141: Why Conventional Trauma Work Fails - And What Works Instead | Irene Lyon

Not everybody is supposed to do nervous system work. It will open up stuff that we historically aren't used to, nor do we have the infrastructure in our system to deal with it. If you unearthed the stuff that I unearthed in my SE training, honest to God, if it wasn't for my husband at the time, I probably would have killed myself. Now in the commodification of this industry, there are tons of influencers who want to give little hacks and tips. How might you introduce the folks listening to the nuances that you think are often lacking from the conversation. Those who are teaching these very simplified versions of movement, somatic, if you don't understand the cascade of what can occur, it will most likely impact the physiological regulatory processes that we don't want to mess with too quickly. We have to remember that meditation is about consciousness training. I think a lot of people that meditate, they're getting really good at managing what's inside, but they're not unpacking the thing that's inside. You have to know how to... Hi, welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan. And today I sit down with Irene Lyon, who is a nervous system expert and multiply trained in modalities ranging from Feldenkrais to physical therapy to somatic experiencing. And what I enjoy most about Irene is not only her personal demeanor and countenance, but her nuanced approach to the zeitgeist that is body-based trauma healing. So in our conversation today, we look at the shadowy underbelly of the trauma healing movement. And we talk about whether cold plunging or even meditating could be driving you deeper into a freeze response or giving you the impression that you're actually regulating yourself when you're just expanding your tolerance for undesired sensations in the body. So we talk about who should and shouldn't meditate, for example, who should and shouldn't engage in cathartic experiences of trauma healing and why certain influencers may be giving you trauma tips, hacks, and advice that is actually potentially dangerous. We also talk about her area of expertise, which is pre-verbal trauma and why reprimanding your infant son for biting your nipple while breastfeeding may be the origins of a lot of complex adult struggles that that boy may grow up to have. And we also touch on why healthy shame is important for development. So it's a whirlwind of a conversation. I plan to have her back for a part two. And I hope that this allows you to really exhale and get back to the basics of human embodiment and how simple, honestly, it can be. Welcome, Irene, to the show. Hey, Kelly. Thank you. You are and have been for many years now, one of my favorite practitioners to learn from. And I think it's because the medium is the message and the way that I feel in my body when I talk to you, even just chatting with you before I press record. And when I listen to your videos or explore your work and offerings, I feel a relaxed woman. And that is, in fact, the name of the system that I offer the world, the Relaxed Woman System, because I think that is the most aspirational, valuable quality in a woman that there is. And when I listen to you, I sort of think, wow, she's really well regulated in her ventral vagal because your tone, your prosody, your relatability is to me one of the great testaments of your work and the journey that you've been on, which I know could be an entire podcast in and of itself. But I wanted to start with what it is at this point that you believe yourself to be living proof of, right? So because I think of those of us who have a microphone and an opportunity to inspire. I believe a lot of what we offer is just an expansion of what's possible. And if you're living proof of something, it means that anyone who comes into contact with you knows that that thing is possible, right? So I talk a lot about reversing slash transforming my diagnosis of Hashimoto's thyroiditis some 15 years ago. And if no one had ever met somebody who had done that, they might not know to even have that yearning in their heart to move in that direction, to take that journey, to make the first step in that direction. So I know that you have moved through diagnoses, injuries, and through that have become in many ways, the archetypal wounded healer that many of us find ourselves to be. So what do you think? What do you think about that? Well, if I piggyback on what you just shared that you've healed, I would say, I mean, there's many pieces, but you named it. I was that kid that was always sick, eczema, autoimmune. I mean, it wasn't really called that then. Allergies, skin problems, which is a whole other story. My exposure to chemicals was vast from in utero through childhood into my teens and early 20s due to being in an animal hospital. My parents were both veterinarians, as I mentioned before we started recording. So I was literally like elbow deep inhaling chemicals, anesthesia, bleach, formaldehyde, X-ray fluids, hands and corticosteroids, filling up bottles and then just rubbing them in my hands, not washing my hands because it's like lotion. I mean, there's so many things, allergy shots for two years that I don't think really did anything. So I was just this walking toxic mess. There's pictures of what I looked at like on my site when it was good and it got much worse. And so a lot of my healing really started to happen at the nervous system level when I started my training in somatic experiencing. But my system blew up because I went too fast, too soon, went into all the traumas because I don't just have that. I have history of sport injury. So that's a whole other story. And so I found myself, it would have been 2010, 11. I don't want to say bedridden because I could I could walk, I can move, but I was just unwell with these body, it looked like body burns. I could hardly take a shower. Anyway, so that obviously has shifted. My skin has healed. And I tried to go the medical route. And what I will say is I did use some corticosteroids almost homeopathically when it was so bad. I'm like, okay, this is like a roller coaster freight train out of control. I've not put any of that stuff on my skin for years. I'm just going to experiment with a little bit. And so I just dabbed a little on my, you know, hand, even though the dermatologist was like, put it all over your body. I'm like, screw that. I'm not doing that. But what was interesting, I woke up the next morning and everything was 10% less inflamed. I was like, interesting. So I kind of, because I know there's a time and a place, I needed relief. But then I shifted out of that, did a whole bunch of work somatically, dowsing, frequency, diet, sunlight, circadian stuff, quantum stuff. And here we are. So So I think I was brought up in a medical world. I looked at diet. I mean, we're so similar in that way, right? It's kind of good and spooky and fun. And I remember my doctor, Kelly, when I was maybe 10 years old, had rashes, like I was itchy. And she said, Irene, you were born with rashes. And I was, like I was covered in rashes as a baby. You're always going to have this. I'll never forget her saying that to me. And then I kind of believed it until I'm like, I can't keep living like this. So it was kind of that shift of its mentality, but it was also, Kelly, really understanding why is my skin doing this? Why do I have these autoimmune reactions? This isn't my genetics because my parents don't have it if we want to go down that route. So it was my exposure. And so I cleaned up my body. You know, I'm by no means perfect, but in here I am. So I can't remember the exact question, but it was sort of a living proof. So that was what it was, is if anything, living proof that those things that you're given, you can shift, but you have to want it bad and you have to work at it. And it's in the wanting and the working that I think you probably agree there's also the opportunity to attach to the outcome to an extent that rejects what's actually happening. Right. So you get into that taboo dynamic, that tension that is saying like a big fuck no to what's right in front of you and insisting that it be different. different. So when I hear you talk about wanting to heal, I also feel like this open curiosity that took you on your heroine's journey to explore and I would say advance the field that you studied of somatic experiencing. I think, you know, the other memory that's coming to my mind right now, which I haven't thought of in a while, was I would have been my first university stint doing my undergrad. I'd had these flares on my arms. I think it was due to a bad breakup, right? Stress, all this. And I was just desperate. It was the first time I read a book on holistic healing. It was Andrew Weil's book, Spontaneous Healing. I still have that book because it's such a good book. I don't agree with everything in it now, but it was still a good entry point. And I was like, okay, I got to find something, find something. I was trying all these diet things, nothing worked. I tried Chinese medicine, definitely didn't work. I even went to a progressive muscle relaxation class at the local community college. This is not something I would ever do. Typically, I was like, I'm just looking. Oddly, it wasn't until just recently. And by just recently, I mean, in the last kind of 10-ish years, actually more like eight years that I uncovered it was chemical trauma that I was dealing with. My fluids were traumatized, which is a whole other story. And that opened up so much information, but it took me from age, let's say, 25 to age 42. I'm 