70//Learning How To Cope With Chronic Stress & Trauma With Erika Thomas

Ericka Thomas is a highly caffeinated coach, course creator and entrepreneur with a certification collection that includes registered yoga teacher, trauma release exercise provider and health coach. She is the owner and founder of Elemental Kinetics online trauma release studio and has well over 2 decades of experience in the fitness industry. As a refugee from the body brand nation and host of the podcast The Work IN, she offers mentorship and professional perspectives to help fitness professionals and wellness educators who want to set themselves apart using a creative, trauma-sensitive approach so that they can get lasting results for their clients and avoid burnout for themselves.

 

Connect With Erika:

Website 

Facebook @elementalkineticsmovewell

Instagram @elementalkinetics

Linkedin

The Work IN 

 

What we discuss in the episode:

1. What do you mean we should stop working out and start working in?

2. Why are fitness professionals perfect to help relieve stress and build resilience?

3. How can people learn to translate the body’s language?

4. What are some ways that you use movement as a release valve for stress and trauma?

5. What are the 5 points we need to navigate the stress curve for ourselves and others?

 

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SHOW NOTES AT 

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Xo,

Shannon Hansen

 

P.S. Make sure to schedule our Thyroid Breakthrough call with one of our thyroid advisors.

 

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION

(00:00):

This is episode 70 learning to cope with chronic stress and trauma with Erica Thomas Erica Thomas is a highly cap coach course entrepreneur, and has a certification collection that includes ed yoga, teacher trauma release exercise provider, and health coach. She is the owner and founder of the element kinesthetic online trauma release studio, and has well over decades of experience in the fitness industry as a, from the, and the, of the podcast, the work she offers mentorship and professional coaching to help fitness professionals and wellness educators who want set themselves apart by using a trauma sensitive approach so that they can get lasting results from their clients and avoid burnout themselves.

(00:57):

Welcome back to the thriving Throid where we choose become powered patients and take our health into our own hands. Hi, I'm Shannon Hansen, a Christian entrepreneur, a mom of three. And after dealing with my own health mysteries, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about the thyroid. I soon became certified as a holistic practitioner, a functional nutrition practitioner and a functional diagnostic practitioner. And so much more after that, I founded the revolutionary thyroid program, the handsome method as a health professional and a mom. I fully understand the importance of having a fun, simple, and sustainable plan for achieving a responsive thyroid. So I share actionable and practical strategies for developing a responsive Throid so that the ambitious moms and women can gain freedom from fatigue and lose the thyroid weight once. And for all each week, I will be here for you along with my guest experts, we will be sharing simple and tangible tips that work for not only your thyroid, your hormones, your family, and your mindset, so that you can get back to living the life that you envision for yourself. Welcome to the thriving thyroid podcast.

(02:17):

Right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. I have Erica Thomas with me on, and I'm so excited to have conversation about stress and trauma and how we can use movement in our life to deal and cope with that. So welcome Erica.

(02:33):

Hi, Shannon. I'm so happy to be with you today. This is gonna be a great conversation. I'm looking forward to it.

(02:39):

Yeah, absolutely. So

(02:41):

Everybody, a little bit of a background as to who you are, how you got started with this.

(02:48):

Yeah, sure. So, okay. I consider myself a resilience coach today and I teach basically nervous system recovery to individuals, and specifically with a focus on fitness industry professionals, because we often in working with people, we come across a lot of people who are dealing with trauma. If you work with people, you're gonna hear a lot about trauma, but I didn't start out there. I started out through martial arts 25 years ago. And through that, that was my doorway into group fitness, into certified personal training. I worked for many years there and then started to feel a lot of symptoms coming up in my, my body that I didn't understand where they were coming from because in my mind I didn't have any stress and I was already doing all the things that they tell you to do to deal with stress.

(03:54):

I was just doing them too much. I didn't understand just the, the way to balance my activity in order to, to kind of give my nervous system a break. I thought resilience meant being able to stay in that highly stressed, activated state forever. Like I thought that's what it, what, what it meant to be resilient. It when in actuality, the, the, the piece, the missing piece for a lot of people is the understanding that resilience is about being able to move from this highly activated challenge, state back and forth from there into a calm, relaxed, rest, and repair state at the nervous system level. So I was never giving myself any any space to recover any grace, to be able to recover, to, to rest in a way that my body understood. And that led to a lot of a lot of symptoms that you, your listeners might recognize, right?

(05:03):

Insomnia crazy mood swings, really dysregulated hormone levels. My, my energy levels were totally out of whack. I was really, I still am a little bit highly caffeinated, but I, I, I was really dependent on a lot of, so supplements just to kind of make it through the day. I lived on Advil because I had all kinds of overuse injuries and inflammation that wasn't, it just never could go away. And and, you know, just like numerous things. Oh, and the gut pain was like insane. right. Like off the chart. And I went to the doctor for all of these different symptoms. Right. And and part of the problem is that we chased the symptom. We chased this one symptom here and this one symptom there, and there was not, there wasn't anything that really obviously connected them. All right. There, wasn't a, a solid connection that I could make.

