How Jaw Tension Reveals Pelvic Patterns with Serena Gold

What if the place you feel pain is not the only place asking for your attention?

In this episode, Ailey sits down with somatic sexologist and pelvic care specialist Serena Gold to explore what becomes possible when we begin seeing the body as an interconnected whole. Together, they consider how pain and numbness can carry information that is easy to miss when symptoms are treated in isolation.

Serena shares the fascinating relationship between the jaw and pelvis, offering a different way to understand tension and the patterns our bodies hold over time. The conversation invites us to become curious about what the body may be communicating before immediately trying to make a sensation disappear.

They also explore the role of scar tissue in healing, including the places where sensation may feel absent altogether. Serena offers a powerful reframe: numbness itself is a sensation. Rather than seeing disconnection as evidence that the body has stopped communicating, it can become another place from which we begin listening.

Ultimately, Ailey and Serena invite us to approach the body with greater curiosity, recognizing that healing may begin not by focusing more closely on one part, but by noticing the relationships that have been there all along.

In this episode:

• 2:57 Defining Embodiment As Home
• 8:41 Pain, Safety, And The Psoas
• 10:02 Why Jaw Mirrors Pelvis
• 18:58 Botox, Relief, And Disconnection
• 24:06 Head Carriage And Vagus Regulation
• 29:28 Scar Tissue Changes The Whole System
• 35:51 Internal Scars And Skilled Support
• 49:39 Slow Devotion And Real Integration
• 58:52 Where To Begin With Self Touch
• 1:03:23 Serena’s Offers And Closing Reflections

You can read the full transcript here.

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Transcript

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Ailey Jolie 0:49

Welcome to In This Body a podcast where we dive deep into the power of embodiment. I'm your host, Aile Shalee, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life away from the wisdom within your very own body. The podcast In This Body is a love letter to embodiment, a podcast dedicated to asking important questions like how does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And helping collective embodiment all over the course of our chair. Join me for more consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own body. This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Alaja Lee. Welcome back to another episode of How to Be in This Body with Me, Aleia Jolie. Today my guest is Serena Gold. Serena Gold is a somatic sexologist and pelvic care specialist based in Austin, Texas. For more than 15 years, she's worked with women, men, and couples at the place where the pelvis meets the nervous system. She is trained in scar remediation with Ellen Heed and known online as the mistress of the body. In this conversation, we start at the jaw and end at the root. Serena teaches in real time how to work with your own masseter muscle and why the jaw mirr the pelvis too. We talk about scar tissue, the kind you can see and the kind you can't see, and about what it takes to keep showing up in a body that's gone numb. Serena also takes us into the bones, the ancestors, and what she calls the unseen. Serena and I have walked strangely parallel roads, and you'll hear this in the next hour as we both disclose pieces of our own personal experience and what's influenced the relationship that we have with our bodies. I hope you enjoy this episode of How to Be in This Body with Me, Aleisurely.

Defining Embodiment As Home

Ailey Jolie 2:58

What does being in your body mean to you?

Serena Gold 3:08

Which really just feels like it's this journey and this learning to really inhabit ourselves, inhabit the flesh, inhabit our hips, know our bones, our structure, our shape, which yes is malleable, but you know, really have this home to house the soul that we are. And I really see the body as the invitation for soul evolution and expansion. And I believe that everything is experienced through our body first. And when we have that deep relationship with ourselves through our flesh, I find that we we really get to live full out in this life.

Ailey Jolie 3:47

If you feel comfortable, I would love if you could share maybe some personal experiences or even professional experiences, if you would like, that have led you to the understanding of embodiment that you have today as a way of the listener getting to know you, but also your body's experience.

Serena Gold 4:07

Yeah, most definitely. As I'm sure so many of you can relate, I've been on quite the journey with my own body and with all of the different parts of me. But so much of my life and my story and journey has really shaped, as you called it, like the embodiment of who I am now. And there's obviously been lots of pivots in there, but I think some of my bigger moments for me always had to do with different pain presentations in my body. And the first one that happened for me when I was quite young, I was about 16. I had PSOAS surgery on my hip. And at that time, I was a tennis player, and I was absolutely overtraining, although I did not know what that meant at the time. And there was some abuse, both physical and emotional. And I tried all of the different modalities, um, Western, eastern, and eventually I went under the knife and had surgery there, and they cut the muscle because in theory they wanted it to heal back longer. And it did work well, but I what I know about the body now and in hindsight, I don't think that was necessary. You know, it was actually a response and reaction to the environment that I was in. No one ever asked me in any of these modalities that I went to said to me, you know, do you feel safe? How is your home life? What's happening in all of these different areas? What are the relationships like with your family or with your caregivers or with authority? And that was really the type of support that I needed. And what I know now about the body and the SOAS is that the SOAS is so deeply connected to the core essence of who we are. And it's so connected to our sense of self or self-trust, belonging, safety. And it's also the connection to the earth, and it gives us, you know, the ability to move forward or to pivot. And so that was a huge, huge experience for me in my life. And although the surgery was effective and that I stopped having the type of pain and clicking that I was dealing with back then, it's something that I still rub up against in my life. When, for example, if I'm stressed or overwhelmed or in fear or anything like that, right? If I'm really stretching myself outside of my comfort zone, the patterns that my body would take up space in back then and really like the way that my body would brace or tighten, I know now that it can talk to me in that way. And it's not something that, you know, is bad or broken or anything like that. And there's so many different practices and tools that I have now to know how to hold myself and as you say, be in this body before any type of bracing pattern happens. And yeah, that experience just really led me down the rabbit hole of the body. And my, you know, one of the frames that I hold through the methodology of Stream, which stands for scar tissue remediation and management, is that pelvic health is whole body health. And we look at biochemistry, biomechanics, the nervous system, scar tissue, and the psyche with emotional wellness. And through that, it's really, we really look at the intersection of all of those domains and how they each talk to and inform the next. And I bring that forward because for me in my journey, it was like I was bumping up against all this resistance and pain and challenges in my own life and body in all of those domains. And so my work was really trying to figure out each issue that I was dealing with in my body until I had this really big picture, like, you know, what I like to say is like the whole puzzle. And I find that that is where we get to really make big systemic change in our lives and bodies when we actually look at the body as a whole piece rather than isolating it and going to one person for food and lifestyle and detox and then somebody else for biomechanics. And okay, I'm gonna go see this practitioner to do my labs. It's like, yes, that that may give you so much information and it might move the needle. It's not that any of those don't work, but I do find that it's a it's a different way of looking at the body when we actually see it as a whole piece, you know, like one big piece of fascia with so many different pieces that sure you can isolate, but I don't think we get to really see see all of it when we separate it like that.

