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EP93 - Don’t Let Your Stress Define You With Aimee Takaya

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Updated: 2 days ago





Stress impacts us all, often shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and even personality over time. But what if you could uncover who you are without the weight of stress and trauma? 


Today, Aimee takes us through the hidden influence of stress on our lives and offers practical insights to help us reconnect with our most authentic selves.


If you’ve ever wondered who you are beyond your stress or felt stuck in patterns shaped by past experiences, this episode will inspire you to pause, reflect, and grow.


In this podcast episode, Aimee explores:

  • How stress reactions and patterns shape your behavior and personality.

  • Why many only address stress when faced with illness or overwhelm.

  • The link between overstimulation, stress, and the need for rest.

  • How releasing stress reveals your true essence and encourages self-discovery.

  • The role of self-acceptance in integrating experiences shaped by trauma.

  • Why giving yourself grace during tough moments fosters emotional growth.

  • Practical ways to relax your nervous system and embrace your authentic self.

And so much more!


Follow Aimee Takaya on: IG: @aimeetakaya 

Facebook: Aimee Takaya 

Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.freeyoursoma.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠


LISTEN WHILE READING!

A: Hey there, how much does stress run the show in your life, in your body? Have you ever felt like maybe all of these personality characteristics and ways that you behave? At a certain point, they amount to stress reactions, stress patterns, right? 


You might even say trauma that you have had to contend with that you have had to learn to deal with. It can be a confronting experience to ask the question, who am I without this stress? If you have felt like stress has taken over your life, your body, your mind, and you're not sure how to come out of fight or flight, this is the episode for you. 


Every day there is a forgetting and every moment there is the possibility of remembering, remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love. 


A: Hi everybody, Aimee Takaya here. I'm so excited to bring you this like middle-of-the-night series of inspired podcast episodes. If you heard my last one, it was on slowing down, the three reasons why you don't slow down, and the number one reason why it's your biggest medicine. 


You can go back and check that out if you did not already hear that episode. It's a great kind of foundational piece for the next subject here today, but where I'm going to talk about which is stress, right? Stress is, I guess, a more neutral and less charged word for other kind of words that we have, like trauma, right? Trauma, you could be like saying trauma is like a stress that was like incredibly intense, right? 


And usually took place like in a very short amount of time where everything was like too soon and too fast, right? In that moment for your body and your nervous system to process and handle, right? Stress in general though is kind of like not, it's not widely talked about like the problem that it really is. Now I feel like slowly people are starting to realize that stress and like what that actually means physiologically in our bodies is related to and connected to all of the illness, all of the problems quote unquote that people are experiencing, right? What role does stress play in our physical health and well-being? What role does it play in our mental health and well-being? What role does stress play in like our level of like happiness or quality of life? 


There's more of a conversation going on about that. And at the same time when I say, oh, you know, it sounds like you need to lower your stress levels, it's kind of like an eye roll or kind of like, yeah, yeah, okay, like what does that mean, right? How do I know I probably need to do that? But until it's an emergency, a lot of us don't lower our stress levels. 


And you know, emergencies can show up in terms of like physical illness and disease, emergencies can show up as, you know, complete overwhelm and psychological collapse than there. They could show up as extremely intense emotions or anxious energy. And these are all ways that our body is trying to get our attention to say, hey, I'm at capacity here, I can't take on any more stress, right? Can't take on any more activity at this level. And, you know, being overstimulated really is a symptom of maintaining a certain level of stress that your body is saying no to. 


That's kind of how I view it at this point. When I'm getting really overstimulated, it's usually because I've been maintaining some stress state longer than my body is like really capable of operating under. 


A: Did you know that your muscles are holding on to thoughts, memories, and feelings? If you have a tight neck or back, you're not just getting old, you're experiencing a buildup of tension from the life you've lived. Most people don't know this, but there is a part of your brain that can reverse and prevent chronic tension. When you relax your muscles, you not only move better and regulate your nervous system, but you also free yourself from the grip the past has over your body. So you can live with freedom, confidence and enjoy your life now. How does that sound? Join me, Aimee Takaya, and discover what my clients are raving about at YouCanFreeYourSoma.com


A: Stress, strangely, is something that becomes part of our personality. And another word that I like to use for kind of this conversation about stress or trauma is adaptation. And adaptation is even a less charged word to talk about this. 


But when we face a struggle or difficulty in our environment, you could call that a stress or you could call that a trauma, right? Our system is super smart. Our body and our like operating system, our brain, whatever you want to call it, our nervous system is extremely intelligent and it will adapt quickly. 