(06:04):

And certainly the doctors couldn't make them either because they're just treating, you know, this one area of the body. They're not looking at the whole person and the whole history of the person, right? Yes. But we so much more now about the nervous system and how important that full connection is in the body and how much it affects everything. And and so long story short, I stumbled into this idea that, Hey, maybe this stress response is actually triggering all of these things. And if I can focus a little bit more here than I can, I can heal, I can find ways to heal, not just heal, but like get better results from everything that I'm doing and everything that I'm offering to my clients, you know? And so that's kind of where it started. And, and so now I use things like yoga and trauma release in very specific ways to work through the body, to help people really find that true recovery at the nervous system level and kind of re re reconnect or re reprogram our, that, that, that nervous system pattern of response. That's. So that's really what we're doing. We're practicing new ways to respond to stress through the body. And luckily it works so , well,

(07:35):

It should work. Yeah. Things that work. So I little curious for you was this high pace, go, go, go. Something that you were taught as a child, and you try to keep up with, or was that some external thing where you are like just a high achiever and you felt like in order to achieve more, you had to keep going.

(07:57):

Okay. So this is a great question because there was a time when I would've told you I was totally type a, that I was like, I was that go, go, go, go. But the more study that I do, more self study that I do for myself and the deeper I have gone into other practices like Iveta and really looking at my pro constitution. I'm not naturally like that, but interesting. Just, yeah, just because I, I got a lot of feedback. I think this happens to a lot of people, like you get a lot of positive feedback from being over involved. Overscheduled overworked, overstressed. Like it's a badge of honor. Right. And, and you can be successful there. You can have a lot of external success there. You can look like you have the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect job, you know, and on the inside, you can feel like you're dying.

(09:01):

This resonates so much with me.

(09:03):

right. So, so that's, that's what was happening to me. Like I looked like I was healthy on the outside, and that's a real, a cognitive distortion for a doctor. When you have somebody that walks into your office that looks fit that, you know, I mean, they, they, they are, they're not overweight. They're, you know, they're, they've got exercising, they exercise all the time. They supposedly eat right now. I, I will say I, I had to do some correction on, on my nutrition, and we can talk about that nutrition piece because I think people get a lot of there's a lot of myths out there about correct nutrition. Yeah. and what works for one person doesn't work for everybody. So so we can talk about that also, but, you know, I thought I was like picture of health, but, but I was in pain all the time.

(09:58):

Like I was, I was really felt like I was suffering and it really didn't start to let up until I let up. And really learned how to let my, let my nervous system shake off that stress and, and then make some of the shifts out side of that. Cuz you know, we have, we have these pillars of, of, of health. Right. We have movement, which we're gonna talk a lot about today. We've got movement, we've got nutrition, we've got sleep. Right. Sleep's so important. But when those first two are not right, the sleep isn't gonna be. Right. And sometimes the sleep is like the first thing that goes when you're highly stressed. Right. Yes. And then that at fourth pillar is connection and other people will talk about some other things too, but they all kind of fall under those categories. Right. Yeah. And and, and so that's a lot, it can be overwhelming.

(10:49):

And if you're trying to do all of that all at once, it's really overwhelming. It's almost impossible. So, you know, just pick one thing, like what is that you can actually intentionally start to work on just one small thing. , doesn't have to be everything all at once. One small thing. And then the better that will help you to feel better a little bit. And then the better you feel, then the more you can do on top of that, then you can take that next step. Let's do that next thing. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So it's it's yeah. That question of like, are you, how are you naturally like this? No, I was totally outta balance. Like not, that is not how, how I would love to live. Right. Yeah. So

(11:33):

I grew up with a single mom who worked full time. She went to school full, she took care of me and my brother. She cleaned the house and I, like, I tell people she made breakfast for me in bed, you know, cuz she left a couple hours before me and my brother had to get up to go to school. And so she would leave a warm, hot breakfast for us that we could reheat or just go ahead and eat at that time. And she made dinner every night. And I just remember like, that's what you have to do in order to be a good mom. You have to work and hustle and grind and keep going. And even when you feel like, like you said, falling apart, you gotta keep going and you gotta going and going and going and going. And, and people in my life have always said, I don't know how you do all the things you do. And I'm like, oh yeah, like no big deal. But then I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm like, how do people do this? You know,

(12:27):

So I can, well, they, they don't for real, like they, they don't and, and they certainly don't do it happily. And that, and that's that's something that I think, you know, I don't, I don't like to get into the whole feminist thing, but I think that that did women, a disservice, like the whole idea that you can have everything and you should, like, you can have everything you want and you can do EV anything you want and you should like, that is, that is not true. Like you don't have to do everything and be everything to everybody you don't.

