April 14, 2025 • 57 mins
Michelle Hollingbrooks' extraordinary story begins with a mosquito bite that changed everything. At thirteen, this seemingly insignificant event transmitted equine encephalitis, causing her brain to swell and plunging her into a seven-day coma. The aftermath was devastating – she awoke blind, deaf, partially paralyzed, and with no memory whatsoever. Unlike a newborn baby with established connections from the womb, Michelle describes awakening as a "blank slate" with no understanding of who she was or even what it meant to be human.
This profound disconnection forced Michelle to develop extraordinary body awareness. Unable to communicate verbally and with no memory to draw upon, she became hyper-attuned to energy and somatic cues, learning to read others' bodies as a survival mechanism. These skills now form the foundation of her work as a trauma-informed somatic coach, where she helps others reconnect with their own body wisdom.
The most remarkable aspect of Michelle's journey? The very creature associated with her illness – the horse – became central to her healing. After establishing her nonprofit Unbridled Change, Michelle discovered how horses provide unparalleled opportunities for trauma recovery. She shares a powerful story of a traumatized teen whose breakthrough came when a therapy horse named Barry chose to move toward her during an emotional outburst rather than flee, creating a safe container for authentic emotional processing that no office-bound therapist could replicate.
Michelle's approach blends somatic awareness with spiritual dimensions, recognizing that true healing requires addressing body, mind, and soul as an integrated whole. She views healing not as "fixing" something broken but as "remembering we're already whole" – a profound perspective gained through her own journey back to embodiment. Today, she offers coaching both in-person and virtually, hosts the Soulful Practices podcast, and has authored "The Horse Cure" with a second book on somatic healing coming in 2025.
Ready to reconnect with your own body wisdom? Explore Michelle's work at unbridledchange.org and discover how somatic awareness can transform your relationship with trauma, helping you find the medicine within your own wounds.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi everybody, Welcome to Trauma Talks with Russ
Tellop.
I'm Russ Tellop, your hostToday.
We've got a guest with us.
Her name is MichelleHollingbrooks.
Michelle is a trauma-informedsomatic coach just like me, and
we're going to chat a little bitand find out her story and kind
of what brought her into thisspace and I hope you guys enjoy
(00:34):
Michelle, how are you doingtoday?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm really excited to be here and to dive into, you
know, the body and healing andall this good stuff.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Awesome.
So we had a little chat beforewe got going here and, um man,
you've got one heck of a story.
Do you mind sharing with us umkind of what led you to coaching
and got you started in thisspace?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a little bit kind of likemade for Hollywood movie kind of
thing.
So I do like to invite peopleto use my story as a vehicle to
see the different ways in whichthey've experienced a similar
maybe not a physical symptom oflike what I've experienced.
(01:19):
But as far as that journey ofthat wounded healer, you know,
like we all have had a past,especially if you come into this
podcast, what you have, whichis all about helping to heal
trauma and stepping into thatand reconnecting with the body,
you know there's something thathas got us into this threat and
that is that wounded healer,which is the medicine, is within
(01:40):
the wound right, which means,unfortunately, for us to wake up
to our medicine, we have tohave a wound.
And so that's the unfortunatething.
So I invite people to just kindof presence themselves and
witness as I'm going through mystory, like feel into your body,
like what is happening in andaround your body, what is it
(02:03):
bringing forward, and if youhave a little piece of paper,
you can just write it down,because I would love for it to
help you recognize, maybe, thebreadth of your own experiences
and really honor them and themedicine that was held within
them.
So if that feels good to y'all,then definitely.
Oh, I'm in the South, by theway, sorry about that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Ah, the y'all.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Then you feel free to do that.
Okay, so here's the shortversion of my healer's journey.
So when I was 13 years old, Iwas bit by a mosquito that had
equine eastern encephalitis, andso, for those of you who don't
know, encephalitis is is aninfection inside the brain and
the lining of the brain and theystart to swell, and since it's
(02:50):
viral, there's nothing you cando except for try to manage
what's happening.
But it's your brain, so it's abit of a problem.
Um, and at the same time thatmy system was trying to fight
that, it happened to domino intospinal meningitis and it was
viral as well.
So these two viruses wereinside of me.
My brainstem was swelling andpushing on everything, my lining
(03:15):
of my brain was swelling andthey ended up putting me in.
I slipped into a coma for sevendays and during that time they
cut the back of my skull, put mein a halo.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, trying to just, you know, alleviate that
pressure as much as they canduring that time the virus was
causing your brain to swell andyou said you also got meningitis
.
Was that a different virus orthe virus spread to your spinal
cord?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
It was a different virus that happened to be in, I
guess, the school or in theenvironment that I was in,
because my system wascompromised here.
It just ended up having to workwith two at the same time and it
lost balance.
It couldn't do both.
And so that's when I went intothe coma, and when I was in that
(04:02):
coma, they were telling myparents, you know, like we don't
know what this was back in 1990.
You know they didn't know toomuch about all these different
things and they were like, youknow, like we don't understand
quite what's going to happen.
This is the areas of her brainthat are really vital to her as
being able to function, and sowe don't know what will wake up,
(04:22):
and when I did wake up, I liketo preface it and say my family
has their version, and this isone of the things that I invite
people to remember when they'redoing trauma work is it's not
about tending to the otherpeople in your world with your?
When you go back and you'rehealing and you're working with
(04:44):
those parts of you, honor themfor their experiences, you know,
and so I honor that.
My family has their experience,but this is the experience that
I had and I'm not here to tryto tell theirs.
That's their job to do.
This was what my experience was,and so when I woke up, there
were a couple of things thatwere problematic.
(05:05):
I was deaf because of all theswelling and the trapped fluid
that was within and the pressurethat was within that area,
because the most of the swellingwas on the back, where the
visual cortex is.
I was blind, but not like darkblind, I was like white blind,
so the light absolutely hurt ifand it was so it's like the
(05:27):
aperture on a, on a lens, wastoo open, um and so everything
was just absolutely excruciatingand my system didn't have a way
to to adjust and do what itneeded to do.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
How long were you in the coma?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Seven days.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And so those were two problems.
13 years old, I'm now deaf, I'mnow blind Wow.
I also was paralyzed from themiddle of my back down due to
where in the spinal cord therewas just too much damage from
the swelling that was happening,and so I was a little.
Push me, pull me.
But I wasn't really littlebecause I went into the hospital
(06:06):
as I was about five, nine, five, eight ish.
When I came out of the hospitalthree months later, I was six
one, so I grew four inches inthe hospital yeah, In three
months.
So brain pains are real and theyreally really hurt and they're
(06:26):
very painful.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, that's a lot of growth in three months.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, I feel like my body was trying to give itself
more room.
It was like going into itsgenetic coding, being like what
can we do?
And took like what would havehappened over three years and
said let's do it in three monthsto try to disperse as much as
this.
And so I was.
I had no catch.
If you pushed on me, I couldwould fall over, but I could
(06:54):
move my arms and I could feellike I didn't have a word for it
back then, because you're aboutto find out why I had no work.
It was like like you go to thedentist and you get numb.
You know it's there but youcan't really feel anything with
it.
Yeah, that's what the lower halfof my body was doing, and so I
(07:17):
kind of had an awareness of it,but at the same time, I had no
ability to communicate with itor send signals or receive
signals from it.
It was just this weird deadweight that was attached to me,
so that's problematic.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
And the biggest one, though that was the big problem
is that I had no memory, and soI woke up completely a blank
slate, no awareness of whoMichelle was, no awareness of
who my family was, that I washuman, what that meant to be
human, and so, because of that,I had nothing to link to.
I had no tether to the worldthat I woke up in, because I
(07:56):
didn't remember it, I didn'tknow it, and all I knew was I
was an immense amount of pain,disorganization, and that
eventually, my body had zerosovereignty.
Anybody could do anything to it, and I didn't understand what
those like shadowy things werethat came in and touched me and
(08:17):
moved me and were putting me indifferent machines.
You know, I had no point ofreference for any of that, and
so it just became a permanentfight, fight or freeze, and
eventually my system just wentall the way down to to freeze
because they kept restraining me, because I was like a little
wild animal, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So this is the part that fascinates me is so you're.
You wake up, you're paralyzedfrom the waist down.
You can't see anything, youcan't hear anything, you're in
an incredible amount of pain andyou have no clue what's going
on, or even who you are, or oreven what you are.
You're like a blank slate Rightand I asked you this question
(09:01):
before almost like a baby, andyou had a response for that yeah
, so a baby.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And you had a response for that.
Yeah, so a baby actually hasmemory already, like when we're
in utero, we are sinking, we'rehaving conversations, our
nervous system is talking to themom.
It's talking actually throughthe environment, through mostly
how the mom's interpreting theenvironment around us.
But it can feel sound, soundand it works with sound
(09:26):
frequencies and heartbeats andall these other things.
So it's syncing to theenvironment.
The environment might be a hotmess, but at least it's feels
that there's a predictability.
It's starting to adjust what itneeds to do to be in that space
.
What my body went through withthis was it was completely blown
apart.
(09:46):
It was completely disorganizedby the disruption to the nervous
system and because of the lackof cognitive um connection.
I had nothing to reach for.
There was a little baby reaches.
I didn't know to reach, I justknew to push and to fight.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Sure, well, like you said, it's almost like a, like a
wounded animal right, thatdoesn't know what to do.
Wow, that is incredible.
I'm assuming you still feltbody sensations, somatic
experiences while you're in thisstate, right?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, I didn't have language for them and so I just
really had the impulses for them.
But the problem was my impulseswere always overrode.
So if I did a guttural soundthat just like was like a baby
crying, like there's somethingwrong with me, I didn't know how
to ask for that in a clear wayand continuously.
(10:46):
Every time I would do somethingthat would ask for help from a
somatic point of view or just anonverbal point of view.
It was corrected by I couldn'tmove my body because I couldn't
walk, so I couldn't run away.
You know my body was cueing me,run away, that person's scaring
you and I couldn't run away.
You know my body was cueing me,run away, that person scaring
(11:07):
you and I couldn't do it.
And so, and because I was sospindly at this point, having
grown so much, people could justmove my body.
They just picked me up andmoved me and put me down and
strapped my arms down and youknow I didn't have a voice of
what was happening to me when itwas happening and they just
kept doing hand over hand withme to try to get me to eat, to
(11:30):
push the button when I felt likeI need to go to the bathroom or
something like that, and noneof this made sense to me.
But I realized that if Icomplied, if I've just followed
the bouncing ball of whateverthe people around me I didn't
know that word at that timewanted everything got better
because they went away.
(11:51):
If I just pushed the button,the person would come in, they'd
figure out what was wrong withme, move me and not be as upset
at me because I didn't have anaccident in the bed, you know
what I mean, or something likethat.
Or frustrated with that processof if I would just let them pick
my arm up and prick it, well,that was them drawing blood.
You know, I didn't know whatthey were doing or why they were
(12:14):
doing it, and I didn't evenreally feel a lot of desire to
eat because I didn't even feelconnected to my body.
So it was a whole hot mess of adisorganization that was
happening and I just learned tomimic.
I just called myself a great.
When I look back and I feelinto those versions of me I was
(12:37):
not even like a chameleon,because a chameleon kind of
knows it's changing shapes thatthose early years it was just a
parrot.
You know, I just would matchwhatever thing was around me,
because it was the passive leastresistance, because I had
figured out I couldn't fight andI couldn't run.
