How We Can Heal

Global High-Intensity Activation, Rhythmicity & Healing with Mahshid Hager

• Lisa Danylchuk • Season 6 • Episode 10

Share episode

When slowing down feels dangerous, your body might be living in Global High-Intensity Activation(GHIA): always on, always braced, always moving. Today we sit down with licensed marriage and family therapist and Somatic Experiencing faculty member Mahshid Hager to name that pattern, trace where it comes from, and chart a humane path back to rhythm. 

Mahshid explains why a body wired for survival often resists rest, and how to work with that reality using micro-rests that your system will actually allow. We unpack the gas-and-brake reciprocity between sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, the difference between hyperarousal and global high, and how swings between overdrive and full collapse can fuel chronic pain, inflammation, and exhaustion. Along the way, curiosity shows up as the quiet superpower ~ because genuine curiosity cannot coexist with threat.

Mahshid shares a story about her relationship with the mountains over the years, and how the same thing that triggers panic can become a source of awe years later - not with forced exposure, but with care for the body.  We also reflect on capitalism’s applause for burnout and the 24/7 news cycle that delivers shock without local action. You’ll hear smart, doable suggestions for managing news & technology in a way that keeps you engaged , but not overwhelmed.

If you’re always in GO mode, running on fumes, or trying to support clients through trauma, this conversation offers language, tools, and hope. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a break, and leave a review to help more listeners find their way back to rhythm.

Support the show

Lisa Danylchuk:

Welcome back to the How We Can Heal podcast. Today, our guest is Mahshid Hager. Mahshid is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a somatic experiencing international faculty member. She also serves on the board of the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy, a nonprofit dedicated to developing and advancing the art, science, and practice of body psychotherapy. Mahshid was born in Tehran, Iran. Her lived experience as an immigrant and an expatriate gives her a unique understanding of cultural and social impacts and systemic inequities. Today we focus on our nervous system's response to extreme stress and trauma and how global high-intensity activation shows up in our bodies. She also shares her journey from Tehran to Germany to the US, and we explore avenues for rhythmicity and rest amidst our ongoing exposure to trauma and social and political challenges. I so appreciated our conversation and I'm thrilled to share it with you here today. Please join me in welcoming Mahshid Hager to the show.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Welcome to the Hell We Can Heal Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here and to talk with you about global high-intensity activation, trauma, healing, all of those things.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Sounds great.

Lisa Danylchuk:

And you've spent a lot of time thinking about and working with and teaching. So my first question for you is just how did you find somatic experiencing or how did it find you?

Mahshid Hager:

Oh goodness. I was at a state in my life where not much was going right. 2000 uh 2003 is kind of known as the no good, very bad year in my family.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Mine was 2002. Hey.

Mahshid Hager:

Right there with each other. Yes. I mean, my my father passed away from a 10-year battle with cancer, and my marriage fell apart, and I became a single mom of two little ones. My house almost burned down in a wildfire. Wow. I was still finishing grad school, and it was just like nothing worked. I'd been a, you know, I was in grad school. I'd been in therapy before. I'd had experiences in internships with therapy, and none of those tools worked. I was just constantly overwhelmed, unable to stay present in my life with my kids, with my family. I was representing myself in court and just falling apart, just falling apart. And I needed, like I in my mind, I needed an emergency measure because the court thing was really eminent. And I I needed to pull it together and you know be representative of myself and my kids appropriately and kind of started asking around about uh if people knew a good therapist that could kind of patch me back up. Yeah, like help. And and you know, people were like, what about your old therapist? And you know, I'd I'd had wonderful experiences with therapists, and I could kind of think, think about those sessions and and remember what they would tell me. I would say, none of those things are working. I am doing all of the things I've learned in therapy and they're not working. And so one of my friends uh referred me to uh his therapist who was here in town, who was a somatic experiencing practitioner. And he didn't tell me she was a somatic experiencing practitioner. He just said she's very different. You know, the way that she approaches therapy is different from any other talk therapy that I've I've experienced. And so I was like, what do I gotta lose? Let's let's go, let's let's see what this is. And yeah, that was uh, you know, she was the first person to say, and what do you notice in your body?

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And I remember just being so confused by that question at first. Like, what do you mean? My body's fine, my body's normal, I feel nothing, you know, yeah. And so it was just this like slow reintroduction to noticing my physiology, noticing my my body. And I say reintroduction because I grew up in Iran uh in a multi-generational household, was my you know, zero to seven years, and and the body was very much part of that culture, very much part of the equation. And then we uh fled the country and went to Germany, and that's the detour from the body, right? It's just like now we are on the go. Now you need to, now you're in a in a different plane where survival is priority, and we don't have time to dwell on the past, and we don't have time to check in on the body, and we don't have time to rest. Yes, just go, go, go, go, go. And so I had I had lost that skill of noticing what cues does my body send to me about these different experiences, you know, that I'm having. And uh yeah, my my first somatic experiencing practitioner taught me how to reintegrate the body into the conversation. And it kind of made an impact right away. I remember walking out of that first session, just feeling taller, you know, some of the practices that we did in that first session just really expanded something inside. And I remember walking out thinking, okay, I can I can handle my life for the next few weeks. And I, you know, I was I was a single mom. I didn't have uh the funds to see her weekly, but I I found that even every three weeks or so was enough. I could practice the tools she had given me um to continue benefiting from them throughout the weeks. And then I stayed uh stayed in therapy post-divorce and post all of that because uh I really uh appreciated this new tool and wanted to know more and learn more. And I wanted to help my kids through the transition with these tools and direct them to their body and notice all these different ways that they're protecting themselves. And and then eventually the training came back around in my town in San Diego, and I signed up for it, and the rest is history, as they say. Yes, and now you're teaching on the faculty, and now I'm teaching, yes, yes, yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

It's so interesting to track for all of us, right? How our personal journey interweaves with that professional path and how moments where we go, oh, that really helps me. I want to learn more about it. Yes, right, because for me it was 2002, it was my brother who passed away, and I went to yoga, and yoga was doing for me. And my parents are both therapists, very good therapists at that. Yeah, I was very familiar with the therapy world, but I needed something different, like you said, I needed movement and breath and to notice what was moving through and to have space to let it move through.

