Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women

(#77) Rediscovering Wholeness: A Somatic Approach to Identity, Creativity & Self-Trust

• Rae The Somatic Coach • Episode 77

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What does it really mean to feel whole? In today’s episode, I’m opening up about my own journey of rediscovering wholeness—beyond performance, perfectionism, or external validation. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, voice, or creative energy, this conversation is here to remind you: you are already whole—you just might need to remember.

In this episode, you’ll hear:
🌿 Why I paused my business and how I rebuilt it from a place of authentic self-expression
🌿 Reflections on identity shifts after a life of being a high-performing athlete—and the freedom I found beyond competition
🌿 How somatic healing, breathwork, inner child work, and parts work supported me in reconnecting with my truth
🌿 The 3 pillars of wholeness: self-compassion, self-trust, and self-knowledge
🌿 Client insights and what I’ve learned guiding others back to their most radiant selves

If you're in a season of reimagining your life, letting go of the noise, or seeking deeper alignment with who you really are—this episode is your invitation to come home to yourself.

📣 Retreat reminder: The Return to Soul Retreat is happening in October! For more info, check out episode #68.
📩 Sign up for the newsletter to receive updates, practices, and be the first to hear about my upcoming 1:1 program Rooted & Radiant.

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women, a podcast for the sensitive, soulful, high-achieving woman ready to come home to herself. I'm your host, rae. I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator here to guide you back to your body, your truth and your power. Each week we'll explore nervous system healing, somatics, breathwork, embodied living, creativity, self-expression and soul-led personal growth. If you are ready to soften the pressure, release perfectionism and live with more presence, more pleasure and more purpose, you're in the right place. Let's take a deep breath and let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Rae. I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator. And if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're tuning in for today's episode. Some front desk items before we dive in. If you are not already connected with me on Instagram, for the month of May, I'm doing a weekly Instagram live series where I dive into different aspects of what you can expect on the retreat that's coming up in October. So the Return to Soul Retreat. So the Instagram Live is all about listening to your soul, being connected and receiving wisdom from nature creativity, nervous system regulation, trusting your inner, knowing your inner guide, your inner compass. So it's a weekly series. The first one was just released last week and then it will be released every Tuesday. So even if you can't tune in live, you can always go and head over there and watch the replay. And yeah, that is all about it. I'll also share in those lives all about the upcoming retreat in october. So if you also want to know more about the upcoming retreat, you can tune into episode 68 of the podcast. That's where I kind of talk more in depth about the retreat and announce it. And, of course, if you have any questions, you can always send me a DM at raythesomaticcoach on Instagram or you can email me at hello at rachelecraftcom.

Speaker 1:

All right, so let's dive into today's topic. I would really love to speak with you about this idea of wholeness, and this idea of wholeness is something that I think has been on my heart for a very long time, and it's been really nice to bring some context and some structure to what I think is really at the root of a lot of the long-term one-on-one work that I do with my clients, the long-term one-on-one work that I do with my clients. So for me personally, I didn't always feel this sense of wholeness. For a very long time. I felt like I was wavering. I felt disconnected from my knowing, from my body and my expression, my creativity, my expression, my creativity. For a long time I felt blocked or like I had to stay small in these areas. And even this year, in the past six to eight months, I've had so much growth and so many breakthroughs in these areas. So if you've been following me or connected with me for a long time, maybe you've even seen some of those shifts which is pretty awesome Growing in real time, like always really nice.

Speaker 1:

And just yesterday I was listening to a podcast with Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle and I absolutely love them, especially if you've listened to it the past few episodes. You know I'm like a soccer chick at heart and so Abby is like oh, she's so freaking cool. So she shared on this podcast. She shared a lot about her story of being a retired athlete and she calls herself a recovering athlete and so much of her story resonated with me and what I've experienced over the past few years of really discovering myself and what my values are and who I am in the world outside of sports. And I think for a long time, because I was such a competitive athlete, my purpose was based around performance and it was around winning, and it was around competing and working as a team and being surrounded by a team and community. And you know, that's what my priority was for a very long time was for a very long time, and then going on this journey of really learning more about myself and experiencing life and discovering more of my identity, and I discovered that I really just wanted a place to express myself authentically and feel safe doing that, because that can feel very scary for a whole laundry list of reasons, depending on your history little t, big t, trauma, childhood roles that you've taken on throughout your life and so for me, I really wanted to express myself outside of being a performer, outside of being someone who competed, and I think that's one of the reasons why I love my business and why I love what I get to do, because it's not about performance, and I think that it wasn't always that way.

Speaker 1:

When I first started my business, I mean, it was new territory Some days it absolutely still is new territory and and, like about a year ago, I really put pause on my business. I switched to bi-weekly podcast episodes. I stopped pumping out content. I was like putting out a lot, a lot of content and I was also making that content. This was like before TrashyPT, so this was like. Now I feel like if you want to pump out content with ChatGPT, you really I mean you could do anything. It takes a lot of the time. It saves you a lot of time if you wanted it to.

Speaker 1:

I don't use ChatGPT for my content, but I definitely use it in ways in my business. But anyway, I'm going on an AI tangent. This was before AI and so today I could not tell you like what a trend is right now. Like I'm not like against them by any means, but it's just like not the part that I'm feeling inspired by. Right now. I'm really feeling inspired by creativity and joy and authenticity and how I can share more of myself authentically and express myself authentically in a creative way. That feels really good for me. And so, yeah, like right now you're witnessing me kind of build things back up in my business in a way that feels really good and that looks like having the retreat in October. That looks like switching back to weekly episodes on the podcast. I just rebranded the podcast, I just redid my website.

