Unleash Your Inner Power with Dr. Janny Chang
Unleash Your Inner Power with Dr. Janny Chang
Ep. #12: Our Nervous Systems and Channeling our Predator Energy
This week's episode is all about our nervous systems and trauma and how channeling our predator energy can move us towards healing and unleashing our inner power.
I draw from the book Call Of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power and Use it for Good by Kimberly Ann Johnson.
In this episode, I talk about:
- The difference between Trauma (with a capital 't") and trauma.
- Why humans and domesticated animals have traumas, but wild animals don't
- What it means to feel unsafe in our nervous systems
- How our responses to situations can be habitual trauma responses, like over-identifying with the prey versus the predator
- How to channel the predator energy
- The difference between healthy aggression/power and force/domination
- Why it's so important to get to know our nervous systems
Dr. Janny Chang 0:10
Welcome to unleash your inner power with Dr. Janny Chang, the podcast that helps women from all walks of life use thoughtworks research and storytelling to help rewire your brain and kick you out in your personal and professional life.
Dr. Janny Chang 0:28
Hi, friends. This week, this episode is all about our nervous systems. And channeling our predator energy. I dropped in the book called The Wild how we heal trauma, awaken our own power, and use it for good by Kimberly Ann Johnson.
Dr. Janny Chang 0:49
So my husband and I were browsing Netflix and Amazon Prime for movies the other night. And there were just so many movies that were so violent. And I will admit that I am pretty squeamish when it comes to blood. But aside from that, I do wonder what seeing all this violence in films does to our nervous system, as a society, because so much of our thoughts are subconscious, that we absorb this messaging from the media images around us. And this can cause our nervous systems to go haywire. And this is in addition to external events that have happened that I would categorize as trauma with a capital T like school shootings and this pandemic that we're still in. So I want to talk about trauma. Like it's a commonplace thing. And not just what happens to other people.
Dr. Janny Chang 1:47
So there's trauma with a capital T, which is like life changing incidents.
Dr. Janny Chang 1:53
And then there's trauma with a lowercase t, which is what Kimberly Johnson calls unprocessed material in our bodies that affects how we act and interact with the world around us.
Dr. Janny Chang 2:08
She also says that trauma is not just a specific event, which is how we tend to think of it, it's it's the way we process the event, how we digest it, how we metabolize it, and the residue that shows up in different ways for each of us. For some, it might manifest itself as non stop talking, or certain eye movements, or certain body postures, even the development of personality structures. It's part of being human to have trauma.
Dr. Janny Chang 2:41
Basically, we all have traumas by go and processed, and that live in our bodies.
Dr. Janny Chang 2:50
And it's primarily because of what we discussed. I talked about this in my last episode on stress. Humans and domesticated animals don't get to complete stress cycles, whereas wild animals do. And therefore don't experience trauma. I mean, this is just something that is so fascinating to me, right? The rabbit that gets hunted by Wolf, for example, or play dead
Dr. Janny Chang 3:18
collapse. This is a sign of a system shutting down, right, the wolf that might come and pick up the rabbit, shake it, predators don't necessarily want to dead prey, right, so let's convinced the rabbit is dead. it'll drop it and run off the rabbit. When it senses safety is going to perk up
Dr. Janny Chang 3:37
the jump to all fours and start to shake and shake and shake until stocks that allows the stress level to be completed.
Dr. Janny Chang 3:51
Now the thing about stress cycles, many things can interrupt them for humans? And I find that for many of my clients, who are women identified, and I've experienced workplace traumas,
Dr. Janny Chang 4:06
they tend to have freeze responses.
Dr. Janny Chang 4:11
These
Dr. Janny Chang 4:13
What is this? What does this look like freeze responses. You know, they might have had a boss that they didn't get along with or job that they were
Dr. Janny Chang 4:23
not happy about, you know, instead of allowing themselves to feel angry or sad, they suppress it and try to escape the feeling and then of course, the job. They engage in codependent behavior by allowing others like their job to dictate their sense of self worth.
Dr. Janny Chang 4:41
When you skip the sympathetic step of recognizing your anger, or sadness, or the parasympathetic response of hopelessness, then you end up either acting aggressive and domineering
Dr. Janny Chang 4:58
or on the other side of the spectrum, weak
Dr. Janny Chang 5:00
And diminished. With this sense of power, your own power that's also diminished. The response is not even something that we're consciously doing right? It's a physiological response. It's a habitual trauma response. And the responses are either good or bad, you know, we don't have to judge them. But we can be aware of what our body needs and be able to tap into what energy we need based on the situation. And by the way, the predator and prey relationship is also neither good or bad, we don't have to judge in that way. It's also on a spectrum.
