Somatic Experiencing, Chronic Illness, And The Body’s Hidden Stories with Dr Erin Hayford

What if your symptoms are not random, but messages your body has been trying to deliver for years? We sit down with Dr Erin Hayford — naturopathic doctor and somatic experiencing practitioner — to explore how the nervous system stores unfinished stress and how tuning into sensation, imagery, and emotion can unlock real change. Instead of chasing every flare-up with a new fix, Erin shows how to listen for the belief or memory beneath the pain so the body can finally stand down from survival mode.

Erin breaks down somatic experiencing in simple terms: ground, scan, describe the sensation precisely, then follow what arises. That shift from labels to felt detail turns down the analytical mind and invites deeper signals to surface. We talk about hip pain that vanished after recognising an old shock, why fight or flight blocks repair, and how recurrence often signals the story is still running even when the symptom was removed. Erin’s own path from Crohn’s disease to symptom-free living adds hard-won depth, showing how nutrition and herbs helped until mind-body work revealed the root.

We also explore her “Sacred Illness” framework and community, a space that treats diagnosis as a doorway to meaning rather than a dead end. It is not anti-medicine; it is a both-and approach that honours treatment while uncovering why the body learned to protect in the first place. Practical takeaways include a future-vision practice: imagine your best life and notice the objections that arise, because those objections often point to what needs care next. By reframing illness as communication, we trade helplessness for agency and build a kinder relationship with the body.

If this conversation sparks something, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help more people find it. Your story could be the next one to turn pain into purpose.

Dr Erin Hayford

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Chapters

• 4:58 Introducing Dr Erin Hazer
• 5:38 What Somatic Experiencing Actually Is
• 7:48 A Personal Story Of Pain And Release
• 9:58 How The Body Speaks In Sensations
• 13:18 Survival States And Healing Blocks
• 17:13 Integrating Medicine With Inner Work
• 19:33 Recurrence As A Signal To Go Deeper
• 21:33 Erin’s Journey From Crohn’s To Clarity
• 25:43 The Sacred Illness Framework
• 28:53 Community, Purpose, And Self Inquiry
• 31:33 Reframing Diagnosis Without Dismissing Fear

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:30

Welcome everybody to another episode of Armand to the Soul. I'm your host, Mr. She and I'm a lawyer, I'm an energy therapist, I'm an author, and of course podcaster. And today we've got another new guest, Dr. Erin Hazer. So welcome, Erin. Thank you so much for coming on and supporting the podcast.

Speaker: 2:50

Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here today.

Speaker 1: 2:53

I'm really excited to talk to you because I find this subject just fascinating. So you are a neuropathic doctor and a somatic experiencing practitioner. Before we go any further, just explain what a somatic experience practitioner is.

Speaker: 3:10

Yes, great question. Yeah, I think there's so many things today that are referred to as somatic. So somatic experiencing is a specific um, I guess, version of somatic work. It's something that was coined by Peter Levine. If you you or your listeners are familiar with him, um, he wrote a really, really amazing book called Waking the Tiger. Um, so somatic experiencing is a therapy, it's a mind-body therapy that helps people connect with their body and understand essentially how trauma is stored in the body. And so it's connecting. My specific lens is on chronic illness. So my the way I use somatic experiencing is helping people understand how trauma is stored in the body that uh is creating chronic illness or symptoms. And so, yeah, it's it's a it's a it's not quite therapy and it's not quite like hypnosis or something, but it's sort of a combination of the two where you're you're going in and you're connecting with the body and you're having a conversation essentially with your body to understand what it's holding and you know, things that you might not be able to uncover otherwise because the body holds things that are subconscious and not always, you know, super aware things we're super aware of or things that are super obvious. So it's a really fascinating modality to get really into the core of what's driving a lot of our symptoms or the way we feel on a daily basis, etc. So that's the sort of the the nitty-gritty of what it is, right?

