October 22, 2025 • 47 mins
What if performance, health, and leadership all come down to one thing: safety in your body? In this transformative episode, nervous system specialist and founder of Lumera Leadership Lab Carrie Montgomery breaks down how regulation—not force—is the true foundation of resilience and power. We explore how trauma imprints affect our capacity, why nervous system work is the missing link in healing and business, and how you can start rewiring your system with simple, science-backed practices. Carrie’s story of surviving medical trauma and rebuilding her life from the inside out is a powerful testament to what’s possible when we stop pushing—and start listening.
Topics:
- Nervous system regulation 101
- Somatics + applied neurology
- Burnout, illness, and the collapse before clarity
- Wealth and capacity
- Codependency + fawning
- Creating internal safety
- Redefining power and leadership
- Building resilience through the body
Learn more about Carrie’s work at carriemontgomery.com or connect with her on Instagram at @realcarriemontgomery
.
If you loved today’s episode, please leave a review and share your favorite takeaways by screenshotting this episode and tagging us on Instagram! We also have a free virtual monthly community call on the 3rd Thursday of every month, join here!
CONNECT WITH INNER REBEL
Follow Inner Rebel Podcast: @innerrebelpodcast
Follow Melissa: @melissa-bauknight & @thenovaglobal
Follow Jessica: @bydesignwithjess
Visit the Inner Rebel website
Check out The Nova Community and become a part of our "Novalution" https://thenovaglobal.com/
Download our FREE Reclamation Rituals to become unmasked, unboxed, and rise together.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:07):
It doesn't always feel like courage, what looks
like courage to other people.
For me, it feels like survivalsurfaces.
SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
If I'm surrounded by thinkers, by lovers, by actors,
by integrity, then I really dothink that I know who I am.
SPEAKER_02 (00:22):
It's indescribable when you're being who you are
and you're living your purposeand not expect the end of my
life because it's like I didn'tlive the life of my list.
SPEAKER_07 (00:30):
And I feel so comfortable in the unknown and
so comfortable in thatuncertainty that every fortune
of it is going to be okay.
SPEAKER_06 (00:38):
This is the Inner Rebel podcast.
Welcome to Inner Rebel.
This is a very excitingconversation today.
We have one of my best friends,Carrie Montgomery, here with us.
Hi, Carrie.
SPEAKER_05 (00:59):
Very excited to be here.
SPEAKER_07 (01:00):
I am so excited that you're here.
And before we started, you justasked how I am, and we're gonna
talk see, I can't even talk alittle bit more about that.
A little bit about the nervoussystem today.
And I feel really stressed andreally dysregulated.
So I think it's perfect thatwe're all together right now.
How are you?
I love that.
I'm fabulous.
SPEAKER_05 (01:20):
Okay, I'm doing great.
Good.
I had a voice lesson thismorning.
I'm like doing great.
It is my most favorite activityin life that I do.
And it's so regulating and soexpansive.
It's like a creation portal forme.
SPEAKER_07 (01:34):
So when you say voice lesson, is it like
singing?
SPEAKER_05 (01:36):
It's actually, I have a stomatic voice coach.
And um, yeah, Brooke Wolf, sheis we are creative soulmates.
It's really cool.
And so we do a session a weekand it allows me to tap into my
body as um a creation portal,not something that needs to be
healed.
And I've been on like my healingjourney for a long time, like 30
(01:57):
years.
And it's changed the game for mebeing able to like look at it
from creation instead of fixing.
SPEAKER_07 (02:05):
Yeah.
I don't know, Melissa, if youwant to segue into an intro, but
I want to dive into that andwhat that means.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06 (02:12):
Do we pause or do we dive in?
Let's pause and we're gonna divein because this is what happens
when we start talking.
We just want to dive in.
So before we get any deeper,because you know that's very
easy for us, let's share withour community who is here with
us.
Carrie Montgomery is the founderof Luminara Leadership Lab,
pioneering a revolutionaryapproach to leadership
(02:33):
transformation through theintegration of neuroscience and
nervous system optimization.
Through her signature program,she helps visionary leaders
create sustainable success bysourcing their power from safety
rather than force.
With a proven track record,including 176 million in real
estate sales and revitalizingNew Mexico's film industry and a
(02:55):
sought-after personal brandingbusiness.
Carrie guides multi-passionatefounders and personal brands to
scale their impact whilemaintaining deep well-being.
Carrie is incredible.
Carrie is one of my, like Isaid, she's one of my dearest
friends.
And I think our friendshiptranscends normal what I
historically have viewed astimelines and normal friendship.
(03:19):
And I was telling Jess beforeyou popped on a little bit of
our story, but our relationshipand the relationship that we've
cultivated in an intimate groupof friends has really
transformed what I now seepossible in friendship and how
fun it is to actually blur thelines between professional and
personal and what's possiblewhen we get to really
(03:40):
collaborate with people that weknow on such a deep soul level.
And the safety and the love andthe support in which we can
provide each other in our wholelives has really changed my
life.
And I know it's changed yourlife.
And so I know that we're goingto be talking about the nervous
system today and your healingjourney, but this is a big part
of it.
This, what we've beencultivating inside of our
(04:02):
friendship, has been a deeplynervous system healing
experience for us.
SPEAKER_05 (04:05):
It's really up-leveled the standard I need
in friendship.
It like rewrote the script forme.
SPEAKER_06 (04:11):
Yeah.
Yeah, same.
So I just got full bodygoosebumps.
Literally up to the top of myhead.
Catingles.
I've I've catingled myself.
It's not like peeing your pants,but it's better.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (04:25):
I cat tingled.
There's so many questions that Ihave.
And I know that Melissa has somevery specific questions for you
too, but before we completelydrop the ball on the seed you
planted, I would love to sharewith our audience what it means
to experience your body as acreation portal.
SPEAKER_05 (04:44):
Yeah.
I mean, our body is made up ofenergy.
And we've been programmed insociety to operate within these
structures and confines ofsuccess.
You know, you need to performthis way to get this output to
build this family structure sothat you can have this kind of
wealth to then have this kind ofbusiness.
And it's crushing to the soul alot of times.
And it's crushing to how thebody performs.
(05:07):
For me, I got out of the gatevery young at 18, having a
really crazy medical crisis andbreaking my back and having a
spinal fusion.
And then it was 20 years ofinsane medical experiences to
the point where I almost died.
So I was always trying to fixthat.
I got into healing at 18 yearsold.
I got into energy work and I wasalways trying to fix stuff.
(05:28):
I'm naturally a creative, likeI'm born to be a creative, but I
lost all that life force in theeffort to heal, to make myself
perfect for society so that Icould earn the right money, fit
into the mold, have the rightfamily structure.
And all of those things I don'thave, right?
Like I don't have the familystructure, I don't have the
(05:50):
children.
But what I do have is mysovereignty, my sanity, and my
creativity.
And that's like all that Iactually need.
And everything else will risefrom there.
But you can't create from theimprint of fix without putting
that out into the world, as thisis broken and it needs to
change.
(06:10):
And things in the world you needto change.
But again, the source has to befrom this like organic body open
driven way to create.
And the body needs to feel safeto be open.
And that is the most primarything to do is create safety
first before any release.
(06:31):
It's so scary to release whenyou've got no resources inside.
You're like, let's do a hugesomatic release, and then you're
on the floor, totally like, Ican't handle what just happened
to me.
And in another kind of meltdown,because you've actually not
resourced any safety in the bodyfirst.
And I was on a somatic journeyfor almost 30 years or 25 years
(06:53):
until I found this type ofnervous system regulation work
that gave me boundaries tooperate within that were safe
for me to bring that into mysystem so I could feel what
safety felt like.
I had no idea what it felt like.
SPEAKER_06 (07:07):
It's such a loaded conversation because I think
about safety in the layers.
You've experienced safety infriendship.
You're learning to find safetyin boundaries with family.
And these are all externalthings, but like safety in
romantic partnership.
And then, and but ultimately itcomes from within, but it's a
co-creation within your externalenvironment.
SPEAKER_05 (07:30):
So this is probably the most loaded question, but
how and like sorry, and withwealth, like safety with
earning, right?
Like I've had the highestearning year I've ever had in my
life this year, and I'm thesafest I've ever been.
And so it's just like reallyreinforcing that it comes from
within.
And I always thought the innerwork was there for me, but the
(07:53):
imprint was so dysregulated,miswired, defunct, off track
that I had to really work onwhat those imprints are.
And so we can talk about thattoo.
SPEAKER_06 (08:05):
Yeah.
Well, I would love for you toshare a little bit about the
co-creation of safety.
So you've been doing itsimultaneously inside of
yourself with lots of supportand mentorship, and then the
role of relationships to helpreinforce that safety that
you've been establishing inyourself.
So can you kind of unpack ifsomeone's like, what does safety
(08:26):
mean and how do you actuallycreate that inside of yourself
and your your life?
SPEAKER_05 (08:31):
Yes.
Okay.
So I'll go into the felt senseand then the science.
Okay.
If you have not truly feltsafety in your own body, you
have no clue what that sensationis.
You have no clue what a newbaseline is.
You have no clue what it's liketo not have constriction where
it's like holding you so tight.
And you're like, I just gottapush through this stuff, right?
(08:52):
Just gotta push it out.
But you're literally coming fromthe wrong way in, right?
Like you're trying to pushthrough something with force.
And it's not about that.
And I'm like the first to beforceful.
Like I love to like get intothings, but it was working so
against me.
And so in my neurosomatictraining, we do applied
(09:12):
neurology, somatics,neuropsychology, and bagel
toning.
What we really look at is themap inside the body.
If you were to look at thenervous system as an
input-output structure, the jobof the nervous system is to take
in information from sound,taste, touch, thoughts, images
around you, relationships, moneyproblems, all that input data.
(09:34):
And then it makes a decision andit creates an output.
If that's the only thing youlearn today that could
revolutionize your life, justthinking, I am actually a
computer and it's input,interpretation, decision,
output.
The output is based on a scaleof what your threat bucket is.
So it could be overwhelm,dysregulation, pain, fight or
(09:58):
flight, freeze, fatigue,anxiety, depression, skin
rashes, bowel issues, right?
I'm not talking about long-termdisease states.
I don't want to go there.
I don't want to go to cancer.
I want to talk about likechronic symptoms in the body.
That is your nervous system, thelanguage of the body saying, Hi,
hello, something's not right.
(10:19):
I'm not okay over here.
I need some attention.
And we're like, okay, keepgoing.
Let's go to work.
Yep.
Okay, let's go take care of thatperson because I'm a really good
fawn responsor.
Like, I'm really good at that.
I'm really codependent.
That's been my deep work.
I will put anyone in front of meand I don't have a partner and I
don't have children, and I willput every single person in front
of me.
I consider myself selfish to putmyself first because I don't
(10:42):
have all the other things.
And it's like the only way youcan get other things is to put
yourself first, not otherpeople.
