April 25, 2025 • 56 mins
Air Date - 23 April 2025
Is there a connection between our Souls, Chakras, and Vagus Nerves? How may we understand the body’s internal messages, not act against our bodies, and regain a Soulful connection to self? My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, C J Llewelyn, says that an understanding of subtle energy and our nervous system will promote a journey to wellness. C. J. Llewelyn, MEd, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor, trauma therapist, and intuitive Reiki Master in the lineage of Dr. Mikao Usui. Her passion is combining the psychological, physical, and spiritual to heal trauma and facilitate personal and spiritual growth in her clients. Her work incorporates polyvagal theory, energy psychology, and an understanding of the chakras and subtle energies.
Her website is https://cjllewelyn.com, and she joins me this week to share her new book, Chakras, the Vagus Nerve, and Your Soul: Journeying to Wellness Through Subtle Energy and Your Nervous System.
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Is there a connection between our Souls, Chakras, and Vagus Nerves? How may we understand the body’s internal messages, not act against our bodies, and regain a Soulful connection to self? My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, C J Llewelyn, says that an understanding of subtle energy and our nervous system will promote a journey to wellness. C. J. Llewelyn, MEd, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor, trauma therapist, and intuitive Reiki Master in the lineage of Dr. Mikao Usui. Her passion is combining the psychological, physical, and spiritual to heal trauma and facilitate personal and spiritual growth in her clients. Her work incorporates polyvagal theory, energy psychology, and an understanding of the chakras and subtle energies.
Her website is https://cjllewelyn.com, and she joins me this week to share her new book, Chakras, the Vagus Nerve, and Your Soul: Journeying to Wellness Through Subtle Energy and Your Nervous System.
#CJLlewelyn #VictorFuhrman #DestinationUnlimited #Interviews #Spirituality
Connect with Victor Fuhrman at https://victorthevoice.com/
Visit the Destination Unlimited Show Page https://omtimes.com/iom/shows/destination-unlimited/
Subscribe to our Newsletter https://omtimes.com/subscribe-omtimes-magazine/
Connect with OMTimes on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Omtimes.Magazine/ and OMTimes Radio https://www.facebook.com/ConsciousRadiowebtv.OMTimes/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OmTimes/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omtimes/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2798417/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/omtimes/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
we will explore these topics and so much more with
fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
(00:28):
Destination unlimited. Is there a connection between our souls, chakras
and vegas nerves? How may we understand the body's internal messages,
not act against our bodies, and regain a soulful connection
(00:50):
to self. My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, c J. Llewellyn,
says that an understanding of subtle energy and our new
servers system will promote a journey to wellness. C J.
Llewellen is a licensed professional counselor, trauma therapist and intuitive
Reiki master in the lineage of doctor macau Usui. Her
(01:13):
passion is combining the psychological, physical, and spiritual to heal
trauma and facilitate personal and spiritual growth in her clients.
Her work utilizes polyvagal theory, energy psychology, and a knowledge
of the chakras and subtle energies. Her website is Cjllewellen
(01:33):
dot com and she joins me this week to share
her new book Chakras, The Vaguest Nerve and Your Soul,
Journeying to wellness through subtile energy and your nervous system.
Please join me in welcoming back to Destination Unlimited. CJ. Llewellyn,
Welcome back him, Victor. How have you been wonderful? Thank you,
(01:57):
It's so nice to have you back on again and
talk about the latest in your series, Chakras, the Vegus
Nerve and your Soul. And we're going to be getting
into that shortly, but before, for listeners meeting you for
the first time, please share your path and how it
led to your calling.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well. I am a trauma therapist and I am also
a Reiki master. Those two paths have always been a
little integrated. I have been in private practice for about
ten years. I've been practicing as a trauma therapist for
over fifteen. I work very much with the body, helping
the body release process and release trauma, old trauma, and
(02:37):
I was just seeing the patterns along the vegas nerve
through polyvagel theory. I always I work with a foundation
of what we call polyvagel theory, and clients can certainly
look that up. Stephen Portis's work is changing the world.
And I would see the messaging with my clients, whether
(02:57):
they were processing through current traumas or have already released
and getting new information through their bodies. I was noticing
it aligning with their chakras, with the aspects of their
body that we're holding certain messages, and it was just
it was profound, and there's a lot of nerve endings
(03:18):
that align with these chakras, and Yogis have known this
for years. So this is all about what everybody is
I think. I hope this is where we're going in
the world, where we are finally integrating science and what
we would call spirituality, the etheric, the intuitive. So very
(03:39):
excited to be part of this journey and to be
part of the messaging on this journey.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Your bio also shares that you are a traditional reiki master.
How did reiki grace your life and how do you
use it in your practice?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So I do not use when I'm working traditionally with
a client. I do not actually use reiki in the
way that we would think reiki is used. When someone
comes to a reiky session, you are doing hands on,
you are utilizing the energy you are one on one
with your client. What I do is I am noticing
(04:15):
the energies, being attuned to the energies. I am noticing
as we're working somatically what's running through the client's bodies,
and I allow them the opportunity to tune into that message,
because if I didn't, I'd be stealing their power in
this way.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
When we are.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Entering into a contract where it's hands on, that's one thing.
When we are entering into a contract where we are
deeply working through the layers of attachment messaging right from
early childhood, when we are deeply working through the layers
of what has been stored in our body, how we're
having neuro biological, physiological responses in our body. I turned
(05:02):
that back to them gently to help them attune to
their energy, because that's where the power lies. It's within
each of us anyway. So I am holding the space
for this energy, but I am allowing this energy for
my clients to connect to to understand their own personal
(05:23):
journey with it and reiki.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
When it blessed my life was life changing for me.
I'm just curious as to how reiki came into your life.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh, it's life changing. I have always seen energy. I
was one of those kids. We could go on for
a long time about what I used to see as
as a child. But I've always been very attuned to
the energies. I however, didn't know that, and I think
a lot of people could probably relate to this. When
(05:53):
you are attuning to the things that you don't necessarily
see in a third dimensional way, you're feeling them. And
so Reikie became the construct for me to understand how
to appropriately channel energy, how to not take my other
people's energies in, and how to stay within my own,
(06:16):
and also how to channel right universal energy, the energy
that comes from a higher source that we just step
back and utilize through our own bodies. We take ourselves
out of the picture, but we use our bodies as
the container as the channel to help send energy to others.
(06:39):
So I ended up with some fantastic friends through the years.
And one of my best friends who's also does a
lot of life between life work. She's a PhD nurse.
She's now retired, so I love it because she has
this very strong science background. She became a reiki master.
She became the one twenty years ago that helped me
(07:02):
learn how to manage channel attuned to these energies in
a different way. And she's also created a foundation for
me with just watching her work through the Newton Institute
working with life between life regressions as well. So she
was she's one of my besties. I think she would
(07:24):
be very she's very humble, so she wouldn't I wouldn't
call her one of my masters, but I would definitely
say that she was one of my greatest influences when
it came to doing the energy work.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
You know, I was one of those kids also growing
up in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, and I
was told that I had an overactive imagination until one
day my mother confirmed everything that I had been experiencing.
Did you have the same type of thing?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I'm laughing yes, because my mother used to say, oh,
it's you and that wo woo again, you and your father.
You're just spooky. It's just it probably is the Celtic blood.
I don't know, but she used to say that all
the time to me. But it was also very accepted.
It wasn't rejecting, it was just sort of I don't
(08:11):
quite understand this, but I know that this is what
you do.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Absolutely in your practice you employ internal family systems therapy
and also EMDR. Please tell us about these modalities.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So EMDR's I movement desensitization, reprocessing. And I've been working
in the EMDR world since the early twenty tens. I
can't believe I'm even saying that. And that was my
first somatic experience as a therapist. I came into the
(08:47):
therapy world thinking I was gonna do couples work, and
I'm leaving that one to someone else. I was so
drawn to helping people with their trauma, and I became
very quick understood that there needed to be more to
this than just the talk therapy. So I'm movement desensitization
ME going back. A second was developed by a woman
(09:09):
who is who has since passed, but she developed this
process through noticing that she was thinking about something deeply
and her eyes were moving back and forth in a
way that mimicked rem sleep. And as all amazing modalities
(09:30):
experiences discoveries are founded, they're founded initially with sort of
the hypotheses of huh, I wonder if this would work
with therapy? Why am I doing this? This is remsleep?
Remsleep we are working through our unprocessed our our aspects
of ourselves that we can't even define in our dream world.
(09:53):
So maybe this is something that we could apply to trauma.
And she did, and through the years she developed a
protocol for trauma, and it is burgeoning now. I think
everybody that has become a therapist and understands that trauma
is not talked out has at the very least of
(10:16):
their foundations EMDR and even brain spotting. Brain spotting is
one of those neuro experiential models that came from EMDR,
and it uses eye movement and it's got a very
contained process to it because when you actually are working
through trauma, you don't just open the Pandora's box. I'm
(10:38):
very careful with my new clients to explain that to them,
because I think people come to trauma work or don't
come to trauma work because they're terrified we're just going
to rip open that Pandora's box and everything's going to
fly out. No, we just open a little bit closet
work on that one thing. And so EMDR has a
lot of protocols around that, using the eye movement and
(11:00):
then in terms and then from there, I realized, oh,
I still needed something else, because there's a lot of
parts that were happening, a lot of eco state parts
that were not letting me in. And so I went
and I had been noticing for years internal family systems,
(11:20):
and I went and got trained. And that is probably
one of the most profound modalities and structures that I
think we can put in place with therapy, because what
it does it normalizes the fact that we are all multipled.
