EP118: A Holistic Approach to Baby Sleep with Aleni Katsinis

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What if everything you've been told about baby sleep is backwards? In this week’s episode, Aimee welcomes infant and toddler sleep specialist Aleni Katsinis to challenge Western sleep culture and reveal a more instinctual, connection-based approach to helping your child rest.

From co-sleeping to understanding what babies really need at night, this episode will transform how you think about sleep—not just for your child, but for yourself.

They take us through:

—How sleep training isn't the only option, and babies waking at night is biologically normal and healthy

—How positive sleep associations through connection create lifelong healthy sleep habits, not independence training

—Why your parental instincts are valid, even when they contradict mainstream advice

—How we were raised around sleep affects our nervous system and beliefs as adults

—Why building community support is essential when mainstream culture isolates new parents

And so much more!

I live in Buffalo, NY with my beautiful daughter Nora and lovely partner (for life) Dave. As a certified infant and toddler sleep specialist—and a mom myself—I know how overwhelming sleep struggles can be. Trust me, I’ve been through it all! As a first time mom, there was so much pressure to sleep train. That pressure was overwhelming, exhausting, and draining. It took away from the moments I should have been enjoying with my daughter. I knew there had to be another way we could achieve sleep without using separation. That’s why I founded Rooted in Sleep, to honor that connection with my daughter while still getting some sleep!

My approach is based on attachment, helping families build strong roots in their relationships while nurturing their babies’ sleep needs—without using any type of sleep training methods. Together, we’ll focus on your family’s unique needs, creating a sleep rhythm that honors connection. I don’t push for strict independence; instead, I empower families to create sleep solutions that align with their values, instincts, and unique dynamics.

Connect With Aleni:

Website: Rooted In Sleep

Email: alenikats@gmail.com

IG: @rootedinsleep https://www.instagram.com/rootedinsleep/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555776178545 

Connect with Aimee:

Instagram: @aimeetakaya 

Facebook: Aimee Takaya 

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

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Aimee: Hey there, listener. Have you begun to realize how incredibly important sleep is in our lives? It's where our body heals and regenerates and then of course, where did it all begin? How did our early sleep patterns and the ritual and culture that we have around sleep affect our somatic experience later in life? 

Today, I have infant and toddler sleep specialists, Aleni Katsinis is here to talk about the way that sleep affects our children and the things that we can do, right, or start shifting in our approach to create more deep connection, intimacy and health for our children and for ourselves for the rest of our lives. Stay tuned. 

Aimee: 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. 

Aimee: Hello, Aleni. I'm so glad to have you here when I met you some weeks ago, months ago, right away. Your approach was very resonant with me and I was so excited to hear more about all of your knowledge and background that you have around sleep. So maybe to orient our listeners to your approach, right, as a infant and toddler sleep specialist, why do you think that sleep is so important to get right when you're raising a child? 

Aleni: Well, hi. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. I feel like when we met, we clicked and we just bived right away, which was really cool because sometimes when I talk about what I do, I get nervous with the reaction. You know, like, oh, you're a sleep trainer. I'm like, no, I'm not. And then I always, like, you know, never know how it's going to happen. But we vibe, which was really cool. 

So my approach is very, very different than your average approach that you'll probably see on mind, what your pediatrician is telling you. It's very holistic and instinctual and goes with your connection with your child. And of course, sleep is important, right? Like we all need sleep. It's important to have sleep as a baby. It's important to have sleep as a toddler. 

But in our society, you know, people deem babies or toddlers as bad sleepers if they're waking at night, you know, if they're wakeful, which is totally false because it's important for babies to wake at night to feed and to get comforted and go right back to sleep. So we can create healthy sleep habits starting from infancy, you know, into toddlerhood and childhood. But you'll hear that culturally, you have to put your baby to sleep alone, you have to make sure they fall asleep alone so they can have those healthy sleep habits. 

But I'm totally opposite. I create positive sleep associations with the families I work with to create those everlasting, healthy sleep habits. Because when you're connecting with your child before bed or soothing them to sleep, that's creating lifelong, you know, healthy habits around sleep, you know, those positive sleep associations are so beneficial for babies. And even for us adults, right? Before we go to sleep, we want to be calm. 

We don't want to like sit there and cry ourselves to sleep like we're told to babies. So yeah, I hope that answered your question. I'm not sure I was going to engines. 

Aimee: No, love it. I love it. And you know, I, I really see eye to eye on you on the sensitivity around this subject because a lot of us, you know, culturally were sleep trained, right? And may not even fully grasp or understand the impact that that early experience had on our, on our nervous system, right? And also, there's a lot of people who continue to sleep train or who really believe that that's the right thing to do. 

And they're being told by their the experts in their world that that's the right thing to do. And so when you start to offer another approach, and then, you know, usually people ask, well, then what's wrong with what I've been doing or what's wrong with, with the other way, right? Then it's, it's sort of delicate territory because you don't want to be sounding like you're accusing people of abuse, right? 

And also respecting that, you know, there's a status quo that exists, especially in this country that doesn't see it as abuse at all, but sees it as some kind of helpful thing, right? And, you know, where I come from, from it is that I was raised with a mother who always co slept with us. That's how I grew up. 

I grew up co sleeping. And some people think that's strange, right, or are weird, or they could not imagine doing it. But the truth is, when you look at cultures all over the world, it's more common to co sleep with your children than it is to separate yourself from your child, have them in another room, and listen to them over a radio. It's just, and we're the only mammal, right, the only mammal on earth that would separate itself from their young when they sleep. Not even whales would do that, right? 

There are no other animals that would do that. So when we actually ask the question, is this a natural way to do things? Whereas this is a human construct, right, that has come through, you know, wanting there to be a certain level of convenience in our lives, right? The answer is kind of clear that it's not really a natural thing to do from a biological standpoint, right? And also a cultural one when we look at the status quo, like I said, all over the world. Totally. 

Aleni: And that's the thing, like our westernized culture is so different from everywhere around the world, right? Because moms have to go right back to work at six weeks. So they need their babies sleeping all night, they need their babies separate from them so they can get back to work, you know, and just go in the function of our society, like we don't want babies to depend on us because we want them to be independent at a very young age, so they don't need to rely on us. But that you said it's totally going against biology, like, and that's what I help families teach is like, unfortunately, our society is setting us up for failure, it's setting moms up for failure, and we don't have the support system like in other cultures. 

