Transcript
WEBVTT
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This is the eat well think.
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Well, liftwell podcast, episode 44, Living mindfully connecting with nature, emotions and breath.
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for a stress free life with Amy Stein.
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Amy is an herbalist energy medicine, educator, and trauma informed.
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Breathwork facilitator and she is going to walk us through a lot of what her passions are and how we can implement some of these things that have truly changed her life within ourselves.
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Some of these things are going to be a little bit more.
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Um, maybe woo-woo, if you will.
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Then you typically hear on my podcast, But I think it's so great to learn from all different kinds of people and different kinds of work that's out there.
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I do a lot of the same emotion work that Amy does.
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And so we really connected on that and stay tuned for the end.
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We get into some breath work talk, and I have a little surprise for my email subscribers.
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At the end that Amy.
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Did for us a little bonus clip.
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So be sure to stay to the end and learn about that.
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All right, here we go.
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Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food.
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I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury.
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I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter.
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I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating.
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I have Amy Stein with me here today, and I'm excited for our conversation.
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I'm gonna let her introduce herself and tell us a little bit about what she does, and then we'll jump right.
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Hey, Lisa.
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I'm happy to be.
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So I live in New York and what I do is I take the power of the plants along with energy medicine techniques and trauma-informed breathwork training to connect people back to the wisdom of their body.
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All right.
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Tell me more.
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Keep going.
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So basically for me, I was brought up like the majority of people that you know when you're sick, you go to the doctor, they fix you, right?
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So ever since I was a kid, I had symptoms.
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My body was giving me messages, but I didn't know what they meant.
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So I always had headaches and stomach aches, and I always felt like really different from everybody else because I could feel things.
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That we couldn't see.
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I could understand when I didn't want to eat a certain food, or I didn't wanna wear a certain piece of clothing or be around a certain person, and I would express this to the caregivers in my life.
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And they were like, you're just being difficult.
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You're too sensitive.
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And so I didn't understand what this meant.
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Until my body forced me to understand.
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And at that point, I was a medical researcher.
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I was working at a big university here in New York with chronic pain patients, and they were geriatrics.
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And I was in my mid to late twenties and I began to resemble them.
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And I thought, what's going on here?
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Yeah, this is not, this is not working out so well for me.
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And at that point, I did not understand that the body's designed to heal.
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I didn't understand that the body's designed to keep us safe.
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We didn't understand.
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It's difficult to go against what the body deems as safe behavior, right?
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So we have this idea that we're brought up with of what it's right or wrong, of a certain way to do things, a certain way to be.
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However, a lot of times this goes against the intelligence of the body.
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It goes against the wisdom, the body.
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And so all of this I had to discover in the process of unlearning, which I'm still on, it's been about 13 years of unlearning, and that's where I joined you from.
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Great.
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Okay.
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Fascinating.
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So we're talking a little bit today about habits and making healthy decisions and gonna relate this into some of this, what our bodies are telling us.
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And we're just gonna start out talking about why it's such a struggle to make healthy decisions.
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And I think, I just see this so often with my clients because lack of information I don't really find to be the problem.
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They wanna tell me that they wanna say, well, I don't know what to do.
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I don't know, you know, I don't know what to eat.
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But when I really push'em, when I really question'em, the truth is they do know what foods feel best in their bodies.
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Most of my clients have been.
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Several, if not dozens of diets.
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They know that they feel best on, say, higher carbs or higher protein, or, you know, whatever.
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I, I feel best to eat this many times a day.
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They know what they feel best on because they've tried all the things.
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And saying, I don't know, is a way to keep us from change.
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It's a way, I think it's one of the ways that our body keeps us safe, because any kind of change and difference is deemed dangerous.
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And so, um, once we get past the, I don't know, like, and, and here's the thing too.
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If you've never been on a diet in your life, like Google's not hard to.
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Right.
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So I'm always like, lack of information is not the reason people don't make a healthy decision.
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It's something else.
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And I work a lot with the thoughts and the feelings.
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Tell us why you think it's such a struggle for people to make the decisions that they know make their bodies feel best.
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And that's kind of, maybe you can also tell us, I'm asking you a ton of questions here, but maybe you can also tell us, like, for me, when I talk about make a healthy decision, I'm talking about.
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I know what works best in my body and sometimes I don't do it.
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And I think a lot of us do know, I, I know that I, if I overeat this thing, I'm gonna feel gross.
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I'm gonna feel bad in my body.
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My pants are gonna be too tight.
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I'm gonna be bloated if I eat that dairy, like I know and I do it anyway.
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You know, this is like what my clients tell me.
