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A Human Body Standing On Earth with Sue Choi · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Papist podcast. My name is Ga Macpherson.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. Here we go so
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Very excited to have my guest today,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Sue Choice. Sue Welcome, Thank you, Happy here here, Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Sue is a semantic movement expert and bodyworker with over
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  Speaker 1: two decades of experience working with clients to resolve chronic
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: body issues. Her book When Things Stick Untangling Your Body
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: from Old Patterns outlines a multisensory framework to develop self
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: trust and move forward. This framework has helped therapists find
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  Speaker 1: quick and reliable breakthroughs with their clients.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Sue, before excuse.
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  Speaker 1: Me, before we get go in here shore with the listeners.
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  Speaker 1: Where you're from originally and where you are currently?
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  Speaker 3: Okay?
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  Speaker 4: Originally I was born in Soul, Korea, but we came
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  Speaker 4: to the US when I was going to and I
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  Speaker 4: grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, so Midwesterner. But I've lived
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  Speaker 4: around the world and I landed here in Los Angeles.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, let's dive in here. How did this start?
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  Speaker 1: This being, this interest, this passion? How did how did
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  Speaker 1: all this begin for you?
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  Speaker 4: For me, it was kind of a long struggle with depression.
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  Speaker 4: I've kind of struggled with that my whole life and
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  Speaker 4: going to different therapists and not wanting to go on medication.
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  Speaker 4: So when I was in California, I was in San
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  Speaker 4: Francisco at the time, and I had put myself in
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  Speaker 4: what I considered the best situation possible, you know, and
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  Speaker 4: I thought that that would work in terms of work situation,
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  Speaker 4: living situation, and I was so miserable. And it was
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: at that point I was working with someone and again
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  Speaker 4: we're just kind of treading water, and I realized how
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: far away from being in my body I had gotten
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  Speaker 4: in terms of just self care. You know, I was smoking.
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  Speaker 4: I just I wasn't taking care of myself. I didn't
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  Speaker 4: feel good. So I made one commitment to go to
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  Speaker 4: something every day. So I went to either a yoga
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  Speaker 4: class or a martial arts class every day. And that
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  Speaker 4: changed everything for me. It just it changed so quickly.
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  Speaker 4: I was able to get out of that bad relationship,
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  Speaker 4: stop smoking. I really changed things that, you know, the
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  Speaker 4: talk therapy didn't move and she was very impressed too.
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  Speaker 4: And then I just wanted to learn more about that,
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  Speaker 4: and so I studied more and I realized I just
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  Speaker 4: couldn't do this on the side, and so I kind
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  Speaker 4: of dove in headfirst into a future that I had
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  Speaker 4: no idea what would look like. But I dedicate myself
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  Speaker 4: full time to learn more about it. I just took
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  Speaker 4: a lot of trainings. My first training was just a
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  Speaker 4: very simple yoga training. I was doing Ashtanga yoga at
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  Speaker 4: the time. But at that time, in the late nineties,
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  Speaker 4: there were a lot of yoga trainings. You know, there
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: are only three and so I did one of them.
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  Speaker 4: But then I knew I needed more. So I went
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  Speaker 4: to India to study yoga therapy. And so the DNA
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  Speaker 4: of this work has always been around mental emotional change
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  Speaker 4: that you could.
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  Speaker 3: Find through the body.
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  Speaker 4: And so I spent like five months there and then
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  Speaker 4: when I came back, I started to study what I could,
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  Speaker 4: you know, I did. I started doing bodywork just to
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  Speaker 4: learn more anatomy because I didn't have that background, and I.
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  Speaker 3: Just kept learning and learning to try to get better.
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  Speaker 4: Outcomes for me. And then as I started working with
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  Speaker 4: people for my clients.
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  Speaker 1: So you're all in as they.
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  Speaker 3: Say, Yeah, So all right.
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  Speaker 2: This depression, when when did this? When did it start
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  Speaker 2: for you?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I think I've had it most of my life.
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  Speaker 4: I remember, I don't have a lot of memories of
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  Speaker 4: my childhood, but I do remember. I think I must
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  Speaker 4: have been six. So this is Indianapolis, and I'm thinking
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  Speaker 4: I see people they're going to work and they're just
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  Speaker 4: kind of living this life. They go to a shopping
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  Speaker 4: mall and I'm like, you know, there has to be
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  Speaker 4: more to life than this.
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  Speaker 3: It was a real.
