Did you know that the key to unlocking your full potential is hidden within your own body and mind?
Imagine having the power to rewrite your life story, heal from seemingly impossible odds, and achieve success beyond your wildest dreams.
Today's guest, Jen Barber, did just that.
In this captivating episode, Jen reveals how she combined cutting-edge somatic techniques with the ancient art of visualization to not only beat cancer but to completely transform her life.
She takes us on a journey through the landscape of the mind-body connection, revealing how visualization and somatic techniques can transform not just our health but our entire lives.
In this podcast episode, Jen takes us through:
- Hanna Somatics and its impact on Jen's recovery from injury and cancer.
- The importance of listening to subtle body signals and addressing discomfort early.
- Different brain wave states and their role in healing and personal growth.
- Using visualization to communicate with the subconscious and reprogram beliefs.
- The significance of cooperating with your body during treatment.
- Jen's remarkable recovery: recent tests showing zero detectable cancer cells.
- How past traumas and emotional experiences can be stored in the body.
- Using Hanna Somatics to release traumas and past emotional experiences.
- Her definition of success: authentic self-expression without limiting beliefs.
And so much more!
Jen is a seasoned Success Guide dedicated to illuminating your path to personal growth and empowering you to step into your greatness. With over two decades of experience in personal development, she brings a multifaceted approach to her practice that inspires and transforms.
Jen's certifications in The Silva Method, Reiki, NLP, hypnosis, and Aromapoint therapy allow her to seamlessly blend these powerful modalities into a unique tapestry of techniques that catalyze profound change. Her gentle yet effective guidance focuses on uncovering and rewriting deep-seated narratives, liberating you from self-limiting beliefs and unlocking your full potential.
Her own journey, marked by triumph over stage 4 breast cancer using the very tools she teaches, has fueled her unwavering commitment to supporting others on their healing and personal evolution paths. This profound experience inspires her compassionate and empowering approach to guiding others.
Jen works closely with clients on a one-to-one basis, offering personalized guidance and holding sacred space for your transformative journey. Her YouTube channel, Expand Your Greatness, shares guided meditations and visualization techniques, extending her support to a global audience.
With a wealth of knowledge, a compassionate presence, and deep reverence for the human spirit, Jen stands as a beacon, ready to illuminate your path to self-discovery and actualization. Connect with Jen and embark on the courageous journey toward your greatest self.
Contact: jen@jenbarber.com
Expand Your Greatness FB Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ExpandYourGreatnessCommunity
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@expandyourgreatness
FB Personal Link: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.desaubarber?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Follow Aimee Takaya on:
IG : @aimeetakaya
Facebook : Aimee Takaya
Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at www.freeyoursoma.com
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Hey there, welcome to the Free Your Soma podcast. I'm Aimee Takaya. Today I have Jen Barber, and she is a success coach. We are going to be exploring the power of visualization to change not only what's happening in our mind, but also in our bodies and in our lives.
We're going to talk about how do we measure success? Have you ever wanted to be successful, and what does that mean to you? What are the deep-seated beliefs that we might have that keep us away from our true potential and our success?
She's going to be sharing about her powerful journey through stage 4 cancer over the last year and a half, two years. And we are going to dive deeply into all of these subjects to show you how you can start today in changing the way that your life feels from the inside out. So stay tuned.
Every day there is a forgetting, and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your Soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love.
A: Hi, Jen. It's so good to see you.
J: Hey, Aimee. I'm so excited to be here with you.
A: Yes, I feel like this conversation has been a long time coming because we started working together. You joined my program, the Radiance Program, and then during the Radiance Program, some really big things started shifting in your world.
And then there was kind of this long break where we didn't have a lot of contact. But when you reached out, and we started having contact again, it was just like I felt like I saw this massive uplevel of you on so many different levels. And so I'm really excited in this conversation to explore all of that.
J: Yeah. What has happened since you and I started our conversation? I guess it's been about two and a half years ago. It's almost like two different lives. There was the pre-life and the afterlife and where I am now.
And I feel that you have been such a catalyst, your work, and helping me get to where I am. So I'm really excited to share honestly the work that you do because it is so powerful, and it's been such an important part of my growth and well-being. Thank you.
A: Thank you. I appreciate that. It was absolutely my honor to be your guide, especially someone who's as bright and successful, and powerful as you are. I mean, I see the Hanna Sematics as a tool that goes with all these other tools.
And I felt that you really saw that and connected with that right away, especially in regards to visualization and NLP tools and also the energy work that you do. All the different things that you do because I know you have a pretty wide toolkit, right? And then being able to bring the neuromuscular work into your own body, that I could see just really being like the glue that starts bringing things more deeply together.
J: And that's exactly what drew me to you. I think we were in a business group together. And I started reading what you were doing. And at that time, I was recovering from tearing my rotator cuff and trying to get that mobility back, and nothing was working.
And so I reached out to you out of curiosity of, you know, can you help me? And you were like, yes. And we started those sessions. And after the first one, I'm pretty sure I told my husband that I met a magician. It just, I felt like you were magic and what you taught. And it really confused me, the hanasomatics, because it goes against like what we're taught in the world.
You know, you have to make these big sweeping movements, and you take a lot of energy to move forward and make change. And listening to you and with your guidance, it's like, no, it's these little movements. And I was instantly feeling relief when I had been for like eight months of pain and, you know, tightness and not being able to move. And it was that fast.
And I just needed to know more because I am a super curious person. And the more that we talked, and we dove into how important the visualization was. I was just like, I knew I found a really important piece in my development. I had been, I grew up learning about meditation and visualization. So that was nothing new to me, but applying it in this way was life changing. And it came at the most important time.
