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Since You Put It That Way
Tune into "Health Insights with Dr. Mary Louder," where she and her distinguished guests unravel the complex differences between health and medical care. Explore a range of topics, from emerging healthcare challenges to groundbreaking concepts, all designed to ignite transformative "aha" moments and reshape your perspective on wellness. Don't miss an episode—subscribe now to embark on a journey that redefines what you know about health and invites you to think, "Why haven't I seen it this way before?"
Since You Put It That Way
Resilience-Informed Therapy: Building Strength in Trying Times
Dr. Mary Louder and Dr. Arielle Schwartz speak in this episode about what it means to be resilient, now to find that middle ground between constant anxious motion and shutting down in overwhelm, and the various paths into finding your own resilience. Dr. Schwartz discusses her own history with finding resilience and how yogic practice led her to a better understanding of how we can all find peace through self-acceptance and self-compassion, and together with Dr. Louder, starts putting the pieces together for a fuller picture of what mind-body-spirit health really means and how we can all practice it when facing uncertainty in our own futures. A must-listen episode!
Learn more about Dr. Schwartz here: https://drarielleschwartz.com/
Read her many books here: https://drarielleschwartz.com/books-by-dr-schwartz/
Find her therapeutic yoga classes on YouTube: Dr. Arielle Schwartz’ YouTube Channel
Intro for "Since you put it that way" podcast.
Outro for "Since you put it that way" podcast
Hi. I'm Dr Mary Louder, welcome to this episode of Since You Put It That Way, it's the podcast that causes us to stop and think, Hmm, since you put it that way. We're going to dive deep today into a meaningful conversation that will challenge us to grow, and, I think, allow us to thrive. And certainly, yes, you're meant to consider, since you put it that way. Today, my guest is Dr Arielle Schwartz, and she is a well established and beloved psychologist and psychotherapist from the Boulder, Colorado area. And she is an acclaimed author as well, and the creator of the Resilience-Informed Therapy, which is a strength based trauma treatment model that integrates approaches from EMDR, somatic psychology, mindfulness and relational psychotherapy.
Mary Louder:With her decades of experience, Dr Schwartz has helped countless people heal and grow, and she's also a therapeutic yoga instructor who masterfully weaves polyvagal theory into her practice. What truly sets Dr Schwartz apart is her profound belief that trauma recovery isn't just about survival, it's about awakening the spiritual heart, whether through her private practice, training for therapists, or her impactful tools, she empowers others to find strength and resilience in the face of life's challenges. Today, we're going to be diving into her insights on resilience, neuroplasticity, and how we can rewire our minds and bodies for healing and growth, even in the toughest times. So whether you're a therapist, someone on the healing path or is simply curious about the incredible potential of the human brain, but really, more importantly, the human spirit and soul, this episode's for you. So welcome, and welcome to our guest, Dr Arielle Schwartz. Great. Well, welcome Arielle. It's lovely to see you. How are you today?
Arielle Schwartz:I'm well, Mary, thank you. It's so lovely to see you again, too.
Mary Louder:Good. It's taken us a minute to get this going.
Arielle Schwartz:It's true. It's true. We had starts and stops in our scheduling process, and it feels like right timing right now.
Mary Louder:It does. It does because we're going to talk about resiliency. We're going to talk about how to grow, stand strong, thrive, and maybe even just stand, in times of turmoil and in times of uncertainty, I think the ever-present constant would be change and uncertainty, and humans, by and large, don't like that.
Arielle Schwartz:It's so true. It's so true. I saw this little bit of, little nugget of a statistic that says that about 80 to 90% of what we do say or even perceive about the world around us is based on the past. So we're constantly trying to basically control our environment by using the past to try and predict the future. And yet the truth of the matter is, is that everything is constantly changing. There's this, you know, constant river of flux, as we think about it, and we can never step in that the same river twice, right? So, but at the same time, there's this kind of polarity. There's this tension between the need to control and manage and, and make things same so that I can feel safe, and then on the other side, the longing for change and evolution in ourselves and in the world around us, so that we are not stuck in ruts of patterns that aren't serving us.
Mary Louder:Right. Yes. Okay, that was like, okay, the end, okay. I see our work here is done.
Arielle Schwartz:Well, you pulled that one out of me in the first five seconds. So, you know.
Mary Louder:I thought we were gonna go deep. But yeah, there we went.
Arielle Schwartz:We got deep in that river.
