October 20, 2025 • 31 mins
Manuela Mischke-Reeds is an internationally respected somatic psychotherapist, somatic trauma expert and educator with over 30 years of clinical and teaching experience.
She is a founder of the Hakomi Institute of California and creator of Embodywise, a platform for embodied learning.
Manuela developed the Innate Somatic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach (ISITTA), an advanced training program for therapists, and co-developed the Hakomi Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training.
A global voice in somatic and trauma psychology, Manuela teaches and trains professionals in mindfulness-based somatic therapy, trauma recovery, leadership embodiment, and psychedelic-assisted therapy integration. Her work bridges neurobiology, somatic nervous system practices, and ancient wisdom, helping therapists and leaders embody resilience and compassion in their work and lives.
Manuela’s books:
Trauma-Sensitive Movement: 96 Somatic Techniques to Support Nervous System Regulation and Embodied Transformation in Therapy
Embodied Psychedelic Therapy: A somatic guide.
In This Episode
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You can learn more about what I do here:
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She is a founder of the Hakomi Institute of California and creator of Embodywise, a platform for embodied learning.
Manuela developed the Innate Somatic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach (ISITTA), an advanced training program for therapists, and co-developed the Hakomi Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training.
A global voice in somatic and trauma psychology, Manuela teaches and trains professionals in mindfulness-based somatic therapy, trauma recovery, leadership embodiment, and psychedelic-assisted therapy integration. Her work bridges neurobiology, somatic nervous system practices, and ancient wisdom, helping therapists and leaders embody resilience and compassion in their work and lives.
Manuela’s books:
Trauma-Sensitive Movement: 96 Somatic Techniques to Support Nervous System Regulation and Embodied Transformation in Therapy
Embodied Psychedelic Therapy: A somatic guide.
In This Episode
- Manuela’s website
- Incogni - Take back your personal data with Incogni. Use code [traumatherapist] at the link below and get 60% off annual plans: https://incogni.com/traumatherapist
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
Thank you to our Sponsors:
Incogni - Use code [traumatherapist] and get 60% off annual plans: https://incogni.com/traumatherapist
Jane App - use code GUY1MO at https://jane.app/book_a_demo
Journey Clinical - visit https://join.journeyclinical/trauma for 1 month off your membership
Therapy Wisdom - https://therapywisdom.com/jan/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is gaming
Person and I interview incredible people who share the story
of how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big
thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest
and our sponsors. SO five four, three, two and one,
(00:24):
Our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Super excited to
have back. Manuela Michiga reads Manuela, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Back, Thank you, thanks for having me so.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Manuela is an internationally respected sematic psychotherapist, semitic trauma expert,
and educated with over thirty years of clinical and teaching experience.
She's founder of the Hakomi Institute of California and creator
of embody Wise, a platform for embodied learning. She developed
the Innate Sematic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach, an advanced training
(00:54):
program for therapists, and co developed the Hakomi Psychedelic Assisted
Therapy training Her books include Trauma Sensitive Movement as well
as Embodied Psychedelic Therapy or a Somatic Guide and Correct
Me if I'm wrong, the latter book that has yet
to come out.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's coming out in October.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, okay, okay, and then Astmann book just came out.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay, yeah, Okay, so let's give our if we can.
First of all, before we even get go in here,
share with the listeners where you're from originally and where
you are currently.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I currently am based in California, Northern California. That's
where I work in practice, but I really work in
practice all over the place. So I teach internationally and
do trainings. But I'm originally from Germany and Spain, so
I grew up in Europe, was bicultural and bicultural and yeah,
(01:46):
and then my path led me from Europe to Asia
to Australia we're also teach, and then to the United States.
So I consider myself very much a person of the world,
of global world.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Awesome, awesome, all right, Before we get into specifics, I
want to talk about the new book of Coorse and
your work with psychedelics. If we can, let's just keep
our audience kind of a thumbnail sketch of how would
you define what it is you do?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So I wear a couple of hats in my heart.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I'm both a somatic trauma psychotherapist. That's what I've been
doing for over thirty years, working with a very wide
range of clients, all kinds of different traumas and personal
growth as well. I have also a foot in the
kind of psycho spiritual world. I come from drama practices
and embodied practices. I'm a somatic therapist, but I'm also
(02:45):
a somatic educator, so I come from movement therapy, somatic
embodied practices. My new book actually is on trauma sensitive movement,
so how to bring movement techniques into the therapy world,
how into trauma work, because that's a very neglected area,
I think. So that's the new book that just came
out in February. But I wear the head of somatic psychotherapists,
(03:09):
but I do a lot of education, so training of therapists,
training of anybody in the healing field, also coaches, and
right now I'm doing a class and intergenerational trauma for
the general public actually how to work with somatic imprints
and trauma from the past, from the family lineage and
using somatics. So at the heart, what I care most
(03:31):
about really is a transformation through the body, and that's
really what I'm most interested in, especially when trauma has
interrupted that inherent knowledge of our bodies.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's what I care about most.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Going back just a little bit, when did this desire,
this need, this calling come to you.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
We have to go way back.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Sure, well, it started with being in the natural world.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Actually with my I'm a little child, I'm dancing in
the wheat fields with my cat, where I discovered that
being in tune with nature, the movement of nature, the
movement of.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The wheat field.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And I was a really little kid, we're talking six seven,
and she was my companion.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And I would copy her movements.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
I was so fascinated how cats moved through the world,
you know, with such elegant and grace and fluidity, and
so I literally would copy her like my first dance teacher,
and I began to have an experience of feeling very
connected with my environment.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I grew up in a trauma household.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
There was a lot of violence and also, you know,
two generations passed, but post Holocaust in Germany. That's why
I grew up in the first early formative years, and
so there was a lot of incess trauma into generational
trauma and violence in my home. And so my moving body,
being in the natural world, being with the animal world,
(05:09):
were my first teachers into back into my somatic resource,
into my own inner wisdom. So that's what started, and
it became then I started to study dance, and I
had wonderful teachers of African dance that also brought that
more tribal psycho spiritual.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Work, ancestral work to me through dance.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
So it's really through movement that I began to feel
at home in my body. And then when I later
on began my work with all kinds of trauma clients,
I never forgot that that was my medicine and my thread.