I mean, it's called the village, because in other cultures, they have a village around the mom, they're helping raise the baby, some babies don't even know who their mom is because there's so many and some grandmas and neighbors, you know, helping raise this child so the mom can heal like they're supposed to postpartum and not supposed to go right back to work. So same with me, I was co sleeping with my mom, my mom breastfed till I was three or four. And when I had my baby, I thought it was just a normal natural thing to do that. 

My daughter is now five, the back we had her during 2020 during COVID. So when instinctually I'm nursing her right I'm nursing her to sleep I'm laying with her like a put them in the back of my head I'm like well everyone's telling me not to do this, but like why is my gut telling me to do this, you know, and I know that's my instincts like my instincts were screaming at me to like co sleep with her nurse her to sleep like why is everybody telling me she can sleep by herself or why is it okay for her to cry herself to sleep like it just didn't make sense to me I was like, there has to be another way and thankfully I found it and I got certified in this attachment based approach. And I, you know, explore this beautiful way of attachment parenting especially when it comes to sleep. 

And I'm so happy I did but unfortunately so many of us don't have that you know they don't find me until later they're like I didn't even know you existed. I'm like I wish you found me sooner because they think sleep training is the only option. They think that if they never put their babies down independently they're never going to sleep like into the future. I was like that is such an absolute right like that's so dramatic because that's what people are telling them like you have to do that four months old or they're going to have issues you know into childhood. I was told that if I supported my daughter to sleep she was going to have issues as a five year old but now she sleeps beautifully because I set that up for her. 

You know she knows if she needs me I'm going to come to her like I always have and that responsiveness consistently creates a healthy sleep habits and it creates that healthy attachment that is biologically needed right for us to be humans and have connection and to just grow up and have that secure base from your parents and from your mother especially but unfortunately it's just our cultural norms like you said like we're just not set up for that and it's just sad like other countries they have hotel rooms where you can like and like Sweden and stuff like a new book a hotel room is like are you close sleeping family do you need a close sleeping bed. I'm like can you imagine if America had that they're like here's the crib you know like right. It's just it's insane. 

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Aimee: Well you know I think that there's so many layers to why you know we have ended up this way and some of it is. You know what's the name of that doctor doctor Ferber or whatever in the nineteen sixties who wrote a book and you know made really you know made really strong claims. Right we see this in a lot of different areas of health and wellness where at some point in the twentieth century there was a person who made a really great claim. 

That just spread like wildfire like I don't know one example that's parallel to this is think of this called diet for a small planet it was written in the nineteen seventies. And in the book the woman who wrote the book outlined this idea of complete protein and she basically claimed that you had to eat rice and beans together in order to get the all the amino acids to create a complete protein and it can come completely. 

You know created this whole system of food combining in order to get the right amino acids right to create a complete protein well. That book changed the entire like nutritional conversation all over the United States but what people don't know is that she came out with a revised edition of that book in the nineteen eighties the same book but revised where she corrected herself. And she said there's no such thing as a incomplete protein all proteins are complete that's what makes it a protein so she actually went in and corrected herself. 

But still nowadays you can go take a nutrition course at a community college and they will teach you about food combining for complete protein. So it's things like this where someone makes a claim they have a hypothesis they have some kind of data or information to back it up but it's incomplete. Right and it doesn't really show us the things that kind of happen culturally or scientifically you know to follow up that claim. You know how has that claim now been researched and studied and I think this is true of the FURBER method and with sleep training is that when you actually look into the claims that a lot of. People are making it's like they don't really have any actual data to back this up like the idea that your daughter is not going to sleep well. 

Right if you don't leave her alone in the room and let her cry it out. Is there any data that can show that that's actually true because it sounds like a myth to me at the end of the day. 

Aleni: Totally it's so crazy because that's how many years ago did they for a better method come out right it's just like mind boggling to me that we're still using this from so many years ago. I mean we know better so you do better right. But like people are still using that because there's no negative research right supposedly there's no negative research that for a better method of sleep train harms children. But how are you going to do that study number one like who is going to study children sleeping and like who sleep train children versus non-sleep children like the research and the studies I really wish you washy. 

But the studies that they have done with sleep train babies is the mental health of the mother and how well the baby is sleeping or if the baby is able to put themselves to sleep. They don't study like how they're sleeping all night long. They're not studying like the happiness of the baby. It's because the mom's happy now because she's getting sleep because the baby stops signaling to mom. The sleep train babies excuse me still wake up as much as non-sleep train babies. 

They just stop signaling to their parents you know because they were told not they're trained. Not to which is also a crazy concept to me that you're trying to train a baby to sleep alone. I mean why are we training children like It's not training because sleep is biological function. We all know how to sleep especially for babies and toddlers sometimes we have to help them. You know set them up for optimal sleep which I help families do because you learn about your child or every child's unique and different. I learned my daughter's highly sensitive and she doesn't need as much sleep as like your average baby that you'll see online those schedules and all those things like your Pinterest perfect schedule you need to do this for your baby. 

My daughter never followed those. So I always thought like what's wrong with her. She broke in like she's not fitting in with every other baby but I just learned she doesn't need that. And she's so sensitive that she needs me. She needs me. She needs the contact. 

She needs the closest she needs touch to fall asleep and she still does which I'm totally fine with and I love it. You know another study back. I'm sure you've heard about self soothing right you have to teach your baby how to self soothe in order to sleep independently in order to you know create healthy sleep habits. That study was done and also in the 60s about like it was not even supposed to be about teaching self soothing for independent sleep. 

It was just a study based on temperament. So it was like the self soothers. And the signalers and it was just like when babies wake up. Are they signaling to their parents or are they able to put themselves back to sleep. And they didn't teach babies like OK self soothe at that age but they took that term and they ran with it. You know they're like OK now we got to teach these other babies to do what those babies were doing. But it was just based on temperament. 

You know those highly sensitive ones were waking up and signaling and the ones that were more in the easy going side were able just to look around but go I'm safe. I'm good. I'll go back to sleep. 