50 this year to figure that out. Most would have stopped. And so the other thing that's interesting, because my colleagues and I talk about this all the time, like what makes it such that a person gets through these hell points? I mean, you could look at all the factors, and I keep thinking and looking at its soul age. It's the only thing I can think of. It's the only thing that makes the most sense. Because you'll have people with the exact same trauma history, for example, horrific shit that's happened to them. One person, I'm thinking about one of my best friend's colleagues right now, she should not have survived her history. and she's thriving. Whereas you have another person with the same history and they're just bedridden, unable, mindset is terrible, my life is screwed, I'm never going to heal. It's like, yeah, what do they say? If you think you can or if you think you can't, you're probably right. I think that's a Feldenkrais saying. So that's the other piece is not everyone, it's really true, I've started to really say this to my students in training, not everybody is supposed to do nervous system work at the level I am teaching. Because man, it will open up stuff that we historically aren't used to, nor do we have the infrastructure in our system to deal with it. Someone has a car accident and they're disabled, they can get money from the government or the local whatever to help them sort of live. if you unearth the stuff that I unearthed in my SE training, which led me not able to work, thank God I had money and parents that were there to help and a place to live. I don't know what would have occurred to me if I didn't have, honest to God, like I, there was a point, Kelly, when I was covered in these rashes, if it wasn't for my husband at the time, I probably would have killed myself. It was that painful. And I met a woman, a dowser who had an uncle who took his life due to a skin condition. And I'm like, I know it. And so these things that we start to uncover when we go through these layers of trapped trauma, which is, you know, my field now, they don't make sense sometimes. Like what? All of a sudden your joints are flaring for no reason? Oh, you must have rheumatoid arthritis. Oh, you have psychotic visions of things coming at you and getting you in your sleep. It's like, oh, you must be psychotic. Go to this psychiatrist. Really, it's probably old surgical trauma. But again, the system can't adapt for what might come out of a person. And so I'm a little more tempered now in how I try to engage people into this work. I say to my students, do not push people to do this. They have to come to you. And they have to want it really bad because the consequence of them starting to heal might mean that their life is going to look very different in two years, five years, 10 years. Doesn't mean you're not going to heal, but you've got to work at it really hard. I hope that makes sense. Absolutely. I mean, it's the archetypal journey of individuation. You know, it's like walking into the dark, into the wildness of your unexplored life. And I think that's a big part of why, you know, even in my own work with my own health program, it's just it's the first six weeks. Like, I'd like to claim the first six weeks of anyone's journey. I got that. The rest, I just trust that everyone will find exactly what they need, because especially when it comes to this, I don't know if I made up this word or what, but I like to think of it as insolent. It's like your soul starting to rest back into your vessel. your vessel. There is so much nuance required. And now in the commodification of this industry, the wellness trauma-based informed industry, there are tons of influencers who want to give little hacks and tips. And I love hacks and tips, so no shade, but there is a nuance lacking a depth and I'm a big outcomes girl, right? So I like to see the testimonials, the potentially published literature. I want to know the foundation of claims just because it's a way to cut through the noise. So I know that you probably also experience the world as a bunch of individuals walking around in their variously dysregulated systems with their mountains of trauma of various forms. And you encounter folks who end up, as you were suggesting, labeling the overt manifestation of these compensations as diseases, right? And I know how passionate you are about the root, right? Like the root, root, root causes that are as individual as a fingerprint. So how might you introduce the folks listening to the nuances that you think are often lacking from the conversation about embodiment and somatic healing work and, you know, trauma-based therapies and all of these efforts that we seem to be making to come into our bodies and to stop fleeing into our mental caverns. What are some of the missing pieces of the conversation that you bring to bear? So that's a loaded question, but I accept the challenge. Yeah. Well, so before I go into that, my training is vast. So I think this is also why I guess I see the complexity of it because of my medical upbringing with my parents. I studied exercise science at a high level, sport, rehab, fitness, nutrition, Feldenkrais training, which is kind of the gold standard of somatic movement therapy work, which is totally being bastardized right now. So that's a whole other issue. And then somatic experiencing with Peter Levine and then the offshoots of that, the work with early and preverbal trauma. And so when you have that mixed together and you see someone showing a pelvis movement on the floor saying, do this movement for 60 seconds and you're going to open up the sore trauma in your pelvis. I just go says who like and the thing is is there's being an exercise physiologist yeah move that fucking pelvis like you got to get it moving the joints need to move you need to squat you know I have best friends who do qigong and tai chi work with high performance athletes like I know all the people and the thing that's missing in that and then I'm going to go back to the root in a second is if you can move your pelvis I can go there and manip and mobe as a physical therapist what would because I have that training. But if that person doing the work is not sensing the interoceptive changes and so someone's taking notes, write this down, interoceptive and how you connect with the extraoceptive, how you feel the touch, like for anyone listening right now, have you been feeling your pelvis on the chair that you're sitting on? or you just listening to me and Kelly talk, right? This isn't to like call anyone out and say bad that you're not feeling your pelvis, but this just shows how disconnected we are from the connection of our internal with external and at the same time. And then with that, it's like, are you tensing your jaw? Are you tensing your pelvic floors? Are you even breathing into your full chest cavity, into your hip joints? Do we even know that your breath can go to the crown of the head and to the roots of the feet? That's osteopathic tradition. right craniosacral chakra stuff and so to say just move this pelvis and you're going to open up and release all this trauma is so dangerous because someone might just do it and be like yeah I don't feel anything in my opinion that's like a good outcome because someone might do that and go whoa I didn't even know I had a pelvis true story I had a call from someone this was ages ago. How they got my phone number, I have no idea. They had just attended a Feldenkrais class in New York City. They were calling me from their apartment, afraid to leave, and they hadn't been able to leave for a week because they went to this Feldenkrais class. And Feldenkrais is great, by the way. You want to give people like a one-liner about what Feldenkrais is? Yeah. So he was a person. He's long gone. People think it's about movement. It is about movement. You can fix a lot of orthopedic, structural, musculoskeletal issues. That's why I got into it. But the core is it's about teaching humans how to learn again through their body, by listening to the body, by feeling how the peripheral nervous system activates, the sensing, the motor, the execution, how you hold your breath, how you don't hold your breath, how your eyes go one way but not the other. Oh, isn't that interesting? And then you work at opening up differentiation through the musculoskeletal system in relationship to the environment while listening to your physiology. So it's a very big practice. There's a reason why Feldenkrais can be taught in physical therapy settings, but also to orchestra singers on stage, right? Because it's about human learning through the body. So this woman calls me and she's freaking out. So what happened, she went to this class. They taught developmental movement patterns. Baby rolling is a very common thing that we might do in a Feldenkrais class. I mean, I think you've had children or a child. You know babies roll. They find their spines. They look at their fingers. They hold their toes. They touch and roll and move. That's how you develop spinal curves and all these things. she had a flashback to being abused as a child in a satanic cult. And she knew she was in this. But you take this woman who thinks she's fine. Yes, I had a screwed up child and I know that happened, who has no idea that that trauma is stored in the peripheral nervous system, in the motor memory. Maybe it's in the fascia. We really don't know where it is. It's somewhere in the system. And then she opens up this infant developmental rolling process that so slow and so gentle being tender probably with herself because that how we like to teach it