Latest / Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast / Radical Healing & Returning to Your True Self | Scott Moore

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Radical Healing & Returning to Your True Self | Scott Moore · Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast, where we share stories of resilience, recovery, and hope.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Join us as we sit down with survivors, authors, and leading experts to discuss their experiences and insights, exploring the path towards healing and the power of the human spirit.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And now here's your host, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Mark McNear.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, and welcome to Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Mark McNear, and I have, I'll tell you, I have been looking forward to this episode.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: I have with me Scott Moore.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: And before I introduce him, I just want to say that he has, I want to say, a radical way of healing in so many ways, and he has taught me a radical way of healing.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so maybe we'll get into some of that with jujitsu and other things.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: But before that, Scott, could you introduce yourself to the audience?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my name is Scott Moore.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Mobile, Alabama.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I live with my wife Katie of almost 22 years.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we have uh we like to say we have five children plus one because we had five children for 10 years, and then and then uh plus one happened about a year 15 months ago.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, um we have six children, and Middle George is pretty awesome, three girls, three boys, and man, so life's an adventure, and we've been through a lot from passed through it in difficult circumstances and all the way to earning our wellness center uh collective.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's a bit that's me and a not a nutshell, but just kind of a flyover.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you for that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm wondering, I have heard your story in a couple of different contexts, but I was wondering if you would be willing to share your story with us because I think stories are so powerful.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I grew up in in Auburn, Alabama.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh ironically, I was the plus one kid about nine or ten years later.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh I grew up almost an only child.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um I grew up in Auburn.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I played basketball.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm I'm I'd normally tell I'm 6'9.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh when you're 6'9, everybody sort of asked if you play basketball, and I took that as an invitation.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I did love basketball for a while.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I moved down to Mobile to play in college, and that's where my right my life just kind of radically changed, and things happened uh in Mobile where a lot of um insecurities happened, basketball fell apart, a particular girlfriend fell apart, and uh that's when I became a Christian, and um a couple of gentlemen from overseas from Pakistan um actually shared the faith with me.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um it was pretty wild, and and I was so desperate at that time that um I asked if I could live with them.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I started living with them.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have enough money for TV.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So all we did was just they taught me the Bible, and we were, you know, we studied and did that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um after that, I became pretty passionate about ministry and started doing some college ministry at the University of South Alabama.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I met my wife, Katie.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: About three years later, we got married.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I uh she graduated from physical therapy school.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I went to seminary.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Out of seminary, I became an assistant pastor, but was introduced.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I started going to a community center in a distressed neighborhood there, uh right just outside of Mobile, it's called Pritchard, Alabama, and fell in love with that community so much, and people just started calling me pastor there, um, that uh Katie and I were just like, hey, we need to we need to plant a church here, and the church, you know, so that's what we did.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I planted, we planted a church and what was called Trinity Gardens there.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was um back in 2013.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh being a church planter, pastor in a distressed neighborhood is I I was seeing so much trauma.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I could tell that I was disconnected from it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so in 2015, I asked my uh therapist friend of mine, I was like, hey man, I I need help.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm seeing all this going on around me, and I just but I just can't connect with people, you know, at a heart level.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I was real heady, you know, at that point I was I was also real heady and um and so that's when I learned about the Islander Center and uh I started I went to the NFTC one, I think in uh in in 2015, and uh and just continued that story work and and got my training through the Islander Center there, and uh went all the way through an externship and became a fellow there where I was leading groups, and but that was a radical, radical um thing that happened in my life where not things just weren't precepts or knowledge.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I was learning my own story.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was learning that my story was important, I was learning like where these sensations were coming from, these feelings were coming from, and in the context of story.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, it was powerful.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, like uh not only did I learn myself better, but the more I learned myself, the more I I I really understood the scriptures and understood sort of God and Jesus and like man, it's all this stuff was happening, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so um, long story short, uh in 2018-2019, uh um I was still to a certain extent very cerebral because while I understood my story, I didn't understand my body.