Mary Louder:We did. We really, really did, so, you know, and the type of therapy as a psychotherapist that you do is unique. The type of work as a physician I do is unique. And really, there's so many things that cross over with the type of work that you and I do for our patients and clients, and I want to--I found a quote on the website of someone I know that would be you, and this is what your quote says: We adapt to adversity by orienting to our strengths, attending to our pain, and taking charge of the narrative that defines our lives. I love that quote, because I'm always telling patients that we have a story, and Narrative Medicine is so strong and so powerful, but we're also not our story. We're who we are. We're what our story says has happened to us, and by and large, that can be disease patterns, that can be trauma patterns, that can be ups and downs, things where we go bump and land on our head, or things where we land on our feet. And, but in that, what I've always found, and one of the things that's challenging as a physician is the will to change, the desire to change, the desire to grow, the trappings of staying as a victim, or, you know, the I don't know, I'm you may be probably aware of the Cartman triangle of the Victim, Persecutor and, and Rescuer, and that's just the dysfunctional flow that happens all the time. But I think the underlying thing reaching to humanity in the person, reaching to and teaching self-compassion, and then really finding within them, that sense of resiliency, of like, I can choose to be different. I can choose to have a different ending to my story. And so that's a lot too. And even to get to being that type of a therapist or this type of physician was an evolution for ourselves. So can you share with our listeners about your evolution, how you got to, you know, the beautiful place you are, and the type of work that you do?
Arielle Schwartz:You know, I'm, I'm reflecting for a moment. I get asked this question a lot, and every time I get asked, I'm like, Well, I want to share like a, like a slightly different response, because, you know, one could piece together, perhaps a whole bunch of interviews and get Arielle's life, but if I'm always telling the same story, well, you know, then you only hear your one and the response that comes very authentically today is actually not so much about the adversities that I've faced that have helped me get here, but the people that have helped me get here. The people who have been sources of like, really in-depth listening, in-depth presence, willing to see me so clearly, so compassionately, non judgmentally, and that they have dramatically changed my life. And it, and I'm grateful to say that it's not just one, and I'm also grateful to say that they haven't all been therapists. Some have, and, and like, amazing, life changing, and I tell this story in the Post-Traumatic Growth guidebook, and it's it's also where that quote that you read comes from, but one of those people that dramatically turned my life around was a complete stranger when I was 15, who took a risk to not only see me clearly, but to share with me as a complete stranger, what he observed.
Mary Louder:Wow.
Arielle Schwartz:Yeah, yeah, big wow. When I was 15, I was rather lost, if one wants to put it that way, I was, you know, acting out, if that's the terminology that we use for a teenager. I was taking excessive risks, and I was putting myself in some significant danger. And there were a few people at that stage of my life that actually saw the risk that I was in and spoke to me and almost like helped me see myself. One was a teacher who saw that I had suddenly lost a lot of weight, and he just took me aside after class one day, I think I was in 10th grade, and he said, Are you okay? You lost a lot of weight, and I'm concerned for you. Like, wow. And it was a male teacher.
Mary Louder:Yeah.
Arielle Schwartz:Talking to again, a 15 year old youth who was a risk. I was at risk. The other was that we had gone on a family trip. And this was a trip that we had gone to my, my, with my grandparents, my, my father, my stepmother, my step sibling, and my cousins and aunts and uncles. So there were, I think, 13 of us that went on this family trip together, and I was suffering, and I was very depressed. And out of that depression, was acting out in in some pretty concerning ways. And I had, we're at a like a resort, right, one of these places, and I snuck out of the room that I was staying in with my cousins, and I had gone to the bar at 15 years old. I won't go into all the details of what proceeds next, but the next day, I felt like just total crap, like I just felt so down on myself. I did not see a future for myself. And I was sitting by myself by the edge of the water, crying and that complete stranger that had seen me the night before, adult male, safe, trustworthy male, again, for a young, 15 year old girl, walked up to me and said, You seem lost.
Mary Louder:Wow.
Arielle Schwartz:Right?
Mary Louder:And, yeah.
Arielle Schwartz:And sat far enough away, but close enough, and just spoke in like, metaphor. I called this man my guardian angel. He's spoke in metaphor--
Mary Louder:That's what came to my mind too, to be honest.