It's also what I think is very powerful in psychedelic work,
you know, bringing movement technique, somatic techniques into that works.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, that's what started. It started in the wheat field.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Thank you for sharing that. There's something as soon as
you started talking about movement, there's something that can almost
feel like the use of movement can almost feel antithetical
to trauma work. I mean a lot of times when
I think of people who have been traumatized. There's not
(06:17):
for everyone, of course, but for many people there can
be a need to avoid the body, yes, right, a
need to just feel so constricted you're asking me to move.
Of course that's not for everybody, but okay, so let's
talk about this movement and movement you said initially you
(06:39):
felt that was kind of an under utilized or research
or area within the trauma field. Why do you say.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That, because I think that we're looking at movement, We're
looking at the body as behavior and responses. We're looking
at the freeze response, We're looking at you know, bracing patterns.
This is all good ways of looking at it. About
what we're not looking at. Even the most frozen body moves.
We move, We move through.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Breath, right, and if we're we have to move.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
We have to move, but we might not be conscious
of the movement, we might not be connected with movement,
and movement often is misunderstood as dance, as kind of
leaping through the space or something, and that's not what
it is. We're talking about very intrinsic movements, very inner,
subtle micro movements that can actually unthaw frozen states and
(07:31):
that are very very safe to the most traumatized body.
It's just really misunderstood because we are moving, we're also
choosing to not feel the movements in the body or
feel our sensations in the body. But it's actually that's
exactly the medicine that somebody who is traumatized, especially in
a frozen spectrum, actually needs They need to come into
a relationship with their body in a safe way, in
(07:53):
a very scuffolded way, so that they safely begin to
you know, feel and sense and find them way through.
I'm talking before we even talking about any kind of
discharging of trauma states held memories in the body, that's
all part of it. But what I have found, and
this is where continuum has entered my life. It's been
(08:13):
a very impactful uh teaching in my life. Emily Conrad
and Susan Harper too somatic movement pioneers in this world,
and they have taught me the practice of continuum. I
became a continuum movement teacher, still a continuum teacher, and
I began to experiment with bringing this very intrinsic We're
(08:35):
talking really barely visible on the surface movement and applying
that to when people go into dissociative states. We're talking
a little movement in the neck. You know we're talking.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So let me just stand there for one seconds. Are
you talking about bringing awareness to intentional movement?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
No?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, no, okay.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
We're talking about shifting first a reference point of like,
oh I feel stuck and I feel frozen to like,
what's actually happening? As you're feeling the frozen what else
is here? The truth is, there is movement, There is
well being. We're just not connected to it. I call
it poetically the river beneath. There is actually a fluidity
(09:18):
in the body that's existing ours, the Noville fluids. I'm moving,
our heart is pumping. There is actually movement happening in
the body. I'm just not connected to it. So the
first step is connecting to it. Intentional movement means I'm
going to move my arm. So it's before that. It's
saying like, so you feel the frozen pattern and let's
(09:40):
say a tightness in a chest. And then as you
feel the tightness in the chest, what else is here? Well,
I can feel my breath up and down. Now that's movement.
They just don't know it yet, right, they don't have
the language yet. So as you feel the tightness and
this is polarity, by the way, and you feel the
movement of the breath breath, notice that there is a
(10:01):
rhythm to the breath. The body has a primordial rhythm.
There is a rhythm to our body. Yeah, our heart
has a rhythm. Our snowball fluids have a rhythm. Our
cranial sacral has a rhythm. There is a rhythm. It's
expansion and contraction. That is the primal dancer in the body.
When you begin to connect with, ah, there is a
(10:21):
rhythm here, my breath is doing exhale in here, there
is a rhythm. Then the person begins to connect with
something so innate, so deep, and it's actually what I
would call the healing intelligence. And so the person connects
with that rhythm.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And what do they begin next?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
They go, ah, they engage the parasympathetic Yeah, the tension
is still there.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I'm afraid, I don't want to feel my body. L la.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It's all what they've kind of created, avoidance pattern, dismissive pattern,
blah blah blah. But then there's also this other experiencing
that's also happening.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So let's go.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Back and forth, which is a common pendulation technique. It's
used in somatic experiencing, other somatic task. Let's go back
between the tension, but then also that rhythm of the breath,
and as you feel that, notice what wants to happen.
The body always wants to heal, always wants to go
towards resolving whatever is in the way, stuckness, blah blah blah,
(11:18):
wants to resolve itself. So once we connect a person
with that kind of rhythm, it's not a big step
than to say, so, see if you can bring a
little bit more capacity to the breath or is there
a movement that goes with it? Well, I feel a
little tickling down my spine.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and you.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Begin to re educate the person that actually what's happening
is movement. We're constantly in motion externally and internally. There's
always movement.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Interesting, So you're you're inviting them to in a way
bringing an awareness not to kind of intentional movement, like
I said, but to the very state of their human beings.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's that's right, it's moving.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It which is which? Or is moving? I mean move
them into the office, That's true? Right? Which is which?
Is really interesting? Now is how do you I don't
want to use this term, I'm gonna use it anyway.
How do you how do you encourage them or how
(12:23):
do you how do you invite them to do that?
For someone for someone who might I don't even want
to go there, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, you always start with where the person is at
and I don't want to go there as fear it's
a barrier, but it's a resistance and that's not a problem.
So we start with what the resistance is. Resistance is
also a movement, by the way, so you don't want
to go there. So a party can use parts language, right,
you can a part of it doesn't want to go there.
So notice there's like a I don't want to Is
(12:52):
that in your mind? Is it in your body? Do
you feel something? I feel like holding embracing you can.
I have gotten people to move that are quote non movers.
I've worked with firefighters, work with people that wouldn't be
in a million year's cart to be moving on the floor,
and I've gotten them there.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the reason is you pick them up, not.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
From giving them an exercise, but starting where the awareness
is and then increasing the awareness. Because the movement is there,
you just have to fight it. So as I said,
the movement of the breath is the easiest, but then
even them doing a little head movement or they're twitching
shoulder and it's like, as you're feeling that shoulder, see
if you can just be with the shoulder movement.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Notice that, Oh it's just a twitch up and down.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, And as you do that, see if you can
do it even smaller, you always make it more durable
by making it smaller.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Where I come from, you don't exaggerate.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Kind of reframing in a sense. Why is this important? Yes,
for trauma work.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yes, it's hugely important because first of all, people don't
have access to the inherent wisdom of the body.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
They are stuck.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
And first of all, they're stuck in trauma responses or
five flight freeze, and with that associated belief systems and
then behavior patterns. Right, So they're stuck in these and
they recycle them over and over again because they're based
on survival. That's not thriving. It's great, but it's not
based on on thriving. So when you connect people with
this intelligence, when my experience has been people suddenly go like,
(14:25):
oh my god, it's so tender. I feel such reverence.
