December 4, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of Soma Says, Dr. Soma Mandal is joined by Sue Choi, founder of The Coherent Body, a somatic awareness and nervous system healing practice that helps women rebuild resilience, presence, and inner stability.
Sue shares her powerful personal journey—from living with chronic depression to discovering the healing potential of yoga, martial arts, and mindfulness-based somatic work. She explains how her method evolved into a trauma-informed, integrative approach that teaches women how to reconnect with the wisdom of their bodies.
Together, Soma and Sue explore the science and art of coherence, how posture and sensory integration shape emotional regulation, and why somatic awareness is essential for navigating hormonal transitions, chronic stress, and midlife change.
Listeners will learn practical tools to regulate the nervous system, cultivate presence, and complement traditional therapy or medical care with body-based practices that promote deep, sustainable healing.
A must-listen for women seeking calm, clarity, and embodied confidence—especially during perimenopause, menopause, or life transitions that demand resilience.
⏱️ Timeline00:00 — Introduction to Sue Choi and The Coherent Body 00:39 — Sue’s Personal Journey and Professional Development 02:41 — Understanding Coherence in Body and Mind 03:30 — Practical Techniques for Somatic Awareness 11:49 — Addressing Women’s Health and Hormonal Transitions 17:41 — Integrating Somatic Practices with Traditional Therapy 19:42 — Approaches to Trauma and Healing 22:16 — Incorporating Somatic Concepts in Clinical Practice 43:12 — Final Thoughts and Rapid Fire Questions
🔗 Connect with Sue Choi🌐 Website: https://www.coherentbody.com 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coherent_body/?hl=en
🔗 Connect with Dr. Soma Mandal🌐 Website: https://www.somamandalmd.com 🏥 (incoming) Medical Director of Women’s Health, Hackensack Meridian Health – Jersey Shore University Medical Center 📚 Book: Midlife Masala Available on: • Amazon • Barnes & Noble • Kobo • BookBub 🎧 Listen to Soma Says: • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soma-says/id1752337105 • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SomaSays/videos 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsomamandalmd 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/somamandalmd
⭐ Support the PodcastIf this conversation inspired you, please follow, rate, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your support helps more women discover the tools and insights they need to thrive in midlife and beyond.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today, I'm Soma says, I'm joined by Sue Choi, the founder of The Coherent Body, A practice dedicated to helping people restore balance and vitality through somatic awareness and nervous system healing.
(00:13):
Sue's work, bridges movement, mindfulness, and trauma-informed practices to help women reconnect with their inner rhythm and resilience.
Sue, thank you so much for joining me on.
Soma Says, what inspired you professionally and personally to develop the coherent body? Thanks for having me on.
(00:38):
I'm excited to be here.
My journey started with my own personal battle with chronic depression.
So spent most of my life dealing with that in different ways.
And when I was, really not getting anywhere with the talk therapy.
And I had done yoga before and I knew that I was definitely not taking care of my body and need to get back to that.
(01:01):
So I committed to yoga and martial arts every day.
that combo was really magical for me.
It really helped me start to change bad habits.
I was in a really quick turnaround in transformation that surprised both me and my therapist and I wanted to understand that more.
I was working in finance and I took a year off to immerse myself in learning.
(01:28):
And then I started teaching yoga.
I went to India.
But for me after I started working in this way, I developed an autoimmune disease.
I have graves.
And that was another layer of self-examination that I had to go through.
And then I started to learn about trauma in the body, but there weren't a lot of good approaches or understanding around that.
(01:52):
as I started to do more across a wide range of things, I started to develop my own approach because early on in my yoga therapy training, there's some psychologists in the group too, and they said, this is really just psychology.
the approach was that you're meditating on the person in front of you and you are with them and their goal, and you bring the whole toolbox that you have to help them reach their goal.
(02:20):
the foundation was in the relating, and that's, I think it's carried me through, but I've always looked for what's the missing thing that I don't understand that would help them.
And that's brought me to a multi-sensory approach where I use the visual system, the auditory system, and the postural system to help people find their center.
(02:42):
but before we get into it the name Coherent Body it's very.
Very beautiful, and it's very, it just automatically makes you think, what does that mean? So what does coherence mean in the context of body, mind and healing for you? For me it means presence.
And that's just a big word that people can interpret in different ways, but it means presence of how you pay attention what you're paying attention to, how you're paying attention to it, and with what you're paying attention to.
(03:12):
So the whole self, the sensory, phenomenal self, the heart self, the cognitive self to bring all of that into alignment really is magical.
Opens up a lot of your own perception.
Can you educate my audience as to how you do that and how it helps your patients, your customers realize that, it's not just one thing that they need to work on, but a variety of things? Yeah.
(03:47):
Like one thing for instance, while you're listening to me, if you, so we listen through air conduction through our eardrums, but we also listen through bone conduction.
So if you listen to me with your bones, you could, first of all, I always say listen from the deep front surface of your spine.
you could listen with your sternum or you could even listen with your forehead and notice how that changes the way you pay attention.
(04:13):
There's a subtle internal shift in your entire postural system.
When you do that, and one of the I got that from Alfred Tamad, who was a French ENT, he developed a sound therapy method that I'm trained in.
But he would see when people were their listening was organized, their body was in this ready state to receive and that ready state to to him, he called it the listening posture.
(04:38):
But I can get people there quickly when I say, listen from the front of their spine.
And if that feels too vulnerable, then what the whole process is designed to do is to feel how your bony structure can support you.
And when you do that in a way that allows the front surface of the spine to listen, your central column of hydraulic support, your alignment of your diaphragms gives you this elastic support.
(05:06):
And in general, is it a vibration that you're supposed to experience within your body? Within, let's say the forehead or the spine or your sternum vibration, really the orientation.
How do you orient to listen to somebody else? Okay.
Alright.
Orient yourself to listen from the deep front surface of the spine.
(05:28):
Can you feel like there's a postural shift? Yes.
Internally.
And there's a availability and what I hear a lot of people say is oh, I can actually really listen and not be anxious about what I'm gonna say and reply.
Okay.
Present.
there are a lot of really quick ways you could get into this present moment state from different, senses and techniques so that you're doing it in the moment that you're not doing it off to the side when you have time, but you're doing it in the moment you're really living it.
(06:02):
So you're it's, and correct me if I'm wrong.
But is it like a meditation because you're focusing one part of your body instead of I think of it as a meditation.
Is this a similar thing? There's this psychologist Ellen Langer and she has been doing MINDBODY and mindfulness stuff, but not in the way of the meditative, I'm going to sit still so that I can focus.
(06:29):
Or just being attentive to the moment and to the possibility of the moment.
So not pre-judging the moment, not pre-ex expecting what's gonna happen, but to be available and with the present moment in.
All its possibilities is to step back from the doing state and be in this receiving state.
(06:53):
But in a way, and because you're standing in the way I teach in a way that is supported and that you're not listening and receiving in a way where you are not presence, you are, you show up and you feel your presence really clearly.
And when you do that and are available, then that's really powerful.
(07:17):
Okay.
Can you give us another example of how you incorporate other senses for your customers? Sure.
Sure.
You standing, you want me to stand? the reason I have people do it in standing is because our posture is personal.
It is so personal and so global.
(07:38):
And so if you could make this change in your standing a lot of things start to fall away in terms of so close your eyes.
And for most people, when they close their eyes, they're gonna sway a little bit, and that's natural.
Now, organize yourself.
So all the weight is over the arches of your feet, okay? And then from there, you're going to imagine that you're about to take a seat, but don't do it.
(08:03):
Make a small enough move within yourself so that you feel maybe even more solid on your feet.
And then, so with your eyeballs, you're going to lift your eyeballs out into the horizon as if your eyes are open and you're looking at the clouds above the mountains.
(08:24):
So what just happened for you doing that? That's a really short, less than almost.
Should I open my eyes now? Yeah.
Such a short little thing.
If you look off in the horizon, the weight of your head is gonna be positioned a little differently.