(12:59):

Right. And that's what I'm learning more and more. And not again, not to get into this feminist thing, but we have masculine energy and we have feminine energy and we need, I think what you're saying that a balance of both,

(13:14):

Right? Yes, absolutely.

(13:15):

And sometimes being more in the feminine energy allows for more creativity to come in and allows for more ease and flow instead of trying to be in this masculine, push harder, go stronger. And that's something that I'm really working on in my life. Right. Know, is finding that balance. Before we move on and start talking about the strategies and things, I wanna ask you, what is your definition? How would you define trauma? Because I feel like we kind of throw around this word and I wanna put some maybe context behind sure.

(13:55):

Trauma. Yeah. That's a so trauma is a, is a, it's a sticky word. Like when I talk to fitness, fitness professionals about trauma, they, the assumption the way they talk to me about it is like it's, it's when you've had some catastrophic injury. Yes. Right. Okay. Yes, that is traumatic. Okay. But if we wanna strip all of this idea of, you know, like these outside ideas about trauma down to the way the nervous system looks at it, the body's nervous system looks at trauma as anything that is too much too fast or for too long.

(14:35):

I love this. Somebody said to me a while ago trauma is anything you categorize as less than nurturing.

(14:45):

Oh, that's interesting too.

(14:47):

Yeah. And so anyways, okay. I'll let you keep

(14:50):

Going. right. Right. So, so yeah, that, that could fall into that now that no, that those definitions, right. They opened the door for so many different things. And I think I'll just use myself in as an example. I would've told you like 10 years ago, I would've said I had never experienced Trump because in my mind, trauma is for soldiers. Mm. Trauma is war trauma is like a violent assault. Okay. And I have never experienced any of that. Now. I know now that, you know, also what also can be trauma is like a childhood, a history of childhood abuse or neglect that can fall that can also be trauma. Right. Is it, it can set you up for CPT, right. Complex PTSD. But the truth is that not everyone experiences everything that we would categorize as trauma as traumatic, because not only do you have that effect on the nervous system, you can kind of break it down, like, okay, here's an event could be any event and Shannon, you and I could experience the same event we could be at the same place.

(16:07):

The same thing happens. We witness it mm-hmm . And because of our past experiences and how we, how we experience that event, it produces different effects on our nervous system. Yes. Okay. So the, the trauma, the stress response in the body that shows up as all of these crazy symptoms that sometimes will were like, oh my God, you know, where are they coming from? Those, those are the, that is the effect, the residual effect of experiencing that event in a certain way. And basically it is rooted in how our primitive brain is translating, what's going on around you. And that primitive brain really is dependent on your history. It, it is a pattern seeking piece of our anatomy, right? So it's trying to make these connections and assign meaning to the feelings that you are having in that moment, or, you know, to, to, to what is going on around you.

(17:14):

And so it'll do that by connecting associations to your past and, you know, all kinds of other things. And then it like locks it into the body's memory as this is how we should respond to protect you, because that's the ultimate purpose of the nervous system. It's like the most general security system out there. Right. So it's got the same alarm system when somebody is breaking in as it does when a fly hits the window, you know, the same response. So so that's where, that's where things can kind of get twisted up. If we get stuck, you know, we can get stuck in that response. And that's really hard for people because you can, you can be feeling from your body, the sensations that come up in your body are telling you you're not safe that you know, something is wrong, you're in pain.

(18:12):

Oh my gosh, what is this? I don't know what this is. And then on the outside of you, you're, you're like you understand cognitive cognitively understand that you there's nothing wrong, right? Yeah. You're not, yes. Not in an unsafe space. Why do I feel unsafe? Right. Spend too much time there. And the body kind of cuts off the communication after a while. So then we have a really hard time reading and trusting the sensations that are coming up from the body at the same time that we're in this hypervigilant state, like watching what's going on in the body. yeah. So that's like, that's just an awful place to be. Really?

(18:50):

Yeah. I have an experience, literally just this week where I was talking to my husband and I'm processing through this thing and I'm like, why is this such a big deal for me? Exactly what you're saying. I was like, logically, I understand the situation. I understand what's going on. I understand I'm not in danger or whatever. And then the words came out and I was like, it reminds me of my dad. And I was like, you know, . And it was this big thing because my dad most likely had personality disorder and had some tendencies where he was well, just a, less than nurturing in those situations. And so something that I've carried from childhood, this event,

(19:38):

Mm-Hmm,

(19:39):

Triggered that. And when I said those words, I was like, oh, okay. . And then it was like, I could kind of work through things mentally, you know, and we're still working on some solutions to finding all of that, but it was like, I now understand that connection for me of why, why it's such a big deal when it shouldn't be right. A big deal.

