Bringing Heart and Accessibility to Female Biohacking with Lauren Berlingeri [Episode #935]

Episode Summary:

In this engaging conversation, Kimberly Snyder speaks with Lauren Berlingeri, a holistic health coach and co-founder of HigherDOSE. They explore the concept of biohacking from a female perspective, discussing the importance of self-care, emotional regulation, and the balance between motherhood and entrepreneurship. Lauren shares insights on the four happy chemicals—dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins—and how to naturally enhance them through lifestyle choices. The discussion also touches on the significance of heart-centered leadership, the benefits of red light therapy, and the role of rituals in family life.

They explore the concept of biohacking from a female perspective, discussing the importance of self-care, emotional regulation, and the balance between motherhood and entrepreneurship. Lauren shares insights on the four happy chemicals—dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins—and how to naturally enhance them through lifestyle choices. The discussion also touches on the significance of heart-centered leadership, the benefits of red light therapy, and the role of rituals in family life.

About Lauren Berlingeri Co-Founder and CEO of HigherDOSE.

Lauren Berlingeri is dedicated to inspiring others through fitness and naturally-healthy lifestyle practices. After launching her career as an international model, Berlingeri went on to star in her own show, “Women vs. Workout”—grossing over 15 million views and receiving a Webby Award nomination for Best Host. This experience led to extreme sports hosting for brands such as UFC, EA Sports, and IMG. Having cemented her name within the fitness industry, Berlingeri decided to expand her expertise, earning a holistic nutritionist and health coach certification at The Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Her venture into the health and wellness startup spectrum began in 2014 as one of the first creative minds at Aloha.com—doing product development, leading the brand ambassador program, and brand partnerships.

Lauren discovered the power of Infrared technology — specifically Infrared saunas — and saw an opportunity to bring the biohacking tool to the masses. Since co-founding HigherDOSE with Katie Kaps, the wellness brand has experienced meteoric success, boiling down to a true revolutionization of the spa business. Creating all the initial branding themselves and even acting as models in their first campaigns, the brand exploded, leading the way to at-home sauna systems that thrived during the pandemic.

As a female biohacker and mother of twins, Lauren brings a fresh perspective to a space that has been dominated by male voices from its inception, making it HigherDOSE’s core mission to educate women about their bio-individuality and give them the tools they need to reach their own best selves, with content designed to educate people on how to take control of their own wellness regimens.

Guest Resources

Link for HigherDOSE Website Use Code FEELGOOD15 for 15% off Purchase

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Holistic Health and Biohacking
02:49 The Female Perspective on Biohacking
06:07 Finding Balance as a Busy Mom and Entrepreneur
09:10 The Importance of Heart-Centered Leadership
12:03 Exploring the Four Happy Chemicals
15:07 Navigating Caffeine and Other Stimuli
18:04 Gentle Biohacking Technologies for Women
21:10 The Benefits of Red Light Therapy
24:02 Creating Evening Routines and Boundaries
26:57 The Role of Rituals in Family Life
29:47 Reflections on Parenting and Co-Sleeping
33:09 Closing Thoughts on Leadership and Self-Care

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Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:01.176)
Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have our very special guest here on the show with us, Lauren Berlingeri, who is a holistic health coach. She is a female biohacker. She is the co-founder and co-CEO of HigherDOSE.. She is the TV host of Women vs. Workout, which won the Webby Award nomination for best host.

She has been in the wellness and wellness startup world since 2014. She’s an amazing entrepreneur. She’s a trailblazer in the space. Thank you so much, Lauren, for being here with us today. thank you for having me. I can’t wait to dig into the great conversation. Well, we’ve been here for a couple hours talking and doing the heart aligned meditation. Well, I kept stopping and being like, should we be recording this right now? Because there’s already been so much.

greatness that has happened. There’s so much greatness that’s happened and a very important part of your bio that I did not mention is that you are a mama of two. You have twins. have twins. five years old now. It was really hard the first three years as an entrepreneur with twins, but since they’ve turned five and now they’re just really great friends and whatnot, it’s so easy and now I want more, which is the crazy thing. I get asked a lot of questions. I’m sure you do as well about being a working mother, especially an entrepreneur.

And because for us as entrepreneurs, it’s never really, you know, off. We’re not just leaving the office. Our businesses are really integrated into our life as our kids. so I’d love to hear more about that aspect of your life as well. there’s so much to dig into here at Lauren. First of all, I have to say, and I feel like you’ve sort of owned this field of female biohacking, but you’re doing it in this accessible, approachable way.

when I first started hearing the word even hacking. It just feels very, you know. Masculine. Masculine, linear, harsh. You know, I know a lot of male biohackers, especially because my husband also works in the wellness space, particularly with male biohackers. So it has that feeling. And then you’ve brought your own feminine spin on it.

Kimberly Snyder (02:21.324)
tell how this developed, what it came about. Yeah, I mean, we also don’t like the word biohacking and have tried to find many different ways to talk about what we do. you know, we can say it’s holistic recovery or in the pursuit of vitality or living the high life. You know, I think ultimately, at the end of the day, everyone just wants to feel better. And, you know, I’ve always been in the health and wellness space and health and wellness has mainly been around diet, nutrition and

and fitness. And I think of what we loved about the biohacking space, it was in this like pursuit of optimization and, you know, mental and emotional, you know, health as well. And you were also, you know, speaking about like, when you first started about nutrition and fitness, that there was something missing, whether that be like faith, spirituality, the heart, heart, there’s so much more there. So I think when you actually achieve feeling healthy, you realize that there’s so much more.

and you know, like the biohacking space is mainly male dominated, which is unfortunate, but I feel like the women that women are the original biohackers. just never called ourselves that, you know, women not only have their hormonal cycles, but we also have pregnancy and post pregnancy and menopause and many things to consider in our bodies and our emotional states are different at so many different moments in our lives. And there are so many tools for people out there.

to help them feel and look their best. And we discovered most of them in the biohacking world, infrared saunas, rhythm therapy, PEMF, just getting exposure to light. And there’s so much greatness in the biohacking world. So we’re trying to look at it from the female lens and what that looks like and bring these amazing tools to more women because they are amazing tools.

don’t know what to call it. We’re like pioneering this whole new space in vitality. And we haven’t really figured out what that word is. HigherDOSE.stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, which are our four main happy chemicals. So what we talk about all the time is ways to release those happy chemicals and get high naturally. that’s our different spin on it.

Kimberly Snyder (04:43.606)
Unfortunately, I feel like most of our tools are in the biohacking space, but we are here to educate on this amazing world and help people bring these tools in to help them feel and look their best. So I want to break down those four hormones we talked about in just a moment. But one of the things that stood out to me, and I’ve tried the higher dose products and I love many of them, I like that they are also, feel the ones that I love.

like the mat, they feel self-care oriented versus pushing myself to be better, like relentlessly and sort of in the forced way. But one of the things when I was doing research and reading as well in your guide, you actually use the term, I forget which page it’s on, you actually say feel good, which is funny because it’s the name of our podcast. And people think about feel good in different ways, right? For me,

Feeling good means we’re really connected to ourselves, to our hearts, to our authentic expression. It’s not forced, know, giddiness all the time, but there’s a groundedness in feeling good. And we can achieve that through emotional regulation, through heart practices, and also through external tools, which can help us physically and with our health in all sorts of ways. So it’s really this multi-dimensional approach. It’s not all or nothing. And you can also take what

works for you because another piece that I think when I speak for many women, sometimes it’s confusing. Sometimes the messages we get are if you go on social media, there’s so many modalities. And it’s like, I don’t have time to do everything. I don’t have time to, you know, cold clunge. Yeah, wake up more. See the sun, you know, do your exercises, right? the weightlifting work and

It’s just a lot. how do you, before we get into the feel good chemicals, which are so powerful, I think to run through, but how would you, what would you say to someone, what do you do in your own routine, Lauren, where it’s like you’re a busy mom, you’re running a business, can’t do everything. Does it shift day to day or is it seasonal or are you just sort of leaning in with what?

Kimberly Snyder (06:51.628)
makes the most impact for your body? Yeah, no, I think the number one thing is having a relationship with yourself and your body and trying to tap into what it is that you feel like you need in that moment. Because much like yourself, I don’t have time to do all the things that I know I need to be doing every day. But it’s like, when I do have the 20 or 30 minutes, like what do I reach in and do in order to sort of offset what it is that I’m feeling?

So sometimes I feel low energy and then I might need to like go and do a workout to help me feel better. Or sometimes I might feel stressed and know that like going into my sauna, I’m Yes. feel better. And sometimes I feel like I need a tool to help me sleep at night. You know, I might do some red light therapy because I didn’t get outside that day. And it does change all the time. And I think when you are really educated about this world of ways to help yourself feel better, there’s lots of tools to do. So every day it changes.

Beautiful every day. Sometimes I you know have five minutes and sometimes I have an hour for self care But it’s just about like having those resources the tools and the education and the know-how to help yourself Feel your best and know what you need in that moment Yeah for me. It’s like I have a base right? know I’m gonna meditate every morning Yeah, I have a pretty solid morning routine, but they’re shifting within it, right? So I may put different ingredients of my glowing green smoothie, which I’ve been drinking for over a decade

And sometimes, usually I do my walk, my, you know, my exercise, but when I’m on my moon cycle. I might not want to. Yeah, I just wanna like sit on the floor and do like very in yoga. So I think it’s important to have some type of foundation, to have the tools, but also to not be so rigid. Not be so rigid Which is again, back to the overly masculine, pushing the way, which is where I think we can start to feel depleted.

Well, I know better than anyone because I’m very a type personality. When I was doing women versus workout, I was doing Navy SEAL training. was doing NASCAR driving motocross. I felt like for your pregnancy. yeah. Yeah. This was like maybe 15 years ago. Yeah. But if I didn’t wake up and run 10 miles in the morning, then I wasn’t like I wasn’t happy. You know, I relied on that for my happiness. And if I wasn’t getting a little bit faster every day, then it was like it didn’t didn’t even count. And I depleted myself.

