In this compelling episode of the podcast, host Alex sits down with Julia Yanker, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, coach, and self-described adventurologist, for an insightful discussion on the intersection of nervous system work, somatic experiencing, and the draw of adventure sports. Julia shares her personal journey from a stress-filled childhood to her explorations in yoga, Buddhism, life coaching, and eventually, somatic experiencing, which she sought after experiencing traumatic incidents in skiing and whitewater sports. Her story is one of self-discovery, learning to meet her own needs, and the profound impact of somatic experiencing on her life and relationships.
The conversation delves into how adventure sports served as a pathway for Julia to explore her inner landscape, revealing the neurobiology behind being an "adrenaline junkie" and how trauma can be processed without directly confronting the event. Alex and Julia discuss the importance of the relationship with the self and others in healing and personal growth. Julia's experiences highlight the transformation from seeking extreme experiences for fulfillment to finding joy and satisfaction in gentler, more introspective activities.
Listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode to hear Julia's fascinating insights and her journey through somatic experiencing, adventure sports, and self-healing. For those interested in exploring somatic experiencing further or seeking guidance in their own journey towards healing and self-discovery, resources and links mentioned in the interview can be found below.
Don't miss out on this profound conversation full of personal insights and professional wisdom. Listen to the full episode now to dive deeper into Julia Yanker's journey and the transformative power of somatic experiencing.
Key Highlights:
Links and Resources:
In this compelling episode of the podcast, host Alex sits down with Julia Yanker, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, coach, and self-described adventurologist, for an insightful discussion on the intersection of nervous system work, somatic experiencing, and the draw of adventure sports. Julia shares her personal journey from a stress-filled childhood to her explorations in yoga, Buddhism, life coaching, and eventually, somatic experiencing, which she sought after experiencing traumatic incidents in skiing and whitewater sports. Her story is one of self-discovery, learning to meet her own needs, and the profound impact of somatic experiencing on her life and relationships.
The conversation delves into how adventure sports served as a pathway for Julia to explore her inner landscape, revealing the neurobiology behind being an "adrenaline junkie" and how trauma can be processed without directly confronting the event. Alex and Julia discuss the importance of the relationship with the self and others in healing and personal growth. Julia's experiences highlight the transformation from seeking extreme experiences for fulfillment to finding joy and satisfaction in gentler, more introspective activities.
Listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode to hear Julia's fascinating insights and her journey through somatic experiencing, adventure sports, and self-healing. For those interested in exploring somatic experiencing further or seeking guidance in their own journey towards healing and self-discovery, resources and links mentioned in the interview can be found below.
Don't miss out on this profound conversation full of personal insights and professional wisdom. Listen to the full episode now to dive deeper into Julia Yanker's journey and the transformative power of somatic experiencing.
Key Highlights:
Links and Resources:
I find that as I've gotten to know myself better and provided myself with the relationship that I've always longed for, but just with myself, that when I can meet my own needs, I don't need to reach outside of myself to go find it and go to extremes. All right. Good morning, everybody. I am here in Boulder, Colorado as per usual, and I am sitting down today with Julia Yanker and Julia is in Bozeman, Montana. So I think we're on the same time zone, but she's a bit north of me here. Julia is a somatic experiencing practitioner. That's how we connected through the somatic experiencing community. And she's also a coach. And my favorite description from her website is that she's an adventurologist. So that's an exciting thing that, we can ask a little bit about. but yeah, we're going to have a conversation today about nervous system work, somatic experiencing, And, this idea of, Julia's connection into adventure sports, which is part of her own personal background, as well as some of the folks that she works with. So we're going to just talk about, what are the, what's the neurobiology of being an adrenaline junkie was maybe an interesting question that we can ponder today. Julia, thanks so much for taking time for a conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me, Alex. I'm so excited to connect. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. let's just start with, your own story, kind of journey to somatic experiencing and, the related things in your work. Like what, led you here? what are some of the influences, that, brought you into this, this specialization? Yeah, it's been a long journey. When I was 18, I left the house and I, grew up in a family that was, loving, but very stressed out. So I felt like there's a black cloud there's so much stress in the home. And I didn't realize how that impacts little kid nervous systems. But when I was 18, I said, I think that people are happy out there. I'm going to go figure out how to do that. And it led me down this path of going to yoga and then eventually Buddhism and just studying all these different things which eventually led me to becoming a life coach and then eventually I found somatic experiencing after I had some traumatic incidents with skiing where I nearly died and then also some whitewater stuff that happened and I wove it all together and it's in my work today as yeah, there's so many different threads Interesting. Are you without sharing anything more personal than you want to, like regarding that, that ski incident and the, and then the white water, and then how that led you to SE. I always think it's a little bit interesting for people, a lot of folks, especially, in this audience, they've heard about somatic experiencing, some people have done it, but I always think it's sometimes interesting for people to hear a little bit of like how it works. And so I don't know if it's too personal, but maybe you would share what SE looked like for you regarding the, those kinds of big traumas like the, like the, ski incident, for example, is that something you're comfortable with? Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. When I moved to Bozeman and I got into adventure sports. I fell in with a group of friends who had been skiing since, I don't know, like they were five maybe, and I was a brand new skier, and it was very much a, no friends on a powder day type group, where they were like, if you want to hang out with us, we're going to go do whatever we want, and we are not going to make any accommodations for beginner level skiers, so maybe there are some accommodation, but in general, I went to a lot of places that a beginning skier should not go, and I got myself into a lot of situations that were very scary. And my fear of the skiing, even though I can technically ski almost anything, my fear of it makes me have bad form. And one day I was skiing in the back country in the Beartooth mountains nearby. And I got in the back seat, which you're not supposed to do and stopped on a really steep slope in June. So it's like corn snow and it's very slidey. it's not powdery so that when you fall into it, you just fall into the ground and stay it's slippery. And so I slipped backwards and fell and started ragdolling down the slope, and so I was headed right towards a rock pillar, and somehow I magically, like a gold medal gymnast, saw the rock pillar coming, threw my feet over my head, and stomped the landing, and when I could, reach out and touch the rock pillar from where I was standing when I came to a stop finally. And if I had hit that head first, I'm I don't see how death isn't what would have happened. Not a near death experience in the sense that, I saw the light, but certainly I was right there on the very edge of that. Did you end up getting injured or just that near miss? You were okay, but it was a super close call. Yes, it was a near miss. Everybody else was down the slope. I literally was sitting on the slope when I get that. Stressed out, that high level of stress. I talked to myself out loud, very, carefully. And I literally talked to myself through getting down off the slope. I think I'd lost at least one ski in the ragdoll tumbling. And then, so I literally had to talk myself down the slope and my friends were like, why is she talking? Nobody had seen what happened. I was the last one and so I finally made it down and from that day, I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not ever skiing in the Beartooths again. This is just not for me and honestly, it had never been for me, but this is where it weaves back to the beginning too, is that it was this adventure trauma that really led me to become interested in somatic experiencing. At the same time, what was going on in my life in general was all of this conflict around relationships. I was having difficulties in my marriage, I was having difficulties with my friend group where I felt like I was constantly abandoning myself to be able to fit in. keep up or fit in that sort of thing. Yep. Yep. exactly. And that's what got me in that situation in the first place. I didn't belong out there. That was not a place that I should have been given my, just the psycho spiritual landscape of Julia's brain. Should not be out there doing those things on skis. Yep. Yep. Yep. And so what I found was that I actually started to see a therapist because I found myself treating my husband the way I did my mom when I was 16, which is not very kindly, I will say. And so I thought, Oh my goodness, I need some help and support here. I don't know what's going on or why this is coming up now, but I reached out and found a somatic experiencing therapist. And what I learned through that process is that even though I thought that my childhood was like fine, that the stress in the home, created some things in my nervous system that were as an adult now adaptive thus, my problems with self abandonment and relationships and everything else and so it all just came together and really my adventure sports life has been this outer exploration of my inner landscape. Interesting. Huh, you so, I will actually, that's a threat. I want, I'm gonna, I'm saving that one in the file. I'm bookmarking that.'cause I, feel like there's a lot to that, way of framing it. But, just coming back, so, when you thought, okay, I, maybe I should seek out a therapist and, get some support. What made you specifically choose a somatic experiencing or a somatic practitioner, was that like some recommendation or that's just what, or what did you, what, gave you that insight that's where you wanted to go looking? Yeah. Yeah. I went to a therapists that I knew and I didn't really know about all the different time types of therapy at this point in time cognitive behavioral therapy and whatever else might be out there. And so I went to see her and after a few sessions, she's I don't think I can help you and i'm very strongly get the sense that you need some sort of somatic therapy body based see. And so that's when I found somebody with this somatic experience. I'd already had a referral to somebody and I just hadn't done it. And so as soon as I started to see this person within six months, one of the behaviors that was my coping mechanisms was stonewalling. And In conflict with my husband, I would completely shut down. Like I just could not handle being in connection or conversation. And I would just shut down and like stare at the floor and just literally not be able to engage and not on purpose. It was just, It was a pattern of nervous system pattern for Yeah, it was my nervous system's way of keeping me safe when things seemed really dangerous and conflict. That just magically went away. And within six months, it's not that I tried to stop doing that, I just didn't need it as a coping mechanism anymore. And that was what really told me that SE was moving the needle on my particular conglomerate of things that are going on, but also the needle was staying moved and that was the first time that I'd really experienced that in any