S3E01 | Reconnecting With the Body After Trauma with Jamie Lee Finch - Time with Tim Fletcher

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's easier to be the devil in the midst of
angels than an angel in the midst of devils. And
what that essentially means is like children really have no
other choice but to internalize what they're experiencing and receiving
from their environment around them. So for many little girls,
and this is true for me, the only choice was
to go ooh, there's something wrong with me. But even
more specifically than that, the problem is my body, because

(00:22):
it's the only thing that's changed.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome. I'm Andy Carlson and you're listening to the Time
with Tim podcast. Each episode, we explore the impact of
complex trauma through the personal journeys of our guests. Along
the way, we'll connect with experts and individuals who share
their unique perspectives, insights, and practical tools to help you
on your healing journey. Hey everyone, and welcome back to

(00:49):
Time with Tim. I'm Andy Carlson, joined by Tim Fletcher,
and today we're sitting down with Jamie Lee Finch. Jamie
is a writer, educator, and embodiment coach. She helps people
transfer how they relate to their bodies, not as objects
to control or fix, but is living, breathing partners her
journey began in the world of authoritarian religion, where she

(01:10):
learned to disconnect from herself in the name of being good. Today,
Jamie's work is rooted in compassion, agency, and deep reconnection
with the self. Jamie, we're so grateful to have you
here today.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you, and so.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
We'd love to begin with your story, and so if
you wouldn't mind to just take us back to the
earliest years and share what your childhood looked like.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
First of all, I want to say, I don't exactly
know why, but hearing you give that introduction made me pretty.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Emotional all of the sudden.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
I think, if I were to guess, it's just this
enormous amount of gratitude I feel for being on this
path of reconciliation with the body and being someone who
gets the incredible gift of living in partnership with her,

(02:13):
And it's just it's it's the greatest feeling in the world.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
So yeah, I think that's that's what was coming up.
There's a wow.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
That's all everything he's saying is true. I've done We've
been there, we did that. Wow. And to take it
and anchor that into the context of my journey, something
that's I think quite fascinating about about me and my
ability to answer those kinds of questions is that I

(02:46):
actually have over one hundred hours of video footage of
my own development because my dad got a got a
camquorder in the late eighties and.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Went pretty ham with it, and for good reason, his.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Parents, my paternal grandparents. I was born in well, I
was born in New Jersey, but I was raised in Missouri.
My dad's from Texas, and it was, you know, I
was their first biological.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Grandchild, and they really wanted to.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Be a part of my life somehow, but them coming
to us, us coming to them was just quite a
tall order. And so he would record these videos on
VHS tapes and put the tapes in the mail. And so,
I mean, I have everything from a couple of years
before I entered into my family, so I can see
what with the family unit was like there's my mother

(03:40):
and my siblings, who are her children from her first marriage,
and then you know my So I'm observing my dad
as a stepparent, which is fascinating now that I am one.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Just we can put a pin in that maybe come
back to later. It's incredible.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
And then I'm seeing them like getting ready and excited
for me, and then I literally have a video of
like you know, four in the morning, my parents set
up the recorder on a tripod, and my dad's wearing
a suit, and my mom's got her big belly, and
they're going to the appointment to you know, have the
surgery for me to get and then the video of

(04:15):
my birth. I have the whole video of my birth,
and then I have so much footage from everything that
comes after that. So as a somatic facilitator, this is
excellent because I have gotten the opportunity to view some
raw footage of what my body was experiencing, and I

(04:36):
don't have to simply.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Attempt to rely on memory.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
And even as we know in developmental psychology, like there's
so much that is like largely inaccessible to conscious memory
in the first roughly seven years of development and then
much less like in utero, where your conscious mind is
not totally online yet all you are is really just
living matter that is like absorbing any mitting and absorbing

(05:03):
any metting. Which is a huge component in my work
is teaching people that reality about their bodies experience. So
what I know about my body's experience and my experience
is that it was quite a mixed bag, like everyone's
is kind of what you sign up for in the
human journey, the human path. I have two incredible parents

(05:28):
who vastly improved on the model of what they were
given and what they were raised with, who showed up
to the best of their ability in my life and
and well first and foremost in the life of each other,
and then in my life. And there were certain things
that they couldn't quite, couldn't quite get to within themselves

(05:51):
to be able to offer their full presence to themselves,
to each other and then to myself. And if I
might be so bold to speak on behalf of my siblings,
my siblings as well, and I think that that's usually
the best way of understanding, like the breakdown of what
happens in our development as humans who get scared and

(06:12):
cannot continue to offer full presence.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
And so I had that.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Journey as well, and was also raised inside of the
fundamentalist evangelical Christian Church, which I'm extraordinarily grateful now, like
just being given that initial framework of there is a
divine presence and it is interested in being in relationship

(06:35):
with you, like, oh, I can't imagine my life had that.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Not been formed in my unconscious And.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
There were some really complex narratives that came along with.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
That, regarding who and how.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
I was overtly told or what was covertly implied, of
who and how I needed to be, as you said, Andy,
like in order to be good, which really is the
price of belonging, is you have to be good to
belong especially when you're a little girl. And in many ways,
nobody really looked me in the eye and told me

(07:14):
that and then told me to stop being who I was.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
But there were those subtle, you know, largely unintentional messages.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Everyone thought they were doing their best to save me
and make me well, and I fell into line because
that's all you can kind of do when you're a
little one, and started on this path of really just
like forgetting, but not knowing that I was forgetting. And
you know, I could touch on all the milestones childhood,

(07:45):
adolescents and beyond, but I'll just kind of speed us
up to the early iteration of my public facing work.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
I was definitely still.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
A person who was forgetting, and I didn't know that
I was forgetting, And so the way in which I
was showing up to.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
A lot of.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Podcast interviews, specifically, like, you can go back and listen
to anything that has me as a guest on it
from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, and you'll hear
an entirely different person with an entirely different nervous system,
who also was doing an excellent job with what she
had to work with at the time, and also was

(08:28):
doing good too, which I think is just that's I
think my definition of grace now that in spite of myself,
there was still like love was still able to get through,
and I was really suffering in ways that I was
trying to outrun the acknowledgment of.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
And there are many things that contributed to my.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Slowing down and catching up to myself and to the
God of my understanding and to the credible, loving partner
that is my body. And we might be able to
get into what some of those things have been as
we continue in our conversation, But at this point, I
would say, if I were to identify myself in some way,

(09:14):
I made this joke not joke on my podcast Experiential
Anatomy that I actually don't have a commitment to an
identity anymore.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I'm kind of just like.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Interested in being here and seeing what emerges. And if
I were to tiptoe in the direction of any kind
of identity, I think I am just a consciousness animated
into living matter that mostly wants to exist as often
as I possibly can in a relaxed state of gratitude,

(09:49):
because I believe that that is the state that makes
my body the most well. And there's so much that
I don't know, but the one thing I know is
that I have a body and that she has always
been for me, and so I always want to be
for her, and if that is the state that makes
her most well, I'm committed to moving anything and everything
that's in my consciousness out of the way so that
she can be be as well as she came.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Here to be.

Speaker 4 (10:13):
And I just make a couple of comments just because yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
We're having a conversation.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
Yeah, you said that so beautifully. Just a couple of
things that I wanted to highlight and then ask a question.
So to me, what I think stands out that a
lot of people don't realize if you're raised within kind
of high control religious culture is there's so many things

(10:39):
that aren't said. But as a child. You just pick
up absolutely, you just know. Nobody has to tell you. You
pick it up, and then you get validated by conforming
for conforming, and so you become great at conforming to
what people pleasing, whatever they want. So you're almost trained
to be a faun er, to to be codependent, to

(11:02):
put your needs aside. But more than that, you're told
who you are and what you're supposed to be role wise,
all of that. So you're not to the full extent
like many parents allow you to some extent to explore
your personality and your gifts and your passions, but there's

(11:23):
a certain kind of overriding but this is who you
are that has to then kind of limit that to
a degree you can.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Explore, but inside of these constraints.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
This box here exactly. So what stood to me as
you were sharing, Jamie, is you grew up in that.
I grew up in that, but you grew up as
a girl. I grew up as a guy, and I
think it was harder for girls. There were more constraints,
There were more It was almost like the role was

(11:57):
more rigid and cast for the girls than it was
for the guys. Can you just talk about that what
it was like being a girl.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah. Yeah, The first thing that comes to mind is.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
I would guess again because I only had my experience
and I didn't have the experience of a of a boy.
But I very much remember, like somatically remember mostly the
how how frequently it was put to me covertly, occasionally
overtly as you get older, but like this this covert

