of pigeonholes us into like one way of responding. Like, um, I think a lot of people think for men it's like uh, you know, fight. I don't really see that in our culture as much. Like maybe there's some of that, but actually what I see a lot more of is like some collapse. Right. So then we get like on this one one station of like uh anytime I get stress, I go to my fight response, or I go to my flight response, or I go to my collapse response. I get a my partner tells me I get aloof, that I lose like emotion in my face, that they don't feel understood, that they don't feel very heard by me, that they don't see me getting it. That's like a one station, right? So our nervous system is really designed. We're designed to experience the whole palette of of all of those states and all of their hybrid states. Yeah, because we have to have sympathetic arousal to be in play, to be in passion, to be in healthy aggression, to be really mobilized. Like that has to be here. So I think if we're talking about authentic living, we're talking about how how much of the, yeah, the the the palette maybe is the best way to put it, how much of the palette of human experience am I able to have?

unknown 50:36

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 50:38

And capacity, turns out like our capacity for doing that is is all about how safe we feel. And so I think if we're gonna encourage people, do they want just more feeling more, experiencing more, more life, more yes, more um, you know, and that includes grief and loss and sadness and anger and joy and ecstasy and bliss and peacefulness and like all the things? Nervous system regulation isn't just rest and redress and peace all the time. No, it's like how am I being responsive to stimulus that's coming in and how do I have a relationship with life in a real way? So, do you want do you want a relationship with life? Sometimes I hate myself with what I say, but like, I mean, it's kind of true.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

The word that kept coming to me is uh coming home to yourself. Like my heart just you know deepens in terms of like, wouldn't wouldn't you want more of you? Like, wouldn't the guys out there like I'm just taking a deep breath? Like, I want to feel more of me. I want more of my depth, more of my senses, more of my ability to say yes, more of my ability to say no, to trust myself, to feel confident, to just all the emotional gamut. Like, I want to feel and experience more of life. And sort of like what you said about this like one tunnel, like or one train track. Like, I don't want to experience life like that. Like, I want the gamut, right? Yeah, yeah. So I love that encouragement. I think it's amazing. Like to feel more, to experience more of life. What a gift. Yeah, why not?

SPEAKER_05 52:24

Yeah. Well, it turns out that's what life wants from us, too. Like, that's what the the clerk at the grocery store wants from us. That's what our parents want from us, that's what our children want from us, that's what our partners want from us, that's what our bosses want from us. They want life. You know, that's the most attractive thing is someone that is living a real life.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Yeah, you can I can feel it, right? When I'm around someone who's just like it, and it's not about like their expression or how they it's it's more like there's this, there's this thing, like this energy that they're imbuing. I'm like, that person's totally connected to who they are.

SPEAKER_05 53:06

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Feels so attractive.

SPEAKER_05 53:08

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:09

Even in grief, like how how can we, you know, you can have conversations with people who are like, grief sucks. And you're like, uh, actually, I mean, I've experienced a lot of grief in my life, so maybe I've had to develop a different relationship with it. And also, like grief is like such a rich human experience. Like we only experience grief grief because we loved something that we lost. Right. Like, so it's like even to it's like the totality of life. Um, and I think we can get really small, we can make our lives really, really small because we don't even know that we're experiencing like that we're feeling unsafe, or that there's a message in the background of our nervous system, our reptilian brain that's saying, uh-oh, everything's unsafe. Get get small. Everything must get small. I don't think people want to feel that way. Or are like, I'm just gonna create a small life because that's just what I like to do. I'm gonna use be small. That's not what's happening, right? We don't even know that that's running. Yeah, we don't even know what's possible.

unknown 54:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Oh damn, so good. Man, freedom. So freedom. So freedom. So you want more freedom? Here it is. So freedom. So back to freedom.

SPEAKER_05 54:31

So you think about freedom.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

Right. Um great. So we heard a little about what you do, how this amazing works works. Yeah, that's great. Uh tell us, yeah, let's dive into what the exercise is gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 54:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Like how you're well, actually, what I want them to hear before we dive into the exercise is because you mentioned a couple of times, like somebody's gonna be witnessing you, someone's gonna be there. I'd I'd I'd like them to know, like, cool, what does a session look like? So they can get an idea of like, oh, what does it mean that I'm that someone's witnessing me?