(20:03):

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's, that's a beautiful illustration right there. Right. So, perfect example of why it's important. Try to find ways to replace those reactions. Right. Because you know that you're not back there with your dad, you know, that this is not, you know, happening right now, but the body doesn't because your nervous system can't tell time.

(20:27):

Yes.

(20:28):

It doesn't know that this stuff happened, you know, years and years though. It, it just makes a, a split second need your reaction to protect you. Mm-Hmm

(20:38):

.

(20:39):

And so that actually is something that if we can keep in mind, we can kind of lift some of the judgment, a away from our reactions. This is your body trying to protect you. Yes. So, so let's, let's see if we can work with those defenses a little bit so that we can feel easier in our own skin that we can feel more comfortable in our own. And I think for women, especially, I, I don't know for maybe just, maybe it's just me, but really the ultimate goal is to feel comfortable in your own skin. Mm-Hmm

(21:15):

yeah.

(21:16):

To just be easy there. Yeah. Yes,

(21:19):

Yes. So good. Okay. So I feel like that's a perfect segue into talking about how do we deal with this for like, how do we start calming down our nervous system? So we can recognize in those situations, instead of going immediately into a fight or flight response and like what, you know, freaking out lashing out nudes things, all of those things, where would you recommend people starting?

(21:46):

Okay. So that's, that's a big, a big question. It is a big

(21:49):

Question.

(21:50):

Our, our number one goal is to learn, or maybe a better word is to relearn safe self-regulation of the nervous system. And that is not done by just doing one thing. , it's, it's, it can be many different things that will affect the nervous system. And I wanna encourage anyone listening to really be open to the idea, to experiment with a bunch of different things, because some, something that we talk about today might work for some of you and it may not work at all. So just because I, the thing you try doesn't work doesn't mean we stop trying different things. Now I work through the body stress lives in the body. And whenever your nervous system gives you a a message that something is off we need to learn to listen to that. So the first place to start is directing our awareness into the body in very intentional ways.

(23:01):

And this sounds very simple. I think, I think it sounds pretty simple for people, but it's not always really easy yeah. To, to do right away. It's, it's, it's really, this is a practice, right. We have to be okay with kind of following the sensations that come up in our body and removing that attachment to the judgment that we have and what I, what I mean by that is like a lot of times we feel, feel something in the body and it's and we automatically think there's something wrong or it's bad, or, you know, my bad knee or my my, that stupid shoulder isn't working or, you know, my stomach is horrible. Right. We say the negative things about the, the sensations in the body. And so, and that doesn't do us any any good, okay. That actually puts another layer of stress response on there.

(23:58):

It triggers something else like, oh my gosh. Now we're now we're instead of working with the body, we're fighting the body. right. When, when really, it's just, it's just trying to talk to you and tell you that, Hey I'm holding on detention. Now the other piece to that is that a lot of times people will ignore those messages. And if you ignore those messages and I am totally guilty of this, because we wanna just get it done, right. We're just gonna suck it up and drive on. If you ignore those messages, they don't go away. They just get stored as tension in the body, in different places. And not always the places you think about most, right. This is where you can feel gut pain. Mm-Hmm , but this has absolutely nothing to do with your stomach. You know, that's just where you you're feeling it. Yeah.

(24:46):

Yes. Yeah. So just to make sure I'm understanding this, so let's say something happens and I start to notice maybe some knots in my stomach, right? Like I'm, I'm in a situation I'm uncomfortable. I've got knots in my stomach. Then later that night, or the next morning, I'm waking up with like a tight jaw. Is that what you're talking about? Where it's like,

(25:10):

It will expand. Yeah. It will expand. And, and then the other piece to that, right? So you, you know, you, that something happened and you feel those knots in your stomach, you can, you can immediately, you don't have to wait to do some kind of exercise, although you can, and we can talk about what those movements might be, but like, okay, so it's knots in your stomach and then give yourself a beat, right? Like take a beat there and be like, okay, this is happening. Let's just, let's just think about that for a minute. In an observation level, this is, this is becoming your own expert in the body. Okay. So, so when we're working on directing awareness in the body, it often we go straight to what hurts. Okay. So what if we, we feel those knots in the stomach and then can we follow that sensation somewhere else? Can we send our awareness? Okay. My stomach is tense here. What's happening in my shoulders now because what happens when we go, aha. Yeah. Shoulders go up. Right? Because like something think about, we have, think about all the language we have around our, our gut. Right? Trust your gut. Mm-Hmm can you feel it in your gut? Like the

(26:26):

Gut feeling

(26:27):

That feeling or I've got butterflies in my stomach. Right? Like, there's so many things that are like central. Here. We take a lot of, we take a lot that was a gut punch. Right. Something happens and you feel it like a gut. Well, the body actually puts tension as if you were punched in the gut. For real. Yeah. Even if it didn't actually happen. So what does that do? You've got tension in the, the, the abdominals, the, so as muscle, that's your hip flexor, tightens down. That's where it, much of our stress sits is in that. So as muscle, it locks you, and then it doesn't help that we sit all day long. Right. So that's gonna keep that muscle shut. And then, you know, just like you did the shoulders kind of hu up the neck tightens up, and then it's no wonder yeah.