Speaker 1:

Like things are kind of coming together really nicely in a way that feels really authentic for me and really expressive for me and like this is a part of my art, this is part of my life's work and it's going to change and shift over time and evolve and I'm going to keep on clearing out the noise and processing anything that comes up for me and working past you know, illusions that I bump up to all the time so that I can show up more for you and share more of myself. So that is all to say that facing these challenges in my life and also in my business, and doing the identity work, the somatic work, breath work, regulating anxiety, the inner child healing really is based around so many different parts of myself, but one of them is loving myself outside of performance, loving myself outside of what I am doing, like how much I'm actually like doing rather than being and who I'm being as a human and just really feeling connected to the compassionate part of myself. And I think parts work and inner child work is really what had changed everything for me and allowed me to create and share my art and my passion in the world in a way that feels authentically expressed, and I've helped so many of my clients move through similar challenges, whether it is a similar actual core wound around, like athleticism and performance, or if it's something entirely different. Lots of good girl conditioning, perfectionism, communicating needs, knowing what your needs are, self-expressing yourself, allowing your creativity and your art and your joy to come through. And so all of these experiences that I've had with my one-on-one clients, my own journey of finding wholeness.

Speaker 1:

I think there are three aspects to it and I think this idea of finding wholeness is really at the root of it. It's like the ultimate kind of like return to ourselves, and to me, wholeness is made up of these three things. I think the first is self-compassion, so really allowing yourself and giving yourself the ability to meet yourself exactly where you're at, with the arising of what is happening, and meeting yourself with love, meeting yourself with a gentleness, with a softness, allowing yourself to be that inner mother or inner father, that divine parent that maybe you didn't always have or maybe you did have. And they there's, uh, misses, there's needs that still go unmet. Even if our, our connection with our parents wasn't this, like you know, very traumatic thing. Needs can also go unmet from, you know, friends, family, teachers. There's, there's moments that can happen. It doesn't always have to be big T trauma, it can also be little t trauma, so anything that comes up, being able to meet yourself with love and softness and gentleness. And then I think the second aspect of wholeness is really around self-trust, so allowing yourself the time and space to hear that inner knowing, to hear the whispers of your intuition, the whispers of your knowing can handle anything that comes your way. So there is a sense of inner knowing and self-trust, in a way that you have your own back. You know that anything that comes up, you're going to be able to meet yourself with what is arising.

Speaker 1:

And then the third, one of my favorites, I think part of wholeness is self-knowledge. And to me self-knowledge is really being clear about what your core values are, what really really matters to you, what are your non-negotiables, who are you as a person and do you have clarity around that and what means the most to you. And I think that, for this is more like identity work that we're talking about here and I think over time that can change. I think self-knowledge is well, all of them really self-compassion, self-trust and self-knowledge. They all can grow and they can ebb and they can flow, and throughout different seasons of your life things might change, but having this sense of knowing, like knowing yourself, I think is really powerful, especially for confidence. In particular, I think having a sense of self-knowledge is something that will boost your confidence pretty quickly and I I think it's pretty incredible. It's one of my favorite parts about what I do is having this moment with clients where we're able to do this practice around core values and around your unique vision and what's important to you, and it's incredible what can happen and what can stem from that.

Speaker 1:

Um, I don't remember what the episode I share on the podcast is, but it's something. I think it was around New Year's, so it's a few episodes back and it's about, um, core values and if you're, if that's something that you're interested in, you can totally dive into it just to get ideas or inspiration or just learn more about it. But I think that's a huge part of self-knowledge. Just learn more about it, but I think that's a huge part of self-knowledge. And so, yeah, over time, on my personal journey of self-discovery and growth, and also in my experience in my business working with my one-on-one clients, I found that this sense of wholeness, this sense of really being rooted in these three qualities of self-compassion, self-trust and self-knowledge is such a deep foundation of the work, and if any of those three buckets, if something feels like it's missing or you want it to feel stronger, then I think that that is okay. I think it's like a great direction to go in. It's like asking yourself if you needed one of these three things right now self-compassion, self-trust or self-knowledge which might it be? And also creating your own definition of what wholeness means to you.

Speaker 1:

So this is at the root of my deepest work, and I haven't offered a one-on-one like a long-term one-on-one program in almost a year now, and so I'm so excited to share more about this new offering that I have coming. It's called rooted and radiant, and I will share more about it in a future episode, and if you want to know more first, you can just send send me a DM at Ray the Samada coach or an email hello at rachelecroftcom. And yeah, so that's what we have for today's episode, as always. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. I absolutely love creating these episodes for you and I have so much fun with this part of my business, so I'm really appreciative that you're here tuning in and, yeah, you can always send me a message if you want to chat about anything that came up in today's episode, you can send me an email. And, yeah, I hope you have an incredible rest of your day. I hope you have an incredible rest of your week and I will talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being here and tuning in to Somatic Healing for Wellness Focused Women podcast. If you were moved or inspired by today's episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It truly helps the podcast grow and helps more people find me on their healing journey. Make sure to check out the show notes, to sign up for the monthly newsletter, links to more resources, opportunities to work with me and ways that we can stay connected. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram to follow me at RayTheSomaticCoach. Send me a DM. I'd love to connect with you and I answer each note that comes in. I am so happy you're here and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the podcast.