So there's only one thing leftin the nervous system to do.
(12:58):
And that's just to freeze.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're aware of all of this as
it's happening, right Like youcan think back and remember all
these things, or are peopletelling you about what happened?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
line panic and terror , like anytime.
I would go back and feel intothat timeframe.
It was just utter terror, utterlike um.
People would ask well, wheredid you go when you went into
the?
And I was just like I just wentinto nothingness, just into
darkness.
It's not like I had a funfantasy place that I would
escape to, because I didn't knowto escape.
You know, I had no memory tobuild off of an imagination of
something with, and so it wasjust pain.
(13:50):
I became a very cellular.
Thing that I had to work onlater in life was that earth was
nothing but pain,disorganization and absolute
helplessness.
That's all the earth school is.
There's nothing else in here,and so that took a while to undo
(14:10):
.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I could imagine yeah, so eventually did all this, all
your memory return, oreverything that you've got now,
stuff that you've developedsince then?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, so the hearing and the eyesight came back first
.
It took about two years.
Well, I guess the very firstthing that came back was my
ability to walk, and that'swhere horses we'll get into that
later kind of come in.
There's a story about howhorses were a huge part of my
healing journey.
We can go there now if you want, or I can keep answering your
(14:44):
question.
We can go there now if you want, or I can keep answering your
question.
But and then the site came backand then the hearing came back,
because I was traveling and Iwas going up and down different
really high mountains out westand so, and when that happened
they popped and like thisgrotesque fluid came out.
It was really gross and all of asudden I was like, oh my God, I
can hear, but they wereteaching me to sign and start to
(15:06):
to communicate that way at thatpoint.
Um, so then I had to go backthrough speech um to learn how
to talk, and if you listenreally closely, you'll hear that
I have some garbled words andit's a little bit more guttural,
because the hearing came backlike 80%, you know pretty good,
but still, I was trying to learnthrough the, the scar tissue of
(15:27):
how I hear things and to workwith things, the memory, yeah,
eventually I tried everything.
You know, you know you dohypnosis as well and other stuff
, like, like you name it.
If there was a technique outthere to try to get memory back,
once I was like in my twenties,I was there, I was up for it, I
(15:47):
was trying and it just everysingle time I would hit, just
like the people that wereguiding me and working with me.
They would literally I'd walkup to a blank sheet of paper,
that's it.
Nobody could ever get past thatblank sheet of paper.
And that's persisted until todaypast that blank sheet of paper
(16:08):
and that's persisted until today.
It changed, but it changed.
I'm trying to think of how longago I had a cancer healing
journey six years ago where Ireally had to dive in because
the type of cancer I had wasneuroendocrine sarcoma, which is
on the nervous system, theendocrine mist within which is
the fight, fight or freeze ofthe nervous system, and so I had
(16:32):
just been swimming in toxicchemicals for so long.
My body lost balance and throughthe really deep work that I was
doing in that realm, I was ableto get through that blank sheet
of paper, but I needed all thetools in my toolbox to do it.
So I understand why my memoriesnever came back before that I
(16:55):
would not have been able tomaintain balance with that
version of Michelle.
And this you know, because oneof the things that happened in
my family is why I say there aretwo different stories is
originally with my family.
Once I became, once I figuredout I had a voice and I started
to use that voice.
(17:15):
They said the minute I woke upwas the minute there Michelle
died, and so that was a wholesituation amongst itself.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So you are a trauma informedinformed somatic coach?
Yeah, you do somatic, spiritualand equine healing.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe spiritual side of what you
do?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, the spiritual side was definitely something
that I came into kicking andscreaming.
I was the science person.
Like, once I decided to comeback into earth school I wanted
to know why my body had healed,like, why had it figured out how
to walk again, why had itfigured this out, like, why was
my mind struggling the way itwas?
(18:00):
And so I dove like crazy intoneuroscience and to attachment
work and all these otherdifferent modalities to
understand why it was happening.
And that's where I was willingto sit, because my family, with
their story, has a very strongreligious point of view of, like
, why I was saved and blah, blah, blah and all that other stuff,
(18:23):
and I didn't want to haveanything to do with that Sure.
So it took me a while.
I was very willing to go intoshamanism because I could feel
the energy of everything,because when, when part of your
senses are taken away, the otherparts that come in come forward
.
And so I like to say I speakbody first or somatics first.
(18:45):
I got very good at being ableto feel people's auras and
energies way before they everphysically got to me, because if
I waited for them to physicallyget to me, I couldn't adjust my
body, and since I had no otherchatter telling me that this was
not how people communicate, Ihad nothing to stop me from
learning how to talk that way.
(19:08):
And eventually, though, I reallycame to understand that I could
go mind-body all day long, butunless I put in this third leg,
mind-body-spirit, I reallywasn't viewing myself as a whole
being, and I wasn't allowingmyself to have inner wisdom, and
(19:31):
a wise one.
I was taking myself down tojust nuts and bolts and pathways
and firing of synapses.
I was taking out the soul, theessence of me, and I had to go
on a quest to find her of me.
And I had to go on a quest tofind her and to bring her in and
to really start to work withher.
(19:52):
And that was when I reallystarted to realize oh, wow, it
doesn't matter which doorway wecome through working with the
mind, working with the body,working with the soul, it's all
the same thing.
It's all about helping us builda connection to ourselves as a
whole unit, and seeing thebeautiful essence that each one
(20:12):
of us has to contribute intothat whole interconnected weave.
And once I got that, I was likeoh, this is healing, this is
wholeness, it's not just amindset hack or a nervous system
override of forcing my breathto trick my system into going
(20:34):
into parasympathetics.
It's actually a willingness toexhale and then a willingness to
breathe in that takes essence,that takes spirit.
It's not just body and it's notjust mine, it's, it's my
presence coming to thatwillingly and that's the magic
(20:55):
you know.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, so I'm curious during this time, because it
sounds like it was a couple ofyears that you were dealing with
all of this, or was it longerthan that?
Speaker 2 (21:07):
The physical body it took a full two years to to work
with.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Um, yeah, keep going with your question and then I'll
.
I'm just curious if, if beingbasically isolated with your
body essentially I mean you'rebasically, you're blind, you're
deaf, you're paralyzed, you'rebedridden the only thing you can
do is feel your somaticexperience Right?
So did that help you connectwith those like trauma responses
(21:35):
and different somaticexperiences and feeling that,
did it help you identify thosethings and kind of come to terms
with?
Is that kind of what helped you?
I guess I'm having a hard timeasking this question because I'm
not sure how to ask it.
I think you kind of get toterms with is that kind of what
helped you?
I guess I'm having a hard timeasking this question because I'm
not sure how to ask it.
I think you kind of get it,though I see you nod yeah, I, I
think I go and know where you'recoming.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's like was I able then to start to like build
awareness and acceptance ofwhat's happening in my system
through my own body?
Yes, the short answer is likeno in the beginning, because it
was so disorganized.
I just wanted out of my bodyand so every time I dropped into
my body, it was giving me somany signals of things that it
(22:16):
needed and I didn't know how tocommunicate that with anybody
that I just decided to stop, andI think that's what happens to
so many of us.
It's why, when we start tolearn somatics, it's like one we
hear crickets, we're like Idon't feel nothing.
We'll tune into your tummy, youknow, see what it's saying, and
you're like it's not sayinganything.
(22:36):
You know, and you're like doyou feel tight?
Do you feel?
And they're like it's I don'tknow, it's a stomach, you know.
And that's a common response,because there's so much
information happening in ourbody that if we don't know how
to communicate with it and itdoesn't have a place to go to
get the help that it's being amessenger for it's overwhelming.
(22:58):
And so we do just numb out,avoid, disconnect and separate,
and that's what I did early on.
It took me into that journey ofwaking up, to be willing to turn
towards my body in a helpfulway.
Now, what I did figure out howto do was to read you.
I figured out how to read yourbody from a mile away and start
(23:25):
to realize, okay, they'reagitated, they're irritated,
they're tense, their jaw istight, they're this, that and
the other.
Okay, how do I need to adjustto like be 2D and not trigger a
time bomb or wow, this person iscoming to me, needy, it wants
something, you know, like it.
What I've what I would say Ihoned in that timeframe was
(23:47):
feeling the energy of the personwalking up the stairs so I
could get my body prepared Ifthey were upset with something
that had happened before.
When they came in to attend tome, they were quick, they were
harsh, they removed me in waysthat wasn't like inviting me to
be a part of that conversation,in ways that wasn't like
(24:07):
inviting me to be a part of thatconversation.
If they were sad and upset,they would be coming to my space
and get even more sad anddisappointed and upset because I
wasn't doing something theywanted me to do, you know, and
so learning to track the otherperson became more of a priority
to me, because that's what Ineeded to survive versus
tracking myself, because Ididn't know how to tell anybody
anything.
What I needed to survive versustracking myself, because I
didn't know how to tell anybodyanything that I needed.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Wow, that's a heck of a story man.
That's wild.
Um so, being a trauma-informedsomatic coach, how long have you
been working?
How long have you been working,cause it looks like you've been
doing mental health for about20 years.
How much of that time have youbeen a coach?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
So in the beginning I started off solidly on the
equine side, because that washow I literally brought myself
back in.
Horses were what was the carrotto get me to come back into
reality and not disassociate asmuch.
And so I wanted to have thatsame environment for somebody
(25:12):
else to provide that for them.
And as I was doing that, Istarted to really recognize that
what was being created in thosemoments between the horses and
the client and myself, or atherapist, if they were in there
, like a speech pathologist oroffice space there, like whoever
(25:34):
that was that was in there aswell, and part of that team is
that it was if the person's bodydidn't feel safe.
It didn't matter how amazingthe interventions were, how
brilliant the questions were, itdidn't go anywhere, it didn't
do anything.
And I also realized very earlyon the horses were reading the
(25:58):
body and the energy and thefield and the non-verbals.
I was reading that, but nobodyelse in the room was reading it.
And very quickly people startedto be like Michelle, how did
you know to pause that wholeconversation and just say, hey,
let's go for a walk, you know,and let me just walk with the
person and let me start to match, you know, like in a rhythmic
(26:22):
motion, with whatever they'redoing.
If they're erratic, I'll be alittle erratic, but then go into
a rhythmic sway with my bodyand then I'll go back and pretty
soon I realized that in talkingto the body, that was the
gateway, that was the gatekeeperto the whole rest of the system
, that if I tried to go throughthe mind I'd get kind of far,
(26:46):
but not too far because I wouldhit all the protectors.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
If.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I tried to go through the heart.
It would be too much, too soonand it would flood the system
and they would say we don't haveenough capacity for this, we're
out of tolerance.
But if I went through the body,that was the thing.
So that became pretty early onin 2008, when I started on
bridal change, that was a coreconcept of what we were working
(27:10):
with, as somatic work was inthere, in addition to the best
practices and all the other goodstuff that was in there.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, and imagine which is a great segue, by the
way, to talk about your equinetherapy I would imagine working
with the horses helped a lotwith like mutual self-regulation
, co-regulating with the horsesIs that kind of what the main
benefit of that was.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Mostly yeah, because it's not that the horse is a
magical healing being.
When I hear that, I kind of getreally, because the horse is
its own sentient being.
Because the horse is its ownsentient being, you know, it's
its own being, living its bestlife the best it can, and
whatever environment it happenedto land in, because it doesn't
(27:55):
have really truly free will, itgets bought and sold, you know.
