SHF Podcast Episode 10- Reclaiming the Wisdom of the Body with Cynthia Bergh, D.C.

Cynthia Bergh D.C. joins this episode of Sovereign Heart Frequency Podcast.  Cynthia is a chiropractor specializing in nervous system regulation and holistic healing practices network spinal analysis, Qigong, yoga, and sacred plant medicines. She emphasizes the body's innate wisdom and its role as a guide for healing and connection to life.

Cynthia explains her therapeutic methods, which involve reconnecting clients with their body's wisdom through touch, breath, and movement. By creating a safe space to explore physical and emotional responses, Cynthia helps individuals release past traumas stored in their bodies, promoting healing and resilience.

Throughout the podcast, Cynthia challenges the Western cultural tendency to intellectualize and separate mind from body, advocating instead for a holistic approach that honors the body's self-organizing intelligence. The episode concludes with insights on how listeners can cultivate safety within their bodies to facilitate healing and emotional resilience.

To learn more about Cynthia and her beautiful programs and services, visit https://www.lecoeurasheville.com/ 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Sovereign Heart Frequency Podcast. I'm Katherine Finley with Sovereign Heart Coaching and I'm here with my co host Miriah Feehery of Whole Being Counseling. We recognize that we're living through an intense time on our planet. There seems to be more polarization and division and less connected communication than ever before. We are here to change that. We intention to hold conversations in a container of love and authenticity. We believe that when humans come together from a heart centered place, we can not only understand one another, but we can get creative together, solving problems we couldn't solve alone. It's time to reimagine and rebirth a new world in which everyone's authentic voice is included in the harmonic orchestra of human voices, to create a world that works for all of us. Thank you for being part of this conversation, we're excited to have you. Hey everybody, welcome back to Sovereign Heart Frequency Podcast. We're so excited to introduce you to our guest today, Cynthia Berg, who is a chiropractor that specializes in supporting healthy self regulation of the nervous system. She offers both hands on adjustments, but also teaches clients to improve their own connection with their bodies, so that they develop their own confidence and skill in working with their personal healing resources. In addition to her studies in chiropractic, her wisdom has been greatly influenced by experiences with network spinal analysis, Golden Shield Qigong, yoga, Andean nature practices, sacred plant medicines, and the 12 stages of healing. Thanks to the support of ancestors and the alchemy of growing up and immersed in the gifts and dysfunction of the late 20th century America, she has uncovered the deeply held truth within each of our bodies, the body is our guide and essential resource to connect us to the earth, living and thriving. She is a guide to others to find their alignment with life, where all life springs forth and delivers exactly what is necessary at every moment for us to take the next step in our personal and collective healing. And I personally know Cynthia's work. I've off and on gone to her clinic in Asheville, North Carolina to receive treatments. And the first phase was long ago for some deep kind of emotional blocks in my hips and that was helpful and I didn't need to see her anymore and then I got pregnant for the second time. It was probably a month or so after getting pregnant, and I just stopped being able to breathe. Like, I was, I felt like I was just hyperventilating all the time. I could not get a deep breath. I was constantly, gasping for air. And everyone's like, well, you're pregnant! you know, the baby's taking up space in there. I'm like, dude, this baby's the size of, a Black eyed pea that hasn't been cooked. There's no way this baby is like taking up too much space for me to not breathe. Something's going on. And I had no idea what was going on, but it was obviously very concerning and uncomfortable. So I went to see Cynthia and she just knew I couldn't breathe. Didn't know what else to tell me, but had me, you know, lay down and worked on me And a lot came up when she was working on me and a lot was unlocked and she can explain more in the moment about how she does what she does and what actually happened. Cause I honestly don't know. I just know it worked and I was able to breathe again. and with her help and the help of a therapist I was working with at the time came to realize that the reason I couldn't breathe was because my body had remembered the sudden. traumatic experience of being told that my baby was about to die when she was two days postpartum and My body was like nope. We're not going to experience that again Just started to shut down on me. And so I just I I thought I dealt with that I mean, I had a great support team at the time Like really did a good job of processing what I went through in the hospital with my first baby, but then lo and behold, my body still was like, Nope, you didn't deal with all of it. I'm still here. So I gotta get a little deeper. So I just had to grieve and, and let go and face those feelings. And then I could. Breathe again. Thanks to the help of Cynthia and my therapist. So welcome to our show, Cynthia. And yeah, maybe you could fill our listeners in on how exactly you work the magic that you work with people in reclaiming the wisdom of their bodies. Well, thank you. First of all, I'm just thank you both, Catherine and Mariah for having me on your show. I'm really excited to speak to your listeners and to share about this. It's so, it's so powerful and so important to know that we have so many birthrights that or just, just a waiting for our attention and waiting for us to kind of connect and use them and find them again. So I love your story and thank you so much for sharing that with your listeners. I think what we realize or what we don't realize is, you know, the body is so wise and the body contains the wisdom and the information that we need. And sometimes we just don't understand that. And when we feel something so extreme, like, Oh my goodness, I can't breathe. We often think something's wrong with me, and I think that's one of the biggest problems that we face right now in Western culture, is this idea that when we feel something uncomfortable, we think something's wrong with us. And it's our job to fix it. It's our job to, you know, we've done something wrong or we need to do something differently. And so I start, when I work with people, I, I start from a different place and I just remind, you know, I know that the body's wise. And so as your body started to experience this, alarm setting, not breathing, really feeling to help you reset, to help you feel that you were okay in that, and that this was a message to listen to and that the, the, for some reason, though I didn't know the history of your first birth at that time for some reason your body was having this response. So what we worked with was just a simple connection to help you feel safe. In that system in your body again, and as you could connect to even the fact that you couldn't breathe I don't know if you remember, but we were also connecting to parts of you that could breathe. So, as we kind of reminded your body on a very deep level you found more peace. Oh, I can breathe here. But I can't breathe here. And so as we kind of validate that connection, we validate the wisdom of the body. and you worked with your therapist, the story unfolded and the healing, that was necessary for your next birth to have a different outcome, to have a different manifestation, a different experience, kind of came to your realization. I believe, and it, it opens up in the body's connection. So when we think there's something wrong with us, we resist. Our experience. And so most people come to me in a place where they're resisting what's happening in their body. So I think the most important keys for people to understand is that, that your body is infinitely wiser than our minds. And as we find that safety through touch, through our breath, through our movement and just reconnection with what's right, with that birthright, with that kind of self organizing intelligence that it's okay to feel the constriction. Of of what's not working and what's uncomfortable and through that, you were able