Trauma Sensitive Movement with Janis Isaman #191

Sometimes as we put difficult experiences out of mind to keep moving forward, it shows up in the body instead.   That old "pain in the neck" boss, starts to show up as a literal pain in the neck.   Or maybe you've noticed how back pain may show up just when you are feeling under-supported.  

The body has it's own intuition and intelligence that we can tap into.  And it's a big part of our energy and vibration.   The body reflects all kinds of hidden truths about our true feelings and experiences in life.  It holds the inconvenient truths, past traumas, and unspoken emotions.

In this episode, we'll learn about how to tap into the wisdom and intelligence of your body to access deeper healing and growth.  Are you are feeling out of sync with your body or suspecting that it's holding onto a bit too much?  Or struggling to heal something physical and suspect the roots are really emotional?  Releasing and letting go of your "pains in the neck" or trauma begin by opening up a whole new conversation with your body.

Joining us today is Janis Isaman, a certified movement and wellness expert whose journey began when she discovered Pilates as a transformative solution to an overuse injury. With certifications in a range of disciplines from STOTT Pilates to Trauma Sensitive Yoga, Janis has dedicated her career to helping others find relief and alignment through holistic practices. After inspiring stints in Toronto and New York City, she founded My Body Couture in Calgary, providing personalized, intimate wellness coaching.

 Janis is here to share some beautiful, gentle techniques tailored for those of us who feel life deeply. These practices will help you reconnect with your body and practice listening to the messages it's giving you. Whether you’re a master of sacred movement or just dipping your toes into the world of body awareness, today’s talk will help you shift your relationship with your body and clear your energy more effectively.

About Christina Wooten, Sedona Medium:

Want to take more aligned action in your life?  Want to understand the energies at play each month, so you can flow with Divine Timing?  Join the Inner Circle to get access to Monthly Readings with Christina and the Energetic Calendar!

Christina Wooten helps you access the wisdom and support of the Spirit World to elevate your life.
She is a Certified Psychic Medium and Reiki Master Teacher.  Christina is the owner of Sedona Medium and co-host of Modern Life and Spirit podcast.

She offers Psychic Medium Readings, Soul Readings, Past Life Regressions, and teaches how you can start communicating and receiving messages from your Spirit Guides - through her program.
Learn more about her offerings here

Robert Wooten is a Certified Reiki Master Teacher who loves to help others to increase their life force energy and heal mind/body/Spirit.
Sessions are performed remotely thru Zoom or by phone call, and energetic information received during your session can be recorded and shared,  to assist you on your healing journey.
Learn more about how Robert can help you here

Contact www.SedonaMedium.com Today!

Transcript

Narrator: 0:51

Welcome to the modern life and spirit Podcast where we explore spiritual topics relevant to today's world. Your hosts certified psychic medium, Christina Wooten and Reiki master teacher, Robert Wooten break down how to work with spirit to create more positive growth in your life. Consider this podcast your go to spiritual resource for navigating the modern world.

Christina Wooten: 1:14

Hey, they're kindred spirits. Welcome back to the show. It's me Christina Wooten certified psychic medium from SedonaMedium.com. Today, we're going to be diving deeper into body wisdom, how your body and movement can help you to shift stuck energies, and can even help you to release old trauma. Our body is such a powerful mirror for what is happening in our world. And it is so critically important to recognize this power of being in an attuned relationship with our bodies. So joining us today to help us with all of this is Janis Isaman, a certified moving and wellness expert whose journey began when she discovered Pilates as a transformative solution to an overuse injury. With certifications ranging in a variety of disciplines from Pilates to trauma sensitive yoga, Janis has dedicated her career to helping others find relief and alignment through holistic practices. After inspiring stints in Toronto and New York City, she founded my body couture in Calgary, providing personalized, intimate wellness coaching. Hi, Janis, thank you so much for being here, I'm so excited to dive into all of your wisdom and kind of pick your brain and pick your heart today about the topic of trauma, but also really connecting with our body wisdom to resolve that and move through these cycles that seem to repeat over and over in our lives. So I'm excited to hear what you have to share with us and want to thank you for being here. And I'd love to start with, if you could share a little bit more about your journey, how did you become such an expert in this type of work,