SPEAKER_04 55:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

So yeah, so tell them what a session would look like, which is gonna be different than the exercise you're doing.

SPEAKER_05 55:15

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

Um, but yeah, give them a little rundown of what a session would look like.

SPEAKER_05 55:19

Yeah. So um, you know, I mentioned that there are sort of two ways to access. I mean, there's many ways to access, it's in you. Like, let's be honest, there's lots of ways that you could access the involuntary tri. It's called neurogenic tremoring, by the way. Um, of the tremoring of the nervous system. That's all neurogenic means is of the nervous system. So, um, but with a session of TRE or neurogenic yoga, with TRE, there's just a set of really simple exercises that Burselli has developed that are designed to fatigue large muscles and stretch key muscles that are kind of their contraction muscles. So very simple. It takes like 20 minutes to do this quick exercise that he created, the seven exercises he created. By the way, he did this with like hundreds of people at a time. He developed this because he was working in war-torn countries and recognizing that there's no way to use the Western paradigm of psychotherapy with hundreds of people that are highly traumatized. Um, so he developed this so that he could work with lots of people at one time who were on in ongoing stressful situations. So, in theory, you could go to a TRE practitioner in, you know, San Diego, California, and go to somebody in Sydney, Australia, and it would be the same seven exercises that are designed to help you elicit this shaking response. So a session generally looks like coming in, having a conversation about like what's happening in your body, what are you noticing, what are what are we here for, right? And then walking through those exercises and then allowing your body to do this tremoring work. Most of the time, like if you were to Google it, you're gonna see people lying on the floor. That's the easiest way to access it. You don't have to lie on the floor, but if you're brand new to it and you're just starting to reawaken this in your body, it's the easiest shape to do that with because there's the least amount of work to, you know, that the body's doing to access it. Um, and then so what I mean by witnessing is that the the practitioner, um specifically in T areian neurogenic yoga, isn't a psychotherapist. Sometimes they are, some people are, but generally they're not. And that's not the work of the of the witness in that position. Their work is to simply make sure that you, as the person experiencing it, are still feeling safe enough with what's happening. Are you still here? Are you feeling like what's happening in your body and or and or emotions or whatever, whatever material material is rising for you? Does it feel okay? Are you able to hold it? Are you able to be with it? Um, so their work is really just to co-regulate with you, right? Just to have another organism that's here to create enough safety. Sometimes we need to borrow each other's nervous systems, right? For safety. Like um that happens for all of us. Like if I'm really wired and worked, it was a great great example this this afternoon. Whenever I came in, I was like way up here, and you were like way down here. And I was like co-regulating with you. You brought me into a more regulated state for sure. Um, so really it's not, this is not a therapeutic process. This is an organism-to-organism experience. So when I say witnessing, I really mean like it's just following your body and making sure that you feel safe enough. So that's like a TR, that's like a typical TRE um session. Neurogenic yoga uses yoga postures, body-driven movement, so more intrinsic movement in the body, uh, somatic movement, um, nervous system responsivity, movement, breath. So it's a bit more creative and an art that practitioners develop based on what you share about your experience and what it is you're there to work on. And that's specifically um facilitated, it's facilitated by experienced yoga instructors. So a session looks different every single time because your body is showing up different every single time. But the gem is safely activating this natural neurogenic tremor in your body.

SPEAKER_00 59:32

And then you said it's 20, it can be 20 minutes, or usually how long the exercise usually a um uh like a one session.

SPEAKER_05 59:40

I mean, I can't speak for every practitioner, but like one session with me is usually like an hour and 15 minutes. So that's like check, you know, that's including like the check-in and the the I'm checking at the back end and like what did we take from this and other things that I'm other nervous system work that I'm teaching you, which I'm gonna do one today that I teach every single client. Um so so uh then there's the movement part of it. So with neurogenic yoga, my yoga portion might be like 30 minutes long, and then we leave like 25 minutes for the body to tremor. Sometimes it's only two minutes that the body's tremoring. Because what we're doing is taking really um manageable bites. So we're taking breaks, we're tremoring, we're taking breaks, we're tremoring, we're taking breaks, and and the breaks are really part of the process. They're not because we're doing it wrong or we can't handle it or whatever. That's that that titration or small manageable bites is actually how the nervous system and and the body will actually resolve these patterns. So it the it's you know, 25 minutes sounds like a really long time, but you may not actually be tremoring that entire time. Likely you just there's little bites, bite sizes through the process.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:58