And all the stored survival stress started to move out and she was in absolute terror and panic. So this is an example. You mentioned pre-verbal trauma before we started recording. this woman had had severe, clearly pre-verbal trauma. Doesn't matter the type, but something happened to her that wasn't good when she was an infant. This then opens up, probably something happened at the level of her pelvis, probably. And here she is not knowing what to do with the unpacking of all of that, not just the movement, but the survival stress that goes with it, the racing heart that goes with it, the flipping of going into shutdown of the vagus nerve that would have went into it as an infant to survive, right? We know when a baby is put under extreme stress, they can just, they can die, right? Because they can't, they can't self-regulate their heart rate. And so this is why when I see these movements of just rule your pelvis for a minute this way, while humming to activate the vagus nerve, I go, no, no. And again, like I said, some people will be fine. Others, that is an extreme example. Not everybody is going to have that. But those who are teaching these very simplified versions of movement, somatics, if you don't understand the cascade of what can occur, because you have to remember the autonomic nervous system, Yes, it's fight, flight, freeze, and dorsal vagal shutdown, but it also governs our digestion, our immune system, our cardiovascular system, our respiratory system, our ability to sense, feel, connect, all the things. And so you unpack that portion of the autonomic nervous system that is helping that person stay safe. It will most likely impact the physiological regulatory processes that we don't want to mess with too quickly. And so this unfolding of people trying to understand somatics, trauma healing, nervous system rewiring, trauma release. You know, I know David Bercelli has done some great work. He invented what's called a TRE. But again, that does not work on a population that is currently dysregulated, not able to feel that introspection. Even EMDR, I know of people who've gone into psychosis after a session. Because it's too much stimulus for this system that is so unable to process quick enough what's happening at that brain level. Does that make sense? Absolutely. So if you have a parent or an aging loved one who is struggling with balance, joint stiffness, or simply getting around, you may have wondered what you can possibly do to support them. And I believe that I have found the solution for our parents if you are in my generation. So Juvent's micro impact platform is one of the most effective and science backed ways to improve mobility because it delivers precise low magnitude vibrations through the soles of the feet that improve circulation and help maintain stability. There's no sweating. There's no strain. you literally just stand on it for 10 minutes a day. I speak to the Juvent CEO, Rush Simonson, in episode 114, and I learned that his own mother, who was in her 90s, went from bedbound to fully mobile with this simple daily routine. So if you want to be sure that somebody that you love stays healthy and independent, Go to Juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan and use the code Kelly 300 for $300 off at checkout. You can bring this incredible science backed tool into their lives. And I think it's one of the most thoughtful and powerful investments that you can make in their well-being. So again, it's Juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan. And the code is Kelly 300. So it sounds like in a best case scenario, it's ineffective. And in a potential worst case scenario, there is an insufficient stability of the system to contain and offer like the, as you're describing, the introceptive awareness, even through the sensation. So when you talk about these stored traumas, you know, I think back to Candice Peart's work, if you remember, molecules of emotion and and this idea, you know, that our emotions are in our body was like quite revolutionary when she started to talk about that and write about it and research it. And I know that through the somatic experiencing lens, procedural memory and the movement encoded stress is a big part of this idea of how it could be beyond just sort of like the, you know, almost like magical thinking of like, oh, our traumas are somewhere in our, you know, it's like it can get very new agey very quickly. if we lose the thread of understanding how it is that we develop and grow, right? So when you understand how we develop and grow, that an acute stressor may be trapped, so to speak, in a certain movement or an incompleted movement or something that is verging on a movement does make a lot of sense. And I wonder if you could do a better job than I just did explaining how it is that procedural movement and memory rather could be how and why and where even trauma is stored. Yeah, totally. So I like to think of there's sort of two categories. These are not all of them, but we can think of trauma as stored at this, you said, procedural level. Just for those that don't understand that, like when we're little, we learn motor skills like tying our shoes, riding a bike, older, drive a car. Those are procedural motor skills in our memory. We need that. We can't think of that each time and relearn it. So we need those procedures in our system. Then there are procedural memories that want to come out. We call them threat-based. So the best example that is simple is I'm on a soccer field and a ball is coming towards my head and I'm not a soccer player. I don't know how to hit it with my head or do whatever. And I go, uh-oh, and my hands come up to protect, right? It's like you drop a knife when you're cutting your carrots at night and you pull your feet back without even thinking about it. Now, for example, let's just say you see that ball coming and let's just say you're holding your baby or your dog or a pile of groceries. It doesn't have to be an animal as your kitty shows up right here. That's great. I love it. Perfect timing. So let's say you're holding something and you can't drop whatever it is. And so you feel the desire to bring your hands up to protect your brain, essentially, and your eyes. That's what you're doing. But you can't. And so that procedure that your nervous system wrote really quickly, automatically, autonomic nervous system, doesn't get too complete. You might then later that day or night or the next day go, why is this trap so tight? Why are my deltoids all of a sudden feeling a bit stiff? I better go get a massage. I better stretch. Why isn't this working? And so what's happened is that procedure told the upper traps, and really it's the deltoids more so, work to protect head, brain. So that is an incomplete procedural memory. Now, we could say traumatic, but that's pretty loose in terms of a trauma. It just sucks if a ball hits your head. Now, a more extreme example would be if someone is attacked. And this is a common thing we hear. I was attacked. I couldn't fight. I wasn't strong enough. I wanted to, but I was held down. We also see this with surgery, surgical procedures, got to hold that kid down, dental, hold that kid down, hold that person down. So we want to, I'm using my hands right now, we want to break, we want to hit, we want to scratch, we want to run. But if we can't, we go into the next survival stress level, which is freeze. Freeze has sympathetic also in it, fight flight. It's a combo deal with part of the vagus nerves, high tone dorsal response and the sympathetic fight flight that's freeze if the person is like i can't do this i'm gonna collapse i'm just gonna let what's happening happen to me and this is what occurs with infants specifically like very much so when they have a lot of trauma when they're young um we then go into the collapse state the shutdown state which is full vegas quick shutdown, collapse, preservation of life. I think I'm going to die. I better bring everything into the core. Now, let's just say that occurs to someone. They're attacked when they're young or at any age. If they don't realize that there is that trapped, incomplete procedure, they will go through their life. And we've seen this with folks with chronic illness, those living in deep toxic shame, they have a posture that is very collapsed, very sunken. You may have felt this in working with people. The skin is kind of doughy. There's no elasticity to it. That is a very strong sign of this system being highly shut down. And so when you start to work with that, you can't just say to that person, I need you to get this baseball bat and hit your assailant over the head to feel that you've conquered and triumphed them. Because if that person has this internal physiology that is shut down, sure, they can take, here's my pen, the baseball bat and do that movement. And maybe they feel a little more energy. And we know with exercise, what happens? Endorphins, blood. But then after that, the system goes back to that collapse. And so you had mentioned, you know, the cathartic release of just shaking, screaming, I'm seeing this a lot in group breathwork classes where people are just like going for it. I'm like, that looks nice. And you might feel really good because you created a state shift in the cardiorespiratory capacities. Lymph is going. So, yeah, of course, you're going to feel better afterwards. But does your system then revert back to its combos of freeze, collapse, maybe to fight flight in there? And so this concept, to go back to your original question, procedural memory, it is complex. It's more than just I need to get my