And so if that horse is givenfree will within the environment
that they're in, they'll moveaway from you.
When you're all over the place,they'll.
If you are willing to seekco-regulation, they'll work with
you, you know.
And so it becomes a reallyclear message.
(28:17):
That's that we're taught toblow past, you know, oh, I'm
fine, it's, it's all good.
And the horse is like, yeah, no, that's not fine, I'll be over
here until you figure it out.
But they also have the abilityto hang with extreme energies
when they can feel that it'swhat's in somatic thing, which
(28:38):
is, if you can, you know, patOgden says if you can stay with
it long enough, it will bringyou in through and out the other
side.
You know, and that's the trickypart, because when you go in
it's a buck and Bronco ride.
You have no idea where it'sgoing to.
You know it's.
It can take some, some, a lotof courage and a lot of trust to
(29:02):
come into that, to ride thatwave of that body messenger and
and let it bring you out theother side, let it unwind,
resolve and release, and workingwith the horses is a way to
visually see it, um, and to workwith that conversation.
I have stories I can share withyou if you want, but I'd love to
(29:24):
hear one, one of the ones.
It's in my first book, thehorse cure, that I love to share
because I think it reallybrings this in and I do want to
say this has a bit of a triggerwarning to it.
You know as, but I do traumawork, so you know my stories are
(29:44):
going to have it in it.
Um, there was a beautiful, uhgirl and I worked at a
residential treatment facilityat the time before I started on
bridal change and, um, that's ahome for kids who have been
through a lot, a lot of traumaand she had a history that just
your heart just broke open forher.
(30:04):
She was trafficked by herparents, um, all these other
things.
I mean, she just had absolutereason to not trust anybody and
she was getting to the pointwhere there was a foster family
who really liked her and wasreally wanting to like, adopt
her, and she was starting tohave visits with them.
And she had gotten to this pointa couple times and every time
(30:26):
she would throw a stick ofdynamite in and walk away with
like slow motion moviebackground, you know, because it
was just too scary to believethat a family could be safe to
her.
You know that they were goingto switch on a dime, they were
going to give her a sales pitchand then change and she would be
stuck, or at least at theresidential home.
(30:46):
She knew what to expect, sheknew it was predictable to her
and she also happened to beremember, I'm 6'1", she's a
little bit taller than me, butshe's built like a linebacker,
so she was substantial when shegot revved up.
And when she would get revvedup she would like go through
walls to get to somebody.
(31:06):
If she was mad at somebody shewould just turn red and
everything would blind rage andshe'd feel horrible afterwards.
But there was no way to stopher if she got started.
But there was no way to stopher if she got started and in
that moment she was reallystruggling with that.
And so the house said, hey,she's starting to rev up.
(31:30):
We don't want her to rev up tothat point.
Everybody stopped her beforeher threshold would get to that
point because you'd have to callcops.
It's a whole situation.
She had gone home, she hadgotten into a little bit of
fight with one of the fosterparents and she just thought it
was game over.
She was like I've lost it,there's no point in here, I'm
going to blow everything up, I'mgoing to go back to Juby and
it'll all be fine.
(31:51):
And they were like, can webring her down to the barn?
And I was like, yeah, sure,I've got time, bring her on down
to the barn.
And the horse that she had beenworking with was an off track
thoroughbred and so he was ahigh strung, you know, like wiry
little thing.
He'd been with us for a while,so he'd done a lot of his own
healing journey and but he wasstill pretty reactive and he was
(32:11):
working with her and they wereworking on this one particular
activity.
And it's never about theactivity, it's about the
conversation that we're having.
But she was asking him to kindof stand in an imaginary box and
she could walk around him andhe would stay, put kind of like
a sit stay for a dog, you know,and so, without anything tying
him, he would choose to standthere.
(32:33):
Well, it takes a lot of trust.
He's got to trust that she'snot going to walk away and leave
him and she's got to trust thathe's actually going to be able
to stay and they have to be ableto communicate with each other
from a distance.
So all these hidden therapyskills are in this activity,
working with it, and she's hadsome moderate success in the
past with it.
But she hadn't gotten to thepoint where she could make it a
(32:54):
full circle around him and thearena that we had at that place
was a grass arena, so it kind ofdidn't help but it could be
done.
So the horse, you know, can getdistracted with the grass
easily.
So she came down, she'sproceeded to just snatch up
Barry with his halter and likedrag him to the middle of the
(33:17):
ring.
And first I was like no, youdid not just like grab my horse
that way.
But then, luckily, somethinggrabbed me and was like Michelle
, just look Barry's.
Fine, he's 1200 pounds.
If he wanted to shake her off,even though she's tall and big,
you know like he could.
He still outweighs her, so justlet it ride.
And she put him in the middleand she was like, just stay.
(33:39):
And she started to just stompaway.
Well, he didn't even stay a hotsecond, he just turned, walked
over to the side and startedeating, and that just pissed her
off and so she came runningback in.
She grabbed him again and likedragged him back to the middle
of the ring and again I was likeno, you are not treating my
horse.
And I looked at Barry and Irealized he was going and I was
(34:02):
like that doesn't make sense,because he knows he has the
right to say no, he knows hedoesn't have to listen to her at
all.
And he let himself come backand he stood in her little
imaginary box for a hot secondand then he was like yeah, no,
I'm not staying.
And off he walked again.
Well, that was just too muchfor her.
And she just exploded.
(34:22):
I mean cussing, screaming,yelling, you name it.
She was doing it.
And the therapist was likeMichelle, we got to stop.
And I'm like no, we don'tactually, because look at Barry.
He's just over there eatingmunching like nothing's wrong.
There's a tornado happened nextto him, but he's not responding
.
That doesn't make sense.
It doesn't match, because he'sa flight animal, so why is he
(34:43):
staying?
And so I was like let's justwait it out and see what happens
.
Well, she walked over, picked upan orange traffic cone you know
the big ones and she picked itup over her head.
I was like, oh, she can throwit, I thought she.
But instead she threw it at thehorse and the horse just moved
to the side as the cone whizzedpast him.
(35:03):
And I was just like whoa, thisis crazy.
And yet Barry's doing something.
So she proceeded to walk aroundthat arena, cussing up a storm,
grabbing everything she could,from like mounting blocks to
cones, to poles, if you name it,if it was in that arena and she
could pick it up and check it.
She was doing it and Barry justkept dodging things.
(35:25):
And what I realized about fiveminutes into this explosion that
was happening is he was closingthe gap.
He was getting closer and closerand closer to her and I was
like I wonder what's going tohappen when he gets there, like
what is's going to happen whenhe gets there, like what is that
going to be?
(35:45):
And there came a moment whereshe had thrown everything around
her.
She couldn't find anything elseand she was kind of paused and
looking around.
And Barry took that opportunityon his own he's at Liberty,
he's not attached to any of usto close the gap and I thought
at first he was going to runover her.
I'm very grateful he didn't.
Instead, he just kind of pushedinto her with his chest and she
pushed back into him and he metthat and he put his head up and
(36:08):
over the top of her and justheld her and she was like
wailing on him, like stop, Ihate, you, get away from me.
And eventually, though, shejust you could hear she shifted.
She just started sobbing andsobbing and she's holding him
and she locked her arms up overhis head and he lowered his head
(36:29):
slowly, brought her to theground and she just sat there in
front of his legs Like she'sright in front of his legs with
his head up atop over her andshe just sobbed.
I mean just those full body sobsand the therapist is like, oh,
I need to get in there.
And I'm like, don't you dareinterrupt this, we need to wait.
And she just kept doing that.
(36:51):
Eventually you couldn't hearany sobs, but you could feel and
see her body still kind ofmoving.
And see her body still kind ofmoving.
And eventually, after that kindof stopped, barry picked up his
head.
Her arms were still on his neckand she wanted to go with him.
So she stood back up, sheburied her face kind of like in
his mane and she just breathedfor a few seconds.
(37:13):
Therapist was like, can I gonow?
I'm like, no, don't go, they'restill having a conversation.
And once she got done she cameback and her poor face was just
smeared with dirt and sweat andtears and she stepped back and
he just stood looking directlyat her.
And as she stepped back shestarted to walk in that circle
(37:34):
around.
He didn't move a muscle, russ,he stayed perfectly still.
She walked all the way aroundhim in a full circle.
He didn't move.
She did another one just forgood measure.
And eventually she got all theway out to the edge of the arena
, like 90 feet away from him,made a full, entire lap.
He followed her, just with hiseyes, just turning his head,
(37:55):
stayed completely in attentionto her, had stayed completely in
attention to her.
They came back together.
She gave him a huge hug and akiss and said thank you.
And then she turned to us.
I was like okay, therapist, nowyou can go.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
That is amazing man.
I got goosebumps from thatstory.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
And it was that moment that her body, because of
her size, no therapist could dothat in an office.
I mean, how could you ask atherapist to ride that wave?
But all those times her bodyhad been overrode, you know, all
those times her voice had beensilenced, all those times people
did leave her.
(38:34):
So what she said to me when shecame back is she goes, he
didn't leave.
No matter what I did, he didn'tleave me.
And I said, yeah, this family,they're not going to leave you,
they're in it.
And that was the moment wecould then be like, okay, so do
we need to get that big?
And we could keep working withit.
But that's our bodies.
(38:55):
They're so constricted.
There's so many times that wejust explode.
And and what is that explosion?
That's a.
That's a message of saying Ineed help, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
Wow, man, I got goosebumps.
Like I said, um unbridledchange, so you started a 503.
Um, um bridal change, so youstarted a 503.
Can you tell us a little bitabout that?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah.
So once I kind of had done theworking for other people, I
really felt, um, that I wantedto bring in an organization that
could do horses, if that's whatpeople wanted, but then also
could offer the somatic coaching, the healing coaching and
wellness, the energy work andthe spirituality that could
offer the freedom of all of that.
And it was really hard to dounder anybody else's program.
So when I started on BridalChange, I did it with that
(39:51):
specific intention that I wantedit to be a sanctuary, a place
that people, no matter whichdoorway they wanted to walk
through, could find a place forfirst to have hope and then to
start to heal, whichever doorwayAgain, maybe that's the
physical doorway, maybe that'sthe emotional or the mental, or
you want to come through theesoteric Okay, cool, but
(40:12):
eventually we're going to bringyou to your body and eventually
we're going to bring you to thatconnection with your true self
and being able to liberate thatfrom all the different ways that
it had been burdened.
And so unbridled change seemedlike a pretty fitting name for
that, and I wanted it to be a501c3 because I wanted it to
(40:34):
have an educational component, Iwanted it to have the ability
to work with people across thespectrum and sliding fee scales
and meet them where they're atand be really a community.
So that's why I did it as anonprofit.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
That's amazing Website for the nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, it's unbridledchangeorg.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Okay, and then I'm assuming that it's a local thing
, right?
So so it's people locally thatcome in for coaching?
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, that's the beauty about running your own
business.
Originally it was like thatbricks and mortar, so you had to
be local to really access.
And then in about 2016, Istarted to really get the nudge.
The horses were like, okay, welove doing this, we'll keep
doing this, but you really needto bring this to a wider
(41:25):
population.
I can't bring a horseeverywhere, and so it really
challenged me to come out frombehind the horse because that
was my comfort zone.
