"Physician, Heal Thyself" or in this case, "Holisitic Psychologist".
Christina Kantzavelos says she never intended to become the person she is. It was through a traumatic health crisis that she gained wisdom and made the necessary lifestyle changes that have made her who she is today: the therapist she needed when she was struggling with chronic, debilitating illness.
On the podcast today we explore:
-Her timeline and how she came to be chronically ill
-The myriad of factors in becoming sick
-The lifestyle shifts she made that saved her life
-The way stress accumulates in our system over time
-Celiac, her experience in being gluten free
-Food as Medicine supporting relief from chronic illness
-The root causes of her illness and what it took to heal
And more!
Connect with Christina on IG @buenqamino or visit her website www.beginwithintoday.com
Christina Kantzavelos is a California-based psychotherapist, writer, advocate and artist. She received her Bachelor’s and Master's of Social Welfare (MSW) from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and her Masters of Library and Information Sciences from San Jose California State University (SJSU). She has visited over 30 different countries and documented most of it on social media. However, it was in completing the Camino de Santiago (500-mile pilgrimage across Spain) at the end of 2015, where she realized her strong affinity with writing. She decided to start BuenQamino, an award-winning, gluten-free and health-conscious lifestyle travel publication. In clinical practice (Begin Within Today), she treats those with chronic illness, including Lyme disease, and physical, developmental and age-related disabilities. She also published the Begin Within Daily Health Wellness Journals for chronic illness and mental wellness that she is now turning into an app, called WithinMe.
Read While You Tune In
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.
Hello everyone and welcome to Free Your Soma, Stories of Somatic Awakening and How to Live from the Inside Out. I have a wonderful guest with me here today, a holistic psychotherapist, a writer and an artist, Christina Kansavalos. She's here to talk about the ways in which we get sick and the ways in which we heal. She helps people struggling with chronic illness, various things from autoimmune, co-infections, mold and Lyme disease. She's done a lot of personal work in this area in her life as well. She's going to share a little bit about that process with us today and about some of the things that really help us have the most aligned healthy somatic experience in our bodies that we are born to have. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
C: Thank you so much for having me, Amy. I love the podcast name, just Free Your Soma because I'm Greek, I speak Greek, so right away Soma body. Free Your Body just feels, it feels good. It's such a nice title for a podcast. Thank you again for having me and yeah, here to talk about it all. Should I start with? Sure.
A: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, how you came to be someone who's doing this kind of work in the world.
C: Yeah, so first I'm going to say I had no intention of becoming who I am today. This is all a result of a post, basically post traumatic growth. That's what I like to say. My past life was in humanitarian work. I was with various NGOs, Doctors Without Borders and I became incredibly ill while on contract. I was in Mexico and prior to that, my entire life I had chronic illness but nothing debilitating. Anything I could handle. I didn't think of it more than just somewhat of a nuisance. More than that at times, but I was able to get my work done and figure things out.
But it all came to a head when I was in Mexico and I became pretty ill. I ended up in the hospital there. I kept my contract, returned back to the States, was passed around like a hot potato, went and did another vipassana retreat thinking, well, let me calm down my nervous system because the work we do, I understand, is very traumatic. That didn't help. Being passed around like a hot potato didn't help. It wasn't until I landed on a Lyme specialist doctor. He was a rheumatologist. I didn't know anything about Lyme. I knew about it peripherally but nothing passed that. He took one look at me and just based on my presentation and my symptoms knew right away that it was Lyme, Lyme Co-Infection and all of its friends.
It's not always just Lyme. It's a soup. It's parasites. It's mold. It's heavy metals. It's Candida. So on and so forth. I do believe that's when my healing truly began. I mean, I was so incredibly ill. I couldn't work. I had to move back in with my parents. I relied upon my mom to give me showers. I thought I was going to die. It was really, really intense. During that, I looked for a chronic illness therapist for myself. I could not find one. I actually ended up finding one in London. But yeah, I mean, that's how difficult or challenging it was to find the person I needed.
And ultimately in the midst of my healing journey became the therapist and practitioner I wish I had. And yeah, that's why I'm basically here today to guide and help as many folks remember who they are safely return to their bodies, reclaim their power, reclaim their health. And yeah, it's an honor, seriously an honor to be able to do that with my clients. Yes.
A: And as a holistic psychotherapist, the picture you're looking at is the bigger picture. You're looking at how all these things are interacting with each other. It's not just like, for example, it sounds like it came to a serious head in Mexico when you were exposed to certain things, perhaps an environment. But in your own words, you said that there had already been a history of chronic illness. It just hadn't reached a point that it was unmanageable. It was basically manageable. So even though it all kind of came to a head and there was this really dramatic period of time, this had been slowly accumulating over years.
C: Definitely. Definitely. And for those who are familiar with the histamine bucket, which if you have mast cell activation syndrome, as that bucket fills, that could be trauma, that could be your environment, what you're putting on your body, what you're eating, the amount of stress you have in the area, what's going on in your partnership or in your any relational dynamics, all of that begins to fill. And it's like the question is, what is the straw that breaks the camel's back? So my bucket was already so full. And then, yeah, the whole situation in Mexico was traumatic in and of itself. And then obviously I was exposed to certain parasites and bacterial infections that just put me over the edge and mold and likely triggered everything, everything else.
And I say it took me getting sick to get healthy because it really changed the entire trajectory of my health. When I say like my past life was in humanitarian work, like I was set to die. I thought I was set to do that for the rest of my life. And now, you know, I went through that grieving process of who I was before I got sick, because that person got me sick and letting her go, letting her go and reclaiming the person I always was, who I was hiding from my authentic true self. And it's taken a long time to get to her to reach her. And I still am. I'm still constantly I'm sort of, you know, taking the layers off from the onion, peeling the layers off to get to know her.
A: Yes, because our healing is never really over unless we know we're alive. I'm being exposed to whatever. You may just go into somebody's house and you don't know, but there's mold in that space. Or you go to eat something and, you know, there's certain bacteria in that food, right? And then there's ongoing stress and tension. Sometimes we are better at handling it than other times in our lives for various reasons. And so there's just a constant, a constant process of taking care and a constant process of feeling that's going on every day. I mean, even from just like how much sleep we're getting at night has an impact, right?