Arielle Schwartz:Right? Like, truly. And he said, you know, there are
Mary Louder:Yeah. times when we're like a boat on the water that's lost its point on the horizon, and if we don't have that horizon point, you're just going to continue to weave your way, and it takes, you know, and you don't have a direction. You don't know where you're going. He said you need to find your point on the horizon. Essentially, what I hear is, why am I here? Why am I on the planet? You know, and not that I had that answer per se at 15, but it even gave me the sense of possibility that, that I could find that. Yes.
Arielle Schwartz:And, and we ended up talking for the next hour or so, or maybe longer, but this complete stranger totally turned my life around, or helped me turn my life around, you know? And, and the felt sense that there was something larger than me, community, humanity, kindness, that willingness to see and take action, something larger than me in a spiritual sense, the meanings, making sense, that completely shifted my life from that day forward.
Mary Louder:Wow. Yeah, that's beautiful. So that was almost like an anchor of hope. Because that is, you know, that had--hope has
Arielle Schwartz:Yes. action to it. It's not just wishful thinking. It has a verb to its definition, and so you've got to do something. That's beautiful. It's amazing. And then the movement, the yoga. So then did you go right into yoga? Was that one of your first forays, or therapy first, then yoga? Because I, I kind of know you as the yoga therapist, psychotherapist, like extraordinaire. How did you pull this all together? That's kind of-- Thank you.
Mary Louder:And the funny thing is, I literally connected with you and your website, like two weeks before we moved from Boulder to Michigan. So it was the fi--I'm like, what is, what is happening? And then coming back to, and then we meet in Arizona, of all places. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, we're, you know, in the ethers. But anyway, so what happened there, like with the yoga and the therapy and things like that? And that was this 15 year old phase that went on before and
Arielle Schwartz:Well, I had grown up. Thankfully, yoga was in--talk about anchors. One of my additional anchors, and also additional people that really served as a source of strength for me and resilience, is my stepfather, and he came into my life when I was about five, and brought yoga with him. So he was a yogi. He was a seeker. Is a seeker. He's still living. He's a very inspirational person in my life, and really became an anchor for my mom and I both. And, and so, we started going to ashrams when I was six or seven years old, and yoga became kind of a lifestyle factor for us, in the sense that, like for example, in third grade, he came every single Friday and taught yoga to my third grade class. And it was so playful, right? We would be lions and roaring and trees and, you know, cobras and whatever, whatever creatures we would become in that process. But it was super grounding and rooting, and I loved it. And so I had this early influence, and then I became a teenager, and after a bit. And then I--you know, we have moments where I really uprooted myself from any of that. say, kind of like coming to the surface and getting a breath of air, or kind of seeing even that that horizon exists. And then we get kind of swallowed under again. And I think I went through several rounds of that, surfacing and then, and then descending again into some of my own wounds and struggles, but reenacting them in the world. And I had another round of that when I was first went off to college, and I was feeling a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety, and it was the first time that I went into psychotherapy as a young adult, I had been forced into therapy as a seven year old, which wasn't a great experience for me. It's kind of like a little bit of a humorous experience now, but not a good experience. Not a good experience for a seven year old with a psychoanalyst, no, not a good experience.
Mary Louder:You know where your navel is to gaze at it? Do you know what a navel is to gaze--
Arielle Schwartz:It was just too heady, you know? And I was so I was such a sensory kid, I would have benefited from play therapy, perhaps, but not from that form. So anyhow, we--I go into therapy legit as an 18 year old, and that really helped. That really helped give me just a, like a meta reflection. It was very narrative. She was a Jungian analyst, but it was just right for that phase of my life. It was not somatic, but it was--I felt so held and seen and and then maybe a year later, yoga came back in, and a friend of mine, kind of like, grabbed me by the arm, and she's like, oh, there's a yoga class at school. Let's go. And I went to this yoga class, and I felt connected to myself. Like, Oh, there I am. Oh my gosh, where, did Arielle go? There she is, and and then I would go once a week, and then I started to do a home practice, and I was started--within a year, I was practicing daily, like it became a lifeline, where every single time I practiced, I felt less anxious, more more grounded, less depressed, more connected to myself. Hallelujah moment, okay?
Mary Louder:Yes, yes.
Arielle Schwartz:And I had some other experiences in body, mind centering and somatics, like early, early flavors of the body playing a key role in my own mental health. And enough of this to lead me to just like crave anything that I could that not only gave me that embodied, felt experience of connection, but I had a very strong mental inquiry, curiosity that came in that said, I want to understand why this works. That's what brought me to Naropa to study somatic psychology. Is what brought me to Boulder, Colorado. This was 1996, and that same year I did my yoga teacher training. So I was 22 when I completed my yoga teacher training, and when I started the somatic psychology master's program, and really like from there until now, the last 30 years, have been just like a hunger to continue to kind of not only link for myself and to offer practices that help other feel it, but to also offer the science about why this works and to legitimize the value of body centered work within clinical psychology and medicine.