Kimberly Snyder (09:10.392)
my hormones were all out of whack. couldn’t sleep at night. I’d literally wake up in the middle of the night and have to eat something just to calm my nervous system down. So I learned the hard way of burnout and what that feeling was like. And now I’m very different. Like I don’t put that much pressure on, you know, what I need to do in terms of workout or, you know, making sure that I’m getting faster or stronger and whatnot. And the crazy thing is, is like, I’ve achieved this body that I was trying to get, you know, 15 years ago.

because I’m just in tune with what it needs. And I have a relationship with myself and I don’t have the same expectations on myself. you know, I’m trying to figure out how to do that a little bit more with work. And as an entrepreneur, we were talking about this before, like, I still have a hard time with work because I feel very stressed by work. I’m so passionate about what I do. I want, you know, that passion to come through and everything that I do with product and my team and whatnot. So I’m trying to figure out how not to put so much pressure on myself the same way I did.

15 years ago with workouts and that’s been a little bit more challenging. I wish I had more of a mindfulness practice every morning. It’s been really challenging for me but if I go into the sauna, I can do it. Well now you can do the alignment. Yeah, if I go on the mat, helps me calm down and relax. So I still need those tools in order to help me drop in. And we just did the heart alignment meditation before and I’m like, man, this is what I need to be doing.

eight minutes. and immediately it changed my whole being and the way that I felt about my relationships that were triggering me or causing me stress. And I was just like sending them love. And I was just like, this is so easy. Like, but we forget, we forget, even though we have these tools. And we, we, you know, used to be a great meditator eight years ago, you sort of forget. then when you go back there, it’s just like how quick you can go back and so powerful. Yeah.

And also like we were talking about, sometimes there’s different buckets that are easier to be in our hearts. Sometimes it’s easy to, we’re trying to get a lot of things done. We’re entrepreneurs to kind of plow forward and to get as the language we use in the community, the propelled heart, right? Sort of that make it happen onto the next thing where we feel hardened and sort of, you know, just very mind based. And what that does to the body is we know that is definitely detrimental to hormonal balance.

Kimberly Snyder (11:35.992)
inflammation, digestive health, so many things. So I’m so happy we were able to really connect on a heart level, Lauren. I just talking and what I found for me is when we really do the work with the heart, comes out like I’d see it in my family life. I see it in my work life. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect, right? Still get into some ego battles with my husband or with certain people, but you come back faster. And you can adjust. you realize how

good it feels to really be in this heart led way. And I think this is how we can start to really move forward into just success in a different way. Could you imagine if more leaders led with that heart? I mean, I find it very easy to do that with my kids. It’s so natural. Right. You know, when you were telling me about these different heart levels, I was like, I’m definitely like more of a clear heart when it comes to my family and my kids, but I can’t help but be out of

stage two with my business and why is that? like, could I be in more of this clear state and still be a great leader and still have these expectations on my team? But heart led. But heart led. I think it would be an amazing injection of just a different fresh energy. I think, know, myself too. Yes, enjoy. so depleted at work. Yeah. Well, what’s amazing in my, my team at Saluna, when I started doing this work, one of the things is we have really

honest conversations where it’s like, hey, you know, coming from the heart, like I’m really feeling like this or this. And it just takes out so much wasted energy when you can really be clear, like the ego is personal and gets offended and slighted. Defensive. Defensive. And it just causes a lot of friction. So I know in my work life, so much energy saved. So it’s a beautiful thing to just work into like another, a different layer of, you know,

You can even call it biohacking if you will. it is. But that’s what it is. Yes, it’s a technology. It’s a technology. Yeah. It’s a practice. It’s a tool. You know, because we are human and we will go back into ego. But it’s about, you know, tapping back into that tool that you need in that moment to remind yourself. Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (13:48.056)
So now I’d love to dive into some of the technology that you’ve really gone down the rabbit hole. If we could go back to the joes for a minute, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, and those are your four main happy chemicals. They’re all very different. know, dopamine is the happy chemical that you release when you get something done, when you accomplish. Oxytocin is more heart-led. It’s self-care, touch, connection, eye contact, you know, how we’re sitting here now.

Serotonin is kind of the happy chemical that you can get in many different ways. It’s mainly made in your gut, healthy foods, meditation, the sun. There’s a ton of- sleep. Good sleep, yeah. That one’s a little bit easier to get. And then endorphins was my happy chemical of choice that I would dose myself all the time, which was workouts, I really stress. And so that’s kind of more the pain.

receptor one, two as well. So when you’re pushing it in a workout or you get that intense body work, you release all these like feel good endorphins. When your heart, you know, beats at a faster pace, you’re releasing a lot of endorphins. So yeah, our whole company is based around releasing these happy chemicals. And a lot of our tools are based around releasing these happy chemicals. And I think it’s a very different way of thinking about health and wellness is like,

releasing these feel-good hormones. And it’s not just with our products, but it’s the lifestyle. And we’re very much focused on educating around ways to naturally release these happy chemicals that are free. And that you can access at any point. So we have the high life. So for example. Dopamine.

I mean, don’t I said it just from Instagram, right? Because as we hear like people are checking all the time to get like, well, yeah, like you can set a goal, say like now my new goal is to wake up every day and do the heart lead meditation. Yeah, my day that way. And you know, if I wake up in the morning and do that, then I like already released this happy chemical of, you know, dopamine. Yeah, you’ve success like raceways beautiful. But there’s also kind of quick.

Kimberly Snyder (15:53.496)
fix high ways of releasing these happy chemicals and then you crash afterwards. So going on your cell phone and scrolling through Instagram is a quick fix of dopamine and then you feel bad about yourself afterwards. So you also have to be very careful with ways that you, we call them lower doses. Where you can, drinking alcohol is another way of initially releasing these happy chemicals and then sort of crashing afterwards.

Drugs are full of happy chemicals that you’re releasing and then you get depleted afterwards. Can you tell us a little bit about your perspective on caffeine, which we were sharing about is a newer thing in my life and yeah, I like how coffee tastes, but I definitely don’t like the jittery. after. Yeah, I realize I’m very sensitive to caffeine. Yeah, yeah, I’m very sensitive to caffeine too. That’s why I wanted to ask you if you drink caffeine because

I find it raises my cortisol. puts me more into that second phase of heart, know, I’m like, do, do, then you kind of have that crash afterwards. So, you know, it’s about finding those practices that can like, you know, get you excited and make you feel full of life and fill up that battery without like knowing that you’re going to crash afterwards.

Yes. And I think it’s different, obviously, like we said, for each person, my husband, my dad, even who’s staying with us now, he’ll have a coffee in the afternoon is no effect on his sleep. He likes it. It’s like part of his practice. But do think that’s mainly because he maybe doesn’t have a business that he’s running and like lots of to do’s and it’s not like just amping up his already cortisol.

I think that and I also think from an Ayurvedic perspective, such different body types, he’s very kapha. John, my husband is very pit-dab, very fiery. And we tend to like what we… We shouldn’t have. Yes. So I’m very vata, right? Which is, know… Air. Yeah. Yeah. It’s dry and I can be floaty and I really like dry, like crackers, like crispy things versus, you know, my body type would benefit from more fats and grounding oils and certain things.

Kimberly Snyder (18:04.764)
So I think it has to do with that. think my dad is, people have different tolerances. But it’s just kind of like realizing that everything has an energetic essence and you have to just like be aware of what energy that’s going to bring in and whether it’s going to be balancing or not balancing to the body. Exactly. And so it’s interesting because Wim Hof came on here, which I think you know. I love Wim Hof. Cold plunge person. And I totally respect.

the philosophy around cold and I understand what it’s doing for circulation. But there’s also different body types, different times of your female cycle. Well, that’s the issue with all of the biohacking world is mainly because it is male dominated. Most of these practices are made for men. Most of the science and research is done on men. And we have to navigate this world very differently as a woman because they don’t really consider our hormones.

our goals, you know, where we’re at in our cycles. Just so much more to consider. And so I know for myself that if I do cold plunges, especially at certain times in my cycle, it’s almost like a trauma to my nervous system. My brain doesn’t work afterwards. doesn’t work for me. Whereas, you know, the saunas, the heat, stretching on the mats, like these feel very nourishing. you know, back to that intuition.

Yeah, well, mean, we kind of go through all of the biohacking technologies and really only choose ones that we know are gentle and safe and nourishing for everyone. It’s the reason why we haven’t launched a cold plunge or have launched any of the technologies that can be quite detrimental to the nervous system or just like a lot of contraindications at the end of the day. All of it is like very gentle. Right.

And research based research based technologies and as two female founders, you know, we’re ultimately released or loving technologies that really nourish women I’m really interested in red light therapy, which I do feel good Having my husband set up a red light in our sauna, which I have to admit

Kimberly Snyder (20:14.956)
I don’t use so often. you don’t use the sauna so often? it’s just hard to to. You see it’s in our garage and I’m with the kids in the morning and bedtime and then I don’t know. It’s just I would like to spend more time in the sauna. But the red light, you hear a lot of benefits for skin, for other things. It’s gentle. mean, most people know about the skin enhancing benefits of red light therapy, but there’s mitochondrial function that is amazing for it balances your circadian rhythm.

So it’s red and infrared light, which is ultimately what the sun gives you in the morning

