Unlike traditional approaches that may focus solely on mindset tools, Tricia Takvorian helps women reconnect with their bodies on a deeper level, beyond thoughts and beliefs.
In today’s episode, I’m excited to host Tricia Takvorian, a women's trauma-informed life coach who guides women beyond mindset tools to reconnect with their bodies through the transformative practice of somatic yoga.
Tricia Takvorian takes us through:
The importance of accessing the hidden world beneath our mindset through yoga to return home to our true selves.
Her personal journey with yoga, starting in her early 20s after a breakup.
The importance of embracing somatic healing alongside mindset tools to fully address the root causes of our issues.
The power of somatic yoga and how it helps access the hidden world and reconnect with one's true self.
Trauma, as defined from a somatic perspective and it’s impact on our bodies and patterns in life.
The importance of integrating mindset tools with somatic healing for a deeper and more holistic approach to healing and personal growth.
And so much more!
Tricia Takvorian is a certified trauma-informed life coach, embodiment leader, and somatic healer. She has spent the last decade dedicated to doing her own inner work of healing limiting beliefs, emotional blocks, and conditioned patterns, as well as studying the tools/modalities to help support her clients through their own journey of healing and transformation. She helps women go beyond mindset tools, reconnect with their body’s innate wisdom + power, and experience freedom from within.
Get free with T and follow her on Instagram at @triciatakvorian.
DM Tricia the word “FREEDOM” to set up a FREE clarity call to see if working together feels like a right fit.
Website: Triciatakvorian.com
Email: Triciatakvorian@gmail.com
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: 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 and experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy. Here is where you free your Soma.
A: Hello and welcome to Free Your Soma, stories of somatic awakening and how to live from the inside out. I'm Aimee Takaya, and today, I have Tricia Takvorian here with me. She is a women's trauma-informed life coach.
She helps women go beyond mindset jewels and reconnect to their bodies so they can come back home to their true self. We are going to be exploring the realm of somatics today, a little bit about Tricia's personal journey, and asking that question: what does it mean to go beyond mindset tools?
Mindset tools can be really valuable, but there is another world, a hidden world that is going on underneath of our mindset, and how do we start to access that? Thank you so much for being here, Tricia. Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, wonderful. We met during somatic yoga training, and that was quite some time ago now, so it's been really wonderful to get to watch you develop and grow as a practitioner and become a life coach and all of that and really embrace this somatic approach to living.
T: Yeah, thank you so much. Wow, it feels like it was so long ago that we met, but I think it was only about three years ago. But when I met you during that time was such a turning point in my life, so I truly appreciate the reflections on my journey and just really excited to dive into this conversation.
A: Yeah, totally. So let's go back a little bit then on your timeline and let's just explore where you started in your journey. You can go back as far as you want, like childhood, or you could start at a certain point, maybe in your midlife area, wherever you want to start to kind of explain like where you came from on your journey.
T: Sure, yeah, that's so funny as you say that, the permission to how far back do I want to go but I think I'll start around my early 20s. So, during that time, I had gone through a breakup with a partner I was with for about two and a half years, and I remembered I was super depressed. I was not nourishing myself properly. I was sleeping in super late, and I was just kind of going through the it of a breakup. One day, I just woke up and decided I don't want to keep living my life like this.
Something has got to shift and got to change so that was a pivotal moment. I signed up for a yoga class, and it was my first one. It was love at first downward dog, and it really got me through a really tumultuous time of heartbreak.
I started to feel like I was actually coming back online and coming alive again, and so I practiced pretty regularly for about three years, and then I took a little break. I started exploring some other healing modalities workout modalities, and then, in my early 30s, I tried to get back into yoga, but something just felt different. I noticed my body was not responding the same.
I had a lot more aches and pains, and when I even looked back to when I started in my early 20s, although I think yoga is such a beautiful practice, I realized at that time I was using it to numb out a bit. I was using it to not really deal with my emotions that were coming up.
So I still value the practice and what it allowed for me at that time to move through something that felt so difficult, but I could see then how it was not going to, it was going to be different this time around for where I was in my life in my 30s. So Q, a few years later, after practicing, you know, COVID happened and I decided that I found this somatic yoga, and I was really interested in trying that. I was with a partner at that time, and it was a really toxic relationship.
We would fight almost every single day. I was feeling really lost in stock. I didn't know what I wanted to do with myself or my life, and I signed up for this somatic yoga, and it was one of the big catalysts was coming back into my body. I realized that through more traditional yoga. I was not actually in my body. I was going through the motions of it, which is why I think so many people end up getting a lot of injuries is because they're not really listening to those subtle cues of the body.
So, through the somatic yoga, I was really able to slow things down, which can be difficult because we live in the world of go, go, go and do, do, do. So, slowing things down so I can really feel into my body, which started to open up a lot of emotional channels and blocked energy. So, coinciding with the somatic yoga, I hired my first life coach, which combines somatic and nervous system work and before then, I didn't even really know what a life coach was or what a life coach did, and through working with her and doing the somatics it literally opened me up to a whole another of healing which was again just not the traditional mindset tools.