Unknown: 3:02

I always have kind of one sentence for that. And it is I became the practitioner that I needed to be in to find. So in essence, I'm a trauma sensitive movement specialist. And so what I'm doing is combining what we used to call mind body, physical fitness and disciplines. So your yoga is Pilates and there's some others in that mix. I also have, I don't know, four or five different trauma trainings. So some of those are evidence based. One of them is evidence based, and I'm able to, to use those tools, both in a still unmoving body and in a moving body so that we're really fusing all your movements or trauma based work and really digging into the components of how we can use our body to integrate our experiences. I really got into that. Many, many practitioners will kind of relate to this. And some of your listeners will relate to this. But it started with the practical, my knee hurt, let's fix that. And, and I mean, that was that was a whole a whole situation in and of itself. But it opened a door and a portal to what is back here. And it's been almost two decades. So it wasn't an overnight thing where it came from my knee hurt to being a trauma sensitive movements specialist by any means. But I think that's important too, because they think sometimes we talk about healing journeys, and they're instantaneous, or 20 days or a year, and mine has taken half my life. Wow.

Christina Wooten: 4:40

I think it's so powerful, how our bodies reflect what's happening energetically and what's happening underneath. And I think we don't pay attention about what's happening within them until it hits the body until you can't ignore it anymore until it's, you know, kind of put you on the ground a little bit so that you have to deal with it. You have to keep digging deeper. And you sometimes find that limit of traditional medicine where it's no matter what you're trying, it seems to not be working and it's pointing us to this deeper message of what's the spiritual aspects was the emotional aspects that are happening, that have are now reflecting and expressing itself through the body and the body's wisdom. How do people know if they have these things hidden and stored before it gets to the point of being a physical symptom that you have to treat?

Unknown: 5:40

That's a really good question. So I hear and see a lot of advice on social media to listen to the body. And then and then what does that mean? So there's a couple of different things that that means to people. When we say, I can feel my arm, and it's very muscular, and it's very, there's a bone there, there's muscle there, there's a high chance that we're not connected to the body. There's also a really high chance we're not connected to the body if we feel nothing. Most of us don't have like a huge practice in noticing and naming the body that way. So quite often, we really do it when somebody asks us, so it may be a therapist, and maybe some prompt that we've seen in a book or something on social media. And quite often my experience as a practitioner is that much of it is is quite rudimentary in many ways. And so I think that really, that's where the kind of core of the how do we how do we do the work before we need the work is, and it can feel almost silly, because that connection to our body, if we're speaking of it, like it's an anatomy textbook, or something outside of us, or something we own, which is another really common thing, we want to change your body or we want to manipulate it, or we want to decorate it, or is it something that a again, it's like an object outside of us. Those are not connecting language components. Those are, it's something we master we control that's outside of us that we happen to have in our possession. And maybe we even know that we need to take care of it. But that that can be one of the big flags. Another piece is when we're talking about emotional experiences, can we notice and name, what the corollary physical experiences. So we know from polyvagal research that about 80% of our experiences are body up. So we're getting that messaging in through the body, whether it be fear or joy, etc, there is actually sensation happening in the body that comes up to the brain, the brain starts decoding it interpreting it, giving us signals giving us stories, giving us perceptions. So that means only 20% of what's really happening comes from the brain down. And our culture is quite focused on kind of therapy, even even honestly, I've taken multiple yoga trainings, there's a lot of meditation and mindfulness that's really about our brain, and coming down into the body, controlling the breath, that becomes part of the control of the body. This doesn't mean that these things are wrong. But what it means is that we're not allowing space for that 80% to kind of organically boil up. And and really feel it, be aware of it, etc. So, you know, there's there's no kind of like hard line where it's like black and white, we say this is a time that you need to intervene versus not. But those are kind of some broad guidelines for how we might know whether we have that connection or whether we're not, we might want to explore that a little bit

Christina Wooten: 9:00

more. I love what you're talking about about being in relationship with your body and really honoring it in a more profound way rather than an afterthought or something that's just like a tool to do the other things that we want to do to really respect the body in a different way. But I was thinking about when you're talking about okay, the shoulder, the shoulder is like tissue, it's muscle, its bone. So what if some, if you said connect with your shoulder? What does a healthy response look like? Other than just okay, well, it's tissue, it's bone? Like, what would what if somebody asked you that? Are you telling me about your shoulder? Like, what is your response look like?

