Do You Feel Alone? Millie’s Journey Home Through Nature, Somatics and Shadow Work

In this episode, I’m joined by Millie to explore what it truly means to feel at home within yourself. Through her journey with nature, somatics, and shadow work, we unpack why so many of us feel disconnected, lost, or alone in modern life. 

We dive into how reconnecting with your body and the natural world can help you build a deeper sense of belonging, safety, and self-acceptance. This conversation offers powerful insights into emotional awareness, inner work, and personal transformation. If you’re seeking connection, clarity, and a sense of home within, this episode will guide you back to yourself.

About Millie:

Hey! I'm Millie Jones - a Somatic, Shadow Work and Reiki practitioner. I help women reclaim their wholeness and step into their authentic power, giving them tools for self authorship. I believe healing isn’t just about processing pain - but about coming back to joy, play, aliveness and reconnecting with the rhythm of nature.

https://www.instagram.com/thefreesoma?igsh=N2VtdTVmbjliNmpx&utm_source=qr

Transcript

0:00

Do you ever feel alone even when you're surrounded by people like something's missing, a deeper sense of connection, belonging, or home within yourself? In this episode, I'm joined by Millie to explore what it truly means to come home. Not to a place, but to your body and yourself through nature somatics shadow work, we unpack why we feel disconnected and how to reconnect. A conversation about belonging, self-acceptance, and remembering that home has always been within you. Welcome to You Matter. I matter, a transformational podcast about reconnecting with what truly matters. I'm your host James, and each week is an opportunity to explore a little bit deeper who you really are with amazing guests. We explore topics such as purpose, connection, commitment, and what it really means to live more consciously. If you've been feeling disconnected from yourself, from others, or from life, you are in the right place. Join us on new matter. I matter. Now. Let's begin.

James 1:14

When you have a home within your body and a home in nature, you can never be lost or alone. Good afternoon, Millie. Can you explain more?

Millie 1:24

Yes, good afternoon. So this saying came to me last year. I was going through a really difficult time of my life the start of last year. And there was a lot of questioning who I was, a lot of confusion around, am I good? Am I doing good in the world? Am I bad? Am I this, am I that? And I was forced out into nature last year and that forcing was the best thing that could have happened to me. So when I was in nature, I was doing eco somatics without realizing it and finding my body in the earth, finding the experiences that I've gone through in the earth, and in doing so, connecting so much deeper to myself, finding belonging, finding love for myself in ways that I've never known before and. It really made me realize that once I've got a home within my own body, through somatics, which is what I do through shadow work, once I understand the community that is within me and also similarly find that home in nature, find parts of my myself, find places to be comfortable, I can't ever be alone because there is always home surrounding and within me. And I can never be lost because I always have something reflecting who I am back to me as well. So nature's been like a profound journey and something that I'm still very much on, but that's where that quote I suppose came from.

James 3:02

How were you forced into nature, out of interest?

Millie 3:05

Yeah, so my ex-partner and I, he used to live with people. That for some reason or another didn't, weren't fond of me and how I expressed myself in the world, which is absolutely fine, but we couldn't hang out at his house. So from pretty much like the February when it was still cold, we were forced to be out walking, to spend time in nature to always be outdoors, going to caravans up in places in, in, in the forest and stuff. And we had to be outside if we wanted to hang out together. So that's how I ended up being forced out into nature. And from there we both went on like our own, separate but beautiful journeys with nature.

James 3:49

I can understand with regards to belonging and never being alone but probably about three probably longer, less than that a year and a half ago, it was the opposite. How did you get to that place of being, of knowing that's your, that's you're never alone, that your home is always where you are?

Millie 4:11

Ah, yeah. Amazing question. I think. Like I said, obviously deepening that relationship with the earth and realizing the abundance first and foremost, that was around me when we were going into spring. I was realizing, wow, there's medicine here. There's medicine there. There's things that I can, I live by a river and there was so much medicine around me, things that I've never actually seen before, because I never knew I didn't pay attention. I just, walked on by. And so to see all of that and be like, wow, I can be, I can live off all of this. And then also to go through really difficult times of crying and just anger and grief and all these emotions and in the same breath be held by nature. I might be lying on the floor and just crying and she's just holding me. There was a time where. I was feeling sad, so I went down to the river and I picked up some litter because this is my part of the river and I don't wanna look after it. So I picked up litter and then I sat and I sang to her and I was just like, I love you. And how amazing that I'm sharing, this river with loads of little beings and animals that are in it. And as I was just expressing my gratitude, I put my toes in the river. And I started hearing this noise and I was like, what is that? It was like this loud squeak and I thought, I can't see anything. So that's like either a tiny bird that is really loud, or I dunno what it is. And when, so I carried on singing and I lucked up and this otter just jumped out of the water, ran across the bank, went back into it, and I was like, oh my gosh. Like completely in awe. And it really made me like feel like, ah, this is. My perception of it was when I do something for the earth, when I look after her, when I show her gratitude, she reminds me of what I needed, right? For me, an otter is very playful, it's very joyful, it's very community led, and that was the exact things that I needed to be reminded of in that moment. And I've had so many journeys like that with plants as well. Different daffodils, buttercups, daisies. When I've sat with them fully, I've seen my own journey in them. And from that I've been like if I love nature so much, and I think she's magnificent and she has the same like journey as me, but slightly different, how can I not love myself just as much as I love her? So she's been such a beautiful mirror for me of, hey, there's a part of my journey in nature. I love it so much in nature, and so it's allowed me to love it within myself, and it almost unknowingly brings you a sense of belonging, of ease. Oh, I do belong. Here I am at home. I am safe. So that's my, yeah, my little story behind it.