I liked partnering with them, Iliked having them with me and
these riding these waves withpeople.
And so in 2016, we branched, wedid a pretty big pivot and
(41:45):
opened ourselves up to distancework.
So we now coach, you know, viaonline and working with other
things like that, and I like tosay all the things, the tricks
in my toolbox.
I learned from a horse first,but now it can come into
anyone's and we also offerworkshops.
I have my second book gettingready to come out in summer of
(42:06):
2025.
So I'm super excited about thatand that will be it's based in
somatic work and bringing youinto that bridge of connection
which is my method.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
So Okay, cool.
So so you work with people allover the world.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
All over the world.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, and you also have a podcast too, right?
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Yeah, so Soulful Practices.
I got a wild hair and my teamwas like Michelle, why are you
doing this?
And I was like you know, causewe had had a membership podcast.
But yeah, I wanted to bringthis concept of dialoguing with
the different I call them beingsof the body the body, the mind,
the heart and the soul and howto do that in a somatic way.
And so Soulful Practicespodcast is the name of my
(42:53):
podcast and I share a quicklittle quote, build a little bit
of a teaching about what thatinvites us into exploring, and
then I lead you through aprocess with it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
On the podcast.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
On the podcast.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Very cool.
And then where can they findthat?
Are you on all the platforms?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Two working my way it's on YouTube right now and
Spotify and working my way tothe other ones.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Okay, cool, let's see here.
And you I didn't catch this inour pre-talk, but you've got a
book and you're working on asecond one.
Can you tell me about the firstbook?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, so the first book is the horse cure.
It was kind of a swan song in2017 and 18, I was working
through a cancer healing journeyand I really didn't know what
direction it was going to go,because the type of cancer that
I had was on my nervous systemand you can't cut it out and you
(43:53):
can't irradiate.
It doesn't respond to theadditional, so I kind of had to
put my money where my mouth wasand go to my healing toolbox and
and pull all those out.
But during that time I reallyfelt like I wanted to capture
some of the stories like I justtold you, and the power that can
happen when we give horseschoice and a voice, and how I
partner with them, because it'snot how everybody in the equine
(44:17):
industry who does the equinetherapies works with horses.
Um, so the horse cure is kind ofa pun on it, you know like, and
so it's, it's a, it's some ofthose stories and it doesn't
have as much of the how to.
It's just really invites youinto recognizing and finding
that hope within yourself thatthere is a way to heal complex
(44:40):
trauma in our system.
Right, and so that's what thatbook is.
It's a caveat of a coupledifferent things of stories of
different clients that cometogether through that part of my
world.
The second book, though, that'scoming out in 2025, that book
is more of like an actual likesoul workbook, as I like to call
(45:04):
it, like it's.
It's there, it's, I'm meetingyou and I'm walking you through,
as if you had had me, as acoach, sitting right there next
to you helping you on yourhealing journey.
Or and it's a beautiful book,I'm super excited about it.
It's been two years in themaking, but here we are.
We're getting close to beingborn.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
That's awesome, let's see here.
So, okay, I've got a questionfor you, because this popped
into my head just a few minutesago while you were talking what
was the name of the infectionthat you had in your brain?
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Encephalitis.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Equine encephalitis right.
Equine encephalitis.
Equine encephalitis right.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, so it came from a horse.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, so is this your connection there?
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, it did come from.
There was an outbreak, I didn't, we didn't have horses growing
up, I just rode at the localbarn.
But somebody who had had horsewent down to Florida that had
there was an outbreak of equineencephalitis down there and when
they came back this littlemosquito took a ride in their
trailer and that little mosquitoand I decided to have a dance
(46:07):
and, yeah, I ended up with it.
So it's kind of that's why Ilike the archetypal pattern of
the wounded healer is themedicines in the wound.
The wound came from horses andthat did the healing medicine
yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, you know, I did a show with another guy.
He's a grief coach and he losthis son about two years ago and
he refers to those things asgifts and crappy wrapping paper,
which I really enjoyed.
Yeah, it's really good, andit's true, because, you know,
like for me, I had an immenseamount of childhood trauma and
(46:44):
abuse, um, and then some reallyreally traumatic relationships
over the course of the last 20years.
Uh, but those, those are thethings that led me to to wanting
to help you, helping myselffirst of all and then wanting to
help others.
So, yeah, it's true that traumacan do some pretty amazing
things for you once you start toheal.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, and it can become a catalyst.
And I always like to put thecaveat right here, because I
fell in this trap.
I don't know, rosa, if you'vefallen in this trap or you
might've heard other people.
It's like I had done a weirdthing where I was like my
purpose was to have the traumaso that I could do my purpose
work.
And I did this weird like thingwhere I had made it to where
(47:30):
that trauma was a part of mylife and like all this other
stuff.
And, um, you know, when we dothat, we wrap ourselves in this
weird savior kind of a thing youknow like, where we have to
take our trauma and turn it intosomething.
And sometimes our traumahealing is just for us and
sometimes, yes, you do turn intothe wounded healer with it.
(47:52):
But I also like to tell peoplethat trauma is the crappy paper.
That sometimes just happensright and we can ask why all day
long for it?
Because they're like oh, that'swhy you were born, michelle.
When some people hear my story,I'm like whoa, hold up, I
wasn't born to be traumatized sothat I could then do what I do.
(48:12):
It just happens to be.
This is my life path and thisis what I'm inviting myself to
do, yeah the trauma is not yourpurpose, but the trauma can give
you purpose.
Yes, and there is a bigdifference in those two
statements, right?
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Right, Absolutely.
Wow, Michelle, this has been aheck of a conversation.
I really enjoy.
Enjoy talking to you.
I thank you so much for yourtime and coming on and sharing
this story with us.
I would imagine that out therethere's probably a few listeners
that have been triggered overthe course of the last 30
minutes or so that we've beenchatting.
One of the things I like to doon this show is invite the
(48:52):
healers that I'm talking to towalk us through maybe a somatic
exercise or something to helpthese people who have been
triggered during theconversation to kind of reground
themselves, reset, get back tothe present.
We've covered some pretty deepstuff, so would you mind sharing
an exercise with us to helpreground?
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Sure, why don't we do like a quick, what I call like
a check-in on the system?
And so the way I like to workwith, and I've been taught to
work with, somatic one is wedon't try to change anything
right off the bat.
We don't try to change ourbreath, we don't try to change
the way we're sitting rightthere.
All of that is beautifulinformation.
So if you and your listenersare willing to just kind of go
(49:37):
soft eye and tune in what ishappening in and around your
body right now, without changinga thing, without judging it or
bringing it into, it's doingsomething right or wrong.
So what is happening?
Maybe?
Notice your breath.
Has it been kind of clenched?
Does it feel free?
Kind of go through the zones?
(50:01):
What is your head feeling inthis moment?
Is your jaw tight?
Does your abdomen want to takea nice deep breath in and out?
Check in on those shoulders.
What are they doing?
Are they up by your ears?
(50:23):
And so maybe just give them alittle bit of love, see what
they want.
Yeah, check into those forearmsand often forgotten part of
ourselves.
We realize that we clench andwe hold our forearms, we hold
our wrists, our fingers,everything in odd, weird ways.
(50:44):
So just check into what arethey up to do.
They want to kind of relax andstretch, release and then,
moving down into the lower partof the abdomen, the hips.
So notice what they're doing.
Do they want to kind of stretchand wiggle?
Can you feel your seat bonestouching the surface that's
(51:08):
holding you Down into yourthighs, your knees, to your
lower legs, the calves?
Now, here's an odd little one.
Try not to change it, but asyou bring your attention to your
(51:29):
feet, just notice what they'redoing.
Are your toes clenched andpulled up?
Does it feel like your foot'sletting itself meet the surface
that's holding it, or does itfeel like you're having like the
foot itself is trying to pullitself away from the ground?
And this one is the key togrounding, because our feet are
our first messengers.
(51:51):
When we feel scared, when wefeel nervous, we pull our energy
up and our feet get constricted.
They get nimble, they get readyto move and shift and do they
don't want to soften and flatten.
So I always invite people tokind of see if let them wiggle
for a second.
Wiggle those toes, maybe pullthe feet up so you're going from
(52:14):
your toes back down to yourheel.
Maybe bounce your heels acouple of times on the ground.
There's some science in that,but I won't bore you right now.
And then let them relax and seehow that changes.
What does that change in therest of your body?
(52:35):
What are you feeling?
Maybe different in your body,russ?
Speaker 1 (52:39):
You know, as you were talking, I realized that my
feet were kind of crossed acrosseach other and very pulled in
Um, and then, as I relaxed themand took your suggestion to kind
of lift my heels off the groundand then replant them, as soon
as I felt my heel touch theground I could feel my body
(53:00):
release tension.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
So it's huge.
And people say, well, michelle,why don't you start with the
feet?
And I said because we got toget the information from the
rest of the body.
And then the feet say oh,you've heard me, you've heard
your shoulder, you've heard yourhip.
You might not understand them,but at least you've shown a
flashlight on them, right, right.
So by the time we get to thefeet, they're kind of willing to
(53:25):
give us some information.
And that crossing, that tuckingthat, pulling themselves up,
yeah, that's all completely,really typical actually.
And and so the first step ofgrounding, coming back in your
body, is letting them do.
I want to let my feet connectto where I'm at right now, and
(53:48):
that's a hard question.
That's a whole nother podcast.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
So we'll stop there for me yeah, and I think the the
part, like you just you nailedit earlier in the conversation
where you said trying to avoidthe way we're feeling is is I
mean there's definitely hacksout there, like you said, the
different breathing patterns totry to get rid of anxiety that's
that we're feeling is.
I mean there's definitely hacksout there, like you said, the
different breathing patterns totry to get rid of anxiety that
we have in our bodies.
But the act of feeling it,sitting with it and
(54:14):
understanding it is so much morehealing and that's really
ultimately how we feel safetyand can identify safety right.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Yeah.
And to me the word healingisn't safety, right yeah.
And to me the word healingisn't restoring wholeness, it's
remembering we're already whole,like we don't have to be
perfect to feel a sense ofsafety in our body, no matter
what it's doing, you know, likeif it's doing something odd with
a illness or a trauma storythat is still unwinding.
(54:42):
If we can feel that wholeness,if we can soften our feet, we
can come home just a hair moreinto our system.
That's wholeness, that'shealing.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Michelle, I am 100% sure that someone that is
listening is touched by yourstory and would probably love to
work with you if they wanted todo that.
How, what's the best way toreach you?
Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah, the best way is to you know, meander around the
website.
It's got tons of freebies in itso that you can start working
with me.
Soulful practices is a greatway.
And then you can reach out andsign up for my my mailing lists
or get on my social channels.
And then you can reach out andsign up for my mailing list or
get on my social channels.
Then you'll know aboutdifferent programs and offerings
that are coming up, of ways toget into classrooms with me and
(55:33):
get into healing spaces with me.
Those are the best ways tostart that process.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
That's awesome.
Now you have a beautiful energy.
Michelle, I really appreciateyou coming on and chatting with
me and sharing your story.
It's such a powerful story.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Well, thank you, Russ , for taking your wounded healer
journey and your crappywrapping paper and being willing
to open that up and puttogether this beautiful podcast
and the offerings that you have,because that really is what
this is all about, right.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
Absolutely offerings that you have, because that
really is what this is all about, right?
Absolutely Okay, guys.
