[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Grove podcast today.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have Nicole Sachs who is a psychotherapist and author and a podcast host and recent author of the book.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mind your body.

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Happy to be here.

[SPEAKER_02]: So mind your body.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is we got to get deep into this because [SPEAKER_02]: I want to know, there it is for you watching, go get one.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to know what was the journey as a psychotherapist, too, of going towards the body of like mind your body and what do you mean by it?

[SPEAKER_02]: And let's get into where it came from.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I have been a student of the Mind Body Connection for many, many years because the whole story began in my own body, my story.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people who go into this kind of healing go through the door of their own personal experience and I am no exception.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just in really short order, when I was nineteen, my back went out, I was in college.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was very young, obviously stressed out and my parents had to come and kind of [SPEAKER_00]: collect me, pick me up and bring me home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I underwent all the tests that any responsible parent would do, X-rays, MRIs.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had North of Pedic surgery consult.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I say back went out, I mean, I couldn't walk.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was being helped to the bathroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a pretty serious situation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the diagnosis, which they did find is structural finding was called degenerative spondylolis thesis.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's an abnormality of the lower spine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, very reasonably, this team of doctors looked at my films, which apparently are very severe and looked at my pain, which was very severe and said, okay, we found the reason for your pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's this abnormality.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was nineteen ninety, but I actually think it's still true that when people get this diagnosis, the recommendation is spinal fusion surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which is a very significant surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: It requires to fuse the spine with a metal rod and it leads to decreased mobility for life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, just in terms of like the eitgeist that horrible story with Louie G.

Manjioni, the guy that who took the life of an insurance executive, that was his diagnosis and that was his surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I got a lot of people kind of contacting here on that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: because people were like, wow, you know, he has the exact same story as you, but his story began like mine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, our paths diverged completely.

[SPEAKER_02]: He wrote a book and healed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: The rest of history.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, the long and the short of it is I came by it honestly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I opened my mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not want to have the surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: My prognosis was very dark.

[SPEAKER_00]: They told me I wouldn't no longer be able to exercise or travel or [SPEAKER_00]: kind of live any sort of normal life in the likelihood of me having a biological child was slim to none because the danger of destabilizing my back with the weight of the baby and through my understanding of mind body medicine and all the things I've evolved since I had three babies I exercise till the day they were born I live a completely chronic pain free life and I still have this abnormality and it is a normal abnormality but it was never the reason for my pain.

[SPEAKER_02]: So what was the journey of exiting the pain?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so curious.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think that what most people don't really embrace, which my whole, my whole purpose in life is to get them to open their minds to this is that we live in a mind body system.

[SPEAKER_00]: And basically what I'm teaching most people, they already believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I could be lecturing to a room of a thousand people and I can say raise your hand if you've ever had a stressful day or been very overwhelmed and gotten a headache.

[SPEAKER_00]: And every hand goes up because we all know what it's like to be super overwhelmed and be like, oh, such a headache.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like the old joke in the fifties, you know, not tonight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dear, I have a headache.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, why are people always complaining of headaches because they're stressed out and they're overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, OK, keep your hands up then.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you ran to the ER for a CT scan, if you're brain panicked, you had a brain tumor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, everyone laughs and their hands go down because people don't think that something structure really structurally wrong with them when they have a headache.

[SPEAKER_00]: People know that when they have terrible news or see a phone number at midnight of their mother, their stomach can go sick.

[SPEAKER_00]: They know that like when people panic, they break out into hive.

[SPEAKER_00]: So essentially, we all know that emotional stimuli cause physical reactions.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one doubts it, no one argues, but as soon as anything becomes chronic.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as the pain gets scary, we move from our understanding to the mind body of the mind body connection to chasing the symptoms.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, only focusing on the part of the body that the symptom is expressing itself and I seek to help people understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: that when we apply our understanding of my body medicine to chronic pain, the ability to rewrite those neural pathways and to bring the nervous system from fight to fight or flight to rest from repair is astonishing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've spent all these years, of course, working with my own body using my own story and my body as an example.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then thousands of people around the world, it's just the most life-changing work.

[SPEAKER_02]: What's at the core of the beginning, I guess, of that journey than of healing chronic pain?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the core, well, the core of my journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: was I think the core of many people's journeys at the beginning, which is desperation leads to surrender and surrender leads to openness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you are willing and open, it's incredible how things can come in and change your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was desperate.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not want to have a life that was that limited.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to have children.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to avoid.

[SPEAKER_00]: spinal fusion surgery that by the way no surgeon was saying would guarantee pain cessation so I'm like well why would I even do it if I'm definitely like no one's promising me my pain's gonna go away so you know it starts with understanding that [SPEAKER_00]: We might need to look into a different paradigm for solutions after we have spun our wheels and something isn't working.