We all have aspects, many, many personality aspects to us.
(11:43):
Many of these were defined early on in our lives.
Many of that you know us have parts that are
who were we when we had to go through this
particular argument with our family, Who am I now? That
I had to go to first grade and perform? So
these personalities are living in us, and these aspects of
(12:03):
us step forward. When our body is feeling a certain
way that has a certain somatic memory to it, they
step forward and function that. If you ever had that
conversation of oh my gosh, I don't know what got
into me. However X Y and Z I did this,
I don't normally do this. Those are parts, Those are
(12:24):
personality aspects of us. And some of these kids are
walking around with these burdens. This is what Richard Schwartz
refers to it as And I love the language actually
of internal family systems because it's very non blaming. And
these children are carrying the memories of the past. They've
learned something that got them through that time when we
(12:45):
were five or six. However, the shouting that they got
to be heard in the family when they were four
doesn't work in a board meeting now. So internal family
systems is about connecting with honoring those parts and helping
them understand. And this is where I love the spiritual
aspects of this, that there is a higher wiser energy
(13:09):
within us that can manage that board meeting now, that
can manage the relationship now. As these young ego state
parts connect with the empathy, the love, the kindness of
that higher wiser energy within us, this is the spiritual
This is what we all pursue. This is what I
refer to in my book as the soul. When they
(13:32):
connect with that energy, they understand that there's a grown
up actually in the room, in the body room, and
they can lay those old coping mechanisms down so that
they can go back to doing what they wanted to
do when they were children. And as a result, I
have found through the years the system, the body, the
ego state that is combined with the soul state that
(13:53):
is combined with all these working parts like our vegus
nerve that are keeping us alive as humans. We have
more play in our system. We have more kindness because
our children aren't on the ready trying to fight for us,
and they will die for us. They will fight to
the bitter end to protect us because they still think
(14:15):
they're fighting something from the past. And therein lies the
trauma bridge. I always say trauma is when your system,
in this case through internal family systems, when your system
cannot identify if the present is past or the past
is present. There's a time loss that happens when we
(14:39):
have trauma stored in our system. When these parts come
forward because it feels like they've got to they got
to be the ones that get up there and scream
or do whatever they needed to do shut us down.
When they realize that this higher, wiser aspect of us
can take over, they let the parent in the room
do the thing and they go back to playing, and
(15:01):
so we have more joy in our system. We have
more relaxation. I love to equate. Once we process some
trauma out of our system, it's like we open up
that window and let in fresh spring air into our
bodies and we have room, which goes to the gist
of you my major message, which is then we can
(15:25):
have that wisdom, that wise, soul energy within us, whatever
you want to call it, lead us. When we are
cleared within our body of the protective mechanisms that have
been keeping us in a survival cycle for so long,
we can lead the way with our soul.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. That's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
The last time you were on, we discussed your award
winning book, Chakras and the Vegus Nerve, Tap into the
healing combination of energy and your nervous system. What inspired
that book and what did you share with readers?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Oh, thank you for asking that, because this is this
goes back to what you and I were talking about
in regards to reading the energy and having this reiki
foundation and having this understanding of Polyvagel theory, which, by
the way, Polyvagel theory posits that it is our vagus
nerve that not just automatically keeps everything functioning. A heart
(16:30):
beating or lungs breathing, our digestion going. But it also
is reading the room. It's also listening for danger. It's
also what allows us to connect through the three branches,
the ventral vagel connection branch, the safety branch, the sympathetic branch,
(16:50):
the dorsal vagel immobility branch. So having this in mind,
watching within client's body how they are working through their
trauma and connecting, I went, oh, my gosh, a majority,
not all, but a majority. The messaging was through the
(17:12):
torso and aligning with the chakras, the seven main chakras.
And I had this work in my head for years
and I think we've discussed the last time. I think
two years ago. I was on the last time. I thought,
oh my gosh, I've got to write a book about this.
But breaking that down a little bit, when you're looking
at the root chakra and you have felt sense, you
(17:33):
have felt memory, but you don't have what they call
explicit memory, So in other words, you don't have chronological memory.
You don't you're feeling and knowing from childhood. It's in
your body. It may have been related to traumas from
(17:54):
the waist down that becomes the energy and the information
in the root chakra. Then then I would watch people
feeling a lot of memory and just having information that
came up through the sacral chakra. That is the chakra
that seems to be really connected to early childhood attachment,
(18:18):
how we learn early to connect, how we learn early
to connect through the messaging and and our family, but
also in our body. And so a lot of the
information that people would pull in from early childhood about
how they connected in ways that were helpful or not helpful,
(18:39):
or painful or calming, seem to have a messaging process
around their sacral chakra, which is kind of near the
belly button. Then you talk about identity, you talk about
internal family systems. We're talking about that solar plexus of
the mind, the identity that is that part of us
(19:02):
that just ends up burning sometimes right the charge they
got to get out there in the world, got to
present myself. Those are the ego parts of us. And
ego is not bad. We need identity. You need Victor Furman,
the identity the person that has been putting himself forward.
(19:22):
I need C. J. Llewellen, the person that's putting myself forward.
So we need identity. It's just when our identities get
so burdened and so caught up in the world that
this becomes the only identity we have. So with that,
a lot of that gets felt in the solar plexus.
When you get up into the heart chakra, you're getting
(19:43):
up into that safety branch of the vagus nerve. Right,
everybody loves the heart chakra. But by the way, everybody
loves the heart chakra because the ventral vagual branch of
our vagus nerve starts slowing our heart rate down, our
beats between beat, that heart rate variability starts slowing down,
(20:05):
our blood pressure lower. Suddenly we are feeling safer and
calmer as we get up into speaking. Maybe we didn't
feel safe, maybe our voice didn't feel heard, Maybe we
were told just plain old, don't talk. What you have
to say isn't worthy. As you begin to process out
(20:25):
those old messages, those old traumas, whatever they were in
your system, however they applied meaning in your system to you,
you are able to open up, you are able to speak,
You are feeling safe enough to speak, which of course
relates back down to the heart. And then I've noticed
that as we would continue to clear out and process trauma.
(20:47):
The third eye would shift to more meaning, more symbolism,
more symbolic what we would consider spiritual aspects unless of
the actual physical images that we would we get from
early childhood trauma. So then we are able to really
kind of feel a little bit more freer in our
(21:08):
crown chakra at the top of our head, which you
know aligns with the fontinel right when we were children,
I'm six years older than my brother. I remember my
mother saying, don't touch a soft spot. So that is
how I started to just see the alignment with the chakras,
the messaging, and of course, as I said, it's not
(21:29):
completely limited to these seven chakras. But when I work
with clients, I hold the space for them. I don't
ask them what chakra this is, because that takes them
out of the actual somatic process, that takes them out
of the felt experience, and it puts them into their brain.
It puts them into that left brain that explicit memory.
(21:51):
The explicit memory comes into our mind our brain. Our
brain starts developing the ability to remember dates and times
and places as when we're about three, but we have
a lot of previous experience that we are storing in
our bodies prior to that time. So when we can
trust the felt experience, even when it doesn't make sense
(22:14):
to the brain, we can open for possibilities of healing
that we probably never even thought of before. I answer
your question because I kind of went off on No.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Absolutely. My guest is CJ. Lowella. We're going to be
talking about her brand new book, Chakras, The Vegus Nerve
and Your Soul. CJ. Please share with our listeners where
they can get all of your books and find out
more about you and your amazing work.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Thank you, thank you. My books are now available. They
released April eighth. Well, they my new book Chakras, the
Vegas Nerve and Your Soul released. You can find this
through Llewellyn dot com. You can find and I will
break down the different spellings of my name in there
name no relation. You can find that at Barnes and Noble.
(23:04):
You can find it at Amazon almost anywhere where you
can get books. You can find both of these books
right now. My email is CJ at Cjllewellyn dot com.
And now let me break down the spelling of my name.
It's two l's upfront and one in the middle. That's
(23:24):
how I like to break it down. CJ. L L
E W E l y N. And of course you
can go to my website, which is CJ. Llewellen dot com.
I'm on social media. I am on I'm on Instagram,
I'm on Facebook, I'm playing around now on Blue Sky
(23:46):
and I actually got back on TikTok because I kind
of like videos. I like playing with videos. So you
can meet me there. Please say hello, would love to
engage with you.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
And we'll be back with more of CJ after the
these words on the Old Times Radio Network, the cutting
edge of conscious radio.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Home Times Radio IOMFM. Ome Times Magazine is one of
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A philanthropic organization, their net proceeds are funneled to support
worldwide charity initiatives via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment
to creating community and providing conscious content, they aspire to
(24:28):
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Speaker 1 (24:35):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week CJ. Llewellyn
her new book Chakras, The Vagus Nerve and Your soul
journeying to wellness through subtle energy and your nervous system CJ.
What inspired this wonderful new book.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, I kind of wasn't done it the first one.
I mentioned in the first one, how I genuinely see
our higher wiser soul spirit energy, however you want to
refer to it as. And I get very open about
the terminology of this, because I think it's more of
a applied experience. Soul has some religious connotations for some
(25:18):
people that they're not comfortable with, and others absolutely feel
very comfortable with that more hellenistic use of the word.