And so in the self-help world, alot of times I say go out and
help others.
But if you're a fawner andyou're codependent, it's really
freaking dangerous because yourmoral value is equated on how
other people will treat you andrespond to you.
(11:04):
And that is detrimental for yourwell-being.
SPEAKER_06 (11:06):
And I think it's like almost every woman.
SPEAKER_05 (11:09):
I know it really is.
I'm like, I don't know anyexceptions to that, do you?
I really do this work for women.
I work with men also, but Ireally think that women have had
enough boundary violations thatwe don't know when they've been
violated and when they've beenbypassed.
So when you have a sense ofsafety in your own body, getting
(11:30):
into your nervous system andfeeling that sense of safety
inside your nervous system, youknow when they've been bypassed.
You have a very clear trigger tobe like, oop, that's not okay.
So the practices that I do arevery simple, small doses of
drills.
It's not this like big somaticprocess, right?
(11:54):
That we're all like, let theheart open, free the vagina,
like whatever it is.
Free the vagina, push it out.
Exactly.
But if you have no safety, and Ihave done all those things, like
I've done Mama Gina's, I feltvery unsafe in there because I
didn't have the safety of mybody to be in that open of an
environment.
And so the drills are aboutrewiring your brain.
(12:18):
So we have these littleneurotags, it's like a marker on
your brain where a sense will goby, or someone's voice, or you
see something, and it activatesone of those tags.
And that tag is attached to thepast that sends a signal to your
body, physical, mental, oremotional.
And so you might be having likea very visceral response to
(12:39):
something very benign and itmakes no sense.
It could be an emotionalflashback, physical experience,
mental thought.
So those three things can happenbecause you're activated by the
tag from the past.
So the goal with doing appliedneurology is breaking down how
the body functions and getstriggered.
(13:02):
We're actually erasing theseneurotags.
We're rewiring wires together,fires together, right?
We're literally rewiring thosesynapses so that you can
experience threat, go do threereally small drills and feel
safe in your body because thatthreat isn't the real threat.
(13:24):
It's just a trigger of threat.
So I'm trying to make it assimple as possible to break it
down.
It does kind of get a little bitmessy in the expiration process
because you gotta track thetriggers.
You need some guidance, you needsomeone accessible to you, you
need to know what drills to do.
And so this is where it makes mywork like a real art with people
(13:46):
and really showing them thepathways and the deficits inside
their body.
SPEAKER_06 (13:52):
This is why everyone needs to hire you.
I like believe that.
And every time someone talks tome about anything, I'm like,
have you met my friend CarrieMontgomery?
I feel like you should talk toher.
SPEAKER_07 (14:05):
And I'm making it accessible too, which was has
been an issue.
SPEAKER_05 (14:09):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (14:09):
I know you said that you're trying to make this as
simple as possible, but I wouldlike to even simplify it a
little bit more so.
SPEAKER_05 (14:16):
Yeah.
Because you're really new tothis.
So I'm I'd love for you toreally break it down, like to my
language.
SPEAKER_07 (14:22):
Okay.
Well, I'm new to your work.
Yes, but I'm not new to thisworld.
But a lot of people that's whatI mean.
Yeah, but a lot of people are.
And I was just thinking back towhen I was in my 20s.
And would any of this make senseto me back then?
Because we normalize anxiety, wenormalize the boundaries being
crossed, we normalize all ofthese things as though they're
(14:43):
just normal functions thatsociety tells us to that's
right.
Yeah, that's right.
It's really not okay.
So I'm not even sure I wouldhave been able to recognize what
unsafety in my body actuallyfelt like.
Absolutely.
Or what that language even meantand what it meant to be safe,
because I wouldn't have knownthat there's any other way to
be.
(15:04):
Now I do.
But how could we frame this forpeople who are like, what are
they talking about?
So that you can identify some ofthe things, even a trigger, like
what does that mean to them sothat they might relate to what
we're talking about?
SPEAKER_05 (15:17):
100%.
Okay.
So I'll just say that the way Ilearned that I was unsafe was I
had to lose everything.
Me too.
Like the bottom of the barrelmoment, I was living in another
country.
I was in long COVID withautoimmune conditions, a lot of
other complex things going on inmy life at that time.
(15:40):
Came home to America for athree-week visit for my family.
I hadn't seen them in threeyears.
This was like end of 2021.
And then I had an injury wheremy spine blew out finally after
25 years of this battle.
And then I blew out my knee andI had to have emergency surgery,
and I couldn't go back to Spain.
I had to leave everything in mylife there.
(16:02):
And I tried to fall into mypartnership that I was in, and
he was not the person that heactually had shown up as.
He was a completely differentperson, and it was very scary
who he was on the other sideonce we were really together.
I flew from LA on crutches in awheelchair, and I got to my
parents' house, and I was like,I need to stay here.
(16:22):
I am not safe anywhere.
Like, I am petrified of theworld right now.
I need to be here.
And I'm very fortunate that theyare very loving and open-armed
and that they could welcome mein.
I do not want anyone toexperience that kind of pain.
So I had to learn a really hardlesson and lose everything.
(16:44):
That surgery was not coveredbecause I was on travel
insurance and they decided thatI was traveling into the country
to have surgery, that it was notvalid.
And so I ended up having to paycash for that surgery in
America.
Like you can see the financialdestruction, the unwellness, all
of the things.
Like that's how I had to learnthat I was not safe.
(17:04):
And that is not okay becauseI've actually been in the
healing world for 30 years.
And the fact that was somethingthat I didn't know all the way
through my journey, that a lackof safety was the undercurrent
of my whole entire life.
And our world right now is notsafe.
(17:25):
A hundred percent is not safe.
The political situation that'sgoing on in the world does not
feel safe to anyone on everylevel in every country.
The collapse of structure doesnot feel safe.
It's not safe right now.
It doesn't feel safe.
And the only way for you tocreate safety is to do it
internally.
And it's really like the worldneeds to understand what safety
(17:47):
feels like to then know how tofilter out things that are
absolutely not okay.
SPEAKER_04 (17:53):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05 (17:53):
And if we can do that one person at a time, our
world will change.
Yeah.
I can't change everyone.
I cannot change weapons of massdestruction, but I can help
people feel safe.
So it's a hard answer to say,like, what do you look for?
Right?
If you have anxiety, you don'tfeel safe.
That is the root.
Like you are in a threatoverload.
(18:14):
You have a bucket that yourcontainer of your body is
holding and it is overflowingwith threat.
There is too much input, and weneed to change the input.
And that does not start withthings outside you.
It starts with little thingsinside yourself.
SPEAKER_06 (18:30):
This comes up a lot on this podcast, this complete
collapse of our lives.
And so I also want to bring itback to, you know, if somebody
hasn't experienced that, becauseI don't want people to be like,
oh my God, the only way for meto know what it is is to like
have my life collapse.
No, but I have like somepractical examples from my life,
like public speaking.
So if you're afraid to speak infront of people, you don't feel
(18:52):
safe, right?
One silly example was like I waswith a group of friends last
weekend who I love and they wereplaying Pictionary.
And I was terrified to fuckingdraw a picture in front of this
group because I didn't want tobe judged.
I was tracking it and I waslike, oh my God, this is wild.
These are dear friends.
And then I got a thing and I hadto draw a dolphin and I like
freaked out and no one couldguess it.
(19:13):
And I was like, this is theworst thing.
Like I, it was such a simplething, but it was like, I didn't
want to be in front of the roomand screw up because I didn't
want to get judged.
And I was like, is it thesepeople?
Is it me?
Would I feel this way in anothergroup?
These are just some smallexamples of what it looks like
in a day-to-day thing.
We all are dealing with this.
Like if you're feeling a strongsense of overwhelm in your life,
(19:33):
if you're feeling burnout, likethese are really practical
examples that I think so manypeople are feeling.
And it's one of the things thatyou've supported so much in the
Nova is this is how to do it.
So your body can just feelrelaxed, where you can feel
confident to be yourself, whereyou feel like you're not trying
to hide anything, where you feellike you can speak when you need
to.
(19:53):
And so to me, safety is thejourney to authenticity.
It's the journey to being ableto actually show up in the world
in a way that feels true to you,which is a loaded sentence, but
where you don't feel like you'retrying to mask, hide, pretend,
earn, prove, like all thesethings that we do to manipulate
(20:14):
our belonging so we can justfeel love and like we're
ourselves.
And so there's just, it's likethere isn't one person that
listens to this that is notnavigating this on some level,
whether your life is fuckingfalling apart or you're like, I
actually don't like publicspeaking.
Yeah.
It's like everything in betweenwhen your body like closes up,
gets super tight, or you feellike you may die if you have to
(20:37):
do that thing.
SPEAKER_05 (20:38):
I think it's also like if we look at capacity as a
scale, right?
Like what you can handle, themore that comes at you, the less
you can handle if you're notregulated, if you don't have
that like nervous system ninjaway of being.
So if you look at that wholeinput-output model, and then if
you look at output also as ascale, there's like the pain,
(21:01):
fight or flight, and thenthere's performance.
Performance is like my balanceis really good, my hormones are
operating well, I'm sleepingreally well, I'm communicating
well.
If your brain is firing on allcylinders and your body's up to
the charge, like, yeah, I feelalive.
You're doing good.
Like you're doing really, reallygood.
If you are experiencing symptomsin your life of chronic pain,
(21:25):
anxiety, depression, migraines,things that we pathologize.
Does that make sense?
You don't feel safe.
I spent 30 years looking foranswers to medical conditions.
And in the past five years ishow I've learned that all of
that, if I had known this 30years ago, my life would be so
(21:45):
different.
But one surgery set off a levelof dysregulation in my body that
was almost irreversible untilnow.
SPEAKER_07 (21:54):
So maybe we can talk about what safety feels like.
Yeah.
Like a warm cuddle puddle.
SPEAKER_05 (22:02):
Like you're melting.
It's so interesting.
I actually it feels so differentfor me.
Like it's different foreveryone.
Yeah.
So for me, oh, let's talk aboutit and what each of our safety
feels like.
SPEAKER_06 (22:12):
This is a fun exercise.
SPEAKER_05 (22:13):
Yeah, this is a great question.
So my center channel is likeonline.
This is where I can feel fromlike my root to my crown, we're
talking chakras here.
So running up the body, I canfeel my center channel feel
really aligned.
And like there's like a hum init, right?
Like it's like, uh here we are.
(22:35):
And that's why singing works sowell for me because I'm toning,
I'm working with all of mychannel.
I'm toning my column to createthat frequency and that harmony,
right?
My pain symptoms are really low.
I'm not like, eh, I got thisreally weird kink in my neck and
shoulder, and like my handreally hurts and my foot's
(22:56):
aching, right?
Like I know that when my pain issignaling, I'm dysregulated.
I'm not safe in my body.
And so for me, it is like thisit's a harmonized channel in my
center.
I'd love to know what it feelslike for you guys.