Unknown: 9:43

I mean, that's, that's a great question. So to be clear, I would actually say that a healthy response is being aware of bones, muscles and tissues, because that is part of it, for sure. But can you feel and are you tuned into heat? So that might be a temperature? Some people I don't connect to this strongly, but is there a color? So some people have different colors that they can kind of tune into? Do you have an awareness of the bit above? Or beside? or below? Or is it just a when you tune into the shoulder? Is it just sort of a floating, floating bit?

Christina Wooten: 10:22

Oh, I love that.

Unknown: 10:23

Is there actually emotion attached to this? So when we're talking about the shoulder fleet, think about the shoulder does an emotion arise anywhere in the body? And again, all of these can be things that you don't connect to what I'm saying. So it doesn't mean that something is the matter if you don't connect to a color or an emotion, but there are a lot of people that win We think about certain body parts, especially if it's had some pain or trauma or injury, there is emotion in there that immediately pops up, right, I think the way that I describe a lot of my emotional experiences is through memory of my body. So if I think about a challenging emotional experience, I can recall my stomach clenching up, I can recall heat in my, in my chest. And even recalling, it kind of brings it back where I can feel it, then I can attach an emotion to that. And then I can start to process what the thought pattern is. And much of my experience of how I learned to express emotion was the opposite. What are you thinking? And then what are you feeling as opposed to what experience happened in my body? What was a feeling? And then I can link those two together. And then I can start to dig into perceptions, and responses and triggers and things like that. But I think that, you know, my own experience is, I can feel pressure in different parts of my body, if I think about emotional experiences. So when I'm talking about something like fear, there's a compression concept in my chest, it's heated up, actually even just talking about that I'm recalling a specific incident in my chest actually literally feels hotter to my touch my heart rate, sometimes, I'm not super aware of my heart rate, but I can feel it in this particular case. So that's kind of some languaging that I use. And that doesn't mean it's the only possibility. But it gives you kind of a sense of how my body is core to my experience, it's not outside of it. It's not a it's not a meat sack, where I'm like, Oh, my bones were doing a thing. My viscera, my bones, or my muscles were actually related what was happening, but it's the experience of what did it feel like to be inside my body at that moment? And how do you describe that? That's part of why like movement, because you're actually moving through something and you can describe it versus sitting in a chair and trying to describe a static area such as your shoulder?

Christina Wooten: 13:10

Yeah. I think that's really powerful. Our bodies are just thinking about Louise Hays, the book, heal your life, and how symbolic our bodies can express things as well. So it's interpreting this information that it's receiving from the environment and from, you know, what's happening around us. And then reflecting that in these very symbolic, you know, journeys, that if we're trying to use our mind to understand that it doesn't make sense. But when we go to that space beyond intuitively, it's like, oh, this makes perfect sense. Why this weight of the world since a burden I'm having is sitting right on my shoulders, you know, I feel like Atlas it's so it really makes me think about that is how we're symbolically expressing things too. But how, how does movement help you get from this like locked in state or static state of, you know, things are being held inside my tissues or things are being held inside the body itself, or the organs to a more fluid state of I'm moving the energy and the energy is being processed? And starting to release from the body? How does movement fit into all of that?