If you listen to your environment, the organization of your head again, is gonna be positioned a little differently.
But the first idea of this is that the weight centers of your body, the heavy head, the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle are aligned in a way that you allow the pelvic girdle to support those two weight centers above, and it brings all the weight down into the feet.
(09:01):
In a way it was designed to support you.
That was, I noticed it and it was like, normally if I'm feeling a little anxious, and I always am a little bit, when I do the podcast not a bad anxious, it's just I always wanted to be a good, interview, but it takes me a little time to relax.
And so I always like, when I, prepare beforehand I always try to relax, but inevitably when I log on, I get a little bit anxious.
(09:30):
But what I noticed with that exercise was that my heart rate went down pretty quickly.
Yeah.
And so here's the other thing you can do as you're talking, if you feel for the vibration of your own voice in the front surface of your spine.
So you listen and you speak from there.
You were mentioning that you were trained in this sensory method.
(09:50):
What specific training have you had to be doing this with your patients? Can you let our audience know? Yeah.
I have a lot of different trainings.
I did the tamma sound therapy method.
I've done a natural vision, which was based on William Bates, who was an ophthalmologist that helped people improve their visual system.
(10:11):
But really it was just, when I learned about it, I learned about it in India, and then I went to train in Holland.
With a chemist who changed his life, so he could do that as his work.
But what I noticed, it was like yoga for the eyes.
And there in fact, there is a fellow named Mayor Schneider, who's Israeli.
He has a system he calls yoga for the eyes.
And a lot of the natural, a lot of the Bates work is based around this process called blur resolution.
(10:38):
So that's a higher cognitive order.
But I use the visual system as a body organization method as well.
So the way you use ocular control to turn the body informs how the spine organizes, informs how the two halves of your body organizes.
(10:58):
So I'm always.
Going back to the whole body as a complete system.
And the two main things, everything goes back to whatever I'm teaching or developing, goes back to standing and walking.
And when you have that, if you have that and feed everything back through those lens, it really helps you feel more comfortable understanding what you can do in the moment, because that's my ultimate goal, that you are empowered to shift the moment for yourself when you need it most.
(11:34):
Yes.
I think, these, the little exercise that you taught me, I'll definitely be using, and I am trying, the postural exer exercise that you just mentioned as we speak.
So I'll keep you posted on that.
As a physician, as a doctor who sees a lot of women I see a lot of women in their midwives, and a lot of times women as they go enter into perimenopause and menopause, and even afterwards their nervous systems are often on overdrive and it shows up in the exam room and it's often mixed with other things, right? They're in the sandwich generation, so they're juggling taking care of their kids, their spouses, their parents obviously work and they're dealing with these hormonal transitions.
(12:23):
So how does.
Your program, your method, help women with these kind of things.
What have you seen in your practice with these type of women that I'm describing to you? I would say it's not a bunch of different issues.
(12:43):
It's all, if you can look at it as all part of the same thing, then it becomes more manageable.
It's your bandwidth is eaten up.
How do you recover your bandwidth so that the present moment feels more expansive? And I have a lot of different ways to address that, but that posture one is really powerful and really quick and can shift the moment because a lot of times it's the.
(13:06):
Internal dialogue that we're having about all the things that you still need to do.
Why do I have to do this? It expands the, it eats away at your bandwidth and it just makes everything that you do so much more difficult when you have this inner narrative that you may not even be knowing know is going on.
Like a really quick way to quiet that inner narrative is to actually say out loud exactly what you're doing.
(13:32):
Okay, I'm lifting this cup and I need to, I'm putting it into the sink.
I am cutting these vegetables because I'm making soup.
It crowds out that self-talk, but it also brings you into the present moment.
I'm doing this, I'm seeing it, I'm narrating it, I'm exhaling because I'm speaking out loud.
(13:53):
And it's just, it's, it is a really powerful, simple tool.
Okay.
So when you see your patients when they come in, what are some of the early signs that somebody's body is out of coherence, basically physically, emotionally, and energetically spiritually? What are these early signs that you identify? Typically when people come in to see me physically they have something that is bothering them.
(14:23):
And then when they're on the table, I'll be doing craniosacral on them so I can feel it in their system.
Okay.
Is overactivated and if I can't get them into a calm state within less than 10 minutes, then there's definitely something that's a little bit more embedded.
For the general public, maybe they need to watch what they eat more and, cut out some of the high inflammatory processes or whatever.
(14:50):
But for my people, if they're coming in and they're resistant to, if their system is resistant to settling, to recovering, then a lot of times there's some verbalization that needs to happen.
Or some level of agency, they need to feel back in their body.
And that's why I do the standing work because you feel the agency you're not lying down and relaxing and then bringing all of your patterns back in when you stand up.
(15:17):
Okay.
But when they feel something that they can do.
In the moment that changes them and makes them feel better without having to check out and go to an appointment or go to a class, that they have this immediacy of a shift.
And the accumulation of having those experiences really quiets a lot of the worry and the anxiety about everything that needs to be done and brings you into the flow of what's happening and what you're doing.
(15:49):
And does it take several sessions before they are able to get into this state physiologically? Or is it just one time and then they know what to do? What is your experience, your perspective on that? When they're coming in to see me, it depends on what to see me for, and, yeah.
(16:10):
Help them get to a different state, but it's always what you end up doing for the rest of the day.
You have to change your habits.
The postural habits can be slow to build, but because they're so quick I let people know, 'cause I work with people online too, that what you want to do is not more practice, but you want the practice to move.
(16:33):
Practicing learning how to play piano, you have to practice more to build that skill because it's a non-native skill.
This is a native skill.
Your body knows how to stand and walk.
What you are doing is you are looking to get to less doing as fast as possible because your lower brain processes multi-millions of times faster than your cognitive brain.
(16:56):
And when you are trying to top down control.
An outcome in your body.
It is so slow and you often get in the way, especially with this work, but if you give it the right signals and you give it key signals that it understands, it takes over.
And people feel such a huge shift, and sometimes the shift goes too quickly and it's frightening.
(17:20):
And then, they revert back because they're not used to it.
So that's, that is typically the issue with a lot of people.
As you start to unwrap things another layer comes off, you come against a different pattern.
What you're doing is you're accumulating and improving your skillset as you go on.
It's like, how long is a piece of string? So as you were talking, I was, I was basically comparing this to traditional cognitive behavioral therapy.
(17:48):
And oftentimes like in, in those kind of situations, it becomes about managing the stress, but your work basically emphasizes on feeling the stress that what may be causing it, but also integrating it.
how does this complement your patients who are also maybe going through therapy or seeing a psychiatrist on maybe on medications? How does it work in tandem? Yeah, it's perfect for that because so if you have the top down and your story, it's really great because when you bump up against things, you'll be able to link it to something that makes sense to you.
(18:27):
But in terms of what you're doing, when you're noticing in your body what is happening the small signals There are two times, one time you actually, you probably wanna go into co action and cognitive behavioral therapy.
The other time you wanna go deeper.
So if you are anxious and you don't feel good and then you look for signals in your system, you're going to find things that stress you out more.
(18:55):
Okay.
You don't have an out.
Yeah.
That out is gonna be some sort of top down action.
You are paying attention to what works and you can predictably recreate that.
You've just developed a skill that empowers you and it creates a positive feedback loop that starts to wire the change of possibility.
(19:19):
Yeah.
Instead of trying to fix what you can't do first you build your warehouse of all of these experiences of what you can do.
That makes a huge difference because now you can go back to those things that were stuck and holding.
You have more tools.
(19:42):
Often in patients who have experienced some type of trauma, it can, at least some of my patients have told me that sometimes when they talk to a therapist, they feel like their wounds are opening up again and it's too traumatic for them that can induce another trauma for them.
(20:03):
Or if they feel like their therapist doesn't hear them in a certain way, that can also induce a trauma.
How does your techniques, your treatment differ from something like that? How, what is your approach for patients who have experienced a deep trauma? Yeah.