Pain, Safety, And The Psoas

Ailey Jolie 8:41

So could you share a little bit more around how pelvic health is whole body health, how they are connected, what maybe the pelvis tells us about the rest of the body. Um a piece of information about me that leads to this question as someone who's had a lot of reproductive surgeries. It was no surprise to my gynecologist at least, and I'm quite blessed that I had someone who's open-minded or aware, or I don't know if even open-minded is the right word, more informed than just medical system in her training. But she was so curious about my jaw and my TMJ. So when they found a benign tumor in my jaw, she was like, that actually makes sense because there's a mirroring, and she was able to educate me on those two things. And so I would love if you feel comfortable to dive into how is pelvis health, how is the health of the pelvis related to the rest of the body? How does it mirror other places in our body? And you can go into as much juicy detail as you like because I know you have lots of wisdom on this topic.

Serena Gold 9:45

Yeah, it's it's so important. And I I love that you got to have a doctor that pointed to that because it is such information that most of us don't know, right? Or we haven't put together until our bodies ultimately sometimes ask us to to recognize the connection.

Why Jaw Mirrors Pelvis

Serena Gold 10:02

But, you know, if you if you cut the body in half, so to speak, or fold the body in half is a better way of saying it, there's quite the mirrored relationship between the hips and the mouth. If there's tension and tightness in the jaw, it's absolutely gonna be mirrored in the pelvis. So there's, like you said, an experience, there's such a connection there. If we are tightening and grinding our teeth at night and really bracing the jaw and tense there, again, it's gonna reflect what's happening in the pelvis. So one of my teachers likes to say that the masseter muscles are really responsible for the masks that we wear and the identity that we hold. And the masseter can really be responsible for or hold rather, like what we see but don't say. So as we live and as we experience things, maybe we there's difference of opinion, or we see a situation that we don't agree with. So yeah, if you're if you're in the world and you're having these experiences where maybe you're bumping up against stuff and the reaction is to hold it in, you're gonna tighten and clamp down. So the maseters can hold so much, so much tension, but also so much information. And it can also be a place where we can have so much release. I've uh when I got into pelvic care, one of the first things that so many of my teachers taught me, one of them specifically Ellen Heed, was to really start at the upper pole, meaning the neck, the head, the shoulders, the jaw. And I've experienced this in my own sessions where when you start there, like the whole body actually really unwinds and unravels. So doing different cranial holds up at the head can really downregulate you and you know, stimulate the vagus nerve and give you a really big state change that it can really actually open the body to be ready to receive pelvic care or pelvic touch, whether it's hands-on and hands-in. But when we go straight to the pelvis, often the body's not ready as it shouldn't be, right? There has to be this level of safety and connection and all of that. So, you know, as for your question, the relationship between upper and lower, it's it's so big. And I find that when we can start to really be aware of our daily movements, our gestures, the the structures and the like the postures we hold and we breathe into the jaw and speak more of our truth and really come into more of an authentic expression, it it really does change the tissues of our entire body.

Ailey Jolie 12:40

How can you, you've named some ways, but how can you work with the masseter in a way that it impacts the rest of the body?

Serena Gold 12:48

Mm-hmm. I'll share that and I'll I'll share one story too, because I kind of hear the invitation for them and they're fun. Um I once had a bodywork session where we were doing different modalities and I was having some tension in my back, and he was really trying to get into my erectors and into my rhomboids and you know, work with my spine. And I was so guarded, you know, I just I didn't, my body just didn't want to open. And eventually he's he made his way up to the jaw because I was saying, I think there's things in my jaw here. And so he went up to the jaw and we did a lot of, we did some intra-oral work, which I can share with you about. And I just felt my entire back body release. Like it just, it just melted open. And inside of myself, I'm like, yeah, this is this is why we need to start at the head for sure, and really work with the A and S before we go into any of that. So I like to share that story because I think that a lot of times if we're trying to get into the place where we actually are having pain, the body sometimes doesn't want to let you in. And there's other places that you can work with that actually help, you know, that domino effect and actually get things downstream. So intraoral work is so, so good. And you can do so much of it on your own. One of the ways that I like to teach people to do it is um first by doing external maceter work. So if you clench your jaw, you'll feel the maseter right at the edge of your jaw and then go up towards your cheekbone. So you can feel around and just notice how tense or pliable or supple your tissues are. You might notice a difference side to side as well. It's totally normal. We tend to hold a little bit more on one side than the other. And what I do notice in people is that we can often have a lot of awareness of one side, but the other side is generally tighter. I know I have that too. I see you nodding your head. Yeah. Yes. Um, so I like to start with the external for the same reasons that I just named. You really want to start on the most outside layers with a lot of love and presence and care. And if and when you do maseter work at home, I would actually recommend really come into coming into some sort of down regulation process before you do. You know, it could be a body scan, some breath work, different types of breath, maybe laying on a PEMF mat, a bath, a sauna, but something to really just drop your system down because your tissues are going to be so much more accessible that way. So I like to actually start at the upper part of the maseter. And I'll use my thumbs. Sometimes I'll use my knuckles. Generally, when I'm doing this work on myself, I'll do both at the same side, uh, same time. So I'll start up at the cheekbones and I will take my sweet time, almost 60 seconds, going all the way down to the jaw. And it's a very small surface area. So 60 seconds can feel long, which is good. You want to go slow. You can't go too deep. You just you can go fast, too fast, but not too deep. So I like to do three to five strokes this way. And when you do this downward motion on your massers, really make sure that your jaw is open and relaxed. You can leave a little part between your teeth, between your mouth. And I also really encourage sound. Sound is gonna be really huge to move anything there and you know, work with your own body. It's quite a negotiation process to see like how deep you can push in while your uh jaw really like opens and receives that without bracing any other parts of the body. So it's like finding that sweet spot of riding the edge. And then after you do the external work, you can move to one side. Um, it's your own mouth, so you don't need to use gloves, but if you'd prefer to, you can use any types of nitrile or latex. And you can take your index finger and you're gonna slide it along your upper jaw, like along your upper teeth. So you're gonna slide your finger all the way back to the back pocket of your masseter, and you're gonna hold there. It's a lot of holding, presence, sounding. And I've held here for sometimes like eight minutes or more. I had a client immersion not too long ago where we were doing internal jaw work, and she's we were there for like an hour, and I was I was in one side for probably 10 minutes or more, and she was having such a beautiful release of trembling and um shaking and all involuntary. So you'll do that on on that one side, and then what I like to do is actually get into the deeper muscles, the pterygoid back there, and I use the pinky. So you're gonna go in the same way, you're gonna slide your finger along your teeth on that upper jawline, and then get right back into that pocket. So your pinky is obviously a lot smaller, you can reach further back there, and you'll find that pocket. And as you breathe, you're gonna feel everything start to open, and your finger will get even further back. With the pterygoid one with the pinky, um, it's really helpful to actually encourage yourself to do a snore breath. So, like you would at night if if you snore, if you've ever felt that, but it'll actually help open the pockets a bit more. And then you can repeat that on the other side. And I generally see a very lifted cheek and so much more space, it feels like you just have a completely different jaw. And then when I'm working with clients or myself, I really like to bring awareness then down into the hips, into the pelvis, into your psoas, and you know, really have you recognize okay, what what, if anything, shifted in your hips? Does it change the way that your weight is distributed as you stand? You know, how is your spine tilted forward or backward? And yeah, really bringing awareness to the pelvic diaphragm.