Unknown: 14:30

I have a lot of answers. So we so we actually what we know from trauma research is that rhythm is a very integrating experience to the body. So there are a lot of ways to express rhythm, music, art. movement, is one of them, so that the actual rhythm of walking moves your pelvis, and it's it is quite rhythmical. That tends to I mean, it activates your nervous system, it literally moves lymph. And your circulatory system moves those bones and muscles just sitting here, kind of coming into a rhythm, it immediately changes the the processing and the experience. So it's something that's quite powerful in our body and we need it. So we know that that is actually a huge part of it. Also on an energetic level, stagnancy is almost never healing, regulating, or integrated. So whether we're thinking about integration in something as simple as cooking it, foods don't typically integrate by way of setting the only A kind of exception to that is marination. But if we wanted to make cookies, we don't kind of put the eggs and the flour in and then just walk away and come back and the cookies are done, we have to stir them, right? So we need that movement to integrate experiences, because stagnancy tends to create pressure, it creates build up, it creates a lot of things that aren't necessarily great for our mental or spiritual health. So that movement and integration is where we really, we have insights, we have energy passing through, we have that idea of, you know, we've made that cookie, I do a lot of presentations to therapists. And in those presentations, I always say, there is no client who ever achieves mental health by sitting still in a chair, and they all agree with me. So movement is fundamental to the human experience of mental health, we cannot be lacking mental health and physical health and have amazing spiritual health, it does not exist. So on on a really kind of pyramid plain, we need to have the physical health first than the mental health and then the spiritual health. And we really cannot skip parts of that pyramid. So there's a lot of different answers. Some of them are research based, some of them are more kind of esoteric, but it's all part of a pathway, where we're not going to be in service to other people or ourselves if we do not move. And that doesn't necessarily mean something that looks like traditional exercise. But we need that in order to move through and discover who we are and discover our purpose in the world and to give in that way, and to connect with spirit and source.

Christina Wooten: 17:41

I think that's such an important distinction, too, because for a lot of people that I the concept of exercise is so daunting, or like uninspiring, like, uh, you know, I mean, a lot of people love it. And those people I think are amazing, I'm really impressed. I'm not one of those people, I have to like, make myself like, okay, you can do this. It's like a whole pep talk that's happening internally before I go do my walks, or whatever it is that I'm doing in that moment. And, but I feel like the, your distinction about that there's so many other forms of movement, and there's a rhythm that's happening underneath. That, to me is really exciting. It's about exploration of exploring, your body exploring, you know, how it wants to move, I like the image of the pelvis rocking when you're walking. And for some reason, it makes me think of the ocean and waves of the ocean and the waves of our breath. So that I love that distinction between exercise and movement can be different things.

Unknown: 18:48

Yes, yes, absolutely. So there is a lot of research in North America that about 85% of people do not get enough exercise. So that's been kind of top of my mind for many, many years. And I have looked at why that is, and your experience is really quite common. There is actually I think it's an interesting research study on people with depression and how we can, why why and how they're motivated to exercise. And none of those reasons or to have a hot body. Those reasons are to achieve weight loss goals, the efficacy of it really links to your value system, your community, and having meaning Yes. And when we really look at that exercise in that traditional gym way, for a lot of people, it has none of those things, it might have some community to it. Versus I'm gonna go take a walk and look at some flowers that can have really deep meaning you get that sense of awe, you get that sense of connection, you're with nature. So I really move people to on that spectrum of let's forget about exercise, if you're already not doing it, and you're a grown up, you're probably not going to and that's okay, but how can we kind of bring some comfortable, integrated movement into your life? And I've never had a client who can't do it. Yeah. And it's because when we find the connection to our bodies, where our bodies feel good, and when we find a connection to meaning. It is very, very easy to move. It's very fulfilling. And we don't have to count things or track things or have goals. We just find that we want to do it without kind of that whole pep talk. Because it feels nice. And that might look like your walk shifts from whatever you're doing now to 10 minutes. One of the things I actually like doing, we have little free libraries here. And I love just either going and putting books in or checking out what's in there. That for me is part of community. It's part of connection. And it's a small thing. But I'll map my roots out based on where the little free libraries are. In the spring, I like going in finding peonies in the garden. And so it's almost like a little scavenger hunt through my community to, to see who's got peonies in the front yard, take some pictures, stop. Last year, one of the one of my neighbors who I'd never met saw me admiring his peonies, and he was like, Oh, would you like to take one home and he gave me a peony on my walk, which is lovely. So there's moments of surprise and delight and connection. And, and all of that is super counter to what we've been told that exercise needs to be.

Christina Wooten: 21:49

Yeah, I think that's huge. I really like that distinction really resonates for me for sure. So for people who are empaths, particularly, I have this tendency to absorb all of this emotional information, all of this energy in the environment from other people just from spaces that they're within, how would you encourage people who are feeling like they're getting this energetic overload from not just their stuff, but everybody else's energy that's around them? How can they learn to tell the difference between the two and also process this energy that really isn't theirs? Like, what does that look like in your practice?