A: Yes, yes, I think like what you're describing about how we're trained to do these big forceful things in our body, when you actually like look at that it like doesn't actually fit with all the other tools and practices that you have which are about the micro and about changing things internally to change our outer world.
You know, so how incongruent would it be to then kind of be really forceful? And, you know, in a way kind of like aggressive with my physical body when I'm actually in so many other ways practicing this tenderness and this careful, attentive, loving kind of way of making changes right. And so I can see how even though it was like a bit of a paradigm shift it was like really aligned for what you already do.
It's just like okay how do I apply these same principles of tenderness and focusing on the small, you know, and releasing things how do I apply this in the physical tissues of my body.
J: Exactly. And once I started experiencing it. It was fully like a no brainer like why did I not connect those dots before? Because the work I do, working with my clients to make those big shifts. It's not by doing big things.
It's by getting quiet and I guide them through. And it's so gentle and powerful. And, but when it came to my body. That wasn't what I was doing. And it really showed because I had a lot of tension that I was holding, not just in my shoulder.
It was all through my system. And it, you know, we, we know what we know. And we apply things where we're comfortable. You know, it's like, Oh, this fits here, and I'm really comfortable with this, so this is where I see it, and working with you just that one time it just like blew open possibilities. So I'm, I'm a manifesting generator.
I am all about the looking big and making things happen. And I think my husband kind of just got tired of hearing me saying, Oh, and with what Aimee taught me, you know, if you play with this, it's like, okay, Jen, but the possibilities are there and pulling in the visualization with the work of the muscles was just a, you know, I knew about the body connection because like I said, I grew up my grandfather was a clinical psychologist and researcher for the silver method. So I grew up as his guinea pig of intuition using visualization meditation like working with the body healing.
I grew up with all of that. But the way that you teach this through the Hannah semantics and bringing the mind body connection together is more powerful than anything I've ever experienced. And the program is powerful. You are just a amazing facilitator. And I learned so much about myself in working with you and I'm still learning as I'm putting these things in to practice every day. I've worked a little bit more to learn more and to do more.
A: Awesome. That's, that's wonderful to hear, especially since you went through so much and we'll, we'll get to that we'll kind of get to like what came to kind of an apex during the radiance program for you. But I would love to ask this question that's very much in line with what we're talking about right now, which is, when did you first realize that your body was trying to communicate something to you?
J: Well, as I said, I grew up, like, knowing this connection. I had been in such a state of denial that you could also call it like bypassing. Yeah, we do this bypassing. And I was like, Oh, you know, I have this little discomfort here. Oh, it's probably just this, you know, we can kind of blow things off and not really acknowledge it was when I tore my rotator cuff is when I really started to pay attention because I was other things I could, you know, just kind of block off, push through, you know, we got that, you know, we can we can deal with it.
And the rotator cuff, I could not. It was so painful. And it was also my right arm. So my dominant hand I was limited. And, but then, once I started focusing on that, it was also I was noticing the tension in my neck, you know, the tension in my, in my chest for the breathing. And then, you know, I just, it was almost like a dam had broke open when I tore my rotator cuff, and all these things over the years that I had been trying to push down really showed up. And I couldn't not pay attention anymore. And I will say that that is not the best way to do it.
Yeah, learn from me do not, you know, don't get to that point that you can't ignore it. There's now I am so aware of the subtle changes. So even from what I eat and how that affects my body, like, yesterday I had a milkshake because I was with my nephew, and I don't usually have dairy. And I was, and my system was like, okay, this is this is different. But the subtle things and the movements.
And I really focus on listening now, because I feel that if we follow the wisdom of what our body is trying to share with us, every little catch and like stiffness or, you know, lack of mobility. All those are little signals, messages of love, I feel from my body to say, hey, we need something here. Yes. And as you said, the henna somatics is, it's like giving love back to your body.
A: Yeah, and it's a beautiful way to respond to answer. So I think, you know, that what you said about like the ignoring or the brushing away or the overcoming, you know, the discomfort. I did that too. And I did that till my body was also screaming at me instead of being able to listen to the whispers and make subtle changes.
I just kept kind of pushing through until I was at a point where there was there was no more pushing through my body was like, you're just not going to be able to walk now. Like maybe for you, it was like, you're just not going to be able to use your right arm if you can't if you're not going to listen right. My mind was in the left side of my body.
My left leg, it was like, oh, you're just not going to be able to walk. That's what will happen if we can't get our needs met. You know, what's it's getting too overwhelmingly tense in here. It's getting too tight. It's getting too much. And like, I think that for a long time.
And for many people, this might be true too. We don't do anything about it because we're not sure what to do. And when we try to do things, we only get limited, like limited results. It doesn't, it doesn't really go like, oh, wow, it feels like so much better now.
It's like, oh, it's a little better, but not really. And so there's not that channel of communication open because we don't we're not speaking the language of our nervous system and of our body and the language of our nervous system, our body is actually gentle, quieting, small.
That's what our nervous system craves is like the gentleness, you know, and when we're doing these things that are more like aggressive, which I did for a long time to try to make changes. It's like our bodies like, oh, that's not quite it. And then we sort of just go, well, that didn't totally work. So I'm just going to have to live with this level of tension that didn't go away.
This is just something I'm going to have to habituate is the word that we use in neurophysiology just make this normal and get used to this tension because I tried to do something about it and it didn't really do it. Absolutely.
J: And I see that in the work that I do with my clients because I'm doing deep core belief change, not the superficial. Oh, I'm not a good public speaker. You can learn skills, get better. I'm talking about the deep things that create this vision of who we are. And when we feel that it is just who we are, it's not something that can be changed. It's a normalcy because it was created as a foundational belief, just like we accept this pain that it's just become who we are.