SPEAKER_06 (23:10):
Yeah, Jess, what's yours feel like?
SPEAKER_07 (23:12):
Wow.
I'm trying to feel back intowhat it feels like because right
now I don't feel it.
And I even articulated it to mypartner this morning.
I said, I feel off-center.
Okay.
I feel off.
SPEAKER_05 (23:26):
Can we just do something really quick before
you do this then?
Yeah.
Can you just do a rotationalassessment?
So just take a deep breath in.
I love when Jess gets topractice.
SPEAKER_06 (23:34):
Somehow always happens where it's like, Jess,
let's do this live.
SPEAKER_05 (23:38):
This is great.
So just take a nice deep breathin and out.
Okay, cool.
So I'm gonna teach you therotational assessment.
This is the language of the bodytelling us where your nervous
system is actually at.
So I just want you to look leftand look right and mark how far
you can turn.
So actually with your neck.
So you're gonna turn look leftand look right.
(23:58):
And just feel how much you canrotate.
Okay, so that's pretty good.
So come back to center.
Isn't that?
Yeah.
I have a bad neck.
Okay.
Yeah.
But you can notice as we do somedrills, you will contract or
expand.
Okay.
Like I can do one drill and itwill literally not allow me to
move my neck because it takes meinto dysregulation.
I can do another drill and Iturn into an owl.
Okay.
Okay.
(24:19):
So we're just gonna start withtongue circles right now.
So you're gonna take your tonguebetween your lips and your
teeth.
So just put them above, like upabove.
And then you're gonna circlearound your mouth, trying to
reach around your mouth as muchas you can.
Yeah, great job.
Circling around.
Good.
So just go five in one directionand then five in the other
(24:41):
direction.
Good.
And just like notice your toes,notice your fingers, continue to
breathe.
And once you've done five bothways, you can stop and just take
a deep breath in and out.
Good.
And I'm gonna have you reassess.
So just look left and lookright.
(25:03):
Okay, so more.
Yeah.
Yeah, left definitely felt a lotmore.
Great.
Okay, cool.
So let's do another one.
You're gonna take your hands.
This is more proprioceptive.
So that was interoceptive.
I'm working with the vagussystem.
This is proprioceptive.
So telling your body where it isin space.
So I'm just gonna have you startby turning your hand.
I'm gonna tilt my camera downright now.
Okay.
(25:24):
So hand is over, under, up, anddown, right?
Just start like that.
And then I'm gonna have you slowit down and you're gonna open
and then as you rotate down,you're gonna close the fingers.
As you rotate up, you're gonnaopen the fingers, one, two,
three, four.
As you rotate down, close, one,two, three, four.
Yeah.
Try to go big finger.
(25:45):
What's this finger called?
Pointer.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_06 (25:47):
Pointer finger, pointer, finger, middle finger,
ring finger, pinky, right?
SPEAKER_05 (25:51):
And then flip it over, pointer finger, ring
finger, you got it.
Pinky.
Then you find a flow where itturns into like a figure eight.
Your thumb just kind of likehangs out on this.
So just slow it down.
Yeah, so just slow it down untilyou feel like you can get the
rhythm.
And then you don't have to speedup as I'm speeding up, but what
(26:12):
I'm just gonna show you is thatas you speed up, you're telling
your body, you're reinformingthe map of your body in space
right now.
Okay.
So I'm just gonna have you putyour hand down on your leg and
take a deep breath in and out.
Great.
And then just do a rotationalassessment.
(26:33):
You're gonna look left and thenlook right.
Yeah, great.
Better?
SPEAKER_07 (26:38):
I think so.
SPEAKER_05 (26:39):
Great.
All right, so let's do one more.
Tell me where the tightest partof your body is like the most
constriction you feel.
It's kind of a war between myforehead and chest.
Your diaphragm and chest.
My diaphragm, yeah.
All right.
So I'm gonna have you cross yourleft ankle over your right
ankle.
Okay Oh, oh, your feet were noton the floor this whole time.
(27:02):
Yeah, they were on my lap.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is great information toknow.
I'm gonna ask you in the futureto actually put your feet on the
floor because it helps your bodyknow you're you're up floating.
SPEAKER_03 (27:15):
Right?
SPEAKER_05 (27:16):
Okay so okay, so left ankle over the right, right
hand on left knee, left handbehind your head.
Okay.
You're gonna rotate towards yourleft elbow really gently, right?
Just yep.
And then you're gonna take anice inhale to extend the spine
up, and then just exhale to letthe shoulders go.
(27:36):
Good.
Yeah, just let them relax.
Great.
So this is not too strenuous,and just look towards that left
elbow.
Great.
And I'm gonna have you inhale,expand into the back side of
your right rib cage.
One, two, three.
You're gonna hold for five,four, three, two, one, exhale
(27:58):
for eight, seven, six, five,four, three, two, one.
Inhale, three, two, one, two,hold, five, four, three, two,
one, exhale, eight, seven, six,five, four, three, two, one.
(28:24):
Inhale, three, two, one, hold,five, four, three, two, one,
exhale, eight, seven, six, five,four, three, two, one.
So you feel that pressure reliefvalve happen.
(28:45):
Come back to center, just take adeep breath in and out.
Good.
And then just turn your bodytowards me so I can see you head
on, like your whole body.
And I'm gonna have you assesslook left and look right.
Yeah.
Oh, my right is so much better.
Isn't that wild?
unknown (29:04):
Oh.
SPEAKER_05 (29:04):
Yeah.
So that was that one is a verypowerful.
You're innervating thediaphragm, and so that's where
the vagus nerve like runs rightthrough.
And so it's like doing asqueezing out of a towel, but
we're doing it very gently, butwe're using the breath to do
that, and then you're releasingit.
And so you might have felt likea little bit of the rush of
(29:26):
oxygen to the brain.
You can increase the intensityof the breathing and make it
really like kind of a wildexperience.
SPEAKER_06 (29:34):
So thank you.
Thank you.
So now what is safety?
SPEAKER_07 (29:39):
I know just to give you a different access point,
right?
So, what I'd say, I don't knowwhy I feel like I have to give
context to this, but what I'mjust sort of finding interesting
in my life right now is that Idid a really good job creating
safety within a set ofconditions.
So I had a similar experience.
(30:00):
To you, in losing everything, toreally have to do my healing
work and really discover that inmyself and built a life that
created a lot of space for me todo this work.
And in that context, I feel calmand very centered and strong,
(30:21):
like a sense of no matter whatcomes up, I have the inner
resources to handle it.
Self-assurance.
Self-assurance and the space toreally be with my feelings so
that I'm not in reaction, that Ican really hold whatever is
coming up and allow it and feelsafe in it, and then make
(30:44):
conscious decisions.
What I'm noticing right now isoutside of that context, and I
guess the context is just a lotof spaciousness and time.
I need a lot of time in myroutine.
SPEAKER_05 (30:58):
What's your human design?
SPEAKER_07 (31:00):
I am a two-five generator on the cross of
service.
And stillness, ironically, is mymain number.
52.
Really?
Are you on the cross of service?
No.
The cross of healing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Of course you know that.
So stress is the shadow, right?
A lot of life is being thrown atme right now.
(31:20):
And I'm not given that kind ofspace to really be with myself
to feel grounded.
There's a lot of pain around meright now.
SPEAKER_05 (31:32):
Co-disregulation.
SPEAKER_07 (31:33):
Yeah.
And I don't feel in control ofmy schedule.
And I'm noticing in the midst ofthat that I no longer feel okay
taking pauses.
SPEAKER_05 (31:44):
Because your system says it's not safe to pause
right now.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (31:48):
Like doom, doom, doom, one thing to the next.
And I woke up this morning andI'm like, oh no, I am so off
balance right now.
I do not feel safe in thefeelings coming up right now.
I don't feel like I have thespaciousness to be with those
feelings.
I get into overfunctioning mode,I get into codependency, I get
into perfectionism.
You're such a good highperformer.
(32:10):
Yeah.
So I'm I guess my question, andI do want to come to Melissa and
find out your safety.
But my question is when lifegets intense, right?
What is it that we can do?
Because sometimes circumstancesare out of our control.
How do we maintain that safetyif we're no longer able to keep
(32:33):
the, you know, the sovereignty?
SPEAKER_05 (32:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great question.
So that is why I love this work.
You can do tiny drills over theday, the course of the day.
You can prime yourself in themorning with just a few drills
just to make contact, right?
Just to have that internal,like, I'm giving you a moment.
I'm giving you what you need.
You have an assessment tool thatwill let you know how
(32:58):
constricted or how open you are.
So you're talking to thelanguage of the body, not to
your cognition.
Your cognition will tell youanything it wants to hear.
And your protectors will come inand give you any reason to
continue moving at the paceyou're going, right?
Over functioning.
So when you have that level ofawareness of like, oh, right, I
(33:20):
just need to do like a handfulof drills as I'm making my
coffee, brushing my teeth,getting dressed.
That is how I integrate it.
Now there are times where I'mlike, I need to take 30 minutes
and blow through some realstuff, right?
Like, but I've also learned howto spend that time because I've
built the safety to spend thattime.
(33:42):
But when you're in this highperforming mode, it is very hard
to downregulate.
And so the oxymoron is thatspace is the one thing that you
need.
Right.
Like that is it.
But the drills become part ofsurvival and the lifestyle until
you get some sovereignty backand some inner awareness and
(34:04):
some safety to say, oh, I needto go handle that emotion.
SPEAKER_04 (34:09):
Right.
SPEAKER_05 (34:10):
Like I actually need to go deal with that emotion.
That emotion's running me rightnow.
I had it with anger recently,and Mo is on the inside know of
that.
And it really had me likehardcore.
And I was like, I feel like Imight die right now.
And I didn't realize that I wassuppressing anger.
Like I was not on board with it.
I was just suppressing it andbeing like, I'm fine, I'm fine,
(34:30):
I'm fine.
And then it caught.
But what I was doing all alongwas my drills to bring the
conversation between my body andmy brain back to a place of
awareness, safe cognition, safeactivation, safe engagement with
the world.
So your body needs to know whereit is in space, how it's
(34:55):
interpreting the insides, andwhat the language between the
brain and the body is.
That is what it's asking forwhen you're in overfunctioning
mode.
And so if tiny little drillsover the course of the day can
do that, and I'll share the onthe go video that I have.
It's literally like you could doit in your car, like safely do
it in your car.
(35:15):
I'm on the go.
I will do drills when I'm intransit in the car.
Because that is a moment that Iget back to myself.
I try not to do calls anymorewhen I'm in the car.
I try to give myself thosemoments, right?
We're in an overfunctioningworld.
We're in a high demand world.
There is too much pressure.
And so it is our job to squeezethose moments in with the
(35:38):
drills.
SPEAKER_07 (35:39):
Because then I or maybe this is an assumption, but
I'm assuming that then if we'reable to regulate in the midst of
that chaotic state, we canactually make better decisions.
We can actually hold ourboundaries.