Just we want to think our way into healing instead of feel our way into healing. So those two things really had such a profound shift on my life that led me to breaking up with my partner at the time, moving into my first apartment ever, living on my own by myself, deciding I wanted to be a life coach, and support other women in their journey. So yeah, it just had such a big impact on my life and really shed a lot of light in my purpose of what I'm here to do.
A: I love that, and you know I love the way that you are, you know we kind of go back to that first yoga experience where you know you felt so much, you know, it was very helpful at that time right in your early 20s and like it was this opening and this you know I think that yoga itself is a somatic like experience. But there's like layers to it, and there's a layer of like how much depth we are capable of.
You know how far we're capable of going and what I love that you said was even though you were using it in some way to numb out and that was something you kind of realized in hindsight it doesn't mean that even when we're doing that even when we're in our states of like still being in this process of kind of distracting ourselves or numbing out that we don't get benefit we still can because it's not like when you have a practice of like numbing out you know or dissociating or ignoring what's happening right real-time in your body that you just like never do that again. You like, you still back dip back into it from time to time. There's still these like moments where that's a thing, and you catch yourself unconsciously avoiding or distracting right and there's a practice of like coming out of that.
So, what you said, I just wanted to point out like to our listeners to anybody who hears that and is like, oh my god, like I know what she means. I've totally used yoga in that way to to like distract myself from what I'm experiencing versus being in my experience right. And yoga is this enhancement of my experience, right? It's not like you can't still get benefit. It's just about like how deep your capacity to go is at that moment, right it might be like that not going so deep and just like using the physical practice to like distract yourself a little bit is like where you're at at that moment.
And it could change like in the next yoga class, it could change like you know, in the next day, and it's like when we're stepping out of that pattern, and we look back on it, there's this tendency to feel like shame. Or like embarrassment or like regret or all these different feelings like that what we were doing was somehow wrong. I'm speaking for myself here with like the way that I totally did the same thing. I use yoga to like numb out; I use yoga to distract myself from things like a difficult relationship, you know.
It's not like it wasn't helpful. It just wasn't like the full picture. It just wasn't quite deeper, and then there's those points in your life like you were called into in your 30s where you're ready to go deeper where it's time, you know. And then like you said, this whole world starts to open up in front of you, and yeah, I just I really appreciate you kind of like sharing that perspective because we don't see it from the outside.
We can't see it if we watch somebody do yoga and we think, like, oh, they're doing such an amazing pose. We don't know what they're experiencing internally, and we also don't know, like, if somebody has all these great mindset tools, what they're experiencing internally, even just what somebody is saying, and maybe you can talk a little bit about this, like what does it really mean to step beyond mindset tools and to move beyond just like the mental gymnastics of like figuring out ourselves or using our language to like reframe things like what's the benefit of like that too and then what's the benefit of going deeper and beyond that.
T: Yeah, Absolutely. And I just want to comment and say thank you so much for everything that you just shared in our conversation because I do want to highlight that as well that I do think it's important is not to shame or judge yourself for different experiences that you've had in your life for different tools that you used at that moment because at that time that may be where your emotional capability and what was available to you at that time you know so for the most part.
Most of us are just doing the best we can what we have at each given time, and it also may be certain points in your life that you are just not ready to dive into some deeper some to some deeper stuff like doing the emotional work can be heavy can be painful can be messy and we don't always need to be in that deeper work as well.
So it's just to notice our patterns. I think awareness is one of the biggest things because awareness precedes choice. And we cannot see a forest through the trees so like you're talking about sometimes while we're in it we're in it and we can't see so always reflection can be so powerful and potent in our journey to just be able to see where we were at to then create more conscious choice as we move forward.
A: Beautifully said.
A: Yes, yeah. So, going into the part about going beyond mindset tools again from my experience because I think we're so inundated with those messages of positive vibes only I didn't even know until a few years ago that there was such thing as toxic positivity, which absolutely blew my mind and I think that that is discounting our human slash spiritual, emotional experience. So there's an opportunity for us to sit with things and process things and we can know that they're here for a reason, and we can see that the silver lining.
But I think that takes away again from like doing some of the deeper work in order to heal but doing just mindset tools in my personal experience. And what I've noticed with with clients that have come to me is it's almost like when we're just working at the cognitive level, it's like our brain is having one conversation, and our body is having another. Our body the living library of all of our experiences. And especially if you're someone who's experienced a lot of trauma, which again I want to I really want to clarify that for people because I had a client who, when I said the word trauma she said, oh, you mean like it you have an injury and you go to the hospital?
Like that was her definition of trauma, and from the somatic perspective, it's something that happens that's too much, too fast, too soon. So, can the trauma be a molestation or sexual assault, or a divorce? Absolutely, but trauma could also be when you're a child says and you're at the grocery store with your parents, and you wander off into the next aisle, and there's a few minutes that you don't know where your parent is, and you start crying and having a little freak-out moment and then when they find you you know you're being kind of loud and emotional.
And they're just like, it's okay, I'm here. Like stop crying that could be a traumatic experience that lives within your body that continually can show up in a pattern in your life. There can now be this fear of abandonment that plays out in your relationships, so again, trauma could have such a wide definition, but so when we're going with just mindset tools, we're not really getting to the root cause of some of our issues to me it's more like we're just putting a bandaid on the surface
A: right yes I think that the phrasing too to go beyond the mindset tools it encompasses them so it's like these concepts these ideas are helpful they're valid and if we are only experiencing them mentally and not feeling them the truth of these things in our bodies and sort of connecting those ideas to something deeper and anchoring them in ourselves it just is it's limiting how effective they can really be right like take like an affirmation like most people are familiar with affirmations.
