Latest / Homestead And Heal Podcast / Ep 18: What the Body Can Teach Us About Healing, Faith + Becoming Whole with Adelaide Biggs

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Ep 18: What the Body Can Teach Us About Healing, Faith + Becoming Whole with Adelaide Biggs · Homestead And Heal Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Homestead and Hill.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Scott.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Lindsay, and we live with our three children on a farm in Vermont.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our lives revolve around growing food and medicine, working with the body, and trying every day to live in deeper relationship with the earth.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're welcoming guests to our farm for intimate retreats where they can slow down and feel deeply into this earth-body connection.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast is about remembering something many of us have forgotten: that we're not separate from the natural world.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Our bodies are part of it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Our healing comes through it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when we reconnect to both, our purpose often begins to reveal itself.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Through conversations with herbalists, farmers, body workers, and people walking unconventional paths, we explore what it looks like to step outside the modern paradigm and build lives rooted in connection, healing, and reciprocity with the earth.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, welcome back to Homestead and Heel.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are joined by a dear friend of mine, Adelaide Biggs.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I happened upon Adelaide, I think, through an Instagram ad, which was so random.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And she was running a pelvic health intensive retreat in Vermont in, I don't know, a month after I saw this ad or something like that.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I signed up and it was just so life-changing for me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely loved learning about your work.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I remember just at that retreat, we did a lot of movement, and we've often talked about movement versus body work and how they're both just so needed.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And at that retreat, I remember doing a lot of movement and then sitting next to you for lunch.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just was like, I actually just need to go cry really.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had so much emotion move just from doing this movement and being in these particular positions.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really interesting for me because I'd never had that experience before.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, I have just been able to.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: What a beautiful and articulate introduction.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Hi everyone.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: My name's Adelaide, and I run a business.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the founder of a business called Faith in the Body, where we work with supporting women through healing a diverse array of women's and public health concerns, but specifically with a lens of structural integration.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really looking at the influence of our sit and stand, walk, move, and respiratory patterns and how those actually impact our multisystemic health.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a fancy way to say the way we actually move through the world is an under-assessed and under-supported resource for really moving the needle clinically.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really what we're what I'm often looking at in my assessments and with the clients that I see in the women that I support.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been doing this work in various iterations for, I mean, I guess almost 15 years, but like over 10 and serving many years working in my own body and still doing that, but serving clients and really public facing for about 10 years.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: And during, and what that actually looks like is a lot of teaching movement fundamentals and removing the understanding of movement for maybe from the realm of fitness or exercise, and really starting to understand the context that and the influence and the impact that our structural bodies have on how we actually experience the world on our nervous system capacity, and also on multisystemic health concerns.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So within that, I see women that have a whole host of felt concerns ranging from public health concerns, something like prolapse, pain, incontinence, and orgasmia, exercise resistance, that kind of stuff, all the way up to metabolic concerns, autoimmune diseases, just like we see really all sorts of, and women through all sorts of all phases of their womanhood.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: So not just kind of mothers that we see a lot of moms in postpartum, but also through menopause and paramenopause, menopause, and then postmenopausal women.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we are looking at the full continuum of womanhood with this lens of how, through coming into more understanding of how we actually feel and move our bodies can really be supporting our women's health overall.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the questions that we always ask at the beginning is for you to describe your place, introduce where you are in the world and like what's blooming outside, or what are you excited by out in nature right now?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's such a great question.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I live in such a beautiful place.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: I live in rural Maine.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: And Maine in the summer is just remarkable.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And Maine in the winter is remarkable in its own ways, but it is very cold here.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: And but I live very close to a lake, like about maybe 20 feet from my front door.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I live in a house that was built by my husband's grandfather, and they lived here his whole life.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then his mother grew up here, and then we're on a family compound.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: So then my mother and father-in-law, my brother and sister-in-law, they all live next door.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, so I'm here on the family compound.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: We have between all of our households about a hundred acres in the woods on this beautiful lake in Maine.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and it's also rural.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have a bathroom at home.