(12:32):
like it's the just the water you're swimming in, like
there's something dangerous, like inherently dangerous, and it about your body.
And it's really difficult too, because it kind of just
comes on seemingly out of nowhere because you're you're just
like a little girl who gets to like be super free.
And then it's some undefined moment of your development that

(12:55):
you can't keep from happening. It's just going to happen
to you. You are interacted with by some of the
same people who used to like hold.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Your gaze and be with you very freely.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
You are interacted with at like this, like in this
distanced sort of way. And I heard this phrase many
years ago. That is a phrase that's used in like
child development psychology, which is that.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
It's easier to be the devil.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
In the midst of angels than an angel in the
midst of devils. And what that essentially means is like
children really have no other choice but to internalize like
what they're experiencing and receiving from their environment around them.
So for many little girls, and this is true for me,
the only choice was to go, oh, there's something wrong
with me. But even more specifically than that, the problem
is my body, because it's the only thing that's changed,

(13:50):
and it hasn't really changed, but it's changed in the
sense that I don't use it words for the body anymore,
but I think in this context it makes sense just
to speak to that previous, you know, mindset. But she
is growing, That's all that is going on. I'm growing,

(14:10):
I'm expanding, I'm blossoming. I'm blooming, I am feeling all
these sensations and feelings and emotions, and.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
At this really.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Pivotal moment of what deserves to be kind of the
exploration of self and the greater exploration of the world,
exactly as you're saying, there's these covert messages that we
absorb from our environments that that request of us to
do the exact opposite, which is not only to close
off from the world around us because we're dangerous. But

(14:42):
what ends up happening so often is that we close
off to our own bodies.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
We close off to ourselves.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
But again, more specifically, this rift happens in our relationship
with our bodies. I'm one of the many facilitations I
do now is I'm a sober for full dose psilocybin journeys.
And I recently had a client that I was working
with this exact like at twelve, was the moment of

(15:12):
breaking between her and her body for the purity culture reasons,
and how from that point that schism started and it's
just been this, you know, these lines that just keep
getting further and further away from each other ever since.
But she was sharing both during her journey and then
in the processing after some really specific memories that were

(15:34):
coming up for her about what was happening, yes, but
mostly the way it felt to have to try and
figure out how to exist under all of that. And
the smartest, you know, the smartest survival strategy is self
abandonment when you're faced with that, with that impossible challenge
of like somehow continue to exist as a as a person, but.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Not like that well, I can't help it it like this.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
So yeah, there's on some level it's unavoidable to end
up experiencing that schism between mind and body exactly.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
So three different directions I want to go here, so
let me let me just itemize them. So, part of
what we know with in the world of complex trauma
is that for most people, complex trauma starts at a
preverbal stage of life, So in your row before they
can talk, and so they're not the brain can't process

(16:30):
the trauma, so it stores it in the body. So
you've got trauma stored in the body. But because you
can't resolve any of the trauma pain and the body
pain that's happening, you start to abandon your emotions. You
disconnect from your emotions, you disconnect from your body. You
just escape into your head or dissociate totally, and so

(16:53):
the healings are reconnected. So that's just the trauma piece.
Then to me, when you get to some of the
religious piece, where I'd like to ask you about is
some of the messages, if you were to put them
into words, that kind of told you your body was bad,
pleasure is dangerous, your body is dangerous, and created this

(17:16):
fear environment and a very negative restrictive environment. You can
no longer be you. You got to wear certain clothes
now because you're going to be tempting men. So in
a patriarchal culture, it's always the women's fault, all of
that kind of messaging. So then the third thing you

(17:37):
keep track of all of this is did you go
through kind of stage of body dysmorphia, hating your body, suicide,
all of those different types of things eating disorders? Yes,
so you go wherever you want.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
There, Yeah, yes I did.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
I did, definitely, And I've gotten over the past few
years a lot braver and boulder about like telling the
truth about the fact that the work of embodiment, however
you find it, but to just to speak to like
the methodology that I've created a personified embodiment, and learning
how to regard your body as a living being that

(18:16):
you're in relationship with, enacting that process, self facilitating that process,
and then also partnering with facilitators who could help me
strengthen my ability to self facilitate that process is what
healed my fifteen year long eating disorder when nothing else
would work. And there's a lot to say about you

(18:37):
know the specifics of that journey, and I'm happy to
share that with anyone who you know, reaches out, wants
to know, or wants to work with me. But absolutely
I had what I didn't know it was body dysmorphia.
I didn't know it was an eating disorder. I didn't
until I did.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
I it was just the natural unfortunately like natural sort.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Of outcome or results of it was the external expressing
the internal of this rift, of this difficulty, of this
desperate need to get out of here somehow, and then
the anxiety and the tension that exists because you actually
you can't, like you can't fully get out of here.

(19:24):
For me and many of the people I worked with
over the last nine years, the majority of which I
would say are women, but I work with people of
all genders, I wrote, I wrote some things down while
you were articulating the like what's the what's the covert
messaging or if you were to put language to what
you're absorbing in your environment that's sort of asking to

(19:48):
demanding you to go through this process of self abandonment.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
What is it that is being risked?

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Essentially, I would say that the way it felt for
me and what I've heard articulated from hundreds of people
is that it was this feeling, and the feeling is
all you need. It was the feeling that if I
don't figure out how to be good in spite of myself,

(20:18):
if I don't figure out how to be perfect, in
spite of my humanity, in spite of my body, I
will lose belonging. And in losing belonging, there is something
you know to that idea of like the safety of
existing within the tribe. And that's like you know, evolutionary psychology,

(20:42):
it's appropriate development. But even more specifically in my work
as of late, I've been really mapping like attachment theory
over everything, and in particular because my path is blossoming
and unfolding and in the direction of becoming a mother,
and I've been thinking so much about mothering and remothering
and the primary work of mothering. And we could expand

(21:04):
this out to just say parenting is to offer your
full gaze, your your unmitigated gaze, and your complete and
full presence to your child and everything flows from that.
And so that's that is what is vital for survival,
and that is what is felt by the developing child.
If it is there and if it is not there,

(21:26):
and in fact, that is all that's going on, is
whether or not the un you know, unmitigated gaze and
the full attentive presence is there. If it's not there,
we're seeking that all the time, and we're we are
you know, from from day zero, we are compensating in

(21:48):
in sematic not thought based, but just like automatic sematic ways.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
We are compensating to try and figure out how.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
To get that back on us, how to negotiate that
presence back.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
In our direction.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
And so what I would say is that what I
understand now is it definitely was this feeling of unless
I solve this unsolvable problem, I will lose belonging. But
it was it was more specifically this like feeling that
I needed to get back the like the feeling of

(22:26):
having the full gaze.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Of unconditional love pointed in my direction.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
And that was where what manifested such a complicated relationship
between me and God. As I talk about in my book,
you know, I needed God to be on my team
because I didn't feel like I had anyone else on
my team. But like the rules were tough and confusing
because it was both like he loves you no matter what,
but only if you do this stuff. And so again

(22:51):
that creates like such a specific tension in the body,
when really all I wanted was union. Of course, that's
all I wanted. That's the blueprint of the somatic system
is union with unconditional love and unlimited resourcing.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
That is the blueprint of a body.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
And for many reasons that I did not have that,
I couldn't quite get to that. So I was seeking
that out in everything I was doing, and in many
ways the things I wasn't doing, the things I wasn't
allowing myself to do, and who I wasn't allowing myself
to be.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
So just if I can share something from my perspective,
but my story as well, like to me, the attachment
theory becomes that fundamental that's the first driving need of
an infant, because if you don't connect, you die. You're
totally dependent, and so you're driven to connect. So your

(23:44):
whole radar system, kind of all of your vaguus nerve
is your teroception, is sensing can I connect to this.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Person that's right and available to me here exactly?

Speaker 4 (24:01):
And if I'm not feeling I can connect, then it
must be my fault. So I need to adapt and
do something different. Like you say, it's purely automatic response,
I need to switch and try something else because I
got to have connection. I got to have connection. And
so once your body changes and all of a sudden,

(24:22):
people are looking at you differently and they're judging you.
Now you're desperately going, well, how do I get the
connection back? Now? I got to earn connection. It's not
unconditional anymore. And that that's traumatic to the nervous system
for a child especially. Okay, So I just remember way back,

(24:45):
like once you start to kind of know all of
this stuff, you sift back through all the memories of
your childhood. And I sift back to early in life
what I sensed with certain people, and it was just
like I would send out almost like a tentacle, and
since can I connect to this person or not? And

(25:06):
I knew, I knew, and I have vivid, vivid body
memories that I can't connect with this person. They're not safe,
they're not available, they're not present, and it's like WHOA.
I just wanted that person to be present and safe.
That was what my nervous system needed long for and

(25:26):
it had to be an unconditioned or I didn't have
to earn it. And so that's to me what you're saying, Okay,
if I can branch here a little wee bit. So
we've been focusing on the body, but I think there's
another piece. Well, there's two pieces to me that women
have to deal with, but they come out of kind
of a religious context, and that becomes sex and pleasure.