Mary Louder:Yeah, yes.
Arielle Schwartz:Yes, yes, yes.
Mary Louder:Yes, yes, yes. I guess it's going to be the choir preaching to the choir at this podcast. Um, yeah, that's just beautiful. Because when you
Arielle Schwartz:Yes. know, I think about movement as life and as an osteopath, we're we're taught that if we really look back at the true osteopathic teachings of A.T. Still, he was really a mystic, actually. And if I think about that, and then just the whole thing of, you know, well, you've got to move lymph, you've got to move circulation, you've got to move your neural networks. You've got to move your digestion. So, I mean, we could, like, go down, literally, to the cellular level, and then we can come right back out. You gotta move your feelings. You've gotta move that energy. You've gotta move your muscles. You've gotta move your bones. You know, and so, and then you've gotta move because it's, you know, time to go. The rent is due. You've got so there's movement everywhere, literally, you know, the whole thing about life is movement. And then what we do is we get stuck, don't we? And so then inertia. Yes, yes. Well, there's two sides to this equation. Sometimes I think we get stuck and we don't move, and sometimes we get stuck in movement to such a degree where we're actually so scared of inertia that I'll just keep moving, but now I'm moving in an unproductive manner. It's like or this, or that, da-da, da-da, da-da, but it's all to avoid the potential that if I stop moving, I'm just going to go into the quicksand and I'll never get out.
Mary Louder:Yes, yes, I see that too, because people just don't stop.
Arielle Schwartz:Right.
Mary Louder:And then if they do stop, or there isn't a stress, their guard goes down, you know, because you know that equation they talk about, not 5% conscious, 95% unconscious. I'm not sure I like those numbers. I think it's a bit different number. But the point is, you know, we spend the a lot of part of our consciousness trying to suppress. And that can be through the phrenic movement or always being busy, and it can be also just going into not-movement, which is different than quietness, different than stillness, isn't it? And so, you know, if we were to say, and how would you then jump right into something like resilience? I mean, because people are like resilience, man, I'm not even able to stand up today. You know, I just went in and put the covers over my head, went back under the feathers, you know, as I say, and it's an important thing for us right now, because we're existentially facing things. We're facing things within our culture that I think, if handled correctly, will cause us to look inward to see what's our part to bring about a better world? That's, that's my personal feeling. But I also think that is also based in humanity and compassion. So you know, what are your thoughts to get someone going either direction from too fast or not moving, and then into kind of that resiliency, even if we can name that.
Arielle Schwartz:Yeah, yeah. I love that you kind of went from one extreme into resilience, like you're both extremes, and this idea of coming back to resilience and how far away it can feel. Like there's no way that I can go from not wanting to get out of bed and pulling the covers up, or going going, going and not wanting to stop, and like, how in the world do I get from either of those into this midline stream of resilient, responding, agency, a sense of control, sense that my actions make a difference in the world, right? Those are some of the characteristics that we can describe as, as the resilient mindset. And I've spent, you know, when I was writing the Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook, I've been studying what are the factors associated with resilience? And the knowledge that it's not something that you're born with. It's not something that you just have or don't have. It is a set of skills and behaviors that can be learned and practiced. Okay, great. Then, how do we get from here to here? Some of it is the trauma work, right? Some of it is recognizing that resilience isn't just inside of an individual. It's about our direct access to support. That, you know, one of those factors, we call it control, but it's basically, how much control do I have to know that I have some access to the support systems that, that will help lead me to feel more resilient. And you know, whether that's access to therapy, whether that's access to a yoga class, whether that's access to a book that I might read, right? A group that I might participate in. And all of those things are good, but if I don't have the ability to access them, you know, not so good. So can--you know, so part of it, sometimes it's financial, sometimes, you know, we can look at some of the very realistic barriers to accessing those resources. But then there's an internal barrier that we would call here more the the loss of self efficacy, or the inability to sense that, that, let's say there is that yoga class out there that's for free on Zoom or on YouTube that I might be able to take with someone like Dr Arielle Schwartz, right? Let's say that's out there, but I can't get myself to it. Why can't I get myself to it? Because part of me believes that no matter what I do, it's not going to make a difference. Where did that come from? That's a historical experience. At one point, was it true that no matter what you did, it wasn't going to make a difference? Are you still looking through the eyes of that child part who is perceiving that to still be true in your world now? Could now be different from then? Well, I can't do all the things that she does in that class. Could you do the first 10 minutes, right? And notice how just 10 minutes of moving and breathing create a subtle shift, or a not so subtle shift? Sometimes it's a very dramatic shift. So some of it is about kind of working with those internal barriers of you know, it's not going to make a difference, or I don't have what it takes to be able to do that XYZ thing, or I'm scared of what I might feel if I do get in touch with my body. So, you know, I think that it's about finding the pacing of the process that works for you, but one of those resilience factors that, that shows up in every research study that I look at on resilience is the willingness to stay committed to the process, even if it's hard, right? The willingness to just show up. I have some--I mean, people come to yoga from all over the world, and sometimes people will show up and they say, I'm just coming to listen today and to feel part of this community. Beautiful. Do that. That's enough.