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USE LINK: DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD ANIMA MUNDI OFFER: To get THE PUREST, MOST DELICIOUS PLANT-POWERED protein blend, infused with real vanilla and harmonizing adaptogens go to Animamundiherbals.com and use code: KIM20 to get 20% off your purchase! USE LINK: Animamundiherbals.com and use code: KIM20 to get 20% off your purchase! Episode Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Parenting and Emotions02:48 Understanding Emotions in Parenting06:01 The Role of Connection in Parenting08:50 Identifying Needs Behind Behaviors12:09 Navigating Punishment and Connection14:48 The Importance of Self-Regulation17:51 Co-Regulation and Emotional Intelligence21:09 Addressing Lying and Trust23:47 Creating a Safe Space for Sharing27:00 Understanding Fear and Vulnerability29:45 The Impact of Trauma on Parenting32:59 Conclusion and Resources SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS Glowing Greens Powder™ Feel Good SBO Probiotics Feel Good Detoxy Feel Good Digestive Enzymes Feel Good Starter Kit Feel Good Skincare KIMBERLY’S BOOKS Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart The Beauty Detox Solution Beauty Detox Foods Beauty Detox Power Radical Beauty Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life You Are More Than You Think You Are OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY! Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877 How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne Transcript: Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast, which is all about heart-led living and wellness. When we awaken the power of our hearts and let that guide us through our daily choices and decisions, through our four cornerstones, food, body, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth, we will experience the most incredible results and create more vitality, health, strength, peace, abundance, and love in our lives. I am your host, Kimberly Snyder, New York Times bestselling author, founder of Solluna, creator of the research-based Heart Aligned Meditation, wellness expert, nutritionist, and international speaker. I am passionate about supporting you on your unique heart and wellness journey. For more information on todays show please go to mysolluna.com for show notes and links. Let’s get started. Speaker 1 (01:29.13)So thank you so much for being here with us today and congrats on your new book. This is your second one. Speaker 2 (01:30.73) Yeah, yeah, my first one, Tiny Human’s Big Emotions came out in 2023. I was like 32 weeks pregnant when that one published, was a whirlwind. Wow. Yeah, that one hit the New York Times bestseller list, which was exciting. Yeah. And then a few weeks after it published, was doing well. Our editor reached out and was like, Alyssa, will you write another book? I was like, actually, I just need a nap. I’m so tired. And so I turned to Rachel, who I’ve worked with, had the privilege of working with now for seven years. And she works with me at my company. And I asked her she would write this bad boy with me. And she said, yeah. So we were able to do it. Well, I think this is so great because many of us are parents in the community or are thinking about being parents in the future or even not. feel like parenting books help us understand ourselves. And I can say as a parent, there’s been this incredible experience of feeling like I’m reparenting myself. And most of us are not learned. You we don’t learn. to handle emotions, have tools as you talk about in your book. And I went through this period of this, where it’s like, hmm, you know, it just felt a little sad and I had to process that. But I also think we’re given the, you know, the childhoods that were meant to be given. But I feel like this is, you know, this is big stuff we’re talking about here. Yeah, people often say they like come for their kids, but they stay for themselves. That so much of this work. We say if you have a nervous system like this works for you. We are really just talking about neuroscience and what it’s like to be a human on planet Earth and be in relationship with other humans. And man, it’s doozy sometimes. Yeah. Speaker 1 (02:55.63)Yeah, and I like how you talk about upfront. It’s not about trying to shield ourselves or our children from hardships because you know my nine-year-old now I can see him being more self-conscious about what he wears to school and Then he told me that there was a child like in one of the older grades who kind of made fun of his dog man sure now he won’t wear it and it just brings up stuff and It’s a lot like all the layers of kind of reliving what we’ve been through as parents. 100%. And I find for myself as a parent, there’s nothing harder than just watching your child experience something hard, like being made fun of, feeling left out, feeling that shame or embarrassment. And knowing that it’s not our job to take it away, but instead to be with them through those hard things to let them know that they can navigate this and survive it. It’s so hard. to do in practice as a parent is allowing it. Well, I’m not sure that all of us were even raised with parents that were aware that there was hardship. I wasn’t. I’m not just blaming my parents or anything. just I don’t think that’s how they were raised either. So I just know that there was a lot of things that I pushed down because I couldn’t handle them. Speaker 1 (04:26.614)And I think that’s ultimately why I turned to certain things like bulimia and eating disorders. I couldn’t digest life. And, you know, as adults, we continue to learn and grow and pass on, you know, more tools to our children. Totally, and we’re not gonna heal all the things and that’s okay too. I think of my friend, Dr. Linietta Willis, she’s an intergenerational trauma therapist. And she talks about our legacy blessings and our legacy burdens. And our legacy blessings are those things that we wanna pass on, that we inherited and that we want to pass on to our children in the next gen. And our legacy burdens are those things that maybe we don’t want to pass on, but also knowing that we’re not going to heal all the burdens, that some of them will get passed on and that’s okay. We get to give our kids the tools and the outlets to continue to heal and process. Yeah Speaker 1 (05:24.078)Well, I love how, and we’ll get into some of the more specific tools you talk about, but there’s a underlying theme of connection, which is, you know, in my work with the heart and just being connected to self and always, even if we’re not perfect parents, if we can stay empathetic, we can be connected. Our children will really feel that. 100%. And when we’re talking about different topics in big kids in this book, we talk about a number of different topics, but you’re right, the through line is not it. The goal isn’t to say, Hey, say this script at this time, or say these exact words or do this exact thing. The through line for us is how do you maintain connection and just stay in relationship with each other and recognizing that Yeah. Speaker 2 (06:13.336)Sometimes relationship is messy and hard and sometimes it feels good and easy and you’re not failing if you’re in conflict in relationship or you’re in the messy hard parts. That’s just a part of being in relationship with each other. Right. Well, you know, as you say, these tiny humans and then middle childhood, there’s different things happening on in their brain and their prefrontal cortex and the way that they process information. So I want to ask you as a parent, you know, some real questions. And then of course, it will illustrate some of the information that you share in big kids, bigger, bigger feelings. either you or Rachel use an example where, obviously paraphrasing here, but I think it was one of the daughters. was teasing the sibling. then the mama, which was you, Rachel, said, well, no screen time tomorrow, if you remember this. And I think as a parent, sometimes we see behaviors in our children. And in our family dynamic, our older son, who’s four years older than our younger son, who’s now five, sometimes he’ll take his choice because he can, and he’s bigger, or he’ll do things. And as hard as a parent, like we don’t know. Sometimes you wanna say, because my kids don’t get screen time except on the weekends. So sometimes I’ll say something, well, next Saturday you’re not gonna get your 30 minutes of screen time. like you said, it’s punishment, give, take, but sometimes you don’t know what else to do. Totally, yeah. Well, and that’s real and a part of just being a human on planet Earth too, that you’re not always gonna in the moment have the answers. So giving ourselves grace is so key here too. But in an ideal world, what we’re looking at is trying to identify, we get to be like a detective and see what’s the need that’s driving this behavior. So when your older son comes and takes that toy from his younger son, is it a need for connection? Speaker 2 (08:08.768)Is he really trying to connect or engage or get somebody’s attention, which is a connection? You get so much attention though. Some of our kids, it’s like a leaky cup. It can feel like a leaky cup for connection. I have a high connection seeker. My daughter’s a high connection seeker. And it can feel like there’s not enough connection in the world that will be enough for her. And my son is not a high connection seeker. It’s almost like it feels easier to fill his connection cup. But also for him, his sensory needs are more demanding than hers. we all just have our own little blueprint walking through this world. But when we can look at what is the need driving the behavior and we break these down into two categories. We have sensory needs and we talk about the nervous system, the nine sensory systems which we can get into. But when we’re looking at that, we’re really looking at are they under stimulated or overstimulated? Are they hungry? Are they tired? Do they need to move their body? Do they need a break from stim? They need to chill. Right, okay. That’s more easier to decode in a way. Speaker 2 (09:11.822)For a lot of us, we grew up in cultures where sensory needs were seen as needs. Food, water, movement, were seen as needs. And connection needs were often seen as wants. It was like attention-seeking behavior, and that was a negative thing. And it wasn’t seen as, you need attention, that you have this need for inclusion or belonging or knowing that you’re loved or worthy or valued. so for a lot of us, the connection needs can actually be quite triggering. where it can feel like, my gosh, this kid’s so needy. They need so much. And that’s our own bias coming up into play and being able to recognize that is half the battle. And then really being able to see like, okay, this is a need for connection. And maybe I just spent a bunch of time connecting with this kiddo and maybe they’re a high connection needs kid. And so what are the outlets for that? Great. Speaker 2 (10:07.154)And we give some examples in the book. And I was actually, was just at an event down in LA where we were, I was met with a group of a hundred moms and we were talking about exactly this. Like what are ways that we can help our kids? Like if I can’t give them more connection in this moment, I’m cooking dinner or I’m trying to do something. What are outlets for that? And we have things like journaling back and forth or being able to call a friend and chat with them on the phone or. FaceTime a grandparent or a cousin or a friend or an aunt or uncle and find ways to have that outlet that’s not always directly from you as the parent or maybe even from the sibling who might have lower connection needs and kind of needs a break to be by themselves for a little bit. Right. Okay. So would you say as a parenting expert, Alyssa, punishment or taking things away doesn’t really work? It just doesn’t solve the problem. What we’re going to do is we’re responding to the behavior on the surface. As long as we’re not meeting that need, you’re going to keep seeing new behaviors pop up because the need doesn’t go away. Right? In the same way that if you had like a baby who was hungry, you could bounce them and shush them all day long, but until you feed them, they’re not going to stop crying because they’re hungry. And if we have a child who needs to move their body or a child who needs to connect, we might put out the fires on the surface, but until we meet that need, you’re just gonna see new ones pop up. Speaker 1 (11:40.226)Do you think that there’s some children in the way that they’re, you know, finding their way in the world? Like my older son is very mischievous, for example. Slime in my farm boots and he