If you are interested ingetting in touch with Michelle,
she can be reached onunbridledchangeorg or one of her
social media outlet channels.
addresses however you verbalizethat I'll get all that stuff
from Michelle and I'll includeit in the show notes that you
(56:25):
guys can reach out to her.
Michelle Hollingbrooks.
Thank you so much once againfor coming on.
I really appreciate it.
You've been such a blessing tome and I'm sure everybody else
is listening.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, All right, guys.
So this has been Trauma Talkswith Russ Tellup.
Once again, my name is RussTellup.
I am also a trauma-informedsomatic coach.
(56:45):
If you are interested inworking with Michelle once again
, you can reach out to her viaunbridledchangeorg.
If you're interested in brainspotting, hypnotherapy or
somatic work with me, you canreach out to me on
brainspottingcscom.
That's brainspottingcscom, andwe'll see you guys next week.
(57:06):
Thanks again, michelle.
Have a great week.
Hi everybody, Welcome to Trauma Talks with Russ
Tellop.
I'm Russ Tellop, your hostToday.
We've got a guest with us.
Her name is MichelleHollingbrooks.
Michelle is a trauma-informedsomatic coach just like me, and
we're going to chat a little bitand find out her story and kind
of what brought her into thisspace and I hope you guys enjoy
(00:34):
Michelle, how are you doingtoday?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm really excited to be here and to dive into, you
know, the body and healing andall this good stuff.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Awesome.
So we had a little chat beforewe got going here and, um man,
you've got one heck of a story.
Do you mind sharing with us umkind of what led you to coaching
and got you started in thisspace?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a little bit kind of likemade for Hollywood movie kind of
thing.
So I do like to invite peopleto use my story as a vehicle to
see the different ways in whichthey've experienced a similar
maybe not a physical symptom oflike what I've experienced.
(01:19):
But as far as that journey ofthat wounded healer, you know,
like we all have had a past,especially if you come into this
podcast, what you have, whichis all about helping to heal
trauma and stepping into thatand reconnecting with the body,
you know there's something thathas got us into this threat and
that is that wounded healer,which is the medicine, is within
(01:40):
the wound right, which means,unfortunately, for us to wake up
to our medicine, we have tohave a wound.
And so that's the unfortunatething.
So I invite people to just kindof presence themselves and
witness as I'm going through mystory, like feel into your body,
like what is happening in andaround your body, what is it
(02:03):
bringing forward, and if youhave a little piece of paper,
you can just write it down,because I would love for it to
help you recognize, maybe, thebreadth of your own experiences
and really honor them and themedicine that was held within
them.
So if that feels good to y'all,then definitely.
Oh, I'm in the South, by theway, sorry about that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Ah, the y'all.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Then you feel free to do that.
Okay, so here's the shortversion of my healer's journey.
So when I was 13 years old, Iwas bit by a mosquito that had
equine eastern encephalitis, andso, for those of you who don't
know, encephalitis is is aninfection inside the brain and
the lining of the brain and theystart to swell, and since it's
(02:50):
viral, there's nothing you cando except for try to manage
what's happening.
But it's your brain, so it's abit of a problem.
Um, and at the same time thatmy system was trying to fight
that, it happened to domino intospinal meningitis and it was
viral as well.
So these two viruses wereinside of me.
My brainstem was swelling andpushing on everything, my lining
(03:15):
of my brain was swelling andthey ended up putting me in.
I slipped into a coma for sevendays and during that time they
cut the back of my skull, put mein a halo.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, trying to just, you know, alleviate that
pressure as much as they canduring that time the virus was
causing your brain to swell andyou said you also got meningitis
.
Was that a different virus orthe virus spread to your spinal
cord?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
It was a different virus that happened to be in, I
guess, the school or in theenvironment that I was in,
because my system wascompromised here.
It just ended up having to workwith two at the same time and it
lost balance.
It couldn't do both.
And so that's when I went intothe coma, and when I was in that
(04:02):
coma, they were telling myparents, you know, like we don't
know what this was back in 1990.
You know they didn't know toomuch about all these different
things and they were like, youknow, like we don't understand
quite what's going to happen.
This is the areas of her brainthat are really vital to her as
being able to function, and sowe don't know what will wake up,
(04:22):
and when I did wake up, I liketo preface it and say my family
has their version, and this isone of the things that I invite
people to remember when they'redoing trauma work is it's not
about tending to the otherpeople in your world with your?
When you go back and you'rehealing and you're working with
(04:44):
those parts of you, honor themfor their experiences, you know,
and so I honor that.
My family has their experience,but this is the experience that
I had and I'm not here to tryto tell theirs.
That's their job to do.
This was what my experience was,and so when I woke up, there
were a couple of things thatwere problematic.
(05:05):
I was deaf because of all theswelling and the trapped fluid
that was within and the pressurethat was within that area,
because the most of the swellingwas on the back, where the
visual cortex is.
I was blind, but not like darkblind, I was like white blind,
so the light absolutely hurt ifand it was so it's like the
(05:27):
aperture on a, on a lens, wastoo open, um and so everything
was just absolutely excruciatingand my system didn't have a way
to to adjust and do what itneeded to do.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
How long were you in the coma?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Seven days.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And so those were two problems.
13 years old, I'm now deaf, I'mnow blind Wow.
I also was paralyzed from themiddle of my back down due to
where in the spinal cord therewas just too much damage from
the swelling that was happening,and so I was a little.
Push me, pull me.
But I wasn't really littlebecause I went into the hospital
(06:06):
as I was about five, nine, five, eight ish.
When I came out of the hospitalthree months later, I was six
one, so I grew four inches inthe hospital yeah, In three
months.
So brain pains are real and theyreally really hurt and they're
(06:26):
very painful.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, that's a lot of growth in three months.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, I feel like my body was trying to give itself
more room.
It was like going into itsgenetic coding, being like what
can we do?
And took like what would havehappened over three years and
said let's do it in three monthsto try to disperse as much as
this.
And so I was.
I had no catch.
If you pushed on me, I couldwould fall over, but I could
(06:54):
move my arms and I could feellike I didn't have a word for it
back then, because you're aboutto find out why I had no work.
It was like like you go to thedentist and you get numb.
You know it's there but youcan't really feel anything with
it.
Yeah, that's what the lower halfof my body was doing, and so I
(07:17):
kind of had an awareness of it,but at the same time, I had no
ability to communicate with itor send signals or receive
signals from it.
It was just this weird deadweight that was attached to me,
so that's problematic.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
And the biggest one, though that was the big problem
is that I had no memory, and soI woke up completely a blank
slate, no awareness of whoMichelle was, no awareness of
who my family was, that I washuman, what that meant to be
human, and so, because of that,I had nothing to link to.
I had no tether to the worldthat I woke up in, because I
(07:56):
didn't remember it, I didn'tknow it, and all I knew was I
was an immense amount of pain,disorganization, and that
eventually, my body had zerosovereignty.
Anybody could do anything to it, and I didn't understand what
those like shadowy things werethat came in and touched me and
(08:17):
moved me and were putting me indifferent machines.
You know, I had no point ofreference for any of that, and
so it just became a permanentfight, fight or freeze, and
eventually my system just wentall the way down to to freeze
because they kept restraining me, because I was like a little
wild animal, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So this is the part that fascinates me is so you're.
You wake up, you're paralyzedfrom the waist down.
You can't see anything, youcan't hear anything, you're in
an incredible amount of pain andyou have no clue what's going
on, or even who you are, or oreven what you are.
You're like a blank slate Rightand I asked you this question
(09:01):
before almost like a baby, andyou had a response for that yeah
, so a baby.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And you had a response for that.
Yeah, so a baby actually hasmemory already, like when we're
in utero, we are sinking, we'rehaving conversations, our
nervous system is talking to themom.
It's talking actually throughthe environment, through mostly
how the mom's interpreting theenvironment around us.
But it can feel sound, soundand it works with sound
(09:26):
frequencies and heartbeats andall these other things.
So it's syncing to theenvironment.
The environment might be a hotmess, but at least it's feels
that there's a predictability.
It's starting to adjust what itneeds to do to be in that space
.
What my body went through withthis was it was completely blown
apart.
(09:46):
It was completely disorganizedby the disruption to the nervous
system and because of the lackof cognitive um connection.
I had nothing to reach for.
There was a little baby reaches.
I didn't know to reach, I justknew to push and to fight.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Sure, well, like you said, it's almost like a, like a
wounded animal right, thatdoesn't know what to do.
Wow, that is incredible.
I'm assuming you still feltbody sensations, somatic
experiences while you're in thisstate, right?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, I didn't have language for them and so I just
really had the impulses for them.
But the problem was my impulseswere always overrode.
So if I did a guttural soundthat just like was like a baby
crying, like there's somethingwrong with me, I didn't know how
to ask for that in a clear wayand continuously.
(10:46):
Every time I would do somethingthat would ask for help from a
somatic point of view or just anonverbal point of view.
It was corrected by I couldn'tmove my body because I couldn't
walk, so I couldn't run away.
You know my body was cueing me,run away, that person's scaring
you and I couldn't run away.
You know my body was cueing me,run away, that person scaring
(11:07):
you and I couldn't do it.
And so, and because I was sospindly at this point, having
grown so much, people could justmove my body.
They just picked me up andmoved me and put me down and
strapped my arms down and youknow I didn't have a voice of
what was happening to me when itwas happening and they just
kept doing hand over hand withme to try to get me to eat, to
(11:30):
push the button when I felt likeI need to go to the bathroom or
something like that, and noneof this made sense to me.
But I realized that if Icomplied, if I've just followed
the bouncing ball of whateverthe people around me I didn't
know that word at that timewanted everything got better
because they went away.
(11:51):
If I just pushed the button,the person would come in, they'd
figure out what was wrong withme, move me and not be as upset
at me because I didn't have anaccident in the bed, you know
what I mean, or something likethat.
Or frustrated with that processof if I would just let them pick
my arm up and prick it, well,that was them drawing blood.
You know, I didn't know whatthey were doing or why they were
(12:14):
doing it, and I didn't evenreally feel a lot of desire to
eat because I didn't even feelconnected to my body.
So it was a whole hot mess of adisorganization that was
happening and I just learned tomimic.
I just called myself a great.
When I look back and I feelinto those versions of me I was
(12:37):
not even like a chameleon,because a chameleon kind of
knows it's changing shapes thatthose early years it was just a
parrot.
You know, I just would matchwhatever thing was around me,
because it was the passive leastresistance, because I had
figured out I couldn't fight andI couldn't run.
So there's only one thing leftin the nervous system to do.
(12:58):
And that's just to freeze.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're aware of all of this as
it's happening, right Like youcan think back and remember all
these things, or are peopletelling you about what happened?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
line panic and terror , like anytime.
I would go back and feel intothat timeframe.
It was just utter terror, utterlike um.
People would ask well, wheredid you go when you went into
the?
And I was just like I just wentinto nothingness, just into
darkness.
It's not like I had a funfantasy place that I would
escape to, because I didn't knowto escape.
You know, I had no memory tobuild off of an imagination of
something with, and so it wasjust pain.
(13:50):
I became a very cellular.
Thing that I had to work onlater in life was that earth was
nothing but pain,disorganization and absolute
helplessness.
That's all the earth school is.