Aimee: Yeah. So and then it's like you're unfortunately you have these highly sensitive little ones who 

Aleni: if you're being told to sleep train your highly sensitive child or with the fervor method. It's taking longer for those babies. And it might not work for them. Right. Like it didn't work for them because they're crying for three hours every single night for like weeks on end. And they're like well it's not working. They're like well. The you know sleep comes on so tell them you're not doing it right or like you need to cry longer. You know all those things and it's just upsetting because your baby is just really sensitive and it's not normal for them to cry anyway. 

Aimee: You know it's right. Right. For three hours. It's pretty awful. You know but like yeah I know that there's variations of the sleep training method. Like I know that there's you know there's this one where you like go pick up the baby and then you put them down again. You know and then you go in and pick them up and put them down and you keep doing that. And I'm not really sure that's any better like personally like that feels kind of mechanical to me and strange like if I'm going into pick up my baby why don't I just hold them till they fall asleep. 

Exactly. You know what I mean like why am I you know but again this idea of self soothing is really interesting because I appreciate what you're saying about the child's temperament and another way we could put that is like their nervous system construction how they're wired and some children are going to be more agreeable to just going back to sleep. 

They're going to have more of maybe a proprioceptive awareness that's developed in their bodies where they know where that where they are physically feel you know. That safety of like oh I know where I am I know where I like end and the world begins but children who are highly sensitive you know an empathic and all those you know think words that we use to describe a certain configuration of a person's nervous system may not be getting that feedback from their physical body, about where they are and that they're safe and they need that physical touch they need that outside co-regulation of your nervous system of a grown up person's nervous system for them to feel that sense of security, that allows their nervous system to down regulate out of whatever kind of fear right there living in as a baseline being a highly sensitive. 

Being very perceptive and taking in the world that way you know so I think that this is again very difficult to study because of all the different variations. Plus, you know, in my personal like more as a somatic educator and in my intuitive kind of realm, when I have a client coming to me who is having a lot of anxiety at night they're full grown adult but they're having that's when they get most anxious. That's when they get most dysregulated they can't sleep insomnia or they wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack. I've had multiple clients like this in the last few years. And I can't help but ask or wonder and I finally did recently wish I'm glad that I did you know what was your what were your sleeping conditions like when you were a small child. 

Did you sleep alone were you scared at night when you were alone in your bed as like a four year old you know did you have nightmares did you feel like you could go and you know wake up your parents or go get that support from your parents. Right because I wonder myself knowing how you know our early years affect our nervous system and affect our behaviors. And I think that's what I've been doing for the past few years you know if there are adults out there who are living with a certain level of anxiety and disruption to their sleep patterns that actually goes back to those early years. Right a feeling feeling abandoned even if they may have not even had the words for that at the moment and you know that moment in time. 

Aleni: Totally I totally agree with that and it's I feel like those long term studies are hard to study as well because there's so many factors that go into anxiety when you're an adult right. You can't pinpoint well I was sleep trained so now I have anxiety you know you can't say that because there's so many things that happen throughout a child's life. Into their childhood their teenage you know like trauma but of course I totally agree. 

I mean the first three years of your baby's life is forming their brain it is so important for you to respond consistently day and night like there's no. Why do we stop responding to them at the night when you need the most like you said I mean like for grown adults with developed brains like our babies brains are nowhere near developed they need our active right cope are regulated brains to help them regulate if we don't they don't have that. 

I truly believe it is harmful and so many people say like you can't say that like sleep training is not harmful we've been doing it for years i'm like. But just think of it in the moment like even if you're not doing it for the future of course you want to think about your future of your children but like just in that moment if you're. Got in your stomach and everything's telling you like I need to go to my baby then go to your baby. There's a reason those instincts are in you it's primal and it's biological and sleep training is not the only option unfortunately we're being told that. And now people a lot of people aren't using like the cry out method they're using those gentler methods about pick up and put down or the chair method and almost other methods because. 

cried out is really does sound. Neglectful right and like people don't want to use that so they're throwing on like gentle sleep training. But I always tell clients who have tried it and then come to me they're like oh I tried gentle sleep training didn't work like they still had to cry i'm like. If anybody is telling you their method is gentle but they're telling you to leave your child alone to cry it's not gentle like. If they're just making it sugar coated to sell something to you you're still going against your instincts. And you're going against your child's cues and there's a misatunement there like if they're crying for you and you're looking at them like. 

Oh it's two minutes I have the time two minutes I can't pick you up until then I can't make eye contact with you because the book says I can't. You have this terrible misatunement with your child, which is really affecting attachment and of course we can always repair. Attachment you know like we're parents I know your mom too we're not perfect we're going to have. You know misatunement with our with our children and there's moments of repair but I just feel like night after night if you're not responding to your child there's. Something that's going to snowball into something later on right it just makes sense to me. 

Aimee: Right yeah and the repair is a real thing right and I think about that a lot with you know someone could have. You know whether it's sleep training or some other kind of approach when they're young. That is not the most helpful for their developing nervous system but you get a whole bunch of other things really right. Right in terms of supporting their nervous system and their overall well being well then that person may grow up and you know even though they had that experience is kind of balanced out. Right? Whereas someone else you know who has been sleep trained or who had some kind of early. Maybe we can even say like birth trauma could be a factor right? 

And then they don't get those things that support their healing because their environment is chaotic or because their parents are unavailable and overwhelmed or maybe. You know they're raised by people who aren't their parents you know what I mean like in in some scenarios and so they don't get that repair they don't get that. Support it's kind of like can turn into a very difficult situation for people you know and I want to say you know repair and repair of your nervous system can happen at any time. Like obviously we want to do it right away when we realize that there's been some kind of harm or some kind of. You know disruption right but even clients of mine that are in their fifties or sixties can start repairing their nervous system and healing from whatever. 

Things happened in their early years right so the repair can happen at any time sooner we get to it the better because then this person can enjoy their lives more right. 

Aleni: Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean everything starts with your childhood everything starts with your childhood I'm sure you like you say you ask those questions right like oh I have a hard time sleeping. Well how is it when you were a baby like it all goes back to being a baby and being a child and I feel like that does put a lot of pressure on us right as caregivers like. 