I also want to just share one more thing. That, like, okay, so because this is in you, you it doesn't have to be facilitated. You can access this work. Um, you can buy his book, you can look online for the exercises. It's it's like, you know, not one of these things where it's like, don't do it on your own. But what I would offer is that um in in any of those videos that you might watch, they will they will tell you like the the benefit of doing it with someone is that, you know, the the rewiring, the the actual work um that you're that you can integrate is going to happen in your window of capacity. And it's very difficult for us to know what that is for ourselves, for the most part. Um, not everybody, but a lot of people, especially people with a lot of unresolved trauma. We're usually functioning outside of our window of capacity anyway. And and to clarify what you mean by window of capacity, window of capacity is like where I can be okay with what's happening inside the session, where I can stay present, where I can um feel safe enough, where I'm not feeling overwhelmed. Um, you know, those are those are all ways in which we know that we're in a in in the like sweet spot for making a real change in our nervous systems. If we're not, it's not the worst thing ever. We're we're outside of our window of capacity frequently. We're not you're not gonna come out, you're not gonna like totally have a flooding of your emotions for the first time ever in a session. Like if that happens, that's your go-to, right? So it's like we wanna we wanna stay well below any of our go-to overwhelm.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:47

Right. So that's the benefit of having it facilitated, is this witness, this co-regulation piece is extremely powerful, more powerful than we I think that we even know. Like, I don't even think science has really caught up with what's happening there because we're such like connected, bonded animals. Um so there's magic there that we that I can't even speak to because it's just like happening. Um, and then there's the the helping you to stay in this window where where the new wiring can actually happen. So those are the reasons to have it facilitated.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

So if you like go over either above or below, the practitioner can be like checking in, like, how are you doing? Like, where are you at? Like let's take a break. Let's take a break. Okay, got it. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:33

Yeah. So if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I want to do it on your own, yes, and then your work is going to be um really making sure that you're staying in your window and making sure that everything happens is safe enough for you to integrate. Um, and that you're doing it for short periods of time, right? It's not like something you're gonna go and do like for 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

Yeah, if it's your first time, like a couple of minutes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just experience it, let your body feel it, and then come back and just take a chill, like look around the room or like go take a walk. Yeah, do something else.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:10

Because it's something we're doing for like long periods of time and just getting to develop a relationship with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

I mean, somebody like I I've been in this work with you for quite some time. Um, I'm not a practitioner yet. I use the word yet. Um for me, I don't do it for more than five or ten minutes. Even me, like who's been in this sort of like somatic world where I can I'm really pretty tuned into my body. So yeah, so just take it with caution, take it with a grain of salt. Like, we want to make sure that you're safe. That's basically at the end of the day, like we don't want you to all of a sudden like have an experience where because it can happen, right? So let's not it can happen where you do a tremoring and you have maybe a few days of like feeling yucky.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:54

Yeah, not sleeping well. I don't know. The technical term, right? Yeah, the medical term. Yucky.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

Not a doctor focus.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, so uh that's that's a really important piece of it, is that um you you can overdo it. It's it's not the worst thing in the whole world, but no nobody wants to you don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:17

Yeah it's it's not advantageous to go beyond your limit.

unknown 1:05:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:23

We actually can't do the work there. We have to it actually happens in the window.

unknown 1:05:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:30

The the healing, the what we're looking for, the freedom. The freedom that we're looking for is in that window of tolerance.

unknown 1:05:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

Capacity.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:42

Window, yeah. We it use you can use it either way. There's there's um I think originally they called it window of tolerance, and there was, you know, uh language means a lot. And so I think that tolerating something is actually way outside your window of capacity. So we're not looking to tolerate it. We're looking to be like, yeah, this. And that doesn't mean, by the way, like there's there are lots of opportunities for us to like have big intense things happening and be like, yeah, I can totally be with this. So it's not the the bigness of it or the intensity of it. It's the and can I hold it? Can I am I a yes to what's moving? And that could be really big things.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:33

Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Man, this is so good. This is such juicy stuff. I love it. So this is great. This is perfect time to sort of now lead into uh giving an explanation of what the exercise is.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:49

And and then we can go into the exercise.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:51

So okay, cool. I do want to say one more thing about freedom, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:56