And we stop really trying to do anything about it, besides maybe mask some of the discomfort with taking pain pills or drinking or eating things that make us feel better for a little bit of time or just zoning out on our phones. These things that we do to not hear what our body and souls are trying those messages that they're sending. Yes. And working with you, that is what I saw so clearly the parallels between the body and the mind and how these ideas really connect beautifully together.
A: Did you know that your muscles are holding on to thoughts, memories, and feelings? If you have a tight neck or back, you're not just getting old. You're experiencing a buildup of tension from the life you've lived. Most people don't know this, but there is a part of your brain that can reverse and prevent chronic tension.
When you relax your muscles, you not only move better and regulate your nervous system, but you also free yourself from the grip the past has over your body. So you can live with freedom, confidence and enjoy your life now. How does that sound? Join me, Aimee Takaya, and discover what my clients are raving about at youcanfreeyoursoma.com. Yeah, let's get more into this idea of changing a deep-seated belief. So maybe we can you can give some examples what kind of deep-seated beliefs block us from our success.
J: Let me start with the superficial first if you don't mind, because I look at this like a tree, and there's a bunch of leaves. And the leaves are those superficial beliefs that we have, like I'm not good enough. I'm, people don't like me. I'm not worthy. I don't speak well in front of others. Math is hard. I'm not a good reader. You know, all these things.
These are a lot of leaves on the trees. But they're being fed by four beliefs. And these beliefs were created almost always in your youth, often between like five and 10 years old, because at that time were sponges and we're just absorbing everything and we're making sense of this world that we are in. We were plopped down into and so as we're interacting with our family and our teachers, it's how we are interpreting the information, and the same thing can happen to multiple different people.
But the result is going to be very different in the belief that is created. I did some work with someone not too terribly long ago, a writer, and she had the belief, you know, she could not get clients. She was trying and trying. Really good writer.
I loved reading her work, very created these beautiful visuals of places and experiences. And so coming to me, I have a business, you know, I can't grow my business. And she would say, you know, this is part of her belief system. You know, she's like, I have a business block here. I can't grow my business. Well, when we did the work, the real core belief was she didn't trust herself. She had a belief that she was not trustworthy.
She was not good at making decisions, because she was told very forcefully by her mother. She had memories of her mother pointing at her and telling her how bad of decisions she made and how she was not smart enough and her mother always correcting everything that she did.
So this created this foundational belief. So how was that showing up in her life? Well, she wasn't able to grow her business. She wasn't able to show up with her clients and articulate what she wanted to do for them because she didn't trust herself to do that.
She was making very bad financial decisions because she had that belief about herself. So when I'm watching, you know, the interwebs and Facebook and things and people are talking about these beliefs, it's like, oh, all you need to do is affirmations and journaling and, and you can change your business beliefs, you know, your negative beliefs, and that's not true for these core beliefs.
You have to go back to the place where they were created, which is those slower brain waves. I don't know how much I could talk a whole show on brain waves. Will you tell me what you want to know?
A: I'm down. Let's let's talk about some brain waves. Let's give us a brain wave lesson. I love that.
J: Okay, so the brain, like our heartbeat, so many times per minute, our brain wave beats oscillates so many times per second. And our body does different things at each of these levels. We have beta, which is right here where we're talking engaged, awake.
You know, those are the beta brain waves. Right below that is alpha brain waves. And that is where we are relaxed and aware. And that is a really special place to, it's like where I do all the work with my clients is that the alpha brain waves.
It's like eight to 12 beats per second is how it's rated beta is 13 to 25 ish. So, you know, everybody, they change a little bit depending on who you're looking at below that is theta, and then delta is deep sleep. And when we're born, our brain waves have not developed past delta. So baby sleep a lot. Right. That's what they do.
Eat and sleep. And as they mature and grow, the brain begins to beat at these different frequencies so theta is next. And then alpha and then theta and alpha that is the like three to 11 years old. Now it's actually shifting a little bit. Kids are moving out of alpha brain waves a little faster now. I think because of all the electronics and stuff.
But what's important here is that at these theta and alpha brain waves that is when kids absorb everything, everything you tell them, they take it as truth, because that is where they're building their ideas about this world and who they are.
And so that's why it's so important to be careful of what you say to kids about them, them, or the world because it becomes their truth. So, you know, playing with these, how do you get to these other brain waves well as an adult, you use meditation to actively get there.
We actually go through all of them when we sleep, which is really beautiful because and why it's so important to sleep well, because we have this natural flow of going through these each cycle of sleep it's like an hour and a half, and you go through every level of these brain waves and your body does recalibrating of information through the day.
It does healing at, you know, at different levels, it performs these different things so it's really important to have that healthy sleep so that your body is being able to do what it naturally wants to do. Do you have any quick.
A: Well, that's wonderful. I love it because I actually think about brain waves a lot, but I had not been like, you know like I have like a book on it somewhere, but I hadn't been like thinking about okay, what are the stages and what are the stages of life, even though I've heard a lot of the information that you just shared, like I just loved having it laid out from you explained that so well.
And, you know, I know that in the theta and the alpha brain waves like that's where we're more open to suggestion, right, which is part of that absorbing of information, you know, when I will guide like, you know, I'm going to go into the next steps and definitely put you into those, you know, alpha and theta brain waves I have people feel like they're about to fall asleep like they're slipping into delta, like throughout a session sometimes to you know where they're getting this a deep kind of rest.
And in that, you know, like you said, is ability to reprogram things, I will also talk about it as an altered state of consciousness. Right, and that's sometimes the term that I will use is like you're entering an altered state where you're more vulnerable. You know, you're more vulnerable to suggestion, but in a beautiful way, this is where you can start to reprogram things like you said, you know, this is obviously like a space that you bring people into consciously, you know, and I guess one of the things that I often, and this is more like something I talk about in a presentation or in a workshop.