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: We have a wood stove that heats our home, and we have propane heater for when that is needed or when we leave the house and don't keep the can't keep the fire going, and it's five degrees, which is the reality of winter here.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we are in process of working to plumb our home with lake water, which would be great.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we could have like a shower, which would be meaningful.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, living in yeah, living in rural, beautiful water family compound.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: What's blooming outside?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: I know they're annuals, but like begonias, just like in the flower box, they're just they're really not from here.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And they're not, they will not come back.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: They're beautiful, but they're so beautiful, and like there's these ones that are like flesh colored that are just I know there's a lot of colors of flesh, which we can talk about, but like they're just but I mean like the inside of the body flesh colored, they're this sort of like pink, like to translucent to then like almost like bright red at the edges.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: They look very corporeal, and I was like, I have to buy these.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Love that, yeah.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And even when they're not blooming, they're beautiful.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the greenery too.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that's what we got here in roaming.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can you can jump in the lake until the shower has run it down.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what we yeah.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: So lake water, it's always gonna be lake water because we're gonna we can't dig a well right here.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: So lake water through carbon filter.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Nice is but yes, lake bathing in the summer, and just less I'm a girly, clean woman, but I'm like in my less bathing era and it's fine.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I spend a lot of days swimming in our beautiful, like crystal clear mountain lake here, and not showering nearly yeah, that's the summer, that's the summer vibe for sure.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, maybe that's a good you feel clean, you don't need yeah, I feel pretty clean.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't stink, yeah.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So and I like touch body, so I try to be pretty aware of like my own whether I stink or not.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's courteous, yeah.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, go ahead.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so next question would be like looking back at your childhood, curious about if you can see the makings of your adult of your present-day self.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: What are things if you look back, or can you see the work that you're doing and pursuing and how you are in the world?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what was there as that you can see in your childhood?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: My I like this question.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: And my childhood was entirely animal oriented.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: So specifically dogs and horses, which are still my most enduring loves in my life now in my adult life.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: But I yeah, I just I remember it's like my earliest memory is wanting to ride horses.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember I asked and asked, and I started in my early childhood.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: My mom said I had asked every day for years by the time I started riding, which was at age five.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So this feels like a God-given like initial, initial like gift and aiming.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then the same with dogs.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: I asked for a dog every day until I got my first dog at eight and or seven, and just then riding horses, training horses, dog obedience, dog agility.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: These were just the only things I cared about, without exception for the entirety of my young life.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the I didn't even really learn how to swim.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: I also I grew up in New England, but I didn't learn how to swim effectively until I was in my mid-20s because I just didn't care about going to the beach or going to cool parties or doing any literally anything other than dogs and horses in my childhood.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh no, I'm pretty uncoordinated in some ways.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't catch a ball because I didn't care at all about any kind of sort of sport or anything like that, other than these animal sports.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: And see that not only do I still love that now, and I have an amazing cattle dog who's so cool now and work with horses in my life now, still, which is just it really fills me and regulates me in a way that nothing else in my life ever has.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I still feel that way.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: But just from that formative, just I think about what that act, what skill that actually just forms, which is I think such a such an opportunity for like attunement and just body alignment, like body awareness, because that's largely how you are communicating.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And this is where I think the horses specifically are very unique in that they they all just are communicating through through pressure, right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Through pressure with one another.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so whether you're working with horses on the ground or under saddle, like how much you're able to understand their pressure and apply and remove pressure, often not through touch, often just through like spaciousness, proximity, and start to understand the way your body language is communicative to them, the way their body language is communicative to you.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you then are riding horses, which I've also spent my life doing, then it just becomes such a such like a unified reality of pressure, uh pressure management.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds less that's lame, but of just exchange.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that type of attunement, just even to my own body, to just notice, which I think this can be done through I think just athletic training in general in your youth.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: But like the feedback from animals is so immediate.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: You kick a soccer ball, if you don't kick it well, it won't go in the right direction.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I've never played soccer, that's a stupid example.