[SPEAKER_00]: And back pain is one example, but in my years of experience of working like you said as a psychotherapist, [SPEAKER_00]: That's how I began, like entering into this journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was migraines, fibromyalgia, you know, back-necked shoulder knee hip pain, problems that people associate with chronic Lyme or chronic mold toxicity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying that any of these things aren't real.

[SPEAKER_00]: The pain is real.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not in your head.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not making it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not hysterical, you're not overly sensitive, and you are not at fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are really common misperceptions of mind-body medicine, but what's really happening, you say, what's at the center of it?

[SPEAKER_00]: When we are human species, that is not meant for chronic fight or flight.

[SPEAKER_00]: No animal is meant for chronic fight or flight.

[SPEAKER_00]: fighter flight comes in bursts so we can run faster, jump higher, freeze without needing to, you know, use the bathroom or eat like the way that our systems work is to keep us alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is modern day society is an onslaught of predators.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are predators in the form of, you know, your boss who treats you poorly or your children who feel really needy and you are over identifying with them or your love relationship where you just don't have a voice and you don't know how to find it or yourself worth or the way you feel about your body, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: These predators are everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we live in this human body in this world full of predators, our brains and our nervous systems get confused.

[SPEAKER_00]: They think we're in actual danger.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I heard an interview recently with the celebrity and she was talking about her incredible fame in the eighties and nineties and how she was essentially a panic attack all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the way she described it is, my nervous system didn't know the difference between a camera and a gun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is a perfect way to describe what I'm trying to teach people, which is if your nervous system perceives you to be unsafe, it starts to scan the landscape of your life for where you can find safety.

[SPEAKER_00]: And pain by its very nature is a protective posture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pain alerts the human body, it's time to slow down.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to take care of yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to ask for help.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to soften the demands on yourself because you obviously some things amiss.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so chronic pain is an epidemic of a confused conversation between the brain and the nervous system and the body.

[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously in one podcast we're never going to explain everything, which is why I wrote the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: So people like really can like sink in and get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to [SPEAKER_00]: invite people to replace their skepticism, their fear, and their certainty that they know what's going on in their body with curiosity.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just need curiosity.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need you to believe me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just need you to be curious because as I walk this earth and as I collect these stories, thousands and thousands of them, many of which are in this book, I say to myself, [SPEAKER_00]: We need to rewrite the story.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to open space for a paradigm shift because this regulation, this work, this mind-body work allows people to live completely free of chronic conditions.

[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think creates that skepticism that we have to overcome or even is, and where did this skepticism did it show up for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was very young, and I obviously am a therapist so I had, you know, four years of an undergrad degree, and I was in grad school when I finally really understood my body medicine.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was, I was minded for this, not everybody is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And another thing, and I think you and I maybe right before we jumped on air on air had this conversation, because I think I've heard you say this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason I became a therapist is because I was a therapist since I was eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was the person that when I was a kid, people would come to and be like, I love the way you see things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I tell you what's going on with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: You're such a great listener.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would really appreciate your time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was already minded for this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be honest with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have a lot of skepticism.

[SPEAKER_00]: I understood what I'm kind of explaining to you and I said, yeah, that actually makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do believe stress causes a headache.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do know that like in my last breakup, I lost my appetite or when I go to make a presentation, I feel like I need to run to the bathroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I know the human body experiences emotions physically.

[SPEAKER_00]: So why would this be any different?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so it made sense to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think people are skeptical quite honestly, Mark, because we're so scared.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're so scared, you know, chronic pain is an epidemic of fear and meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about long COVID, because long COVID is a huge thing in my practice right now that people are completely eliminating the long COVID symptoms, the fatigue, the brain fog, the unexplained chest pains, all the long COVID symptoms, the headaches.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you start getting those symptoms, [SPEAKER_00]: And you start looking at your life and thinking, well, I've already missed my son's little league game twice.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to miss it the third time or I have that work event last next week.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if I don't get there, I could lose my job and my family depends on my income.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are meanings associated with what the factors in our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we assign meaning, meaning gets attached to fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: because urgency to be different than we are is read by the nervous system is fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is an untenable situation alert alert alert and that sends more symptoms.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like a snowball rolling down the hill.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I honestly think skepticism is the static, the block that fear can cause, that stands in between us and opening our minds to something different or more expansive.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, when I think about something like long COVID or phypomalgia or chronic pain or, you know, even the cluster of Lyme disease being in there and all that, I used to work in sales and pharma years ago and I sold a drug for irritable bowel syndrome.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the, all these sort of clusters of things overlapped with the irritable bowel and for physicians, which I called them both the family physicians and then also the gastroenterologist, [SPEAKER_02]: They, I would say mainly the family physicians had a lot of frustration with these patients.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe not outwardly to the patient, but that's a lot of what I heard because they couldn't find a solution, you know, and so here I was a rap with like, oh, I have a solution, you know, blah, blah, sales opportunity.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what I now in hindsight can see quite clearly is like, I remember there was some studies that correlated irritable bowel syndrome to sexual trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was like, it was like almost not supposed to be talked about in the talks.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm curious when you think about, because the cluster of symptoms and disease states or whatever is the right term for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: that overlaps with personality styles and wounding patterns and attachment styles.