That is why we want to have not only skilled, but ethical people guiding us into these spaces, because you're going to be more open to influence, you know, and more vulnerable to suggestion, and so you want to have people who have an energy that's going to be aligned for you that have a philosophy that aligns with you, right, and that have your best interests at heart.
Right, and I think that, you know, making people more aware of that like, oh, okay, and then, you know, looking at how, you know, maybe we didn't have the best parents in some ways in terms of meeting all those criteria, you know, and we got embedded with the influence or philosophies of, you know, people that those beliefs or philosophies aren't really serving us and need like an update, you know, so I love this way that you describe that, and I can see how it just fits in perfectly with the idea of visualization so let's transform things for us.
J: What's important to know about that is that visualization is how we communicate at those levels. At Beta we have the words, you know, we that's how we're communicating with each other at this altered state, and Alpha and Theta, it's the images that we create. And I need to say here because I've always felt that visualization is a misnomer.
Because so I have been teaching visualization for over two decades now. I've taught thousands of people, and in every class people some, there would be many people that would come in and say I can't visualize. And I need people to hear this right now that visualization is, however, you sense something with your eyelids closed.
So, a lot of people, when they close their eyes they do not see that Technicolor TV or movie screen that they think is supposed to be there. And the easiest way to find out how you sense things with your eyelids closed is to think about something you're very familiar with and I always suggest your bedroom. You know, and just close your eyes and think about your bedroom and how big is your bed where is it placed in the room.
What color is your bed spread, however you're sensing the answer to those that is how you visualize. And that is exactly how it should be and it doesn't need to be anything else to be successful with visualization. But it's those images that you create that send the message that's how we direct the intelligence of the body. It is how we create the new neural pathways and our brains for the new things that we want to be thinking.
And it's the fastest way to do that. Reprogramming the brain playing with those neural pathways creating those new connections. When we use visualization. It amplifies it and makes it happen so quickly.
Whereas instead of in beta trying to force it to happen. You are in the state of flow and ease, and those connections can just easily happen. It takes repetition.
Oh, still, but it can happen easily. Now the work that I do different, you know, you're working with that body connection with the muscles and how we're bringing ease to our system that way. I'm working with the subconscious mind, and I actually call myself a success guide now because listening to someone I can have my own ideas of what's going on with them. But I don't know all of their experience.
I don't know everything that's happened to them in their life, and within your subconscious, everything that has ever happened to you is stored in there in some way, so it is a treasure trove of information. And so I relax my clients and guide them through a visualization to that inner dimension so that they can explore and find what those core beliefs are because it's all there. And to understand where these different things came from like the client that I told you about working with her and going within.
And she didn't even have all of those conscious memories of these things, but they all came forth in a way that she could easily handle them. And that is a part of what I make sure is possible is that it comes through easily, and it's safe to make to look at this stuff, you know, and again, tied in with what you do, it's calming the nervous system, allowing change to occur.
And so, bringing in the visualization with my clients, then they can see themselves responding in new ways, realizing that this old core belief stuff was just ideas that they had. You know, it doesn't need to have power over them. And using visualization, they can experience new things, see themselves showing up in new ways.
They can heal the whatever. How do I want to say this, because it's different for everyone. Sometimes we have that little us that was so traumatized or hurt, or felt so powerless. And using visualization you can connect with that part of you and let them know that they're not alone and ask them what you need to feel better, and it's different for everyone.
You know, everybody needs a little something else to feel better, more secure and allow ourselves to evolve in that way. And again, that's why I use the term guide because I'm not telling them you need to do this to feel better. It's, what does that inner part of you need?
You'll get an answer. And then using the visualization, we can craft something that just brings that healing to the person. And I have had clients. Well, the one I told you about the writer who will stick with her story because there's so much fun. But within one month, she had booked more clients and was bringing in more money than she had in the last year.
Like, it was just that one shift; We had one session together. So this can be very fast using visualization, the body just accepts it as truth. And she was able to transform her whole business with one session, you, and it's the power of visualization and the alpha brain waves of using those most effectively. And as I said, that's what I've been doing for over two decades. So I'm, I'm super passionate about it because I know that all this stuff doesn't need to be hard. It can be so.
A: Well, and why do we know? I love that it doesn't have to be hard because life is going to be hard anyway. There are things that are going to be hard that are going to show up, and so a lot of this what you're describing sounds like how can we how can we decide to act with grace in our own experience because life is already going to have difficult things that blindside us, you know.
And kind of maybe even moving into that and moving into the big things that you've gone through on a personal level in the last couple of years that are now sort of like more deeply integrating like the, I guess, what I see this how I see this is like, you went through this deep internal reprogramming through the illness that you went through.
And now there's an even more clear sense in you of how this really works, how all these things that you've learned and gathered right and even, you know, bringing in the way that Hannah somatics kind of catalyzed that even deeper into your body, you know, and that connection that you're now having with your body.
It's like, there's an even more embodied version of what you're doing now because of the things you had to go through, so, you know, just taking us back into that time and you were in radiance, it was after, you know, radiant the radiance program by program, right, it has six months of somatic education and the first three months were meeting weekly.
And then the last three months were meeting, well, it was just going to be like monthly, but now I've changed now to twice a month for the newest round of the program that's going on. It's so different than when you took it.
It's really interesting, but you know, you were attending almost every week the weekly calls and doing the lessons, and there was like this really crazy pain that was going on in your body, so you would do the movements, and you're like oh my God I feel better than I have in decades I feel so good, and then there would be these like crazy amounts of pain that would show up in these really specific places.