(20:25):
The first thing is that you are, you're not gonna tackle the trauma head on.
Okay.
The first step is to develop a new skillset.
Yeah.
Is an embodied skillset.
And that skillset is at the core about attention.
How you pay attention and what you pay attention to.
So you're paying attention to what works and you're paying attention to sensations, not to emotions, but to the component sensations that make up any emotion.
(20:54):
So you're looking, instead of saying, I'm scared, you're looking for, I feel the knot in my stomach on my left side and not my right side.
Or I feel, you start to get familiar and use language that is body phenomenal physiological changes instead of.
Staying general or abstract or using emotive words, you get down to the sensations and that sensations are what you can witness in real time.
(21:23):
You can watch the lifecycle of activation and resolution, and what they wanna do is really start to practice seeing resolution again and again.
And that's why something like, let's say progressive tensing of your body and the releasing works because you are creating a moment where you can do something and then you can watch the resolution.
(21:45):
And you know that the isometric exercises for high blood pressure, they work because you build up a little bit of tension, but then there's that release process and you're training your body.
To go into resolution phase.
And if you do that deliberately and observe resolution stage and understand what it feels like in your body, and you have that again and again, that is your toolkit to address old traumatic stories.
(22:14):
Okay? So doctors like myself or even other types of doctors psychiatrists general practitioners, GYNs, how can we incorporate more of this with our patients? What can we do as clinicians to better introduce somatic concepts in a way that feels grounded and not abstract.
(22:45):
Yeah, that's a great question.
that's, Would you, is that something you'd be comfortable teaching your clients Yeah.
So that's one way you could do it.
if they tools, and maybe if I wrote a little booklet, but another simple tool in terms of breathing, which can be really hard for people if they're anxious.
Yeah.
You really wanna focus on the exhale and lengthening the exhale for them and waiting for beat before the inhale.
(23:08):
Do so that if they wait and linger a little bit with you there and you tell them that you're building up the CO2 so that your body will naturally trigger an inhale that you could trust it and they do three cycles with you, that could really change everything.
Or I love alternate nostril breathing as a Break you out of a breathing pattern.
(23:28):
And then the final thing is for some people who are more exhale, fixed or they don't take a, an inhale very well, I like to have them imagine that they're smelling different scents.
So lemon.
Okay.
Lemon and pine are really good.
So if you imagine you're smelling lemon and notice how you breathe.
And then imagine you're smelling pine, you just take a deeper breath.
(23:51):
Do you feel the difference though, how With just that imagination.
So for people who are depressed smelling lemon is great 'cause it wakes them up.
But for people who are anxious, like smelling pine can ground them.
Okay.
So there's a lot of these different ways of paying attention to what's happening in your body in the moment that can really give you more confidence in how adaptable you are.
(24:19):
How do you see this changing the way we approach women's health in the future? I'm moving forward into a role where I am going to hope, with others, collaborate at a major medical center to develop a women's health center.
And I do want to bring in an aspect of, holistic care.
(24:42):
And how, if you were part of this program, what would you do to.
Work on women's anxiety and or depression within this center, if you had to imagine yourself being a part of this.
Yeah.
Like I've developed an intro course where it's four 20 minute videos.
(25:07):
The standing that we did.
But with breathing through the central column of hydraulic support and then they go through using more, their visual and auditory sense in the standing posture.
then they go through the concept of moving forward.
So what needs to happen in your body for you to move forward? It's basically getting the sacrum and the spine to rotate in a way that elicits the whole body organization It's really powerful.
(25:36):
Then for them to feel those things, to experience them and also have the cognitive explanation of what's happening.
So it's not just this mystery thing that happened and then it goes away as an experience.
That becomes an experience that is meaningful to them.
that is the first thing.
And on a brain level, the cerebellum is now it's recognized that the organization of the cerebellum helps with emotional regulation.
(26:04):
So what you're training yourself to do, and they do this in Tai Chi too, you're training yourself to balance on one side.
So that's the ipsilateral side, but then when you cross the midline to walk, now that's a conscious action and that's more somatosensory cortex.
So that's more opposite contral side.
So I explain it to people like you are integrating your lower and upper brain.
(26:28):
Through doing that by standing and walking.
'cause people can think, oh, I know how to stand and walk, and they don't worry about it until they can't do it.
But when you it's like a unmined resource that you have available to you if you do it before you get to state where you can't walk if you do it, there's so much available to you.
And I've sold over 20,000 copies of my book.
(26:51):
People are giving me feedback of how powerful it is.
Yeah.
It's, it sounds like you're, whoever is going through this, they're building new neural networks.
Okay.
The brain is, is fascinating in terms of how it works.
So it, that's what it sounds like to me.
(27:12):
Yeah.
And also I'd like to think of I explained like in your hormonal stage, in your teens, you're you're developing these hormones and they push you through life to have experiences when you get to midlife and now those hormones are taken away from you.
It's, yeah.
Opportunity to take all of those experiences and move forward with more intention.
(27:34):
So now, instead of the hormones pushing you forward, you have wisdom from your experience, but also it clarity more intention if you know how to pay attention.
yeah.
Figure out that they have a body, but then attention is what you pay attention to.
And when you are paying attention to your body with intention it's such a powerful force.
(27:58):
Is this.
More something that you would find in, let's say, Ayurvedic medicine or perhaps within other types of Eastern medicine as well? This concept of posture? Yeah.
I would say the closest thing is would be the martial arts.
Okay.
(28:19):
I have a lot of people, even if they've been doing martial arts for decades, they finally understand, they have the felt sense of the dian, the lower Dian because the way traditions are passed on, it's it's more like indirect.
And here we like to be in the west.
We like to be very direct and so they never got the direct experience of feeling their lower Dante.
(28:40):
And they've never there wasn't the back and forth.
Do you feel it, do you get it? But with the postural shift they feel it and it in a way that they didn't realize that they were missing.
So I'm wondering if this is more of a challenge for people.
'cause I often find, and I always tell myself as well as my patients, that they have to be open to different concepts, which might be acupuncture or Ayurvedic medicine.
(29:09):
That if they will themselves not to believe in it, that it won't work.
Is that similar to, what I just said with this type of practice? I, that, that's one of the reasons I stay away from using esoteric terms or even in anatomical terms.
Because it doesn't matter if you know what the SOAs is, your body doesn't know what the SOAs is.
(29:32):
Because they wanna show that they know an anatomical term.
I tell them your hips, I show them what the sacrum is, but it's really concrete and really accessible.
I used to say that if you, this is for people who have some experience in let's say Tai chi or yoga or other practices where they're paying attention to subtle signals.
(29:52):
I don't say that anymore 'cause I have a lot of people who've never done that before.
Okay.
I was just saying, be careful.
'cause if you don't know how to do this, you might be too boring for you or something.
But I don't say that anymore 'cause I have enough experience with people who have never done anything, feel big shifts.
And it's and I have somatic therapists that I'm training and their clients feel it too.
(30:14):
So I know that it is really accessible without any belief system other than being willing to try something because for some people being in their body or paying attention to their body is still a no-go.
And that's they need to work on.
But yeah, to just try something so small.
(30:35):
To feel how much can change cracks open the window of possibility that you didn't know was there.
Yeah.
So what do you define as healing then? Is it different for each person, for each patient? Is it not just symptom relief but maybe, a reduction in pain somewhere, a reduction in their anxiety levels, perhaps, they didn't even identify it as anxiety, but a fast heart rate.
(31:06):
What does healing look like in your practice? For me, I would say it looks like the capacity to want to do something because I think a lot of the body-based and healing and all of the languaging is around fixing something.
And it can really close and get a little even narcissistic when you're constantly focusing internally.
(31:32):
The whole point of being present is to be available.
So that means relating and that, that goes back to my original training in the yoga therapy.
That the healing happens in relationship, it happens in conversation, it happens in words.
And for me, a lot of it just as a way to that when I see it, since I don't measure the way you do when people start to speak differently, they start to speak up, they start to be more expressive, they start to ask questions.
