Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

Nervous System Expert Sarah Tacy on Breaking the Freeze - How to Re-Wire Your System

• Anthea Bell

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Breaking the Freeze: A Journey to Authentic Self-Care and Resilience

Gorgeous Listeners, welcome to this week's episode of Finding Your Way Home. And what a treat we have for you…

Today’s episode delves deep into the intricate connection between physical, mental, and emotional - and how these blended factors impact our lives on a granular and global level. Anthea Bell, your host and Embodiment Coach, welcomes Sarah Tacy — a body~mind specialist with extensive expertise in physiology, nervous system health, emotional regulation and mindset - the holistic picture of how we create optimised, connective human development. Her stated mission: to support high achievers in cultivating a pace, buoyancy and joy that truly optimises them for the lives they desire. 

Sarah shares her journey from a competitive athlete navigating physical pain, depression and nervous system burnout, to becoming a profound guide in body~mind coherence. They discuss the complexities of trauma, the multifaceted aspects of the freeze response, and the importance of creating on-ramps (easily accessible gateway tools) to better states of being. Sarah introduces her programme 'Resourced’; a profoundly nourishing container designed to empower women to recognise and prioritise their own needs and preferences. 

This episode is a compelling dive into the genuine relationship between resourcing oneself and authentically experiencing, expressing and evolving through life's highs and lows. You’ll love it. 

Episode Breakdown: 

00:00 Understanding the Impact of Pain on Coherence

01:45 Introduction to Finding Your Way Home Podcast

02:51 Meet Sarah Tacy: Mind-Body Specialist

07:09 Sarah's Journey: From Athlete to Mind-Body Expert

08:39 The Role of Yoga in Healing

10:53 Working with the Nervous System

22:53 The Importance of Relational Health

27:20 Empowerment Through Small Steps

33:20 Expressing Emotions and Building Capacity

34:15 Understanding Trauma and the Freeze Response

41:28 Understanding the Freeze Response

42:30 Layers of Freeze and Their Impact

43:38 Gender Differences in Freeze Response

45:27 Personal Experiences with Freeze and Fight Responses

46:44 The Thawing Process and Emotional Release

54:25 Metaphors and Imagery in Healing

01:07:13 The Importance of Curiosity and Resources

01:13:28 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

To connect with Sarah, find out more about her work and consider joining her in Resourced:

For more on Finding Your Way Home, including events and spaces at our next retreat in Costa Rica: visit @ab_embodiment or www.ab-embodimentcoaching.org

If you've enjoyed the episode, remember to Subscribe and share it with a friend - you couldn't imagine the profound ripple effect… 

With love, always x

Sarah:

What's interesting about physical, mental, or emotional pain is how much energy it drains and how hard it is to be in coherence with others. You know, people talk about doing gratitude practices and it's a way of reverse engineering nervous system regulation, but I have found when I'm in my deepest, darkest places. It's hard for me to identify things that I'm grateful for. I could say I'm grateful for my family, I'm grateful for my kids, but to really, really feel deeper. Whereas when my resonance, my window of tolerance, my, uh, range of regulation is larger. The gratitude comes first before the effort to gratitude, if that makes sense. You're like almost overtaken with awe of the beauty that's around you and the little, um, textures that you're feeling. And when that range gets smaller, when the demands outweigh the resources, it can become an effortful process to identify the gratitudes, like if I'm laying on the sideline in a ton of pain wrapped in a blanket, um, and wishing I was out on the field, it's more of an effort to try to change to a state of gratitude when I'm working with, you know, physical pain moving through my body.

Anthea:

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in. Welcome, gorgeous listeners to this week's episode of Finding Your Way Home. Oh, I've got a treat for you. I am sitting in front of the glowing face of Sarah Tacy. Sarah is a veritable treat. She is a MINDBODY specialist. Unbelievable expertise with not just physiology, but within the nervous system, emotional regulation, um, really looking at the whole holistic picture of how do we bring people into a beautiful, adaptable set point, rhythm level of mind, body coherence, where it feels to me, Sarah, in your work, it's not so much about where we can control ourselves or where we can even quote unquote regulate. It's much more about. What is a human life like when it is alive and it is easeful and it is potent, and it has the moments of easy release and activation. It's, it's all of that. It's the, the diversity of the lived experience. And, you know, I will let Sarah give herself an introduction, but she has worked with some extraordinary individuals across sort of Olympian athletes to entrepreneurs, uh, executives. So her span of hmm, clients and the sort of personalities that she meets and the needs that they have is vast. And our hope today as part of this series of heart led female founders and visionaries, is that we give you a little taste of her magic and that we give you maybe some insights into the nervous system, into physiology, into even what is going on in your emotional experiences that you can gain intimacy with. That might help you in your onward journey. So listeners, welcome. We are delighted to have you with us and Sarah. Oh my God, so much welcome. Thank you for zooming in with me.

Sarah:

Ugh. Thank you for having me. It is a true pleasure to be here and I always feel so grateful when I can say things like that, those statements authentically, right? Not as a reflex of this is what I'm supposed to say, but to really feel like, wow, I'm really, really, uh, happy to be here in your presence. And I can feel the care that you put in. And as I, as you speak, so many people will say to me that they love hearing my voice. Uh, which it's funny, right? Like to me it's my voice and my voice and as I hear yours, I am having an experience of like. Swept away is the wrong word, but like, oh, this is gonna feel so good. So, and I know that, um, for many vocal tone also has to do with the nervous system. And so there's an appreciation for me that as I hear your voice, I feel in my body a sense of the depth of life that you've lived and the sweetness of your heart and the care. And so all of that just really warms me and makes me like, ah, I'm really glad I got to land here today. So thank you

Anthea:

that moment is supposed to be about you. And over here I'm having this sort of Fluttery experience.

Sarah:

I wanna even say one more thing is that. It then also helps me to imagine into who is listening, like who would be attracted to you and who is listening. And so that also gives me a feel of the blessing of getting to be in this circle. Like it feels like this like really broad council of what I'm guessing is largely women. Um, and so it feels just a blessing to be here for that too.

Anthea:

Well, that also reminds me of one of the things that I know that we'll talk about'cause actually working with women and particularly working with mothers, that feels like it's been a beautiful arc in your journey, right? Because at the get go, your introduction into this world, my sense from your story when I heard it earlier this year is almost your get go was living in the opposite tonality within yourself, and that's part of what then spurred you into really in depth experience of nervous system. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey?