Mary Louder:It's nice.
Arielle Schwartz:Yeah.
Mary Louder:That, that actually just feels really good, even that. Yeah. Do you think that those messages from when we were young'uns, that's what I call us when we're little, the youngins? Do you think those turn into like unconscious core beliefs?
Arielle Schwartz:Right. That are running the script in the background, the 95% of that iceberg under the water. And, and what I love about the yogic practice is that so often we
think yoga:physical movement, but Yoga is a whole package. It's the whole thing, and it corresponds so beautifully with, with psychology, with psychotherapy.
Mary Louder:Yeah.
Arielle Schwartz:So when we look at the practice of yoga, part of it is waking up or beginning to listen to those unconscious scripts that are running in the background that we adopted way back when and are still, you know, at large. And once we can hear the voices that are saying, You're not enough, it's never going to change. You don't deserve it, right? And we can be--bear witness to it. That is a game changer as well.
Mary Louder:It is. I, you know, I've learned a technique, and, you know, I'm gonna, I laugh about this, because it's like surgery. Well, there's a surgical technique to take out your appendix, and there's a good way to do it, and there's, you know, you want to go in the front, not the back, right? Because of where things are. So location's important. But in psychotherapy, I don't know if location is important, because it's different. Where, you know, where are we treating? Where's the soul, where's the consciousness? You know, all of those things. The body holds, the memories the body keeps, the score. You know all of that, and our understanding is expanding so quickly and changing so quickly that, you know, I hold it very openly and, you know, gently, but to that point, the subconscious, I'm wondering--I've learned a technique that can, in theory, turn off those tapes. And I've had, I've become a, you know, I've learned, I've learned this technique, and I have, I honestly have mixed feelings about it, because I see it as a technique, but not as a standalone, because sometimes patients aren't even, folks aren't even aware of what they're feeling, to know that it's coming from the subconscious. And then, if you share with them that that's what it is, and like, it's been living there with them. It's like, what's behind that door, where that is, you know what I mean? Yes, for sure. And then the other side I'm going to go the other side of the pendulum, probably, where sometimes folks are in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or other types of therapy, where, 3, 4, 5, years, they really haven't made a lot of progress. Now, you know, I see that in medicine too. I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but I--and those folks end up in my office, chronic illness, really stuck, really stuck. And my nature, my character, is catalyst, change, transformation, the type of physician I am. Bar none. And so sometimes you sandblast, sometimes you chip, sometimes you gently sand. Sometimes you're just indirectly over here and the patient's over there. The question in that is, it looks like there's not any just one straight line through this. Yeah. What are your thoughts about that? With people saying, you know, here, I've got this online. Here, I've got this online, three easy steps, two visits--
Arielle Schwartz:Right. And then the--
Mary Louder:Help me, help me break that down.
