The Mind-Body Couple

Transforming Chronic Pain Through Somatic Experiencing and Breathwork with Laura Haraka

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 70

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Have you ever felt trapped in a cycle of chronic pain and endless medical consultations with no real relief in sight? Laura Haraka did, and her journey from battling debilitating pelvic pain to finding solace and healing through somatic experiencing and breathwork is nothing short of inspirational.

In this episode of MindBodyCouple, Laura opens up about her transformative journey, sharing her struggles with chronic pain and how she emerged stronger through the power of mind-body medicine. Her story is a testament to the strength of self-love, self-compassion, and our innate ability to heal.

Laura Haraka is a Somatic experiencing practitioner, breathwork facilitator, and mind body coach. She is the owner of  Feel to Heal Wellness where she empowers people to utilize their own innate healing capabilities to free themselves from a life of chronic symptoms by reframing negative thinking and beliefs through self-love, self-compassion, and self-worth.

Connect & work with Laura:


https://www.instagram.com/feel.to.heal.wellness

https://www.facebook.com/feel.to.heal.wellness

https://www.feeltoheal.live/

Code to Join a Free Breathwork class with Laura: FREEBREATHER
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Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson are therapists who treat neuroplastic pain and mind-body symptoms. They are also married! In his 20s, Tanner overcame chronic pain and a fibromyalgia diagnosis by learning his symptoms were occurring due to learned brain pathways and nervous system dysregulation. Post-healing, Tanner and Anne have dedicated their lives to developing effective treatment and education for neuroplastic pain and symptoms. Listen and learn how to assess your own chronic pain and symptoms, gain tools to retrain the brain and nervous system, and make gradual changes in your life and health!


The Mind-Body Couple podcast is owned by Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc. This podcast is produced by Alex Klassen, who is one of the wonderful therapists at our agency in Calgary, Alberta. https://www.painpsychotherapy.ca/


Tanner, Anne, and Alex also run the MBody Community, which is an in-depth online course that provides step-by-step guidance for assessing, treating, and resolving mind-body pain and symptoms. https://www.mbodycommunity.com


Also check out Tanner's YouTube channel for more free education and practices: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Fl6WaFHnh4ponuexaMbFQ


And follow us for daily education posts on Instagram: @painpsychotherapy


Discl...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the MindBodyCouple podcast.

Speaker 2:

I'm Tanner Murtaugh and I'm Anne Hampson. This podcast is dedicated to helping you unlearn chronic pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

If you need support with your healing, you can book in for a consultation with one of our therapists at painpsychotherapyca or purchase our online course at embodycommunitycom to access in-depth education, somatic practices, recovery tools and an interactive community focused on healing.

Speaker 2:

Links in the description of each episode. Hi everyone, welcome back to the MindBodyCouple podcast Today. I'm very excited and honored to have on the show Laura Haraka, so thanks so much for being on.

Speaker 3:

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we've been planning back and forth for the listeners' sake. We hadn't booked actually a few months ago, but then I got the stomach flu and then we were both busy. So we're finally doing this, which is great. So before we jump in, I'll just give the listeners just a bit of information about you, Laura. So Laura is a somatic experiencing practitioner, breathwork facilitator and mind-body coach, and they're the owner of Feel to Heal Wellness, where they empower people to utilize their own innate healing capacities or capabilities to free themselves from a life of chronic symptoms by reframing negative thinking and beliefs through self-love, self-compassion and self-worth. So thanks again so much for doing this with me.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm excited to be here with you today. We got a chance to have you on our podcast.

Speaker 2:

So it's nice. You know we get to reverse now. We're reversing roles now. This is great. Exactly so to start off, just so the listeners can learn a bit about you. I know you have your own personal journey with chronic symptoms and whatever you're comfortable sharing, but I was hoping maybe you could share a bit about your journey with chronic symptoms and what you went through.

Speaker 3:

Sure, so I'll just give you a bit of background information. I was living in Bloomfield, new Jersey at the time, with my husband and my two daughters. I taught high school math for 10 years, wow. And then I became a stay-at-home mom. I say I took like a 20-year maternity leave. Yeah, I like it, I like it.