SPEAKER_05 (35:54):
We can because you're safe to hold your
boundary.
I had no boundaries first.
Yeah.
And you're not bottleneckingeverything through a filter
that's a broken filter, right?
Because that's what's happeningwhen you're dysregulated.
The filter to the world isbroken, but it's not clear, it's
not an open channel.
It's like zigzaggy jaggedy.
(36:14):
And so what you're workingtowards is building like how
clear can this channel be?
Mo.
SPEAKER_06 (36:20):
Yeah, what's your the word that came to me was
trust.
That's how you feel safe.
And it yeah, self-like trust ortrust.
It's like Yeah, I agree.
Which I think is sort of whatyou were speaking to too, is
that, and I think of all of themoments where you've held me
carry around like you know, likeMonday of this week.
(36:44):
Um, I love you.
It's like just deep trust inmyself, trust in the
circumstances, trust in that I'mheld, trust that it all will
work out.
It's like less of futurepanicking or blaming.
Like I get really like, I need avictim.
Like realized that this week islike I need like somebody to
(37:05):
blame this person.
SPEAKER_05 (37:06):
That's the fight response.
SPEAKER_06 (37:08):
Yeah.
I realized that.
I was like, oh my God, I alwaysneed someone to blame for what's
happening inside of my body.
SPEAKER_05 (37:14):
It's so funny.
We've had this conversation forlike a year, but this is the
first time.
I realized that this week.
And we you went deep in that andlook at the amazing stuff that
came out from it.
SPEAKER_06 (37:24):
And I've been in major, major high performing
mode.
I mean, I made a list onWednesday of like all the things
we've accomplished.
And there's a part of me thatdoesn't even want to be proud of
it because I'm like, oh my God,is this me just being like, must
perform, must perform, you know.
Like I don't even want to likecelebrate my overfunctioning
anymore.
But when I feel safe, I feeltrust.
(37:46):
And then, you know, what thatlooks like of how I show up in
the world is I feel alive.
It's almost like you can havelike an orgasm with your life
because you're in yourcreativity, you're in your flow,
you can be calm inside of chaos.
It's like I always speak to likebeing the eye of the storm.
It's sort of what it feels like.
And I'm a really incredibleleader, I'm an incredible
visionary.
When I'm in regulation, like thespeed to which I can make shit
(38:08):
move is fucking crazy.
But I noticed the differencebetween force and trust.
And that's sort of mydysregulation regulation in my
body.
I love that.
SPEAKER_05 (38:20):
Yeah, I want to just like riff off of one thing
really quickly because Jess saidthe word calm and like that's
her knowing.
And I just want to clarify onething like regulation does not
always mean calm.
It really means like you haveagency to move in and out of
states.
Right.
(38:40):
And so while calm is likedefinitely a desired state, we
sometimes need to get activatedto stay safe in a situation and
then be able to come downafterwards.
So it's more modulation.
Like that is the skill of how doyou ride the waves so that you
(39:01):
stay autonomous and sovereign.
SPEAKER_07 (39:03):
I want Melissa's answer.
SPEAKER_05 (39:06):
Because I think it was perfect.
SPEAKER_07 (39:08):
I think it was the perfect articulation of it.
Yeah, it was so good.
SPEAKER_06 (39:10):
But I understand, I do understand what you're
saying.
One thing I think is interestingis too, is if you don't have
like a tracking, like an auraring or something to track, this
is how I can tell.
I can like peg the days that I'mdysregulated.
Because if we look at Monday,this is the day that I like
freaked out up with Carrie.
This is high stress.
I literally could not come down.
(39:31):
Can you explain what we'relooking at?
So it's a it's uh a daytime.
So it there's a graph that isthe Aura Ring app and it tracks
your if you're stressed,engaged, relaxed, or restored.
Wow.
So it like literally maps yourstress points throughout the
day.
I need this.
And I love having the databecause I can feel that feeling
(39:51):
in my body where I just like Ican't come down.
Like I just feel tight and Ilike look at this and it's like,
oh, well, it's probably becauseand it tracks for time.
So it'll track like your wholeday until you're like asleep.
And I'll look at it, and thesedata points are on the top of
the graph at like maximumstress, and I'm not coming down
(40:13):
too engaged or relaxed.
And so if I'm having a day whereI'm like more, let's call it
normally functioning or moreregulated, it might look more
like this, where it's kind of upand down and up and down.
And that day, Monday, what itfelt like at the end of the day,
I literally came home from anevent and I like turned all the
lights off in the house and Igot into bed and closed my eyes
(40:35):
and was just like, it's sointense.
And so to me, the visualrepresentation of the modulation
of like you can have thesepoints and then your body can
come back down.
But probably what you're feelingtoday, Jess, it's like your
graph would probably look likemine, where it's like, I was in
a state of stress for eighthours and 15 minutes.
The day that looked normal waslike two and a half hours of
stress and like two hours ofregulation or restored.
(40:57):
And so it's fascinating becauseI mean, I love the tool of like
your assessment is really a moreobjective way of looking at am I
regular.
SPEAKER_05 (41:05):
It gives you outside feedback.
SPEAKER_06 (41:06):
Totally.
Like so the feedback of a ring,or you I know you have another
tool too, which we can share inthe show notes, is like having
an actual tool that objectivelyis like this is what's happening
in your body.
The data is so good.
It's so good.
And then then I become kind ofaddicted to my sleep and really
protective over sleep.
Because if you're not restoringduring the day, then you need to
be restoring at night.
(41:27):
And so then you can track yoursleep.
And anyway, so it's justfascinating because no matter
when you restore, you have torestore.
Right.
SPEAKER_05 (41:34):
And like if I don't restore at night very well,
that's where my deep trauma is.
And I've been working on it alot.
And it's been, yeah, it's beenthe work.
It's been the work.
SPEAKER_06 (41:43):
So I know we need to wrap up, but I want Carrie as
our final question, which isnormally our first question.
We do things so normal aroundhere.
Fuck the rules.
What is your relationship toyour inner rebel?
SPEAKER_05 (41:56):
Oh my god, I didn't know that's what you were about
to say.
Um, so I spent a long timeshaming her for living the
alternative lifestyle, right?
So I would like shame her a lot.
And in this past year, I'vereally learned to respect the
path that she's taken and kindof get into the kink of it of
(42:21):
like, yeah, this is kind ofcool.
Like, whoa, okay, so whatactually really does feel good?
Let's go there.
And why are we playing by theserules?
And so I tried to be like a goodgirl in society and it doesn't
really work for me, right?
Or anybody.
SPEAKER_06 (42:39):
Right, like I didn't work for anybody.
SPEAKER_05 (42:41):
I was like, oh, you must play by the rules and get a
normal job and do these thingsand have benefits, right?
And I can shame myself out oflike why I shouldn't be living
the life I do and I shouldn't bean entrepreneur, all these
things, right?
Instead of actually reallyloving this creative spark and
spirit that is so from anotherplanet and doesn't fit in the
(43:04):
system here at all.
And the more I love her and themore I play with her, the more
fun and the more freedom Iexperience.
But I couldn't do that until Iunderstood my own boundaries and
what felt safe to me.
And I could express those.
And it when you can learn toexpress boundaries, you can be
as much of a rebel.
And I would say the biggesttakeaway for me, and we can
(43:25):
leave it with this, is that mywake-up moment in my business
was I knew I was here to doreally big things.
And the first week into mybusiness had a major medical
collapse.
Five years in, I had anothermajor medical collapse.
And I realized that I didn'thave the nervous system to hold
the vision that I wasexperiencing.
(43:46):
And I committed what's thatlike?
I committed my life's work to itfive years ago.
And I have just made everydecision for that so that I can
feel in honor of myself, myspirit, the things I would know
that I came into this world todo.
(44:07):
And you just have to take onestep at a time, create safety
along the way, and build thatcapacity so that you can live
the vision of the rebel that youtruly are, because the system is
not meant for you.
I boom.
SPEAKER_07 (44:22):
Love it.
Mic drop.
Love it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Carrie, so much.
I know that we could just keepgoing and we'll have you back
again.
But thank you so much and forsharing your tools and your
gifts with us.
I really appreciate that verymuch.
I feel a lot better.
SPEAKER_05 (44:38):
Yeah, it's it is like a little bit of a warm hug,
right?
Like once you get that fuelsupply to the brain, that's what
it was, right?
Your brain was like, and so wejust got some fuel supply.
I would actually go recommendthat you eat right now just to
give yourself a little bit morefuel supply.
The brain needs glucose, ittakes a lot to function.
SPEAKER_07 (44:58):
It does, it does, and it was such a good reminder,
like the right reminder at theright time.
I'm so glad of the space totake.
Like I know what that sense ofsafety feels like, and to
prioritize it.
To put it, make it number oneright now.
I think.
SPEAKER_06 (45:15):
We'll use the word devotion.
SPEAKER_07 (45:17):
Devotion.
SPEAKER_05 (45:19):
So bad.
SPEAKER_06 (45:19):
It's one of my favorite words like over the
last year.
It really always lands becauseit's like it's it's like that
deep spiritual commitment to thethings that you care about.
Like, I'm devoted to cultivatingsafety in my body.
I'm devoted to and it's so muchbetter than like dedicate.
And you know, these likestronger, more masculine
versions of like just fuckingyeah, that they're more in
(45:42):
alignment with that all ornothing mentality, you know.
Like sometimes I think we getwrapped up in in that side of of
our commitments and so thatdevotion of like, I'm devoted to
this, so I'm gonna take how longdid that take?
I mean, Carrie did three drills,it's five minutes.
You could even do the tonguecircles and then like get on
your next one.
SPEAKER_05 (45:58):
You can actually do the tongue circles and the hand
movement together.
It takes a little bit ofpractice, but when you start
layering the Yeah, you saw Jesstrying to do the hand.
SPEAKER_06 (46:07):
It's like it's like pat your head and rub your
tummy, Jess.
SPEAKER_05 (46:11):
It's called stacking.
So you can actually stack drillstogether to increase the
effectiveness of them.
And it's all of a sudden you'relike fucking efficiency.
I love efficiency.
SPEAKER_06 (46:19):
I love efficiency.
SPEAKER_07 (46:20):
Efficiency.
SPEAKER_06 (46:21):
All right.
SPEAKER_07 (46:22):
Yeah, I know I do know that we have to go, but I
also just want to put in that Ilove the reminder also that it's
not our fault that society iswhat it is that we all into
myself.
Like I was shaming myselfbecause I'm like, I know this
work and I've been doing it forso long, and I got into such a
healthy place.
How did I let certain thingsknock me?
SPEAKER_05 (46:44):
Dude, you are in war with society, like every day is
a battle against the way theworld is set up because it's not
working for our system, and sofinding the sovereignty in that
of like, I don't need to beratemyself, I didn't do anything
wrong.
The whole entire ecosystem isnot set up for your success.
(47:04):
To meet it with grace and tolike love on that part that part
of safety is gentleness andcompassion.