thinks it’s hilarious and he laughs like he’s always… Pranks like he loves it. And he just thinks it’s hilarious. And he gets so much attention. Again, like always, all the time. Do you feel like maybe some of this behavior is, you he wants his… He would. Speaker 2 (11:54.888)Such a connection seeker. Speaker 1 (12:09.57)get a rise out of his brother and. really from a place of connection. I want your attention. want you to notice me. brother. From anybody, right? Our high connection seekers, they’ll seek it out anywhere. we can help them identify that. I would say things like, that was a silly prank that you did, or that was silly joke. Did you want me to laugh? Were you trying to connect with me and help kind of bridge that awareness for them of when you’re doing these things, it’s because you want to connect. That’s how we help build their awareness of what is my need. So then when they grow up in the world, they can move through the world knowing, when I feel this way, it’s because I’m hungry. When I feel that way, it’s because I’m tired. When I feel this way, I need to move my body. When I’m doing these things, it’s because I need to connect with somebody, because I need to feel that sense of connection and belong. you Speaker 1 (13:07.278)As many of you know, I’ve been drinking our beloved Power Protein Smoothie Community Recipe for many years. And I do this day to day as a great way to get energizing protein into my day without feeling too heavy. Usually I drink it in the early or mid afternoons. And lately for the protein, I’ve been using the most pure, delicious vanilla chai plant-based protein blend that I want to share with you by Anima Mundi. This protein is made from pumpkin seeds, brown rice, sacha inchi, and pea, and it contains adaptogens like astralagus, ashwagandha, and aluthero, which all have been known to help support recovery, enhance performance, and help the body adapt to everyday stress. It also has digestion-boosting warming ingredients. You know we love that, like cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger. This protein tastes delicious and there’s a subtle sweetness to it which comes from the vanilla and the monk fruit. It’s a way to deeply nourish your cells with amino acids, complete plant-based protein. To get this delicious plant-based blend, please go to anemamundiherbals.com and use code Kim20 to get 20 % off your purchase. Again, we’re talking about the amazing vanilla chai protein powder. That’s anemomundierbals.com code Kim20, A-N-I-M-A-M-U-N-D-I-H-E-R-B-A-L-S.com code Kim20 to get 20 % off your purchase. In a world that is constantly promoting health fads and quick fixes, we can never get past the importance of the basics, such as creating optimal digestion, eating whole foods, and hydration. Yes, hydration. When we are optimally hydrated, our skin glows and is nourished, and it greatly helps us avoid headaches, cramps, fatigue, brain fog, and weakness. Besides water, we need electrolytes, which need to be replenished like probiotics. Every morning in my room temperature water that I drink first thing, Speaker 1 (15:27.99)I add a packet of Element electrolytes, usually the watermelon or raspberry flavors, which contain a science-backed mix of magnesium, potassium, and sodium. Element contains no sugar or artificial colors or fillers. I highly recommend that you also incorporate electrolytes into your routine as well to optimize your hydration, which your body, mind, and heart will greatly benefit from. And for now, our amazing community listeners, We’ll get a free sample pack with any element drink mix at www.drinkelement.com slash feel good. That’s eight single serving packets for free with any element drink mix purchase. Please go to www.drinkelement.com slash feel good. That’s www.drinklmnt.com slash feel good. Also check out the new element sparkling, which is a sparkly, fizzy electrolyte water if you love fizzy drinks. Speaker 1 (16:34.958)I’ll just tell you a fear as a parent hearing this is, again, he gets so much attention. Again, everybody says it, right? I pay so much attention to E. So I guess my fear is if he’s still wanting more, what if when he grows up, he gets into unhealthy relationships or he just always has to be in a relationship because of that. I want to reframe, like, you’re looking at intimate relationships. I see most often with our high connection seekers, they often actually seek it out even much outside of intimate relationships in friendships and in other spaces where, like, they might be the human who corrals kids to, like, all get together and play a game or they can often be, like, leaders in a pack where they… are so many outlets for connection that it’s not just an intimate one-to-one relationship. There are so many avenues for it. And as they continue to grow, they’ll find places to connect in different ways to make that happen. And we can support them along the way. But these are humans who it’s a superpower and we need them in this world. My daughter is like this. She is a high connection seeker. She walks into a room of 100 people she doesn’t know. And she’s like, my God, yes, 100 new friends. She’s 20 months. And she’s four? my gosh. and do you think that correlates with being an extrovert? Yeah, a lot of way. Speaker 2 (18:00.494)A lot of our high connection seeking kiddos are also extroverted. You a little bit have to be because it’s going to fill that cup, right? That like when you’re in that, although I just had a kid pop into my head who I when I was teaching and he was five years old and he had high connection needs, but he was an introvert and he would seek out more one to one like peer connection connection for me as a teacher. But he would look forward in those kind of smaller groups. activities and avenues, but he would glom on to like other kids and just want to be near them and want to talk to them and want to share and yada yada. But it was like he had one or two good friends in each space. He wasn’t like, I want to hang out with everyone in the class. Well, so there’s natural extroverts, introverts, connectors, like you said. How do you think this relates to, and you know, this is sort of on a spiritual level and in yogic traditions, you talk about the true self and self connection, which is self-effulgence and fulfilling and being so connected to the love inside that you wanna share it with people, but you’re not needing it. Yeah, I think that we’re, I’m going to pull in the like neuroscience and too. When we’re looking at this, I want to recognize that there’s not a human on the planet where there’s a one size fits all. Right? all of us, our nervous systems operate differently in the way that we integrate stimuli, the way that we integrate the world around us and make sense of it is different for all of us. And for some kids, they are their superpowers. I can noticing the details. or they know if something moves in their environment. They can get really dysregulated by like piles or clutter or things like that because they’re super attuned to the visual stimuli in their space. Some humans who sound, they’re really aware of the sounds in their environment and they can get really overstimulated by sound, especially if there’s competing sounds happening. Some kids who notice the details of how clothing feels in a heightened way. It’s too itchy, it’s too tight, it’s too something. Speaker 2 (20:02.378)And I look at these as superpowers, that they’re really good at noticing, they’re very attuned to those senses. And there are some humans who aren’t as attuned, and for them, can, it then appears as though they can maybe be more easygoing or they can move through the world differently, because their brain isn’t so hyper-focused on like, my gosh, what is that noise? I can’t stop hearing that clicking sound in the background and kind of tuning into those things in different ways. And so when we’re looking at the integration of all of that stimuli. We go through the nine senses in the book and outline it. But I think it’s really important in then saying like how you integrate them then determines how you show up in the world and what you need from the world around you based on how your nervous system is integrating that stimuli, because it’s going to find kind of homeostasis and regulation in different ways based on your unique nervous system. Does that make sense? It does to me. It sounds a little complicated to explain to a child. for sure. I’m going to break it down in different words to Yeah, to a kid. we this so the bulk of the work that we do at Seed is in school systems. I work in schools, elementary, middle schools, and then in childcare programs. And we teach teachers like how to talk to kids about this. How do you teach them about their nervous system? Totally. Well, there’s this idea of self-regulation even is something I think we need to really break down that and self-regulation. Speaker 2 (21:32.404)You teach self-regulation through co-regulation and self-regulation isn’t one size fits all. Wait, so say that again for a moment. mean co-regulation, you regulate yourself and then you’re in the space and then… You know, it’s like goosebumps. It’s almost like the science of heart coherence. Well, our hearts are giving off a magnetic field that’s 100 times stronger than the brain. So when we’re more emotionally calm, you talk about emotional intelligence and the more coherent, our heart rhythms are smooth and our… borrowing your comms. Speaker 2 (21:52.108)Not anymore. Speaker 1 (22:06.306)Brains are nervous, everything’s in sync. People around you feel that. Totally. So as we calm ourselves, we can calm our children more. That’s right. I think of it like the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat. A thermometer is just going to read the temperature of the room, you’re going to join it. A thermostat sets that temperature. And in order to set that temperature, you have to be mindful of your own regulation. So often we want kids to regulate for us. We want them to get calm for us when we can’t. Right. Yeah, I see parents who are literally screaming in public. Yeah. And they’re like, you calm down. We’re at the playground and I heard this, this mom didn’t know we were there. We were in the bathroom and she was like talking to her two girls and then me and my younger son came out and she was like embarrassed. I mean, I felt bad for her because obviously she didn’t want, no one wants to be that person. Nobody wants to be in that state where their body feels so out of control that you’re like, need the humans around me to change their behavior so I can feel in control. And so so much, that’s why I said so many folks, they come for the kids, but stay for themselves that we dive into what is, how does your nervous system work? What does it look like to learn how to build your own self-awareness and self-regulation so that we can then navigate co-regulation with our kids so that Speaker 2 (23:28.098)when our kid comes in and they roll their eyes and they slam the door and they give a sass or the sarcasm or whatever, that we can be the calm force in that moment. And it doesn’t mean I don’t hold boundaries. It doesn’t mean that any behavior is allowed. It does mean that I am really working on, okay, how do I calm my body so that I can respond with intention instead of react from a place of dysregulation. So let’s play this out for any mamas out there who have teenagers or getting close to teenagers, not there yet. But although I’ve seen some behavior from my nine-year-old defiance and disrespect, which you talk about in the book. Let’s say your teenager comes home and you say, or, hey, I’ll be the teenager. Well, it seems like something happened at school today. I’m fine. Yeah, I am here if you want to chat. Would you like space or do you want to talk about? Speaker 1 (24:30.862)Why are you so annoying? Why are you always trying to say that to me? I love you so much. I’m going to be cooking in the kitchen. If you want to come touch base, that’s where I’ll be That’s not a fun. Okay. Let’s do another one. Yeah. I mean, so it’s a center. You’re the center and you’re not trying to grab. Okay. I love it. I’m not taking the bait. Right? Like the bait is all, that would be me joining their energy. And I’m saying like, I’ve got you. I’m still calm in your storm. Okay, let’s do this one, which I have experienced where my son will call me by my first name and I don’t like it. Sure. Okay, so I’ll be the teenager tween, okay? Yeah. Comes home from school. Hey, Alyssa. Speaker 2 (25:15.544)Hey, did you want my attention? I heard you use my first name. Alisha? Yeah, it does sound like you want my attention. I’m here if you want to chat or hang. Lyssa, Lyssa! Yeah, come