Sarah:

Um, if we were to start 20 years ago, we, going back that far, um, I was an athlete. Um, I still am an athlete, but I was, uh, a competitive athlete and I played, you know, at the university level and, um, and my, and I had so many injuries just all through high school as well. Um, I just wanted to be the best at everything I did, and I wanted to get great grades and I played on all the sports teams and the travel teams and every time I'd get an injury, I felt that my body was getting in the way of me doing the thing I wanted to do. And it wasn't until I had a major back injury where I could not. Sit up to sit through class. It hurt to lay down for too long. I could not play any sports. Um, so my teammates would carry this reclining chair and I just kind of lay down and get wrapped in a blanket and watch from the sideline. And it was my first introduction to any level of depression and just noticing that when my body hurt, my brain and my emotions hurt, and how tied my identity was with my performance. And so I would say that the beginning of my journey into Body Mind, which then became body, mind, spirit and energetic, was through injury, was through having the things I so identified, taken away from, taken away. Um, and then yoga was the first thing I was able to really do. And it was so humbling because I was this college athlete in a class with mostly women in their. You know, sixties and seventies, which back then seemed old to me, which now I get is like a, still a spring chicken and with lots of wisdom. Um, and I, how, how come I can't do a down dog? And they can like, how? Like, just like, and then they come and adjust me where I think I'm touching my toes and, but they make me then straighten my spine. I'm like, it was so humbling and it was one of the first things I did where I was really not good at it and still wanted to come back to it, right? And um, and I just got to be with my ego over and over. And I had a teacher, uh, in college, a yoga teacher who had kind of like yell, are you doing this out of love or are you doing this to prove something to somebody? And what a potent question to ask at any point in my life, am I doing this out of love or to prove something to somebody? Because the answer. It doesn't mean always stay longer to have those top us, that inner fire, to show that you can do more than you think you can do. Sometimes the answer is that, and sometimes the answer is gonna be like, yeah, today is the day for child's pose, while other people are doing headstands. And the only way I'm gonna know that answer is through figuring out what love would do. As an athlete, if I missed a goal, I played lacrosse in college, if I missed a goal, my mind would be, oh my gosh, what am I gonna say to the people who came to watch? And I would just leave the game and be in my head about what am I, how am I gonna explain my mistakes? And when I started yoga, I could remember, why am I here? I'm here for love, I'm here for fun. And I would take a breath and I'd notice the blades of the grass. And I just entered a whole new flow and state that I had never experienced before as an athlete, uh, through coming into a better relationship with my mind and body. Um, and then I might also say just yes, isn't it interesting that I'm working with moms primarily now and entrepreneurial women because, uh, my career right out of college was doing research and development for stor sports training facilities. So how do we upregulate the nervous system? How do we increase speed and patterning? And also how do we, um, slowly release old patterns, which is still super useful. And a lot of the things I learned there were opposite of what I was learning in yoga, which is where I generally land, like schools that don't agree with each other, basically like, oh, how do we weave this? Um, and so I worked, that's where I worked with Bill Garrin, who. That was his 19th year in the NHL, the Professional Hockey League here. And, um, he won the Stanley Cup that year and he was a previous Olympian. And I had another guy who was going to the Olympics. And um, so it, it is interesting the way that it went from primarily male athletes to male CEOs to wi to then like a mix of bringing more women into my practice. And, um, now I, I definitely see more moms and female entrepreneurs, so I have seen quite a range of humans at different places. Um, and I'm really grateful for that. I'm really grateful for that range and it kind of reflects the different places that I, um, was most present at those times in my life.

Anthea:

Yeah. And the, the different leanings that we have, depending on whether we are in potentially, depending on whether we're in presence and flow, whether we're in outcome orientation.

Sarah:

Hmm.

Anthea:

I was thinking about the sweetness of being really in the movement. I, I think, you know, I, I adore moving, so when you were telling me the story about the back accident and I was picturing you on the field watching, when I watch someone dance or when I, when I go to circus performance, it's as though my body is feeling what they're feeling as I watch them. To the extent sometimes that I have a sort of an, an ongoing internal nightmare that I'm actually gonna leave my seat and try and get on stage with them. Not because I have any capacity to do it, but because my body just so deeply wants to be there. And so I could imagine that part of the, the fear for the, uh, the being for the ego is part of it is to do with the identity piece, but also part of it is what, what do I do when my body is not in motion? Hmm. I'm reminded therefore of cadence speed. Mm. And how ultimately that touches onto this theme of the nervous system.

Sarah:

Yeah. The um, the things that I would add to that, I know exactly what you're saying about feeling it, because when I taught yoga, I didn't go through the sequence with the class so that I could really walk around and see and speak and move my voices to different places within the class. But every time a class was complete, my body felt like it had experienced the entire flow without having to like do the Chaturanga or the headset. Just being so in the energy and the coherence of the space, um, I would say the added layer, because that was not my experience laying on the sideline, um, was not like, oh, I feel what they're feeling because the pain was so intense and. What's interesting about physical, mental, or emotional pain is how much energy it drains and how hard it is to be in coherence with others. You know, people talk about doing gratitude practices and it's a way of reverse engineering nervous system regulation, but I have found when I'm in my deepest, darkest places. It's hard for me to identify things that I'm grateful for. I could say I'm grateful for my family, I'm grateful for my kids, but to really, really feel deeper. Whereas when my resonance, my window of tolerance, my, uh, range of regulation is larger. The gratitude comes first before the effort to gratitude, if that makes sense. You're like almost overtaken with awe of the beauty that's around you and the little, um, textures that you're feeling. And when that range gets smaller, when the demands outweigh the resources, um, it becomes an, it can become an effortful process to identify the gratitudes, um, or. Similar, like if I'm laying on the sideline in a ton of pain wrapped in a blanket, um, and wishing I was out on the field, it, um, it's more of an effort to try to change to a state of gratitude when I'm working with, you know, physical pain moving through my body. And so it's, it's different, you know, the two feel different to me.

