The Whole Shebang
The Whole Shebang Podcast is a space to explore our collective awakening, often through the lens of unifying the Divine Feminine and Masculine in order to experience our most whole lives.
Each week Jennifer connects with various teachers, authors, friends, heart centered leaders and creators on topics such as coming home to ‘Self,’ consciousness, sacred sexuality, manifestation, abundance, inner alchemy and personal growth.
These conversations are aimed at supporting people in connecting to their own inner knowing, power, and divinity, to enlighten their lived experience, and move people towards their fullest potential. The Whole Shebang Podcast is here to create an energetic space and channel where people are invited to re-member who we are as individuals, and as a collective.
It's with all the love, and so much joy that we invite you to to buckle up buttercups, because we’re diving in! - xx
The Whole Shebang
What Your Pain Is Trying To Tell You | Dr. Aidan Kinsella DC on Body Wisdom
"The challenging thing about pain is that it interrupts us. We're actually pretty tolerant of pain. We can walk with and live with a lot of pain, but when pain interrupts us, that's when we get upset and frustrated. That interruption is sacred because it allows us to recognize the change that either has already happened that we need to adapt to, or is happening, or is coming." - Dr. Aidan Kinsella
Dr. Kinsella shares how our bodies hold the key to deeper understanding, especially during times of challenge or transition. Whether you're navigating stress, seeking answers, or ready to access more of your natural wisdom, this episode offers a revolutionary perspective on listening to your body's intelligence.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction to Embodiment and Healing
07:35 The Disconnection from the Body
18:43 The Body-Mind-Spirit Connection
23:55 Intuition and Embodiment
32:32 Work Culture and Its Impact on Wellbeing
40:52 Emergent Change: The Interplay of Growth and Breakdown
46:51 Embracing Uncertainty and the Fear of Change
56:59 Unlearning Self-Doubt and Embracing Emotional Depth
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You know, my body's failing me, I'm not able to do this thing that I need for my well-being, especially in this moment. That is more challenging, and so people are like, why so? Why this? But even that's why I say the interruption is sacred and what it interrupts is important too, especially when what it interrupts is something that we've been really using to stay afloat or to manage, especially to manage our emotions. Then often the body is there's this wisdom that happens that, no, you don't get to, you don't have that out. Right now there's something here to face, there's something here to feel, there's something here to experience, because only through that encounter and that experience will you grow in the ways that you need to grow.
Speaker 2:Aiden Kinsla, welcome to the whole shebang.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I am so excited to have you here. So let's start by just giving the listeners a bit of context for your work, what it is that you do, and can you share the journey of how you got into this work? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So the work I do is it's a chiropractic technique that's called network spinal analysis, but it's really different than traditional chiropractic and the focus is really on kind of where nervous system, regulation, embodiment, practice, consciousness and authentic expression meet.
Speaker 1:And so, because I'm a chiropractor, I'm working with people often at some point in their healing journey, whether that's because they've got something that's arisen in their body that's a physical pain of some kind, or, for many folks that end up getting referred to me, they're at some point in their healing journey. That's not so simple as just a physical sensation. There's maybe something manifesting physically, but they're also growing and healing and trying to come to terms with their life experiences, maybe the trauma they've had and who they are and who they're becoming and where they want to go. And so the work, even though it's this chiropractic technique, is really focused on navigating change in a way that helps you more present and more connected to yourself and more authentic in your body and then able to live a life that is really by your design and that is an expression of who you are. So it's chiropractic, but really different than what people think of when they think, oh, chiropractor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say everything. You just surprised. For one, I feel like I just ate the best meal of my life, cause my response is like I don't know if that's going to come up in the recording, but um, yeah, cause everything you're describing is is embodied, obviously, and feels really nourishing and healing and is yeah, you're talking about the emotional body too, correct, I mean the work, yeah, yeah, and really that you know, when I say when I'm talking about the body, for me it's not separate from our physical experience, our emotional experience, the thoughts we think, our identity, our conditioning, our you know social experiences and our connection to spirit and to the divine.
Speaker 1:that all you know. We're in a body for this short, amazing, brief experience we have, and so it's the context through which we can experience everything in a way that helps to bring us into ourselves and into truth and to encounter magic and wonder all the time. So when I'm talking about the body, I'm not just talking about the meat sack, not this thing moving around in, but really you know what's home and what's true.
Speaker 2:Okay, so can we just chit chat? I mean that's what we're here for? Just chit chat? I mean that's what we're here for. Um, I don't know if this is just me, like, I'm curious to get your perspective on this because I feel like, as I've woken up in my body, or the themes that I'm, the themes that I'm seeing and the angle that I'm coming at it from which, you know, we talked a little bit on our Scotland trip about this Um, I'm just going to back up and like share a snippet for the listeners who might not have heard.
Speaker 2:This part of it is that is, that I've seen this theme that we have been in what I would call the masculine or you can say sort of like this left brain centric way of being or doing I guess is probably more accurate which is logical and framework and all of these things, and and we've been shut off, I think, to some extent, or pushed into the shadows to a great extent. The other aspect, if you want to think, yin-yang, which is this feminine, what I would call the feminine, but like creative, connected, more fluid, sensual part of our beings, and I think a big part of the root of that is, you know, dating way back to 313 AD, when we were when religion came in and nothing, nothing against any of that, but it it disembodied us. It cut us specifically, I think, women off from our embodied experience, and it did the same thing to men. I'm going way on a tangent here, but I think you're with me. You're with me, okay. And so, as that's become more and more clear to me, you know I had this fascination with just energetics between this, the. You know if I'm leaning more into the energetic of the feminine, how people in my world, whether they're romantic, or my kids or my colleagues, would tend to polarize in that.