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so my body was holding so much, my brain, not my mind necessarily necessarily, but my brain, I had normalized trauma so much that in 2018 um my my brain just broke, it just couldn't handle anymore.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I had to take a year-long sabbatic, I was diagnosed with severe depression and PTSD, and uh we moved from that neighborhood and and um I found some healing through medication, and um we ended up having to move out of that neighborhood.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: We lived there for seven years, and that was a really trying time.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was um really sad, you know, a lot of stuff going on, and my life was heartbreaking.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was heartbroken, my children were heartbroken, and um through medication, I I I sort of got above the waterline, you know.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I could see, I could sleep again.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um, but I did have to retire from that pastorate.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'd already started uh seeing about five clients with pastoral counseling, and um, and so uh as I resigned or retired from that pastorate, I opened up my own pastoral counseling practice, and within a few months, uh, you know, was was was going with that, and and it was it was I was thankful for that.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then COVID, you know, that was right after COVID, and and uh some things started happening where I felt myself I had I had stopped medication, so I was feeling decent, but then I found myself going below the water line again.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I still hadn't figured out how to take care of my body, and um, and I was mitigating that that pain, that that physical pain, that emotional pain with with addiction.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to become self-aware with that.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it had wrecked my wife, it had wrecked my children, and um, and I just remember in the living room on a really dark morning, it's like 4 30 in the morning, sitting in my rocking chair, um a book recommendation that I'd seen on Facebook like a month earlier on on breathing.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I started reading it, and I just read a few chapters and it described this breathing practice, and I did it in my in my chair, and I was like, I feel something here, you know, something's going on.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because at this point, my my wife couldn't be my comfort.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was resolved to to be sober, I couldn't project my pain on anyone else anymore.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I needed to take responsibility for it myself.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I started doing breath work right there.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the next day I was laying in the bed and I started doing that breath work, and my wife was like, What in the world are you doing?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now yeah, like now what are you doing?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like what are you doing?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Well, hey, it's better than it's better than mastery, you know, you know what I mean?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I'm breathing.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so you know, it's like uh I'm breathing, and and then uh after looking into breathing so much, I uh I I stumbled on cold water exposure.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember the first time I was I was in the shower, you know, it was a warm shower, and I was like, and I turned the hot water off, and I was like, you know, it was so cold, and uh so I breathed through it there because I remember, man, the power of breathing into it, like ah, and uh so I did.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I remember getting out of the shower just feeling so good, and that's when my I think my body started coming online.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was aware that my body was coming online, I was I was connecting with my body, and not only that, but it there's a spiritual experience that we can get into later, a deeply spiritual experience with these bodily modalities because I'm passionate about that, I'm passionate about how it all fits together.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, for years I just did breath work, and my head and my wife didn't trust me very much.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was doing cold water exposure outside.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'd finally gotten a cold plunge and was freezing blocks of ice, and I'd go every morning, break the box of ice up in this little pod, get in there.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, hopefully hopefully we'll be able to show a picture of that during this podcast.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just remind me, and I'll I'll send a picture of the early days of me just in a in a pod, you know.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and about I think of a couple of years in, my wife goes, Hey, can we do some breath work?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I want to try the breath work.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the first time we did uh we did that together.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: After we were done all sex, I was like, How'd you like it?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, Don't ask me that, that's too vulnerable.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like okay, I'll I won't ask you that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then um I just remember inviting one of my best friends, which is her also, his wife was her best friend.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: We were visiting each other and they had a big bathtub.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: We had a big bathtub, we were staying, and I brought in 12 bags of ice.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, What in the world are you doing?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, You'll find out here in a minute.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so we all ended up doing breath work, but Katie didn't get in the cold water.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, I'm a grown-ass woman, I don't have to get in cold water.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, You are with dog.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, her best friend and mine was like, they went all in, they built a sauna at their house that converted a cold water plunge.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: They were doing breath work every day, and so eventually uh Katie started doing it with me.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: But long story short, um we were having coffee one day.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is a sacred day mark.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, and right across the street, which is a beautiful part of town, it's about a mile from our house, there was this dilapidated house.