Oh my gosh I have to do this right or i'm going to mess them up forever and I always tell clients like it's not forever like there is a lay at the end of the tunnel of course it's hard. And I feel like as our children get older and if you keep that bond and attaching with them having those conversations as they get older like. You know I did this when you're a baby because I thought I had to you know it's like and i'm sorry that I did and like I tried the best I could you know all that stuff like i'm very much about that because I never got apologies and I was a kid. 

And my parents definitely parented differently but it's like you know better as a parent you know you're trying to heal your own inner child while you're raising a child so it's a lot and those triggers come up which i'm sure it's from the trauma right and it's your body processing that still. And they weren't able to heal and I think that's so so powerful. I mean you're doing such powerful work for families and. People and helping generation and generation and that's what I like to do because my. My business is rooted in sleep so it's like i'm trying to create those roots in your children as their baby so we can have these generations of generations like I want to stop the old way like. Throw that out sleep training 

Aimee: should be done and like there is I just don't I wish I can ban it but. 

Aleni: It's still there people think like you have to do it and i'm just trying to reach out everybody out there like this is the message I promise you it's not the only way because they keep being told that so it's heartbreaking. 

Aimee: Yeah absolutely i'm so glad that you are doing what you're doing and that you're being you know a voice for another way because it does. You know and here's the thing I would love to explore a little bit the way that you know a mother has these instincts right. And so much of it you know is just in her nervous system in her body and we could say maybe some of it is like hormonal or like learned from how you know she was parented although sometimes that's not the case sometimes they you know. There are women who are incredibly nurturing and attentive who had completely absent mothers right and and their attentiveness is almost in response to the lack of that that they had early on you know what I mean like how we can kind of have. 

Our behaviors formed by the absence of something but at the same time there are women who have struggled like we say postpartum depression or who are struggling to feel connected to their baby right and then at the same time feeling guilt or shame about that. You know when you have you ever worked with a mother who you know was just really honest and said I struggle to feel that instinct to pick her up when she's crying. Right and if that's the case you know like is there a way for the actual act of doing it to start repairing and building that for the mother. 

Aleni: Yeah I definitely have worked with clients not in the present moment when there was struggling with it because I had it like after the fact you know if they got the help they needed or the therapy they needed or you know the healing process because. There's always a root cause to that right like there's postpartum depression or anxiety there's a root cause under that and a lot of times it could be birth trauma for sure they had a traumatic birth. Tremendous pregnancy if they're not having support you know there's always a reason it's not like well I just I can't feel my instincts they're not there. I'm like no there's a root cause for it everybody has those instincts they're deep inside of you there's a reason for it. 

And we just have to figure out why it's being blocked I guess in a way and then once they do figure out that root cause or if they're getting that therapy or that healing they really come out on the other side like wow this is so much. Better they're healing physically and mentally better they're getting the support that they need I mean I know a close friend of mine that had really bad birth trauma. And she did not feel connected with her baby up until like nine months and she sleep trained around eight months eight seven eight nine months and because she's like. 

I didn't bother me because I didn't feel connected to her so I just sleep trainer clay thought I had to and then she's like something kind of clicked and sparked in me after that moment she's like whoa what am I doing like I feel connected to this child now. I feel kind of more healed like emotionally and mentally like why am I doing this and I was like well that's a beautiful you know journey and fortunately sometimes we do have to struggle to like. Come at the end you know come at the light, but I feel like to a lot of our instincts are being blocked by external noise you know around us. 

So I always try to be like walk out that noise and I always ask them like does that sit right with you like when people tell you. You know stop spoiling them if you keep picking them up you're going to spoil them like do you agree with it they're like no I'm like then just don't listen to them like a solar generation, a lot of them say that or your pediatrician like. It's hard but just try to block it out and like those noises and those words do build up in your head and you hear in the back of your head and you're like. Am I right and then you start doubting yourself like am I am I doing this right like should I be sleep training I mean i'm certified and i've been certified as my daughter's like a year and a half and she was toddler she had some struggles and like. 

Should I sleep training I was like why am I thinking this like I know I shouldn't. yeah. You still have those doubtful things and I think it's. it's I think it's really just your consciousness to and just being confident and like mindful and like telling yourself positive mantras over and over again like I am the best mother to my child like I do know what i'm doing all those things and like. 

Just pulling up that confidence and I feel like if a mother is struggling with their instincts like definitely reach out for support definitely reach out for that support it's needed we're not supposed to do this alone. right not supposed to go through motherhood and parenthood alone and just like if you have a partner like reach out to your partner tell them you need support like i'm struggling in this area like I need this you know and sometimes. 

The dad or partner really does pick up the slack if the mother struggling you know that partner maybe feels the connection is able to help you know there's so many every journey is unique every family is unique that i've worked with. But those are the tips that I would definitely have codes hard sometimes you feel like I don't have the instincts right like you said like. I don't feel that instinct but then they'll tell me a story like what happened i'm like that those were your instincts you know like maybe you think they're not there but they really are you just have to like dig deep like find the root cause of what's. What's what you're struggling with 

Aimee: right right and I can imagine that even just starting the act of you know physically initiating that connection is part of creating those hormones in your body to feel more of those instincts. So if you're being invited to sleep train and your sleep training you're kind of like. Cutting yourself off from that building in your system in some way like you know unless of course it comes by hearing your child cry for two hours and part of your body just finally says like no like I can't do this you know like your instincts kick in that way right but even just approaching sleep from a more holistic angle from. You know a place where you're supposed to like detach from and ignore the cry for help that your baby is sending you to one where you're responding to that. 

And you're bringing your awareness to what they need and providing for them I think that I could see how that would be very beneficial also for the mother to be engaging in that way to really be honoring. the connection, even if it's not easy to feel confident for whatever reason in her body at that moment. I think that the external noise is a huge factor and it just says the power of the status quo to enter our brain. 

I also like what you said about it being a mirror to help us reflect deeper on why we're doing what we're doing, to have doubt can create great faith, to question ourselves and say, maybe I don't know everything is a really powerful thing for reorienting us to what we do know through that contrast, through that moment of questioning to reorient ourselves back to why it is that we've made the decision that we've made. In terms of the actual practices around this, can you outline if you're working with someone who has been sleep training and now they're interested in a different approach, what would be some of the first things that you would have them address? 