Arielle Schwartz:The looping back, or the regressing back into symptoms, and why am I here again? Or how did I repeat this pattern again? All of the above. So I think there's a few pieces that come to mind. One is that the complexity of our inner system is such that, as you said, we have these inner young'uns, right? But we we carry with us not just the belief, but the part of us that carries that belief. And so this idea that we can just get rid of a cognitive process actually, in some way, communicates to the individual we're going to get rid of a part of you. Well, what happens when we feel like any part of us might be, might be exiled, is, is it brings up more fear. We go, well, I don't want to lose that part of me, that part of me is here for a reason, or it helps me feel some sense of identity, whatever it might be. And so we hold on stronger. And, and the same misconception happens with EMDR. I've been an EMDR therapist for 22 years, and people say, Well, you're going to get rid of this memory, right? Well, it doesn't really work that way. What we do is we fold into your overall sense of self, that memory or that part of you. So the part that carries, let's say, unworthiness, there's, you know, I should have never been born. I'm not worthy of love. Look at all the examples in my life that show me that--and that this is this predominant experience of oneself. What what occurs in those moments is that there's this phenomenal blending with the unworthy part. I'm still living inside of the unworthiness, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, because looking out through the eyes of unworthiness, I'll find 1000 examples to confirm it. So now we have other layers that come in, the part that's But if we can get just enough distance, just
Mary Louder:That's right. rejecting that young one that feels so unworthy. Now we get to like with the belief, we get enough distance, and we go, Oh, work with another part, where was that learned from? Who honey, that part that feels unworthy developed those feelings in such and such a context in these ways. Now, can I have compassion for the part of me that feels unworthy? Alright, so now we've got this idea that there is the unworthy part and maybe a Self, capital S, that can have compassion for rejected that unworthy part? Who criticized or couldn't have that part that feels unworthy. It makes it sound kind of compassion or couldn't have softness, never made space for, oh, okay, well, that was a learned experience, so now we have to differentiate from that often internalized parent, simple, and--but it's not. And you and I both know this, right? Okay. So we've got this young one with unworthiness. We've got some separateness from the parent. Once we can separate what's restricting or blocking the compassion, maybe we can because so often what shows up next is, now we've got unworthy. start to feel some softness. Or we could imagine someone else that could feel that compassion for that unworthy part. Mary, I We try and cultivate self-compassion, but what comes bet you could feel a lot of compassion for that unworthy part, even if I couldn't, right? So we lean into the allies or up instead? Rejection, disgust, repulsion, how dare you. I can't the others on the path that help us hold those parts. We don't ever get rid of the part, but we become better at becoming protectors, nurturing--or, a nurturer for that part that has even look at that part, that part has helped me back all of felt so unworthy for so long, so that when another life event happens and she comes to the surface, we go, Oh, honey, I've got you. You're my charge, and we'll get through this. these years. So you become then the protector right away, which is a mammalian trait, by the way. Mother Bear. Lioness.
Arielle Schwartz:That's right. That's right. Well, you know compassion has two forms, right? Fierce, and nurturing.
Mary Louder:Yes. And then, just like the mama bear, you know, don't go after the cubs. You'll learn that, bad news, you do that. And as soon as the cubs are safe, she goes back getting huckleberries like she was. We don't have that capacity as humans so much to go back to the huckleberries, we tend to stay in that trauma response where--that's what I call it, a trauma response, where it's not safe, that you don't feel safe. And so you get the that dysregulation, the autonomic dysregulation--the change in heart rate, change in blood pressure, change in blood sugar, change in weight, change in sleep pattern, all those things that go with that. Looking at, you know, EMDR, how that is one of the formative, you know, foundational, energetic psychology approaches. Tapping, thought field therapy, EFT, another one, advanced integrative therapy, I do--I came up with a Self Compassion and Connection that kind of blends a number of things and gets right to it, that I found that when a person is beset with anxiety, and really just beside themselves, literally, that we can find that connection and slow that autonomic response physically, that then allows for what I saw emerge was, as you say, that sense of compassion for self. Because all of a sudden you're like, Oh, there I am. Oh, hello, I can--I got you, we can do this. Yeah, and you know, true to form, there are just some days that we the best we can do is stand up and breathe.
Arielle Schwartz:True.
Mary Louder:And I think accepting that and understanding and having compassion for ourself in that point of time is super important. And listening so that the voice, and really our internal voice, is what's guiding that. More important than what's expected of us, what we're supposed to do, what we should--the "shoulds."
Arielle Schwartz:I had a thought that came up when you were speaking kind of early on in this about how hard it is for us as humans to get back to the huckleberries.
Mary Louder:Yeah.
Arielle Schwartz:Right, and that we're staying looping in those fear-based state and the way that, of course, that is interacting with our autonomics and therefore our health. And what has been so powerful for me, both as a yoga teacher and I also teach classes in what are called vagal toning practices, which is toning the vagus nerve, is that anything that we are trying to repattern in our mind, in our body, in our nervous system, in our emotional response, requires repeated practice. It's not a one and done game, right? It's kind of like what we were saying before. It's not like the one magic session. We learn a tool, we learn a strategy, and then that--the rubber hits the road when we practice that strategy every day.