I feel like there I am, I'm home. There is
fluidity here. I thought I was all a bundle of stuckness.
People use different language, you know, whatever they're whatever they
or they have an image that goes with it, but
they're connecting with themselves as a continuum of life, because
(14:47):
trauma cuts us off from all kinds of connection, right
from connection with our body, our psyche, our spirit, from
other people the world.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
It's a cut off. It's a big, massive disconnection.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
When we find pathways into the body and I go, oh,
my god, there's an ease. I have all chronic pain
in my body, but there's this little ease in my neck.
Oh that feels so sweet, and then tears are coming.
You're now connecting them to something so inherent that's them.
That's also beyond any kind of spirituality. It's just them
and their body, the innate knowledge. And when you have
(15:19):
that connection back, then trauma becomes just things to work through,
you know, it's becomes a huge ally because I have this,
it's we can call it a resource, we can call
it resilience, we can put all those names on it.
But it's so inherently something that I have inside my body,
and it's not been lost. And most people think that
in trauma, I've lost connection.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I'm doomed.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I'm this Life is passing by me, right is like
life is overing here, I'm over there.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
That's not true. That's a trance.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Actually, trauma makes us believe it out of survival, but
it's not true. We are actually inherently connected always. So
this goes a little psycho virtual here. But when you
have a direct ex of your body as a living intelligence,
like wow, I'm breathing, moving, sensing, billowing, feeling streaming, ooh right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's like wow, that's all true.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And then when there is a trauma discharge, it's like yeah,
I can write it because I know there's also this
there and that comes also after being Discharge's like oh
there it is again an opening in my belly is
streaming down into my pelvis. That was so fraud with
trauma memory. So those experiences of the sensing, feeling, sensual body,
(16:32):
which I want to call aros, really errors in the
cleanest sense, a connection back with aeros, because trauma cuts
us off from that cuts vitality errors.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Let me just remind everyone i'm speaking with Manuela Miss
reads her books Trauma Sensitive Movement and also Embodied Psychedelic
Therapy a somatic guide. Wow, I'm just thinking the way
you're speaking. Obviously, we could all traumatized, or I mean
probably we're all traumatized to a certain degree, but we
(17:05):
can all benefit from this, this this incredible awareness. Would
it be okay if we kind of segued into psychedelics
and the new book and how did this interest start
for you?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well, psychedelics has been part of my life for the
last thirty years along with it because my inquiry has
always been what heals trauma. That's been from my early
and I think of the last podcast I talked about
that that's been my guiding post what.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Actually heals trauma?
Speaker 3 (17:31):
My own personal journey for where I came from, but
also then with my clients, I was always interested in
what healed it. So I've had a lot of personal
experiences with psychedelics thirty years on and then I had
over my career always people come in doing psychedelic integration.
So I've been doing hundreds of sessions of psycholic integration
(17:52):
over the years where people you know, did underground work.
We're traveling into other countries and came back and its
like how do I do this? And has been such
a powerful tool because people come back with some psychedelics
is a lot of nonverbal experience, so it's very hard
to integrate something that you experienced nonverbally.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
But somatics movement offers a route to that.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So I got interested because my clients were doing I
was on my own healing path. And then obviously as
it became more knowledge, you know, more Michael Pollan's book
and so on, it became more above ground. And I've
been doing ketemine work with firefighters in group work, individual
(18:34):
work with keademine, and so I got really interested in
working with psychedelics because of the trauma, because I saw
that certain traumas needed more support, It needed that kind
of stepping out of the thinking mind. Even with all
my toolkits with movement and somatic techniques that I have.
I've written a couple of books on it. But even
(18:55):
though there were certain clients that were quote trauma treatment
resistant with trauma and they needed an extra help. And
I think that psychedelics is such an incredible helper along
the way of helping to integrate trauma. So it's not
the healing itself, but it's a tool along with it.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
You said certain traumas could maybe benefit from psychedelics. Are
you talking about a type of trauma? Are you talking
about maybe certain people or trauma resisting could benefit from
the peat.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
People who are resistant to other treatments, right, what other
treatments haven't worked. And then of course veterans, the first responders,
helpers a lot, you know that are constantly exposed to
trauma over and over again. Where there's a coupling of trauma,
so that the difficulty of as you know, I mean,
this is your field. What makes trauma so hard is
(19:49):
that there's not just one trauma. It couples with intergenerational trauma,
collective trauma, then more crisis trauma. I mean, there's like
many multiple layers and people who are on the front
lines of mental health professionals too, by the way, but
people who are on the front lines of trauma, there's
like more insult right, more trauma kind of getting accumulated.
So I think that psychedelics is a very powerful way
(20:13):
to help with those kind of traumas. In particular, I
mean there's lots of studies being done right now with veterans,
with firefighters, with helping professions, medical prof I mean, there's many,
many studies end of life and so on too. That's
the different, but there are many studies done. But the
idea here is that I think psychedelics can bring the
(20:34):
person from the overly vigilant thinking mind into deep experiential work,
which often somatic therapists know how to do that, but
it helps you to access these non ordinary states in
which you can confront more at ease some of the
difficult traumas because especially with MDMA, it down regulates the amygdalas,
(20:57):
so the fear center is not so activated and the
person can actually relate to whatever they have to confront,
the deep shame, the moral injury of combat, or whatever
it is. They can confront it now. And what has
been found is that compassion self compassion arises, and that's
been so powerful, and that's often so missing in trauma healing.
(21:18):
It's really hard work for the therapist to help the
client to come towards self compassion and self acceptance. So
MDMA in particular and also ketamine and other medicines too,
but they often are helpful to opening up that self
compassion and that is a huge ally on the path
of healing. So we know now, you know, one to
(21:39):
three initial sessions or one psilocybin session, people have these
deep mystical experiences and they feel this connection again with self,
with spirit, with life itself. Just when I was talking
about the movement. Right when we get that sense of like,
oh I am connected. I am not disconnected from my
wisdom or in the body. I'm not disconnected in the
(22:02):
universe yet I am actually part of it all.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
That is huge healer right right.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Uh? With the book and body psychedelic therapy talk a
little bit, Yeah, what your purpose?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah purpose?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I co wrote that with my friend and colleague, Joshua Sylvey.