There's nothing else in here,and so that took a while to undo
(14:10):
.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I could imagine yeah, so eventually did all this, all
your memory return, oreverything that you've got now,
stuff that you've developedsince then?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, so the hearing and the eyesight came back first
.
It took about two years.
Well, I guess the very firstthing that came back was my
ability to walk, and that'swhere horses we'll get into that
later kind of come in.
There's a story about howhorses were a huge part of my
healing journey.
We can go there now if you want, or I can keep answering your
(14:44):
question.
We can go there now if you want, or I can keep answering your
question.
But and then the site came backand then the hearing came back,
because I was traveling and Iwas going up and down different
really high mountains out westand so, and when that happened
they popped and like thisgrotesque fluid came out.
It was really gross and all of asudden I was like, oh my God, I
can hear, but they wereteaching me to sign and start to
(15:06):
to communicate that way at thatpoint.
Um, so then I had to go backthrough speech um to learn how
to talk, and if you listenreally closely, you'll hear that
I have some garbled words andit's a little bit more guttural,
because the hearing came backlike 80%, you know pretty good,
but still, I was trying to learnthrough the, the scar tissue of
(15:27):
how I hear things and to workwith things, the memory, yeah,
eventually I tried everything.
You know, you know you dohypnosis as well and other stuff
, like, like you name it.
If there was a technique outthere to try to get memory back,
once I was like in my twenties,I was there, I was up for it, I
(15:47):
was trying and it just everysingle time I would hit, just
like the people that wereguiding me and working with me.
They would literally I'd walkup to a blank sheet of paper,
that's it.
Nobody could ever get past thatblank sheet of paper.
And that's persisted until todaypast that blank sheet of paper
(16:08):
and that's persisted until today.
It changed, but it changed.
I'm trying to think of how longago I had a cancer healing
journey six years ago where Ireally had to dive in because
the type of cancer I had wasneuroendocrine sarcoma, which is
on the nervous system, theendocrine mist within which is
the fight, fight or freeze ofthe nervous system, and so I had
(16:32):
just been swimming in toxicchemicals for so long.
My body lost balance and throughthe really deep work that I was
doing in that realm, I was ableto get through that blank sheet
of paper, but I needed all thetools in my toolbox to do it.
So I understand why my memoriesnever came back before that I
(16:55):
would not have been able tomaintain balance with that
version of Michelle.
And this you know, because oneof the things that happened in
my family is why I say there aretwo different stories is
originally with my family.
Once I became, once I figuredout I had a voice and I started
to use that voice.
(17:15):
They said the minute I woke upwas the minute there Michelle
died, and so that was a wholesituation amongst itself.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So you are a trauma informedinformed somatic coach?
Yeah, you do somatic, spiritualand equine healing.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe spiritual side of what you
do?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, the spiritual side was definitely something
that I came into kicking andscreaming.
I was the science person.
Like, once I decided to comeback into earth school I wanted
to know why my body had healed,like, why had it figured out how
to walk again, why had itfigured this out, like, why was
my mind struggling the way itwas?
(18:00):
And so I dove like crazy intoneuroscience and to attachment
work and all these otherdifferent modalities to
understand why it was happening.
And that's where I was willingto sit, because my family, with
their story, has a very strongreligious point of view of, like
, why I was saved and blah, blah, blah and all that other stuff,
(18:23):
and I didn't want to haveanything to do with that Sure.
So it took me a while.
I was very willing to go intoshamanism because I could feel
the energy of everything,because when, when part of your
senses are taken away, the otherparts that come in come forward
.
And so I like to say I speakbody first or somatics first.
(18:45):
I got very good at being ableto feel people's auras and
energies way before they everphysically got to me, because if
I waited for them to physicallyget to me, I couldn't adjust my
body, and since I had no otherchatter telling me that this was
not how people communicate, Ihad nothing to stop me from
learning how to talk that way.
(19:08):
And eventually, though, I reallycame to understand that I could
go mind-body all day long, butunless I put in this third leg,
mind-body-spirit, I reallywasn't viewing myself as a whole
being, and I wasn't allowingmyself to have inner wisdom, and
(19:31):
a wise one.
I was taking myself down tojust nuts and bolts and pathways
and firing of synapses.
I was taking out the soul, theessence of me, and I had to go
on a quest to find her of me.
And I had to go on a quest tofind her and to bring her in and
to really start to work withher.
(19:52):
And that was when I reallystarted to realize oh, wow, it
doesn't matter which doorway wecome through working with the
mind, working with the body,working with the soul, it's all
the same thing.
It's all about helping us builda connection to ourselves as a
whole unit, and seeing thebeautiful essence that each one
(20:12):
of us has to contribute intothat whole interconnected weave.
And once I got that, I was likeoh, this is healing, this is
wholeness, it's not just amindset hack or a nervous system
override of forcing my breathto trick my system into going
(20:34):
into parasympathetics.
It's actually a willingness toexhale and then a willingness to
breathe in that takes essence,that takes spirit.
It's not just body and it's notjust mine, it's, it's my
presence coming to thatwillingly and that's the magic
(20:55):
you know.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, so I'm curious during this time, because it
sounds like it was a couple ofyears that you were dealing with
all of this, or was it longerthan that?
Speaker 2 (21:07):
The physical body it took a full two years to to work
with.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Um, yeah, keep going with your question and then I'll
.
I'm just curious if, if beingbasically isolated with your
body essentially I mean you'rebasically, you're blind, you're
deaf, you're paralyzed, you'rebedridden the only thing you can
do is feel your somaticexperience Right?
So did that help you connectwith those like trauma responses
(21:35):
and different somaticexperiences and feeling that,
did it help you identify thosethings and kind of come to terms
with?
Is that kind of what helped you?
I guess I'm having a hard timeasking this question because I'm
not sure how to ask it.
I think you kind of get toterms with is that kind of what
helped you?
I guess I'm having a hard timeasking this question because I'm
not sure how to ask it.
I think you kind of get it,though I see you nod yeah, I, I
think I go and know where you'recoming.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's like was I able then to start to like build
awareness and acceptance ofwhat's happening in my system
through my own body?
Yes, the short answer is likeno in the beginning, because it
was so disorganized.
I just wanted out of my bodyand so every time I dropped into
my body, it was giving me somany signals of things that it
(22:16):
needed and I didn't know how tocommunicate that with anybody
that I just decided to stop, andI think that's what happens to
so many of us.
It's why, when we start tolearn somatics, it's like one we
hear crickets, we're like Idon't feel nothing.
We'll tune into your tummy, youknow, see what it's saying, and
you're like it's not sayinganything.
(22:36):
You know, and you're like doyou feel tight?
Do you feel?
And they're like it's I don'tknow, it's a stomach, you know.
And that's a common response,because there's so much
information happening in ourbody that if we don't know how
to communicate with it and itdoesn't have a place to go to
get the help that it's being amessenger for it's overwhelming.
(22:58):
And so we do just numb out,avoid, disconnect and separate,
and that's what I did early on.
It took me into that journey ofwaking up, to be willing to turn
towards my body in a helpfulway.
Now, what I did figure out howto do was to read you.
I figured out how to read yourbody from a mile away and start
(23:25):
to realize, okay, they'reagitated, they're irritated,
they're tense, their jaw istight, they're this, that and
the other.
Okay, how do I need to adjustto like be 2D and not trigger a
time bomb or wow, this person iscoming to me, needy, it wants
something, you know, like it.
What I've what I would say Ihoned in that timeframe was
(23:47):
feeling the energy of the personwalking up the stairs so I
could get my body prepared Ifthey were upset with something
that had happened before.
When they came in to attend tome, they were quick, they were
harsh, they removed me in waysthat wasn't like inviting me to
be a part of that conversation,in ways that wasn't like
(24:07):
inviting me to be a part of thatconversation.
If they were sad and upset,they would be coming to my space
and get even more sad anddisappointed and upset because I
wasn't doing something theywanted me to do, you know, and
so learning to track the otherperson became more of a priority
to me, because that's what Ineeded to survive versus
tracking myself, because Ididn't know how to tell anybody
anything.
What I needed to survive versustracking myself, because I
didn't know how to tell anybodyanything that I needed.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Wow, that's a heck of a story man.
That's wild.
Um so, being a trauma-informedsomatic coach, how long have you
been working?
How long have you been working,cause it looks like you've been
doing mental health for about20 years.
How much of that time have youbeen a coach?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
So in the beginning I started off solidly on the
equine side, because that washow I literally brought myself
back in.
Horses were what was the carrotto get me to come back into
reality and not disassociate asmuch.
And so I wanted to have thatsame environment for somebody
(25:12):
else to provide that for them.
And as I was doing that, Istarted to really recognize that
what was being created in thosemoments between the horses and
the client and myself, or atherapist, if they were in there
, like a speech pathologist oroffice space there, like whoever
(25:34):
that was that was in there aswell, and part of that team is
that it was if the person's bodydidn't feel safe.
It didn't matter how amazingthe interventions were, how
brilliant the questions were, itdidn't go anywhere, it didn't
do anything.
And I also realized very earlyon the horses were reading the
(25:58):
body and the energy and thefield and the non-verbals.
I was reading that, but nobodyelse in the room was reading it.
And very quickly people startedto be like Michelle, how did
you know to pause that wholeconversation and just say, hey,
let's go for a walk, you know,and let me just walk with the
person and let me start to match, you know, like in a rhythmic
(26:22):
motion, with whatever they'redoing.
If they're erratic, I'll be alittle erratic, but then go into
a rhythmic sway with my bodyand then I'll go back and pretty
soon I realized that in talkingto the body, that was the
gateway, that was the gatekeeperto the whole rest of the system
, that if I tried to go throughthe mind I'd get kind of far,
(26:46):
but not too far because I wouldhit all the protectors.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
If.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I tried to go through the heart.
It would be too much, too soonand it would flood the system
and they would say we don't haveenough capacity for this, we're
out of tolerance.
But if I went through the body,that was the thing.
So that became pretty early onin 2008, when I started on
bridal change, that was a coreconcept of what we were working
(27:10):
with, as somatic work was inthere, in addition to the best
practices and all the other goodstuff that was in there.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, and imagine which is a great segue, by the
way, to talk about your equinetherapy I would imagine working
with the horses helped a lotwith like mutual self-regulation
, co-regulating with the horsesIs that kind of what the main
benefit of that was.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Mostly yeah, because it's not that the horse is a
magical healing being.
When I hear that, I kind of getreally, because the horse is
its own sentient being.
Because the horse is its ownsentient being, you know, it's
its own being, living its bestlife the best it can, and
whatever environment it happenedto land in, because it doesn't
(27:55):
have really truly free will, itgets bought and sold, you know.
And so if that horse is givenfree will within the environment
that they're in, they'll moveaway from you.
When you're all over the place,they'll.
If you are willing to seekco-regulation, they'll work with
you, you know.
And so it becomes a reallyclear message.
(28:17):
That's that we're taught toblow past, you know, oh, I'm
fine, it's, it's all good.
And the horse is like, yeah, no, that's not fine, I'll be over
here until you figure it out.
But they also have the abilityto hang with extreme energies
when they can feel that it'swhat's in somatic thing, which
(28:38):
is, if you can, you know, patOgden says if you can stay with
it long enough, it will bringyou in through and out the other
side.
You know, and that's the trickypart, because when you go in
it's a buck and Bronco ride.
You have no idea where it'sgoing to.
You know it's.
