Latest / The Trauma Therapist / When You Let Yourself Heal with MJ Renshaw
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therivers podcast. My name is Guimingferson
- 0:03Speaker 1: and I interview incredible people who share the story of
- 0:07Speaker 1: how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big thank
- 0:10Speaker 1: you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest and
- 0:13Speaker 1: our sponsors. SO five four, three, two and one, Our folks,
- 0:24Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have as
- 0:27Speaker 1: my guest today. MJ Renshaw, MJ welcome.
- 0:29Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
- 0:31Speaker 1: You are welcome. SO. MJ is breathwork facilitator, podcast hosts,
- 0:36Speaker 1: author and founder of The Being Method, a science backed
- 0:40Speaker 1: spiritual education platform that teaches students to heal and reconnect
- 0:43Speaker 1: with their bodies through breathwork. After her own journey overcoming
- 0:47Speaker 1: child to trauma, MJ launched The Being Method in twenty twenty,
- 0:51Speaker 1: quickly establishing it as uniquely comprehensive, blending breathwork science, trauma
- 0:56Speaker 1: informed care, and practical business training. Podcast also called The
- 1:01Speaker 1: Being Method, explores the intersection between science and spirituality and
- 1:05Speaker 1: is ranked in the five percent globally of podcasts. Her
- 1:09Speaker 1: upcoming book is titled How to Cry, explores a powerful
- 1:14Speaker 1: science behind the emotional release of crying. MJ welcome to
- 1:18Speaker 1: the podcast.
- 1:19Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Someone else definitely wrote all
- 1:22Speaker 3: that and they made me sound very important.
- 1:26Speaker 1: All right, Before we get going shore with the listeners,
- 1:28Speaker 1: where you're from originally and where you are currently?
- 1:30Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in Canada.
- 1:32Speaker 3: I grew up in a small town north of Toronto,
- 1:35Speaker 3: and I actually live within twenty minutes of that small town.
- 1:39Speaker 1: All right, I moved back, So let's let's get into it.
- 1:44Speaker 1: How did all this start for you?
- 1:48Speaker 3: My own healing journey. I feel like that's so common
- 1:51Speaker 3: for people, but I went through a lot as a kid.
- 1:55Speaker 3: I had a parent who struggled with addiction, a lot
- 1:59Speaker 3: of abuse my home. I struggled with sexual abuse outside
- 2:03Speaker 3: of the home, starting at the age of four, So
- 2:06Speaker 3: there was a lot going on and a lot there.
- 2:09Speaker 3: If anyone's ever done the ACE score, I'm nine out
- 2:11Speaker 3: of ten. So, you know, reading books like Gabor Mate
- 2:16Speaker 3: and looking at what does trauma do to a person,
- 2:18Speaker 3: I'm definitely an anomaly in terms of my physical health
- 2:23Speaker 3: and where I'm at in life. And I think that
- 2:25Speaker 3: comes down to the fact that what do.
- 2:28Speaker 1: You mean You're an anomaly? In what sense?
- 2:30Speaker 3: It means that I didn't go the direction that people
- 2:33Speaker 3: frequently do when they've experienced that much trauma.
- 2:37Speaker 2: So we have the studies that.
- 2:38Speaker 3: Show if someone's scoring high on the ACE test, which
- 2:41Speaker 3: is just adverse childhood experiences, did someone around you go
- 2:45Speaker 3: to jail, were you abused by a parent? Did you
- 2:47Speaker 3: have sexual abuse? All those questions. Those people frequently tend
- 2:51Speaker 3: to struggle with addiction themselves end up you know, in poverty,
- 2:56Speaker 3: they end up with disease.
- 2:57Speaker 2: Earlier on in life.
- 2:59Speaker 3: We know all these links between trauma and you know,
- 3:03Speaker 3: disease later on in life. Now, so I think, you know,
- 3:08Speaker 3: me grasping at a better life after these experiences have
- 3:13Speaker 3: kind of helped me reach a place where I'm like,
- 3:16Speaker 3: oh okay, good, like this is not happening to me.
- 3:19Speaker 2: But it's taken a lot of work.