Botox, Relief, And Disconnection

Ailey Jolie 18:58

The reason why I asked this question is because I am aware of how common it is to have Botox in the TMJ to release jaw pain. And I've also been someone who did that, and that head finding my benign tumor for a little bit longer than was needed because I wasn't having pain in my masseter anymore, and the pain was the sign that the tumor had grown. And so I asked this question because I wanted to hear a little bit more about the mastodor muscle, but also to open up a conversation around which you shared a little bit there in your answer around how important this muscle is, not only for our jaw, but the rest of our body, you start to speak about how it relates to the pelvis, but also if you feel comfortable speaking to what happens when we freeze it or we make we immobilize it. Um, as someone who has now gone through a lot of TMJ physio and has been a lot of time on cranial sacral. I don't have jaw pain anymore, tumor is still there. Um, and haven't had any since because of the protocol that my oral and malofascial surgeon put me on with physiotherapy and facials and cranial sacral and all of the things. And so I know that it's possible without Botox um to alleviate pain.

Serena Gold 20:19

Yeah. What a rich experience. Thank you for bringing that in. And wow, it's a huge testament to the work that you've done with yourself, obviously. But I think anytime that we're using Botox, I mean, I've been talking a lot about this on my own channels too. I don't think that, you know, it's not about shame or right, wrong or morality, but I do feel that we need to be asking ourselves the deeper questions about what the cost is and what's the come from? Like who is it for? What is it for? What is it shifting in our lives and in our relationships when we make those choices? And, you know, I think that it's I think that often, I mean, in your case, it sounds like there was literal pain, right? Where sometimes there isn't pain, but we're doing it for image or identity. But regardless of what the choice is, I think the effect in that way will always sort of be this some at some level a peat like a level of disconnection. A level of disconnection from the self. Like you said, Botox can freeze the muscle. And so it's creating a level of separation. It's creating intentionally this level of numbness to this part of us. And like I said in the very beginning, I really believe that the body is the place that we expand and evolve. Like that's the vehicle, especially as Volva-bodied people, as women. Like it's that's that's what the body, that's that's the experience that we're here for, is through the body. And so if we're freezing and using Botox for these parts of ourselves, I think that we're skipping over what the body and soul is asking us to actually look at, right? Like if there's pain there, well, why is there pain? Are we clenching? Okay, why are we clenching? When are we clenching? Is it in response to some anything? Is it a relationship? Is it old things that we're carrying that we never really got to feel and complete within ourselves? So I think that's a really big conversation that needs to happen. And I also really get that when we're in that level of pain, we want relief and we want it fast and we want it now. And as you probably experienced, I know I certainly have in my own life, it takes time to do it the other way, to do it the holistic, embodied, I suppose, way is what I'll call it. It takes time, it takes effort. Um, and from my viewpoint, it takes really looking at all of the domains, you know, what is what are we? Eating, what's our detoxification and drainage like? Um, what emotions and psychological and existential people pieces are coming into the conversation? How does our biomechanics affect that? And, you know, our head carriage, is it tilted forward? Is that impacting everything? So it's like all of these questions are things that we really need to look at. And if we're using talks, I think that we're really closing the door on the opportunity to know ourselves in a deeper way.

Ailey Jolie 23:10

I want to sit inside this moment for a breath because I know some of you listening have Botox in your body right now. And I do not want you to hear any of this as a verdict on you. I've had it too. You've heard me say that. For some people, it's considered a medical choice. It's used for chronic migraine and for jaw clenching. And for some bodies, it's the very thing that has made life livable again. And neither Serena nor myself are interested in passing any judgment on what you do or do not do with your body. What Serena is offering here is a question, not a rule and not a judgment. She's inviting you to ask, what is this choice doing in my life? And what might my body be trying to say underneath it? You can hold that question and still keep using Botox. Curiosity does not require you to change anything. It only asks you to stay in relationship with yourself while you choose. Let's get back to the conversation now.

Head Carriage And Vagus Regulation

Ailey Jolie 24:06

I'm going to be a bit biased and ask you a question around how our head carriage influences the rest of our body, our introception, inapproprioception. Again, and I say I'm a bit biased or maybe being a bit selfish. I asked this question because when I had my breast implants removed about six months ago and I went to physiotherapy, she was so adamant that the weight of my implants had been pulling my spine forward, and that that was the reason why I had had had polyps down my digestive system, why my I had back pain, why my jaw pain had developed. Like she was so adamant when she looked at my neck and there was no longer that weight there carrying me. So, and and now having gone through the physio and done the things, I think she was onto something. And it's something I would have never, ever thought about. And I don't think you have to have breast implants for this to be a part of your embodied experience. A lot of us are standing over our phones all day with our head in bunny positions, our computers, and all of these things. So I would love to talk about head carriage and how that ties into our overwhel being, overall sense of well-being, and also our introsception.