(25:49):
So it's not just your body that's a problem. It's
now sex is an issue, and now sex is dangerous,
sex is potentially bad. And then pleasure, Yeah, it's it's okay,
but not too much, and so pleasure is suspect. So
again to me, for a woman that even is magnified,

(26:13):
how the messages get sent to women, Would you mind
just kind of speaking into that a little bit.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, it's again it's it's extraordinarily developmentally confusing because any
of this is This is something that came up in
that in that recent facilitation, as my client was kind
of working through and and weaving back together her understanding

(26:42):
of like what has sort of laid the groundworker or
defined the relationship she's largely had with her body. One
of the things we found ourselves talking through was the
specificity of like how this manifested with like sexuality and
like sexual urges, drives desires.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
And how.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
It is irreducible to human development, Like there's no way
to turn that off once it comes on. But again,
what you're being met with from these external sources who
probably even largely don't know that they're meeting you with

(27:22):
this is like turn it off.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Figure out how to turn it off, and then.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
You will be we will recognize you as safe, we
will recognize you as good. Then you will belong and
then you will get my gaze. So there's something so inhumane,
something so just. It's like a puzzle that can't be
solved when you're trying to figure out how to shut

(27:47):
down what tens of hundreds, maybe thousands of years of
evolution has been Like this kind of needs to be on,
this light switch needs to be on, but you're like wrestling.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
With thinking that maybe you can just figure out how
to like hack it and turn it off.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
And the stakes feel high, like the stakes feel really
really high to figure out how to do that, because
it is like the present moment belonging, but also like
how your future unfolds is really kind of on the
chopping block of whether or not you figure this out,
because that's a lot of what I really vividly remember

(28:27):
about the messaging I absorbed regarding my relationship to like sexuality,
sex pleasure, as if you don't figure this out and
walk it perfectly, there will be consequences, both in this
lifetime and possibly the next, though you're mostly like saved
from the consequences of the next lifetime, so it's really

(28:48):
just this one you have to worry about. But I
just I have so many vivid memories of just the
the constricting terror of if I don't want this out appropriately,
God's going to punish me in some way. Okay, the
main one, The main one I had was specifically it

(29:09):
was God is going to force me to marry someone
I don't like and who knows where specifically, Well, I
think maybe that was because a lot of the people
I was, a lot of the adults I was in
the presence of my parents included, like, didn't seem to
really like each other that much, and so it was like, Okay,
I don't I'm trying to figure this out in square this,
but it you know, for me, it was very much

(29:31):
in one way or another. If I cannot figure out
how to successfully shut down my sexuality until I am
inside of a sanctioned, you know, arrangement and moment to
allow that to be turned back on for me, I
might never find myself in that sanctioned you know, situation environment,

(29:55):
or I will destroy myself in some way. I will
I will lose value in some way, both in general
as a person and also kind of in like this
sexual marketplace like or that you know, I won't be
marriage material and and then what then I'll just you know,
so it just there's a huge spiral there. And the
other thing I want to speak to as well is

(30:16):
this idea of like pleasure being suspect.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
And I do think a lot.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Of times when we're talking about the body and sexuality,
we what we're talking about we talk about pleasure is
kind of like one's relationship to one's own body sexually,
like sexual self pleasure, which is you.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Know, definitely off the table.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
But lately I've been I've been really working with this
idea of just how much delight across the board has
to kind of go when you go from girlhood into
your adolescence, your ability to just freely embody delight at
all becomes suspect inside of that environment. And I would

(30:55):
even say not just inside of fundamentalists religious context, but
culturally in the West.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
I think that that's something.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
And I haven't quite ideated this through enough to be
able to speak on it super confidently. I just feel
the truth of it in my own body and in
my lived experience that it wasn't just the idea of
masturbation or self pleasure that was off the table. It
was really becoming suspicious in my own direction about anything

(31:26):
that brought me delight. And I was sharing with a
client a couple weeks ago that one of my comsentory
strategies for that was learning how to pivot immediately and quickly,
like immediately and very successfully like practicing the pivot. So
it wasn't for some people they'd associate to where they

(31:47):
can't even get access to what feels pleasurable and delightful.
For me, it was I at first, at least until
I practiced it enough that I started to lose the
ability to access it. But right at first it was
more this like I could identify what brought me delight,
or I could identify what I wanted or what was

(32:08):
starting to kind of stoke the response of pleasure in me,
and I would immediately shut that down. It was just
this practice motion of you can't go there, it's dangerous.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
And then then would you go to guilt, Oh.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yes, yeah, and guilt more shame more like the specific
somatic sensation of shame, which they're quite similar. Usually guilt
would lead to the shame. It'd be like, oh, no,
I did something wrong. Well, that's because I am someone wrong,
because my core is brock.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
So yeah, it's just you spiral all the way down.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, And then you learn to innately associate somatic
experiences of pleasure and delight with shame right away.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
Exactly exactly. So if I can just talk to two things,
So I think, first of all, just if you look
back on kind of all you've said so far, and
you've internalized all these messages about your about all of that,
all of the messages, the sum total is used to
be good enough, but now you're not good enough. You

(33:09):
now have to earn it by being good and so
the belief that develops inside is okay, then I shame
core belief that I am not good enough, that I
am flawed, wrong, bad, less, than all of that, So
that shame is the ultimate kind of belief system that

(33:31):
comes out of all of that upbringing. Okay, so if
I can just what you were saying, you were wanting
to idate but weren't feeling confident enough to really do
it yet, if I can just give my two cents
that you to add to your kind of mixing pot
in your brain. To me, there's a couple of things

(33:52):
that happen within cultures, within religious organizations. But there's a
certain amount of an indoctrination. So it's the water you
swim in, but you're trained to think a certain way,
you're trained to have certain biases and perspectives. But then
there's also within high control religions gaslighting that happens. So

(34:17):
your gut tells you something and you're told you're wrong.
That's not the way it is, it's this way. And
so you live with this cognitive dissonance. Now, or my
body's telling me one thing, but my authority figures are
telling me the opposite. Yes, I don't like this internal
mental tension, so let's just shut down. If whenever I
feel cognitive dissonance, don't pay attention to it, shut it

(34:40):
off and just conform.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
At least resistance is just exactly.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
So you learn to shut down a whole bunch of
critical thinking, learning to listen to your gut, your body,
learning to voice stuff because that's especially if it's contradictor
learning to ask questions. All of those systems start to
get shut down because they're dangerous and they're going to

(35:07):
get you in trouble. And so I think culturally they
take religion out of it. Culturally, that's true, especially shame
based cultures, where you'd better conform to the way we
do things around here, the social etiquette, or else you're
going to make us look bad as a family. You're

(35:28):
going to get us in trouble. You're bad if you
do that. And then there's all the shaming, your messages
and fear messages to try to get you to conform.
So I was thinking of when you were sharing my
wife sharing with me growing up in a similar upbringing,
when she hit puberty and her body starting to develop,

(35:50):
that her dad's big fear, because she's very pretty, was
that she was going to lose a virginity. And so
his only way, he couldn't trust that he had given
them enough tools and support that they would want to
do the right thing because they had to stay pure
till they were married in that culture, and so his

(36:12):
only recourse was to pour fear into them and to
use God and religion to create extra fear that you
better not air in this area or else you're going
to be not just in trouble with me, but with God.
And then in the church system, the only time they

(36:32):
did excommunications and church discipline was if somebody aired sexually.
It wasn't if you overrate, it wasn't if it was
just sexual. So there was just this constant fear message
that again I think from you for my wife, get

(36:53):
you get bodily sensations. When you think back to some
of that, like it was powerful.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yes, yeah, the programming goes really deep.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
I One of the things I talk a lot about
in my work is that one of my core foundational
beliefs about like the way the body works and the
way are the dance of consciousness partner with living matter
just kind of works in the human experience, is that
what we are always doing until we learn how to

(37:23):
stop doing it. If if we learn how to stop
doing it, we take that path of development and maturation
towards wholeness and presence. What we're always doing is unconsciously
seeking the most our most familiar somatic state act and
and everything that you just described like for I think,

(37:45):
I think for for everyone inside of fundamentalist religious environments,
and also outside of them. I think for everyone who
exists in you know, the Western modern culture for myriad
reasons that all have different tones and expressions.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
To them and different you know, signatures to them.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
I think the most familiar somatic state for the vast
majority of us, when it comes back to what we
internalized wordlessly in our developmental experience, is the state of shame.
And I don't know if you're familiar with Carolyn Lovewell's
work with existential kink, but that expression of like you know,
shadow work basically of figuring out how to excavate lovingly, gently, consciously,

(38:34):
compassionately excavate those parts that are desperately trying to cling
to that most familiar somatic state of shame, and beginning
to work with those as allies through understanding in order
to grow and set yourself free. But when we come
to understand that everything that we're doing until we learn
how to stop doing it is unconsciously seeking our most

(38:55):
familiar sematic states, so much of our behavior in adolescent
and adulthood starts to make deep sense to us. And
my theory is that the most appropriate response then is
compassion in the direction of self, not trying to control
your programming or bully your programming into doing something different,

(39:16):
because that just reinforces the shame state. Sematically that when
you are yelling at someone telling them what to do,
or let's put this way, if someone's yelling at you
telling you what to do, what happens to your system?
You contract, you get small. That is the somatic state
of shame. When someone is looking at you with full
presence and full love and full compassion and is saying,
oh my gosh, that makes so much now that I

(39:39):
know the full context of where you've been, what you're
doing right now makes perfect sense. Do you want to
keep getting the results that you're getting?

