Latest / The Cyclical Doula Podcast: Fertility Awareness, Charting Cycles, and Reproductive Health Education / Reconnecting With the Body: Nervous System Safety & EFT With Carly Catherine
Transcript
- emmamma: Hello and welcome back. I today am joined by Carly Catherine, a certified EFT practitioner who supports women in reconnecting with their bodies, their emotions and their sense of safety. Carly's work sits at the intersection of nervous system regulation, emotional awareness and embodied healing, especially for women who have spent years living in their heads overthinking. Emmamma: hey, just popping in real quick to say sure you're subscribed to the Cyclical Doula podcast on whichever platform you're listening to. ⁓ Thanks so much for being here today on the cyclical doula podcast. If this episode resonated with you, the most powerful thing that you can do is to share it, send it to a friend, text it to your sister, forward it to that group chat. This is how conversations about our bodies start changing, quietly, organically, woman to woman. you are listening and thinking, ⁓ ⁓ want help applying this to my emmamma: overperforming and overriding what their bodies were trying to say. I am so excited to have this conversation with Carly to have just like this deeply human conversation about not fixing yourself or forcing healing. But I'm excited to dive into it. So welcome. Emmamma: And don't miss upcoming conversations. If this episode is resonating with you, please share it with a friend, rate it and write a review. This is how this movement grows, not through algorithms, but through women talking to women. All right, let's jump back into it. I offer free cycle clarity calls. It's a relaxed conversation over Zoom we talk through your goals, your charting practices, and kind of support that would actually make sense for you. can book one at emmamma.com / free. And if you already, make sure you're following or subscribe to the Cyclical Doula - podcast so that you don't miss future episodes. Carly Catherine: Thank you so much Emma, it's a pleasure being here. emmamma: Great. So can you just tell us a little bit more about who you are as a human being? Carly Catherine: Yeah, so as many women, I wear a lot of different hats. I'm a mom, I work in the education system here in Canada, as well as, you know, I'm a lifelong learner, so I'm constantly taking courses, I love travel, I love people, I love women. ⁓ You know, and I really just came to nervous system work and EFT tapping because of my own frustration ⁓ with how I was feeling in my own body. Emmamma: And if you feel called to leave a rating or review, it genuinely helps more women find this work. So thank you. You deserve to understand body. You deserve to feel confident in your reproductive choices. And you ⁓ have to figure it out alone. I'll see you next week. Thanks for being here. Carly Catherine: You know, I am someone who, you know, is hyper independent. I'm a people pleaser. I do all things and I feel like I can do it quite seamlessly and no one would have any idea that behind the scenes I was struggling and I was struggling, you know, in my day to day life. I'd show up to work. I do all the things, check all the boxes. I do it with a smile. I bring the muffins and of course they were homemade. I mean, I do love to bake, but you know, I was doing all the things and when I got home, emmamma: Yeah. Yeah. Carly Catherine: I was crashing. The thought of unloading a dishwasher was overwhelming to me. If I had to have a shower plus wash my hair, blow dry and straighten, it was enough to put me over the edge and I was just so overwhelmed and I thought something was inherently wrong with me. Like what is wrong with you? You are napping on the couch every day and not just a little siesta, a little pep. It's like I can't function. I'm shutting down. And at the time I didn't have the language. I didn't have the education and I had emmamma: Yeah. Carly Catherine: so much shame around how I was experiencing my life and my experiences outside of the public eye, so to speak. emmamma: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Absolutely. I feel like so many people can relate to that of this idea of like the shame and the not knowing like how we're going to unload the dishwasher. like, yeah, like we're putting on this show for everybody on the outside. But when you come back to your own life, like it just is overwhelming. Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm, it really is. And I didn't have the language and I thought something was wrong with me because... emmamma: Yeah. Right. Carly Catherine: I'm intelligent. I've read the books. I've done therapy. I've done certifications. Like I've done all the things and I can identify my patterns. I know my attachment style. I know all of the things, but I was frustrated because my day-to-day experience and how I was relating to my world wasn't changing because I was caught up in just cognitively analyzing, thinking, and I wasn't, I was only operating from my mind channel. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: And I think so many of us, like culturally, that's what we do, right? It's what we do. emmamma: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So for people who have no idea what EFT is, tell us what that is and then like how you got into knowing about that specifically. Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. really basic EFT tapping stands for emotional freedom techniques. And what it is, it's a blend of Chinese ancient acupressure, neuroscience, Western psychology. And what we do is we use really simple language to Emmamma: Welcome to the Cyclical Doula podcast. I'm Emma, a certified fertility awareness educator, miscarriage doula and the founder of Emmamma Carly Catherine: describe how we're feeling in this present moment and holding it in compassion. So I'll walk your listeners through the nine points we use. We and I'm tapping as I do this listeners and you know, sometimes I have to slow down because I know you can't see me. So the first spot is your karate chop. So that would be the fleshy part of the side of your hand. That's your first spot. And then we've got our eyebrows right where your eyebrows start. And when I'm tapping, I am sending calming signals to my amygdala, which is our threat center, our security alarm, sending signals of safety. In this moment, I am safe right now. Okay? Now we have our temples, and you might feel silly doing it. That just means you're doing it right. The first couple times you feel silly. Okay? And then we've got under our eyes, and I can already feel my body decompressing a little bit. We've got under our nose. Under my lip. We've got our collarbone, and you can do both hands, one hand, left, right, doesn't matter. If you decide to wear a bra, where your bra strap would lie, under your arm. Emmamma: This space is for women who want to understand their bodies deeply, not just memorize information, but actually feel confident in interpreting their cycles. Here we talk about ovulation, hormones, cervical mucus, basal body temperature, and all that's messy in between emotional layers that come with being woman. We talk about trying to conceive, avoiding pregnancy ⁓ hormones. Carly Catherine: And then the last point is your crown chakra at the top of your head. So those are the nine points that we use primarily in EFT tapping and it's a body based tool, you know, so I will just do an example here. So I'm tapping listeners on my eyebrow right now and I can say, even though I'm feeling really frustrated in this moment, I'm feeling frustrated with my four year old son. I'm trying to get dinner done. I feel frustrated and I kind of feel it in my chest, my face, Emmamma: postpartum transitions, pregnancy loss, perimenopause, and everything in between. Because body literacy isn't just about charting. It's about the autonomy. It's about informed consent. It's about not outsourcing your reproductive decisions to guesswork or fear. Each week, you'll hear conversations with women's health professionals, ⁓ workers, ⁓ Carly Catherine: feels warm. So what I'm doing right now is I'm telling my amygdala that it's safe for these emotions. And as I'm doing that, I'm taking the edge off off them, where I'm allowing my body to process them, giving them space to then move to high vibrational emotions, right? So maybe I'm feeling compassionate, I'm feeling grateful, I'm feeling all of these things. ⁓ And that's really simply ⁓ EFT tapping, of course, you can go in Emmamma: and researchers along with solo episodes where I teach practical skills you can apply to your own cycle right away. if you have ever felt like you should have learned this information sooner, if you have ever felt disconnected from your cycle, Carly Catherine: to it much more in depth but for listening purposes that's EFT tapping. emmamma: That's great. So I think the few questions that come to mind and obviously like working with somebody who's trained and is a practitioner is going to be important for people who are listening. But my first thought comes to you like based on what I can see you doing. Like this is light tapping that we're doing. We're not doing this aggressively. ⁓ And you also were like as you were like going through that the Carly Catherine: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Emmamma: If you want to raise the next generation without shame around their bodies, you are in the right place. So grab your tea, open up your notes app, and let's build a cycle confidence together. Carly Catherine: Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Good point. Thank you. emmamma: situation, like you were moving your hands to different points and tapping in different locations. And I think that's really cool about just like, obviously, like, you've learned this, you teach this, all of these things, but that, ⁓ getting into that space of just physically having our body have a different reaction to a situation seems like an amazing, amazing situation. Okay. Carly Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And you don't have to go through all nine points. You can find a favorite spot. I like under my nose, under my lip and my collarbone. Those are my go-tos that you can also just tap on a favorite spot and it's still effective. You're still regulating and Emma, even you watching me do that, you are co-regulating with me and you were borrowing the benefits. So, you know, even if you don't feel like depending on where you are, if you're in complete, ⁓ you know, shutdown. emmamma: Yeah. Carly Catherine: Just tapping and watching someone tap, your nervous system is going to slowly start to regulate, which is amazing, right? emmamma: Yeah, absolutely. mean, okay. So my brain is going