Unknown: 22:34

That's great. I like that question. I think that the the super feelers have superpowers, in my practice, I have people that come in, and I can't feel anything in their body. And we can work towards that. But then I have other people who come in, and they feel everything. And they end up in some ways being the same problem where the information volume is a struggle. So whether it's too much or too little, we're not kind of still sitting in that Goldilocks amount. So I mean, I think that the the people who feel too much have incredible body awareness, typically, so the exercises that we kind of went through at the beginning of the podcast, yeah, that tends to be quite a bit easier for those folks because they can notice and name, all of these experiences, they can really, typically dive into, you know, I've had people that can feel their heart beat just sitting without kind of efforting towards that, etc. And that's amazing, because at that point, we have that really strong body connection. But what can happen is then it's just this overload. Our human nervous systems co regulate with others. So when we talk about the energetic components that belong to other people, they genuinely do. So we, you and I are attuning and CO regulating right now, if you started screaming, that would have an impact on the nervous system. Right? The reason that television shows us laugh tracks in the 1980s and 90s. is for that reason, because when you hear somebody else laughing, it changes your nervous system does. So I I don't believe that we need to kind of discern between what's my energy and what somebody else's, because what that really means is that I have a tuning powers as human that I'm aware of, as opposed to some folks attune, but they're not aware of. So a couple of things, one, on a very practical level, if somebody has that hypersensitivity, it will be really important to be in environments where you are with other calm, regulated people. And that doesn't mean placid and having no emotions, it means that you're sitting in from a polyvagal theory standpoint of ventral vagal state where your nervous system is moving up and down, and it's regulating in correlation to what's happening around you. So if somebody laughs, you can laugh, if somebody screams and there is something terrifying that your nervous system would respond accordingly. So that's super important. From a movement standpoint, I would recommend a daily practice where we could move some of that energy through so I do that myself, which is why I had that log emphasis on the word I because I do it. So what happened with me when I opened my practice, I am one on one with people. So I'm here in a space with one person, one body, one nervous system. And so in the In the work of bodywork and movement, people would start going into their traumas and going into their emotional stuff in quotations. And I would go home completely exhausted, because I would I would hold it, they would feel it, they would have that sense of regulation, but I didn't know what to do with it. Because when I grew up, nobody really taught me how to process emotions, there certainly wasn't kind of a lot with my body. And so the only kind of tools that I really had were go for a run and get it out. But that's really aggressive. And so I ended up actually going down the hallway to the therapist, and it's an it kind of opened the door to all of this trauma work that I do. But I find that actually, my regulation every day has to be really much more calm. So if if you are somebody who's like, I need to run it out great. But I actually do yin yoga every day. So brings my nervous system down. And then that way, when these spikes happen through my day with my clients, I'm not having this over response or a clenching or an overburdening. So I do that for 45 minutes every single morning. And then I do other movement that is more active through the day. But that for me is a is a way to, to ensure that my body is integrated, regulated. And then I'm like a cat on the sea. Like, I don't know that that's like the perfect practice for everybody. In fact, I know that it is not. But what I recommend is finding of movement practice for you that you can do daily. And it doesn't need to be 45 minutes, either. It could be it could be 14 minutes, it could be seven minutes, it can be two minutes, but something that actually helps you integrate and move that experience through your body. Because otherwise what does tend to happen is our tissues respond to that we kind of were in that soup of stacking thing after thing after thing until suddenly or whole system is in some kind of crisis. So if we're taking all of this in, how do we integrate it in a way that we can also? I don't think it's moving it out necessarily. It's our if our bodies are our kind of porous channel for all of this, how can we let it flow in a in a usable, digestible amount? Right? Yeah,

Christina Wooten: 28:19

I think that's really powerful. I think the tuning your nervous system, and being intentional about that, so that you're not overly responding to things is such a strong takeaway, and such a strong nugget of how important it is in not creating new traumas for yourself. Yeah, to, you know, be in a regulated state and a peaceful centered state as much as possible. So when things happen, I mean, I found my greatest spiritual growth, I can tell when I'm in what would be a triggering challenging situation, and I feel peaceful inside regardless of that situation. And that happens not in the moment of the triggering experience. It happens, the all the preparation beforehand of doing the meditation and doing the deeper levels of work, that then I see the rewards of it in daily life. But it makes me think of that what you were sharing is this, that's part of the toning of your system is that your you see the rewards, that you see it not necessarily the moment that you're on the mat or while you're out on your walk, you can feel that, but you see it in these other powerful places that you go, Oh, wow, something's working. Something is happening and moving here and a really