So it's yeah, like there'snothing wrong with you.
Yeah, and when you can get intoso there is like a state in the
regulation process where you canget really into the cognition
and you start to like crackcodes where you're like, oh
wait, I've had this beliefsystem that has literally put me
(47:27):
in prison for most of my life.
And then all of a sudden you'relike walking without that belief
system anymore, and then youbecome superhuman.
Okay, it's wild.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (47:39):
To being superhuman.
Thank you.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_06 (47:43):
That's the name of the how to be superhuman.
SPEAKER_05 (47:47):
No big expectations here.
SPEAKER_06 (47:49):
Yeah, no, no crash.
All right.
Love you, Gary.
Thank you, Gary.
Talk to you soon.
Bye.
It doesn't always feel like courage, what looks
like courage to other people.
For me, it feels like survivalsurfaces.
SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
If I'm surrounded by thinkers, by lovers, by actors,
by integrity, then I really dothink that I know who I am.
SPEAKER_02 (00:22):
It's indescribable when you're being who you are
and you're living your purposeand not expect the end of my
life because it's like I didn'tlive the life of my list.
SPEAKER_07 (00:30):
And I feel so comfortable in the unknown and
so comfortable in thatuncertainty that every fortune
of it is going to be okay.
SPEAKER_06 (00:38):
This is the Inner Rebel podcast.
Welcome to Inner Rebel.
This is a very excitingconversation today.
We have one of my best friends,Carrie Montgomery, here with us.
Hi, Carrie.
SPEAKER_05 (00:59):
Very excited to be here.
SPEAKER_07 (01:00):
I am so excited that you're here.
And before we started, you justasked how I am, and we're gonna
talk see, I can't even talk alittle bit more about that.
A little bit about the nervoussystem today.
And I feel really stressed andreally dysregulated.
So I think it's perfect thatwe're all together right now.
How are you?
I love that.
I'm fabulous.
SPEAKER_05 (01:20):
Okay, I'm doing great.
Good.
I had a voice lesson thismorning.
I'm like doing great.
It is my most favorite activityin life that I do.
And it's so regulating and soexpansive.
It's like a creation portal forme.
SPEAKER_07 (01:34):
So when you say voice lesson, is it like
singing?
SPEAKER_05 (01:36):
It's actually, I have a stomatic voice coach.
And um, yeah, Brooke Wolf, sheis we are creative soulmates.
It's really cool.
And so we do a session a weekand it allows me to tap into my
body as um a creation portal,not something that needs to be
healed.
And I've been on like my healingjourney for a long time, like 30
(01:57):
years.
And it's changed the game for mebeing able to like look at it
from creation instead of fixing.
SPEAKER_07 (02:05):
Yeah.
I don't know, Melissa, if youwant to segue into an intro, but
I want to dive into that andwhat that means.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06 (02:12):
Do we pause or do we dive in?
Let's pause and we're gonna divein because this is what happens
when we start talking.
We just want to dive in.
So before we get any deeper,because you know that's very
easy for us, let's share withour community who is here with
us.
Carrie Montgomery is the founderof Luminara Leadership Lab,
pioneering a revolutionaryapproach to leadership
(02:33):
transformation through theintegration of neuroscience and
nervous system optimization.
Through her signature program,she helps visionary leaders
create sustainable success bysourcing their power from safety
rather than force.
With a proven track record,including 176 million in real
estate sales and revitalizingNew Mexico's film industry and a
(02:55):
sought-after personal brandingbusiness.
Carrie guides multi-passionatefounders and personal brands to
scale their impact whilemaintaining deep well-being.
Carrie is incredible.
Carrie is one of my, like Isaid, she's one of my dearest
friends.
And I think our friendshiptranscends normal what I
historically have viewed astimelines and normal friendship.
(03:19):
And I was telling Jess beforeyou popped on a little bit of
our story, but our relationshipand the relationship that we've
cultivated in an intimate groupof friends has really
transformed what I now seepossible in friendship and how
fun it is to actually blur thelines between professional and
personal and what's possiblewhen we get to really
(03:40):
collaborate with people that weknow on such a deep soul level.
And the safety and the love andthe support in which we can
provide each other in our wholelives has really changed my
life.
And I know it's changed yourlife.
And so I know that we're goingto be talking about the nervous
system today and your healingjourney, but this is a big part
of it.
This, what we've beencultivating inside of our
(04:02):
friendship, has been a deeplynervous system healing
experience for us.
SPEAKER_05 (04:05):
It's really up-leveled the standard I need
in friendship.
It like rewrote the script forme.
SPEAKER_06 (04:11):
Yeah.
Yeah, same.
So I just got full bodygoosebumps.
Literally up to the top of myhead.
Catingles.
I've I've catingled myself.
It's not like peeing your pants,but it's better.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (04:25):
I cat tingled.
There's so many questions that Ihave.
And I know that Melissa has somevery specific questions for you
too, but before we completelydrop the ball on the seed you
planted, I would love to sharewith our audience what it means
to experience your body as acreation portal.
SPEAKER_05 (04:44):
Yeah.
I mean, our body is made up ofenergy.
And we've been programmed insociety to operate within these
structures and confines ofsuccess.
You know, you need to performthis way to get this output to
build this family structure sothat you can have this kind of
wealth to then have this kind ofbusiness.
And it's crushing to the soul alot of times.
And it's crushing to how thebody performs.
(05:07):
For me, I got out of the gatevery young at 18, having a
really crazy medical crisis andbreaking my back and having a
spinal fusion.
And then it was 20 years ofinsane medical experiences to
the point where I almost died.
So I was always trying to fixthat.
I got into healing at 18 yearsold.
I got into energy work and I wasalways trying to fix stuff.
(05:28):
I'm naturally a creative, likeI'm born to be a creative, but I
lost all that life force in theeffort to heal, to make myself
perfect for society so that Icould earn the right money, fit
into the mold, have the rightfamily structure.
And all of those things I don'thave, right?
Like I don't have the familystructure, I don't have the
(05:50):
children.
But what I do have is mysovereignty, my sanity, and my
creativity.
And that's like all that Iactually need.
And everything else will risefrom there.
But you can't create from theimprint of fix without putting
that out into the world, as thisis broken and it needs to
change.
(06:10):
And things in the world you needto change.
But again, the source has to befrom this like organic body open
driven way to create.
And the body needs to feel safeto be open.
And that is the most primarything to do is create safety
first before any release.
(06:31):
It's so scary to release whenyou've got no resources inside.
You're like, let's do a hugesomatic release, and then you're
on the floor, totally like, Ican't handle what just happened
to me.
And in another kind of meltdown,because you've actually not
resourced any safety in the bodyfirst.
And I was on a somatic journeyfor almost 30 years or 25 years
(06:53):
until I found this type ofnervous system regulation work
that gave me boundaries tooperate within that were safe
for me to bring that into mysystem so I could feel what
safety felt like.
I had no idea what it felt like.
SPEAKER_06 (07:07):
It's such a loaded conversation because I think
about safety in the layers.
You've experienced safety infriendship.
You're learning to find safetyin boundaries with family.
And these are all externalthings, but like safety in
romantic partnership.
And then, and but ultimately itcomes from within, but it's a
co-creation within your externalenvironment.
SPEAKER_05 (07:30):
So this is probably the most loaded question, but
how and like sorry, and withwealth, like safety with
earning, right?
Like I've had the highestearning year I've ever had in my
life this year, and I'm thesafest I've ever been.
And so it's just like reallyreinforcing that it comes from
within.
And I always thought the innerwork was there for me, but the
(07:53):
imprint was so dysregulated,miswired, defunct, off track
that I had to really work onwhat those imprints are.
And so we can talk about thattoo.
SPEAKER_06 (08:05):
Yeah.
Well, I would love for you toshare a little bit about the
co-creation of safety.
So you've been doing itsimultaneously inside of
yourself with lots of supportand mentorship, and then the
role of relationships to helpreinforce that safety that
you've been establishing inyourself.
So can you kind of unpack ifsomeone's like, what does safety
(08:26):
mean and how do you actuallycreate that inside of yourself
and your your life?
SPEAKER_05 (08:31):
Yes.
Okay.
So I'll go into the felt senseand then the science.
Okay.
If you have not truly feltsafety in your own body, you
have no clue what that sensationis.
You have no clue what a newbaseline is.
You have no clue what it's liketo not have constriction where
it's like holding you so tight.
And you're like, I just gottapush through this stuff, right?
(08:52):
Just gotta push it out.
But you're literally coming fromthe wrong way in, right?
Like you're trying to pushthrough something with force.
And it's not about that.
And I'm like the first to beforceful.
Like I love to like get intothings, but it was working so
against me.
And so in my neurosomatictraining, we do applied
(09:12):
neurology, somatics,neuropsychology, and bagel
toning.
What we really look at is themap inside the body.
If you were to look at thenervous system as an
input-output structure, the jobof the nervous system is to take
in information from sound,taste, touch, thoughts, images
around you, relationships, moneyproblems, all that input data.
(09:34):
And then it makes a decision andit creates an output.
If that's the only thing youlearn today that could
revolutionize your life, justthinking, I am actually a
computer and it's input,interpretation, decision,
output.
The output is based on a scaleof what your threat bucket is.
So it could be overwhelm,dysregulation, pain, fight or
(09:58):
flight, freeze, fatigue,anxiety, depression, skin
rashes, bowel issues, right?
I'm not talking about long-termdisease states.
I don't want to go there.
I don't want to go to cancer.
I want to talk about likechronic symptoms in the body.
That is your nervous system, thelanguage of the body saying, Hi,
hello, something's not right.
(10:19):
I'm not okay over here.
I need some attention.
And we're like, okay, keepgoing.
Let's go to work.
Yep.
Okay, let's go take care of thatperson because I'm a really good
fawn responsor.
Like, I'm really good at that.
I'm really codependent.
That's been my deep work.
I will put anyone in front of meand I don't have a partner and I
don't have children, and I willput every single person in front
of me.
I consider myself selfish to putmyself first because I don't
(10:42):
have all the other things.
And it's like the only way youcan get other things is to put
yourself first, not otherpeople.
And so in the self-help world, alot of times I say go out and
help others.
But if you're a fawner andyou're codependent, it's really
freaking dangerous because yourmoral value is equated on how
other people will treat you andrespond to you.
(11:04):
And that is detrimental for yourwell-being.
SPEAKER_06 (11:06):
And I think it's like almost every woman.
SPEAKER_05 (11:09):
I know it really is.
I'm like, I don't know anyexceptions to that, do you?
I really do this work for women.
I work with men also, but Ireally think that women have had
enough boundary violations thatwe don't know when they've been
violated and when they've beenbypassed.
So when you have a sense ofsafety in your own body, getting
(11:30):
into your nervous system andfeeling that sense of safety
inside your nervous system, youknow when they've been bypassed.
You have a very clear trigger tobe like, oop, that's not okay.