But I just I started to really see that when
we are able to clear the memory data sets, sometimes
(25:40):
I refer to that as data sets, there's trauma responses
as memory data sets in our nervous system. People change
their own way of being in the world. Sometimes that's
their own way of looking at things. There seems to
be more applied empathy. There seems to be just a wider,
(26:03):
softer range, that's soft but powerful range, that's that soul energy.
And so I've been watching through the years, and by
the way, I've had my own I do my own
trauma work, you know, we're we're all not without having
some of those data sets that hold us back, right,
but they're there to protect us, by the way. So
(26:25):
I just kind of wanted to explore a little deeper
the aspect of how our soul, light, our energy is
driving the machine of our body when our soul leaves
the body. And you know, we were just talking, and
(26:45):
I appreciate you sharing that with me, you know, the
passing of your mom and the experience around that. When
the soul leaves the body, our nervous system doesn't function,
doesn't perceive, doesn't doesn't work. Our organs do not function
any longer. So the soul is the energy. It is
the if you will, the gas. Sometimes when I have
(27:08):
that conversation with people, using a car metaphor works. It's
the journey, right, We need the vehicle to have the
journey our essence takes on this vehicle for whatever reason
the essence wants, from whatever experience the essence wants. But
(27:28):
along the way we get tripped up. We have to,
like if it's our car, we have to do tune ups,
we have to clean. I don't know, are there spark
plugs in the car anymore? I don't even know how
the cars are made anymore. But we have to clean
out the sparks, spark plugs, we have to clean out
the air filter. Right, we have to keep our engine running.
(27:52):
We are not our car, right, our car. Our body
is the vehicle by which this light energy gauges with
this world. And I think I realized I have a
pet peeve is too strong of a word, but I
do have a strong leaning into the argument. I lean
(28:16):
into the argument that while we are here, it isn't
a there's no dualism in this spirit is not good,
body is not bad. And I see that a lot
within a lot of our spiritual communities. No, no, we
want to go spiritual. We don't like this stuff of
our body. But what we do then is we become dissociated.
We're not connecting with our body. We're not listening to
(28:40):
what the messages of the body want. We are here
in this vehicle to have whatever very unique experience our
soul energy wants to have. And there's probably one point
none of us can argue you take any theology out
(29:00):
of this. We come into this world this light. You know,
we have a light in our body, because when it
isn't there our body doesn't function, and then we leave
this world and we leave behind this the structure that
we used. So, you know, us humans put a lot
of meaning and theology and absolutes in between that. But
(29:23):
whatever this light is here for if we can just
keep our our engine thrumbing, our engine working, and that
that also not only just goes to the making sure
that we are psychologically sound with working through these traumas,
knowing what our old patterns are so we can heal them,
(29:44):
shift them, but keeping our bodies healthy. In this book,
I get a little bit now. I am not I
am a licensed professional counselor with a lot of foundation
in polyvagel theory and a couple of other things. So
I've learned how and and the body is affected emotionally
(30:07):
and medically and to listen in that regard, but I'm
not a medical professional. However, it's really apparent that when
we also do not take care of our physical selves,
our emotional self collapses, and then we can't access that
deeper light within us. We cannot access our soul. Our
(30:30):
soul can't lead the way the you know, when when
our car breaks down, we don't think about our car
running except for when it doesn't, then then it becomes
a priority. So I do just touch upon very very
basic aspects of how we can get problems with our
(30:53):
vegas nerve, because that vegus nerve, boy, it is our soul,
It is our wisdom nerve. It is what keeps us going.
It is the main, the main programming that runs our vehicle.
When our vagus nerve is not cared for, our information
that we gather also becomes its skews. We get skewed.
(31:20):
So it is important for us to do the physical
health work, the psychological health work, and that allows for
the spiritual health work as well. So we can't we
can't discard our human experience. We're here for this. We
you know, tell our Dejarden we're here. We are spiritual
beings having a human experience. So that's where I kind
(31:43):
of really just wanted to emphasize and bring in some
of my own experiences around a very brief, temporary thing
where my own vegas nerve got a little over stressed,
and how I work through some of this stuff too.
It's not this book is so not about me, but
I just thought thought I would bring in that one
(32:04):
in that chapter. One of my personal experiences. So yeah,
that's how I got started. I wasn't done.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Absolutely. Now, your car analogy is very interesting because you
refer to this book as a travel guide.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yep, yep, it absolutely is, because this is why we're here.
Anybody listening to your podcast has at least an innate
sense that they are on a journey. But it is
not an either or journey. It is it is a
(32:37):
collective journey between the human experience and the soulful experience.
And you know, we don't know what it is. There
are aspects of this we will individually not know until
we go back to where we came from.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And you share with readers that they should be curious
in their travels. What is the importance of curiosity on
this journey?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Well, I always say that the Buddhists had this right,
and if we could follow some fundamental mindful principles, curiosity
takes judgment out of our process, just noticing, just being curious. Hah,
have this pain in my back, I'm just going to
(33:25):
be curious with it instead of Oh, I have this
pain in my back and I want it to go
away now, because that creates more pain. Being curious about
our sadness, just holding the space to be curious about
the experience of sad or the you know again, the
curiosity sometimes of pain in our body leads us to
(33:46):
the softness of our emotion. It may have a filter
of some old experiences that we might need to process
through that we might be afraid of reliving. That if
we can lead our lives through curiosity, we take out
that very I would say, on some level highly negative
(34:07):
human experience of judgment, right that sometimes we apply these
things as humans that really don't help us along our path,
and judgment is one of them. Judgment is a preconceived notion.
Judgment has an absolute to it, judgment of self, judgment
of others that doesn't get us anywhere. You know, being
(34:28):
curious allows us to discern versus judge. Judge, you hit
using the journey analysis, you know, metaphor you hit the
dead end when you judge, when you discern. When you
are curious, you are open to new roads and you
(34:50):
may be a little afraid, but you're still being curious
along the way, and it may lead you to someplace
you have never ever than before that you couldn't even
imagine and is so spectacular, But along the way. We
have to just stay curious and not let judgment, not
let fear, and not let some you know, some of
(35:11):
those limiting beliefs stop us on this journey that we've
got going on here.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
You know, it's interesting. Eugene I on Esco I'm the paraphrase,
said that enlightenment starts with the question, not the answer.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Absolutely, absolutely, And if you want to look at the
difference maybe perhaps between our physical selves and that eternal
light self, the light is nothing but a question. Our
internal light is nothing more than curiosity.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Absolutely. With each chapter you offer readers exercises to follow,
please tell us a little about these exercises and what
they may learn from them.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
So in the first book, I do a lot. I
do a lot of exercises that I utilize in my
work with clients, which is breaking down the concept of
top down processing, which is thought, explicit memory and utilizing
maybe language and words to send information down but bottom up, right,
(36:19):
our nervous system has felt, experience, has perception, has images
symbols that sometimes the mind doesn't doesn't like the dubiousness
of that, right, So I do a lot of I
try to do a lot of bottom up on both
in both books, but this book, I do a lot
(36:42):
of allowing for different movements, to just be curious with
the experience that's happening within your body. I'm I actually
did a lot of my own meditation on my own health,
(37:05):
and I then saw a few of these experience exercises,
I should say, and then I worked on them myself
and I actually found some relief. But again those don't
have the validity that something like IFS or EMDR has
where there's thirty years of research. Some of the things
that I bring to the table in this book are
(37:27):
very intuitive, but I also offer that listen to and
there's a lot of this in this book, listen to
your own intuition, and I offer some exercises in this
new book about how to listen to your own personal experience.
What do you need? We never asked that question. I
(37:49):
asked that question in my sessions, and I will ask
that with clients I've worked with for years, what do
you need? And I still get that deer in the
headlight look because we don't stop enough to ask that
question for ourselves. So a lot of these exercises, I
hope we'll bring people down to being able to ask
(38:10):
that question for themselves.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
You know, it's funny. When I was training salespeople in
the industry that I was involved with for forty four years,
one of the questions that I would ask them is
what does the customer really want? Which basically is the
same thing as what you need, and it's something that
people don't think about. They go for sometimes the quick answer,
the quick sale in the case of sales, but not
(38:33):
really the overall picture of what the outcome can be
if you truly look at what they truly.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Need, right, And we were driven by it, which is
really kind of funny if you think about it. We're
driven by that and sometimes we don't differentiate between our want, yeah,
versus our need, but we are still driven by it.
We still act from it, but we haven't slowed down
enough to integrate the answer, you know, to ask the
(39:01):
question so that we can really genuinely integrate an answer
to it. We're just constantly driven. We're constantly what do
we need? What do we need? What do I want?
What do I want? But we never actually ask the question,
so we're what would you say, you're driven by the
question more than the answer or no, you're driven by
the answer more than the question, but you haven't really
defined the answer correct.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Absolutely. One of the exercises that you offer is called
Earth to Sky zip. What is it? How does it work?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I love this exercise and it's taken from the movement
of Chikong, which I'm starting to get very intrigued by
and want to study more. And if you're in a
safe place, do this. If you're driving, do not do this.
Just as an experiment. Imagine yourself from your crown all
(39:49):
the way down to your root chakra. Just do an
unzip like imagine there's a zipper there and just do
an unzip now, just you could be You don't even
have to touch your ground. Right now, do a zip up,
zip up from the root from your lap all the
way up your mid to or so to the top
of your crown. And notice how you feel. I haven't
(40:16):
said every time I do this as somebody, they say,
I feel more contained, I feel more grounded. I feel
less like I'm flying, like my energy is falling apart.