emotions out. I need to hit. I need to run. Now, we add in early trauma. This is shock trauma I'm talking about. If you then add in growing up unsafe, mother was always stressed, war zone. maybe lots of surgical procedures. I've met people who had to have spinal surgeries as babies due to a defect. You're in this ringer of constant extreme stress. That little one starts to think everything outside is dangerous. I have to protect. I have to be on vigilance or I have to just shut down. You can't take a person who has survived that kind of early trauma and just work on their incomplete procedural memories from when that ball hit them on the head or when they were attacked at college. You then have to go back to what I said a while ago. Can this person even feel their gut? Does this person even know they have a digestive system? You'd be surprised, Kelly, a lot of people couldn't point to where their liver or stomach is or kidneys or any of these things, that their lungs go up to the shoulders and all this. Because when you start to unpack these procedural memories, these stored traumatic procedural memories, the internal physiology will also go, hey, what about me? I've been clamped down and working in this way since age five. I'm using my hands to depict the flow of valves, say, in the digestive system. and I know how to go really fast or really slow. And this is IBS, chronic diarrhea or constipation. You're telling me now that I have to shift that? Oh, and now you're going to cry and get rid of that? Now the heart is open? I don't know what to do about that. I better clamp down over here. And so these things move. And so this is a very long way of saying it's actually quite complex. in this current day and age with humans who have been raised so differently with so many traumas without lineage or teaching that we have this body that we have to listen to and take care of. You know, there's a reason why Peter called his book Waking the Tiger. His original book is because he realized in the late 60s in Berkeley, doing his work that animals in the wild don't really get PTSD. You know, it's a simplification. You put them in a zoo, they don't do so well, right? They're not hunting, they're not running, they're not doing their stuff. Humans, on the other hand, we do get PTSD, even if we are running and eating good food, because of this higher brain that traps us in these cycles. And so Peter's work really put that part on the map, but then you also have to look at the early trauma, lack of dysregulation from the beginning and decide as a, at least at the level that my colleagues and I work at, okay, it's like triage in ER. Do we have to work with this big boulder of survival stress because this person just cannot sit still because they're waiting for someone to attack them again? Or are Are they so darn afraid of everything that we have to work at establishing safety and regulation at the barest bones level, almost the way you would raise a baby at the beginning? It's very simple what they need. But when you didn't get that at the very beginning, your system doesn't actually know that it can work in a certain way that it's meant to work with. So that's a very long verbal essay. to take you down this path of procedural memory, incomplete procedural memory, survival stress, but also that it's not cut and dry how you start with a person. And you have to consider all of these physiological and psychological factors. If someone is terrified at the thought of expressing an emotion, then we're not going to push them to try to express an emotion because it could be that when they were young, when they cried, they got hit or put into their bed to sleep train, for example. Right. And so these are all these little like levels that a person who does real somatic trauma healing work should be able to sit here and talk about it at this level, Kelly. And I can almost bet you that if you were to take some of the influencers who were just showing these 60-second pelvis things and you were to quiz them on all of these different branches of the vagus, these connections with procedural memory, with early trauma in utero, and how that comes out physiologically, they wouldn't know what to say. I'm making a big assumption there, but I've been around long enough to know that most of that detail does not get taught to people, nor are people seeking it out because they think it's just about the movement and the release. Right. And nor is the information readily available. I mean, I was a neuroscience bench researcher and then went on to become a psychiatrist. And you would think that I would have encountered even one of the concepts that you're describing here. So even where somebody might turn to understand these nuances from pre-verbal development to the sensory apparatus from intero to neuroceptive, you know, I don't think it's clear. And I do think that's a part of the vanguard that you embody is to help really legitimize this very complex field of Right. To be fair, if you know, to be fair, this work is so embryonic. Like Peter discovering incomplete procedural memories being trapped in a person's system, causing fibromyalgia like symptoms, because that's what it was. And fear and panic. That was just late 60s. That's not that long ago. And I always make this I think you'll like this parallel. I don't know how long medicine in terms of, say, surgery has been around, but it's been thousands of years, right, in terms of when people started experimenting with cutting people open and dealing with that kind of stuff. I always like to use surgery because that has a time and a place or orthopedics. So if we think about that, like when you say you got to go see an orthopedic surgeon, you don't say you got to go see someone who does this method. And so that surgeon has been taught, granted, you know, they go to a decent school, the whole zeitgeist of not just orthopedics, but medicine, what you would have gone through. And then they specialize and there you have a great profession that is pretty darn solid and standard. that I look at. And then I look at where my profession, like we don't actually have a profession. A profession isn't a bunch of people doing their own thing, making money. And again, I'm all for good capitalism and I'm an entrepreneur, but to take this work to the next level, the trainings cannot be entrepreneurial and there needs to be collaboration. Like a surgical procedure might have one person offer a little bit of a tweak to that procedure, but it's been brought up with all these other things. And then everybody goes, well, of course, that's how you repair an ACL. We've figured it out through the research and trial and error. You want this kind of a graph, this kind of a rehab process, and boom. With this somatic trauma healing work, we don't even have a name for it at this point. We're still at that level of figuring out the basics. So I think that's also why you wouldn't have learned this. I mean, I was just listening to Andrew Huberman talked about the vagus nerve. I'm like, okay, I'm going to listen to it. And see what he says. I'm regulated enough to listen. And so his neuroanatomy was great. Like, I actually learned something. I'm like, that's wonderful. But he still, Andrew, is talking about the autonomic nervous system being reciprocal, where the parasympathetic and the sympathetic have a reciprocal innervation situation going on, and that is not accurate. And it happens to a certain degree, but you can have sympathetic high and high parasympathetic shutdown on at the same time. That's what creates a chronic illness. And so it's okay. Like, I don't expect him to know everything, but there's like this piece that's being missed that, you know, you kind of say, well, how come he's not getting that? But then he did mention something. He did mention Stephen Porges. I was just going to say, yes. He mentioned it, but what he said, it was fascinating. I wrote it down somewhere. He said, because his work is so new, there's not enough evidence or data to show that this is actually what's happening. So it's considered a theory, but there's been enough working evidence through myself, my colleagues, Peter, and the others within this new traumatology world that, of course, there is not a reciprocal relationship between these two nervous systems. And this is why you can have someone that has these mysterious symptoms that flip. And that's why these people go get labs and everything looks okay on paper because the system is kind of like got multiple personality disorder as a metaphor. four. So I don't know where I went with how I got to that one, but it's just sort of a peek into the nascent stage that we're in and developing this. So when we talk about these scaled interventions that are very supported by a lot of the new age cultural agenda, We can think about meditation and breath work. We can think about catharsis, the kind of shaking, screaming you're referencing, or then just basic observed movements, the simple movements like the pelvic rolling. I'm going to push you probably where you don't want to be pushed, which is to try to distill down a little cautionary message. for like, who is the person who may not benefit from meditation? Who is the person who probably wouldn't sign up for the rage catharsis, which is like a big, you know, sort of goddess, you know, feminine movement, you kind of a thing. Who is the person who, who maybe shouldn start with you know releasing sexual trauma through pelvic rolling I laughing because it like yeah the promise of some of these interventions are so it so grand Yeah. So is there any sort of like