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The Stories Your Body Holds · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The stories your body holds.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: The body remembers even when the mind moves on.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are someone who has done all the mindset work and yet you still feel stuck, or you're somebody who finds yourself repeating limiting patterns of beliefs and behaviors, even though you should know better, or perhaps you feel tension in your body even though you don't feel stressed, then this is your sign to grab yourself a cupper and start to listen to why you need to lead with your body first.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to open this conversation by sharing a story with you.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was January 23, and my one of my best friends had said to me, Louise, you have to sign up for this free training that's online.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was totally not interested.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was all about money mindset.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was so over that.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: She said, please sign up.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: She said, You're gonna, you won't regret it.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I dutifully did as I was told, and she was absolutely right.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was five days of training online, and I remember like locking myself in my tiny little office on my yoga mat.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And within about two minutes of this simple movement, which is basically just alternating the weight of my body to my from my left leg to my right leg, from my left leg to my right leg.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It really was that simple.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, like I say, within two minutes, I was on the floor, snotty, sobbing, my whole body like being racked by these sobs.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of that first day, I felt an element of cleansing.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I felt clearer, I felt lighter, I felt like something had been lifted and taken away from me that I just hadn't been able to do with my brain.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of the five days, I remember thinking, I don't know what's just happened to me, but I feel completely different.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I felt something had changed in me and it felt body-led.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't something that I'd done with my brains.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We hadn't done lots of brain work, we hadn't done coaching, it was all embodiment.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember going out with some friends for a walk that weekend and saying, I feel like this is the first time I've smiled and felt that smile for well over two years.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So since then, I feel extremely blessed to have trained in somatics and nervous system regulation, and it has completely changed my life.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, my intention for this conversation is to give you a very basic overview of how your body is storing your stories and how you might be experiencing that in your life and what you can start to do about it so that you can release it because it's such a transformational process.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: We probably all know some of the common ways that we hold stress and tension, like tight shoulders, tension headaches, clenching of the jaw, digestive disorders, IBS, that kind of stuff.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're kind of relatively generic.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a very conceptual idea, as well as kind of like an active idea of our body and how it stores emotions.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been a healer for a good, well, well, I trained when I was in my 20s, so that was 30 years ago.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I understood it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I understood the concept.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd talk to people about this forever, but learning and experiencing at this level was a completely different ball game.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna, like I say, I'm gonna keep it simple.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about we've got something called fascia.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to imagine just for now that this fascia is like another suit that you wear underneath your skin, but it connects and and surrounds every muscle, every ligament, joint, bone, like everything.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this fascia is a communication highway.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Messages whiz round this really, really fast.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the wisdom of your body.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been likened to um, you know, like your sixth sense.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine that something happens, so a traumatic event or a repetitive emotional event.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I call it repetitive, repetitive emotional impact.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: We have the same thing over and over again, the same life experience over and over again.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have conditioning from how we're brought up.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: We see things on social media, like it's it's happening all the time, whether you know it or not.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And imagine that what's happening is somewhere along the line that is causing a blockage in this fascia.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you imagine what happens to a relationship, imagine that you know you've got a relationship with somebody that you love and the communication breaks down.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can't talk to each other anymore.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That relationship massively suffers, and it's the same in your body.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have become so disconnected from our body as a source of wisdom and a natural source of healing and a natural source of guidance because we've been told to value our brain, to value what's going on up here, to think ourselves forward, to think ourselves out of something, and yet we have this incredibly innate, um, complex and beautiful experience of our body that we've just become so misaligned with.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, somatics has really taught me to lean back into my body and let me lead with that, and then bring my brain on board when I decide.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think I said this in the introduction, there came a season that the season in my life that I've just I'm just coming out of now.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I could not coach myself out of it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I could not think my way out of it.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was something else going on.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when I had that breakdown on the mat, there was this light bulb moment that said, Oh, I I there is something going on in my body, and I could not get there.