Speaker 2:So at first it started with that, but then I just saw this theme holistically. That seems really evident now that we have been disembodied as a society and people are coming back into their bodies and what that's doing in terms of awakening you know, their intuitive sense, their lived experience, the healing of emotion that's been trapped in the body, and so that's particularly why I thought, aiden, come on and tell me what you're seeing, what you know. So, given that a little bit of a context from where I'm coming at this, from what are you seeing in that regard and do you, are you seeing more people that are coming back into their bodies in a new and different way, or what kind of? What's your perspective on all of that?
Speaker 1:I think, because, because you know, people come to me for support around their body.
Speaker 1:But you know, I see a certain slice, right right, I see people who are, they're having to reckon with their body and often it's pain that gets you in the door, it's pain that interrupts you and I can't keep doing what I've been doing because it's I can't, I'm hurting, it's not working, and that interruption is a sacred thing because it's an opportunity for discovery and for realigning with who we are.
Speaker 1:So this challenge you're talking about, about really being disconnected and not aware of, or really living in our skin, in our bodies, with awareness and with energy, is I've seen that all the way through. So this is not a not a new thing, like you're saying, for centuries, but it's certainly accelerated, as technology has accelerated. And then I would say, in particular in these last several years, since the pandemic, as we are, you know, people have, people's lifestyles have changed so dramatically to be more disconnected not just, not just from the body, but also from each other and so from opportunities for things that could kind of bring us, you know, into contact with ourselves and our body in another way, because we do that for each other in each way, so I would say that it's.
Speaker 1:It's a problem that is growing um and you know you have.
Speaker 1:You have so many people that their entire experience of their life is really not here. It's, you know, through a computer screen. You know they're whether they're connecting with friends socially. That way, their job is on a computer. The work that they're doing is really inside of these realities that are virtual in the sense that they're working on a project that's inside a project that's for a thing that they never actually come into physical contact with or touch. And so there's this continued issue of not really being in our bodies. That's exaggerated and accelerated by there's less and less it brings us into contact that way. So and um, you know, healing and pain and disease is unfortunately often the way that that people end up with that reckoning like you know I can't we talk about that a little bit more.
Speaker 2:You said the I don't know if you strung these words exactly together, but that the pain is a sacred thing.
Speaker 1:The interruption.
Speaker 2:Okay, interruption, yeah, yeah, tell speak to.
Speaker 1:That Challenging about pain is that it interrupts us. Like you know, we're actually pretty tolerant of pain. We can. We can walk with and live with a lot of pain. But when pain interrupts us, that's when we get upset and frustrated and the kind of continuity of what we think we're supposed to be doing or we want to be doing or we feel obligated to do is interrupted because of the pain we're having.
Speaker 1:And I'm just going to define pain not just as a physical sensation, although often it's accompanied by that. But pain is any uncomfortable experience that interrupts your life. So that can be emotional pain too. It can be a circumstance that's happening in your life, that is getting between you and the moment and your ability to keep going in the direction you're going in. So that interruption is sacred because really the purpose is purposeful. The purpose of pain is to interrupt us and to allow us the opportunity to stop and to take inventory and to recognize the change that either has already happened, that we need to adapt to, or is happening or is coming. And so pain and change are really in relationship and will often experience more pain when there is suddenly new uncertainty or there's new change afoot.
Speaker 2:Would you say that it's a symptom of? Well, yeah, I mean, if we're talking about bodily pain, it's a symptom of something that I think when we had a previous conversation. I'm just going to go ahead and share. Well, one of the conversations I remember we were at a dinner table together and we were talking about how, when I've traveled in the past, I had one trip that I traveled on I don't even know if I should share this Well, maybe this speaks to like being uncomfortable in my body, that I didn't have a bowel movement for 10 days, and do you remember this conversation?
Speaker 2:I do, I'll never forget that. And so you guys started asking me questions around it. So I'd love to kind of go down this path. Whether it's something like that or other things, when pain is interrupting us or when there's discomfort, or when there's some symptom that's showing up, when pain is interrupting us or when there's discomfort, or when there's some symptom that's showing up, maybe you can kind of go through some of those line, the line of questioning that you took me through and what, what people would do when they have pain that interrupts their life. What does it mean? What? How can they view that? What do they look at that Like?
Speaker 1:well, one of the first questions I ask people when they're sharing something you know that's painful is you know when did that start? Because pain, sometimes we live with pain for a long time before we're asking for help or talking to somebody about it. So when did that start? And then, what was happening? What was happening in your life at that time? What was going on leading up to the moment when that emerged?
Speaker 1:And we encourage people to take a really wide lens. So what we are taught to do is, if I have pain, if I have pain in my knee, then I think about what did I do with my knee today or yesterday, the last three days? So I think of this, this one spot and I think only in a physical context that could be resulting in this knee pain. And the inventory I encourage people to take is to say, oh, my knee hurts. What's happening, where am I at? What's changing, what is new, what's challenging?
Speaker 1:And sometimes then we're able to see something that's quite obvious when we take a moment to step back and, wow, that knee pain emerged right after my mom got a terminal diagnosis. I know, and it was so challenging because I'm a runner and running is how I handle stress, and so you know my body's failing me. I'm not able to do this thing that I need for my well-being, especially in this moment. That is more challenging, and so people are like well, why so? Why this? But even that's why I say the interruption is sacred and what it interrupts is important too, especially when what it interrupts is something that we've been really using to stay afloat or to manage, especially to manage our emotions. Then often the body is there's this wisdom that happens that. Nope, you don't get to, you don't have that out. Right now. There's something here to face, there's something here to feel, there's something here to experience, because only through that encounter and that experience will you grow in the ways that you need to grow in order to adapt to this change.