a million miles an hour of all these different things that we can talk about. the first thing that there's so many things that we can talk about and I definitely want to get into like women's health and female, all of those things too. But the first thing that comes to mind is because you were just talking about co-regulating. How can you do this? Or have you seen with like how you can do this with kids too and teach them? Carly Catherine: Yeah, there's a lot of ways we could. Yes! emmamma: Okay, because I'm like, wow, what an amazing skill to be able to teach a four year old about like, how to figure out their regulation as well. Carly Catherine: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and right now my son is four, so it's simply, I model it when I'm feeling the feelings, as we all do in the human experience, that is our day to day, ⁓ as well as I work in the education system. And I work specifically with young girls managing anxiety. ⁓ And it is really about anxiety lives in the body. It doesn't live in your brain. Like yes, that's where the rumination is and all of the anxious thoughts. emmamma: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: But we need to get out of our mind and into our body. But in order to do that, we need to build capacity and we need to build safety. Right? In order to do that. If we don't feel safe doing that, right? But yeah, it's great for kids and just even you tapping and modeling that and giving them, like you can identify how you're feeling. It's those emotions are okay to feel that way and we don't have to bypass them or suppress them. Yeah. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Right, that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. sure. Absolutely love that. ⁓ That's so good. Okay, so you what like got you into learning about this and figuring out that this was different than what you've tried before and really finding freedom from that. Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. For me, it really was the body piece. emmamma: Yeah. Carly Catherine: Initially it was during COVID when everything shut down, there was no more distractions, you know, for so many of us. And I just intuitively felt like, you know, I know all the things, nothing is changing. I'm sick of my own BS. What is going on here? That I, being a lifelong learner, being an educator, it's not uncommon for me to be researching, taking little courses that I just stumbled on this EFT tapping. And I had heard of it previously. I'd kind of seen it, but I knew nothing about it. And I just signed up for a weekend course and within it was a long course, it three days, nine to five each day. By the second day I was like, this is remarkable, this is going to change the game for me as well as for anyone who is open-minded and willing to give it a go. And then I signed up for my certification, it was a year long, super intensive and it's just been... totally life-changing for me as a person. emmamma: It's amazing. Yeah, I love when I feel like so many people in the wellness space, like, when they realize that there's a tool that they can use for themselves, they're like, okay, like, I have to share this with other people and get into that that space of just being able to share and help other other people. Carly Catherine: Yeah! And it was really just giving myself a lens to view my behavior and my patterns and taking the shame away. Right? That was huge. That was huge. emmamma: Yeah, absolutely. you were talking earlier about how, ⁓ like anxiety live in the body. And so, and you said specifically that you work with girls a lot. So how can we, ⁓ as women, like reframe this idea of like, that thinking pattern of anxiety versus like living in our body? Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. First of all, we need to feel safe building a relationship with our body. Because so many of us don't have a relationship with our body. I did not for years. In the relationship I had, I was a bit of a bully to my body, right? I always use the example of like how many of us hold our pee. And I know that sounds so ridiculous. But even a couple weeks ago, I was rage cleaning as you do. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: And I was doing the stovetop and I'm like, ⁓ no, I just have to finish it. I'm like, Carly, go use the washroom. it's a biological, like it's a physiological signal and I'm ignoring it. And I'm like, no, I have to do this for this because this and I have to. So just even something simple like eating when I'm hungry, using the washroom when I need to use the washroom. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: being in tune with what our body is trying to tell us. But in order to do that, we need to build safety first. And the first step really is using tapping, right? Because most of the women that I work with initially, they don't have a relationship with their body. They're second guessing, like, what should I do? How should I do it? What should I say? And the more you do it, the more you trust whatever comes up. the more you don't second guess it that you're like, I don't know, I'm feeling constricted in my throat. Okay, great. Right? And being curious about that. So really the first step is being opened to ⁓ building a relationship with your body, first and foremost. emmamma: Yeah. That's so good. so many people I think also like in my field of like reproductive health to so many people just like don't know like physically don't know their body and then also being able to like feel safe in that as well like as a whole nother layer and but that awareness and and safety is huge and I feel like so many of Carly Catherine: whole other layer. emmamma: just being empowered as women in ourselves can just come from knowing our body and feeling safe. And that doesn't necessarily, I think, always look like, and I'm sure you agree, like it's not always being regulated. It's not, like you feel all the emotions, you do all the things, and you can still feel safe in yourself specifically. Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. no, no. Yeah, and I love that you touched on that, Emma, because what I tell women is the goal is not to be Zen all day. It's not to be calm all the time. That's delusional. The idea is I want you to build flexibility in your nervous system, where you can first identify and attune to what signals like, ⁓ my heart rate is increasing. I'm feeling hot. Okay, that's a signal I'm going to fight flight. And then being able to use a regulation practice like EFT tapping to then bring you back to emmamma: Yeah. Carly Catherine: rest and digest. I like to think of your nervous system as a climate, right? You're going to have storms, some storms last month, some a few days, but what is the overall climate? Where are you primarily living in fight, flight, freeze, or rest and digest? Identifying that and then building it. So yes, identify I'm in fight, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm resentful, and I'm going to use this tapping and then I can move back to rest and digest. And you're going to oscillate between the two and that's what you're supposed to do. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Right, Yeah. So what about the people who are living in extended seasons? If not, like they're thinking about this and they're like, ⁓ I don't think I've ever lived in a state of rest and digest. How do you get from feeling like you're always living in that fight flight? What like once you establish safety, how do you then like what's the next step from? Carly Catherine: That's what we're meant to do. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the next step really is building regulation practices all throughout your day. Like it really is. This is something that it's not intensity, it's consistency. So there's a lot of different ones. I use EFT tapping primarily, but... emmamma: Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: Working what, like find what works for you and there's a variety. Singing is great for your nervous system. Humming, getting outside, shaking, dancing. And then if you're someone who is in, you you identify, like, I'm in functional freeze. Like I identify with what you said earlier. I can't unload my dishwasher. Then for you, you need rest because your body is using so much energy in a protective state just to keep you alive. So for you to think that you're going to do emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Carly Catherine: this, this, this and this, it's not going to happen because you actually don't have the physical capacity in your nervous system in order to sustain any sort of protocol quote unquote. So what I would recommend for them is like tapping while they're being a sloth on the couch. And that's it. Just allow yourself to do that and giving yourself compassion that this is not me. This is a protective strategy that was highly effective. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Carly Catherine: what I would recommend for is like tapping while they're ⁓ being a sloth on the couch. And that's it. Just allow to do that and giving yourself compassion ⁓ that this not me. This is a protective strategy that was highly effective. emmamma: Yeah, yeah. yeah. Carly Catherine: when I didn't have the contacts, when I was egocentric, and it protected me. And I'm grateful, but I don't need this anymore, and I've got it from here. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's so good. I love this. Amazing. So I feel like so many people who like I work with and who probably are listening are in these seasons of like young kids or doing all the things, working and all of the things as so many of us are, especially as parents and especially as moms. And so you kind of touched on this, but how do you add these practices in those like Carly Catherine: I've got it from here. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. emmamma: crazy, messy moments of daily life. Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. I would first recommend doing it when it's not messy. using it with like you can tap on your collarbone while you're waiting for your toast to pop when you're driving one hand on the wheel, of course, we want to be safe, but you can go through the points when you're watching Netflix, you can be tapping because ⁓ emmamma: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: you're not going to be able to use your toolbox when you're dysregulated if you don't use them when you're regulated, right? So I really recommend just tapping, layering it on to a habit you already do. ⁓ You know, you can literally tap anywhere. It's accessible, it's portable, and you don't have to do anything. You can talk or you don't have to talk either. emmamma: Yep. ⁓ Yep. Carly Catherine: It's all ⁓ effective and supportive. And then, you know, once you are using it, you've built that, then you can just layer it in where a tuning, ⁓ I just, I sounded kind of bitchy when I said that. That was a bit defensive. I'm going into my fight response and then you can, you can tap. You can bring that out. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's amazing. ⁓ What do you I'm sure there's a lot but how has reconnecting with your body, maybe you can either tell a personal story or something that you just see other people do but how does it change the way that like you make decisions and set boundaries relate to other people, things like that. Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's, I love that question. You know, yeah, everything really started when I started letting my body lead the way. Do I have to make a decision? How like, do all of a sudden, do I feel my chest constructing is my do I have a lump in my throat? That's probably a signal. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: that something is amiss that I might need to pause and say, know what, thank you for thinking of me. I'm going to take some time to think on this and I'll get back to you. Right. It really allows us a buffer so we can respond instead of react. Right. Because if our amygdala is constantly firing that prefrontal cortex where we do all of our decision making, where we make aligned conscious decisions, it's offline. emmamma: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: Right? So even if you have to go in and have a tough conversation with your husband, your partner, a boss, you can tap beforehand. ⁓ So for me, it really allowed me to tap into my own intuition where I don't second guess myself and I also don't question it. I'm not questioning it constantly. I don't need to know the answer. My body has such innate wisdom that I have... emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: that I'm developing, I've cultivated, that I'm allowing space. And that was not the case prior. Like you said in your work, you know, I was someone who I had no idea about my menstrual cycle. I didn't know if I was here there because I was so disconnected. And then I struggled to conceive and I was like, well, I don't even know. I've been so disconnected. I don't even know where to start. You know, so emmamma: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Carly Catherine: I let my body lead the way. I let it respond for me. Now I also have conscious decision making that I can decide to be like, know, there is a fear and excitement can feel the same way that maybe I do want to take this opportunity, even though it feels scary. ⁓ But then I'm also paying attention and I'm not overriding it all the time. emmamma: Yeah. right. you Carly Catherine: you know, I was someone who was constantly over exercising and all these things overriding overriding overriding and I'm not saying I'm perfect. This is not like I am no expert in the sense I guess I'm trained in it, but I'm I'm right there along with the women that I support alongside with them. You know, but I would say just intuition and allowing this space and that's the beauty of tapping is when we take away the noise of these emotions like the the negativity, the frustration, the anxiety that clouds our big capital self and tapping allows us to create space for that self to come to the forefront and share like it knows but we have to create create a relationship and allow it space and time. emmamma: Mm-hmm. right. That's so good. I ⁓ wonder, so I think like when you were filling out the information that you were sharing with me, you were talking about ⁓ like, like that some people are living in this chronic state of flight or fight, fight or flight, which we talked about a little bit earlier. But ⁓ what are you like, how are you working with women specifically? I'm not sure if you work with everybody, but in regards to that, ⁓ just like, Carly Catherine: No. ⁓ Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. emmamma: that were in that and then also like what what are you seeing around hormonal shifts with with that being there? Carly Catherine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I myself, am I think I'm 42 turning 43. I always forget, you know, at some point, you're like, I'm gonna stop counting. So I am right in perimenopause. And I am noticing changes in my capacity. And I was like, you know, emmamma: Yeah, Yeah. Carly Catherine: What is going on? What is going on? And I want to really wanted to understand not just the hormonal and everything, but the emotional piece, the hormonal piece, the physiological piece. And my estrogen and my progesterone is fluctuating and decreasing. And that is a natural buffer for the part of our brain that's responsible for our stress response, our sleep and our nervous system. So for those of your listeners who, or even like postpartum women as well, emmamma: Yeah, yeah. Carly Catherine: right? Like there's so many hormonal shifts that all of a sudden your nervous system bucket so to speak is a lot smaller. So what once you could easily navigate where you're like yeah no problem I can gladly do that your bucket is so much smaller. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: where we're probably reacting more than responding, and we're moving through those three states a lot faster because we don't have that buffer of the progesterone and the estrogen to give us that sort of feel good, to give us that pause. So, you know, again, that speaks to the biology piece. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's really fascinating. feel like there's so many different things that we can learn about how our body works on that biological level, but then being in tune to like, okay, like this is a change that I'm seeing in this current season can also just be really helpful from that. okay, like I know, like we were talking about earlier, like I know my body therefore, and then I know like what's changing in this time. Carly Catherine: Yes, yeah, yeah. And then you can also have compassion because you're like, yeah, my hormones are all over the map. Obviously I'm gonna be a little bit crazy from time to time. ⁓ Like that's expected and that's okay. Right, so a lot of, I like to use both and energy, right? I can be both really frustrated, I keep going back to that, because that's been my real own ⁓ journey. ⁓ emmamma: Yeah, right. You were right. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: and at the same time, really grateful for the experience, right? So that both-and, and that's what EFT is. It's holding the both-and. Mm-hmm. emmamma: Yeah, right. Mm-hmm. That's absolutely amazing. What else do you want to tell people about either EFT or what you're working with? Carly Catherine: Yeah. That was a great question. I mean, it's like, there's so much, what do I want to tell them, right? You've done a great job of asking some really good questions. ⁓ I guess the thing is really just hammering home the point that it's not about doing it perfectly. It's not about, you know, emmamma: Yeah. Carly Catherine: Because I, for my whole life, I've had the mentality of like, go big or go home, where it doesn't have to be this 5am crazy routine that you're getting up and doing all of these things, but really just being open and honest with yourself in where am I? What is my nervous system climate? And then how can I go about supporting myself in order to begin to heal because we are all worth that. And ⁓ it's not going to happen in your mind, right? We need to have embodied change and that's only going to happen through our body and building a relationship with our body. ⁓ And that takes a lot of courage as well. It really, really does, you know? emmamma: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. That's so good. Okay, so I have one last question, I think. So as people, we talked about how people are getting started, what they need to feel safe and all of those things. What about once they're in it? Once they've had this routine, they've kind of gotten down that rhythm of like, okay, this is a practice that I'm using on the regular basis. How do you then use it ⁓ in your daily life? Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. Ya! Yeah. Mm-hmm. emmamma: I'm assuming that you use it regularly to keep up the practice of it and then also in those times that you are having a dysregulated state. Is that right? Carly Catherine: Yeah, I do. Yeah, I love that question. And because it's like, when I'm in it, there's so much in it. So thank you for the question. It's great just to bring me out. You know, because we've chatted a lot about in the moment, but how I use it, I use it that way. But also I use it to rewire my neurological patterns. Right. So I am someone who has been working on opening my throat chakra. emmamma: Yeah. Ooh, okay, great. Carly Catherine: and being seen and sharing my knowledge and my expertise because most of my life I stayed small because in my nervous system that felt safe. Right? So what I do now is I identify my limiting beliefs. I identify the things that are keeping me stuff and stuck, excuse me, and I'm actively working with statements to rewire my brain to build capacity and safety in my nervous system so I can go out and share so I can go out and do the work that I know I'm meant to do. Ten years ago, absolutely not. I would not have been able to do that because that didn't feel safe in my system that I would have shut down, would have procrastinated, would have self-sabotaged and I still do that because that's the human experience but it's like chipping away at it. You're slowly titrating, you're titrating, you're titrating and you're slowly getting closer to where you want to be and that's what I'm doing is I'm rewiring my brain so it feels safe. to feel expansive. It feels safe to have 100 people looking at me while I'm sharing. So it feels, and it's gonna be different for everyone. Like for me, that's been my journey and being seen and sharing and my throat chakra. But for someone else, it might be holding boundaries. It might be codependency, self-worth. And at the end of the day, it all comes back to the same sort of things. I don't feel worthy. I don't feel safe. I'm not enough. emmamma: Yeah. right for sure. Carly Catherine: It's just disguise different ways. Right? So ⁓ that's how we can really and that's when it's helpful to work with a practitioner. Because our job is picking up all those limiting beliefs. And then you're using your language to create even those statements that respond to your nervous system to then allow it to be safe and then to be expansive for you can you can then do the things and create transformational change because