Mahshid Hager:

Absolutely.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I mean, I feel like we live in a culture of global high, and we can maybe talk about that more. So I think it's one of the reasons I feel like people love yoga and focus on the calming side of yoga, like, oh, it can stir things up, and then you can leave balanced at the end because there's actually maybe 10 or 20 minutes in most classes these days at the end for you to lie down or rest, or yeah, like we don't have I don't think American culture has that integrated of just rest time, really casual social time. I think of so many countries, you know. I lived in Italy for a while where people just walk. You know, yes. What do you do on Sunday? Oh, we have breakfast, we go for a walk, yeah, go to church, you know, everything's closed.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, Sundays, everything's closed, yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, no, we just rest, we just hang out. And I feel like you know, American culture, even coming back to that, it's just it can be very go, go, go.

Mahshid Hager:

Absolutely.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So, to back up a little, can you just describe to listeners what is global high intensity activation? What does that look like?

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, so global high is a global response from the physiology, something that happens where our nervous system gets a surge or a flood of energy and activation, and the whole physiology has to respond.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And it when people experience that, the physiology enters into sort of like end stage survival strategies, like the most extreme survival strategies. So subcategories of global high or the events that can put a person in a global high presentation are things like extreme fetal distress, um, suffocation, drowning, uh, high, high fevers that are dangerous, uh, electrocutions. I mean, like really where the where the where the physiology uh goes into a flood of response uh and extreme survival strategies. And you know, we see this a lot in folks who've had those experiences, but also folks who have grown up in unsafe conditions uh without safety, without attunement, where caregivers were in the midst of their own survival strategies, uh, survival responses. And so the baseline for this type of nervous system is that of activation. The sense of calm and rest is really high, really difficult to access, really hard to come by.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So it's having a hard time settling down, um, being in go mode, always doing, right? Always busy, which again just feels so I feel like American culture is in that place, and probably because of the way the country was founded on genocide, right? I feel like there's just this global high pattern. And it's easy if you're in that place in your nervous system, especially maybe more so in some areas, big cities, to just always be going, right?

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, I mean, it becomes the norm. It becomes uh not only the norm, but people uh, you know, people get rewarded for, you know, capitalism really relies on a bunch of us being constantly in global high presentation in our nervous system because you can get a raise and you can get promotions, and your friends think you're, you know, superwoman, and how does she do it all? There's a lot of kudos for that type of go, go, go. Um, and so people lose access to that rhythmicity. Like for me, a lot of somatic experiencing is about how can I create the conditions so that this nervous system in front of me can experience the rhythmicity it was born with, the rhythmicity, that innate rhythm that's geared towards coherence, greater health, greater presence. How can we create the conditions so this person can experience that rhythmicity again? Because, yeah, I can I can go, go, go, go, go and get rewards and get you know promotions and raises. And that kind of physiology was supposed to be used on a short-term basis, yeah, and the long-term chronic use of it is a lot of wear and tear on the physiology. And eventually some things begin to demand attention, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

If we don't have rest or if we don't have quality sleep, that will really start to impact someone mentally, physically, emotionally level. Yeah. It makes me think about yeah, just the rewards we get from culture in going and going and going, and also the opportunities in technology to never turn off, right? Oh, yes. Like you can be in bed with your phone. Oh, yes, chatting with someone or or responding to a distressing message, or you know, I so I feel like boundaries plays a role here in terms of managing maybe that global high. But I'm curious from the somatic experiencing standpoint, or just from a nervous system standpoint, what are some windows in? Like if someone's listening, they're like, This is me, I'm on global high. I've got a lot of promotions at work, but I'm not feeling great in my body, or I know there's trauma there. What are some windows into that shift, that downshift that you found really helpful?

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah. So I I want to name that for folks who are global high, the slowing down will actually signal danger. So it, you know, the this there's safety in that more elevated uh mobilization response. It's what's it's what's worked, it's what's saved us, it's what's uh, it's been a good friend, you know, for many. And so that slowing down will actually feel very uncomfortable in the physiology at first. I remember in my in that very first session with my SCP, uh, you know, I kind of laid out my life. This, these are the things. I'm in an internship, I'm finishing grad school, the kids are in school, I'm, you know, 85% custody during the week, they're with me. I have to get home, I have to do all of the things, right? And towards the end of that session, she said, okay, here's what I need you to do for homework. You have to take a 10-minute rest between leaving work and getting your kids. And the car ride doesn't count.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

So either when you leave work, go for a 10-minute walk before you get in the car, or when you arrive at the kids' after school care, sit in your car, listen to music, go for a walk, do nothing, listen to birds, just sit for 10 minutes. Yes. And I thought she was out of her mind. Like, how? Why? And I was like, I don't have 10 minutes. I have to get home, they have homework, I have to cook dinner. Sometimes I even have to go grocery shopping first. I've got my own notes to finish. There is no time. There is no time. And she said, uh, I am telling you, if you don't do this, you're gonna get sick.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And then you won't be present for your kids at all.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And so then I argued with her. I was like, I can see myself doing this for three minutes, and she said, seven minutes.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I love the bargaining that happens in therapy. Six point five.

Mahshid Hager:

We agreed on five minutes. Okay, and I remember those five minutes being so long. Like, you know, just sitting in my car waiting for the time to pass, feeling so uncomfortable because your physiology is used to the go, go, go. That's almost easier, you know, than just the stillness. Yes. But then I notice the difference right away, which is you know, the gift on somaticity. Therapist is right. Yes. I would notice that I would pick up the kids with a different capacity.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yes. Wow.

Mahshid Hager:

That I would come home and it wouldn't be rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, that there would be, you know, playfulness, that I would be able to be present with them, that they responded to that with their own curiosity and their playfulness, you know, so I really couldn't deny that it had an impact, even that five-minute break. And so my suggestion for someone who's uh listening to this and recognizing themselves is see if you can even a minute and a half, even just a couple of minutes, you know, between work and lunch, maybe, or after lunch, before you open up your email again, can you just notice what your body does in stillness?

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yes.