Speaker 1:That's either happening or emerging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so significant because I think, obviously, yeah, yeah, the why, now like why?
Speaker 1:And I think why does this happen? You caused it, but why now?
Speaker 2:Why does this happen? I can't remember. I'm reading things all the time, all over the place, like so many people. But just the idea that pain sometimes can be a portal you know that it's it is the pathway, or fear might be the compass and in this way, instead of just treating the symptom of the pain I love you, know the work that you're doing in the way that it you're encouraging people to go much deeper than just the symptom. But it's hard, I think, for speaking for myself, to like to look at it objectively and see, well, I don't know cause I was traveling, that's why I didn't go to the bathroom for 10 days Like, how do I see how this is actually connected to what else is going on?
Speaker 1:But but maybe if you could speak to that a little bit in terms of how the body, mind, spirit are connected, Well, and I think what you're speaking to too is and this is where you know the work I do is not a talk process, although certainly there's a conversation and there's encouragement for people to reflect and to inquire. But I work with the body and I work with the nervous system, and our capacity to self-reflect is really linked to how our nervous system is functioning. So when you go into a stress response, 70% of the blood supply to the frontal cortex of your brain drains, 70% of it gone out of the frontal cortex, and it goes to your heart and your lungs and your muscles so that you can react and our lower brain centers come online. So it's our frontal cortex, it's the part of our brain that allows us to step back and to observe ourselves and to be curious and to ask questions and to recognize patterns and to change behavior and to recognize patterns and to change behavior.
Speaker 1:So when I'm in a habitual kind of chronic state of fight-or-flight physiology, which most people are running their lives on that energy and are rewarded for it too.
Speaker 1:So this is not a fault of people. This is the way that we are doing culture and work, and society functions better if people are able to do a lot and not feel a lot, and it's why we, you know, have the health outcomes we have. In one of the wealthiest, most privileged countries in the world. We are one of the sickest and it's because we kind of run our bodies into the ground. So that's not a fault of the individual but more of the system of how we're living. So when we're living in that kind of chronic state of fight or flight, the part of your brain that you need, the physiology that you need online and on board, to ask those kinds of questions and really be able to perceive deeply and answer them authentically, is not available to a lot of people. And it's not, it's it is easy to get there, but it's, um, it can feel like that's far out of reach.
Speaker 2:So this is, in a way I don't mean to um oversimplify this, but the work that you're doing really is retraining the nervous system.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Okay, absolutely. And I'll just share one. You know, piece of the physiology that I'm working with, kind of mechanically in the body, is that when you go into a stress response, your spinal cord tightens, just like if you become stressed, you may notice that muscles tighten, your actual the sheath around the brain and around the nerves tightens, and that's on purpose, that is, it's protective, but it also mutes our awareness of our internal landscape. So in a moment of of that I need to protect myself.
Speaker 1:Our fight or flight physiology is wired that this tightening of the spinal cord means that my brain is not able to perceive my physical and emotional sensations as clearly and I become hyper-focused and hyper-aware of my external environment, which is great if I need to run or fight for my life. But if I'm trying to try what's going on with me, how am I feeling? What's really happening? What do I need?
Speaker 1:Right now it's like I can't. I can't feel that it's either feel numb or it's distorted. It's kind of like holding a guitar string way down low on the fret and trying to strum it. It doesn't resonate. So when we have that tension in our neuroskeleton we actually can't feel very easily, or or or accurately, or accurately. So the work helps the nervous system become aware of how it's holding and start to soften and unwind those patterns. And so, as that tension drops down out of the nervous system and breath opens up and space it's what it really feels like. To people is like all of a sudden space opens up inside of them, and then there's this flood of data from the body to the brain, but all of a sudden I can feel my body, and if I can feel my body, I'm much more aware of the state I'm in and how I'm feeling and how it is that I'm really responding to what's happening and what I need, and so I'm able to advocate for myself really differently.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love all of this. I love all of this so much. Okay, so we become more acutely aware of our body, and one of the things that I'm very tuned into is our awareness or connection to not even connection to, I guess our intuition, and I'm curious if that's what you, if you've, would name that consciousness. You mentioned that you said embodiment, consciousness and authentic experience. And so, coming back to that consciousness piece, as we are becoming more aware of, because I believe our intuition speaks through our body, would you agree with that?
Speaker 1:Everything speaks through your body, but yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Say that again for the people in the back. You said everything speaks through your body.
Speaker 1:Everything speaks through your body. Everything speaks to your body.
Speaker 2:Everything speaks to your body. What do you mean For somebody that's like not in their body?
Speaker 1:Okay. So, for example, but your body is doing something when you're not in your body. What's it doing? So, if I'm really in my head, what's happening in my body in that moment? It's probably tight, rigid, not breathing, not moving, not expressing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's still an embodiment, that's still an expression in the body, there's still a way of organizing that allows me to become really aware of my thoughts, because I'm muting the sensations. So you may notice that when you folk, when you focus on something, you hold your breath. So you know if I'm like, you know if I have to like untie a knot or if I have to really try to like figure something out. We hold our breath and we do that because we don't feel as much when we hold our breath. So it allows us to become really focused for a moment.