So when we can do that, especially outside, if we
can do that outside, we don't have to be outside.
Imagine reaching down to the ground, right, pulling the energy
(40:38):
from the earth, pulling it all the way up between
your legs like a zipper, big zipper that's been unzipped.
Pull it up up up through your legs, over your
root chakra, your sacral your solar plexus, your heart, your throat,
all the way up to the ground, all the way
up to the top of your head. And I actually
will as I'm talking it. I'm doing this. No one
(40:59):
can see me. I'm extending my arm outward. I zip
way up to where my arm is extended, and it's
just such a grounding experience. I bring that all and
I bring these things, by the way into my into
my therapy practice. These are the things that I also
allow my clients to really work with their subtle energies
(41:21):
in that regard. So did you try it, Victor? While
I was describing it, I'm still there. You do, and
if you're feeling out of sorts, do that. I'm telling
you it is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Absolutely, that earthing aspect is very important.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Also, yes, yes, I do mention earthing, and I forgot
I mentioned earthing in the book. I live in the city,
but I had to have some property behind me, so
I've found my new house has a lovely backyard, smacked
out in the city. So I hit both my extroverted
aspects where I can get out, walk around, see my neighbors,
you know, do my little community thing, and then I
(41:59):
can I'm home and I lay on my grass the
earthing just I mean, there's studies that are being done.
Heartmouth has been doing a lot of studies in this
regard as to how we pull in the energy from
the earth, and we need this for our bodies. We are,
our bodies are of this earth, and we need that grounding,
(42:23):
We need that connection.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
My guest is CJ. Llewell in her new book Chakras,
The Vegas, Lrive and Your Soul. We'll be back with
more after these words on the Old Times Radio network.
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(42:56):
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Speaker 1 (43:36):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week CJ. Llewellyn
her new book Chakras, The Vegas Nerve and Your Soul. CJ.
How do the chakras interface with the vegas nerve?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
So we have end points if you think of it
that way or not. Naughties excuse me, naughties are more
of a I can do uh wiring of the chakras
going upward. But we have endpoints to our nervous system
(44:12):
and where, and of course we have by the way,
we have hundreds of chakras throughout our body because we
have hundreds of thousands of nerve endings as well. But
the ancients seem to believe that these were nerve endings,
but they didn't have access, They didn't have the scientific
equipment that we have now for these nerve endings to
(44:34):
be viewed. But they end up we end up with
some different points where our nervous system ends. And I
have always maintained that this is where this is. This
is how I break it down in the book. Our
soul energy is what's charging our nervous system. It just is, because,
(44:56):
as we discussed in our last segment, when our soul
and our lightly this body, our bodies just nothing more
than a mass. So it is charging through the nervous
system almost like electricity goes through wiring in our house.
And when it does that, it certainly does not end
(45:17):
at the end points of these nerves. It extends outward,
and where the nerve centers are a little bit more condensed,
we end up with these these energy centers called chakras,
which you know from the Sanskrit view of the world
that that's where our energy centers are that are felt
(45:39):
more intensely. However, these expand outward. I don't even get
into aras because I'm giving enough, I'm giving too many
layers in the book not too many layers, but I'm
giving a lot of layers in the book to begin with.
So we end up with this energy that extends outward
along the way, our soul energy through this conversation with
(46:02):
the chakras, through the charging of the chakras, those data
sets that have been set within our nervous system are
also combining with this energy center. So when we talk
about how people talk about, oh, I have to open
up this chakra or the chakras carrying this or that,
(46:22):
it's actually from the inside out job right, Because we
may be holding onto memories from early childhood that we
feel or may be perceived as the root chakra is blocked,
But what we might be holding on to is trauma
around the dorsal veagel complex, around the sympathetic complex that
(46:44):
reach down into the sereum. I'm trying not to get
to sciencey here that need to be processed through other
avenues beyond just the energy work. So that then when
we should lift our nervous system, when we clear trauma
from our bodies, when we move in ways that allow
(47:08):
these memories and these experiences to reform in different safer ways,
our chakras, our energy centers shift. They shift naturally. We
can do energy work from the outside in, but the
permanent shifts come from that inside out because that's where
(47:33):
that's the data sets. That's what I mean. It's not
an official term. I'm using that to help people develop
a sense of image here, but that's where the data
sets hold on too, images and experiences that extend outward
into our etheric realm. The etheric realm being the energy
(47:54):
that we feel, the energy that we feel from other
people as they're just simply standing next to them, the
energy that walks in the room before we do.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
What is the importance of breath work on this journey?
Speaker 2 (48:06):
So during breath work obviously intuitive we've known from the
beginning of time that breath work is important. What breath
work does is it can engage the nervous system in
ways that are very invigorating. That engages sympathetic nervous you know,
(48:29):
the nervous system in a sympathetic way that is safe.
But also on the exhale, we are slowing down the
heart rate, right those beats between beats get longer. There
is safety that becomes more established within the system. Our
engagement with slowing down the breath slows down, as we
(48:50):
were talking earlier, the blood pressure, it slows everything down
to send messages of safety and engagement with the safety
branch of the vagus nerve. So breath work is very important.
When we are stressed and we're only breathing from the
top of our lungs, this branch, the safety branch of
(49:13):
our vegus nerve, is not getting that full message that
we're okay. Because when we're not, when we're having to run, right,
we're having to run from from the tiger, we're having
to run from a scary person that's running after us,
We're not to sit there and breathe deeply. We're suppose
(49:33):
our body shifts into more sympathetic engagement. We get shorter breasts,
our muscles tighten, blood gets you know, the blood pressure
pushes through our muscles a lot harder and faster because
our muscles are tightened because we are engaged to move,
we are engaged to run, and we are engaged to
keep ourselves safe. In that way, fight here, the fight
(49:55):
or flight response is afterwards. The the deeper breath work
can come in once we're safe as well, because then
we start sending safety queues. Back into the system. So
if we're not thinking, if we're thinking in a way
talking about judgment, we're thinking in ways that are judgmental
of self or others. Right there, our brain is sending
(50:18):
cues to our body that we're not safe. Well, this
person is this, that person is this. We have to
that person believes this, So we're not safe with this person.
None of this is a fact, but it registers in
the nervous system in the vegas nerve is a fact.
And if so and so wasn't safe because they don't
believe what we believe, Well, there we are. We're off
(50:40):
to the races, and we are thinking. We're engaging our
sympathetic branches, our movement, our fight branches. We're tight. Of course,
we're sitting in our office typing away. We are sending
mixed signals to our body. So knowing our thoughts how
they affect and send messages down that top down processing
(51:02):
we were talking about earlier, how they affect our system
is vital to our own reality, our own engagement in
the world, our own health physical that actually mental is physical.
Mental psychological is a physical health as well.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
And how does this reflect in the body to soul approach.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
So when we are feeling safe, we are able to
access that light. When we are feeling that we have
to run from I'm trying to think of it. You know,
the lion that escapes from the zoo. We just got
to get the heck out of there. We have to
run and climb up that tree or jump into the car.
(51:49):
This is when we have to become a very human experience.
This is when our nervous system says, none of this
stuff matters. None of this stuff is going to matter
until you get yourself into a safe place. So that
is that that leaning in and leaning out of the
human experience. You're you know, you're not going to sit
(52:11):
there and continue to meditate when an angry lion is
running after you to attack you. You're going to find
a way out of that situation. So being able once
you are safe, first of all, having your body identify safety.
This is part of the trauma work. This is part
(52:31):
of what I help my clients with is pulling in
actual cues of physical safety when they are actually safe,
but their mind might not believe it is so queuing
the body differently, allowing for safety to integrate into the system,
allows the body to come enough and then that light
(52:54):
is in there.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
And as you share, you have a very eum titled chapter.
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas if you're not careful.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
It's the whole reason I wrote that book is so
that I could actually use that title.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
And of course we're not talking about Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
We're talking about now it's a vagus. Yeah, yeah, I'm
glad they let me use that title for that that
chapter because I say that all the time to my clients. Look,
what happens in your Vegas stays in near Vegas because
our nervous system is brilliant, It is smart. It is
(53:38):
reading the room, it is looking for cues, and it
has been before we were born. Right, if our parents
were arguing, if there was a lot of volatility, our
nervous system already getting programmed for that, because it's feeling right,
it's feeling the nervous system of the mother's it's picking
up these cues, it's establishing what's to come. So it's
(54:00):
already in there. What happens in Vegas, what gets programmed
in stays there until we are aware that it is
programmed there. Then we have full freedom and capacity and
opportunities to shift this and work differently, and that's the
honoring of the body as part of the spiritual process.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
By the way, my guest CJ. Llewellen her brand new
book Chakras, The Vagus Nerve and your Soul, Journeying to
wellness through subtle energy and your nervous system. CJ. Please
one more time share with our listeners where they can
get your books and find out more about you and
your amazing work.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Thank you so, Cjllewellen dot com. Building I'm continuing to
sort of build out my website as a place where
we can come and just read and just have a
community here. And by the way, Llewellen is my Llewellen
is two l's upfront and one in the middle. So
L L E W E L y N c J.