cautionary, just based on your experience, any sort of cautionary words that you want to offer? Because I then want to talk a little bit about like what you see as some of the very basic entry points for different kinds of folks. Yeah. So let's start with meditation. So I am not someone who meditates traditionally. I know many people who do. I know many people who were monks, Catholic monks, also Buddhist monks. And we have to remember that meditation is about consciousness training, technically, and consciousness is a very strong technology. So if you have got nervous system physiology, and there's a bit of a tricky one to this. You have dysregulation within your nervous system, which I have not met anybody who has not had that to a certain degree. You have to know how to maneuver and be with the sensations, the emotions, the behaviors that might come through when you do, say, a classic Vipassana sit. We'll use Vipassana as an example. Now, if someone goes into that and they have pretty good, like they actually have a real window of tolerance, which is a whole other story because people keep talking about that without understanding what it really means. If you have like even a little bit of a window of tolerance, you can maybe manage some strong emotions that come up, some discomfort, be with it, feel it and move it through and integrate it. That's great. Most people go into these sits and they bypass. And this is where that topic spiritual bypass comes in. I actually like somatic bypass because you can actually go into the happy place in your brain and go into more dorsal shutdown through the vagus in your belly and you feel fine. But you see it from an observatory point of view. The eyes get glassy. It kind of looks like you're anesthetized. There's no life in the system. And so what happens, sadly, is a lot of people have been told because of the research, the research meditation shows when these monks who don't have any responsibility or or university students sit and do this for X amount of time, we see all these variables change. heart rate variability, exposure to stress is greater, or the ability to take in stress is greater, blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, is that most people aren't like that, and they're living in a world that has a lot of demands. So when it comes to meditation, it depends on the person. What I have also found is that those who stick with working with the basics, and we can go over that, as you mentioned, simple things, they naturally start to go into a space of meditative practice naturally. It just happens because you're connecting and you're recycling this focus of attention on your interception, on your extraception, on your breath. Oh, this is tight. That's loose. I'm having this thought. So the speed at which you can take care of these somatic experiences, you need to be able to slow that down. But again, if you've got this big boulder of survival energy living in your system, or you think the whole world is out to get you, you're basically like you're trying to keep yourself contained, like you're white knuckling that meditation session. And I think a lot of people that meditate, this is just from observation, are actually training more so their, how do I say this? Their training, their tolerance for feeling stuff they don't want to feel, but they're not feeling the actual thing that's there. So they're getting really good at managing what's inside, but they're not unpacking the thing that's inside. You know, and so a student of mine a long time ago said, she was doing my course and this just shows how how far a lot of people are from integrating even the work I offer she said why I know I was I was I'm doing your course but I'm also meditating like okay great and she said but whenever I meditate I just I just have this feeling like I want to like flail my arms but I know I'm not supposed to because I'm supposed to sit still in like below this position I'm like flail your fucking arms like you've just learned through me that it's important to get these procedural memories out. And this is where we compartmentalize, right? I'm meditating. I'm doing my exercise routine. Now I'm doing my yoga. Now I'm doing my spiritual practice. A person can just go for a walk and do all those things at once. But instead, we listen to Andrew Huberman on our earbuds, right? So we're thinking about things as we're walking and we're not noticing all the things around us. So that's the meditation piece. The breath work one is really interesting because people will say, and I hear this, I do my breath work, so I'm taking care of my nervous system regulation. The trouble with that is that when we are regulated, we do not need to do breath work to regulate our nervous system. So I'll say it again. When we're regulated, like true big window of tolerance, our nervous system knows how to react and come down, activate, deactivate. Our capacity, lung capacity is just shifting, just like our heart rate and blood pressure shifts based on movement. You know, I'm here with you. I've got a little bit of energy, but I'm also not flying all over the place, constantly looking around. Right. so if we need breath work to regulate then I say leave the breath work because there's a therapeutic aspect to breath work that I do appreciate but I'm more interested in can you just sense your breath and not change it because when you work at some of these old procedural memory the pre-verbal say stuff you actually have to allow a person to go to where they're almost not breathing and what happens when I was in private practice people would do this when they start to feel the energy so I'll kind of demonstrate it they'll go so they'll focus on the exhale which again Huberman was talking about on this vagus nerve thing the trouble with that is if we really want to do any form of cleaning up of the survival patterns in our system we have to build the capacity to feel that that tiger reaction and activate and explode in a contained way that is safe, raise our heart rate as if we were fighting or running. But if we just keep, it's just keeping the tiger trapped. So that's the breathwork piece that's interesting. One of my students who's learning with me to be a practitioner, she teaches breathwork, but she has seen that, yeah, Like we can't use it just as a tool to keep us calm. And so I often say if you're going to do some breath work, you got again, interception. If you're just doing the behavior of, but you're forcing it into fascia that's tight around your mediastinum, which is that heart space. It's like, you're just, I don't know the metaphor right now, but it's like, you're trying to go through a brick wall with like a straw that you're blowing through. It's like you need to work first on can you open up the organs, the diaphragms. A lot of people's diaphragms are stuck. And so you're trying to force this breathing in and it's kind of just trapped in this upper quadrant. So breathwork, I think, has a time and a place therapeutically. I could add in cold plunging to that one because hydrotherapy, wonderful for therapeutic benefit. it. Hot, cold, sweat, tolerance to cold, all the, I mean, I get the hormesis pieces, I get it. But if you have someone who goes into a cold plunge and they're like, and they're going into more survival, it's like, that's not the point. And then the timer, stop timing yourself in the cold plunges. What will occur is if you're going by the timer, you are disconnecting from your physiological need to get out of water, right? People say, just put some ice on your face or this will put you into rest. I just know it does not. The dive reflex, which gets activated and cold, is the part of the vagus nerve that shuts us down. It's what puts us into shock. And so if you have someone who can't feel the physiology shifting, and if you're really good at listening, you feel your heart rate then drop. and that is not rest digest. That's actually going into shutdown. So you see this with meditation, breath work, cold plunging is if the physiology is being forced and forced and it can't handle the activation, it will shut down and that's not good. And then the worst case scenario of that is passing out in a cold plunge and then what happens? Not good, right? And we've seen this. We've seen cases where people have died in pools because they pass out. with the combo of breath and cold, and the system says, time out, we can't handle this, out. Totally. I mean, what I'm hearing is really just an affirmation of the wisdom of the body's homeostatic mechanisms, right? Because I have explored a lot the very many needs that are met through what we call symptoms and illness and the wisdom of these expressions. And so what I hear you saying is that it's imperative to meet yourself where you are. You know, I worked with a somatic coach for years and that was, I can't tell you how annoying that message is because all I wanted to do, right, because I have this like spiritual thrill seeker in me. And all I wanted to do was push myself past my discomfort and be the brave cycle breaker and everything else. And she would always bring me back to developing a kind of trust between my will, I guess, and my body. So that if I'm really listening to my body, and then I started to talk about what I now jokingly call urinary reclamation, Right. Like how simple it is to just develop a relationship to your own urinary impulse, honor it and enjoy it. Right. Like that there's even pleasure in the relief there. It's a simple biological thing that if you're not oriented towards that imperative to meet yourself where you are, instead