Speaker 1:That's a great short-term strategy, but to live that way has all kinds of consequences. So it's, it's all speaking to the body, is that's? My point is that as you start to notice and observe what the body, how the body is expressing, and if I circle back to these, um, the constructs of masculine, feminine, the context of how I'm working with those energetics in the body you can think about. Our masculine is our ability to observe and to witness, to be aware, to be that kind of constant observer for ourselves. And the feminine is the expression, it's how is life moving through my body? So, even you know, in a world that overemphasizes the value of those masculine aspects of our wholeness and undervalues these feminine aspects of our wholeness. We'll we'll, you know, even think we'll try to observe more and observe more and notice more.
Speaker 1:But we've got to, in equal measure, feel and move and breathe and express and so just becoming aware is just part of the process, but that awareness needs to move into some expression of acknowledgement. So, you know, speaking to that awareness, expressing that awareness not just through words but through how I'm holding myself, how I'm breathing, how I'm moving, how I'm interacting and dancing with and relating. And so intuition, often, you're saying, is that something that we connect with in the body. It's partly because it's a little quieter and a little subtler, seeming than how loud the mind and thinking sounds. Yeah, so when I'm in that embodiment, that means I'm not moving much and I'm maybe holding my breath so I can really focus on the mind and the thoughts.
Speaker 1:It's harder to hear the intuition, Harder to notice it, and it's harder to follow it, to move with it, because often our intuition doesn't I mean sometimes, but it doesn't always come in a full download. It'll come in a I'm going to gonna move that way. I'm not sure why I've got to, I've got to talk to that person. I'm going to drive this way today to work, you know, and without having the full, complete understanding of why, just trusting that. And the more you can feel your body, the more you can pick up on those subtle tugs and clues to move in a direction, or to stop, or to go, or to soften or to rise. So, in that way, I think people talk about intuition as being this really body, felt sense, although I would say everything has its way of expressing body. It's just as you start to notice the contrast and the difference.
Speaker 2:I love the way you share and teach about this. It's so powerful. You've got a gift, um yeah, the intuition I just I get. I feel sort of at a loss for words sometimes too in my attempts to explain why I think it's so important that we connect to our intuition, because to me it's it's on a base level. There's sort of this I'm going to say selfish in the most positive sense of the word like if I want to live my best life and I can connect with my intuition, it is a superpower that is intelligent beyond anything my mind can comprehend. So if I can move and live and be through the world that way, that's great for me, and I have a belief that it is connected to the whole, to the whole of the collective, to a greater sense of consciousness, and so we can't see the whole of the picture.
Speaker 2:But how powerful would it be if we were all living life that way? But how powerful would it be if we were all living life that way? How would that impact our society and our environment and the earth, the mother nature? I mean? How would that impact every day if we were living that way? And you know, the truth is probably some people don't desire that, like they are more comfortable maybe in their, just in their minds, because there's a sense of control there, um, or just a fear of feeling. Maybe do you do you run into that or kind of what's your perception, whether it's in your work or just in general, on what keeps people from getting into their bodies?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it is those things. I also really believe that all humans want to live fully. So I think you can look at someone and say, oh, they don't want to grow, they don't want to change, they don't want to heal, they don't want to be fully alive nature. And we can be so bogged down in layers and of constructs of these kind of identities and habits and when we're really in that, we're really in our head and really identified with these conditioned constructs of what it means to be who I am and to interact with the world the way I do, and so disconnected from myself and my body and my emotion, from my own humanity. I'm so disconnected from my own humanity. Then at the surface it will, it will behave and it will look like. I don't value that and it's because it's not what my resources are going towards. My resources are going towards, you know, survival, essentially.
Speaker 1:And usually the physiology that's under that is, is a highly stressed system, so you don't see a nervous system that's really connected in a body that's really connected behaving in those ways.
Speaker 1:Now whether sustain that has to do with their community support. None of us can sustain that all by ourselves. We're not wired to grow or to heal or to change in isolation. And now we live in a world that, especially here in this country, that glorifies individualism and being able to do everything by myself, and I think well, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was very excited about this massive interruption and the incredible potential in that. The shadow side of it is that we became even more isolated and even more reliant on you know, we have an app that does more for us, and so we have fewer interactions, fewer ways to come into contact with others, and so our sense of being connected to a community that's larger than us for most people has shrank in small ways. So certainly you will encounter people who behave and speak and act like they don't want this um, but I don't think that's really true about our nature.
Speaker 1:I think that's a symptom yeah, of how we're living and the resources that are available, and to um, and even maybe an innate wisdom or instinct to not move in a direction of something I can't sustain, because that will be even more painful.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's profound, Aiden. Oh, this is tangential to um and I. I jotted it down as quickly as I could but I didn't get the full sentence that our society or our systems function better if we're able to do a lot and not feel a lot, and this has been on my mind, but recently has just really come to the forefront Well, not recently, in the last few years has come to the forefront to me to just start looking at the way we work and it's a beast, right, I mean, the whole thing is a beast. So I'd love to dive into that conversation with you and honestly, I'm not even sure what the pointed question is. But if we can just talk about work in America, Go.
Speaker 1:I had a client who, within their, she was in grad school and you know she was about three weeks into care and she's like I have. I have a problem. She's like, you know, my, my back pain is way better, but I have a problem that now I can't sit in class for more than about 20 or 30 minutes without getting up. And I was like what's the problem? You know, in this sense, and what she was speaking to is like oh now, now I'm a problem because I'm disruptive in the classroom, but she, you know she had permission to do that, but she noticed if I would sit for about 20 minutes and then my body would be like I can't, I can't sit anymore, I need to move. And so she has to go and stand in the back of the class.