C: Oh, yeah, all of it. All of it are sleep. Yeah, sleep hygiene is huge. You know, hygiene in all areas, energetic, relational food, etc., etc., etc. Yeah, it's been and there's just so and inhaling. There's such an unlearning we basically have to do, right? Amidst learning, we're unlearning so much that we thought was was true or was right for us. And yeah, that's how we reclaim our power. Absolutely.
A: You know, something you said at the beginning was that you didn't intend to become this person, but you became this person through a traumatic experience, through a traumatic stress response. And it reminds me so much of one of my somatic mentors was talking about so many characteristics of our personality, physical ways that we move and walk and talk in so many ways. It's a collection of different kinds of stress responses. They're where we have learned and been conditioned into a certain form or shape or way of being, you know, and so when I look around, like I kind of after absorbing that idea and kind of replying it to myself and my life looking around at people, you know, you can easily judge people as having like character flaws or, you know, that they're unhealthy or this or that or whatever kinds of, you know, judgments might come into our mind as we look around at the world at people and why are they behaving that way, right? And then when you kind of look at it through this lens of like they're going through something or they've gone through something and they're having this reaction to life because of their experience, because of their somatic perceptual experience. This way of behaving at this moment is exactly what makes sense to them. Right.
C: Yeah. Yeah. And we have to think everything, every action, every little thing we do individually is just a way to regulate our nervous systems. And that regulation, that learned regulation often comes from a response from earlier on, a traumatic, like usually traumatic response and how we survived our childhood. And yet looking at it from that lens and understanding like, cool, that got us through our childhood, but is it helping us thrive in our adulthood? Is this, does this still make sense for us now? Like we are safe right now. Do we still need to be responding this way and doing these things? And for me, I can speak to the fact that I'm a recovering codependent. People, please are overachiever. All, you know, all of these things that I felt I needed to be as a child in order to survive, to be, you know, continue to be included in my family. And now it's like, that's not, that's not necessary. Like what I need is rest and balance and tranquility and peace and compassion and understanding, but it's something, you know, it doesn't happen overnight. We have to constantly like learn and unlearn what we choose.
A: Absolutely. Yes. You know, and so much of our conditioning is largely unconscious until these kind of things happen where you have an illness or you have a relationship end or you have some catastrophe occurring your life. And then all of a sudden you're looking at how you've been living or how you've been operating. And then the things that aren't working start to stand out and like stick out and you can't ignore them.
C: Exactly. Exactly. And so, yeah, so much of that, you know, I had to take a really good look at in myself to figure out, you know, is this, is this me? Is this an alignment? Can I, can I let this go? Is this serving me any longer? So, so much, so much in that.
A: Yeah. And I mean, I kind of almost like a good analogy for this is like when you do like a food eliminate and the elimination diet or you, you know, change the way that you've been eating, because a lot of our eating is habitual. We just eat whatever our parents fed us, whatever our culture, you know, promotes whatever, whatever kind of culture we happen to be in. And we don't think a whole lot about it until something happens or until we're starting to have some kind of health issue. You know, for many people, it might just be as simple as like, oh, I want to lose weight, right? And so then they start thinking about what they're eating. But, you know, it can come in from all different directions and chronic illness definitely there is like a strong intersection between chronic illness and like what we're consuming on a regular basis.
I know from my own personal experience, right? And when you do like elimination diet and then you start adding stuff back in, you start to notice that thing that stands out. Like, oh, like now I know this how I feel when I eat this thing. Because, because I tried something different because I was outside of my, my habitual pattern long enough to feel that result of that thing. You say a little bit about that. I mean, because you exactly. Yeah.
C: Yeah. And, you know, the same and the same with like, I was going to say, like with supplements or medications, it's like, if you, you know, you often you go see this practitioner who gives you, you know, 10 or 15 supplements to start off with, even if it's a few. I always tell my clients low and slow one at a time. If you can give them at least 72 hours to a week to see how your body responds before adding on the next one, the next one. So same with the elimination diet. Yeah. I mean, I had been, I had been gluten free since, um, oh my gosh, I think I was 20.
I didn't think I'm like, I'm like 15 years almost of being gluten free. It's been, it's been a minute, but even, even with that, you know, I, I, I did an elimination diet and slowly added one ingredient at a time to see what was causing my symptoms. And at that point it was very obvious. It was, it was gluten. And when the mast cell stuff came up and that's basically like an extreme histamine response, often caused by Lyme and co-infections, Lyme disease and co-infections. Um, that too.
I mean, I was down to 20 safe ingredients. I could eat without needing an EpiPen beside me. It was really, yeah, it was really scary to have that, but also to be able to eventually integrate those ingredients slowly back into my diet was huge. And, you know, with anyone going through any health concerns, like I'm always going to recommend doing an elimination diet and, you know, choosing foods that are naturally anti-inflammatory, um, you know, foods that aren't in the top, like five allergens. And yeah, just, just checking in with yourself to see, yeah, just to see how you feel.
And, um, I created a journal when I was really, really sick for this exact reason, because I wanted, right, I was seeing my doctors maybe once a month, but the magic happens in between and I needed a way to track, track my health between food and its relation to my mental health, to my menstrual cycle, to my bowel movements, to my sleep hygiene. All of it is connected. Um, and like even just doing that, I was able to see like, wow, when I eat this, I notice it affects, you know, my blood pressure or my blood sugar or something, something else, just connecting those dots in our health.
I mean, that's how we reclaim our power. Like you are, and I'm, you know, anyone who's listening, like you are your own best doctor, you know yourself best. There is no one who knows you better than yourself. And part of healing is learning to believe and trust that.
A: That's definitely my philosophy as well. It's like the way that we get conditioned to think that anybody knows more about our bodies than us. We're living them, and we're experiencing them. Once you step into that and you realize that, it's hard to ever go back to thinking that someone else is going to tell you what's best for you.
C: It is totally. Also, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. One diet may work so well for one person and not for the other. Then maybe a diet works for you for a little bit and doesn't next month or next season. Allowing for room and flexibility, the goal is that we're listening to our bodies and how our bodies are responding to us. I always say getting ahead of our bodies so that our bodies don't have to say no for us again because chronic illness is when did the body start saying no and why weren't you listening to it? Our bodies speak to us constantly. It's just a matter of us tuning in and listening and figuring out a way to communicate with it that feels good. This isn't something we can learn super quickly. It's on go. I'm still learning.