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  Speaker 4: Feeling like I that this is not life, this is
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  Speaker 4: not what I want. I don't see like a lot
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  Speaker 4: of a lot of stimulation or inspiration in what was
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  Speaker 4: modeled to me. And so that was, you know, I
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  Speaker 4: think it was really a depression that came from like
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  Speaker 4: longing for meaning and longing for desire to feel alive.
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  Speaker 1: In addition to that that longing. How else did it manifest?
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  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean I was definitely very disembodied, and
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  Speaker 4: I didn't recognize at the time, but a lot of daydreaming,
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  Speaker 4: a lot of not being present when I was in college,
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  Speaker 4: you know, like these I'm in California, right, now and
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  Speaker 4: you know, these kids learn yoga and stuff. There was
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  Speaker 4: none of that. And you know, I didn't go to
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  Speaker 4: a gym or anything. And when I was in grade school,
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  Speaker 4: I didn't do any sports. In high school, I did
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  Speaker 4: some sports, a little tennis, a little cheerleading, but it
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  Speaker 4: was nothing really extensive.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I wasn't like competitive in sports.
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  Speaker 4: So in college I had access to the gym, and
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  Speaker 4: I recognized that when I spent extra time stretching out
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  Speaker 4: that I felt better. And so I started to make
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  Speaker 4: that link there, and you know, just but still it
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  Speaker 4: wasn't it wasn't anything in depth. It was just a
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  Speaker 4: recognition that if I worked in my body in a
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  Speaker 4: certain way and gave myself some time, that I can
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  Speaker 4: feel different.
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  Speaker 2: When did you start with therapy?
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  Speaker 1: When did you realize, you know, when I need something,
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  Speaker 1: I need to get some kind of help.
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  Speaker 4: I think it was when I was in New York.
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  Speaker 4: So that was very expensive therapy because I was in
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  Speaker 4: New York. But I was you know, I had been working,
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  Speaker 4: and I had been working overseas and it was you know,
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  Speaker 4: exciting life. And then I came back and I was
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  Speaker 4: so you were.
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  Speaker 2: An an adult, an adult at this time.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay.
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  Speaker 4: I came back, and you know, it was at a
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  Speaker 4: point where you're in your late twenties and you've kind
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  Speaker 4: of worked a little bit, and I I I was wondering,
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  Speaker 4: like what do I do from here? Because do I
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  Speaker 4: go back to grad school? And I was a business major,
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  Speaker 4: so I would I had half an MBA done. I
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  Speaker 4: could have gone back for another year and finished that up,
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  Speaker 4: but it just didn't feel like what I wanted to pursue.
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  Speaker 4: And the whole idea of purpose was always a challenge
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  Speaker 4: for me in terms of like, you know, what did
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  Speaker 4: I want to do? You know, business was kind of
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  Speaker 4: like a placeholder for me until I discovered what that was.
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  Speaker 2: So walk us through how you decide.
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  Speaker 1: I mean you talked about, you know, going to India
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  Speaker 1: and taking all these classes, but let's dial in here.
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  Speaker 2: Walk us through how you.
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  Speaker 1: Decided to you know what, I want to get into
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  Speaker 1: this field.
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  Speaker 2: I want to start working with people. And then we'll
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  Speaker 2: segue into the book.
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  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, sure.
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  Speaker 4: So when when I came back, I was just teaching
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  Speaker 4: yoga classes, but then I started to take a lot
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  Speaker 4: more training and I kept doing trainings.
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  Speaker 3: And then uh.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, just anything that that taught me more about how
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  Speaker 4: to improve outcomes for the people I was working with
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  Speaker 4: because a lot I mean.
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  Speaker 2: What capacity were you working with people to yoga?
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  Speaker 4: Okay, yoga teacher, I did a PLATES training too. Then
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  Speaker 4: Plates teacher, I taw people meditation in the early days
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  Speaker 4: when I was doing yoga would kind of extend the
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  Speaker 4: meditation session and then just do like a small warm
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  Speaker 4: up and teach them just to be in stillness and
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  Speaker 4: to pay attention. But you know, I didn't really do
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  Speaker 4: that in a big way. It was always about body first.
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  Speaker 4: And at one point I was thinking, you know, should
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  Speaker 4: I go back to school. If I did, there really
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  Speaker 4: weren't good options for somatic psychology because that would be ideal,
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  Speaker 4: like did I go more into body or more into psychology?