Dr. Janny Chang 5:38
But if we can actually tap into these different energies, and if we are able to expand our ability to tap into these energies, then we can use them and activate them. Based on the situation that we're in, we can be flexible
Dr. Janny Chang 5:56
with what we want to channel.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:00
Excuse me. When we feel unsafe in the nervous system, we have some Nervous System responses, right? to stress Now, most people know about fight or flight, and that's in that sympathetic style.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:17
Then in the parasympathetic system, we have a freeze or collapse response, like when an animal plays dead.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:25
When we feel unsafe, another response is defined, which is when we try to be nice and be less threatening.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:32
If you're a people pleaser.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:35
This is very familiar, right? fawning is a survive survival strategy.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:42
starts off as niceness. Then it turns into appeasing and then acquiescing, it says, If I lose my sense of personal wants and desires, I'll be able to play someone else, and I can stay safe.
Dr. Janny Chang 6:55
Now for many women, or people like myself, who inhabit marginalized bodies and identities who've been told that self cares about taking baths, or doing yoga,
Dr. Janny Chang 7:07
any anything that down regulates the nervous system. Now, that might actually not lead towards healing.
Dr. Janny Chang 7:19
I've noticed for myself, that I had been in freeze mode for few years
Dr. Janny Chang 7:26
since a workplace trauma that happened over seven years ago. And I was one of those people that went into yoga and meditation
Dr. Janny Chang 7:37
and exercises that downgraded my nervous system. But really, what got me back into that healing process was during rolfing.
Dr. Janny Chang 7:49
And roll things to make familiars like really, it's it's intense bodywork,
Dr. Janny Chang 7:54
on the tissues of spasa tissues that actually connect to your nerves. And that also, along with grounding exercises, grounding exercises, is what allowed me to heal from my workplace trauma.
Dr. Janny Chang 8:14
And is very similar to what Kimberly Ann Johnson recommends in her book is reclaiming our predator energy, a predator. And so for those of us that are social justice minded, or activist minded, and tend to be on the altruistic side, it feels so counterintuitive to what we want, right? Like, if we were to watch the video of a predator hunting a prey, we might identify with prey with a prey energy, right, we tend to root for the underdog, you tend to have certain belief system, but you're a vegetarian, or you care about the planet, right? I think a lot of people do identify with, you know, the rabbit or the prey and with that energy, right. Also, I think, in a spiritual sense, a lot of the teachings that we've been conditioned to believe, you know, that there's no you or I or ego, and that we're all one amorphous being.
Dr. Janny Chang 9:22
Now, these ideas actually work against nervous system repair, because for you to be grounded in your body and to then reclaim that predator energy. You need to feel that sense of separation first in that body, you know, and then you come back and into this collective right and we talked about that
Dr. Janny Chang 9:44
before with the polyvagal theory, totally geeking out here.
Dr. Janny Chang 9:49
But is that you know, we can co regulate with other people, right? And that's where community and the collective is so important. But aside from that, we still I mean,
Dr. Janny Chang 10:00
Surely we do need to feel the sense of boundaries within the bodies in which we inhabit, right. And so when we've been socialized to believe there is no i or like, I am not as important as other people, or if you're empathetic and or highly sensitive by would be highly sensitive could also be a response to trauma, as opposed to something that we tend to think is just a personality trait, right.
Dr. Janny Chang 10:30
But we've been socialized to always be on the side of the prey and channel that energy, well, then we really have to unpack that and challenge that. Because it could be based on a trauma in the past, it could be response to trauma,
Dr. Janny Chang 10:50
it could also be a response to social conditioning, right. And so being in our bodies to be more aware, actually will help us identify like why it is that we tend to over identify with the prey, and then learn to channel the predator energy, because that's what keeps it balanced. It's like the Yin Yang.
Dr. Janny Chang 11:14
You know, in Taoist philosophy, you know, where they balance each other out, right. And same with like, the 5050, concept and coaching, right? Like, there was no like, 50% of times positive 50% of time, it's negative, they go together.
Dr. Janny Chang 11:31
And in fact, it's that 50% of the time, that's negative, that actually helps you enjoy the 50% of positive, more. So similarly, the prey and predator relationship are interdependent. And they go together.
Dr. Janny Chang 11:47
Okay, and so we're when we're able to channel either of those energies, and being aware of when we need to do that our bodies tell us that our body has a certain intelligence that will tell us that. And it's not just some sort of habitual trauma response, then it'll help us heal.
Dr. Janny Chang 12:16
Excuse me, I have a
Dr. Janny Chang 12:18
cough going on here.