So the practices that I do arevery simple, small doses of
drills.
It's not this like big somaticprocess, right?
(11:54):
That we're all like, let theheart open, free the vagina,
like whatever it is.
Free the vagina, push it out.
Exactly.
But if you have no safety, and Ihave done all those things, like
I've done Mama Gina's, I feltvery unsafe in there because I
didn't have the safety of mybody to be in that open of an
environment.
And so the drills are aboutrewiring your brain.
(12:18):
So we have these littleneurotags, it's like a marker on
your brain where a sense will goby, or someone's voice, or you
see something, and it activatesone of those tags.
And that tag is attached to thepast that sends a signal to your
body, physical, mental, oremotional.
And so you might be having likea very visceral response to
(12:39):
something very benign and itmakes no sense.
It could be an emotionalflashback, physical experience,
mental thought.
So those three things can happenbecause you're activated by the
tag from the past.
So the goal with doing appliedneurology is breaking down how
the body functions and getstriggered.
(13:02):
We're actually erasing theseneurotags.
We're rewiring wires together,fires together, right?
We're literally rewiring thosesynapses so that you can
experience threat, go do threereally small drills and feel
safe in your body because thatthreat isn't the real threat.
(13:24):
It's just a trigger of threat.
So I'm trying to make it assimple as possible to break it
down.
It does kind of get a little bitmessy in the expiration process
because you gotta track thetriggers.
You need some guidance, you needsomeone accessible to you, you
need to know what drills to do.
And so this is where it makes mywork like a real art with people
(13:46):
and really showing them thepathways and the deficits inside
their body.
SPEAKER_06 (13:52):
This is why everyone needs to hire you.
I like believe that.
And every time someone talks tome about anything, I'm like,
have you met my friend CarrieMontgomery?
I feel like you should talk toher.
SPEAKER_07 (14:05):
And I'm making it accessible too, which was has
been an issue.
SPEAKER_05 (14:09):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (14:09):
I know you said that you're trying to make this as
simple as possible, but I wouldlike to even simplify it a
little bit more so.
SPEAKER_05 (14:16):
Yeah.
Because you're really new tothis.
So I'm I'd love for you toreally break it down, like to my
language.
SPEAKER_07 (14:22):
Okay.
Well, I'm new to your work.
Yes, but I'm not new to thisworld.
But a lot of people that's whatI mean.
Yeah, but a lot of people are.
And I was just thinking back towhen I was in my 20s.
And would any of this make senseto me back then?
Because we normalize anxiety, wenormalize the boundaries being
crossed, we normalize all ofthese things as though they're
(14:43):
just normal functions thatsociety tells us to that's
right.
Yeah, that's right.
It's really not okay.
So I'm not even sure I wouldhave been able to recognize what
unsafety in my body actuallyfelt like.
Absolutely.
Or what that language even meantand what it meant to be safe,
because I wouldn't have knownthat there's any other way to
be.
(15:04):
Now I do.
But how could we frame this forpeople who are like, what are
they talking about?
So that you can identify some ofthe things, even a trigger, like
what does that mean to them sothat they might relate to what
we're talking about?
SPEAKER_05 (15:17):
100%.
Okay.
So I'll just say that the way Ilearned that I was unsafe was I
had to lose everything.
Me too.
Like the bottom of the barrelmoment, I was living in another
country.
I was in long COVID withautoimmune conditions, a lot of
other complex things going on inmy life at that time.
(15:40):
Came home to America for athree-week visit for my family.
I hadn't seen them in threeyears.
This was like end of 2021.
And then I had an injury wheremy spine blew out finally after
25 years of this battle.
And then I blew out my knee andI had to have emergency surgery,
and I couldn't go back to Spain.
I had to leave everything in mylife there.
(16:02):
And I tried to fall into mypartnership that I was in, and
he was not the person that heactually had shown up as.
He was a completely differentperson, and it was very scary
who he was on the other sideonce we were really together.
I flew from LA on crutches in awheelchair, and I got to my
parents' house, and I was like,I need to stay here.
(16:22):
I am not safe anywhere.
Like, I am petrified of theworld right now.
I need to be here.
And I'm very fortunate that theyare very loving and open-armed
and that they could welcome mein.
I do not want anyone toexperience that kind of pain.
So I had to learn a really hardlesson and lose everything.
(16:44):
That surgery was not coveredbecause I was on travel
insurance and they decided thatI was traveling into the country
to have surgery, that it was notvalid.
And so I ended up having to paycash for that surgery in
America.
Like you can see the financialdestruction, the unwellness, all
of the things.
Like that's how I had to learnthat I was not safe.
(17:04):
And that is not okay becauseI've actually been in the
healing world for 30 years.
And the fact that was somethingthat I didn't know all the way
through my journey, that a lackof safety was the undercurrent
of my whole entire life.
And our world right now is notsafe.
(17:25):
A hundred percent is not safe.
The political situation that'sgoing on in the world does not
feel safe to anyone on everylevel in every country.
The collapse of structure doesnot feel safe.
It's not safe right now.
It doesn't feel safe.
And the only way for you tocreate safety is to do it
internally.
And it's really like the worldneeds to understand what safety
(17:47):
feels like to then know how tofilter out things that are
absolutely not okay.
SPEAKER_04 (17:53):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05 (17:53):
And if we can do that one person at a time, our
world will change.
Yeah.
I can't change everyone.
I cannot change weapons of massdestruction, but I can help
people feel safe.
So it's a hard answer to say,like, what do you look for?
Right?
If you have anxiety, you don'tfeel safe.
That is the root.
Like you are in a threatoverload.
(18:14):
You have a bucket that yourcontainer of your body is
holding and it is overflowingwith threat.
There is too much input, and weneed to change the input.
And that does not start withthings outside you.
It starts with little thingsinside yourself.
SPEAKER_06 (18:30):
This comes up a lot on this podcast, this complete
collapse of our lives.
And so I also want to bring itback to, you know, if somebody
hasn't experienced that, becauseI don't want people to be like,
oh my God, the only way for meto know what it is is to like
have my life collapse.
No, but I have like somepractical examples from my life,
like public speaking.
So if you're afraid to speak infront of people, you don't feel
(18:52):
safe, right?
One silly example was like I waswith a group of friends last
weekend who I love and they wereplaying Pictionary.
And I was terrified to fuckingdraw a picture in front of this
group because I didn't want tobe judged.
I was tracking it and I waslike, oh my God, this is wild.
These are dear friends.
And then I got a thing and I hadto draw a dolphin and I like
freaked out and no one couldguess it.
(19:13):
And I was like, this is theworst thing.
Like I, it was such a simplething, but it was like, I didn't
want to be in front of the roomand screw up because I didn't
want to get judged.
And I was like, is it thesepeople?
Is it me?
Would I feel this way in anothergroup?
These are just some smallexamples of what it looks like
in a day-to-day thing.
We all are dealing with this.
Like if you're feeling a strongsense of overwhelm in your life,
(19:33):
if you're feeling burnout, likethese are really practical
examples that I think so manypeople are feeling.
And it's one of the things thatyou've supported so much in the
Nova is this is how to do it.
So your body can just feelrelaxed, where you can feel
confident to be yourself, whereyou feel like you're not trying
to hide anything, where you feellike you can speak when you need
to.
(19:53):
And so to me, safety is thejourney to authenticity.
It's the journey to being ableto actually show up in the world
in a way that feels true to you,which is a loaded sentence, but
where you don't feel like you'retrying to mask, hide, pretend,
earn, prove, like all thesethings that we do to manipulate
(20:14):
our belonging so we can justfeel love and like we're
ourselves.
And so there's just, it's likethere isn't one person that
listens to this that is notnavigating this on some level,
whether your life is fuckingfalling apart or you're like, I
actually don't like publicspeaking.
Yeah.
It's like everything in betweenwhen your body like closes up,
gets super tight, or you feellike you may die if you have to
(20:37):
do that thing.
SPEAKER_05 (20:38):
I think it's also like if we look at capacity as a
scale, right?
Like what you can handle, themore that comes at you, the less
you can handle if you're notregulated, if you don't have
that like nervous system ninjaway of being.
So if you look at that wholeinput-output model, and then if
you look at output also as ascale, there's like the pain,
(21:01):
fight or flight, and thenthere's performance.
Performance is like my balanceis really good, my hormones are
operating well, I'm sleepingreally well, I'm communicating
well.
If your brain is firing on allcylinders and your body's up to
the charge, like, yeah, I feelalive.
You're doing good.
Like you're doing really, reallygood.
If you are experiencing symptomsin your life of chronic pain,
(21:25):
anxiety, depression, migraines,things that we pathologize.
Does that make sense?
You don't feel safe.
I spent 30 years looking foranswers to medical conditions.
And in the past five years ishow I've learned that all of
that, if I had known this 30years ago, my life would be so
(21:45):
different.
But one surgery set off a levelof dysregulation in my body that
was almost irreversible untilnow.
SPEAKER_07 (21:54):
So maybe we can talk about what safety feels like.
Yeah.
Like a warm cuddle puddle.
SPEAKER_05 (22:02):
Like you're melting.
It's so interesting.
I actually it feels so differentfor me.
Like it's different foreveryone.
Yeah.
So for me, oh, let's talk aboutit and what each of our safety
feels like.
SPEAKER_06 (22:12):
This is a fun exercise.
SPEAKER_05 (22:13):
Yeah, this is a great question.
So my center channel is likeonline.
This is where I can feel fromlike my root to my crown, we're
talking chakras here.
So running up the body, I canfeel my center channel feel
really aligned.
And like there's like a hum init, right?
Like it's like, uh here we are.
(22:35):
And that's why singing works sowell for me because I'm toning,
I'm working with all of mychannel.
I'm toning my column to createthat frequency and that harmony,
right?
My pain symptoms are really low.
I'm not like, eh, I got thisreally weird kink in my neck and
shoulder, and like my handreally hurts and my foot's
(22:56):
aching, right?
Like I know that when my pain issignaling, I'm dysregulated.
I'm not safe in my body.
And so for me, it is like thisit's a harmonized channel in my
center.
I'd love to know what it feelslike for you guys.
SPEAKER_06 (23:10):
Yeah, Jess, what's yours feel like?
SPEAKER_07 (23:12):
Wow.
I'm trying to feel back intowhat it feels like because right
now I don't feel it.
And I even articulated it to mypartner this morning.
I said, I feel off-center.
Okay.
I feel off.
SPEAKER_05 (23:26):
Can we just do something really quick before
you do this then?
Yeah.
Can you just do a rotationalassessment?
So just take a deep breath in.
I love when Jess gets topractice.
SPEAKER_06 (23:34):
Somehow always happens where it's like, Jess,
let's do this live.
SPEAKER_05 (23:38):
This is great.
So just take a nice deep breathin and out.
Okay, cool.
So I'm gonna teach you therotational assessment.
This is the language of the bodytelling us where your nervous
system is actually at.