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The Connection Between Body Movements and our Emotional & Physical health with Henry Abbott [EP. #1011]

Week’s Episode Special Guest: Henry Abbott Summary: In this episode Kimberly Snyder speaks with Henry Abbott, a former ESPN journalist and physical movement expert, discussing his new book ‘Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance.’ They explore the importance of heart-led living, the connection between movement and emotional well-being, and the significance of understanding our body’s mechanics to prevent injuries. The conversation emphasizes the need for diverse movement practices, the role of weightlifting, and the impact of hydration and nutrition on overall health. Abbott shares insights on how to improve mobility and stability, particularly focusing on the hips, and the importance of trusting our bodies to move freely and joyfully. About Henry Abbott Henry Abbott is an award-winning journalist and founder of TrueHoop. He led ESPN’s Networks 60-person NBA (National Basketball Association) digital and print team, which published several groundbreaking articles on sports science and body injury prevention. He also won a National Magazine Award. Abbott currently lives in New Jersey. Guest Resources: Website: treuhoop.com Book: Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance Episode Sponsors: LMNT OFFER: Right now, for my listeners LMNT is offering a free sample pack with any LMNT drink mix purchase at DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD. That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT any LMNT drink mix purchase. This deal is only available through my link so. Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. USE LINK: DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD FATTY15 OFFER: Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/KIMBERLY and using code KIMBERLY at checkout. USE LINK: fatty15.com/KIMBERLY Episode Chapters 00:00 Heart-Led Living and Wellness Introduction00:53 Exploring Athletic Performance and Injury Prevention03:06 The Importance of Connection to Movement05:42 Understanding Movement Patterns and Injury Risks09:01 The Role of Hips in Mobility and Stability12:00 Weightlifting and Its Benefits for Women15:00 Hydration and Nutrition for Optimal Performance17:38 The Science of Movement and Body Awareness20:50 Fascial Release and Its Impact on Mobility23:31 The Interconnection of Physical and Emotional Health26:35 Embracing Diverse Movement Practices29:31 The Role of Animals in Understanding Movement32:41 Conclusion and Call to Action SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS Glowing Greens Powder™ Feel Good SBO Probiotics Feel Good Detoxy Feel Good Digestive Enzymes Feel Good Starter Kit Feel Good Skincare KIMBERLY’S BOOKS Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart The Beauty Detox Solution Beauty Detox Foods Beauty Detox Power Radical Beauty Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life You Are More Than You Think You Are OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY! Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877 How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne Transcript: Speaker 1 (00:00.302)Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast, which is all about heart led living and wellness. When we awaken the power of our hearts and let that guide us through our daily choices and decisions, through our four cornerstones, food, body, emotional well being and spiritual growth, we will experience the most incredible results and create more vitality, health, strength, peace. abundance and love in our lives. I am your host, Kimberly Snyder, New York Times bestselling author, founder of Saluna, creator of the research-based Heart Aligned Meditation, wellness expert, nutritionist and international speaker. I am passionate about supporting you on your unique heart and wellness journey. Let’s get started. Speaker 1 (00:57.518)Hi everyone, welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited for our very special guest. Joining us here today, Henry Abbott, who is a former ESPN journalist, a physical movement expert, and he has a new bestselling book out called Ballistic, the New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance. He talks about research on pain, psychology, biomechanics, and neuroplasticity. And as we all know, this is such an important topic today to increasing our mobility, keeping our mobility going for decades to come, to really enjoying our lives, to living with our hearts, to living with passion, to avoiding injuries and aches and pains, which really detract so much from our enjoyment of life, our spiritual growth, so many things. So Henry, thank you so much for being here with us today. It’s a delight. Thank you for having me. And so you and I were chatting a little bit before about your daughter, who I know is involved in soccer, and I was saying, Henry, I love your book. Really cool cover, by the way. If any of you guys are watching this on YouTube or if you’re listening, check out our YouTube so you can see the beautiful cover. And I said, you know, at first, you you say, oh, athletic performance. And some could say, hey, well, I’m not really an athlete. So this doesn’t apply to me. But as I got into the research and the book, and there’s some really interesting things that you’ll talk about here about glutes, really helping with back pain, hips, like lots of things. I said, you know, this is such an important topic for women and everyday women like me and moms. So that’s, you know, it just, it’s a lot broader. It’s really for everyone actually, we could say. Speaker 2 (02:41.718)I know this sounds like super salesy and woo woo or whatever, this really is like these people that we’ll talk about have a different lens for looking at the human body. They’re looking at it with biomechanical, granular biomechanical movement data. Who cares? Why is that fun? like, if you look this way, you start unlocking all kinds of crazy stuff about how to manage your body a little better. You kind of end up with a better owner’s manual to your own body. and get to age better. I’m trying to do it myself right now, right? So I feel like we have MRIs, we have x-rays, they solve a bunch of problems, but they don’t solve all the problems. And a lot of us are struggling with things that we can see in how we move. And that’s kind of, I think, important revelation for all of us moving forward. Well, one of the things we talk about here so much, Henry, in the community is connection, right? Connection to your heart, connection to your intuition, connection to what foods would best serve you and so on. And I think a lot of us develop movement patterns that maybe we’re not really connected to or fully aware of that form from an early age or some sort of emotional trauma or something can. cause our feet to turn out, or I know I can dump a lot in my hips, or I lean on one side, and I noticed a lot, you know, I held my babies on one side of my body. And so I think it’s really important to bring that connection back to movement because we’re in this physical bodily temple to house us through. And if we’re abusing it in these microwaves or not really nourishing proper movement, it does have a profound effect on our life’s experience. It’s super real and your doctor doesn’t know about this, unless you have a really good doctor, right? But like they, there’s a kind of a dumb example in the book of the guy who’s the founder of P3 that the book is about. His name is Marcus Elliott. was suspecting there was a better way to prevent injury while he was training to become an elite triathlete. And he would reach his hand forward in the pool and, you know, end up with pain in his shoulder. And then his coach was like, just move your hand a little bit out to the side, right? Speaker 2 (04:52.34)and all the pain went away. We all understand this could happen, right? Of course how you move can have these effects, right? But he was like, well, look at that. That’s kind of like he was going to have an injury and then he moved a little differently and then he was fine. I think so that’s one little super basic example. We all are doing this to ourselves. I think we’re open to the idea that maybe if you jog the way that you land on the ground or the way that you know, there’s People debate should you land on your heels or on the ball of your foot or on your toes or should you get these shoes or those shoes. Like we’re used to the idea that these things could, with all those steps, pounding again and again, end up with like maybe your knees hurt or maybe your hips hurt, right? And so I think we’re used to the idea that how you move can inform whether or not you get injured. These are the people who are just taking that and really making a scientific approach out of it, making a systematic scientific study of like what kinds of movements tend to connect to what kinds of outcomes. You know, it’s interesting in the beginning of the book, you say, know, trainers say that we often go back to the type of movement that we did in high school or earlier. And it’s funny because I played soccer, you know, when I was younger and then I stopped. And now my older son is nine and we play a lot of soccer and I’m experiencing some those knee pains. I’m oh, don’t run like this anymore. It’s sort of taking me back to that period in time. And I just stopped Henry, right? Instead of trying to figure out like maybe I’m not really running correctly or, I did some marathons too. And I don’t know. It was just interesting because it’s like, huh, I don’t know if this is the pounding or my son’s place a little rough, it’s, you know, it’s funny. He’s a rough nine year old, that’s what’s happening. Speaker 1 (06:33.422)He’s a rough nine-year-old. We have a lawn and we love to, know, anyways, sort of rough house. But I think it’s amazing when we can sort of say, like you said, I think what’s interesting is micro shifts. You know, people are experiencing towards injury, but so many aches and pains. As you know, Henry, it’s really common back pain. For me, a lot of women, hip pain. And so how do we sort of take this research and some of the things you talk about in the book and apply it to, again, the everyday movement and our workouts so we can benefit? Yeah, so I think there’s so much to unpack there. One for me is just thinking about the goal. And after spending three years marinating in all of this super geeky stuff about, you know, hips and knees and ankles and how we move and all this stuff, you know, I think it was important for me to kind of think about what is the real goal of all this. to me, my personal answer is like two dogs playing on the beach, like off leash dogs just romping around. maybe they’re in the ocean, maybe they aren’t, they’re covered in sand, they’re throwing each other down, but they’re having the time of their lives, right? And that’s movement, right? That’s really moving, right? And so to me, moving with joy, I’m not a dog, but to me, that kind of fun, driving that amount of fun from how you move is to me the goal. And so I’ve done a lot of physical therapy in my life. I’ve done a bunch of, injured myself a bunch of different ways. And I know that sometimes you have to go, or this place from writing about P3, know, NBA players, NFL players, MLB players, WNBA players, they’re in there doing their prescribed workouts with coaches watching carefully and it’s work, it’s real work. But that’s not the goal, right? The goal is for you to play soccer with your son, hopefully to be feeling great doing that, right? Like the goal is to have this body just move how you want it to move. And so what’s keeping us from that? Speaker 2 (08:36.662)And it’s tricky. We all have different bodies and there’s not going to be one answer for all of us. But some big themes do emerge from all of the thousands of athletes that they’ve studied. And one of the big ones is that basically every single one of us needs to work on our hips. Yes. In different ways. your hips, women tend to be more mobile than men, but plenty of women are not mobile enough. And so either your hips need work on mobility or stability. when mobility is not exactly the same as yoga, but you could think of it as a yoga type move or stability would be more weightlifting. You need to put muscles around your hips to keep them from being dangerously unstable. It’s to know which one of those you’re in. Yes. when you say that, obviously men, everybody has a different body, but in general, can say women’s hips, you know, kind of go out and they don’t align with your waist and they don’t drop straight down to your knees. So how does that affect injuries for women, whether we’re talking about stabilizing or mobility versus a man’s body, which is more linear. There’s all kinds of, like we’re hundreds of years into kind of guessing around that issue, right? And one of the big topics is ACL tears, right? This is where women athletes tend to have eight times the ACL tear rate of men. So why is that? It’s like a big mystery, right? And if you want that, you can go and watch like the finest experts in the land have given lectures on this and like they’re all like one theory is hormones. One theory is exactly as you described, like the just the geometry, right? There’s theories about how big is the actual ligament, right? Women tend to have a smaller ligament or how big is the canal the ligament sits in and on and on. All these things that are easy to study with MRI and x-ray or blood tests, they’ve been studied. if you go and look at these lectures, the answer is everything is wrong. Every single theory has a