Mahshid Hager:

Can you just listen and see where is it holding tension? Where is that energy? You know, I'm not I'm not expecting a state of calm right away.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

But but curiosity in those moments of stillness is going to have is going to give us a lot of information.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. I love that you shared just the feeling of not having time, because that's actually one of my own like self-awareness cues that I'm in hyperarousal. Yeah. When I'm like, I don't have time, I don't have time. Oh, I have so much to do and I don't have time. It's like, you know what? You do have time. You have time for the next thing. What's the next thing? That's right. You know, okay, that's right. Now I have time for the next thing. And it turns out the same amount of time can feel so different depending on the state of your nervous system. Yeah. Right. And so for me, that thought, I don't have time. I mean, sometimes we are very pressed for time. We're like, okay, it's a 17-minute drive there, and it's we have 15 minutes to get there. And that can cause a sense of activation. But if we notice, if we can notice that activation, we can work with our nervous system, like talk to it, coach it, give it some movement or breath or whatever it needs, and then approach from a different state, the whole experience is different, right? Yeah, everything changes. And I think there's people who would argue you bend time and you get there on time because you're calm. Like that's not my area of expertise. I love it super into it. But but there is something really interesting about these state shifts for us and how we experience time, how we experience our relationships. And you just mentioned too, when you're able to go, okay, I'll bargain with my therapist, but it'll be five minutes. Notice this is changing something. Oh, there's more room for connection. There's play. Like this maps with everything we know about our nervous system, right? That's right. In if we're in sympathetic drive, some form of fight or flight or hyper arousal or activation, whatever words we want to use, if we're there, we don't feel a lot of access to play. There's stress, there's demand, there's tension, there's no space. I'm gonna tell you how space, and I'll spend five minutes telling you there's no space. That's right. But I won't spend five minutes looking at the clock, noticing how slow the second hand is going to go, taking a really long breath in and a really long breath out because it feels like a waste of time. Yeah, it's the same amount of time that you could have spent arguing your position, right? But you're absolutely yeah. So, and I think there's something about the collective nervous system you're speaking to in your family as a single parent, running the household, right? And then seeing with five minutes, right? The shift, yeah, incredible. And yeah, it just happens, and you just have to spend that time, right? So it's yeah, as well find intentional time to open the door to rest, right? To invite it in. It might not show up anyway, but just that possibility, and then noticing wow, this is really changing my life and my kids' life. I mean, that's really powerful. Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And it's about coming back into that, like um, you know, the the go, go, go mechanism of our of our physiologies, all under this branch of the sympathetic nervous system. Yeah uh the mobilization physiology. Uh, one of my teachers and mentors, Kathy Kane, says this phrase that I really like, which says, uh, the sympathetic nervous system is supposed to pick you up and move you. Yes. Like that's its function. That go, go, go, go, go is by design.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

What happens then, though, if you're using the gas all of the time, then the brakes don't ever get to come on. The parasympathetic rest and digest system never gets to engage. And these two systems are supposed to be in reciprocal relationship to each other. And now we're just using one all of the time. And that five-minute rest actually allows for the shift to happen. And our physiology really likes that, right? That phase shift into rest physiology is essential for our well-being, for our health and our growth. Um, and that that mobilization physiology, the system that picks you up and moves you, the byproduct of that is less connection, not just to loved ones, but less connection to myself, less connection to the here and now, less connection to playfulness. That's its function.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And so we we need to bring about opportunities, as you said, for our nervous system to shift gears into something else so that we can actually be present to our lives.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. And I love this concept of just the smallest bite you can chew. Like for you, it was three minutes, your therapist negotiated it to five. Okay, we start there. We start with the smallest bite to chew that feels possible. That's like, well, okay, I guess I could do that. Yeah. It makes me think of Carolai, a meditation teacher we had on this season. And she's done a year-long meditation retreat. Like she has meditated her face off in her right. So much respect for people. We can't do that. Wow, right? And it's so interesting because the learning of the year-long retreat, you know, folks can listen to the episode was like, wow, maybe I don't need to meditate this much. And so many other lessons in there, right? About things that connect with this, about connection, about, you know, working with ourselves rather than against ourselves. But the point as thinking of her, because she said that early in her meditation, she had this big shift in her system and it lasted a few days. And it was this taste of like, whoa, I want more of that. And at that time, she was sitting eight minutes a day. Eight minutes a day. And there's there have been times for me, you know, I have a two-year-old where it's like one minute a day, I'm gonna commit to that because I know I can do it. That's great. I could do it while I'm breastfeeding. I can I give myself parameters of like what's okay and what's not. Whatever works slippery. So it's like breastfeeding counts, car does not, right? Walking doesn't in this case, like, but just sitting still in some capacity, connecting with my breath, noticing my thoughts. And the the funny thing is, and this is like again, I have a pretty significant history with yoga and meditation. I have a little timer on my phone I'll use. I can forget that I'm meditating within like 90 seconds. Yeah, I can be like, oh, I was totally just planning tomorrow. Yeah. And not noticing my breath. I mean, that's part of meditation, to be fair, is like going away and coming back. But but picking that small bite that you can chew. Yeah. And then, you know, oh, when you like it, when you notice the benefits of it, allowing that to expand a little more. So, so it's doable. I think it's easy for us to think, yeah, oh, this is some big lofty goal, or my nervous system doesn't feel like it can go there. So just finding that window to start.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, I mean, I I love to start with things that are easy. Yeah. The world is hard enough. Yeah. And even that one minute meditation, even if you're planning your next thing doing, if you can walk away from that saying, I did it, I committed to this thing and I did it, that's gonna land in your nervous system as success, you know? Yeah, yeah. Even if the experience of it wasn't like, you know, life-changing, life sublime, you know. But just knowing that I set a goal that I could accomplish and I accomplished it, yeah, gives your gives your nervous system uh a sense of success, and that's important. Yeah. In a world that's mostly overwhelming.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Mostly increasingly so, I might say.

Mahshid Hager:

Yes, absolutely.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So I'm curious about global high and how it's different from hyper arousal, right? We talk about hyper-arousal and post-traumatic stress. Do you see a differentiation there that's important?