(27:13):

The jaw it's no wonder the next morning, your jaws feeling tight. Cuz were you grinding your teeth? Why were you not allowed to, did you not say anything about what that, whatever happened that made your stomach feel like that? Because now you're like, I can't speak, right. This is our, this is our speech, all this in the neck, this, this fifth chakra, right. This the, the, the chakra of, of, of our truth speaking our truth. Right. And so we get a lot of tension around the neck and jaw on the face. And, and and just, and aside your vagus nerve, which runs that that, that sympathetic, the parasympathetic nervous system, you know, that connection there with our stress response comes all up into the neck, the throat and the face. This is where we connect with other people, how we communicate. And we just shut the at down because we've something happened. And we did not acknowledge it in the moment where our, you know, we felt that those knots in the stomach. Right. So if in the moment we notice that and we can say, okay, now I feel my shoulders. Now I notice them. You don't have to even do anything. Just notice it. Like, that's the first level, just noticing things that are coming up. Maybe it's his shoulders. Maybe it's not, maybe you, you notice your hands gripping, right? Oh,

(28:31):

Yes. That's another one.

(28:33):

Maybe you notice, maybe you notice something with your feet or your legs or your calves, the calves and the ankles. They take a lot of pressure or feet, the legs, or the roots of our, of ourself, of our true self. Right. We take a lot of pressure there too. Maybe in the back, the upper back, whatever it is for you. Just notice it first. And sometimes if in your head you can just kind of do a little internal body scan where you're like, okay, stomach, and then just fall it up. You know, heart, chest shoulders. Can I drop my shoulders? Can I loosen my grip? Can I, can I soften the neck? Can I relax the face of the jaw? And if you've never done that for yourself before, that can be really challenging. So what I would suggest for folks, one of my favorite things is to find some guided meditation which include a body scan. Okay. And they're super simple, and you can find them for for like five minute body scans or, you know, 30 minute body scans. You can look up yoga, Neros, really good, because if you have trouble sleeping, sometimes you can pop in, you know, a little guided yoga Nera right before bed, and it'll talk you right into sleep. And usually those include a body scan. So

(29:53):

Yeah. I love those. I started using those maybe five years ago and I go through phases, right. Use 'em and then don't, but they make a big difference and I don't even finish the whole thing cuz I just get so relaxed. I end up falling asleep. So

(30:08):

Absolutely. And, and wouldn't that be nice if you could do that for yourself just very quickly, you know, in the middle of your day, and this is the piece that I think people get hung up on. Like when they're, when they're in that at really highly stressed state and they're like, well I don't and somebody suggests meditation or yoga and you know, all of those things. Yes. They, they help. But who has time to, to, to pull yourself outta your day and go sit down in the middle of the day for, we have this idea that meditation has to be like, oh woo, woo. You know, sit down for an hour and think about nothing. No, it doesn't have to be exactly. No, it doesn't have to be that at all. It can be like, literally one minute of following your breath where you just take your mind into the body and follow the breath into the body, it can be like your own miniature little body scan from feet to head, you know, like what are the bottoms of my feet? Feel like wiggle your toes. How about my knees? How about my hips? What about my low back? You know, just like follow those sensations up through the body. But without trying to change anything about them, they'll change themselves. They will, they will let go. They will, as soon as you pay 10, because that's really all they want. They just want your attention. It's like a child

(31:28):

Yeah. Well they're giving you a sign to say, Hey, I'm stressed. I'm overworked. I'm yeah. You know, running on fumes or whatever, whatever it is. I, yeah, I'm so excited. This is so good.

(31:44):

Okay. So once we take awareness to this, mm-hmm we observe these things. We start to just throughout our day kind of scan the body, say, oh, Hey, I'm feeling knots. My stomach. I'm feeling tightness in my shoulders. I'm clenching my jaw. You know, I'm shaking my leg. Oh, I feel like that's a big one where look over at a friend and they're bouncing their leg. And I totally did that for a long time. And I didn't even notice it until one, oh man, this must have been like 11 years ago, 12 years ago. Cause it was before I had kids and my oldest is, and I wasn't pregnant so 12, 13 years ago. So anyways, I was doing it and she put her hand on my leg and I was like, oh my gosh. Like I didn't even notice that I was doing it at that time. And so I really started to take notice of why am I shaking my leg or bouncing my leg and what am I feeling right now? And I think for me at that time, that was before I started learning all the things that I knew now, but I started to take notice of why and when I was doing that.

(32:48):

Mm mm-hmm so, yeah. And then, and so what that gives you is another data point of the patterns that your body has developed to help you handle what's happening in your life. Right? Mm-hmm to help you survive what's going on, but I, but I love that you notice that little knee bounce. Okay. So here's, here's the thing about the body. It wants to move.