to unlock this previous trauma, that was still held in your body and your memory and your nervous system. And as you moved through that yourself, you were able to have more freedom. And I think more successful outcome. Without that affecting your second breath. So I would say that, just creating that safety and ability to remember is so important. That's a beautiful reminder to, let everyone find that place inside of them, that, that is okay, that is working, that is. It's grounded, even if it's a small place and that through that connection, we're resourced enough to endure the places that feel really challenging. Yeah. So there, there are some tricks to, understanding how to create that safety. Because what we do know in that moment is you didn't feel safe in your body. So it is important to connect and it means that, you know, you've kind of lost that grounding. You've lost that, I'm okay in my experience here. So as we can find safe ways to do that, it opens up. That strength, it opens up that so it probably didn't feel super courageous at the time like, Oh, I'm being courageous to feel this. It just naturally started to happen. It's like, Oh, I feel safer. I'm okay. I can breathe here. I'm just feeling constriction here. So, as you felt stronger and just your ability of like, Oh, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm okay. then the energy starts to flow and your awareness kind of opened up. You're like, Oh, I can feel this. And that's where the connection, the safe connection with that place of tension in your body, that place that was still fearful that space with that was still, you know, kind of traumatized from that initial, the worst news ever of like, Oh my goodness, something's gonna happen to your baby. So, you know, new skills and resources to be able to resolve that from not only your conscious mind, but also from the tissues, of your nervous system of how you had to protect yourself in that moment. so many of the challenges that we have right now is just really moving that bar of judgment, you know, to being able to hear the messages and go, there's something wrong and something needs my attention from I'm wrong and there's something wrong with me. Yeah. It's subtle, but profound, the difference in those two statements. Yeah I was also thinking, Cynthia, that the body is wiser than the mind and how we often escape to the mind when something's uncomfortable in the body as a protective mechanism to, you know, figure it out, or, whatever we do, that's actually not creating the safety. that we need to feel in the body to actually be with what's going on. So I didn't know if you wanted to share ways that you use yourself or ways you teach your clients like, how do we create that safety where I can start to feel comfortable with being present with the discomfort in the body? Cause that's a place where we usually want to get away from it. Yeah, usually, I mean, from an early age our culture we're doers, we want to do things, we want to figure things out with our minds. So, it's really important to understand that as a chiropractor, I was trained to understand the innate intelligence of the body. And that is the self organizing force that is natural to all living things on the planet. It is. Present, you know, from conception, you have an agonist sperm and they unite and somehow there's these operating instructions that grow that into a full fetus and then into a baby and into us. So we know that this magic of life, this self organizing field and force is always present, but we just don't talk about it that much. So there's a lot of misunderstanding about what that's like. And. I think another piece to understand about that innate intelligence or self organizing field that we have is that there's different components to it. We have different needs and we have physical needs. So just to maintain our, our physical structure, our physical connection to our body, which is associated with life on this planet. Then we have emotional intelligence. works with our emotional needs and the energy to organize through the intelligence of our emotions. Then we have mental intelligence. And we have soul intelligence. And then there's this unity field in intelligence of all life being connected. So, I mention that now because a lot of our culture really values and focuses and emphasizes our mental intelligence. And that is not necessarily mental intelligence, like the nature of our mental intelligence, but actually like knowledge. Like, what have we learned? What can we study? And it's important to understand that. What we study is, you know, the realm of science and what we can prove and that's super important and a huge part of what we do. However, it's always, there's the edge of our human brain. understanding. That's different than the self organizing field and intelligence. And the innate intelligence is something that is beyond our mind and something that we can't ever fully, completely comprehend or understand. So I mentioned that now because sometimes trying to figure things with our minds actually lowers the frequency, lowers the amount of resources that we have because you've now narrowed the type of intelligence you're using to a small range of our human experience. So the human being is connected to that vital life force energy, that physical intelligence and that emotional intelligence. And an example to understand is, you think about animals. and animals have instincts and we can really see, Oh, animals, they know, they have a sense, they get an instinct that an earthquake's coming and you'll watch, these mass migrations happen for a disaster or tsunamis or they don't check the news. They don't check their phones or they just do, they just move. They're just motivated by this force. It's not a thought. It's not that they have a council meeting and go, Hmm, what should we do? They just start to move and respond to this. And humans have this too. We've always had this, and we still have this, and, we definitely would refer to that as an instinct. But what's happened in our culture is we've not valued that, we haven't respected that. Sometimes, instincts can be looked at either good or bad and judged by the mind. So, but that just usually means either I understand it or I don't understand it. And when we really embody, and when we really can engage in the wisdom of the body, moves us into a form of intelligence and communication that's far beyond the mind. So it's like animals. It's like humans have an instinct. Many of us have felt an impulse to move location. many of us have felt that we need to go to a different part of the planet for a period of time. And that's on an instinctual level. It's just a feeling sense. There's maybe no reason the three of us live in Asheville. And most people, if you ask them, why do you live in Asheville? Nobody has a good reason. And so what we can say is it's an instinct. I had an instinct. For me, the right place on the planet was to be living in Asheville. And That's usually beyond jobs beyond finances. It's a stew. It's kind of a ridiculous on a practical level. It's pretty ridiculous to ever move to Asheville. So what I say is most people have an instinct and their instinct calls them to the particular place on the planet that they're supposed to be when they're grounded in their body and they can feel that. So when I refer to, bringing safety into the body, if we don't feel safe at a time, the mind can never help us feel safe. Unfortunately, the mind can debate, the mind can track and see the future. It can look at a plethora of scenarios of different options, but none of which create the needs of creating safety in our physical body. So if we ever feel overwhelmed, when we feel stressed and we, or we feel, which is basically narrowing it down to feeling of being unsafe, what you really need is connection with the vital life force energy and or after that's established, if that's clear, then you need a connection and flow with the emotional intelligence because our instincts actually come from that place. They come from a grounded sense of safety within our physical body and then a listening to our emotional intelligence. And the emotional intelligence that we have is actually, it's based on charge. It's based on a system of just positives and negatives. And so you could put all of our experiences, on a broad range of, the spectrum, a cornucopia of diversity, but somewhere on that range, you would label them as either being something that you want more of, or something that you want less of, and that