Like you look in the mirror and you say I am beautiful, I am beautiful, and you're trying to help yourself feel more confident. But if you are saying verbally I am beautiful and what you feel in your body is like discussed, that's incongruent, right? That's not actually the words: I am beautiful you know, don't like really land, and I did that for a long time in like my 20s. I had these like mental constructs that I would like try on and see if I could like embody that by just believing it mentally and just like speaking it into reality, and it was kind of like it turned into a performance more than like an actual authentic expression of self.
It was a performative thing like I was reading lines in a play versus embodying that experience of competence or that experience of beauty, you know, so I think that in congruency that we experience as we're using these very helpful mindset tools, you know people start to realize like there's something else that I'm missing here there's like a missing link and can you say a little bit about like the discovery of that missing link like for you from your perspective like discovering that somatic element what was that like yeah.
T: I appreciated the words incongruency because that's what was flashing in my mind as well, the incongruency between the mind and body, the incongruency between the inner self and the outer self, so the outer self outwardly, it's I'm confident I'm beautiful all those affirmations again that we're inundated with but what is the truth of what you really feel what is the programming what is that internal voice that you have that saying so I think there's such a difference between saying I love myself and the embodiment of self-love or I am confident and the embodiment of confidence what does it really feel like in your body to experience that right.
A: Well, because the embodiment of something is in itself an action, so it has to be things you do, not just things you think or say has to be actions that you take, you know, and so I kind of like one of those ways of sort of a parameter of like figuring it out that that I've often used is like if my goal is like I want to love myself fully and truly.
I can't just say I love myself. I have to do loving things for myself, and doing loving things for myself is not just like going and getting a pedicure or buying a pretty dress. It might involve like holding space for like some really nasty emotions that I have that is an act of love for myself. Sometimes, choosing to not go buy something is an act of love for myself, you know, so there's no one way that, like showing ourselves and taking action in the direction of self-love. There's no way that that looks but in, but it is an action rather than just something that you think about or something that you verbally say right.
T: Absolutely, absolutely. As you were saying that, too I remembered going back to your question that you just had about, like, when was I having like my moment of kind of noticing my own in frequency and in my words, and I remembered a few years ago where I was laying on my bed just a random day, and I started to feel a lot of sensation in my body it was like this very buzzy feeling that kind of started at my heart and started moving and expanding down towards my toes up towards my head, and I was just sitting with presence which I find is that like that could be its whole own podcast is about just being present just being in the moment and I started to kind of laugh out loud and then I started crying I was like this was my first experience of really feeling embodied self-love.
I don't even know how to describe how I knew that it was self-love, but it was something that just came over me, and I just knew that that was just this feeling that I had never experienced before. And again just going back to work that I had done, I had been reading books and listening to podcasts and doing quote all the right things like going down the personal development checklist, but I was like, why am I not feeling great? Why am I not getting the results that I desire? Why am I still feeling stuck in life?
So when I started really being more present, being more in tune with my body, really feeling into sensations, and noticing where I felt things and what they felt like, that really started shifting things for me, the experience of self-love, the being able to make decisions. So many conversations that I have with women, friends, coaches, clients, you know, this analysis paralysis that we experience or the fear of making the wrong decision, you know.
Our body is always speaking to us, and it speaks to us through the language of sensation, but for many of us, we're so disconnected for so long, you know, starting in our younger years, that we're not really able to pick up on the language of our body and hear what it's trying to communicate.
So through listening to sensation, you can ask yourself a question, and within five seconds, your body will give you the answer, but then what happens is if you take it past that five seconds, I can't remember what the study was. I think it might be about 18 seconds that then we start to take that embodied wisdom, and we want to bring it up to the brain, and then we want to start logically processing it right.
A: Yes. Yes. That makes sense to me, and what I loved with your language before about the sensations and being present to sensations in your body is you were asking questions like how does this feel what is this sensation like versus what does this mean which is, I think where a lot of people go in the beginning is they want to come to some kind of conclusion about the sensations that they're experiencing they want to make it mean something they want to connect it to a memory or something that they have already experienced before.
They want to be like, oh, this must be where I'm holding my stress or my pain, or they want to, you know, label it something, oh, I'm horny like whatever it might be. And what you said was just kind of staying with the experience itself in this realm of openness and what I have discovered, and maybe you can speak to this as well. It's like when we stay in that place of openness; there's a knowing that arises that is not anxious, that is not like deterministic; it's just like a oh, it's sort of like something just coming into view, and you go ah I know what this means.
And that's that knowing, as you're talking about in that first five seconds, and then immediately we start to extrapolate upon that, we start to like build a castle on that little bit of knowing instead of just allowing that knowingness to kind of be the thing you know and be present to how that feels. How does it feel to know what your body's telling you? Right now is it feel like exciting. Does it feel like tingly? Did you feel like worry coming over you? Right, there's all things the sensations are continuing, right it's like that's not the conclusion, but our brain is always looking for like a conclusion to like make something mean and then connect it to our past to connect it to things we already know so I think that you know like you said presence could be its own podcast but just how do we keep coming back to what does this feel like versus what does this mean.