(33:14):

Yeah.

(33:15):

It wants to let go of that tension in some way. And for the body movement is the release valve. And when you think about it, let me just, let me just give you an example in nature. Okay. So if you've ever watched those those wildlife specials on television where they've show a, like a cheetah or a lion chasing down a gazelle, right. Hunting, and they chase after the gazelle and they jump at it and the gazelle escapes and runs off. If the gazelle can escape, what happens after that? What happens to that gazelle?

(33:57):

I know I took a class on this and so I'm so excited. Okay. the body begins to shake. It begins to move and Twitch and

(34:05):

Yes.

(34:06):

Release. Yes. That trauma that, that animal had just gone through.

(34:11):

Yes. But what the, what the gazelle doesn't do is go to a therapist and talk about it for the next 10 years. Right.

(34:18):

Interesting. Yes. I had never thought about that.

(34:22):

Not that there's anything wrong with that, you know, I love my therapist, so , we, we need that. There's, there's a balance for humans

(34:29):

Therapy. Yeah.

(34:30):

Right. Gaelle can't do that. Right. We are, as humans, we are ultimately an animal and our nervous system is the most primitive part of us. And so it wants to really shake off our stress and trauma. If we can't, it is stored as tension in the body, many layers of tension. That could be like the physical, when I say physical, I mean like muscular tension or tension in the fashion. or like at that deeper level than it gets into the tissues, like our, our Vira and the heart and the, you know, different organs in the body, it just kind of soaks in there. If we cannot let it go. But just like your friend took her hand and put it on your knee to stop your leg from moving, we have been socialized out of that natural stress response of shaking after we are threatened in some way.

(35:31):

Right? Yeah. That is children will do that. People, human children. I wanna say people, children, human children will still do that to a point. But for the most part, adults do not in, in most threatening situations unless they have reconnected with that. And that is basically what trauma release extra size will do for you. It will get you back in touch with the nervous system at that very, very primitive level and allow the body to move into the kind of shake that would happen immediately after some kind of threat escaping some kind of threat. Right. And if you practice trauma release on an, on ongoing in, in an ongoing way, it helps to kind of reorganize that response so that you're not getting stuck in those anxiety loops and you know, some of those other things, and it helps to, to retrain the nervous system to resilience where it can rise up to that challenge whenever the challenges come and it will then let you come back down because that's the, that's the trick, right?

(36:45):

Yes. To be able to quickly and easily come back down to your safe and social engagement state. Yeah. The way we are. I mean, we're still activated Shannon, you and I are in a stress state right now, but it's a happy stress state hopefully, and otherwise we would never get anything done. Right. We would, we would never be able to connect with other people, but there's something beyond that where people can get stuck right. Or frozen up above that sympathetic state where it trips from anxiety over into depression. Yes. And, and and feeling paralyzed and hopeless and all of these things. Those are the, those are the bases of Stephen Portis polyvagal theory. Right. So so, and, and everyone has experience with this stuff, right. This isn't like limited to only women or only men or only veterans, or, you know, like it, it weaves itself through every aspect of our culture.

(37:49):

Yeah. I mean, really. So I, and that's one of the reasons why it's so important to just have an understanding of that because, you know, I think sometimes people are like, oh, they feel, it feels like you're going crazy. , you know, you feel like you're alone, , you're alone in that feeling like in your body. Like, oh my gosh, I don't know what's happening to me. And and it's, it's possible for everyone to get there , you know? Yeah. so yeah, so, and, you know, trauma release will do that, but other types of movement can help you with that too. Any exercise is considered stress, right? That's, that's what exercise is. You are stressing the body yep. To, to cause some kind of change. So hopefully positive change, right. You get stronger or you get better cardiovascular fitness, all of these things in order to get that, you have to kind of push yourself beyond where you are right now.

(38:45):

That is a stress on the body. Yep. And we want that, we want to use, we want to use movement in healthy ways to support our long life right. But what we don't wanna do is get like do too much or move out of balance there. We wanna make sure that, that, that this is being recognized as, as healthy for the nervous system for the body. And one of the ways to do that is to make sure we integrate proper recovery. So no matter what exercise, what type of exercise you're doing, we need to really make sure that we recover. So you can work out as hard as you want. There's people that use exercise. I mean, that are like hardcore, right? We we've got hardcore athletes, we've got people that just like to hang out with their friends at the gym, whatever, you know, like movement, go for a walk with your friends around the block, you know, that's social connection, but we're still moving all that stuff. We just, we still need to recover the nervous system. Right. So that's where that understanding and awareness comes from. And it's, it takes a little bit of, so to, to be able to find what that is for you, cause it's different for everybody. It's gonna look different.