He's from somatic Experiencing. He's a trainer in semitic experiencing.
I'm a Hakomi trainer, also trained in sematic experiencing, and
we both obviously share the love for somatic trauma work.
And we were actually attending and training together. That's how
we met. We had met in other circles before, but
we sat in training and we loved it. And we
(22:41):
also started going like, wow, the somatic component is missing here.
And you know, combined we have like I don't know
how many decades of experience together, and we kept having
this really spirited.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Conversation what would you do here? What would you do here?
What did you do here?
Speaker 3 (22:55):
And we started to go like, wow, somatics is such
an incredible health for psychedelic therapists because the non ordinary
state comes often with nonverbal states. How do I track
the non speaking body when they're going into these deep,
deep mystical experiences.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
How do I read the body? How do I support
my client?
Speaker 3 (23:17):
What are some tools for them to prepare to get
more comfortable in the body so they can accept these
experiences that really push people into giving up control. Yeah,
this is a big one. People are afraid of losing
control or dying. Right, This is a very common psychedelic
fear that people have. So somatic work can prepare you. Yeah,
(23:38):
well you're not alone all of us. Right, but even
if you've done a lot of it, every time I
go what the ego doesn't like it? So Joshua and
I were really thinking about we could from all this
experience that we've had. There are so many tools that
we could offer, and also in my frame of how
(23:58):
to look at psychedelic work work and be helpful in
the therapeutic context. So this is for therapeutic context. Obviously,
psychedelics has deep roots and indigenous, and I want to
acknowledge this technology is rooted in Indigenous and there's so
much wisdom and knowledge that we are complete in infancy
about So this is no way a replacement or a
(24:19):
competition or anything. This is just from our little corner
and offering that there are somatic techniques that could help
the therapists to prepare the client, to make them accept
the experience of fear of losing control. Through breathing techniques,
through somatic awareness, through movement techniques, you can actually embrace
(24:41):
the experience. So learning how to be with a challenging moment,
rehearsing that in preparations for psychedelics, the body will remember
it in their session.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So suddenly you.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Can as a therapist, all you can say, remember the
breath we practice and they suddenly go and then making
because you practiced it, the body remembers. The body doesn't
just remember the bad stuff, it also remembers the training.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So when you have.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Trained certain breaths and movements and practices, all the therapist
has to do is either gently remind them or the
body remembers it itself because it's not part of them.
So preparation. Then there are also tools certain in the
different stages of a journey to help people with certain
breaths and somatic techniques, and also some very select touch
(25:31):
which is a controversial issue and then hugely in integration.
So in integration work, you know, coming back like through
the sensory channels of remembering a session, not just like, oh,
this is what happens, and people want to make meaning
right away, and it's often encouraged to actually wait on
meaning making and just actually feel and sense and let
(25:51):
things settle. You know, what's your responses in the body,
what has come up.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And then the.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Integration to actually work through certain somatic practices remembering in
the body and having the meaning making come from the
soma up from the bottom up, versus like oh now
I saw certain that means ABC. That's just applying such
a narrow understanding of mystical experience. So somatic techniques can
(26:20):
be such a helper along all those three main stages
of psychedelic work, and I think it helps people to
integrate deeper. One technique I use a lot is continual movement,
especially in both in the preparation and integration. But when
you're asking people, as I said earlier, in these little
micro movements moving through the body, suddenly they go, oh,
(26:41):
an image came back. Oh now I understand why I
had a voice from my grandmother talking to me. Because
the body brings it back in this nonlinear way. Healing
happens nonlinear, right, So we need to amvoy techniques that
are non linliar, and so of course we want of
them make sense and you can journ, you can do
dream work, and you do all that stuff. You's all
(27:02):
wonderful techniques, but also often recapturing and really understanding the
essence of a psychedelic work needs to come from nonlinear channels.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
That's what I think. So Somatic is a helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
The book. Is it for therapists as well?
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yes, it's for therapists everybody who's guiding psychedelic work, So
I mean it also can be for the general public
who's interested, but it's really for people who are helping
other people through these kind of processes like that. How too,
some ethics. We'll also talk big topic is ethics ethical
touch because there's been a lot of injury there, so
(27:41):
that's a big component of the book.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
As we kind of wind down here, I want to
ask you a couple more questions, but what kind of programs, teachings,
workshops are you offering? Now?
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, I teach a lot of embody wise, so we
teach a hakomi psychedelic train that's for therapists. I also
teach innate somatic intelligence trauma therapy. That's the work that
I developed that brings continuum together Hakomi trauma work that
really equips therapists to work with this process, the innate
somatic intelligence as I was describing, I teach Hakomi trainings
(28:17):
all over the place. I also developed in your training
with Susan Harper, actually the one of the founders of Continuum,
weaving continuum into the therapy process, which is a really
wonderful program to using these very innate, subtle movement patterns
into therapy process, into psychedelic process, any kind of therapeutic application.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
So yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And I teach also at Embody Lab. I teach at
different places, different courses. So yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
And finally, I mean, you have so much experience. Where
do you see trauma education trauma treatment right now in
the field when you think of it.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Well, I think it's very exciting what's happening. I think
there is such a confluence. I think because of psychedelics
and so much of the trauma research and then psychedelic
rese which there is so much bridging happening the addiction work.
I mean I feel like there is such a coming
together of the different silos, which that's what I have
loved about psychedelic work. I just came back from the
MAPS conference, you know, and there was such a wonderful
(29:27):
confluence of all these different researchers, therapists, you know, ethicists
and activists, everybody. I think that psychedelics is a great integrator,
and in trauma work, I think we need to really
be open to many different modalities. I'm sad when trauma
work is just put into one methodology because I think
(29:49):
that's not how we organize as humans. And I'm also
said that we don't bring in more than moving body,
you know, that it gets to that was still kind
of adhering to a model of the body that's somehow
fixed or rigid.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
We are not.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
We're living, intelligence, challenging organism, and we need to engage
it as such. So I hope that with all this research,
you know, there's in different modalities coming in, that there
is more communication with the different methods and.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
An openness to integrate.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
And that's actually one of the reasons Joshua and I
wrote the book Here's se and there's Hakomi and other
methodologies we played with and we really wanted to bring
it together, like we need to have the best of
the best coming together for finding our pathways through. That
addresses individual trauma, intergeneration in collective trauma, because we're in
a very different world now, you know, everybody has the
(30:41):
intersection of many, many different trauma. We need to address
the individual and the systemic and the therapist needs to
be equipped for that, or whoever works with trauma, you know,
if you're working with groups or whatever it is. But
we no longer can just have one method. That model,
I think is out the window. We need to be
thinking much more collectively and so stemachally around trauma.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
So that's my hope.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Wow, all right, Manuela, how do people reach you? What's
the best way they can reach me?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Through embodywise Manuela at embodywise dot com. So that's where
I do a lot of the teaching and my website
Manuela Mishcreed dot com. That's my personal website. But yeah,
the body Wise is where you can find me.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Manuela. I remember when I first interviewed you. I remember it,
and I remember you use this word human being. This
you had me at human being this. I love you.