T: Yes, and that is a great point to make. And sometimes, in the work that I do with people, I feel like it can sound a little contradictory because I do think that it can be powerful sometimes to explore the sensation and to connect it to an emotion or what why is this coming up and get really curious curiosity. I think it's so huge in this work, and then there's other times that I feel like we don't need to know it's more just allowing the sensation to move through the body, and I think that's another piece that is so huge is the connection to emotions.
That emotions are just energy and motion, yet we are taught from a young age boys don't cry, girls are too emotional don't express you know, I've been told by many partners that I'm too much, and so I always had a lot of issues coming up with emotional expression because I am a crier and I used to identify that and make that mean something about me but when you can start to detach from that and just realize that crying is even just a way of the energy in the body that is wanting to be expressed anger is a is an energy in the body that wanting to be released anxiety overwhelm all of these things it just makes me look, and we can look at the body in such a different perspective again where it's always just trying to communicate, and there's no an opportunity for it wanting to be released instead of holding you know.
We make anger wrong or bad we make sadness wrong or bad. You know sadness more is taboo for men and anger more taboo for women, and a lot of times again, with like mindset tools or tools that we have that we want to that we kind of want it to be like a one-size-fits-all meditation I am a huge meditator I love meditation but I feel like it has its time in place and its benefit so I know that I've heard you know if you're feeling anxiety somebody might tell you oh calm down which is not necessarily helpful or maybe just go meditate go meditate on it.
But anxiety is a buddly feeling in the body, and the energy wants to move up and out so if you're feeling anxiety, instead of meditating, which is more grounding and pulling the energy in you want to express the energy so it could be through dancing through singing through walking but I think that's some of the other things too is like pulling apart some of the tools that are again designed to be this one-size-fits-all in this society and coming back to like our emotional intelligence. Right?
A: Yes. I think from what I know about the history of like seated meditation and yoga for example, what you're saying is congruent with what I know or it makes sense because, like they would do yoga, they would move the energy in the body before seated meditation so movement hatha yoga was meant as a way to prime the body for seated meditation and that seated meditation is actually something that we want to do.
Like you said, when we're grounding, when we're drawing our energy inward, so if we're having that frenetic, anxious energy, something that's more movement-based is going to be like a little more helpful for a lot of people. I mean, I've certainly experienced that when I've had anxiety, and I've tried to sit still when I'm anxious it can actually increase my anxiety, it can actually make me more uncomfortable, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's it doesn't feel very efficient in calming me down right it feels like it might take a lot for me to like hold myself there and that stillness versus if I were to just get up and move around and move my body the anxiety might shift more easily.
So it really depends. I think what you mentioned before, and this fits now, is that the idea here is to have flexibility and have choice in how we're operating, that we're not just like doing what we've always done but that we have choice. So, like you said like, we can have that experience of inquisitive and curiosity and asking what is this emotion, you know, or what is this coming from, and we have the flexibility to also just be like, right now, I don't need to know.
So, the flexibility to be able to move the energy through or to sit and feel it out and go inward and what's going to be the most appropriate thing this time for me, and that sounds like kind of what you help women start to get in touch with can you talk a little bit more about coming back to your true self or coming back to that sense of freedom and flexibility and our perception.
T: Yes, and that is my goal with women is to basically give them tools to put in their tool belt to pull from at different times in their life, and oh yeah, remind me of the question again.
A: Oh, yeah, just I wanted I wanted to tell more about like that, coming back to your true self, and you can talk about tools too because that's a big part of it, right? Coming back to some flexibility and freedom that I think is innate to our true self is being flexible and adaptable and not stuck. I mean, most people, when they feel stuck they don't feel like their true self. They feel like a stuck version of themselves.
T: Right, yeah, and something I heard the other day that I found fascinating that was talking all about this feeling of stuckness. Stuckness is often just us on a repeated loop of a story because when we are actually purely present when we're just in the present moment, which we don't have anything outside of that right. We're oftentimes living in the past or worried about the future but all of that's existing is this current present moment.
When we're in that place, we can come from conscious choice. We can make choices that are in alignment; otherwise, we're constantly using that feedback loop to try to use it as a way to predict the future like that was one of the biggest things that I learned getting into nervous system work is that our bodies are wired for safety. So we're always scanning for that safety, and so in doing this work, I started realizing for me again what is really Trisha and what is social conditioning what is really Trisha, and what was learned from me at a young age based on my experience, and that is something that's super fascinating when you start to pull it apart even in our society how it's set up as a work week how is that how is that where was that created that a work week is Monday through Friday nine to five that you have to go to an office to do work.
And I think covid started to kind of pull apart some of those paradigms and social conditioning but even like gender roles or how people feel about money or what's the measure of success. I mean, we're constantly inundated with messages for social conditioning and commercials and social media. And so really starting to expose what is the truth of me versus what I have learned or been conditioned to believe about myself has been really big in my healing journey.