- 3:22Speaker 1: So when you were I mean, all this seems like
- 3:25Speaker 1: all this was going on, you were in it from
- 3:28Speaker 1: the very early age. How were you managing it quote
- 3:34Speaker 1: unquote dealing with it? And to what degree, uh, you know,
- 3:40Speaker 1: were you at what point did you come conscious of
- 3:43Speaker 1: Jesus fuck, well this was yeah, I.
- 3:46Speaker 3: Mean, yeah, that's an interesting question because when you're a child,
- 3:48Speaker 3: you don't know any different. But it's you know, when
- 3:51Speaker 3: you get friends and you you start going to other
- 3:53Speaker 3: people's houses and you're like, wow, your home life is
- 3:56Speaker 3: much different than mine. And then you start connecting with
- 3:59Speaker 3: people in high school and university and I'm looking at
- 4:03Speaker 3: the way they are experiencing the world, how open they
- 4:06Speaker 3: are to the world, how safe they feel, and it
- 4:11Speaker 3: was very different for me, how authentic they can be,
- 4:14Speaker 3: how much support they have from a support system. So
- 4:17Speaker 3: it's been layered of just experiencing the world and coming
- 4:21Speaker 3: to almost compare how has it been for me and
- 4:26Speaker 3: how has it been for you? And it was quite different,
- 4:30Speaker 3: obviously not with everybody, but with a lot of people.
- 4:34Speaker 3: So that was kind of my wake up too that
- 4:38Speaker 3: this is not normal. And you know, I went down
- 4:42Speaker 3: the typical path that most people go down, where you
- 4:46Speaker 3: know I did, you know, it was like, well, maybe
- 4:49Speaker 3: I should do drugs or maybe, you know, I should
- 4:53Speaker 3: live this certain lifestyle. Is there a way out of
- 4:56Speaker 3: this or is this what life is now? Struggled with
- 4:58Speaker 3: mental health issues, tried to take my own life.
- 5:01Speaker 1: And what age are we talking now?
- 5:03Speaker 3: Well, the first time I tried to take my own life,
- 5:05Speaker 3: I was eight years old. Who yeah, so I know
- 5:10Speaker 3: it was it was dark.
- 5:11Speaker 2: Things got dark. You know.
- 5:13Speaker 3: I had to call the police on my dad, put
- 5:15Speaker 3: him in prison myself. He was attempting to, you know,
- 5:19Speaker 3: murder my mom. I hope she forgives me for saying that,
- 5:21Speaker 3: because it's something she likes to keep private. But that
- 5:24Speaker 3: put a lot of weight on my shoulders because I
- 5:27Speaker 3: didn't know if that was a good thing or a
- 5:28Speaker 3: bad thing. I loved my dad a lot, very complicated
- 5:31Speaker 3: for a young person, and that happened when I was
- 5:33Speaker 3: seven and I my dad was an antique gun collector.
- 5:37Speaker 3: So I took one of those and tried my best
- 5:39Speaker 3: when I was gladly failed. But you know that kind
- 5:43Speaker 3: of those patterns repeated for a while until I tried
- 5:49Speaker 3: desperately to live a different life. And that's kind of
- 5:52Speaker 3: where my book comes in, or where my work comes in.
- 5:54Speaker 1: You know.
- 5:55Speaker 3: I studied at school for a long time. I studied
- 5:57Speaker 3: philosophy and then later on osteopathy. Most of it came
- 6:01Speaker 3: down to us just trying to figure out how to
- 6:03Speaker 3: have a good life. Is it in you know, the thinking?
- 6:06Speaker 3: Is it in the thoughts? Is it in the science?
- 6:08Speaker 2: Where is it? How can I heal?
- 6:11Speaker 3: I've been asking that a long time, and you know,
- 6:13Speaker 3: my answer has landed in obviously going deeper into feeling
- 6:19Speaker 3: my emotions, feeling the things that happened to me, looking
- 6:22Speaker 3: at the intelligence of my body. Somatic healing has been
- 6:26Speaker 3: big for me, and that's that's been my path is
- 6:30Speaker 3: just how can I how can I be free? How
- 6:32Speaker 3: can I open my heart back again to just life?
- 6:35Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's get into that. I mean, when you
- 6:38Speaker 1: were going through getting into school, were you thinking, all right,
- 6:42Speaker 1: I want to go in this direction or that direction?
- 6:44Speaker 1: What was it like for you?
- 6:47Speaker 2: I think I did? You know?
