The Motherhood Mentor

Beyond Words: The Embodied Power of Somatic Healing with Andrew Rosenstock

• Rebecca Dollard: Somatic Mind-Body Life Coach, Enneagram Coach, Speaker, Boundaries Coach, Mindset

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What happens when healing moves beyond thinking and into feeling? In this rich conversation, Becca sits down with somatic practitioner Andrew Rosenstock to explore the profound world of embodied healing—the kind that words can’t quite capture.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode:

  1. What somatics actually means and why it’s more than a wellness buzzword
  2. How the lived, felt experience of the body differs from the concept of the body
  3. Why talk therapy sometimes can’t reach trauma stored in the body and how somatic practices can
  4. The metaphor of “explaining the taste of chocolate” as a way to understand embodied experience
  5. The relationship between mindfulness and embodiment
  6. Why doing somatic exercises is not enough without presence and awareness
  7. How embodied healing transforms not just you, but your parenting, leadership, and relationships

About Andrew

Andrew Rosenstock is a registered somatic movement therapist, rolfer, and biodynamic craniosacral therapist. He has spent years helping people return home to their bodies and discover healing that thinking alone cannot unlock.

Whether you’re brand new to somatics or have been exploring embodied practices for years, this episode will expand your understanding and inspire you to listen more deeply to your body’s wisdom.

Find more about Andrew here: AndrewRosenstock.com


Want to begin using somatic healing in your journey, here is a great place to start:https://themotherhoodmentor.myflodesk.com/somatichealing


Work with Becca : https://www.the-motherhood-mentor.com/reclamationcoaching

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a somatic healing practitioner and a holistic life coach for moms, and this podcast is for you. You can expect honest conversations and incredible guests that speak to health, healing and growth in every area of our lives. This isn't just strategy for what we do. It's support for who we are. I believe we can be wildly ambitious while still holding all of our soft and hard humanity as holy. I love combining deep inner healing with strategic systems and no-nonsense talk about what this season is really like. So grab whatever weird health beverage you're currently into and let's get into it. Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Today, I have Andrew Rosenstock with me, and I was first excited to have Andrew on this podcast. We had connected through a podcasting group and he had sent me a blog. I think you would call it a blog an online article, maybe is the better word.

Speaker 2:

A writing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, about somatics and about especially how somatics has become a buzzword, and as soon as I read it I was like I want to have a conversation with this guy. So, Andrew, thank you for coming to the podcast today. I'd love if you would just kind of briefly just introduce who you are and what you do a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, first thing, I'll say one of the things, before I even go into that, just to hit on something you said which will tie in is I am happy that you are happy to talk about this, because for me it is, besides what we're going to talk about, why it's important. It's just, somatics is life-changing in a real, not to be dramatic way, but a real, felt way, and so to dive more into the depth of what it can mean, the roots of where it comes from and what it points to, is something that I believe people who are in several places like you and me love talking about it. So, yeah, which brings us into. So I have a lot of titles. One of them is a registered somatic movement therapist. I'm what's called a rolfer, biodynamic, craniosacral therapist, yoga therapist.

Speaker 2:

I got kind of lucky in that I took a break from life and became a backpacker and then started studying along my travels and, at some point, changed profession because I'd studied so much and learned so much and all of a sudden, I had all these titles that, to me, all pointed to the same thing. They all pointed to this way of how, how can we simply be in this world with more ease? You know, yoga would talk about union, or what's union with this thing? There's less disconnection, so there's more ease in that.

Speaker 2:

Rolfing talks about gravity. I'm looking at how bodies move within gravity. Well, if we can align with gravity, a force of nature or a force of life, there's more ease, you know. And biodynamic cranial has a different but similar sort of approach, and so they're all very similar in this way which is, I think, either accidental or my subconscious is like, really primed, and I just didn't realize that they're both. So that's a bit of what, like my titles are, but I I work with people and just to kind of figure out what is what's going on. And so the cool thing about somatics is it is really a bridge between body and mind, you know, because a lot of it's looking at how patterns of our, how we exist in pattern-making ways and understanding how the patterns are and why they are and are they still serving us and if not, how do we evoke newer patterns or different patterns? So how's that for an intro?

Speaker 1:

I love that and I even had to laugh when you were like you know people. I think something to the effects of people like us love talking about somatics, and I think that's what's fascinating is. I was so drawn to somatics, I think before I had even learned the word somatics. I was just drawn into movement as medicine, before I had the language, before I had the training, before I had the tools. But I think what's really fascinating is a lot of the people that I work with with somatics are not always the people you would think are drawn to somatic work and in fact, a lot of times when I started introducing it into my coaching, my clients were like wait, no, like let's go back to the mindset, let's go back to the like. My thoughts create my feelings, create my actions, let's go back to the like. I want something concrete, give me something to do.

Speaker 1:

And all of a sudden we started introducing somatic work and a little bit they were like wait, this is too intangible, but they would get done. And they're like wait, I feel different, I'm showing up different, something's changed, but I can't put my finger on it, I can't find language for it. One of the things I loved in that article you wrote is you were talking about how do we define something that, like by its own nature, isn't necessarily just cognitive? So I'd love to just hear, I guess, your roots of somatics and like what does that even mean to you? What is somatic to you, and where do you see that disconnect between how we try to explain somatics versus what it actually is in practice?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, this is what I love talking about so great. One other thing I should say for a title just because it's the Motherhood podcast is I'm also a dad to an amazing 10-month and what were like four days, five day old, 10-month, five day old little girl, lena, who I love. So what brought me into somatics was a bunch of stuff I first started doing. What I learned was somatics air quotes for those just listening in a yoga therapy training and we were doing these exercises that were like a little different than yoga and they were called somatics and they were coming. I later learned were coming out of Thomas Hanna's work and Thomas Hanna is the person who kind of coined the term and I'll dive into him a little bit but when I like and I liked them, they were fun.

Speaker 2:

But later, when I sort of learned more about somatics, I realized that those practices were not somatic in the term. They were just another way of doing an exercise. They were still being taught and doing this and while they were fun, they were probably fun because they were different and I think a lot of people like them because why, well, we've been doing this yoga thing for a while. I'm kind of bored. Here's this other thing. Oh cool, now my ego can say look at these other things I'm doing. I'm a better person now, you know, or whatever it is. I've got this new material Yay, spiritual Materialism, awesome. But that's what kind of introduced me into it. And so I was doing somatic. I was doing what I would call Hannah somatics, but it was much later I realized I wasn't doing it. What I would say is somatically and so like, what does that mean to me is you have to kind of look at the origin of the story.