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she goes, Hey, that house is for sale over there.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um I was like, Katie, we can't do another project.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, No, I don't think you understand.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, What are you talking about?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, I think I think that that's where we need to see if we can buy that, where you can do your counseling work, but also bring breath work and cold water exposure, and maybe even jujitsu.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, don't play, don't play me.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I was like terrified and at the same time intrigued.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we walked over there and it was almost laid out perfectly for what we want.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we bought it and turned it into something beautiful, and that's what we have here now, and that's what I'm doing now.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have jujitsu here, but not yet breathwork, not yet.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not yet.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but um, it's a wellness collective where another therapist has her office here, but we have breath work and sauna and coal plunge.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: We have four co plunges, but uh we have red light, yoga.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have a massage therapist that operates out of here.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, we we call it a wellness collective where we have a functional medicine doctor who's also partnering with us to help people with their diet.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um the dream is to continue to offer intenses and retreats here uh for people to just find healing to connect with their body.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm also finding is part of like my Nordic tradition, my my my last name is Jacobsen or Jacobson.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: So like I think I'm Scandinavian, you know, I am Scandinavian, and so but the sauna is a deeply spiritual experience as well.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the Finnish folks have always thought of it, you know, it's a very spiritual experience, and you'll see that when people go into the sauna.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes we just see weeping in the sauna.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, yeah, it's it's really interesting.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: I want to say we have done work together, and and um I have had the privilege of doing some breath work with you, and and I'll be honest that when I first started it, I was like, What what is like what is this all about?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: But you came highly recommended, and so it's like I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting because we have talked about how controlled I am with my emotions because of my history and things like that.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, uh after a couple times of doing it, I just did some breath work, I let go a little bit and I burst out crying.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it was such a good experience.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: And and to you, you have a quote that I absolutely love.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: And are you familiar with that quote that I'm gonna bring up, or you'll have to you'll have to let me know which one you're thinking.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, it's the one that says, crazy stuff got us here, and we have to do crazy stuff as a result.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, yeah, that's right.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I'm a I'm a tall white Presbyterian.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so breath work and putting myself in cold water and sauna and doing these ancient practices and breath work and relatively speaking, it feels and seems crazy in my culture and around the people that but here's the deal, man.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, um, I I feel like the amount of effort, and for you too, Marcus, like the amount of effort that evil put in to bind us, and the amount of effort that we spent trying like holding that together, that's it's just some crazy stuff that happened.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's crazy stuff that's gonna get us out.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, if if if I just go with the in other words, how do I say this?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like the social structures and the structures that I put in place to keep my life hidden feel normal, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: In the context, because that's that's what I'm used to.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna have to break out of that normality.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have to do things that feel crazy because it was crazy stuff that got me here, you know.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we gotta be willing to do what feels crazy.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, yeah, that's true, man.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's a method to the madness though, and and and you know, as I've worked with you, one of the things you recommended was jujitsu, and I can remember being scared to death, and I can remember talking with you and saying, Yep, I'm gonna do it, and then and then getting out of, you know, I got getting out of the session and going like, oh no, what did I just do?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was like, you know what, I'm gonna trust him.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so I got in touch with a black belt, Alex Kennedy from uh Gale Force Jiu Jitsu, and I started last April, and it has been one of the best experiences of my life.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, jujitsu is yeah, go ahead, keep on.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: No, I was gonna say you you talk about your body coming alive.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it came alive.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: No, I want I want you to talk about that, you jujitsu.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that the young psychologist, uh, and I don't know if I'll get her name right or not, Marie-Louise von France or von Trance or whatever name is, she said something really powerful that stuck with me for a really long time.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: She says, the divine core, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um the truest self gets activated in circumstances of extreme danger.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um jujitsu is special because for many reasons, but one of the main reasons jujitsu jujitsu is special is because it's it's one of the only martial arts where you can literally get into a position where you're within six seconds of dying.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone could could put you in a stranglehold.