Aleni: Yeah, totally. So usually I'll have people who have tried sleep training, but they've only tried it for like three nights. They don't try it for like months. I haven't had any clients that tried it for like a long period of time. I have had clients who tried it for a couple nights and then they like come to me like, that was horrible. Like I'm not doing that. What can we do instead? 

And they had their babies maybe cry for a couple hours a night and then they'll come to me and they're like, I can't, I'm so happy I found you. I don't want to do that. You know, like what can we do instead? And I'll always start with like, but if you have sleep training for like a long period of time and you realize like, I can't do this anymore, even if you successfully sleep trained if your baby stopped signaling to you, I always start with connection. Like you're gonna repair those moments and you're gonna show up more like you're gonna respond to every single wake up, you're gonna, you're gonna support your baby to sleep. 

Like you're gonna really hone in and that connection and build that up again. And you're probably gonna see a little bit of maybe more disrupted nights, maybe more frequent night wakings because your baby probably was waking at night, just stopped signaling to you. So they're gonna have to know that sleep is a safe place again, that they're able to, you're gonna respond to them again, you know, so you're gonna have to build that connection back up. 

Not saying that these moms aren't doing that during the day because I'm sure they are, but they stopped at night because they thought they had to. So connection and attachment is always one of my biggest focuses. But then for per family, it's really just unique on their goals and what's going on. 

Just, you know, like if their goals were less night wake ups or maybe they want to stop nursing to sleep or they want to, you know, transition from co-sleeping to a crib. But I always start with like, what is your reasoning? Like, why do you want to do this? Well, because my pediatrician told me I had to or like my mother-in-law keeps in my ear like you need to put your baby in the crib. I'm like, well, how do you feel about it? 

Don't listen to them. How do you feel? They're like, well, I love co-sleeping. I'm like, then do it. 

They're like, what? Like we can do, we can co-sleep. I'm like, of course you can. 

As long as you're doing it safely. And like, I understand. So I'm very much about like a baby let approach, you know, let your baby lead you, follow your baby's cues and like support their emotional well-being. But I'm very much about mom and dad too. Like, it's important to support their emotional well-being. So if your baby is like 18 months old, they're nursing around the clock all night long and you're exhausted. Well, there's probably something going on, right? There's a root cause to why they're waking so much and nursing so much. 

So let's really begin to that. Like I always try to help families find the root causes of the night wake-ups. Like, if a three-month-old is waking up every two hours to nurse to sleep, that's normal. But if they're getting older, there's a reason, you know? So that's why I try to help families with. And that's a big thing that I see with clients is like shifting their goals. Like they start with me like, I want my baby totally in their crib. 

I'm done supporting them overnight. Like I'm so tired. I'm like, okay, let's try to get some things like working here. Let's try to get a longer stretch for you at the beginning of the night. And we do, you know, we try to nail down some sleep during the day, maybe cap some naps or like really cone and on that connection, even like sensory needs. Like, does your baby need that massage before bed? 

Do they need more, you know, rough and tumble play before bed to help calm their nervous system down for sleep? And then you'll see like a nice six hour stretch. And they're like, Oh my gosh, like, I feel like a whole new person, I slept six hours straight in my bed alone. And baby wakes up for like a nursing session, and they bring them in the rest of the night because they're okay with cold sleeping now, because they feel a little bit better. You know, so it really just depends on the family and their unique journeys and their sleep goals. But like I said, I really haven't had any clients who have sleep trained for a long period of time and then come to me like I would love to help those families. But I think it would just be like a longer process possibly to repair those moments, you know, to really build on connection and totally depending on baby's temperament. 

Because if you sleep trained a really highly sensitive child, you probably didn't fully do it honestly, because there's my if I would have sleep trained my daughter, it would have took probably weeks and weeks, and she would just keep crying, and she would throw up to the point of crying. And I just know I couldn't do it. So I get a lot of those clients like I can't do it. I'm like, that's okay. There's a reason why you can't. Yeah. 

Aimee: You know, so yeah. And I would imagine if someone like, you know, successfully sleep trained and like, you know, had done it for several years, you know, it's it's less likely that they're going to come to someone like you because they feel like there isn't a problem, you know, but once again, like some of those issues could be problems later on or could be behavioral issues that they don't actually know are part of this root, you know, part of this root cause of their child, not fully trusting that they're going to respond to their needs. 

And so is shutting down, you know, what's been very interesting for me as a parent, because I think that when you become a parent, you sort of revisit yourself at that those different points in your development. And you also revisit like what your mother was like, or who your care what your caregivers were like in that moment, you know, and my son over the last year, you know, we moved across the country. 

There was a lot of big shifts or a lot of big changes. And he started having this like very, you know, negative self-talk. But he was doing it out loud to me. He was like telling me, you know, that he didn't like himself. 

He was saying those things to me. And of course, it was heart breaking and like, I didn't want to hear that. And I was struggling to figure out how to respond, you know, to my to my five year old, my six year old, who's saying these very like heavy things to me. At the same time, I was like really, I took it as a good sign because he's actually saying it to me out loud. I think that at his age, I had already started having negative self-talk patterns. 

You know, by the time I was eight or nine, I definitely had negative self-talk patterns, but I didn't say them to anybody. I didn't tell my mom. I didn't tell my dad. 

I didn't tell my friends. I kept that like buried inside of me. And I can see now that that was part of, you know, what kept me in pain for many years in my young, you know, adolescence and stuff is that I only had a way to express those things through angry music, you know, or acting out like, you know, with drugs and alcohol when I was a teenager, you know, versus what if your kid could actually say that heavy stuff to you and you could receive it in a responsible way and they could actually move that energy out and not keep it suppressed and buried in them, you know.

And over the last year, he stopped saying things like that, you know, but he's also just happier because we got over kind of the difficulty of the big transitions in life, you know, so I think that being able to feel safe to express our needs and to express our fear or our pain, right? And one way, you know, crying for an infant is that they're crying out and they're saying, I need you, I need help, you know, my son telling me, oh, I don't like myself. I hate myself, you know, is his way of trying to get help, letting me know that he's in pain so that I can be a responsive parent, right? 