James 7:00

Yeah, I can relate to that. That's quite an except exceptional story, how to connect kind of thing. But it's, but for me I should get in nature definitely more because I know when I'm in nature, everything changes and. I give you an example. I went through a five day a short romance from a festival. Okay. And it ended, and on the day it ended, I just went into the woodland and it came to me like, do you know what? I'm gonna do a 12 month journey on becoming a more connected peasant man. But it was from going into the woodlands that the idea came.

Millie 7:39

Yeah. Yeah.

James 7:40

And so it's sent me a, this journey. And another occasion more recent is that this realization that being brought up on a farm is the old fashioned way of thinking of farmers, is they have to do work, because otherwise they suffer and could possibly die. And so for me, going to a woodland or going for a walk was a treat, but if I hadn't done any work. I wasn't allowed that truth. So I've had to change that whole perspective and that realization and understand that, in nature, that is part of the work.

Millie 8:19

Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that. That's Wow. Yeah. That's beautiful.

James 8:25

So with regards to nature, how do you personally connect with nature? Is it.

Millie 8:33

Oh my goodness. So many different ways. Like it really depends on the day as well. If I don't have much time, I am really fortunate enough to have a garden. And I'll go out there and I'll just put my feet in the grass and just watch the birds because again, I'm very lucky. There's lots of birds around me, which are very loud and chatty. And even just spending five minutes out there and noticing them. It calms me down. We all know that nature's a fantastic regulator, so I won't go into that. But that's different ways. I'll go down to the river, I'll go for walks, I'll go for go to different places, is one that I love going to. But I also, like I said before, I'll sit down with different plants, even like the grass, the sky, and. I relate myself to these things. So I obviously mentioned like the daffodils and blue bells, and I'll really sit and just honor that plan and find myself in it and plan or anything really that is around me. And I'll start writing, and I do a lot of poetry. It comes to me and I'm like, write it all down. And through that poetry I find an even deeper sense of connection to the plant and understanding within myself as well. So there's so many different ways that, that I connect even when I'm indoors. You can see that I've got plants here, so if I'm ever inside, I still have those bits of nature that are around me to regulate me, I suppose

James 10:04

it the other day I went for a walk and it was windy and it was literally pushing me and I just being there gave me this kind of realization that I could be so much faster on my path, but wanted, the only thing stopping me is myself, and that was me pushing against the wind.

Millie 10:25

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean, right? Like when you just think into it, you're like, ah, there I am. There's my part of the journey in the wind, in the, but in everything, like when you just take a moment to actually relate to it, it's oh yeah, and you figure stuff out about yourself. It's incredible. Yeah. So incredible.

James 10:44

So actually before we. Jumped on this call. You mentioned how much, how it's sunny out there the first time in months in the uk. Yeah. How, it's so interesting how when it's still or raining or snowing, everybody gets a little bit down. And then the sun comes out and everybody is just com completely changes their attitude, their mindset. And it's it's interesting how. When it's sunny and hot. And it's almost, I think it's almost due of discomfort'cause rain. Rain cold. It's uncomfortable. We're not used to discomfort are we? We're used to comfort. Yeah. So when it's hot and warm, it's yeah. It's just as easy, it's as warm, it's as comfortable.

Millie 11:28

Oh yeah. Gosh. I love, honestly, I'm such a sun baby. As soon as I see the sun, I'm like outside tan me. I, I don't wanna do anything. I almost just wanna lie down in the sun and just be with it. It's something I love because you can really see the change in people, right? Winter we're all very, oh, life is hard and all that kind of stuff. And then as soon as you come out of it, I went to a retreat yesterday and the whole time I just heard this guy walking around whistling and I was like, God, we're just completely different people when the sun comes out. But something I tried last year and I'm still definitely learning to do it as well, was. Winter is so hard for everyone, and to me, winter is such a good reflection of our shadows within ourselves and the parts that, like you said, we don't wanna sit in the discomfort, we don't want to be in it, we don't wanna, we wanna have the sunshine all of the time. The sunshine is a rept representation of good vibes and high energy and all that kind of stuff. And we often really want that. And something that came to me last year was learning to love Winter is like learning to love yourself fully. Because we as human beings, not all of us, but a lot of us will reject winter. We don't want it. Give me the sun, and that is a direct symbol and mirror for how we reject those darker, colder, stickier parts of ourselves as well. So as much as I love and enjoy the sun, and I will absolutely a hundred percent always be out in the sun when it's here. How can we get comfortable and start loving winter and seeing the beauty in winter and how can that mirror and reflect to us as well what we need to love and start. Yeah, just bringing a bit of life to.