A: It's through trial and error. First, I want to go back and acknowledge something you said before that was really great about the way that you have people go low and slow with herbs and whatever supplements and just one at a time. I think that's amazing and brilliant because plants are powerful. One new kind of plant in your diet, especially if a medicinal plant, can really shift things. If you're just taking a whole cocktail of those, you're not really sure what each one of them are doing and what the effect is unless you go slow like this. I just love that approach because I learned that a lot of master herbalists will say that about doing herbal teas.
For example, you are going to start doing nettles. They would say you do just nettles for an entire month so that you can actually connect with what nettles do in your body and what the essence of nettles is. You can start communicating with this plant. Then you would do a different plant for a different month or different season. Instead of a lot of these teas that we buy in the store are just a combination of all these different herbs to get a specific flavor. What kind of shift can happen when we just take it really slow and really feel into it? What is this doing to my physiology? Is this really a suitable relationship between me and this plant at this time?
C: I love that. It's all about just slow living. We live in a culture that everything needs to happen so quickly. Food and work and everything. There's an urgency behind everything and that's so dysregulating to our nervous systems that we're not taking the time and the energy to really get to know what we're doing and to really think about how does this feel in my body? Is this an alignment? It's funny you bring up nettles. I recently started integrating them into my daily living.
I noticed because I go low and slow. I gave it a week and a half on its own. I noticed that I'm using the restroom a lot more. It turns out it is a diuretic. Usually I don't need a pee in the middle of the night but with nettles I have been. I don't know if I would have figured out that was it if I started it with a bunch of different herbal remedies.
A: That's so true. Going back to what you were saying about discovering that gluten was the thing that was triggering a lot of the histamine or basically compounding it. I was curious did you ever find out whether you had celiac or if it was a sensitivity?
C: Yeah, it was confirmed. Yeah, I have celiac. With that said, so many people do have a sensitivity and there is a question on whether is it gluten or glyphosate because glyphosate is spring on. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Versus I have clients, friends who will go to Europe and they have no problem eating wheat products there. I still wouldn't do that because celiac is celiac. So it has an effect on me but for those who have a sensitivity, I always am curious is it the actual gluten or is it the glyphosate being sprayed on our products so that there is a faster production. Again, fast, fast, fast. Right.
A: Maximize output, maximize the amount that we can harvest at one time or them as much as we can get from every moment in life. So now we're multitasking and we're doing this and we're doing that and we're busy, busy, busy and our brains are having a hard time keeping up. Our bodies are having a hard time keeping up with the pace that we're studying.
C: Of course, our nervous systems are not used to this by any means.
A: Yeah, yeah, I definitely feel you on that. And it's it could become in a way like its own addiction to living in a fast way because we get kind of like adrenaline going, get all of our stress hormones going and they're very stimulating. Right. And then that's why a lot of people end up facing burnout, but then they do it all over again. And what you're describing that you went through with this health crisis is there comes these points in our lives that feel like a curse. They feel like something terrible is happening to us. But it's actually like a wake up call that forces us to slow down and forces us to shift habits and behaviors that are no longer sustainable.
C: Yep. I like I said, it getting sick in some ways saved my saved my life. I, you know, entered into this new this new lifestyle. I was able to return back to myself. I finally understood that I was on this. It's and it's true. It is it is an addiction. This like hamster wheel of of chasing adrenaline and releasing all that cortisol to to really keep the same the same pace, the same pace. Anything else was uncomfortable because I wasn't used to it. I'd been in fight or flight mode my entire life. So right. It was a lot scarier to step off that hamster wheel than it was to stay on until I basically until I literally was forced off.
A: And, you know, I I see people and you probably have this happen too with your clients. Like when I do the somatic work with people that really calms their nervous system, relaxes them, relaxes their muscular system in their bodies. Like we all imagine that that's what we want. We think, oh, I want that I want to be relaxed. I want to, you know, be at peace. I want to be calm, right, especially when we're living in this really erratic hectic environment. Right. That's what we think we want. But then sometimes when people get that.
I see them having a hard time with it. I see them not feeling relaxed in it. Like they are physically relaxed, but there's this little like. Anxiousness that's still there that says, like, who am I if I'm not, you know, holding this tension? Who am I if I'm not chasing after these things in life? Will my life even be functional if I'm relaxed? There are all these kind of questions come up and I always can relate to that so much because that's what went on for me in the beginning of the somatic work that, you know, I've been doing now for years is that it felt so uncomfortable to actually be calm. It felt uncomfortable to be relaxed because I was not used to it.
C: I'm so glad. And I'm so glad you're saying that aloud because I think a lot of people feel this way and it's not it's not spoken about enough. Right. We see these pictures of folks meditating and they're just able to step into it right away. And it's like, wait, why, why can't I? Why doesn't it feel that good for me? Why? Why can't I just relax with the book? Right. And there's so much, you know, when we start looking at belief patterns, it's like at the root, you know, there's this belief or disbelief of worthiness around around resting. Like, am I worthy if I'm not productive?
Do I still have work? Do I still have any worth if I go take a nap instead of giving 110 percent on this project or, you know, being there for everyone, you know, on call literally at work and in the family everywhere, like being that being that person. And that isn't, you know, an addiction in and of itself. And for, you know, do you probably listen to or read Dr. Gabor Matei's work? Right. Yes. Yeah. His two specialties are substance use, substance addiction and chronic illness. And people are like, wait, what is, how are these two connected? I'm like, they're actually, there's addictions within all of it, actually. And under, you know, what's underlining is trauma and it's a response to that trauma, but we all respond differently.
A: Yes. You know, and it's interesting too, because I feel like, you know, sometimes when I, when I would hear this kind of stuff in the past, like what you're talking about, the word addiction in and of itself has such a stigma and it feels charged, you know, like, I don't want to think of myself as being addicted. I don't want to think of myself as an addict to, you know, codependency or to, you know, the different adaptations that I've gone through, you know, due to my trauma.
And so it's like, when, when we say you're addicted to your own stress, it sounds kind of like it's like our minds have a hard time like actually accepting that. Accepting that it is in its own way an addiction because we think of an addict as, you know, kind of this helpless person who is doing, I don't know, heroin or something. You know, we don't think of it an addiction just as being this thing that you're compulsively returning to. And then that doesn't make sense for you to do that.
C: Yeah, it's a pattern. It's a great way to say a pattern you're compulsively returning back to. And why? Why must you keep returning back to it? You know, I could, I could relax. I could, I could not do that. I could, I could figure it out. And it's like, can't, can you? What will your life look like? What will it, what will that feel like in your body if you stop doing this?