study that proves it and one that disproves it. It’s all messy. Speaker 2 (10:45.454)It’s hard to find a bright thing. So when you just look at movement, you see that there is like 100 % of NBA players who tour the ACL land on the outside of their foot and then roll to the inside. It’s a little movement that no one studies that is 100 % or like another very common thing. Big theory that’s gone around and probably we all have trainers who will cite this, right, is about cue angles. Do you know about cue angles? Have you heard this phrase before? Okay, so this is exactly what you’re describing with like if your hips are wider, there’s a chance for your legs to like your knees to basically have a can travel in towards each other as you squat. Yeah, it’s like they call it valgus collapse. Please explain. Speaker 1 (11:34.177)I Speaker 2 (11:37.964)Right? And so if you were to squat in front of a trainer and your knees were to dive in together, they would like have a cow. They would be very upset about this. Right? So this Q angle thing is seen as like a major risk factor for catastrophic knee injury. what they found in a bazillion, studying thousands, literally thousands of athletes and how they move at P3 is that just having your knees dive in like that is not a giant risk factor. Instead, Some of those cases where you need to dive in, have something happening that’s very hard to see with the naked eye, which is your femur, your upper leg bone, is rotating. And it ends up being kind of like twisting the drumstick off the turkey. And it like, that tears your ACL, is your upper leg bone rotating. And so when I talked about needing hip stability, this is what we’re talking about, is like, you can literally lift weights to build the muscles to hold your femur in place so it doesn’t rotate. That’s like the kind of work we should all be doing, but that so far most of us don’t even know to think about. you Healthy fats are essential for our health and wellbeing. And I’m so excited to share with you a very exciting scientific breakthrough to support our long-term health, wellness, and beauty. C15. This is the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in 90 years. Studies have confirmed that C15 is three times better, broader, and safer than taking omega-3s. Speaker 1 (13:14.254)C15 works by strengthening our cells, improving our mitochondrial function, and protecting us against damaging free radicals. The result is better long-term metabolic, liver, and heart health. Taking C15 can help to slow aging, boost your sleep and your skin, hair, and nail health. The most pure brand that I found that I absolutely love and take every day is Fatty 15. This is a vegan friendly supplement of pure C15. It’s a tiny little capsule that you take every day and it helps to replenish your cells with essential C15. You can get 15 % off your Fatty 15 subscription or 90 day subscription when you go to fatty15.com slash Kimberly and use code Kimberly at checkout. Please check it out for yourself and take it every day as I do. Once again, that’s fatty15.com slash Kimberly. That’s fatty15.com slash Kimberly to get 15 % off your 90 day subscription. It’s the small consistent things that we do on a regular basis that give us great results over the long term. And one of the easiest and most effective steps that we can do on a regular basis is to create optimal hydration in our body. It’s really the difference between a grape and a raisin. Of course, the grape is beautiful and looks supple and is full of water. And that’s what we want our energy to feel like. That’s what we want our skin to look like, glowy and supple and just full of that beautiful hydration. So it comes down to water, of course. That’s quite obvious. But also electrolytes, right? Electrolytes are a really important part of hydration and we need to replace them regularly. And I’ve been talking about certain foods for years, like celery and chard and certain foods, which are really great to help with electrolyte levels. But in our modern busy days, and because we’re running around and we’re sweating and there’s stress, I also recommend adding a packet of electrolyte to your room temperature water every day as I do. And the reason for this is that in one packet, you’ll get a hefty dose of science-backed electrolytes. Speaker 1 (15:38.894)including sodium, potassium, and magnesium. It has no added sugars or filler. And it’s just a great way to ensure that you’re really staying hydrated. And this is one of the easiest, I find, and most effective wellness steps because hydration is fundamental to our organs functioning at their best and also to enhance detoxification and many other things. So right now, Element is offering our amazing feel-good community. free sample pack with any element drink mix that’s drink element comm slash feel good D R I N K LM NT comm slash feel good to get your eight single serving packets for free once again drink element comm slash feel good Speaker 1 (16:36.012)the diagrams in the book as well. The visual because unless we’re, you know, a trainer or we studied a lot, it’s like it can be hard to visualize on a level with these detailed bones and the muscles. Yeah, no, this guy, John Early did these illustrations and they were like, they’re hard to do because they have to be like medically accurate, but also hopefully kind of like fun to look at. Right. This one is I think maybe important. I don’t know if you’re if you’re watching. Yes. OK. So when I mentioned that everybody’s hips need help with mobility or stability, you can do a little test. Right. If you can side plank all 10 toes pointing forward with your leg elevated, your body like in a big X. If you can hold that for 30 seconds, just lock it out, then they would say that your hip stability is sufficient, right? Like your hips are stable enough. Similarly, if you can do this standing figure four, so you’re like, take your, let’s say your right ankle and hook it over your left knee, rest it on top of your left knee, and then sit down and get so that like your hips are are level with your knees. If you can sit down like that, then your hips are mobile enough. But If you’re like me, then you can’t do either of those things and you have to work on it. Right? So we all got to work on these things. Yeah, it’s cool. These are both yoga poses or asanas that can be incorporated in a routine. This is a version of an ukta asana. Yeah, and that’s, I love that. That’s really interesting, seeing the diagrams, because I’m like, hey, I’ve done these movements before. I never thought about them in terms of this language, but they’re kind of fun to do. Speaker 2 (18:21.688)Do think you can lock out that side plank like that for 30 seconds? Gosh, Henry, it’s, you I used to have such a serious asana practice. It was every day, hour and a half. And then I started shifting to walking for different reasons, to getting outside. It’s just a break in the middle of my day. And it’s really hilly where I live. I live in the mountains, so it’s like quite a tough walk. But, you know, my husband keeps saying, you know, got to do more upper body lifting, you know, for bone health. And I got some weights. And so I’m… thinking about shifting the routine. So I’ll report back to you because I don’t know. Honestly, I used to do it a lot and definitely hold it for that long, but it’s been some years. So it’ll be interesting to see what I try. I’d be interested to know. It’s hard. I mean, it’s hard. My wife is amazing at that kind of stuff. She can do it. She can do all that stuff. she’s very, she can go to any yoga class and just fall right into whatever the teacher is doing and just fine with it. But me, I don’t have that kind of, that’s not my forte. Well, know, injuries even within yoga in the last few years of my practice, I noticed when you’re doing the warrior poses, because people think, yoga is great for injuries and it doesn’t have slow impact. But I would experience towards the end hip pain from doing the warriors. And again, I don’t know if that’s dumping into my hip or not having enough hip stability, but I did experience some pain from the asanas. What do you think about that? Speaker 2 (19:54.54)Yeah, that brings up an interesting point. I grew up, my family, have, parents and sister, we have really tight hamstrings. And so to me, anyone with hip mobility is like a magician. And clearly you’re better off, clearly you’re better injury resistance, et cetera. So I’m always working on trying to get more hip mobility. And so I’ve been to a bunch of yoga classes and I always think the teacher is probably someone who’s just in a better category than me in terms of injury risk, right? But Marcus Elliott, who this book is largely about, he was explaining that when his first yoga teacher in Santa Barbara, where he lives, she had the most incredibly mobile hips and she would show off. She could do all these crazy yoga moves that no one else could do. But she had both hips replaced in her early 50s. he would explain the reason why is because she didn’t have hip stability. Right? Like she worked crazy on hip mobility, he’s like, but if she had just done basic weightlifting to just, you know, she could move that hip super mobile, but like she didn’t have the control of it to keep it from getting out of place. And for things like our femur rotating other lots of other things from hips ability, like she didn’t have very stable hips and you want both. What kind of weightlifting would you do to stabilize your hips? There’s a fair amount of that kind of stuff in the book. I think there’s different flavors of hip instability, but they do recommend basically for everyone really good form as you squat and do hinging motions. I follow their routines now and I spend a lot of time doing single leg RDLs. There’s also in the book, most of what they prescribe is individual to the athlete. Speaker 2 (21:44.28)The warm up is the same. There’s a 13 step warm up, includes a fair amount. Your hips will be like, the hips will notice the warm up. I don’t know, it takes 15 minutes maybe depending how careful you do it. But there’s a ton of like Romanian dead lifts. You know this move, the Romanian dead lift? It’s like the most basic form is you stand on one leg and then you keep your torso and the other leg in a line as you like. pitch forward and touch the floor in front of you. You’ve done something like this, I’m sure, a bazillion times. And you can do that with a weight, starting with a lightweight, et cetera. But that’s a hinging motion, right? Which will put a pretty good bunch of tension on the back of your hip. I’ll tell you, for me, they obsess about the form of how you do that. And I would tend to do it leaning a little too far forward, which means I wasn’t using the proper muscles in my hip. they have to have me like… Yes. Speaker 2 (22:42.018)I mean now I still as a little cue like when I get in the form for that I like try to really like shift back a little bit so that when I bend over and come back up I’m pulling on like the very back of my glute as opposed to recruiting other muscles from your hips to kind of cheat. Right. You know, this is so, it’s so interesting we’re talking about this, Henry, because I can say, you for me, I really like walking in nature and it feels good or doing my yoga poses sort of like that teacher you described where I could put both of my feet behind my head and do these crazy poses. But sometimes it’s like what we need is not, not to say our favorite thing or the other thing that we’re most drawn to, but it is the balance. And Dr. Suhas was an Ayurvedic teacher and doctor came on here and he was talking about how, he talks about in different contexts, weightlifting is really important to women for that cough of that groundedness to balance. we’re in our heads and Vata energy and it actually makes you feel strong so you can feel strong on the decisions you make in your life. And, know, in terms of what you’re talking about preventing injury and just feeling really stable. So maybe it’s, you if you’re like me and you’re like, well, I don’t know, like I never, I never go to these like weight, I don’t go to the gym and I don’t really lift, you know, I’m not drawn to weightlifting classes or whatever. But what you’re talking about the book is things that we can incorporate and you can make a huge difference in balance. Because if we’re just doing the things that we like, can, that’s, that’s probably why I started to feel some injuries from yoga because I wasn’t doing the stabilizing aspect. Yeah, that’s definitely a factor. I think they do. There aren’t a lot of things they recommend for everybody at this place, but like they do recommend there’s some kind of weights in everybody’s program, right? Like it’s just, it’s just maybe there are ways around it, but I think it’s, it’s, you know, your husband’s probably right, which I hate to say, you know what I mean? There’s all these studies and stuff, you know, like, Speaker 1 (24:40.226)Right? But then it’s like, again, you’re talking about patterns. It’s making space in our life and creating a new habit. It’s also I mean, I never thought I’d be a weightlifter. I was a runner and just like never had any interest in that. And then I started having like hip trouble basically. And and a friend of mine, she is a kinesiologist who runs a gym. And so I started going to her gym and it’s I don’t know, it’s 75 % women and like, which matters to me because like, it’s fun as hell to go there because everyone’s very supportive, right? Like, like, it’s just not it is not the like, it is technically a CrossFit gym. But I don’t know, they got that certification for whatever reason. the fact is, no