You're incredible. You're welcome back anytime. Thank you, and I
love I love the work you do, I love what
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, it's great. More to you, it's amazing. We need
to get all this work out. This is where we're at. Yeah,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
We'll be in touch so much. All right, take care
Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is gaming
Person and I interview incredible people who share the story
of how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big
thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest
and our sponsors. SO five four, three, two and one,
(00:24):
Our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Super excited to
have back. Manuela Michiga reads Manuela, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Back, Thank you, thanks for having me so.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Manuela is an internationally respected sematic psychotherapist, semitic trauma expert,
and educated with over thirty years of clinical and teaching experience.
She's founder of the Hakomi Institute of California and creator
of embody Wise, a platform for embodied learning. She developed
the Innate Sematic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach, an advanced training
(00:54):
program for therapists, and co developed the Hakomi Psychedelic Assisted
Therapy training Her books include Trauma Sensitive Movement as well
as Embodied Psychedelic Therapy or a Somatic Guide and Correct
Me if I'm wrong, the latter book that has yet
to come out.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's coming out in October.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, okay, okay, and then Astmann book just came out.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay, yeah, Okay, so let's give our if we can.
First of all, before we even get go in here,
share with the listeners where you're from originally and where
you are currently.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I currently am based in California, Northern California. That's
where I work in practice, but I really work in
practice all over the place. So I teach internationally and
do trainings. But I'm originally from Germany and Spain, so
I grew up in Europe, was bicultural and bicultural and yeah,
(01:46):
and then my path led me from Europe to Asia
to Australia we're also teach, and then to the United States.
So I consider myself very much a person of the world,
of global world.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Awesome, awesome, all right, Before we get into specifics, I
want to talk about the new book of Coorse and
your work with psychedelics. If we can, let's just keep
our audience kind of a thumbnail sketch of how would
you define what it is you do?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So I wear a couple of hats in my heart.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I'm both a somatic trauma psychotherapist. That's what I've been
doing for over thirty years, working with a very wide
range of clients, all kinds of different traumas and personal
growth as well. I have also a foot in the
kind of psycho spiritual world. I come from drama practices
and embodied practices. I'm a somatic therapist, but I'm also
(02:45):
a somatic educator, so I come from movement therapy, somatic
embodied practices. My new book actually is on trauma sensitive movement,
so how to bring movement techniques into the therapy world,
how into trauma work, because that's a very neglected area,
I think. So that's the new book that just came
out in February. But I wear the head of somatic psychotherapists,
(03:09):
but I do a lot of education, so training of therapists,
training of anybody in the healing field, also coaches, and
right now I'm doing a class and intergenerational trauma for
the general public actually how to work with somatic imprints
and trauma from the past, from the family lineage and
using somatics. So at the heart, what I care most
(03:31):
about really is a transformation through the body, and that's
really what I'm most interested in, especially when trauma has
interrupted that inherent knowledge of our bodies.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's what I care about most.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Going back just a little bit, when did this desire,
this need, this calling come to you.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
We have to go way back.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Sure, well, it started with being in the natural world.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Actually with my I'm a little child, I'm dancing in
the wheat fields with my cat, where I discovered that
being in tune with nature, the movement of nature, the
movement of.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The wheat field.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And I was a really little kid, we're talking six seven,
and she was my companion.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And I would copy her movements.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
I was so fascinated how cats moved through the world,
you know, with such elegant and grace and fluidity, and
so I literally would copy her like my first dance teacher,
and I began to have an experience of feeling very
connected with my environment.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I grew up in a trauma household.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
There was a lot of violence and also, you know,
two generations passed, but post Holocaust in Germany. That's why
I grew up in the first early formative years, and
so there was a lot of incess trauma into generational
trauma and violence in my home. And so my moving body,
being in the natural world, being with the animal world,
(05:09):
were my first teachers into back into my somatic resource,
into my own inner wisdom. So that's what started, and
it became then I started to study dance, and I
had wonderful teachers of African dance that also brought that
more tribal psycho spiritual.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Work, ancestral work to me through dance.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
So it's really through movement that I began to feel
at home in my body. And then when I later
on began my work with all kinds of trauma clients,
I never forgot that that was my medicine and my thread.
It's also what I think is very powerful in psychedelic work,
you know, bringing movement technique, somatic techniques into that works.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, that's what started. It started in the wheat field.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Thank you for sharing that. There's something as soon as
you started talking about movement, there's something that can almost
feel like the use of movement can almost feel antithetical
to trauma work. I mean a lot of times when
I think of people who have been traumatized. There's not
(06:17):
for everyone, of course, but for many people there can
be a need to avoid the body, yes, right, a
need to just feel so constricted you're asking me to move.
Of course that's not for everybody, but okay, so let's
talk about this movement and movement you said initially you
(06:39):
felt that was kind of an under utilized or research
or area within the trauma field. Why do you say.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That, because I think that we're looking at movement, We're
looking at the body as behavior and responses. We're looking
at the freeze response, We're looking at you know, bracing patterns.
This is all good ways of looking at it. About
what we're not looking at. Even the most frozen body moves.
We move, We move through.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Breath, right, and if we're we have to move.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
We have to move, but we might not be conscious
of the movement, we might not be connected with movement,
and movement often is misunderstood as dance, as kind of
leaping through the space or something, and that's not what
it is. We're talking about very intrinsic movements, very inner,
subtle micro movements that can actually unthaw frozen states and
(07:31):
that are very very safe to the most traumatized body.