Speaker 1:So we're not designed to sit and to be on a computer all day and even if you're not doing computer work you know I'm using that example, but you know a lot of the work that we do is there's not a wide variety of movement and expression, there's not a lot of room for the more complex nuances of the expression of our humanity, and there's certainly not a culture that supports feeling your feelings and witnessing and connecting deeply around that. So I think that this isn't new in the United States. If you travel other countries, you get teased about how we work here. It's kind of deeply woven into the culture here. And yet it's again kind of back to this If you look at our health outcomes.
Speaker 1:We have so many resources and we are not well. We're not well physically, whether that's looking at heart disease and cancer and brain, you know central nervous system things like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and things like that and we're also not well in our mental health. You know people are well here and I think this has a lot to do with the ways in which we are out of balance with this kind and we we connect inside of family and inside of local communities the same way that we did even 50 and a hundred years ago. We did really differently. So we have this tension, I think, between so many more options as an individual now and especially as women. Right, we have so many more choices we get to make, but at what cost too?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah, this, the, the working. You know I'm looking at the way we work from a lot of different angles, as I'm sure you are right now or have been for however long. But from just a physical standpoint, even even that example you gave, I wouldn't have thought of that. But when our bodies, if I connect to the dots correctly, she's doing work with you, her body's coming back online and in her body. Right, is that right? Okay, and so in her body coming kind of, or her getting back into her body more, she's realizing what her body needs, and the needs of our felt sense don't fit in the system that we've built in. The system that we've built in this country is a production, production centric, I would say, uh, right.
Speaker 2:So then it's got me asking questions, just from a, from a curious creative thought, like, well, there's a lot of people, myself included, that have left that structure to create my own business, to do my own thing. And so I'm asking those questions, going just hypothetically, let's say I'm building a business, well, what could that look like? How does it look different? And growth is healthy, but how fast? Growing is healthy, and what does growth really mean? And what if I'm more evolution focused rather than growth focused in my business, so that I understand what prosperity versus abundance like. What does it look like to have enough but not to over consume. And what does it look like from a business sense to have enough but not to over consume. And what does it look like from a business sense to have enough or to be collaborative in business to serve the needs of the community, rather than to be in competition constantly, which causes over consumption, overproduction, which damages the earth?
Speaker 1:You can see, my mind is like going down all of these In the stress physiology, if you think about that, just adding that to the stress physiology that that puts us into in order to be able to do that and sustain that, and so this is why you know I feel like I'm really successful working with people, not when their pain gets better, not when you know whatever they thought the outcome was going to be, when you know whatever they thought the outcome was going to be, but really when I know I've I've done my best work with somebody is when they start to use their body as a barometer and so even like, how am I, if I'm going to, you know, build my own business? Or if I'm going to, if I have the opportunity and the privilege to design something and to move in?
Speaker 1:that direction which you know, only some of us have that. But if I do, then then how is my body part of my board of advisors? So am I making decisions from, from a place that I'm at least checking in with how that feels? And and then, in order to be able to do that, what are the tools I need and what are the practices that I need, and what are the mentors and facilitators and support systems that I need in order to be able to have a more body led life? And if I'm having a more body life, then it is going to be more emotionally attuned and it is going to be more intuitive, it is going to be more relational, it's going to be more feminine in all these ways, because to be in relationship with the body that way and to listen for, pay attention, to be attuned to and respond lovingly to what's moving through me is to be in service to the feminine are you okay?
Speaker 2:so, hypothetically, you and I are teaching a class to people that want to. They want to live a body-led life and they're in a system that is not supportive of that. What could they do? What would we teach them? What would you say like how, how do you navigate that?
Speaker 1:I. I would have them all lay on the floor and breathe first.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because it would just start right then, right there, and put their hands on their body in a place that's easy to breathe and go, wow, that's what connected feels like. And then find a place that's like I can't really breathe here, touch that and acknowledge it Like, oh yeah, sometimes I get disconnected. I make a sound like, oh, so disconnected feels, like, oh, that's what connected feels like. There already, just with that, just being able to identify and notice in my own body, I already have the roadmap for what feels connected and what feels disconnected, and so I don't have to go out and change the whole external world in order to start to live by that. I can still go to my regular you know nine to five grind, but choose to walk in my own skin and relationship with that in a new way. And even if it's just, I'm going to start my day doing that, I'm going to end my day doing that it will start.
Speaker 1:What happens is that the change is emergent when we start to do that. So I think we tend to try to problem solve from this really heady place. We go okay, here's the problem, I've got to identify the solution, I've got to create the roadmap to get there, and then I've got to execute it. And when we do that, we're really only using a fraction of our intelligence, because we're really only using that rational intelligence and we're only going to allow in what I already know and maybe just a little bit outside of what I already know. But when we choose to engage with our wider range of our intelligence, our body's intelligence, our emotional intelligence, our intuitive intelligence, our relational intelligence, our community intelligence, we start to really incorporate all this.
Speaker 1:Change will happen and it will emerge. But I might not have any idea what that looks like. But if I can learn how to follow what brings me more into alignment and what has more energy, things come together and grow in response to that. It's like if you put a plant in the sun and you give it water and you tend to it, it grows. Like all living things grow. We are growing all the time and there's forces of breakdown too. But when we have something is breaking down, there's a loss of energy in that system when it's breaking down and there's often something also emergent happening at the same time. And so as we start to become aware of that process that is universal in in all living things, we start to become aware of that process within our, within ourselves, and be guided by it, then we start to change is emergent.
Speaker 2:I love the way you describe that. I mean, I've been rereading Women who Run With Wolves and just reminded of the life-death-life, the myth in there of is it the skeleton woman Anyhow, the life-death-life cycle, but the way you describe that change is emergent and that it feels that. How did you say that? The breakdown, when there's a breakdown, what was the phrase you used?