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Overcoming Trauma through Somatic Body Healing with Britt Piper [Episode 1008]

Week’s Episode Special Guest: Estelle Bingham Summary: In this conversation, Kimberly and Brittany Piper delve into the profound impact of trauma on the nervous system and the importance of somatic healing. Brittany shares insights from her new book, ‘Body First Healing,’ discussing how trauma is stored in the body and how somatic work can help individuals reconnect with their bodies to facilitate healing. They explore the concept of intergenerational trauma, the natural responses to trauma observed in animals, and the significance of body awareness in the healing process. Brittany also shares her personal journey of overcoming trauma and the tools that can aid in navigating trauma responses, emphasizing the importance of building resilience and capacity for emotions. The conversation concludes with a message of empowerment, encouraging individuals to trust their bodies and recognize their innate ability to heal. About Britt Piper Brittany Piper is a renowned speaker, author, and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner specializing in sexual violence prevention and trauma-informed care. As a survivor and leading advocate, she has educated thousands worldwide, including the U.S. Army and Department of Justice. Her book, Body-First Healing: A Revolutionary Guide to Nervous System Recovery, offers a groundbreaking approach to nervous system regulation and recovery through harnessing the wisdom of the body. Guest Resources: Website: https://www.bodyfirsthealing.com/about Book: Body-First Healing: A Revolutionary Guide to Nervous System Recovery Episode Sponsors: LMNT OFFER: Right now, for my listeners LMNT is offering a free sample pack with any LMNT drink mix purchase at DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD. That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT any LMNT drink mix purchase. This deal is only available through my link so. Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. USE LINK: DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD FATTY15 OFFER: Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/KIMBERLY and using code KIMBERLY at checkout. USE LINK: fatty15.com/KIMBERLY Episode Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Somatic Healing and Trauma02:59 Understanding Trauma and the Nervous System06:07 The Role of Body Memory in Healing08:56 Intergenerational Trauma and Its Impact11:57 Lessons from Animal Behavior on Trauma Recovery14:50 Cultural Disconnection from Somatic Practices17:52 Personal Stories of Healing and Resilience21:05 Justice and Advocacy for Survivors of Trauma24:31 The Journey Through Trauma and Justice28:49 Understanding the Body’s Response to Trauma33:51 Navigating Anger and Emotional Regulation39:32 Empowerment Through Somatic Healing46:41 The Path to Self-Healing SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS Glowing Greens Powder™ Feel Good SBO Probiotics Feel Good Detoxy Feel Good Digestive Enzymes Feel Good Starter Kit Feel Good Skincare KIMBERLY’S BOOKS Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart The Beauty Detox Solution Beauty Detox Foods Beauty Detox Power Radical Beauty Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life You Are More Than You Think You Are OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY! Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877 How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne Transcript: Kimberly Snyder (00:00.718)Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited for our very special guest today and our conversation with Brittany Piper, who is a speaker and somatic and trauma trained practitioner specializing in somatic experiencing. She has a brand new book out called Body First Healing, Get Unstuck and Recover from Trauma with Somatic Healing. Brittany and I were speaking just a little bit before the podcast about how amazing it is to talk about trauma and healing on such a deep level now, which wasn’t really happening a generation earlier. So Brittany, thank you so much. Welcome to our show and congratulations on your new book all at the same time. Brittany Piper (00:43.95)Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I’m excited to have a conversation today. So I appreciate you having me here. Kimberly Snyder (00:51.118)You know, it’s very close to my heart, literally. My recent book was about the heart and dropping into this deeper place beyond the linear mind. And I found that really reflected in your book as well, this idea that things happen to us, challenging experiences happen of all different degrees, and we can’t just think our way out of it. Can you talk a little bit about how experiences can actually get stored? in our nervous system and in our body, similarly to how we might not properly digest certain foods. Brittany Piper (01:26.124)Yeah. Yeah, the, so I think that there’ve been so many different definitions surrounding trauma over the years. And I think that the one that lands best with me is that trauma is any experience that overwhelms the nervous system’s capacity to cope. And when that happens, your nervous system can get stuck in chronic states of survival. Or in other words, it gets stuck. Kimberly Snyder (01:42.381)Mm. Kimberly Snyder (01:50.062)Okay. Brittany Piper (01:54.016)in the states or the responses that it used in the past. And it’s as if somatic work, which is body-based healing work, we work with the nervous system and with the body, and more specifically body memory rather than verbal memory to help the body and the nervous system to know that the trauma is over, essentially catching up with what the mind already knows. Like the mind knows that the trauma was, you know, maybe seemingly back then, but maybe the nervous system doesn’t know that. Kimberly Snyder (02:14.473)Right. Brittany Piper (02:23.714)and it’s not a rational system. Yeah, it’s a system that operates through experience, through this felt sense. And so what we really try to do is help people in their nervous system to kind of disarm and to recognize you don’t have to be stuck in survival mode anymore. So, yeah. Kimberly Snyder (02:25.516)Yes. Kimberly Snyder (02:43.904)Survival mode is that feeling of almost, when you say that word, it conjures up frantic, irrational, big emotions, freezing, like all sorts of ways that can manifest and not feeling safe. Brittany Piper (02:59.01)Yes, yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of the best way I describe it is like an analogy I like to use is like, we’re armored up, but you can think of like this night suit of armor. It’s like we’re battled up to go or we’re armored up to go into battle. But at some point it’s like our nervous system didn’t get the memo that the battle is over. And so we kind of remain with like this armor on and this armor can start to, know, what once started off as self protective in nature. Kimberly Snyder (03:06.582)Yes. Brittany Piper (03:25.486)it can start to show up in almost the self-destructive or self-sabotaging ways, which I think is such a more compassionate way to look at it as this is self-protection, not self-sabotage. And we can kind of like lose sight of ourselves. We can disconnect from ourselves because we get so lost in this armor. Yeah, and I’m sure you experienced the same. A lot of the people that I work with, they come to me and they’re like, I just feel stuck. Kimberly Snyder (03:43.854)Right. Brittany Piper (03:52.168)And I feel like I’m not myself and I don’t know how to get out of this. And that stuckness is really what it boils down to is a nervous system that is stuck in those active defenses still. Kimberly Snyder (04:03.99)And has it been your experience that no matter what we’ve been through, we can reteach the nervous system through some of the tools that are in your book, which we’ll talk about in a moment and through this more body-based experience, because I’ve met people, and I’m sure you talk about in the book, that have been in therapy, because we’ve been talking, go to therapy, but they’ve been talking about the same story. for years and years. I’ve met people that seem to have the same narrative, victimhood, I wasn’t treated like this, and they almost still sound angry. So it’s like, are we really clearing it out by continuing to reinforce and talk about it? Brittany Piper (04:35.0)Yeah. Brittany Piper (04:39.992)Mm-hmm. Brittany Piper (04:46.54)Yeah, exactly. So I think what I can maybe like describe a little bit is what we call the stress or the threat response cycle. And so when your nervous system goes into an active state of survival, know, fight, flight, shut down, freeze, fawn or functional freeze, what happens is first, your body is kind of inundated or flooded with survival hormones, stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. Kimberly Snyder (04:54.231)Yes, please. Kimberly Snyder (05:13.644)Yes. Brittany Piper (05:13.74)and this helps to mobilize you to fight or flee. And so when you have an experience though that overwhelms that stress response, you can kind of think of it like a pressure cooker. All of that adrenaline and cortisol is still stuck within the body and the physiology. And so there’s no amount of talking that out of your body. You have to be able to move through that experience and express or what we call discharge all of that adrenaline and cortisol. So. You you see this, I’ll use an example of maybe abuse or, you know, something that was violent in nature where you weren’t able to fight back. You might find that you now have what we call a thwarted fight response. And so you have likely a lot of suppressed anger that’s being held down within the body and the system. And so the work actually starts with not throwing someone into the deep end of their trauma. Kimberly Snyder (05:50.765)Right. Brittany Piper (06:07.276)like we commonly do in therapy, right? That’s what we’re used to. I just wanna talk about it. I wanna get into it. Instead, we actually walk them into like the shallow end and we’re like, hey, what would it be like to think about a moment recently where you felt a little frustrated, a little angry by something and maybe it’s, yeah, someone cut me off the other day and it kind of like pissed me off. And you’re like, okay, and as you’re thinking about that, what do you notice in your body? Wow, there’s some heat here and I’m actually noticing my jaw is clenching. And so, we touch into more gentle moments of activation, which allows that, again, that pressure cooker, we just gently open the lid for a second and close it back down. And it lets out and discharges some of that adrenaline and cortisol, getting these chronic stress hormones out of the body. And we do that consistently over time. But what’s also great about that is that you’re showing the nervous system or you’re giving it evidence that, hey, you can be with an experience of anger. Kimberly Snyder (06:54.627)Mm. Brittany Piper (07:05.358)maybe like you weren’t able to do in the past and you can be okay. And so it’s this evidence that over time is like, yeah, when I do feel anger in my body, like this frustration of, don’t like the way that person talked to me. Instead of shutting it down like it automatically do, or instead of running away or avoiding conflict, my body now has this muscle memory of like, I can be with that anger and I can express it. so trauma work doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to go back into all the hard stuff. Kimberly Snyder (07:28.078)Well. Brittany Piper (07:35.692)Right? We’re working with the body memory here in the present and untethering that, like, from the past. If that makes sense, Kimberly Snyder (07:42.851)Mm. And it’s, imagine it’s different for each person. noticed in, you know, the heart work awakening, the heart or heart coherence, it’s not linear. Like, you had this much trauma, so it’s going to take this prescribed amount of time to reteach. It could be big awakenings or big realizations. Certain junctures are maybe a little bit more time to work through. that? Yeah. Brittany Piper (07:48.611)Yes. Brittany Piper (08:01.998)Mm-hmm. Brittany Piper (08:05.804)Exactly. Yeah, yeah, because every year you’re working with each individual person, their nervous system, but also the nervous systems that came before them. So like a lot of the work that we do is we work with a lot of, you know, it’s important to know like intergenerationally, what was your life like in your earliest years, because our first three years of life really lay the foundation for our nervous system. Kimberly Snyder (08:23.286)Yes. Brittany Piper (08:30.306)And so that surprises people when they get into somatic work. They’re like, well, I can’t even remember that. And it’s like, your body remembers. And yeah. And then even before that, even when you’re, exactly. Yeah. And even, you know, what were the experiences of your mother and your grandmother? So, and that’s something I, you know, deeply explored in my book with my experience was that journey of intergenerational trauma, you know, cause I’m not. Kimberly Snyder (08:32.535)Thank Kimberly Snyder (08:36.724)so much or even when you were pregnant or when your mother was pregnant with you. Brittany Piper (08:56.578)I’m not sure if people probably come to you with this of like, think I have the signs and symptoms of trauma, but like, I don’t think I’ve experienced anything. And so we explore indirect trauma, which is like, yeah, but I think there’s also like, you know, getting to the, well, trauma might not be what you think it is. I think we have these ideas of, yeah. Kimberly