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  Speaker 4: And I eventually went with body, just because the outcomes
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  Speaker 4: were more tangible. But you know, because there wasn't really
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  Speaker 4: a lot of good programs, I thought, like the somatic
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  Speaker 4: therapy focuses a lot on sensing and feeling, right, there's
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  Speaker 4: not enough There wasn't enough body in it. And then
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  Speaker 4: the body training, like physical therapy, there's not enough sensing
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  Speaker 4: feeling in it. So I was trying to build something
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  Speaker 4: for really rapid results down the middle, because I felt
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  Speaker 4: like it wasn't really quite well articulated or specific and
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  Speaker 4: repeatable and as.
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  Speaker 1: Quick as it so in what capacity? Now are you
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  Speaker 1: working with people?
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  Speaker 4: I do most of my work online now, okay, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: And what I find is when I went online during
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  Speaker 4: the pandemic was people took a lot more ownership because
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  Speaker 4: they couldn't touch them. So if they came in to
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  Speaker 4: see me and they you know, I can make changes
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  Speaker 4: in their body, there's already a idea.
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  Speaker 3: That you do this, it's because of you and it's
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  Speaker 3: not because of me.
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  Speaker 4: I've always given people like little routines that they could
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  Speaker 4: do on their own to replicate what we did in session.
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  Speaker 4: And I could tell the people who worked in between
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  Speaker 4: our sessions. They accelerate very quickly. They reported back what
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  Speaker 4: was happening. They were invested in it because they were
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  Speaker 4: taking that step. But a lot of people, because you know,
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  Speaker 4: I'm paying for your expertise and you're going to help me,
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  Speaker 4: they're in this mindset that they're not going to make
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  Speaker 4: the change they're paying me to make the change, And
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  Speaker 4: it's not that at all. And when when they work online,
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  Speaker 4: it's really great because they I can't touch them, I
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  Speaker 4: can't make that change. And when they see that, they
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  Speaker 4: can make a change inside themselves, like a real palpable change,
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  Speaker 4: reliably and predictably is super empowering, and it lays the
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  Speaker 4: groundwork for working with trauma and working through things that
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  Speaker 4: otherwise might feel overwhelming or just too hard to change.
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  Speaker 1: That brings up a good point. The body is I
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  Speaker 1: think hard for a lot of people. And I'm making
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  Speaker 1: a generalization of course here, but I think for many people,
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  Speaker 1: not everyone, of course, But it's hard. What do you
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  Speaker 1: mean feel get into my body? What do you mean
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  Speaker 1: feel my body? What has been your kind of broad
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  Speaker 1: brushstroke perception of how people engage with their body or
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  Speaker 1: the degree to which they're able to and willing.
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  Speaker 2: To engage with their body.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know.
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  Speaker 4: The reason that it feels like inaccessible for a lot
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  Speaker 4: of people's well, for people who have a history of traumas,
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  Speaker 4: because they very often absent their body because it wasn't safe,
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  Speaker 4: because it's too overwhelming to feel the feelings. But in general,
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  Speaker 4: the directive to get back into your body is just
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  Speaker 4: too vague, it.
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  Speaker 3: Doesn't, you know.
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  Speaker 4: So they're like, okay, so I'm going to exercise, I'm
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  Speaker 4: going to lift weights or whatever. It's when you get
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  Speaker 4: into your body with a very specific purpose and intention,
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  Speaker 4: with a very specific.
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  Speaker 1: Framework for just for example.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so here's the framework. Like you learn how to
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  Speaker 4: stand and you learn how to walk. Those two things
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  Speaker 4: are the foundations for how.
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  Speaker 3: I work with people. And when you narrow.
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  Speaker 4: Down the possibility of what you're working with in your body,
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  Speaker 4: then then you can really go into the details in
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  Speaker 4: a way that just will surprise you.
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  Speaker 1: So what do you mean when you learn how to
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  Speaker 1: stand and learn how to walk? Let's let's talk about
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  Speaker 1: this now we're getting into your book. Yeah that right, okay, okay,
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  Speaker 1: so if you.
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  Speaker 4: So, the whole idea of getting into your body in
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  Speaker 4: this way is you're getting into your body below the
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  Speaker 4: personal story levels. So it's not the guy body, it's
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  Speaker 4: not the Sioux body. It's a human body standing on earth.