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: If they held that for a number of seconds, you could pass out and you could even die.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And to the nervous system, if you're lying on the ground and someone's on top of you, or someone is like, you know, about to break one of your major joints, I mean, you your nervous system believes that you're you're face to face with with death.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so something gets activated there.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I would argue even in cold water, uh something gets activated uh in this circumstance of extreme uh danger.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what's beautiful about cold water in jujitsu is that you can willfully move into those circumstances.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Before in our trauma, we didn't willfully, when we were traumatized, we didn't get we didn't have the willful decision to move into that dangerous circumstance.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But now we do.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I can willfully move into grappling with someone who's 20 years younger than me and who outweighs me by 30 pounds, right?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can and they can get on top of me and start strangling me, and all I have to do is willfully tap them on the arm and they stop, right?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I can willfully go right back into it and say, okay, do that again.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so they put you in the stranglehold, and then you learn the defense, you learn how to willfully position your body in order to get out, and then the next time you do it, your your nervous system calms down, and now before you know it, you can be in one of the most dangerous situations.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody could be on your back, putting you in a put in a stranglehold that most people can't get out of, and you can position your body in a way where you're just as cool as a cucumber.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like it's awesome, and something divine gets gets activated there, and there's a there's an opportunity not to fragment from it like we did when in the earlier, like when we were younger, when we didn't have a choice, when we didn't have that willful decision.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now we get to willfully step into the cold water, we get to willfully step into that jujitsu circumstance, and we can calm our nervous system down with our breath.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: We can use our agency to either get out of the cold water or tap the partner on the shoulder and they'll stop.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think you're talking about like that idea of agency.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I can remember, I'm I can I can remember you saying to me, You're gonna love it, you're gonna really love it.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: All you have to do is tap and they'll get off you.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, what do you mean they're gonna be on me again?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: But but that but that idea of being able to move into some of these things that seem so bizarre, so radical, so strange.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: But then to be able, as as you put it, and I want to keep saying that, have your body come alive.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, yeah.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and the aliveness, Mark, isn't just like a spiritual awakening, you know what I'm finding what it's the way we're made, there's a physiological awakening too.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: That the oxytocin that's released.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why jujitsu always forms a community is because when you are when I'm face to face with another human being, and their sweat is dropping in my eyes, and you know, and you've got you know, you're you've got a rash on your neck because they're you know, they've they've done, you know, but just because of all the the the the intensity, right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's this oxytocin gets released.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you get all these connectional uh endorphins, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like all the all the all the goodness that gets released.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so would you say physiology, yeah.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so would you say with that physiology that so many of those things got shut down?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And now now they're coming alive?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, yeah, for sure.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And another thing that shut down is like for me I didn't I didn't know that I needed it.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think passively my body knew that I needed it, so I would love to like give hugs.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but now I can ask for a hug.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know I know I need it.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can ask for it.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so like you can go to training at night in jujitsu and you can say, hey man, I I I just I need to be with you.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is good for me to be here.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you leave feeling just a deep sense of connectedness, you leave a deep sense of, you know, I'm not alone.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there's something really uh beautiful about um jujitsu and and doing these modalities where the body's involved, where we just get to learn ourselves and and to use our own decision making, our own agency to bless that.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: You also I I I want to throw a throw a curveball at you.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't talk to you about this, but I'm gonna throw it out there.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: And and that is that idea that you talk about blessing your pain.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: And for for a lot of people out there might be listening and going, like, is he crazy to bless his pain?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us about that.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, one of the one of the things that I say the most is the most beautiful thing about you is the most painful thing inside of you.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if we take a moment, just let that sink in, the bind that that puts us in.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so that being traumatized is at the heart of being traumatized, is that fragmentation that happens where we become separate, you know, we we become separated on the inside.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're separated on the inside, then eventually everything's going to be separated on the outside.