[SPEAKER_02]: There seems to be a fairly high correlation, which I would imagine is the data from the adverse childhood experiences looking at.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm curious, yeah, are they essentially healing through the mind-body experience?

[SPEAKER_02]: Are they healing core wounds?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is that sort of the key premise?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what is it?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, yes, this is sometimes people need a visual.

[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the best visuals I can give is I want you to picture that each of us has a reservoir inside of us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So just picture like a clear science speaker and exists it between your belly and your chest.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in that reservoir, there are three main contributors.

[SPEAKER_00]: One is childhood, which, you know, the adverse chat, the ACEs stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: One is daily life, which we're all subject to, you know, that includes whatever experiences you had during COVID, that includes every member of your family, that includes all the things from childhood that still live within us because, you know, we are products of our experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, [SPEAKER_00]: When we move through life, we move through life based on the filters that childhood has given us.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I am too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am unworthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am different.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am uniquely alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, these are things that come, all of us have some of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's daily life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the personality is the third contributor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oftentimes, people who have come to my work identify as perfectionists.

[SPEAKER_00]: Goodest, which means it's really important for me to be seen as a good person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Co-dependent, you know, really, really attached to the relationship between yourself and if somebody else is okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you're okay, I can feel okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: being your own worst critic, holding yourself to an impossible standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of these things cause a tremendous amount of panic in our systems because as we all know, it is impossible to be perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is no such thing as perfection.

[SPEAKER_00]: So people can mask perfectionism and say, no, no, no, I'm just like, I'm trying my best.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have really high standards.

[SPEAKER_00]: I seek to meet them, but I would say, [SPEAKER_00]: Perfectionism is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Perfectionism is constantly scanning the landscape of your life to see where you screwed it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: and berating yourself in ways that you would never speak to someone that you love and care for.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, those three factors end up dumping into the reservoir.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens with chronic illness or pain or any of these things we're describing in irritable bowel is a huge one that is completely eliminated through people doing my work is that the reservoir reaches maximum capacity.

[SPEAKER_00]: and like anything in maximum capacity, it has to move somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it starts knocking on the door of our consciousness, our day-to-day minds, because this is a lot of stuff from our childhood and even personality stuff, it's unconscious, it's in there, but it's operating underneath that level of consciousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it knocks on the door and it says, I won't be suppressed any longer.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need to be heard.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens to your brain in these moments is it, [SPEAKER_00]: senses a predator.

[SPEAKER_00]: Same as it would in our, you know, the dawn of early civilization when you saw a woolly mammoth or a sabertooth tiger, you know, and you thought that you were in danger, your nervous system senses danger.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: If she knows how overwhelmed she is and how her personality is relentless and how she keeps getting triggered back into that bully and third grade who ruined her life and made her feel suicidal, she's going to expire.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know it sounds hyperbolic, but I actually choose hyperbolic words purposefully because you need to understand the stakes are that high when when our nervous system senses a predator.

[SPEAKER_00]: goes into a fight or flight stays there, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's no easy solution for, you know, your mother or yourself worth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then because of the need for protection, the pain signals fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the irritable bowel.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now you were supposed to go to that work event because, you know, you were supposed to go, you can't leave the bathroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now you have to cancel and all though that is not a life that you choose.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a safer space, according to the brain and the nervous system, and it would like to keep you there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when things become chronic because it's working.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's when I can describe how it all kind of comes together.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's so well explained.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I love that metaphor of the reservoir.

[SPEAKER_02]: Good to think of it's working because it's keeping you here, not there.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think when we can have compassion for that, then it's on the body's like, it's actually doing what it's supposed to do, which is protect you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: So what is the journey of moving through this?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what are the steps?

[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously, I know your book dives much more deeply into it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, if you can give us a high level, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think that the best way to describe it is my work is like three legs of the stool and like any stool without one of the legs it will not stand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the in the simplest terms the work is believe do the work.

[SPEAKER_00]: and patients and kindness for yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: So under the umbrella of belief, there is real solid brain science behind what I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm very clear that even though we're calling it mind body medicine, you are not making it up and this is not in your head.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's brain science behind why you are struggling, hurting, why disease is perpetuating your body.