Speaker 3 (39:46):
If you do, that is perfectly okay.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
If you don't, we might need to start making some different,
really courageous sovereign choices in alignment with our chosen values
as opposed to our past programming.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Preaching from the same book they're doing. That's exactly what
we teach and it's we emphasize it so much, and
so I put it in terms of we're born with
default settings, and shame is the main default setting that
comes out of complex trauma, and so your brain just
gravitates naturally back to it subconsciously, and so it's beginning

(40:26):
to understand that if I'm looking at my life and
listening to your life. So part of my healing journey
had three main pieces that I had to get a
lot of healing in. And so number one was I
had to learn to connect to my body, listen to
my body, let my body be my teacher. And that

(40:49):
was huge when you've really like it was a tuned
to my body, but only to a certain if I
was hungry, if I was tired, if I was achy,
if I was sick, but beyond that, I was an
a tune to my body. I learned to ignore a
lot of my body signals because I had to work hard,
I had to accomplish stuff. I had to be this

(41:12):
model person. So that was part one. Part two, I
had to give myself permission to relearn what sex is
and that sex was designed to be this wonderful gift
that created pleasure. And so let's just kind of remove
a whole bunch of rules here and just see what

(41:33):
that's about. And then I had to give myself permission
to understand it's okay to enjoy pleasure, it's okay to
explore pleasure. It's okay. Now you're still going to need
to find boundaries because you can go into unhealthy and
it gives you instant gratification but not deep lasting pleasure.
So you're still going to have to figure that out.

(41:56):
So walk us through your journey a little bit in
those kind of three key parts of your healing journey.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah, I would say that for me, I think it
feels true that mine went in the same order as well,
the like body attuned, the beginning stages of body attunement,

(42:25):
stepping beyond just the the type of attunement, the acute
attunement that can happen when when your body gets loud
in your direction about something and learning the more kind
of consistent, subtle attunement, to just noticing your own well
being as well, beginning to cultivate that. I think you

(42:49):
know it's but it is interesting because for me, it
in some sense it feels like point one in point
two were sort of happening at the same time and
interchanging with one another.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
In many ways.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, there's a way of like feeling my way through
my own journey, and there's a way I could storytell
it and say that, you know, relearning sex came first,
and then the process of developing deeper attunement with my
body came second. So I think those were happening in
tandem in many ways. And I think some of that
is just situational. Like I wasn't I was single and

(43:29):
young and you know, curious, hungry, just like try, like
very interested in getting to know myself in the context
of this activity that I either hadn't done at all,
or when I did, I was doing in like deeply unconscious,

(43:52):
self destructive ways. And when I started becoming more attuned
to my body, definitely the sex I was having was
still largely unconscious and self destructive, but I started to
notice that that didn't feel good, and that.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
Was what mattered.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
It was like I was actually having these experiences of
fully presencing both during sex and then after and assessing
how I felt, not just what felt good, but what
made me feel well, how much of myself I felt
like I still had access to or how much of

(44:28):
my felt I how much of myself I felt like
I had just like abnegated, given away, had allowed to
be taken from me. And I think through just the
messy baby deer process. You know, I have said for
many years in my work, especially when I my first

(44:50):
iteration of largely almost exclusively actually working with like former evangelicals.
I remember one day in a session with a client,
probably seven or eight years ago, this phrase came out
of my mouth and it landed so well with the
person I was speaking to that then it.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Just I just ended up finding myself saying it.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Very frequently moving forward that it it feels like for
many people when you're in that like for me and
for many people, when you're in that phase of like
figuring out what sex means for you, you are having
your second adolescence, but for the first time. And that's
what it felt like for me for sure, And so
it was just as messy as it's supposed to be,

(45:29):
because you're figuring out who you are what you want,
and there's no way to do that without like getting
into the arena of experience, and through being in the
arena of experience and having a lot of sex and
then like not having that much sex because I was like,

(45:51):
I don't think that's really giving me what I want,
you know, just experimenting with both the physical act of
sex and then also the necessary presencing that I needed
to bring to.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Contributing to the physical act of sex.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Both the presencing like in my body in the moment,
also the presencing of learning how to tell the truth
about what I wanted and what I knew and what
I didn't want and where my boundaries were. Like the
somatic experience of shifting out of codependency into sovereignty is
a doozy, and one of the main areas that I

(46:28):
think can be a profound teacher for that is in
reworking and relearning your relationship to sex and then definitely
walking through that.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
Working through that for many, many years led me.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Into that third phase of really understanding that the experience
of like pleasure and delight is so much more expansive
than just this one activity or this one urge or
this one facet of my existence as a human being.

(47:03):
It belongs, It is in its in the It's in
the soup, for sure, but there's so many other ingredients
in that soup, and so learning how to identify what
a yes felt like in my body sexually and what
a no felt like in my body sexually. For me,
the path was starting to learn that and identify that

(47:26):
gave me.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
A somatic.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Definition, like a wordless feeling based definition of what yes
in my body felt like and what no in my
body felt like. And then it again was the courageous
work of expanding it outward from there about about everything,
and for me personally too, What that journey looked like
for me and continues to look like, is about three

(47:54):
years ago I came into what feels the most true
to call a remembering of myself as a polyamorous person.
And that is as much an orientation for me and
for many other people as being gay, being queer, being

(48:15):
bisexual is like an innate orientation, which is that for me,
it has everything to do with that third point of
not just relearning how to have sex, but relearning how
to enjoy the full expansive invitation of pleasure and delight,
which again for me and my journey and my values,

(48:36):
necessitates the putting into practice of the non attachment component
of love. And that was I mean, right around the
exact same time I was like right on, Polly was
the exact same time I entered into codependency recovery, just
over three years ago now, and those coalesced beautifully of

(48:57):
this like Okay, I'm understanding the the cravings of this,
like these like hungry ghost part of me that believes
that I won't survive unless you let me consume you.
And and as I started to tend to those young
parts and tell those parts the truth about the fact
that we could not be annihilated by loss of attachment, it's.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
It's not possible.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
It used to be totally understand why you're freaking out,
but I have to tell you the truth about the
fact that like that.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Can't hurt you. That started reinforcing for me.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
The I was again for me necessity and deep beauty
of prioritizing non attachment in all of my relationships, but
in particular my romantic and sexual relationships, where it at
no point do I want someone that I claim to

(49:53):
love to shut down.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
They're innate.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
A process I suppose a good word for the continual
growth and exploration in their own life, and that includes
the connection with other people. And it feels very out
of alignment with my values. To enter into a relationship
where someone is asking that of me too. So, yeah,
it has been a very dynamic journey going from you know,

(50:26):
being very shut down regarding my own body's impulses to
then once they started waking up having this like Yeah,
I guess the best terminology is like hungry ghost craving,
just like extraordinarily anxious attachment, like coming through most of
the time, to then learning how to relax into the
reality of groundlessness, the reality of change, the reality of

(50:50):
sovereignty as it exists in every person that I look
at much less love like that is irreducible in them,
it's irreducible in me.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
And what feels best for.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Me in the context of love is to honor that
through surrendering to the reality of non attachment and non ownership.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Yeah, and just a perspective for listeners, just on what
you're saying. So, if you look at so you talked
about kind of going through puberty as an adult. But
to me, what is childhood? One way to look at it,
it's curiosity and play. It's exploring, it's finding out about