It's just really misunderstood because we are moving, we're also
choosing to not feel the movements in the body or
feel our sensations in the body. But it's actually that's
exactly the medicine that somebody who is traumatized, especially in
a frozen spectrum, actually needs They need to come into
a relationship with their body in a safe way, in
(07:53):
a very scuffolded way, so that they safely begin to
you know, feel and sense and find them way through.
I'm talking before we even talking about any kind of
discharging of trauma states held memories in the body, that's
all part of it. But what I have found, and
this is where continuum has entered my life. It's been
(08:13):
a very impactful uh teaching in my life. Emily Conrad
and Susan Harper too somatic movement pioneers in this world,
and they have taught me the practice of continuum. I
became a continuum movement teacher, still a continuum teacher, and
I began to experiment with bringing this very intrinsic We're
(08:35):
talking really barely visible on the surface movement and applying
that to when people go into dissociative states. We're talking
a little movement in the neck. You know we're talking.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So let me just stand there for one seconds. Are
you talking about bringing awareness to intentional movement?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
No?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, no, okay.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
We're talking about shifting first a reference point of like,
oh I feel stuck and I feel frozen to like,
what's actually happening? As you're feeling the frozen what else
is here? The truth is, there is movement, There is
well being. We're just not connected to it. I call
it poetically the river beneath. There is actually a fluidity
(09:18):
in the body that's existing ours, the Noville fluids. I'm moving,
our heart is pumping. There is actually movement happening in
the body. I'm just not connected to it. So the
first step is connecting to it. Intentional movement means I'm
going to move my arm. So it's before that. It's
saying like, so you feel the frozen pattern and let's
(09:40):
say a tightness in a chest. And then as you
feel the tightness in the chest, what else is here? Well,
I can feel my breath up and down. Now that's movement.
They just don't know it yet, right, they don't have
the language yet. So as you feel the tightness and
this is polarity, by the way, and you feel the
movement of the breath breath, notice that there is a
(10:01):
rhythm to the breath. The body has a primordial rhythm.
There is a rhythm to our body. Yeah, our heart
has a rhythm. Our snowball fluids have a rhythm. Our
cranial sacral has a rhythm. There is a rhythm. It's
expansion and contraction. That is the primal dancer in the body.
When you begin to connect with, ah, there is a
(10:21):
rhythm here, my breath is doing exhale in here, there
is a rhythm. Then the person begins to connect with
something so innate, so deep, and it's actually what I
would call the healing intelligence. And so the person connects
with that rhythm.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And what do they begin next?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
They go, ah, they engage the parasympathetic Yeah, the tension
is still there.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I'm afraid, I don't want to feel my body. L la.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It's all what they've kind of created, avoidance pattern, dismissive pattern,
blah blah blah. But then there's also this other experiencing
that's also happening.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So let's go.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Back and forth, which is a common pendulation technique. It's
used in somatic experiencing, other somatic task. Let's go back
between the tension, but then also that rhythm of the breath,
and as you feel that, notice what wants to happen.
The body always wants to heal, always wants to go
towards resolving whatever is in the way, stuckness, blah blah blah,
(11:18):
wants to resolve itself. So once we connect a person
with that kind of rhythm, it's not a big step
than to say, so, see if you can bring a
little bit more capacity to the breath or is there
a movement that goes with it? Well, I feel a
little tickling down my spine.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and you.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Begin to re educate the person that actually what's happening
is movement. We're constantly in motion externally and internally. There's
always movement.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Interesting, So you're you're inviting them to in a way
bringing an awareness not to kind of intentional movement, like
I said, but to the very state of their human beings.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's that's right, it's moving.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It which is which? Or is moving? I mean move
them into the office, That's true? Right? Which is which?
Is really interesting? Now is how do you I don't
want to use this term, I'm gonna use it anyway.
How do you how do you encourage them or how
(12:23):
do you how do you invite them to do that?
For someone for someone who might I don't even want
to go there, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, you always start with where the person is at
and I don't want to go there as fear it's
a barrier, but it's a resistance and that's not a problem.
So we start with what the resistance is. Resistance is
also a movement, by the way, so you don't want
to go there. So a party can use parts language, right,
you can a part of it doesn't want to go there.
So notice there's like a I don't want to Is
(12:52):
that in your mind? Is it in your body? Do
you feel something? I feel like holding embracing you can.
I have gotten people to move that are quote non movers.
I've worked with firefighters, work with people that wouldn't be
in a million year's cart to be moving on the floor,
and I've gotten them there.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the reason is you pick them up, not.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
From giving them an exercise, but starting where the awareness
is and then increasing the awareness. Because the movement is there,
you just have to fight it. So as I said,
the movement of the breath is the easiest, but then
even them doing a little head movement or they're twitching
shoulder and it's like, as you're feeling that shoulder, see
if you can just be with the shoulder movement.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Notice that, Oh it's just a twitch up and down.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, And as you do that, see if you can
do it even smaller, you always make it more durable
by making it smaller.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Where I come from, you don't exaggerate.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Kind of reframing in a sense. Why is this important? Yes,
for trauma work.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yes, it's hugely important because first of all, people don't
have access to the inherent wisdom of the body.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
They are stuck.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
And first of all, they're stuck in trauma responses or
five flight freeze, and with that associated belief systems and
then behavior patterns. Right, So they're stuck in these and
they recycle them over and over again because they're based
on survival. That's not thriving. It's great, but it's not
based on on thriving. So when you connect people with
this intelligence, when my experience has been people suddenly go like,
(14:25):
oh my god, it's so tender. I feel such reverence.
I feel like there I am, I'm home. There is
fluidity here. I thought I was all a bundle of stuckness.
People use different language, you know, whatever they're whatever they
or they have an image that goes with it, but
they're connecting with themselves as a continuum of life, because
(14:47):
trauma cuts us off from all kinds of connection, right
from connection with our body, our psyche, our spirit, from
other people the world.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
It's a cut off. It's a big, massive disconnection.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
When we find pathways into the body and I go, oh,
my god, there's an ease. I have all chronic pain
in my body, but there's this little ease in my neck.
Oh that feels so sweet, and then tears are coming.
You're now connecting them to something so inherent that's them.
That's also beyond any kind of spirituality. It's just them
and their body, the innate knowledge. And when you have
(15:19):
that connection back, then trauma becomes just things to work through,
you know, it's becomes a huge ally because I have this,
it's we can call it a resource, we can call
it resilience, we can put all those names on it.