(40:02):

Yeah. And well, and I, as you were talking, I had all these connections and aha moments for myself where I was struggling with depression. Then my parents put me in dance and then that kind of went away and then I stopped dancing. And that was when I started the leg shaking or bouncing or whatever you wanna call it because I was still dealing with the trauma, the stress, you know, life, whatever. And that was my way of having movement and I wasn't exercising. So anyways, I was, as you were talking, I'm just putting together some of these puzzle pieces of, oh, that's why this, and that's why this, and this is why I responded that way. And you know, I think it is just so important for people to have what you're saying, some kind of movement, routine, whatever that looks like, you know? Yeah.

(40:55):

Yeah. And the thing about the thing of about that is when you, when your purpose, if your purpose is to, to, to help the nervous system, if that's your ultimate purpose, if let's just say, you know, you're not interested in, you know, in any way, like becoming a body builder or an athlete or whatever it is that you're doing in the gym. If you're, if you're, if you're there for stress relief, which, you know, I heard that a lot. You know, I, I used to teach cardio, kickboxing class, everything from cardio kickboxing to yoga and in it didn't matter what the intensity of the class was. Most of the people in there were there for stress relief. Yeah. Okay. So if you are there to relieve stress, then we need to be really, really mindful about the intensity that we use in our movement. Because if you are already in a really highly activated state, if you are already under like toxic levels of, of crime stress, where you, where every room has a tiger in it, , you know, like you can't step away from that. Yeah. Then, then using using movement is fantastic, but we don't want to make that movement into another tiger. Okay. Because a lot of times people will, will say, I am so, so stressed. I have to do the highest intensity thing in order to meet that. But that's not what the nervous system really wants. It doesn't want another level of, of fight. Yeah. Okay. It wants balance. So, and this is, this is a hard lesson to learn if you're a certain type of personality, right. yeah.

(42:36):

Well, a couple years ago I was ex so I was in this stress response. I went to the gym cuz I wanted to lose weight, but I was so overworked. I don't know. I just, my whole life, I had like three kids, you know, six and under, and I wanted to get off the baby weight. And I was like, okay, I gotta go to the gym. I hired a personal trainer. I went in five days a week, did hit training, did all of, all of the things. Right. I did stairs. So I would work out with my trainer for 30 minutes and I would do stairs and then, you know, lift weights or sit in a sauna or whatever. And in a month I gained 10 pounds and I was like, how is this even possible? And that was this moment where I was like, what is wrong with me? Mm-Hmm because my body, I was putting more stress on my body and it was giving me extra signs and symptoms saying you're doing too much. Mm-Hmm right.

(43:33):

Yeah. So, so, so the magic of movement and exercise and health and wellness, the magic of it happens in rest and recovery.

(43:46):

Yeah.

(43:47):

And that is something that so many people miss you, miss that, you know, it it's, I can't even tell you how many people skip, just skip out on the last five minutes of a, a yoga class of a, a, a weight class. They, they have no time to stretch no time to rest. If it's not balls to the wall for 60 minutes in a row, they don't want it. If the music isn't blaring loud, that's another form of stress. Right. You're being bombarded with, through the ears. Like our senses are what read the, the room. Right. And for threat. That's that? I mean, you think you're doing one thing when you're looking around the room, the nervous system is just looking around to see who's gonna get you, you know, like that is literally what is happening. And so we are accidentally putting ourself into a place that's reinforcing these stress patterns.

(44:41):

Yeah. And as you know, right. as, as, you know, as, you know, like the hormones that are released when you are under high levels of stress can be how catastrophic, if you're trying to lose weight or change your, your health in some way. Right. We've got, and, and I don't pretend to be a hormone expert for, for, for sure. But I wanna work with those hormones. I mean, I, I want to work with my body. I wanna make this easy. I don't wanna fight it all the time. I felt like even as a fitness professional for so many years, I always felt like I had to fight my body to, to make it look a certain way to make it do what I wanted to do to perform. Right. It was always about performing. And I wanted to optimize that and it was really, really self destructive. And you don't have to be in that kind of a job to be that self-destructive by accident because we don't know, you know, that it, people just don't know. That's not something that we talk too much about. And a lot of times people just don't wanna hear it. Like what you talking about, I need to take a rest day. Yeah, you do.

(45:52):

Dang it. I wish I did not. That is really something that I consciously have to work on because I just wanna go from one thing to the next, right. I wanna eat fast so I can get onto the next thing to clean up dinner, to do the dishes, to put the kids in the bath, to put on their pajamas, to read them a book, you know, I mean, and it's just, we just go and go and go. And I sometimes taking, and not, hopefully I say, I say this right way. Not to take a rest in the sense of turning on a TV and numbing out.

(46:25):

Right. That's different. Very different, different mm-hmm yeah. There's a, there's a difference between rest and recovery and exhaustion and collapse.

(46:35):

Ooh, let's talk about that really quick. And then we will give our listeners some strategies to and how they can connect with you.