So I just want you to look leftand look right and mark how far
you can turn.
So actually with your neck.
So you're gonna turn look leftand look right.
(23:58):
And just feel how much you canrotate.
Okay, so that's pretty good.
So come back to center.
Isn't that?
Yeah.
I have a bad neck.
Okay.
Yeah.
But you can notice as we do somedrills, you will contract or
expand.
Okay.
Like I can do one drill and itwill literally not allow me to
move my neck because it takes meinto dysregulation.
I can do another drill and Iturn into an owl.
Okay.
Okay.
(24:19):
So we're just gonna start withtongue circles right now.
So you're gonna take your tonguebetween your lips and your
teeth.
So just put them above, like upabove.
And then you're gonna circlearound your mouth, trying to
reach around your mouth as muchas you can.
Yeah, great job.
Circling around.
Good.
So just go five in one directionand then five in the other
(24:41):
direction.
Good.
And just like notice your toes,notice your fingers, continue to
breathe.
And once you've done five bothways, you can stop and just take
a deep breath in and out.
Good.
And I'm gonna have you reassess.
So just look left and lookright.
(25:03):
Okay, so more.
Yeah.
Yeah, left definitely felt a lotmore.
Great.
Okay, cool.
So let's do another one.
You're gonna take your hands.
This is more proprioceptive.
So that was interoceptive.
I'm working with the vagussystem.
This is proprioceptive.
So telling your body where it isin space.
So I'm just gonna have you startby turning your hand.
I'm gonna tilt my camera downright now.
Okay.
(25:24):
So hand is over, under, up, anddown, right?
Just start like that.
And then I'm gonna have you slowit down and you're gonna open
and then as you rotate down,you're gonna close the fingers.
As you rotate up, you're gonnaopen the fingers, one, two,
three, four.
As you rotate down, close, one,two, three, four.
Yeah.
Try to go big finger.
(25:45):
What's this finger called?
Pointer.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_06 (25:47):
Pointer finger, pointer, finger, middle finger,
ring finger, pinky, right?
SPEAKER_05 (25:51):
And then flip it over, pointer finger, ring
finger, you got it.
Pinky.
Then you find a flow where itturns into like a figure eight.
Your thumb just kind of likehangs out on this.
So just slow it down.
Yeah, so just slow it down untilyou feel like you can get the
rhythm.
And then you don't have to speedup as I'm speeding up, but what
(26:12):
I'm just gonna show you is thatas you speed up, you're telling
your body, you're reinformingthe map of your body in space
right now.
Okay.
So I'm just gonna have you putyour hand down on your leg and
take a deep breath in and out.
Great.
And then just do a rotationalassessment.
(26:33):
You're gonna look left and thenlook right.
Yeah, great.
Better?
SPEAKER_07 (26:38):
I think so.
SPEAKER_05 (26:39):
Great.
All right, so let's do one more.
Tell me where the tightest partof your body is like the most
constriction you feel.
It's kind of a war between myforehead and chest.
Your diaphragm and chest.
My diaphragm, yeah.
All right.
So I'm gonna have you cross yourleft ankle over your right
ankle.
Okay Oh, oh, your feet were noton the floor this whole time.
(27:02):
Yeah, they were on my lap.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is great information toknow.
I'm gonna ask you in the futureto actually put your feet on the
floor because it helps your bodyknow you're you're up floating.
SPEAKER_03 (27:15):
Right?
SPEAKER_05 (27:16):
Okay so okay, so left ankle over the right, right
hand on left knee, left handbehind your head.
Okay.
You're gonna rotate towards yourleft elbow really gently, right?
Just yep.
And then you're gonna take anice inhale to extend the spine
up, and then just exhale to letthe shoulders go.
(27:36):
Good.
Yeah, just let them relax.
Great.
So this is not too strenuous,and just look towards that left
elbow.
Great.
And I'm gonna have you inhale,expand into the back side of
your right rib cage.
One, two, three.
You're gonna hold for five,four, three, two, one, exhale
(27:58):
for eight, seven, six, five,four, three, two, one.
Inhale, three, two, one, two,hold, five, four, three, two,
one, exhale, eight, seven, six,five, four, three, two, one.
(28:24):
Inhale, three, two, one, hold,five, four, three, two, one,
exhale, eight, seven, six, five,four, three, two, one.
So you feel that pressure reliefvalve happen.
(28:45):
Come back to center, just take adeep breath in and out.
Good.
And then just turn your bodytowards me so I can see you head
on, like your whole body.
And I'm gonna have you assesslook left and look right.
Yeah.
Oh, my right is so much better.
Isn't that wild?
unknown (29:04):
Oh.
SPEAKER_05 (29:04):
Yeah.
So that was that one is a verypowerful.
You're innervating thediaphragm, and so that's where
the vagus nerve like runs rightthrough.
And so it's like doing asqueezing out of a towel, but
we're doing it very gently, butwe're using the breath to do
that, and then you're releasingit.
And so you might have felt likea little bit of the rush of
(29:26):
oxygen to the brain.
You can increase the intensityof the breathing and make it
really like kind of a wildexperience.
SPEAKER_06 (29:34):
So thank you.
Thank you.
So now what is safety?
SPEAKER_07 (29:39):
I know just to give you a different access point,
right?
So, what I'd say, I don't knowwhy I feel like I have to give
context to this, but what I'mjust sort of finding interesting
in my life right now is that Idid a really good job creating
safety within a set ofconditions.
So I had a similar experience.
(30:00):
To you, in losing everything, toreally have to do my healing
work and really discover that inmyself and built a life that
created a lot of space for me todo this work.
And in that context, I feel calmand very centered and strong,
(30:21):
like a sense of no matter whatcomes up, I have the inner
resources to handle it.
Self-assurance.
Self-assurance and the space toreally be with my feelings so
that I'm not in reaction, that Ican really hold whatever is
coming up and allow it and feelsafe in it, and then make
(30:44):
conscious decisions.
What I'm noticing right now isoutside of that context, and I
guess the context is just a lotof spaciousness and time.
I need a lot of time in myroutine.
SPEAKER_05 (30:58):
What's your human design?
SPEAKER_07 (31:00):
I am a two-five generator on the cross of
service.
And stillness, ironically, is mymain number.
52.
Really?
Are you on the cross of service?
No.
The cross of healing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Of course you know that.
So stress is the shadow, right?
A lot of life is being thrown atme right now.
(31:20):
And I'm not given that kind ofspace to really be with myself
to feel grounded.
There's a lot of pain around meright now.
SPEAKER_05 (31:32):
Co-disregulation.
SPEAKER_07 (31:33):
Yeah.
And I don't feel in control ofmy schedule.
And I'm noticing in the midst ofthat that I no longer feel okay
taking pauses.
SPEAKER_05 (31:44):
Because your system says it's not safe to pause
right now.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (31:48):
Like doom, doom, doom, one thing to the next.
And I woke up this morning andI'm like, oh no, I am so off
balance right now.
I do not feel safe in thefeelings coming up right now.
I don't feel like I have thespaciousness to be with those
feelings.
I get into overfunctioning mode,I get into codependency, I get
into perfectionism.
You're such a good highperformer.
(32:10):
Yeah.
So I'm I guess my question, andI do want to come to Melissa and
find out your safety.
But my question is when lifegets intense, right?
What is it that we can do?
Because sometimes circumstancesare out of our control.
How do we maintain that safetyif we're no longer able to keep
(32:33):
the, you know, the sovereignty?
SPEAKER_05 (32:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great question.
So that is why I love this work.
You can do tiny drills over theday, the course of the day.
You can prime yourself in themorning with just a few drills
just to make contact, right?
Just to have that internal,like, I'm giving you a moment.
I'm giving you what you need.
You have an assessment tool thatwill let you know how
(32:58):
constricted or how open you are.
So you're talking to thelanguage of the body, not to
your cognition.
Your cognition will tell youanything it wants to hear.
And your protectors will come inand give you any reason to
continue moving at the paceyou're going, right?
Over functioning.
So when you have that level ofawareness of like, oh, right, I
(33:20):
just need to do like a handfulof drills as I'm making my
coffee, brushing my teeth,getting dressed.
That is how I integrate it.
Now there are times where I'mlike, I need to take 30 minutes
and blow through some realstuff, right?
Like, but I've also learned howto spend that time because I've
built the safety to spend thattime.
(33:42):
But when you're in this highperforming mode, it is very hard
to downregulate.
And so the oxymoron is thatspace is the one thing that you
need.
Right.
Like that is it.
But the drills become part ofsurvival and the lifestyle until
you get some sovereignty backand some inner awareness and
(34:04):
some safety to say, oh, I needto go handle that emotion.
SPEAKER_04 (34:09):
Right.
SPEAKER_05 (34:10):
Like I actually need to go deal with that emotion.
That emotion's running me rightnow.
I had it with anger recently,and Mo is on the inside know of
that.
And it really had me likehardcore.
And I was like, I feel like Imight die right now.
And I didn't realize that I wassuppressing anger.
Like I was not on board with it.
I was just suppressing it andbeing like, I'm fine, I'm fine,
(34:30):
I'm fine.
And then it caught.
But what I was doing all alongwas my drills to bring the
conversation between my body andmy brain back to a place of
awareness, safe cognition, safeactivation, safe engagement with
the world.
So your body needs to know whereit is in space, how it's
(34:55):
interpreting the insides, andwhat the language between the
brain and the body is.
That is what it's asking forwhen you're in overfunctioning
mode.
And so if tiny little drillsover the course of the day can
do that, and I'll share the onthe go video that I have.
It's literally like you could doit in your car, like safely do
it in your car.
(35:15):
I'm on the go.
I will do drills when I'm intransit in the car.
Because that is a moment that Iget back to myself.
I try not to do calls anymorewhen I'm in the car.
I try to give myself thosemoments, right?
We're in an overfunctioningworld.
We're in a high demand world.
There is too much pressure.
And so it is our job to squeezethose moments in with the
(35:38):
drills.
SPEAKER_07 (35:39):
Because then I or maybe this is an assumption, but
I'm assuming that then if we'reable to regulate in the midst of
that chaotic state, we canactually make better decisions.
We can actually hold ourboundaries.
SPEAKER_05 (35:54):
We can because you're safe to hold your
boundary.
I had no boundaries first.
Yeah.
And you're not bottleneckingeverything through a filter
that's a broken filter, right?
Because that's what's happeningwhen you're dysregulated.
The filter to the world isbroken, but it's not clear, it's
not an open channel.
It's like zigzaggy jaggedy.
(36:14):
And so what you're workingtowards is building like how
clear can this channel be?
Mo.
SPEAKER_06 (36:20):
Yeah, what's your the word that came to me was
trust.
That's how you feel safe.
And it yeah, self-like trust ortrust.
It's like Yeah, I agree.
Which I think is sort of whatyou were speaking to too, is
that, and I think of all of themoments where you've held me
carry around like you know, likeMonday of this week.