Speaker 3:

And in 2015, I developed a chronic pain condition and I went on a four-year quest to find the cause of my pain. I went to over 25 doctors all across the United States and I was actually given 10 different diagnoses. Okay, I had so many tests, procedures. I even had a surgery to try to fix what they thought was wrong with me. During this time, I was addicted to oxycodone and morphine and other prescription drugs, klonopin being one of them as well and I experienced clinical depression and anxiety.

Speaker 3:

Now I know everyone likes to hear what my symptoms were. So I was diagnosed with chronic pelvic pain and each time I went to a different doctor, they diagnosed me with something different, but all in the same region. So I was diagnosed with pedental neuralgia, interstitial cystitis, pelvic floor dysfunction and PGAD. Those were probably the main ones that I was diagnosed with, and because of those symptoms, I couldn't sit or stand for long periods of time at all. I carried a cushion around with me wherever I went my young children at the time they're older now but they couldn't sit on my lap and it was a pretty lonely life from like family and friends. I kind of isolated and kept to myself and there's so many details, but it was a very bleak time in my life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's so much that, uh that you kind of went through. I appreciate you sharing that um with the listeners and and what you kind of went through and I'm sure so many people listening relate to that. That kind of isolation um that, as we know, so commonly comes with with chronic pain, chronic symptoms, um, that kind of isolation from the world, yeah yeah, yeah, there's a lot of grief and a lot of sadness.

Speaker 3:

The things that I used to do I was no longer able to do. I was extremely active.

Speaker 2:

I used to go running and go to the gym and my whole life came to basically a halt stops and the main focus is what's going on, trying to figure it out, trying to get diagnosed and and I relate to you there I was just given so many diagnoses over over time, right like every new doctor, and I think that creates such confusion for people and such frustration and um, yeah, you keep going to chase a different diet.

Speaker 3:

You go to each doctor in search of a cure for your pain and then they come up with a different diagnosis every time you go, and it's extremely frustrating yeah, it really is.

Speaker 2:

It just leaves people confused and it's one of these things about the medical system that we, that we fall into right, is everyone has different specializations or everyone thinks there's a different cause and it's all over the place just going from person to person trying to figure this out. And I remember, I remember thinking I don't know if you relate to this I remember feeling like the power so much on their side of figuring this out for me. Like I felt very like that despair, that hopeless feeling of like there's there's nothing I can do. I can just advocate to see another doctor and try it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it would be sometimes making an appointment and I wouldn't be able to get an appointment for weeks. And I'd be hanging onto that appointment for dear life, thinking, oh, this doctor is going to have the answer for me, and then I'd get there and I just go down another rabbit hole.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Which can feel very hopeless yeah.

Speaker 2:

And can I ask you know with with your journey and what you went through, like how long was that kind of period to give people reference that you were going from doctor to doctor trying to find a cause, a solution?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was probably about three to four years before I found the world of mind-body medicine, and I was lucky. I found the world of mind-body medicine and somatic experiencing and breath work and I realized that I had the power to heal myself. So I took my own power back, which was nice. I didn't keep it in the hands of the doctors and thinking, oh, this doctor will help me or this doctor will help me, and you know, you can do the same thing with all different types of practitioners. I started going to Reiki and acupuncture and, even though that was more the correct path to go down, I still was looking for them to cure me and what I realized is that I had to really regain my own power in this journey.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I like that line. You took your power back along the way, and I'm sure you've seen so many people do that over your time and in working in this healing space. But it's, it's a beautiful sight to see when that happens. Um, because it is, it's the nature of the medical system and any practitioner I, I think I'm always cautious when I'm working with people too, of people not thinking like I'm the solution to, to somehow I'm gonna cure them, like that's not how this functions. Um, you provide a space, you, you provide you know, maybe, skills and strategies, but at the end of the day, the, the, the wonderful thing and and the hard thing about mind, body healing is that the power is in the own person's hands to start to make changes, to start to discover themselves, to start to, you know, cultivate a sense of safety and connection with themselves. Right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that's my main goal as a practitioner to show people that they do have power over what's happening and they might not be able to stop the sensation the unpleasant sensation from happening, but they do have power over how they react to the sensation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's almost like the idea of where do you have the control? Because people go down that loop of trying to control the sensation, whatever it is. It could be any symptom, it doesn't even matter. They're trying to control, they're trying to do everything they can to make it turn on or off, essentially Exactly. But there's all these other things that we do have some semblance of maybe not full control, but control and power and ability to make shifts and changes.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, exactly. We do have the power to believe our thoughts and to challenge our thoughts. So when we do that, we can shift our mindset from negative thinking to positive thinking, and that can also give us our power to change or shift the symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, I think that's such a key understanding of that you mentioned there that I think I really thought was amazing. When I was first healing I'm like, hey, my thoughts actually affect the sensations in my body, like there's a real connection. It sounds so straightforward with what we know now in the literature, but it's quite remarkable compared to kind of that medical lens that people can have with their symptoms, that their thoughts, their emotions, their state of their nervous system. It's completely disconnected from the pain or symptom that they're having.