[SPEAKER_00]: So part of believe, and I did spend a good deal of time with it in the book, is talking about the brain science educating you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the prescription is knowledge, educating you on what actually is going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because you know something is a miss.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you don't know what is a miss.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you think, oh, it's my shoulder.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I have this bad MRI and I, it hurts and I have frozen shoulder.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've limited motion.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's like, it, it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's what's happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you think the shoulder is what's a miss.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you chase the shoulder, [SPEAKER_00]: And I say this with all the compassion in the world, you will never stop that race.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will chase that till the day you're done here because even if you get the shoulder to resolve as a result of injections and medications and surgeries, if you don't deal with this core overflowing reservoir, [SPEAKER_00]: two months later, you're going to start to get migraines or stomach, you know, gut issues and you will never know that it has anything really to the shoulder because who would that's why the prescription is knowledge.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I teach people about the core of what's going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's believe do the work.

[SPEAKER_00]: The foundational part of doing the work is a program I have created called journal speak.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not regular journaling.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a specific expressive writing practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: that puts a ladle in the reservoir and dumps it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a detailed practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: You destroy it when you're done.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not like, you know, an affirmation journal or taking, keeping track of your days.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is like, you know, this is a brain dump.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a vent.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a specific way to get in there because the problem with the nervous system protecting you [SPEAKER_00]: Is it protects you without your permission and without asking your opinion?

[SPEAKER_00]: And thank God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if it didn't, you would be dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: If a car is veering in your direction, you will jump out of the way before you even have a consciousness that you're doing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you touch a hot stove, you're going to pull your hand off.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to sit there while your skin melts on the stove thinking about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in the same exact reflexive instant, [SPEAKER_00]: The pain signals fire because the nervous system thinks it's protecting you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the overwhelming reservoir needs to come down.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to get in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to get our hands dirty and figure out what.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, going back to your question about the core wounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, this is where I provide a road map for us to with so much compassion and understanding go to those places that [SPEAKER_00]: We don't pay attention to who is time for your core wounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have three kids in a job and, you know, a mortgage.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we're not, you know, sitting around romancing our core wounds, but they're in there and it's remarkably simple, actually.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once you start getting in touch with them, like you don't have to solve your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not about solving your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is about bringing the unconscious to the consciousness so you're not being triggered into a protective mode and the third leg of the stool.

[SPEAKER_00]: Patience and kindness for yourself is very simply understanding that trying to do any healing work without a self-compassion practice of some kind is like bailing water out of a boat with a hole in it because you don't even realize you don't pay attention once and once again there's no time to be conscious of the way you speak to yourself and until you wake up to it [SPEAKER_00]: you do it all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I teach people, I do it over treat every summer at the Omega Institute in New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on faculty there and we do a whole morning on understanding how we can even practice self-compassion because it's so alien to people.

[SPEAKER_00]: But once you understand it, you start to realize [SPEAKER_00]: that ticker tape in your mind of how unkind you are, how shaming, how blaming, and how you would never do that to your child or your best friend or anyone you feel lovingly toward.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a game changer in a way that I never knew.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought self compassion was stupid and an ad on until I didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I figured it out, it was really crazy how it changed my life.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you started writing, what is the journal?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, journal speak when I started my own journal speak practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Were you just like venting and all of a sudden you're like, hmm, there's something here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, did you see your better and no one's done your did your body feel better after you did it?

[SPEAKER_00]: So the story is kind of extreme and great.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll tell you here.

[SPEAKER_00]: We love extreme great stories, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So at the worst of my chronic pain, and I like to tell people that chronic pain recovery, just like any recovery, is not a straight line.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not a track from the bottom to the top of the mountain.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is concentric circles woven up the mountain and, you know, such as life.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we all mourn like we just want.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and here's the thing about you being a pharmaceutical rep.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want a pill.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want to, you know, it wouldn't be nice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't it be nice if there was something that would just work and take away, you know, whatever else us, and I wish to, by the way, guys, but they don't work.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't work the way we need them to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not against all medication at all at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, you know, some sort of like a extreme person at all, but I want you to live your best life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that just taking a pill for something, unfortunately, doesn't work.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in my chronic pain recovery journey, [SPEAKER_00]: I was able through my first understanding of mind body medicine to have my first two kids to exercise till the day they were born.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then I had a really acute incident.

[SPEAKER_00]: When my son was ten months old, he was totalling around and I had to move his walker from my deck to the driveway.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like two little steps.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it felt like there was a hot knife dragging through my back.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a terrible electric.

[SPEAKER_00]: Brett take your breath away kind of pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so in addition to feeling the physical pain, of course, I went into a terrible shame spiral, which is the doctor's told me not to live this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I believed in mind body medicine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that, you know, I was doing the right thing, but clearly I have now failed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And not only now have I failed myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I failed these two children.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like a very, very terrible dark time in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it led to a year of being in terrible chronic pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I did everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had physical therapy three days a week, electric stem treatments regularly on my back.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a therapeutic massages that oddly now I understand made my pain worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I say I understand is because anytime we're trying to [SPEAKER_00]: get make a physical solution be the solution when we're so disregulated.