- 6:51Speaker 3: At first I just wanted to be a professor. I
- 6:53Speaker 3: just loved writing. I loved the world of writing. I
- 6:56Speaker 3: think you asked the things that how did I get
- 6:58Speaker 3: through everything? One hundred percent? Books and horses. Those were
- 7:02Speaker 3: the two tethers of my life. I love reading. I'm
- 7:05Speaker 3: still a big reader. Going into another world has been
- 7:10Speaker 3: immensely helpful in escapes association, Yeah, yeah, yeah, if if
- 7:15Speaker 3: you want to call, yes, definitely, but a healthy form
- 7:19Speaker 3: of it because it's you know, literature.
- 7:21Speaker 2: Is so healing.
- 7:24Speaker 3: So that was that was where I was, And then
- 7:26Speaker 3: I realized, you know, I had my own healing path
- 7:29Speaker 3: during that I want to help other people heal, went
- 7:31Speaker 3: to school for osteopathy, realize that wasn't quite didn't quite
- 7:35Speaker 3: fit what I wanted to do, So I dropped out
- 7:38Speaker 3: of that four years, four and a half years into
- 7:40Speaker 3: a five year program, and started my own business. And
- 7:44Speaker 3: here I am today.
- 7:46Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about the work you do,
- 7:49Speaker 1: how that came about, and then we'll get into the book.
- 7:52Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 7:53Speaker 3: So, I mean we we teach somatic breath work. What
- 7:57Speaker 3: that means is we're not teaching a certain technique. We
- 8:00Speaker 3: don't we're not married to any certain breathwork technique. Our
- 8:04Speaker 3: goal is just to help people who have experienced any
- 8:08Speaker 3: sort of trauma come back home to their body and
- 8:10Speaker 3: feel safe again. For some people, that might be you know,
- 8:14Speaker 3: a big, long, very intense breathwork session where they are
- 8:20Speaker 3: sympathetically breathing. They're doing something like holotropic breathwork, which a
- 8:23Speaker 3: lot of people have heard of, or transformational breathwork. They're
- 8:26Speaker 3: all very similar in that regard, very sympathetic kind of
- 8:29Speaker 3: getting that body into a different state, having a very
- 8:32Speaker 3: profound experience, usually getting themselves into you know, maybe even
- 8:38Speaker 3: a psychedelic state. That's an option for some people that's
- 8:41Speaker 3: too intense, So you can go the other route and
- 8:45Speaker 3: have a more parasympathetic state, slow down the breathing, tightrate
- 8:48Speaker 3: them into you know, a more slower, calmer nervous system state.
- 8:53Speaker 3: But essentially you're just using your physiology in order to
- 9:00Speaker 3: a healing state of your nervous system.
- 9:02Speaker 2: Whatever that looks like for you.
- 9:04Speaker 1: When did when did that become important to you? When
- 9:07Speaker 1: did that get on your radar? Oh, breath work somatics?
- 9:10Speaker 3: Yeah, I so my dad ended up committing suicide when
- 9:15Speaker 3: I was twenty two, and of course I went and
- 9:18Speaker 3: stayed in an ashram and I you know, ended up
- 9:22Speaker 3: doing a yoga teacher training and peppered into that with
- 9:25Speaker 3: some pronium, and at the time it.
- 9:28Speaker 2: Didn't really land with me.
- 9:30Speaker 3: And then later on I took a private member mentorship
- 9:33Speaker 3: with a breathwork facilitator and got certified again, and it
- 9:37Speaker 3: was a little bit more. It wasn't grounded so much
- 9:40Speaker 3: in Hinduism, but grounded a little bit more psychologically, like
- 9:43Speaker 3: what is happening to the nervous system when we breathe
- 9:46Speaker 3: in certain ways? And that helped me heal immensely. I
- 9:51Speaker 3: felt as if for the first time I had got
- 9:53Speaker 3: out of my head and kind of into my body again. Literally, yes,
- 9:58Speaker 3: like I was just I was like, wow, I'm feeling
- 10:01Speaker 3: things that I had blocked for so long.
- 10:04Speaker 1: Talk more about that. When What was it about the
- 10:09Speaker 1: breath work and what type of breath work did you do?
- 10:12Speaker 3: So I did a more sympathetic style, so it was
- 10:15Speaker 3: like transformational breathwork and.