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so um so here's what happens is like, man, when I'm young, when we're young, and that that vulnerability, that glory inside of us, because that which is most glorious in you is that which is most vulnerable about you, and therefore most painful when it's harmed and hurt.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're young, it's like, and not even when you're young, but anytime that has pain has like harm has access to that vulnerability, it hurts so bad that when you're young and there's no mitigation for it, you find a way to separate from it.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I call it separating and sedating, you gotta separate from it and sedate it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so uh a part of the main path to healing that I use is the beatitudes.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the first beatitude is blessing the poverty.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what I would say is that poverty, if we were to define it, it would be the significant pain inside of you that happened when your glory was harmed.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's the pain of the orphan, widow, and sojourn, right?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's the pain of feeling unsafe, it's the pain of feeling misunderstood, it's the pain of feeling rejected.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because at our heart, we want to be loved, we want to be understood and be a part of a community who understands us and loves us and doesn't stereotype us, and we want to feel deeply safe.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of the path is blessing that poverty and existentially blessing the pain of that poverty so as to not try to sedate it or get rid of it, but learning how to embrace it, or as the Bible would say, to suffer it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's freedom being integrated back with that glory inside of you is freedom, but there's no freedom without suffering.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if somebody is listening to this and and they're just even contemplating some of the things that you talked about with breath work or or you know, uh cold water plunges or red light, where where would you direct them or what would you say?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: I want to talk about your facility in a little bit, but I want right now I just want to kind of ask you if somebody just wants to try a couple of things and dabble with a couple of things, you know, where would where would you direct them, Scott?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, um cold water is easy, you know.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Most people, you know, listening to this are probably do take a shower, you know, some form of bathing.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so um the cold water part is easy, you know, just just start with a cold shower.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you want to start warm and then you know crank it down at certain some point and get rid of the hot.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the main the main part there is you're not you're not breathing so that you can do the cold.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing the cold so that you can learn how to breathe.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Say more about that.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's the main thing.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can't take the cold water with you, but you will have cold water experiences all throughout the day.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: The most beautiful part about the cold is that I can willfully step into it.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I can willfully turn the hot water off.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I can take my body into a sympathetic state where I lose my breath every time.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've been I've I've done this thousands of times.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Every single time I lose my breath.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's the beauty of it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: You lose your breath, and every single time your body is saying no.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I can I can sort I can I can willfully trigger myself, and then I can I can cling to my breath as the part of me that brings me back into presence to regulate my own nervous system because I'm I'm responsible for regulating my nervous system no matter who or what triggers me.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And because I've done that thousands of times, literally every single day, my breath is now the the rope that I cling to most times.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still not perfect at it, you know.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: But my breath is is typically the thing that I fall on to regulate me and to take responsibility for my own life and for my own for my own nervous system.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And my breath is always with me, and so I always have access to it, no matter what the cold water situation is, whether it's the cold water of my wife who might be mad at me that day on her, or the cold water of something happening with my children, or a relationship, a conflict, whatever it might be, that I don't have control over.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I do have control over my breath.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can I can cling to my breath.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that mark is not only my physiology, it's not only where my mind takes me, but it's also my spirituality.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I'm passionate about bringing all of those together.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: My my physiology, my psychology, and my spirituality.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think when all those three things align, that's when a person can finally become whole.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And breath is one of the few things where all of your breath is psychological, it's physiological, and it's very spiritual.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: And you and you have talked about the fact that it's free.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's one, it's free.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you can pay me to teach you how to breathe, but you always have the breath.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can just come to me and ask me how to breathe.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can come to Numa and I can teach you how to breathe.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um because one of the one of the primary goals, I believe, of evil in this world was to get you to stop breathing rhythmically, slowly, willfully.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because our life, the way that we live our life is directly related to how we breathe.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Your physiology is connected to your breath, your mental state is directly related to your breath, how you breathe impacts your anxiety, and the pace of your breath is directly related to the pace of your life.