creates the polarity and the direction. So, a human being or an animal, when they're responding to their instinct, they have a grounded physical sensation within their body. That creates a charge, and that charge is either I need to move, you know, this is something I want more of, or something I want less of. And that's how that part of our intelligence works. So when I work with people, reestablishing that connection beyond the mind, beyond the story of, Mariah's trauma from her first birth, which we may or may not have known, at the time. So we don't have to know what it was that creates the constriction in the body. We just have to be able to experience the wisdom of the body. And then Mariah is able to reset on her own because of this innate intelligence that always runs through her body. Yeah, Absolutely. And I wanted to dig into that a little more cause I find this really interesting with creating safety and then working with the emotional intelligence of the body. So my mind said, but what about when our body is like, when we're having an emotion that's based in a past trauma, because it's connected to a past trauma, we feel fearful of something, say, that in the moment, it's actually not a dangerous situation, but we're feeling fearful because it's triggering something that's happened before. So how do you see that when it's of course there's emotional intelligence in there. Does my question make sense? Like I'm wondering. The Mariah, so we'll go back to Mariah's example of her, second birth. So As she was pregnant and she describes it, you know, as being the size of a bean, you know you know, and this, this little creature who's kind of hijacking her ability to breathe at the time. But what's happening is she's preparing for birth, her whole body on a level, because of the presence of this, embryo. This fetus is preparing for birth. So she's having this cascade of emotions and preparation that goes through this, nine, 10 month period of time of preparation. So part of that preparation on an instinctive level was actually to Reset to kind of clear this trauma so that the residue of that fear was no longer present for her birth. She doesn't consciously know that this is happening, but this is what she starts to experience. So in the present day, she was just experiencing a lack of breathing. So it's not really about the story. We don't need to know the story. It's actually more helpful to not know the story because our body is always right here, right now. And if you'll notice, your body changes every day. And most of us may not notice because we may not pay that much attention to it. But when I work with people, we bring your hands onto your body so that you can feel. So the first part we're doing is just touch. Can I touch my body? Some people, you'll notice, even if you try to put your hands flat on your body, they'll actually cup up and they have a hard time putting their hands flat on their body. They may be able to put it flat on one place, but not flat on another place. that just indicates there's a lack of safety, a lack of ability to connect to that part at that time, at that moment. So, when I worked with Mariah, we worked in the present moment of she's showing up in my office today, we don't know why, we can't see that there's any practical reason why she can't breathe in this moment. She says it's not practical because the baby's the size of a pea. So we just looked at the reality of what was showing up in the moment and what we found was a place where she could connect. And not only could she place her hands on her body, but she could volitionally move her body and expand with breath and, and connection into that part. It was relatively easy and we found an anchor for where that peace still existed for her. So in this present moment, all of us have an anchor to this earth, to our bodies, to a peaceful state. Sometimes we may have lost that connection. We may not know where it is, but it's always there. So we were able to find that. And when we find that, A miraculous thing happens in the brain, because we use touch, we use breath, we use focused attention, and we use movement, all of those things. It requires recruitment of your brain, so it takes you out of that fight or flight, that defensive pattern that we have in the hindbrain, kind of our reptilian structures that keep us safe. And it starts to recruit our higher brain centers, our more developed parts of self reflection, of movement, of awareness. And just that shifts our state of, oh, I'm okay, I'm more present now. So I can't breathe, I can breathe here, but I'm uncomfortable and can't breathe here. But there's no tiger in the room. There's nothing chasing me or trying to eat me at this moment. So Mariah was able to use her focused attention, movement, and breath to go into a place of peace. And that caused a shift in her nervous system, which created more safety. For her to feel the place that was more bound, but the place that was more bound became friendlier, became more okay, because it's like, Oh, she's not trying to change me. Cause the first thing that a lot of people do is we try to, to change or dominate or control our bodies. And that's not actually our job. Our job is to listen. Our body is here to just show us what's happening. And when we try to dominate or control it, we lose trust in our body. Cause we think that's based on something's wrong. So by finding that anchor to peace, we remember that. Our body's okay, that this information is here for us, and so in a safe way, she could connect to both the place of peace and the place of non peace. And then the two pieces, one piece started to share context and information, and through that connection, she started to remember, oh gosh, I remember when I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe when I was so shocked and I was so fearful that I might lose my first baby. She's like, Oh, but I'm here right now on the table and I can breathe into this peaceful place here. And so that information was able to come into a better resolution. So as far as traumas that we have in the past, we find that, that peaceful access point. We find that way to come into the present moment where there may be a shadow or kind of a a reflex that's set up, but we discover that it's just a reflex. It's not current day. present trauma. Now, in another experience, say, her body was still charged and it kept building up more charge, we would go, okay, there is a current threat. You know, Mariah's alarm bells are going off and she's feeling like something's really wrong. So I'll share a personal experience of that. I hike in the woods on a regular basis several times a week. I go to the same place. I go up to this waterfall that's near my home. And so this is probably, my, 300 and some trip up to this waterfall. And one day I start to get this feeling of, as I'm approaching, and it starts from quite a distance off, I would probably say, probably a half mile before I get to this spot, I start to see Oh, I should stop at this particular tree. I should stop at this log. it's a log that's laid across the trail. And I'm like, that's weird. I'm just kind of like through the thought to the side and I keep hiking and I'm going towards my waterfall, which is, another, you know, Probably quarter mile past this log that I keep seeing. And as I'm hiking, I'm listening to the birds, I'm seeing the trail, so I'm present with where I'm at. And this feeling keeps growing. And my mind is starting to argue with me. Like, why would you stop there? You never stop there. There's nothing to see there. You're going to the waterfall. You're going all the way. No, we're just going to go to the waterfall. And as I'm approaching this log across the trail, I catch myself and I observe myself. Arguing with my body about this feeling that I need to stop. And because I've, I've done this, I have enough sense to this point, realize like, Oh, why are you arguing with yourself? I'm going to listen to my body. Cause I've learned to trust that. So I stop, I get to this log and I stop and I look around behind me and around me and I don't see anything. I'm like, so proving the mind, right. Okay. Duh. There's nothing to see here. And as I turn back around to face forward on the trail. In this moment that I have stopped, a baby bear has shown up on the trail about 20 feet in front of me and is hugging a tree right in front of me. And I go, oh, oh, that's why I'm supposed to stop. And I go, oh my goodness, mama bear must be right near. No, I just looked behind me, so I'm