Unknown: 29:44

cool way. Yeah, I think that's really well put, because it is it really is. And I can't emphasize enough that it's the practice before the thing happens before the crisis. I mean, even our fire departments do drills before the fires. And they do that for a reason. But many of us wait for the fire to be burning before we address the crisis. And I understand why I mean, we have busy lives, we have all kinds of things going on. But we have other priorities culturally and practically. But my own experiences similar to what you just shared, were pulling that practice in on a daily basis, it reduced the crisis. It reduced the amount of response energy, it reduced the amount of resources that they needed to put into it. And there are times when it makes a trying situation. Take two minutes, whereas before it might have taken me a whole day. Right? That doesn't mean that my life has no challenges. But I Um, it means that I'm able to respond with fewer resources. And then those resources are available for other things.

Christina Wooten: 30:57

Well, I love that idea of that as a resource. That's beautiful. What kind of traumas do you see in people's bodies the most for the people that you're working with? What kinds of things are like the repeat offenders and the repeating patterns that you're seeing?

Unknown: 31:16

Um, so I actually work with people with all different kinds of traumas as an intake. So everything from chronic and terminal illness to, you know, chronic PTSD to pregnancy and infant loss and sexual traumas, you name it, it's been in here, but how does that manifest very differently. So there are people who have traumas, who completely disconnect from the body. Yeah. And so that, typically, we know from research that, and this is not my research, it's Bessel Vander Kolk research, that typically a trauma will, will make us dislike our body. So actually, another thing that can show up as eating disorders are just extreme dislike of our bodies. And we do tend to have a little bit more of that construct of my body is a thing, my body's outside of me, I'm not connected to my body, I have seen absolutely dissociation. So we get into difficult circumstances. And we're out of not only the brain, but we kind of come out of the body. And unfortunately, some of the things that I'm sharing actually get very much culturally reinforced by our fitness and movement cultures who encourage some of this, we don't want to feel the body we push through, we keep we keep going. And then on the opposite side of the spectrum, to trauma can also make people hyper, hyper conscious of certain body parts and areas. So it's not uncommon that somebody is really hyper aware of maybe their arms and their legs, and then they have no sensation in their torso, for example, we can develop hypertonic, pelvic floors, we can develop hypertonic muscles, and hypertonic just means they're like, really active. So I have seen people with really, chronically painful necks, hypertonic, pelvic floors, the glutes are really common area, really, really hypertonic glutes where we're getting sciatica, or other kind of areas like that. And in these cases, we always try to work with the body first, to develop more comfort, more openness, more of a skill set, and what it feels like to be neutral. So when there's pain or disconnection, how do we experience sensation of neutrality, and that sounds really easy, but it's not. It's the same way that meditation helps us develop that same feeling of what is neutral feel like in a, in our breath, and in our thoughts. And that is, for a lot of people. It takes practice, especially if some of these traumas go back to childhood where somebody maybe doesn't remember their life before they were four, and it happened and they haven't ever really experienced it. Or maybe somebody has a really chronically traumatic life. And they only have one hour a week, and it's with me where they actually feel safe and open. But can we give somebody an awareness of what that sensation is? So it sometimes trauma can lead to pain, sometimes, pain is not from trauma, but there there usually is at least some imprint of it, whether it's in posture, whether it's in pain, whether it's in how we're holding or muscles, whether it's how we're patterning, usually, it'll show up somewhere, in addition to how we experience our body,

Christina Wooten: 34:53

right? Wow, I was thinking about people that I've had conversations with who do a lot of spiritual related work, but a theme that I have heard before. And this is really ringing some bells, what you're talking about, especially with dissociation from the body is this annoyance with the body of having a body so it's an annoyance of like, I have to go eat like how many meals It's so annoying after you know, cook and then I have body sensitivities like I need certain dietary needs, and then I have to get stopped what I'm doing and go to the bathroom. There's this theme of like, I'm identifying as an energy and not identifying as a body and it makes me think more about that from a trauma person. spective of is there something that's deeper within that's, you know, creating this disassociation to either one part of the body or to just not? You know, maybe it's cultural and ignoring the needs of the body to just keep pushing or keep hustling or keep moving and keep going. And so it's really what you're talking about was ringing some bells over here for sure.