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  Speaker 4: A human body standing on earth has a lot of
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  Speaker 4: power and intention that's evolved for millions of years to
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  Speaker 4: help you accomplish that. If you get into the specifics
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  Speaker 4: of that, what you start to feel is you start
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  Speaker 4: to feel capable, You start to feel how your body
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  Speaker 4: is a resource and not a burden or something that's
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  Speaker 4: not safe. You start to be able to work with
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  Speaker 4: your body in a neutral place. So if you're working
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  Speaker 4: with the guy body, there's the whole story of guy's
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  Speaker 4: life that is embedded in there, but you can put
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  Speaker 4: that aside and really go down into the clarity of
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  Speaker 4: the human body. And that's a thing that we all share.
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  Speaker 4: If you can, and I kind of make caveats on this,
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  Speaker 4: if you can sit and stand from a chair without assistance,
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  Speaker 4: and if you can walk outside for thirty minutes without
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  Speaker 4: getting out of breath, that you can do this work.
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  Speaker 4: You know, if you have more limitations, then you might
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  Speaker 4: need more therapeutic work.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just writing down something you said that I think
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  Speaker 1: is amazing. Let's back up a little here. When did
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  Speaker 1: you decide and why did you decide to write this book.
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  Speaker 4: I had wanted to kind of bring everything that I
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: did together in some cohesive way, and the going online
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  Speaker 4: was something I wanted to do. I just didn't have
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  Speaker 4: the time to do it. So it was a great opportunity.
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  Speaker 4: And my whole thing was to have people taste test it,
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  Speaker 4: to try it out on their body. When they feel
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  Speaker 4: that profound difference, then they can continue on with it.
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  Speaker 3: But what I found was.
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  Speaker 4: The difference was too surprising and too kind of out
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  Speaker 4: of the box that people didn't know what to make
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  Speaker 4: of it. So what I wrote a book around and
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  Speaker 4: I kind of framed it out in a way that
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  Speaker 4: fits this concept of what it means to stand on
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  Speaker 4: your own two feet. So that's adulting, that's resilience, that's ownership,
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  Speaker 4: and that's presence. And what it means to move forward
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  Speaker 4: as trauma resolution, that's really showing up for yourself, that's
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  Speaker 4: going in the direction of your intention and your heart's desire.
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  Speaker 1: So I mean, obviously there's a lot of now A
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  Speaker 1: somatic courses out there, therapy, treatment modalities and so forth.
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  Speaker 1: Books How did you because what you're describing is very
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: interesting to me. I certainly haven't talked to anyone who's
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: doing what you're doing. How did you come at it
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  Speaker 1: from this angle?
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  Speaker 3: In a sense, it came in pieces.
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  Speaker 4: I think one of the turning points for me was
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  Speaker 4: when I read doctor John Rady's book.
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  Speaker 3: He's a psychiatrist.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: He wrote a book and it's i think in the
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: early or mid nineties, called The a User's Guide to
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: the Brain Perception attention and the fourth theaters of the brain.
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  Speaker 4: So he's a psychiatrist, and he writes about how he
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: treats people and their sensory issues and how that can
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  Speaker 4: make such a change. It was so powerful and very
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  Speaker 4: profound that one woman in particular, he worked with her
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  Speaker 4: auditory issue, and she had been hospitalized she identified as
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: having this disorder, a psychiatric disorder, when in fact, if
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: he addressed her auditory issue, she could function normally.
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  Speaker 3: So it's a and I.
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  Speaker 4: Don't know, I sense that a lot that people struggle,
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  Speaker 4: and their struggles are not personal struggles. They're just body struggles,
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  Speaker 4: sensing struggles, perception and interpretation struggles, and that when you
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  Speaker 4: can work on that level and open up people to
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  Speaker 4: have space, like I like to say that, you're giving
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: people back their bandwidth, because if your bandwidth is eaten
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  Speaker 4: up by trying to stay straight or trying to figure
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: out what you're seeing, like if you have glasses, like
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  Speaker 4: if you need glasses to see and you take it off,
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  Speaker 4: it's a lot of struggle to.
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  Speaker 3: Try to figure out where you are.
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  Speaker 4: So when you can take that struggle away, you offer
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  Speaker 4: people more bandwidth to deal with the things that life
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: throws at them.
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  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit how you organize the
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: book again, let me just remind every when I'm speaking
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: with Sue Choi, the book is called When Things Stick,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Untangling your Body from Old Patterns.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: How did you who's the first? Of all? Who's the
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: book for?