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: But there's gonna be obviously a fine-tuning of skill in that way, but just the immediate feedback that's only available through relationships with another living thing, just gives you this just immediate.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think children can be like this too, this sort of immediate response in that then reflects back to you what you're doing in your own body.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I just spent my entire childhood in that, all day, most days.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And and dogs have this to a degree, but they're, I think, they're just less, yeah, they're less sensitive in that.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: They have different communication styles than the horses.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so yeah, even just noticing that is oh, how am I breathing?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Where am I, how are my shoulders rotated, what's happening with my hip and pelvic alignment?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: That is the that is the method, that's the language, that's the vocabulary of communication, and to just be like raised in that vocabulary of communication, yeah, that's what's up.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that really, I feel like is super influential to like how I'm able to do the work that I do now.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then also just watching gait.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: So much of just watching horses move and looking for soundness, doing just even things like that, just being able to pick out differences between though, this horse trots like this, this horse trots like that, just actually look at different gait patterns and what they might be like have a better propensity for based on their confirmation or their anatomy or how they're moving, and like all that type of assessment, which just honing that eye, I think, for movement and sensitivity and nuance is that's I do gait assessment all like all the time.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: I do postural breathing assessments all the time, movement assessments all the time in my work.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: And in some ways, I've been doing that since early childhood, but just with animals.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's like that whole I've never thought about most of what you just described.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and just seems like you are having a hyper focus, like not learning to swim till you're in your mid-20s, like just and having asking every day to have a horse or ride a horse from the time you're two or three years old.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: That makes so much sense to me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm knowing you a little bit.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Lindsay always just talks about how good you are at your work and just have that really critical sort of knowing eye.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's so cool for me to hear that sort of like the makings of that.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's just super interesting.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like thinking about how you also through that work were honing both your intuition and your analytical brain eye.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a really cool to think about working with animals.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you work, you're like pressure management or something, and I was just thinking it's it's an energy exchange in my world.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: That would be like it's you're like you're playing with energy, but absolutely, of course, it's like more than that too.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think what's such a cool thing, we could talk about horses for this whole time, but like learning, and obviously there's lots of different ways you can work with horses, but like what I'm most interested in, like right now in my life with horses, is I'm working with horses on the ground.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not even riding at the moment.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just doing like groundwork, which like if you imagine this, imagine like some people have a hard time.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can Google liberty work, that's sort of the name of the equine sport, but imagine just like bareback, just like no-tack, bridal list, horses that are loose, and you're having them essentially respond and do all different sorts of things, like dog agility or whatever, but you're just doing this all like on the ground with your own body language without touching them.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just how do you actually start to understand the like what these sort of just like the language, like what is the vocabulary?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: And like they are incredibly sensitive when you're saying this like energetic, and then every individual horse has their own, their own, like sort of character, and it's all very unique and relationship-based, but the ability to just yeah, to like sense, oh, are they getting ratcheted up?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Are they like, is it does this feel stimulating to them?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is this feel calming to them?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just like that sort of like energetic temperature and being able to adjust your own energetic temperature to match or apply pressure or simulate, or like what is the change that you're hoping to engender and to be able to work with that, it's absolutely it's like, yes, it's that energetic and it's also like incredibly corporeal as well.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I didn't realize that you were doing that thing because I was stepping forward with my right foot, my left foot.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And like I didn't even realize I was stepping forward with my right foot, not my left foot, until I saw you move this horse move their left foot, not their right foot.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just like because they're so inherently like responsive to because that's like their language, that's how horses communicate with other horses, and then to just see sort of honesty that can emerge and the breaking down of nervous system barriers as they like open up and and just all of this directly just related to people.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: And like I worked as a home birth midwife for eight years and attended lots of births and babies, and like that that same skill as well, of just like being able to have maybe like enough or like some skills of I don't know, self-possession or something to see and feel like what is happening in this space, and how can I see this from an analytical perspective?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: How can I also feel into the yeah, like the the relational environment of this space and and God willing, like tack with some accuracy and grace to support what it is you're trying to support, be it like a a birth outcome or whatever in that circumstance or whatever you're working with your animals?