Speaker 1: 4:33

So so in the body we can store emotions and you know um life experiences and uh childhood traumas and that sort of thing, can't we? That's that's what we're looking for, basically. Exactly. Yeah, and have and the symptoms that they create. This really resonates with me because I'll tell you a little story, but uh I suffered from hip pain for about 10 years. I've always put it down to having three kids, you know, and all their ligaments being stretched and all the rest of it. But it would come and go, which was a strange thing. And often at night, which I think when you relax, maybe. But but I I did a lot of work on it and I got sort of removed layers, I think, and then it came back with a vengeance. But I went to see an intuitive healer, and she said I was holding shock in my head from when I was a toddler. And then she started describing something, and I knew instantly what she was referring to. Wow, afterwards, and I have had no pain since. And I thought that was just massive for me. And it might be psychosomatic, it might be just suggestive, but when you when you've got daily pain and it suddenly goes, it doesn't really matter what it is, does it? It doesn't because it feels so much better. So it really resonated with um the things you were talking about because I've experienced that. So it can be something like that, can't it? That we don't even know, we don't even think about. I mean, I've not thought about that for years and years and years.

Speaker: 6:18

Exactly. Yeah, and that's it that's why somatic work is so fascinating because yeah, we could maybe relate it to, oh, you know, there was that incident a month ago or a year ago, or you know, having babies, whatever that could be. And so that in our mind that makes sense. But when we go to treat it, you know, nothing works, nothing works, nothing works. And that's where somatic work is really helpful because it gets into, well, yes, technically, maybe having babies is what flared it up, but it it's more like it woke something up in your system from back then. And so that's somatic work is getting into those memories and those things that are stored in our body that yeah, we would never core, you would never correlate that unless you know you had that kind of conversation. And and then that's the core, you know, you get into that, and then like you said, that's where the symptom can actually let go because you're actually addressing the reason it's there in the first place.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Yeah. So so you sort of you help the clients um talk to their body, really, don't you, to to sort of get those nuggets of information that makes sense. Yes. So how did how do they do that? Do they do it in a meditative state? Or how how do you how do you sort of investigate that?

Speaker: 7:34

Yeah, so yeah, exactly what you said. It's sort of guiding them into a meditative state, um, getting them into their body. So often I'll, you know, we'll do some grounding and like a body scan type stuff, just trying to switch the perspective from the outside cognitive thinking, logical brain into, you know, how's your body feeling? What are you noticing? Like really getting into the body and just being with the body. And once we get into that deeper inner state, deeper connection with our inner world and what's going on, then I facilitate basically a conversation, like as though you were talking to a person. So, you know, for example, if I was working with you in your hip pain, it would say I would say, okay, let's go to the area where you're feeling the pain. Describe that to me. How, you know, how big is that sensation? Where is it taking up space in your body? Uh, how does it feel? Is it heavy? Is it throbbing? Is it burning? You know, like we get really into the details of how that sensation feels in the body. And something about switching our mind from thinking of it in this, just these like concrete logical terms of like, oh, it's hip pain. And instead being like it's a heavy metal ball, you know, that's sitting in this spot in my like it just it turns off that logical brain and gets us more into the body, into like this more somatic, uh, subconscious way of being in relationship with it. And from there we start asking questions like, you know, is there anything? Um usually when we're sitting with the sensation in that way, things start to come up for the person. So like a memory might come up or an emotion might come up, or um, even just an image might come up. And so we start to track that. Okay, what does that remind you of, or what is that memory, or what is the emotion? And we just start to follow basically the body's cues. And it's fascinating because, you know, even people who are not like seasoned meditators or who have never done this work before, it's like the body, I've never worked with someone where the body didn't talk to us and didn't give us something. So it's like a language that we're all able to speak, so to speak. Um, it's just a matter of learning how to switch into that space and remember how to communicate in that way. Um, so yeah, so we start getting those sort of signals from the body. And then we just, yeah, like I said, kind of follow the whatever comes up. And often it will get us to some sort of uh belief or like limiting belief or some story or some memory or something that our that our system is holding on to. And then the work is to essentially begin to rewrite that or rewire it, you know. So if it's like I'm unsafe or this means I'm not enough, or I'm bad, or you know, whatever the story is that we took away from the event, we start to help the body let it go. And that's how it can start to release the symptom as a result. It must be fascinating because I bet every session is completely different, isn't it? Yeah, even with the same person. Yeah, never, no, never. I think and that's why I think of myself just as like a guide. Like I'm just facilitating because I don't I don't have any idea. There's no way I could. I think there's a lot of somatic people or books or things that say, you know, this symptom equals this, you know, you're you're storing this in your body because this is how it manifests, and that's I haven't found that to be true. You know, there's there's certainly similarities between similar illnesses, but yeah, everyone is unique. So there's no way to know until you do it yourself.