A: Yes. And that can be quite heavy and can quite illuminating when we start to dismantle that and take it apart because so much of who I thought I was at different times in my life was actually a collection of different kinds of stress responses or a collection of different kinds of conditioning. And so when I started to unwrap that, it was like, you get this question of like, well, who am I if I don't do this thing or I don't behave this way or I don't have this or have that?
Who am I then? And so that's, I think, what's really beautiful about having guidance in this process of dismantling this stuff, you know, like you having a life coach at that really pivotal time for you, you know, or like the women who are coming to you who are ready and having someone who's already been through it before, because there's so much that comes up. And some of it can be really painful just to realize like how much of our conditioning, and maybe you want to speak to this as like culturally.
We're conditioned to dislike ourselves or to feel like something's wrong with us because, and there's so many different reasons why because maybe that's going to maybe our parents think that's going to motivate us. They think like speaking down to us is going to somehow like motivate us to do better, or it could be capitalism like, you know, tell you that you're not pretty enough. So you want to buy all these products to make yourself prettier, you know, all of that. Can you speak a little bit to like some of the more painful conditioning that we carry?
T: Yeah. I completely agree with everything that you just shared. And I can think of an example, like especially women want to go to lose weight, how often we want to stand in front of the mirror and criticize ourselves and tell ourselves that we're not attractive or we'll point out all the flaws in our body as a way to motivate ourselves to go to the gym.
But what's so interesting is, first of all, we cannot heal our trauma in the same way that it occurred. So that's why this healing journey takes time, it takes titration, it takes just really slow work, because you can't heal in the same way. So too much too fast too soon, you can honestly re-traumatize yourself by trying to get into this work too fast.
A: Yeah, well, you're talking kind of about like the the painful conditioning that we carry and going in too soon too fast. I mean, I think that idea kind of it's it is re-traumatizing, you know, in a strong degree, but it can also just be like reinforcing the same pattern. It's like we're just we think that we're changing things, but because we're going about it the same way that we've always done instead of a new way, it's actually just reinforcing that old behavior that we're attempting to step away from.
And so it's not ever going to be, you know, and and I hear this in my own language and like language from my clients where they talk about, I just want to get back to where I was when I was like a size six, I want to get back to like my old body before I had a baby, I want to get back somewhere that they can remember like they have some memory of a time when they were better than they are now, and they want to go back there. And the truth is we can never go back, it's always going to be a new way forward.
Because even if you went back to that size six, who were you really when you were that size six, you were probably still criticizing yourself, you're probably still thinking that you were fatted size six, as the same way that you feel fatted to size 12, right?
Like the mental construct, it was probably the same back then, even though now you look back on that size six and you wish you could go back there, but that's never going to happen. You're already there. You're in whatever you're in now. And so it's always going to be forging a new pathway forward, right?
T: Yeah, and that comes back to what I was saying about being wired for predictability. It's funny that we have those little kitschy phrases, but I think that sometimes people don't understand like the meaning.
For me, there's such a difference between hearing something and embodying it or embodying the wisdom. So the fear of the unknown, we've all heard of that phrase before, but there is a reason for it, because we want to have the safety and predictability, we want to have that's why we're constantly sourcing again, the path to predict the future so we can mitigate any kind of pain. So it's the same thing of like wanting to go backwards to that point, because we can remember that experience of that body and that shape, but you're so right. We can never go backwards, we can only be moving forwards.
And if given really the honest choice, I think most of us always would want to be moving forward. And I think that's another thing for a woman too, is just the different stages of grief that we experience in our life. I don't think there's enough that's really talked about grief and that the body holds the grief. And just like the healing journey and grief, it's kind of like the EKG machine.
It's always kind of up and down. We're never getting to this completely healed place in our journey, but just going through the process of letting go of the old past versions of ourself, which should be past patterns or past ways that our body used to look, you know, as women, we have children. And I think that that could come with a lot of grief as well, you know, pre-birth, post-birth, and what that experience is like. So just knowing that the one thing that is certain in life is that life is uncertain.
A: Yes, yes. And you know, speaking about grief that you're holding in your body and these transitions that you're speaking about, I think that's really potent for me in my own life to really honor the grief that I went through when I lost my child body. And I think a lot of women, you know, and people experience this at puberty, you know, whenever it is that they go through that transition, where they no longer have their child body, and they start developing, there's a point, a turning point there, that can be full of a lot of grief, just in that same way that as we transition from maidenhood to motherhood, there's a grief, there's a letting go, you know.
And then stepping from motherhood or that productive phase in our lives into a crone, you know, or into the wise woman, the older woman, there's going to be another turning point where we will, as we experience growth, we're going to simultaneously experience that shedding. And sometimes, that shedding comes with sorrow. It comes with grief.
T: Yeah, I mean, we're constantly experiencing so many rebirth cycles, you know, just as in life and in a year, we experience in our own personal life, we go through our own season.
And it could be fascinating because it doesn't always correspond to be winter externally, but internally, you could be having a summer, you could go through an entire season within yourself, within a week, within a day. And I think that that could be hard too, because I mean, I can speak from experience that's last few months have been really challenging time, because I was being called to heal a lot. And in this healing journey, I know and feel that it is not just for me, but it is healing past lineages. It is healing for other women that are in present day and other women that are going to come through.