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Right.
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Yeah, I can so relate to that.
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So there's a a lot of knowledge, right?
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So they call it Dr.
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Google.
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But it's not always the right knowledge for you.
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So it goes back to the, the idea of understanding how the body was designed.
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Yes, it's designed to keep us safe, but it's also designed to heal.
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The issue in our society is that there's only one right way to do it, right?
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So like everyone does this protocol, and if you didn't lose weight, that's on you.
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There's something, you didn't do something right?
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Right.
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So there's a stigma, this idea that you didn't follow the directions properly, you didn't follow the rules, you're different.
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We don't know how to help you and people don't wanna be different.
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Cuz again, it goes back to back in the day when if you were different it was bad because you could be left behind by the tribe.
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you get kicked out for if you disagree.
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Yeah, it is dangerous not to fit in to our brains.
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Yeah.
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And that's the thing is, so in our society, we live solely in the brains.
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We don't live in the body.
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And so I invite people to remind them that the brain, the mind is just part of the body and actually the real intelligence, the real intelligence is in the heart, which is where your intuition lies.
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So if you can come back, And listen to that small whisper that you've not been listening to your whole life, right?
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Because it's not real.
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You can't see it.
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So it doesn't exist, but it does exist, and it is real, and it is valid.
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If you can reconnect back to that intuition, it will guide you on the best way for you.
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So the, the mantra I always have for everybody is you get to choose what's best for you.
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I'm not gonna sit here and tell you do X, Y, and Z.
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I'm never gonna do that because we are all different.
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We all have past live experiences.
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We've all have past pain and trauma and experiences that have made us the people that we are today.
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Right?
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So this idea of understanding.
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That these belief systems, these programmings were inherited before age seven.
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So Bruce Lipton speaks about this in his book.
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And so understanding that these beliefs of what is right and wrong, of how you're supposed to look, of how you're supposed to be is are not yours.
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They were passed down to you by your society, by your culture, by your caregivers, right?
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So that's the first step, is understanding that this was not something that you chose, right?
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You did not choose this.
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You didn't choose For you to think of things in this way.
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It's a dynamic that was just in, is introduced to you by your society.
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So that's the first step of the unlearning process, right?
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Is questioning do these beliefs, these systems of living still serve me.
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So it's also a process of awareness, of being aware of how I am behaving, how I'm interacting, and is this still serve me?
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Because what also happens in childhood is, again, we were all raised by humans who.
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Not perfect, right?
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We were not raised by robots.
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So we had needs that were not always met, right?
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So we expressed a need.
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It wasn't always met in the way that the body needed it to be met.
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And so a wound forms.
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So when that wound.
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Formed the protector forms within the body to keep you safe.
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Right?
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Again, the body's designed for survival, for safety.
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So that lizard brain, that reptilian brain that they speak about, that's what that is.
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It's just for survival.
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It doesn't have logical thought processes.
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It's just like, oh my God, are we gonna die?
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Don't do that.
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Right?
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So we all have these protectors and they, they're varied.
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There's about 25 of them.
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I'm gonna just list a few so the listener can.
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So that's somebody who's gonna be the victim.
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That's somebody who's gonna be the control freak.
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We have the codependent, we have the person who is going to shame other people.
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We have the person who's gonna numb out.
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We have the addict.
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Like these are all personality aspects of us that we all have.
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There are ones that may be more predominant in others.
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Right?
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So I identify as the person who's that control freak, right?
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Like, if I can control every aspect around me, then, then I can prevent things from happening, right?
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But that's not realistic.
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I'm also that person that comic relief.
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So if I can put people's attention on what I'm saying rather.
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Chicho around me, then it's better, right?
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Because, oh, I look like I have my stuff together and I'm making everybody laugh.
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But it's an idea, again, of keeping us safe, a part of the tribe, but it actually keeps us safe in childhood, but it does not keep us safe as adults.
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It actually keeps us stuck.
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So it keeps us stuck
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Stuck.
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right.
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Creating new habits from creating more positive behaviors because the body does not understand the difference in time.
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So when these protectors formed, you know, age three, age four, age five, age six, age seven, it just thinks like, oh my God, this happened at age seven.
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It doesn't understand.
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I'm age 40 now.
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And that the same, it might not have the same direct effect.
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It just thinks, oh my God, we're at age five again.
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And it puts me right back there again.
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And this is why we react when we're triggered, we can't respond, right?
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Because we just go back into that reptilian brain of it's gotta be survival.
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We have to survive, we have to get through this event.
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And even if it's something that logically we may know after the fact, like how come I freaked out about that?