Serena Gold 25:17

Yes, this is such a rich question. I hope I remember all the things that I want to say. Uh, I too actually had breast implants for about nine years, and I got mine out, I think three years ago now. And I similarly, I went to network spinal, which is a type of chiropractic care, because I was having back pain and all of these different issues, which again, okay, so as history, right? Neck issue. So I went to network spinal and they did all of these x-rays, and they were like, your spine or your neck rather is curved in the complete opposite direction. Like it's going the other way. And eventually I got my implants out and I started to realize like, I think it's the weight of the implants that completely threw the weight of or through the weight of them, just threw my whole head carriage off and the curvature of my spine. And I'm not sure if you had a similar experience, but when I did get them out, it was, I mean, I still think my body is adjusting three years later because for me, I really needed to find my center. And I think metaphorically and literally, that was what I struggled with was being in my center as a human, as a woman, and knowing myself. And so getting them out, it was this whole reorganization of where am I in space? Where does my where does my body like lie? How does it hold itself? What is proper alignment for me? And also what is proper alignment without the lens of like Western biomechanics? Like, what is proper posture? You know, I think a lot of times we're trying to fit our body in a box in in the way the medical system has kind of said, like, you should look this way or be shaped this way. And I've been so blessed with such incredible teachers and body workers that are always encouraging and reminding me to really honor that this body and where it's at and the intelligence of the shape that it holds. And I get to pass that down to the women and the people that I work with. So I think for your question of the impact of uh forward head carriage so much. I mean, the vagus nerve again comes out on both sides of your occiput in the back of your head. And so if you are really struggling with this, with this head carriage tilt, I mean, the head is heavy, it's about 10 pounds, right? That's your if you're forward, your entire structure is compensating for the weight of your head. And if the circulation and flow of the vagus nerve isn't really operating properly, like if it doesn't have its full function and the blood flow isn't happening in circulation, you're going to be what I see limited in your range of regulation. So, what I notice often is that there's much higher levels of reactivity because you don't have the flexibility in your autonomic nervous system to downregulate. And so you kind of get stuck in this place I find of like anger and jumpiness and irritability. Uh, something that I also really like to say in terms of biomechanics, and I think it'll speak to your question, is that we have our emotions and our emotions create gestures. Our gestures create postures, and our postures create structures. And so if we are constantly in certain emotional states or repressing certain emotions, it's going to have again this domino effect down our body, and it's going to quite literally change the structure that we take and the shape that we hold. And that I find impacts what we attract and call in and the things that we experience in our life. And I think that we humans can can not always maybe consciously. I think, you know, as we deepen our own embodiment, we can do it more consciously. But there's also this unconscious, I think, calculation that happens when we meet another human and we're in somebody's essence and shape and the way that they move. And I think we can feel the emotions that are there or like underneath the surface, and we can kind of read that through the structure of the body.

Scar Tissue Changes The Whole System

Ailey Jolie 29:28

I loved what you said there about our gestures becoming posture and posture becoming structure. I, because I have listened to you on other podcast episodes, I know that you speak about scar tissue and how that also changes our posture and therefore our structure. And there are various different types of scar tissues, and there are lots that we do not think about or aren't aware of, or actually a type of scar tissue. And so I would love to get into a conversation with you around the impact of scar tissue, what it does to our posture and our gestures, and how we can work with scar tissue to have more mobility and ultimately change how we experience our body.

Serena Gold 30:11

Yeah, we need this information so much. And I'm so grateful for the women that out that are out there that have, you know, really pioneered this space and have stood for women's bodies because I can't tell you how many women find me when they hear me talk about scar tissue and are like, I've never even known this was a thing. I had my babies 15 years ago and I still have numbness in my belly, or I still can't, I don't have any sensation there. I've seen women who have 15 years or 12 years have had different bladder infections and bladder issues. And often, more often than not, it's because of the scar tissue that's there that they didn't even know, you know, you can remediate. And so I've had plenty of different surgeries. Like I said, my psoas, implants, explant, uh, ACL surgery, and and also knowing so many different types of humans that have had surgeries. But ask any of us, like, how much has has our doctors really talked about scar tissue? Not much. I think often they're talking about it from more of the topical surface level like image of it, like, okay, get scar strips, but that's not actually recognizing how deep scar tissue or unre unremediated scar tissue can impact the whole system that like you're speaking to. And like I said, the fascial network is one big sheath. And so it's if we if there's a scar in one place, it's kind of like this kink in the hose that actually uh interrupts the communication between all of the cells, and everything starts to pivot and move to accommodate those adhesions and that scar tissue. So, especially when we have scar tissue in the midline, that can really impact our ability for pleasure, the communication there, like our endocrine system specifically communicates in this midline. So there's so much though that we can do with scars. It doesn't matter how old the scar is. You can work with castor oil, which is a huge thing. Um, it permeates the tissue and hydrates the fascia, unlike any other oil. Um, there's a book that's called The Oil That Heals. I highly recommend it. It's all about castor oil. It's such an old remedy, and I think that it's so underestimated in what it can do and all of the different uses that you can use it, like for parasites, for hair, for skin. Um, you know, I use it when I cut my face and gouache, I use it and work with it so much in the sauna, especially in my past when I was working my own scar tissue because the heat allows the castor oil to penetrate even more. So if you're dealing with scar tissue again, it doesn't matter how old the scar is. It does matter if it's newer. If you have a new, newer scar, if you had surgery or an injury, you do want to make sure that you wait 12 weeks because the castor oil is so potent that it'll actually reduce the inflammation so drastically. But when you're in that initial healing window for that first, those first three months, the first 12 weeks, you want the body to actually go through its inflammatory process and lay everything down in the way that it needs to. So make sure that you wait those 12 weeks. But after that, um, try working with with castor oil. You want to make sure that you can um really pinch and lift your scar, that it's not adhered to any different deeper layers. Uh, you want to work against the grain when it comes to the scar. So if it's a horizontal scar, you want to work vertically. Uh, you can roll it, you can pinch it, you can do circular motions. And I would also say always start with holding. Always start with holding and presence and attuned listening touch. It might feel like nothing has happened if that's maybe newer for you to do with your own body, but really just meet it with a lever of curiosity and and openness to really hear like what is here. I know for me in my own journey with my hip and my knee. I really just wanted and needed somebody to put their hand on that part of my body and just be with me in that. And that the sessions that I've done in respect to my scar tissue there has been so revolutionary and then it's really profoundly shifted the relationship to those parts of my body, just knowing that that somebody was there to witness and be with me in that level of pain. So holding castor oil, rolling it, working against the grain. I also really recommend castor packs. Yes, you can do them on your liver and on your womb. Definitely recommend that, but you can also wrap your scars. So when I had my ACL surgery, I would wrap my knee in castor oil in a castor pack. I would often do that in the sauna as well. I recommend sleeping with it because the more time that you actually have the castor pack on, the better.