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I could not release that by thinking about it or by coaching myself there.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back to the fascia.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll hear me talk a lot through our conversations about shapes and patterns.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll explain shapes in a little bit because I really want you to have a visual or a feeling that you can anchor into that helps you understand what I mean when I say shapes, that you can start to be aware of the shapes that you are expressing yourself in and through in the world.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It will also help you elevate and expand your compassion for other people when you understand their shapes and how they might have been created and how it's impacting and informing the model of the world that they are living in.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got patterns of um hidden patterns of stress, trauma, and limitation.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it can come from conditioning, it can come from repetitive experiences, it can come from you know a powerful emotional or you know, or a physical event.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like it, we we don't know how it's happening, we don't know where it's happening, we don't know where we're storing it.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've said to people on my retreats, you know, you may be holding something in your knee, it could be something in the knuckle of your little toe, it could be in your rib cage.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: We know that with there are some there's some amazing um research on ancient wisdom that talks about certain organs that hold certain emotions, and I believe all of that is true, but I also believe that we have to tap in, turn sometimes turn that off so we can let our body say, Well, this is where I'm holding it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what that doesn't have to make logical sense.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the process, okay.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got these stored patterns and shapes of stress, trauma, and limitation, and they can show up in so many ways.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It can show up in physical pain, it can be uh lack of mobility, it can be in unhelpful mental loops, um beliefs and behaviors, it can be emotional and nervous system dysregulation.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just such a huge map.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If we think about just some of the simple day-to-days that that could impact, if you are in a lot of physical pain, chronic pain, and you know, un undiagnosed um pain, some of that can be to do with these stored patterns of limitation.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a personal example.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Since my dad passed away in November 21, I've watched my mum.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's still thankfully, you know, very active, but I've watched my mum's um physical shape change.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've also watched how she's become more limited in her mobility.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched her start to roll over.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, grief can get into our into our ribs.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've got our lungs, which are to do with with fear and uncertainty and loss, alongside however she's experiencing it, if that makes sense, like a flexibility moving forward.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So hips and knees and feet.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I just wanted to share that with you.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to think about sleep, I want you to think about moods, I want you to think about flexibility and openness in your mind and your body.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about how it's in how it might impact your relationships if you've got um emotional dysregulation, like that can be really hard.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: The oppression.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about a limited life experience because you've created this shape that informs how you're experiencing the world.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: The shape that gets created actually determines how you see the world, who you are, and how you interact with and in the world, but also how people experience you.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the more you dive into this, it's absolutely fascinating to not just see people how they physically change shape.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you if you look at somebody that suffers with um, you know, depression, oftentimes their shoulders will be rolled and their chin will be sort of tucked more in towards their chest, they're sort of like slightly rolled over.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you, you know, you can tell when somebody's rigid, you can tell when somebody's very open.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: All these shapes are are nuanced um signals for our body, our our own wisdom to pick up on, but we're so disconnected, like I said, you know, we're so in our brain that we're a lot of us are switched off from that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's oh my god, it's just amazing.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to go back to the story briefly and and sort of let you know.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um, like I said, I couldn't think my way out and I couldn't coach my way out.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And after that experience on the mat, I knew that somehow I had to find a way to start leading with my body.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was less about deciding that I needed to go on a healing journey.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't feel like that, but it felt like I needed to put my body in the environment where she could release what she'd been holding on to so she could restore her and me so that I could find harmony.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But what I didn't expect was not only finding this harmony, but my whole world shifted in terms of how I felt about what I'd been limited in before, what I thought was possible for me, what you know, I just viewed the world differently.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when our teacher told us this when we was on the course in Barcelona, and he said, you know, before your external world changes, it will change because of how you're seeing it.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, eh, yeah, all right.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he was so true.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's magnificent.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when you leave with your body, you'll hear me talking a lot again about somatic wisdoms.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: They call it mind-body, they're not separate, they're together.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like learning to trust the wisdom of your body.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: The trust is the biggest barrier, hands down, to people receiving, experiencing the transformative effects, impact of somatic practice in my experience.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we start to learn how to value that inner message, that inner intuition, those little nudges that are like, I'm I've got to go here or I've got to do this, or there's just you start to pick up on these synchronicities and you start to tap into what's going on for you.