But it's so inherently something that I have inside my body,
and it's not been lost. And most people think that
in trauma, I've lost connection.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I'm doomed.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I'm this Life is passing by me, right is like
life is overing here, I'm over there.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
That's not true. That's a trance.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Actually, trauma makes us believe it out of survival, but
it's not true. We are actually inherently connected always. So
this goes a little psycho virtual here. But when you
have a direct ex of your body as a living intelligence,
like wow, I'm breathing, moving, sensing, billowing, feeling streaming, ooh right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
It's like wow, that's all true.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And then when there is a trauma discharge, it's like yeah,
I can write it because I know there's also this
there and that comes also after being Discharge's like oh
there it is again an opening in my belly is
streaming down into my pelvis. That was so fraud with
trauma memory. So those experiences of the sensing, feeling, sensual body,
(16:32):
which I want to call aros, really errors in the
cleanest sense, a connection back with aeros, because trauma cuts
us off from that cuts vitality errors.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Let me just remind everyone i'm speaking with Manuela Miss
reads her books Trauma Sensitive Movement and also Embodied Psychedelic
Therapy a somatic guide. Wow, I'm just thinking the way
you're speaking. Obviously, we could all traumatized, or I mean
probably we're all traumatized to a certain degree, but we
(17:05):
can all benefit from this, this this incredible awareness. Would
it be okay if we kind of segued into psychedelics
and the new book and how did this interest start
for you?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well, psychedelics has been part of my life for the
last thirty years along with it because my inquiry has
always been what heals trauma. That's been from my early
and I think of the last podcast I talked about
that that's been my guiding post what.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Actually heals trauma?
Speaker 3 (17:31):
My own personal journey for where I came from, but
also then with my clients, I was always interested in
what healed it. So I've had a lot of personal
experiences with psychedelics thirty years on and then I had
over my career always people come in doing psychedelic integration.
So I've been doing hundreds of sessions of psycholic integration
(17:52):
over the years where people you know, did underground work.
We're traveling into other countries and came back and its
like how do I do this? And has been such
a powerful tool because people come back with some psychedelics
is a lot of nonverbal experience, so it's very hard
to integrate something that you experienced nonverbally.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
But somatics movement offers a route to that.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So I got interested because my clients were doing I
was on my own healing path. And then obviously as
it became more knowledge, you know, more Michael Pollan's book
and so on, it became more above ground. And I've
been doing ketemine work with firefighters in group work, individual
(18:34):
work with keademine, and so I got really interested in
working with psychedelics because of the trauma, because I saw
that certain traumas needed more support, It needed that kind
of stepping out of the thinking mind. Even with all
my toolkits with movement and somatic techniques that I have.
I've written a couple of books on it. But even
(18:55):
though there were certain clients that were quote trauma treatment
resistant with trauma and they needed an extra help. And
I think that psychedelics is such an incredible helper along
the way of helping to integrate trauma. So it's not
the healing itself, but it's a tool along with it.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
You said certain traumas could maybe benefit from psychedelics. Are
you talking about a type of trauma? Are you talking
about maybe certain people or trauma resisting could benefit from
the peat.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
People who are resistant to other treatments, right, what other
treatments haven't worked. And then of course veterans, the first responders,
helpers a lot, you know that are constantly exposed to
trauma over and over again. Where there's a coupling of trauma,
so that the difficulty of as you know, I mean,
this is your field. What makes trauma so hard is
(19:49):
that there's not just one trauma. It couples with intergenerational trauma,
collective trauma, then more crisis trauma. I mean, there's like
many multiple layers and people who are on the front
lines of mental health professionals too, by the way, but
people who are on the front lines of trauma, there's
like more insult right, more trauma kind of getting accumulated.
So I think that psychedelics is a very powerful way
(20:13):
to help with those kind of traumas. In particular, I
mean there's lots of studies being done right now with veterans,
with firefighters, with helping professions, medical prof I mean, there's many,
many studies end of life and so on too. That's
the different, but there are many studies done. But the
idea here is that I think psychedelics can bring the
(20:34):
person from the overly vigilant thinking mind into deep experiential work,
which often somatic therapists know how to do that, but
it helps you to access these non ordinary states in
which you can confront more at ease some of the
difficult traumas because especially with MDMA, it down regulates the amygdalas,
(20:57):
so the fear center is not so activated and the
person can actually relate to whatever they have to confront,
the deep shame, the moral injury of combat, or whatever
it is. They can confront it now. And what has
been found is that compassion self compassion arises, and that's
been so powerful, and that's often so missing in trauma healing.
(21:18):
It's really hard work for the therapist to help the
client to come towards self compassion and self acceptance. So
MDMA in particular and also ketamine and other medicines too,
but they often are helpful to opening up that self
compassion and that is a huge ally on the path
of healing. So we know now, you know, one to
(21:39):
three initial sessions or one psilocybin session, people have these
deep mystical experiences and they feel this connection again with self,
with spirit, with life itself. Just when I was talking
about the movement. Right when we get that sense of like,
oh I am connected. I am not disconnected from my
wisdom or in the body. I'm not disconnected in the
(22:02):
universe yet I am actually part of it all.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
That is huge healer right right.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Uh? With the book and body psychedelic therapy talk a
little bit, Yeah, what your purpose?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah purpose?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I co wrote that with my friend and colleague, Joshua Sylvey.
He's from somatic Experiencing. He's a trainer in semitic experiencing.
I'm a Hakomi trainer, also trained in sematic experiencing, and
we both obviously share the love for somatic trauma work.
And we were actually attending and training together. That's how
we met. We had met in other circles before, but
we sat in training and we loved it. And we
(22:41):
also started going like, wow, the somatic component is missing here.
And you know, combined we have like I don't know
how many decades of experience together, and we kept having
this really spirited.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Conversation what would you do here? What would you do here?
What did you do here?
Speaker 3 (22:55):
And we started to go like, wow, somatics is such
an incredible health for psychedelic therapists because the non ordinary
state comes often with nonverbal states. How do I track
the non speaking body when they're going into these deep,
deep mystical experiences.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
How do I read the body? How do I support
my client?