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The body doesn't understand that it's that trauma response, right?
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So trauma is a response to a stressor.
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So you and I could have the exact same stressor happen, right?
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So I form a trauma pattern in my body.
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You don't because you allow your body to process the event.
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The problem is most people in our society do not do that.
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They don't allow the body, they don't trust the body to process.
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Through the event.
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We don't take the time to feel our feelings.
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We don't take the time to stop and feel our sensations.
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So we create all this suck energy in the body, which leads to disease and illness and pain and, and feeling down on ourselves, right?
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Like, we're not enough, we're not good enough.
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Oh, it must be something wrong with me cuz this protocol didn't work.
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This diet didn't work, but it worked for 30 other people.
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I know what's wrong with me.
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So we become like this self-deprecating attitude.
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And we think that there's something wrong with us, but there isn't.
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It's just the way that your body is designed and we work against our body and our society rather than working with it because we don't understand how it works.
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Okay, so how do you get to that point of understanding?
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So you're saying understanding how it works as far as like the uniqueness of how your body say loses weight or how uh, Tell me more about not understanding how your body works.
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Right.
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So it's, it's really in a lot of different ways.
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We don't understand the way that the body works, right?
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So, again, like I said, we don't feel our feelings and we don't feel our sensations in our society.
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So maybe we choose to eat them.
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Right.
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So rather than sitting with it and, and being curious about it, we just immediately want to numb out.
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We don't wanna deal with it.
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We don't wanna feel it because we've been taught by these programs, these belief systems, that it either, it's not real, it doesn't exist, or we're too sensitive.
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Or we should not be bothered by that, or we should get over it already, right?
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Like these are all common themes.
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It's, oh, you don't have to deal with that.
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That's not real.
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That emotion isn't real, but it is because everything is energy.
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And emotions are just energy and emotion.
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And so if we had been taught from a young age to feel our feelings, rather than saying, you know, I'll give you something to cry about or don't cry over this, you know, things like that.
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We've been told all our lives, rather than saying like, what is, what is coming up around this?
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Right?
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Where do I feel it in my body?
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Where is the sensation correlating to the emotion?
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One of the other things too, when you're talking about, you know, as children, I, I know what you mean.
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Your parents say, well, I'll give you something to cry about.
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But the other thing I think that is, was really common was, um, well here's a treat.
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Here's, here's a lollipop.
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Basically.
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Here's a cookie to soothe what's happening in whether that hurt was emotional.
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I'm so sorry that that little boy hurt your feelings.
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Like, let's go get some ice cream.
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Not only were we taught or, or rather not taught about our emotions, but we learned that when we have a bad emotion, Food is the solution.
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And so I just think it is just only natural that we do that as adults.
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We've been soothing with food literally since we were babies, and of course, because.
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When we were babies, our only communication available was to cry, and then we were soothed and, and so that was the communication.
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But then that has just carried on.
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I mean, I did it too, like, no, no shade.
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We all do it.
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We all do it.
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As parents, I have four kids.
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They all got food to keep them quiet at church, they all got food to keep them happy in the airplane.
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They all got food to keep, right?
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Like, Use food to do that.
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Right.
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And
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And that's the thing, it's that conscious unawareness,
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so it's only natural that not only do we not know how to feel our feelings, but that the first go-to, to soothe the feeling is food.
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And I just think, you know, it's in Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes, where she says, here's the rub food works.
00:15:05.549 --> 00:15:05.820
It does.
00:15:06.570 --> 00:15:06.899
Right,
00:15:07.164 --> 00:15:09.764
It does, it works to soothe your feelings.
00:15:10.335 --> 00:15:14.445
So, um, we, we have to unlearn that part too, I think.
00:15:14.970 --> 00:15:15.690
Exactly.
00:15:15.779 --> 00:15:15.990
Yeah.
00:15:15.990 --> 00:15:18.690
And it's, it goes back to this idea of dissociation, right?
00:15:18.690 --> 00:15:22.279
Like we're dissociating from the body, so we're gonna try to numb out.
00:15:22.884 --> 00:15:24.554
And get the symptoms to go away, right?
00:15:24.554 --> 00:15:29.565
So whether it's a pill, whether it's food, whether it's social media, you're choosing a way to dissociate.
00:15:29.894 --> 00:15:33.284
And now there's nothing wrong with that if you're recognizing it's happening, right?
00:15:33.284 --> 00:15:34.485
Like we all need to do that.
00:15:34.904 --> 00:15:35.325
Yes,
00:15:35.340 --> 00:15:37.320
we live in a chaotic world, right?