Speaker 2:

So this guy, thomas Hannah who, by the way, I'm not like, hopefully I'm not sounding like, oh, he's an evil person, he's great. He helped bring this out. He was a student of a guy named Moshe Feldenkrais and he was also a philosophy. I think he was a professor. He was a philosopher I don't know if he was a professor or not and he more or less simplified a lot of most of Feldenkrais' practices and created these thematic practices. In my take, they're a little less in-depth than Feldenkrais, but they work. They do a point. And he brought stuff in.

Speaker 2:

But he came up with the term thematics and he says that it comes from I think it's the Greek. I always confuse them. It's the Roman and the Greek. I think it's the Greek. I always confuse them. It's the Roman and the Greek. I think it's the Greek that there are two forms of the body One is the lived body and one is the sort of conceptual or dead body. So you can't see it. But over on my side I have a skeleton just over there, and that skeleton, we would say, is actually nothing but an idea, and when we impose that onto ourself, we're actually not living within our body, we're living in the dead and non-material thing.

Speaker 2:

But this soma, this lived, experienced body, that is what we're attempting to work with. It's sometimes what philosophers will say the preconceptual, the pre-reflection. Philosophers will say the preconceptual, the pre-reflection is right before the idea of it. That is the experience, and so that's where the somatics comes from. But what a lot of people don't know is that, hannah, actually that philosophical statement he's saying actually came, like almost a hundred years before him, from a German philosopher named Edmund Husserl, which I know this gets a little boring for some people saying why does it matter? Not to me, okay.

Speaker 1:

I'm getting out my notebook.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I've written a bit more about this. And there's other people Michael Shea has written about this, don Allen Johnson, various other thematic people. Don Allen Johnson is a big name. Michael Shea is not as well known but written a lot of books and great and a lovely dude.

Speaker 2:

So Husserl was actually the person who kind of came up with this. He had the German word of and my German's not great, but of Korpenliebe or Liebe, and it's the same thing. There's a sort of limb, body and this conceptual body. So and then the various phenomenology Herzog's father is something called phenomenology. That branch of philosophy has really impacted me and impacted other body worker, movement people, because it's really looking at how this body as a non-conceptual being is and how can we move or be in this body, in this experience. So that's sort of the roots of how I got more into somatics, various sort of accidental things.

Speaker 2:

My first rolfing client when I graduated as a rolfer was actually a professor of philosophy and I was working on him.

Speaker 2:

He said you're doing my work embodied, and I was like smiling, like oh, thank you, having no idea what it meant, you know, like okay, thanks.

Speaker 2:

And so we would work and he would like explain these sort of things to me from a very conceptual level, and the concepts were important because we are conceptual human beings, we have a prefrontal cortex, for a reason, and it's great, and making sense of stuff is great, but it's not the actual experience, it's the, it's the codification, the wrapping of the experience, and so recognizing the two is incredibly helpful, because are we, if we're trying to like, heal or help ourselves, are we continuing to go more into ideas which have value but can also take us far and far away? We can actually be. What I sometimes say is we can be moving east, but we think we're going north and so we keep going east. Yeah, I'm going north. And then all of a sudden, we realize, well, this didn't get me to where I thought I would go. Yeah, I'll take a break. We realized, well, this didn't get me to where I thought I would go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'll take a break, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, it's the paradox of talking about something meant to be felt, like you had said in the article, and I think that's what drew me, I believe, deeply into somatics. For my own practice, for my own healing, is because I had done so much cognitive talk therapy and I was in early motherhood and I was at this place where I was, I was experiencing, you know, I had a lot of freeze, I had a lot of disassociation that I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have told you that I didn't have language for the experience until years later, until recently really. But birth and kind of early motherhood all of a sudden had me feeling and experiencing things that I didn't have language for and I had the cognitive understanding and knowledge of like okay, trauma probably created this, but I had this. I don't need to go back to therapy and talk about what happened. I already know what happened. What I don't understand is why I'm standing in my kitchen and my toddler is triggering me like this. What I don't understand is when my husband does this, why is it triggering these responses in me?

Speaker 1:

And that's kind of when I found somatics of like why is my body still holding these things that conceptually I can logically say isn't happening anymore, but my body is still experiencing and in that, so in that season, I had this draw towards I don't want to talk, I don't need to talk about what happened anymore, I want to feel differently. I know how I feel now. I really didn't, but that's the language I would have used and I think that's what drew me into somatic is, I had started doing kickboxing workouts and after each kickboxing workout I would just start crying and I didn't understand why it was such a relief, why it was such a cathartic experience for me. And that was kind of my introduction into somatics, was kind of understanding. It wasn't just the intellectual idea of what happened, it was the felt experience of it then and that my body was still experiencing it in the present, even though it was a past history. But my body didn't feel that yet. So I'm just curious.

Speaker 2:

Your body didn't feel what didn't your body feel yet?

Speaker 1:

My body didn't feel current safety, like my body had never moved through the expression of fight or flight. My body had never processed or moved through the trauma. With integration. A lot of my trauma was early on in childhood. There wasn't. So my body was starting to have these expressions or have these things that I was moving through and I'm grateful now that I have the language for it. But I again, it's that felt experience of a thing, not just the cognitive understanding of somatics. It's and you spoke in the article of, I think we're, I think so many people are seeking for that one singular, all encompassingcompassing solution, and I think somatics has become the new keyword for that, the new like oh, here's the magic bullet. But I think a lot of people are using it as this prescriptive. Here is somatics, here's the do, here's how you regulate your system, here's how you calm down, and it's like you're missing the part where you relate to what you're experiencing and feeling.

Speaker 2:

Well, yes, and because it's more than just movement, you find it in. I have a lot of clients who are top therapist clients. They're top therapist, that's what they do in their clients. Yeah, and they all of a sudden say, well, I'm doing these somatic practices like IFS, and I'm like, how is IFS a somatic? I understand that they name it that way. It's super conceptual.

Speaker 2:

Somatic experiencing, I find, can be somatic. But most of the somatic experiencing people I meet are just doing it on a cognitive level and so you can codify the physical and still be at a mental codification of it, which is therefore not the somatic process. But again, right now I have a joke that somatics is the new nervous system, which was the new psoas, which was the new fascia. I messed the order up. It's a different order. But which was the new black? We just keep jumping for whatever the new hot thing is, because that's kind of how, whether it's a society or whether it's how we're wired, we seem to keep liking that. But somatics, I would say, by itself could be the the magic bullet, but it generally isn't, because it's more inclusive than even itself, and so it it's. There's like so much more that could be done. I bring various parts of therapy-ish things into my practice because I think understanding neuroscience is pretty important here to understand a bit of the why of a source, but also to recognize the why we have is not necessarily the why, it's just the best why we can come up with at this moment. And so to get out of the absolute of that but to say, hey, this is what's going on. For me it's incredibly important in somatics and there have been a few in the ISMEDA, which is the somatic, I forget International Somatic and Movement Educators' Teachers Association. I'm gonna guess I forget International Somatic and Movement Educators Teachers Association, I'm going to guess. I don't know the exact what it stands for, but I'm an ISMETA member.