(51:30):
my body, my interests, what I'm good at, what I like.
That's how you get to know who you are. And
so that's why people from complex trauma who've got to
shut down all of that just because they got to survive,
they get to forty and they don't know who they
are because they've they've never been allowed to explore. And
then often people within very rigid type of cultures where

(51:55):
they're told what to think and what to be, they
don't know who they are because they've been allowed to
explore any of that. And so what you've done, and
I love it, is give yourself permission to explore. I'm
going to explore my sexuality. I'm going to explore my identity.
I'm going to explore pleasure. And as I do it,
i might not do everything perfectly, but I'm going to

(52:16):
learn from each each thing what feels good, what feels right,
what are kind of some of the basic requirements to
make this meaningful? And you gradually piece that together. And
so you're going through this exploration learning and.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
I'm committed to regarding myself with the utmost compassion when
I are that I've engaged in things that ultimately are
not for.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Me exactly exactly. And so that to me is like,
you know, some people are going to look at what
you're describing. She's breaking all the rules and doing kind
of immoral stuff, and it's like, no, she's exploring. She's
doing what we're all supposed to do. That's part of
how we learn who we are. So I applaud you

(53:00):
for for you on that journey. So I want to
move into very specifically kind of what different types of
somatic things that you've learned and that you do. But
before I get to that, I want to give Andy
a chance to jump in, and because he's always got

(53:21):
some really good.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Question, I think that's the that's the direction that I
would be heading myself. Like I've I've really appreciated this
so far. I think there's a lot of a lot
of pieces here that are super valuable. But maybe before
the sematic, one of the things I love that you're
so clear on is the relationship with your body, kind

(53:42):
of this friendship that you have, this companionship, this partnership.
And so for somebody that this is like really unfamiliar
as an idea, especially coming out of a shame of
like not worth anything, my body's horrible, Like what are
kind of what are some of the steps that you
can take or frame or mindset that you can think

(54:06):
about to move into this healthy relationship, healthy friendship with
your body with something that maybe we've treated as a
tool or trash for our entire life.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Yeah, it's an excellent question.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
That question is exactly why I created it online course
four years ago, because it is there's so many different
potential points of entry, and.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
I do deeply believe that.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Learning how to like just get yourself on the path
and begin to take the journey can be taught, for
lack of a better word, somewhat formulaically, as far as
teaching people what the most generative dispositions to have in
their own direct are going to be for beginning to

(55:03):
walk this out. And I would say the thing that
really kind of built my career is my particular conception
of the body as a person. In fact, the name
of my online courses your body is a person. And
this methodology that I created called personified embodiment. I think

(55:28):
actually this extraordinarily simple but potent shift of learning how
to speak about and regard your physical container of living
matter as an animate, living being as opposed to an
inanimate object. By way of starting to practice shifting your

(55:49):
language from calling the body an it to calling the
body kishier day, which everyone feels truest and best for you,
starts to change everything because when you start beginning to
regard your body as a haeshi ar they rather than
an it, you start to recognize that like conversation is happening,

(56:11):
relational principles now apply and learning to be in conversation,
and in some ways the best word, the word that
feels truest to you is often is negotiation. Learning how
to be in continual negotiation with the record keeper of
your living matter while you are the truth teller to

(56:32):
the record keeper of your living matter, necessitates being in
this dance of conversation and this flow of negotiation where
it cannot A concept in my course. My course is
among many other concept concepts, is this idea that when
we're raised with this sort of fundamentalist ideology in any form, cultural, religious,

(56:55):
or otherwise, the water we're swimming in is to regard
our body as an object that we should figure.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Out how to be in control of.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
A lot of times, when we start to come out
of that mindset and practice and wake up from that,
we start operating under the assumption that now they get
to win all the rounds, and so they this record keeper,
this memory holder, just needs to be in charge and
constantly driving the cars. So every one of my traumas
I identify with every one of my every one of

(57:26):
my triggers, I just listen to and I fooled in
on my like.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
I think that's a vital doorway to walk through.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
I think in order to develop self trust with this
record keeper who loves you and is just trying to
tell you the truth about what's being held here, they
have to learn that you're listening and that you're interested
in regarding them and regarding their information as wisdom and
important to you. So I do think it's vital to
pendulum swing for a time to the other side of

(57:56):
letting your body win a free rounds, so to speak.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
But then ultimately, what I think the path.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Deserves to look like for both your well being and
the well being of your living matter is learning how
to dance the dance of Just like in any other relationship,
it is never the case that one person is always
correct about everything. There is this there's this energy that's
created in the space of listening and regarding in between
two people, and so learning how to and again this

(58:25):
is what I teach in depth in my course.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
It's why I created it. It's like fifteen.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Hours long because there's a lot to teach here, but
the core principles for developing that communication and that ability
to regard like the signals communication, the language that your
body is speaking. The four main principles I teach in
the course are self compassion, self curiosity, self communication, how

(58:50):
to build on the compassion and curiosity to get into
consistent flows of communication, and then from that experiencing sustained
self connection, which just looks like continually practicing these you know,
definitely tools, practices, et cetera, but mostly just practicing the
art of changing your language and how you regard your
living matter because that it matters so much.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
If you are calling.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Your body in it they're a lamp on a table,
They're a blunder in your kitchen. They don't have anything
to tell you about anything. And in fact, like the
only path of success forward is if you figure out
how to hack or control or you know, win in
some way over what they might be doing. And then
that that trickles down into like how our medical system

(59:37):
regards bodies as if they you know, start to get loud,
they're they're breaking, they're doing something wrong as opposed to Again,
another concept in my course is this idea that allowed
body is a kind body because they're trying to get
your attention about like what is stored here and how
that correlates with like what got skewed in development that
wants to be set right, Like they are a spiritual

(59:59):
technology and they are trying to wake you up so
that you can experience full presence in this lifetime. And
none of that is possible to find out and work
with with them unless you start regarding them as a
live And we don't call a live beings it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
We regard them as he she that we sometimes even
like some people call their cards her or him. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
So there is this there's I think there's this necessity.
The simple pointed answer to your question to land on
in that longer answer is reanimate your living matter.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Reanimate give them. Well you're not giving them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
They have one a personality, a memory, a communication style.
Learn how to regard them as a live and begin
wondering what they have to tell you that I promise
you is for your own good. Their whole reason for
existing is to try and love you and say you
and make you as well as you possibly can. That

(01:01:02):
is why they're here. That is why you are in
a body. You don't have a body.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
You it's supposed to feel good to be in a body.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
It's like, that's that's like the secret. I think that
shouldn't doesn't deserve to be a secret. I just I
reject the belief that consciousness animates into living matter so
that you experience like chronic dissatisfaction and then chronic disease
until you eventually die way younger than I think is appropriate. Like,
I just that can't be what we're here for. There

(01:01:31):
is something more sacred than that going on, and they
can tell you about it. That's why they're here. They
exist to tell you about it. So I'm gonna stop
talking now because I could.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
I could. This is why the course is fifteen hours long.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
I could talk about It's funny because as you're asking
the question, I was like, I wonder how I'm going
to answer this today, And there you go, because I
clearly like, this is this is the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
I am most passionate about.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Before we started we started according we were talking a
little bit and I reflected to Tim that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
What feels really true for me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
And how I understand my life's journey, both personally and professionally,
is that, you know, I got curious about my body's
experience and fundamentalist religion.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
So I started talking to her and getting to.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Know her, and I fell madly in love with her,
and then I kept following her as she kept and
has continued to teach me about the nature of the body,
about the nature of bodies, And that is why I
have arrived at this conclusion that the body is a
spiritual technology and they are here to wake us up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
But I also really love the relationship, the relationship coming
in of the body that's caring for you that you're describing,
and I'd love to hear more about that. But before
before I go there, you talked to her earlier kind
of about that that familiar state of shame. But then

(01:03:04):
also like the nervous system and so, and I love
how you describe your your identity with the consciousness animated
in the matter. But this this relaxed state of gratitude,
and so could you speak a little bit about kind
of moving from that familiar state of shame, moving from

(01:03:28):
maybe being kind of stuck in a survival response to
being being able to find this place, this relaxed state
of gratitude.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
It's vital for thriving and flourishing. It's vital, and it
necessitates extraordinary courage because, as we were talking about earlier,
what generally tends to get programmed into living matter, which.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Their whole job is to keep you alive.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
I mean, it's the brain's job too, They just go
about it differently somewhat if they have this blueprint kind
of programmed into them through those early largely proverbal experiences
that form the unconscious mind, which is your fascia, actually
your connective tissue is your unconscious mind. Although I had
a teacher recently who said it is that or how