James 13:17

Let's jump into your, what Can you tell us your story, please?

Millie 13:22

Yes. So my story, I went traveling when I was 18, chasing the sun, of course. And as we all do it turned into a four year stint. Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, and it was an amazing time and I'm so glad I did it. I learned a lot about myself and during the last sort of year that I was in Australia, I became really stressed. It was looking for jobs. COVID had happened and was happening looking for jobs. There was countless times that I thought, oh, I'm gonna be homeless tomorrow. And I started really getting very stressed and also not. Understanding how that stress was affecting my body. I was, someone could breathe wrong and I would start crying. It was like, oh my gosh. It was a complete overwhelm. And I also used to be someone who was like, I don't get stressed. I don't feel stressed. No stress doesn't bother me. Very wrong. And I start again, a lot of health issues. I would start walking and I felt like I was having a heart attack. My chest would feel really tight, and I was, I think 23 at the time. I'd lost my period, so I wasn't bleeding anymore, and I just felt numb, completely disconnected. My body was shut down. I was waking up. It was sunny. I was by the beach. I was skateboarding to the beach, but I was like, I'm empty. I feel nothing. So I made the decision to come home and when I came home back to the uk, that was already hard because I'd ran away from the uk in a sense, ran away from my problems. So when I came back here, it was a big change for me and my goal was like I need to sort my health out. So I got told I had PCOS. Got told I had a brain tumor and heart arrhythmia and all this kind of stuff, and I was, just getting along with it. I was like, cool, you've shown me that these like parts, like the brain tumor and stuff. I was like, I'm not upset by them. I understand that they have come because I can't listen to my body and that's what needs to change. I need to start building that relationship again with my body that we are taught from day dot, ignore your body. It doesn't, mean anything, it's just getting you about life. I was also an ex gymnast, a elite gymnast, so it was very much per your body past what it wants to go and ignore when you're in pain. And that's what I carried through to my adult life, really. And that's one of the reasons I believe I ended up with the brain tumor and the PCOS and everything else. So yeah, I then went on this amazing journey. I found somatics I trained in somatics. And within that training, obviously I was having somatics myself, understanding my body, and it just. Healed me in such a beautiful way. Like it got to a point where at my old job I was getting stressed again and I was starting to feel my tight, get a bit my chest get a bit tighter, and I said, Hey, I'm just gonna have a week off because I can feel my body's getting stressed. I know what this means. My body comes before work now. And they were fine. They understood that. Which was really beautiful. I then found reiki and that was so relaxing, so amazing. I was having reiki done to me and for me, and also then I got trained in it. And I just think, again, it's such a beautiful modality working with the energetics. So it was with the body, it's with the energetics. And then last year I found shadow work, and that is something that I believe transformed my life. I was doing the healing with the reiki and the somatics. Shadow work has transformed my life. It's something that I just adore and the relationship I now have with myself and my trauma, things that have happened to me, things that haven't, the parts of me that, our unconscious, the random anger that comes up and I'm like, Ooh, what is that? I hold it with so much more tenderness and compassion and I just, it's magnificent. And again, like I said, obviously my earth journey as well came last year, same time shadow work did. So they've just, they've all interwoven so beautifully with themselves. And I, God, I'm just so grateful I found them all to be honest when I did. So that's my journey.

James 17:56

That's quite a profound journey. So let's start,

Millie 18:01

yeah.

James 18:01

When, let's start the somatics.

Millie 18:03

Yeah.

James 18:04

Because you said about obviously your relationship with your body was non-existent staff with So how. Does somatic somatics work and how did you start to incorporate that into your daily practice?