A: It's often life changing and it shifts a lot of, it shifts a lot of shit. Like you're, you, yeah, when you, when you, and you know, you're not in your head because you know, like the, the illness basically forced you into that slowing down. And then all of the stuff, all of these different things probably started coming into your awareness, right? When you slowed down.
C: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I, my entire, you know, for the most part, my entire life, I thought I was, I was pretty health conscious and I, I was taking the time off from work. And I, you know, I was doing all of the right things as far as I knew at that time, but it was, it was almost like I was out smart. I was trying to outsmart myself and my body in a way. And when I got sick, I was like, okay. Yes. This is what they mean by slowing down. This is like, I, I got it. I finally, I finally understood it. But now knowing what I know, and I'm sure you can relate to this and anyone listening who has had to slow their lives down, can't, lives down can relate. It's like, do you, I wouldn't want to go back to that previous lifestyle, but it has no alert to me at this point. Right.
A: And I think it's because you know something else, you know, a different way. And I think a lot of times it's difficult for people to surrender and to actually leave those patterns behind because it's unknown. It's, it's unknown still what that's going to be like. You know, it could mean that they, they really can't work that job that they were working or that they can't really have this relationship that they were used to having because it's not actually going to be in alignment for them anymore.
C: Well, there's more predictability and control and staying in the same situation, even if it's toxic or harmful, then there is stepping away from it. Yes.
A: Yes. And that is a scary, but true thing. Yeah. I feel you on that. Absolutely. So I would love to, you know, we've kind of already touched on this, but let's kind of bring it all in a little bit and clear. So we're kind of talking about the ways in which we get sick and there's multiple ways in which we become ill. And, you know, with something chronic or serious, like what you're talking about with Lyme, you know, or with co-infections or with this histamine load, right? Tell us a little bit more about just all the different factors that are influencing this over time. Yeah.
C: So a lot of it has to do with the little tea, I would say the little teas and the big tea traumas we experience when we're younger. And generally, I found out not all therapists do this, but, you know, there's an ACE test, right? It's 10 questions. Yes or no questions related to childhood. It's the childhood adverse. Oh, my gosh.
Yes. Yes. So those are about big tea traumas. But what they've found in their research is the association between like the higher the higher the number, the likelihood of chronic illness later on down the road. But, you know, no one's created a size. Someone needs to do it. I'll do it if no one else does. But a little tea trauma list too. Like things like not getting, not making the sports team or not getting invited to a birthday party or not being invited to a family function. Those little things also start to add up and to us as adults looking, you know, looking at kids, not understanding why is it such a big deal that they weren't invited to other child's birthday party?
Well, you know, if we're looking at like a child's survival instincts, them not getting invited to something is essentially like them not being part of the tribe, right? Where the pack and that's part of their survival. They weren't accepted into the pack. Oh, my God. Now they're, now there's a chance they might not survive. That's how kids look at these, these little tea traumas. So they can turn out to be big in the body is what I'm what I'm saying. But of course, like the bigger tea traumas abuse, sexual, physical, emotional and so forth. Being exposed to a diet that's not nutrient dense can weigh heavily on us just because it can be highly inflammatory.
And being in situations that are that are stressful. So basically keeping our nervous system in dysregulation, being exposed to harmful chemicals in the house, in, in the work environment, mold in the home, getting sick, anti, taking too many antibiotics, growing up, messing with dysbiosis of the diet. Yeah, I mean, those are, those are all various, various ways and traumas and things that begin, begin to add up its environmental exposures, its emotion, you know, emotional traumas, dysregulated nervous system. Yeah, there's, there's a whole list. It can be so many things and, and how we interpret two people can experience the same event. And one might take it on a little bit stronger, stronger than the, than the other. And not having a way to process that with anyone to can cause that histamine bucket to just rise.
A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you're talking about these little tea traumas, you know, immediately I can start thinking of these different moments in my life. And some of them, you know, when I was younger, I would kind of like shrug them off to like this funny humiliating story that happened when I was a kid or something. But when you're talking about it, I realized like, Oh no, I was like a pain point that I was humorizing to like deal with. I have to try to deal with this thing that nobody else would ever see as a traumatic experience necessarily, but that felt that way to me, you know, and like the most simple one I can think of it's like, you know, I won't go into the whole story of it, but I had a third grade teacher who yelled at me in front of the entire class.
And I remember the experience so intensely because I was so deeply ashamed and humiliated and I just felt like my body like crumbled up like a little piece of paper, you know, when she did that, you know, and like you said, that's not sexual or not. And it wasn't even like she was abusive. She didn't call me names. She didn't, she just raised her voice and scolded me in front of everybody, you know. And so that would, I think that would count as a little teach trauma that totally impacted my feeling of safety in a sense. In a school a you know, definitely. It was just one of many of these like small little things that happened during that time that really impacted me.
And so I think it's so beautiful what you're saying, what you're pointing to is that a lot of people, you know, when they think of trauma, they think that something really bad must have happened to me. And these things that I feel upset about that happened in my childhood, like not getting invited to your birthday party or being yelled at by a teacher. These things don't really matter. They're invalid, right? Compared to someone else who's had it so much worse.
C: Yeah, they were almost considered negligible. But then I always say, like, whether it's, you know, an inch of water or a pool, an ant will drown either way. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't. There's no need for us to compare our trauma or experiences with various traumas and understanding that, you know, it is, it is on a spectrum. And we're all going to be affected in different ways.
A: Totally, yes. The other thing that kind of came up while you were speaking about all of this is just the ways in which we are constantly adapting over time and continuing to kind of move on and keep going despite all these different things that happen. And in some ways, it's quite miraculous that our bodies can really carry so much and take on so much over time until there's this stopping point where our body says, nope, no more, we can't do anymore now.
But it speaks to the strength of our human vessel and the strength of our character. At the same time, we're only going to be resilient if we can also downregulate, if we can also rest, if we can also recover from the things that happen. So even though our body is really capable of just waruring on. Yeah, and it's beautiful and it's amazing and like Bravo, like thank you body, right? Like it's also, there's going to come these points where, you know, even just something as simple as like burnout, you know, which might be like multiple burnouts and then a chronic illness occurs, right, in a person, right? That there's got to be this balance, this kind of give and take between, you know, how much we are allowing to accumulate.
C: Yeah, we can only, we can only allow so much dis-ease in the body before it turns into disease and sometimes something worse.