Aleni: Yeah, totally. I mean, that's that is how you build a securely attached child and into their childhood and childhood is letting them come to you with every single emotion and accepting every single emotion, like you accept all of the pain, all of the sadness, the happiness, everything, like if I hear like, oh, my baby's always happy, they never cry, I'm like, okay, that's a red flag because there's a reason, you know, like babies should be crying and toddlers should be crying, they should be having those big feelings, those big emotions. 

And if you tell them, oh, just stop crying, like get over it, then they are going to stop crying and they're going to stop coming to you. And they're going to suppress those feelings and it's going to carry them on through, you know, childhood and childhood. And I always talk about the older generations and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt because they did what they thought they had to back then. 

And we were, you know, generation is getting better with emotions and like feelings and all that stuff, but they were just like in survival mode, I feel like that, you know, like my mom grew up in Greece, and then she came to America and married an American and they're very different dynamics, you know. So she was very instinctual and responding and stuff, but also just like she had to grind and be a mom at home and while dad worked all the time and she didn't have that support, so she definitely suppressed a lot of emotions, which maybe came out to us without meaning to. 

So like I respect her so much because she did so much for us. And now as an adult, I understand like why everything happened the way it did, you know, but I was going to say also with sleep training, a lot of times if you do sleep train your baby young things do come up into toddlerhood because if they're done with the crib, you put them in a bed and now they understand like, oh, I can move, I can get out of my bed, right? Like they're not trapped in the crib, they're gonna, you know, move and I see a lot of problems servicing into toddlerhood. 

They're like, you know, I'll see things all the time, like my sleep train baby now as a toddler and they're waking up so much, they're crying out for me and then you'll see comments like, well, just shut and lock the door and they'll figure it out. Yeah, so it's like, well, now they're a toddler, they're actually able to vocalize mom, I need you, but then like, you're just telling them no, like figure it out on your own. But then I have a lot of toddler families come out and like, be like, I did sleep train, but now my toddler's having a hard time. I don't want to do that. I'm like, okay, you don't have to. 

So let's really repair a lot and focus on that connection. You have to show your toddler that sleep is a safe place to be. And you will always come to them when they need you. And you're gonna lay with them till you fall asleep. You're gonna bridge that separation because it's okay if you don't want to go sleep with your toddler if you do lovely, like that would build so much connection and bonding. 

But if you don't want to like lay with them, like, you know, tell them, I'm gonna come to you if you need me, like, mommy is always there for you, like, let's dream together. You know, I always tell my daughter, I'm gonna meet you in my dreams and stuff like that. You always want to like bridge that separation with the next connection. You never want to tell them, like, just go to sleep or like, good night, come on, just, you know, because they're gonna really think about that separation, like separation is wounding to everybody, even to adults. Like, we sleep with our partners every single night. 

And we expect babies and young children to sleep alone all night, 10, 12 hours is just like funny. Like it regulates our nervous systems to sleep next to somebody we love, like that skin to skin that warmth, like it's just so healing and bonding for everyone that you love. Like, I just feel like just embrace it. And if cold sleeping doesn't work for you, because you have maybe a lot of families, I'll say like my partner's a heavy sleeper, you know, like they're nervous about that or whatnot, I was like, I totally get it. There's definitely safe ways to do it without being nervous about those factors. But yeah, I always go on Tanger's. I forgot what the main point was. 

Aimee: Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, all of it makes sense to me. But then again, you know, I was raised with it being normal to sleep, you know, and there are, you know, other things too, like, you know, we mentioned kind of breastfeeding, there are all kinds of things that we get told, you know, about spoiling our kids with too much love, you know, or oh, you know, once they're walking around, you know, you shouldn't be breastfeeding them anymore. That's weird. 

It's like, well, what if, what if it's not weird? What if it's only something we've been told is weird, you know, and kind of going back to this crux of things in the 1950s and 60s, you know, formulas started being pushed as like more beneficial than breastfeeding, like that somehow breast milk wasn't as nutritious as these formulas, you know, and then it also became kind of like a class thing too, where it was like, if you had the means and you had the money, you would buy formula. And it was something that only poor people did was breastfeed their children. And my grandmother, for instance, like, you know, did formula for all of her kids, children, because, you know, she believed it was better. And she had been told that, you know, and it also culturally for her, she came from Japan, and they all, you know, in her family's system, they had 

Aimee: what is it called wet nurses, right? So they actually paid other people to breastfeed their children, which is, I think, rather weird. But that was a big cultural thing that you can see in, you know, in societies where people have wealth, that's like one of the things they do. 

They outsource the breastfeeding so that the mother doesn't have to do that, you know, which is strange in my view. But what I'm getting to here is that, you know, there are other kinds of like cultural ideas that we might have about, say, coast sleeping, you know, like that maybe, I don't know, 100 years ago, everybody was coast sleeping because, you know, the average, you know, person didn't have the amount of money or the amount of wealth, right, in our developing nations to have separate rooms and separate beds for everybody. 

So there may be a piece where having separate rooms and separate beds for everybody is a sign that like you're making it in America, you know what I mean? That you have the means to do it this way that is, you know, more luxurious or more preferable or, you know what I'm saying, versus like the old style where everybody's just in a pile on a big platform of a bed, which is literally how they still do it in rural Vietnam. 

Like I saw it, it's like, Auntie, Mama, Grandma, three kids, all in one big platform of a bed, you know, right? And then there's other layers to it about like, you know, familial trust and feeling safe to sleep with your family members, you know, and whether the health of the family is like sound enough that there's that there's no worry about like, you know, inappropriate touching or things like that, you know what I mean? Like there's so many layers to why people might feel like sleep, co-sleeping is weird, right, from a societal standpoint. 

Aleni: Oh yeah, totally. I just think it's so funny that so many things that are supposed to be natural and instinctual is so weird, right? Like breastfeeding is weird, co-sleeping is weird, being with your baby all the time is weird, but like it's okay, just drop them off for eight hours a day, a day care, that's like, you know, I mean, just like we're such a detached society and it's just so harmful for the mother and child relationship, especially in the early years, like I get it, some moms do have to go right back to work, so they do have a daycare or a nanny. And I always just tell them like, you know, bring in their attachment village if you do have to go back to work. 