Mahshid Hager:

Um, that's a good question. A hyper-arousal to me speaks of something happened. My physiology didn't get to complete. It's a blueprint for self-protection. We all have a blueprint for self-protection that has these like very distinct phases. I first orient towards the threat, then I will use my, you know, if I've had the good fortune of growing up in safety and attunement, I'll band together with those around me to figure out the solution. If that doesn't work, I go into fight, flight, or freeze. And then I'm I'm able to survive the thing, and then completion happens, and I can come back to uh to a state of relaxed alertness. If that blueprint gets interrupted anywhere along its response, which is so often true in today's world, then the body really doesn't get the message that the threat is over.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And so it remains in this sort of continuous threat response because it thinks the threat is around the corner. And I have now a bigger startle response, and now I'm less oriented to the here and now because my physiology is preoccupied with uh with threat response. Global high remains in place even you know, even in in the aftermath of having responded to a threat. It's just it's been established, it's often established when the physiology has to navigate between uh competing impulses for survival. Like do I act or do I freeze? Do I scream or do I play dead? Those kinds of um, you know, competing impulses can can cause this sort of global response. And then and then, you know, it's not about completion, but about the navigation of what is safety, what is threat, what is baseline, and it just shows up differently. Um, so it it's uh it's a little bit nuanced, that's how I understand it.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Um yeah. A little bit of a different flavor. Yeah, yeah. You're talking about the freeze response to and shutting down or collapse, all these kind of stages that we go through in response to threat and trauma. I'm wondering how dissociation folds in. Well, uh, actually, let me rephrase that, because I think we can talk about a lot of things when we talk about the freeze response and dissociation is one of those. But when um, to use the analogy, we love to use you know, the car analogy of the gas and the brake. If if something happens that's traumatic and overwhelming, and someone gets to that freeze collapse, and let's just say like the brake is on, the parking brake is on, like their system has been told to shut down. And that maybe there's some dissociation that's not integrated, right? That story, that experience was so overwhelming. It's sort of in its own compartment in the brain or in memory or in identity. Like people don't really fully remember or connect with what happened. I'm curious about the relationship between that and global high. Like people have to find a way to function in the world.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

And so it's like the gas goes on full speed ahead because it's like that's the only way to move with the parking brake on. And they might feel internally a lot of heaviness or depressive symptoms, even though there's the sense of I can't rest, I'm going all the time. In yoga, we'd call it rajasic depression. It's like the energy, this rajas, this heat, this movement with the feeling of heaviness or with the feeling of, oh, I can't get myself off the couch at the same time, even though I have to keep always doing things. Physically, I think it might manifest in different ways, but I'm thinking about that internal experience of go, go, go. And if you see it also connecting with that shutdown response, absolutely. Yeah. And so when people start to address the go-go, what's there can be really challenging too to start to digest. Yeah. Physically.

Mahshid Hager:

I mean, one of the ways that uh a nervous system, a physiology, or an organism might learn to navigate this constant go, go, go, go thing is by pushing a little bit further. Yeah. Because then you reach a point of no return where the physiology takes over and the dorsal breaks come on and it's energy conservation time, right? So for folks who have had to navigate global high physiology for a long time, sometimes the only way to find some rest to, you know, uh to drop into the parasympathetic is through this highway of freeze. Yeah. It's like I'm my system is has been go, go, go, go, go for so long, and I can't find a space for rest. And so this motor is just gonna speed up, speed up, speed up, speed up, and then the heartbreaks come on. Yeah. Right. And when it gets to that point when the only way to navigate uh a balance between activation and rest becomes high activation freeze, high activation freeze, that's really when we see the functional organs begin to break down.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Because both of those systems, the high, high mobilization system and the hard, hard break system, were designed for extreme threat.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And they were meant to be short-lived.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And now we're using that system just to find rhythmicity.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

You know, and that can be that can cause a lot of wear and tear on our functional organs. And that's when we begin to see things like chronic digestive issues, autoimmune issues, fibromyalgia, chronic pain issues, and chronic inflammation. Uh, that's when that begins to show up.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yes. And I know we have so many different models of the nervous system that we can kind of integrate together in this work. But what's coming to mind is just from you know, 1999 at UCLA, right before you and I had our bad years. Dan Siegel's window of tolerance, right? And I just see the waves. There's the window in the middle, and then there's like way up and way and then being stuck up here and being stuck down there. Exactly. Hyper and hypo, and the and the window being, oh, I'm just gonna relax, have a cup of tea. Yeah. And that also makes me think of bipolar diagnoses and experiences that people have and differentiating that. Is there anything that you've noticed from that somatic standpoint? You know, I I've worked with people who've had bipolar diagnoses and they have very different flavors sometimes. Sometimes I'm just like, this just feels like a trauma response, right? And other times I'm like, no, this feels different. There's something else. Yeah, there's a chemical thing going on. There's something else going on here. It doesn't feel so much just like normally if I'm working with someone, they have a trauma history, I know their history, and there's a trigger. They know the moment that they went into hyper was because they watched a movie that reminded them of when they were in school, or then they go into more of a hypostate and they were really exhausted and they were drained and they were parenting, and then somebody said something unkind, and you know, whatever it is. I'm sort of making up scenarios and putting them together, but I think that can be a challenge for mental health providers to discern. So I'm wondering if you've come across conversations or tools for mental health providers listening to to help differentiate that. Is that something that's come up? Gosh, I I this is a tough question because you don't think we have the answer. I'm not thinking I'm wondering.

Mahshid Hager:

No, I'm just thinking about, you know, I'm every now and then I get reminded of how much somatic experiencing has changed the way I view diagnosis of any kind, you know?

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, knowledge of trauma and all of a sudden.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, I feel like sometimes the diagnosis is helpful in terms of like my clients really find a lot of relief with knowing what it is. It has a name, and here's here's the you know, here's the guidelines around it, here's the criteria for it. That that can feel like uh like some relief for my clients. But for me, it just it just muddies the waters.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Uh my stance usually is like if if the diagnosis is helpful to you, that's great.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

My work doesn't change. I am doing nervous system regulation work.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

My my aim is to give you some tools for explicit self-regulation at first, so that you can you can tap into this rhythmicity a little bit more. You know, you can find these tools that can help you shift gears out of hypervigilance into something else or deep freeze into some mobilization. And then I, you know, I'm I'm looking out for whether these tools are going to help your physiology remember its rhythmicity.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And I found that with nervous, you know, somatic experiencing is not a cure all for all for all illness and all diagnoses. Yeah. But I feel like nervous system regulation work doesn't hurt anyone. It can help, right? No matter what your diagnosis, knowing more about your nervous system response, knowing more about what happens in threat response, knowing how your trauma history has impacted your symptoms can be helpful. Yeah. And then, you know, in six to eight weeks, we're gonna look at your diagnoses and the symptoms again and see if they're still there, if they're still as strong. And sometimes they are, and sometimes we need medication, and sometimes it's a chemical thing that has nothing to do with your trauma history. And other times you find a lot of relief just having learned these tools and having tapped into a different rhythm in your nervous system.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. What do you wish everyone knew about their nervous system? Oh gosh.