(32:02):
Because a lot of, like I said, a lot of these things are running in the background and they're constantly limiting you.
And when you start to get more available and feel solid, that then your expression feels authentic.
It feels spontaneous.
It feels genuine because it is coming up from you in a place that's grounded and not, coming out because you you're leaving your body, but that you are grounded and you're able to express what's going on And we're constantly needing to do that in order to communicate and also to bring something new to the, to your world by connecting and engaging with people.
(32:45):
What is the biggest misconception that they have about somatic work or body-based healing or people that you encounter who may doubt the healing processes of this? Yeah, like you say, like people kind of self-select when they come to me.
Okay with me for that specific reason.
(33:06):
But I would say like right now, there's so much out there about the mental attitude and how that changes everything.
That I'm trying to think of people maybe who are actually more trusting of the medical model and are a little skeptical that changing your body will have a big mental emotional effect other than, I exercise and I feel better other than you feel better, is we're looking like, can you feel more empowered and can you feel more available? And when you do that, you can connect and the concept Of connecting with the body, I never try to convince people.
(33:45):
I try to show it.
And so I try to show it by doing, making things as small and simple as possible.
I have the intro courses, I have the book.
I never intended or set out to write a book.
the three keys, which was a version of what I just taught you was what I started with.
this has everything that's gonna fix a lot of things.
People would do it, but then they wouldn't trust the changes because it happened too fast.
(34:10):
it was too easy.
I've been working with my back pain for 20 years that, that can't fix it.
They don't believe it.
So I write more context so that they can grasp what's going on.
But yeah it can be hard for people to believe that it's possible to change by changing how you stand and walk.
(34:32):
Yeah.
One of the, you are over on the east coast, you know the Franklin Institute? Yes.
So I like to show they, they have this model of the white matter in the brain.
Have you seen that? So I like to show that and say, these are super high ways in your brain there.
It highly connects your brain.
And it's not cognitive, it's just a connector.
(34:55):
If you allow your body to use that and connect these things together, you are, you're leveraging the speed of that, and that's what happens.
That's why you feel such a quick change because you're leveraging the subcortical organizational brain.
You don't wanna think about that.
That's not, you're not, your thinking brain is not good at doing that.
(35:18):
Your thinking brain is good at creating new things, dealing with novel, problems or things that way, but it's not standing and walking.
Sorry, that's been figured out, that's evolution, that's been figured out.
Let your body do that and give it the signals it needs so that it can trust that you are able to feel supported and that comes from internal.
(35:40):
If you are gripping, embracing yourself to stand, you cannot feel though that central column of support.
But Once you feel it, that's when you get into the martial arts.
That q yeah.
You feel the power of gravity coursing through your body.
(36:01):
Yeah.
I've felt q when I have had acupuncture and I didn't even know what it was.
And I described it to my acupuncturist, this was many years ago when I first felt it and she said, oh wow.
This, that's what this is.
And I'll be honest with you, I was very skeptical of the whole process itself until I tried it.
(36:26):
So I think the fact that even though I come from a culture of Eastern medicine I, I definitely at that time at least wasn't in touch with my own body.
Yeah.
And I think actually the more professionals like yourself who hold a certain level of authority, experience themselves and can communicate it, I think that will help a lot of people get over the skepticism.
(36:51):
An MD came to me and he, was dubious about the craniosacral, but on the table, he's oh, I get it now.
Oh, come on.
The craniosacral is the best.
Yeah.
that should actually be a required module for all MDs.
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
There's we.
They crammed so much into four years, and now we're discovering all the things, especially about women's health that weren't focused on So there's a lot that needs to be taught to physicians.
(37:26):
But I think the concept, and I know we're joking around right now, but I think, what happens with a lot of doctors is we become close-minded, and I was one of them.
So I feel like I can say this without sounding judgmental of others.
But as I got older, I realized that I had to really keep an open mind to things in order to continue learning.
(37:48):
Because when you close yourself off, that's when learning stops.
Yeah.
You will not learn it through your patients, through other physicians or other types of practitioners.
Your learning will come to a stop.
So I felt like I had to I don't know, I just force myself to listen more, to listen and not talk, wow.
(38:09):
There's so many constraints with medicine these days.
At times you have to, you have to really it, there's a lot of challenges in terms of listening to patients and, keeping an open mind.
So what have you, we, I've been talking about what I've learned.
What have you personally learned from your clients through this whole process? Like even a very, what I would consider you are getting down to the core.
(38:36):
Yeah.
Challenge and you're ref you're hitting it.
Oh, this is what you want.
That sweet spot.
It, that could be scary that going to doing too much too fast can in a seemingly simple movement can actually be, feel very threatening.
(38:57):
Yeah.
It can feel threatening to, to find your internal locus of control because there are layers of self-doubt and training and everything that's sitting there making that feel dangerous.
But really what you're doing is when you get to the center of yourself, you're in your locus of control in a way that can be frightening.
(39:27):
Yeah.
While you were speaking of that, I was thinking about some of my patients today, who, and I'm not trying to get political with you, they were just basically saying that our current climate let's just say that that they're doom scrolling, they're watching the news.
In those moments where people are feeling very anxious, what can they do to stop that from happening, to put the phone down? What did that little exercise that you just showed me, would that help? Or is there something else that you would guide my audience to do? Here's what I would say, because when you are looking at your phone or even your desktop, but really it's the phone 'cause it's so close to your face.
(40:08):
It's a very visual experience.
So what you need to do is maybe relieve that visual system so you're like this, they're down and together.
This is a really simple thing.
If you imagine that you pick a horizon, and let's say it's a horizon off in the distance, but you're making a demarcation in your room even.
You use your nose as if it's a feather or a pencil, and it could reach out to trace the edges of things.
(40:35):
Okay? So you could trace the ceiling, you could trace the lamp or the cup.
And if you trace that, what you're doing is you're allowing your visual system to let go and you're using your head to orient, and you're also allowing yourself to look off in the environ.
It's a really surprisingly calming thing.
(40:57):
And, I have a whole way of teaching people how to use their visual world.
So that they feel more, again, in the center of their experience and present within themselves instead of adjacent to themselves or instead of in front of themselves.
(41:17):
How long, if you don't mind me asking, did it take for you to practice this before you found some relief? Oh, this is a, what I offer now is a result of 25 years of study.
Yeah.
So there are pieces but I would say the auditory and visual piece were two components that I realized that if I brought them together, you don't need to have.
(41:47):
If you bring 'em together with enough with enough of a small change the body will come up because it's seeing everything together and it will come up and assist with that process.
And when did I start doing that? 'cause early on I would, I did do that visual training, and then I got the I think it was probably like 12, 15 years in, I started to bring it together the way, okay, now but before even when I saw people in person, you are coming in for body work, okay? You're being on the table, you're coming in for movement training.
(42:23):
Okay, I'm gonna teach you.
And then I realize like they'll just get faster results if I touch them.
If they're doing movement, I'm gonna help you so you can feel it.
Or if they're on the table, this is your exercise, We're gonna, you're gonna learn how to do what I just did to you on the table through movement.
So that's how I start to, to develop that together.
(42:45):
And basically what I teach people online is how they can navigate their own system so that they could get similar results to what I do to them on the table, because that's the fastest way when I do it.
But the enduring way is how you stand up and walk out the door with it, Obviously, you can't be with your clients 24 7, right? So what they do outside of your exam room is what counts the most.
(43:12):
So what I've started incorporating in my podcast are some rapid fire questions meant to be fun and light.
One question I wanted to ask you was, what body-based practice do you do every morning? Oh, I use my eyes when I'm still in bed.
to coordinate movement through my whole body.
(43:34):
So it's okay.
That shame, but also waking myself up.
Okay.
And what myth about stress would you like to debunk? Oh, that it needs to go away.
It is part of life.
It's your, it stress can be debilitating or it could be stimulating.
our bones grow, we need stress, yeah.