Mary Louder:Yes.
Arielle Schwartz:So that you know whether it's your compassion practice. Or, you know, whatever the thing is, my vagal toning practice. It's like, brushing your teeth. It's kind of like, okay, wake up, do my practice so that I can create the mental hygiene that's required.
Mary Louder:A Mental Floss, a dental floss.
Arielle Schwartz:It's totally like, Okay, I'm gonna, gonna floss my vagus nerve this morning, right? And like, but it really does help with that resilience. Because what, what vagal toning means is that we are, are helping create autonomic nervous system flexibility. What do I mean by that? With our autonomic nervous system, it has two branches, you and I know this, but I'm saying it for anyone listening, right? Has the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And again, we don't want to be stuck in anxiety. We don't want to be stuck in hiding in bed, under the sheets. We want to be able to move between, you know, feeling mobilized and ready to handle the day, and that ability to move the lymph and the muscles and the bones, everything we said, and the ability to go into rest and digest without going into collapse. So the tone of the vagus nerve is really about this ability to go back and forth between nervous system states with flexibility and fluidity. Okay. When we practice really simple techniques, we can strengthen that autonomic flexibility. And, just like me, going to that yoga class when I was 19, I felt better immediately. And then within a year, I had a daily practice because I liked how I felt. I felt less anxious. I felt less stuck in my head. I felt less dissociated from my body. I felt more at home. It's such an empowering place to be. I don't ever want to leave that home again. But of course, every day we get a little bit disconnected because life is hard.
Mary Louder:Yeah.
Arielle Schwartz:And then we have ways to come back home again and again.
Mary Louder:That's beautiful. So, what I'm hearing you say is, probably don't get a punch card for power yoga. I'm just saying.
Arielle Schwartz:It depends, I'm not anti power yoga. I'll say that I'm not anti power yoga, so as long as inside of that environment, you feel like you've got a teacher you connect to, a community that holds you, a space where it's safe to be you, and that you feel like you can listen to your body inside of that environment. Great! If those ingredients are there, power away. And if, if you go to that class and it's like, oh my gosh, so fast, and I have to match that shape, and I can't even keep up with my breath. No-go, right? Find class, or whatever the practice is, that allows you to be you, that, that gives you space for that authentic expression of you.
Mary Louder:Yeah. So one of the things I do is genomic work, where we do their folks' genome. Not diagnostic, but definitely shows patterns and epigenetics, which is the environmental influence on our genes. And I was speaking the other day to a patient, and I'll tell you what, they do all power stuff, and they were faced with their genome for the first time, and it was endurance. And they're like, I don't even know what to do with this. And it was fascinating, because of the struggles that they were having and how they couldn't recover from their activity. But the messaging when she was a--when they were a young'un, was you have to be like the boys. You have to be like this. You can't be who you are. And we were able to, through our work together to find that space of compassion for her. And in that session, what was really just amazing was the autonomics change. Her face changed, her skin tone changed, the blanching, the, the, you know, the redness, the different things that occurred for just finding that connection again. And I, you know, and so it was just amazing to see that we were able to address that. And she's like, I think I'm going to go for a walk. I go, yes. You know, versus I got to hit the gym and do the circuits, you know?
Arielle Schwartz:Right. I remember there was some, some set of literature that I come across, I think, from my naturopath many years ago, that was some combination of, like, eat right for your body type, but it also had the kinds of exercise that were beneficial if you were an adrenal, you know, adrenal driver, versus if you had, you know, kind of other primary drivers in your system. And it was so beneficial to really link type of exercise, and of course, now with genetic testing, you can get super specific based on your epigenetics and all of that. I love that. I think that's a great story.
Mary Louder:Yeah, and it's really fun, because connecting then the patient to their story of who they are. I said, let's just come back--keep coming back to that, because the body has the inherent capacity to heal. Same thing, I think it's driven towards resilience. We're, you know, we're really meant to be more than survivors. We're meant to be thrivers. And I think knowing that we can a--you know, we have agency. Maybe speak a little bit about choice and agency as you see it through your work, how to strengthen that with someone, that they're not, you know, a victim of their circumstances or their story. You know?