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:57

I I I want to just name that it I'm we're using that so loosely that um uh and I know when I did it, I'm the one that said it, I had started it, but also I want to just name that like there is privilege, and you know, we're seeing I'm standing from a place of privilege that freedom is an option. So I I do want to name that, that that's not everybody's experience. Yeah. Um, so you know, know what what I um the intention is uh how do we find a deeper relationship with ourselves? That's kind of what I mean by freedom. But I I recognize that not everybody is has the freedom to be free. Not everybody has the privilege to be free. So I don't want to name that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:46

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, so having a deeper relationship with who you are. Yeah, it's sort of the other things that we said about experiencing life in the fullest of the can. Like can you uh can you actually live life to the fullest, right? Yeah, and whatever that looks like, right? But being fully connected to who you are and experiencing life in in the most amazing, epic, fullest way possible.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:11

Yeah, in its totality.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:15

Okay, now we can follow. So what are we doing now? I'm telling you what the exercise is. Okay, great. All right, so um, we've had a lot of conversations about stress and trauma. And um when we have those kinds of conversations, what it elicits for most people is symptoms, right? This idea of symptoms. I talked a lot about like anxiety, sleeplessness, uh, digestive issues, sexual dysfunction, all those things. Um, so it in it turns out in order for us to actually process those things, to actually process the um what the nervous system took up during an event, or how it related to an event, or how it related to the stress, it's important for us to be able to hold and to have um a relationship with sensation. So um the way that the nervous system is wired is that we can only hold uh we have a negativity bias essentially. So if we have pain and discomfort, our system is immediately going to be oriented to pain and discomfort and what's not working. Thank you, negativity bias, because it is what has helped us survive as a species. And it also is why we're both sitting here, because we have successfully um gone like, uh oh, something's not right. How do I how do I respond to it? So super important. What happens in a system that is hyper aroused or um when we're holding lots of patterning for stress, old patterning for stress or for trauma, is that we get overly oriented to what's not working. And we it our our our system stops orienting to what is working. So the the exercise that we're gonna work with is in an effort, it's called resourcing. And it's that that term is actually coined by Peter Levine, who is the granddaddy of somatic experiencing. He won't. Um that's uh that this is it it is not something he made up, it's something that he that people have been doing for a very long time. We have been um tracking, orienting towards what is working inside of ourselves. So why that's important is because in order to have the capacity, enough capacity to hold sensations of discomfort, we also have to be able to hold sensations of comfort and what's pleasant and what is well. So um this practice isn't just nice. We're gonna we're gonna orient to what's working, and that's really nice, but it's not just nice for nice sake. It's because in order for us to pendulate over and be able to process the other stuff, we need to be able to hold capacity for other kinds of sensation. And it can feel difficult. I mean, I'm saying something and you're like, that's gonna be fun. Yes, and it can be very difficult if we have a system that has constantly been going over to the negativity bias. You're gonna, you're gonna see it. We're gonna get in there to noticing what's working. And I'm saying what's working, but I'm gonna rename it here in a minute to something neutral, something pleasant, something easeful. That's what we're gonna be looking for, grounded, whatever you choose. Um, that your system is automatically gonna want to go over to the leg.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:08

Yeah, but what about that pain? Right? Yeah, but what about that breakup? Yeah, but what about that thing my boss said?

SPEAKER_05 1:12:14

Sure, cool. That's part of it. We're not fighting that. That's a part of the pendulation. That's gonna happen. Our curiosity is going to be like, yes, and yes. I had a client last night that said, You're gonna write a book and you're gonna call it and also.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:43

And she like looked at me and she's like, we're gonna write a book.

unknown 1:12:46

That's gonna be and also.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:48

Yes, because that's it. Also, right? So we're this is not a fight. We don't need to be in a battle with that. We're just gonna, yes, and also this. Right. So resourcing. That's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

Okay. And what kind of position is that's up to you.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:10

