Today's episode is quite personal. Um, there's been a bit of a break, a bit of a gap, a bit of a change in the way that, uh, in that I haven't really been doing a lot of online work. And I've been kind of navigating this journey that has kind of w- I feel like it's changed or deepened or I h- I'm not sure.

This connection, um, that I have with my body, um, and to somebody who's been teaching embodiment for a long time, uh, it's been humbling and also really affirming, I think. And I think n- the, the part of it, the part that I wanna talk about today is this underlying very specific belief system about health. 📍 📍

And if you've ev- spent any time in the wellness or personal development space, you probably understand this narrative well. It's this idea that your physical symptoms are a direct result or, or are influenced by unhealed emotional trauma or dysregulation. And while I'm not saying that that's not true, I wanna talk about, like, the very insipid other side of that theory or belief system.

It can be... Oops, Siri thinks I'm speaking to her. It can be very empowering, and I found myself falling into the disempowering part of it When we have this belief or this understanding of, like, the issues are in your tissues, or that if you do enough healing, then life will become super easy and maybe your chronic illness will even vanish.

Um, I thought that I had pulled myself away from that. Uh, you know, I, I ha- I got... I was diagnosed with alopecia universalis when I was seven years old, so I've, I lost all of my hair from my entire body when I was seven. And everyone would tell me, "Oh, if you do this, if you meditate, if you do that, if you do yoga, then, like, you'll heal it."

And I was like, "No, well, that, that is not true." But then I found the power that comes from, and the capacity at, that comes from, uh, engaging in embodiment and somatic e- healing and all of the stuff that I talk about in my book, Somatic Intelligence for Success, and I've been teaching. And that was really empowering because it reminded me, okay, cool, like, I have control over the way that I experience my world, then I have control over the way that I influence my world.

And we have an episode coming out on that called How Much Power Do I Actually Have Over My Reality? What the Science Says. So you can, you can look at that one. But I bought into that, and it created this very subtle toxic layer of hypervigilance and self-blame, which is ironic because the p- we were trying to remove the hypervigilance and self-blame and remain regulated.

I have a visual if you're a visual person, and you want the visual of this, um, and this kind of laid out, uh, there is a link down below in the show notes so that you can get that. So instead of a line that runs from mind to body, he placed a third variable at the very top, your underlying biological structure.

This is a physical blueprint that is shaped by your genetics and your early environmental adversity. So this underlying biological structure branches downward in two separate directions at the exact same time. Branch A is your personality, your emotional landscape, your nervous system sensitivity, and branch B is your physical vulnerability to illness.

Eisenberg looked at a part of the brain called the AR- ARAS, the ascending reticular activating system, and the autonomic nervous system. He proved that some of us are simply born with a highly reactive, highly sensitive biological kind of like body of your car, like chassis of your car. And the master volume knob is naturally just turned up to a 10.

If you have this type of biology, then two things are happening simultaneously. On the psychological side, you feel emotions deeply. You are prone to anxiety, hypervigilance, and sensing danger. On the physical side, your organs and your immune system and your hormonal pathways react intensely to any environmental change So this has created a bit of a shift in understanding, and I remind myself of this.

For me, it means my adenomyosis, my autoimmune s- concerns is not caused by me failing to, you know, become more regulated. It's not like my anxiety is somehow punishing my body. It's just that I have more emotional sensitivity, and my physical cond- condition ... The emotional sensi- sensitivity that I have and my physical condition, they share a biological root.

My body processes stimuli more sensitively. It's just my baseline, which means my baseline and the way that I need to structure my life is gonna be different to other people's I think for a long time I f- fought against the sensitivity, and I even have a part of me that as I say this wants to be like, "Oh, like, there's a silver lining to this."

Um, there was also... There's also another part of me that, like, wants to be invincible. I mentioned that a little bit at the, at the top of the podcast, wanting to be able to do everything. Um, for a while, I think I, I managed this by living in deep, deep, deep alignment with my body by eating really well, by managing my pace, by having an environment around me that allowed that, and having people around me that really supported that, and not being necessarily, like, challenged or thrown into environments where it was more difficult.

You know, um, the weather was different, the pace of life was different. And then I moved back to Australia, and this bustling, high stimulus, big city, living in the inner part of the city, not being as close to nature, like, my diet shifted. The way that f- food is grown here is very different to how I was.

And so the baseline demand on my system increased, but my baseline sensitivity was still the same 'cause that's, that's what mine is. Because my master biological volume knob is naturally at a 10, so it's increased, so I receive a lot, it... My body, it can't just absorb pollution, and noise, and dietary changes in the same way that maybe somebody else's less sensitive body could.