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I was just you led into it, but I was wondering having built that type of vocabulary, language, awareness with horses, like do you remember when you started to take those skills you'd built and turn them on either your own body or other humans?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like taking that sort of skill set and applying it to people?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember starting to do that?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Or was it just like a natural, it was like the way you saw the world, and so you naturally were looking at people that way too?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: It took a while for me to see the connection, maybe between like why maybe I could just see something and my peers when I was trying to just learn how to do the work that I do now, where it was just like it was always pretty evident to me to be able to just look and be like, I know I'm thinking of doing a yoga teacher training at one.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh just it was always obvious to me to be like, oh, their right shoulder is hiked, or their left hip is not, or they're rotated to the left, or they lead with their right foot, or they're breathing into their left lung, or their heads tilted.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: None of that ever seemed to me to be things that you would ever not notice.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it took me a while, and honestly, like moving into teaching, really, for me to understand that those are just things a lot of people don't notice, not only in their own body, but certainly in other people's bodies, where where it's like, oh, I see that now that you pointed it out, maybe for some things that are more maybe obvious and others might be more subtle and hard to determine.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I think I did have that skill that had been built that I didn't really notice had been built until you just get a little more self-awareness with more practice and I think maturity.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: But in terms of applying that skill sort of subconsciously, I had the really I had a very severe injury history in my early 20s that required a lot of rehabilitation.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: And saving that whole story it for a different day or whatever, I lost just like I had to relearn how to walk and talk and read and write and have just a very basic kind of occupational skill, occupational skill from the ground up.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And just the ability that I then had to sense what was going on in my own body, and really regaining that from both being like an unreliable narrator, which is what kind of happens with that type of trauma.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, I you think you're doing something, and then you're just not.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where kind of outside input can be super helpful, obviously in a rehabilitative environment, but then really relearning that I did actually have that innate skill of sensitivity to some extent, and then how to realign that sensitivity with maybe a more objective truth about the body.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that's not too esoteric sounding, but like no, it's it's really interesting.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: As we before we got on this call, just saying, like, what were these like breadcrumbs along your path?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it is interesting to think about your childhood growing up in this way.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And would your rehabilitation have gone as well if you hadn't, like if you hadn't grown up with these horses?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just fascinating.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: It is such a fascinating thing because there was like, because I definitely like surpass all medical prognosis, and there are like most people who have these injuries, don't actually recover to the degree that I have.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's such a gift, and I think that's also like a gift from God, and I think that was also given to me, like by the triune God.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that's just like through my own like volition, so to speak.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I just want to like orient that, like all glory to God.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we have the power to like influence but not control, and the power that I had to then influence my own healing outcomes.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think it really does start with a skill of noticing to some extent, and your own somatic capacity to notice.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I did have that, even though I wasn't a great athlete or super coordinated, I you know what I mean.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: I just had I did have some skill and that ability to feel and notice what the body's doing, which is often a separate skill actually from athleticism to some extent.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: I've worked with a lot of really competitive athletes, and often I'm like, they maybe just have a natural ability or propensity to do whatever sport that they do.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they actually sometimes have in that way shunted body awareness because they have just always been so capable.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: They've never had to break it down and whatever.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about naturally gifted athletes, for example, of oh, I I don't know how I do X, Y, Z.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've always just done it this way and gotten good feedback and it's worked.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So there hasn't been this kind of broken down, which I think is amazing.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that there's a lot to be said for that type of constraints-based learning as well in learning somatic skill, but that wasn't me.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so I built it all from essentially observational skill and somatic attunement to some extent.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then, and that really does feel foundational to my work now is this combination between somatic attunement and observational analysis.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious if you would speak a little bit about, I'm just curious about what your beliefs are around, like you're speaking about it being a gift from God that you healed from this injury.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Would you how would you describe how much you think God laid out before you in terms of you having this connection to horses, you having this injury?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like it could all be part of this grand plan that has now put you on the path to doing the work and being in service to women the way you are now?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'd just love for you to riff on that a little bit.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's so many ways that you can.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Take this question, so I'm gonna try to keep it somewhat contained.