Anthea:

I couldn't agree with that more. I think there's two things that really strike me from what you're sharing. The one is that, and this is perhaps just a reminder to anyone listening that might lean into that tendency for self-critique change creates obviously beautiful opportunities in your life, but change is very energy hungry, and we have to be, as you say, resourced in order to be able to get there. And if every part of your internal driving mechanism is seeing a problem and trying to point you toward the solution to the problem as quickly as possible, it often feels like overriding. To make an internal statement of gratitude. One of the practices that we play with a lot in the work that I do is this concept and actual practice of welcoming it. It's really the sense of releasing resistance to what is, and I know that that even, even and of itself is an effort for clients when they're in physical pain. I, I had chronic back pain for 10 years, so I, I know what you are speaking of, and it takes the effort to pause for long enough to notice there is a practice you could use, which is simply to welcome it. And in the welcoming it, of course, what happens is that the intensity of the, the sensation begins to abate because it's not so hungry for your attention. But even that takes effort. And so I think there's a lot to be said for environments where you can naturally just land.

Sarah:

Mm-hmm.

Anthea:

To great, to safety. And that environment could be made up of people, it could be made up of na made up of the pet that you are around, that brings you into more of that ventral vagal state where you are soothed and supported. Sarah has a gorgeous cat crawling over her as we speak.

Sarah:

Uh, I was saying that when I do meditations or podcasts, my two cats suddenly are like, this is where I want to be. And they get all up in, all up in this space. Um, yes, I, there's something that I want to say that might be a little controversial, but before I say that, I'll, I'll speak to when I am in session and I am there as the outside person, the person listening, the person holding space, and the inside person, the one who is journeying within their selves, um, comes up with a statement that's in their body that. Is highly critical and often so harsh. And what I see in this person is their beauty. And what I see in this person is their strength. My reflex is to wanna go like, what? No, let me tell you how freaking you are, a miracle. Let me tell you why. And I have to pause myself to say, wow, I hear that. Can we like, and then can we resource ourselves to, to be with that? Because there's generally an age to those statements, to those, um, harsh things that might be living in there to the sadness and, and to not give it a space to say like, oh, I can sit with that sadness, which is what a lot of parents are trying to do for their kids now. Um. Is what we kind of need to go back and do many of us for ourselves, is to go back and sit with those places and give it a steady presence to just feel the sadness, as you said. And, and just like you said, I've seen it time and time again where then sometimes the physical symptoms that where there also start to move, once we sit with the feelings that are there and, and we can resource with what is steady and what is stable and what is already well in this work, they get to coincide. Um, and the part that feels, because I don't want it taken out of context, um, there's a map called the three directions map. And if you think of the bottom left hand side, I. So there's a big arc, almost like a rainbow. And the bottom left hand side would be a normal resting state. And as you go up, um, that represents activation. And the first direction as you go up that you could take is to soothe and distract to help bring you back down to a resting state. And as you do more and more nervous system work, one might say, well, to soothe, um, you could do a breath practice, you could put your hands on your heart, you could do some vagal nerve exercises. You could hum, right? There are all these things we can do to soothe ourselves, to help reregulate our system. What I really appreciate about, um, what I've learned through alchemical alignment, which is. The work of Bridget Vixens is that in there also gets to exist. If somebody is smoking two cigarettes a day, if somebody is having a margarita to help them come down, that we would say, okay, at this stage it's lifesaving. Right? And, and I know that things can go to a place where it, it feels like it's not lifesaving anymore, but I've worked with a client where the pain she was in was like, I like unable to get out of bed. The amount of emotional pain and two cigarettes a day at that point was her soothe and distract until we built more and more resource until that was like, oh, that doesn't feel like a good fit anymore. And then the choices became more generative in time, where when doing it also gave, um, a continuous ongoing growth energy. So I, I do honor that there are times where the body is so depleted and the mind is so depleted and the spirit is so depleted that some of the soothing and distracting our society would say is bad or not right? But sometimes it's lifesaving until we can resource enough slowly over time to choose ones that have more of a generative effect.

Anthea:

Yeah, and I think that's such a beautiful point because the. The tendency would be to assume that there is a moral directive there. If you drink, it's bad. If you have, um, sex too often it's bad. You know, if you lean into the part of you that finds food delicious and indulgent, and so much of that is driven toward correcting the behavior. And what you're really describing is that as you work with the nervous system, and particularly as you work in this, let's say, relational field with your client, as you hold the presence, you know, when you were describing earlier this thing of wanting to go in and fix, what I was also reminded of is that you just sitting there beholding them in the aura of love that teaches them more even than words could. And, and so as we create that environment for them, then the identity naturally shifts. Not least because so much of the work, it sounds like that you do offers people incremental actions within a safe context that also they're in charge of. And so the being evolves and the being evolves into a being that does not choose to smoke, that does not choose to live in a context of pollution that does not choose to work a 50 hour week. But until you've had the sweetness of that relational experience and that gentle teaching, it's hard to know that it exists. You know that there's one you said,

Sarah:

so I was gonna say, you've said so many beautiful things there, and the way that you phrase is just, um, it's music to my soul. And, um, you used what I hear as relational health, um, choice and the tension field. Um, those weren't necessarily your exact words, but um, I often say that choice is the opposite of trauma, physiology, and. There is hyper choice, right? Where it's like a controlling thing, but trauma often happens. The physiology that stays with us when we did not feel like we had choice. And we also generally get that physiology ingrained, cyclically in our body when we felt isolated. And it's not always because we're alone, it's often we are around others and we feel unseen, overpowered. And so we're feeling powerless and isolated in the presence of others. And so what I hear you saying is that as we're being held in a healthy relational field, there is an intelligent energy that is moving towards blueprint. Phrase that I heard from Tel Darden, which I think is linked to biodynamic, cranial sacral therapy, is the tension field. I have looked it up multiple times, and I don't actually think that phrase is directly from there, but when Tel used that phrase, um, I felt like I knew that place in my body, that place between familiar and optimal when things are realigning and we're building the capacity to be in the discomfort of the unknown until things realign through. Um, sometimes it's a bit of effort, but a lot of times it is actually just being able to be in that field until the, uh, energy realigns itself. And so as I am holding a field for somebody when they're working through or being with something, um, that might happen, but they're also, I. There has to be some willingness, like some choices you said, which is again, that breaking, breaking the trauma physiology, creating a new lo loop of what I'm calling empowerment physiology. Um, to also be in that tension field to be able to withstand that tension field as a new pattern is developing. I heard Huberman the other week talking about the anterior mid cingulate cortex in the brain and how, you know, the way he was phrasing it is the more that we do things that are hard, that are challenges that we don't necessarily, you know, we have resistance to doing, the more that part of our brain develops and it's thought to be the center of willpower and possibly the center of our will to live and. This is, you asked me at the very beginning, before we started recording, what am I excited about right now? And I am kind of taking my own self-directed tangent. Um, because I think it's related to the tension field, um, which is if we are going to trust that our body is intelligent and our body knows what's best for us, and our body is an ally, then why is it that sometimes the things that are best for us that the next right step are body feels so much resistance towards why is it so hard to do if it could actually bring us so much pleasure and so much growth? And what I am coming to conclude is that our emotions love themselves. I'm not the first person to say that. Um, but the way I'm seeing it is that our physiological state. Likes to ruminate, you know, like a thought, likes to ruminate. And it can be very hard if you are in a rumination of a physiological state to take a step that breaks that loop. It, it almost feels like you're killing, right? Like you're killing that state to come onto another. And so the thing I've gotten excited about when, when I hear Huberman speak of this, and when I think of Bridget Vixen small doable pieces over time, is what are the on-ramps? If you're thinking of you're driving on a highway and you want to get over to this town where there's family and there's health and there's, right. Like, but, and you wanna get off this really fast, well, there's gotta be an on-ramp, right? Your car doesn't just jump into a different speed into a, there's an on-ramp or an off ramp. Uh, when I think about working out, I don't generally want to work out, but I know how good I feel afterwards. So what is a small dual piece and is there a whisper also, by the way, is there a whisper that this is actually something I want? Yes, I know through patterns, this is what I want and yes, I know I have a desire that's coming up against the resistance. So what is the smallest piece I can do that is easeful enough that begins to shift my state because when my state shifts the resistance to my desire shift. That makes sense.

Anthea:

It makes complete sense. And it reminds me of just how, um, intelligent our biology is in the sense that survival is almost always at the heart of everything. So I can quite see how the survival of a physiological state I. Could feel like the imperative for that aspect of your physiology. And then as you say, the whisper is, it's funny for me, more and more when I think about spirit, there is this inside and out experience. I think my body always, I think my being always experiences things in a sort of somatic, quasi somatic way. But now from an energetic standpoint, it's as though, even as I sit with you, I'm aware of these hands and I'm aware of the hum of air that sits around each and every finger. And so when I tap into intuition, I'm also tapping around me to glean what's the next right. Action. That's, that was my old mantra. Just what's the next Right. Action. And by right all I mean, is indicated not good, bad.

Sarah:

Mm-hmm.

Anthea:

I, I think what you're describing of the, the on-ramp that meets the least resistance, it's so clever and corralling and it's how we would be with a little one. You wouldn't try to get them from naught to 10. You would just, it just gently. You mentioned to me earlier before we started the call that, you know, one of the things that we need to offer children is not just the sort of statement and practice of let's calm you down when you are, quote unquote dysregulated. IE having an emotion. But also we need to offer them perhaps the appropriate tool, which would be to amp them up, to give them an avenue through which they can express. And it takes me, actually, back to the first thing that you said about yoga. The statement that you gave was, it was the first time that I had tried to do something that I wasn't good at and I still. Wanted to come back. And as you paused between the two statements, what my brain heard or predicted was it was the first time I wasn't good at something and I was welcomed back. Hmm. And somehow that feels really relevant to this wider conversation that we're having, especially getting out of a competitive, athletic environment where perhaps the teaching has been, if you are not good at it.

Sarah:

Yeah. Thank you for that. That's really beautiful. That will definitely be something that I'll reflect on as you say that. Um, I think about, like, of course there were teams where people who weren't super great at the sport, like there's JV and there's, you know, there are teams for, um, where there's like a place for everybody. Um, and so I'm thinking like, oh, was it, I. Yoga that says welcome as you are. Um, was it the teacher? Was it the field? Was it a calling inside of me that just really knew like, this is the doorway to a better way? Um, and as I say, welcome as you are, it's reminding me of Ray Castellano who was, again, I put him in like the grandfather of some of the pre and perinatal work that would say like, what would make a baby system feel safe and calm? And he talks about two layers of support for the mother and two layers of support for each one of those layers of support. And, and that could be a whole podcast. And, um, his eight tenants, the first one is welcome as you are. Um, and so how do we, how do we create that which then could weave back to the other thing that you just brought up, which was, um, if my child is having, um, fight energy that often comes out verbally, uh, welcome as you are, I see that you have this fight in you and um, do you want to wrestle? Do you want to pillow fight? And this is not for everyone. Some kids would feel overwhelmed by that. Um, one woman was like, oh, my kid doesn't like that. But she likes when you take one of those beanbag and kind of like hug her body and it, right. Like that would be her choice. So I'm not saying it's for everybody, um, but I would love to say a thing or two, which is that Peter Levine, um, again, grandfather of, um, somatic experiencing, his idea is that trauma is not the event. This is pretty widely, um, said about trauma. Trauma is not the event, but how our body perceives our experience of it. And so did we feel powerful on the other side of it? Did we overcome the horrible thing that happened? Um, or did we feel powerless, isolated, alone? Right. And he'd often say, or what he noticed in his work was that people who kept, who retained the trauma physiology, who retained the pattern, is that they were retaining patterns that were unfinished. So he would say like, they had a fight pattern. They had a push that they never got to complete. They. Needed to be able to run away, but they were frozen. And so he would help them as they're telling their story or you know, as I'm talking right now, my hands are moving these circular mo motions. And so if, um, if someone were in session, it might be like, okay, can we, um, make that motion a little bigger and what, what do you feel and what's coming up? And you'll see that there are these patterns inside of us that want to be expressed and want to be moved. So if we always think that the key is calm regulation, we are sometimes missing the very outlet that maybe very natural, like we were talking about earlier. Uh, we can say this is good and this is bad, but there are so many healthy places for fight as well. When my husband and I were in a parenting class early on, it was called hand in Hand parenting and there was this idea that kids have an emotional cup. And a connection cup. And if the conne, if the emotional cup was high and the connection cup was low, you were gonna see tantrums. And so they would suggest be present with them and like, almost you can initiate the tantrum. Like you could either happen in the store or when they're like upset about the shoes that they can't have, instead of trying to let me get you your shoe, let me try to fix it, allow their emotions to come out and then create some time for connection. And, and so, um, therefore, I. In my house, we're sometimes looking up like ahead of time, um, where can we wrestle more, where can we dance to music that's like, you know, sometimes it may be soft and slow and meditative, but a lot of times, uh, whenever it rains, actually my girls and I would go out in the rain and we turn the music on from my car and open up the trunk and just feel the rain on my, oh, you know, your skin, however it goes. You know, it's like, and we just jump up and down and put, and so just like, what are outlets for expression? Um, my girls, I was got an email one time that I really felt triggered by, and I tried to do all the nervous system things. I, you know, put my fingers in my ear lobes and pulled down to tone the vagus nerve. I put my hands on my heart and I was like, oh, I actually, it might be helpful to express this anger. And do it in a way that's not scary to my daughter. Right. And so we turned on music and I just was able to kind of throw my head around and throw punches and make some sounds just like, ha ha ha. Um, because again, I, I do see in women all the time that the throat is, um, so closed down. And so with my girls just giving so many spaces to make sounds and movements so that that emotion cup isn't already at its peak when something that actually is triggering comes up. So we have the space for connection, we have daily outlets for emotions, and it makes us have greater, I think I'm experiencing greater capacity to be with what is when it comes up.