And I remember there were a couple of times that you like, you called me, and you're like I can't get up off the floor, and I did this like impromptu session with you, where we buy out we found these like weird, strange full body movements that you needed to do to be able to move that you needed to relax like in these really strange ways.
And it was sort of a mystery to me, like exactly what was going on with you. But then, at the end of the radiance program, you broke you will not be at the end of the three months, you broke your arm. And in breaking your arm, you discovered.
J: That I had stage four breast cancer. It had stage four means that it had moved from the breast to a different part of the body, and for me, it had moved into my skeletal system, I have had it.
I had cancer all through my bones, the cervical spine, the lumbar a lot in the lumbar as well down my arms and hips, and pelvis. And I broke my arm on a flute because my dog tried to run out the door and I reached to grab her. And my arm hit the doorframe, not hard just kind of hit the doorframe.
And there was this moment. And the only thing I could imagine because it wasn't hard was that I like, somehow dislocated my shoulder because of the dog pulling, that's what I thought, and And I told my husband I was like, I think I've dislocated my shoulder and I need to go to the hospital.
Luckily he was there, and you know I'm trying to be calm, and then I passed out. And I got to the hospital, and they took the x-rays, and I broke it right here at the very top of the bone, and they told me that it was on a cancer lesion.
And I was just speechless, like it didn't even I couldn't even process it. It was like, I'm an organic food eater. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I exercise. I was very active. I had zero that I would have thought was warning signs.
I didn't have them. I was feeling well, and I was going through your program and I, but these weird things were coming up, and getting that information and finding out it had progressed so far, they really didn't think I was gonna live. The oncologists were like, we're gonna start these chemo treatments, and we'll see what happens basically.
They weren't looking to promising. And at the time, I was 49. So I was not ready to go, and I had this huge toolbox of tools, and I was listening to these doctors and I was just like, my internal mind was saying, Jen, you have been training for this your whole life. But if anybody can get through this and have a different outcome, it is you. And so I had to, I called you. I think you were one of the first people I called because I was in the hospital with this broken arm, which when you break this bone, they don't put it in a cast.
They allow gravity to help. And so I was in so much pain because I could feel the bone moving, and it was just horrendous. That was actually a bigger deal for me than the cancer actually at that moment because the pain of this I could feel. And I called you from the hospital bed, and I was just like, Amy, this is what's happening. And you gave me some tools to use for my arm, and I'm just laying in the hospital.
I couldn't get out of bed, and I was doing my somatics to have some mobility in this part of my arm. And because I was laying there so much, it was like I was doing the lower body stuff, and I could do that. It gave me that sense of I was powerful.
There was a lot of stuff I couldn't control, but you gave me the confidence to control these bits really powerfully. And my doctors would come in and they were amazed at how quickly I was able to use this arm to write. It's broke.
It's in this weird little thing that's kind of holding it here, but I could write, I could use it to eat, I could do stuff, and they're just like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Honestly, they didn't wanna know what I was doing, and I would tell them. I was like, my friend teaches Hannah somatics, and I'm using it, and they weren't interested in hearing that, but I kept doing it.
And I was visualizing the bone growing together. In Qigong, I practice spring force Qigong and they have a saying that the Qi follows the Yi. The Qi is the life force energy. The Yi is the intelligence of the body that directs the life force energy. And so I was directing, helping my Yi direct my body to grow this bone because they thought they were gonna have to do surgery but I needed to start chemo.
So it was like, what do you do? And so we went with the chemo, and this bone grew back so fast, which is one thing for just a regular break, but where there's cancer cells there and all of that, it's really surprising that it grew back, but it did.
And so then, once I had the arm where I could handle it and I'm still laying in my hospital bed doing my somatics, the things that you were teaching me, then I started focusing on the cancer using the visualization, how I was getting chemo, and I was getting radiation, and I was visualizing the chemo going right to those cancer cells and killing them.
And having that, those cells removed from my body and I was focusing on my body handling again the Chi and the Yi directing my body to handle this chemo because there was no way I wasn't going to get chemo.
I would never tell someone not to. I know it's like, oh, you're putting all this poison in your body, yeah. And I was also like expected to die rather soon. And I was not stable enough in my everything to be able to, oh, I'm just gonna blow all that off and do this on my own.
That was not what I felt was right. I listened to my body and I helped direct it. And I used visualization, I listened to my meditations all the time.
I stayed in alpha as much as I could, guiding my body. And my oncologist, he's just like, I don't understand your body. He literally said those words to me. He said, your body is responding in ways that it should not be responding. I was getting better and better, faster than, well, as I said, they didn't expect me to get better.
So the fact that I was was confusing. And my arm, the doctor for my arm is like, you don't need me anymore. He's like, your arm is fine. I was like, no surgery needed. And I just, I was going with this. I've continued, we're coming up on 22 months.
And I was using the visualization shifting because it's stage four. It's considered a chronic disease like diabetes or something that you're going to have. I would have to have treatment every 21 days for the rest of my life to manage. And that was not something that I wanted to do.
A: I remember when you first told me that, I remember when you told me, I think I was inviting you to a retreat or something like that. And you were like, well, with what the doctors are saying, like I have to receive chemo every 21 days for the rest of my life. And I think I remember hearing you say that.
And there was like a little, like there was a little something in your eyes. And I was like, doctors have to say stuff like that. But I don't think that that's going to be true for you. I don't know if you remember me saying that, but I was kind of like, I know that they're saying what they're saying, and they probably have to say that, like kind of an illegal way, like a CYA, like make sure that they said that, is cause maybe that's what's typical. But I'm like, you're not typical.