of pushing yourself and being a brave patient or client or social media consumer. then you could end up inducing just another flavor of stress physiology and even interpret it as progress, right? So are you relaxed or are you in freeze, in shutdown? So that's very profound. Yeah, that impulse, what you just said, that is actually one of the first things I teach students. I call it following biological impulse. You'd be surprised how tough that is for people. At the beginning, thirst, hunger, urination, defecation, cold, rest. Now, of course, there's a weird balance because those that have been chronically ill and shut down, they're really good at resting. But we also don't want them to go out and run a marathon, but they got to do a little bit of something. And so this is where Peter kind of co-opted the word titration from organic chemistry of these little tiny doses. And it will drive a person who is functionally frozen and a high achiever, which I think you and I share this common trait. It's like, what? You want me to do five minutes of that and that's it? Like, I can climb a mountain with a backpack on my back and fly off of it. You know, true story. It's like, and I got to just listen to what my feet are doing right now and the sensation of them. you know when i was in my se training and this just to give like a more subtle example to people i was unpacking all this stuff and i was at the beach in socal and i i don't know i'm like am i having a stroke like what's going on i just felt these like energy is going down my calves and then i'm driving to la jolla to see uh my se um assistant for a session and they just keep happening and I had just unpacked a massive piece in that training the week before and I went into her office and I don't know what's going on, Drew. Like I've just got all these things, like these weird energies. Like what the F is this? And she just looks at me and she's so therapist-based. She's like, honey, you've been in functional freeze your entire life. And I went, oh, that's what's going on. And she's like, uh-huh. And you're now finally feeling which is so strange because I was an athlete up to that point. And so I say that because there might be a lot of people that are like, well, I'm fine, like I can work out. But like, is there something else in the body that is not good? Like, are you chronically constipated? Are you always getting sick? Are you having trouble with keeping your home clean, motivation, relationships, thinking, brain fog, Like all these sort of laundry list of things. And the ACE study showed this so beautifully, Adverse Childhood Experiences study. Like if we don't work on this stuff, I don't mean to scare people, but we will get sick. Yeah, absolutely. Like we don't, you know, how many people do you just hear who just go to sleep at age 99 and just never wake up without having any problems? It's like, well, that's unheard of. But that actually is, I think, how we're supposed to be. and so I share that little bit of a vignette because the layers that we have in us are massive and vast but to uncover them and unearth them we need to go quite slow and a lot of people will stop because it just seems insurmountable all these pieces but I have seen so many people move through this stuff when you do go in a titrated way and what I think is happening with the meditators, the breath workers, the cold plungers, the raged, cathartic folk. That's fine. That's your prerogative. But inevitably, and I know this from hearing accounts of it, they fall back. Okay, I need to go to another retreat. I need to pay this guru another 10 grand. I need to be in conscious community and all this stuff. It's like, actually, you just need to sit at home and make food, do your work, maybe be in your relationship, deal with that stuff, and listen to when you have to go pee. I mean, it seems so silly, but it's like that's what animals do, right? That's what animals do. If you look at animals in the wild, they're just looking for food. They're taking a piss. They're having sex, making babies, and sheltering themselves when they need to. But again, we're not just that, and I get that. so to I mean humans have a lot to work with right now because now we do know that this stuff exists in the 50s and 40s it was just all survival and a lot of cocktails right like at least for the U.S. post-war it's like oh yeah we got all these beautiful things and let's just keep it all inside you know and now it's like we can't keep that inside we have to work with this stuff so I just went on a bit of a tangent there but absolutely no I mean it's it's amazing because I would even exactly what you described is I would say like the past four years I have been titrating into boredom truly from you know sort of righteous angry activist drama addicted you know, state of adaptation, right? So it was absolutely working for me. And, you know, my mentor, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, I mean, he would talk about the premise of his work was the autonomic nervous system. And he would talk about how some folks, the paras, he would call them paras, that they need to go on roller coasters and watch horror movies, whereas the sympathetic dominance need to learn to sit still. And I am a sympathetic dominant for, according to his rubric, you know, for a few minutes and just be with myself unstimulated, right, or stimulated only by the simplicity of what actually is in my environment and is in my body. And it took me out of the activism game. It also took me out of my then relationship because in order to prioritize regulating, I guess, in the ways that I deeply desired, there was a change in environment that was needed. And yeah, it's amazing to consider the simplicity. I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. I want to talk just a little bit, like double click on the functional freeze concept. And then I want to just touch a bit on the role of healthy aggression in men and infant voids even. The functional freeze concept, I think, has begun to permeate the zeitgeist. And I think if anything, it is having, it's conferring some benefit, right? Because women are now, I think particularly women, able to resolve the gaslight on some level that says, I should be happy. I should be feeling fulfilled. I should be, you know, in having arrived at a place in my life where I feel deeply okay in my own skin. I'm running a business. I'm mothering, you know, a couple of kids. I am getting things checked off of my to-do list, but something feels amiss. I call it the sensation of like living behind a glass wall, But it can obviously be variously described. What do you think of as being the physiologic underpinnings and the most common manifestation of what we're calling functional freeze? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I only heard that term in my trainings, you know, in the SE training, I believe, and don't quote me on this, it was coined more so by my mentor, Kathy Kane, when we were working with preverbal trauma at the somatic level using touch work. and the other thing that she coined and I know she did coin this is the faux window of tolerance so false and so someone has this representation of functional freeze which is basically what built Western civilization if we just go really macro what makes it such that a person gets up in the dead of winter to go work out and then go to work and constantly be in this you know, rat race of going against biological needs, right? So that's one part. But the faux window means that there's this disconnection to that interception. It has to. And that then, of course, is why is that? Well, there can be lots of reasons. Trauma, I think, overachievers, I see it. I saw it obviously in myself, but it's got common, like, you go to kindergarten, Jordan, you go to elementary school, you got to get good grades, you got to be a good kid, you got to sit still, you got to be on the sports team, you got to get to college or university, got to get good grades, you get a job. There's never this moment of pause, of reflection. Some cultures have rites of passage for their young, but even those can sometimes be wrought with toxicity around showcasing, you know, this little human that just probably wants to have fun and play and hang out with their friends. So there's all these layers of functional freeze that get popped on due to culture. But then there's also injuries, right? Going to medical procedures that were never prepared for. And rather than like feeling the terror of doing this thing, We just like be a strong boy. I saw this at the ER ages ago. This little kid, I forget what it was. He was looking fine with his mom, but his mother was clearly like stoic and like not being comforting with her boy. And then the doctor came in. He had to do something. I think he had to get into the ear, up into the nose. I don't know what it was. And the poor thing, I washed his legs. My husband and I were sitting there and his little legs were just like this. But his mother was like, don't cry. Don't cry. And that's normal, right? That's completely normal. And then he got up and he walked away and you could just see his energy just get a little smaller. but this is common and so this is I share that because it's not functional freeze isn't just from abuse and it's from these everyday little things you know it's from needing to drive five hours and there no rest stop so you just hold it in you don drink I know friends who will not drink on airplanes because they don want to be bothered to get up By drink I mean water right I like what You didn get up for nine hours That's