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: I I've heard you say that people who have been traumatized breathe differently.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: Could you could you talk about that, Scott?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in trauma, we lose our breath.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so when trauma is happening, when the sympathetic state gets triggered, the sympathetic, the fight or flight, we begin to pant through our mouth.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: We we don't breathe deep into the lungs because we're not time for it.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: We breathe high up in our chest, we breathe fast, we breathe a lot of volume in, a lot of CO2 out, and we we breathe that way.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we breathe um autonomically.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, we don't we're not conscious of how we're breathing.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's get to a safe position, get to a safe position fast.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, follow me here.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: When in trauma, a traumatic situation is a traumatic situation, and breathing in a sympathetic way is not bad, it's actually necessary.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're thankful for that.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're thankful that we have so sympathetic breathing is not bad breathing, but the trauma needs to be mitigated, right?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Levine would say it need the cycle needs to be completed, the pendulation needs to it needs to be completed, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to go from the sympathetic state back into the parasympathetic, we need to flow.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens is, especially when we're young, is that trauma doesn't get mitigated.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if we become traumatized, then let's just say, for example, our righteous anger is what caused the trauma in our lives.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And our righteous anger, we confronted our father, and our father misnamed that as disobedience or disrespect, and so we had to make a decision part ways with our anger so that we don't get abused by dad, so that we can have dad again, or stay connected to our anger and risk the wrath of dad.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Most kids are gonna choose part ways with the anger so that we can have peace with dad.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's traumatizing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: So now the bear in the room is inside of us, it's our anger now.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: So anytime that anger is aroused, which it's not gonna get, we're not, we don't make willful decisions when our anger gets aroused.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because when we see injustice, it just pops up.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the deal.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're sympathetically breathing all the time because that anger could get aroused at any time.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we get stuck in the sympathetic state.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's physiological reasons for that, we're all floating CO2 so much that our CO2 tolerance uh we become very, very CO2 intolerant.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that causes us to pant more and more and more.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when we pant more and more, we're communicating to our nervous system that the bear is in the room still.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when the bear is in the room, we pant.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when we pant, we communicate the bears, and then it creates this vicious cycle.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have to willfully, what I've told you, I think, and I've told my clients, is that we have to turn off autopilot and take control of the airplane, our own plane.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so the days of unconscious breathing are over.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can't consciously breathe all the time, but we need to be consciously breathing most of the time.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I think our relationship to our breath is just that it's not a discipline, it's a relationship.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there I go again, bringing in the spirituality of it.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's a relationship that we have with our breath.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us about NUMA.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: You had mentioned it, but I want I want a better look at it.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: And again, I'm gonna hopefully get some pictures from you and I'll be able to put them up, but I want to hear more about it.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, so NUMA is um it's a collective, it's it's a place where uh NUMA means breath or spirit or inner life, you know, and and so um we have these core modalities of breathwork, sauna, and cold plunge, but at the core of those is breathwork.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so we teach people how to move into discomfort, um, into the discomfort of heat.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: We have a traditional finished sauna that I built that holds 14 people, it's beautiful.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're putting up the pictures, put up the pictures right now, and it's just fantastic.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it gets 190 degrees in there.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when you're at 190 degrees for about 12 minutes, you know, your body starts saying, Hey, this is too hot, you gotta run.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so learning how to breathe and regulate your own nervous system there is powerful.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then what people most people do is they'll move out of the sauna and we have a little shower area, and there's plants everywhere, music is playing.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, then I've got four, we've got four cold plunges, and I did two different, I built two different types of cold plunges.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I built two where you could sit up because if people uh have been in a lot of trauma, they they don't want to lie down in a in a deadly situation.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: They the body needs to be able to sit up so they can spring out if they need to.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we wanted uh we wanted people to be able to have the option.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but then we have two where they're long tubs where you can lie down and you know, just like a traditional bathtub, but we keep those anywhere from 40 to 46 degrees, and so you know you get in and it's a you know two to five minute experience, and people can go in there.