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it's a big one, yeah.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like this could go into predestination and deep theological inquiry, right?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: But to steer it away from that and more into maybe the narrative of understanding one's own testimony, where what's coming to mind right now is a quote, and I wish that I could tell you who it was from.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was in a Bible study that I was in last year that said, if you're ever doubting the presence of God, sit down and write down your own life story, and you will not get a quarter of the way through without being like floored by the amount of divine intervention that has changed everything about your life.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: This is a paraphrasing quote, but I was just like, like, I just found that very staggering and just may we not look for more proof than our own integration of our own testimonies.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that is something that I feel like I will be doing for the rest of my life, really.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do I because what I hear in that question is I work and live within the theological belief that we are never forsaken, and so I'm never without the presence of God in my life.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like that is I'm never forsaken, I'm never left.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Though there may be like seasons of like seeming quiet or where it really seems to be forsaken, which is off obviously, these are seasons where faith is both tried, and then also the real substance of having faith is in forsaken seasons, right?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's faith in what?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that question becomes in those moments.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so then really looking back and like writing my own story, or maybe not necessarily writing, but just like in that sort of contemplation of my own life of like where like where was there actual divine hand and intervention?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like that is a question that is worth lifelong reflection on, where that in many ways can actually only be seen, I think, with the gift of distance.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Which if there is inarguably for me, like that gift of if there is any obvious gift from God, it's that gift of distance.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's that I woke up alive today, that I get to have distance, and therefore that allows for this capacity for reflection, which in capacity for looking back and perhaps like thinking about this this question of where and how and what are like where is the guiding hand?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing that I think you've said the like breadcrumbs for I think that you said that, like where these, and for me, I personally I don't like to think about God as leaving breadcrumbs and for this secret mystery for us to follow the path or whatever.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: That feels stressful to me.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: As a and I think of my prayer life being like, can Lord, can you make it clear?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Can you make it clear in no uncertain terms?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And actually being prayerful and then being in waiting, as opposed to the looking for signs, if that makes sense, which can just maybe be a bit of a different theological or just maybe spiritual inkling of just can I lay in waiting and then can I actually receive that which is bountiful?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel that I've my life is, I think a lot of people have life stories that are somewhat varied and complicated, but I'd say that mine definitely falls into that category.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I have absolutely received gifts that are just bountiful beyond my imagination.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't yeah, and it wasn't through the following breadcrumbs.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was through the trap would carry water and the consistency of being willing to just keep doing what, keep aiming up, essentially.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that answers your question at all.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Speaks to it.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: One question that we usually ask, and I'm trying to think of how to frame this because just like the way the conversation is going, I know that you orient towards faith as the central, that's your central orientation.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And like yeah.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: But and so maybe some of this language that we've used with other guests maybe doesn't hit as cleanly or clearly.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: But just wondering about, and you alluding to laying and waiting, it's times of just wondering about times in your life where perhaps you felt less connected or disconnected.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or perhaps for you, it's maybe a question of I don't know.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Has faith always been a central part of your life?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that something that came later in your life?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I feel like I certainly have had feelings seasons of feeling quite lost.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that those seasons have had they haven't all been the same.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: They've actually been quite dis different.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I am thinking about a season of my life that was maybe my mid-20s, where I was like still quite sick and in the hospital all the time and healing from my injuries, and really seeking, yeah, just like really seeking, just like really seeking some type of like meaning and overall like spiritual, like sustaining force.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like seeking all over in that time period.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was definitely not raised in a Christian household, and I was definitely not only not raised in a Christian household, but I was like specifically taught that the Christians are like the reason for all ill in the world, pretty strongly dissuaded, and then didn't believe that, and then went on to study religious studies in college with a specific interest in Judeo-Christian studies, and then I was like joining churches all throughout my 20s and then like leaving them and just in this like in-out inquiry.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: But then I was also teaching yoga.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: I also did a multiple year-long Taoist, uh, like Taoist and Vedic like religious study group, for lack of a better word, where we're just doing sort of comparative theology there.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't just go back to school for comparative theology.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like this was just, it was certainly from like an academic or like intellectual pursuit.