Anthea:

There's also choice in that, right? If we're choosing to routinely come into a certain practice or come back to meditation or whatever it might be, then there is a natural sort of sense of empowerment that that creates. I, I was listening to Peter Levine relatively recently. Um, I was listening again to one of his, his books, and he was talking about a study in which they looked at, um, a group of children who were kidnapped and taken underground. You, yeah. I'm sure you know the story and for those that haven't heard it, it's, it's narrated in Waking The Tiger, which is a beautiful, um, very old school book now, but, you know, phenomenal and fundamental. And, um, basically the, the long story told short is that all of the children were kidnapped. They were taken into an underground, I think it was an underground caravan actually underneath a huge amount of rubble. And they were left in there. And, uh, over time the ceiling started to collapse and one of the children of about 12 or, or or so, um, and I think these are children under the age of 12. One of the children had this, this, this rescue fight energy in him to try to escape. And he brought someone on side. And the way that, um, Levine tells it, he then starts the, the crawling evacuation. And when they studied the children in the decades afterwards, a at the time, most of them had had to be really corralled and, and, and pulled out of the enclosure because they were in that free state. What I think now is known as kind of freezy business. They were there. B, their outcomes later on in life were, were very tricky. And they did hold onto the trauma because their instinctive response as had already been shown in that experience, was the response to freeze. So if that predated the significant trauma and then was compounded by the trauma, it then just got reenacted over the course of their life. Whereas the, the one individual that really had a bit of get up and go in them, in him probably hadn't had the precursors, relationally speaking to freeze, and so had been able to work his way out and with them and then had better outcomes moving forwards. It raises the question, and you talked about this a little bit when you were, uh, gloriously stroking your throat. It, it raises the question, if one knows that one is a freezer. Then what would be the pathway if you were working with a client? A lot of the people that listen are either self developers and many of them have written in to talk about lack of confidence, um, social, um, inadequacy, all of the signals of freeze that we then make into a story. And of course, self-blame is the most common story tied in all of them together. And then we have an incredible group of mostly female, um, practitioners working across the mind, body space. Their coaches or their therapists or their Pilates teachers or their, their people that are really keenly interested in how do we bring a little bit of nervous system theory and healing into. The work that they do on a subtle basis, perhaps the client doesn't even know. What would you say are the steps out of freeze in your experience? And also do they differ from men to women given that you've had a span of experience and even studied across the two?

Sarah:

So in my experience, um, more women and of course it's situation to situation. We often think of freeze as, and the way that nervous system is often spoken about is that it's honor, it's off. And we often think if it's freeze, it's fully frozen or that a person is fully in a freeze. There is, the phrase PEMSER, which is physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, energetic, relational. So it could be that physically I look like I'm doing great and I might have a spiritual freeze because of something that happened in my childhood around religion and spirituality and, um, I might have like a mental hyper, right? And so there therefore, because I don't believe in the energetic or the spiritual, I need to explain everything away through the mental. Does this make sense? So within one person, different parts of us can be hyper, some can be in range, some can be in freeze. Relational is in there too. So it could be like, you're doing so great as long as it's individual, but when it comes to relational, you don't trust anybody. And the tricky part about freeze is that when it's a full freeze, there are five layers of freeze. And if there's a full freeze of extinction, in some part, it doesn't have to be the whole body. We generally don't even know it's there, right? It's like When we have life events that we don't have any recollection of, that may return at a certain point when we have enough safety. Um, I. There can be physical parts of the body when I'm working with somebody and we're scanning the body and they'll just be like, oh, I just, oh, that side of my body's fine. I, I can't even, I can't even sense it. But there's actually a great, um, reason to believe oftentimes that there's a lot of protection going on. A lot of freeze. Uh, freeze is an anesthetic though in waking the tiger. I think he also talks about a time where somebody was actually, um, mauled by a tiger and dragged back, and that whole arm was numb until he got away. And so freeze is actually an anesthetic. It's lifesaving. It is the most extreme of the nervous system responses. And for women, kinda my theory behind this is that as most of us have less testosterone than you know. The males who tend to have more, um, their outlet for fight, they may have more success than we do. Our success when we're in the smaller villages and tribes is most likely gonna be from showing people through our wisdom, through our mediation skills, through our peacekeeping skills. Peacekeeping is what's gonna keep us the safest. Right? It's a really high, beautiful lifesaving skill. And if it's becomes chronic, because when we're young, there's so much, um, fight and anxiety and, and we might learn, oh, if I disappear or if I keep the peace, this is my trauma strategy. And people say, wow, she's so calm. Wow, she's so kind. And now I get to keep my place in the tribe, And so I do think that with people who are socialized as women, that they tend to have more freeze in their body than those socialized as male. Um, and I think that just goes back many generations and as I say that, so I do think that, um, men are often said like, you get to have rage, but not sadness in women, it's, you get to have sadness but not rage. And so it's so funny to me when I hear people talk about like, oh, beneath anger is sadness, as if you're trying to get people to feel the sadness. But I think, again, this is'cause it's men that are mostly studied.'cause I think women have more access to sadness and have a freeze around anger. So when my teacher said to me a couple years ago, what do you do for a fight outlet? And I was like, I don't. I don't have any fight urges. I'm good. Like I'm the most chill person you'll ever meet. I'm good. And she ha made a suggestion for me to go out in the backyard and find like a stick, um, and a tree that was already down and just, I have now learned like put on sunglasses and gloves. Can you do this?'cause wood ricochets and the, but I was like, whoa, that felt so good. And I get why when you played baseball, or even when I was an athlete and played lacrosse, like we had these outlets of like ha Right. And I was like, oh my gosh. After years of being wife and mother and being the calm, central nervous system. Wow. And even in childhood, wow, so much of my fight had been frozen. And when we talk about liberation work, how important is it that our fight comes out? And a lot of women, as they go through perimenopause and their hormones change, a lot of rage comes up when the hormones that would help you to stay peaceful, go away, and all the things that aren't okay, become very clear.