Speaker 1: 11:01

And um, can you can you can it be that somebody is stuck in that fight and flight sort of sensation? And could can that cause, you know, flare-up of symptoms and physical issues?

Speaker: 11:15

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's that's sort of the for everyone across the board, I think whatever your body is holding, it's keeping your nervous system in a state of survival to some extent. So it's in that fight or flight to some extent because of what the body is holding. Because typically, you know, the body the if the body's holding on to good memories, that's not going to create issues, you know, generally speaking. Like, so if it's holding on to a scary memory or a traumatic memory, though, that's essentially continuously telling the body you're not safe to some degree, which is generally keeping you in some state of activation, fight or flight, which is, you know, the block to your body healing, because we can't heal when we're in that state. So, yes, fight, it's it's sort of like working it backwards, like, okay, your body can't heal. What's blocking its healing capacity? You're in some sort of survival state. What's causing that? So we like walk it backwards to that specific story.

Speaker 1: 12:08

And do you uh do you your clients have every illness going, you know, from very serious to like a an icky joint like me? Yep, exactly. Yes, process.

Speaker: 12:23

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 12:24

All illness is you know, we need to talk to our bodies more rather than just rush out and um not that I'm disrespecting traditional medicine at all because it's part of you know the whole, isn't it? Um any illness you know, we need to talk to our bodies more, don't we? We need to it's a completely different perspective, isn't it? Rather than looking out, who can help? You're looking in. How can you know what what's my body trying to tell me?

Speaker: 13:54

Exactly. Yeah, it's a communication. And yeah, exactly what you said. I I'm not about saying, you know, it's all or nothing, like either you all do though, do all this or do all that, because certainly pretty much everyone I work with is engaged in both worlds, you know, like even down to some people getting major surgeries or taking tons, you know, not tons, but medications for their illness, whatever it is, right? But it's that both and where sometimes we need those things to have a semblance of a quality of life or to survive, you know. In some cases, things have to be removed in order for us to survive. Um, so it's not about not doing those things, but it's also about adding this layer in because if we're, yeah, if we're not having that communication with our body, if we're just focused on the external thing coming in and fixing it, we're missing the root of why it's there in the first place. And yeah, I think that's, you know, it's very clear to me. I, for example, I'm working with someone who had cancer several years ago and had the surgery, removed the cancer, for all intents and purposes, it was cured, you know, from that perspective. But now she's back with me now, working with me because the cancer has come back. And I think oftentimes when we see recurrence of things, that's a very clear signal of you technically get the physical manifestation out of your body, but the story is still there. And so at some point it's going to come back and talk to us. Not always, but you know, if it's important, I think that's my message is that illness is uh it's an it's an important communication. It's trying to get our attention and saying your body is holding something that is not sustainable and it's not conducive with life, you know, like the life you could be living and are here to live, essentially. So tune in and figure this out. And you know, it's actually a yeah, like you said, it's a paradigm shift because it's saying illness is actually the gateway to a better life, not the thing in the way of a better life. And yeah, that's a hard pill to swallow for some folks because it's a very different message from what we typically receive.