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was always at the forefront, but with a lot of just like confusion and like conflicting information and being like, and still like without a lot of guidance.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think as I just think about that period of my life, I didn't have a lot of family support.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: My family was struggling with incarceration and just like not just wasn't, I was like still just like like just pretty ill and just in poor health and trying to support myself financially and like trying to also do things that had meaning and build this career out of that pit.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think of that as being like a pretty like having this like heart for faith that was very diffusely aimed, if that makes sense, with I yeah, without a lot of like guidance or oversight, if that makes sense, really from or a lot of like parenting or you know, maybe like healthy role models.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't really know anyone who was like or sane or stable.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was talking about this with my husband the other day.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'd never met anyone that was married until I was 25.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like I remember the first time I met a peer who she was like 27, and I was like, You're married?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: My parents, like they were like everyone's divorced, my whole family.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just never occurred to me that there could be like stability, faith, fidelity, consistency.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: I just never seen that in the world.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like I had this heart for the Lord and had this sort of, and then I had this near-death experience where then medicine could not explain why I was alive.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like taking in that information and just trying to place that with a lack of success for sure.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that, and that just slowly changed.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's just slowly evolved over the last when I first joined the church.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: I guess that would have been I mean, yeah, I guess almost 15 years ago.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been like a long time in that sort of like vein of faith development.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Were there any kind of bigger epiphanies, obviously, besides your near-death experience, but were there any kind of bigger epiphanies or people that came into your life that you feel like just provided more of that clarity?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, there's two.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a few.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: One, I get to then be a midwife, which then you just get to watch life.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just wild.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And just that maybe wasn't an epiphany, but that was definitely a process of me understanding the relationship between embodiment and divinity.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then really that was very clarifying to me with Christianity being the only embodied faith, the only faith that says full embodiment of God was necessary for the full expression of God, which is so distinct.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Every like all Eastern religion is, I don't want to speak up of my call.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm obviously not an Eastern religious scholar, but this is the unique, this is what is unique to Christian faith, is embodiment is inherently the center, Jesus Christ at the center.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, that became evident, not from religious teaching, but from life experience of if something isn't actually saying that your divine corporeal reality is the location of divine encounter, the body is the location of divine encounter, and that is directly denied by every other faith, and that is the center of Christian faith in some ways.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Some people could argue that, and I'm happy to on a different day, but the so just that reality that I came to understand through my work with the body and wanting to, and then I had been in this world of studying and just doing movement practices in Tai Chi and Qigong, which I think those things are amazing.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, I don't think those are anathetical to anything necessarily, but I do think that there is, but then I do actually have a religious deviation from maybe some things that might be held at the that from certain aspects of it, maybe that would be a better way to put it, that then brings that divinity into our own bodies as opposed to how can we sort of practice mastery of the body in order to transcend the body, as opposed which is arguably not the aim of the Christian faith, which I think that that definitely came through my body work.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not really an epiphany, but a process, I would say.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: To your question sort of circling back about being lost or not always knowing, then I had a very pretty traumatic three years, like back to back, that was like I lost my first marriage, but I also lost my whole community.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then there was just and then my father.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a lot of loss.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: I lost my woodwifery practice due to the sort of circumstances, nothing that just a lot of loss that sort of felt like it was just happening to me.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't feel like I was actually in the driver's seat of my life.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: I just felt like it was cascading, and then my life was just laid vacant to some extent.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: Which, okay, I would not say that this is a moment of that's not true.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's definitely times in this of deep spiritual doubt and confusion, like and pain and grief, and absolutely very quite significant.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: But what I felt also maybe revelatory to me in that specific time is a clear distinction between forces of good and forces of evil, which that did actually feel somewhat revelatory to me and epiphiananic, right?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: That regarding to an epiphany.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I think that's a word, where it's not all just in the balance, a willingness to be like, that's evil from the pit of hell.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's actually wrong.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that's and everything's not all relative.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't, and that sort of relativism is definitely arguably maybe at the heart of liberalism, it's maybe at the heart of capitalism, it's maybe at the heart of just a lot of the modern thinking, and for me to really understand the ways in which I had subtly believed that, even though not overtly, and really sort of see that laid out in my own life and been able to name like that that existence and that division rather than like all being well and we'll find out in the end, which are like all like all things are from God.