sort of therapy or self help that I had It wasn't just a temporary insight. It was something was changing that you could observe. You weren't doing this stonewalling pattern anymore for as an example. Yeah, and I don't know if anybody else has ever had this experience. But you go and you get some sort of healing done or some sort of work and you're like, oh my gosh this is great for two or three weeks. Then you're like, oh, I'm back where I started that actually didn't stick you Yeah. No, I can relate. Do you remember when you started with SE and you, and did going back to that ski incident, did you do the kind of, I'm guessing, you probably brought nervous system perspective to the family of origin stuff and your responses to stress and maybe conflict and, even some of the things you named self-abandonment. I can easily imagine how those things might have, come up and, in SE but what did you do any work like on the shock trauma, go like processing that memory or slowing some of the things we do in SE with, the, I'm just curious if there was, charge from that ski event that you needed to discharge, with SE know, that's a good question. So a couple of things. I did, I love to write and I did write that incident out one time after I started doing the SE training and when I did that, there's actually a lot of stuff that came up like some shaking and trembling and some of those typical SE things that we see happening. Yeah. And however, my therapists have always said, we have to address the developmental trauma first. And, so let's not work on those shock trauma incidents. Oddly enough, we've done a little bit of work around them. And I think also that what I've found in my own work and then also with my clients is that sometimes we don't even have to work on the event specifically because it comes up in other stuff anyway, and when we work with the stuff in the present moment, that is the issue, then we end up tapping into that old stuff as well. Yeah. Which is an interesting principle of nervous system work in general, which is that sure, sometimes naturally speaking, we might want to work through a, memory where we, we can just tell that there's, that there's some release or there's some discharge, but that isn't the only way of working with the nervous system working in the present moment, is a very tangible way of, of, working with the autonomic nervous system. And very often a funny thing is I bet you've experienced this where, somebody comes and there's some work they want to do, let's say about an assault or something like that. And then you're like, okay, all so you keep that in mind as maybe something that we're going to work with. But in SE and I'm curious to hear your perspective, but at least for me, I'm much more likely to begin with present moment kind of work because I want, to just get to know that person's nervous system, teach some of just the foundational principles about tracking. orienting, finding as much safety as possible. some of those kinds of, to me, I think of it as the low hanging fruit of somatic experiencing as preparation. And what's funny to me is very often, there's not a particular need to go back to the, whatever we thought was the the, shock trauma that was, that sort of brought somebody in, we might go back to it and we might realize it's, there's not, maybe there's a little bit of discharge or processing, but I'd say equally often, like in your experience, the needle has moved and that thing just doesn't even, it just feels like it's in the past. It doesn't feel like it's, coming up. So I'm curious if that's been your experience working with clients at all. Yeah, absolutely. Working with clients and what's actually coming to mind is a specific incident where I hadn't really done any work. So I had two scary whitewater swims when I first started packrafting, where I was like, if I don't get out of this water right now, I am going to die and was like, I couldn't really breathe. And got out of the water, both of those times they happened within a month or two of each other. And I had a fear of whitewater and I always wanted to have a leader and be behind and be like, I'm going to watch and see what happens to somebody else first. And I'll choose my line based off of that. And after several years of this work and getting SE therapy, I noticed that all of a sudden, one time my my mother duckies, didn't want to be first for some reason, everybody in the group that day on this particular river was feeling tentative and didn't want to go first. And I was like, I can do it. And I led us through some of the hardest rapids on that river. It was a seven day expedition. And so this was day one and I was like, I can do it. I got this and it was totally fine. And I was just so surprised to see that was available within my system to do that in a regulated and calm and excited way when I actually hadn't even done any of the specific shock trauma work. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So another example of some things that shifted inside of you. Yeah, and oftentimes my clients will come to me thinking that they've got something like that they want to work on and then something even bigger opens up that is relational in nature because what I found was that just you know, trauma accumulates over time, as we know, and sometimes the one thing happens that is the straw that broke the camel's back. And we oftentimes, there's so much in there to work with that the shock trauma of the ski accident or whatever might not be the primary thing that actually needs our The tip of an iceberg. And then now you're looking at developmental history or relational trauma. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Cool. on this, you mentioned the thing I bookmarked where you said, in some ways your own engagement with adventure sports has been a little bit of a, it's been, somehow it's been connect, it's been an outer exploration of something that's in a way related to some inner, things of your patterning. Tell us more about that. To me, that's a really interesting way to describe it. Could you, yeah, explain that a little bit more. Absolutely. I've always been drawn to nature. I basically grew up running around in the woods behind my house and having a rocks shop and down there and whatnot. And so I love nature and I always wanted to do more, but that wasn't available in my family of origin, really, and where I grew up. And so when I moved to Montana, it finally did become available. And I was just like, let's do all the things. Let's go backpacking. I used to be a professional horse person, so I wanted to get on horseback and skiing and just all the things. If someone was like, Hey, do you want to come try XYZ? I was like, yes, let's do it. And so I felt, I think for the first time, having as a growing up, having so little agency, and stepping out. Of my regular life that, my parents were so busy and they worked so much. So it just wasn't really available that all of a sudden the world was my oyster and I could really step out into anything. And so as I explored that, I found that when I was out adventuring and basically putting my life on the line and putting myself in dangerous situations, it really called into question some of the ways that I was looking at the world. And it's what am I actually doing here? Why am I doing this? Who am I doing it for? Why do I feel driven to do this? And I've always been this interesting blend of adventure sports person, but then I've also got that spiritual side, where I've really been seeking like, what is the meaning of life? And how do we walk this earth in a way that's meaningful? So I love that description of and it makes a lot of sense if you're, childhood was such that you didn't have, you didn't have as much agency as you would have wanted. And then, and that this idea that then at some point in your adulthood, and then your things have changed a lot and now you can really pursue. And so that, that makes a ton of sense. And I'm just curious, has your, how has your connection to adventure sports changed over time? I'm like, as it goes, it go in phases. you've mentioned time, like with the skiing where you were probably doing stuff that objectively. Wasn't that safe? And maybe wasn't even, you were part of the dynamic was, trying to fit in with your group of friends or something. So, as I imagine that has changed. But what else has changed about your pursuit of, adventure things as time is going on, Yeah, I think In our society, I'll speak for myself that this definitely happened within me, but I see it within so many people, we're really taught to ignore our bodies and to ignore our own impulses and Because we have this sort of illiteracy with our own body language and sensations sometimes adventure sports or something that fuels us with adrenaline might be the only time that we really feel because otherwise we've so shut that off in ourselves. So for some of us, it's the only time we really feel alive. And so what I've found is that as I go along my embodiment journey and being like, Oh, I have a body, how does it feel? What is it telling me? So that I'm not just all in my mind all the time, I've noticed that Oh, I actually don't like this feeling of knowing that I'm going to go paddle a class four river tomorrow, and that's the last thing I want to do. I am so anxious about this. And I found that as I get my nervous system more regulated, and as I become, less addicted to the adrenaline and those higher states of activation within my own body that I want to do gentler things. I can, I don't need to go stand on top of a mountain after using ropes to get up there to feel really good about myself because I can feel really good about myself floating on the lazy river right outside town, just looking at the plants and the birds and the water and having it be really gentle. And my enjoyment of life has, the things that will bring me joy have, become broader because they don't need to be so extreme. So that would be, I think, the major change that I've found. And I find that as I've gotten to know myself better and provided myself with the relationship that I've always longed for, but just with myself, that when I can meet my own needs, I don't need to reach outside of myself to go find it and go to extremes. Interesting. So it's like the, sort of, it sounds like for a while part of you was really craving at some level anyway, the high intensity. So the, big, sensations and the big charge of, exertion, but also the risk and the adrenaline, but that, for you anyway, you don't require that intensity anymore, in order to, feel appreciation, connectedness, all that sort of something along those lines. Yeah, and I think, too, that at some point, it's like, what was I trying to prove and to who? Part of it was like, look at me go. Look at all these am I allowed to say badass? Oh yeah. Look at you want. This is a, yeah, this is no holds barred show here. Yeah. part of it was just my programming from being small is like, when you do something well, and unexpected that people don't expect from you, then you'll get praise. And so it's oh, if I can go do this new thing and do a really good job, I know that people are going to be like, wow, Julia, good job. And then that feels nice. And that was something that was really craving in my life. And I'd never really had. And so I think I was chasing this. praise from other people admiration or whatever might be coming and also maybe trying to prove to myself that I can do this. I remember the last time I really did that I went and did a six or seven day solo backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon Like on over New Year's. It was horrible. It was so lonely and so cold. And I was like, why am I doing this? This is terrible. I thought I was gonna have time for like introspection and some whatever. And I was just like, maybe I needed to prove this to myself. But now I really feel like, that was the last one. I proved that I could do something like that. And now I am happy to just hike a quarter mile into some creek somewhere and just lay there and bask in the sun. but I think that what I really found was that once, I changed my relationship with myself and was able to really bring in some self love and some self acceptance, that I didn't need to get that from other people. And I didn't need to put my body at risk in order to do that. I had an experience just the other night where, I've made a new friend and I was thinking about them and I was just like, I really wish that they would reach out to me or like they're gone and they're unavailable to me. And I was noticing this, desire for hearing you're doing such a good job, well done, whatever. And I was like, how am I going to work with