- 10:17Speaker 1: Listening deep right.
- 10:20Speaker 3: Yeah, you're breathing quickly, you know you're laying down. I'm
- 10:25Speaker 3: not an intent. I wasn't doing it hours. I probably
- 10:27Speaker 3: did it twenty minutes. And I'm listening to music and
- 10:31Speaker 3: I'm following this guide a breath work, and I you know,
- 10:36Speaker 3: I had this nervous system state where I had completely
- 10:39Speaker 3: shut down. You know, I'd lost my brother in an accident. Afterwards,
- 10:43Speaker 3: my dad committed suicide. My mom and I were kind
- 10:46Speaker 3: of in a weird place, and I just felt it
- 10:48Speaker 3: like everything in my life had been ripped from me,
- 10:51Speaker 3: and I shut down. I wasn't crying, I wasn't feeling anything.
- 10:55Speaker 3: I didn't know how to connect with other people my
- 10:57Speaker 3: entire life. I was just pretending I had no emotional
- 11:02Speaker 3: intelligence at all. And something happened during that session and.
- 11:09Speaker 2: We don't have a.
- 11:10Speaker 3: Name for it, or we don't know exactly what it is.
- 11:13Speaker 3: Some people call it the exhaustion theory. Some people think
- 11:16Speaker 3: that we are releasing, you know, microbits of DMT.
- 11:19Speaker 2: Who knows what.
- 11:21Speaker 3: It is, but whatever it is, it can break down
- 11:24Speaker 3: those walls you have in yourself so that you can
- 11:27Speaker 3: feel things that you wouldn't normally let yourself feel on
- 11:30Speaker 3: the day to day. And this, my whole book goes
- 11:33Speaker 3: into this where it's like, we have so much science
- 11:36Speaker 3: that proves that when you let yourself feel, it evokes healing,
- 11:43Speaker 3: and when you suppress things, it is terrible for you.
- 11:49Speaker 1: I'm just writing that down. That's very, very profound when
- 11:55Speaker 1: you let yourselves, when you let yourself feel, just from
- 11:59Speaker 1: an going back to the breath work. You touch upon
- 12:02Speaker 1: this earlier. But is that synonymous with the psychedelic experience?
- 12:09Speaker 1: Is that what we're talking about here or is that
- 12:11Speaker 1: more or not that?
- 12:13Speaker 3: I mean, that's a good question and we don't really
- 12:17Speaker 3: know the answer to that would take a lot of
- 12:19Speaker 3: funding for me to answer that. I would love to,
- 12:23Speaker 3: But you know, I think that people have done brain
- 12:25Speaker 3: scans on people having spiritual experiences and they look a
- 12:31Speaker 3: lot like the breath work sessions, So I would say
- 12:35Speaker 3: probably less of a psychedelic experience, more of a spiritual experience.
- 12:39Speaker 3: But they're they're very close. I mean, people will say
- 12:41Speaker 3: they had feelings of oneness, feelings of expanding beyond their story,
- 12:48Speaker 3: feelings of you know, miraculously healing things that they maybe
- 12:54Speaker 3: can't fully explain, or they were caught up in as
- 12:57Speaker 3: being part of their.
- 12:57Speaker 2: Identity for a long time. Does everybody have that? No,
- 13:02Speaker 2: but some people do.
- 13:05Speaker 1: And you did.
- 13:08Speaker 2: I definitely did.
- 13:09Speaker 3: I yes, I definitely did.
- 13:11Speaker 1: Talk a little bit more about that. What that was
- 13:14Speaker 1: like for you? What did you experience?
- 13:15Speaker 3: So the specific experience, I lost my big brother. He
- 13:18Speaker 3: was my only brother. We were extremely close. Obviously, we
- 13:21Speaker 3: went through so much stuff at home together, and when
- 13:24Speaker 3: he died in a car accident, I just I don't
- 13:26Speaker 3: even remember the period after Matthew, because it's just I
- 13:31Speaker 3: just didn't know what to do. And in university, you know,
- 13:34Speaker 3: I did this breath work and I started crying thinking
- 13:39Speaker 3: about him, and I remember being like, wow, I know,
- 13:43Speaker 3: I don't remember the last time I cried thinking about him.