Speaker 3:

And it's amazing when you actually are working with a client and then they go oh my goodness, you're right, that thought did affect my symptoms or that emotion did, but it's, they put it together. I don't actually, I just kind of point it out to them yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2:

It's that beautiful, insightful moment um where the connection happens, whether it's between thoughts and sensations, or emotions and sensations, like the link is seen very clearly.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's like you can see the light bulb go off in someone's mind.

Speaker 2:

Totally, and you know in your journey. I'm curious what was the entry point into more of this mind-body world of treating chronic pain, chronic symptoms Like? What was the entry point? How did that kind of unfold for you?

Speaker 3:

Well, I was a math teacher. Like I said, I actually later on in life I became a dog walker. I opened my own dog walking business.

Speaker 3:

So, I had no idea that this was going to be a path, a career path that I chose, and one day I was asked to be on a podcast to share my success story. So I said sure. And as soon as I was on the podcast and the podcast aired, people started contacting me and they started calling me and I spent hours and hours talking to people on the phone and I really enjoyed it, but it got to be extremely time consuming. So I had to start telling people oh, I can talk to you tomorrow or you just have to give me a couple more days, because I was on the phone for sometimes six hours a day. And then someone told me well, I'd pay you to talk to me because you're really helping me. And that's when I said, okay, maybe I can use what happened to me to help other people. So I decided to become a somatic experiencing practitioner, which, as you know, because you're going for the same certification, it's a three-year certification. It's a long certification yeah.

Speaker 3:

It is. I really think it's worth it because it was one of the modalities that really helped me quite a bit, and breathwork was one of the other modalities that helped me a lot. So I said, okay, I'm going to get certified in breathwork. And then I said, okay, if I really want to do this right, I'm going to get certified as a mind body practitioner. So it all stemmed from just being on one podcast and people just calling me to ask me some questions, and I decided to make this a full-time career and I made it my own business Field to Health Wellness.

Speaker 2:

Amazing, amazing. And you know, I the the areas that you pull from. I think, as you say, we have so much in common and I think maybe give the listeners an understanding of maybe, your own journey and healing. And you know, I know you mentioned how somatic experiencing and breath work really supported you. Um, like you know, how did you see that, like, how did you kind of utilize that? What were the the main kind of pieces that supported your healing and supported you in in recovery?

Speaker 3:

okay. So as far as somatics goes, I saw a somatic practitioner near my house here, wendy Newman, and when I saw her she taught me different techniques to regulate my nervous system. And when I did that I started realizing that there are other sensations in my body besides the pain, and I never knew that. I never realized that. If I put my hand like this, for instance, yeah, if you just put your hand in the air for a moment, even support it by the table in front of you or your other arm, and you can start sensing into each finger and you might start to notice the weight of your hand, you might start to notice any tingling and temperature. And it was amazing to me that I never realized that I had sensations in my body unless they were painful. So we started leaning into positive sensations in my body, which was really a cool thing to do. I also started leaning into, so started leaning into or I should really say giving the painful sensations. And I really, when I say painful, I don't really like to use the word pain with my clients at all, I find the word to be kind of scary sometimes. So when I would sense into the sensations that weren't as comfortable as I'd like in my body. I was able to give them a voice and I was able to talk to them, because these sensations are just a part of who we are. They're not exactly, they're not who we are.