Speaker 1: 15:50

Yeah, absolutely. Um and I I was reading somewhere that you um you sort of got into this because of your own health issues in your 20s. Yes. Yeah. So um what so just tell us about that? How did that all come about?

Speaker: 16:08

Yeah, so I was, I had always been sort of um struggling with GI, like stomach issues, stomach pain, stomach aches my whole life, and you know, my younger life. And then when I got into my 20s, it really ramped up in intensity to eventually to the point where I got diagnosed with something called Crohn's disease, which is an autoimmune condition where essentially my immune system was attacking my gut. Um, it was it was awful. I was in, you know, I was very young, but I was in so much pain and I couldn't keep any food in. Everything just went through me. I was super anemic, super weak. So, you know, while everyone is in college and, you know, living their best young 20 life, I was at home living with my parents and like getting colonoscopies and doing all these things that you just don't think you're ever gonna have to do at 20. Um, and I don't know, you know, I always say that I don't know why, because my upbringing, I I wasn't exposed to alternative anything. You know, we were, we just went to the doctor, we did the conventional medicine thing. That was our, that was just our world. Um, but for some reason, I when I got sick like that, I just in my head, I was like, this is not my story. I'm this is not gonna be my trajectory. Um, because they had told me, you know, you're basically gonna be on medication for the rest of your life. Eventually you're probably gonna have to have surgery and have like a bowel reconstructive surgery and, you know, all these like really scary things to hear when you're 20 years old. And so yeah, I mean, maybe that was it. It was just like so scary. I was like, I this can't be real. I'm not accepting that. But that's what put me on the journey to figuring out what else could I do. So I kind of started in a more conventional way, studying nutrition and studying herbs and things like that. Um, but that's what led me all the way to where I am now. Cause I just kept being like, what's the next layer? What's the next layer? What's the next layer? You know, all these things I was studying were helping, like nutrition help, taking herbal medicine helped, et cetera. But nothing got me into that like root of what really is causing this. Why is my immune system really attacking my body? Because that doesn't make any sense. Um, so it was when I started doing this mind body work that I do now that I uncovered, you know, what my body was holding and why it was doing what it was doing. And that's what got me to where I am now, which is symptom-free. Like I don't, I don't consider myself someone who has Crohn's anymore because I don't have any of the symptoms. I don't have to do anything to manage it. So that's yeah, that was my journey to this, basically.

Speaker 1: 18:29

That's amazing. That's really amazing. And really helpful for somebody who's struggling, actually. Yes, there are alternatives, there are different perspectives. So I think you just have to try, don't you? Absolutely, yes. So you also have a program, don't you, called Sacred Illness. And that's and that's basically what we've just been talking about. Um and uh, you know, illness is is rather than just say sacred, but illness is uh is is is a way of us sort of um shifting. Shifting slightly and and you know changing stuff for the better, isn't it? It's uh it's uh a prompt and a gateway, really. That's how we need to look at it.

Speaker: 19:17

Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's that's my I guess my sort of mission or my my what I'm teaching. And yeah, it's called sacred illness, which obviously in and of itself is sort of evocative and you know makes people kind of raise their eyebrows of, you know, like what how could that be? How can those words be together? Essentially, which people had actually asked me. Um, yeah, but I think about my own journey and how if I hadn't gotten sick, you know, first of all, I wouldn't be doing anything that I'm doing today, but I also would just be living a life that wasn't mine. You know, I think about who I was and how I was prior to getting sick. I was like a chronic people pleaser. I was just so much in that world of like, who do I need to be to make you happy? And how do I show up in the world to be what you need me to be? And I just wasn't living my own life. I was kind of just copying what people around me were doing. And so it was, it wasn't until I got sick that it was this like profound wake-up call of, you know, this isn't you, this isn't your life. You're not living your life. Um, and so my yeah, so sacred, I have a sacred illness community, and it's that's sort of the paradigm that I'm teaching folks. And I what I essentially did was just write out, you know, what were the steps that I took? How did I heal my body? What did I have to learn? What did I have to face? What did I have to overcome? You know, all of those things. And like it goes everywhere from like the the science of like the nervous system and fight flight freeze and trauma and all of those things into, you know, if you want to call it more like the woo of like my purpose in life, you know, like why I got sick and why this this had to happen. So my community has a course that essentially maps that journey out. And so now folks can walk that journey through the community and have, yeah, kind of uncover their own purpose through their illness. So that's the that's the goal and the mission through that space.