- 13:46Speaker 3: And then I thought, well, I'm actually not feeling sadness.
- 13:50Speaker 3: Right now, I'm feeling love, like I feel like I'm
- 13:53Speaker 3: feeling the love I had for him more than I'm
- 13:55Speaker 3: feeling the sadness. And something clicked for me with grief,
- 13:57Speaker 3: where I thought, you think you're going to feel better
- 14:00Speaker 3: not going into grieving someone, but really it makes you
- 14:03Speaker 3: feel worse because what's under grief is love. And that
- 14:08Speaker 3: got me kind of on my journey of just trying
- 14:11Speaker 3: to crack myself open again to feeling the aliveness of life.
- 14:17Speaker 3: You know, I always tell people you can't selectively block emotions.
- 14:21Speaker 3: You're either blocking all of them or none of them.
- 14:23Speaker 3: So if you want to block grief and sadness, you're
- 14:26Speaker 3: going to block.
- 14:26Speaker 2: Joy and love.
- 14:28Speaker 3: Right you just have someone who's shut down or someone
- 14:32Speaker 3: who's out there experiencing the terror and wonderfulness of life.
- 14:37Speaker 3: And I just chose that different path. I was like,
- 14:39Speaker 3: I want to feel the full experience of love, and
- 14:44Speaker 3: if I want to do that, I'm going to have
- 14:47Speaker 3: to feel the other side of that too. They come together.
- 14:51Speaker 1: That takes a lot of courage.
- 14:53Speaker 2: It's extremely terrifying. I'm still working on it.
- 14:58Speaker 1: I mean, from your back, you talked about my God,
- 15:03Speaker 1: I mean to get to this point where you're like,
- 15:05Speaker 1: bring it on. How I mean you talked about your brother,
- 15:11Speaker 1: your brother and your father? Was it the culmination? Were
- 15:16Speaker 1: the sequence of those events that you were like, Holy
- 15:19Speaker 1: fucking how am I going to get through this? How
- 15:21Speaker 1: did you? How did you build up that courage?
- 15:25Speaker 3: I think it's easier when you've had those experiences.
- 15:29Speaker 2: I mean it's terrifying.
- 15:30Speaker 3: I think those experience can create a lot of anxiety
- 15:33Speaker 3: for the fear of having it again. But once you've
- 15:36Speaker 3: had them, you've had them, you know, and the only
- 15:40Speaker 3: way out of that is to choose what to do next.
- 15:44Speaker 3: So I already knew what the rock bottom felt like.
- 15:51Speaker 3: So do I want the rest of my life to
- 15:53Speaker 3: just be that or do I want a different experience
- 15:59Speaker 3: and that?
- 15:59Speaker 1: So go ahead. I'm sorry.
- 16:01Speaker 3: I was just gonna say, I think that's the healing
- 16:02Speaker 3: journey for a lot of people, where they're like, well,
- 16:04Speaker 3: this is it now, and.
- 16:07Speaker 2: I get to decide what to do with this.
- 16:10Speaker 1: And at some point you made the conscious decision to
- 16:14Speaker 1: share your work and to teach. How did that come about?
- 16:19Speaker 1: What was that like?
- 16:20Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it wasn't right away, obviously. I definitely
- 16:23Speaker 3: never felt didn't feel confident in that. But studying osteopathy
- 16:28Speaker 3: was extremely helpful just because of the amount of anatomy, physiology,
- 16:32Speaker 3: neuroscience you're learning, and it was an amazing part of it.
- 16:38Speaker 3: But I worked as a student osteopath for probably three years,
- 16:43Speaker 3: and you start working with a lot of people where
- 16:45Speaker 3: you start to think, hmm, I feel like your problem
- 16:48Speaker 3: isn't in you know what we think is in.
- 16:52Speaker 2: It might be.
- 16:53Speaker 3: Psychosomatic, but there was nothing I could do about that
- 16:58Speaker 3: because that's outside of the scope of our work. And
- 17:01Speaker 3: I started putting it together that this might be my problem.
- 17:04Speaker 3: I have chronic health issues.
- 17:06Speaker 2: Now you know.
- 17:07Speaker 3: I had mass cele activation system and pots and c
- 17:10Speaker 3: bow and IBS and all the classic diagnoses that a
- 17:14Speaker 3: lot of people come to realize are from their nervous system.