Mahshid Hager:

I think I would want everyone to know that the answers are all right there.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Like it's not something that comes from the outside.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Like that innate rhythm is our birthright, and it's just waiting for us to connect to it. You know? And the world will have you believe that your trauma response, your trauma rhythm is your innate rhythm. Yes. You know, the the world may may make you feel like uh that's how you were wired. You were not, and there is something else possible.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And I what one of the things I love about somatic experiencing is that it's in its basis, it's an empowerment approach. I am, I often refer to myself as someone with a flashlight. We're just looking, we're just looking for because something is working, otherwise, you wouldn't be in my office. You wouldn't be in my classroom. Something is working. Yes. And together we're gonna find out where things are actually working, and that's where we're gonna pay attention, and that's what we're gonna reinforce so we can have more and more of that.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. So I'm noticing we're talking about somatic experiencing, and there might be folks listening. I mean, some people are mental health professionals, they're familiar with it, but some people might be like, What is that? So, how do you explain somatic experience to someone who's new to it?

Mahshid Hager:

Okay, here's my like 30-second element.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yes, go.

Mahshid Hager:

Somatic experiencing is a modality we use to uh help folks who've had pervasive stress in their lives or trauma, where the nervous system holds some part of those experiences. Uh, it was developed by Peter Levine, Dr. Peter Levine. And it's, I mean, basically what it means is that we're including the body in the conversation. We're including the nervous system in the conversation. It's a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach. Not that, you know, there's no talking in a somatic experiencing session, not that your thoughts and meaning making doesn't matter, but we're just making space for the body to tell us the story of uh whatever it is that you're struggling through, either presently or in the past.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. So rather than going from words and meaning making to somewhere else or to the body, you're letting the body sort of inform the conversation if there's a conversation happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You mentioned extreme stress or trauma. So I'm wondering if you feel like specifically global high, does it does it feel like that's always a trauma response? Do you see it come from other things ever?

Mahshid Hager:

Uh I mean, trauma and pervasive stress, I'd say, yeah. You know, folks who grow up in in um in unsafe conditions and chaotic conditions and violent conditions can have that too. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

And have you noticed ever like certain people or characteristics, predispositions for um for I mean, we all have a nervous system, right? But I'm wondering about hormones, you know, obviously cortisols involved here. I wonder if there's anything you've seen of folks who are more likely to get stuck in global high versus folks who maybe aren't.

Mahshid Hager:

Um I'm probably not the first best person to speak on uh hormones and all of that, but I know that there can be generational impact. There can be kind of historical generational impact and trauma in their history, in their generational history. Um, and so uh that that definitely shows up. Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Yeah, that's an important piece, intergenerational trauma. And I know there's you know people doing great epigenetic research on that. And that's right. Look to them to guide us. Yeah. Yeah. You told a story. I I heard you tell a story about your relationship to the mountains, and I'm wondering if you wouldn't be sharing that with us today.

Mahshid Hager:

Uh yeah, I uh I grew up uh in Tehran, Iran. Uh I spent zero to ten there, and Tehran is surrounded by mountains. Uh, and so you know, we're in a valley, and everywhere you look, especially to the north, you can see the mountains at all times of the year. So they've been part of the landscape uh of my life growing up. And then my family uh left Iran through those mountains. Yeah. And uh that was obviously uh an ordeal and uh a big scary event uh in my family's history. And then kind of subconsciously I'd avoided mountains. I mean, that it wasn't an it wasn't an active, I'm not going to, but you know, the area we ended up in was pretty flat and uh we weren't skiers or hikers, you know, at the time. And then I come to San Diego and I, you know, establish my life here, and I get married and I have kids and I'm in school, and I become a therapist. And uh in an effort to take care of my body more, I'm exercising, I started walking, and um I uh, you know, eventually it was like walking is not enough, and I'm not a runner, so I'm gonna start hiking, and I'm looking out there because there's mountains around my house right now that I can see from my window. And I was like, I want to go find hiking trails. And I, you know, became an avid hiker. And one day I came home from a hike and it had I'd gone out before sunrise, and my husband and my current husband uh was sitting at the kitchen table uh drinking coffee, and I burst through the door and I was like, Oh my god, it was glorious out there, like the sun came up, and I was above the clouds, and it was all pinks and purples, and I just feel so energized. I was just going off, and he's just like looking at me, and he goes, Wow, you don't even remember being afraid of mountains, huh? And I go, Oh, because him and I, one of our first trips we took together was to Mammoth Mountains for skiing.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Wow.

Mahshid Hager:

And I we hit those mountains. It was my very first time skiing, and the road up, I I was, I was like, I'm I'll explain this later. I'm gonna close my eyes while we drive up because I was feeling so much anxiety, so much anxiousness, just and then you know, bunny hills that weekend. Like I just couldn't, you know. And he was just like, wow, you don't even you don't even remember. And it was really this kind of like, oh right, that used to be a thing. And it was surprising because my fear of mountain had never been something that I'd processed in all those years in in somatic experiencing therapy, right? But something about the overall activation in my system had reduced enough to uncouple this beautiful, you know, majestic element from my trauma response. And so the activation that informed that anxiety just wasn't present anymore. And I had, you know, going back to connection and curiosity, I had that available. I had the curiosity of what it would be like to go hiking in these mountains. Yes, and and connecting to the joy of that activity, you know, that's not available when you're in trauma response.