this? This is not this person's job to do this for me. some of my relationships, I would just be like, Hey babe, I really need you to tell me how proud of me you are. But this just isn't that relationship. And so it occurred to me, I'm like, what if I just tell that to myself? What if I hold myself with tenderness and say, Julia, I'm so proud of you. And so I sat with myself in that way for a few minutes. And I checked back in with the whole situation. I'm like, my need was met. I don't need anything from any, from that person anymore. And it really released them and now made me free to engage in that relationship in a much freer way and less. with that needy feel, Lovely. Yeah. That, that's what you did there. of course that's a common piece of a lot of approaches, including an SE but it, sounds very IFSC to me too, the internal family systems. That's just, that's the core ingredient is how do we give our, the parts in us that have unmet needs or fears or they want validation or anything. It's can we be our own audience, our own witness, our own validator, is such a strong piece of that. But I love that. I love that little example. Yeah, absolutely. The little girl Julia really wanted some figure to come in and say, good job, And so I was like, Oh, I can do that for I could do that. Yeah. so fun that when we find that, like almost any time that we feel a really strong attraction to somebody, whether it's romantic or not, or just friend or like someone who might feel like a parental figure role model, we're oftentimes projecting onto them what we can't give to ourselves. And we're hoping that they'll give it to us. And then when they don't, It either feels like we try to get it and then it can feel desperate or needy and it can drive the other person away even and so it's when we can learn to give it to ourselves, we free ourselves up to be able to be in relationship in a completely different way. Totally. and I'm staying with your example if you're okay with it. I'm guessing for you that it was also somatic in the sense of that, when you you said, Oh, I can do that. And, hey, Julie, I'm proud of you. You're doing a great job or you gave yourself that validation. I'm guessing it wasn't just the sort of the verbal level, but the part of the landing of it or the taking it in was like, okay, yeah, that, that connected at a felt sense level. Is that true for you? Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting as I do this work. I feel like. For me, there's like baby Julia, little girl Julia and teenage Julia, and they all want something different. So for this, it was like I made self contact and I put my hands on my chest and held myself. I really settled into my seat and felt held, and just yeah, literally told myself the words, right. opened myself to receiving them, and then really allowed them to land. if, little girl Julia was feeling like dry crusty bread and she needed some love and words of affirmation soup, it was like just putting the bread in the soup and letting it like really soak in and enjoying it. Oh, my God. What a great image. I love that image. The dry, crusty bread soaking in that nourishing soup. That's so good. Wow. cool. The whole thing about the high intensity, the adventure sports, it makes me think, I guess thinking a little bit about. polyvagal theory, which is a, map that we use a lot in somatic experiencing and the, the kind of the different states of arousal and, especially defensive physiology. So the sympathetic or the fight or flight nervous system, or, the freeze immobilization system. And, of course what we want more of in somatic experiencing is how do we get more of the ventral vagal, the safe, safety, social engagement, nervous system. Also available to us because that's, we feel best when we have the access to the, that, that ventral vagal safety. But, it's funny, like I, part of me wonders, and I don't know if you have any insight around this for yourself or even with, people that you work with, because I think you support a lot of people who are involved in some of the adrenaline sports and things like that. And, you mentioned earlier, if you're a little bit disconnected from your body, like more kind of perhaps numb, maybe in a more shutdown or immobilization physiology, then you might seek intensity in order to feel aliveness, as you mentioned. But what sounds important to me is like, there's a big difference of when we're in a high adrenaline state and we, but there's a, but there's enough safety or there's that blended state from a polyvagal perspective of we can have sympathetic arousal plus ventral vagal safety. then that would be excitement, fun, that's one feeling that many people pursue cause it feels good. But then there's also there's when we're in a high intensity, fighter, sympathetic arousal or fight or flight nervous system, but there's not the feeling of safety. that's where we're terrified or, and and it's such a key distinction between whether something is fun and enjoyable or not, whether we have that the presence of ventral vagal safety. And I wonder if you think about that at all, either sort of thinking about your own experience or, how you've worked or how you work with clients that are in that field. Yeah. Yeah, for me, that path has really been realizing stumbling upon whitewater boating has been my primary way of exploring this and noticing that when it's just me and my husband, I feel very different about the same run. Then if a third person who I trust is with us and how much more common at ease I feel if that person might be there. And, and I noticed this with other people too, that with my clients, that depending on who is there and who is with us and how our relationship to that person is or the group and the group dynamic really helps set the tone for that. are you in a group that is willing to stop and scout a rapid, or are you in a group where. that if you say, Hey, I want to stop and scout this rapid, they're roll their eyes at you. And yeah, they'll go along with it, but they think you're silly and dumb. That really changes the tone of everything, how much you trust your partners and how much on the same page you are and who you choose to go out and do that with. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's, a really, that makes a lot of sense. Super cool. Earlier, you you talked about, what led you into your own se therapy and what happened for you. which was really great description of how you. The needle moved in ways that stayed and lasted and whatnot. it sounds like it was significant enough for you that then you went through the training and it's not a small training. It's, it's a three year program. what, what made you have the clarity that you wanted to do to get the training? and what was the training process like for you? Yeah. I took the life coach training about eight or nine years ago. Yeah. And I was doing it, people were paying me, they were coming back, they seemed to be having a good time, but the whole time I was like, am I really helping them? I feel like there's something missing. I feel like I have really good sessions, but I don't necessarily know why. And the coach training program that I took introduced, something called the body compass. It's a tool that we use. And so it's like SE at the kindergarten level where they're like, notice the sensations in your body. They're telling you yes or no. How do you know? And so I was using that. And when I discovered SE I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is the thing that I've been looking for. I often call it, how Einstein was like looking for his grand unifying theory of everything or whatever it was called. I feel like SE is that for healing, that no matter what the modality is, when healing happens, it's because the nervous system did a thing. And so SE isn't something that somebody invented, it's just the way the nervous system works and somebody finally looked at it for long enough, stuck with it long enough to be able to outline it, Peter Levine, and to describe it as it goes through its phases and what the actual mechanism for injury is for trauma, because we didn't know for so, long. We're just, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. And so when I started to see what this really was, I was like, I have to incorporate this. And, my teacher, Abby Blakeslee, who you also know, she said at the beginning, she said, oh, by the end of this, you're going to be seeing everyone as a walking nervous system. And I was like, whatever, Abby. And, yeah, now I'm literally like, oh, that person's so activated. Oh, no, poor them, or I have compassion for them because I'm like, oh, look at their dysregulated nervous system. Shoot, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. led me to it. And now I love the, in my work, I can see someone come in with symptoms that they might not see as a nervous system thing, but I'm like, Oh, that's indicative of this and that and whatever. And it makes much more sense to me how I need to work with it. And the training process. Oh, gosh, I didn't know what developmental trauma was before I found SE despite being a life coach. I knew that you have bad experiences in childhood and they would impact. There are all your experiences in childhood impact who you become in life, but I didn't actually know developmental trauma and I learned about it during my first module and wow, it really threw me for a loop. And that was the beginning of my self discovery journey of really truly understanding who I was today as a result of how I was raised in the home that I grew up in. And so it was a profoundly healing journey in that sense. And I would say that. So many things have changed it basically that whole time. I was really learning about that the way I was showing up today and the relationship that I chose for myself. I was basically recreating my life in my family of origin and as I started to really find myself and learn what I wanted and asking for that in my relationship, the way that everything around me shifted was really incredible. And so it was. I loved the training. I got to do most of it in person, which I highly recommend to people. Doing it online is just not the same. I did a few online during COVID and then, yeah, it's just entirely changed everything about the way I view life. I don't know, there's, I don't have enough words to be able to emphasize that. So Yeah, totally. Oh, that's a really great description. and what is something I'm remembering about Abby, because Abby was my instructor to for years 1 and 2, and, there was a phrase there's tons of things about her teaching that stayed with me. And I remember her saying that same thing. You're going to start just seeing, you're just going to start, you, it's like you take everything away and you just see these autonomic nervous systems walking around. And that definitely happened. But a phrase of hers that I really like is she's, is this idea of, that SE can be sneaky, powerful. And, and she, and so she used that term sneaky, powerful a lot. And I like it cause it's this idea that. the intervention can be subtle. It can just be about pausing. It can be about, but, that, that when we are observing, when we are attuned to or in connection with the nervous system, then the ways that, that, that change can happen, can be so powerful and profound. So anyway, I'm just remembering that about Abby. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's just so amazing how, when we go to the root of where the thing is coming from and we change that everything else changes because oftentimes people seek help because they're like I'm doing this behavior and I really hate this and this needs to change and what they don't realize is that behavior is preceded by thoughts and the thoughts are preceded by emotions and the emotions are informed by the sensations in the body and so if you try to stop eating chocolate cake let's say at midnight from the refrigerator and you just try to willpower your way through that you're like fighting all these other impulses, the entire chain, where it's like what if we go back to the beginning of where the sensations are coming from in the body, work with it that way, and the rest of the chain just dissolves and you don't need to worry about trying to keep yourself from eating chocolate cake. Yeah. Yeah. Really good example. Could we talk a little bit about who you work with these days? What, is, do you work with a broad population, tell us just a little bit about the kinds of folks that you're supporting now, the kinds of, yeah, share about your practice a little bit, if you will. Yeah, thanks. I work with a lot of, I do work with a lot of people who see themselves as adventurers. I guess they, I see them as