Anthea:

This is dovetailing. Thank you by the way, so much for explaining the differential stages and, and when you were talking about this idea that we can be optimal in a physical category and then actually let's say on a spiritual level or an emotional level, there can be a different response within the system. You actually, interestingly reminded me of something that I learned very early on when I started looking at addiction, which is that we can be absolutely functional. To the outside world. And certainly with addiction on a spiritual level, we can be in complete chaos underneath the surface and in one context of our life able to perform, able to show up and in another not. And again, that sort of speaks to the survival mechanism and what you were referencing earlier about is this my lifesaving soothing? Um, you've also had me reflecting on a real series of conversations I've had over the course of the past couple of weeks, partly because we're in this incredible season of podcast recordings. And so the women that we've had on so far have been sharing so much of their individual stories of how they found voice and how they really oh, so delicious. How they really, how they learn to validate their desires and lean into pleasure and, and all of these things. And several of them are of the, the. Sort of waning, perimenopausal into, let's say even now, popularly known as the Crone years, um, which is this era of life where they get to, in their words, live very fully without the social inhibitions and really without taking seriously the things that for the first 30, 40 years of your life you are minutely, attentive to. Um, I'm also really reminiscent of the fact that part of how we connected, first of all, my very, um, open question to you was, can someone that's been through some of what you described, can they unfreeze their body? So, you know, and I think some of the listeners know that a question for me ongoing is, can I, do I have children? And I'm at the ripe age of 37, where those questions start to be asked from people outside of you, and obviously from a calling within you. You sat me down and we were cross-legged in this gorgeous sun kissed room, and you sat me down and you were like, yes, it, it can, we just would need to feel for the condition that your system needed in order to gradually start to unthaw. And my sense from that conversation is that the, the thawing process, it does take time, it does take incremental steps, and it does take an enormous amount of care and attention. I was reminded of the fact that, um, I had an experience last year where, um, let's say I wasn't able to experience my rage in a moment where I needed to. And it wasn't as though as I came away from the experience. The only reason that I knew that all of my boundaries had been transgressed, and this was in a sort of an intimate scenario, was that the next day I could not stop crying. I was completely unstable the next day. I couldn't be on my own. I had to be in cafes surrounded by people in which I then sobbed and it, I had no sense that there had been a boundary that had been crossed, that I was angry, that I had really good reason to be angry, but the body kind of knew it, kind of knew what I needed in that day. And then of course the next day I was less numb and I was more able to process. So you've had me reflecting on all of these things in that gorgeous explanation that you gave. I wonder if anything comes up for you in relation to any of that Gump that I've just laid on your door.

Sarah:

Absolutely. Um, I was aware that in all I said, I didn't speak about how we can move outta shame. And so I will speak to that. And before I speak to that, I am always in awe when people tell me their stories, when they're in places where they're prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that's thinks logically. Isn't able to yet, um, pull up the tools that we learned or orient to, oh, this is what's happened, A boundary violation. How, whether it's a whisper or a knowing that you had to be in a cafe, that you needed to be around others. I am so in awe of the stories that people tell me of these, like, well, I'm gonna keep saying like, these lifesaving moves that they take. Um, going back to the woman who I said, I smoke two cigarettes a day, there was like a whisper that she knew she needed to get to the east coast to see a friend. And it was like these, like these times where she didn't know if she could get outta bed, but like she would get these whispers of, and she would just follow it. And it's like be the times where logic, um, can't be at our aid. I am just always so grateful to hear the way that our bodies. Do what they need to do. And so maybe in that way you had a mental freeze, but you weren't having an emotional freeze. Your emotions were flow flowing out before the mind was able to come online with it. And I just think that was, that's so beautiful. The whole story is just, uh, I know it probably was not comfortable. Um, but I am gonna keep referencing Bridget today. I apparently, um, she has, you know, she's been in these practices for over 40 years, uh, maybe 30 years. Um, she's wise and I would put her in the Crohn category, I believe, and. It's her experience. And now that I've been working with people long enough in with trauma resolution as well, that each time you defrost one of the layers of freeze, it's not unusual that that was bound together with shame. And so there can be this story that when you do nervous system work, your life is gonna feel glorious, calm, at ease, and regulated. Sometimes that capacity we grow is the capacity to be with what was too hard to be with before. And therefore we start to feel the feelings we couldn't feel before, which can include joy and calm, but also might bring up sensations of pain and shame. And so as we create conditions, the third direction on the three directions map, has to do with creating conditions, which might be pause, orientation, co-regulation, attunement. When we start to build these conditions in our daily life, we are able to stay with the activation. So we can stay with the activation that might come up as we are coming out of a freeze, and be with it and be in that tension field and make it to the other side. And then we're gonna feel more life flowing through us, and then we're gonna be at the next level. Um, and each layer has, uh, different elements that might show up, but the short answer is that coming outta freeze has to do with the small doable steps. And like I was saying, the on-ramps. Um. I this year, uh, was looking to do a, a retreat at my house, and I was trying to find the right word and I was like, uh, what's the word between, like, what's the place between holding it all together and chaos? And, um, I started using chat GPT for this, and it was like presence. I'm like, no, no, no. Like I got that, like, um, like what has more arrows to it? And one of the words was juice. And I was like, yes, juice. I'm gonna name the retreat juice. And it's so edgy for me because I don't necessarily consider myself a juicy person. And so it was like, oh, what? Like, it was an invitation for me. I don't actually think I'm gonna host this retreat anymore. Um, I have refocused my energy on my highest priority and, um. And it has opened this question that sometimes, um, I didn't realize that sometimes I was blocking the love of my husband that he had so much love to give me. And I had these resentments that get to be met, but also when I open up to like, what would juice do? It was like an on-ramp to like, oh my God, there's so much pleasure, literally waiting at my door for me. Um, there's so much play available and, and so you may wonder what this has anything to do with, with freeze. Um, freeze really drains a lot of energy from life and it can make it very pale. And I have before done so much nervous system work and gone, wow, I'm so well resourced now. Everything that I might have thought was a demand has is now being met and then going, oh, shoot. What is it all for? Life feels so bland, and so there are parts that were frozen, right? Even though I thought I was so well resourced and had all the things I finally needed, all the help, I finally needed thought I needed. Um, but coming out of freeze is also for me, it's like, oh, what's the smallest doable step towards this new energy that I'm not fully embodying yet, but I know it's calling me? Um, I don't know if that answers the question, but for me, that's been alive and it's been really awe inspiring to go, wow. There's, it's like the idea of the reticular activating system. If you just ask a question, your brain will begin to look for new possibilities that it wasn't looking for before. So it's like, it's been there the whole time. And you just couldn't see it. And with this, it's like, oh, this energy of love and pleasure and play has been there the whole time. But if I keep asking myself, what would you do? Um, something unfreezes a little bit and I get to meet what's there, like what is the block, but also what is the energy? And when I let that blueprint energy come in, it can start to heal the wound without me having to dissect the wound.