(55:03):
Llewellen dot com. I am on Instagram, I'm on Facebook,
I'm starting to play around again on TikTok, and I'm
even on where else am I? Which? Look what did
I say I was on me for? Oh? And I'm
on I'm trying out a little bit of Blue Sky,
so I'm playing around on there as well, And you
(55:25):
can get my books anywhere they're selling books. Right now,
you can go to llewellynbooks dot com. Different spelling, no relation.
That's two l's upfront and two in the middle, by
the way, so it's not a complicated name, but it
looks very complicated. So llewellynbooks dot com. You can go
to parts of Noble Access on Amazon. They are in
(55:46):
your bookstores, and if they aren't, just let them know
they need to put it in there.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
CJ. I think we should all get together and have
a conference in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
Absolutely, and then and then what happens in Vegas. We'll
just kind of keep it to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
We're not keep it to ourselves, bring it to our therapist.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
That's right. CJ. Thank you so much for joining us
and sharing all of this wisdom in the world that
needs this kind of wisdom.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
Now, thank you, Thank you Victor for having me.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
It's good to be back, and thank you for joining
us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor la Voice Furman. Have
a wonderful week.
My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
we will explore these topics and so much more with
fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
(00:28):
Destination unlimited. Is there a connection between our souls, chakras
and vegas nerves? How may we understand the body's internal messages,
not act against our bodies, and regain a soulful connection
(00:50):
to self. My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, c J. Llewellyn,
says that an understanding of subtle energy and our new
servers system will promote a journey to wellness. C J.
Llewellen is a licensed professional counselor, trauma therapist and intuitive
Reiki master in the lineage of doctor macau Usui. Her
(01:13):
passion is combining the psychological, physical, and spiritual to heal
trauma and facilitate personal and spiritual growth in her clients.
Her work utilizes polyvagal theory, energy psychology, and a knowledge
of the chakras and subtle energies. Her website is Cjllewellen
(01:33):
dot com and she joins me this week to share
her new book Chakras, The Vaguest Nerve and Your Soul,
Journeying to wellness through subtile energy and your nervous system.
Please join me in welcoming back to Destination Unlimited. CJ. Llewellyn,
Welcome back him, Victor. How have you been wonderful? Thank you,
(01:57):
It's so nice to have you back on again and
talk about the latest in your series, Chakras, the Vegus
Nerve and your Soul. And we're going to be getting
into that shortly, but before, for listeners meeting you for
the first time, please share your path and how it
led to your calling.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well. I am a trauma therapist and I am also
a Reiki master. Those two paths have always been a
little integrated. I have been in private practice for about
ten years. I've been practicing as a trauma therapist for
over fifteen. I work very much with the body, helping
the body release process and release trauma, old trauma, and
(02:37):
I was just seeing the patterns along the vegas nerve
through polyvagel theory. I always I work with a foundation
of what we call polyvagel theory, and clients can certainly
look that up. Stephen Portis's work is changing the world.
And I would see the messaging with my clients, whether
(02:57):
they were processing through current traumas or have already released
and getting new information through their bodies. I was noticing
it aligning with their chakras, with the aspects of their
body that we're holding certain messages, and it was just
it was profound, and there's a lot of nerve endings
(03:18):
that align with these chakras, and Yogis have known this
for years. So this is all about what everybody is
I think. I hope this is where we're going in
the world, where we are finally integrating science and what
we would call spirituality, the etheric, the intuitive. So very
(03:39):
excited to be part of this journey and to be
part of the messaging on this journey.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Your bio also shares that you are a traditional reiki master.
How did reiki grace your life and how do you
use it in your practice?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So I do not use when I'm working traditionally with
a client. I do not actually use reiki in the
way that we would think reiki is used. When someone
comes to a reiky session, you are doing hands on,
you are utilizing the energy you are one on one
with your client. What I do is I am noticing
(04:15):
the energies, being attuned to the energies. I am noticing
as we're working somatically what's running through the client's bodies,
and I allow them the opportunity to tune into that message,
because if I didn't, I'd be stealing their power in
this way.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
When we are.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Entering into a contract where it's hands on, that's one thing.
When we are entering into a contract where we are
deeply working through the layers of attachment messaging right from
early childhood, when we are deeply working through the layers
of what has been stored in our body, how we're
having neuro biological, physiological responses in our body. I turned
(05:02):
that back to them gently to help them attune to
their energy, because that's where the power lies. It's within
each of us anyway. So I am holding the space
for this energy, but I am allowing this energy for
my clients to connect to to understand their own personal
(05:23):
journey with it and reiki.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
When it blessed my life was life changing for me.
I'm just curious as to how reiki came into your life.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh, it's life changing. I have always seen energy. I
was one of those kids. We could go on for
a long time about what I used to see as
as a child. But I've always been very attuned to
the energies. I however, didn't know that, and I think
a lot of people could probably relate to this. When
(05:53):
you are attuning to the things that you don't necessarily
see in a third dimensional way, you're feeling them. And
so Reikie became the construct for me to understand how
to appropriately channel energy, how to not take my other
people's energies in, and how to stay within my own,
(06:16):
and also how to channel right universal energy, the energy
that comes from a higher source that we just step
back and utilize through our own bodies. We take ourselves
out of the picture, but we use our bodies as
the container as the channel to help send energy to others.
(06:39):
So I ended up with some fantastic friends through the years.
And one of my best friends who's also does a
lot of life between life work. She's a PhD nurse.
She's now retired, so I love it because she has
this very strong science background. She became a reiki master.
She became the one twenty years ago that helped me
(07:02):
learn how to manage channel attuned to these energies in
a different way. And she's also created a foundation for
me with just watching her work through the Newton Institute
working with life between life regressions as well. So she
was she's one of my besties. I think she would
(07:24):
be very she's very humble, so she wouldn't I wouldn't
call her one of my masters, but I would definitely
say that she was one of my greatest influences when
it came to doing the energy work.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
You know, I was one of those kids also growing
up in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, and I
was told that I had an overactive imagination until one
day my mother confirmed everything that I had been experiencing.
Did you have the same type of thing?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I'm laughing yes, because my mother used to say, oh,
it's you and that wo woo again, you and your father.
You're just spooky. It's just it probably is the Celtic blood.
I don't know, but she used to say that all
the time to me. But it was also very accepted.
It wasn't rejecting, it was just sort of I don't
(08:11):
quite understand this, but I know that this is what
you do.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Absolutely in your practice you employ internal family systems therapy
and also EMDR. Please tell us about these modalities.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So EMDR's I movement desensitization, reprocessing. And I've been working
in the EMDR world since the early twenty tens. I
can't believe I'm even saying that. And that was my
first somatic experience as a therapist. I came into the
(08:47):
therapy world thinking I was gonna do couples work, and
I'm leaving that one to someone else. I was so
drawn to helping people with their trauma, and I became
very quick understood that there needed to be more to
this than just the talk therapy. So I'm movement desensitization
ME going back. A second was developed by a woman
(09:09):
who is who has since passed, but she developed this
process through noticing that she was thinking about something deeply
and her eyes were moving back and forth in a
way that mimicked rem sleep. And as all amazing modalities
(09:30):
experiences discoveries are founded, they're founded initially with sort of
the hypotheses of huh, I wonder if this would work
with therapy? Why am I doing this? This is remsleep?
Remsleep we are working through our unprocessed our our aspects
of ourselves that we can't even define in our dream world.
(09:53):
So maybe this is something that we could apply to trauma.
And she did, and through the years she developed a
protocol for trauma, and it is burgeoning now. I think
everybody that has become a therapist and understands that trauma
is not talked out has at the very least of
(10:16):
their foundations EMDR and even brain spotting. Brain spotting is
one of those neuro experiential models that came from EMDR,
and it uses eye movement and it's got a very
contained process to it because when you actually are working
through trauma, you don't just open the Pandora's box. I'm
(10:38):
very careful with my new clients to explain that to them,
because I think people come to trauma work or don't
come to trauma work because they're terrified we're just going
to rip open that Pandora's box and everything's going to
fly out. No, we just open a little bit closet
work on that one thing. And so EMDR has a
lot of protocols around that, using the eye movement and
(11:00):
then in terms and then from there, I realized, oh,
I still needed something else, because there's a lot of
parts that were happening, a lot of eco state parts
that were not letting me in. And so I went
and I had been noticing for years internal family systems,
(11:20):
and I went and got trained. And that is probably
one of the most profound modalities and structures that I
think we can put in place with therapy, because what
it does it normalizes the fact that we are all multipled.
We all have aspects, many, many personality aspects to us.
(11:43):
Many of these were defined early on in our lives.