And you have skills and tools that you're using that they don't understand the full power of. And what I also love about your story here is that, you did the chemo, you did the medical required things to save your life. And the truth is, is that Western medicine is very good at those kinds of things.
Even though we don't want to take chemo and for some other person, that could not be aligned, or maybe they had a different circumstance, there are people who have those stories of say, no to the chemo and surviving or saying yes to the chemo and not surviving, right? But we don't have to be so rigid and black and white.
We can't use all of these things together and synthesize them for the best possible outcome, right? Like, hanasomatics is not against stretching or weightlifting. Some people get that idea when they learn, oh, you can make changes from these tiny little micro-movements and relax your body.
And they've been doing all this other stuff, and they're like, oh, so I can't do that anymore. And it's like, no, no, no, you can do these other things, even aggressive treatments like chemotherapy, and still also do the gentle, calming, soothing things alongside. It's not one or the other.
And sometimes it's gonna be a combination of things that our body or our nervous system needs to really heal or to really transform or to really make the thing that we're desiring happen, right? Like it's sometimes it is gonna be big dramatic actions, right? That come alongside those tiny changes in belief that are how someone transforms.
J: Absolutely. And I feel that that's such a big part of my story and what I wanna share with people because there's so much shame in the cancer world of getting chemo or not getting chemo, doing this or not doing that. And we see that through all of our lives because especially when we start delving into spirituality and evolving, there's these people in this space that are so driven by ego that it's, you have to do it this way.
And if you don't, then you're not spiritual enough or whatever and they don't realize how that is the opposite of what being mindful and spiritual is. And we have so many opportunities in this world right now.
And to say that only a handful of them are relevant and necessary is definitely an ego statement and not true. And I embraced the chemo, chemo sucked. I wish I hadn't needed it, but I really feel that I did, and it saved my life.
And using these other tools that I have amplified that and allowed me to get through it very quickly. I didn't have to stay on the hard chemo drugs for too terribly long. I was able to drop those and stick with the hormone therapy, and I have HER2 positive.
So there's a drug that specifically targets the HER2 positive, but it wasn't giving me problems like the taxa tier, which was the hair gone and all of that. But I found that I really liked the short hair and I always wanted to shave my head. And so this was one of the things that I joked that came out of this is I had to shave it. I was worried I had a bumpy head and I did not. And I could shave my hair.
A: Oh, you looked totally cute with that. You looked like some kind of Tibetan monk or something. You had that. My husband is funny. This is kind of a tangent, but he loves shaved heads on people, and it's because he practices Zen Buddhism, and the monks from Japan met women too. They shaved their heads.
And so he, just as an artist, thinks that when someone shaves their head, their face becomes the main feature. Like the features of their face really stand out more. And so my husband's kind of funny like that. Like if he sees people and like they say, oh, they all look really beautiful with their heads shaved.
J: I agree with him. And I've noticed that I am so drawn now to the face. And when I see people with the hair, it's like trying to envision the beauty of the face without the hair. And yeah, it draws you into the eyes and the smile and just the life force that comes through there. I totally resonate with them there.
A: So this story, I feel like, is so powerful, not only for people who have gone through any kind of cancer treatment, who know that someone who's gone through cancer treatment, but just for this idea that we can transform our physical reality and we can transform our bodies and one of the things here I think that ties in going back to the chemotherapy is that how incredibly important cooperation and consent within our own bodies and within ourselves truly is.
Because if we're taking something in, right, like chemo that's like poisonous, or even that milkshake that you had yesterday, and we are aware, ooh, this isn't actually really good for me or this isn't actually like the ideal thing for me, but in this moment, there are extenuating factors, and it is what I'm doing.
Can we choose that sense of consenting and cooperating with ourselves and not be at war with ourselves, not be at war with taking the chemo in, but find that way of saying, I hear that this might not feel good, this might not be the best thing, maybe my tummy isn't gonna love this milkshake, but can I choose this in my heart and soul even though there are aspects physically that may be challenging, right?
It's like choosing to do kind of it, I mean, and this is like kind of taking it in another direction a little bit, but choosing to do a hard thing instead of kind of dragging ourselves, kicking and screaming into the hard thing and like part of us not really wanting to do it, it's like how can I choose to consent and cooperate with this direction that I'm going that maybe isn't in all of the perfect ways as I would want it to be?
How can I be pragmatic enough to say, I choose this, I choose the chemo even though it's not what I would want normally in my life to take in poison, I'm choosing it, I'm consenting, I'm allowing myself to be on board with this.
J: It's a beautiful way to say that, and it is exactly what I felt. That's what I had to do with my inner work is to be okay with the decisions that I was making, talking to my body, how I am sorry you are having to take in this poison, and it is killing the good cells along with the cancer cells, but I'm here to support you as best I can. I was literally having these conversations with myself, and I never once, and I still don't say that I was at war with or I was fighting cancer.
That's not how I looked at it. There was something in my body that was there for a reason. I wanted to understand, I wanted to be fully present in appreciating the wisdom that I was gathering from this experience.
Do I wish I didn't have to have gone through it? Well, sure, but here I was, and I just loved my body. I wasn't angry at my body for betraying me. I hear that a lot in the cancer circles of people feeling that their bodies betrayed them, and I didn't look at it that way. It was my body was sending me a message, and it was screaming, and I listened, and I helped it.
We didn't understand that message when I first started having issues. Sometimes you don't understand the message even if you're aware of it. And I listened, and now I've made a pact with myself to be as present as I possibly can be and to help my body in any way.
And I tune in in the mornings and at night for sure and throughout the day, but I take these moments, and I ask what do you need? And in that, I don't know if I shared with you because this is very new news for me as an update, but there's a new blood test from the FDA that was just approved, and it measures the amount of cancer cells in your blood.