Anthea:

It, it's so true. And it that even that question, you know, when you. Use a single word. They study this in, in neurolinguistics. When I use a single word individual to me, I'll have a cascade of images and memories and associations with it, often relative to when I first heard it, but also created through so many other contexts. When I first started working in a rehabilitative form with people's bodies, we found that when we were queuing movement, if you, for example, use the phrase engage it created a different series of physiological pathways than if you use something like, I mean, if we use an example like a bridge. Engage your glutes well, that's gonna really tap into very specific physiology. Whereas if I say, stamp the ink of your feet down into the pads of the floor, the person is on a completely different, uh, creative, imaginative journey. And that creates a completely different movement experience. It makes it pleasurable. And, and I think as I'm listening to you talking about juice, it's, it's fascinating. As I sit with you, my image is of a really white orange on one of those old fashioned glass juices. And as you gently squeeze it down, it's full. But I am hanging on every word that you speak. Like I'm watching the drips of that juice coming out. It's not, not juicy. I'm hooked. I'm completely hooked. But it's not the showy, immediate impulse jazz hands that maybe you had associated that word with previously. Mm. So we get to be captivated by these images. And it's part of why in, in integral, um, coaching, which is one of the forms that I trained in, we really do create a metaphorical way of being that you currently find yourself to be. And we create the evolved way of being that transcends that, not discounts it, but steps over it. So mine hilariously, when I went into my first training, they asked us to describe our tendencies in trainings. And I am a training hoarder.

Sarah:

Mm-hmm.

Anthea:

I do many at the same time. I'm always in supervision. I just, I love it. But the metaphor that I was given was the ever watchful fox who sits back, is very scared of the headlights. Scavengers behind the scenes. You know, there was a lot of shadow in that for me. And sometimes they say that when you're describing yourself in a metaphor or when someone else in this case is describing you, you need to be attentive to how accurate and how spiky it is. Because if it's a metaphor that makes you recoil from yourself, it creates the same dissociative pattern that you are actually already struggling with. So I evolved from that, or the task was over the course of this training, as you train and as you teach others, can you evolve from the ever watch for Fox who sits back into Athena or Athena in a verdant landscape with silver armor on and a sense of nature weaving through her. And it was very accurately what happened, but immediately that I had the image of Athena, I was able to be a completely different part of me that already existed. It was already latent. And like you said about asking the question in, in my work, welcome is followed by curiosity because if we can open the landscape of curiosity, we're in play, we're in pleasure, and we take life so seriously, especially those of us that are practitioners and there is so much rich juice

Sarah:

in it. I like, I'm just loving all of this over here. My teacher Don Stapleton used to always, he's like, you know, if, if you and I were to sit upright and he'd say, imagine you have this wise white long beard. You are to move it to the right and to the left. And how does your head feel? And then it's like, imagine you're a grandfather clock. Now imagine there's a sponge on the back of your head and you're cleaning the window behind you. And we got to feel from five different metaphors how basically the same movement, um, really engages so differently and feels so differently depending on the imagery. And I'm really loving this idea of familiar to optimal and using metaphor and imagery. Um, and I'm, I'm like, well, what was the other thing that I was, so, um, when you were talking about juice and not necessarily being the jazz hands, it just reminds me that yesterday and the TV core, I was having lunch with this woman. I, every bite I took, I was like, mm, ugh. And I was like, at some point I was like, oh my God, I think I need to take this in the other room.'cause, um. I feel like my body now is so free with making sounds that, uh, reflect the way I'm feeling. And even when I was at the gym the other day, the man who owns the gym, he's so, you know, just like so strong and so smart and, um, probably when it comes to like the mental and physical realms, just like in the highest range of regulation. And I go over to my sheet and I just like, ugh. Like, like a, ah, like, I don't know what it was, but it was some sort of exhale. I mean, I think I might have even done like a physiological side without me, like a ah, or, and he looked up and over at me and he just started laughing. He's like, that's exactly how I feel. Um, but it's just this, uh. When I'm thinking about juice now in instead of like only the sensual or sexual or that place in between of the arrows or the jazz hands, or the way it might look or present, even just the freedom to make sounds and emote in a way that is, uh, without effort, kind of the way that gratitude can come without effort at cer certain points. Um, awe as a, as a reflex. Um, and I think I'm gonna pause'cause I, in some ways I think I may have lost some of your thread. Uh, I've loved listening to you and I love listening to the images that you gave and just thought that work that you do is sounds so potent.

Anthea:

So I'm gonna lead us back to Thank you. No, no. I'm gonna lead us back to one of the things that you mentioned, which is that you realize that your priority shifted and you used the phrase earlier calling. What's the calling that whisper. And I'm curious, I know that you are relaunching an incredible program later this year, which I'd love for you to talk to us about. But as the preamble to that, what does your calling or your primary purpose feel like in this era of your life?