You know, especially if it's we're talking of something that's happened when you were a child, the foundation of who you are and the things that happened while you were growing up in terms of your nervous system structure. We will adapt very quickly to overcome, to navigate and get through that challenging experience. And a lot of those adaptations end up becoming like staples of our personality over time. 


You know, I had this awakening some years ago where I realized that like so many of these characteristics and things that I thought I was when I like kind of dug deeply into their origin or into their function, they were adaptations to deal with stress. They were ways that my nervous system had come up with a strategy to get my needs met and to survive the environment that I was growing up in and right and then those kind of adaptations, those strategies continue to play out in my day-to-day life. And so then that question of who am I without this stress? 


Who am I when I deconstruct some of those adaptations? When I take out the factor of like being stressed when I get this need for rest or love or support or validation, when I get that need met, do I cease to be the person that I was who had all of these behaviors and strategies for like getting those needs met forgetting that love and attention or forgetting that sense of safety, right? Like take for example, if you're someone who considers yourself kind of a type A personality and kind of a controlling person where you want things to be a certain way, you know, and you go out of your way to kind of like control what you can in your environment, right? Just take that kind of personality. 


What if you relaxed enough in your nervous system in your personality, what might change in your so-called personality if you softened some of those mechanisms that were directly in response to getting certain needs met? It's a scary question. It's actually a very kind of scary question for a lot of people because we identify so much with what we have been and what we have done in the past to be who we are right now. 


Oh, I'm like this, I'm like that. And we don't just say that to other people to like get understanding, you know, for whatever it is that we're doing that they may not understand. We also derive a lot of comfort from that in ourselves. So asking that question of like, how might I change if my needs for love and safety and, you know, whatever it is we're met? How might my personality shift? Who might I become? 


Right? What might I be challenged to let go of that I have so long defined as myself? It's an existential question. And the truth is, and you know, this is coming from like my experience and my experience with so many clients who somatically release their stress is that when you take away those mechanisms and you cut down on the level of activity and output that your nervous system is constantly doing, right, which for most of us is unconscious and we don't even realize how much our nervous system is doing and, you know, maintaining until we start to soften until we start to relax, right? You discover that there is a whole new you. 


There is a you that exists beyond the stress. And it is a radiant, alive, curious, loving being. It is your light. I mean, it is your essence. And, you know, that is so much more than whatever kind of personality quirks are again, using that word mechanisms, adaptations that we might have developed as coping strategies for dealing with life and for dealing with stress, right? 


And for dealing with trauma. It is so incredibly powerful to get in touch with your essence to get in touch with your self, your true self, right? That is not your stress. This is, I think, what they speak of when they talk about self actualization. And I don't totally buy into the whole conversation about like ego and like, you know, killing your ego and like, I mean, I love Buddhist philosophy and at the same time, I feel like it's a little bit dogmatic sometimes and a little bit harsh compared to what I've experienced through somatics and through a more tender and loving meditation style and like practice, right? Which is that our essence and our true nature does not exclude who we have become through stress. It's not separate from those personality quirks and adaptations and identities. It can include them. 


It's actually accommodating to them. When we come into our full self actualized being, we don't have to kill our ego. We don't have to kill anything. We don't have to let parts of us die off unless they naturally do, like our skin naturally, you know, comes off. We don't have to do this extraction of who we've been. 


It doesn't have to be a violent process. When we truly step into our radiance, it can include and accommodate all of ourselves, including the shadowy bits, including the dark things, including the self serving, you know, mechanisms or the manipulative parts of ourselves that we may feel shame or guilt about having. Our true essence is deeply loving and accommodating. 


It is. And it's this kind of presence that I believe can change the world. It's actually getting more and more people in touch with their true self that transforms the way that they operate, even as they dance around in the stressful world, because stress isn't going to go away. Stress isn't going to stop and we wouldn't want it to anyway, in the sense that he makes life pretty exciting. And it creates challenge for us to adapt to and overcome, right? 


The question is, how much can we keep reorienting back our sense of identity and our sense of self to that radiance and to that beautiful space inside of us that is not driven by the stress, but accommodates and allows the stress to exist in like a safety bubble of who we really are, right? Like, I could have a reaction and be in a very undignified state. It could be like triggered by something like I don't know my husband says or right or whatever, and enter this stressed out state where all my little quirks and adaptations that, you know, I might call unpleasant or ugly, you know, where my ego starts to show up and I could be like being a bitch quote unquote or being angry or whatever. And that is not necessarily this like bad thing that I need to like stop doing or get rid of in myself. Do I need to check myself like when the stress ends and go clean that up? 