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  Speaker 4: So the book is for people, you know, I like
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  Speaker 4: to say it's for people who have tried other sobatic
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  Speaker 4: modalities already, because the process of paying attention to what
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: you're feeling in your body can sometimes take a little
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: bit of training. However, from the feedback, because I've sold,
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: you know, like over fifteen thousand books. From the feedback
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  Speaker 4: that I get from the book, even people who don't
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  Speaker 4: necessarily have a lot of experience with that but are
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: furious have done their their therapy.
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  Speaker 3: Have have have.
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  Speaker 4: Know their story. Right, This isn't this isn't a one
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  Speaker 4: o one book. You shouldn't do this at your as
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  Speaker 4: your first exploration into your mind, body and your trauma,
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  Speaker 4: for sure. But people who you know don't have a
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  Speaker 4: lot of experience still get pretty profound results.
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  Speaker 3: But it can be a kind of bumpy ride.
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  Speaker 4: If you are experienced in mind body, you've been doing
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  Speaker 4: that for a while, you're used to sensing small internal signals,
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  Speaker 4: then this is this is you're gonna the more experience
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: you have, the more you'll get from the book.
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  Speaker 1: So it sounds like it would also be good for
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: not just clients, but therapists, is psycond therapists as well.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, definitely, Okay.
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  Speaker 2: I'm very intrigued by this. So how did you structure
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the book?
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Well, one of the things things like you you asked,
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: like how you know, getting into your body and stuff
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: is so vague in general and out there. A couple
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: of my early experiences with somatic modalities was Hannah Somatics
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: and Alexander Technique, and the people I worked with had
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: such a hard time actually trying to articulate what it
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: was or what was happening, that there there's a gap there.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: And so I wanted to simplify the understanding of what's happening,
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: what you're doing in your body, what's happening, And so
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: I framed it out in standing and Walking, and I
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: framed out in just six kind of core lessons where
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: you can get the direct experience of what can change
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: for you. And every lesson is associated with the meaning.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: So the first one is about finding how you can
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: feel supported in your body. And it's a very accessible concept.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: A lot of people get a lot from that and
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: use it again and again. But it's really not about
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: the action. It's about the experience of being able to
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: feel safe in your body when you you don't have
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: to hold yourself up because your body is designed to
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: hold you.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: How can you find that? And if you could find.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: It in a reliable, predictable way, suddenly you're you're way
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: forward right in how comfortable.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: You are in your body.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: This is really interesting to me. So who do you
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: work with? Who comes to you to work, are people
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: specifically or primarily who've been impacted by trauma.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: Or just Yeah, I would say a lot of people have,
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: but some people haven't. Sometimes were coming just with a
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: physical thing.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: But because it.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: Relates back to meaning, meaning is kind of the binder
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: for the physical and the mental emotional. When you understand
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: the meaning that changes your body evoke, then you change
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: your perception of yourself, of your personal narrative of what's possible.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Give us an example of that. When you change the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: meaning of what's happening, Give us an example of that.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: What does that look like?
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So might that look like yeah.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: So I'm thinking of someone in particular who was very
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: rigid when she came in. She you know, her her
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: job was in it, and she she was very like,
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: I have to get it right, I have to get
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: it perfect. And her journey has been amazing because she
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: took on a physical challenge like a you know, century
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: bike ride.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Which she wouldn't have done before.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: And then and now she's and she's in her she's sixty,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: and she's she's cracking open a new aspect of herself
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: because she's not beating herself up for not doing it
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: right or trying to work harder to make it happen right.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: She's able to meet herself in a different way that's
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: more compassionate, more educated about how she can operate in
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: her body system, and more accepting and more playful. So
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: what it does is like a lot of people say
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: that they feel more playful in their body because that
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: level of discovery in your body that kids have, because
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: there's so much happening, you can start to capture that
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: again because you're feeling your body differently, you're going into
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: different places, and so it feels fun and refreshing because
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: you know, most of my people are more in midlife or.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Later, so they have this. You know, when we're.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: Young, we're kind of pushed by hormones to go through
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: life and have experiences, and we don't have a lot
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: of reference point.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: But you get to a certain point.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: Where, now you have a lot of data in your life,
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: you can notice the patterns. You get frustrated where you're stuck,
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: and you start to feel the diminishment of possibility. So
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: when you feel that deep visceral change that is surprising
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: that you wouldn't expect in your body, that's when all
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: those those neurons go on.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Now that you get those.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Now and when you're working with someone, how do you
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: invite those changes?