Speaker 1: 21:01

So is it your community are people who are all looking at certain symptoms and it's not a sort of training program to to help. It's just sort of um helping people who are trying to understand what their body's trying to tell them.

Speaker: 21:18

Exactly. Yes, yeah. And it's a self-paced environment. I also offer, you know, one-on-one work with people who want that more intimate guidance. Um, so the community is, yeah, there's you know, people from all walks of life and all different illnesses and all different symptoms who are there trying to uncover that message of what is my my sort of like phrase is who is your illness inviting you to become? So they're in there trying to answer that question and yeah, figure out what what it's guiding them toward.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Actually, it becomes very I mean, obviously it's not pleasant, but it becomes much less scary when you term it in that way, don't you? And I think I mean finding out that you've got you know, like cancer must be a trauma in itself. A shock and all of that's going to affect everything, isn't it? It's a real it's a real sort of um labyrinth that you've got to sort of navigate, isn't it? It's the same, presumably.

Speaker: 22:19

Exactly. Yes, yeah, it is. And I that's you know, it is it's a delicate line to walk because I never want to dismiss the seriousness of a diagnosis or how scary or life-changing for the worse it can feel to folks. Because certainly for me, like, you know, if I I don't know how I would have felt if I like heard what I was teaching back then because I was I was terrified and I was angry and you know, I felt like my life was over. And um, so I I always try to present this as a space of you know, validating, like, yes, this is scary, and I would never wish this on anyone, and I'm so sorry you're going through this. And and like it's not all that we make it out to be. It's not this death sentence, it's not an end to life, you know, there's there's such an interesting and different way that we can look at it. So it's yeah, it's trying to hold those that both and of it's challenging and scary, and there's this different path that we can walk together.

Speaker 1: 23:10

Yeah. So it can change your life for the better, really. And that's a great message, isn't it? Yes, yeah. It's just a bit that you have to navigate in between in between can be hard. Yes. And you also have a podcast, don't you, where you Because I've listened to a few of fascinating. It's lovely hearing people's stories and how they've navigated it. Very interesting.

Speaker: 23:34

Yeah, it's fascinating on the podcast too how everyone walks a different journey. But there are, I mean, and this is basically why I mapped out this course in my community, because I saw that we all sort of walk a similar path. You know, we come across the same challenges and the same mindset shifts we have to make. And, you know, so even though every person I interview on my podcast has a different journey from when they got sick to where they are now, they there's a similar sort of arc and trajectory. Um, and kind of what you just said, like I was I was actually just editing an episode before I came onto your show today, um, where I was talking to my guest and she said her illness changed her life for the better. And that's something that I would say like 90% of my guests say, you know, whether outright say it or through what they learned, you know, demonstrate that if it wasn't for their illness, they would not be who they are, or you know, just their life changes in all these ways that it could not have and would not have had they not gotten sick. And so yeah, it really is a perspective change. You know, it's all about how we are in relationship with it and how we see it. Because yeah, obviously if we're in that space of it's ruining my life and it's the worst thing ever, you know, that keeps us stuck in a certain place. And again, I don't, I don't under, you know, I understand that, of course. I understand why people feel that way. Um, but it means that we're missing out on what it could be opening for us otherwise.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Yeah. And when you're stuck in that, you're also you're relying on people outside of yourself on you to find the answer, to cure you, whereas actually it's all about what we need to do.