(01:04:26):
did he say it? He was like, it is that,
and then some essentially like there's also like the unified field,
you know, like and I was like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
But if it is true that we've got this, most
of us have this kind of blueprint of shame going on.
What the body who loves you and is trying to
save you is under the impression of is that like,
if we stay here, we will be safe in perpetuity.
And unfortunately, What happens hopefully as we grow, is that

(01:04:54):
we would like to live.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
We would like to not just survive in this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
It's not known, it's not controlled, but we you know,
we can, we can convince ourselves and enlargely in modernity,
we can actually live our days out like that where
we do not open our hearts, we do not engage
in vulnerability. We don't even see or interact with another
human person. We we scroll, we we work, we dissociate,

(01:05:23):
We entertain ourselves in ways that don't necessitate, you know,
the the opening of our hearts, the potential they're risking
of relationship, and and you know, the the inevitable loss
that will that will come from connection. Because even if

(01:05:43):
like connection in this lifetime has never dropped, eventually someone
will leave their body. And so it's it's deeply understandable
that our bodies have this invested interest in wanting us
to stay closed. That's so underst standable. And many spiritual
teasers will tell you that you need to figure out
how to like, I don't know, be mean to them

(01:06:06):
about that, or like like transcend, like get away from
them because they're they're stupid, or I don't know, I'm paraphrasing,
but again, I love them more than that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
I think they're wiser than that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
And also like, again, why do we have one unless
they're trying to teach us something, if you know. So,
in order to go from that state, that sort of
default setting of shame into wherever it is that we
would like to go, number one, we have to know
where it is that we would like to go. And
the processing of figuring out, like the maturation process of

(01:06:40):
identifying your own values is vital because then identifying what
your values are, you're essentially identifying the alternative ways that
you would like to feel. And then once you've identified
the alternative ways that you would like to feel, for
better or for worse, what comes next and is what
is absolutely unavoidable. Deep is deep courage is learning how

(01:07:03):
to presence yourself in your own life. There's so many
teachers with so many tools, and it's like such an
exciting time to be alive that like, more and more
people are waking up to this path and this process,
and there's myriad ways to become a more embodied person,
but it is functionally that's what we're talking about when
we're talking about becoming more embodied it is the path

(01:07:26):
of learning how to when you feel the tendency to
close and maybe listen to the fear based memory that
is encoded here what is most needed and can't happen

(01:07:47):
right away, So patience and compassion for the process that
it's going to take is necessary. But ultimately this patient
and compassionate and devoted process of continually telling your body,
that record keeper, the truth about what you know about
now and in fact, there's again there's a lesson in

(01:08:10):
my course that walks people through like this exercise of
what to do when you experience a trigger, and the
process necessitates like anchoring yourself inside of where you are
in linear time and speaking compassionately to your nervous system.
That is like firing on all cylinders, trying to make

(01:08:30):
you safe. And so they're saying run or shut down.
They're saying go sympathetic or go basicly agal shut down,
like do something to get the fuck out of here.
You're essentially going, thank you so much for telling me
what you think the strategy is here, And you know what,
You're not totally wrong. That strategy has absolutely worked before.
You are brilliant. That's how we got here. You driving

(01:08:52):
the car is how we got to this point, and
enacting that strategy is how we got here. I'm not
kicking you out of the car. I'm not firing you
from your job. I'm simply asking you to trust me
and maybe like, get in the passenger seat, backseat, I
can you let me drive right now? I promise you
we are safe enough for you to believe me that
we can have a different experience. And from that point,

(01:09:14):
now that you've identified the alternative ways that you would
like to feel, developing that trust between yourself and this living, animate,
record keeping being of your body is how they become
willing to literally on a nervous system level, relax into
believing you that beginning to move in the direction of

(01:09:38):
the chosen and identified alternative feeling that you would like
to have, that that is actually safe to do.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Now, Yeah, I guess that's my answer to your question.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
That I want to ask one more follow up before
I let Tim ask some of more of a somatic question. So,
and this is, well, I know the direction you're going
to answer this, but I'm going to ask the question
anyway as can I do this alone? Can I begin
this just by watching YouTube videos or reading a book,

(01:10:15):
or do I need to do I need a teacher
or a community.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
It's so funny.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Because I'm like, I don't even know what You're like,
I don't know, Well, I think you do know where
I will ultimately land with this, which is like I
would say, start wherever it feels most successible to you
to start and trust that the teacher will come, Trust
that the community will come. Trust that the organizing principle
of the universe that is resonance will do its work

(01:10:45):
on your behalf and bring to you. The individuals and
or communities that are working this out and walking this
out for themselves will will find you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
You will find that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Because healing has to happen in the context of community
and of connection and of relationship, because that is where
the wound lives. I was just actually listening to podcast yesterday.
Joe Despenza is on Rick Rubin's podcast, and he's talking
about Rick just like directly asked him this question about
whether or not Joe believed that like these astounding, like

(01:11:26):
just mind blowing, like you know, logic defying metrics that
they're seeing results that they're getting from these seven ten
day immersive retreats that they're doing with large groups of people.
Rick was like, do you believe, not even just believe,
does the data bear out that you would get the
same results if you were doing like one on one

(01:11:48):
stuff with people, And He's like, no, this it has
to happen. It not has to It happens best in
the context of relationship for a number of reasons. But
also I would hate for anyone to hear or interpret

(01:12:16):
that answer as well. Then if I don't have a teacher,
if I don't have a facilitator, or I don't currently
have the resources to hire someone as a teacher facilitator,
if I don't have a community around me, or if
my family's on a board, there goes that for me.
This is why again very exciting time to be alive,
because things like YouTube videos and podcasts and online courses

(01:12:38):
and the ability to like follow people on social media
that you might find resonance with like those.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
Are excellent places to start.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Those are those are wonderful doorways, and they cannot be
the ultimate destination because living matter needs to heal inside
of the context of relationship with other living matter. For
that that specific experience of like coregulation and resonance and
This is exactly why so much of my work has

(01:13:06):
moved offline. This is exactly why after being a somatic
facilitator for almost a decade and doing work largely at
a distance with people through like online coaching, phone calls,
various things like that, both individual and groups, I felt
this deep need to move in the direction of getting
my license as a massage therapist, as a body worker,

(01:13:30):
where I am participating in the process of attunement and
allowing the body that I'm working with, whoever's on my table,
allowing their body to come into attunement and seek and
find resonance with the unconditional positive regard that I am
allowing to flow through both my presence and my touch

(01:13:51):
and the results that I not that it's about like
the metrics of results, but I will say like the
potency maybe of what I'm what I see, and what
people articulate that their experience is in this space of
my hands on in person work is the potency is
is very specific and in many ways exponential to the

(01:14:15):
potency of you know, something that's done at a distance,
but start wherever it feels most successible, most possible to start.
And I think the final thing I'll say about that
is maybe maybe this is totally inspers to me, like
trust your body, like to speak to what Tim mentioned earlier,
like this this long term process of kind of unconsciously

(01:14:40):
learning how to deny your own.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Instincts and impulses and intuition.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
That doesn't that doesn't go away for like it can
go dormant, but you never lose it. And I think
once you start, I know, once you start waking up,
once the desire starts waking up within you to walk
this kind of path, to have this this type of
relationship with your body, the intuitive pins and nudges of you.

(01:15:07):
Open up Instagram and there's this person who's offering this thing,
and there's like a deep resonance within you with that,
like learning how to not not overquestion that, learning how
to not shut that down, learning how to just go.
I'm going to take the next step that is available
in front of me right now, and I'm going to
trust that if I show up with my full presence,
I will get what I need from this and then

(01:15:29):
the next step will reveal itself to me after that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
You are a very articulate, wise woman there, Jamie. It's
been a pleasure to listen. So the remainder of our time,
I want to kind of do body work, and I
think it's important for people to realize. I think there's
kind of three directions in body work. So we talked
about pre verbal trauma being stored in the body. So

(01:15:56):
we get a lot of clients that how do I
get in touch with the trauma in my body? So
they've got headaches, they've got TMJ, they've got all kinds
of different body pains and sensations that they don't They've
gone to doctors for years, but it hasn't helped, and
it's traumas stored in the body. So that's part one,

(01:16:17):
is helping them kind of get in touch with their
body and the traumas stored in their body. The second
is when you look at an infant, much of emotional
regulation is done through bodywork. Parents rock them and pat
them and hug them and cradle them and kiss them,
and there's just so much of emotional attainment that then

(01:16:41):
happens because of body sensation and safety and connection that
happens through that. And so a big part for people
dealing with trauma is emotional regulation, learning tools for emotional regulation,
and because they get disregulated so easy every time they
get triggered. Body work like art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy,

(01:17:04):
pet therapy, on and on it happens. And then the
third piece is to me what you've talked a lot about,
it's learning to relate to your body and listen to
it and dialogue with it, because it's always telling you
stuff either about your emotional stuff about your external world,

(01:17:24):
about what it's picking up. And so your vagus nerves
got your not just perception, it's got neuroception and teroception,
and that neuroception is sensing all of it's designed to
pick up stuff in your bodies hearing that. So people
need ongoing things that help them listen to their body,

(01:17:51):
get better at understanding their body, exploring how to listen
to their body. So you really got re functions in
the recovery journey that the body plays a key role
in the healing. So can you speak to very very
practical things that people can do as far as starting

(01:18:13):
to get in touch with where traumas stored in their body,
practical somatic exercises, and now there's earthing and ice, water,
bass and yoga and martial arts and on and on
and on it goes, and there's tremendous amount of research
being done, but I think you've done a ton of
work in that area as well. And then just practical

(01:18:34):
daily things to stop and listen to my body.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
So yeah, Well, as you pointed out, there are so
many points of entry to the path, and I think
that's really exciting because that I think the fact that
there are enormous point like an enormous amount of points

(01:19:01):
of entry helps to how do I say this, like
it that reinforces the existence of intuition that like, there's
there's so many things that like I could say or
anyone else could say about like what has worked for
me or what I've seen worked with so many people.