And there are great daycares out there, you can do a nanny situation and all that stuff. But I think it's so funny that when people say like you're spoiling your baby, I always tell them like, do you know the term for spoiled? Do you know what spoiled means? It means that you're rotting something. Are you rotting your child by responding to them? 

Like if you're spoiling your baby, it's by not responding to them or not being there for them, like do the opposite. If you're, you know, I mean, it's just so funny when I hear those things, because I'm like, you just really think about it, because I feel like so many people just take things as it is, like right away, they just hear like, oh, put them down your spoil, and I'm like, okay, I'll listen to you because you're medical doctor and you know what you're talking about. 

I was like, we're just remember your pediatrician is not specialized in everything. They're there just to like be the primary caregiver to make sure your child's, you know, health is okay. But like they don't specialize in sleep, they don't specialize in like airway, like all that stuff, because I see a lot of medical red flags come up to, you know, like they have reflux or they may have a tongue tie or they have like enlarged anoints or tonsils and those babies are having issues with sleep, because they really have to breathe, they can't breathe. And then doctors are telling them, oh, mouth breathing is normal. I'm like, well, no, it's not. It's not normal for anybody. 

So please investigate that. But you might have to go to a specialist for that, even as adults, right? Like we go to specialists for things that we're doing. Like, can you imagine if you went to your primary doctor and said like, I need to heal my body, like I have all this trauma inside my body, like, okay, take an antidepressant, like, they're not going to go to get some, you know, like go to you, they're going to like just do all that stuff. So it's just like, I feel like we're not getting to the root cause of things, we're just like handing things out to like a band-aid solution, like sleep training is a band-aid solution for a lot of families. 

Right. And they're going to figure out that, unfortunately, maybe later into childhood or childhood, when your child can vocalize in words, like what's going on with them, because as a baby, they just cry. And then you're telling them to ignore their cries. And then I even hear like, oh, you'll start to understand their cries. Like there's a cry when they're falling asleep. 

And then you know the difference of cries. If they're hungry, they're just manipulating you. I'm like, oh, my gosh, these poor moms are being told and it's social media too, right? You see so many things on social media, which can be a blessing in the curse because there's positive things with social media. Like what we do is positive on social media, but then there's the negative things like follow this perfect sleep routine for your three month old baby. And like, just don't look at that. Like don't compare your baby to other babies online because it's so it can be harmful for your relationship for sure. 

Aimee: I love this, you know, focus on listening to your own instinct and listening to what your body is saying is the right thing to do in the moment and inviting people to really tap into that to get clear on the action that needs to be taken, right? And to encourage them to create connection through loving touch, through responsiveness, right? So many times we need that from ourselves in our lives. 

You know, how many times do we need like to be kind and gentle to ourselves? You know, a lot of people struggle with, you know, negative thought patterns, right? Sometimes when I'm having those negative thought patterns, I've, first of all, as a somatic educator, I've stopped seeing my mind and body as separate, right? 

I see it as like, my thoughts are an expression of my body, my thoughts are an expression of my biology at that moment, right? And so when I'm having negative thoughts, it's like, what if I listened to that like it was a dear friend of mine or like it was my little son telling me, you know, that he's hurting in this way, that he's feeling down, you know, about life or about himself. And instead of just trying to override, ignore or shut down, right? What if I like kind of held myself in my negative thought space, right? And I do that now. It's like a thing that I've learned to do when, you know, my preferred approach is like, I'll just go lay down in my bed for a little while. 

And I'll just like let myself kind of curl up and feel, you know, the downness, right? But it's hard for many people to do because they didn't have that experience as a child, where it was okay, and it was safe to be, you know, in some kind of intense place, you know, of sadness or pain. Like, there's so many things that are very natural for human beings to think and feel that we have made weird, as we were saying, you know, like for a person to have, you know, like a dark thought where like, oh, I just wish I could like melt into the grass and just like not be here. 

And like, you know, we get really alarmed, like, oh, no, like suicide, like, you know what I mean? Like, and I'm not saying we shouldn't take those things seriously. But the truth is, is that most human beings have those kinds of thoughts, you know what I mean, from time to time, as we as we feel pain and as we suffer with whatever it is that we're challenged by at that moment, you know, so I think there's a lot here that you're building a foundation for people to not only be more responsive to their little ones, but to build that muscle of being responsive to themselves as well, to not just ignore their inner cry, you know, but listen to that and do something about it, be something about it. Totally. 

Aleni: People are so uncomfortable by emotions, right, especially crying. Like I'm sure you've seen or you heard families like at any time a baby starts crying, everyone's like, okay, how do we make the baby stop crying? 

Like, of course, you know, sleep train is different. But even just, you know, baby is being held by mom and they're fussy and they're just crying because they're communicating. There's something wrong. Everybody in the room has to figure out how to make this baby stop crying. They're clapping in their face. 

They're distracting them. I'm like, the baby's crying for a reason. Let the mom handle it. 

And they try to take the baby from the mom. Oh, I can do it. And I think like, why do you think you can do it better than the mom? You know, so it's just funny. And when you're talking about things for adults, I think it's also funny to think about the term self soothing. Because I did a post online about the difference of what we tell a baby to self sue versus an adult and self soothing for babies, let them cry and figure it out by themselves. But for an adult, it's like going for a walk or talking to a friend or getting a massage, taking a bath, right, like all these self soothing, self regulating, because that's what it is. You are self regulating to calm yourself down, which babies are impossible and capable of doing because they don't have a regulated brain, right? 

Like we do. So I just think the comparison, I always like to say that because everyone's like, well, can my baby self soothe? I'm like, no, they can't. Are they able to down regulate from a distressed state by themselves? No, that's, you know, that's what it means. And you have to help them. And unfortunately, a lot of us have a dysregulated state a lot of the times because we have that trauma, you know, like I'm learning that as I'm growing with my child, like, oh my gosh, this is triggering to me that she's crying or I can't calm her down because I'm thinking, okay, when I was a child, I probably had to suppress my emotion, right? 