[SPEAKER_00]: It kicks up the urgency to heal.

[SPEAKER_00]: It kicks up the fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why isn't this working for me?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the pain signals get greater because the nervous system is so confused.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that was happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: It culminated in a moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had my two kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were one and three and I had them in a deli and I was trying to pay and they were being one and three-year-olds, grabbing things off the shelf.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I have a face?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: I paid and I had them by the wrists because we were going to my car and it was an active parking lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my back started to seize up and I felt that I felt it building and building and by the time I got to the car, [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't get my kids in the car.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was totally locked up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was in searing pain and all the mind-body medicine had gone out the window.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was completely in despair.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a despairing state and I couldn't let go of their wrists because one moment they could run into traffic.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were one and three.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had no idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just stood there in that parking lot at some moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will never forget.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I put my forehead on the driver's side window of my car and I just wept [SPEAKER_00]: for my broken body and my broken life and my ruined, you know, children.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really, really real.

[SPEAKER_00]: And somehow, I don't know how long we stood there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got them in the car after a while.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got them home.

[SPEAKER_00]: I put them to bed and I sat in my bedroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember I had this big picture window that looked out onto the trees and the stars.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a clear night and I surrendered.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, what I'm doing is not working.

[SPEAKER_00]: And mess with me, but don't mess with my kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: I endangered my children today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I need to do something differently, and I took my lens, and I just moved it right back to my body medicine, and I said, I'm missing something, and I need to find out what.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually went into New York City at the time, and the man who would become my mentor, Dr.

John Sarno, who's the grandfather of my body medicine.

[SPEAKER_00]: He passed away about ten years ago in his nineties, but at the time, he was still practicing at NYU Langone Medical Center.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to see him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, Dr.

Sarno, I thought my body medicine was the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I did this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've gone through all the physical stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he looked at my films.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, there is no way, no doctor at Harvard or Mayo or Hopkins will tell you that this abnormality, although great would account for the way your pain moves around.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this, you know, he said, you have a process going on in your body.

[SPEAKER_00]: He explained all the stuff to me that I am now teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've evolved quite a bit, but he explained to me, you need to find a way to get to these darker feelings.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, one way to do it is people journal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, journal, I said, I don't think you understand here, buddy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't get my children in their crypts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what do you mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to journal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he explained to me all the brain science.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, OK, fine, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Desperation leads to surrender.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I went home and I started journaling about the childhood daily life and personality.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm such an ace to do it in.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did all the lists.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was very, very on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it felt like a whole lot of nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like I was playing the tapes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard a hundred times.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm tired.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was writing about motherhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a moment that I can only call a spiritual awakening where a voice kind of came into my consciousness and it said, you're lying.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not lying.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do have two babies in cribs.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do have two babies in diapers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't prepared.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my second one came sooner than we expected.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all the facts, the facts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the voice just said, you are not crippled in chronic pain because you are tired and you have two babies in cribs.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what is it?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I [SPEAKER_00]: had a moment where I was invited into what would be the first line of journal speak ever penned, which is, I felt it rising seriously, I felt like when you before you throw up and I wrote the line, I hate being a mother and I just stare at it on the page and I was sick.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they're, and it's so crazy about journals because it doesn't stay true, but you need to walk through these ugly sort of five year old roots to get to what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I started writing, I hate this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not good at it.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not what I expected.

[SPEAKER_00]: My kids, I had the wrong kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're too crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're too wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: My daughter looks exactly like my, at the time, my husband, my ex husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was, I was just saying, I said, I said, fuck it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just went for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm starting right, and it was amazing what started to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: started with myself, moved on to my parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: F these people, they made so many bad choices.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I suffered and I'm writing about all that childhood stuff and I'm writing and then I went in on myself, such self-loathing, such toxic and dark self-loathing.

[SPEAKER_00]: What are you a failure?

[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's a mother.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do this with the hell's wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just came to this place where I had a realization mark that you could have put a gun to my head.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could have put [SPEAKER_00]: Any sort of pressure on me I never would have been able to tell you, which is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm an only child.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a rather lonely childhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: My parents did make a lot of bad decisions in terms of money and I was moved around a lot and I made a very quiet and personal promise to myself when I was about ten or eleven years old, which was.