Speaker 2:

I should know there's been more neuroscience coming in, but some of the people again they're like haven't fully, I think, immersed themselves in the phenomenological, which is what you're talking about, the felt feeling of it prior, like. Just for those who don't know, phenomenology, it's, this is the branch of metaphysics that sort of looks at. I mean, essentially buddhism is a is a form of phenomenology where we're looking at the world as simply phenomena and so that there's simply things happening of which prior to us labeling it or making it as as we it. There are simply just experiences. We cognitize the experience and label and create boxes for it.

Speaker 2:

That's what we're good at, but that's not actually necessarily what it is. It's how we understand it to be, it's how we make it up to be, and so semantics for me is very phenomenological because it is getting out of the way that we are. Yeah, the problem is that sometimes, as you know, it's A I'm drawn in like five places, but B it's such a rich area and the more we drop into it, to some extent words fall away, which is a great excuse and why I can't say anymore. But also it's a bit of the truth is that maybe your clients or you, when you've been there, you get into those sort of deeper places where everything is flowing or whatnot, but yet there isn't a way to describe it, and I think that's partly where I just went. So I'll take a break there and see how that was.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, and it's true, I think a lot of the somatic work I've done, I mean, even I just think of you know, through fall and winter I was doing some pretty deep somatic work and I, while I was going through it, I didn't have a ton of language to to explain and I'm someone who, like I don't stop talking Hence why I have a podcast like jokes to all my teachers, who every report card I ever got was like Becca can't stop talking, like I'm never at a loss for words.

Speaker 1:

And yet, somatic work, there's some times where I'm experiencing something and there's a felt sense of what's happening, but, like, sometimes after I won't have the language for it.

Speaker 1:

I still don't necessarily have the language for the work that I did fall and winter, but I know that it deeply and intimately changed so many aspects of my life and I'm starting to witness.

Speaker 1:

Things feel different, things look different, I'm showing up different, I'm behaving different, but there's not this like pinpointed, like here's the magical pill that I took, here's the somatic practice that I did, because it was such an interwoven experience of relating to myself, not even always with cognitive words, but just experiencing it. And I'm trying to think of how to describe this for people because we're on a podcast talking about it, but it's like it's the difference between me telling you what a cookie smells like and you smelling a cookie. I don's like it's the difference between me telling you what a cookie smells like and you smelling a cookie. I don't know why. That's the example that came to mind. It's the difference between intellectually knowing what is what it's going to be like to be a parent and then actually becoming a parent, actually going through the experience and the act of it. It's the it's so good.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's the challenge with selling the thing, and I have colleagues who sell better than I do, for sure, but I would say, without something to eat or whatever, their product is kind of a joke. But their product, what they're offering, is far inferior, which is why they're busier than I am. But when they can't help people, they send them to me and I'm okay with that. Sure, there's moments of fear, of insecurity that come up and say, oh, but I should be busier. But no, I had clients who are marketing gurus and they say you need to do better marketing for this and I was like good luck. And then after a few sessions they say you're right, you can't really market it, because the issue is again to market. It isn't it To market, it is to put an image around what we're trying to express. But that isn't the actual feeling. It still keeps us locked in that way. I mean, I appreciate your cookie. I used to use a similar one about tasting chocolate and would say you know, if you see me eating a piece of chocolate, you say what is that? You know you've never had it. I say, oh, you know, it's chocolate, it's sweet, it's bitter, it's dark. And the person says ah yeah, I completely understand. But then they go eat chocolate and I say that is not exactly what I thought it would be right, or similar.

Speaker 2:

When I work with clients a lot to try to get them to separate thoughts and feelings because they're so conflated together, especially in this world that we live in. I'll put a finger on them and say okay, so what's happening right now? Like what do you feel? And I say I feel you touching me and I say no, I say no, no, no, you don't feel me touching you. You feel touch.

Speaker 2:

Let me explain another way. Imagine if there was a midget hiding under a short person I don't know if the correct apologies to people there A small person under the table that you didn't see, and when I put my finger on you, they were actually putting their finger on you. Now you didn't see them. You would say Andrew is touching you. That is actually not what's happening. All you feel is touch. Your brain creates another story based on everything it knows and labels the touches Andrew and all that, unless you were really familiar with working with me for a while and knowing what my touch actually felt like. We have now separated these two things, or we've combined these two things together, andrew and touch to be one thing, but actually, from the somatic way, there's just touch, right, there's just touch, that's going on there with another, there's another object, this other human being. Does that make sense? Does that make some sense?

Speaker 1:

I mean that makes total sense and I think this is we're, I think our culture is so stuck in the thought, in the story, and I mean I live in this world of somatics, like personally, I I it myself, but like also as a coach and I'm still a very cognitive person where it's like no, I'm not actually experiencing and feeling and sensing, I'm just thinking about it, I'm creating stories, I'm up in my head and I think being up in our heads and in cognition is one of the ways that we avoid sensation, we avoid feeling that touch, because feeling for a lot of people is very uncomfortable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Well, yeah, we also don't want to demonize cognition. It's what keeps us alive.

Speaker 2:

It's what keeps us moving forward and it serves a great point. It's also wonderful as a sympathetic nervous system responds. So if we need to be thinking about something, we're going to be in a sympathetic state. Sympathetic state Again.

Speaker 2:

Thinking is a hard word because there's certain levels and ways of thinking. Any sort of, I would say, movement happening from our brainstem is mental thought. So it's not mental movements of thought, it's just not a purely conceptual thought or a cortex sort of thought. So I don't want to demonize thinking. The issue is that it can run amok and so then we are spending more time in there and taking us further out. As you said, we can't think and feel at the same time. We can micro switch quickly, but we can't do it both at the same time. But we can create thought what I was going to say like thoughts as feelings or feelings as thoughts would probably be more of it. So we can sort of take over or hijack the actual felt sense by using a logical reduction of it which keeps us from feeling and keeps us moving in that direction, which serves a wonderful purpose in lots of ways. It just doesn't serve as sort of being more present, being more here or really being with reality, because the sad thing is and I don't mean to scare people everything that Rebecca thinks, everything Andrew thinks, isn't really objectively real. It's just our own subjective reality, not that it can't align with it, but it's just our understanding of things and our memories are very faulty. We have a conversation for like a year from now again, and I'll talk about how great your red shirt was and you'll talk about how cool my purple shirt was, and that's not the case. But that's how we remember it and we stick into that. And so we keep looping in these sort of non-real places, but feeling prior to the thought, that feeling is real, it is just nature, it is all that, and that is in some way what somatics can allow for.