you're not going to create transformational change. emmamma: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Carly Catherine: if you don't change your behavior. And in order to do that, we have to start at the foundation through nervous system safety and regulation because we can't manage all these symptoms and expect change. And we all have that wrong, myself included. You know, I love a supplement and I'm like, wait a second, I'm dysregulated AF. This is not gonna work. I can't fight it. emmamma: Mm-hmm. I Mm-hmm. Right, right, right. It could have really good properties and it's still not gonna work. Yeah, absolutely. Carly Catherine: Yeah, like kind of what I say to women is your body's not going to fight inflammation if it thinks it's being chased by a bear. Right? So I hope that answers your question, but that's how I personally use it. ⁓ In a bigger sense of really creating ⁓ a different life for myself. emmamma: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely amazing. And thank you for sharing that because I think that's really helpful that it's not just a tool for regulation and feeling safe, but it really can be a tool for like expansion and and manifesting or whatever words people want to use within that and growth, I think is a huge part of that of just like, goals of I think it's like what a what an amazing thing of being able to take the the things that we we Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. It is. Yeah. emmamma: want to be and being able to really like dig deep into that and finding those tools to help make it make it happen. Carly Catherine: Yeah, because so many of us, we don't allow ourselves to sit and enjoy. We don't allow ourselves to sit and feeling expansive and powerful and confident. That's like big tall poppy syndrome. We don't do that. So in session, this is a space where you're encouraged and we tap and we say like, where is that joy? Where do you where does that joy live in your body? If it had a color, what color would it be? emmamma: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right, right. Carly Catherine: Right? Like all that sensory piece through the body, because we should be spending time there. You know? Yeah. emmamma: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that so much. So you mentioned sessions for like the average person that you work with, how often are you working together and for how long? Carly Catherine: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, so I've had women that I work with for a year, upwards of a year. ⁓ What I like to say though, the sweet spot is six sessions. If you're coming to me for one session, we're, no, you're gonna, you're gonna feel silly. You don't even know, cause it's very slow and repetitive. emmamma: Yeah, I feel like that would be useless. All right. Carly Catherine: because the nervous system doesn't speak in words. But six sessions is the sweet spot. And then either people are like, I'm going to go off and do my work. Or I'm like, OK, now I'm really into it. And I'm going to like, now this is what I want to dig into. And I usually see them bi-weekly for an hour at a time. And then if that doesn't feel safe to you. emmamma: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Carly Catherine: because I get that where you're like, I don't know, I don't even know what I'm feeling. That's okay, that's valid. ⁓ I also do online tapping circles with women only where I facilitate you just hop on a Zoom call and we are tapping and regulating and co-regulating together. Yeah. emmamma: That's great. Amazing. think like what a good way to have both of those options for people to jump in and feel like they're able to grasp it at the place where they are. Carly Catherine: you Yeah, and because it's one of those things, you I try to articulate as best as I can, but until you've experienced it, you just don't get it. Because that was me too. I'm like, I'll try it. And I did some one-on-one sessions like, I don't even know. like, but I just I'm feeling less resistance. And that's what I kept saying. I'm like, I don't really know, but I just feel less resistance, you know? So it just feels good. emmamma: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Fabulous. What are other ways that people can connect with you? Carly Catherine: ⁓ You can go to Instagram at the Carly Katherine as well as I have a website carlycatherine.com and that's the best places to reach me and connect ⁓ and yeah, and I'd love to work with women that you know are really ready for some healing and to build that relationship with their body and ⁓ To have whatever they want to create in their life and feel safe doing so emmamma: That's amazing. I love that. We'll make sure those are all in the show notes. Is there anything else you want to leave with listeners before we're walking away from this conversation? Carly Catherine: I guess just the one thing that I always come back to is you're not broken, you're just dysregulated. That's it. That's it. emmamma: Yeah. Amazing. I that should be on a sweatshirt if it's not already. I love that. It's so good. Probably a toddler sweatshirt too. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here for sharing your wisdom and for just get having this conversation with me. Carly Catherine: Yeah, right? Yeah, that's good. I like that. Thank you so much for having me Emma, this was a lot of fun.