pretty sure that she's not behind me because I didn't see her there. But I realized that she's somewhere, because this little baby bear looks like it's probably about two months old, so definitely mama is close by. So I start to sing, and I start to clap, because I figure, well, I want her to know where I am, and I want her to know that I don't feel threatening. So I'm singing a loving, very calm song and as soon as I start to make this noise, the baby bear who's seen me, I see mama bear about five feet behind baby bear poke her head up. So if I had not listened to this sense in my body, this embodied feeling of stop at this tree that I started getting long before I got to the tree, I would have run into mama bear and baby bear right at this tree. So in the story, what I did was I just sang the song and I very slowly started moving backwards and clapping and Mama Bear watched me and she watched me for quite some distance and she seemed quite alerted herself. And, you know, even as like a tree or a bush would get in the way and obscure a view, she would move to make sure that she was still tracking me. So I continued to do this until I went completely out of her sight. And could no longer see her. And then I kind of sat down and went, whew! Okay, I have to reset my nervous system and breathe and connect to this present moment. But what happened in that and why I share this is the fact that, you know, my body was detecting the presence of these bears far before. And, I see this mama bear as my teacher, because I also know that my instinct, like, brought me right to that tree's edge. It didn't tell me to, to, like, book out of the woods and get out of there. It actually brought me to that edge to have this experience for myself, because that's the edge that I was walking on. But I know to listen, and I know to listen beyond my mind, so we can see how our mind can play tricks on us. And I, I heard all the stories, all the justification, Oh, that's silly. Why would you stop here? Oh, no, you just need to go to the waterfall. You have done this. And so the ability for us to tune into that, that feeling of discomfort and what I encourage people to do is to learn how to build that capacity so that we can consciously experience that, to feel what happens when, you know, we're approaching danger. What happens when our body's trying to get our attention and we need to listen and how do we listen, not judge it and not say, Oh, Oh, I should override that feeling. I should, press through this feeling of constriction or I should do something. And so so just having the ability to just kind of pause and listens opens us to much fuller experience of our potential and what's possible as human beings. So I don't know if, any other stories of instincts, when we listened to, our bodies versus our minds, I'll, another story that comes up for me is I had a, challenging interaction with a person in my partner's life was a collaborator of his and, and this person I didn't feel was respecting me. And so I knew I had to, I had to speak to this and this person was going to need to come into the studio, into our house, into our home. So I really felt that in order for this person to work with my partner, we needed to clear this up. So. We agreed to have a phone conversation to clear this up and, this was all based on this feeling that I was having that things were not right. And so as we started to talk, I had to move through some of the, the tension, and speak to what I was feeling and really speak up for myself in that. And she responded and we had a nice conversation and we worked through some of it and I thought, okay, wow, we've done that, but I still had this unsettled feeling in my body. And. All I could do is sit there and pause for a moment and go, it's not complete because I haven't come to peace again in my body. And we both kind of took a breath and then the next words were spoken. And what came from the next part of our conversation was a deeper collaboration and a deeper understanding. And we kind of took our relationship to what I would say is like the next octave, the next level, to being collaborators and, and all I can say is that my mind could not do. That came from me just sitting rooted in this knowingness of like, we're not complete yet. I'm not feeling that sense of, expansion and collaboration that I truly wanted. We were both able to sit with that and come to the next octave of relationship. And now respect was not only established so that we feel comfortable and like her coming into through my home to go into the studio, but also in a deeper respect of collaborators. So I think there's so many ways that we can respond and use the wisdom that's innate. You know, the wisdom of our body that responds quicker, like moving an animal out of an earthquake zone, or ourselves to a new location to live, or even just navigating real day life conversations of like, what's the highest outcome that I can have with this individual. in this moment, what's the highest outcome that we can have in this moment right here speaking, in this podcast, what's, and how does that feel in our bodies and how do we know when we've gotten there and that there's a resonance and a feeling to that, that we can all feel in ourselves when we feel that flow of energy. So I don't know if either of you have a moment of knowing. when that instinct was real a time when you chose your body chose that feeling, or notice those thoughts and how our beliefs can kind of take us off from from where we're at. Yeah, actually I have one that I think would be helpful for our audience to hear because it just shows the complexity of our thoughts interacting with our bodies. And so there was a time when I was sharing my office with a friend of mine and she had put up this poster in our back room that said, gut feelings are guardian angels. And so I would see this poster practically every day. And I just, Sat with it and meditated on it for a while. And in that same timeframe, I was picking berries on the side of the road at this place. I go every year when the berries are ripe and usually people stop and ask me what kind of berries I'm picking and I'll tell them and they'll be like, cool. And they drive past it's at a. So people always kind of slow down and, you know, can sometimes talk and I've even run into other berry pickers there. It's a pretty well known spot. And it's, it also happens to be in a part of town where a lot of homeless people live along the river. There's a lot of uninhabited places because it's a flood zone. So people camp there. And so this one man who didn't look. Exactly homeless, but looked I guess, unkempt and kind of drunk. Walked up to me with his fishing pole. So I guess he was fishing at the river and he started talking to me, asked me what I was picking and just like everybody else does, you know? And I answered him and I got this feeling inside that like, this could be bad. And so I was just trying to be nice. And he asked me if I wanted to like eat his fish with him. And I said, no, my, my husband and child are waiting for me. And he suddenly got angry. It was like, you're just saying that you're not married. And I just put up my hand and showed him my ring finger that had a wedding ring on it. I was like yes I am. And so he was obviously. you know, incapacitated. He wasn't responding the way a normal, rational person would respond. And it made me feel very unsafe in my body and my heart was pounding. And so he kind of walked away for a second. And in that moment of space, I was trying to hold my ground a little bit and be like, I'm not done picking berries. I want to pick berries for our family. And so I, in that moment, I prayed. And I was praying to my guardian angels to protect me and, imagining a bubble of protection around me. And in that space of feeling protected, I heard the phrase Gut feelings are guardian angels. And I was like, Oh, I'm not safe here. I need to go. And so I did, I packed up my stuff, got in my car. I was like, I can come back later and pick berries this evening or tomorrow or whenever they'll be here. And so for me, that was a really big aha moment because here I was praying for protection, thinking that like there was going to be some force field around me that this person couldn't like, Penetrate when really my gut feelings were just saying, Hey, this is a threatening situation. He stepped away for a minute. Now's your chance to go. And I did, and I was, I was grateful for that transmission of what gut feelings are guardian angels truly means. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And just to learn to trust ourselves. It's like you realize that all these you know, they could be beliefs, they could be traumas, they could be these different things that trick us, and take us into, listening to our mind of like, Oh yeah, you can just create this force field of protection around you and stand here and do this, versus no, actually just listening to your body and going, Oh, I trust, I trust my body. I think I'm complete for today and I'm going to go now. Yeah, what I'm hearing in this conversation is the different pieces right there's the first step of learning to listen to even notice. What our body is saying or the sensations of the body and then to trust it. And I feel like so much of my learning in this realm has been for better or for worse in hindsight, where I, in hindsight, I was able to see, my body was giving me so many signals and particular situations that I overrode. And got me in a, worse situation or more dangerous situation or more tricky situation. And so now it's really my practice, when I have that feeling, like with your bear story, for instance, you had the gift of seeing the bear, but what if you got the stop? and never saw the bear. And now I'm in the practice of listening to that, even if I never get to know where that was coming from, or my mind never gets to wrap itself around, like oh, that's why, that's why I was told to stop. And who knows, right? Like but, but I'm just going to trust that internal guidance system now and have that, like, it's just, doesn't feel right to go out to drive this way or to go out with my friend tonight. I'm going to postpone or whatever that is. It's quite a practice to just trust it when the mind doesn't have any reason why, right? Yeah. So you can see the, you know, frequency of how this can change your life. Because so many times when we listen, we get these signals well in advance, so you don't see the bear. You don't see the danger, but you listen. And what I have learned is just from time after time after time, I have learned to trust that feeling so that you don't have to see the bear. So that you don't have to meet the man who gets a little angry or belligerent, you know, to avoid. And so what happens is we often end up experiencing less. of that drama, and what you find is, that you just start to attract. and move into a more free more of what you want just because you trust and you don't have to understand, so our natural rhythm, our natural intelligence, most people don't know why they've moved to Asheville still. Other than it's a really great community, but we're all here going, it just feels good, and then we open up and we meet, the people that are meant to cross our paths. And so, you move into a place where there's more synchronicity in life, there's more of the ability for the things to drop in and just appear. It's like, Oh, I was just thinking about that and I just wanted that. And now look, Oh gosh, I went to the store and this person handed me this and said, you know, I have this for you. I mean, I've had many stories like that and I'm sure both of you have too. but it starts, it starts simply, with that ability to trust that ability to trust ourselves, to trust our body, the ability to listen. And what you find is that we become less reactive. We don't need to react, but even like Mariah explained in her experience, she sat, she was able to sit, and feel, both the prayer space and the know that it's a birthright for her to have protection. And then she could receive the clear guidance, but her protection was saying it was time to leave. So it's, it's a different, it comes from listening and we find that there's instead of reaction, we then move into response. Thanks. And that happens because we've realized first, nothing's wrong with us, but there's something wrong that needs our attention. Yeah. And Cynthia, you make a distinction that I'd love for you to share with our listeners between instinct and intuition, because I think it could be easy to say, Oh, I had the intuition to stop at that log. Right. But how do you see the difference? Yeah, I love this question. It's such an important understanding because I think there, the terms are used interchangeably a lot and they're really very different. And there's such an important difference in that an, an instinct is an embodied sense. So an instinct, when we have an instinct, when an animal has an instinct, when a person has an instinct, you could say. Say something comes up in life, and it's just a clear no for you. And it doesn't matter what someone says, they can't talk you into it. You're just like, nope, that's a no for me. That's not for me, that's not for my body, that's not for my children, that's not for my life, whatever. That is, we may have a sense. And the solidity, the knowingness, Always has to do with the embodied sense and you'll find that you're very centered as opposed to an intuition and a lot of people use, Oh, I got an intuition. And what I find with intuition is it lacks that physical sensation within the body. And in that a lot of things can tamper with that a lot of things can influence that. So different beliefs, different people different practices. If you, know different people who have. some questionable, questionable ideas of like magic and things like that where you can actually influence someone's thoughts. That's a proven, proven fact that you can influence someone's thoughts. So sometimes when we get an intuition it is a sense that's coming from, a thought that could be pure, but it also could be very it could be coming from a lot of different influences. And it's up for debate. the difference with an instinct, which many of us say, Oh, I had an intuition, but I just, I questioned that many times when people say that if you really listen and you really look in, it's like, wow, actually it was an instinct. It was a knowingness and it wasn't up for debate. Someone could have an intuition and still question whether they're going to follow it. People always follow their instincts, whether they're conscious or not conscious, but we can become conscious and aware of them. As we go. So, important to understand that and own the power of that in our conversations and, just question next time you, you want to share a story with someone and you say, Oh, I had an in, was it an intuition? Or was it an instinct? And just kind of lean into that in your own knowing and I think you'll feel and find a difference in yourself and a difference in the results as you follow that. you know, now might be a good time to introduce the idea of, like you said, that interference of your intuition that's harder to do with the instincts. And on this podcast, we've explored the symptoms of narcissistic abuse from interpersonal and kind of systemic relationships. And also. inner personal, like we, if we've experienced narcissistic abuse from a loved one or from society, we can create an inner tyrant that criticizes our instincts and our intuitions. And and so I wonder if, if now would be a good time to explore some of that, how does the phenomenon of gaslighting chronic gaslighting over periods of time get in the way of our honoring our instincts? This is so important, such an important topic and so timely right now to understand kind of how this has happened. And what I would say is there's been just such a chronic disconnection from our bodies and a disrespecting of the instinct and a valuing of, you know, And so what's happened is people kind of come out of their bodies. And so we don't realize we don't trust our bodies the same way as we used to. And this plays very strongly into how power and authority is externalized. And that's what happens when we're in narcissistic abuse is the. narcissist whether it's a structure or a person or, a collective but that comes from, thoughts and it directs behavior and it makes people, they think that they're serving, they're making a choice for themselves, but really they're following, the thoughts or the imprints of a narcissist and it's how they kind of navigate in the world. So when someone is. Grounded in their body. It's the antidote to that narcissistic abuse. It's the difference, between that intuition and that instinct. The instinct can't be tempered with the instinct is what actually when people get grounded in their bodies, they start to wake up from narcissistic abuse, and they start to realize that the feelings that they're getting are actually leading them out of that. And so the tension, the anxiety that you get in