(43:58):
So it's like you view it as a tool rather than a problem.
I feel Okay.
Yeah.
It's different than what I've encountered with most people.
finish the sentence, my body feels most coherent when.
My body feels most coherent when I am outdoors with perspective.
(44:23):
So typically it's gonna be like elevated so I can see at a distance.
So I've learned a lot from you and, for my audience who want to get in touch with you to read your book, to find your website, perhaps your social media, where would we find you? It's coherent body.com.
(44:44):
My book is When Things Stick, untangling Your Body From Old Patterns.
It's on Amazon.
Or if you go to my website, you could get the digital book.
There's also intro course where you'll walk through these videos and then you get the book as a bonus after you finish the course.
Okay.
For ways to get, instagram, it's coherent body and Facebook.
(45:08):
It's all on my website, Great.
So I just wanted to thank you, Sue, for reminding us that healing begins when we learn to listen in our bodies with compassion.
And to learn more about Sue's work, visit coherent body.com.
And if you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe.
(45:28):
Leave a review and share.
Soma says What someone who could use a little more calm and coherence in their life.
Today, I'm Soma says, I'm joined by Sue Choi, the founder of The Coherent Body, A practice dedicated to helping people restore balance and vitality through somatic awareness and nervous system healing.
(00:13):
Sue's work, bridges movement, mindfulness, and trauma-informed practices to help women reconnect with their inner rhythm and resilience.
Sue, thank you so much for joining me on.
Soma Says, what inspired you professionally and personally to develop the coherent body? Thanks for having me on.
(00:38):
I'm excited to be here.
My journey started with my own personal battle with chronic depression.
So spent most of my life dealing with that in different ways.
And when I was, really not getting anywhere with the talk therapy.
And I had done yoga before and I knew that I was definitely not taking care of my body and need to get back to that.
(01:01):
So I committed to yoga and martial arts every day.
that combo was really magical for me.
It really helped me start to change bad habits.
I was in a really quick turnaround in transformation that surprised both me and my therapist and I wanted to understand that more.
I was working in finance and I took a year off to immerse myself in learning.
(01:28):
And then I started teaching yoga.
I went to India.
But for me after I started working in this way, I developed an autoimmune disease.
I have graves.
And that was another layer of self-examination that I had to go through.
And then I started to learn about trauma in the body, but there weren't a lot of good approaches or understanding around that.
(01:52):
as I started to do more across a wide range of things, I started to develop my own approach because early on in my yoga therapy training, there's some psychologists in the group too, and they said, this is really just psychology.
the approach was that you're meditating on the person in front of you and you are with them and their goal, and you bring the whole toolbox that you have to help them reach their goal.
(02:20):
the foundation was in the relating, and that's, I think it's carried me through, but I've always looked for what's the missing thing that I don't understand that would help them.
And that's brought me to a multi-sensory approach where I use the visual system, the auditory system, and the postural system to help people find their center.
(02:42):
but before we get into it the name Coherent Body it's very.
Very beautiful, and it's very, it just automatically makes you think, what does that mean? So what does coherence mean in the context of body, mind and healing for you? For me it means presence.
And that's just a big word that people can interpret in different ways, but it means presence of how you pay attention what you're paying attention to, how you're paying attention to it, and with what you're paying attention to.
(03:12):
So the whole self, the sensory, phenomenal self, the heart self, the cognitive self to bring all of that into alignment really is magical.
Opens up a lot of your own perception.
Can you educate my audience as to how you do that and how it helps your patients, your customers realize that, it's not just one thing that they need to work on, but a variety of things? Yeah.
(03:47):
Like one thing for instance, while you're listening to me, if you, so we listen through air conduction through our eardrums, but we also listen through bone conduction.
So if you listen to me with your bones, you could, first of all, I always say listen from the deep front surface of your spine.
you could listen with your sternum or you could even listen with your forehead and notice how that changes the way you pay attention.
(04:13):
There's a subtle internal shift in your entire postural system.
When you do that, and one of the I got that from Alfred Tamad, who was a French ENT, he developed a sound therapy method that I'm trained in.
But he would see when people were their listening was organized, their body was in this ready state to receive and that ready state to to him, he called it the listening posture.
(04:38):
But I can get people there quickly when I say, listen from the front of their spine.
And if that feels too vulnerable, then what the whole process is designed to do is to feel how your bony structure can support you.
And when you do that in a way that allows the front surface of the spine to listen, your central column of hydraulic support, your alignment of your diaphragms gives you this elastic support.
(05:06):
And in general, is it a vibration that you're supposed to experience within your body? Within, let's say the forehead or the spine or your sternum vibration, really the orientation.
How do you orient to listen to somebody else? Okay.
Alright.
Orient yourself to listen from the deep front surface of the spine.
(05:28):
Can you feel like there's a postural shift? Yes.
Internally.
And there's a availability and what I hear a lot of people say is oh, I can actually really listen and not be anxious about what I'm gonna say and reply.
Okay.
Present.
there are a lot of really quick ways you could get into this present moment state from different, senses and techniques so that you're doing it in the moment that you're not doing it off to the side when you have time, but you're doing it in the moment you're really living it.
(06:02):
So you're it's, and correct me if I'm wrong.
But is it like a meditation because you're focusing one part of your body instead of I think of it as a meditation.
Is this a similar thing? There's this psychologist Ellen Langer and she has been doing MINDBODY and mindfulness stuff, but not in the way of the meditative, I'm going to sit still so that I can focus.
(06:29):
Or just being attentive to the moment and to the possibility of the moment.
So not pre-judging the moment, not pre-ex expecting what's gonna happen, but to be available and with the present moment in.
All its possibilities is to step back from the doing state and be in this receiving state.
(06:53):
But in a way, and because you're standing in the way I teach in a way that is supported and that you're not listening and receiving in a way where you are not presence, you are, you show up and you feel your presence really clearly.
And when you do that and are available, then that's really powerful.
(07:17):
Okay.
Can you give us another example of how you incorporate other senses for your customers? Sure.
Sure.
You standing, you want me to stand? the reason I have people do it in standing is because our posture is personal.
It is so personal and so global.
(07:38):
And so if you could make this change in your standing a lot of things start to fall away in terms of so close your eyes.
And for most people, when they close their eyes, they're gonna sway a little bit, and that's natural.
Now, organize yourself.
So all the weight is over the arches of your feet, okay? And then from there, you're going to imagine that you're about to take a seat, but don't do it.
(08:03):
Make a small enough move within yourself so that you feel maybe even more solid on your feet.
And then, so with your eyeballs, you're going to lift your eyeballs out into the horizon as if your eyes are open and you're looking at the clouds above the mountains.
(08:24):
So what just happened for you doing that? That's a really short, less than almost.
Should I open my eyes now? Yeah.
Such a short little thing.
If you look off in the horizon, the weight of your head is gonna be positioned a little differently.
If you listen to your environment, the organization of your head again, is gonna be positioned a little differently.
But the first idea of this is that the weight centers of your body, the heavy head, the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle are aligned in a way that you allow the pelvic girdle to support those two weight centers above, and it brings all the weight down into the feet.
(09:01):
In a way it was designed to support you.
That was, I noticed it and it was like, normally if I'm feeling a little anxious, and I always am a little bit, when I do the podcast not a bad anxious, it's just I always wanted to be a good, interview, but it takes me a little time to relax.
And so I always like, when I, prepare beforehand I always try to relax, but inevitably when I log on, I get a little bit anxious.
(09:30):
But what I noticed with that exercise was that my heart rate went down pretty quickly.
Yeah.
And so here's the other thing you can do as you're talking, if you feel for the vibration of your own voice in the front surface of your spine.
So you listen and you speak from there.
You were mentioning that you were trained in this sensory method.
(09:50):
What specific training have you had to be doing this with your patients? Can you let our audience know? Yeah.
I have a lot of different trainings.
I did the tamma sound therapy method.