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And once um, I call that a death burial resurrection experience where people can choose to get into the cold, they can uh but once you're in there for about 30, 45 seconds, your brain kicks in and starts rewarding you.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this um, I remember this one gentleman that came in, and once he got in, he did the hard work of getting all the way in, but I thought he was having a heart attack.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've never seen anybody respond like this.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: His eyes were about to pop out of his head, he was panting.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I got on my knees and uh and I got almost face to face with him.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, look me in the eyes.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Okay, breathe with me.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I started doing emotions and breathing the breath if he needed to breathe.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I started breathing to the music, actually.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think his mirror neurons, right?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're picking up mine, and he started breathing with me.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Mark, literally within like 30 seconds, he was in this zen mode where he almost didn't want to come out.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I had to tell him, hey man, three and a half minutes is up.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you need to get out, you know.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was a powerful experience here, and then he gets out of high five.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so anyway, um, but it's a it's a collaborative effort where I get to I get to show my clients in real time, hey, this might have been what happened to you.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: So this cold water represents this situation that you didn't have a choice about, but now you be.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so let's willfully step into it.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's breathe and regulate your nervous system.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: And before you left yourself, that was the trauma, that was the traumatizing point.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not when the harm happened to you, but because of the harm you left yourself, you did harm to yourself.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's the most painful part of the story when I left myself and I kept cursing myself in shame and contempt.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: But now I get to step into this circumstance, this deadly circumstance, and I get to stay connected to myself and not leave.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I love Scott that you're talking about doing it together, you know, because I think that that's I I really do think that's where some of the magic happens is is in, whether it's jujitsu or whether it is cold water or whether it's breathing, what whatever it is.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that's hard for people to hear who've been traumatized, but I I think that like any of us that have started this journey, we did it slowly to begin with.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and sometimes there starts and stops and starts and stops, and that's okay, you know, because it's a journey, it's it's it's not like one and done.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I Mark, I mean, I I just I just had a horribly difficult conversation with my wife just last week about how, you know, and this, and when I move into when we move into this type of conversation, I personally get triggered.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not aware.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can so when she asks me to pause, and I'm and we can do it slow enough to where I can see that just because she's confronting me, she's not a bear in the room, you know, but I can see that she's soft and tender when she's asking me that, then I can go, okay, yes, you're right.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm triggered.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and it and it took me a while, like it takes me a while to breathe and to it and to regulate and to and so yeah, like uh just because I own my own wellness center, we're doing all this.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think the the win is that we can repair, not that we never get into situations where we have to repair.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, yeah.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Scott, this is this has been so good.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: I I I want to thank you for this time.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Also, I also want you to tell us where people can connect, whether whether it's uh social media or where they can go to learn more, learn more about the facility.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: So numawellness.org is our website.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you spell that?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: The website.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Numa is n-uma wellness.org.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I'm still um seeing clients, which is something I love to do.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'll ever not see clients.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh people can book sessions with me there, they can see more about what we're doing at Numa there.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: We also have an app, Numa Wellness Collective app, which you know, if you're ever in town, you can book set you can book sessions with me um virtually, or you know, if you're in town, you can come by the facility.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then on Instagram and Facebook, it's Numa Wellness Collective, or Numa Wellness Mobile is our Instagram handle.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I uh gosh, I social media is just is just really getting to me, you know.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: But we do we are posting on social media, and so we people can really keep up with this with us there.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for this time.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Man, thank you, Mark.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I can tell you're in your zone here.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: I love watching you do what you do, and now that I get to experience it myself, it's been fantastic, really.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I love I love what you're doing.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us on the Trauma Meets Recovery podcast.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: If today's conversation spoke to you, we would love for you to like, subscribe, or share the episode with someone to learn more or connect with us.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Visit our website at trauma meets recovery.com.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, be gentle and kind to yourself.