[SPEAKER_00]: One day you're going to get out from under these people and one day you're going to be a mother yourself and you are going to have the perfect family and you are going to have the most beautiful children and you are going to heal the wounds of this of this day to day life we live and you're going to do it and I said to myself [SPEAKER_00]: That's a pact.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I forgot about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then all these years later, the reality of two toddlers, the reality of real marriage, the reality of being grown up and money, I had no idea that what I was trying to do with these children was heal the pain of my childhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as I figured that out, oh my god, it was such a moment because first of all, I had so much compassion.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had so much compassion for myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had so much compassion for these little toddlers.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're just trying to be people.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had so much compassion for my parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were screwups, but you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: They also weren't.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, we all have the both and of our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in that moment, I knew I had hit on something.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I woke up the next morning, and my back pain was about eighty percent gone never to return, never to return.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fifty-two.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I said, all right, let's journal speak.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know how I got the term journals.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're doing this for everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I looked at my list and instead of telling my stories, I said, what's actually in there?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I went nuts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wrote and then I threw it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote and then I threw it out within a couple of months.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was pain free of every cron.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have had moments of everything that my patients and clients.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I have many [SPEAKER_00]: thousands of people around the world that contact me and I get it all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've had a migraine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've had that feeling of electric fiber, my algebra.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've had fatigue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've had because I get, we're, we're human.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all are going to feel these things, but nothing has ever become chronic because I just, I take, I catch and release.

[SPEAKER_00]: I catch and release.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I tell people to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is a long answer for a question of what was the thing that turned the time?

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, such a good [SPEAKER_02]: journey because I think for a lot of us there's a resistance to just telling the truth.

[SPEAKER_02]: And revealing something we're ashamed of that we feel that might not be, you know, gone to the head truth.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's like, I hate being a mom or whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there might be moments that you do because you need to express that.

[SPEAKER_02]: You need to get it out.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a liberation to that because no longer is your body of prison for all these thoughts that you like cat moralize and categorize.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I remember doing a personality test for a company back in the day when like I was done university.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the questions was something like have you ever thought of robbing a bank?

[SPEAKER_02]: And apparently, everyone's thought of robbing a bank.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was like, oh, this is a weird trick question.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I have thought of robbing a bank, not seriously.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've just thought of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, do I answer yes?

[SPEAKER_02]: But I, and I was like, is this a double trick?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if everyone's done it, then do I have to answer yes to it?

[SPEAKER_02]: And if I don't, am I being deceptive?

[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever it was.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think I answered yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: I did keep the job, though, because it was during my, so I must have been the right answer.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I first took the first step towards leaving Pharma, I was at a personal growth program and one of the exercises was to vent and to someone you didn't know, which actually probably reduced the social cost more and say everything you were done doing, like tired of, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember [SPEAKER_02]: things coming out of my mouth that I have been so desperate to say that I'd never said and maybe because the environment was filled with people much like I'm sure your retreat experiences is the same as that my retreat is that all of a sudden people have permission and like the example you give the example you gave are so good because they're like [SPEAKER_02]: Who would sit in a group of, let's say, moms?

[SPEAKER_02]: And be like, what's some of our worst thoughts?

[SPEAKER_02]: And who would say, you know, like, most moms would be like, oh, you know, like breastfeeding's hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you're like, I hate being a mom.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I would think of the permission that would give.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like it's really beautiful.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I love how it came to you through like the ultimate act of surrender.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, and I want to say something because I think it's really important as like a to put a finer point on this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The truths that need to come out in journal speak that end up relieving chronic pain, not only don't stay true, but they are a portal through which you will get what you think you've always wanted, meaning if what you really want is deep connection to your children, if what you really want is to be able to love them for who they are [SPEAKER_00]: and be with them through their difficult times without trying to fix them because that leads to shame.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're read the parenting books, if you listen to Dr.

Becky and if you want to achieve the things that you think you want to achieve, this is the portal because I did not know that I hated being a mother and I did not know I quoted my kids and they were the wrong kids I had the wrong [SPEAKER_00]: But when I realized that the whole thing was a vehicle for healing the pain of my own childhood, and I looked at them, all of a sudden it was honestly like a veil had been lifted, and I was like, oh wait, they're my babies!

[SPEAKER_00]: I have their twenty-two, twenty-and-seven teen, I had another one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I tell you, there are three of my favorite people on this planet.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are who they are, not who I need them to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not raise them through the filter of my needy, painful stuff that was unconscious and because of it, [SPEAKER_00]: They freaking live for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know people who hate their parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, my friends literally say to me, my goodness, if your three kids could crawl back in, they would.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, sometimes it's a little much.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is, like, I have three people in the world who I have raised as the three people that they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is the gift of this work.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hated it in moments.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what do we all?

[SPEAKER_00]: But I hated it far less.

[SPEAKER_00]: because I wasn't in that illusion of what I was trying to make it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really want to inspire people that even though we will reflexively resist these darker places and as helpful as it is to be in an exercise where you're saying it to someone else, journals because totally private.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you can say anything and then you delete it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, some people type and delete some people rip it up in a public garbage can or burn it in their fireplace.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the point is [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the inner child.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that little place in us that needs to be heard, needs to be needy, needs to kick and scream or needs to beg.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the things that we don't want to do, actually.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it sets our system free because the nervous system goes, oh shit, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't a predator.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can feel these things and they won't kill me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then all the pain signals go down because the pain is protecting you from feeling the feelings.