A: Right, yeah, yeah, I feel you and I've been, you know, when I was 11, I had, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I was having a bunch of different health problems, a lot of them were gut related, and I discovered at that time that I have food sensitivities. And so I've spent this whole, like, you know, 15, 20 year journey around food sensitivities. And I'm finally at the point in my life where I don't have food sensitivities anymore. And I'm really grateful for that. And then at the same time, I'm like, well, the reason that I had food sensitivities was all of, you know, these, this myriad of things that went on during that time in my childhood.
But also they, those things didn't get resolved, they kind of just continued until there was a shift in me until there was a point, you know, with the somatic work that I've been doing with learning about how my body works, and learning to listen to my body, that things really started to like improve dramatically. You know, and so as I'm listening to you talk about this, it's like, I'm feeling like you're reminding me so deeply like, yes, like, these little signals that I'm getting about my stress levels.
About, you know, and how whatever I'm eating or whatever I'm exposed to is, you know, it is affecting me. Those are all such important pieces of information, because I know that, you know, from my childhood, up until, you know, my late 20s, I was, you know, I was struggling with my health and I was struggling with my gut health and I was struggling with all these experiences that I'd gone through. And even though I've released a lot of that and like I'm amazed that I don't have like food sensitivities anymore.
I know that the potential, you know, is still there if I don't continue what I've been doing that is working. If I don't continue with the tools, you know, that I have accumulated, you know, that it's, it's like, you know, I don't want to sound like, you know, what's the word like kind of like, there's like this warning in the background but like some of that is appropriate like some of that fear of like for example with you, you know, having bacterial infections again or something. I'm sure your mind goes there at some times and it motivates you to take care. It motivates you to pay attention to what's going on, right?
C: Oh, I mean, this is the rest of my like this lifestyle is the rest of my life and I can, I can tell a difference when I'm not taking good care of myself. I'm not prioritizing myself in mind and body and in spirit. All of those, you know, where biopsychosocial spiritual beings and all of those things need to be nourished and taken care of. And the moment I noticed I'm like, oh, I've been a little bit behind on this, not taking my Epsom salt baths or I said yes to too many, too many things.
I will feel it. I will feel it. And it's a lot more dramatic than it was in the past where I would just override it like, you know, I just tell my body like, you know, I would. I would shush all my all my little warning signs and symptoms and now it's like they're very loud and clear because we have this communication going on. And so, you know, it makes me like step right back into and I'm not perfect by any means. I have days where I do not take the best care of myself or my or my body. It's just that it's yeah, it's a little bit more evident now than it than it used to be. I'll, I'll, I'll, my body will. It'll, it'll, it'll snap at me. It'll yell at me. Right.
A: Yeah, yeah. And the, the relationship I had to that for a long time was like when I would be taking really great care of myself and then I'd slip up or I would, you know, do something that wasn't an alignment. There would like, I would like over correct. You've ever done that we like, oh yeah, yourself. And like sometimes that's actually like, not helpful. Because, you know, I would do it by, I don't know, going like I've done a green smoothie cleanse or something. And then I would just be feeling over, you know, overloaded with kale or something like three days.
Yeah, it was part of actually the dysbiosis that I had. It was part of the dysfunction that I had that I did these things that I thought were going to be helpful, but we're actually an over correction that went far in the other direction. And just, it was part of, it almost felt like it was part of the same cycle. And so now what I really practice and I say practice because it's ongoing. You know, when I have an experience where I'm like, oh my God, like I really wish that I hadn't ordered that at this restaurant and then why did I eat it when I noticed that I didn't feel good while I was eating it.
Oh, I felt like social pressure to like eat or, you know, I had this fear that like, I wouldn't be able to get food some other way. And I'm like, Oh, that's not really true. You could have paused and not ate the rest of that and then gone and eat something else later, right? Like there's also little ways that we trick ourselves in the moment, right? So when something like that happens, like now I don't over correct so hard. I try not to. I practice, okay, like what's something small and gentle that I can do to help myself feel better, to comfort myself. Mm hmm.
C: I really like that so that's so true. And I think sometimes like when when I do that I try to be as compassionate as possible because we have this tendency right to then go into this dysregulated state of we will shit on ourselves. Like, I should have done this I should have done that and it's like that only that only releases cortisol and puts us into this dysregulated state. So I go in like with a compassionate lens and I'm just like, okay, why, you know, kind of like what you said you're like, I, for whatever reason, I'm like, I'm finished this because I was nervous maybe I wouldn't have food afterwards or maybe there was some social pressure my friend made the dish and I felt like I needed I needed to eat it.
And so just just being there with yourself and being compassionate will, you'll notice it will shift future situations where something like that will occur, right. But also, you know, I want to mention too right we we leave we can sometimes leave this one addictive behavior of like, go go go taking doing everything at 110% for everyone including, you know, including yourself and your job and your this and your that and then shifting into this new in this new lifestyle but I've also seen some addictive, you know, patterns happen in this, this health conscious realm, if you will where people are such purists that it takes away from the joy of taking care of yourself like, you know, doing this so many times a week or eating just this or just that like just leaving one restriction for the other and just being mindful of that you know I always say like, we're trying to leave dis ease and kind of head into joy to things that feel good and feel nourishing not restrictive like I'm eating this because it feels good in my body not because I have to because this diet tells me I have to, you know, so just keep being mindful of that as well is really important I don't know if I mean I've been there before so I knew it firsthand.
A: Oh, absolutely and low and slow is always like such a good philosophy about food in general because, you know, like we have these certain ideas about what we like to eat, right and what tastes good to us but I've found in my own experience like that is very shiftable that is those things can shift and change and evolve, but they don't do that overnight and they don't do that instantly. So like for example, like I've been on a journey for the last couple of years of reducing my sodium intake, because when I get that when I experimented with that for a couple of weeks like I noticed such a huge improvement in my skin in my energy levels all of that and so I was like okay and this makes sense to me from my own somatic experience like you know the things that I'm reading about eating too much sodium and the impact you know on my body like I can feel that that's true because I know what it's like now when my system is lowered from it, right, but that didn't change like my taste for salt, you know, at first.