Speaker 2:

But something I think we're kind of alluding to before is it can be very scary, not in a sort of horror movie way, but you know, when people, a lot of people work with trauma, say I really want to work with trauma, right, but okay, well, why haven't you been? Because a part of us has been heavily scared or traumatized or whatever. But again the mind will say oh yeah, I want to do it, but no, working with all that sort of stuff, all that stuff we've pushed aside. No, it's scary. I don't want to feel. I'd rather just be this autonomous robot unit and just kind of you know, do that sort of thing. No disrespect to Elon Musk, you know he's served very good in ways, but, like you know, and then you get sort of you get what a lot of what I think ties to the beginning. I don't want to be this way anymore. Okay, what am I going to do? I'm going to pendulate over to this other way. I'm going to do somatics. Well, I'm doing the idea. I'm being the best version of myself. But that's still like wrapped up in in all this sort of sub or or or contra, uh, like subconscious or conscious aspect.

Speaker 2:

Still, there's like a lot of this gripping, which is why so many mental health, so many body health, so many coaches, really unhealthy, like leaders in trauma. I took this big trauma course, big leaders in it, christ man, there was like very few people who I felt safe with. I was like these people have avoided their body very well, but they have, they can understand it, they don't live in it. And then you get the, the, the others like most of the, many of the, like the money, many of. For me.

Speaker 2:

The people say who should I study with somatics? I'll name some people and they say I've never heard of them. I say exactly the people you've heard of. A lot of times that's just insecurity, that's that's hidden repression, that says I gotta show how big I am look at me right which I have no interest in studying with those people. So there's like this kind of catch 22 of sorts. Like most people that I know don't know bonnie bambridge cohen and to me she's really one of the last of the real like people who have the depth of what a somatic is. Or andrew olsen or karen mccose wonderful, wonderful teachers. But you haven't really heard of them and I think that's because they're content with just being themselves, you know well you spoke to, I think a few things.

Speaker 1:

I apologize, I go no, I, I no, I love it, I love it and I'm following along. This is the way that I think and experience life too. It's like it's so multidimensional and I get pulled and all of these different directions all at once. But, like, what I'm sitting with is there's, I think so many people have such a desire for depths and yet they don't know how to live in the place of the depths. They know how to talk about it, they know how to look like it and I think even just the field of coaches, of therapists, there's so much about knowing more without actually taking that medicine. Like you, you don't know it in your bones. And I think this is the like not to bring myself on a whole different tangent, because don't get me started at GPT, but like people keep being so excited for this thing and it's like don't get me wrong, I see a purpose in like being able to see patterns or like drawing stuff that would take you forever, but I'm just like knowing more has never helped us.

Speaker 2:

It's, it's it's yes and no, yes and no it has.

Speaker 1:

There's certain things that can help with. And yet I'm sitting here, going, I work with women and I count myself as this person too. I knew a lot, but it didn't actually change the way that I was living. It didn't change the way that I was walking and breathing, my posture. It's like I I understood the concept, but I didn't feel it in my bones and it didn't change the way that I moved and experienced life. And to me, I think it's just this. It can almost be this performance piece, but I think our bodies can feel that something's off, Something's weird about it. It's missing a depth. But again, I think that's something that it happens in relationship, not just concept, it's not just here. Let me sell you this outcome, Let me give you this result. It's like I don't know what you're going to come with. I don't know where you're going to want to go with it. That's not for me to say.

Speaker 2:

Totally. Yeah, I mean my first client today. He came in. I haven't seen him in like six months because he wasn't living here and he's coming in and he's been doing this program from chiropractor stuff and he's a nice guy. But he comes in and I'm looking and he's saying he feels much better. And I'm looking at him saying I'm not going to sell this to him. I'm like you look much worse. You look like you. You know he's saying I'll do this functional medicine thing. And I asked him well, functional for what? And whose definition of function? You know, because he looks like he's put all this stuff on so he can be stronger.

Speaker 2:

But the actual issue that was there was never actually addressed. So it's inside of it. But you know he's got more information, more knowledge, more this or that, so he's doing it right, which, yeah, in some way he is. But also what we found within it took a little while, but minutes on the table. There was a lot of discomfort underneath. That's what happens when ice melts. It becomes, you know, ice isn't like I can't wait to be water, no, it has to vibrate and move. It's really uncomfortable. Then it's like oh man, water is great, I don't want to be frozen again. But there's no way, I mean there's no way we can know that. Until we know that or until we feel that and it's hard to feel, like we said, it's sort of hard to feel that I think culture in some way our culture gets a better up.

Speaker 2:

I spent 12 years as a nomad. I lived all over not all over, but over most of the world, much of the world, and I saw a lot of similarities across a lot of cultures. So I don't know how much is like even east and west. I mean they've blended a lot, so we like to keep these separations. I don't know how much is like even East and West. I mean they've blended a lot, so we like to keep these separations.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if it's our culture, I don't know if it's just human culture. I don't know what it is. But yeah, I, I, I, I agree with what you're saying and I partly don't, whereas the knowledge has never done that, has never helped us, and I know you kind of correct it. But to say it's not that it can't, it's that it maybe isn't or really for you it wasn't helping, which is also to say that the next person you're coaching it might be, and for me, so much of my work is actually about knowledge, but not just knowledge, because you have a cortex and you have a sub brain, so we need to work with both, and if we're just working with one, we're denying the actual sort of experience. Does that make some sense?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I love what you're saying. I think the way that I think of it is. I think there's a difference between knowledge and information, between knowledge and information. My husband, for example, like we have a garage full of tools like welding woodworking.

Speaker 2:

Oh, nice All of it.

Speaker 1:

He can build anything. He is incredible that way. I technically own those tools right Like they're all down in my garage right now, but there's a difference between me going down there and being like this is a welder and me actually knowing how to weld things like knowing how to use that. I think that's the different to me, that's the difference between information and knowledge is I have the applied knowledge of how to use that thing. That to me is somewhat of like embodied knowledge and information. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

yeah, it makes sense to me why, somewhat of like embodied knowledge and information, does that make sense? It makes sense to me why you would think that it doesn't make sense to me as from a logical reasoning. For me, the way that I, it does make sense, but that definition, the knowledge, because you could say I still have information on how to use it. I just I don't know how to use it, but I have information on how I could use it, but I don't quite know how to use it, so that some of that, that sort of metaphor you spoke of, doesn't fully resonate. Yeah, but I think I get where you're going.