- 17:18Speaker 3: Of course, I went on the route of working with
- 17:20Speaker 3: my doctor or a natural path or a functional doctor,
- 17:23Speaker 3: doing the test, taking the supplement, spending thousands of dollars,
- 17:27Speaker 3: and it wasn't until I started being like, Okay, I'm
- 17:28Speaker 3: gonna get really serious about my trauma and my stress
- 17:34Speaker 3: and see what's there.
- 17:36Speaker 2: And lo and.
- 17:37Speaker 3: Behold, my symptoms got a lot better. So that was
- 17:42Speaker 3: kind of my path of just being like, Okay, there's
- 17:43Speaker 3: other people like me that may benefit from breathwork. Am
- 17:47Speaker 3: I going to stand on a you know, poll and
- 17:50Speaker 3: tell everybody they should do breathwork? No, it's not the store,
- 17:53Speaker 3: it's not the tool for everybody. There's tons of tools
- 17:56Speaker 3: out there. But what I love so much about it
- 18:00Speaker 3: is that we have evolved with breathwork for thousands and
- 18:04Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of years. So there's no person out
- 18:07Speaker 3: there where their heart rate, their HRV, their VO two max,
- 18:11Speaker 3: all these sort of really important biological markers won't change
- 18:15Speaker 3: with breathwork. So everybody can affect their body with breathwork
- 18:20Speaker 3: and the way they breathe. And it gets so interesting
- 18:24Speaker 3: when you start to look at it from a physiological sense,
- 18:26Speaker 3: because when we experience something traumatic, it can get caught
- 18:30Speaker 3: in the nervous system, it can get caught in the fascia,
- 18:33Speaker 3: caught in the vegus nerve its in the body. And
- 18:36Speaker 3: you can tell by the way someone breathes. So is
- 18:40Speaker 3: someone breathing chronically shallow? Is their fascia restricted around their
- 18:44Speaker 3: diaphragm and their lungs. You know, there's something called the
- 18:49Speaker 3: CO two threshold. You can get a baseline marker of that.
- 18:53Speaker 3: If you want to really nerd out, you can tell
- 18:55Speaker 3: whether someone is breathing in a way that is synonymous
- 19:00Speaker 3: with someone who's experienced trauma, which is so fascinating to me.
- 19:05Speaker 3: So you can start to put these actual quantitative markers
- 19:09Speaker 3: on it and work on something like breathholds or doing
- 19:15Speaker 3: more sympathetic or parasympathetic breathing practices, and see in a
- 19:18Speaker 3: month from now on the day to day am I
- 19:21Speaker 3: breathing differently? Is my body showing me that I'm more calm,
- 19:25Speaker 3: more safe, more present? And I love that. I mean,
- 19:29Speaker 3: everybody loves data. That's why the Oral Ring has done
- 19:32Speaker 3: so well.
- 19:33Speaker 1: Right I read just remind everyone. I'm speaking with MJ. Renshaw,
- 19:39Speaker 1: a founder of the Being Method. Her book is called
- 19:44Speaker 1: How to Cry. How did the book come about?
- 19:50Speaker 3: I just love writing, you know, it was I just
- 19:55Speaker 3: really it's been a life goal of mine. So I
- 19:57Speaker 3: just wanted to write a book, and I you know,
- 20:00Speaker 3: it was just a more niched idea of just writing
- 20:03Speaker 3: about how emotions are incredibly important to living a good, long,
- 20:08Speaker 3: healthy life. I know, in the wellness world there's so
- 20:12Speaker 3: much talk about biohacking and you know what thing to buy,
- 20:16Speaker 3: what thing to do. But if we don't have emotional intelligence,
- 20:21Speaker 3: which just means the ability to know what emotion you're
- 20:24Speaker 3: having and hold space for someone else to have an
- 20:26Speaker 3: emotion without shutting them down, truly being able to connect
- 20:30Speaker 3: with another human being, we don't have anything right that
- 20:36Speaker 3: is the marker for longevity. What do your relationships look like?
- 20:40Speaker 3: We have all the studies in psycho neeural immunology now
- 20:44Speaker 3: that shows if you suppress emotions, you're more likely to
- 20:47Speaker 3: get cancer, autoimmune conditions, chronic inflammation, heart disease, like the
- 20:52Speaker 3: mental health suicide The list goes on and on and
- 20:55Speaker 3: now just naming every single top killer in the United States.