So it was like okay if I go so hard into this and say just like no salt diet, is that really going to be functional or do I need to like ease myself into this slowly over time. You know, what I found is that like easing myself into it I actually prefer food without added salt now. You know, which wasn't the case, when I first started this journey. You know, but it, you know, but at the same time I'm not like so sensitive to it that if I eat something that has more sodium than I would put in it. I'm not going to go running for the hills like I'm like okay about it. So I think just like taking it slow and not forcing ourselves into a whole new way of doing something right away has been. Yeah, really, really important for me personally to do that but then at the same time with the stuff you're talking about about gluten about celiac there are these times that's going to be appropriate to draw like a hard line right.
C: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but even even so if it helps for you to sort of slowly become gluten free you know it's it's whatever it's whatever feels good to you or you know this will be a much more sustainable path. Then I'm all for it you know it's it's whatever works and is an alignment with you and that's going to again look so different for every single person.
A: Right, well and that brings me to a question actually I have about celiac is. If you have celiac and you're having all these symptoms from it. You know, and then you stay away from gluten what's the amount of time that you need to stay away from it in order to start feeling better and I mean I'm sure there's other factors here but just kind of generally from your experience.
C: Sure, I would say, like, at minimum two to three months, but I've also heard other practitioners say six months. So, each, you know, each person is going to be very different I think I noticed, I mean I noticed a difference honestly pretty, pretty quickly but within like six weeks I was you know there was like a milestone like I just looked less inflamed I didn't. I mean I was, I never broke out I was one of those lucky teenagers that didn't have acne and then all of a sudden right I had acne everywhere. And that was like one of the first things that began to really calm down.
And then three months my face looked slimmer and then a year in like people are like oh did you have you lost a ton of what I had in I had not lost actually lost weight like via the scale, but my inflammation had lowered so much that it made a noticeable difference and I look back at pictures and it's, you know, it's pretty evident I don't know if you look back at pictures like before all of this right you can just tell that you were probably a lot more inflamed.
A: Oh yes, absolutely I can, I can tell that, especially when I look back at my childhood pictures because I'd say those were the times you know childhood in my teen years were the times that I had the most dysbiosis the most inflammation in my poor little body. But there were varying times in my twenties as well that I had it from drinking too much alcohol and the toxicity that alcohol, you know has on your system and you know, can definitely see that I used to be so fascinated by it actually I would take pictures of myself like, you know after a night of like party or something and my face would be like all super puffy and I would be like oh my god like I don't even look like myself right now.
C: It's toxic I mean alcohol is by definition toxic I just I mean I it does not align with me so.
A: Yeah, I feel you I mean the few times that I've had it in the last year, like I would I'd have it and I'd immediately be like, that wasn't a good idea, because now I just feel stupid.
C: It doesn't work as well. I've never drank it and like thought oh I feel you know I feel good after after you know doing this or drinking this for you know and again everyone's different but I just it's yeah hard to imagine it's an alignment truly with anyone's body, but completely in alignment.
A: I don't know. Right, right, right. I guess that's the, you know, the idea that it, and I've talked about this before, I think on one of my first podcasts, that the idea that they call it spirits, because when you drink it, you actually sort of like fracture or splinter your energetic field of it, and it allows for other kinds of energies to come, you know, float around and hang out, right?
C: I've heard that, I've heard that before too. And I'm like, okay, so, if there wasn't another reason to not drink it, you know? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, when I was younger and I would partake, it was, I just never felt good. And just, I would end up in flame. And you'll see pictures too, people who were drinking regularly versus those who have, or now have stopped, and you see such a difference in their face. It's amazing.
A: Yeah, yeah, you know, and I know everybody's body is different, you know, in terms of how, depending on what's going on in our microbiome that we process like plant foods, but I work with that, especially with my parents who have gone plant-based in the last year, you know, and particularly like my father who was beforehand, you know, before he went plant-based, he was, he was eating chicken like every day, you know, and a lot of like animal fat every day. And the shifting that happened in his face when he just went for less and less of that and more and more plants, I felt like I noticed a noticeable difference in his face as well with that lowering of inflammation.
C: Yeah, you see that a lot. And with different types of lifestyles and diets, yeah, it's all very fascinating. But it's all, I think, you know, anyone listen, it should give you hope, that's the goal. You know, if you're going through it, you know, people make it on the other side and they feel better and they know, again, no one's perfect and healing is ongoing, but you can definitely thrive with what you have going on.
A: Absolutely, yes. I think about that a lot when, and you probably have a similar experience when I'm working with clients who, you know, I work with a lot of people who are in chronic pain, muscular tension and pain that's been going on, you know, X amount of time, 18 months, two years, 30 years, you know, of their life. And I used to live in chronic pain too. I used to have a lot of pain and tension in my body. And I feel like when I'm working with them, it's like I'm working with myself seven years ago and I'm giving myself seven years ago help, like hope, that it could be different, you know? And so that's always felt a little bit like time traveling to me.
C: I love that, yeah, totally. I love being able to say like, yeah, I had extreme chronic pain and bad surgery, like shoulder surgery. I mean, I had it multiple surgeries and to be able to tell clients like, look, I was in chronic pain, like excruciating pain. And now I don't think about my pain. Like this is possible. Remission from chronic pain is possible. And so you're serving as like an example of that, which is really important. And you get, I love that you see it as like going in and nourishing yourself at the same time as you're working with them. That's powerful.
A: Yeah, well, this idea that like the teacher and the student are one, you know, that as even as you're, you know, offering advice, sharing wisdom and encouragement and compassion at the same time that you are creating that and serving it up, it's literally filling your own body.
C: I so, I so love it. I so, so, so, so love that. And yeah, I walk away. So, and I'm sure you do too from sessions too, just learning so much about myself, them, the world and how we all relate. And yeah, they're just as much the teacher as they are the student. And yeah, it's important to cultivate that kind of energetic setting and dynamic.
A: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, we're on the same page. I wanna talk a little bit here about Lyme because you kind of mentioned it a bit before and I have been learning more about it in the last year. And I realized that it has, you said before we started recording it has like 300 different symptoms. And some of these symptoms can look like what we might describe as like mental health challenges or mental health problems.
You know, I think the first time that I heard about this was like years, few years ago, Dr. Daniel Amen. Do you know him? Just like Amen, clinics and stuff. He had, I went to one of his talks and he was talking about a girl who the family had thought she had schizophrenia and they were medicating her for schizophrenia and then he, I heard all of the different symptoms and just basically was like, you need to go get her tested for Lyme. And it turns out that she had Lyme and that she had been bitten by a tick while they were like on vacation in Canada or something like that. And it was a huge revelation because they realized like, oh my God, like we almost like, you know, gave our daughter all these antipsychotic drugs and like changed the course of her life with this label that was untrue. Yeah. Would you say a little bit about some of the effects of Lyme disease, the symptoms?