Speaker 3:

So through somatics I was able to give these sensations a voice and let them speak and I was also able to find the emotion that I was feeling in my body.

Speaker 3:

And if I was feeling angry, feel it in my body, where it's going, where it's living, if it's in my arms, if it's in my fists, if it's in my face, if my temperatures, if my temperature changes. And we were able to actually let the action that needed to be completed complete, because so many times these actions are thwarted in our system, we're not able to have them completed and we just kind of keep them in and repress them. So through somatics I was able to have the action complete. Maybe I needed to punch or kick or whatever that is, and in a safe environment. So somatics was a big part of my healing and some days I would just go into my office, which is kind of like my meditation room, and just take 20 minutes and sense into my feet because they felt good, and just lean into the positive sensations in my body and when I was doing these things I could see the sensations shift, change and move.

Speaker 2:

Wow, and it's such a journey of just deeper connection within, and deeper connection within besides just the pain or the problem area that we get so fixated and locked on.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, and when we do that, we're able to look at the sensations without fear and just with some curiosity which, when we look at them with fear, the symptoms just get stronger.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they really do. And even just the focus on the positive sensations, on sensations like holding your hand up and feeling it's just you're connecting. You're connecting with your body in a way that feels maybe less threatening, exactly. But then the other side of it is, you know, completing actions that need to be complete. Completing, you know some people talk about it as emotions or survival energy, like being able to work that through First, obviously, identify and be able to sit with it but play that out and work that through. That's so much a big part of my body. Healing, in my opinion too, is being able to allow things to move through us and be present with them and not just move through them not connected but be connected with them as we kind of move through them.

Speaker 3:

Right as we kind of move through them right, exactly, and we always think of you know. I mentioned anger as like a negative emotion, but anger is neither negative or positive, it's just an emotion, and an anger can be an extremely useful emotion in our lives. And some people's perspective of anger is like I don't want to be an angry person, but what anger really does is it helps us build our boundaries. Yeah, so if we could utilize the power of anger to do something good, it's actually a very beneficial emotion to have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's such a key understanding that people need to. You know, understand truly, because it's one of these things where people use certain emotions bad, certain emotions is good, um, and and that's how it's kind of labeled, and, as a result, you avoid what's bad exactly it's, yeah, anger.

Speaker 2:

Anger can be a very empowering emotion. It's. It's a very empowering emotion. It can help us set boundaries and help us feel strength. These are just two of the many benefits, but there's so many benefits to being able to handle sitting with that and be connected with that and allow that to kind of move through us. You know, somatically there's, there's's amazing healing that comes from that.

Speaker 3:

And I think it's important to note that sometimes there's other emotions underneath the anger. Sometimes that anger you know anger makes us feel powerful, yeah, and when we're feeling powerful we're not paying attention to the hurt and the sadness or the grief, yeah. So sometimes, when we can process that anger, we can then go deeper into underlying emotions as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I know somatic experiencing is a big part of your practice. You also mentioned breathwork, which I'm sure people are interested in understanding. How does breathwork apply to this mind-body space? How is that beneficial?

Speaker 3:

Well, one of the ways I healed was also through breathwork, and I would take a lot of time to sense into my emotions, feel my emotions in my body, lean into positive sensations. But when I was done with that part of the healing process for me, I then was able to just regulate my nervous system through the breath and it brought me into a calm and relaxed state where I was able to then turn to love and compassion for myself and for others. But I think it's really important to note that breath work is very important because the way we breathe shows our brain we're safe, and I'm sure most of the people know this that listen to your podcast, because they probably listen to you quite a bit. You know the brain is trying to protect us because it thinks we're in danger. It might still think we're being attacked by a lion or a tiger and we're not. So the way we breathe can actually show the brain. It tells the brain that we're actually safe. So it's a way to communicate to our brain, and one of the or the key to doing that is breathing through your nose. So when we breathe through our nose, we activate our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest nervous system, and one of the things I practice I'm certified in like four different types of breathwork.

