The Mind-Body Couple

How Can I Release Stored Trauma and Emotions from My Body?

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 76

Share episode

Ever wondered why animals seem to bounce back from stress so effortlessly, while humans often get stuck?

In this episode, Tanner and Anne dive deep into the science of trauma and the nervous system, guided by insights from experts like Peter Levine and Deb Dana. We'll explore how intentional movement can rewire our nervous systems from a state of chronic stress to one of connection and healing. Hear how animals naturally navigate fight, flight, and freeze responses, and learn why humans often struggle to do the same. With practical tips and heartfelt stories, we offer you actionable steps to start your journey toward emotional regulation and self-compassion. Whether you're new to somatic practices or looking to deepen your understanding, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss.

Polyvagal Informed Qigong Group Details: https://www.painpsychotherapy.ca/polyvagal-informed-qigong-group

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 or purchase our online course at embodycommunitycom to access in-depth education, somatic practices, recovery tools and an interactive community focused on healing. Links in the description of each episode. Hi everyone, hi everybody, welcome back. Welcome, we had our son's birthday.

Speaker 2:

We did, yes. It is a relief that it is over now the hecticness of the kids' birthdays.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think anyone that has kids can probably relate to. Like kids' birthdays are kind of exciting, like we want it to plan it and we're excited, but it is hectic and stressful and you want it to be over right away.

Speaker 2:

But our son had fun. Yeah, our daughter had fun.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I ran around the play place with her yeah, I was at a play place and you did a lot of running. I was. It was helpful that you were spending time with her playing yeah, she, uh, she goes to you for cuddles she comes to me, for fun, that's to be a fun with her and I have cuddles too.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying I don't cuddle with her. You know, we each have our strengths. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Look, I'm too tired for fun.

Speaker 2:

It's holding down the fort, yeah, but you're prepared for cuddles. Anyways, we're hanging on this, but our son had fun. Yeah, dumbo-themed birthday.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it went well, it was good. Yeah, and we're about to go on holidays.

Speaker 2:

Yes, another like kid themed holiday kind of. Yeah, with our kids we're going up to Fairmont BC. Yes and so no podcast next week.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we apologize for that. It'll be a bit too hard for us to figure out how to do that from Fairmont, so a little difficult. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so today we're going to dive into a topic and it's related to a group that I'm about to run. So the topic is how can I release stored trauma and emotions?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think this is a really needed topic, tanner, because there's a lot of talk about trauma and trauma being the body, and I think there's a lot of knowledge about that. But it can get really confusing when we think about okay, how do we release that now?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's confusing on both fronts. It's like, what do you mean? It's stored in my body, what does that even mean? And then the other part is like how do you release that? Right, I think it can be a little mystical sometimes. So we're gonna break down some of the science. Today I am starting to run a polyvagal informed qigong group yeah, that which is super exciting.

Speaker 1:

How does that tie into this topic?

Speaker 2:

well, you know, the group start in this september and it ties in because Qigong, I use this in my practice, I use this in our course quite a bit and it involves and the YouTube channel.

Speaker 1:

If anyone's seen it, they've seen your Qigong, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and Qigong, really, a lot of somatic practices are pulled from it. Yeah, there's somatic attention. There's attention to movement. Using intention with movement and doing so as we talk about in this episode really can help us release that stored emotions and trauma.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so I guess, like, like a simple way that helps me think about it, is like if it's in our body, we want to somehow for it to go elsewhere, and so movement in your nervous system that has not been fully released.

Speaker 2:

And, as you know, like, these traumatic experiences cause your nervous system to become sensitized for a lot of people. And when the nervous system becomes sensitized, what we mean by that is chronic pain, chronic fatigue, chronic dizziness, other chronic symptoms start to be perpetuated. Yes, and essentially, you know what's happening. Your brain's not doing this by accident. No, I think that's a misconception. That happens is like oh, my brain's just making a mistake and your brain is misinterpreting that your body's safe. But your brain's essentially producing the pain or physical symptoms as a way to protect you, like they're a protective mechanism and they are easily triggered and sustained when we're in this kind of fight, flight, freeze, shutdown response. So it's not by mistake, people, this is like a thing that people view, but your brain is very wise, your nervous system is very wise. It's not doing anything by accident.

Speaker 1:

Well, and some way to look at that kind of with the sake idea is that there's a reason why this is happening. But sometimes, when we've experienced something like trauma and the trauma has long passed, it's continuing to happen. Yes, and so that might be like the view of, like the mistake idea that the trauma has passed, but it doesn't mean we just ignore that. There's a reason that is saying we need to look at that trauma or we need to release that trauma.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I like how Deb Dana, like a famous polyvagal therapist, talks about it. Like after overwhelming situations, events, what happens is your nervous system becomes wired. It becomes wired for protection instead of connection, because we are naturally wired for connection. That's what helps us regulate. But these overwhelming situations it shifts Because these overwhelming situations cause our nervous system to become stuck in this way.