someone who's grounded, you'll start to get anxiety in a narcissistic situation. And many people judge themselves and think something's wrong with them because they have anxiety. And what that's showing is, it's like a stop drop. Like your body is saying something is so out of alignment with you here that we're just going to take the, the, your feet out from under you and you're going to stop. And you're sometimes it's a literal, like you have to lie down. Like you can't move, you're incapacitated. So that's the wisdom of the body, acting in a narcissistic situation that creates a stop drop situation. And what we don't realize is that there's wisdom in that. So often we'll try to go, how do I, Stop this anxiety. Instead of realizing that the anxiety is actually the signal telling you that that's the instinct saying something's wrong. So in those situations, what we have to do is first reestablish that connection of safety within the body. And when people are grounded in their, sense of self, when they're feeling their bodies, it's very hard for the narcissist and the narcissistic agendas or Or behaviors to take over. And so that's where otherwise our minds are so easily misled when we're not grounded in the body and we can't tell the difference. So this way when someone can feel that polarity, feel that yes or no within themselves, they decide, is this information for me or not? And that can come simply down to, we look at it more innocently in just how you eat food. You know, so an apple could be good for you today, but not good for Catherine. You know, it could be, good for, dairy could be good for me and not for you. And so how do we find the medicine that's right for me? Could be, is this information that I'm getting from this person? Is it right for me or not? And so whether it's a narcissist or not, we can feel in ourselves, how does that land in my system? Is this advice that I'm getting from this doctor? Is this advice that I'm getting from this authority? Is this advice that I'm getting from my partner in my relationship? Is it right for me or not? And that's an embodied sense. And when we're not connected to our bodies, we tend to overthink. And then we start to go, Oh, well, but maybe they're right because I did do that and oh, there is this and we can get in that, spinning of our thoughts that debate and considering of a lot of different things. So the grounding factors when we find like what's right for me in this, it comes from that, that embodied instinct. I have found that people start to get out of narcissistic relationships and start to see things differently because they start to hold their truth. And a narcissist will cast their truth over top of other people and convince them that it's their truth too. I love the question, is this right for me? Because so often we want to outsource our power to what is right? what are the right things to eat? What are the right ways to take care of my body, what is a healthy relationship look like, right. And looking out there for this right or wrong. And you're really talking, speaking to bring us back into the body of what is right for me in this moment. Like my truth doesn't have to be your truth. But my body and my system knows the truth for me in this moment. And I get to learn to trust that rather than outsourcing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because we all have a really individual soul and a really individual signal, you know, of expression to create on this planet. So we have to know. how do we access that? How do we access our uniqueness in this connection with life? And that is through that inner knowing. A silly example would be like, Well, everyone can't have the instinct to move to Asheville. That would be inappropriate. That wouldn't work. That would be ridiculous. The whole world population moves to Asheville. Ha ha. You know, no. It's just, it's just for certain people. And other people follow their instinct and, they move to Costa Rica or another person follows their instinct and they move to Maine and another person moves to Canada and we all finding that position, that proper space and place and time and it's the same thing as diet. It's why so many of these diets, like you can see all the studies. For every diet plan out there, there's great research saying this is why this worked on this population and this is why this worked on this population and all these different things because we're all different and we're all in this path of finding ourselves and finding, how can we bring it together. Our frequency, how can we bring ourselves fully to this moment and fully thrive and fully live right here in the fullest expression of life in this moment. And then that's different for all of us. And the only way to know that is to be connected to, that truth somehow through ourselves. And otherwise, we can be susceptible to kind of more of those, those what some people call a slave. Mentality and not even realize that we're being led astray and that we're following a truth that might not serve us, but might serve something else. And peeling back the layers of that, you know, we get to do through this sense of self this sense of like what's right for me right now, right here in this moment, and feeling,, the importance of that that signal comes through a depth of understanding the simple, basic game that we play when we're kids of hot and cold. It's like hot, hot, hot. Oh, okay. Oh, cold. Okay. Hot, hot, you know, warm. And, and using that navigation that that's the gift of this innate intelligence, that's the gift of our body to direct us to the place that we want to be through that intention and through that soul knowing of what it is that we're here to do and how to navigate in the direction of our thriving, you know, is going to be different for each of us and is going to take us to a different place. And it's going to be done through a different route. Some of us eat carrots and some of us eat apples. For sure. I'm wondering. What you do in one of your clients comes to you for, for help with anxiety. Cause as a mental health counselor, I see a lot of people who suffer from anxiety. And I know that it's pretty much a national crisis at this point, especially sadly among younger and younger populations. And what I hear a lot of my clients asking me is how do I know what's it. My fear from anxious thoughts that make my heart race and make me sick to my stomach and make my breathing shallow and my palms sweaty. And if I have anxiety all the time and I'm afraid of everything that I'm thinking about, how can I feel my instincts? How can I know what my body wants to guide me towards that will keep me safe? Thing would be to acknowledge that something's wrong. So something is wrong. The wisdom of the body is expressing itself. So we know something is wrong, but we're not wrong. And so if we can correct that, just to acknowledge that, that something's wrong, but I'm not wrong, it creates safety to go, okay, I'm having anxiety. It's incapacitating and I can't do what I want right now. I can't do what I was doing, or I can't do what I thought I was going to do or what I planned to do. But now, if we can acknowledge that. My body's having a reaction that's showing me something's wrong and that I'm not wrong. So then we have safety and we can start to connect, but anxiety is so strongly physical that what we really need in that moment is not just thoughts, but also feeling in context in our body to reestablish that safety on an instinctual level. Cause right now we don't feel safe. We feel like we're going to die. But most of the times when we're experiencing anxiety, it's not that we're going to die in that moment, though that's what the feeling activates in our nervous system is like a fight, flight of our own survival and a feeling of extinction. Like I am going to cease to exist. It is the strongest alarm bell that can go off. So when we Can realize that that's so ingrained in our physiology, we know that we must connect to the physical body in order to reestablish that safety. So there's many different things to do, but the first thing is just to feel, you know, we can feel, put your hands on the body and we'll feel that we're in the body. And you'll feel that with anxiety, you're so strongly in the body. And so there's this dichotomy, this paradox between feeling out of our bodies. At that moment and feeling in our bodies and when we can revalue and reconnect to the vital life force energy, we realize that in an anxiety state, actually the vital life force energy is exceptionally