It can take some, some, a lotof courage and a lot of trust to
(29:02):
come into that, to ride thatwave of that body messenger and
and let it bring you out theother side, let it unwind,
resolve and release, and workingwith the horses is a way to
visually see it, um, and to workwith that conversation.
I have stories I can share withyou if you want, but I'd love to
(29:24):
hear one, one of the ones.
It's in my first book, thehorse cure, that I love to share
because I think it reallybrings this in and I do want to
say this has a bit of a triggerwarning to it.
You know as, but I do traumawork, so you know my stories are
(29:44):
going to have it in it.
Um, there was a beautiful, uhgirl and I worked at a
residential treatment facilityat the time before I started on
bridal change and, um, that's ahome for kids who have been
through a lot, a lot of traumaand she had a history that just
your heart just broke open forher.
(30:04):
She was trafficked by herparents, um, all these other
things.
I mean, she just had absolutereason to not trust anybody and
she was getting to the pointwhere there was a foster family
who really liked her and wasreally wanting to like, adopt
her, and she was starting tohave visits with them.
And she had gotten to this pointa couple times and every time
(30:26):
she would throw a stick ofdynamite in and walk away with
like slow motion moviebackground, you know, because it
was just too scary to believethat a family could be safe to
her.
You know that they were goingto switch on a dime, they were
going to give her a sales pitchand then change and she would be
stuck, or at least at theresidential home.
(30:46):
She knew what to expect, sheknew it was predictable to her
and she also happened to beremember, I'm 6'1", she's a
little bit taller than me, butshe's built like a linebacker,
so she was substantial when shegot revved up.
And when she would get revvedup she would like go through
walls to get to somebody.
(31:06):
If she was mad at somebody shewould just turn red and
everything would blind rage andshe'd feel horrible afterwards.
But there was no way to stopher if she got started.
But there was no way to stopher if she got started and in
that moment she was reallystruggling with that.
And so the house said, hey,she's starting to rev up.
(31:30):
We don't want her to rev up tothat point.
Everybody stopped her beforeher threshold would get to that
point because you'd have to callcops.
It's a whole situation.
She had gone home, she hadgotten into a little bit of
fight with one of the fosterparents and she just thought it
was game over.
She was like I've lost it,there's no point in here, I'm
going to blow everything up, I'mgoing to go back to Juby and
it'll all be fine.
(31:51):
And they were like, can webring her down to the barn?
And I was like, yeah, sure,I've got time, bring her on down
to the barn.
And the horse that she had beenworking with was an off track
thoroughbred and so he was ahigh strung, you know, like wiry
little thing.
He'd been with us for a while,so he'd done a lot of his own
healing journey and but he wasstill pretty reactive and he was
(32:11):
working with her and they wereworking on this one particular
activity.
And it's never about theactivity, it's about the
conversation that we're having.
But she was asking him to kindof stand in an imaginary box and
she could walk around him andhe would stay, put kind of like
a sit stay for a dog, you know,and so, without anything tying
him, he would choose to standthere.
(32:33):
Well, it takes a lot of trust.
He's got to trust that she'snot going to walk away and leave
him and she's got to trust thathe's actually going to be able
to stay and they have to be ableto communicate with each other
from a distance.
So all these hidden therapyskills are in this activity,
working with it, and she's hadsome moderate success in the
past with it.
But she hadn't gotten to thepoint where she could make it a
(32:54):
full circle around him and thearena that we had at that place
was a grass arena, so it kind ofdidn't help but it could be
done.
So the horse, you know, can getdistracted with the grass
easily.
So she came down, she'sproceeded to just snatch up
Barry with his halter and likedrag him to the middle of the
(33:17):
ring.
And first I was like no, youdid not just like grab my horse
that way.
But then, luckily, somethinggrabbed me and was like Michelle
, just look Barry's.
Fine, he's 1200 pounds.
If he wanted to shake her off,even though she's tall and big,
you know like he could.
He still outweighs her, so justlet it ride.
And she put him in the middleand she was like, just stay.
(33:39):
And she started to just stompaway.
Well, he didn't even stay a hotsecond, he just turned, walked
over to the side and startedeating, and that just pissed her
off and so she came runningback in.
She grabbed him again and likedragged him back to the middle
of the ring and again I was likeno, you are not treating my
horse.
And I looked at Barry and Irealized he was going and I was
(34:02):
like that doesn't make sense,because he knows he has the
right to say no, he knows hedoesn't have to listen to her at
all.
And he let himself come backand he stood in her little
imaginary box for a hot secondand then he was like yeah, no,
I'm not staying.
And off he walked again.
Well, that was just too muchfor her.
And she just exploded.
(34:22):
I mean cussing, screaming,yelling, you name it.
She was doing it.
And the therapist was likeMichelle, we got to stop.
And I'm like no, we don'tactually, because look at Barry.
He's just over there eatingmunching like nothing's wrong.
There's a tornado happened nextto him, but he's not responding
.
That doesn't make sense.
It doesn't match, because he'sa flight animal, so why is he
(34:43):
staying?
And so I was like let's justwait it out and see what happens
.
Well, she walked over, picked upan orange traffic cone you know
the big ones and she picked itup over her head.
I was like, oh, she can throwit, I thought she.
But instead she threw it at thehorse and the horse just moved
to the side as the cone whizzedpast him.
(35:03):
And I was just like whoa, thisis crazy.
And yet Barry's doing something.
So she proceeded to walk aroundthat arena, cussing up a storm,
grabbing everything she could,from like mounting blocks to
cones, to poles, if you name it,if it was in that arena and she
could pick it up and check it.
She was doing it and Barry justkept dodging things.
(35:25):
And what I realized about fiveminutes into this explosion that
was happening is he was closingthe gap.
He was getting closer and closerand closer to her and I was
like I wonder what's going tohappen when he gets there, like
what is's going to happen whenhe gets there, like what is that
going to be?
(35:45):
And there came a moment whereshe had thrown everything around
her.
She couldn't find anything elseand she was kind of paused and
looking around.
And Barry took that opportunityon his own he's at Liberty,
he's not attached to any of usto close the gap and I thought
at first he was going to runover her.
I'm very grateful he didn't.
Instead, he just kind of pushedinto her with his chest and she
pushed back into him and he metthat and he put his head up and
(36:08):
over the top of her and justheld her and she was like
wailing on him, like stop, Ihate, you, get away from me.
And eventually, though, shejust you could hear she shifted.
She just started sobbing andsobbing and she's holding him
and she locked her arms up overhis head and he lowered his head
(36:29):
slowly, brought her to theground and she just sat there in
front of his legs Like she'sright in front of his legs with
his head up atop over her andshe just sobbed.
I mean just those full body sobsand the therapist is like, oh,
I need to get in there.
And I'm like, don't you dareinterrupt this, we need to wait.
And she just kept doing that.
(36:51):
Eventually you couldn't hearany sobs, but you could feel and
see her body still kind ofmoving.
And see her body still kind ofmoving.
And eventually, after that kindof stopped, barry picked up his
head.
Her arms were still on his neckand she wanted to go with him.
So she stood back up, sheburied her face kind of like in
his mane and she just breathedfor a few seconds.
(37:13):
Therapist was like, can I gonow?
I'm like, no, don't go, they'restill having a conversation.
And once she got done she cameback and her poor face was just
smeared with dirt and sweat andtears and she stepped back and
he just stood looking directlyat her.
And as she stepped back shestarted to walk in that circle
(37:34):
around.
He didn't move a muscle, russ,he stayed perfectly still.
She walked all the way aroundhim in a full circle.
He didn't move.
She did another one just forgood measure.
And eventually she got all theway out to the edge of the arena
, like 90 feet away from him,made a full, entire lap.
He followed her, just with hiseyes, just turning his head,
(37:55):
stayed completely in attentionto her, had stayed completely in
attention to her.
They came back together.
She gave him a huge hug and akiss and said thank you.
And then she turned to us.
I was like okay, therapist, nowyou can go.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
That is amazing man.
I got goosebumps from thatstory.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
And it was that moment that her body, because of
her size, no therapist could dothat in an office.
I mean, how could you ask atherapist to ride that wave?
But all those times her bodyhad been overrode, you know, all
those times her voice had beensilenced, all those times people
did leave her.
(38:34):
So what she said to me when shecame back is she goes, he
didn't leave.
No matter what I did, he didn'tleave me.
And I said, yeah, this family,they're not going to leave you,
they're in it.
And that was the moment wecould then be like, okay, so do
we need to get that big?
And we could keep working withit.
But that's our bodies.
(38:55):
They're so constricted.
There's so many times that wejust explode.
And and what is that explosion?
That's a.
That's a message of saying Ineed help, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
Wow, man, I got goosebumps.
Like I said, um unbridledchange, so you started a 503.
Um, um bridal change, so youstarted a 503.
Can you tell us a little bitabout that?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah.
So once I kind of had done theworking for other people, I
really felt, um, that I wantedto bring in an organization that
could do horses, if that's whatpeople wanted, but then also
could offer the somatic coaching, the healing coaching and
wellness, the energy work andthe spirituality that could
offer the freedom of all of that.
And it was really hard to dounder anybody else's program.
So when I started on BridalChange, I did it with that
(39:51):
specific intention that I wantedit to be a sanctuary, a place
that people, no matter whichdoorway they wanted to walk
through, could find a place forfirst to have hope and then to
start to heal, whichever doorwayAgain, maybe that's the
physical doorway, maybe that'sthe emotional or the mental, or
you want to come through theesoteric Okay, cool, but
(40:12):
eventually we're going to bringyou to your body and eventually
we're going to bring you to thatconnection with your true self
and being able to liberate thatfrom all the different ways that
it had been burdened.
And so unbridled change seemedlike a pretty fitting name for
that, and I wanted it to be a501c3 because I wanted it to
(40:34):
have an educational component, Iwanted it to have the ability
to work with people across thespectrum and sliding fee scales
and meet them where they're atand be really a community.
So that's why I did it as anonprofit.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
That's amazing Website for the nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, it's unbridledchangeorg.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Okay, and then I'm assuming that it's a local thing
, right?
So so it's people locally thatcome in for coaching?
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, that's the beauty about running your own
business.
Originally it was like thatbricks and mortar, so you had to
be local to really access.
And then in about 2016, Istarted to really get the nudge.
The horses were like, okay, welove doing this, we'll keep
doing this, but you really needto bring this to a wider
(41:25):
population.
I can't bring a horseeverywhere, and so it really
challenged me to come out frombehind the horse because that
was my comfort zone.
I liked partnering with them, Iliked having them with me and
these riding these waves withpeople.
And so in 2016, we branched, wedid a pretty big pivot and
(41:45):
opened ourselves up to distancework.
So we now coach, you know, viaonline and working with other
things like that, and I like tosay all the things, the tricks
in my toolbox.
I learned from a horse first,but now it can come into
anyone's and we also offerworkshops.
I have my second book gettingready to come out in summer of
(42:06):
2025.
So I'm super excited about thatand that will be it's based in
somatic work and bringing youinto that bridge of connection
which is my method.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
So Okay, cool.
So so you work with people allover the world.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
All over the world.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, and you also have a podcast too, right?
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Yeah, so Soulful Practices.
I got a wild hair and my teamwas like Michelle, why are you
doing this?
And I was like you know, causewe had had a membership podcast.
But yeah, I wanted to bringthis concept of dialoguing with
the different I call them beingsof the body the body, the mind,
the heart and the soul and howto do that in a somatic way.