Lisa Danylchuk:

It's not, yeah. If it is a global high, you just go, go, go. And if it is like a very real experience of fear, or however it's in there, if we're not addressing it, the trigger is gonna continue to bring up that feeling. That's right. There's so much richness in that story. I think of first of all, I just think of one person's trigger is another person's resource. I love the mountains all the time when people talk about resourcing. My examples are always nature and animals. And I'm very aware because I've had clients that are triggered by going out alone in nature, that are triggered, but they've had unsafe experiences with animals too. So it's like there's never a thing that is by definition a resource or by definition a trigger. Like we have to find there's kind of categories that feel safer in general, totally, but there's always exceptions, right? And so it's like it's it's there's there's no category that we can place things in, and it's not about the trigger itself. Like the mountains were the thing that you wanted to hide from driving up to man. And all the work that you did in your nervous system just shifted that you didn't have to focus on it. Wasn't it was never the mountains itself, it was the right to them, it was the history with them, it was how that was living alive in your body. That's right, continuous way that maybe you weren't conscious of until you started going, oh, those five minutes in the car really felt nice. Like, what else? Yes, what else pathway to become an S trainer? That's right. You just kept going, What? How much better could this get? Let me just happen in this direction. Yeah. And there's so much possibility, I think, in that for folks listening or folks working with trauma. It's like, I think we can get myopic sometimes with trauma, like really focusing in on the thick or the dynamic. And yeah, and I love body-based work because it's like, well, what's happening right now while you're talking about that, right? Like what's happening in this moment in response to that association, that story, that memory. That's right. And sometimes what's happening in our bodies is amazing, like remembering that, oh, I was out in the morning in the moon and this and the mountains. Like we can resource through that for sure, but we can also um give space to digest or process, and especially, you know, with a caring other person to like let some of these high stress or fear or trauma responses have their moment, have their moment of recognition and process and move through and not be this background, seemingly end-all-be-all truth that we're living every day.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, yeah. Just what else? Just that question, you know, what else is there? You know, I asked that so often in uh in session where folks are really preoccupied by the siren of the trauma. It's like, oh, there's this memory, or there's this person, or there's this pain, or there's this contraction in my system. And just saying, yes, there is that, and what else is there? Yeah, you know, it just allows for uh one of the people I uh she used to be a student and then became an assistant at one of my trainings, said this thing that I often think about and use, which is curiosity is the antidote to trauma response. Like as soon as you're able to go, yes, and what else? You're shifting into something other than that threat response. You know, curiosity is not available to us in the midst of survival. Yes. Um, and and yeah, that's I feel like the gift of any body-based approach is to like expand that lens and go, yes, there is this really upsetting thing. And what else is there? What other information does my body have for me?

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yes, I'm thinking of a client who is very activated and just saying, we're having very different experiences right now, like trying to leave room, or like we're in the same room, you know, same environment. And what's happening in your nervous system is very different from what's happening in mine, and we're making very different meaning. Yeah, right. It's like a little bit of just opportunity for more than perspective, maybe. Yeah, that's hard. When we're in a defense response, there, there, those defenses are there for a reason, right?

Mahshid Hager:

And they've been good friends, yes, save our lives.

Lisa Danylchuk:

And so it's like I'm not gonna let that go really just because you said you have a different experience, but that's right, but that curiosity as the shift, yeah, yeah. So I'm curious too, just about your contrast between I know it was zero to 10 that you're in Iran, and it sounds like Germany after that for a good chunk of time, and then the year. Yeah, so what strong contrast of culture in your nervous system and in your life experience? I'm wondering if you can speak to particularly the relationship to the body that you notice, like any cultural practices that you see you were talking about how in Iran it it was integrated. It was like a re-knowing of, oh, this is my body. Do you feel like that was more um facilitated by culture? Was that also? I mean, obviously, in the story you're telling, the transition through the mountains was a huge traumatic experience for you and your family. And then there's after that. So I don't, you know, none of us is gonna give a completely neutral read of any culture. But what do you see in these different cultures that maybe encourages global high? You're talking about capitalism earlier, or encourages connection to our our present moment embodied experience.

Mahshid Hager:

I mean, I remember uh in Iran out now, it was also a very different time, early, uh early 70s, 1970s, right? Before the age of internet and 24-hour television and all of that. But I my family, we lived in my grandmother's house, my grandparents' house, uh, from zero to six. And it was a multi-generational household with aunts and grandparents, and my parents, and my great-grandmother, and even the aunts and uncles who had, you know, married and moved on, their kids would, you know, my grandmother was like our daycare every day. The parents would go to work and the cousins would all get together. And my grandma cooked meals for the whole family, for everybody, right? That was her task every morning is to get up, get us fed, start cooking the meals, doing some cleaning. And I just remember that that woman napped every day of like the whole household had to go down at 1 p.m. It's it's after lunch. There is one hour rest. Kids don't play, kids lay down. You can lay down with a book, you can lay down with a coloring page, but the house shuts down for an hour.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, right.

Mahshid Hager:

That's rhythm. That's rhythm. She was a busy woman, she had a big household to run, right? But that one hour nap was every day, every single day, right? And then in the afternoons when the family came home, you know, it was like, it wasn't like we were all sitting around the television. It was like, oh no, now it's afternoon tea time, and everyone gets together in the backyard and we sit around the samovar and we drink tea. And my, you know, my grandpa might smoke a pipe or whatever. You know, it's just like it's downtime, it's playtime, it's connection time, right? And so I go from that to uh my my family moved out of that house when my mom became pregnant with my second sister at the height of the revolution. And so now we're on our own, and there's this big scary thing happening out in the world, right? And we're trying to navigate that. How does work and play look like in a in a place that's increasingly more violent and dangerous? And so you become a little bit tighter, and uh you become a little bit more um, you know, your threat response kind of doesn't get to let up.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And then, you know, my mom had a second baby, then the war with Iraq started, and like it things got increasingly to a place where life became not sustainable in Iran for my family. And so we made the pilgrimage, we made the escape through the mountains into Turkey at first, and then with the help of family members into Germany. And Germany has a very different character, yeah, culture, work ethic. You know, this post-World War II Germany is very much focused on doing when it's doing time. So you go to school, you have to excel at school as a refugee, as an immigrant, even more so, right? You have to prove yourself. You can't be lazy, you can't, you can't fall behind. You this just that's go, go, go, go, go. And then uh the the work, you know, for for uh for my parents, the work was kind of a constant in that in that vein of not falling behind, in that vein of making it in this new place. But as you said, even even there in Germany, Sundays, everything shut down. Yeah, you know, Sunday was rest day, and uh, you know, the the uh vacation times in in Europe are famous. You know, if you have a full-time job, you get four weeks of vacation. That's just a given. You know, people would take four weeks at a time in the summer and just go to the, you know, go to Mediterranean, go to Spain, go to Italy, go to Greece. Um, and so that that's a different rhythm, but there's still a rhythm. Yes, you know, and then uh and then I came here. And Germany has changed since uh since I since the early 80s. Like there's a lot of stores open now on Sundays, you know, restaurants are open, bakeries are open, coffee shops are open. It you really used to be everything was shut down, you know, even grocery stores open for a few hours here and there. And so their system has changed. And then I come here and it's you know, college and language classes, and you know, making it again in a different way, and capitalism, and you know, it's like working, you know. I I worked in sales while I was in college. There's no weekends in sales, there's long hours until 10 p.m. You're at work at the mall, you know. So it was just like a different level of go, go, go, go, go, which you know, my system was really accustomed to.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, you know, it works well for me. Yeah, yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Let's keep going. Oh, yeah, yeah. I can I can I can work a full-time job and I can go to school and oh yeah, I can get married and have a couple of kids and be in grad school, no problem.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Like you said, it's rewarded in this culture. Why superwoman? How do you do it? You're amazing. Look at how much you can accomplish, right? I remember seeing an ad for a gym on a billboard on the way to teach yoga, and the ad for the gym just said, do more, rolled up to the yoga studio. Like that is not our agenda for today, everyone. Just so you know.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, do more. That's that's so funny. That's so we're gonna do less today.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, we are doing that, but we're gonna rest a lot.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah. And I, you know, I often reflect back and think, thank God there was no social media when I was a new mom. Like, thank God there was no social media when my kids were little, little, you know, yeah, because now the world of social media has have has you believing that everyone is doing that much and their house is perfectly clean and their vacations are immaculate and their children are always well behaved and cute, you know? And it's like it's just the level of intensity is just increasing and not decreasing. And then there comes so much guilt and shame with stepping off of that hamster wheel, you know, whatever the hamster wheel may be, whether it's, you know, training after training after training after training, whether it's new degrees, whether it's um, you know, new work projects, whether it's you know, hobbies, even hobbies have become intense, you know? Right. Whether it's activism, it's like do, do, do, do, do more, do more, do more. Yeah. And when you step off of it, it feels backwards. Yeah. It feels like I'm doing something wrong. It feels like I'm uh I'm gonna get left behind, or I'm leaving behind something or some cause or some community, you know. I'm having that conversation a lot these days with folks where it's like, yeah, your nervous system really was designed designed for a village where everyone knew your name, yes, where people were ready to help, where you knew if something bad happened to a village member and you had the capacity to respond. It wasn't it wasn't meant to have the world's news at your fingertips in your pocket at all times.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Yeah, if there was an event, it was someone you knew or someone who you knew someone who knew them, and would activate, you would use the activation response to probably go and help or help the people who are helping until the crisis is hopefully resolved. Right. And then you would go back to daily rhythm and life. Exactly. Yeah, and we can't do that if we look pick up our phone or open a browser with news. It's like we're getting all the information as if, oh, this happened to your neighbor, this happened to your neighboring country, this happened on the other side of the world, but we're getting all the details of it without the physical access to walk over there and go, Hey, are you okay? What can I do? Right. I think it's a very huge. Response. Hey, are you doing all right? Like if something happens on our block, people come outside, they look, they gather, they go, we need to help. Do we need to call? What do we need to do? And I think that's like the closest we can get to how we evolved, right? And but but now so much of what we're digesting is we're digesting the nervous system of the world through technology. And so much of that is curated in different ways. Whether it's, well, I want to make sure you click this headline, so I'm gonna make it really sensational, or it's oh, I really want to look good in this picture, so I'm gonna put an extra filter, or I'm gonna put an AI background with a clean house or whatever. And with AI, that adds so much more because it's not even just a policy picture. Sometimes we don't even know if it's real and we don't even know if it's that person in honest truth. So there's so many layers to technology. So get why you're saying, I'm glad that wasn't an element back then. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And one of the things I find working with people is that boundary with technology can be an important part of regulating your nervous system, right? Because it does, even though it's this tiny little box and screen that you touch within a few inches, it can still, you can open a social media app or news or or even just see a notification and have a full nervous system response based on what that means. You can see a text. I mean, I do a modality called deep brain reorienting, and we're always looking for that first moment of shock and the amount of times it's someone's name on a phone. Oh, yeah. Showing up and this full body shock response comes up. And I imagine most people can relate to that. It's an everyday thing these days, but it's so different than what our bodies have in history.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, sometimes I'm in um like I'm I'm teaching all over the place, but you know, uh, as you said, shocking things are have become part of our everyday life. And sometimes I'll go like, we'll go on a break and I come back and I go, what happened? Yeah, you know, yeah, because people saw some news headline on their phone and it's palpable in the room because even though I cannot walk over to help, your nervous system is still gonna feel like it wants to or it has to.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, oh, I gotta do something. There's this a war on the other side of the world, right? Right that would take 12 hours to fly to. Like if we're feeling it. It feels like it's imminent and it's here, and I have to respond. And we don't have that physical aspect to do it. I mean, we can find pathways maybe through technology or other things, right? Then we're still just having all of this input on such a large scale.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, that's a lot to digest, it's a lot to try and then I I connect that to that level of threat response. The hallmark of it is disconnection.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

The hallmark of it is that now you're less present to your life. Now you're less present to yourself, now you're less present to your family, now you're less present to your work. Right.

Lisa Danylchuk:

And so yeah, that's yeah, there's so much power in. I find myself, you know, in in so much of what we're talking about, I've I find myself really having to anchor into like what's actually happening for me right now. Right. So even you were talking about we were talking about different cultures. I remember when I started being self-employed and having a private practice, I felt like I had to work nine to five. Like if I was, I couldn't like I felt like I couldn't rest between those hours because then I was, you know, some conditioned, like, well, you're not working. But if I don't have a client for an hour, I can lie down. That's fine. Like it took me time for my nervous system to be like, yeah, you can even if there's email or other stuff you could be doing, if you're tired, if like you can find a rhythm that's different, you can slow down. And in what you're talking about right now, of like how we can mentally, I think of it as this like dive into technology, our brain just like wires to this whole network of other things that are not happening for us right now, right? Right. And are very interestingly curated in terms of what you see when you log in. So it's like the amount of times that I just find myself like, oh, actually, everything's really nice right now. Like, yeah, right here, right now. And I think that skill, like that awareness in that skill is not something we're taught. It's something that's increasingly important, right? Because of the way the world has shifted. But unless we're in somatic experiencing or maybe tai chi or meditation or yoga worlds where there's this really present moment focused practice, we probably won't even notice if we're in global high and we're just going all the time. Oh, I had no idea. Right? You're like, this is great. I'm getting work done. Yeah, I had no idea something else was possible. Yeah, we have a different experience in our body. We don't have an appreciation for that. So what's the word that your assistant used?