Unknown: 36:14

Yeah, yeah, there can be in the spiritual world, a spectrum that looks quite similar to what we have in the nutrition world where we go from healthy eating to orthorexia. So orthorexia is where there's an obsession with with perceived health, healthy foods, and that could look like a whole range of things. It was it was kind of became a little bit more popular during the Paleo era where, where people would only eat certain things. So we can actually, we can see that popping up in the yoga and spiritual communities as well, where the actual physical sensations have to be blissed out and to be in a meditative state can. It can both feel and be rewarded for forgiveness in this kind of way. So we are we're following these rules. But there's also this chemical rewards from this. So if you ask anybody who's ever had an eating disorder of any kind, the body will be in this kind of buzzed out blissed out, chemically rewarded high from doing that. And so it can feel very annoying and distracting to have to come out of that either. Literally, it's like an impure idea, or it's something physical in the body, where it's like, having to eat or go to the bathroom is like, it's killing my buzz, man. Yeah. And so, you know, the problem with some of these things is it is a spectrum. So it isn't something where if somebody's like, oh, you know, I really hate going to the bathroom, when I'm meditating, that isn't necessarily a red flag, but it certainly can be we can be in that dissociated state, we can find the body, just this, you know, get it, get it away from me, because I just want to be kind of up here in this in this bliss. So that would be something where if you're noticing that or relating to that in yourself, I might check in with a practitioner just to see kind of where you are on that spectrum. Because it absolutely 100% I've had clients for whom that it that does pop up. And it is it is a dissociative slash trauma response. And it can feel like you want to sit in that meditation and that breathing and that control element all day long. But there is a reality and a practicality to you need to be in your body.

Christina Wooten: 38:41

I think it's helped me to think of that our physical body is just a continuation of the energetic form, that it is all the same element, instead of seeing them as singular or divided, or, you know, the physical world is somehow entirely different than the spiritual world is recognizing that there's the threads of all of that, that really, I think, changed my relationship with my physical body to where you know, have so much more of a sense of harmony and peace with normal, like bodily type of things. So I know that's been something that I've had to work on.

Unknown: 39:20

I think the spiritual world also is, it's an idealized world, whereas our bodies are fallible, they're gross, such a good change, you know, they age and so it is not as appealing to actually have to deal with the body. But that spiritual growth is not complete without acknowledging the limitations in the achiness. And the changing and the grief that comes along with owning Yeah,

Christina Wooten: 39:48

I think that's huge. I think that's such a good insight. And I really appreciate you bringing that forward. Because that's a really big one. It is an idealized state. And we were really shocked back to reality, sometimes when we're, you know, dealing with just Yes, let's call it the magic of the body and the magic of the body.

Unknown: 40:08

It is it is it is, yeah, when we're dealing with the body, at some points in our life, we are absolutely going to have to deal with fear, we're going to have to deal with anger, we're going to have to deal with sadness and grief and a bunch of those other kind of less culturally desirable states. That's where we do get a lot of growth as a human being as a flawed person, as you know, that feeds right into spiritual growth. But when we don't necessarily have to deal with that if we set our bodies out of it. So it's to me that's where a lot of my growth has actually come from. Because it's very Are you present? It's right there. Again, no choice I have to deal with my brain and my spirit, my body. We're missing part of the plot of the novel if we don't bring that in

Christina Wooten: 41:01

a new percent. So do you only work with people in person? Do you do work online? Are you able to connect with people distance wise? What what is the session with you look like?