Absolutely. Do I need to find better ways of expressing my boundaries and myself, you know, when I have those undignified moments? Yes, it's called learning. It's called growing as a person. 


But having that moment of being an undignified kind of version of myself of being in that shadowy state does not define me. And it doesn't mean that I have to amputate those parts of myself. It's a learning experience. And it's an opportunity to see what still needs tending to within me, right? So I want you to think about like if there's been a moment maybe in the last few weeks or the last month or even last few days for some of you that you got really upset about something and you let yourself be upset. 


Can you think of a moment? A lot of us don't let ourselves be upset. We're like in our upset but it's like automatic and we're not like allowing that upset to exist. We're like just in it and then later we look back on it and we feel ashamed or we feel embarrassed or we make ourselves wrong for it. Right? What if you could somehow go into that stress of being triggered and upset a little more willingly if you could just say this is what I am right now. This is what I'm experiencing and I'm going to accept it and I'm going to be in it and I'm going to not fight myself or make myself wrong for this. I'm not going to skip ahead to the cleaning it up. 


Right? Just becoming present to yourself in that moment of being triggered and upset will change how you are doing it. It will change how you're showing up because you're giving yourself grace. Immediately you're giving yourself the grace to be allowed to have this experience and you're not just on autopilot and you're not just turning away from the experience. I have experienced this so many times when I've been arguing again like maybe take my husband as an example. Because we've had quite the challenging and fascinating journey as a couple together. That's like a whole podcast that I'd have to get like probably some permission from him to share the story but maybe someday. If I go into my upset with my husband and I just give myself the grace of being allowed to be upset. 


Right? Even as he's maybe whatever doing something annoying like gaslighting me and telling me I shouldn't be upset or you know trying to convince me that his point of view is like the way it actually is right or whatever we do. I mean we all do those kind of things when we're in arguments. 


Right? If instead I just let myself like have it and I let myself hear him while also letting myself have my feelings it changes how I hear him. It's like the escalation is not as steep. It's like I'm carrying less of a weight as I continue that conversation as I continue down that path and that journey. And there's like these tiny little micro moments of opening where even as I allow myself to keep asserting or being frustrated or whatever kind of way my upset or my stress is showing up. 


I can also simultaneously have just the tiniest bit of room to know that even though I'm experiencing this it is not me. It is the stress and the way the stress is showing up in my body at this moment. And who I am who I truly am is someone who is graceful and someone who is providing a space for the other parts of myself to feel this upset. So that's one of the kind of strange and beautiful takeaways of going into your upset going into your stress consciously is that it gives you that sense of being more than the stress being bigger than this moment even as I am small in this moment. I am that I am this upset angry person and I'm providing grace for myself. 


I am also grace. Right. I talked about this on my last podcast in terms of slowing down and the benefit of slowing down. Mad, mad, crazy benefits that we get when we slow ourselves down. Long list of things that you know transform and shift when we take that on as a practice of slowing down. Part of stress is that it arises. And this is you know something I talked about a lot in the slowing down podcast is it arises and then it is kind of maintained by our culture and world at large. There's a lot of pressure on us to stay in our stress state because that's how a lot of people make money. That's how a lot of people get stuff done. 


That's expected of us. You know, and you could say, you know, capitalism or, you know, point to our Western society of basically productivity, right, and say, hey, that's kind of messed up, right. At the same time, like, we are part of it. And there are aspects to it that are not, you know, completely toxic. There are things that when you align yourself with your true energy about it. Yeah, you want to get out there and do things. 


Yeah, you have goals and dreams and a vision. And you want to work hard and you want to get shit done and you want to be in that stress state. It's about not being trapped in it. It's about being able to go into it consciously and to be able to notice when it's time to come out and be able to come out of the stress state, right. 


And that is what slowing down provides is a way to start reorienting to when it's time to come out to get those signals and sensations before you burn out or before your body forces you to slow down, right, to be able to pivot and switch gears and go into a healing mode, which is again, something I talk about on the slowing down podcast. When you become aware of your radiance, I'll call it your radiance, because that's what it feels like to me. It feels like a power that is in the center of my body and vibrates out from the center of me and warms me and it blows. I mean, energetically, I could get all woo with it, absolutely. But it's this sense of self and identity and beingness, right, that is bigger than all of the little compartmentalized micro stresses and adaptations and mechanisms, right. 


It's this larger container, we could call it love that holds all of it. And practicing coming back to that, practicing physiologically, creating more space in your body to experience that is profound. And it will help you to guide your experience of life and handle whatever stresses, traumas, pain, challenge are showing up for you when you have a way back home to that grace and that radiance within you. So this is huge theme of the work that I do. I actually run a program called radiance, right. 