And so Soulful Practicespodcast is the name of my
(42:53):
podcast and I share a quicklittle quote, build a little bit
of a teaching about what thatinvites us into exploring, and
then I lead you through aprocess with it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
On the podcast.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
On the podcast.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Very cool.
And then where can they findthat?
Are you on all the platforms?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Two working my way it's on YouTube right now and
Spotify and working my way tothe other ones.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Okay, cool, let's see here.
And you I didn't catch this inour pre-talk, but you've got a
book and you're working on asecond one.
Can you tell me about the firstbook?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, so the first book is the horse cure.
It was kind of a swan song in2017 and 18, I was working
through a cancer healing journeyand I really didn't know what
direction it was going to go,because the type of cancer that
I had was on my nervous systemand you can't cut it out and you
(43:53):
can't irradiate.
It doesn't respond to theadditional, so I kind of had to
put my money where my mouth wasand go to my healing toolbox and
and pull all those out.
But during that time I reallyfelt like I wanted to capture
some of the stories like I justtold you, and the power that can
happen when we give horseschoice and a voice, and how I
partner with them, because it'snot how everybody in the equine
(44:17):
industry who does the equinetherapies works with horses.
Um, so the horse cure is kind ofa pun on it, you know like, and
so it's, it's a, it's some ofthose stories and it doesn't
have as much of the how to.
It's just really invites youinto recognizing and finding
that hope within yourself thatthere is a way to heal complex
(44:40):
trauma in our system.
Right, and so that's what thatbook is.
It's a caveat of a coupledifferent things of stories of
different clients that cometogether through that part of my
world.
The second book, though, that'scoming out in 2025, that book
is more of like an actual likesoul workbook, as I like to call
(45:04):
it, like it's.
It's there, it's, I'm meetingyou and I'm walking you through,
as if you had had me, as acoach, sitting right there next
to you helping you on yourhealing journey.
Or and it's a beautiful book,I'm super excited about it.
It's been two years in themaking, but here we are.
We're getting close to beingborn.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
That's awesome, let's see here.
So, okay, I've got a questionfor you, because this popped
into my head just a few minutesago while you were talking what
was the name of the infectionthat you had in your brain?
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Encephalitis.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Equine encephalitis right.
Equine encephalitis.
Equine encephalitis right.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, so it came from a horse.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, so is this your connection there?
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, it did come from.
There was an outbreak, I didn't, we didn't have horses growing
up, I just rode at the localbarn.
But somebody who had had horsewent down to Florida that had
there was an outbreak of equineencephalitis down there and when
they came back this littlemosquito took a ride in their
trailer and that little mosquitoand I decided to have a dance
(46:07):
and, yeah, I ended up with it.
So it's kind of that's why Ilike the archetypal pattern of
the wounded healer is themedicines in the wound.
The wound came from horses andthat did the healing medicine
yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, you know, I did a show with another guy.
He's a grief coach and he losthis son about two years ago and
he refers to those things asgifts and crappy wrapping paper,
which I really enjoyed.
Yeah, it's really good, andit's true, because, you know,
like for me, I had an immenseamount of childhood trauma and
(46:44):
abuse, um, and then some reallyreally traumatic relationships
over the course of the last 20years.
Uh, but those, those are thethings that led me to to wanting
to help you, helping myselffirst of all and then wanting to
help others.
So, yeah, it's true that traumacan do some pretty amazing
things for you once you start toheal.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, and it can become a catalyst.
And I always like to put thecaveat right here, because I
fell in this trap.
I don't know, rosa, if you'vefallen in this trap or you
might've heard other people.
It's like I had done a weirdthing where I was like my
purpose was to have the traumaso that I could do my purpose
work.
And I did this weird like thingwhere I had made it to where
(47:30):
that trauma was a part of mylife and like all this other
stuff.
And, um, you know, when we dothat, we wrap ourselves in this
weird savior kind of a thing youknow like, where we have to
take our trauma and turn it intosomething.
And sometimes our traumahealing is just for us and
sometimes, yes, you do turn intothe wounded healer with it.
(47:52):
But I also like to tell peoplethat trauma is the crappy paper.
That sometimes just happensright and we can ask why all day
long for it?
Because they're like oh, that'swhy you were born, michelle.
When some people hear my story,I'm like whoa, hold up, I
wasn't born to be traumatized sothat I could then do what I do.
(48:12):
It just happens to be.
This is my life path and thisis what I'm inviting myself to
do, yeah the trauma is not yourpurpose, but the trauma can give
you purpose.
Yes, and there is a bigdifference in those two
statements, right?
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Right, Absolutely.
Wow, Michelle, this has been aheck of a conversation.
I really enjoy.
Enjoy talking to you.
I thank you so much for yourtime and coming on and sharing
this story with us.
I would imagine that out therethere's probably a few listeners
that have been triggered overthe course of the last 30
minutes or so that we've beenchatting.
One of the things I like to doon this show is invite the
(48:52):
healers that I'm talking to towalk us through maybe a somatic
exercise or something to helpthese people who have been
triggered during theconversation to kind of reground
themselves, reset, get back tothe present.
We've covered some pretty deepstuff, so would you mind sharing
an exercise with us to helpreground?
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Sure, why don't we do like a quick, what I call like
a check-in on the system?
And so the way I like to workwith, and I've been taught to
work with, somatic one is wedon't try to change anything
right off the bat.
We don't try to change ourbreath, we don't try to change
the way we're sitting rightthere.
All of that is beautifulinformation.
So if you and your listenersare willing to just kind of go
(49:37):
soft eye and tune in what ishappening in and around your
body right now, without changinga thing, without judging it or
bringing it into, it's doingsomething right or wrong.
So what is happening?
Maybe?
Notice your breath.
Has it been kind of clenched?
Does it feel free?
Kind of go through the zones?
(50:01):
What is your head feeling inthis moment?
Is your jaw tight?
Does your abdomen want to takea nice deep breath in and out?
Check in on those shoulders.
What are they doing?
Are they up by your ears?
(50:23):
And so maybe just give them alittle bit of love, see what
they want.
Yeah, check into those forearmsand often forgotten part of
ourselves.
We realize that we clench andwe hold our forearms, we hold
our wrists, our fingers,everything in odd, weird ways.
(50:44):
So just check into what arethey up to do.
They want to kind of relax andstretch, release and then,
moving down into the lower partof the abdomen, the hips.
So notice what they're doing.
Do they want to kind of stretchand wiggle?
Can you feel your seat bonestouching the surface that's
(51:08):
holding you Down into yourthighs, your knees, to your
lower legs, the calves?
Now, here's an odd little one.
Try not to change it, but asyou bring your attention to your
(51:29):
feet, just notice what they'redoing.
Are your toes clenched andpulled up?
Does it feel like your foot'sletting itself meet the surface
that's holding it, or does itfeel like you're having like the
foot itself is trying to pullitself away from the ground?
And this one is the key togrounding, because our feet are
our first messengers.
(51:51):
When we feel scared, when wefeel nervous, we pull our energy
up and our feet get constricted.
They get nimble, they get readyto move and shift and do they
don't want to soften and flatten.
So I always invite people tokind of see if let them wiggle
for a second.
Wiggle those toes, maybe pullthe feet up so you're going from
(52:14):
your toes back down to yourheel.
Maybe bounce your heels acouple of times on the ground.
There's some science in that,but I won't bore you right now.
And then let them relax and seehow that changes.
What does that change in therest of your body?
(52:35):
What are you feeling?
Maybe different in your body,russ?
Speaker 1 (52:39):
You know, as you were talking, I realized that my
feet were kind of crossed acrosseach other and very pulled in
Um, and then, as I relaxed themand took your suggestion to kind
of lift my heels off the groundand then replant them, as soon
as I felt my heel touch theground I could feel my body
(53:00):
release tension.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
So it's huge.
And people say, well, michelle,why don't you start with the
feet?
And I said because we got toget the information from the
rest of the body.
And then the feet say oh,you've heard me, you've heard
your shoulder, you've heard yourhip.
You might not understand them,but at least you've shown a
flashlight on them, right, right.
So by the time we get to thefeet, they're kind of willing to
(53:25):
give us some information.
And that crossing, that tuckingthat, pulling themselves up,
yeah, that's all completely,really typical actually.
And and so the first step ofgrounding, coming back in your
body, is letting them do.
I want to let my feet connectto where I'm at right now, and
(53:48):
that's a hard question.
That's a whole nother podcast.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
So we'll stop there for me yeah, and I think the the
part, like you just you nailedit earlier in the conversation
where you said trying to avoidthe way we're feeling is is I
mean there's definitely hacksout there, like you said, the
different breathing patterns totry to get rid of anxiety that's
that we're feeling is.
I mean there's definitely hacksout there, like you said, the
different breathing patterns totry to get rid of anxiety that
we have in our bodies.
But the act of feeling it,sitting with it and
(54:14):
understanding it is so much morehealing and that's really
ultimately how we feel safetyand can identify safety right.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Yeah.
And to me the word healingisn't safety, right yeah.
And to me the word healingisn't restoring wholeness, it's
remembering we're already whole,like we don't have to be
perfect to feel a sense ofsafety in our body, no matter
what it's doing, you know, likeif it's doing something odd with
a illness or a trauma storythat is still unwinding.
(54:42):
If we can feel that wholeness,if we can soften our feet, we
can come home just a hair moreinto our system.
That's wholeness, that'shealing.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Michelle, I am 100% sure that someone that is
listening is touched by yourstory and would probably love to
work with you if they wanted todo that.
How, what's the best way toreach you?
Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah, the best way is to you know, meander around the
website.
It's got tons of freebies in itso that you can start working
with me.
Soulful practices is a greatway.
And then you can reach out andsign up for my my mailing lists
or get on my social channels.
And then you can reach out andsign up for my mailing list or
get on my social channels.
Then you'll know aboutdifferent programs and offerings
that are coming up, of ways toget into classrooms with me and
(55:33):
get into healing spaces with me.
Those are the best ways tostart that process.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
That's awesome.
Now you have a beautiful energy.
Michelle, I really appreciateyou coming on and chatting with
me and sharing your story.
It's such a powerful story.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Well, thank you, Russ , for taking your wounded healer
journey and your crappywrapping paper and being willing
to open that up and puttogether this beautiful podcast
and the offerings that you have,because that really is what
this is all about, right.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
Absolutely offerings that you have, because that
really is what this is all about, right?
Absolutely Okay, guys.
If you are interested ingetting in touch with Michelle,
she can be reached onunbridledchangeorg or one of her
social media outlet channels.
addresses however you verbalizethat I'll get all that stuff
from Michelle and I'll includeit in the show notes that you
(56:25):
guys can reach out to her.
Michelle Hollingbrooks.
Thank you so much once againfor coming on.
I really appreciate it.
You've been such a blessing tome and I'm sure everybody else
is listening.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, All right, guys.
So this has been Trauma Talkswith Russ Tellup.
Once again, my name is RussTellup.
I am also a trauma-informedsomatic coach.
(56:45):
If you are interested inworking with Michelle once again
, you can reach out to her viaunbridledchangeorg.
If you're interested in brainspotting, hypnotherapy or
somatic work with me, you canreach out to me on
brainspottingcscom.
That's brainspottingcscom, andwe'll see you guys next week.
(57:06):
Thanks again, michelle.
Have a great week.
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