Ailey Jolie 35:01

A quick word from me before we go any further. Castor oil is one of the oldest remedies we have. And the books Raina mentioned, the oil that heals comes out of the Edgar Case tradition of healing. I want to name that because the research on castor oil for scar, tissue, and fascia is a bit thin. That doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It's definitely worked on my body. Which leads us to a more important point. There can be generations of practice and reported experience and very little evidence of impact on a clinical trial. That doesn't mean something's not effective. It just means the Western model hasn't investigated it fully yet. So if you're drawn to trying castor oil, especially on a newer scar, make sure that you do a small patch test on your skin, that you speak to a doctor or a surgeon first, and that you do your own investigating. Back to

Internal Scars And Skilled Support

Ailey Jolie 35:51

Serena now. We've talked about now external scars, but I am also curious about internal scars. As someone who's had a lot of reproductive-based surgeries, lots of surgeries on my uterus, there are no scars on the outside. And so I would love to just hear a little bit about how you work with scar tissue that is internal.

Serena Gold 36:12

Yeah. There's so much, again, that we can really do. I think there's a lot we can do with our own selves and body. And I also feel that the experience of working with an attuned, skillful practitioner for internal work is just next level. I mean, the level of vulnerability and trust that needs to be there can be so big in the relational healing space, first and foremost, especially if we have had a lot of Western or like medical interventions. There's such a repair that needs to happen with the body. Also, especially if we've dealt with a lot of anesthesia, because we just, I mean, it's so confusing and disorienting to the body, which again isn't a conversation that we have often, but it's like time just stops and the end, like what is actually happening when we're under. So even the the whole initiatory, initial process of going towards internal work is so big. Uh, so there's a lot that a lot of I think steps that need to happen before doing that. And when you actually get to the internal work, I find that it can be so profound because of truly how quick things can shift. And I'm I'm curious, and I'm sure that you've probably felt that. But again, like I said, it doesn't matter how old the scar is. I do find that things can shift in one session. For example, I had a client, the one that I referenced earlier, um, and she's given me consent to share these stories. But she again had no sensation and feeling in her lower belly from C-section scars and has had years of bladder issues and painful, uh, painful penetration, all of these different pain presentations. And from what I saw and experienced with her, it was totally in respect to her scar tissue. But in one four-hour session, she regained sensitivity. She walked away with all these different, again, tools of how to work with it on her own and to continue to loosen everything there. So the internal work, you again can use castor oil for. Um, but it depends on where the scarring is. I like to really set my clients up for success for internal work by doing their home play or their homework before coming to session. So, really, again, looking at what's the quality of their health, their detoxification. Are they doing castor packs? Are they doing coffee enemas? Um, what's their nutrition like? Are there is their tissue hydrated? Because if that's there, then the foundation is set to actually really do pretty, pretty profound again, internal and scar tissue remediation work. So for the internal stuff, it really depends on what's going on. But um, and it again, it depends. It could be endometriosis, it could be different bracing patterns from labor and delivery. There can be different twisting patterns or reorganization of the uterus, um, bladder stuff. Uh, even internal anal work is really big for scar tissue as well, because sometimes you can't get to certain things vaginally, but you can get to them uh from rectally. So when I'm doing anal mapping as well, I'm working with the coccageal muscle, the tailbone, and the tailbone, you know, can move. So sometimes it'll pull to the left or to the right or tuck under. So I'm really looking and working with all of that. And this applies to men as well. I've worked with men. I have a client uh who had prostate surgery and can sometimes have retrograde ejaculation, and all of that is a result of scar tissue. So doing internal prostate work to actually hydrate everything in there, use lube shooters, but with castor oil to hydrate all of those tissues and really get everything pliable, and then doing lots of different um, you know, remediation with your hands and sometimes with tools.

Ailey Jolie 40:07

A small clarification from me here: retrograde ejaculation after prostate surgery is usually understood medically as a change in the muscles and nerves at the neck of the bladder rather than scar tissue alone. So if this is your experience, a urologist is the right first conversation and body work can be so helpful alongside that care rather than in place of it. It's so important when we're dealing with the body to ensure that we have a balanced perspective, that we see both sides, and that we engage with different modalities of healing and medicine so that we can feel in our own bodies the ones that feel best for us. Let's jump back in now. You've named a few ways there that scar tissue can impact us that probably are not easily associated with a scar. So I would love to hear from you some other ways that scar tissue can impact our physical well-being or our mental health that we commonly wouldn't think of.