I've done a natural vision, which was based on William Bates, who was an ophthalmologist that helped people improve their visual system.
(10:11):
But really it was just, when I learned about it, I learned about it in India, and then I went to train in Holland.
With a chemist who changed his life, so he could do that as his work.
But what I noticed, it was like yoga for the eyes.
And there in fact, there is a fellow named Mayor Schneider, who's Israeli.
He has a system he calls yoga for the eyes.
And a lot of the natural, a lot of the Bates work is based around this process called blur resolution.
(10:38):
So that's a higher cognitive order.
But I use the visual system as a body organization method as well.
So the way you use ocular control to turn the body informs how the spine organizes, informs how the two halves of your body organizes.
(10:58):
So I'm always.
Going back to the whole body as a complete system.
And the two main things, everything goes back to whatever I'm teaching or developing, goes back to standing and walking.
And when you have that, if you have that and feed everything back through those lens, it really helps you feel more comfortable understanding what you can do in the moment, because that's my ultimate goal, that you are empowered to shift the moment for yourself when you need it most.
(11:34):
Yes.
I think, these, the little exercise that you taught me, I'll definitely be using, and I am trying, the postural exer exercise that you just mentioned as we speak.
So I'll keep you posted on that.
As a physician, as a doctor who sees a lot of women I see a lot of women in their midwives, and a lot of times women as they go enter into perimenopause and menopause, and even afterwards their nervous systems are often on overdrive and it shows up in the exam room and it's often mixed with other things, right? They're in the sandwich generation, so they're juggling taking care of their kids, their spouses, their parents obviously work and they're dealing with these hormonal transitions.
(12:23):
So how does.
Your program, your method, help women with these kind of things.
What have you seen in your practice with these type of women that I'm describing to you? I would say it's not a bunch of different issues.
(12:43):
It's all, if you can look at it as all part of the same thing, then it becomes more manageable.
It's your bandwidth is eaten up.
How do you recover your bandwidth so that the present moment feels more expansive? And I have a lot of different ways to address that, but that posture one is really powerful and really quick and can shift the moment because a lot of times it's the.
(13:06):
Internal dialogue that we're having about all the things that you still need to do.
Why do I have to do this? It expands the, it eats away at your bandwidth and it just makes everything that you do so much more difficult when you have this inner narrative that you may not even be knowing know is going on.
Like a really quick way to quiet that inner narrative is to actually say out loud exactly what you're doing.
(13:32):
Okay, I'm lifting this cup and I need to, I'm putting it into the sink.
I am cutting these vegetables because I'm making soup.
It crowds out that self-talk, but it also brings you into the present moment.
I'm doing this, I'm seeing it, I'm narrating it, I'm exhaling because I'm speaking out loud.
(13:53):
And it's just, it's, it is a really powerful, simple tool.
Okay.
So when you see your patients when they come in, what are some of the early signs that somebody's body is out of coherence, basically physically, emotionally, and energetically spiritually? What are these early signs that you identify? Typically when people come in to see me physically they have something that is bothering them.
(14:23):
And then when they're on the table, I'll be doing craniosacral on them so I can feel it in their system.
Okay.
Is overactivated and if I can't get them into a calm state within less than 10 minutes, then there's definitely something that's a little bit more embedded.
For the general public, maybe they need to watch what they eat more and, cut out some of the high inflammatory processes or whatever.
(14:50):
But for my people, if they're coming in and they're resistant to, if their system is resistant to settling, to recovering, then a lot of times there's some verbalization that needs to happen.
Or some level of agency, they need to feel back in their body.
And that's why I do the standing work because you feel the agency you're not lying down and relaxing and then bringing all of your patterns back in when you stand up.
(15:17):
Okay.
But when they feel something that they can do.
In the moment that changes them and makes them feel better without having to check out and go to an appointment or go to a class, that they have this immediacy of a shift.
And the accumulation of having those experiences really quiets a lot of the worry and the anxiety about everything that needs to be done and brings you into the flow of what's happening and what you're doing.
(15:49):
And does it take several sessions before they are able to get into this state physiologically? Or is it just one time and then they know what to do? What is your experience, your perspective on that? When they're coming in to see me, it depends on what to see me for, and, yeah.
(16:10):
Help them get to a different state, but it's always what you end up doing for the rest of the day.
You have to change your habits.
The postural habits can be slow to build, but because they're so quick I let people know, 'cause I work with people online too, that what you want to do is not more practice, but you want the practice to move.
(16:33):
Practicing learning how to play piano, you have to practice more to build that skill because it's a non-native skill.
This is a native skill.
Your body knows how to stand and walk.
What you are doing is you are looking to get to less doing as fast as possible because your lower brain processes multi-millions of times faster than your cognitive brain.
(16:56):
And when you are trying to top down control.
An outcome in your body.
It is so slow and you often get in the way, especially with this work, but if you give it the right signals and you give it key signals that it understands, it takes over.
And people feel such a huge shift, and sometimes the shift goes too quickly and it's frightening.
(17:20):
And then, they revert back because they're not used to it.
So that's, that is typically the issue with a lot of people.
As you start to unwrap things another layer comes off, you come against a different pattern.
What you're doing is you're accumulating and improving your skillset as you go on.
It's like, how long is a piece of string? So as you were talking, I was, I was basically comparing this to traditional cognitive behavioral therapy.
(17:48):
And oftentimes like in, in those kind of situations, it becomes about managing the stress, but your work basically emphasizes on feeling the stress that what may be causing it, but also integrating it.
how does this complement your patients who are also maybe going through therapy or seeing a psychiatrist on maybe on medications? How does it work in tandem? Yeah, it's perfect for that because so if you have the top down and your story, it's really great because when you bump up against things, you'll be able to link it to something that makes sense to you.
(18:27):
But in terms of what you're doing, when you're noticing in your body what is happening the small signals There are two times, one time you actually, you probably wanna go into co action and cognitive behavioral therapy.
The other time you wanna go deeper.
So if you are anxious and you don't feel good and then you look for signals in your system, you're going to find things that stress you out more.
(18:55):
Okay.
You don't have an out.
Yeah.
That out is gonna be some sort of top down action.
You are paying attention to what works and you can predictably recreate that.
You've just developed a skill that empowers you and it creates a positive feedback loop that starts to wire the change of possibility.
(19:19):
Yeah.
Instead of trying to fix what you can't do first you build your warehouse of all of these experiences of what you can do.
That makes a huge difference because now you can go back to those things that were stuck and holding.
You have more tools.
(19:42):
Often in patients who have experienced some type of trauma, it can, at least some of my patients have told me that sometimes when they talk to a therapist, they feel like their wounds are opening up again and it's too traumatic for them that can induce another trauma for them.
(20:03):
Or if they feel like their therapist doesn't hear them in a certain way, that can also induce a trauma.
How does your techniques, your treatment differ from something like that? How, what is your approach for patients who have experienced a deep trauma? Yeah.
(20:25):
The first thing is that you are, you're not gonna tackle the trauma head on.
Okay.
The first step is to develop a new skillset.
Yeah.
Is an embodied skillset.
And that skillset is at the core about attention.
How you pay attention and what you pay attention to.
So you're paying attention to what works and you're paying attention to sensations, not to emotions, but to the component sensations that make up any emotion.
(20:54):
So you're looking, instead of saying, I'm scared, you're looking for, I feel the knot in my stomach on my left side and not my right side.
Or I feel, you start to get familiar and use language that is body phenomenal physiological changes instead of.
Staying general or abstract or using emotive words, you get down to the sensations and that sensations are what you can witness in real time.
(21:23):
You can watch the lifecycle of activation and resolution, and what they wanna do is really start to practice seeing resolution again and again.
And that's why something like, let's say progressive tensing of your body and the releasing works because you are creating a moment where you can do something and then you can watch the resolution.
(21:45):
And you know that the isometric exercises for high blood pressure, they work because you build up a little bit of tension, but then there's that release process and you're training your body.
To go into resolution phase.