Unknown: 41:14

I do all the things. So for the last, actually, I started 20, a and 2018. So it was a little bit ahead of the the 2020 curve, but I see people on these days it's on Google meet. As well as if you are in Calgary, I can see you in person. So session with me looks like we I always do an intake where I chat with the person on the phone, to make sure that we're a good fit before we move forward. Because I have workstyle, they have a set of things that they want to work on. So we just kind of established his thoughts a fit. And then we organize a session and the first session is it's really about figuring out where somebody's at. And I work a lot with a key concept called interoception. Which is where we're asking the person and it's usually based on something I'm seeing, what are you feeling? What do you feel like? What are you feeling? And then I'm actually having the person move through a series of movements, so we can establish what it actually looks like, when somebody moves their hips? What does it look like when somebody's moving their arms? What does it look like when somebody is trying to engage their abs, and then the whole time we're having a conversation of what does that feel like, and there's a lot of mirroring, there's a lot of choice giving. So it's not, it's not kind of a coercive, like we're gonna do this test, and then I'm going to take some notes and send you your report, it's really a very organic process where somebody is doing a lot of self discovery, that first session. And then in the first session, what we're going to do is we're going to find something that feels like a little bit stuck a little bit painful, a little bit, maybe it's leaking agree that it's not working the way that the person wants it to. And then we do what I call a therapeutic. So that's where we'll bring in something like a yoga or I'm gonna body rolling, and we try an exercise that is going to move the person's experience of that to a different place. Then we go back, and we try to the first the thing that we just did, where we discovered the problem, try it again. And then we check in again, what is your experience of that movement like now, and we're looking for shifts, we're looking for change, we're looking for a different process that's happening for that person. All of this is directed towards what is your experience of life outside of my studio, when it comes to experiencing your body living in your body moving your body? We have different outcomes, one of which is how can we move more? One of which is how do we get more aware, one of which is how can we actually be the agency of choice and our own body, etc. So that can all be done online, it translates actually quite beautifully to online programs as well. So I have the good fortune of having clients locally, as well as in other places, which is great,

Christina Wooten: 44:22

I love working online, I feel like energy is non local, you know? And so and I'm also I don't know what your sign is, I'm Aquarian, too. So I'm all for in using technology and bringing it into our world in a positive way. I'm like, minded and supportive. But yeah, so I love that you're able to connect with people regardless of where they are because I think this type of work is so critical and there's everybody can improve their relationship with their body and just the self awareness of what what the body is reflecting what it's bringing forward. And using that as a tool for continued growth and continued integration and processing. And you know, considering ourselves as being a full integrated, energetic being I think is enormous. Yes. So how can people if they want to reach out to you if they want to learn more, you have so many amazing articles also on your website that's available that talks about more about trauma and ways to dig in how to tell the difference between you know, triggers and things that are other things that might be happening in your body so I think it's a really great resource for people that how can people reach out to you to learn more explore this a little bit more?

Unknown: 45:41

My business name is my buddy kitcher which is three words for swords my mi second was body Bo dy. Third graders, Kutcher, CLU, T u, r e. So you can go to the.com. And as you shared those a little bit about me, there's articles, there's podcasts, this podcast will end up being posted there. And you can obviously email me from my website, I also am, I was gonna say active, I'm not really active. But I'm on social media. So you can find me on my social, any social media site where I am present, I am at the slash my body picture. I really am a person that that connects by way of conversation. So I actually, to be honest, I'd rather that you sent me a DM, then, than anything else, because I'm not posting a lot of like flashy content on there. But you're welcome to follow me pages, and you're welcome to reach out to me in any of those formats,

Christina Wooten: 46:44

that's wonderful. I love that you're available and that you're just bringing all of this to light because it is important that we come into a much better place of love within our physical body. And self love isn't complete until we are including our body and including a love of movement and whatever form that wants to come in. And so I just appreciate all the wisdom that you've shared everything that you've opened up, and I think the insights that you brought had been really beautiful. So thank you so much for being here with us and our audience and talking all about all this good, energetic body stuff.

Unknown: 47:23

Thank you so much for having me. I

Christina Wooten: 47:24

loved it. All right, have a good rest of your day.

Unknown: 47:28

Thank you too. Bye. Janice

Christina Wooten: 47:30

Eastman has dedicated her career to helping others find relief and alignment through holistic practices. After inspiring stints in Toronto and New York City. She founded my body couture in Calgary, providing personalized intimate wellness coaching. All right, Namaste many blessings they have for joining us.

Robert Wooten: 47:56

Modern life and spirit podcast is for informational purposes only. The information provided is not intended to provide medical, psychological, legal or financial advice. information provided is not to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological illness. To read the full disclaimer, see Sedona medium.com