C: Yeah. So yeah, as you already brought up, it has over 300 symptoms and many of them are mental health related. So when, you know, someone comes to me and they're, you know, this, this happens. Someone will come to me and they're very, they're very confused. I'm having all these weird symptoms. Doctors can't figure out what's going on with me. It's that whole idea of like being passed around like a hot potato and they want to get to the root of it or they'll say, I just, I'm ready to accept the fact that no one's ever going to figure this out for me. And this is it. So in my practice, it is a requirement. There are two, two requirements.
One is that you do see a root cause specialist because Lyme, Lyme co-infections, Bartonella, Borrelia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, all that are, you know, passed from, from a tick. And now, you know, it's rumored that you can get them via, via mosquito or it could be sexually transmitted. So there's a lot of debate around that, but for sure they're, you know, they're transmittable through, through ticks. So there's that. There's parasites, parasites. Huge, huge issue. Almost everyone has them. The question is what kind do you have? And does your, is your immune system strong enough to keep everything in that, like in balance? Mold exposure also can, can affect our, our mental health. All of these things can affect Candida.
All of these things can affect, it's all interconnected, interwoven. And I've yet to see Lyme get diagnosed without those other ones. It's a suit. I call it a soup. Question is what's in your soup and how much of each ingredient is there? How much is it affecting you? So yeah, anyway, these Lyme, what I, what I have seen, anything from obsessive thoughts to something called Lyme and Bartonella rage, where you are, like you actually have rage, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, extremely anxiety, depression. And I've seen these all be related to, to Lyme, to the other things I mentioned and become resolved once treated.
That's the most amazing part. So yeah, you come to me because I'm a psychotherapist with these mental health concerns, I'm going to want to ensure that you are seeing a practitioner who's going to rule out that this is not being there. You know, this isn't being affected by something biochemical that I, that I wouldn't be able to test myself. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's all interconnected for sure. And if you have, I mean, if you have any weird health symptoms going on, I'm still going to recommend that you see a root cause specialist.
A: Right on. Yeah. This is very, very fascinating stuff. Cause I think we have this weird schism that's been going on maybe since Descartes or something, like this philosophical idea that our mind and our body are separate, you know, and that's just so not true. And things that are biochemical parasites, bacteria, mold, all of those things can affect our mental, emotional and basically our somatic experience in our bodies, our perceptual reality can be impacted by these things. And so I think that it's so wise that you are pairing your, your services with people who can provide that kind of information to others. Yeah.
C: And, you know, we're so lucky. We're both in Southern California. You know, we have doctors here who accept insurance. That's not always the case in, in every state to find doctors who really are true, like root cause, you know, functional medicine doctors who want to figure this out alongside you. You know, I get clients coming to me and they're like, well, this doctor says, oh yeah, though this doctor says it's all in my head and I need to see a therapist and I'm like, well, first of all, it's not in your head, it's in your brain, but that's not separate from your body.
You know, this is, this is all, this is all connected. One, one affects the other, which affects the other, which affects the other. It's super, it's super cyclical. So yeah, figuring it out one, one thing at a time. There's not, there's not one thing that's going to, just like there wasn't one thing that got you sick. There isn't one thing that's going to, you know, get you healthy. It's, it's really testing out and trying out all the different things out there and figuring out what feels good and is in alignment right now for me.
A: I love that. Yes. You know, I think about that with regards to, you know, the somatic work that I offer people is, you know, not everybody's in a place where that is the right thing at the right time. Right. There's, you know, there's other things sometimes that need to happen for them before the somatic work is going to do the thing that it's going to do. Yeah. You know, and so I really do appreciate that.
And I have been slowly building my own network of other practitioners and people who can offer those things that I'm not qualified or that I'm not specifically trained in. It's on my wheelhouse, you know, and, and really looking at, you know, helping a person to feel better. We, we have to help them address things from multiple different angles. Sometimes I mean, every once in a while, and not just every once in a while, I definitely do have people who arrive at my doorstep who are like, I'm ready for this and they really are. And it's just this missing piece in their puzzle, you know, and that's a beautiful thing. But then sometimes that's there's someone who needs some help in a different way before this fully clicks, before this is the right thing. You know.
C: Oh, I yeah, I completely understand. Yeah, I will say like one every 10 clients is like truly, truly ready to just dive in, right? They have it all. They already have their specials. They've been detoxing. They don't understand they fit this plateau. And that's the other requirement for me is neural retraining to get your body out of fight or flight. There's various programs out there. I'm like, you just pick whichever program is in alignment and you do it while we see each other just to get, to get folks out of fight or flight. Because I get to meet anyone chronic illness who isn't in fight or flight. And people forget there's another there's two other apps.
There's the freezing and there's spawning, people pleasing, overachieving, freezing, feeling debilitated, having that decision fatigue, staring at the wall, just confused on what to do next. These are these are all responses and we can go in and out of all of them. But I've found that neural retraining really gets the nervous system at a place where we can or to the, I should say the entire body into a homeostasis where we can then start doing like more somatic work, like somatic experiencing. And I do constructed awareness and EMDR, but I will not take someone there until they, their nervous system as a place where they can truly handle it, tolerate it.
Because I could potentially further dysregulate them, right? There's there as practitioners, we have to constantly decide is this, are they ready for this? You know, we're, we're their guides and we have to be very mindful of that ego removed money removed. It's like, this is, yeah, and I get that feeling from you. And it's like, I'm here like working with this, like beautiful human being. He was entrusted me to guide them. Am I making the best decision possible in their next step? Totally.
A: And I mean, I tell that to my clients right off the bat, you know, I'm, I'm here to be like hold space for you. And I'm very, very good at that. And I'm also not a psychotherapist. And so what I want, the thing that I'm trained to do with you is very specific. And I am also, like I said, a compassionate human. And so stuff comes up if there are things that come up, like I am there with you, like 100%. And at the same time, for certain clients that, you know, I have decided to take on, I've only agreed to, to work with them because they have a therapist that they're seeing simultaneous to me.
Because I know that they need deeper like integration, whether it's through talk therapy or whether it's through another somatic modality, like EFT tapping, EMDR, or maybe they just have, they need to have that ongoing dialogue with someone who is trained at talking to them in this way and interacting with them in this way. You know, and like I said, I'm, I'm a therapeutic human. Like I can be there with you as stuff comes up, you know, but my wheelhouse is really this movement based therapy and helping you to calm your nervous system.