strong because we're feeling a lot, right? So I think every person who's having anxiety is going to express a tremendous amount of physical sensation, so much so that it's overwhelming and incapacitating. But when we realize that that's the strength of the vital life force energy, we go, oh wait, that's my vital life force energy. It's having a strong reaction, but my vital life force energy, therefore, is strong and I'm strongly connected to my body. Now we're changing tracks. Now we're starting to go, okay, I'm in my body. I'm so strongly in my body that it's hijacking my will and what I might want to do. But maybe my reality and my presence, my energy for the next step is actually right here. So it does take help and support. So I do encourage people to get help and support with anxiety. Through, you know, practitioners to help reset this because it is so deeply ingrained in our physiology. But the key to changing that state is A, realizing that, that something's wrong, but it's not you. That there's nothing wrong with you, you just don't know what to do with this quantity of energy at the time. And so knowing then once we can get established in ourselves, we can reach out. The first step would be to reach out for help. Reach out for help in some way to help get feedback because it's so intense and there's such a hijacking that happens of our will at that time that it can be really helpful to have someone hold space for you. It's so important to have someone hold that space and help direct you back in a safe way, back into. The wisdom and into what's trying to break through. And I think that there is an, a surge right now of anxiety for multiple different reasons because we are being taken out of our bodies. We're being so distracted by devices, by life, by all these other things that, that we're coming out of our bodies and the body is saying, Hey, wait, stop, drop, and roll. This is serious. So it's getting our attention. And there's a lot of things that maybe we are doing that we don't want to be doing. And we don't on a conscious level know what those are, but the signal of anxiety is the truth of the body waking us up and saying, stop, we're on the wrong track. We don't know what that track is, but our vital life force energy is screaming for our attention right now. So truly the only thing we can do is pay attention to it. And if you ask people with anxiety, that's really the only thing they can do because they're in this variance of anxiety. So what we can do is create safety. And create value for that experience. Get help. You're not in this alone. There's tons of people who can help you with this right now. To reestablish that grounding of safety on this planet. But the first step is just realizing that your vital life force energy is strong enough to pull you back. And that's exactly what's happening. Powerful. So, yeah. And and that you spoke about someone else holding space in that way and there's a way that that if someone is with you holding space with you that has a regulated nervous system like a practitioner that knows there's nothing wrong with you that knows you're okay. Then our nervous system starts to entrain to that, like we can co regulate in to that, that calmer nervous system. And so that's why,, finding someone that you really trust and feel safe with to hold that space for you can be so, so helpful. So vitally important. Yeah. Because so many people just don't feel safe in their bodies. So that really is the first step of. being, and in the moment, sometimes just that as a lifeline, like I don't feel safe in my body, but I'm with this person who's safe in their body and they're saying, I'm okay. That I'm not dying at this moment, and it might not make any sense to the mind or to the brain, but to validate and connect with the physical sensation of what's happening at that time helps us relax because anxiety is the resistance of our experience on such a deep level that our mind can't work its way out. And so just congruence again for the power of that vital life force energy, the power of that we are okay and that we're actually still alive. And that our body is still functioning at that moment. And just finding out that kind of thread or. For connection back to that safety and Cynthia you said the word a while back polarity and I don't know if this is going to totally take us in a different track or threads with this but that was something that we wanted to talk to you about today your your sense of learning from polarity. Does that fit in now. Yeah, so it does because so much of what we've talked about has to do with that polarity so as we know the universe is made up you look at computer systems. They're zeros and ones, zeros and ones. We look at the universes, it's pluses and minuses. You know, positives and negatives. And On one level, the whole universe is made up of polarity. And that's just one level of it, so we can look at it in many different levels, but we must include the level of polarity as a part of what we are. What we don't understand is our emotions. They're a part of this polarity system. So like I had explained, we have a cornucopia. We have this broad range of, of sensations from joy and bliss and sadness and grief and anger constriction and expansion, all of these different sensations that we feel. But when we break it down, we can break it down to We could put them on at least two different sides of this, long scale of things that I want more of. And things that I want less of. And so, what happens in our bodies is this polarity system has kind of been hijacked. And we've been kind of taught that we're supposed to control or manage the system of polarity. As opposed to align with the system of polarity and use it as a source of our own wisdom and our own guidance. And so, there's many different things that, you can look at the, the,, on the system of polarity, like, the, many of the New Age concepts would be like, oh, everything's love and light. And on one level of reality, yes, that's true. But on another level of reality, if you say abuse, as love and light, that's a distortion of polarity and that actually we have a system. We have this innate knowing within ourselves instinctively of what's wrong and that that's an innate gift that we have. We also have an innate gift of what's right. And so that programming within our own intelligence comes through our body as a sense of polarity. And when we observe or experience or in the field of something that's wrong. We're going to experience constriction, discomfort, and those particular experiences. When we are in the field of something that's right, then our body relaxes and we experience expansion and we experience more of that part of the polarity. What it's not our job is to manage the polarity and to, you know, you can see someone who's had a lot of trauma, we become hypervigilant and we go to the polarity of negativity. Because we have to be vigilant and on guard, and that's kept us safe. So that's actually just a dispens a dispensive pattern, but it keeps us safe. from time to time. As we heal, though, we want to move and expand into the fuller sense of that polarity and experience the other side. Now there's people, you know, spiritual bypass. So we're all familiar with those terms these days, where we just live in this, like, everything's great. Kind of, everything's okay. But the problem is we're not actually looking at the fact that that there are terrible things happening on this planet right now. There's abuse that's happening every day. And it also causes us to justify our own abuse. Our own self abuse or our own abuse from others. So, embodying our polarity and understanding that the polarity system that we have is just that. It's just the universe is made up of positives and negatives. And it's just like our own dial in our experience of knowing, like a kid, hot and cold. There's the polarity. It's good or it's bad. It's something I want to move towards or it's something that I want to have less of. But in order to know what direction Just like in the game of hot and cold, we have to hear both signals. If someone only said hot to us every time you would wander in that pool forever. Trying to find that because it would give you no information. It's actually the polarity, it's the presence of someone saying hot, and then someone saying cold, that gives you that sense of direction. And so the polarity as we start to re understand and we start to clear some of our misunderstandings, that we're supposed to, Fix what's uncomfortable that