Speaker 1:When there's a breakdown is, it shows that there's a loss of energy in a system. And when something's breaking down, something's building up also. So sometimes we're so paying attention to what's falling apart. That again, when our nervous system is more stressed and we can really using that part of our brain and we can only focus on one thing at a time, it can be hard to become aware of that. Well, if this is ending, what's beginning, oh, and if this is this is collapsing, then what's emerging? And if, if, oh, no, this thing that that I so identify with is is going away, then who am I becoming? And to be able to be in that uncertainty that's uncomfortable for us.
Speaker 1:We're wired as human beings.
Speaker 1:Our most basic human need is for certainty, and it doesn't matter how much you grow, you never stop having that need for certainty.
Speaker 1:But you can meet the need for certainty with a breath, because a part of your nervous system that is hungry for that thinks in three-second frames. So if I'm running my whole life on that need to be certain of how things are going to go and have things be predictable and feel the same things and think the same things and experience the same things, it takes an immense amount of energy to control myself and to control my life and to control my environment. That way, and when I can learn to find that quench of that need for certainty just with a breath, then there's a huge liberation of energy. So I suddenly have all that energy I was using to control everything available to me to take a step into the unknown, to maybe be with um, be with the, the, some of the, maybe the fear, the sensations or um, you know, just like whatever I might be avoiding in not wanting to step into that space at the end, so that. So when you say we were to teach a class like, how would we even, how would we do that?
Speaker 1:I think, for people, to people in contact with the resource that they have available to them, that they don't even know that they have available to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Just the breath. Oh so good. As, as you were talking about that, I'm thinking about the times in my life when, yeah, just the tree Be like oh no, you can't. You can't do that and you can try to glue the leaves back on, but that's not nature, that's not what's what's in nature's design right now, and that's not an easy thing to do. But I think I just want to pinpoint that for people that are listening, because I see that in myself, I see that so often. Right, it's so common as a human to not want to let go of the thing that's dying, to actually relinquish that need to try to control it and and then be with the emerging. Just that reminder, just even if it's just a reminder of like this is the way that nature works. There has to be something emerging, there just has to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, change is constant.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. So it's this irony, here we are wired, that our greatest need, our most basic human need, constant need for certainty in a world that's nothing's constant. Everything's changing, except that you're going to die.
Speaker 2:And who knows if it's permanent.
Speaker 1:And our fear of death is a big piece of what you're speaking to. So when, because we're mortal, because we have this survival instinct, and if I'm living really mostly in touch with my fight or flight physiology, that survival instinct is loud and it's what's what's kind of driving me behind the scenes, and so that survival instinct is to try to keep me alive. So with that is fear, and with that is fear of the unknown and fear of death. And so even if I can just take a breath and acknowledge that sometimes I'm afraid and soften a little bit in the face of that, then all of a sudden lots more opens up. So it's exponential. If I take, you know, one moment to be with that fear, then I get a huge up-leveling in my bandwidth of what I can process in the next moment. And so when that starts to become a practice whether any uncomfortable situation or scenario where we're what we're talking about is really upgrading our physiology, because we're wired to avoid pain, it's part of that instinct.
Speaker 1:You touch a hot stove. What do you do? You jerk your hand away. So when something painful arises, our first response to it will be to move away, and that's, that's not wrong and it's supposed to be that way. We're just not supposed to stop there. And so I can't control anything that's happening in my outside world. I really can't. I can make myself believe I can, but I really can't control what happens and I can't control my first reaction to it. So even I think that some people move in their journey of becoming more aware of themselves. They, they can recognize like, oh my God, I'm trying to control everything. So I'm going to stop trying to control everything and I'm going to just try to stop being so afraid of not being in control. And so then they'd go to work at trying to control what they feel. But you can't control what you feel first.
Speaker 1:So important, yeah, so important so you can't control what's happening and you can't control what you feel first. So important, yeah, so important. So you can't control what's happening and you can't control your first response. So we've got to have grace with what's happening and we've got to have grace with what comes up in us in response.
Speaker 1:And if I can stay with myself long enough to notice that to go oh, you know, plans changed for the meeting today and my first reaction is I'm furious. I'm so angry about it. And if I can just stay with myself long enough to notice that I can be informed by it, there's something to learn about myself, there's something that that I value, that I'm trying to protect, and so I can discover that. And then I can choose how I'm going to respond. I can choose how I'm going to respond, even first, to that emotional reaction within myself. I'm not going to yell at somebody or go for a run to try to get rid of it, or am I going to, you know, put on some music and dance and dance with it and breathe with it and be enlivened by it and dance with it and breathe with it and be enlivened by it.
Speaker 2:That's good. I love that. I would like to take a little bit of a left turn, if you're comfortable with this. We talked about and you'll have to jog my memory a little bit so we've talked about the masculine, feminine and reintegrating aspects into self and into relationship, and I can't remember if it was you, if it was you, that said this that, like, the work that you've done has just really transformed your relationship. Was that you that said that? Yes, can you, can you speak to that? So what your journey has been with the masculine feminine, the work that you've done, yeah, the.
Speaker 1:I was introduced to the idea of the masculine feminine energies and they're a polarity that exists within the whole and within the whole within us as individuals too. That that I was introduced to that concept early on and in relationship to the work I do, and but where this really landed for me in my own sort of personal awakening and growth and change and transformation around that was when I was introduced to Regina Thomasauer's work. She wrote a book called Pussy, a Reclamation, and a program for women called the School of Women in the Arts for many years in New York City, york city. When I read her book and I went to her program I, which was just to be in a room with 2,500 other women first of all was what an experience.