insane. That's functional freeze. So it's this big behemoth, I think, of just what we've accepted is civilization, at least in the West. but I also think I don't know if it's the millennials I'm not good with my my eras but it's like this whole oh they don't want to do anything they're so you know self-serving it's like yeah I get that but I also think it's because they're just they they we can't continue with the numbing I think they're taking a little too far like I said we still have to you know clean up shit and learn how to cook and all these things but I think that like we're trying to find this happy medium so that we're not going into this complete shutdown. So yeah, functional freeze is interesting because it often serves you, Kelly, until it doesn't. And what I often see, and you've probably seen this in your practices and knowing people, a person will be fine rocking it and then they get a car accident or they lose a loved one or they, whatever, some kind of massive big event. And then one day they're fine and the next day, so they can't get out of bed, right? And that is a clear thing that I see is the system has been holding it all together with like scaffolding and duct tape and it's been jerry-rigged and MacGyvered to keep going, keep going. And this is also why that classic thing we hear, a person will like work till 65, like this is the old story. Then they stop their job, but they get their pension. And then in a year they have a heart attack and die. I'm being very general with that. But we know these stories. And so that person has just been pushing to do the thing that they're supposed to do. And then it just cracks. The movie Revolutionary Road is fabulous with Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio. Did you see that? Oh my gosh, you have to watch that and let me know what you think. It's like the epitome of what functional freeze was in the 50s, at least in America, in New York, suits, you know, this is what we do. And then of course, spoiler alert, the outcome isn't good because we can't live like that. So I think, yeah, there's this functional freeze piece that people also get a little too attached to it. It still is nervous system dysregulation, but with a very clever mask of being really great at everything. Yeah, to appreciate enough to get things done. Yeah, totally. You're not listening to the symptoms. You might have a sense that supporting your energetic and subtle body is important, but how exactly does one do that? Like short of scheduling regular sessions with an energy healer, how do you do that? Most of the time I find that when we take supplements, It's from the energy of fixing ourselves. And honestly, it's really no different than taking a medication at that point. That's why I love flower remedies. And specifically, my girl Katie has his elixirs from Lotus Way. The formulations that she creates are so nuanced that sometimes it feels like I wrote the descriptions myself. The last one I took was designed to dissolve go-go-go mentality as well as fatigue, weakness, apathy, and resistance to self-care. Relatable? Okay. I have a monthly membership called Flower Revolution where I get a new and super powerful on point remedy sent to me every month. And it blows my mind how resonant each one is with exactly where I am in my process. I think of this as a truly feminine investment that harmonizes my process and allows me to walk, talk and interact with grace. You can try it for a month or six at the link below. And if you just want to dip a toe in to learn more about how flowers heal, you can take their quiz. I love that phrase, faux tolerance. Yeah, because it gives you a sense of where this gaslight arises. Amazing. So, okay. So to shift gears a little bit, because I think this is such an important nuance to contribute to conversations around men and their nervous system regulation. because, you know, I speak to a lot of colleagues about what would shift in our collective experience if men were regulated, right? Like that simple aspiration. And I don't think a lot of folks are talking about the pre-verbal origins and specifically the role of healthy aggression in a man's boy's development, right? And what happens not only on a physiologic level, to, with, and from that man's system, but also on a relational level, like, you know, to zoom out to the seemingly, you know, peripheral concerns and considerations of healthy, polarized romance and erotic connection. Like, what is it to be in a world where men don't have a relationship to their own yang energy, to their own sexuality, to their own predatorial claim on, you know, what it is that they rightly desire. Perfect. So, and the perversion and inversion of that. So I've heard you talk about, you know, what it is for a mother to respond in one way versus another way to an infant boy nursing, right? And biting her nipple. Could it start there? Well, girls do it too. Right, of course, of course. But, you know, what is it to a mother, right? Because I don't work with men and I don't pretend to have any real advice, guidance or insight into what it is that they need. But I do work with the mothers and the mothers of sons, right? And I see this opportunity that we have as women, as mothers, to mother with an eye toward supporting healthy aggression. And I extrapolate that on a cultural and collective level to what a gift that is to future women, you know, to be in a place where men have this open channel of shameless connection to their aggression. So, yeah, let's just talk a bit about that. Yeah, I mean, I think I always like to go back to the baby. So you've heard my example with that. But hate to say it, ladies, it still comes back to you because you're the one modeling the okayness of that little animal. And so, and it's the same, it's women and men, you know, women have to have the healthy aggression too. And so I'll never forget Peter in class saying we were talking about, I think it was a master class on depression, healthy aggression and life force energy because they all go together. We know that many men have severe, we're in a mental health crisis, if we want to call it that, with suicide up, depression, chronic illness. Like I work with men in my work and I've got three students that are guys and, you know, they're to me just as equal as the women in terms of the stuff they're dealing with. But what's interesting is when we're little, when we're starting to find that sympathetic fight and it's when we're still a baby and we're feeding, we will do things like we'll scratch and we'll pull the hair. If mom has long hair, we'll bite, you know, and we'll have like we start to get energy. And I'll never forget Peter saying, yeah, so you have a mother that doesn't know anything about animal physiology and that they're a mammal and that this little one needs to be met. Now, this doesn't mean that he hurt her or she hurt her. But if mom is like appalled by this natural biological energy, she'll think that this little one is a monster and hurting her deliberately. And he, she is not like, no, little baby is not trying to hurt. they're feeling their life force energy kick in and there's neurotransmitters involved that I don't keep in my head, but they're there. And so you want to meet that little one with some play. Right. So often a friend of mine talked about this little one, her little guy was punching or hitting. I can't remember. And she came to me one day to the kind of what to do. Like, this is kind of weird. They don't tell you what to do, you know, in mother's school. And I said, well, what do you think? And she said, well, Google told me that if my baby is hitting me, hit them back. I was like, and I knew that wasn't right. I'm like, good for you. So that's good. I said, well, the moment those little hands start to activate, grab them and pull, play, get a little feisty with him and work with that rather than you're a monster, stop it. And, um, and so she, right. It's like all these tropes, like, oh, we don't hit stop that, you know? Yes. So it's like this, like, whoa, look how strong you are. Let's play with that strength. So it's matching that strength. And so she did that and he never hit her again. so that is like a perfect little morsel of here's this little dude who's feeling his healthy aggression i don't even like to call it that it's just healthy life force energy mom respects it plays meets him and it's like an activation deactivation cycle the trauma release it's like oh thank god it's like it's like the the the cry it out stuff is so interesting to me because if I was in distress and crying due to an injury or pain and my husband came up to me and said, you need to go to your room, Irene, and just cry it out. And I want like a hug. I'd be like, fuck you. Meet me. I don't need to fix it because guys like to try to fix it. I'm like, I just need you to sit. And so, so many kiddos and babies are abandoned in their aggression, emotional pain, silliness, fun. You know, how many little kids did make believe when you're like four, five, and you bring this really screwed up thing to your parent, it makes no sense. And the parent's like, that doesn't mean anything to me. Like, what a hit to that little person's creativity as opposed to, whoa, that's Cool. Can you tell me what that is? Right. It's again, it's a social engagement back to polyvagal connection. And then you mentioned a second ago, shame. I think the shame piece is a whole other thing because I was thinking that's a part two. I mean, there's like so much to unpack there. I'll just give you this much and I'll come back to the men piece, the male thing. We need