I have a program also called revive. And it's about waking up to and becoming present to and cultivating this beingness within you through physically moving your body in a very specific way in a slow, meditative, gentle, kind, loving way, and also being consistently curious about your experience rather than immediately jumping to define or control it and watching how when you approach sensations, feelings in your body, even when they're very intense with a sense of curiosity, right?


It becomes a lot more tolerable. It also becomes more tolerable when you are less stimulated and less contracted on a physical level. So this work is this somatic work is it's accumulative, you get better and better at connecting to your radiance, you get better and better at relaxing out of the stress, you get better and better at integrating the stress so that you learn from it and you do things a little differently next time. 


So this is something that you all are curious about. I highly recommend checking out some of my offerings, some of my retreats, right, especially if you've been looking into somatic movement for a while, because you know, there's all these yoga apps and, you know, YouTube things or whatever that advertise like somatic yoga, you know, lower your stress, release emotions. And I'm not saying they don't work. But when I see that stuff and when I've participated in some of that stuff, it feels a little bit, yeah, like minor compared to what I was trained at, it feels kind of cute compared to the depth that I was exposed to. And I'm just like super grateful for a moment. 


I'm like super grateful that I had the mentors that I had that I was trained by Eleanor Criswal Hannah and got to spend a lot of time with her in 2019, because there's a richness and a depth to my understanding of somatics that like is just not really available in like a little app that shows you some fun moves. Now I'm not saying that we aren't able to get benefit from those things. Absolutely. But there's a delicacy. There's a tenderness. 


There's an intimacy that working with a highly skilled practitioner in a cultivated way that has a much larger, deeper impact on your stress and your ability to regulate it and lower it and come back to that sense of self and identity and radiance that you really truly are. Now, I also just want to acknowledge that there are so many different paths to this self-actualization, to this awareness, right? 


And one of the things that I absolutely love about somatics, specifically the way that I was trained in somatics, right, in Hanna somatics is that we don't look at this somatic, you know, way of moving your body or experiencing life as contrary or in opposition to other practices. Now, when I was practicing yoga, and maybe there's some of you out here who can relate to this because I was so, so deep in the yoga community and in like my yoga practice for years, it was my life, right, before somatics. It can be very dogmatic and it can be also quite polarizing. 


There's a lot of unintentional ego, I think that shows up there that says, this is the way this is the thing. This is going to save your life. This is the way to do this pose. 


This is the right way to do this yoga. And I'm so happy to not be in that anymore. I'm so happy to be in a practice that is accommodating and goes with everything. It even goes with dogmatic practices. Like my dad is like a little bit of like dogmatic about somatics, you know, which is kind of like an oxymoron actually. But that's just his way of being. He was raised by like a Baptist minister, right? 


So, you know, and my mother has always been like a big influence on my spiritual psychological perspective in terms of she's very inclusive and she sees how things are related and connected rather than how things are separate and opposed. Right. And maybe some of that is just like femininity, you know, or like the feminine side of a personality versus a masculine side that's more severe or more like divvying things up or whatever. But something that I love about Hanna somatics is that it goes with energy work. It goes with yoga. It goes with all these different things. It's not separate from them. And that's just so connected to this idea of essence. Like I said before, your radiance, your essence is not separate from your shadow. It's not in opposition to your petty, you know, human bullshit. 


It includes and allows all of that to exist with grace. So if you found this conversation helpful, exciting, I would love for you to click like wherever you're listening to this, maybe even leave a review and tell other people about it so that we can spread the word about, you know, this viewpoint, this way of being, this somatic philosophy, if you will. And then of course, I would love if you followed me on Instagram at Amy Takaya and send me a message. I love having conversations with people. I love hearing people's stories and witnessing their wisdom, right? Because we all have wisdom inside of us and we all have life experience that we draw that wisdom from, right? 


And it's in our bodies. And so as you're listening to this podcast, if there were things that came up for you, if there was like a moment that you could recall that you handled your stress differently, that you didn't fight yourself when you felt upset. And what was that like for you? What changed for you in that moment that you went went more willingly into your stress? Also, have there been times when you've realized that maybe pieces of your personality aren't really authentic, but are part of some programming that you previously learned to deal with a toxic relationship or a difficult work environment, right? I would love to hear your personal stories and ideas and reflections on this conversation. All right. Thank you so much. And until next time, bye. 


A: Hey there, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram @AimeeTakaya and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this Somatic Revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now. 


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