Dr. Janny Chang 12:21
But so, I think that this is really interesting to talk about, and I'd love to hear from you listeners, my friend, my friends, you know, email me about this, I really, I, this is something that I care passionately about, is when I talked, you know, previously in episodes about cymatics work, and also combined with thought work as well.
Dr. Janny Chang 12:44
But, you know, so much of this cognitive behavioral therapy, and a lot of these Western based,
Dr. Janny Chang 12:54
you know, interventions, and as effective as they are, tend to be focused on the mind, like affirmations and thinking your way out of something. But when that's not working, I think that it's very important to have this toolbox and recognize like, I mean, even just to call it Mind, Body connection presupposes that they're separate. But actually, it's like, they're so connected, you know. And so it's important to also just be aware of the way that our bodies work physiologically, and also our nervous system, right? Like, imagine a world that's just
Dr. Janny Chang 13:33
arranged and designed around
Dr. Janny Chang 13:37
nervous systems, you know, can you imagine, right, like, I watched this talk recently about this. And it's like, what if it's like parks and urban layouts were designed,
Dr. Janny Chang 13:49
based on people's nervous systems, you know, like, what made them feel safe, right? Like, it would totally just change the layout of things like where, you know, certain centers are located and where certain parks are and how the traffic should flow. Right, because so much of I think our daily lives does trigger the sympathetic part of the nervous system, which that fight or flight, you know, as we're seeing here, that's not always bad, right? Because like, you do want to channel that when you channel the predator energy, you are essentially channeling that sympathetic or activating the sympathetic response, right? For those people who are tend to be dominant in the parasympathetic sense. They want it's good. The balance to that is to actually activate the sympathetic response. Right? But, you know, it's a balance
Dr. Janny Chang 14:46
issue, right? Because if you do that too much, obviously, with our modern world with, you know, being in traffic, or having stressful jobs or stressful lives and all these concerns, and that sympathetic
Dr. Janny Chang 15:00
activation then goes into overdrive, right? And then we're not able to complete stress cycles, and then that becomes chronic stress, right? So it's really about a balance now at the workplace.
Dr. Janny Chang 15:14
You know, establishing healthy aggression is, is so important, right? And so
Dr. Janny Chang 15:23
when we talk about channeling predator energy, and in this case, Kimberly Ann Johnson talks about channeling the Jaguar is in Brazil was like the Jaguar had this, like, very powerful, symbolic aspect to it, right? And so when we talk about that chalean, Petr energy, it's not about being just aggressive, okay, or dominating. Okay. And so one of the issues that I see in the professional world is that for women, you know, first you're judged differently than men, if you're not seen as likable and personable, that's one thing to consider. Second, this is something that you often see in the academic world, the corporate world is that for women in previous generations, who had to go through a lot to get tenured, and fight all these battles, and just carve their place in academia, and in the in, you know, C suite,
Dr. Janny Chang 16:19
they have to emulate masculine leadership styles. And what I mean is that I think so many of them were forced to suppress, and sometimes hide showing emotions are take on a style that's just aggressive and masculine in order to be taken seriously, because that's what they saw in their leaders and mentors around them, that that's what it took to succeed in their profession. And that, again, also could be considered a response to trauma, you know, it is not conscious, right? And it certainly may have been out of alignment with what their body really needed. We live in a culture in the US where power is seen and examples of colonialism and imperialism and dehumanizing people, right? for profit. And so that just is conquering and dominating into humanizing we don't even know, I think, for many people what healthy power looks like, right? And that's so true as well, for women in the workplace, who are climbing the ladder, we're occupying leadership positions, we think, you know, it's about hiring and firing people or using force force to get people to do what you want.
Dr. Janny Chang 17:39
But it doesn't really have to be that way. Right? I mean, if we are to
Dr. Janny Chang 17:45
be more attuned to our nervous systems, and individually and collectively, then what would that look like? What would leadership look like? Whether it's woman or man or non binary? Right? What would that look like if we cared about our own nervous system, and the people that were working with their nervous systems?
Dr. Janny Chang 18:11
Because in the workplace, there's nothing more powerful
Dr. Janny Chang 18:16
than listening and mentoring with purpose. And being a strategic, yet ferocious ally. Right? It's not about becoming an alpha female.
Dr. Janny Chang 18:28
Right? It's not about becoming an alpha female, because that's just overcompensating right?
Dr. Janny Chang 18:36
And that's not grounded
Dr. Janny Chang 18:39
and rooted and based in in what your body really needs, right? When we activate our predator energy in a healthy fight response,
Dr. Janny Chang 18:53
we're able to then fully relax, parasympathetic, parasympathetic Lee, excuse me for safety.
Dr. Janny Chang 19:02
Now, how do we channel our predator energy?