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We learn to trust ourselves at a whole other level.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like without your brain being involved, there is space.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is space when you just let your brain take a back seat for a while.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It also helps us to create safety in a world that has so much uncertainty.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So many of our patterns come because we have felt unsafe.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we have created this pattern, this shape, to help us create safety at that time, particularly when we were children.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had no concept, no context of how to create safety for ourselves emotionally.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so we develop these ways of doing it that when we're five are great, but when we're 50, not so great, and we don't know necessarily how to get out of them.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, my somatic practice that I take my clients through that I run on retreats is a combination.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: We do beautiful, slow exercises on the mat, putting our body into a state of complete comfort and safety so she can release patterns of stored stress and limitation, restore herself, and then get into harmony and expansion.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: However, I always tell my clients, this is like yoga, you know, if you if yoga is a practice on and off the mat, so is somatic.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Somatic is a way of you deciding the kind of shape you want to experience yourself in in the world.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So before we wrap up, I want to just give you a few little ways that you can start to do that now.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you can tap into that somatic wisdom, so you can start to understand more.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you can start to understand your reactions and your responses.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can start to, I don't even know if I know that I want to say understand, because we're going back to the brain, but you just have a different perspective.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're taking a different viewpoint on the way that you're thinking and on the things that you want.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I've noticed is I'm far more aware of the limiting patterns.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now, after quite a while of doing the practice, I can step out of them without judgment, without having to drag them along with me.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it is honestly it's life-changing.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the easiest ways is to do a body scan.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: The body scan can just be about like where am I holding tension?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of you need to unclench your jaw, so relax your jaw, relax your tongue, drop your shoulders, and soften your tummy.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that is all it takes just to get back into your body.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Jaw, tongue, shoulders, tummy.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love those four.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Also, what I love to do is notice when I have a reaction to something, something that someone said, something that I've seen.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, as an example for me, if I'm watching something on TV and it gets violent, it I can feel like itching underneath my skin.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I might I don't like it.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: My body does not like it, I don't like it.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the body scan is not just about like where you're feeling tension in the moment, it's about, oh, I noticed that I had that reaction or that response to something.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That can be life-changing in itself.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: We can do shaking, right?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Shaking, jumping around.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love doing all of that.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's an instant game changer.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't know, this is why your dogs do a lot of shakings.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: When your dogs get nervous or they get excited and they do the whole shaky, shaky thing, they're just regulating their nervous system.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love, I love that concept.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know about that until I did somatics.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: By far, for me, the easiest way to practice somatics and the one that has the biggest and the quickest impact is to slow down, to slow down how quickly I'm talking, to slow down my writing.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm journaling, slow down my writing, because that shows me if I find myself journaling really fast, unless I'm doing channeling writing, it's because my brain's on fire and I need to take that time back.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, slowing down how you how quickly you're walking.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So slow your walking down, slow your talking down, slow your writing.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And your brain will follow when you've done enough practice, by far, favorite exercise, and you can do start doing that immediately.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So wrapping it all up, this is not a I don't like this is not about fixing.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know that necessarily I want to talk about healing.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I like the words restoration, I like sort of thinking about shape shifting and us making a choice and just tapping back into that somatic wisdom and recognizing ourselves as a as a body, as a whole thing that goes out and experiences the world.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's understanding the limitations of your mind and the power of your body.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So your or your brain, I should say.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that the brain can put so much limitation on us uh just because of we're being human and there is so much power in the body that most of us don't have access to.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And somatics helps you to kind of recreate that balance.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to experience the power of somatic practice for yourself, I have got a free somatic practice video that you can go get right away.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It comes with an amazing somatic dream time handbook, which is part of the somatic practice, talks you through about how to start accessing your own somatic wisdom, how to start listening to the messages, and how to implement that into your life.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is go to the link below this video or this podcast, and you can grab that immediately.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and I'll speak to you again in the next episode of the speaking speaker.