So I was coming out of alignment with what my biology was needing, and my system was getting overload, and I became unwell. It was very slow at first, and I thought I was immune to it because I teach these things, right? Very slow, like a, like a frog that you boil in water, and you don't notice that each month you have a little bit less energy.

Each month you ha- your head hurts a little bit more. Hmm. I think older parts of me, if they'd looked at this as what had occurred, like back when I began entering into the wellness space, if they had looked at this and said, "Oh, you know, she went to Australia, and then she got unwell," they, they would've said, like, "Oh, well then the move to Australia brought up all of these trapped trauma," or, "It was just out of alignment and you need to leave," or, "You need to do all of this healing."

But now that I have more education, or now that I have more experience, now I have a deeper understanding and more perspective, I was... I can just see that neither is necessarily true It's just that my body, and I'm doing the right thing by being here, or it feels right at the time, right now, um, and I don't have like, you know...

I'm sure we all have trauma, but there's no, like, big thing that I need to go and heal, um, in order to have the life that I want. It was just, ah, I have a biology that's more sensitive, and this is how it's responding to the environment, and I'm in control, and I can change the environment. And I think this completely changes the goal of somatic healing, where we are not doing all of this work to, like, delete past lives and past trauma or fix something that is broken.

I'm not broken. You're not broken. We're just doing it to bu- buffer ourselves and help our body so that we can live in a world that I think that we enjoy. I think there are parts of this life that we really love. I do, and I hope that you do. I hope that you learn to, if you don't. We just want to turn the volume down sometimes to a manageable six.

But we wanna enjoy the intenseness of the good things at the same time. Anyway, so if you're listening to this and you have your own experience with, like, some type of chronic pain or chronic diagnosis or feeling guilty that maybe even your stress is making you unwell, can... I just... Invitation to, to, to be us together for a moment You do not have to achieve some sort of psychological perfection to just be well.

And everything that's happening in your body right now, even on the days that it's really hard, it's not something wrong. This is just your specific biology. And sometimes you have to grieve the body that you wished that you had had, and that is a part of the process

And then that leads to acceptance. Acceptance that the beautiful, sensitive body that you do have is where your power lies. And I'm crying because I'm saying it to you and I'm saying it to me

So here is our integration exercise for the week. I want you to lean into a radical thought experiment

If you absolutely 100% fully believed that your success is inevitable and possible with your biology exactly as it is today, what thoughts, feelings, and physical embodiment, embodiment would you step into? Would you feel? Maybe the thoughts are that you stop thinking, "Why can't I just handle this?" And you start thinking, "Hmm, what do I need right now to protect myself, to love myself, to care for myself in the same way that a mama bear would care for her cub?"

On a feeling level. Maybe you don't feel so much urgency to fix something. Maybe you're just grounded and calm, and you just look up to the sky, and you see it, and it's pretty, and you just enjoy those little moments of the day. Maybe you relax while you brush your teeth. Maybe you relax your pelvic floor.

Maybe you find this deep-

bliss or beauty in the sadness or the pain or in the going slow?

And maybe it just feels lighter in your chest because you know that there's nothing wrong, and this is just your unique life experience, and what a, what a good thing it is. Everyone is different

And the embodiment, maybe you stop trying to, like, create a life that your body is not wanting. Maybe you let your thoughts settle. Maybe you go deep down below them. Maybe you stop trying to logic yourself into something, and you just say, "Ah, okay, what do, what does my body need right now?" You feel your breath down the bottom of your lungs, and you notice your impulses, your aversions to specific foods, your desire for more...

something else, for a certain environment or a specific pace, a- and you just follow that. That feels good. Not hedonistic pleasure that hurts you later, but that, that you see that is life-giving, that serves you, that, that little voice inside. I know that you, you know what I'm talking about. I know that you've felt it.

I know that the more that you listen to it, the more... the stronger it'll be, the easier it'll be to follow. 'Cause when you stop fighting your structure, you actually engineer an environment that supports it. Then once again, let's come back to the next episode, which is how much power do I actually have over my reality, what the science says, 'cause we're gonna talk about, about here and what you create when you do these things, these thoughts, these feelings, and these embodiment.

This is how I'm healing. This is how I'm navigating this health challenge at the moment, this adenomyosis, and, uh, this... I think this is how we believe we build success that I... that is sustainable. Um, if this episode brought you the same sigh of relief that it gave me to write it and record it, please share it with a friend who maybe just needs a bit of loving wisdom.

Subscribe. Please leave a review, and I will see you next week. Bye-bye.