Many of that you know us have parts that are
who were we when we had to go through this
particular argument with our family, Who am I now? That
I had to go to first grade and perform? So
these personalities are living in us, and these aspects of
(12:03):
us step forward. When our body is feeling a certain
way that has a certain somatic memory to it, they
step forward and function that. If you ever had that
conversation of oh my gosh, I don't know what got
into me. However X Y and Z I did this,
I don't normally do this. Those are parts, Those are
(12:24):
personality aspects of us. And some of these kids are
walking around with these burdens. This is what Richard Schwartz
refers to it as And I love the language actually
of internal family systems because it's very non blaming. And
these children are carrying the memories of the past. They've
learned something that got them through that time when we
(12:45):
were five or six. However, the shouting that they got
to be heard in the family when they were four
doesn't work in a board meeting now. So internal family
systems is about connecting with honoring those parts and helping
them understand. And this is where I love the spiritual
aspects of this, that there is a higher wiser energy
(13:09):
within us that can manage that board meeting now, that
can manage the relationship now. As these young ego state
parts connect with the empathy, the love, the kindness of
that higher wiser energy within us, this is the spiritual
This is what we all pursue. This is what I
refer to in my book as the soul. When they
(13:32):
connect with that energy, they understand that there's a grown
up actually in the room, in the body room, and
they can lay those old coping mechanisms down so that
they can go back to doing what they wanted to
do when they were children. And as a result, I
have found through the years the system, the body, the
ego state that is combined with the soul state that
(13:53):
is combined with all these working parts like our vegus
nerve that are keeping us alive as humans. We have
more play in our system. We have more kindness because
our children aren't on the ready trying to fight for us,
and they will die for us. They will fight to
the bitter end to protect us because they still think
(14:15):
they're fighting something from the past. And therein lies the
trauma bridge. I always say trauma is when your system,
in this case through internal family systems, when your system
cannot identify if the present is past or the past
is present. There's a time loss that happens when we
(14:39):
have trauma stored in our system. When these parts come
forward because it feels like they've got to they got
to be the ones that get up there and scream
or do whatever they needed to do shut us down.
When they realize that this higher, wiser aspect of us
can take over, they let the parent in the room
do the thing and they go back to playing, and
(15:01):
so we have more joy in our system. We have
more relaxation. I love to equate. Once we process some
trauma out of our system, it's like we open up
that window and let in fresh spring air into our
bodies and we have room, which goes to the gist
of you my major message, which is then we can
(15:25):
have that wisdom, that wise, soul energy within us, whatever
you want to call it, lead us. When we are
cleared within our body of the protective mechanisms that have
been keeping us in a survival cycle for so long,
we can lead the way with our soul.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. That's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
The last time you were on, we discussed your award
winning book, Chakras and the Vegus Nerve, Tap into the
healing combination of energy and your nervous system. What inspired
that book and what did you share with readers?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Oh, thank you for asking that, because this is this
goes back to what you and I were talking about
in regards to reading the energy and having this reiki
foundation and having this understanding of Polyvagel theory, which, by
the way, Polyvagel theory posits that it is our vagus
nerve that not just automatically keeps everything functioning. A heart
(16:30):
beating or lungs breathing, our digestion going. But it also
is reading the room. It's also listening for danger. It's
also what allows us to connect through the three branches,
the ventral vagel connection branch, the safety branch, the sympathetic branch,
(16:50):
the dorsal vagel immobility branch. So having this in mind,
watching within client's body how they are working through their
trauma and connecting, I went, oh, my gosh, a majority,
not all, but a majority. The messaging was through the
(17:12):
torso and aligning with the chakras, the seven main chakras.
And I had this work in my head for years
and I think we've discussed the last time. I think
two years ago. I was on the last time. I thought,
oh my gosh, I've got to write a book about this.
But breaking that down a little bit, when you're looking
at the root chakra and you have felt sense, you
(17:33):
have felt memory, but you don't have what they call
explicit memory, So in other words, you don't have chronological memory.
You don't you're feeling and knowing from childhood. It's in
your body. It may have been related to traumas from
(17:54):
the waist down that becomes the energy and the information
in the root chakra. Then then I would watch people
feeling a lot of memory and just having information that
came up through the sacral chakra. That is the chakra
that seems to be really connected to early childhood attachment,
(18:18):
how we learn early to connect, how we learn early
to connect through the messaging and and our family, but
also in our body. And so a lot of the
information that people would pull in from early childhood about
how they connected in ways that were helpful or not helpful,
(18:39):
or painful or calming, seem to have a messaging process
around their sacral chakra, which is kind of near the
belly button. Then you talk about identity, you talk about
internal family systems. We're talking about that solar plexus of
the mind, the identity that is that part of us
(19:02):
that just ends up burning sometimes right the charge they
got to get out there in the world, got to
present myself. Those are the ego parts of us. And
ego is not bad. We need identity. You need Victor Furman,
the identity the person that has been putting himself forward.
(19:22):
I need C. J. Llewellen, the person that's putting myself forward.
So we need identity. It's just when our identities get
so burdened and so caught up in the world that
this becomes the only identity we have. So with that,
a lot of that gets felt in the solar plexus.
When you get up into the heart chakra, you're getting
(19:43):
up into that safety branch of the vagus nerve. Right,
everybody loves the heart chakra. But by the way, everybody
loves the heart chakra because the ventral vagual branch of
our vagus nerve starts slowing our heart rate down, our
beats between beat, that heart rate variability starts slowing down,
(20:05):
our blood pressure lower. Suddenly we are feeling safer and
calmer as we get up into speaking. Maybe we didn't
feel safe, maybe our voice didn't feel heard, Maybe we
were told just plain old, don't talk. What you have
to say isn't worthy. As you begin to process out
(20:25):
those old messages, those old traumas, whatever they were in
your system, however they applied meaning in your system to you,
you are able to open up, you are able to speak,
You are feeling safe enough to speak, which of course
relates back down to the heart. And then I've noticed
that as we would continue to clear out and process trauma.
(20:47):
The third eye would shift to more meaning, more symbolism,
more symbolic what we would consider spiritual aspects unless of
the actual physical images that we would we get from
early childhood trauma. So then we are able to really
kind of feel a little bit more freer in our
(21:08):
crown chakra at the top of our head, which you
know aligns with the fontinel right when we were children,
I'm six years older than my brother. I remember my
mother saying, don't touch a soft spot. So that is
how I started to just see the alignment with the chakras,
the messaging, and of course, as I said, it's not
(21:29):
completely limited to these seven chakras. But when I work
with clients, I hold the space for them. I don't
ask them what chakra this is, because that takes them
out of the actual somatic process, that takes them out
of the felt experience, and it puts them into their brain.
It puts them into that left brain that explicit memory.
(21:51):
The explicit memory comes into our mind our brain. Our
brain starts developing the ability to remember dates and times
and places as when we're about three, but we have
a lot of previous experience that we are storing in
our bodies prior to that time. So when we can
trust the felt experience, even when it doesn't make sense
(22:14):
to the brain, we can open for possibilities of healing
that we probably never even thought of before. I answer
your question because I kind of went off on No.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Absolutely. My guest is CJ. Lowella. We're going to be
talking about her brand new book, Chakras, The Vegus Nerve
and Your Soul. CJ. Please share with our listeners where
they can get all of your books and find out
more about you and your amazing work.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Thank you, thank you. My books are now available. They
released April eighth. Well, they my new book Chakras, the
Vegas Nerve and Your Soul released. You can find this
through Llewellyn dot com. You can find and I will
break down the different spellings of my name in there
name no relation. You can find that at Barnes and Noble.
(23:04):
You can find it at Amazon almost anywhere where you
can get books. You can find both of these books
right now. My email is CJ at Cjllewellyn dot com.
And now let me break down the spelling of my name.
It's two l's upfront and one in the middle. That's
(23:24):
how I like to break it down. CJ. L L
E W E l y N. And of course you
can go to my website, which is CJ. Llewellen dot com.
I'm on social media. I am on I'm on Instagram,
I'm on Facebook, I'm playing around now on Blue Sky
(23:46):
and I actually got back on TikTok because I kind
of like videos. I like playing with videos. So you
can meet me there. Please say hello, would love to
engage with you.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
And we'll be back with more of CJ after the
these words on the Old Times Radio Network, the cutting
edge of conscious radio.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Home Times Radio IOMFM. Ome Times Magazine is one of
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A philanthropic organization, their net proceeds are funneled to support
worldwide charity initiatives via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment
to creating community and providing conscious content, they aspire to
(24:28):
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a more conscious lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week CJ. Llewellyn
her new book Chakras, The Vagus Nerve and Your soul
journeying to wellness through subtle energy and your nervous system CJ.
What inspired this wonderful new book.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, I kind of wasn't done it the first one.
I mentioned in the first one, how I genuinely see
our higher wiser soul spirit energy, however you want to
refer to it as. And I get very open about
the terminology of this, because I think it's more of
a applied experience. Soul has some religious connotations for some
(25:18):
people that they're not comfortable with, and others absolutely feel
very comfortable with that more hellenistic use of the word.
But I just I started to really see that when
we are able to clear the memory data sets, sometimes
(25:40):
I refer to that as data sets, there's trauma responses
as memory data sets in our nervous system. People change
their own way of being in the world. Sometimes that's
their own way of looking at things. There seems to
be more applied empathy. There seems to be just a wider,
(26:03):
softer range, that's soft but powerful range, that's that soul energy.
And so I've been watching through the years, and by
the way, I've had my own I do my own
trauma work, you know, we're we're all not without having
some of those data sets that hold us back, right,
but they're there to protect us, by the way. So
(26:25):
I just kind of wanted to explore a little deeper
the aspect of how our soul, light, our energy is
driving the machine of our body when our soul leaves
the body. And you know, we were just talking, and
(26:45):
I appreciate you sharing that with me, you know, the
passing of your mom and the experience around that. When
the soul leaves the body, our nervous system doesn't function,
doesn't perceive, doesn't doesn't work. Our organs do not function
any longer. So the soul is the energy. It is
the if you will, the gas. Sometimes when I have
(27:08):
that conversation with people, using a car metaphor works. It's
the journey, right, We need the vehicle to have the
journey our essence takes on this vehicle for whatever reason
the essence wants, from whatever experience the essence wants. But
(27:28):
along the way we get tripped up. We have to,
like if it's our car, we have to do tune ups,
we have to clean. I don't know, are there spark
plugs in the car anymore? I don't even know how
the cars are made anymore. But we have to clean
out the sparks, spark plugs, we have to clean out
the air filter. Right, we have to keep our engine running.