Snyder (09:05.058)Kimberly Snyder (09:15.982)Well, when I read the body keeps the score, it blew me away that statistic, which really stayed in my head from Bessel van der Kolk, that was 75 % of Americans experience some form of trauma. Because I think some of us hear that word and we think about accidents or a one-time incident. one of the things that, because I wouldn’t have used that word in the past, Brittany, but for me, it was learning, not being seen and heard, like different levels of neglect is actually a really big form of trauma throughout childhood, which is something that I did go through. well-intentioned parents that were busy, were hustling, they were working, but there was a lot of coping mechanisms and perfectionism and eating disorders and just constant achieving to sort of fill that unworthiness feeling. So. Brittany Piper (10:02.99)Yeah. Brittany Piper (10:09.027)Yeah. Kimberly Snyder (10:09.688)Thank you for bringing up that it is actually much more than we realize. And I love how you delve into Peter Levine’s work. We could touch on that for a moment where he researched animals to see that, you know, they don’t have trauma the same way we do and they’re like naturally shaking and trembling after something happens. Can you share a little bit about, you know, that work and how we can, what we can learn from it as humans? Brittany Piper (10:33.888)Yeah. Yeah. So I first want to touch on what you just mentioned is, you know, in hearing about your experience, it reminds me a little bit. So in the somatic experiencing world, we use the definition of trauma is that it’s anything that feels like too much, too fast, too soon, or not enough. And so like when you talk about neglect or things like that, those are things that often get overlooked. Kimberly Snyder (10:54.156)Mmm. Kimberly Snyder (11:00.993)Yeah. Brittany Piper (11:01.026)You there are such experiences that are overlooked in our culture today. And I think because they kind of fly below the radar, they sometimes can fester, you know, in our lives in much more intense ways. And so, yeah, just thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, Peter’s work was profound for me to the point where I became a somatic experiencing practitioner. So, SE is what I’m professionally trained in, but… Kimberly Snyder (11:10.647)Yes. Brittany Piper (11:28.31)Yeah, his book, Waking the Tiger, he explored how animals in the wild, they experience threat all the time. They go into these survival responses, yet they don’t remain, and I’m using air quotes, traumatized in the way that humans do. And humans, mean, we have the same primal systems, subcortical systems that animals in the wild do. In other words, our nervous systems are nearly identical to nervous systems of animals in the wild. And what he found is that animals in the wild don’t have this wonderful conscious human brain, right? And so they’re often not talking themselves out of their feelings. So animals, when they experience activation and they go into fight or flight and they have that adrenaline and cortisol, they will naturally discharge all of these, know, press hormones. And I remember in my SE training, they’re like, okay, we’re gonna watch some animal videos today. And I’m like, we’re all looking at each other like we’re watching animal videos. Kimberly Snyder (12:18.06)Wait. Brittany Piper (12:27.202)But it was fascinating to see how a gazelle would run from a cheetah, would get away, but it would go into a shutdown or a freeze response and it would faint. And then we watched this video as it would kind of seemingly come back to life and it would lay there and it would do this labored breathing and then it would start trembling and shaking. And then you see the mouth kind of salivating. And then the next thing you know, it’s standing up, shaking its body and it’s running off. Kimberly Snyder (12:55.402)All innately, it’s just in their knowing, their intuitive knowing. Brittany Piper (12:58.56)Exactly. Yes, exactly. And we have those same mechanisms and those same responses. So like, you know, as a professional speaker, I had debilitating stage fright. And for years I was like, I need to go to Toastmasters to figure out how to get over my fear. I need to do like exposure therapy. Like I got to figure this out because I would freeze on stage. Like I’d get dry mouth. I wouldn’t be able to talk. And when I learned that it was less about like calming down and like making the shakes go away, and it was more so like, how can I actually allow some of that to be here and move it through my body? Like our body naturally knows how to metabolize the charge of emotions. If we just stopped getting in our way and overriding what the body knows how to do, or… And I don’t want to say that we always consciously do that. Sometimes it’s done to us and we remain kind of stuck, dissociated, and our body doesn’t know how to contain or move through those emotions. But yeah, the study of animals in the wild is a really big part of the SE framework. Kimberly Snyder (14:10.126)You know, I think about these ancient cultures where there was a lot of tribal dancing and gathering around fires. And I wonder if that was embedded in these earlier cultures. We’ve unfortunately moved away from a lot of that innate knowing. when I was backpacking in Africa, I saw almost, I think it was a funeral gathering and it was, the dancing was like so, intense and it was just beautiful, but dramatic. And it was. Brittany Piper (14:23.084)Yeah, absolutely. Brittany Piper (14:29.613)Hmm. Kimberly Snyder (14:40.11)Like they were moving the grief through their body. I had never seen anything like that in any sort of funeral. And it was amazing. It was somatic as you were describing. Brittany Piper (14:50.51)Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, even as you’re talking about that, I’m getting goosebumps now because that’s, I feel like in this world that we live in, in kind of a modernized culture, we’ve become so disconnected and associated and detached from our bodies. You know, this fast-paced world that we live in, we’re very mind heavy, which is fine. However, our body in many ways, a lot of the upgraded science shows that our body is really in the driver’s seat. the vagus nerve, which is like the longest nerve in the body. It’s known as the information superhighway. But in the early 2000s, we found that this bidirectional informational nerve, 80 % of those messages go from the body up to the brain and only 20 % go from the brain down to the body. And so, yeah, the body holds so much ancient. Kimberly Snyder (15:40.279)Yes. Brittany Piper (15:45.934)primal wisdom and I feel like we oftentimes we’re scared of our bodies. We don’t know how to connect with our bodies and that’s why like in my book, but also if you were to work with any somatic experiencing practitioner, they give you a vocabulary of sensations to like learn the language of the body and I feel like this is something that I do believe is innately built within us, but it’s become so we’re so disconnected from it that it feels so foreign. Kimberly Snyder (16:00.728)Mmm. Brittany Piper (16:14.351)We kind of forget that we have bodies sometimes and then we… Kimberly Snyder (16:18.11)Yeah, it becomes very heady. It’s the same thing with the heart work. know, so surprised to learn the heart is another brain with 40,000 neurons and it too is sending more messages up because we do get so rational and linear. You know, how we started the conversation trying to think our way rationally, well, I’m not in danger anymore or this is safe, but it’s still in there until we feel. And I want to get into some of those tools you share, but first I just want to acknowledge Britt how vulnerable and Brittany Piper (16:28.91)Mm-hmm. Brittany Piper (16:37.421)Mm-hmm. Kimberly Snyder (16:47.49)beautiful it was that you shared parts of your story as not someone just teaching about this, but someone that’s gone through profound healing and embodies what it can be like to live in far more peace in your body. And you mentioned about your brother’s car accident and also your, you know, the sexual assault, which, know, is, you know, as a woman, could say it’s like the, you know, one of the worst things that we could imagine happening to our sense of safety. Brittany Piper (17:17.016)Mm-hmm. Kimberly Snyder (17:17.462)And to have gone through that and teach about it now is amazing. Brittany Piper (17:22.263)Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I always say a lot of my work started off as me search. You know, I would say probably most of us in this space, right, where a lot of our work is informed by our own personal experiences. And, you know, I had been in and out of conventional therapy for a lot of my life and on different medications. And it was supportive, but I felt like it would bring temporary relief, but I never found like resolution. And I would get in these cycles of like, Kimberly Snyder (17:27.66)Sure. Brittany Piper (17:52.44)Britney’s drinking again or, Britney’s in jail now or, Britney’s in the hospital. And I just felt like every couple of years I was in this cycle of self-destruction, like just destroying myself from within. And I had an experience, which I share about in the book, when I ended up in a jail cell. And it was in that jail cell over three days that my body was able, I feel like, to process decades old grief and trauma. that I had become such an expert at running from. And I also came from a family where we just put everything under the rug. You just muscle through, you armor through, right? And in my early 20s, I realized that avoiding isn’t the same thing as healing and that eventually you have to do the work. So yeah, coming out of that jail cell, I felt like a literal different person. And I remember the judge, this was shortly after my sexual assault case, she remembered who I was. And she said, we’re gonna drop the charges, but she said, you need to learn to live with your pain better. And that was kind of like a big moment because she didn’t say, get over it, get past it. She said, learn to with, yes, with it. Which was a totally new concept, right? Like that’s not what I, you you muscle through, you move on, you get past it. And that was also a message that was passed down. Kimberly Snyder (19:03.775)with Brittany Piper (19:15.95)through generations in my family, in my lineage. And when I looked at the history of the women in my family, we’re all very much the same, right? We just, keep it pushing, we keep going, we stay busy, we focus on work, we overachieve, we’re perfectionist, kind of like you said. But the masking could only last for so long. And so I got into somatic healing back in 2012, just on my personal. in my own personal journey, because I was like, what happened to me in that jail cell? My body felt different. Something happened. And as I started to learn about the literature and also started experiencing it myself as a client, I was like, how does the world not know about this? And so that’s kind of what started that process for me of just trying to share with anyone that I could, because I was like, this needs to be more widely known. Kimberly Snyder (20:08.589)Yes. Kimberly Snyder (20:12.428)Before we move on from your story, Britt, I also want to acknowledge, and what an amazing judge to have been put in your path. It was like a messenger, right, from the divine to say that. But I also want to acknowledge in our society when these sorts of things happen, how easy it is to pretend, like you said, like to not take someone to trial for rape. I have a friend who was raped in college and her parents were like, no, this is going to be too big a deal, just get over it. And so she never pressed charges. And now, you know, a couple of decades later, I don’t know if she ever fully healed. She has never had any other long-term relationships. And so the bravery it must have took to go on trial for two years. And there was a short trauma from that, but maybe a healing that you actually saw it all the way through. Brittany Piper (21:05.26)Yeah. Yeah, there was. I think justice looks so different for every survivor. My work in the trauma space started. I was working in sexual violence and rape crisis centers here in the States, but mainly abroad. And justice shows up in so many ways. unfortunately, we live in a time where favor is not in the hands of the victim. It’s often most times in the hands of the perpetrator. It’s a systemic issue and one that I still fight to end. Like every day this past week, I was in Pennsylvania. I had three programs talking to college students through different universities in Pennsylvania. And I always ask this question at the beginning of every program, like, will you please quietly stand if you know someone who’s experienced sexual violence? And usually it’s like, I’m just tearing up talking about it. Usually it’s like, I don’t know, 50 to 75 % of the audience will stand, which is like gut wrenching. The second question is then, for those of you standing, will you please stay standing if you know that that person reported it? Half of them sit down. And then the people that are still standing all then ask, if you know that the perpetrator received justice, please stay standing. If they did not, can you quietly sit down? And usually it’s a handful. And I’ll talk to audience of like hundreds, thousands, handful of people. An event I had this past week, there were probably about 250 people standing. <

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Join us to get weekly tips, videos, recipes, and 10% off your first order!

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