[SPEAKER_02]: I make sense, the thought, the feeling, because if you were to act on that thought, who knows where you could go, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But to think you bring it out non-judgmentally, and then it gets to come out and you're like, oh, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's really great because it clears the space.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love how you said that it becomes the portal to the thing you desire.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when you're not afraid, like I was thinking when we reject the shadow parts of ourselves, we reject ourselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we now have an internal split.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then what happens in all human systems?

[SPEAKER_02]: Anything you bury or deny just reroutes and gets stronger.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: It finds a way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it becomes often a shadow expression, you know, and I think we see this with things like sexual repression, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_02]: and chronic pain being like was the portal for you to completely liberate yourself from like is that accurate?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's just sort of my experience appearing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not only is it accurate.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I've had my podcast since twenty eighteen and there are hundreds of stories from people of all walks of life, also socioeconomic statuses, genders, places in the world that they find themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: The story is remarkably the same, which is they had something that brought them to their knees, whatever it was, [SPEAKER_00]: They toiled against the, you know, the, the tied, they tried medication surgeries, procedures, diet changes, supplements, you know, they, they tried to fix the physical.

[SPEAKER_00]: They hit a wall again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somehow they became open to this work.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were desperate enough to be willing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They did the journal speak.

[SPEAKER_00]: They did the work.

[SPEAKER_00]: and at the very end of each story, it's almost exactly the same, which is, oh my goodness, I'm so grateful for the pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: Without the pain, I never would have been forced to do this work that nobody chooses.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody chooses to look at the shadow.

[SPEAKER_00]: The shadow is by its very nature dark.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to look there, but when we are forced to, in my goal, with this book, and with my work in general, is to raise the bottom.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want people to have to be on their knees to say, [SPEAKER_00]: My life could be freer.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could have more energy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could love my job or love my parenting more.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could it could be more beautiful than this because we do not realize the amount of energy we are expanding on a day to day basis shoving these things down.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is huge.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you realize what's going on, when you educate yourself on it and do the work to just allow it to rise, the lightness is incredible.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then like you said, it opens to like whatever it is you want.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all want different things.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think for anyone listening, if you're in the chronic pain world, like in that space of trying to figure something out, is like, why not?

[SPEAKER_02]: Why not go deep into this journey, especially if you've gone through it yourself?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to that, you know, you were already deep in it, but through getting your extra back pain experience, you uncovered something that had not been uncovered, like you added, you know, integrated more into the work.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you think about your journey in my body medicine, I'm curious, have you faced resistance in the space of like traditional psychotherapy medicine all those spaces?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, what we have always known is always the common conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love Malcolm Gladwell's concept of the tipping point.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're in a room with, you know, let's say, ten people and one person says a new thing and everybody says, no, don't be ridiculous.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And two people say the new thing and people go, ah, yeah, but still ridiculous.

[SPEAKER_00]: Three people, however, there will be a moment where enough people in a situation believe the same thing that everyone looks at them and goes, [SPEAKER_00]: tell me more and then it becomes, you know, the new paradigm.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so sure, I've experienced resistance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my career now spans about twenty five years.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the resistance has been different.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will say mark right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: More often than not when people really understand what I'm saying, which was the big impetus for the book, because you need to have one place where everything lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: When people really understand what I'm saying, the resistance is like minimal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors are frustrated.

[SPEAKER_00]: They want to help.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, obviously, there are there are dark forces out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are people that want to make money off of people suffering, but for the most part, I feel that the doctors, the physical therapist, the nutrition is the holistic, the integrative.

[SPEAKER_00]: They come to me and they go [SPEAKER_00]: I want to help people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, die it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, exercise.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, sleep.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, all these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: But without this brain science and nervous system regulation, we are spinning our wheels.