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: How are you working with them such that they're.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Moving in such a way or experiencing something in such
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a way such that they're able to experience that.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: Well, most of the work is in standing. That's one
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: thing that's very different from some other practices because that's
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: that is the human challenge of standing on these two
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: little platforms and managing the weight of your head. So
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: you know, you could just imagine a child and you
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: watch that child try to walk. It's a big neurological
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: thing when they start to stand and walk, and they
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: are you know, things are firing off because that's a
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: very complex thing. So when you relearn how to stand first,
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: how to find that balance, and you're balancing in a
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: way that recruits everything instead of having to work at it,
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: that you're able to allow the connections to happen so
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: that your body can support you. So in martial arts
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: they teach you this.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: I have so many.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: People who have been doing martial arts for decades thinking
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: they understood what the lower danteane was, but when they
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: do this work, they're like, oh, wow, that's what it is.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: I have the concept of what it is.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: I thought I was connecting to it, but it's such
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: an internal thing that it's hard to teach. So I
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: teach in a very kind of clear way that somebody
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: said that. He said, you can communicate that in a
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: way that's not bound up in esoteric language.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: It's very interesting to me, Sue, I really like I
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: really like this. There's something obviously so like elemental about
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: standing and moving, right, There's just something so visceral about it.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, just the fact that the people you're working
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: with are standing. Just that in and of itself, feels
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to me like like you you can't. I mean you
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: have to be present, right, you have, whether you're you're
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: shifting around in your body. It invites a kind of
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: awareness that might not otherwise be called upon if someone
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: was just.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: Sitting down exactly or line down, you know, a treatment
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: on the table, and then you get up, all of
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: those patterns to stand, all of your postural patterns, all
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: of those come back online because you haven't relearned anything
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: when you're lying on a table receiving something from someone else.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: So when you're standing up and making the changes in
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: real time to yourself, that's a huge, huge elevation in
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: your skill set.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: How does what you do.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Differ from the other some of the other sematic therapies
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: out there that people might be familiar with, such as
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: sematic experiencing or sentury motor and on and on and on.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of those. The framework is a key
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: one to the frameworks on that is just the the
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: action of sensing or it's you know that it's not
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: in the larger framework of standing and walking, because when
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: you put it into those contexts, you can use it
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: all day long. You have to sit on the side
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: and do it, and you don't need a practitioner. It
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: is you discovering your own body. And when you have
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: to say in the language that your body understands.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And when you say discovering, what does that mean? How
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: is a client learning to discover what are you inviting
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: them to do?
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: They're learning to feel what their body is capable of.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: When they can learn how to organize themselves differently, what
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: they what they'll find is they'll find internal connectivity and
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: specifically in standing, they'll find how their skeleton can support
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: their structure and then there's a hydraulic column of support
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: up the center of their self that they can learn
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: to trust.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: When we bring in trauma, which just feel like the
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: wrench in the cog and how does that work? How
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: do you bring that in? It just seems like it
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: can be very challenging for a lot of us, for
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of people.
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so what like you know, in all trauma work,
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: you have to build up the resources for it first,
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: and so we spend a lot of time building up
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: the resources.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: And that's what it is.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Standing on your own two feet and then learning specifically
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: the clarity of how a human system moves forward, which
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: is moving back and forth from side to side in
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: a way that you could learn to ride that process
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: inside of you, which is the infinity movement. And so
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: in Taichi right, they do that. They're doing this constant
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: weight shift from side to side. So when you can
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: feel the clarity of that in your body, and the
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: clarity comes from working with your cerebellum, which is, you know,
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: the little brain at the base of your head that
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: organizes the same side of the body, and then you
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: understand that conscious movement walking works from the opposite side.
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: So you know, we know that if you have a
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: stroke in your so matter of sensory cortex on the
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: right side, your left side will be affected. So to
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: work on my left side to organize my left side
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: takes the cerebellum and then the opposite so matter of
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: sensory cortex, so there's an integration there that happens so
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: that you can pass cleanly to.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: The other side.
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: And that action of organizing on one side first, that
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: standing and then being able to pass cleanly onto the
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: other side is the essence of being able to be
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: with the center of yourself as you move through life.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: When you're not the center, you're going to have to
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: reorganize yourself. That eats a bandwidth, or you have to
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: correct yourself so you're constantly self correcting. You can do
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: that in a big way or do that in a
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: very minimal way. The less you have to self correct,
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: the more bandwidth you have.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Wow, damn sou intense. It's just there's something very beautiful
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: about this. There's something very