I'm um we're gonna do it seated here. You can do it standing, you can do it lying down. What I would offer is that the shape you take is checking in with yourself. What is the most supportive, most comfortable position you could put yourself in right now? Wherever it is you were visiting us from, right? So um, this can be done eyes open or eyes closed. It can be done in any shape in the body. One of the things I would offer is like if you're somebody that comes to work like this, like this kind of um meditation or this kind of experience, and you're like, I must sit up straight, I must do the thing, I must have a straight spine, I must be open, I must have my hands. I would offer that you let that down a little bit. And instead, how could I give myself over a little more to gravity? And the body is constantly giving us use for that, by the way, and we're constantly fighting it. And that's like part of our pulling up and away from sustenance. This is like earth is by the time you are born and you're out of the, you know, out of the womb, sustenance now is earth, right? That's that's your place. And so what I would offer is instead of pulling up and out for just this, just for this moment, that we're actually like allowing ourselves to be in relationship with gravity in a little different way than maybe you're used to. So neutral spine, soft belly, you know, instead of up and in, we're actually softening the belly. The hands go wherever they feel natural. You can move. So if at any point you're like, oh, this is this ain't the shape. Let me move. That's part of it. So you're probably gonna see me if you're watching. Well, hopefully you're not watching, you're just doing you. But if you are watching, you'll seem like my body is gonna like do all sorts of things. And I'm just because I'm listening. And I would invite you to just listen deeply to what's happening in your body too. Just see if you can give yourself over to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:13

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:14

Okay, cool. Cool. We rather. Yeah, okay. All right, so I'm just gonna invite you to, by the way, this can be done in like a minute. But I'm gonna give you a nice long version of it, but this could be like a 60-second thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

Cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:31

Cool? All right, yeah, so it doesn't have to be 15 minutes. We're gonna do that because it's luxurious. Okay. So however, whatever shape you've chosen to enter this exploration, just invite you to notice where your body is interfacing with the earth. So you might notice where your feet are touching the earth, or where your tail is touching your chair, or your back, or if you're lying down, like all those contact points. Just gonna take a minute while we're exploring those points, just to find some generous breath. So maybe like three or four breaths in through the nose, and then slow out through parted lips. You'll do like three more of those on your own through the nose, full through the lips. Then you're just gonna go to a neutral breath. Just let the body breathe itself. And then we're gonna do a first, we're gonna do this scan a couple of times. So the first scan is just, you can start at the head and go to the toes, or the toes and go to the head. You're just noticing what's here. You're just noticing what you're aware of. So that could be, you know, I'm noticing where my body's touching the chair, or noticing how the air feels, noticing I'm hungry, or noticing my belly feels fizzy, or my neck feels tight, or whatever it is. Just what's here? Remember, movement is fair game, so you might find little stretches when it happened, or little vibrations might start to arise. Let's just let the body be the body. This time, when we scan, we're gonna allow for sensations to light up that feel either neutral or easeful or pleasant. And this time that could be internal sensations like oh I have my belly feels warm. Or it could be sensations that your senses are picking up, like, oh, I just love the way that the light is coming in this room right now. I really love the way that the carpet feels underneath my feet, or there's a you know, my partner's cooking in the other room and it smells really yummy, and that's pleasant. So as you scan, you're just noticing those things that feel neutral or pleasant or peaceful. And then there is probably one of those that's trying to get more of your attention. So there may be quite a few places like that that I described, but you're gonna let one of those places like say, hi, I'm the one. This is the this is the one that wants my attention. And then you're gonna give that sensation that's either internal or coming in from external stimulus, you're gonna give that most of your attention.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:26

It's almost like your awareness is falling into that sensation over and over again. Come back to neutral, pleasant, peaceful. And you're just gonna track that sensation.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:30

So what that means is that you're gonna follow it if it changes, if it expands, if it contracts, if it moves. You're gonna let your attention follow it. Okay, so as you continue to give yourself an opening to sensations, just notice if there's any impulse inside for movement or for stillness or for breath. We've been talking a lot about involuntary movement, but this this could be very voluntary, right? Like as I attune to sensation, uh, there might be voluntary things that can happen, but that deep impulse for movement is valuable.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:12

Yeah, so can I follow that a little bit as I continue to give myself up again and again too? Pleasance, peaceful, neutral.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:44

At some point, if I am deeply listening to impulse, it could start to feel like I'm not sure if it's voluntary or involuntary. So that's okay too.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:19

Maybe just one more minute.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:22

So in this final minute, we might even give our breath over to the sensation. So what if my sensation that I'm tracking is in my left big toe?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:46

It's not for my diaphragm, if I can't actually maybe breathe into my left big toe. What I can do is I can generously breathe and give my awareness to my left big toe at the same time. Is that like giving it your breath a look? Most of your attention and your breath. Where can I soften? Allow just a little bit more access. Sensations. Something that's working. So I'm gonna need the lips or the jaw or the belly.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:55