Speaker 3 (23:17):
What are some tools for them to prepare to get
more comfortable in the body so they can accept these
experiences that really push people into giving up control. Yeah,
this is a big one. People are afraid of losing
control or dying. Right, This is a very common psychedelic
fear that people have. So somatic work can prepare you. Yeah,
(23:38):
well you're not alone all of us. Right, but even
if you've done a lot of it, every time I
go what the ego doesn't like it? So Joshua and
I were really thinking about we could from all this
experience that we've had. There are so many tools that
we could offer, and also in my frame of how
(23:58):
to look at psychedelic work work and be helpful in
the therapeutic context. So this is for therapeutic context. Obviously,
psychedelics has deep roots and indigenous, and I want to
acknowledge this technology is rooted in Indigenous and there's so
much wisdom and knowledge that we are complete in infancy
about So this is no way a replacement or a
(24:19):
competition or anything. This is just from our little corner
and offering that there are somatic techniques that could help
the therapists to prepare the client, to make them accept
the experience of fear of losing control. Through breathing techniques,
through somatic awareness, through movement techniques, you can actually embrace
(24:41):
the experience. So learning how to be with a challenging moment,
rehearsing that in preparations for psychedelics, the body will remember
it in their session.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So suddenly you.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Can as a therapist, all you can say, remember the
breath we practice and they suddenly go and then making
because you practiced it, the body remembers. The body doesn't
just remember the bad stuff, it also remembers the training.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So when you have.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Trained certain breaths and movements and practices, all the therapist
has to do is either gently remind them or the
body remembers it itself because it's not part of them.
So preparation. Then there are also tools certain in the
different stages of a journey to help people with certain
breaths and somatic techniques, and also some very select touch
(25:31):
which is a controversial issue and then hugely in integration.
So in integration work, you know, coming back like through
the sensory channels of remembering a session, not just like, oh,
this is what happens, and people want to make meaning
right away, and it's often encouraged to actually wait on
meaning making and just actually feel and sense and let
(25:51):
things settle. You know, what's your responses in the body,
what has come up.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And then the.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Integration to actually work through certain somatic practices remembering in
the body and having the meaning making come from the
soma up from the bottom up, versus like oh now
I saw certain that means ABC. That's just applying such
a narrow understanding of mystical experience. So somatic techniques can
(26:20):
be such a helper along all those three main stages
of psychedelic work, and I think it helps people to
integrate deeper. One technique I use a lot is continual movement,
especially in both in the preparation and integration. But when
you're asking people, as I said earlier, in these little
micro movements moving through the body, suddenly they go, oh,
(26:41):
an image came back. Oh now I understand why I
had a voice from my grandmother talking to me. Because
the body brings it back in this nonlinear way. Healing
happens nonlinear, right, So we need to amvoy techniques that
are non linliar, and so of course we want of
them make sense and you can journ, you can do
dream work, and you do all that stuff. You's all
(27:02):
wonderful techniques, but also often recapturing and really understanding the
essence of a psychedelic work needs to come from nonlinear channels.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
That's what I think. So Somatic is a helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
The book. Is it for therapists as well?
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yes, it's for therapists everybody who's guiding psychedelic work, So
I mean it also can be for the general public
who's interested, but it's really for people who are helping
other people through these kind of processes like that. How too,
some ethics. We'll also talk big topic is ethics ethical
touch because there's been a lot of injury there, so
(27:41):
that's a big component of the book.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
As we kind of wind down here, I want to
ask you a couple more questions, but what kind of programs, teachings,
workshops are you offering? Now?
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, I teach a lot of embody wise, so we
teach a hakomi psychedelic train that's for therapists. I also
teach innate somatic intelligence trauma therapy. That's the work that
I developed that brings continuum together Hakomi trauma work that
really equips therapists to work with this process, the innate
somatic intelligence as I was describing, I teach Hakomi trainings
(28:17):
all over the place. I also developed in your training
with Susan Harper, actually the one of the founders of Continuum,
weaving continuum into the therapy process, which is a really
wonderful program to using these very innate, subtle movement patterns
into therapy process, into psychedelic process, any kind of therapeutic application.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
So yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And I teach also at Embody Lab. I teach at
different places, different courses. So yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
And finally, I mean, you have so much experience. Where
do you see trauma education trauma treatment right now in
the field when you think of it.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Well, I think it's very exciting what's happening. I think
there is such a confluence. I think because of psychedelics
and so much of the trauma research and then psychedelic
rese which there is so much bridging happening the addiction work.
I mean I feel like there is such a coming
together of the different silos, which that's what I have
loved about psychedelic work. I just came back from the
MAPS conference, you know, and there was such a wonderful
(29:27):
confluence of all these different researchers, therapists, you know, ethicists
and activists, everybody. I think that psychedelics is a great integrator,
and in trauma work, I think we need to really
be open to many different modalities. I'm sad when trauma
work is just put into one methodology because I think
(29:49):
that's not how we organize as humans. And I'm also
said that we don't bring in more than moving body,
you know, that it gets to that was still kind
of adhering to a model of the body that's somehow
fixed or rigid.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
We are not.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
We're living, intelligence, challenging organism, and we need to engage
it as such. So I hope that with all this research,
you know, there's in different modalities coming in, that there
is more communication with the different methods and.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
An openness to integrate.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
And that's actually one of the reasons Joshua and I
wrote the book Here's se and there's Hakomi and other
methodologies we played with and we really wanted to bring
it together, like we need to have the best of
the best coming together for finding our pathways through. That
addresses individual trauma, intergeneration in collective trauma, because we're in
a very different world now, you know, everybody has the
(30:41):
intersection of many, many different trauma. We need to address
the individual and the systemic and the therapist needs to
be equipped for that, or whoever works with trauma, you know,
if you're working with groups or whatever it is. But
we no longer can just have one method. That model,
I think is out the window. We need to be
thinking much more collectively and so stemachally around trauma.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
So that's my hope.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Wow, all right, Manuela, how do people reach you? What's
the best way they can reach me?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Through embodywise Manuela at embodywise dot com. So that's where
I do a lot of the teaching and my website
Manuela Mishcreed dot com. That's my personal website. But yeah,
the body Wise is where you can find me.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Manuela. I remember when I first interviewed you. I remember it,
and I remember you use this word human being. This
you had me at human being this. I love you.
You're incredible. You're welcome back anytime. Thank you, and I
love I love the work you do, I love what
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, it's great. More to you, it's amazing. We need
to get all this work out. This is where we're at. Yeah,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
We'll be in touch so much. All right, take care
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