Speaker 2:

For me, what I say, the difference between like thinking and knowing is that knowing we feel known, we don't feel thinking. So when we know something and there's actually there's a felt depth to it of like, oh and there's actually like, so that there's it is tied more into, into more of a feeling, not that our feeling is is right, because we can be totally sure it's something really I know this to be true. And then later we realize I was, I was wrong, but in that moment it is what we knew to be true, and so there, later, we realized I was. I was wrong, but in that moment it is what we knew to be true, and so there was. There is more of us being there, whereas it's just thinking. For me, thinking has more of an upness to it and knowledge has a weight to it. I feel myself in it. Whereas thinking is there, my body isn't really there. It's a cloud over there. Does that make some sense?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I like the way you defined that. I'm curious for you and you I think we were kind of touching on this a little bit but like the difference between like mindfulness and embodiment, or is there a difference like where, where do those two connect?

Speaker 2:

as I also teach meditation and so this and I teach in a slightly different way than most, because for me it ties in exactly to that I find many meditation teachers not very embodied and I think it's an interesting aspect. So I think, first what I'll say is, when I talk about meditation and mindfulness, I say that people can often confuse these two together, they conflate them together, that mindfulness is meditation, and the first thing we want to know is that is not fully true, that mindfulness is the doorway into meditation or being in a meditative way or meditative state, but it's the doorway into the house. But we don't want to be walking around with the door saying, hey, look at that, this is my house right here. It's just a way in. It's not the same thing. You can have the house without a door in a way, but you can't have a door. That doesn't mean you have a house, you can just have a door sitting by itself. So we can kind of confuse all of these things together and people get stuck in these sort of mindful ways and they're doing all these mindful practices, calling it meditation. But it is the doorway in, so in some way it is required. It is so we could say that because it's required, because it's the start of the process, it is one and the same, even though it's also not the same. It's the entryway in. It's more of a process way of looking at it.

Speaker 2:

So mindfulness is required for meditation and I'll bring it into embodiment in a little bit if I can. But for most people they're not meditating, they're simply stuck in a thought, whereas what is meditation? For me, meditation is simply being with the world as it is, not lost in thought about the world or in a heavily disassociated state, just being with things as they are, just being with things as they are. I can bring in the phenomenology from Heidegger's Das Fein if you want, but I don't get a little bit more technical. But I find that really really helpful. It's what Buddhism is, I think more or less, or that Buddha was more or less saying was not being lost in our thoughts, not being lost in desires, simply being here. But Buddhism didn't really deal with embodiment at that point. So the issue is we can do these mindful practices and then get to these states and say, ah, I'm in meditation without realizing we're really just, we've just sort of either peeled a layer or added a layer on and what happens for some is they get, so this will seem like a branch that'll tie in.

Speaker 2:

There are some, some scientists, researchers are looking at how meditation isn't always healthy, how it actually can be very disassociated, and there are lots of experiences that people going to meditation retreats getting like a really bad dissociation. And that, to me, makes total sense, because meditation itself is a disassociative program or process. We are in a state of being which is largely we're talking about largely mental based and we're attempting to get out of it. So we're going to get out of our current state, we're dissociating from our current state. Well, there's a lot of stuff under the hood that we haven't dealt with or we pushed away, that we forgot about, we haven't seen, and we kind of clear some top layer and then all that stuff comes up. Well, holy shit, that is not good, that's scary. We check out in various ways or we block it even more and we block it even more. And now we're in meditation because we're just like in these sort of states and we keep telling ourselves we're in. And because we tell ourselves we're in it, guess what? We're in it even more. Look at me. Embodiment to me comes after that, or it doesn't have to come after that, but usually it comes after that where we recognize oh, I'm in meditation, look at me, whatever that sort of is. And then we realize, wait a minute, there's no. There's either no ground here or there's too much ground here. And by what I mean by that is either like I'm floating, but I haven't realized it, or like I'm the ground's really heavy and I can't even move. These are sort of two ways of describing it. Neither are very balanced, whereas when we get into that embodied state we're not too heavy on the ground or too up in the sky, which again is something I think hard to fully explain until we feel into that.

Speaker 2:

I had a new client on Monday maybe yesterday, no Monday, I think who after her session she said it oh my god, I feel the ground. I haven't, I haven't. She didn't realize how she wasn't feeling the ground and I was like, yeah, that's. She's like. This is so weird. I said well, for you, it's weird. I hear this five times a week at least, you know because we're so wrapped up that we haven't felt, we aren't aware of the ground. We're up in these, these, these processes, and again we need to be. We have kids. Like you have kids. It is very hard to just be here. Like you know, right before this call, my wife sent a video of my daughter opening drawers and I'm like holy shit, we need to know, like this is awesome and exciting and also like holy shit, we need to, we need to quickly baby-brew the house. This is like she's going to, like she could drink more. You know, I could get all sort of wrapped up and when I do that I'm not in the ground.

Speaker 2:

So the meditation I find for at least in my own process and dealing with people, usually we're in, kind of after some point of mindfulness, we get to this other place where we're in one or the other, but there's not the embodiment there. The embodiment sort of comes a little bit later and then the embodiment in some regard doesn't embodiment such a silly word because really, what does it mean? To be disembodied is to be dead or to have some part of us cut off, right, so like you lose the arm and the arm is disembodied. We're using this, we're using embodiment from a philosophical term which really is about presence, and so the more that we are present, the more we are here with what is, the more embodied we are and it's people thinking black and white, it's super spectrum-y Like.

Speaker 2:

So when I needed to take a break before it's because I wasn't really here. I was getting really excited and that was cool and there was this and that, but I wasn't able to be here. And I can, I can exist in that way, I can function in that way because of all these sort of patterns and mind-making things. But because of my practices, I was able to recognize it. Now some could say, but you should have recognized it earlier, and I would agree, you're right, I should have, but I'm not there yet. So I did just fine, but I could have recognized it earlier, but I didn't.

Speaker 2:

When I did, I said, oh okay, yeah, take a moment. Right, first of all, am I safe to take a moment If my kid's about to drink that like poison in the counter? Please don't take a moment. Please don't be like wait a minute. No, please act in that way. But when I can, I can check in. And I would somewhat say theoretically, when we could be deeply embodied, we would actually be doing that in that sort of way, without being in a fully on hijack state, but of just kind of moving with it. But, as you mentioned earlier, when we're living with other people, especially children, it's hard to be present. So does that kind of answer, the embodiment? There's more. I could go, but did that kind of answer the embodiment.

Speaker 1:

there's more I could go, but and I love that you brought it to presence, because that's actually I. I was going there too when you were talking of I. I think we use we throw around the word presence or embodied, like those. Those are words that are thrown around but people aren't just describing like not just what does it mean, but how does it feel, how does that, what does that look like when you're moving through your day, present versus not present?