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: That narrative really did fall apart for me in my early 30s when I actually just saw, in a way that felt undeniable to me, things that were actually pretty deeply wrong.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I, yeah, and that also felt very aiming for me because that is that that is theologically more held within within the Christian faith, that worldview.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I think, yeah, and that also came out of periods of suffering, right?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: So these sort of periods of suffering that then led to for me, then led me into my midwifery work, which then felt very just such a incredible corporeal study of the body and its divinity.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe there is no other that is more than that than midwifery, other than maybe death work, I think could also be in that category.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then yeah, just it sounds so lame, but just oh suffering, becoming clarifying of that which is true.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: And but not usually in the moment.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, for everyone who I don't want to speak words of flatness if anyone is suffering, be like, oh, it's clarifying that's not the answer.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: I really don't want to have that platitude, but but again, the gift of time, the gift of like sustaining and like what's actually possible upon reflection and looking back at your testimony and looking back at yeah, at like what's unfolded can maybe give you get has given me more of that perspective, at least.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I do feel like just from being your friend through some of these suffering times and to see the beautiful life that you have okay, not that you have created, that you have that's God given whatever, however you want to say it, it is really, yeah, it's worth.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you spoke to that because as a, I think sometimes as a friend, when you have someone that you know, or it could be yourself too, going through just a particularly hard time, it can really feel like that.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, that there maybe there's never any end and that it's just gonna continue to get can it get any harder?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: And your story and your recent marriage, which we were so happy to celebrate with you.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was so fun.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Our wedding was it was awesome, it was so much fun, and our kids had so much fun.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: 85 kids at the wedding is so great.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: It really felt just absolutely blessed.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: It felt so divine and so yeah, thank you for sharing that bit of it too.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sorry.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Were you gonna say something out of the time?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I was just gonna say like on this, like I don't like the sort of language or the idea of like manifestation doesn't necessarily resonate with me personally, but the but what does because this is the thing, I've just seen amazing people do the things and continue to suffer.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's just like a story of a lot of people, and it just is like you can do the things and aim up and be faithful and be whatever, like righteous and a community-oriented, like you can do the things and it doesn't actually guarantee anything.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that is just like a super important point for me personally to like, and I think that was one of the hardest points that I was reckoning with in my time of suffering is yeah, it feels like it will never end.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: And like what is true is like those circumstances might not actually change, you will change, right?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore that suffering might change, but the circumstances of tragedy may not, and that's just like who are we if we're actually gonna sit with that reality, and like I think that doesn't mean that like aiming up and like aiming like outside of ourselves, I think, in a lot of ways, like not just like in my own set, like I think, and that's what where my work often like really saved me.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because if I wasn't like working and serving families for that entire time, like, oh my god, what would I have been doing?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just like in my own misery without cessation, like at least there was some I got to help other people or something during that time, which was not saying that everyone should pour from an empty cup, but I do think there is also some value in that sometimes.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I just like for me, then I feel like it did then grow me potentially in a way that allowed me to be mature enough or something enough, whatever, maybe whatever, allowed me to receive that which was being given.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that maybe feels like a subtle distinction, but actually feels like a quite important distinction because I don't feel like I created or manifested the gifts I have in my life.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I do feel like my ability to try to say, like principled and in integrity and faithful during like periods of suffering allowed, turned me into a person that could actually receive the gifts of my life as opposed to miss them or shirk them or deny them, which then continues in that cycle.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, is that does that difference make sense?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Or it's like I did not create this, but I became a person through my own willingness to have faith that could then receive this goodness, which is that is not a given.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And this is that divine mystery of influence and not control.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And like, what are we influencing?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: I would say it's like potentially our own relationship with God.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I was able to influence through chopwood carry water practice, essentially.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: And not that made me therefore deserving of receiving gifts, but then just like able to actually see something true, which maybe isn't which is like not possible.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like when suffering obscures our ability to see truth.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the things that it does.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's that time and change and willingness to be faithful in that can help lift that veil, which then you know who knows what will happen then, but that's kind of the beauty.