Those are the things that I do. I'll let people know that right off the bat, just so that they're aware, you know, and obviously, like, you know, my favorite client is someone like you or like a therapist who's already done, you know, these kinds of things because they have a set of tool set, you know, they have, they have a toolkit of things that as these stored emotions come up in their bodies, that they have ways to immediately deal with them when I'm not there. Sure.
C: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think calming the nervous system is one of the best things you can possibly do for yourself because with a calm nervous system, your body can prioritize healing once again, when we're in survival mode, healing is on the back burner. Your body cannot prioritize surviving and healing at this. I always say, I always use the analogy of like your body, when you're in chronic fight or flight, you have a, your body thinks there's a tiger running after you or just walking behind you at all times. Is your body going to care about running, getting away from the tiger AK surviving or is it going to prioritize healing? Right.
Yeah. So that includes, right? Cause clients are like, Oh, I'm not absorbed. I can tell I'm not absorbing my supplements or this food or this treatment or this that or well, how, how much of that can be absorbed and prioritized when your body still thinks that tiger is there. But you working with them to, to take the tiger out of the room. I mean, healing, I've seen it happens at warp speed at that point. Yeah.
A: Yeah. And I mean, that's, you know, that is really what I feel like has made the biggest shift in me over time is that my somatic practice, the movements that I do every day, they keep toning down my nervous system from that space, that baseline that I used to exist at. And over time it's just gotten lower and lower and lower. You know, it's simultaneous to the muscle tonicity in my body, but it's also this something that's happening internally. And, and, you know, it's kind of funny because I was thinking back on something that you said earlier where we're talking about the ways in which like we can trick ourselves.
You said you were kind of trying to trick yourself into slowing down. Like, oh, I slowed down enough. I took, I took video, right? And I feel like that still goes on in me sometimes. Like that reconditioning of myself to not trick myself into thinking, oh, I did it. You know, like, for example, I can, you know, do a short 12 minute practice of my movements that will like relax my body and tone down my nervous system. But it's not the same as when I take an hour.
Oh, definitely. It's not the same. But I take an hour. It's like we can eat like a healthy meal at lunch, but it's not the same as when we eat something for every meal that is nourishing and, you know, healing to our bodies. Right. So there's these ways that's like, sometimes I feel like, oh, you know, I did my 12 minute practice and I took the edge off, but there's something deeper that needs to happen. Yeah.
C: And, and understanding it's like, what, you know, what is the block? What is the block that's keeping me from doing this? What makes me think that 12 12 minutes is sufficient compared to an hour? It's always really interesting to, to check in with ourselves and see what's, what's really going on. Totally.
A: Yes. And I mean, they're, you know, bless the 12 minute practice because sometimes when I'm more regulated, when there's not like ongoing stresses of other kinds, right? The 12 minutes is good. And it does mean, and then there are times when it's like, nope, something more is required. Right. There's, there's times when, like, you know, we're regulated in all these other ways and we can, you know, have some meals or something that are, they're heavier or like meals that are not as healthy as what we normally eat and we're fine. You know, and then there's going to be times where that just is that little thing, like you said, that like pushes us over the edge. And now we're facing, you know, feeling really fatigued or facing feeling burned out. And, and I think the real, like, beautiful thing that you've shared with us today is just how this is like this ongoing, this ongoing commitment that you make every day to yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
C: Yeah. And it's not linear. It's going to, healing's never linear. It's going to look different every single day and just being loving and compassionate with yourself and, and being proud of yourself for, for even being on this path for, for choosing this every single day. It's a, it's a huge feat. It's a huge feat to wake up in the morning, right? And then anything past that is, I always say is like an added bonus, but really choosing to nourish and take care of yourself is just, wow, like, thank you for doing that for yourself. Yeah.
A: There's a lot of nobility in it. Definitely. Beautiful. Definitely. It's such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. Where can our listeners find you if there's someone here listening who's going, oh my gosh, like she's the, the psychotherapist that I've been seeking and they want to reach out to you.
C: Oh, yeah. I'd love to connect with anyone who's interested. You can find me at beginwithin today, beginwithintoday.com. That's like my, my therapy and, and journal website, Instagram. And then I also have a gluten free health travel, health conscious publication called Buen Camino, and that's B-U-E-N-Q-A-M-I-N-O, like Buen Camino with a C, which means good, like wishing someone a good path, but the C was taken. So it's with a Q. So you can find me there, buencamino.com or at Buen Camino. Awesome.
A: Yes. Yes. I love your posts. They're always so fun and exciting for someone who's plant based and just loves plants in general, because you share a lot of different plant based ideas for food that look really fresh and exciting. You also share some pretty awesome playlists of music that each one that I've listened to.
C: Thank you. Thanks for saying that. They take me forever to make. And I started making these playlists when I was really sick and couldn't do much. Music has always been a very healing modality for me. And so I started making these playlists and I haven't stopped. They're seasonal and they just feel really, they take me forever, but they feel really good and cathartic to make. So thanks for listening. That makes me really happy.
A: I love that. I love the idea because music itself is so healing and really can shift like the energy in our bodies, the energy in our room, you know, to be able to listen to music when, you know, maybe everything else feels hard, right?
C: Amen. Amen. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want it to be just a resource page to really encourage people to choose their joy and what makes them feel good in life. Awesome.
A: Yeah. Again, for coming on the show, I'd love to check up with you again sometime. Like I kind of, then I'll put this out there as a teaser. I would love to do kind of a whole like podcast expose online with like a little panel of like people who've been through it, you know, because I love emerging topic. And it's really important that people become more aware of this issue because I think it's a lot more widespread than we realize.
C: Yes, agreed. And I cannot wait. You just tell me when and where and it's going to happen. So yeah, thank you. I mean, I was just so I hope I get to meet you in person soon and hug you. We're not far from one another. So yeah. Totally.
A: I'll come out to Joshua Tree soon.
C: Please do. Please do. All right. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome. Listening to whoever's listening. See you next week, guys.
A: You've been listening to the Free Your Soma podcast. Subscribe now to hear more stories of somatic awakening and gain knowledge and tools for somatic living. If you'd like to learn more about me, Amy Takaya, Hanosomatic Education or the Radiance Program, please visit www.freeyoursoma.com.
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