Speaker 1:

One of the ways that I often think of it is are my thoughts and my sensations in the room with me, like, am I here or am I like too floaty, where, like, I'm thinking and feeling about something else the past, the future? Am I with my kid? But I'm thinking about work, which there's nothing necessarily wrong with that but like you can be in the room without really being in the room. It's like when you're driving and you're like, how did I get here? It's like, well, you weren't embodied, you weren't present because you were just kind of running on autopilot, and I think it's very easy for us to run on autopilot. Well, I shouldn't say yeah it is.

Speaker 1:

For a lot of people it's easy to run on autopilot Especially I think of, like my functioners, the highly ambitious. They're really good at just going through the motions and doing what they're supposed to do, but it's missing this color. It's missing this liveliness. It's, you know, a lot of, and I'm curious to know if you've experienced this in parenthood. But a lot of women, a lot of mothers, they come into this season of life and they go. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't feel like myself. And when they say I don't feel like myself, I think what they literally mean is I don't feel me. I can attune to my child's needs and what they have, what I have to do for them, the actions I have to go through, but I don't have like a. I don't feel deeply connected with my feet on the ground to where I am, because there's just so much going on.

Speaker 2:

I just felt again. As mentioned earlier, I'm not a mother, so I can't really fully tell you about that because I will never have that experience. I can share what I see with my wife and with others. I think you're touching on a point, but I think a bigger part really has to do with identity, and so the issue is how we've identified or perceived ourself to be shifted. And so if I'm feeling myself, as I've always felt, as Rebecca, and all of a sudden I've shifted out of Rebecca into Andrew, I won't feel like Andrew for a while because the perception was always as being Rebecca.

Speaker 2:

It's not the best metaphor. So part of it, I think, is that they're not feeling like themselves because they don't know who they are, because the identity has changed and so, as it's changing, how can we? I mean, it's a little bit different. But people say how is it being a dad? And my answer people don't love my answer. I say I don't know, I don't feel like a dad yet, and I know it's been 10 months, but I presume it's going to take me a little while before I I mean I, you know, I know I have a daughter and I know she's like I'm tearing up just thinking about it, she's my favorite thing in the world and I love holding her identity, that I conceptually I understand it, but it still hasn't landed in me and I think it's so much easier being a father than being a mother. It's so much like my wife is definitely dealing with that and she's also from another culture that has other ways of looking at it and she's living outside of her culture as well. So it's like it's really hard for her in a lot of ways and she definitely struggles a lot more with it.

Speaker 2:

And I think there's naturally a hormonal safety towards safety, which is also worry, and so we get in these worry states which, again, as we become, we might say, as we become more embodied, as we become more aware, we can say, well, that's a stupid thing, I shouldn't be doing that or whatever that sort of you know thing is, but like that doesn't change anything because it's still kind of there. And the more we can kind of meet it with compassion and be like, oh God, yeah, of course, of course I'm worrying and I recognize I don't need to be. I don't need to be, but I can seem to stop worrying and that's in some way the only way to really allow it to move through us, whereas most of us keep this like stronghold. I shouldn't be doing it, but I am, and I don't know whatever that is, but yeah, it's it's. Yeah, it's easier being a dad. To sum it up no, yeah, embodiment is about easier being a dad. No, um, I think it's challenging in different ways I was gonna say I think it's.

Speaker 1:

I think it's different and challenging in different ways and I think it's know I could go off on this subject, but I think it's really fascinating to see my brain wants to go five different directions, even just with that.

Speaker 1:

I think men and fathers face a very different experience, and it's not to say that it's easier. I think there's aspects, but there's. I think there's a lot of pressure on men, on dads. I think at least my perspective there's a lot less talk about it, there's a lot less resource, there's a lot less grace or understanding, yeah, or the opposite.

Speaker 2:

Unquote well, there is, but then there's, there's again, there's this, this pendulum, this polarity, so there's the sense that there's not enough talk about it. And so then there's these like men's groups that are coming up, but to me they're so false, they're so fake, they're, they're you know, for them they're not. That's and, and as usual, we, we, we swing through polarities. So, yes, there's, there's less talk than there could be, but then, because of that, there's that rebellion into it which is similar to that somatics thing of you know, oh, I'm, I'm doing this whole other thing. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump into the other extreme, because that's where it is and that that penduling is like, but that's also somewhat required in most forces and as a way of reorienting to, to that. But yeah, I think, there, I agree with you, I think there's that. But yeah, I think, there, I agree with you, I think there's less of it. But I also think there in some ways should be, because there's more, there's more, there's just more challenges just being a mom, but also like again, just biologically, like there's so much like we kind of like do our thing, and then you know, like we so much, like we kind of like do our thing. And then you know, like we're hopefully emotionally supportive, but we're like we don't have a real physiological shift to it. And then, even after the child does, come all that hormonal stuff. We get some hormonal regulation, but not a super lot. And I should preface I'm not an expert on this topic so I might be saying something that isn't accurate probably, but you're right, still the issue.

Speaker 2:

Then we get this other. I was like like yesterday I had a new client this is different, similar new client and man. He kept coming in for neck pain, neck pain. He couldn't relax and he said it a few times like no way, man, I've got to be a man. Or like. And I was like I said this is being a man like, puffing your chest up, that's being a man Like. That's not being a man, that's puffing your chest up. You know, like I said, you know I got to be strong, I got to be a man. I said the most intense strength I know is vulnerability. That's not being a man, being vulnerable. Men are vulnerable, come on. So you know be, you know like playing with him a bit. Of course I think we are.

Speaker 2:

I was just kind of trying to play with him to get him to see that this concept of what it is to be a man is also so, so ripped, as, as is what it is to be a woman. I mean, my wife is Chinese. She well, she has so many of these like things about what this is. What like this is what our daughter should do. This because she's a female and I'm like I don't do whatever she wants to do. Like pink isn't a female color, it's a color that we have generally in most cultures put on that, but it's one of my favorite colors and I'm a pretty hetero dude. So what does that mean? If I like pink, you know, is that like pink I do. I have a pink corduroy suit. It's beautiful that I have a pink corduroy suit.

Speaker 1:

It's beautiful, that sounds epic. That sounds epic. I mean even I think it's hard to wrap that topic up because I think it's an important one. But you know I work with women exclusively pretty much. I've worked with a couple men and like I've worked with like couples a bit here and there.

Speaker 1:

But even the women that I don't work with I keep a pretty strong pulse on what's happening with moms and a huge dynamic with early motherhood being really hard is the dynamic with their partner and I'll the complaints or the struggles that I hear of women from their partners. I hear that in here that struggling and he was struggling before the baby came but now that the babies come it feels like they're bleeding out because there's so much pressure biologically, socially, like there's so much. I mean you're lacking sleep, you're going through, there's so much being pulled on you and pushed in on you and I think for a lot of women part of their struggle is that there was already a rift in the relationship on their partner and all of a sudden they don't have a steady co-partner to co-regulate with or to hold or a partner that they view as steady.