(36:44):
Um, I love you.
It's like just deep trust inmyself, trust in the
circumstances, trust in that I'mheld, trust that it all will
work out.
It's like less of futurepanicking or blaming.
Like I get really like, I need avictim.
Like realized that this week islike I need like somebody to
(37:05):
blame this person.
SPEAKER_05 (37:06):
That's the fight response.
SPEAKER_06 (37:08):
Yeah.
I realized that.
I was like, oh my God, I alwaysneed someone to blame for what's
happening inside of my body.
SPEAKER_05 (37:14):
It's so funny.
We've had this conversation forlike a year, but this is the
first time.
I realized that this week.
And we you went deep in that andlook at the amazing stuff that
came out from it.
SPEAKER_06 (37:24):
And I've been in major, major high performing
mode.
I mean, I made a list onWednesday of like all the things
we've accomplished.
And there's a part of me thatdoesn't even want to be proud of
it because I'm like, oh my God,is this me just being like, must
perform, must perform, you know.
Like I don't even want to likecelebrate my overfunctioning
anymore.
But when I feel safe, I feeltrust.
(37:46):
And then, you know, what thatlooks like of how I show up in
the world is I feel alive.
It's almost like you can havelike an orgasm with your life
because you're in yourcreativity, you're in your flow,
you can be calm inside of chaos.
It's like I always speak to likebeing the eye of the storm.
It's sort of what it feels like.
And I'm a really incredibleleader, I'm an incredible
visionary.
When I'm in regulation, like thespeed to which I can make shit
(38:08):
move is fucking crazy.
But I noticed the differencebetween force and trust.
And that's sort of mydysregulation regulation in my
body.
I love that.
SPEAKER_05 (38:20):
Yeah, I want to just like riff off of one thing
really quickly because Jess saidthe word calm and like that's
her knowing.
And I just want to clarify onething like regulation does not
always mean calm.
It really means like you haveagency to move in and out of
states.
Right.
(38:40):
And so while calm is likedefinitely a desired state, we
sometimes need to get activatedto stay safe in a situation and
then be able to come downafterwards.
So it's more modulation.
Like that is the skill of how doyou ride the waves so that you
(39:01):
stay autonomous and sovereign.
SPEAKER_07 (39:03):
I want Melissa's answer.
SPEAKER_05 (39:06):
Because I think it was perfect.
SPEAKER_07 (39:08):
I think it was the perfect articulation of it.
Yeah, it was so good.
SPEAKER_06 (39:10):
But I understand, I do understand what you're
saying.
One thing I think is interestingis too, is if you don't have
like a tracking, like an auraring or something to track, this
is how I can tell.
I can like peg the days that I'mdysregulated.
Because if we look at Monday,this is the day that I like
freaked out up with Carrie.
This is high stress.
I literally could not come down.
(39:31):
Can you explain what we'relooking at?
So it's a it's uh a daytime.
So it there's a graph that isthe Aura Ring app and it tracks
your if you're stressed,engaged, relaxed, or restored.
Wow.
So it like literally maps yourstress points throughout the
day.
I need this.
And I love having the databecause I can feel that feeling
(39:51):
in my body where I just like Ican't come down.
Like I just feel tight and Ilike look at this and it's like,
oh, well, it's probably becauseand it tracks for time.
So it'll track like your wholeday until you're like asleep.
And I'll look at it, and thesedata points are on the top of
the graph at like maximumstress, and I'm not coming down
(40:13):
too engaged or relaxed.
And so if I'm having a day whereI'm like more, let's call it
normally functioning or moreregulated, it might look more
like this, where it's kind of upand down and up and down.
And that day, Monday, what itfelt like at the end of the day,
I literally came home from anevent and I like turned all the
lights off in the house and Igot into bed and closed my eyes
(40:35):
and was just like, it's sointense.
And so to me, the visualrepresentation of the modulation
of like you can have thesepoints and then your body can
come back down.
But probably what you're feelingtoday, Jess, it's like your
graph would probably look likemine, where it's like, I was in
a state of stress for eighthours and 15 minutes.
The day that looked normal waslike two and a half hours of
stress and like two hours ofregulation or restored.
(40:57):
And so it's fascinating becauseI mean, I love the tool of like
your assessment is really a moreobjective way of looking at am I
regular.
SPEAKER_05 (41:05):
It gives you outside feedback.
SPEAKER_06 (41:06):
Totally.
Like so the feedback of a ring,or you I know you have another
tool too, which we can share inthe show notes, is like having
an actual tool that objectivelyis like this is what's happening
in your body.
The data is so good.
It's so good.
And then then I become kind ofaddicted to my sleep and really
protective over sleep.
Because if you're not restoringduring the day, then you need to
be restoring at night.
(41:27):
And so then you can track yoursleep.
And anyway, so it's justfascinating because no matter
when you restore, you have torestore.
Right.
SPEAKER_05 (41:34):
And like if I don't restore at night very well,
that's where my deep trauma is.
And I've been working on it alot.
And it's been, yeah, it's beenthe work.
It's been the work.
SPEAKER_06 (41:43):
So I know we need to wrap up, but I want Carrie as
our final question, which isnormally our first question.
We do things so normal aroundhere.
Fuck the rules.
What is your relationship toyour inner rebel?
SPEAKER_05 (41:56):
Oh my god, I didn't know that's what you were about
to say.
Um, so I spent a long timeshaming her for living the
alternative lifestyle, right?
So I would like shame her a lot.
And in this past year, I'vereally learned to respect the
path that she's taken and kindof get into the kink of it of
(42:21):
like, yeah, this is kind ofcool.
Like, whoa, okay, so whatactually really does feel good?
Let's go there.
And why are we playing by theserules?
And so I tried to be like a goodgirl in society and it doesn't
really work for me, right?
Or anybody.
SPEAKER_06 (42:39):
Right, like I didn't work for anybody.
SPEAKER_05 (42:41):
I was like, oh, you must play by the rules and get a
normal job and do these thingsand have benefits, right?
And I can shame myself out oflike why I shouldn't be living
the life I do and I shouldn't bean entrepreneur, all these
things, right?
Instead of actually reallyloving this creative spark and
spirit that is so from anotherplanet and doesn't fit in the
(43:04):
system here at all.
And the more I love her and themore I play with her, the more
fun and the more freedom Iexperience.
But I couldn't do that until Iunderstood my own boundaries and
what felt safe to me.
And I could express those.
And it when you can learn toexpress boundaries, you can be
as much of a rebel.
And I would say the biggesttakeaway for me, and we can
(43:25):
leave it with this, is that mywake-up moment in my business
was I knew I was here to doreally big things.
And the first week into mybusiness had a major medical
collapse.
Five years in, I had anothermajor medical collapse.
And I realized that I didn'thave the nervous system to hold
the vision that I wasexperiencing.
(43:46):
And I committed what's thatlike?
I committed my life's work to itfive years ago.
And I have just made everydecision for that so that I can
feel in honor of myself, myspirit, the things I would know
that I came into this world todo.
(44:07):
And you just have to take onestep at a time, create safety
along the way, and build thatcapacity so that you can live
the vision of the rebel that youtruly are, because the system is
not meant for you.
I boom.
SPEAKER_07 (44:22):
Love it.
Mic drop.
Love it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Carrie, so much.
I know that we could just keepgoing and we'll have you back
again.
But thank you so much and forsharing your tools and your
gifts with us.
I really appreciate that verymuch.
I feel a lot better.
SPEAKER_05 (44:38):
Yeah, it's it is like a little bit of a warm hug,
right?
Like once you get that fuelsupply to the brain, that's what
it was, right?
Your brain was like, and so wejust got some fuel supply.
I would actually go recommendthat you eat right now just to
give yourself a little bit morefuel supply.
The brain needs glucose, ittakes a lot to function.
SPEAKER_07 (44:58):
It does, it does, and it was such a good reminder,
like the right reminder at theright time.
I'm so glad of the space totake.
Like I know what that sense ofsafety feels like, and to
prioritize it.
To put it, make it number oneright now.
I think.
SPEAKER_06 (45:15):
We'll use the word devotion.
SPEAKER_07 (45:17):
Devotion.
SPEAKER_05 (45:19):
So bad.
SPEAKER_06 (45:19):
It's one of my favorite words like over the
last year.
It really always lands becauseit's like it's it's like that
deep spiritual commitment to thethings that you care about.
Like, I'm devoted to cultivatingsafety in my body.
I'm devoted to and it's so muchbetter than like dedicate.
And you know, these likestronger, more masculine
versions of like just fuckingyeah, that they're more in
(45:42):
alignment with that all ornothing mentality, you know.
Like sometimes I think we getwrapped up in in that side of of
our commitments and so thatdevotion of like, I'm devoted to
this, so I'm gonna take how longdid that take?
I mean, Carrie did three drills,it's five minutes.
You could even do the tonguecircles and then like get on
your next one.
SPEAKER_05 (45:58):
You can actually do the tongue circles and the hand
movement together.
It takes a little bit ofpractice, but when you start
layering the Yeah, you saw Jesstrying to do the hand.
SPEAKER_06 (46:07):
It's like it's like pat your head and rub your
tummy, Jess.
SPEAKER_05 (46:11):
It's called stacking.
So you can actually stack drillstogether to increase the
effectiveness of them.
And it's all of a sudden you'relike fucking efficiency.
I love efficiency.
SPEAKER_06 (46:19):
I love efficiency.
SPEAKER_07 (46:20):
Efficiency.
SPEAKER_06 (46:21):
All right.
SPEAKER_07 (46:22):
Yeah, I know I do know that we have to go, but I
also just want to put in that Ilove the reminder also that it's
not our fault that society iswhat it is that we all into
myself.
Like I was shaming myselfbecause I'm like, I know this
work and I've been doing it forso long, and I got into such a
healthy place.
How did I let certain thingsknock me?
SPEAKER_05 (46:44):
Dude, you are in war with society, like every day is
a battle against the way theworld is set up because it's not
working for our system, and sofinding the sovereignty in that
of like, I don't need to beratemyself, I didn't do anything
wrong.
The whole entire ecosystem isnot set up for your success.
(47:04):
To meet it with grace and tolike love on that part that part
of safety is gentleness andcompassion.
So it's yeah, like there'snothing wrong with you.
Yeah, and when you can get intoso there is like a state in the
regulation process where you canget really into the cognition
and you start to like crackcodes where you're like, oh
wait, I've had this beliefsystem that has literally put me
(47:27):
in prison for most of my life.
And then all of a sudden you'relike walking without that belief
system anymore, and then youbecome superhuman.
Okay, it's wild.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_07 (47:39):
To being superhuman.
Thank you.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_06 (47:43):
That's the name of the how to be superhuman.
SPEAKER_05 (47:47):
No big expectations here.
SPEAKER_06 (47:49):
Yeah, no, no crash.
All right.
Love you, Gary.
Thank you, Gary.
Talk to you soon.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com