Speaker 1:I can change my life just to be in that room and then to be in a room with 2,500 other women talking about what it means to be a woman and to be in your body and in your sensuality and in your power and to begin to unlearn what we've all been taught. Um was such an awakening for me because I really thought that before that that I was free. I really thought I was free. I was lived kind of outside of the system in many ways. I was homeschooled. I'm queer. I, you know, came into that awareness of my sexuality young and with support. I um married to an amazing woman. I run my own business. I have, you know, I have a family. I have a daughter Like I've.
Speaker 1:I've never I haven't felt constrained by many of the things sort of. Especially, I was raised in a very kind of spiritually curious household, so many of these kind of forces of religion or traditional values or even school or things, ways in which so many of us get shaped really early. I had a lot more wiggle room and a lot more opportunity to explore and to to be myself in ways, and so I really thought like I was free of that, and being in that program really made me confront all the ways in which I still hadn't deeply internalized this undervaluing of the aspects of my humanity that we, that the world and society, the patriarchal system, deems feminine. So, you know, even working with people around their embodiment and around their healing, just the ways in which I was in relationship to my own body and to my own sensuality and to my um, the ways in which my I, my ego has, you know, and my success was the way I've navigated challenges and traumas from my own life, was like, wow, I'm still doing these things that are, you know, more individual and focused on my handling things by myself and not being vulnerable and, you know, overriding the things that I feel in my body and disconnecting and not leaning into relationship and to sisterhood in ways that would be so much more true to my essence and nourishing. So that was a huge awakening for me.
Speaker 1:And to see it also in relationship to the work I do, because I look at bodies all day, to see the shifts in the women in the room we'd have a conversation and I'd watch a woman's body come alive, the way that it would take, you know, three months of care in my office for that to happen. You know, and I was like man, there's something. There's something, you know, even in how I'm, in relationship to the work I do, where you still have to go to this doctor and receive this care and do this thing for soul. It's like still such, the access is still really limited. And yet I saw this thing as just so emergent when you put women together and started to have this conversation, where they had the opportunity to step outside of that conditioning and into something much more effortless and energizing.
Speaker 1:I saw the kind of changes in their bodies that I was trying to find through healing work and it really shook up my life and it shook up my relationship to my work and to my mentor in the work, and I think you know now that's that was 2018. So I've come. It's as a practitioner, it's had me come. I've developed a awareness that we already have everything we need and just need the opportunity to be put in touch with it. So even that like opportunity to put my own hands on my body and find my breath and feel something I don't need.
Speaker 1:I don't need somebody else from outside of me to tell me what to do and who to be. I just need somebody who will stand for me for a moment and hold space for me to connect with that wisdom and intelligence that's within me. And so it's really changed who I am as a doctor and how I work with people. And so it's really changed who I am as a doctor and how I work with people. And it's changed my knowing of what's possible for people. And it's also been a pain point that I've, I continue to learn from and grow from of how the how that I had in that program is, you know, compared to you know if I walk out on the street in every opportunity I have, in a way that supports that emerging change that's so needed, so I don't know how I answered your question.
Speaker 2:You did, and I have a follow-up question what's one of the and I think you've touched on this potentially, but just to, if you could, if it's possible to boil down what's, what's one of the biggest unlearnings you've had since doing that work with the feminine?
Speaker 1:That I don't already. How would I say this? That I don't know, that we don't know?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 1:I don't know, that we don't know, we don't know who we are or what we need that that self-doubt is learned. It's never that we don't know, it's just that we need a moment, you know, and we need support. So and that really again changed how I work with people too, because I know that they know, and so how I witness and facilitate and hold space for somebody in their growth and healing is really different, knowing that they know. When they don't know, and when they don't know, I don't need to tell them when they don't know, I need to be with them and be with my knowing of them and hold space for that truth to emerge because it will.
Speaker 1:And I would say a second one, really a deep unlearning, is fear of emotion and fear of pain and fear of emotional pain, fear of the pain that we have as human beings.
Speaker 1:And so I have a in in the opportunity in that program to dive deeply into my feeling body and to also witness other women do that.
Speaker 1:So we're deeply into grief and deeply into rage, in inside a container of support and to, you know, have the experience of watching that, the, how that transforms a woman and experiencing it, how that transforms me, and knowing that on the other side of that depth of feeling is so much resource and so much knowing and so much power and so much magic, and that really, you know Regina says that women are the greatest untapped natural resource on the planet and so much of how we stay in this sort of stagnant place in that all that potential power is by being so afraid to feel, you know, and feelings are intense and they're messy and they're chaotic, they're feminine, so they are um, we can't control them and we and they're uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:And so to be able to have the experience of both witnessing and experiencing in my own body, to go through the storm of the depth of my emotions and feel and experience again and again how much light is on the other side of that and how much freedom in my body and how much energy in my body and how much aliveness in my body, and then you know having that and how I can then now be with others when they are in, in their pain, and not and not be afraid of it there would be a huge oh so much there is so powerful.
Speaker 2:Um, this is sort of a it feels like a basic, sort of fundamental question, and I'm thinking of people that may be afraid to feel right now, that are listening, that are afraid to step into that level of grief, pain, rage, whatever it might be why is it that our greatest power is on the other side of feeling that? Why can't we get to our power without feeling our feelings? Why can't we get to our power?