Or I was told to stop crying, all those things, those triggers come up. So it's like, I have to heal my inner child, I have to regulate myself, learn how to regulate because, you know, we all saw emotions being suppressed or like getting angry and throwing something across the room, you know, like we didn't, we weren't taught healthy ways to express our emotions. So like, it's so important to teach our children how to express those emotions in a healthy way, like it's okay to have feelings, of course, all those feelings, anger, sadness, we don't want them not to feel them. We just have to teach them like, how are we going to feel them? 

And what way is the healthy way? And I'm here to help you, I'm not going to let you, I'm not going to put you in time out, right? Close the door on your emotions, you know, like, I have a nice little calm down area for my daughter when she's having those big feelings to teach her like, you know, we can go sit and calm down together, there's tools we can use. And now if she's five, she sits there by herself, and she'll sit and take deep breaths or she'll read a book and like, I'm always there to help her, she needs it, but I've helped her all these years, took years and years to build this co-regulation, you know, and like, we're seeing it, but still, I know it's not going to fully be there until she's a grown adult, right? When's your brain stopped developing when you're 25 years old? Like it takes years and years for that co-regulation to happen with the responsive caregiver, like that's how you build it up. 

Aimee: Right, yes, absolutely. And you know, as you said, like, you know, we're still learning this often as adults, we're learning it alongside our children, we're just a couple of steps ahead, because we do have a developed nervous system, we are capable of, you know, taking those actions, you know, to self-soothe. And it really is, you know, something that you intuitively, as an adult, you intuitively figure out in the moment, you know, like I talk about that a lot with my clients, sometimes I need to just go lay in my bed. 

And then there's a moment where I'm done laying in my bed. And the next thing that I need to go do is take a walk or exercise. Or the next thing I need to do is eat something. Or the next thing I need to do is, you know, book an appointment to talk to, you know, one of my, like, coach friends, you know what I mean? Like, there's all these different tools. And to be able to be, like, a functional person, we may have access to a variety of different tools. But a lot of the time, it's not simply just going to be, you know, okay, while you're feeling bad, I guess just like, stop feeling bad. 

Aleni: That doesn't work. It's that easy, right? Try, we try to do that. That's what we were told to do as children. Oh, you're upset, you're yelling, just stop yelling, and you'll be fine. You know, oh, that hurts. 

Well, it doesn't look that bad. So just continue going, like it's fine. But that's what we have been, you know, unconsciously taught to do as children. And that's what a lot of us still try to do to ourselves. We kind of gaslight ourselves, right? And try to pretend that we're okay when inside, we're like, you know, totally, especially when it comes to like mothering and motherhood, like, we have so many self doubts, like, I'm not good enough as a mom, like my baby's sleeping horribly, it's my fault. 

And I'm just like, it's not, it's not, I promise you, like, it's your society, our societal cultural norms telling us it's your fault, or you're a bad mom, because, you know, your baby isn't sleeping well, you're a bad mom, because, you know, you're only producing so much breast milk, like all those things, I'm like, that's not like you are enough for your baby, and you are the best mom for your baby, there's a reason that you are the mother to your child. 

And like, that's just the most important thing. I always say that you're the expert on your child. And I'm just, I'm here to help guide you if you need that help and support. And I also like, I want to be a part of your village, because it can be so isolating and lonely, because, you know, if you just have your partner and your child, maybe no family lives around you, and like, virtually, it really is like taking off, you know, in our society, we do have to create that support system online, which is still so great, like, I definitely always encourage people reach out for support if you need it, because it's you're not meant to do it alone, I say it all the time, you truly are, and it's not fair that some of us do. 

Aimee: Yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much for what you're doing. It's really, it's really beautiful work. It's really necessary, you know, and so do you work with clients mainly in person, or do you do online work as well? 

Aleni: So I do a virtual, you know, like support one-on-one support, if you book a package with me, we'll do like Zoom calls like this, but I also in the Buffalo area, I do monthly mom meetups, they call them rest in roots. 

So they're free meetups. And I always have a special guest with me, so I have all different types of special guests, like chiropractors, nutritionists, like IBCLCs, the baby wear educator, and then I'm the specialist in sleep. So we'll just sit and chat like a casual conversation, like, I open up the floor for moms to talk about their struggles, their wins, and it's so beautiful to see like, everybody opening up like to strangers, like we never met each other, right? And like, usually I start and then there's always one really outgoing mom, you know, to talk about everything. 

And then there's one shy or one, but you just see like the conversations being like, coming out so natural and organic. And then you'll see like moms helping each other, you know, supporting each other. And I'll have a lot of moms come like, my husband wants a sleep train, but I don't want to. 

And I'm like, well, you're in a great place, you know, you're in a safe space with all these other moms. So I really love having those. I love in person events. Of course, I know a lot of people can't do that one on one in person. So that's why I do offer the virtual, you know, support packages. 

But yeah, that's what I'm working on right now. And I really do love meeting with moms. I don't have a baby anymore. So I love seeing the little babies too, because I miss it. 

Aimee: Oh, yeah, that's beautiful. So if people want to connect with you, if they want to learn more about your approach or seek a consult, where can people find you? 

Aleni: I have an Instagram and Facebook, it's rooted in sleep. So our OOTED in sleep. And then my website's the same name. And yeah, you can just contact me on there if you have any other questions. I'm always working on something new. You know, I have these meetups every month, my support packages, I have actually a workshop in a couple weeks for transitioning out of co sleeping. So I understand that, you know, co sleeping is obviously natural and beautiful and biological, but sometimes it stops working for families. And I just have my workshop is teaching families how to gently transition away from that by still keeping your connection and attachment super strong with your child. 

Aimee: Love that. Yeah, yeah, because people need to feel like they have freedom and options to be dynamic and flexible as their lives, you know, shift and as their situations shift, right? Exactly. And not feeling like there's only one way to do things and they have to just stick with the one way they decided at one point, right? We're not meant to do that. 

We're meant to live dynamically and respond to the moment. So that's, that's wonderful that you, you know, that you help with that and you take that perspective. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, well, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If you have a baby, right, if you're listening to this podcast and you have a baby and you've been trying to figure out the sleep thing, definitely put a call with Eleni and she can help you sort it out, right? Or maybe you just have some new ideas of what to play with by listening to this podcast, right? 

About listening to your instincts and the benefits of that for both you and your child long term. So thank you again for coming on the show and we'll be in touch. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. 

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.