(01:19:22):
And fundamentally, when you get all the way down to
the core of it, following your own impulses, following your
own your own curiosity, learning how to feel safe enough
to trust what is registering to your system as interesting
and delightful and appealing is vital. In fact, like if

(01:19:45):
if someone anyone were to follow a predescribed path instead,
arguably what you're trying to do wouldn't actually be happening
because there would be no coming back to self and
getting in touch with self in that way. And again, like,
what an incredibly exciting time to be alive because there

(01:20:06):
are so many teachers, there are so many resources, There
are so many outlets for people who are are waking
up to the relationship with their own bodies and therefore
life itself that they would prefer to have and are
are turning their experience into a technology or into a
teaching that then they emit out to, you know, exist

(01:20:33):
as a point of potential resonance that other people can
can find.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
And so maybe I'll just speak to for me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Really practical, simple tools, like everyday tools. The first thing
that comes to mind, well, actually the first thing that
came up was that I felt the impulse to want
to say dance because like dancing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
In fact, Marian Woodman, who is someone.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
That again early on in my journey three years ago
of coming into this more kind of sovereign you know,
coming out of codependent functioning and into a more sovereign,
non attached way of ideating love and expressing love.

Speaker 3 (01:21:18):
I got really into.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Her talks for a little while there, and I remember
coming across something she said kind of as an aside
in in a lecture she was giving once that she
has a daily practice of dance and that it's like
it is her most like and this is a paraphrase.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
I don't think she.

Speaker 1 (01:21:34):
Said it this way, but it felt like what she
was insinuating is it's like her most potent and important
spiritual practice. I would say that like authentic movement like
that expresses itself through like ecstatic dance or five rhythms
or those sorts of like movement practices to music, whether

(01:21:55):
it's alone or with a group of people, has been
just yeah, just extraordinary reconnective for me. But then as
I felt that that sense of wanting to answer with dance,
what then kind of emerged or bloomed out of that
was this feeling of just wanting to answer even more
foundationally with the self permission for authentic movement period because

(01:22:20):
bodies are is. This is something that that that comes
through very frequently, especially when I'm particularly when I'm sober,
sitting for people on psilocybin journeys.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
I have a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
I could talk about psilocybin for another two hours specifically,
But one of the things that I that was true
for me, and that I notice is true when people
are on like a full dose intentional ceremonial journey of psilocybin.
Is very often the body wants to move and unwind,
even something I learned in my cranio sacral training, like

(01:22:53):
there's like a whole process of unwinding, unwinding the deeply
held like tightly wound patterns in your fascia that have
grown and strengthened over time as competratory responses to your
environment and the personality structure you developed, like various different

(01:23:13):
ways of allowing the body to move freely as opposed
to exist rigidly is extremely important because there are things
that we don't actually have to, like know the things
that the body is working out and releasing regarding, like
the trauma that has been stored there for those loops

(01:23:34):
to complete themselves, for those processes for what was you know,
trauma is you know, essentially unresolved. Impact and movement alone,
the moving of an expression of an expulsion of energy
in the physical system can close some of those loops

(01:23:54):
and resolve some of what has been unresolved without us
even needing to know what any of it is, using
to verbally process it or sit you know, in an
emdr talk therapy session and be able to like know
what's going on. The body has their own innate wisdom,
they can just release. What is needed is for us
to do the internal work of releasing ourselves into the

(01:24:16):
permission of not needing to move around the world so
appropriately anymore, and so just ways in which, like I
don't know, movement, movement is just so vital for this,
like you cannot get around it. Especially in modernity, so
much of our relationship to our bodies is very stuck
and still and seated and constrained, and our bodies really

(01:24:38):
really really need to move. I think another let's see
what comes through. I think another piece that I would
say is really vital is oh yeah, okay. So everyone
compensates differently, and it's somewhere along the the you know,

(01:25:01):
the spectrum of upregulated to down regulated, you know, sympathetic
response to basovagal response, and when there is a response
of kind of what seems to be like a depressed

(01:25:24):
like when that's the competitory response is like a dissociated depressed.
That might look like someone is slowing down, but it's
not a relaxed, regulated slowing down. There is a build
up of phrenetic energy that is swirling and looping in
the system, and the body that's the freeze state. The

(01:25:46):
body freezes when a body is in a freeze state
as a response to a trauma or a trigger. It's
not that like things have profoundly slowed down here, It's
that they're not able to be expelled than expressed. So
it's funny that what I'm what I'm finding in this
moment is my second answer, in addition to movement, is

(01:26:08):
also second answer is slow down. Learning how to largely
and first and foremost like slow down the thinking mind,
learning how to become an observer of your own thoughts,
your own thinking mind. And so as I'm working through
my response here, I would say movement and meditation are
apparently what I'm trying to get to are excellent places

(01:26:29):
to start. Movement to be able to release the stored energy,
and meditation to be able to develop that trust with
your living matter where they know it is safe to
slow down, that there's no active threat on the horizon
right in this very moment, and we can slow down

(01:26:50):
and notice our breathing and take in the sensory information
in our environment, and I can reinforce to you that
we're safe to do that, and then there's just like
unlimited mountains of data on like the benefits of meditation
just psychologically, physiologically, I mean in many ways. That is
like the core of what someone like Joda Spends's work

(01:27:13):
is built on. What meditation essentially is is it's represencing
yourself with your living matter without the thinking mind and
the busy mental chatter.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
Being the thing that's in the.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
Way of your ability to represence yourself in your body.
So I would say those are two really wonderful and
accessible to everyone. Places to start is like start moving
your body authentically more and start slowing maybe for like
as a huge fan of Law of Attraction and as

(01:27:51):
Esther who transmits on Behalf of Abraham and Law of
Attraction says like just fifteen minutes a day, just fifteen
minutes a day, just start there, just like basically reset
your vibrational frequency by just like tuning everything out, slowing down,
coming back to presence.

Speaker 4 (01:28:06):
Yeap. So if I can just again sum up because
to me it's excellent stuff. But the big thing about
complex trauma is it's too painful to be present in
the present. So I want to be anywhere but the presence.
So I dissociate. But dissociation looks like I'm relaxing, but

(01:28:28):
I'm actually freezing. Yes, I'm in my I'm in my
sympathetic or dorsal vego system. And so it's not true rest.
It's actually frenzy that can't resolve itself. So what happens
with that is I lose the ability to be present
to myself, not just to my environment. I don't want

(01:28:50):
to be present to myself because I can't resolve anything.
And so what you're talking about with the meditation and
all this body work is it's really at the very
foundational thing learning to be present to yourself, all of you,
your body, your mind, your emotions, your spirit, all of

(01:29:11):
those pieces. You learn to listen to to slow down
and to hear and to be present in the present.
And that takes time to learn that. That's definitely not
a culturally accepted thing to do, because we're busy, busy, busy,
and our value comes from productivity, not from sitting in silence.