Arielle Schwartz:Yeah, I think that choice and agency have to be rooted in self awareness. In the yogic system we call this svadhyaya or self-study in the polyvagal system, you know that I'm part of, we call it neuroceptive awareness, where we're bringing awareness to the state of the nervous system that I'm in, to what is kind of driving me from from the background, so that if I'm going to build agency, I need to know what is coming out of automaticity or reactivity or habit and--or, you know, out of learned patternings that aren't necessarily in alignment, like the story you shared with who I really am.
Mary Louder:Yeah.
Arielle Schwartz:And so once we can kind of build that self awareness story, then we can bring in the contemplation of what are the choices that are available to be to me now? What might occur if I were to do something different? And what I love about the process of change is it becomes a series of little experiments. I, just because I'm trying something new doesn't mean that I have to wed myself to that too quickly, either. I can experiment with a new way of being, or a new way of walking, or a new way of, you know, in a new way of of showing up in the world, and I can notice now with that grounding of awareness, how did that shift how I feel in myself and my body and my emotions. And then we can keep fine tuning it, but awareness is always going to sit at the heart of that process.
Mary Louder:Okay. So what do you think is the key for awareness? Is it the--yeah, I'm just going to ask, what's the key?
Arielle Schwartz:Slowing down. Slowing down to--and being willing to be curious and to suspend judgment, right? So often we jump from I'm aware of something, and then I've got a story that jumps in that makes it good or bad. And if we can actually come back to slowing it down, because mind speed goes 10 times faster than sensation or body speed, so if I slow it down to stay with a sensation--I'll give a classic example. I'm teaching breath practice, and the breath brings up anxiety. As soon as we bring awareness to breath. If we jump into the anxiety story, we have all of these narratives in the mind that tell us what's wrong with what I'm feeling when I'm connecting to the breath. So I don't want to do any conscious breathing. No, no, that's not for me, right? Slow the whole thing down. First of all, when we look at breath practices, we literally have 30 different breath practices we could experiment with. So, if we broaden out that we could try breathing in different ways and see which ones actually bring you into greater calm, and which ones trigger that "No, no, no, no, no," or if we slow down the, I can't be with that sensation enough to be curious about it. Who couldn't be with that sensation? When and where did did that sensation become too much for you? Why was it too much then? Can now be different from then? So it's a lot of the same practices around this. But if we can build awareness by slowing down, coming to the body versus the mind, suspending judgment, then we've got a little foothold into the change process, into the agency process, the choices.
Mary Louder:Gotcha. Did you just describe desensitization?
Arielle Schwartz:Oh, that's always a part of the of the game, isn't it? Right? Like, yeah, it's desensitization in two seconds flat. Like, what you know, so much of what we do in this world is avoid things that are uncomfortable, and we build phobias up around them, right? Like, whether it's the breath or going on an airplane. And the only way to come out of the phobia or the the distress associated with something is actually to go toward it, right? We call it exposure therapy and desensitization, but we need to go toward it at a pace that doesn't overwhelm us and reconfirm all of the worst case scenario thoughts, right? So we move toward it slowly, with newness of I'm safe enough now to feel that discomfort and know that I'm still okay.
Mary Louder:Yeah. So key takeaways, change is always with us. Discomfort is a close relative. We can do it by slowing down or getting moving wherever we're starting from, but we can do it by literally just starting and not holding judgment, being curious and being compassionate. Does that sound about right?
Arielle Schwartz:It's brilliant. Nice summary, Mary.
Mary Louder:Yeah. Well, this has been a great conversation. I think I've had a therapy session. So thank you very much.
Arielle Schwartz:Thank you.
Mary Louder:It's just lovely to talk with you and to spend this time together. And I know our listeners will really love this. So I appreciate, appreciate your heart. I appreciate all that you bring to the world and to your community. I'm glad that we're connecting. It's just fun and just wonderful. So thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.
Arielle Schwartz:Thank you. It just feels like the beginning of more.
Mary Louder:I'll second and have seconds on that. Alright. Yeah, so we just finished up a great conversation, Dr Schwartz and I, Arielle Schwartz, and you know, I'd like to encourage everybody to go over to her website at arielleschwartz.com and she's got eight books that she's written. She has webinars, she has teachings, she has retreats. It's a great resource, and she does yoga practice that you can follow on YouTube. And so there's either a nominal fee or it's without cost. There's both options. So I think availing ourselves to the things we talked about in this podcast is super important. So with that, I wish us all a very happy end of 2024, and onward, peacefully, quietly with awareness, slowing down with curiosity and non judgment. Enjoy the recording and enjoy connecting and/or reconnecting with yourself and with those around you who are in your community. Be well.