(27:52):
We are not our car, right, our car. Our body
is the vehicle by which this light energy gauges with
this world. And I think I realized I have a
pet peeve is too strong of a word, but I
do have a strong leaning into the argument. I lean
(28:16):
into the argument that while we are here, it isn't
a there's no dualism in this spirit is not good,
body is not bad. And I see that a lot
within a lot of our spiritual communities. No, no, we
want to go spiritual. We don't like this stuff of
our body. But what we do then is we become dissociated.
We're not connecting with our body. We're not listening to
(28:40):
what the messages of the body want. We are here
in this vehicle to have whatever very unique experience our
soul energy wants to have. And there's probably one point
none of us can argue you take any theology out
(29:00):
of this. We come into this world this light. You know,
we have a light in our body, because when it
isn't there our body doesn't function, and then we leave
this world and we leave behind this the structure that
we used. So, you know, us humans put a lot
of meaning and theology and absolutes in between that. But
(29:23):
whatever this light is here for if we can just
keep our our engine thrumbing, our engine working, and that
that also not only just goes to the making sure
that we are psychologically sound with working through these traumas,
knowing what our old patterns are so we can heal them,
(29:44):
shift them, but keeping our bodies healthy. In this book,
I get a little bit now. I am not I
am a licensed professional counselor with a lot of foundation
in polyvagel theory and a couple of other things. So
I've learned how and and the body is affected emotionally
(30:07):
and medically and to listen in that regard, but I'm
not a medical professional. However, it's really apparent that when
we also do not take care of our physical selves,
our emotional self collapses, and then we can't access that
deeper light within us. We cannot access our soul. Our
(30:30):
soul can't lead the way the you know, when when
our car breaks down, we don't think about our car
running except for when it doesn't, then then it becomes
a priority. So I do just touch upon very very
basic aspects of how we can get problems with our
(30:53):
vegas nerve, because that vegus nerve, boy, it is our soul,
It is our wisdom nerve. It is what keeps us going.
It is the main, the main programming that runs our vehicle.
When our vagus nerve is not cared for, our information
that we gather also becomes its skews. We get skewed.
(31:20):
So it is important for us to do the physical
health work, the psychological health work, and that allows for
the spiritual health work as well. So we can't we
can't discard our human experience. We're here for this. We
you know, tell our Dejarden we're here. We are spiritual
beings having a human experience. So that's where I kind
(31:43):
of really just wanted to emphasize and bring in some
of my own experiences around a very brief, temporary thing
where my own vegas nerve got a little over stressed,
and how I work through some of this stuff too.
It's not this book is so not about me, but
I just thought thought I would bring in that one
(32:04):
in that chapter. One of my personal experiences. So yeah,
that's how I got started. I wasn't done.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Absolutely. Now, your car analogy is very interesting because you
refer to this book as a travel guide.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yep, yep, it absolutely is, because this is why we're here.
Anybody listening to your podcast has at least an innate
sense that they are on a journey. But it is
not an either or journey. It is it is a
(32:37):
collective journey between the human experience and the soulful experience.
And you know, we don't know what it is. There
are aspects of this we will individually not know until
we go back to where we came from.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And you share with readers that they should be curious
in their travels. What is the importance of curiosity on
this journey?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Well, I always say that the Buddhists had this right,
and if we could follow some fundamental mindful principles, curiosity
takes judgment out of our process, just noticing, just being curious. Hah,
have this pain in my back, I'm just going to
(33:25):
be curious with it instead of Oh, I have this
pain in my back and I want it to go
away now, because that creates more pain. Being curious about
our sadness, just holding the space to be curious about
the experience of sad or the you know again, the
curiosity sometimes of pain in our body leads us to
(33:46):
the softness of our emotion. It may have a filter
of some old experiences that we might need to process
through that we might be afraid of reliving. That if
we can lead our lives through curiosity, we take out
that very I would say, on some level highly negative
(34:07):
human experience of judgment, right that sometimes we apply these
things as humans that really don't help us along our path,
and judgment is one of them. Judgment is a preconceived notion.
Judgment has an absolute to it, judgment of self, judgment
of others that doesn't get us anywhere. You know, being
(34:28):
curious allows us to discern versus judge. Judge, you hit
using the journey analysis, you know, metaphor you hit the
dead end when you judge, when you discern. When you
are curious, you are open to new roads and you
(34:50):
may be a little afraid, but you're still being curious
along the way, and it may lead you to someplace
you have never ever than before that you couldn't even
imagine and is so spectacular, But along the way. We
have to just stay curious and not let judgment, not
let fear, and not let some you know, some of
(35:11):
those limiting beliefs stop us on this journey that we've
got going on here.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
You know, it's interesting. Eugene I on Esco I'm the paraphrase,
said that enlightenment starts with the question, not the answer.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Absolutely, absolutely, And if you want to look at the
difference maybe perhaps between our physical selves and that eternal
light self, the light is nothing but a question. Our
internal light is nothing more than curiosity.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Absolutely. With each chapter you offer readers exercises to follow,
please tell us a little about these exercises and what
they may learn from them.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
So in the first book, I do a lot. I
do a lot of exercises that I utilize in my
work with clients, which is breaking down the concept of
top down processing, which is thought, explicit memory and utilizing
maybe language and words to send information down but bottom up, right,
(36:19):
our nervous system has felt, experience, has perception, has images
symbols that sometimes the mind doesn't doesn't like the dubiousness
of that, right, So I do a lot of I
try to do a lot of bottom up on both
in both books, but this book, I do a lot
(36:42):
of allowing for different movements, to just be curious with
the experience that's happening within your body. I'm I actually
did a lot of my own meditation on my own health,
(37:05):
and I then saw a few of these experience exercises,
I should say, and then I worked on them myself
and I actually found some relief. But again those don't
have the validity that something like IFS or EMDR has
where there's thirty years of research. Some of the things
that I bring to the table in this book are
(37:27):
very intuitive, but I also offer that listen to and
there's a lot of this in this book, listen to
your own intuition, and I offer some exercises in this
new book about how to listen to your own personal experience.
What do you need? We never asked that question. I
(37:49):
asked that question in my sessions, and I will ask
that with clients I've worked with for years, what do
you need? And I still get that deer in the
headlight look because we don't stop enough to ask that
question for ourselves. So a lot of these exercises, I
hope we'll bring people down to being able to ask
(38:10):
that question for themselves.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
You know, it's funny. When I was training salespeople in
the industry that I was involved with for forty four years,
one of the questions that I would ask them is
what does the customer really want? Which basically is the
same thing as what you need, and it's something that
people don't think about. They go for sometimes the quick answer,
the quick sale in the case of sales, but not
(38:33):
really the overall picture of what the outcome can be
if you truly look at what they truly.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Need, right, And we were driven by it, which is
really kind of funny if you think about it. We're
driven by that and sometimes we don't differentiate between our want, yeah,
versus our need, but we are still driven by it.
We still act from it, but we haven't slowed down
enough to integrate the answer, you know, to ask the
(39:01):
question so that we can really genuinely integrate an answer
to it. We're just constantly driven. We're constantly what do
we need? What do we need? What do I want?
What do I want? But we never actually ask the question,
so we're what would you say, you're driven by the
question more than the answer or no, you're driven by
the answer more than the question, but you haven't really
defined the answer correct.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Absolutely. One of the exercises that you offer is called
Earth to Sky zip. What is it? How does it work?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I love this exercise and it's taken from the movement
of Chikong, which I'm starting to get very intrigued by
and want to study more. And if you're in a
safe place, do this. If you're driving, do not do this.
Just as an experiment. Imagine yourself from your crown all
(39:49):
the way down to your root chakra. Just do an
unzip like imagine there's a zipper there and just do
an unzip now, just you could be You don't even
have to touch your ground. Right now, do a zip up,
zip up from the root from your lap all the
way up your mid to or so to the top
of your crown. And notice how you feel. I haven't
(40:16):
said every time I do this as somebody, they say,
I feel more contained, I feel more grounded. I feel
less like I'm flying, like my energy is falling apart.
So when we can do that, especially outside, if we
can do that outside, we don't have to be outside.
Imagine reaching down to the ground, right, pulling the energy
(40:38):
from the earth, pulling it all the way up between
your legs like a zipper, big zipper that's been unzipped.
Pull it up up up through your legs, over your
root chakra, your sacral your solar plexus, your heart, your throat,
all the way up to the ground, all the way
up to the top of your head. And I actually
will as I'm talking it. I'm doing this. No one
(40:59):
can see me. I'm extending my arm outward. I zip
way up to where my arm is extended, and it's
just such a grounding experience. I bring that all and
I bring these things, by the way into my into
my therapy practice. These are the things that I also
allow my clients to really work with their subtle energies
(41:21):
in that regard. So did you try it, Victor? While
I was describing it, I'm still there. You do, and
if you're feeling out of sorts, do that. I'm telling
you it is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Absolutely, that earthing aspect is very important.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Also, yes, yes, I do mention earthing, and I forgot
I mentioned earthing in the book. I live in the city,
but I had to have some property behind me, so
I've found my new house has a lovely backyard, smacked
out in the city. So I hit both my extroverted
aspects where I can get out, walk around, see my neighbors,
you know, do my little community thing, and then I
(41:59):
can I'm home and I lay on my grass the
earthing just I mean, there's studies that are being done.