(01:29:31):
But it's such an important thing. And then movement actually
can help us get into that state. Breath work can
help us get into that state, and So one of
the most sacred parts of my day is I walk
every morning for about ten kilometers in nature, and I
just I love it. That's my time. That's where I

(01:29:54):
can decompress, that's where I can just be. But there's movement,
there's rhythm, there's all of that happening. And so I think,
to me, what I want people to hear is to
do to start this journey, you don't need necessarily a
whole bunch of technical information. Just start with learning to

(01:30:17):
breathe again, learning to move again, learning to be present
to yourself, develop little things that work for you that help,
and just one other thing, just kind of what you
were talking earlier about the movement piece. So what they
found is with an animal that, like a deer that's scared,

(01:30:38):
it goes into flight mode. So it gets all this
cortisol adrenaline, it goes in and it gets to safety.
And once it's into safety, it gets behind a bush.
And then what does it do. It's like a dog.
It tenses all of its muscles and shakes, takes a
deep breath, and what's it doing. It's releasing all the cortisol,

(01:30:58):
all that pent up energy, and it's resolving the situation
and the nervous system is going back to its normal,
healthy state. And so there's so much that the body
want to help us resolve just by us doing things
that help it release some of that pent up energy.

(01:31:19):
And we don't necessarily even to know what memory was
or anything. Bodies just trying to guide us and help
us begin to resolve some of that stuff. So, yes,
this has been fantastic, Jamie. You are extremely knowledgeable and
it's been wonderful. And he's just going to ask you

(01:31:39):
to kind of give us a little bit of information
of where people can learn more.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
Yeah, And so before we do that, I just want
to have get a last word from you. You know,
for somebody who's listening who feels disconnected or broken, what
would you want them to hear right now?

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
M This actually the like the silent spaciousness before I
speak and give an answer in my own voice, which

(01:32:26):
I know that doesn't make excellent podcasting, which is why
I didn't leave as much space as I really wanted
to leave. But my simplest answer to that question is themselves,
because that is available to you, to everyone, to anyone

(01:32:48):
right now. It is somatically complicated to get to. It
can feel distressing, it can feel dangerous.

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
Until it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
And the only way that you get to that point
of it no longer feeling distressing or dangerous, or unfamiliar
or uncomfortable is through compassionate, consistent practice. But she's there,
He's there, They're there. They can't they cannot ever go

(01:33:26):
fully offline until death, really, And so I think maybe
as I'm saying this, what I would want people to
hear is to put it quite simply, like, there is
no such thing as too late on this journey of
reconnecting to oneself, because they're they're always here.

Speaker 3 (01:33:45):
They are eternally faithful to the sacred mission.

Speaker 5 (01:33:52):
Of waking you up to how good it is supposed
to feel to be here, to be all here in
a body, in the human experience out here, as Abraham say,
out here on the leading edge of like you know, creating,
creating the experience.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
That you most want to have, sensationally that you most
want to have. And there are there are necessary painful
things often to look at and to feel first before
we can get to We'll say it this way, we

(01:34:32):
very often have to expand our capacity, like intentionally expand
our capacity to feel what is uncomfortable and difficult to
feel first, before our capacity can remain and continue to
expand into allowing ourselves to feel what is deeply pleasurable
to feel, what is deeply satisfying to feel. And the

(01:34:54):
invitation to that journey never gets revoked, it never goes away,
it doesn't diminish. There's no such thing as that being
further away than just deciding to presence oneself to oneself
right right here, right now.

Speaker 3 (01:35:12):
So I think that is what That's what I want
to kind of leave your listeners with.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
Is that's what I most deeply believe. It's available to
everyone and anyone at any time.

Speaker 4 (01:35:21):
Excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:35:22):
I love that. And before we close, is there anything
that you're currently working on that you'd like to share
with our listeners? And where can people find your work?

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Easiest way to find me and to remain in touch
with me and what I'm doing and what I'm continually
working on releasing online is my Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:35:47):
My handle is just Jamie Leafinch.

Speaker 1 (01:35:49):
I also website Jamielefinch dot com. I have a membership
space as well where we have monthly calls. We've been
going for over five years now, which is incredible. It's
like a really core, beautiful group of people who are
just enacting this process, you know, with one another and

(01:36:10):
learning in the context of like connection and community. Link
for that can be found on my website and on
my Instagram. And as far as what I'm working on
right now, interesting answer to that question is that I'm
I'm sort of reworking, as in re releasing. I've sort
of re released my online course as my work has

(01:36:33):
moved more to prioritize hands on and in person, one
on one and group work. It feels even more important
to me now to remind people to point people in
the direction of this like foundational both financially and logistically

(01:36:57):
accessible resource that is, I mean, making it taught me
all of these things, which is ironic. I don't quite
know how to understand that because I kind of knew them.
But then in creating the like thirty lessons and fifteen
hours of content in this course and you get a
physical workbook when you order it, like I released it

(01:37:18):
four years ago, and something about this current moment of
moving my work more directly working with bodies. It's hard
to explain, but it just feels so incredibly important to me.
To remind people to offer it to people as like
an excellent, truly excellent place to begin in learning just
these core foundational complex which is why it's fifteen hours

(01:37:42):
but like absolutely accessible to everyone concepts of how to
start this journey of reconnection with self. I also have
an online workshop that I just recently. The course is
kind of a re release. This workshop is a first
release of a it's a recording of a live workshop

(01:38:04):
that I myself and my social media manager Aaron, we
did a number of workshops, or we did this workshop
a number of times of teaching people essentially how to
specifically apply these concepts of like presencing to oneself in
the particular context of.

Speaker 3 (01:38:20):
Your relationship to social media and technology.

Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
Basically, how to help support yourself become unaddicted to the
way in which your phone tends to My phone has
tended to kind of like gra have a stranglehold of
my attention. So it's a workshop about, you know, retaining
your sovereignty of consciousness and therefore your somatic sovereignty as well.

Speaker 3 (01:38:43):
And links to both of those.

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
Are both you can navigate to those via my Instagram
and also my website. The course is called Your Body
as a person. The workshop is called log off and
Tune into your body. And then the last thing I'll
say is also I on my website if anyone is
interested in, you know, having the conversation of what it
could look like to work with me one on one,

(01:39:07):
whether they are local to one of the kind of
two places I live right now, or they're interested in
doing like you know, online coaching, which is the thing
I've been doing for almost ten years now. I do
have kind of perpetually open, very limited availability for one
on one work with people, but anyone can submit an

(01:39:30):
application for that at any time. It's very brief and
very simple, and that is also available to people as
well that one on one work too, So I have
tons of tons of options and I trust that if
any of those are resonant with people, that they will

(01:39:51):
be able to find me easily and effortlessly.

Speaker 3 (01:39:55):
And I welcome and invite that freely.

Speaker 2 (01:39:59):
Deem thank you, thank you for being here with us today.

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):
Oh wait, just remembered one thing I always forget to mention.
I have a podcast too.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
My podcast is called Experiential Anatomy, so you can search
for that on any of your podcast app apps. And
then Also, this did remind me too, I meant, and
I have it on my notes here.

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
Listeners of your podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
I wanted to offer a gift to make it even
more accessible. If they are interested in the online course,
they can get twenty percent off just using the code
tim at checkout.

Speaker 3 (01:40:35):
So I'm so glad I remembered.

Speaker 1 (01:40:37):
To say that, and that I did not popp here
not remembering to say that. It's like the one thing
I came into this.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
I was like, don't forget, don't forget the code. So yes,
I have a podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
You can listen to that and then code for code
for the course as well.

Speaker 3 (01:40:50):
So now I am done, I am complete.

Speaker 2 (01:40:53):
So thank thank you for that, Javi ed. We'll include
some of those links in our description and show notes
as well. And so I just want to thank you
for your clarity, for your wisdom, the warmth you you have,
this like this force and empowered way of being and speaking,
and so thank you for thank you for bringing your

(01:41:16):
full self into this conversation. And for those listening, we
hope that something that Jamie shared invites you back into
relationship with your own body as a person to love.
And what a helpful reminder that if you've carried shame
or disconnection, that your body's not the enemy, that it

(01:41:37):
is trying to speak with you, and they've never stopped
loving you. Yeah, So as always, take care of yourselves
and remember that healing isn't about becoming someone new, It's
about coming home to who you've always been.

Speaker 3 (01:41:52):
Thank you both so much.

Speaker 2 (01:41:57):
Thank you for joining us on the Time with Tim podcast.
If you'd like to share your own experiences or have questions,
feel free to email us at podcasts at Tim Fletcher
dot ca A. Want to learn more about complex trauma,
subscribe to Tim Fletcher's YouTube channel for past lectures and
is Friday Night Tim Talks. You can also connect with

(01:42:19):
us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and tik tok. Looking for
more support, we offer programs and courses to help with
healing complex trauma and recovering from addictions. Visit Tim Fletcher
dot ca a to learn more or send us an inquiry.
We're here to support you until we meet again. Take
care and thank you for letting us be a part

(01:42:42):
of your healing journey.

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S3E01 | Reconnecting With the Body After Trauma with Jamie Lee Finch

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S3E01 | Reconnecting With the Body After Trauma with Jamie Lee Finch