adventures. They don't always, they, think that term is too, too adventury for them. They're like, oh, no, I'm not an adventure. I'm just an outdoor enthusiast. I'm like, you're an adventure. You go on adventures. It's great. Um, and so I work with them around shock trauma, but oftentimes, if they're in an avalanche or had that scary swim, got thrown from a horse a mountain biking accident, whatever it might be, because especially. The American Alpine Club has something called the Climbing Grief Fund and they really are advocates for folks, adventurers, who've experienced something bad because sometimes we go into a therapist's office who doesn't do adventure and who really enjoys just being in town and gardening and stuff and I want to whether it's spoken or not, the worst therapist will say it out loud and the best ones will keep it to themselves and maybe do their own work around it. But they're like, why are you doing that? You're crazy. Spoken or unspoken it's in the field. We can feel it. And so for me, I'm, I really strive to be that safe place where adventure folks can come without judgment to explore, what is my relationship to the mountains now, ever since my partner died in that accident? What do I want it to be? Why am I doing this? And so there's, that's, one aspect of it. And then the other aspect of it is really this relational piece of who are you today? Where are you trying to go? What's stopping you from doing that? And let's really review that because I can almost guarantee you that it's relational in nature somehow. I love Dr. Gabor Monte's recent book, the myth of normal, where he talks about this conflict that lives inside all of us for our entire life, which is the conflict of attachment and connection versus authenticity to ourselves or attachment or connection to ourselves. And so it's sort of me against the world in a way of like the world wants this from me, the world wants, maybe my parents want me to be quiet and calm because they've had a long day. Or maybe, my teachers just want me to sit still and stop fidgeting and stop it, following my classmates. And we learn all these things that people want us to tamp ourselves down and be smaller and be different and follow the rules just to make their lives easier. The adults around us. Yeah. Yet, we have these impulses within ourselves that are organic and authentic and ah, I want to express my life force energy and I want to play and I want to do whatever. And that so often gets squashed. And so we come out of our childhood with the squashed authenticity, but being really well trained in how to meet the needs of everyone else around us. And so we It's really this journey adulthood of coming back to ourselves and finding the right balance between authenticity and attachment to the others around us. Well said. What is, what are, what's alive for you these days? What, are, is there anything you're learning about or leaning into either in your practice or you're bringing curiosity towards? What's, the, latest in your evolution? Oh yeah, the latest in my evolution, it reminds me of an eddy line in a river. it's a very turbulent place. And it's all coming together lately where I'm, I've been so focused on the SE. And the body and the problem and how to fix the problem that I, for a while, completely lost sight of sort of my spiritual path and this alignment to something higher, whatever you want, whether you call it God or the divine or the universe or spirit, the creator, whatever it is, just the energy of all that is our alignment to that. And what is in our highest and best interest as a human species? And something that happens when we align ourselves to that, like, when I align myself to I want to be, live to my fullest potential versus aligning myself to I don't want this or that to happen. It's like the fear versus love alignment, And so I've discovered that I've been so focused on the problem and I'm sitting here and I'm playing with it like a Rubik's Cube and what am I going to do? And it's I also could just put it down and stop playing with it and be like, oh, I actually don't need to worry about that anymore. Let me just align to my higher self and what it wants to express in the world and stop worrying about all these other things. And so what I'm really trying to learn now and navigate is that line, and that balance between how do I give problems enough attention to resolve, but not get so fixated on them that I get pulled off of my center and start basically wallowing in the mud and spinning my wheels. I feel like there's a balance there and figuring it out. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. It's funny. I, at one point I lost faith, in, in, so Peter Levine in several of his books, I don't know if you've followed this, you probably, you maybe you follow this better than I have, but in several of his books, he made the, especially his, most recent one that I, unless I missed something along the way, was, the one about, trauma and memory. This was at least five, six years ago. And in the introduction, he made the comment that, his, he's most well known for waking the tiger. That was one of, and then soon thereafter in an unspoken voice, oftentimes that's the book I recommend, for clients who want to understand a little bit more about the nervous system theory. But then, there've been several others, about kids. And there's a, there's one for the lay person about trauma healing. And then there's this one about memory, trauma and memory. And in the introduction, he says, the last book I want to write is about trauma and spirituality. And I thought, okay, cool. that's, I'd love to hear, Dr. Levine's, thoughts on how this is, how, does trauma connect to spirituality or, in some way, and then some years went by and I didn't see anything. So I started to think, Oh, shoot, maybe we're not going to get it. but then something popped up on Amazon and I've pre ordered and I think that book is finally coming out like in April. So exciting. Yes, I've got it on pre order too, and I, basically I think I've gotta, I need to figure out the date it's coming out, cause I think I'm just gonna block off my calendar so no one can book with me, and I'm just gonna read the book. right. Did you, what's, do you know what the title is? Oh gosh, I don't remember off the top of my head, um, you know that it says autobiography? Yeah. Is that