- 21:00Speaker 3: So I think it's counterculture. A lot of us grow
- 21:03Speaker 3: up thinking that showing your emotions is weak. To be
- 21:06Speaker 3: vulnerable is weakness, especially with the men who we have
- 21:10Speaker 3: a loneliness epidemic. Now we have rates of suicide that
- 21:13Speaker 3: are shocking. So for me, it was just a big
- 21:20Speaker 3: I just wanted at least one other person to know that.
- 21:23Speaker 3: Here's the science. Feeling your emotions is good. If you
- 21:26Speaker 3: suppress it, it's going to bounce back, and it is
- 21:30Speaker 3: good to feel your emotions, no matter how we've labeled it.
- 21:33Speaker 3: No emotion is bad. Our bodies are built elegantly. There
- 21:38Speaker 3: is a way to process emotions in a very healthy
- 21:40Speaker 3: way that's healthy for you and the people around you.
- 21:43Speaker 1: It's interesting that you said it's counterculture, and I just
- 21:47Speaker 1: so resonate with that. I mean, especially in this world now,
- 21:52Speaker 1: in our culture here in the US. I mean, my god,
- 21:58Speaker 1: it just feels like this book is a wake up call,
- 22:03Speaker 1: a breath of fresh air in a way. The argument
- 22:11Speaker 1: the other side is it's scary to feel emotion, it's
- 22:14Speaker 1: scary to show emotions.
- 22:18Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know. I've got good counterpoints. We
- 22:23Speaker 3: have the science that shows that if you go to
- 22:25Speaker 3: feel an emotion, say you're going to feel like a
- 22:27Speaker 3: really scary one like sadness, fear, grief, it's probably gonna
- 22:30Speaker 3: last ninety seconds. That's it. Grief obviously will cycle for us.
- 22:38Speaker 3: You're not going to just not grieve someone one day.
- 22:41Speaker 3: But when you really get that moment where you feel
- 22:46Speaker 3: like I am this emotion is coming, try to let
- 22:50Speaker 3: it flow, and I promise you it will be ninety seconds.
- 22:55Speaker 1: One thing that comes to my mind is people who've
- 22:58Speaker 1: experienced trauma a lot of times don't want to feel emotions.
- 23:03Speaker 1: That's like the antithesis of what they want to do.
- 23:08Speaker 1: What do you say to that? What do you say
- 23:09Speaker 1: to them? How do you guide them?
- 23:14Speaker 3: That's a you know, I'm a big believer in things
- 23:18Speaker 3: unfolding in their own time. We certify a lot of
- 23:24Speaker 3: students to facilitate breathwork, and the way that we always teach,
- 23:28Speaker 3: in the way that we want it to happen, is
- 23:29Speaker 3: that they are in control. You allow what to come up,
- 23:36Speaker 3: what you feel comfortable with. There's no point in pushing,
- 23:39Speaker 3: there's no rush. I think when people try to push you,
- 23:44Speaker 3: yell at you, essentially to release something, it's probably not
- 23:47Speaker 3: going to be it's not going to be authentic.
- 23:51Speaker 2: Get yourself safe.
- 23:53Speaker 3: There's a reason why people who've experienced trauma when they
- 23:56Speaker 3: get into finally a safe home and everything's quiet, just
- 24:00Speaker 3: the way they like it, and all of a sudden
- 24:02Speaker 3: night terrors come. There's a reason for that, right, It's
- 24:05Speaker 3: because our nervous system has gone into a safe place
- 24:08Speaker 3: and it's thought, okay, we can start kind of let's
- 24:10Speaker 3: start releasing some of this trauma.
- 24:12Speaker 1: Now.
- 24:12Speaker 3: That's what happened to me when I moved in with
- 24:14Speaker 3: my husband in the forest. I was here for two months,
- 24:17Speaker 3: having night terrors, waking up. I couldn't sleep, and I
- 24:21Speaker 3: was like, Oh, it's because I finally feel safe. It's
- 24:23Speaker 3: quiet here, I'm not distracted. My body is healing. Our
- 24:27Speaker 3: bodies are so intelligent they will naturally just heal.