that's not our job to fix it. It's our job to listen because that's a part of our device. And when we do that, we start to take our power back and we start to take our power back from these external authorities from these outside sources and who have told us that we're supposed to control our experience. We're supposed to have a positive attitude all the time. Or, our traumas that tell us we're supposed to be hypervigilant of these problems. Instead, it's just information. This is the gift of our body. It is the gift of our innate knowing to know through our senses, Oh, I'm feeling constricted. I'm going to listen to this. I don't know why I'm feeling this hesitation come up, but I'm going to listen. Oh, I'm also feeling that openness. That makes me safe. I know I'm okay right now. I don't have to run, but I can actually sit in this. And when we start to work with that polarity, this is a conscious conversation about what Mariah experienced as she was picking berries. And she sat in that, and as she sat in that, she realized that even her sense of safety started to say, I'm telling you to leave. Her sense of constriction was going, okay, something's not safe here. The sense of safety was going, I am safe here sometimes, but I'm not safe here right now. And Maria comes to the conclusion, she's like, okay, I'm sitting here feeling both of these knowing that I'm safe in the universe, but my safety in the universe is now telling me that I'm going to leave this location now. And then listening to that. So it comes not from bypassing, it comes not from overcoating, it comes from our ability to appreciate. Our polarity. And so when we talk about charge, we talk about the clarity. We can also understand that, you know, what happens when we feel emotional charge, you know, these are nuggets. These are cracker crumbs. We're in a conversation with someone and we get really charged. So maybe that charge that emotion that we're feeling is actually for us. I believe that it's for us. It's not even necessarily something that we might want to share at that time with that person or whatever's bringing that conversation up, but for us to know, wow, this is something important to me. I don't know necessarily what this means, but that this is something important for me to listen to. And that's where Mariah shows up in the office. She's like, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm pregnant and this thing is the size of a pea and I can't breathe. And I don't know what's going on here, but my body, you know, I helped her understand that her body knew what was going on and her body was already preparing for birth. And her body's saying, Mariah, we want to rewrite this program. We want to rewrite this glitch, this holding of your breath that's associated with a new baby because you don't need to have that anymore. So that's the wisdom of the body. And it works through polarity. So, a different language, a different language than we speak with our minds. So to just go back to the initial part of the conversation where we talked about the intelligence having a physical sense, an emotional sense, that emotional sense exists on that polarity. When we talk about polarity, we're talking about the emotional intelligence. And when we're talking about the body, it's just that physical vital life force energy. And so when we touch our bodies, put your hands on your body. You're real. It's a real experience. Whatever you're feeling right now, it's just real. It's real to you in this moment. It might not be what you want to experience in the next moment or in the future, but it's real to you right now. And it helps you locate right where you are, right? What you're experiencing and gives you the wisdom that you need at that moment. So I like to tell people that you know, one thing we should all know is the love language of the body. We speak the love language to our partners in different ways, but what's the love language of our body? It's touch. It's the ability to breathe. So when we can breathe into both what feels good, but also what doesn't feel good, that's sending love to that part. It doesn't mean that that body part is going to have an easy time receiving that breath, but we can feel that body part with that breath. We can feel that constriction. So the love language of the body is breath. It's our movement. We gift it with movement. We know we're alive when we move. It's when we're dead, we don't move. So, movement, breath, same thing. When we're more alive, we breathe more. When we're closer towards death, we breathe less. It's just facts. It's just the way our body is set up and focused attention. So, another way to love your body is to just send it through touch, through movement, through breath, And our focused attention is just to pay attention to it. And for any of us who've worked with kids, whether we have kids and we're parents or whether you're a teacher and you've worked with kids, you know, any successful teacher, a parent knows that what a kid's mean, I need our attention. So when we can treat our bodies with the same way, with this reverence and respect, we change the relationship that we have. With our bodies and this conduit for this innate intelligence for this alignment with with nature and with that, that intelligence that animates life. So it's right there at your fingertips birthright so simple yet so profound like all great truths. I love it it's free you can you can lay your hands on your body and breathe anywhere anytime anyplace for free. And everyone has it. That's, that's what kind of led me out of doing more one on one work as a chiropractor on tables to, helping share this message, like through teaching, because I realized I'm like, we don't have to have money to thrive on this planet. That doesn't seem congruent with, the cosmology of life on this planet that anyone has to have money or has to be educated or born into any of these things. So I was like, what's the common denominator. If we all have what it takes. It has to be located within our bodies. This is why our bodies are so important because it is what connects us to life. It's what we're born into. It's what we have during this lifetime. It's what we exist and experience this world through from our birth to our death. And it is the one thing that all people have. So just paying attention to it and, and maybe just even questioning what is my relationship that I have with my body? Am I trying to control it? Is it my job to control my body or maybe are there resources? Are there ways that I could align with my body? Are there ways that I could listen to it? So just food for thought. Well, thank you so much, Cynthia. I definitely feel more alive in my own body after this conversation with you. And it's just been so wonderful to have you on. Tell our listeners how they can learn more about you or learn about your online offerings. Where can they find you? Yeah. My website is looker Asheville, which is kind of a it's a, it's a non English word, actually. It's spelled L E C O E U R Asheville dot com. And it is. It is actually the word for the heart in French. So I am not French, but that's a whole nother story about where that word comes from. But my business is called Le Coeur Asheville and that is my website. I do offerings in person in Asheville and I also do online offerings. I teach this work and, and things of just how to safely connect to some of the resources around us online. I, I do a nature connection course as well. So I would love to. To have any of you join me for that sometime, but there's more information for that on that site. So it's all our birthrights. if we only knew what we had access to and I love sharing this information. I love talking to you both about this and and just helping people remember what they have, what they have inside. And when we remember that we just don't need as much. We start to take our power back and we find that there's times where we need a lot of support on the outside. And that's really appropriate. But as we start to follow these threads back, we become stronger and stronger and find that we need less and less from the outside. And it is a system of abundance in nature that's waiting for us and calling us. It's a beautiful thing to end on. The abundance of nature is our birthright. So thank you again, Cynthia, for being with us today and, and sharing all this wisdom and these very practical and free tools to reclaim the wisdom of your body. Bye everyone. Thank you. Bye bye. Make sure you subscribe, like and share the video for more content!