what it is? An autobiography? I believe so. It's his autobiography. So I think that actually, so and here's the messed up thing in our world, right? Somatic experiencing is so powerful, but Peter Levine spent so much of his time teaching people instead of doing research that he spread it around the world, but he didn't do the research, which is what the scientists need to know to say, oh, it works versus him being able to say, I've had thousands upon thousands of sessions that were highly effective. That's not good enough, apparently. And Okay. When he, because he's been trying to make it valid in the scientific community's eyes, he's actually, I hear, held back a lot of where this comes from, especially the more shamanic components of it, because he knew that if he shared that, people would just immediately It would interrupt this, the scientific component of Yes. Absolutely. That's an interesting thing. And, Stephen Porges has made similar comments. I've been involved in several conversations with him through the TRE community. I've been fortunate to be able to pose some of my own questions and being a little bit of a dialogue and he, always, when we've asked him about, that, some people, especially, usually TRE, which is another nervous system based approach. It's not uncommon that people say, Hey, this is having a big influence on my spiritual life. They came to it for stress regulation or trauma, but. some percentage of people, it ends up feeling something that connects them more intimately with what's whatever spirituality means for them. And so we were asking Dr. Porges about that. And he said, yeah, he laughed and he said, yeah, that's actually what I'm really interested in too, but nobody gives you a grant for, if I, wrote a grant proposal and I said, I wanted to understand more about the, the neurobiology of spiritual experiences, I wouldn't get any grant funding. So I haven't been able to do that. but he said, but, so he's a similar idea, that, and he said, eventually we'll get around to exploring, neural theology was, I think the term he used or the, neurobiological underpinnings of so called spiritual experiences and states and things like that. So anyway, so I think, yeah. To me, I think it's a funny, it's a funny, it's like the inverse of trauma. That to me, what's interesting about the trauma field. And it's true for me personally too. On one level, one of the, one of the main lessons I've learned from the trauma therapy world is it's given me a, it's given me a certain kind of an optimism that I didn't have before that. The optimism is, Peter Levine has the, well known quote, about, trauma is inevitable, but it doesn't have to be a life sentence. There's, I'm, butchering the quote a little bit here, but, there's a certain kind of an optimism that I've come to believe, which is that, to me, it's really sad that the kinds of suffering, the kinds of trauma accidental because people do it because cycles of abuse happen in families, societal threads. So, to me there, the, degree of suffering and how that impacts people is, something I feel, deeply, and, something that attracted me to the trauma therapy world is, and there are, some things to do. There's principles that work, yes, we can be traumatized. and we can be resilient and we can restore vitality and we can, we can, post traumatic growth, we can grow. So that's my kind of like a big piece of it for me and my. appreciation of it. And I think that many people look at that two sides of the coin, that the world of trauma healing is about hard stuff, difficult stuff, painful stuff. But what it offers is in a some way, the mirror image of that, aliveness, expansion, growth, capacity, connection, that's in some ways the inverse of the, negative stuff. so I don't know. so to me, that's very much included in our field. And I agree with you that, yeah, sometimes they got to dance around the issues of, securing funding and valid scientific research and things like that. Yeah. And I think too that, what you're saying is I just wanted to emphasize that. Trauma. We work on the hard stuff, but it's just as important to spend time on the good stuff. And I know that today if we broaden it to world events, like so many people are so heartbroken over some of the things that are going on in the world and they're like, what can I do about it? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that if I got a on a plane right now and went somewhere out there to the place that these things are happening, that I couldn't actually myself single handedly stop it, right? that's not the thing to do. What I've been really focusing on, besides, we can send them compassion and, whatnot, and whatever acts we're called to do, of courSE but what I really keep bringing it back to is the one thing that I can control, which is myself. All of those things that are happening in the world today didn't just magically blossom out of nothing. There are seeds that were planted years ago, or thousands of years ago, or hundreds of years ago. And so I keep asking myself, what seeds am I planting today that in 300 years might be starting a genocide somehow, right? Like what one little act of hatred or fear or whatever am I putting out into the world that the ripple effects, I don't even know. And so I know that if I can, land more solidly in that place of acting from a place of love and acceptance and compassion versus fear that I trust that over time the ripple effect of that will go out and it will impact the world because we know we're all interconnected. And how can that, so that, that's what I feel like my work in the world is to do and that where I can make a difference. I love that. I love that. Julia, this has been super rich. Is there anything that you, any final note or anything that, we haven't touched on that, should be included to feel complete today? Yeah, We're all on this journey, right? And we all suffer, and we all have fun at times, and for anybody who might be listening, who's struggling, and not sure what to do or how to make their life feel better. Just keep trying. Don't quit. Don't give up. Try different things. Keep looking for the things that can help you because it is possible to heal. And as long as we keep applying ourselves, like it is not a life sentence, like Peter says, so just that little bit of encouragement. Thank you, Julia. Absolutely. Thank you.