So you know, it might feel interesting to bring your hands to. Your belly, if that's where the sensation is, or if it might feel just good to like I'm feeling like I want to wrap my hands sort of around my body to give me a little bit more like this is my containers. I'll do that just to you're not even feeling contact with your body. When you're feeling ready, I'll just invite you to do this next piece of coming out really slowly. So there's an opportunity to if your eyes have been closed, you can keep them closed for a minute, or you can start to just like gently open them a little bit so that you can see through your eyelashes. Just kind of letting in a little bit of light. And then there's that same idea of just kind of maybe moving towards some impulse for movement. Maybe it's stretching, maybe it's wiggling. Maybe you start to let them open a little bit more. Let them sort of look around the environment a little bit. Maybe you can even let your head and neck move a bit, look around. What did you get curious about?

SPEAKER_04 1:30:49

Excuse me. Yeah, if you want, what did you notice? What was it like?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:56

Yeah, I definitely noticed the thoughts, like, oh yeah, I gotta tell Jenica this, or like, but my left side hurts. So for me, the uh pleasing side was my right side of the body. And that's always the case whenever I do the somatic work. It's like my right side's like, oh, hello, right side of the body. Because I have some a lot of quite a bit of pain on my left side. And when I'd be on the right, I'd be like, oh, this is so nice. And then my left would be like, wait, what about me? No, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta feel me too. And so it was really nice to be able to just rest in like I can rest in comfort, like it's okay. It doesn't always have to be focusing on the pain, focusing on the pain, focusing on the pain. So it was really, really nourishing to be in that.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:52

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. It was really sweet to be in the space with the evaluator and and me too. It's beautiful. Um you know, I I mentioned this can be done in like uh one minute. So can it's like can be such a fast thing. It doesn't have to be this really long thing. Um there's there's the consciously working with it that we just did right here is that can be done when we're really activated, but also can be done when we're really relaxed, right? There's no wrong time to dip into resourcing. Um and then there's this really cool thing where it starts to happen naturally, where where we're out and about in the world or we're sitting and we're like, we get a wash that just kind of hits us, you know, like that thing of like we're um it happens when I'm on walks all the time and I catch like a whiff of the jasmine and the the wind in my hair, and just like this perfect moment. I'm like, oh and my body is like in relationship with it, and I respond to it. Deb Dana, who um is this really awesome trauma therapist who is um a steep a student of Stephen Porgis's, um, she calls those glimmers. And I love that because it's like it's these little surprise moments of like regulation or like of um uh blue, like this this uh resource that we're we didn't even know until it just like came in. And the invitation is that when it comes in naturally like that, that we stay with it just a little longer than we usually would. And that's she calls savoring. Nice, which is so great. I mean, I love this language that we because we can remember it more easily, that oh yeah, glimmer, it comes in, but like, and then savoring it, I just let it land a little longer. That's not just nice. That's the that's probably the most important work you can do if you're like working on or wanting to work towards trauma recovery, is this piece of allowing what is working to to to orient yourself towards what is working and to allow those little glimmers to hit and to stay a little longer. This is our growing capacity to work with everything else.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:18

Yeah, it's the sort of what you were mentioning about the negativity bias. It's like how often can you in your day like turn towards this too? Like, what's what's what is working, right? Turn to that a little bit throughout your day. It's such a practice to do that.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:33

It is such a practice, yeah. And and what's so cool is that because our our nervous system is actually designed to pendulate like that, that once it remembers it, it will do it start doing it on its own. So we don't have to be so on top of it because it's wired for that, just like it's wired for the tremoring, it's wired to do this thing. We've just also been trained out of it and in that heightened state of arousal so frequently that we're not it's not bringing us back over into what's working.

unknown 1:35:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:05

So I I would say like everything that I do, teach, facilitate, witness um is already in us. Like that, that if it, if it's not, I'm not, I'm not the practitioner for it. If it's if it's something that we're just already innately have the capacity for, I think um that's what I'm excited about. So you're you know, it's the the science is you. Maybe that's the name of my book.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:36

The science is you. And also out there.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:39

And also.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:40

And also.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:41

I don't think there's a book coming. It's not really in me, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:45

Yeah. Oh, this was so lovely.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:50

Thank you for offering this to the world. Like I said, like you're such a gift. Yeah. And it's been great to know you and have you in my life for what, 12 years now? Something like that. Yeah, it's something like that. Yeah, it's been a long time. And um so what so she's gonna come into the community to offer something a little longer. Uh we don't know what it is yet, and we don't know when, but stay tuned to find out in the socials. And right. Uh so uh how can they find you and uh what kind of work? Yeah, how can they find you and what kind of work are you offering?