(46:43):

Yeah. yeah, so, so this is, this is, this is big, this, this whole collapse thing the body will just shut you down at some point. It, it will, and we don't wanna push it to that point, but you know, somebody has to be the grownup in the relationship, you know, the mind body relationship hopefully it's you. That is the grownup. And that can say, look, we're going, we're gonna back off a little bit so that we can, we can go easy so we can recover so that we can be stronger to, if you really wanna be stronger, if you wanna be the best person, the best mom, the best employee, the best business entrepreneur, whatever it is that you do, if you wanna be the best at that, then we need to give ourself the space and the grace to kind of repair, to recover and repair. That's where all of that strength comes from that is, that is true resilience to be able to back it down so that you can come back stronger. Nobody stays at their peak forever. That's a plateau. So you, yeah. So, so let's, let's remember that, that it's natural and normal to just ride this curve, right. To be able to navigate this stress curve up and down and up and down and up and down and your body will definitely thank you for it.

(48:03):

Yeah. Just a little tidbit for myself. I have found that I can go through, like you said, these cycles up, up and down where I can go and kind of push a little bit harder for six, maybe eight weeks. And then I need, you know, maybe a two week break where I don't do as much. And then maybe I can cycle back up and do a little bit more. And then I need to cycle back down and say no to a few more things. Right. Because I, if I keep going at, like you said, at that peak performance, I'm gonna burn out. I've been there. I think most of the listeners mm-hmm and it sounds like you as well have been to this place of burnout collapse, that kind of thing.

(48:45):

So, yeah. And it robs your, it robs you of your joy, right? Yeah. We, we wanna, we wanna be in joy in, in what we do in our life every day. And sometimes all that takes is just step back a minute, be in the moment, be in your body in the moment and just, you know, just be present with whatever's happening right now, instead of okay. Next thing. Next thing. Next thing, check, check, check the box.

(49:11):

Dang it. I feel like this conversation has been meant for me. I know the listeners are gonna get a lot outta it too, but it was like a therapy session for me and the reminder and aha moments and connection for me of just, oh yeah. Okay. That makes sense for me and this there, this area in that area. so tell the listeners how they can connect with you. How can they learn more about your trauma release technique? Is that what it's called? Did I

(49:44):

Say that right? Yeah. Tra trauma release exercise. So, so let me let I'll just clarify. So trauma release exercise is a a series of exercises that was developed by David Burelli and he he basically pulled together seven really simple exercises that help people get into that tremor that we touched on in, in our talk. I use it at the end of every workout. And it's a way to release tension because, you know, when you, when you work out, you're, you're building tension in the body. So that's another way to let it go, you know? So if you can let it go on a, a regular basis, just release that. Yeah. So trauma release exercises, how I help people get back in touch with their nervous system so that they can burn out proof their body and their business. So we, so I work with a lot of fitness professionals. And so we first always start with that. So safe self regulation and because we can't really help anybody else unless we are, we've got our stuff together, right? Yes.

(50:54):

This is true. Yep. Absolutely.

(50:58):

So, so if people are interested in learning more about that, they can go to my website. It's it's elemental kinetics.com and, and you can check out everything there. Pretty much everything is on my website, including my podcast, which is called the work in. And right now I have a couple of things going for the holidays. I'm not sure when this is going to be

(51:26):

Probably January out

(51:27):

January. Okay. So I will tell you about this. I'll tell you about a couple things. First off is a brand new retreat for fitness professionals, wellness educators, anybody that works with other people or hires fitness professionals. And it's called the well and a combination of of a networking opportunity and a workshop and a retreat. And we're gonna meet in Kentucky, we've got this great this, this, this great Airbnb that's historic and, and it's right on a lake. It's gonna be awesome. It's all inclusive. And we're gonna workshop some of the things that we've talked about on this podcast. So a little bit of trauma release how to integrate it with some yoga, how to integrate it into your day and really get back in touch with your nervous system in a more aware, way, more mindful way. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about how to make sure that that burnout proofness happens in our business as well. So that I'm super excited. About's in February, February, 2022, and all of that information will be on the website under the well network workshop. And you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Instagram is just elemental kinetics and Facebook is L mental S move well. And yeah, so I'd to people, this has been an awesome conversation, Shannon. So I really appreciate you me on,

(53:00):

Yeah, thank

(53:08):

Now's. But if you are like me and you just wanna get to the root of the issue and you want help and you want guidance and you just wanna know what to do, and you are an action taker and you are highly ambitious. We have several spots that are open for the Hansen method. Our schedule fills up very quickly. So if you are interested in getting in, filling out an application and joining us, please take the time to visit the show notes and schedule your thyroid break call. We will be talking to you about what is holding you back, where do you wanna go? How do you wanna feel? And then give you our personal and professional recommendations on the next step for you so that you can get out of this thyroid chaos once. And for all,

(54:06):

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