Speaker 1:without feeling our feelings, because if we're not feeling our feelings, we're disconnected. It's like being unplugged. It's like the toaster's unplugged and you're trying to figure out how to fix it, so we're just not plugged in. If we're not connected, then we're not connected to our body. If we're not connected to our life force, then we're not connected to our body. We're not connected to our life force, then we're not connected to our energy.
Speaker 2:And to our power. Is it like a safe way to put it to say that it may be too simple, but that the same place, that our intuition and power, our intuition, power and feelings all reside in the same place, which is the body. We're kind of coming full circle, but to go, if we're going to tune in, if we're going to, it's all experienced in the body. Got it, got it, got it. But yeah, if we're going to magnify one area, all the areas get magnified. If we're going to turn on one area, all the areas get turned on, and so we can't bypass.
Speaker 1:We can't bypass this to get to that, and and, and I would say we can bypass, but the cost goes somewhere. To explain that.
Speaker 1:You can look around and see lots of people bypassing all over the place, but the cost goes somewhere.
Speaker 1:So, for example, if I'm going to um, you know, put all my energy into, like you know, feeling joyful and feeling, you know, connected to the divine, feeling part of and connected, then what happens? When I have the experiences that remind me that sometimes I get disconnected and sometimes I'm unkind and sometimes I'm afraid and sometimes I'm selfish in a way that's causes harm to others, if I'm not willing to look at that and feel that and experience that, then I'm going to disconnect and then it's like I can feel less and less and less of that thing I'm chasing for. And what, as human beings will do, tend to do is double down on trying to chase that even harder. Beings will do tend to do is double down on trying to chase that even harder, and then we, then we amplify, so we end up with this, this split, where we may be so focused on doing good and causing all kind of harm without even knowing we're doing it to ourselves or to those around us.
Speaker 1:Um, I think you see that a lot, in a lot of different ways, but you can think of feeling, you know, like a, like a shutter on a camera. I can't feel more of that good stuff that I, you know, I call it good because I like the way it feels without also letting in more of that, that stuff that's hard to feel. So, which is also why I say, the more I'm willing to go into the depth of my grief and experience it and find my breath in it and find my body in it, and find my movement in it, find the sounds that I can make in it and also in the rage, um, then that creates new peaks for me the joy I can feel and the aliveness I could feel and the connection I can feel and the love I can feel and the trust I can feel. So that's also why I know that that the deeper I go, the the more it opens me up to all the things that feel good too.
Speaker 2:So good To the women that the woman, women that are experiencing that gap that you talked about, gap between well, maybe let's define that. What is the gap between what and what?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think you can talk about the gap really generally as between what is and what you know is possible ah yeah, what do you say to?
Speaker 1:her what's here and what could be. Um, I say the same thing like how can, how can I be more fully connected in my body in relationship to what's here? So can I be aware of it, can I acknowledge it, can I breathe with it? Can I be aware of and acknowledge what I feel in the face of it? Can I be with that and breathe with that? Can I share that, you know, with somebody who can listen? Um, because the more I can really be with this, then the then I'm, I'm fully here, I'm more likely to be able to create something but, if I'm trying to move away from what is, then I only have parts of me available to move towards something else.
Speaker 1:And also, so there's a being you know more, really fully with what is aware of it, acknowledge it, allowing it, expressing it, accepting it and then also spending that same kind of intentional time with what could be. So, if there's this thing that I dream about or that I desire or that I long for, so you know, or that I long for, so what I desire has such incredible potential, If I can be aware of that and I can acknowledge that and I can feel what I feel in response, I can feel what my body does with that and I can share it and I can talk about it. I can come into relationship with this reality, I bring it closer. So we can do both. I can really be fully with what is and with what could be, just by I become a conduit actually for what brings these seeming disparate realities into relationship, because they are in relationship through me and our body to create.
Speaker 1:We're the most creative species on the planet. We have this incredible capacity to create, but it really requires to be fully present and and you know, fully in my aware part of my brain as well as fully alive in my body. And I would say that, although that, this gap that I see in the world, and I see the cost of it and the pain of it, and it's a practice for me to be with it, but every day of my life is about trying to bridge that and not in a way that I think it's a problem I'm ever going to solve, brings in that is feels connected to my purpose and brings me to life and quenches something in me when I move in. Every little bit that I do it and have you know, activates a hunger to get up again.
Speaker 2:Thank you, aiden, thank you for your work, thank you for sharing the way you do, I mean, and just being your beingness and your presence, I mean on our trip in Scotland and just here today is is a conduit, in my opinion, just for for healing. Well, obviously, it's what you're doing. You literally are, that's literally, that's literally what you're doing. It's such a gift. Yeah, thank you for that and thank you for your time today. Yeah, such a pleasure. Yeah, if people so you're in California, so people can come see you if they're there.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, somebody's in San Francisco, I'm in San Francisco, so if you're in San Francisco the Bay area absolutely you can come see me. So if you're in San Francisco or the Bay Area, absolutely you can come see me. And if people are interested in the work that I do it's called Network Spinal or Network Spinal Analysis People can reach out to me to be connected with somebody in your area. There's people who do what I do all over the world, so there might be somebody local to where you are and my website is vervewellnessstudiocom and if you go to the website there's a link to book a call. So anybody who has a question or would like to be connected with a practitioner in their area or is curious about coming to see me in person, go on the website and book a call. It's free and you have a chance to answer your questions or connect you to resources to answer your questions or connect you to resources.
Speaker 2:Wonderful and you're like the best of the best you really are. I can't recommend you enough to people, so I'll put all of that in the show notes so people can get a hold of you there. Thank you again, aiden. This is a pleasure. Thank you, jennifer.
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