Speaker 3:

I think I'm done getting breathwork certifications because I don't think there's any more to get, but they're all beneficial and people always ask me well, which one is the better one to do? Well, there is no better one to do. It's like if you go to Starbucks with a group of friends and everyone orders a different drink. Everyone has their preference and sometimes it's fun to experiment with which kind works better for your body and what your body likes. But one of the ones that I really like is the techniques through the oxygen advantage.

Speaker 3:

Patrick McCowan I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's fantastic and I did just did his training and what he talks about in order to stimulate the vagus nerve and get the most oxygen delivered to your tissues, to your organs, is to breathe light, low and slow. Oh, I get it, because so many breathwork facilitators, me included, are all talking about the speed, how fast we breathe, right, and we talk about breathing lower in the diaphragm. But we also have to think about how much air we take in. We can be breathing slower and still be hyperventilating and taking in too much air to our system. It's the same thing if you had a plate of food, you could eat that plate of food extremely slow and still keep filling up that plate with food.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

It doesn't mean it's healthy, yeah. Plate with food yeah, it doesn't mean it's healthy, yeah. So what we want to do is we don't want to just concentrate on how slow we breathe or how low we breathe. We also want to soften our breath and take a little less air in.

Speaker 2:

Wonderful, wonderful. I appreciate you sharing that with it. I think that's something that's so unknown for a lot of people around breathing is they're slowing down and most people know like, yeah, breathing, you know your belly, like this is. This is known, but they're taking these like huge breaths, just taking it as much air as possible.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I'm not downing other types of breath work or deep breaths either. There's a time and a place for everything. I teach conscious connected breath work and yoga breath work but I have found his technique has really helped with sleep and pain and activating your parasympathetic nervous system.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, wonderful. And now we've talked a bit about your practice and what worked for you, I want to ask to maybe spend some time sharing with the listeners the different programs you offer and how they can maybe work with you in the future.

Speaker 3:

Sure, that would be great. So I offer right now, at this moment, one-to-one coaching with my clients and every month I offer some type of breathing class. So it might be yogic breathwork. This month it could be a conscious connected, it could be somatic breathwork or it could be my training from the Oxygen Advantage techniques oh cool. So every month I do a different breath work online and they're extremely affordable. They're an hour, an hour and 15 minutes and this month I'm doing one in person in New Jersey.

Speaker 3:

So I'll start my online ones again in August and I might even do two. I'll probably have a Conscious, connected session and I might even do two. I'll probably have a conscious connected session and I'll be doing a class on the oxygen advantage techniques as well. I also have free breathworks on insight timer. It's a free app where you can experience my somatic breath works and they're a really cool way to shift pain in the body, because when we put flow in our body and shift the energy, we can't have pain at the same time. So give those a try.

Speaker 3:

On Insight Timer, they're completely free, you don't have to have the paid version, and I'm also going to be doing a class in September with somatics and the vagus nerve and a little bit to do with weight loss too. So you can look for those things on my website or on Instagram and for anybody listening to this podcast today, any offering for one of my hour hour and 15 breathwork sessions that I offer once a month if you put the code in free breather, it's a one time offer You're more than welcome to experience one of my breathworks and see if you like it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great, that's amazing and I will for all the listeners. I'll put all that information in the description of the podcast of the YouTube channel, so it's easy to connect with you and to learn more about your work.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you so much for being here. We finally did it. I wasn't sick this time, which is great.

Speaker 3:

Yes, we got our calendars to sync.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, thanks again and thank you everyone for listening and I will talk to everyone next week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. For more free content, check out the links for our YouTube channel, Instagram and Facebook accounts in the episode description.

Speaker 2:

We wish you all healing.