- 24:33Speaker 1: All right, So let's talk about the work you do well.
- 24:36Speaker 1: First of all, who's the book for how to cry?
- 24:41Speaker 3: Anyone who either cries too much and they feel shame
- 24:46Speaker 3: about it, you're good.
- 24:48Speaker 2: Read it.
- 24:49Speaker 3: You'll it'll affirm a couple of things for you or
- 24:52Speaker 3: anyone like me who just thought like they were so
- 24:55Speaker 3: disconnected from their emotions.
- 25:00Speaker 1: And what did you want to get through to them?
- 25:05Speaker 1: What did you want to say to these people aside
- 25:08Speaker 1: from you know, crying is good, What is the kernel
- 25:14Speaker 1: that they're going to hopefully get from this?
- 25:16Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean.
- 25:19Speaker 3: My mission is a big one is to heal the world.
- 25:25Speaker 3: So for me, I think the more people we have
- 25:28Speaker 3: authentically showing up vulnerably, vulnerably and connecting, the more we
- 25:35Speaker 3: have a healed world. I see, there's so much, so
- 25:38Speaker 3: much of the negativity that exists in the world comes
- 25:41Speaker 3: from people who are shut down from their emotions.
- 25:46Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree. All right, let's talk about the
- 25:50Speaker 1: work you do. Who do you work with, how do
- 25:52Speaker 1: people work with you? Is it for anyone? For therapists,
- 25:57Speaker 1: for we.
- 25:59Speaker 3: Do sort of by anybody. We have someone who just
- 26:02Speaker 3: joined who is a truck driver, so there's no prerequisite.
- 26:07Speaker 1: Drivers feel too, Yeah, exactly.
- 26:09Speaker 3: I mean anyone anyone who wants to step into, you know,
- 26:13Speaker 3: a position where they're helping others heal.
- 26:15Speaker 2: That's what we care about.
- 26:16Speaker 3: We certify a lot of naturopaths, therapists, coaches, and then
- 26:21Speaker 3: people who just want to leave their nine to five
- 26:23Speaker 3: and they feel called to do some healing work with
- 26:25Speaker 3: other people. We're very science backed, anatomy focused breathwork. That's
- 26:31Speaker 3: my bread and butter. I love the science. We're obviously
- 26:33Speaker 3: spiritual too. It's hard to be doing breathwork without an
- 26:36Speaker 3: element of spirituality. But that's sort of our that's sort
- 26:40Speaker 3: of our bread and butter. Our biggest offer is our
- 26:43Speaker 3: certification program for people who want to use breathwork to
- 26:46Speaker 3: help others heal.
- 26:48Speaker 1: And what's the website?
- 26:50Speaker 3: Your website www dot Being Method dot ca, A.
- 26:57Speaker 1: Being Method dot ca. Okay, we'll have that linked up
- 26:59Speaker 1: here at the shows page at the Trauma Therapist podcast
- 27:02Speaker 1: dot com. And you have a podcast.
- 27:04Speaker 2: Called yeah, the Being Method Podcast.
- 27:08Speaker 1: Okay, and just share a little bit about that.
- 27:13Speaker 3: We interview all sorts of people on all sorts of things,
- 27:16Speaker 3: anything science, anything spiritual. We've got neurosurgeons to people talking
- 27:20Speaker 3: about feminine energy too. We just had an amazing guy
- 27:24Speaker 3: on talking about specifically fathers and husbands and why they
- 27:29Speaker 3: get angry and what they can do about it. So
- 27:32Speaker 3: there's all sorts of people on there specializing in everything,
- 27:36Speaker 3: and I just love learning and listening to them.
- 27:38Speaker 1: So awesome, awesome, all right, m Jay, thank you so
- 27:42Speaker 1: much for being here. Super inspiring. My god. Let me
- 27:46Speaker 1: just once again that is Being Method dot ca A.
- 27:51Speaker 1: We'll have that link up here again. Appreciate the work
- 27:54Speaker 1: you're doing, and thank you for sharing your story and
- 27:57Speaker 1: your journey. I mean, and it's not always easy to
- 27:59Speaker 1: come on and just talk about things like this, and
- 28:03Speaker 1: the degree to which you did, I really appreciate it.
- 28:06Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
- 28:07Speaker 1: All Right, We'll be in touch. Take care,