But this letting go of these old versions of myself, these past versions of myself, because that's what I've known myself to be that's who I've identified. So, while summer was happening externally, I felt like I was in my own internal season of winter. And you can hear people talk about these concepts, like what it's like to go through an ego death or a death and rebirth cycle, and it's a whole nother thing to actually experience with yourself. Everything that we're talking about is just so different to the concept, you know, we can talk about emotions, we can talk about grief or sadness or anger.
But it's another one when you yourself are the one having the embodied experience. But that, to me, is also a big difference between just taking mindset tools is what you said earlier is it's and I'm not putting down mindset tools, because I think that they have a very valuable place, but it's combining body-based tools with mindset tools. So it's taking what you learned and experience and actually applying it to the body, right?
A: And taking embodied action versus just going through the motions or doing things. But you know, that embodied action, I kind of would describe it as like working with your body as a ally, and as a partner, versus just making yourself get up and do stuff. Yeah.
T: And the other thing is, because we often want to get that dopamine hit, we want to get that quick high fix. You know, same with when I was doing yoga back in the day. I felt like that's what I was experiencing because I was at such a low point. It felt like such a contrast after the workout and the moving my body to feel this high. But a lot of times, we're looking for that quick fix. And I think sometimes making decisions that are in alignment for us or making healthy choices don't always feel good right off the bat.
And I think that we can sometimes think, oh, maybe this isn't the best choice for me, because it's not feeling the best, like setting boundaries with family members or partner or friends don't necessarily feel good right off the bat. But the more time and space that you can give it, it's almost like a detox.
Like when you are detoxing off of something, you have some of those days of withdrawals or feeling uncomfortable. But really, if you can see your way through it, then you can start to reap the benefit of what you're putting into it.
A: Yes, this is really important what you're talking about because we have a perception of like what feels good. But there's something beyond that idea of what feels good. Like, yeah, it might feel good to like, stay out of an argument and keep the peace.
Right. And I know it's like, for myself, that was a big pattern I had was to just like, Oh, well, I'm feeling or thinking this, but if I say that like, it's going to rock the boat a little bit. You know, so maybe I'll just keep that to myself. Right.
Or I just won't. I won't speak up right now. Right. And it wasn't even a conscious choice. It wasn't even like that little, you know, example of like a verbal phrase. It was something that happened in an instant. It was a choice I made instantly in the moment to just like keep quiet and not say how I felt.
Right. That felt good in the sense that my relationship didn't have this friction that I was seeking to avoid. But what feels better, I've discovered through experience, is actually being expressed and giving the other person an opportunity to hear me and, ideally be heard.
And those are like kind of like different degrees. Like being heard feels really good. Like we crave that as human beings. We crave to, when we have something to say that there's a receptive person or audience there to receive us.
Right. But expression in and of itself also has a way that it feels cathartic and good. And so we have to kind of go beyond what we know about feeling good. Because in the beginning, that moment where I say how I feel is going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to feel awkward. It's going to feel strange.
I'm not sure if I'm really doing it right, so to speak. But it's going to lead to feeling better that I expressed myself, way better than holding it in. And it gives the other person that opportunity that I might be heard. And then being heard feels really good. Right. So it's like kind of going beyond what we think of as feeling good.
T: Yeah. I mean, and what you said, too is we don't know what we don't know. Right. So it's like going beyond our current set beliefs and circumstances. You know, you may be thinking that you're experiencing something in your life that's like bringing you happy, but it could even be just this, like the drop in an ocean compared to what you can really experience because we just hold so tightly again to what we know because it's easier and it feels safer.
A: Yes. And that that's a beautiful way to put it. Like in terms of the way that limitation works and only knowing what we know and breaking beyond that into a larger capacity to experience pleasure, to experience joy, to experience all of the feelings is going beyond that little point of what we do know. And that process can be scary, but once you have gone there a few times and you know the value, there's really no turning back. You're just like, oh, okay, I'm in it again.
I'm in this process again of going beyond what I know, and it's disorienting and it's uncomfortable, but I've done it before in some way. And I know that there's something here for me. I know that there's going to be a shift at some point.
Right. And so I think, you know, the work you're doing to guide women in this process is such a valuable thing because having someone there, and I think this goes back to like the concept of like re-parenting. And we do this with ourselves, but we also do it with mentors and people that we hire or people that show up for us.
Maybe we didn't even hire them. They just show up in our lives and they offer us this space to be witnessed and held and guided, right, in our own processes. And I think this is so incredibly valuable because it shows us not only how to do that for ourselves, like co-regulation teaches self-regulation, but it also gives us the opportunity to pass it on and pay it forward, which is what I see you doing now, right, like that desire to help others. Can you say a little bit about that journey from like being supported to supporting others? Yeah.
T: So, like I shared, working with my first life coach was just so powerful because I up until that point, had never felt so seen and heard by a human in my entire life. And I can't even speak to that in and of itself, how powerful that is, because we all have that desire.
We all have that desire to truly be seen and heard. And it was the first time I'd ever really had this safe, loving, compassionate space held for me that I could really top more into my trauma, my wounding, my emotional landscape, and really allow myself to feel because that's how we heal. We can't think our way into healing; we feel our way into healing.