Serena Gold 41:09

Kind of reminds me of the head carriage position question. It's like we don't often recognize how much a small or a large scar can actually impact the whole system and how it can inhibit communication. So I think that it can impact our pleasure, our ability to turn on. It can impact our nervous system. Like, can we really regulate? Do we have flexibility? I think that depending on where the scar is, it can really impact that way. It can impact our movement, our flexibility, our mobility. Um and I think the what I'm about to say will kind of be like the opposite to what your question. But I think one of the most challenging domains to really have profound shifts in is biochemistry. Our food, our detoxification, and the way that we eat. Because I find that our food is so deeply connected to one our food schema. I also find that the the mother really shows up there because it comes into like nourishment comes up, fullness, um, satiation. Like these are really big things that arise, but I find that we can really work with them so deeply with food. And so I bring that forward in respect to scar tissue because I think that one of the things that we don't realize is how much our food and our lymph is impacting our scar, like lymphatic drainage and our ability to have everything flow is absolutely going to keep our scar tissue from continuing to proliferate and create. So we can do all the scar tissue remediation work we want, but if our biochemistry is not on point and we're not draining and detoxifying and uh hydrating our tissues, it's we're like pushing a boulder uphill. So both of those have a really strong relationship that we need to kind of go at from both angles. And that's where, again, this lens of pelvic health as whole body health and looking at all of these domains is so important because I find that when we have big brain presentations and we're we're trying to reach for relief and things quote unquote don't work, it's not that these protocols or these methods don't work, but we have to look at what's the order that we're doing them. And are we really giving the body enough time and looking at all of these different areas? So when I work with people, I'm always tracking for what's gonna move the needle the most. And it's kind of this spiral effect, like, okay, we're gonna do some work in biochemistry, then we'll do some work in biomechanics, then of course the psych in the emotional realm is going to come in, and then we can get deeper into the scar tissue, and then okay, let's apply a little bit more in the biochemistry realm and things start dislodging and things start moving. So the biochemistry piece is really a key ingredient to scar tissue.

Ailey Jolie 44:04

I would love to spend some time actually focusing on something that you said there. And so this question relies this question ties into the work that you do and when people come into your space because I am imagining or projecting that you have worked with people who feel like things are hopeless, that it will always be painful or nothing is going to change, or numbness is always going to be the sensation there. And I can deeply relay to someone who's had, again, lots of reproductive health surgeries and went through cervical cancer and had no sensations but absolute agonizing. Pain in one area and everywhere else was completely numb. I know how relentless I had to be in my own process of self-touch, but also working with someone and showing up again and again and again. And I know that that can be a really hard thing to do. So I would love, from your perspective, being the person in the room who's offering the support, if you have any wisdom for wisdom to share with people who are in that experience.

Serena Gold 45:12

Yeah, I love this question. Thank you for bringing this forward. It's so important to really tend to ourselves and our hearts in this place because this is where to me the existential comes in. It's like the question of our worthiness and our deservingness, and what is this life? And are we always going to live in this pain? And why is this happening to me and for me? And I do. I think we can get stuck there and loop, and it can feel really helpless and hopeless. I've absolutely felt that along my way. And I think the first thing that I would say is as a practitioner, because of this, this is really why I personally like to structure my immersions and containers in the way that I do. Like I do six-hour immersion days, I do five weeks all the way up to year-long containers, and I personally won't do single sessions. And the reason why I do it that way is because I think that when sometimes we are in that place of so much pain and we're reaching for relief, it can be so easy to kind of outsource the authority to somebody else, to outsource it to a doctor, to jump around from one practitioner to the next. And it's not to say that that wouldn't work, but this whole idea that I'm saying around seeing the whole puzzle and really looking at all of the layers and domains, like that's from what I've seen in my 15 years, that's the thing that actually moves the needle. That's what makes significant systemic change. And I don't think that we're gonna get there in the way that we want if we're jumping to practitioner to practitioner. So I think another, I think when we are jumping from practitioner to practitioner, that story of it's not working, see, I'm trying all of these things, like that's where that's when and where it gets triggered. So I've written about this on my stub stack. Like, I won't do single sessions, I don't do peak experiences. I'm in it for the long haul with you. Because while you might have big experience in one immersion, it is the integration that matters the most and the daily reps that you put in. And unless we can be in a co-creative agreement that says this is what we're committing to, this length of time, these are the things that you're coming in with. Yes, the body can change fast, but like the things that brought you to that configuration in the first place is going to take time to unravel and to reorganize and reorient. Like that, that's going to take time. And for me, I personally don't want to be a practitioner who gives you this peak experience and then puts you back into your life. And then things go back, like bounce back to where they were, and then that story of shit, it didn't work, can't comes up. So I think that I think that really setting yourself up for success around the idea of containment is huge. Uh, if you do want to go to multiple practitioners, great. Can you create the container for yourself in a way that supports your journey, where you can go slow, where you can really know that this process is going to take time. Miracles can happen in that time, 100%. But the daily, daily reps and devotion to self is where the biggest change is going to happen. So for anyone who's feeling that struggle, I think that, you know, self-compassion and the biggest piece is slowness to me. That's gonna be the pieces. I've learned this so much over my own life. But the slower we go, the better. The slower we go, the better. Again, even with the touch that I was describing, you can't go too deep, you can only go too fast. So if we can really move at the pace of our slowest parts and not override any of them, that's where the magic happens because we then aren't moving so fast fast and kind of leaving these like straggly little parts of ourselves behind, and then having to be like, oh wait, I'm now I'm here. Okay, wait, let me turn around and grab this one and grab this one. It's like, no, if you just walk one step at a time, super slow, integrating it every single step. You don't leave any parts of you behind. And I mean, really, we're gonna go faster that way.

Slow Devotion And Real Integration

Ailey Jolie 49:39

I would love to hear a little bit more about your immersions, the type of people that come to work with you, what you like to work with or support the most, and just dive in a little bit more into your practice.