And so this is the new way to be able to have a benchmark for how active the cancer is in your body so that if the number got higher, the doctors would know, hey, we need to start doing something else. So I had my benchmark test, and it picked up zero cancer cells in my body.
Stage four, all through my bones, going to have to have treatment every 21 days for the rest of my life because it's always going to be there. And they tell you you're going to have those micro cancer cells in your body, even though you can't see it on a CAT scan or something. Well, this blood test shows I'm at zero.
That was, it did not detect anything. That is what happens when you don't go to war with your body, when you're alive and you listen and you give it what it needs.
A: This is such a perfect, perfect, like, I mean, in a way it's like this is the outcome that I sort of expected. When all of this first went down, there was something in me where like, obviously I was afraid for you, I was feeling a lot of things, but there was also this like feeling I had.
I'm like, she, yeah, I think, like you said, if anyone's going to get through this, Jen is going to get through this and see the other side of this, you know, and how perfectly timed discovering and doing all of the hanasomatics that you did, reinforcing that idea that you can be friends with your body, that your body is not there to punish you or to cause you to suffer, that your body's trying to communicate.
Yes, I remember when you were having this mysterious, you know, sudden pain, you ended up telling me like all the places where I was having these clenched tight, painful areas where the places where the bone lesions were.
And I remember going, oh, so her muscular system was contracting to protect these spaces. It was contracting over the spaces where there was damage to the bone to try to protect the bone from breaking. And I think I might have said that to you where it was like, this has been your body trying to protect you from breaking your bones.
I mean, it happened anyway that you broke your bone because your dog pulled your arm, but even those painful contractions that we were undoing, you know, in the Somatics were a way that your body was trying to help you, right? And I mean, this is where it gets like kind of interesting too.
And maybe this will be sort of our closing question to kind of take this further. Did you feel, and you can go into as little detail or as much as you feel comfortable here, that the cancer was your body trying to communicate something to you? That about something that you, some patterns that you were needing to rewrite in your system that maybe you had not been aware of? For sure.
J: About two months before I got diagnosed, we had had a huge betrayal, my husband and I, and from two people that we really cared about. And I feel like that broke me apart. I felt broken in that betrayal and so broken that it could never be put back together in the same way. If that makes sense, there was no patching.
It was exploded apart. And I feel that the cancer was all those things that had broken apart, and I had been suppressing for years of just as I talked about in the beginning, that bypassing, how I got really good at bypassing. Oh, let's do a happy affirmation. And I am strong.
I am powerful. And the cancer made it so I had to look at these things. I had to look at the traumas that I had been through in my life. And that is what I've been doing for the last 22 months is doing what I do with my clients of going within and having the courage to really look at what I had been through. I learned all these things, these tools very young, but I grew up with alcoholic, a lot of chaos.
I knew chaos. And all of that I just feel was packed into the body. And what I find interesting about the Hennessymatics is I do the practice, which now my focus is on releasing the trauma from what my body has been through. We've been through a lot.
And between surgeries and just the protecting all those protection modes. And as I'm doing this work, I'll have attention here in the solar plexus or something.
And I'm being guided by you. I love your videos. It's just a beautiful, the way that you guide us through these movements is beautiful. And I tune in and instead of just looking at it as attention in my solar plexus, it's a message there and tuning in what's being held here. What message is here?
What old stuff is being held? Because I mean, it's been shown that the traumas that we hold, those moments that we run through our minds, they're held in our body. Look at the work at Dr. Bruce Lipton. It'll show you that these things are actually held in the body. So now the Hennessymatics is helping me open up all these stories.
Yeah. But in my body and releasing those. And I'm not fighting it. I wanna know so that I can take the wisdom and just let it go. Because a lot of it's been held onto for 10, we'll say, decades. I'm 51 now. And it's like a lot of stuff. And the work that you do is just been so profound in my healing. And you specifically, because you have so much knowledge. And I don't want to diminish it in any way by saying your intuitive knowledge as well.
And again, that's that it's not one or the other. You marry that wealth of information that you hold about our muscular system and our bodies and how they function. And you have that intuitive knowing as well. And you just marry that together to create a space for healing within your clients.
And that's the gift you bring to us. And I would not be here as well as I am. Hope yesterday I spent the whole day in the ocean, which is why I'm red.
I look a little red today. But I wouldn't be able to do those things if it wasn't for my work with you and the power of the knowledge that you share.
A: Thank you so, so much for that acknowledgment. I receive it. I love you so much. I'm so glad that I met you. And also that you are taking this as deeply as it can go. Kind of this way that you just talked about what hanasomatics can do in terms of getting in touch with the stored emotions and memories and stories, beliefs and everything that we're carrying in different parts of our body and how that's showing up as a physical experience. This is kind of like almost what I refer to, and some of my colleagues refer to as like deep somatics or like deep hanasomatics.
Because at the kind of surface level, when I first start working with a person, depending on where they're at, we're working in kind of a clinical way. It's like releasing muscle contractions and talking about, oh, I had an injury, right? And I had a car accident.
But what is actually going on there, which I'm very, very aware of, because this is how this work has been for me, is that you were in some kind of emotional, mental state when you had that car accident. You were in some kind of mental-emotional experience when your rotator cuff tore in that kayak experience, if I remember correctly, right? There was something going on there and even that something going on there was not just isolated to that moment.
It was part of a thread of your somatic experience of life that goes deep and runs down that chain of events, down that timeline to other experiences, right? Like let's take for example, if someone was in a car accident and during that time, that month of their life, they're having all these relationship problems. Maybe they're in the middle of breaking up with somebody, right? They're in those mental, emotional states when their head flies forward.