So that was so valuable to me. And, you know, we're not meant to heal alone. We are meant to heal in community. We are meant to heal in being witness and back to an evolutionary standpoint, like communities used to get together in ritual to do healing ceremonies.
So I think sometimes, going back to the conditioning, there can be stories around, I got this, I can do this on my own. I don't need help. I'm weak if I ask for help.
I think that's a huge one. Who am I, and what does it mean about me if I need to ask for help for somebody else? And that to me is more sign of strength and a sign of courage to be able to reach out, which I know can feel really challenging and really difficult. But I truly see the importance of having space held and what that's done for me, what that's done for my clients. And that's why I continue to invest in myself too. I feel like I'm a coach who walked the talk of what I share. I, everything that I lead clients through, I've already led myself through.
So I'm not taking somebody anywhere that I have not been before. And I again continue to invest in myself because I can see the value in it. So, you know, when I ask clients to invest in me, I'm also continuing to do my deeper work because the more that I can do my deeper work, the more that I can build my body and my nervous system, the capacity to hold more and experience more of life.
I think that could be a really big fear though is because the more that you, the feel it could come with the highs and lows. It isn't just the pleasure and the joy. It's not all rainbows and butterflies, you know, to the depth of which we heal is also to the height in which we can experience and expand. So it is a, when you open, you fully open. And I think a lot of us want to live from a place of closed where we feel like we just want to let what we want in. And that's not how it works. So it's just kind of like the doors, either they're open or they're closed. Yes.
A: Oh gosh. Cause like what a thing to actually experience your rage, you know, to actually experience it and not just like only let in the amount that you're feel comfortable with at that moment, but to just really let yourself be really angry. You know, and I think that the theme here, though is that like when we have those doors open, it's not going to stick. It's not, we're not going to stay like that. It's going to change.
It's going to move. That energy is coming in and it's going to go out, you know, because it's when we have the pathways open that stuff is going to circulate. It's when everything is cramped and closed and locked up that we're going to get stuck in a feeling. And so we might have this like orientation to being afraid of sadness or being afraid of anger or being afraid of guilt or shame or any of these emotions that we label as negative, because we have a memory of getting stuck there and not being able to move through it.
And so because we don't want to get stuck there, we just avoid it altogether, you know, or we just like feel 2% of it. And what you're saying is like, yeah, we're going to feel it. We're going to feel it maybe more than we ever have, but that's part of like allowing it to circulate, to conclude, to move and to actually be with our experience of living, to be with our experience of being alive, which is going to include the positive things too, or the so-called positive things too, right?
T: Yes, exactly. You know, that's the thing is we're not taught how to cope with our emotions and emotions are often seen as wrong or bad. There's a study that says in about 90 seconds, if you allow your emotions to just be present and to just feel it, that it will move through within that time of about 90 seconds. It's fascinating. I think though, you know, I just kind of get a visualization is the putting things in the closet.
So we want to just keep taking emotions and just stuffing them in the closet, but eventually, the closet is overflowing instead of just allowing ourselves to feel and move through it. But that's again, what I do with clients is just empower them with the tools that they are able to feel their emotions and not make it mean anything about them. Like, I've cried before and there's not necessarily been an emotion.
It's almost just felt like liquid falling from my eyes because it's just a way that something is wanting to be expressed. And one of my favorite tools that I use for so many different things is dancing and body dancing to use it for up-regulation of the nervous system, down-regulation, moving through emotions, just to experience joy in the body. There was a time a few months ago when I was really in my emotional tsunami that I played this nine-and-a-half-minute Rufus Del Sol song, and I could not believe the amount of emotion that I was able to move through in that amount of time. I moved through anger and sadness and fear and pleasure.
It was really quite powerful. And so that's just something that I encourage my clients to do as well is just finding the tool that works for you. Because I think that everyone wants to claim that they have the tool, they have the secret sauce, they have the thing, but healing is such an individualized experience that there is no one way that works for everyone.
A: Yes, I think that that's so true because there's this can be when you find something that works for you. It's easy to get into like a purist mentality and disregard like all the other things that came before.
But the truth is, is that we're always using multiple tools at once, usually, right? We're all using like, say, for example, somebody discovers yoga, but before that, they were like an athlete or a runner or something, right? They're not going to be able to erase that experience of being an athlete. It's going to come into their yoga practice, it's going to inform their yoga practice, it's going to be part of that.
And that's a good thing like that's a blessing in its own way. So like, anytime that we come into like a new practice, even if it feels like, oh, this is it, this is the one, we're always coming in with everything that we've gleaned before. And that's kind of maybe like the benefit of like carrying this conditioning is that we can, if we start to choose, you know, what kind of things we want to expose ourselves to, what kind of things we want to practice, we end up building this beautiful conditioning that informs our way of approaching life. And we can always draw from whatever's most useful at that specific time to make kind of like this alchemy, this like recipe of what we need.
T: I agree, you know, and that's the funny part though, too is about like if we go back to the conditioning and if we go back to where just always in some kind of story, well, if that's the case, then why are we not choosing the story that we're in?
A: Totally. Oh my god, like, I had someone point that out to me some years ago, like I was worried about something with like my partner, and I was like imagining all this stuff.