Speaker 2:

Because it's very possible that the partner is very steady but it's not in the way that they're looking for and so therefore it's not steady while they are. But I will just say a few things out of sort of humor but also seriousness. People will ask me like, how is your lack of sleep? And I say we didn't really have it. And you know why we didn't really have it? Because my wife is Chinese.

Speaker 2:

We had an in-house nanny, which was expensive, but we had an in-house nanny for two months because of the Chinese, believe it's time. Usually it's the mother who does it, or the mother-in-law or the father, but mom's mom. But they usually have someone come whose job it is to kind of wake up so that the mom can rest there was so many wonderful motherhood things so the mom rests, which also means the dad gets to rest, and so we had time for two months. And then my wife more or less took over and she said why don't you sleep in the other room so you can rest and work? And I said you know, I would like to take care of the baby sometime.

Speaker 2:

But also we had different roles. So there is a lot of it. But also, like we just went back to China to see my in-laws we hadn't met their daughter yet and I was on a bike ride with my wife because my in-laws took care of, were taking care of, the kid and I said, oh yeah, I was thinking to myself, oh yeah, that's right, we used to be in love like half joking, half serious, you know, because we were having fun, because we had somebody else taking care of the kid and in their culture that's what it does and it's in some ways so much healthier for the husband and wife dynamic. So I can't wait for my in-laws to get a visa to come so that my wife and I can like do things together again while also having a safety that our daughter is comfortable and not ignoring her, because we need that bonding time as well.

Speaker 1:

But just putting it in that yeah, I think, I think truly a lot, of, a lot of the pains of modern motherhood, fatherhood, marriage after a baby. Is that like?

Speaker 1:

oh yeah you have one single person who has to be your village and it's just an unreasonable ask. Even if they're a really steady, solid, healthy partner, they can't be the entire village. There was meant to be so many people, and I think that is so much of what we crave and long for, and that's not just. It's not just an idea, it's a felt experience of relationship. It's not just an idea, it's it's a felt experience of relationship, having understandable people. I'm curious, as we start to wrap up, is there something that, like, feels like we missed, that feels important to name this conversation?

Speaker 2:

about somatics or embodiment two things, two things one is to kind of dovetail what we were just saying, which is, I think that the more we become more into somatic practices which to me is really about being aware and being with the world as it is the more that happens, the more we can get into the situation he's just talking about. And so for me, for example, I become that village and I recognize the pressure put on me by the situation and also recognize it has to be that way. And so how can I be in this situation as best as I can, navigating these different forces, be it cultural, be it psychological, be it whatever, and saying, okay, I'm going to have to take this hit right now, this wind gust, but do I have to be a solid or can I move around and how can I also bring other things in so that there can be more of this flowing? Well, we can't do that when we're all stuck in fear or worry or disassociation. So the more we have these practices, in my experience it's not that it makes it easier. In fact, in some way it makes it harder, because we see more and there's more, and the things are always there but we haven't seen them. So now we're seeing more, which at first is, oh, it's hard. But oh, to actually respond differently. So that's one thing I just want to tie in.

Speaker 2:

The other, I think I'll quickly try to go in, because you mentioned this word twice, just from a somatic standpoint. So you mentioned something about, like people going to depth, or you had some very deep somatic moments, and I would just counter a little bit to say that for me there is no depth in somatics and that there because in order for there to be a depth, there has to be somewhere something measuring it. And that's what our ego tricks in. It loves to sort of say look at me, look how deep I've gone, look how far I've gone. But you know, as one of there was a professor of embodiment who I was, maybe I was working with at some point, maybe to write something, and you'd always get upset. He'd say, but what's the goal? Where's the end line? And but, mark, there is no goal. There are goals, there are sort of markers, but they're not really it, and the more we get there we see that there are. Other is because it's really just this it's both ever expanding and also somewhat nothing at the same time.

Speaker 2:

And so for me, when I like yes, to some extent there's a depth there, there's a depth of information. To some extent there's a depth there, there's a depth of information. But also, the trick is that when we're then in that depth, or when we think we're in that depth I don't know if I can fully tie it together in words you know, like when we're swimming in that depth, there is no depth, there's just the experience. I'm just here. There isn't look how deep I am, or all that sort of stuff. There's just, there's just life unfolding as it is, as as it is. Does that make some sense?

Speaker 1:

I love that and, as you were saying that, I was like everything you said I agree with and I was like that's interesting, that word deep for me I wonder if there's a different word I would use but it's this experience of like me below the neck, it's like the animal and what's interesting is it's like it's deep and yet it's not at all deep. It's like the animal. I'm a mammal, moving through life, doing things, saying things, and to me, I think there's a weight, maybe to it I don't know, I don't know, I'd have to explore that but yeah, what you just shared, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I love that you brought that piece to it. I love when there's ability. It's what I do in work is bringing people to their boundaries and then just for us, oh there are my boundaries, and then can we go a step beyond, because that's how boundaries expand, and not taking two steps, maybe even a half a step. So there was something about you that I said, hey, I can do that, but many of the people I didn't believe they could. So that's my way of sort of recognizing something in you. But also it's bringing into embodiment.

Speaker 2:

It's how not that any of our perceptions are real, they're real to us, but how are we perceiving things? And what is that information telling us? And there's so much information that if we don't bring it into that top brain and analyze it but we just sit with it, it's the way people speak, the way they move, the way they sit, all that sort of stuff is tons of information happening beneath the cortex and when we can kind of in tune with it, holy shit, we can learn so much. And from a coaching or for me as a body worker, whatever the hell I am, that's where the depth is is, the more I become regulated in myself, the more I can see again dysregulation. What is dysregulation? But a form of regulation it's regulating around the thing that it perceives the more we can see those sort of responses which actually allow us to remove them or help them. We don't remove them, we help the person remove them if and when it's the time for it. So that's my closing.

Speaker 1:

I love that closing, except I don't want to close there because I have so many the term when I use the term parasocial relationship. So like I think of how people know taylor swift, right, taylor swift is everywhere in the news right now social media news, at least I don't know, I know, I know of her.

Speaker 1:

I don't, I don't know very much determined that they know her, they know her motives, they know her ideals and like, had a conversation or heard her outside of performing and they're like, well, and there's all these, and it's like whether performance is a pretend, whether her performance is authentic or not. There's never been a direct relationship, but I think more and more people's relationships to each other, but even to themselves, I think I've met people where I think I don't know, like I don't know if you're here with me, I don't know if you know you. There's like this weird emptiness and it almost feels like I'm watching them on social media but not actually knowing them, or like there's not a relationship going on.