And if you do that deliberately and observe resolution stage and understand what it feels like in your body, and you have that again and again, that is your toolkit to address old traumatic stories.
(22:14):
Okay? So doctors like myself or even other types of doctors psychiatrists general practitioners, GYNs, how can we incorporate more of this with our patients? What can we do as clinicians to better introduce somatic concepts in a way that feels grounded and not abstract.
(22:45):
Yeah, that's a great question.
that's, Would you, is that something you'd be comfortable teaching your clients Yeah.
So that's one way you could do it.
if they tools, and maybe if I wrote a little booklet, but another simple tool in terms of breathing, which can be really hard for people if they're anxious.
Yeah.
You really wanna focus on the exhale and lengthening the exhale for them and waiting for beat before the inhale.
(23:08):
Do so that if they wait and linger a little bit with you there and you tell them that you're building up the CO2 so that your body will naturally trigger an inhale that you could trust it and they do three cycles with you, that could really change everything.
Or I love alternate nostril breathing as a Break you out of a breathing pattern.
(23:28):
And then the final thing is for some people who are more exhale, fixed or they don't take a, an inhale very well, I like to have them imagine that they're smelling different scents.
So lemon.
Okay.
Lemon and pine are really good.
So if you imagine you're smelling lemon and notice how you breathe.
And then imagine you're smelling pine, you just take a deeper breath.
(23:51):
Do you feel the difference though, how With just that imagination.
So for people who are depressed smelling lemon is great 'cause it wakes them up.
But for people who are anxious, like smelling pine can ground them.
Okay.
So there's a lot of these different ways of paying attention to what's happening in your body in the moment that can really give you more confidence in how adaptable you are.
(24:19):
How do you see this changing the way we approach women's health in the future? I'm moving forward into a role where I am going to hope, with others, collaborate at a major medical center to develop a women's health center.
And I do want to bring in an aspect of, holistic care.
(24:42):
And how, if you were part of this program, what would you do to.
Work on women's anxiety and or depression within this center, if you had to imagine yourself being a part of this.
Yeah.
Like I've developed an intro course where it's four 20 minute videos.
(25:07):
The standing that we did.
But with breathing through the central column of hydraulic support and then they go through using more, their visual and auditory sense in the standing posture.
then they go through the concept of moving forward.
So what needs to happen in your body for you to move forward? It's basically getting the sacrum and the spine to rotate in a way that elicits the whole body organization It's really powerful.
(25:36):
Then for them to feel those things, to experience them and also have the cognitive explanation of what's happening.
So it's not just this mystery thing that happened and then it goes away as an experience.
That becomes an experience that is meaningful to them.
that is the first thing.
And on a brain level, the cerebellum is now it's recognized that the organization of the cerebellum helps with emotional regulation.
(26:04):
So what you're training yourself to do, and they do this in Tai Chi too, you're training yourself to balance on one side.
So that's the ipsilateral side, but then when you cross the midline to walk, now that's a conscious action and that's more somatosensory cortex.
So that's more opposite contral side.
So I explain it to people like you are integrating your lower and upper brain.
(26:28):
Through doing that by standing and walking.
'cause people can think, oh, I know how to stand and walk, and they don't worry about it until they can't do it.
But when you it's like a unmined resource that you have available to you if you do it before you get to state where you can't walk if you do it, there's so much available to you.
And I've sold over 20,000 copies of my book.
(26:51):
People are giving me feedback of how powerful it is.
Yeah.
It's, it sounds like you're, whoever is going through this, they're building new neural networks.
Okay.
The brain is, is fascinating in terms of how it works.
So it, that's what it sounds like to me.
(27:12):
Yeah.
And also I'd like to think of I explained like in your hormonal stage, in your teens, you're you're developing these hormones and they push you through life to have experiences when you get to midlife and now those hormones are taken away from you.
It's, yeah.
Opportunity to take all of those experiences and move forward with more intention.
(27:34):
So now, instead of the hormones pushing you forward, you have wisdom from your experience, but also it clarity more intention if you know how to pay attention.
yeah.
Figure out that they have a body, but then attention is what you pay attention to.
And when you are paying attention to your body with intention it's such a powerful force.
(27:58):
Is this.
More something that you would find in, let's say, Ayurvedic medicine or perhaps within other types of Eastern medicine as well? This concept of posture? Yeah.
I would say the closest thing is would be the martial arts.
Okay.
(28:19):
I have a lot of people, even if they've been doing martial arts for decades, they finally understand, they have the felt sense of the dian, the lower Dian because the way traditions are passed on, it's it's more like indirect.
And here we like to be in the west.
We like to be very direct and so they never got the direct experience of feeling their lower Dante.
(28:40):
And they've never there wasn't the back and forth.
Do you feel it, do you get it? But with the postural shift they feel it and it in a way that they didn't realize that they were missing.
So I'm wondering if this is more of a challenge for people.
'cause I often find, and I always tell myself as well as my patients, that they have to be open to different concepts, which might be acupuncture or Ayurvedic medicine.
(29:09):
That if they will themselves not to believe in it, that it won't work.
Is that similar to, what I just said with this type of practice? I, that, that's one of the reasons I stay away from using esoteric terms or even in anatomical terms.
Because it doesn't matter if you know what the SOAs is, your body doesn't know what the SOAs is.
(29:32):
Because they wanna show that they know an anatomical term.
I tell them your hips, I show them what the sacrum is, but it's really concrete and really accessible.
I used to say that if you, this is for people who have some experience in let's say Tai chi or yoga or other practices where they're paying attention to subtle signals.
(29:52):
I don't say that anymore 'cause I have a lot of people who've never done that before.
Okay.
I was just saying, be careful.
'cause if you don't know how to do this, you might be too boring for you or something.
But I don't say that anymore 'cause I have enough experience with people who have never done anything, feel big shifts.
And it's and I have somatic therapists that I'm training and their clients feel it too.
(30:14):
So I know that it is really accessible without any belief system other than being willing to try something because for some people being in their body or paying attention to their body is still a no-go.
And that's they need to work on.
But yeah, to just try something so small.
(30:35):
To feel how much can change cracks open the window of possibility that you didn't know was there.
Yeah.
So what do you define as healing then? Is it different for each person, for each patient? Is it not just symptom relief but maybe, a reduction in pain somewhere, a reduction in their anxiety levels, perhaps, they didn't even identify it as anxiety, but a fast heart rate.
(31:06):
What does healing look like in your practice? For me, I would say it looks like the capacity to want to do something because I think a lot of the body-based and healing and all of the languaging is around fixing something.
And it can really close and get a little even narcissistic when you're constantly focusing internally.
(31:32):
The whole point of being present is to be available.
So that means relating and that, that goes back to my original training in the yoga therapy.
That the healing happens in relationship, it happens in conversation, it happens in words.
And for me, a lot of it just as a way to that when I see it, since I don't measure the way you do when people start to speak differently, they start to speak up, they start to be more expressive, they start to ask questions.
(32:02):
Because a lot of, like I said, a lot of these things are running in the background and they're constantly limiting you.
And when you start to get more available and feel solid, that then your expression feels authentic.
It feels spontaneous.
It feels genuine because it is coming up from you in a place that's grounded and not, coming out because you you're leaving your body, but that you are grounded and you're able to express what's going on And we're constantly needing to do that in order to communicate and also to bring something new to the, to your world by connecting and engaging with people.
(32:45):
What is the biggest misconception that they have about somatic work or body-based healing or people that you encounter who may doubt the healing processes of this? Yeah, like you say, like people kind of self-select when they come to me.
Okay with me for that specific reason.
(33:06):
But I would say like right now, there's so much out there about the mental attitude and how that changes everything.
That I'm trying to think of people maybe who are actually more trusting of the medical model and are a little skeptical that changing your body will have a big mental emotional effect other than, I exercise and I feel better other than you feel better, is we're looking like, can you feel more empowered and can you feel more available? And when you do that, you can connect and the concept Of connecting with the body, I never try to convince people.