Serena Gold 49:53

Thank you. I really see a range of different people. I see a lot of women who are postpartum. A lot of women find me around the piece of scar tissue. Um, I also work with men and I work with couples. And the immersion work is very bespoke and it's very immersioned. I feel like that's somewhat common language now, so I can bring it down to the tactile tangible a little bit more. But the what I see is that these six-hour immersions over time in a three or six month container, it really gives the body the time and space to go where it needs to go without the trepidation or awareness of like, oh shit, okay, we're gonna need to wrap up in 90 minutes. Can I go into this pocket of memory or recall? And will I have enough time to really go into all of it? And when you're in immersion-based containers, I do find the body, it does. It knows that it has time. And in these six-hour immersions, I mean, there's sometimes I'm doing body work for four hours or five hours. That's that's a lot of time on the table. Um, and sometimes we'll only get through the front body over those four hours because it's a combination of different modalities: cranial, shiatsu, rolfing, emotional mapping, like deep muscle meets the bone work, but it's also a lot of holding and being with and recognizing the narrative and the story, and sometimes provoking, provoking the body in a consensual way where you're, you know, where you want to brace, you can kind of say, like, okay, what is here, right? And the and you're in relationship to this person where you have permission to really go in in that way. And then there is often this emotional release when working with these muscles. So back to the question of who I work with and what shows up. I do think that a lot of women find me for scar tissue. And I've often heard that they're so surprised at what else comes through. I have a testimonial on my substack from a woman. She's brilliant. She's a psychosomatic therapist, and she came to see me for scar tissue. And I feel, and in her words, too, the biggest thing that she walked away with was reconciliation and union with the divine or with God, whichever way you want to look at it. But religion comes in a lot with my sessions, like deconditioning on programming from religion and culture and shame and guilt around our sexuality. Um, so a lot of what we do is working with connecting the heart to the sex, the sacred to sex, and really uniting those channels. Um, but yeah, really releasing shame in that way. So there's a lot of work with the unseen and the mother that I find comes up in session. And when we work at that core root level, which is the way that I see and relate to it, all of the other stuff becomes so much easier. Like it's then so much easier to do our coffee enemas and look at why we're eating the way that we're eating or why we're making certain choices. So um, I think that a lot of what we do is really connecting ourselves to our belonging and our wholeness. And then we do all of this other scar tissue work in there. So, yeah, does that answer your question?

Ailey Jolie 53:14

It does. Could you speak a little bit more to the relationship between the body and the unseen?

Serena Gold 53:21

Mm-hmm. That's one of my favorite pieces to talk about. I think something that I've been chewing on a lot lately is that what I see and notice is there's a particular flavor of exhaustion that comes when we're disconnected from the unseen. And the unseen can mean so many different things to you, but I'm talking about our ancestors, our lineage, um, the dead and God or spirit, again, whichever way that you relate to it. But I do think there's this flavor of fatigue that shows up when we're walking in a way that's disconnected from that because it's this, I find that it's this like heaviness of doing it all on our own. And there's a lot of efforting in that. So I like to work with the bones in this place and bring in the awareness of working with the unseen and working with our ancestors and all of the beings and people that have and animals that have been here before us, and uh, you know, settling and resting really into the bones. It's like the the bones are always holding us up without any effort, they're just they're there creating our shape and our boundary, and I feel deep connection personally to like the my mother line through my bones. So I think that the body is this beautiful portal to tap into what is unseen. And so when I think of being really in our feeling body and our sensory body, there is a level of like we're not really seeing in that we're feeling, we're sensing, right? We're like in our interior landscape. And I think that we can get so many different visions or we can get different information that's revealed to us through these different dimensions or like things land inside of us that I think we wouldn't generally have access to. And it makes me, it makes me also think of and bring in the conversation of psychedelics because I think plants are so useful for so many different situations and reasons. And in the work that I do, I feel really passionate about teaching people and providing the spaces for people to do that through the body without plants. And that's often what I the feedback that I get from clients when they got off my table is like that was the most trippy psychedelic experience I've ever had without without medicine. And I always find that so interesting because I think it's just the power of slowing down. It's the power of slowing down and breathing and feeling like we have somebody there as a tether when we go into those places and we really traverse like the waves of our body. But the water and the fascia I find has so much brilliance and intelligence that the mind can't really make sense of. But this is this is like what it means to actually be in the terrain and be in our own territory rather than thinking about it from the head. It's like, okay, so much, so many, so much somatic work or modalities these days, I think can be brilliant in the way that we try to think about it and relate to it, but there's still like we're still a little bit in the head. It's like, okay, are we actually getting into the terrain and giving ourselves the time to really do that? And I think that the connection to the unseen can happen there and and there's an exhale and a relief when we tap into that.

Ailey Jolie 57:01

Thank you for bringing in that piece because it's something that I'm quite passionate about when it comes to embodiment. It's really opening up to the unconscious, the divine source, whatever you want to call it. Um, there is a mystical component to embodiment, at least in my experience of being in the body. Before we close, I wanted to ask you if there's anything that we touched on today that you would like to circle back to.

Serena Gold 57:29

I think I would add to the last question and topic around the unseen. One of the things that I really like to talk about is working with our unconscious through our genitals. And again, one of my other mentors would always say, like, if you want to straight shot to God, like do anal work, anal map yourself, get to know your sphincters. You know, our we have two sphincters, our internal and our external. Our external is way more voluntary. We have conscious control over it, meanwhile, the internal sphincter is less voluntary. We can obviously train ourselves to relax and downregulate so that our internal sphincter can open and relax, but they're they're made of different types of muscle. And so there's so much connection to the unconscious when you work analysis with yourself, which is why I really enjoy anal mapping with people, because most of us have never mapped our pelvis, most of us have never had a true anatomy anatomy lesson to know the true terms of all of our different parts or to know our root. And that's to me what the anus signifies. Like it is so deeply connected to our core sense of who we are. And I find that we can really do that work with the unseen in that realm as well.

Where To Begin With Self Touch

Ailey Jolie 58:52

I have so many more questions, but I'll leave it there for today. Um my last question for you is if there is anyone listening to this podcast and they're unfamiliar with their body or that they know that they have some numbness, but things that we've spoken to about today speak their their curiosity or their interest. Is there a practice or a book or a person or a place that you would suggest they begin? Or maybe with themselves? Hmm.