Heartmouth has been doing a lot of studies in this
regard as to how we pull in the energy from
the earth, and we need this for our bodies. We are,
our bodies are of this earth, and we need that grounding,
(42:23):
We need that connection.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
My guest is CJ. Llewell in her new book Chakras,
The Vegas, Lrive and Your Soul. We'll be back with
more after these words on the Old Times Radio network.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with a big dream.
Since two thousand and seven, HHI has been working tirelessly
to bring help to communities with little or no oh.
Our projects are not broad mandates, nor are they overnight solutions,
but they bring the reassurance then no one is alone
(42:56):
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Speaker 1 (43:36):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week CJ. Llewellyn
her new book Chakras, The Vegas Nerve and Your Soul. CJ.
How do the chakras interface with the vegas nerve?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
So we have end points if you think of it
that way or not. Naughties excuse me, naughties are more
of a I can do uh wiring of the chakras
going upward. But we have endpoints to our nervous system
(44:12):
and where, and of course we have by the way,
we have hundreds of chakras throughout our body because we
have hundreds of thousands of nerve endings as well. But
the ancients seem to believe that these were nerve endings,
but they didn't have access, They didn't have the scientific
equipment that we have now for these nerve endings to
(44:34):
be viewed. But they end up we end up with
some different points where our nervous system ends. And I
have always maintained that this is where this is. This
is how I break it down in the book. Our
soul energy is what's charging our nervous system. It just is, because,
(44:56):
as we discussed in our last segment, when our soul
and our lightly this body, our bodies just nothing more
than a mass. So it is charging through the nervous
system almost like electricity goes through wiring in our house.
And when it does that, it certainly does not end
(45:17):
at the end points of these nerves. It extends outward,
and where the nerve centers are a little bit more condensed,
we end up with these these energy centers called chakras,
which you know from the Sanskrit view of the world
that that's where our energy centers are that are felt
(45:39):
more intensely. However, these expand outward. I don't even get
into aras because I'm giving enough, I'm giving too many
layers in the book not too many layers, but I'm
giving a lot of layers in the book to begin with.
So we end up with this energy that extends outward
along the way, our soul energy through this conversation with
(46:02):
the chakras, through the charging of the chakras, those data
sets that have been set within our nervous system are
also combining with this energy center. So when we talk
about how people talk about, oh, I have to open
up this chakra or the chakras carrying this or that,
(46:22):
it's actually from the inside out job right, Because we
may be holding onto memories from early childhood that we
feel or may be perceived as the root chakra is blocked,
But what we might be holding on to is trauma
around the dorsal veagel complex, around the sympathetic complex that
(46:44):
reach down into the sereum. I'm trying not to get
to sciencey here that need to be processed through other
avenues beyond just the energy work. So that then when
we should lift our nervous system, when we clear trauma
from our bodies, when we move in ways that allow
(47:08):
these memories and these experiences to reform in different safer ways,
our chakras, our energy centers shift. They shift naturally. We
can do energy work from the outside in, but the
permanent shifts come from that inside out because that's where
(47:33):
that's the data sets. That's what I mean. It's not
an official term. I'm using that to help people develop
a sense of image here, but that's where the data
sets hold on too, images and experiences that extend outward
into our etheric realm. The etheric realm being the energy
(47:54):
that we feel, the energy that we feel from other
people as they're just simply standing next to them, the
energy that walks in the room before we do.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
What is the importance of breath work on this journey?
Speaker 2 (48:06):
So during breath work obviously intuitive we've known from the
beginning of time that breath work is important. What breath
work does is it can engage the nervous system in
ways that are very invigorating. That engages sympathetic nervous you know,
(48:29):
the nervous system in a sympathetic way that is safe.
But also on the exhale, we are slowing down the
heart rate, right those beats between beats get longer. There
is safety that becomes more established within the system. Our
engagement with slowing down the breath slows down, as we
(48:50):
were talking earlier, the blood pressure, it slows everything down
to send messages of safety and engagement with the safety
branch of the vagus nerve. So breath work is very important.
When we are stressed and we're only breathing from the
top of our lungs, this branch, the safety branch of
(49:13):
our vegus nerve, is not getting that full message that
we're okay. Because when we're not, when we're having to run, right,
we're having to run from from the tiger, we're having
to run from a scary person that's running after us,
We're not to sit there and breathe deeply. We're suppose
(49:33):
our body shifts into more sympathetic engagement. We get shorter breasts,
our muscles tighten, blood gets you know, the blood pressure
pushes through our muscles a lot harder and faster because
our muscles are tightened because we are engaged to move,
we are engaged to run, and we are engaged to
keep ourselves safe. In that way, fight here, the fight
(49:55):
or flight response is afterwards. The the deeper breath work
can come in once we're safe as well, because then
we start sending safety queues. Back into the system. So
if we're not thinking, if we're thinking in a way
talking about judgment, we're thinking in ways that are judgmental
of self or others. Right there, our brain is sending
(50:18):
cues to our body that we're not safe. Well, this
person is this, that person is this. We have to
that person believes this, So we're not safe with this person.
None of this is a fact, but it registers in
the nervous system in the vegas nerve is a fact.
And if so and so wasn't safe because they don't
believe what we believe, Well, there we are. We're off
(50:40):
to the races, and we are thinking. We're engaging our
sympathetic branches, our movement, our fight branches. We're tight. Of course,
we're sitting in our office typing away. We are sending
mixed signals to our body. So knowing our thoughts how
they affect and send messages down that top down processing
(51:02):
we were talking about earlier, how they affect our system
is vital to our own reality, our own engagement in
the world, our own health physical that actually mental is physical.
Mental psychological is a physical health as well.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
And how does this reflect in the body to soul approach.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
So when we are feeling safe, we are able to
access that light. When we are feeling that we have
to run from I'm trying to think of it. You know,
the lion that escapes from the zoo. We just got
to get the heck out of there. We have to
run and climb up that tree or jump into the car.
(51:49):
This is when we have to become a very human experience.
This is when our nervous system says, none of this
stuff matters. None of this stuff is going to matter
until you get yourself into a safe place. So that
is that that leaning in and leaning out of the
human experience. You're you know, you're not going to sit
(52:11):
there and continue to meditate when an angry lion is
running after you to attack you. You're going to find
a way out of that situation. So being able once
you are safe, first of all, having your body identify safety.
This is part of the trauma work. This is part
(52:31):
of what I help my clients with is pulling in
actual cues of physical safety when they are actually safe,
but their mind might not believe it is so queuing
the body differently, allowing for safety to integrate into the system,
allows the body to come enough and then that light
(52:54):
is in there.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
And as you share, you have a very eum titled chapter.
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas if you're not careful.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
It's the whole reason I wrote that book is so
that I could actually use that title.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
And of course we're not talking about Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
We're talking about now it's a vagus. Yeah, yeah, I'm
glad they let me use that title for that that
chapter because I say that all the time to my clients. Look,
what happens in your Vegas stays in near Vegas because
our nervous system is brilliant, It is smart. It is
(53:38):
reading the room, it is looking for cues, and it
has been before we were born. Right, if our parents
were arguing, if there was a lot of volatility, our
nervous system already getting programmed for that, because it's feeling right,
it's feeling the nervous system of the mother's it's picking
up these cues, it's establishing what's to come. So it's
(54:00):
already in there. What happens in Vegas, what gets programmed
in stays there until we are aware that it is
programmed there. Then we have full freedom and capacity and
opportunities to shift this and work differently, and that's the
honoring of the body as part of the spiritual process.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
By the way, my guest CJ. Llewellen her brand new
book Chakras, The Vagus Nerve and your Soul, Journeying to
wellness through subtle energy and your nervous system. CJ. Please
one more time share with our listeners where they can
get your books and find out more about you and
your amazing work.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Thank you so, Cjllewellen dot com. Building I'm continuing to
sort of build out my website as a place where
we can come and just read and just have a
community here. And by the way, Llewellen is my Llewellen
is two l's upfront and one in the middle. So
L L E W E L y N c J.
(55:03):
Llewellen dot com. I am on Instagram, I'm on Facebook,
I'm starting to play around again on TikTok, and I'm
even on where else am I? Which? Look what did
I say I was on me for? Oh? And I'm
on I'm trying out a little bit of Blue Sky,
so I'm playing around on there as well, And you
(55:25):
can get my books anywhere they're selling books. Right now,
you can go to llewellynbooks dot com. Different spelling, no relation.
That's two l's upfront and two in the middle, by
the way, so it's not a complicated name, but it
looks very complicated. So llewellynbooks dot com. You can go
to parts of Noble Access on Amazon. They are in
(55:46):
your bookstores, and if they aren't, just let them know
they need to put it in there.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
CJ. I think we should all get together and have
a conference in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
Absolutely, and then and then what happens in Vegas. We'll
just kind of keep it to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
We're not keep it to ourselves, bring it to our therapist.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
That's right. CJ. Thank you so much for joining us
and sharing all of this wisdom in the world that
needs this kind of wisdom.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
Now, thank you, Thank you Victor for having me.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
It's good to be back, and thank you for joining
us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor la Voice Furman. Have
a wonderful week.
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