And I like basically just, and this is the beauty of, like actually being able to just share and express instead of keeping it all in your head. I was like, well, what if he's doing this and this and this, and what if this happens? And she's like, you don't know anything about what's happening for him right now. You know, you know, absolutely nothing. You're just like making up something. So if you're going to make up something, why don't you just make up something nice?
You know, instead of worrying that he's doing all this stuff that would like make you upset, why don't you imagine that the reason that he's late is like, maybe he's like doing something lovely, maybe he's like taking care of himself, maybe he's like, you know, having a hard day and he's like taking it nice and slow and like doing things to keep himself in balance. So when he sees you later, he's not a wreck, you know, like you don't know anything. So why don't you just make up something that's going to help you feel okay right now?
T: Oh my gosh, that's so true. But I love that support and just the reframing and the rewriting your story. And that to me is through doing this deeper work and going through the body. It gives us more, it opens up us to a new awareness, which gives us more choice. And what is it that we choose for our life? And what is it that we're choosing in each moment? Are we choosing love? Are we choosing fear? And what is really the story? Right.
A: And those fearful stories, there are information about where it is that we're still holding, that we're still holding conditioning and fear, there it's information about, you know, like, why is it that I'm sitting there so anxious about what my partner's doing when I'm not around? What is that information about where I have spaces in myself that need to find more safety, right?
Like, that's really more about what it means than whatever it is that he's doing. And you know, or in another way, like, how am I, you know, if I'm worried about what he's doing, is it because I'm in a relationship that's not very like healthy, you know, maybe there's part of it that's pointing out to that it's pointing out to something that's not working, something that's not an alignment. And it's so easy to get caught up in the story instead of kind of turn back into it and say, what is my body trying to tell me about this situation? Yes.
T: And I think that that's such a valid point that speaks to what I was talking about in decision earlier, when I've talked with women and worked with women where they say, I have trouble making decisions. And so, you know, I've taken through a process and connecting to their body and connecting to their intuition.
And oftentimes not that they're disconnected from their intuition, their intuition is spot on, the intuition is going to give them the answer, but it's what comes after it's the follow through with not going into the story and going into the fear. So again, I find it so fascinating because the body is really always speaking to us, but then it's what do we do next with that information that is so hope.
A: Yes. And sometimes the information that our body is giving us, you know, we don't want to hear it like going to disrupt things in our lives. It's not going to like keep things the same. It's going to rock that boat.
T: How many times have you talked with a girlfriend and, you know, going through a breakup, and then they'll say, oh, after the first three months, I just knew he wasn't the right guy for me, or this thing was happening, and I saw it as a red flag. But again, so it's a lot of times we're receiving the messages, but we don't we don't like the message. That's not that's not the choice that we want to make in that moment.
A: Yeah, that can be hard. And sometimes it just takes living through it to come to it, right? It just we can't necessarily like force ourselves or renegotiate in when we're in it. It's like we just have to live through it and let it like the world and let our body show us that that wasn't really what was for us.
T: Yes. And going back to what I said earlier, the part about not getting that instant dopamine fix when you're making decisions and choices that could be for your alignment that may just not always feel good in that exact moment.
A: Yes, totally. Well, this has been such a beautiful conversation. I'm really feeling like I believe you when you say that you're doing this work alongside your clients. I can feel that I can see that just, you know, in the woman that I was talking to, like we would talk on the phone during the somatic yoga training. And, you kind of let me know, like, oh, I'm going through this stuff.
You know, I see, and I hear in your presence, there's been a really deep shift, and there's continuing to be deep shifts that you're going through. And I think that that is so admirable. And also, like, yeah, the people who work with you are going to feel that too. They're going to feel that you are alongside them in this process and that they're totally safe to go with you into these murky places.
T: Thank you so much for that. That really, really touches my heart. It means a lot. And for anyone who's listening, I just want to remind everyone that we are never getting to this ultimate healed place. I think that we are sold at.
So just being mindful that people are, there's a lot of people out there that want to sell you on the type dream of you, you know, working with me or doing the XYZ, reading this book is going to get you to this place. But we know that there is no destination.
There's only the journey. And as my life coach used to say, new level, new devil. So each time we level up, you know, it just comes with its own set of challenges, but it also comes with more pleasure and more joy. So just for anyone who's going in is feeling anything right now or going through something, just that reminder that there's no place that we're trying to get to.
A: Beautiful. Yes, I agree. And it's a radical thing to break away from like destination and to break away from results, right? And there were such a results-oriented culture, but to just like stay with the experience is, yeah, it's a radical move. Absolutely.
Well, thank you. If people are listening to you and they want to connect with you, they want to learn more about what you do. Where can they connect with you?
T: Oh, thank you for that. Yeah. So you can go to my IG page, which is Tricia, a tech for you. Or you can go to my website, that is triciatakforum.com.
A: Beautiful. Thank you so much. And you can look in the show notes for those links. Definitely follow Tricia, see what she's up to. And yeah, let's let's catch up again soon.
T: Sounds good.
A: You've been listening to the Free Your Soma podcast. To find out more information about today's guest, check the show notes, and to find out more information about me, Aimee Takaya and the radiance program, visit www.freeyoursoma.com
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