healthy shame. We will not learn right from wrong if we don't have that. It's very different than guilt. Brene Brown messed that one up. Sorry, Brene. Like with the, it's guilt. It's like, no, guilt is more advanced. Guilt is moral shame. I really did something wrong. Whereas you need some healthy shame so that little person doesn't keep putting their hand on the stove. And if it's just like, oh, it's okay. Take your hand off. You'll be okay. Like that isn't enough of a hit to the physiology. You have to feel it. Oh, I mean, you know this, you have an animal like, oh, tail between the legs. You have to feel a little bit of that. And that teaches you, okay, not right. But you don't do that with toxicity, where I often will say, you know, many of my students have heard this, being told that they're worthless, they're stupid, they're a big fuck up, all these sorts of things. That is toxic, right? So that's a whole other piece. But if someone and people will be like, oh, no, Irene, you're wrong. All shame is bad. Then I say you got to go back to your own childhood wounds because chances are there is still stickiness in toxic shame that was dosed out to you. And this is what we're seeing in a lot of the more recent generations of parents where they're letting kids get away with everything. and no boundaries, no rules. And we're seeing a mess because they haven't learned structure. But we also need play, right? We also need creativity. So it's like a bit of both. But to go back to the healthy aggression, I mean, honestly, it's really quite simple. When that part gets met and then it keeps getting met and getting met as each developmental milestone happens, you just create this little being who knows that they can be strong, but also sensitive and nurtured. But what often occurs is it goes one or the two ways. We only reward it when you're really aggressive and showing off. But if you need a hug when you have a boo-boo because you fell off your bike, be a big man. Be a big boy. That's what we would hear, right? Be a big boy. Don't cry. And that little one, there's the start of functional freeze. I feel this. It's like my mom's telling me this doesn't hurt, but I feel hurt. I mean, you know what it's like if you have you've scraped a knee as an adult, it hurts, right? Like you're fine. It's like, no, I'm not. But then you trust your caregiver. Oh, I must be fine. and then starts the psyche confusion. But I feel pain, but she's saying I shouldn't feel pain. And there you start the inability to feel interceptively and then not be so sure. Should I trust this person? Because they're telling me that I should be okay, but I don't feel okay, but I must be okay. The flip side is the mother or the kid falls off the bike and they freak out because the look of fear on a parent's face is worse than what's going on typically in the kid because they look at the face and they go, oh, this must be really bad. And maybe it's not so bad. And then the fancy word is you over couple with something that's kind of minor. It's like, oh my God, this is terrible. There's so many good social memes on that out there with people being a bit too extravagant with their reaction was something really small. Does this make sense? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And again, it's almost like it all comes back to what we were discussing with adult clients or patients, which is how can you meet yourself where you are? Well, you can only really easily do that if you were raised by somebody who could meet you where you were. Right? That's simple. You got it. And many of us didn't get that, right? Many of us didn't get that. And so a lot of times there's confusion. You hear inner child work and reparenting. And of course, Schwartz's work with IFS and all these things are good and fine. But I mean, I kind of always come back to the biological safety of that nervous system. And if it didn't get some solid co-regulation, which builds that portion of our vagus nerve that calms us down naturally through the heart, through the SNO, through the pacemaker, we got to work that. that. So and then, you know, my list here of meditation, rage work, breath work that we talked about, like that stuff is nice. But like, can we just teach this person to connect to the ground under them and even just feel their own touch without doing anything? Because if you are touched with hands that were either vacant or anxious, that's going to infuse this is what the world is. right and so you cannot reparent yourself and go back in time but you can work with yourself as an adult with this adult brain and this knowledge and of course the practices that i bring people through to connect internally and to the environment you need both because the environment feeds us information and so a lot of people will get really good and perfect at doing these somatic things in the comfort of their own home, but then they're in a supermarket and they lose it when someone's being rude. Right. It's like, well, if that can't, it has to integrate. But just like a human that's little that goes, grows into an adult, if they can't integrate and be on their own. And be in good life force energy and good vitality and be certain in what they want and don't want, then something got missed in that apprenticeship. which as we know is rampant and that's okay. That's the other thing. I'm always like, I talk about this as if it's like everything is terrible. But the thing is, is we're at a point right now where we know this stuff. Even Gabor Matei said not too long ago, we don't need to do any more research around chronic illness. We just need to come back to what we do with babies and how we raise children. The good news for those that are like, oh my God, I raised my babies totally wrong. I've screwed them up. don't worry because if you do your work as a parent, I have seen this, it trickles out to your adult children. Yes, I've seen it as well. Yeah. It's super cool. So beautiful. I mean, I'm so, so inspired by this conversation and how many more paths we can go down. I would love to have you back on, which I almost never suggest because I'm very interested in, you know, just being the bridge to some glorious folks out there doing amazing work. But I really just find this, I mean, it's so profound and so fascinating. And I've come to such similar conclusions through very different paths. So I'd love for you to share the resources that you have available for folks who do want to study with you, both whatever you want to call them, lay people and practitioners. And to make sure, you know, people know where to go in the show notes, of course, from this conversation. It's pretty simple. My name is my site, LionOS, and there you will find a rabbit hole that some people will go down for many years. In terms of open resources and education, YouTube is the best place. There's like 600 plus videos there, so there's a lot. If that is overwhelming and you don't want to weed through that, we've got little things on my site that package some of that education up. And then the two courses, one is 21 Day Nervous System Tune-Up, not a reset, tune-up. And then the longer curriculum that teaches how to work with the early trauma, the pre-verbal trauma, the healthy aggression, the healthy shame, more Feldenkrais is called Smart Body, Smart Mind. That's a 12-week curriculum. One thing I will say is this is not stuff that you just do once and then you're done and everything's perfect. I like to say that relearning as an adult how to have true window of tolerance and regulation and have all the systems come along for the ride, it's like learning a second language as an adult. You aren't going to learn Italian in 12 weeks. And you certainly aren't going to learn it if you don't go to Italy and immerse yourself. So there's an immersion that has to occur. And at the end of the day, Kelly, it's lifestyle. Like you can't do this. And then when your husband comes home, you drop it all and go back into Fawn. Like in this will challenge people's relationships. It'll challenge their career, how they connect with family. It'll challenge everything. But that's kind of what we want if we don't want to harmonizing. I would even say. And then it's challenging the conditioning. But I'm also not this activist, used that word a little while ago, of screw all the centralized stuff and leave everything behind and screw the, it's like people need to make money. So if you know you need to like put food on a table and work, then do that. But do this in little bits, right? The all or none approach, in my experience, doesn't work with this stuff. like you gotta integrate it into your life or else what will occur and i've seen this is you'll do this massive swing and then you don't know where you are and then what do you do you go back into shutdown or functional freeze so it's a cliche but like that onion peeling analogy you want to peel it ever so slowly and then just let the peel sit there until it decomposes and it's food for the worms again and then you do the other peel right and it's that slow but the cool thing is is that the nervous system a wants to be regulated it doesn't want to be stuck but the brain will challenge that and so you also have to make a conscious effort and decision like, yeah, I want to do this, but I'm not going to punish myself by trying to get this all done in a year. So slow titration and a willingness to do it and just be interested in your body and in your physiology. So that would be, that's my speech. Beautiful, Irene. I'm so grateful for and to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're welcome....