Speaker 2:

And I think Well, you can't have a relationship through social? Well, it's not true. You can't have a direct relationship through social media because there's a, there's something in between. The other thing is it's it's all performative. I try to. If anyone looks on my youtube, you'll find relatively horrible videos, because I was trying to say how I found so much performance and, from a somatic standpoint, that wouldn't be it. So I was trying to find a way of not performing while also not not performing Right, and it didn't. It didn't work, but it was an effort I tried.

Speaker 2:

So there's there's naturally even even to some extent, you and I in this talk, we're in a bit of performance. Now, as we get to know each other more, some of that performance will will go down, but there's a naturally occurring thing with it and, yes, we can also be. I think this is kind of what you're saying we can be in performance with ourselves. We can even in some way learn that and that becomes our natural way of being. But it's not. It's a learned response which creates a disconnection, which maybe is sometimes where you see people when they seem like they're not there, although the other part of the reason they might not be there is they might not feel safe or be perceiving safety from you or from others.

Speaker 2:

So this client I worked with, she came in and after two years I was like what's different? And she said no joke. She said I finally decided that you're not a perv. And I was like cool, two years, it took two years. So she wasn't, she wasn't scared of me. In fact, early on in session she said it's not you I'm scared, if it's the use that came before you.

Speaker 2:

So she's seeing me, but she's not seeing me. She's responding to perceptions, understanding all that sort of stuff in there, and there's for me, there's nothing I can do about that, except be myself, have compassion, sit with it and, in some way, hope, although I don't think hope is the right word. At some point this may shift, and it did, and it has and as she's become more comfortable. But her checking out, I'm not looking at that saying why is she checking out? Because I'm never going to figure it out. It's not that I don't care, I don't love that phrase, but it's like I'm not that concerned with it because it'll come later, if it does come. Instead, for right now, can I meet the checking out and maybe come one step in or have them become a little bit more aware. But in some regard we want them checking out because them checking out is has served in some way or another, and so we want to keep that on. But again, we can go on.

Speaker 1:

I think that's actually a beautiful place where I can, finally, I keep saying I'm going to wrap it up, and then I'm so bad at doing that because I just love this conversation. But I think that's the heart of somatics is a relationship to what's happening, without trying to force it into something or force it into a certain container or even force it into a specific movement of like you're safe, you're safe, you're safe and it's like well, her body actually doesn't perceive safety right now. So you saying that might actually bypass or gaslight her out of her experience. Even well-intentioned, you're trying to make her feel better, even if she doesn't feel good. So I think somatics is such a powerful medicine or practice or you know, again, people are like it's this new thing and it's like Nope, it's been around forever. It's more popular. I think it was around before language existed, before people used it as a theory, as a practice. It's just, I think it's the difference of being human.

Speaker 1:

I think it's coming back to more humanity.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the issue is that now there's like three other things I want to say, but we'll take more time. I guess I'll say quickly, just because you mentioned a word that I find, as far as the gaslighting, the issue it's really tricky here is that in some regard, regard, there is a gaslighting perceived but there isn't necessarily a gaslighting happening. So the person is perceiving there's no gas in the tank and what you're trying to kind of inform them, and so a part of them can actually get on board, but a part of them doesn't believe it, and so I struggle a bit with, like a lot of times I'll leave that. A lot of times my wife will say you're gaslighting me and bit with. Like a lot of times I'll leave that. I'll say a lot of times my wife will say you're gaslighting me and I'm like no, I'm actually I have no intention for that. I'm I'm trying to get you to see something that I don't believe you can perceive yet and I believe to be true. And when you can see that, but until that person, until that becomes that way and similar, until people experience what we're talking about, we're gaslighting this whole thing, but then then they, they, they get it and and so if people hate this talk at first, well, they wouldn't have listened this far. But if they do hate this talk at first, just say that you know what, cool, and maybe at a later point recheck in, because there's lots of stuff.

Speaker 2:

I one of my uh, you know I'll keep going quickly one of my favorite books that has a lot to do with somatics. Actually, the first time, first time I read it, I couldn't finish it. I hated it. The second time I read it, I liked it more, but I thought, well, the author is still. I didn't like it at first, he's so pretentious. And then, the second time, I said he's still kind of pretentious, but the book's good. And the third time I read it this book and this guy's an awesome, he's so awesome but he never changed. He was the same person when he wrote it. Every time I read it he's the same person. All that changed was how I perceived it, and I wasn't at a place where I could have perceived it, because it was deeply somatic and I wasn't there. I was deeply.

Speaker 2:

What book was it. It's called Spacious Body. I think it's called Adventures in Somatic Ontology. It's called Spacious Body. I think it's called Adventures in Somatic Ontology. It's by a rolfer named Jeff Maitland. Another time I'll go in and talk about him. He's passed away two years ago but really helped open my mind to various things. But yeah, so that's sort of that thing about gaslighting. All right, All right. Yeah, we're good.

Speaker 1:

It's one of those words that it's overused and some people are using it to describe a different experience than what other people are using it for.

Speaker 2:

Right, which we can say both about gaslighting and somatics.

Speaker 1:

Right, andrew, I loved this conversation. I feel like you and I could probably talk for hours, so I'm literally just going to cut us off Thank you so so much for being on the podcast and I'll drop some of our like you mentioned so many resources. I'm like I'm gonna need a whole PDF of all your books, which I just love. Thank you so much for this conversation. It was so good and I'm hoping, as people listen to it, we covered like a lot of ground. Like I was sitting here, just like you know so much, like I feel like I learned a ton from you today, even if you just took one piece of this and just kind of turned it over in your mind.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, just one piece, hopefully. Just one, yeah, and if people are interested you'll have contact. I mean, I meet generally more in person because I think the body is a being in physical presence, can give more information of sorts. But I also do stuff online with people, so you know they're interested as ways of finding stuff. But it's there's so many I don't want to sell, I just want to have people find information.

Speaker 1:

I can resonate with that Awesome. Thank you so much, Andrew.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, dude.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Make sure you have subscribed below so that you see all of the upcoming podcasts that are coming soon. I hope you take today's episode and you take one aha moment, one small, tangible piece of work that you can bring into your life, to get your hands a little dirty, to get your skin in the game. Don't forget to take up audacious space in your life. If this podcast moved you, if it inspired you, if it encouraged you, please do me a favor and leave a review, send an episode to a friend. This helps the show gain more traction. It helps us to support more moms, more women, and that's what we're doing here. So I hope you have an awesome day, take really good care of yourself and I'll see you next time.

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