(33:45):
I try to show it.
And so I try to show it by doing, making things as small and simple as possible.
I have the intro courses, I have the book.
I never intended or set out to write a book.
the three keys, which was a version of what I just taught you was what I started with.
this has everything that's gonna fix a lot of things.
People would do it, but then they wouldn't trust the changes because it happened too fast.
(34:10):
it was too easy.
I've been working with my back pain for 20 years that, that can't fix it.
They don't believe it.
So I write more context so that they can grasp what's going on.
But yeah it can be hard for people to believe that it's possible to change by changing how you stand and walk.
(34:32):
Yeah.
One of the, you are over on the east coast, you know the Franklin Institute? Yes.
So I like to show they, they have this model of the white matter in the brain.
Have you seen that? So I like to show that and say, these are super high ways in your brain there.
It highly connects your brain.
And it's not cognitive, it's just a connector.
(34:55):
If you allow your body to use that and connect these things together, you are, you're leveraging the speed of that, and that's what happens.
That's why you feel such a quick change because you're leveraging the subcortical organizational brain.
You don't wanna think about that.
That's not, you're not, your thinking brain is not good at doing that.
(35:18):
Your thinking brain is good at creating new things, dealing with novel, problems or things that way, but it's not standing and walking.
Sorry, that's been figured out, that's evolution, that's been figured out.
Let your body do that and give it the signals it needs so that it can trust that you are able to feel supported and that comes from internal.
(35:40):
If you are gripping, embracing yourself to stand, you cannot feel though that central column of support.
But Once you feel it, that's when you get into the martial arts.
That q yeah.
You feel the power of gravity coursing through your body.
(36:01):
Yeah.
I've felt q when I have had acupuncture and I didn't even know what it was.
And I described it to my acupuncturist, this was many years ago when I first felt it and she said, oh wow.
This, that's what this is.
And I'll be honest with you, I was very skeptical of the whole process itself until I tried it.
(36:26):
So I think the fact that even though I come from a culture of Eastern medicine I, I definitely at that time at least wasn't in touch with my own body.
Yeah.
And I think actually the more professionals like yourself who hold a certain level of authority, experience themselves and can communicate it, I think that will help a lot of people get over the skepticism.
(36:51):
An MD came to me and he, was dubious about the craniosacral, but on the table, he's oh, I get it now.
Oh, come on.
The craniosacral is the best.
Yeah.
that should actually be a required module for all MDs.
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
There's we.
They crammed so much into four years, and now we're discovering all the things, especially about women's health that weren't focused on So there's a lot that needs to be taught to physicians.
(37:26):
But I think the concept, and I know we're joking around right now, but I think, what happens with a lot of doctors is we become close-minded, and I was one of them.
So I feel like I can say this without sounding judgmental of others.
But as I got older, I realized that I had to really keep an open mind to things in order to continue learning.
(37:48):
Because when you close yourself off, that's when learning stops.
Yeah.
You will not learn it through your patients, through other physicians or other types of practitioners.
Your learning will come to a stop.
So I felt like I had to I don't know, I just force myself to listen more, to listen and not talk, wow.
(38:09):
There's so many constraints with medicine these days.
At times you have to, you have to really it, there's a lot of challenges in terms of listening to patients and, keeping an open mind.
So what have you, we, I've been talking about what I've learned.
What have you personally learned from your clients through this whole process? Like even a very, what I would consider you are getting down to the core.
(38:36):
Yeah.
Challenge and you're ref you're hitting it.
Oh, this is what you want.
That sweet spot.
It, that could be scary that going to doing too much too fast can in a seemingly simple movement can actually be, feel very threatening.
(38:57):
Yeah.
It can feel threatening to, to find your internal locus of control because there are layers of self-doubt and training and everything that's sitting there making that feel dangerous.
But really what you're doing is when you get to the center of yourself, you're in your locus of control in a way that can be frightening.
(39:27):
Yeah.
While you were speaking of that, I was thinking about some of my patients today, who, and I'm not trying to get political with you, they were just basically saying that our current climate let's just say that that they're doom scrolling, they're watching the news.
In those moments where people are feeling very anxious, what can they do to stop that from happening, to put the phone down? What did that little exercise that you just showed me, would that help? Or is there something else that you would guide my audience to do? Here's what I would say, because when you are looking at your phone or even your desktop, but really it's the phone 'cause it's so close to your face.
(40:08):
It's a very visual experience.
So what you need to do is maybe relieve that visual system so you're like this, they're down and together.
This is a really simple thing.
If you imagine that you pick a horizon, and let's say it's a horizon off in the distance, but you're making a demarcation in your room even.
You use your nose as if it's a feather or a pencil, and it could reach out to trace the edges of things.
(40:35):
Okay? So you could trace the ceiling, you could trace the lamp or the cup.
And if you trace that, what you're doing is you're allowing your visual system to let go and you're using your head to orient, and you're also allowing yourself to look off in the environ.
It's a really surprisingly calming thing.
(40:57):
And, I have a whole way of teaching people how to use their visual world.
So that they feel more, again, in the center of their experience and present within themselves instead of adjacent to themselves or instead of in front of themselves.
(41:17):
How long, if you don't mind me asking, did it take for you to practice this before you found some relief? Oh, this is a, what I offer now is a result of 25 years of study.
Yeah.
So there are pieces but I would say the auditory and visual piece were two components that I realized that if I brought them together, you don't need to have.
(41:47):
If you bring 'em together with enough with enough of a small change the body will come up because it's seeing everything together and it will come up and assist with that process.
And when did I start doing that? 'cause early on I would, I did do that visual training, and then I got the I think it was probably like 12, 15 years in, I started to bring it together the way, okay, now but before even when I saw people in person, you are coming in for body work, okay? You're being on the table, you're coming in for movement training.
(42:23):
Okay, I'm gonna teach you.
And then I realize like they'll just get faster results if I touch them.
If they're doing movement, I'm gonna help you so you can feel it.
Or if they're on the table, this is your exercise, We're gonna, you're gonna learn how to do what I just did to you on the table through movement.
So that's how I start to, to develop that together.
(42:45):
And basically what I teach people online is how they can navigate their own system so that they could get similar results to what I do to them on the table, because that's the fastest way when I do it.
But the enduring way is how you stand up and walk out the door with it, Obviously, you can't be with your clients 24 7, right? So what they do outside of your exam room is what counts the most.
(43:12):
So what I've started incorporating in my podcast are some rapid fire questions meant to be fun and light.
One question I wanted to ask you was, what body-based practice do you do every morning? Oh, I use my eyes when I'm still in bed.
to coordinate movement through my whole body.
(43:34):
So it's okay.
That shame, but also waking myself up.
Okay.
And what myth about stress would you like to debunk? Oh, that it needs to go away.
It is part of life.
It's your, it stress can be debilitating or it could be stimulating.
our bones grow, we need stress, yeah.
(43:58):
So it's like you view it as a tool rather than a problem.
I feel Okay.
Yeah.
It's different than what I've encountered with most people.
finish the sentence, my body feels most coherent when.
My body feels most coherent when I am outdoors with perspective.
(44:23):
So typically it's gonna be like elevated so I can see at a distance.
So I've learned a lot from you and, for my audience who want to get in touch with you to read your book, to find your website, perhaps your social media, where would we find you? It's coherent body.com.
(44:44):
My book is When Things Stick, untangling Your Body From Old Patterns.
It's on Amazon.
Or if you go to my website, you could get the digital book.
There's also intro course where you'll walk through these videos and then you get the book as a bonus after you finish the course.
Okay.
For ways to get, instagram, it's coherent body and Facebook.
(45:08):
It's all on my website, Great.
So I just wanted to thank you, Sue, for reminding us that healing begins when we learn to listen in our bodies with compassion.
And to learn more about Sue's work, visit coherent body.com.
And if you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe.
(45:28):
Leave a review and share.
Soma says What someone who could use a little more calm and coherence in their life.
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