Speaker 2:

And when we talk about healing trauma, neuroplastic pain, neuroplastic symptoms that are the result of trauma, we need to release these survival responses and we can use somatic movement, somatic practices to accomplish this so for somebody that's listening to this antenna, how might they connect or realize okay, yeah, like I think my symptoms are connected to my trauma.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or this is like messages about store trauma in the body.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I think the first thing is starting to identify that. You know anyone who's had prolonged dysregulation. There's situations in your past that have resulted in that taking place right, and people get so fixated on the pain or symptom. And we do work on that brain retraining, but part of it is shifting to the nervous system and we did it like a little mapping meditation. I think it was about five episodes ago where we gave a free practice from our course and that's the starting place of like mapping the nervous system. But then, once we're starting to connect with it, we need to learn to release that energy, essentially, yes, which we're going to talk about here, and so when we have survival responses fight, fight, please, shut down we need to move through these responses and release it from the body. Yeah, and animals, they naturally do this quite well, like it especially animals in the wild.

Speaker 2:

Yes, they, you know, the theory is that they don't really hold trauma. No, you think about I'll give you an example here deer right, most of us have seen a deer. Well, we live in canada so we see deer all the time. Hilarious sidetrack story here. Oh, my god, when we were younger than we are now without children oh, those nice years and got me this like we went to like bam oh my gosh oh, you know the story I'm about to share.

Speaker 2:

We went to Banff and we went on a tour, and this is what Anne got me. Banff has tours that are very nice Totally so we went on a wildlife tour, but like you, know, both of us have been to Banff, like you know, probably 50 times before this, but we went to Banff and we went on this wildlife tour and we're on this bus filled with people that are from different places in Europe, China, like all sorts that are just like excited. And so we go on this hour tour and we see one deer.

Speaker 1:

And everyone like erodes in blissfulness when they see the deer. We see deer like every day. Look to be fair. I just have to tell people I thought we were going to see bears. On this tour.

Speaker 2:

There's no bears. We saw a singular deer.

Speaker 1:

I thought we were going to see bears or like owls or something, I don't know. But we saw one deer.

Speaker 2:

And it was funny because when we went back to Calgary, like two days later, I saw like four deer on my lawn. I was like, hey, okay, so I feel like four deer on my lawn.

Speaker 1:

I was like hey, okay. So I feel like this is just too embarrassing.

Speaker 2:

We're getting sidetracked, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:

Like what was the point of this story?

Speaker 2:

It's just a hilarious story I got to share it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I always get embarrassed about it.

Speaker 2:

But like, anyways, it was a good idea if we had seen bears Tanner. Anyway, sidetrack done animals they don't typically hold trauma like humans do.

Speaker 1:

Well, what happens when the deer, when they're in a stress, fight and flight situation?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you got to think If a deer goes into a fight response angry fight response it will start to make itself tall, it will attack, it will kick Right. It naturally engages in these types of movements.

Speaker 1:

So the nervous system is protecting the deer.

Speaker 2:

It's present in the moment engaging in the response, playing it through. If a deer goes into flight, yes, where it gets anxious, it gets nervous, it will run instantly from the situation. It'll just run away. Yeah, if a deer goes into a freezer shutdown state, it'll drop and be still Like it will shut down and after the threat has passed it will reorient. Deers will often shake it off, yes, and so what I'm trying to explain is you know, one of the reasons animals don't hold trauma is when the response happens. They're connected it, they engage in it and then they regulate afterwards.

Speaker 2:

They move through it yes we're humans, we're different and unfortunately, we often don't allow our body to naturally move through this basically threat response cycle right, and there's a number of reasons why this is. The first thing is we got this really highly developed neocortex, yeah, which me and ann are using right now and a little bit better than me, but we're using it right now you had to say that to make me feel better.

Speaker 2:

I had to, I had to soothe you after the embarrassing deer story, yeah, but we have these neocortex and it controls our thinking, our reasoning, our logic, language, and it often overrides those lower brain regions and nervous system where that survival response is taking place.

Speaker 1:

So again and we talk about this a lot, but our thinking harms us it gets the better of us.

Speaker 2:

It basically overrides the feeling, it overrides the response, the survival response that we're having, and then we don't engage in it. On top of this, we have this social conditioning, which often gets in the way of regulating Like our society is not built. It's not like you get angry at your boss and you just like, freak out and flip your desk Like most of us. Well, maybe you do that, but most of us aren't doing that. And we want to get to a point in this podcast of like. Even with like the fight response, you don't actually have to fight, but your body needs to help move through some of that response. And so our social conditioning, our society, it doesn't value emotion, it doesn't value survival states and it doesn't value us moving through them.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that's a really good explanation why so many of us want to do that but don't and I think something that many people probably relate to is we want to do that but we don't. And then we imagine ourselves doing it over and over in our mind as almost an attempt to do that, but we don't. And then we imagine ourselves doing it over and over in our mind as almost an attempt to release it, but we still don't get that release.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's where you know somatic movement can be really helpful and you know what happens to people is they have shame during and after their trauma response which prevents the release.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Like the example here is like imagine a deer felt embarrassed, ashamed, judge or self-blaming for what happened yeah like and then prevented itself from running or prevented itself from fighting right, like that's essentially what we do. Yes, um, and I'm not to say that there isn't benefit to that, but it does kind of keep this prolonged dysregulation going, essentially, and part of the reason we're doing the education in this episode and giving everyone understanding is so that we have compassion for ourselves here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I've worked with so many people where and even for myself I'll give you an example when I was bullied younger, quite perpetually, from elementary up until high school, a lot of times what I had is this shut down response, like I shut down. I went numb, despair, hopeless, helpless, dissociative at points. That was the response and I felt a lot of shame for that response Because you know, our social conditioning taught me that, like, as a man, I should fight, I should be angry, I should be aggressive, like I felt shame about the survival response I had. And the thing that I want everyone to know about that is you don't have control, we don't pick and choose. Like you don't pick in a situation where you flee, fight, freeze or shut down.

Speaker 2:

And I think some people regret their response and wish they responded differently and then they feel, you know, shame about this and I empathize with anyone listening. But the thing is, is your nervous system? It doesn't care about your values, it doesn't care about society, what it cares about is survival. And so for myself, that shutdown response I isolated, I hid, it helped me survive. That's what my nervous system learned yeah, and if something was useful? One of these responses in the past. What happens then moving forward is your nervous system is now coded.

Speaker 1:

Oh, this is really useful, and so it just repeats yes, and so then back to that confusion of like why do I keep getting pain and symptoms, or why do I keep kind of having this response Is that it's continuing to do that?

Speaker 2:

and it's continuing to repeat. Yeah, and you know to release these responses. One of the way we do it in our course and in our therapy is with somatic movement, is with somatic practices. Now, this is a podcast. If you're watching on youtube, you see us, but other people can't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And to get people started for free. I have free resources, free practices on our YouTube channel.

Speaker 1:

Totally so back to how much Qigong he has on the YouTube channel. Yeah, there's.

Speaker 2:

Qigong there's practices for anxiety, for dorsal vagal shutdown Totally, and it may not be the full picture for you, but it'll help people get started for free. And I'll give a real simple example. Like when we have a fight response, we don't actually need to go and fight, but you think about like a child, but they do, they stomp yeah, my son goes and punches his bed. He does, and that's a good thing. Yeah, I want him to like work that through and as adults, you know, a classic somatic, experiencing uh technique that we use in our course as well is like the pushing out. Yes, so like it's. It's feeling the anger, noticing and naming it and then pushing out in front of you, feeling the tension and tightness in your arms. Yeah, it's a classic example of how we're connecting and we're supporting that release to happen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Now, the last thing I want to mention here is that you know, the release doesn't need to be this one time big cathartic thing, right? For some people that works, yeah. For a lot of us it's little releases along the way. For some people that works. For a lot of us it's it's little releases along the way, it's not. I'm not here telling people that they can just push out in front of the air and their fight response will be gone forever. That's not how we function. But we want to support these little releases to happen, because that can reduce the nervous system dysregulation and eventually support us healing from our chronic pain and symptoms that are neuroplastic in nature.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know. Another classic example is when we're like shut down, right, when we're shut down, one thing that deer do is they start to reorient and they shake and tremble and in our course, that's what we support people doing. Is the shaking or trembling that support us coming out of a shutdown state? Yeah so really simple examples, because many of you can't see me right now, um, but again, the youtube channel has lots of this yeah if you need more support, we have our whole course.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um. And if you're in certain provinces in Canada, you can come work at our clinic as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, and we have the Qigong group.

Speaker 2:

And we have the Qigong group. I forgot. Yes, the Qigong group is all about releasing emotions or trauma yeah. It really is a supportive add-on.

Speaker 1:

It's a five-part group, if anyone wants to take part, starting in september yeah and so and and a lot of this, like we talked about just starting having that awareness of like, hey, do I have store trauma in the body? What is happening there? And then what does release look like for me? Do I need to work on release?

Speaker 2:

so that's a good like good questions to ask yourself exactly yeah so thank you everyone for listening thank you for listening we are going on holiday once again with our children, yeah think about us, send us good messages send us good messages that we need those it'll be good, they'll have a blast

Speaker 2:

you know it's those family vacations when you're a little kid, like the birthday party, like we're excited, yet overwhelmed and it's funny because when you're like a kid going on vacation at least for myself you have a blast yeah last time I realized like oh man, that was so much work for my parents which I guess is good like we want our kids to have a blast and not realize, yeah, all the extras that come along with it. But now it it's our turn.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's our turn to be the parents.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it is, yes, it is. So have a good two weeks and we'll have another podcast out, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, exactly, everyone take care.

Speaker 1:

Take care. 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.