SPEAKER_05 1:36:28

Totally. So um I live in North County, San Diego. So, like in-person work, you can come to my little cottage that's in the forest and hang out. I also integrate nature therapy into my work too. So we do all this reanimaling. Um, there's like lots of space to do it inside and outside. So you want to come and like play at the creek and do this stuff in nature, like come on in person. Um, so that's one way that you can work with me. Uh, I also work with people online. This work is so powerful online. So private sessions, um, you know, or small group sessions in person or online work beautifully. Um, so that's that's one way. Uh also, um, I mean, I teach these teacher trainings. So uh there for people who are uh experienced yoga teachers, there is a uh certification process that's a dual certification for TRE and neurogenic yoga, both, that starts every fall for the most part. So it that starts the first weekend in October of this year. Uh and it's about a 10-month program. So that's if you're like, you know, oh my God, I need more of this, I want more of this. I would try it first. Some people come to my training and never tried it. And I'm like, that is deep truth for you. Like you just know you needed to be here and they did. It was amazing, but it's always amazing. But also try it, come try it. You can try it with me online or in person or whatever. Um, and so that that program certified you to teach both TRE and neurogenic yoga in um in with individuals or groups. Um there is a TRE training, just just TRE for people who are not yoga instructors in the works.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:27

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:28

Um, so the dates and times on that are are not um yet, you know, um accessible, but they will they will be. That will be happening. Um and that's for anybody. Like you don't have to have any kind of licensure or any other certifications to become a TRE provider. And that training actually um certifies you to work again with individuals or groups, and it's about a 10-month program. So TRE International require, they have some requirements that um every trainer has to kind of abide by. So any TRE training that you go to should be about 10 months long. And they're kind of spaced out so that you can build your knowledge um based on your own experience first and then working with individuals and working with groups. Um yeah, so you can find me on my website. Uh socials, yes, and also and and also it's and also. She corrected me with that. And also. Um I so social media is not really where I'm most active. I'm I'm way more like person to person. So you can yeah you can find me on my website, but you can reach out to me. Like I'm pretty accessible. You can just, you know, create a little there, there's a link where you can do a um a free consultation with me and we can have a chat and figure out what direction to send you. If you want to come see me, if you wanna, you know, where do you want to go? I'm like, let's let's chat it up and figure out how I can support your journey.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:57

Great. Yeah, links will be in the description. Great. Uh but it's neurogenicyoga.com.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:02

Yep, neurogenicyoga.com. And my and I my personal website is Jenekamills.com. Like if you're not into neurogenic yoga, but you want to find out more about just working with me individually, because neurogenic yoga website is really dedicated to specifically neurogenic yoga and specifically that teacher training.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:21

Got it.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:22

So if you want more of like accessing me for private sessions, then Jenica Mills.com is the way. All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:31

Thanks for joining. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I love you too. And before we go, final remarks for the listeners and the viewers.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:40

Okay, final remarks. I think uh I I really believe that we all have the answers inside of us. I don't think I need to give them to you. And I don't think any practitioner needs to give them to you. Or any teacher really needs to give them to you. It's all here. I just think that there are um, you know, things that get in the way of us being able to listen deeply. And from my perspective, we we could there's so many things, you know, like beliefs and understandings and ideas and other people and all that's fine um and and and true. But what I'm really interested in is how our bodies hold on to that information, and that when we start to unwind that, uh, that that the depth of knowing, um all these ways that we can um truly yeah, truly know ourselves can be unlocked just just through the body. I don't think it needs to be so complicated. In fact, it's pretty fucking easy. Can I say that? Okay, yeah. It's pretty easy once we're actually in relationship with our bodies.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:03

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:04

Great, great final wisdom remarks. With the F-bomb. Yeah, right, exactly. You kind of gotta have that. Okay, a little edging. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for tuning in. Uh until next time.