Mahshid Hager:

The curiosity question is the antidote to trauma response.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Curiosity is the antidote. And so what else could be true right now? What else could be true right now? Or you also said, well, what does play look like? What is what does that feel like? I feel like this curiosity about how our nervous systems could experience rest and play and joy and any of it is a really important ongoing conversation. And I get a lot of questions from people about just collective trauma and the trauma of the news and how do we manage that? And like we really take ownership of our own nervous system because this stuff can hijack it. So I'm wondering if you have any other thoughts or little threads people can follow just to connect with their own nervous system in the moment.

Mahshid Hager:

I just want to make sure that I'm not being misunderstood. I'm not saying that we ignore all of that for the sake of our nervous system, right? For me, it's so much about balance. It's like if I just do that deep dive and continue doing that at all hours of day and night, yes, then I'm actually not available to respond in the ways that I want to to all of these tragedies. You know, I I took a uh hiatus from social media for a year, a couple of years ago. And it was remarkable because on the outside it might look like, oh, Mashida's disconnecting.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Right? She's taking herself out of the equation, she's disconnecting. I actually found that I was more connected in that time.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

And not less. I would check the news in the morning while having breakfast. I would respond in the ways that I wanted to respond, maybe donate some money here, maybe share an article with, you know, with my family members on the family thread. And then I would go about my day and actually be present to my clients doing healing work that I'm passionate about, you know? And I would go to classrooms and I would have the reach of to 50, 60 people in the room that I could teach these skills to and know that they're gonna go out into their communities and that's gonna have a ripple effect. And then maybe at lunchtime I would get on the phone and check with my family, like, how are the kids doing? How's my husband doing? You know, how's how's the world doing? And that would be it, you know. And then I would come home and make a meal and we would have family dinner together. And there wasn't this constant, oh, how did my post do? Oh, how did did this resp this person respond to my message? That that element just wasn't there. And I found that I actually helped me be the kind of activist I wanted to be. Yes, present, focused, yes, um, small community, you know, like what what are the causes that actually matter to me, you know, that I actually feel like I can speak to, you know, without getting an additional degree, which is some of these causes need an additional degree, you know. This is true. This is true. Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

There's so much wisdom in everything you're sharing. So I want to thank you for sharing that with us today and your personal experiences too. I know there's so much depth to any, I mean, any of our histories, but the stories that you're telling. There's so much so much there. So I want to thank you and just honor that um that experience that your family went through, which is is really significant. Have you been back to Iran? Is that I have not. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, that's a that's a deep, uh, deep wound still. Uh yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, I'm not sure that the conditions will be such that I will be able to go back in my lifetime, you know. That's that's one of the things that uh is getting stirred up these days a lot, which is like you know, structural change like that in in a country, once it takes hold, it's not easily reversed. Yeah. You know, my country has been under occupation really for 46 years now.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Wow.

Mahshid Hager:

So um, yeah, that's that's a that's a that's a whole other podcast.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Next time, next time. But I do want to just honor the truth and the impact of that for you and for other people who've experienced, you know, a very similar journey or a different thing.

Mahshid Hager:

Millions of people, yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Millions of people, yeah, who can't be in their home for political reasons. And so just honoring that um as we wrap up today, because it feels really important. You know, we can tell stories, and and I do think your relationship to the mountains is a beautiful story, but I just I know there's so much, so much depth to that. So for for you and for anyone listening who's been through something that pivotal and impactful in their lives, I just want to honor that. I appreciate that, Lisa. Thank you so much. Yeah, so I'm sure folks listening um are gonna be interested in your work and where to find you. Uh, where can people get in touch with you?

Mahshid Hager:

Um, I think the easiest thing to do is mashidhager.com. That's my website. You can contact me through that. I have a calendar of my upcoming trainings in there as well, consultations that I offer. Um, so that's probably the easiest thing to do. And then if anyone is interested in somatic experiencing, their website is traumahealing.org. Uh, and you can search trainings by your location.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, by your region. Yeah. Anything specific coming up for you you want to share other than the trainings on your website?

Mahshid Hager:

No, just gearing up for the holidays. There's uh, yeah, there's uh, you know, it's my my schedule is is rhythmic as well. There's a busy season, and I'm looking forward to the end of that coming up here in November.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So yeah, looking forward to settling down in the winter. Yeah. Celebrating that rest and downtime. Yes, for all of us in the winter. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. All right, thank you so much for coming on the show Mahshid.

Mahshid Hager:

Yeah, thank you, Lisa. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Thank you so much for listening. Now, I'd really love to hear from you. What resonated with you in this episode and what's on your mind and in your heart as we bring this conversation to a close? Email me at info at how we can heal.com or share your answers and what's been healing for you in the comments on Instagram where you'll find me at How We Can Heal. Don't forget to go to howwecanheal.com to sign up for email updates as well. You'll also find additional trainings, tons of free resources, and the full transcript of each and every show. If you love the show, please leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, Audible, or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and keep sharing the shows you love the most with all your friends. Visit how we can heal.com forward slash podcast to share your thoughts and ideas for the show. I always, always love hearing from you. Before we wrap up for today, I want to be super clear that this podcast isn't offering prescriptions. It's not advice, nor is it any kind of mental health treatment or diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands, and I encourage you to consult with any healthcare professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. In addition, everyone's opinion here is their own, and opinions can change. Guests share their thoughts, not that of the host or sponsors. I'd like to thank our guests today and everyone who helped support this podcast directly and indirectly. Alex, thanks for taking care of the babe and taking the prayer babies out while I record. Last and never least, I'd like to give a special shout out to my big brother Matt, who passed away in 2002. He wrote this music and it makes my heart so very happy to share it with you here.