Serena Gold 59:26

I would say starting with yourself. I think that's so much of what I stand for is really bringing our authority back to ourselves. And I also completely understand and believe that having like having somebody there walking with us to show us and kind of be a model to what that even looks and feels like is so important. But I think first and foremost, starting with you and starting with self-touch and getting curious and really meeting yourself with slowness and kindness, compassion, curiosity, and also recognizing that numbness is sensation. And generally speaking, I think, you know, numbness sometimes can be a dissociative thing, but I but I also understand that it can be physical, right? Are there adhesions in the tissue? What is causing the numbness? But can we be curious and bring presence to where we're feeling pain or where we're feeling numbness and trust the information that comes in? And I think an example of that that comes into my head is like, okay, if we're feeling tension um in our pelvis, can we bring our hands there? And in being with that, does another part of the body call our attention? And can we trust that intuitive hit and can we move our awareness there and maybe put our other hand on that spot? Um, so self-touch is huge. And in terms of practitioners, I feel that uh stream practitioners are truly one of the ones that I would always recommend. And they hold the framework that I'm speaking to, which is all of the domains of pelvic health and whole body health. So there is a stream directory. Um, you can Google that, S-T-R-E-A-M. Uh, I also would really recommend working with experienced sexological bodyworkers so that you can really do um erotic exploration and erotic liberation and really map your own body and work with your own desire and your own pleasure. Sexological body work is one-way touch, and it's all about you exploring again your erotic turn-on with another that can support you and ask questions and bring curiosity. But for some examples of what you could work on there, uh scar tissue is for certain some of them. Um, but also if you have patterned ways of being in your eroticism, like let's say you only um ejaculate or get off in one way, you can work with a sexological bodyworker to really expand yourself. One of the things we didn't talk about was the erotic blueprints, but you know, sometimes we have different blueprint maps and we can expand out of that if we so choose to, if we want to play in different realms. So sexological bodyworkers are really great at that. Um, they're really also great for exploring different types of um orgasmic exploration. So oftentimes I work with women who have only ever had clitoral, uh, clitoral orgasms, or they really want to have cervical orgasms, or um sometimes they can only have an orgasm if they're face down, right? So all of these things are are things that you can work on with sexological bodyworkers and potentially some stream practitioners. And I do think that pelvic care is so underrated and something that I feel we all as women can and get to experience. And I think it's old as time, and it's something that we've been so disconnected from because it can be just so taboo, and we can often, especially because of our culture, look at our genitals or look at sexuality and say, oh, that's supposed to be for behind closed doors. And I I disagree. I think that sexuality is relational and yes, it's it's self with self. Um, but we can do our self-with-self work with others and in community and really good, solid spaces.

Serena’s Offers And Closing Reflections

Ailey Jolie 1:03:23

Thank you so much for those additions, but also all your time and expertise that you shared today. We will have all of your information in the show notes, but I want to ask you if you have anything upcoming you'd like the listener to know about.

Serena Gold 1:03:37

Thank you. Yeah, I'm gonna be launching my mystery school again here at the end of this year. So I'll have an in-person three-day event here in Austin in the beginning of November. And then my mystery school will relaunch in 2027 in the beginning in January, and that'll be um a six-month school to really become the mistress of your body and to go into the true integration of all of the pieces that I spoke to. So doing this work self with self, but with other women and really learning how to how to be with the body and be with other bodies in these ways.

Ailey Jolie 1:04:17

There's a moment in this conversation that I've continued to go back to. And this is the moment that Serena said that numbness is sensation. In my clinical work, I meet numbness all the time, and it's so often spoken about as absence, as the place where feeling ran out. Serena's frame really matches the frame that's presented in somatic experiencing. Somatic experiencing talks about how numbness is the nervous system doing something actively with enormous intelligence. The nervous system is holding a door closed because at some point closing that door was the safest available option, which means the question is never how do I make myself feel something? The question is, what is my body protecting and has it noticed that circumstances have changed? That reframe changes the pace of everything. It's why Serena kept returning to slowness and why I want to say clearly that her instinct matches what we know clinically about titration, the practice of approaching sensation in small doses, so small that the system can stay present for them. As Serena said, you can't go too deep, but you can go too fast. Serena offered that as practice wisdom, and it could serve almost word for word as the clinical definition of trauma-informed touch as well. I want to add one thing in here as a clinician. Some of what we walk through today lives in the world of tradition and transmission, teacher to student, hand to hand, and some of it lives in the world of trials and evidence. And those two worlds often overlap less than either likes to admit. You don't have to choose a side, but you do have to stay discerning, bringing your curiosity to castor oil and your questions to your doctor. And that is something I am so passionate about when it comes to different avenues of healing. There are so many different techniques, modalities, practitioners. And I had the opposite experience to many of the clients that I work with. I grew up in a household with a very sick sibling, and the medical system did not bring them healing. And because of that, my mother changed our entire world when I was about four and a half into a very alternative world with seaweed wrapped alfalfa sprouts and special pH water. A lot of those things that we would call woo woo. As a child, we were absolutely my normal because when the medical system was not able to support the healing of my sibling, my mother did the complete pendulum swing. And so I did not grow up believing that doctors had all of the answers. I had an experience of witnessing a woman go around and try different things and ultimately watching my sibling heal. I say this because I know that so many of you have not had this experience. You've had the experience of doctor has all the answers. I do what doctor does. If there's not evidence-based research, I don't do it. There's a lot of validity in the doctor and evidence-based research and protocols, but there's also a lot of validity and a lot of wisdom in learning how to listen to your body and learning how to slow down enough to see how you respond to different modalities, different treatment, different medicine, different practitioners. And I wanted to bring that into this episode because Serena does such a beautiful job of balancing the two, of knowing her scope of practice, but also understanding that there are other scopes of practice around her and how can we bring them together? How can you choose what you need in your process of coming home to your body? I have much more to say on this topic as someone who's gone through a lot of surgeries, lives with an infectious disease, is in remission. I mean, when we talk about illness in the body, I could talk about it for days. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode with Serena. If you would like to receive more of my words, you can always go over to Substack. That's ailejalie.substack.com. As a free subscriber, you can access the most latest article or podcast episode that's been released there. I do have a separate podcast series exclusive to Substack. If you are a paid subscriber, you can access the whole archive, all the essays, all the exclusive podcast episodes, all of the psychoeducation sections that I've done there. There are articles with embedded presentations. If you want to spend even more time with me, you can check out my online course, Embody. You'll find all of the information at ww.imbody method.com. If you want to spend time in person with me, you can join me this November in Costa Rica. We'll be spending seven days together as we move through a lot of the practices, ideas, and theories that are presented in Embody, but in a more embodied way, because we'll be in person together. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your attention, and thank you for being in the tender, ongoing process of coming home to your body and allowing this podcast, our guest and me, Aile Jolie, to be a part of that process for you. If you found value in this episode, it would mean so much to me for you to share the podcast with friends, a loved one, or on your social platforms. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so that this podcast reaches a larger audience and can inspire more and more humans to connect to their bodies too. Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your very own body.