Sarah:

It feels like liberation of women. And, um, a year ago I was on a call with my mentor and I was just really working through, um, the safety that I had here with my family and my kids and the happenings of the world and feeling helpless and not knowing, like wanting, knowing that regulation in my household and my body matters and, you know, and, and, and, and, um, I. There was this suggestion that we are all in the places that we are here on earth to do and bring the medicine that we have here and now in the ways that we know how to share. And so I do know that in my hope that women move from suppression to expression I say my number one nervous system tool is to pause, feel, and choose. And that feel is like pause. Notice I exist. That is a huge freeze. Oftentimes we don't notice we exist. It's, I'm okay once they're okay. So to pause, notice I exist. Notice I have a preference and step in the direction of my preference, step in the direction of my truth. It's what I want for women. And I think that when women do more of that, the trickle down effect to the children in this world. It is gonna be significant and it sounds, you know, like a big dream perhaps. But if like the smallest pieces that I could do would be to get work to women, uh, for them to notice they exist and that their preferences matter, That is a dream come true for me.

Anthea:

I really feel that. They are lucky creatures, And I suppose that brings us to resourced.

Sarah:

Mm-hmm. Do you mind if before I say resource that I go back to something, see my face? Help me remember? Um, um, you spoke about curiosity. I will tie this into resource, but the reason why I made this massive face gesture is I used to work with people who were in physical pain who had been told you this is it. Right? This is the state. They had had the surgery, they had been to the physical therapist. Some of them had lived in pain clinics, and I just had such massive confidence that there was an energy that's intelligent that moves through us, and that with proper space and support, which is often could be biomechanical, it could be emotional and relational. I. That the nerves that were impinged and that the inflammation that's in the body and that the energy, that stuff can begin to flow. And so I had all these clients having really quite miraculous, um, new beginnings and new possibilities. And the phrase that I wanted to put up across my studio was stay curious, because they didn't come in and I didn't, when they came in, I wasn't, I know how to fix you. It was like with curiosity and by asking questions. It's like, oh, when do you notice that this flares up? Oh, that's so interesting when your mother-in-law's around, And then we get to start asking questions or like, it, it was such an interplay. This, again, going back to the phrase like the generative field, uh, where possibilities come up through nuance and not black and white thinking. And so when you were talking about, you know, that second part being curiosity, that's why I made such a big face on the side of the screen that the listeners couldn't hear. Um, and so as I made that face again, the second time when you said resource, I was like, oh, there was something. Um, so that was, I just wanna, you know, bow down to curiosity. Um, so resourced, uh, the name comes from my husband and I work with somebody every Friday. Um, and Jerry, his name is Jerry Mulder, and he said to me once, stress is when you have more demands than resources. And it is by far for me the best definition I've ever heard. You could give me physiological definitions and it's not as helpful. That when I'm stressed, instead of there's a moral good or bad of, oh man, I'm failing regulation. Or it's, oh, we have so many demands right now, individually, collectively, and then, and then it begins to tell me how important it is to actually resource myself. So he would say to us, like, you can have all the parenting tools in the world, but if you come in to a room and your child's dysregulated and you come in and you're authentically happy, which is like a north star, we can't expect all of us to be authentically happy all the time. Right? Um, they're gonna register, I'm safe and you don't need tools. He's not saying you don't need tools at all, but like in that moment, actually your wellbeing is one of the most important things to your kids. And this shifted things for my husband and I, and especially my husband who might go more towards martyrdom, martyrdom of like, I will work hard, I will create safety for the family. I will, you know, on and on and on. And when it's like actually you being happy and healthy is the best thing you could do. Your self-care is the basis of community care. And so this program is called resourced. And I say right away, this is not a parenting course. And so although there are things in there that's like, I do this with my kids and they love this nervous system tool, um, the idea is first and foremost, how do we resource ourselves as women? How do we notice we exist? We have preferences. How do we speak our preferences and. I show them a bunch of nervous system tools and maps so that they can orient to them. And, um, what I'm really trying to work on, especially for the second one around, how do we create and make sure that there's room for community? Because co-regulation and community is one of the most vital things for humans. Um, and so those are the things we're looking for. And because I can be a brainy person, my curiosity in my invitation is, um, am I weaving in embodiment of spirit? Right. Does. When we talk about what parts are frozen, am I including range of regulation when it comes to the energetic, when it comes to, um, the spiritual? And not that anyone needs to believe what I believe, but how people perceive themselves within the bigger mystery. You know, the way I promote it is like, let's bring more magic into our bodies and our homes. Um, but a lot of it is just like you've kept, you've named a few times choice, authentic choice, um, and the capacity to be with that.

Anthea:

It's gonna be such an incredible experience. And it's September that it, it goes again.

Sarah:

Right now I'm gonna do a relaunch in September. Um. And the first round I wanted to keep it small, so we had 10 to 12 people., It was every day, Monday through Friday, there was a nervous system recording that came out and we had a live call each week. And so it was content heavy and um, people seemed to love it. But I really wanna say like, is there less we could do? You know, like, uh, I want like, just, I'm trying to kind of feel it like just the right amount that feels rich where the resource doesn't become a demand, if that makes sense.

Anthea:

Oh, it's such a good conversation. I'm in the process right now of creating all the content for the second round of my embodiment coach training. And it is, that question is such a juicy one. As the capacity of the course increases, how do you keep it intimate? How do you keep people feeling one-to-one held? And can you almost take them through a process where they realize that for their brains and bodies, less is not less? Less is space, less is nuance, less is deep, rich involvement. Um, and that it's all optional. Mm-hmm. All of it.

Sarah:

Mm-hmm.

Anthea:

And you will take the things that you wanna take at the moment that you take them, and they'll still be there for you if you need them you my love, do such beautiful work. It's been the most incredible, gorgeous experience to have you join us. Thank you so much for making the work.

Sarah:

Thank you. I love being in your presence. Um, I love hearing just like the little bit that I'm hearing about your work sounds so profound and transformational and gentle and loving. And, uh, as I know that I could hear in your voice from the very beginning. I hear it in your choice of words and your presence all the way through. So thank you. Thank you so much.

Anthea:

Listeners, we adore you. Thank you so much for being with us. Um, if you have any questions about Sarah's work, we're gonna make sure that we include all of the links to her beautiful stuff in the show notes. I can also put you in touch with her. We'll pass any questions across and, uh, wherever you are. And whenever you're listening, please use this as your perfect excuse your permission statement to pause, to feel, and to choose. We love you team. Take care. Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.