Speaker: 25:11

Yes.

Speaker 1: 25:11

Yeah.

Speaker: 25:12

And interestingly, I feel like illness often will push us. It's yeah, it's this kind of like cruel love that illness does because it seems to push us to a place where nothing's helping, no one's helping. You know, we get to a place of almost hopelessness. And what I again try to change the paradigm on that is it's because it's trying to get you to do exactly what you just said, to turn into ourselves. It's trying to say nothing out here ultimately is going to be the thing that cures you. It will help you feel better. It might prolong your life, it might lessen your symptoms. But, you know, again, all these doors are closing outside because it's trying to get us to go inside. And again, that's something that like is is a resounding thing with all my guests where they are just like, I tried this and I tried this, and like nothing was helping. All these people were, you know, like getting me so far, but not all the way. And ultimately they had to say, okay, I guess I have to be the one to walk this journey to get myself across that finish line. So yeah, I think it's all the things that we sort of characterize as bad and evil or, you know, whatever it is about illness is actually the, you know, if you want to call it blessing in disguise. We just have to understand why and how it's trying to change our lives for the better in that way.

Speaker 1: 26:23

And it's really empowering, presumably, you know, once they find that solution or you know, they start to feel better by the work they've done, that's that's really empowering for them.

Speaker: 26:36

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1: 26:38

Yeah, lovely. Thank you ever so much. It's fascinating um to listen and just to to see that very, very different um perspective. Um very, very interesting. So just one last question that I often ask my guests. Is there something that you do on a regular basis? That's something spiritual that you do on a regular basis that um sort of helps you stay balance-centered.

Speaker: 27:08

Yeah, yeah, I love that question. Yeah, I so I I think a big part of the work that I do for myself and what I do with my my folks inside the community and my one-on-one people is uh I mean, and this is sort of I think a more widely accepted thing now. I think Joe Dispenza made it very popular too, just this envisioning the person you want to become. You know, it's sort of that future focused of like, who am I when I'm living my best life? And so there, I, you know, every like new year, I'm always doing this sort of visioning practice of, okay, who am I going to become this year? Like, what is what is the next chapter of my life look like? And I do this inside my community with people when it's, you know, when I ask them if you are living your best life, are you if you're embodying your full self, if you have the health and the things that you really truly desire in this lifetime, like what does that look like? Who is that person? How does that feel to be that person? And oftentimes what happens is in response to that vision, all of the things that our body is holding start to come up in response of, well, you're not good enough for that, or that's not safe, or you're just gonna fail, or you're not worthy of, you know, whatever those stories are. So that can sometimes actually be the door to understanding like some of what your body is holding, because if our body wasn't holding those things, we would already be that person. And so that's my way of kind of continually helping my own body and my own life continue to heal and evolve and move in the direction of like purple, you know, aligning with who I really am and what I'm here, my purpose. So it's uh kind of a constant like, where am I where am I wanting to be? And I'm not yet there. And so you know that's sort of my practice of continuing to move myself forward. I love that. That's really lovely.

Speaker 1: 28:54

I did actually sign up for a course um recently, and then I had a sleeper this night because I literally panicked and thought, I don't think I can do this. Yeah, yep, yes, maybe I need to delve into that a bit deeper. Yes. Brilliant, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and supporting Barnta. So it's been so glad to talk to you. Absolutely. Put all your details up under your episode so that if anybody wants to contact you, um, they can do so. So thank you.

Speaker: 29:27

Yeah, thank you for having me. I I love this, obviously love this topic and could talk about it all day long. And I just always appreciate any opportunity to reach new ears with this because again, it's it is such a different message. So I appreciate you inviting me on here to share this with your audience today. Oh no, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Thank you very much. So if you've enjoyed um listening to Erin and me, um please like and share. You can also subscribe to the podcast and you um can become a supporter. And um