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Then the more things can happen then, as opposed to more of the same that continues to happen.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's interesting.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: I love hearing you talk about all this.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's it'll leave me with a lot to think about after our conversation today.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have just a couple more questions.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: One best advice you would have wished to receive earlier on in your path.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's can be a tough one.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think surround yourself with people whose lives you genuinely admire and who are stable.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like who has a stable life that you genuinely admire?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily even one that you would want for yourself, but like I just as someone who didn't feel like I really had a lot of that growing up, or didn't really I that's not necessarily true.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: In some ways, my home life was stable, but like it was in my adolescence, like I just didn't see that a lot, and I didn't know that was like a choice that I could make.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really when you think of people that you there's so many people that I can say this were placed in my life, but I'm like, wow, like it really and I think back, I'm like, that really was influential to see that family.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Hadn't really seen that, and yeah, and then I think out of fear of being like evangelical, I yeah, I do wish that someone earlier in my life had talked to me in a non-evangelical way about Jesus.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: I wish someone had talked to me, had said that to me in a way that wasn't either like academic or like, yeah, or evangelical.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: Just almost like history.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like I wish someone had just been like, do you want to learn a little more about this?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I find this even fascinating because I literally studied religious studies in college and it still just didn't like I think there was just there's so much kind of fear to offend, or also fear if you're like, oh, if I want to look into that, then is that like culty and weird, or I need to believe a certain thing or whatever.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: I really that scale fell away for me, but it took a long time for me just even be willing to like just like learn.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I yeah, and I wish someone had said that to me that it's like you can just learn about this and it doesn't really have to mean anything.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think not even from a religious perspective.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: I do know who does this actually super well is Jordan Peterson.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, this is the most influential book of in like all of what all of Western culture and history.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if you don't actually know these stories, you're gonna have a harder time making sense of the world in which we live.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: I wish someone kind of said that to me.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because I think that would have been very grounding and helpful.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: Grounded, cool people, and maybe a little bit of Jesus.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: But not in like an intense way.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: I really I don't have anything.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: In my body, I really don't.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking with you about all this too.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, last question is just where can people find you and your work?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you can find me.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, you can find me in Maine.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just talk about that.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you come to the strange place that is central Maine, off the coast, where not very many people live, I see clients here.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'll usually see them for a combination of on the table and in the gym for postural assessments.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: I really love working with moms and postpartum and pregnant moms.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: I see all kinds of people.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're here, that's where I am.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then other than that, which I just I just want to start with, also starting with that, because I feel so often people just were just like on the internet, but also on the internet.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: You can find me.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: My business is called Faith in the Body.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and we have all sorts of cool things.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: I obvious I see some patients, and then we have a few other trainers that are seeing patients for this sort of this type of structural integration care for multisystemic women's health.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: I have women's health membership that is really rad.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many resources in there, and yeah, and we really operate from the idea that your body is divinely designed, and that when we can understand and respect that design while also being in the mystery and applying critical thinking, not protocol-based clinical medicine, that we see better health outcomes.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that's it.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: We do at Faith in the Body.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then yeah, I guess you can find me at faithinthebody.com, Faith in the Body on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all the places.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you can send us an email.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: We read all of them and we get back to pretty much all of you, which feels staggering, but we really try and we do a pretty good job.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that's amazing.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast and look forward to seeing you one of these days.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can hopefully come back to me.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this episode of Homestead and Heal.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you loved it, please help us spread the word by subscribing to this podcast and leaving us a review.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about our work, visit homesteadandheal.net.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're wishing you the life of your dreams, one that feels deeply rooted, fully alive, and connected to the earth beneath your feet.