So there isn't just their head flying forward and those contractions from that and the pain from that, but there's also that mental, emotional energy as well of what they were thinking about is now associated with that.
So this really is how I see the tool of hanasomatics can be so incredibly profound and especially alongside the other gifts that you bring, that you practice and deepening that. I think that's just this really exciting stage in your life that I can see you're moving into, into this blossoming of really being embodied in all of this magic. So you get to be, you met me and I was the magician, but then now you became the magician.
J: And it does feel like magic. It's just, there's this bubbling of energy that whenever I do this work that comes forth and there's power in that and the embodiment of, we know things on that conscious beta mind analytical.
You can give me all this information, and I can say yes, that makes sense. And I've been teaching techniques for this for so long, and it's like, yes, I know this stuff works, but the embodiment of getting cancer put it on the line. It was like I needed to show up in a big way that I never had before. Oh, sure, I wanna manifest so many clients or get this car or go on this vacation that bringing forth something from thought to the material world.
Sure, cancer, though, it made me embody for sure this information because it was like, if I did not fully believe what I had been saying all these years, and there was not a moment that I doubted it. It was like, I had this very profound moment in the hospital, and it was when I decided to live. It was to really live.
It was like, no, I can do this. I know I have been surrounded by people having miraculous things happen my entire life. Talking about being a sponge at those young ages, I was sitting in graduate meetings with my grandfather and hearing the miraculous things people were creating in their lives and the physical changes that they were affecting by using visualization.
So I knew, I just hadn't allowed myself the love of using these to fully let myself experience them and to bring that healing that I could have been doing along the way. It got to this big thing that I had to make a choice. I was like, are you gonna use what you know and heal, or are you going to suffer and die? And it sounds so dramatic, but it was a literal thing. And that was my choice.
A: Yeah, and life is dramatic, and there are those pinnacle points of no return and it came in some layers for you. It sounds like with just the series of the way that all these things played out. And I am so incredibly proud of you and inspired by you.
And just, yeah, I have so much appreciation for what you've gone through, and I feel like every client that you work with now is going to just have like even more of the best of you from all of this that you've gone through. So if there are people listening right now who would like to learn more about what you do or maybe have a session with you to kind of get a feel for this, what are some ways people can get in touch with you? What are some ways that people could work with you?
J: Right now, I just have one-on-one sessions available. I have a nice little starter pack. It's one week and we do one of these guided sessions, and then you have a week of support. And honestly, so much can happen in that.
As I told you about the writer, one session, I've done other work; one of my other clients, he had a million-dollar shift in his business just from one session that we did together and some support to help throw a wobble. Cause people ask me, they're like, what is one session, what can you get done there?
I was like, we can get a lot done. It's good, it's a good starter place. I also started a YouTube channel, I just started. There you can get a feel for how I guide.
I have guided meditations on there, specific topics all around mindfulness and just learning to listen to your body. Cause that's what I want people to understand is that they are powerful and they have the answers within them. They just need to learn how to access them. And that's what I guide to help people access that wealth of knowledge because everybody's path is different.
And I'm not here to tell someone how to live or how to be or how to show up in this world. It's what do you want from your time here on this planet? What do you want? How do you wanna feel? And that's what I wanna help you do.
Open that up. You had asked me about what does success mean to me? That's what success means to me. It's understanding who I am and being able to show up that way exactly embodying that without those old beliefs and those old patterns showing up limiting me.
I wanna be able to just show up and just be that freedom and being freedom there. Drop me a message. My website is jenbarber.com. A lot of stuff's on there.
Started a blog too. I'm just like, I've been in this place of, I have all this information in my head and it's not right for me just to have it in my head. We're here to share and to inspire, and to be a helping hand to people as they are grasping for the next step. So I've been putting out all these different ways for people to get information and see what resonates.
Read something, and as you're reading it, just feel into where you're feeling things in your body. The messages are there whether it's good for you or not at this time. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. And I have, I'm working on, I don't know if I told you this, I'm putting together a bunch of small courses on very specific topics like money and relationships and health that people will be able to get, pick and choose or get the whole thing.
I'm in the creative stage of that right now too. So I have a waiting list for people to get that information as it's coming out. So lots of things, you know, stage four cancer almost dying, now it's like, get all the information out.
How can I show it bigger? So my husband's like, are you doing too much? And I'm like, I feel so freaking good right now. It's like, the information is flowing and the people that I'm meeting, it's like seeing the shifts that are occurring and how people are stepping up and being courageous and curious about their lives.
And I think that's what both of us look for with people is when I showed up with the henna somatics, you know, it was like, it's a courage. And I was curious and I'm reaping all those benefits now and that if we keep those two things in mind, our lives can change dramatically.
A: Yes, a word I've been playing with a lot has been adventure because adventure is gonna come with pitfalls and challenges and difficulties. It's part of it, but it's also exciting and it's also a place of curiosity and growth and victory triumph, right? So adventurous and I definitely feel that adventurous spirit in you. And I'm so glad that you were able to come on and share your story at this depth.
I feel like we've found the right timing in your progression of events for this to occur. So definitely check out all of the information in the show notes about Jen and her offerings, her meditations; check that out on YouTube.
And then, of course, if you're curious to learn more about releasing neuromuscular tension and hanna somatics, send me a DM about this episode on Instagram, right? You can find us both on Instagram and at us there and then send me a DM, maybe send Jen a DM about what you thought of this episode, what kind of showed up for you as you were listening. We'd love to hear from you.
J: Absolutely.
A: Yeah, wonderful. Okay, thank you again, Jen. So good to see you.
J: See you. Thank you so much for having me.
A: Hey there, friends; I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram at AimeeTakaya. And send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this somatic revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now.
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