Dr. Janny Chang 19:08
Literally,
Dr. Janny Chang 19:10
you know, and I've done this and it's so liberating and powerful, is, you know, it's recommended by Kimberly is to mimic the motions and sounds of the predator of your choice. In this case, like I channel the Jaguar.
Dr. Janny Chang 19:29
You know, it's channeling that energy of healthy aggression. You get on all fours. You mimic the motors and motions of a Jaguar, it's in pursuit. You can make the sounds a full roar, you know, and also the book talks about rooby Roo certain sounds. Really just add energy. And that activates the sympathetic part of you.
Dr. Janny Chang 19:58
Like Whoo, right?
Dr. Janny Chang 20:00
This also
Dr. Janny Chang 20:03
helps those who tend to be
Dr. Janny Chang 20:07
you know, I think we talked about this like force, parasympathetic, dominant, right? You show your things as a binding motion, right? You add the client of your hands, you feel that energy move through you.
Dr. Janny Chang 20:21
There might be even some exercises
Dr. Janny Chang 20:25
to do. And I think she talks about this, like wrestling, someone, you know, and in a very
Dr. Janny Chang 20:33
purposeful way, right? So that these are all ways that we can channel the predator energy is getting on all fours really becoming that predator, mimicking the motions and the sounds.
Dr. Janny Chang 20:48
I've done it. And I mean, it just charged, it brings fire, you feel the fire in your belly, there's also breath work as well, that does that and brings a fire in your belly. And if you know that kind of breath work, by all means, like, that's one of the most effective ways of doing that. And activating that sympathetic response, if you tend to be parasympathetic, dominant, right? That is, you tend to be just like,
Dr. Janny Chang 21:16
more calm, right? But you need to channel that fire, okay? part of our journey as a human is to get to know our nervous systems and feeling at home with our bodies.
Dr. Janny Chang 21:27
We can feel how it feels to inhabit our body, no, notice how much space you're taking, or not taking. These are all grounding exercises that bring you closer to awareness of your nervous system.
Dr. Janny Chang 21:43
You know, if you tend to be parasympathetic dominant, then during meditation retreats, or even more yoga may actually be more disconnecting than healing, it won't balance your energies out, you know, it's also so this is also about just getting to know you, your nervous system, your thoughts and feelings, all of that. Right? Like where do you tend to fall parasympathetic, sympathetic? or certain situations that you want to work on? And how can you balance that out?
Dr. Janny Chang 22:16
How can you channel another space, in which you perhaps you're not really used to, right. And like, I, the other day, I was watching, you know, wrestling, you know, on TV, and I thought, wow, all that, you know, and it's, it's almost like a dance in some ways. But I was like, that's a whole space that I'm not very aware of, but, you know, I can find ways to actually channel some of those movements, and the grunts, you know, in my, my daily practice, right, and that actually can also lend itself to other areas of your life. So when you get that fire in your belly, and you channel that, and you Reclaim Your power, it can, you know, it bleeds into other areas of your life, like your, your work, you can go and ask for a promotion or for a raise, but be grounded in it. So it's not, you know, you don't feel like you're disconnected from this mission, it feels very purposeful, and like you're in your body and you're present, right? Or it could be you know, in a relationship that you're in, where you are expressing your needs, you know, your sexual needs, right? The book actually talks a lot about that. But
Dr. Janny Chang 23:32
this channeling that predator energy helps with that in all areas of your life, right.
Dr. Janny Chang 23:42
It's getting to know your nervous system, getting to know where you tend to lie, can you to know what energies to channel to complement that. And then doing the exercises that will help you and cultivate greater self compassion and love. That self compassion piece is always so important in all of my coaching all my work, and here as well, right. So always be self compassionate and loving, even as we pendula ate into the predator space. And we learn to greater advocate for ourselves, and step into our own power.
Dr. Janny Chang 24:22
That is the kind of coaching I do, and this is why I'm here. It's truly my life's purpose. It is to coach women, and especially all women from all walks of life, feel good about themselves, right and step into the power that's already there. And that does involve
Dr. Janny Chang 24:44
somatic work, which is what we talked about here channeling that predator energy, getting into our bodies, recognizing when we feel safe, and when we don't, and, of course, our thoughts and feelings and being aware of that.
Dr. Janny Chang 25:00
Both are so crucial. And I also use other methods as well based on the client and I customize it. But I want to work with you, I want to hear from you. I want to hear your story. So reach out to me, email me at Janny Chang one@gmail.com. Let me know. Give me feedback on on this podcast and what's serving you and what's not. And I mean, I enjoy every step of this like from the researching to the writing to the applying to the practicing. I love coaching and all its aspects and I love also being an entrepreneur that's also a life coach. It's what I do. So, reach out to me and let's get connected my friend.