[SPEAKER_00]: These people are not getting better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was interviewed.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was in New York City last week from my book launch.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was interviewed on serious XM.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was called The Doctors.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a program.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the guy who was interviewing me was the [SPEAKER_00]: Head of spine surgery and I'll think of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was literally the top doctor of at all of NYU for neurosurgery, neurosurgery and spine surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is like a major player.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he literally wanted to hear from me.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I am so sick.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sick of people coming to me because I can't even tell them to get surgery for their disc, you know, for their bulging disc.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it doesn't cause pain cessation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it doesn't help.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, so I need you, you know, and that so I am feeling the resistance less and less as the studies rise to the level of [SPEAKER_00]: proving statistically significantly proving that that mind-body medicine and rewriting these neural pathways changes the pain experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I actually am thrilled to be the having the privilege of doing this work now because I do believe that the tipping point is coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not looking to replace anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that if you tear your ACL, you're going to do journal speak and make your, you know, your attendance fuse like I am not a person who believes in bypassing anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go to the doctor, get checked out.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there are many, many, many millions and billions of people in the world whose doctors have said things like, [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing else I can do for you or there's a procedure or there's a surgery but it doesn't guarantee a cure and these people are suffering in such epic proportions and this work changes their lives and so I am here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here for it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I had a woman once on the podcast who had such debilitating chronic pain and, you know, through a process and in a burning of marathon, like, hey, months later.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I have those stories all the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's called Never.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you'll never be free of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not treatable anymore.

[SPEAKER_02]: Pain killers, all the things.

[SPEAKER_02]: I totally agree with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that, you know, where ten, twelve years ago, the conversation in this space of coaching and therapy is really, you know, the head, like cognitive behavioral therapy, in coaching, motivational interviewing, all these different ways, and they're all great.

[SPEAKER_02]: in their own place and they're all tools that are sometimes necessary.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the beginning of my work was really very much like let's understand your family system, let's understand the core blah blah blah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's all helpful.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I also now realize it's all incomplete without the nervous system.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you were to do only one modality, [SPEAKER_02]: figuring out how to heal your nervous system is the core thing because.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I really do and I'm not saying that because it's been my work for so long before I was nervous system for nervous system was cool, you know.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, sexy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, no, right.

[SPEAKER_02]: The hot thing like a good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, I wish I was, you know, thirty five and instead of fifty two and when it got so sexy, but no, the truth of the matter is that I couldn't agree more, you know, it's like, [SPEAKER_00]: The way I look at fighter flight and being paralyzed by this is if you had to control your circulation, your respiration, your heartbeat, you'd be a tired person.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would be a lot of work, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure it beats again, circulate that blood.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have unconscious processes for a reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is why we have sustained and evolved and grown as a species.

[SPEAKER_00]: problem is the same stuff that is keeping us going and alive and protected and safe is causing us to be chronically ill it's the exact same system because it thinks we are in danger and as soon as that is rewritten as soon as that that that that ladle is put in the reservoir and it goes down which is why quote journaling sounded like a joke to me but actually it's just a vehicle this specific way I teach it the point is [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't do that, you cannot override your nervous system's protective function.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you could, you would be dead because we do not understand how to do all these things that our body does unconsciously.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so to become conscious of this is what allows the other stuff to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was contacted this morning by a woman who is creating a conference.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, would you consider your work integrative?

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to put you on a panel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, and I looked at the description and the description had people who were acupuncturists and the description had people who were integrative medicine doctors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there was some nutritional stuff on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, some food stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, this stuff is fantastic.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stuff is important.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have somebody like me on this panel about regulating nervous system and understanding the brain signs or else all these things will make people feel like failures.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because it doesn't matter how you change your diet, how you change your sleep, how you change your, how much acupuncture you have.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you are in this state where your system thinks you're in mortal danger, [SPEAKER_00]: The paint will continue to fire because it doesn't have a choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you need, I'm not saying that it replaces all of that stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: But without this core work, that stuff will make you feel like a failure.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the things I'm so, so adamant about.

[SPEAKER_00]: When people feel like failures, then the depression sinks in, then the anxiety, you know, starts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, and then it's a barrier to everything.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, just compounds.

[SPEAKER_02]: His great, such great conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so happy you wrote this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: In a backwards way, I'm happy you went through the journey that you went through with crime scene, just to be able to bring more understanding and gifts to this space of people being able to see possibility and hope in which is often a place that feels very hopeless.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, the systems often reflect that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So who for you to be disruptive in that space is really incredible.

[SPEAKER_02]: So everybody, [SPEAKER_02]: Go by the book, Nicole, where can they find more of you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Where can they find the book?

[SPEAKER_02]: All the things.

[SPEAKER_00]: The book is called Mind Your Body.

[SPEAKER_00]: They can find it anywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: They get their books.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you prefer an audio book, I read it myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I will read it to you as you take your walks or drive in your car.

[SPEAKER_00]: And finding me NicoleSax.com and I see OLA.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I see, can I spell my name?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I see O-L-E-S-A-C-H-S.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we have so much there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've spent years and years just accruing the best information.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're a person who wants to be in community and be with people, we have memberships where I meet with them one-on-one, not one-on-one, but one in the group.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we do [SPEAKER_00]: Zooms together, I have courses that are self-directed where you can just do this work for yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, all sorts of content and the podcast, the care for chronic pain podcast with hundreds of interviews.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just people who are just like you, we are so much more the same than we are different.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a beautiful thing, so much to do, so much to heal.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being on today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.