Millie 18:18

Yeah, so in short, it's a body-based approach to therapy. It's works with the body's wisdom because there is so much wisdom there as opposed to being cognitive and thinking about feeling. And it's actually how can we just get to the root cause and feel that feeling instead of shaming it or pushing it to the side? And my relationship, it was such a gradual change that you almost don't notice it. You just begin to be like, oh gosh, I've got tender shoulders, right? What do I need to do? And you just start moving in a way that your body wants to. I also learned to start breathing, and that sounds very random, but doing deep breaths. There's a lot of. Shame around noise. I feel like in the uk, if I hold space for people and I'm like and deep breath out, they do the quietest thing they could possibly do and I'm like, you can make noise here. But it's I think I remember the quote, is it, let me see you before I hear you, or something like that. And I think a lot of us have that ingrained in us. It's oh, be quiet, be, be a little bit less, be a bit smaller than perhaps we want to be. And yeah, now I go out into even supermarkets and if I need to do a deep breath, I will. And it doesn't bother me what people think. I've also learned how to communicate properly, listen to my body if there's something going on. Like I said, going into that and realizing that there's emotions that are getting stored in whatever parts of my body that there are, and it was such a slow. Slow journey. So I started really just orienting first as a part of my practice. Like I would get up in the morning, I'd orient to my space and also as well orient to joy. Like where are the parts of my life that I'm finding loads of joy? Can I focus on them? It was moving, it was a lot of shaking, a lot of dancing, a lot of making the most random noises ever, which would then also make me laugh. And I'm such a believer in our healing journey, not being so serious, not being, oh gosh, we've gotta get into this hard thing and it's gonna be awful. While sometimes it absolutely can be, I more steer towards like, how can I find the fun in this? How can I liberate from this? How can I find the joy? And nowadays I just do so much micro regulation. Throughout. I work with children on the other hand of my business, and you need a lot of capacity for that because there are lots of, 29 plus little humans who have absolutely no idea how to regulate themselves. You have to really find the micro regulation within you to be there for them. So just the understanding of my own body and how to be with other people as well as myself, as well as the earth is just, it's been profound with the journey of somatics. Yeah.

James 21:19

Yeah. I can again, I can relate.'cause I think with the body, it's, there's so much going on. So we've, I think you talked about last time you, you call it kind of part work.

Millie 21:33

Parts work. Yeah.

James 21:34

I find, yeah, just communicating with every part of myself. Yeah. It's parts work, but it's it's the wisdom. The wisdom is in all them parts. So it's in the anxiety the stress, the anger, the frustration, the overwhelm, the joy, the happiness. It's the wisdom's there. But it's we just, as human beings, we just see it as. Just an emotion. And that's it. We waver it off. I'm, I almost feeling a little bit overwhelmed today. That's just okay. It's, if you go into it quite often, it's actually the surf, the surface layer is the overwhelm. Underneath it is a deeper I was gonna say more darker, but I don't think it's even darker. I think it's a bit more wiser. Wiser part of herself. Yeah. And it's like intellectually we try to think about emotions and truth, trust, overwhelm. But if we embody it, I feel like we get a limitless pull of wisdom.

Millie 22:34

Absolutely. And I think when we are born, we don't, we can't speak, right? So our first language isn't talking. It's from your body. It's picking up on the energetics. It's it limbic resonant the energy, right? We as babies can only speak through touch and movement and sounds, and that's what somatics is. It's bringing us back too. Our first language, the first language of the body, and like you said, these beautiful parts of us that do come out sideways that I just, I truly love all of them. Say with anger or anxiety, like you said, when you go deeper, there is actually a part of you, and more often than not, it's a part that is trying to protect a younger version of you where something's happened, your younger versions got stuck, so then this, way of being has come on top to protect it or avoid it or whatever it might be. And these parts of ourselves, they. They don't actually understand that we're now adults. So they're still trying to protect. For example, I use me, it's trying to protect young Millie that might be a 5-year-old in gymnastics who's crying. So this part comes on top trying to protect her, but doesn't realize, hey, actually she's a 25-year-old woman now who can do that herself. And when you show that part, Hey, thank you so much for being there. I love you. It's okay. We can do this together. You completely change the relationship.'cause you, you would know, we, we can't get rid of trauma, can't get rid of things that have happened to us or not happened to us. It's there, it's in our body. And I think that's where I can get a bit confused sometimes in the healing space, everyone wants to heal and get rid of something. It's like when you can't, you change your relationship. It's a, it's the community that was, is within you. All these different parts is a community and all the work that we do is relational. I've never come to you and be like, change that because you know you need to heal, so do this different. No, I'd be like how can we relationally come together and heal from that? So I think parts and shadow work for me is. I think it's my life path. I just, I adore all of these parts, even when they don't perhaps work in my favor. They're just doing the best they can, with what they have. So it's incredible. Yeah.

James 25:00

They're almost part of your tribe.

Millie 25:02

Oh, yeah, absolutely. They're trying to look after us. They just are maybe doing a bit skewed,

James 25:07

yeah. Yeah. It's, it was, I know from doing, obviously doing the stuff that. I think there's a difference between what I've noticed recently is there's a big collective grief, massive, I think massively. The thing that I find is that the question I feel like I, I always ask myself is that grief mine? Because it's not mine. Why am I holding onto it?

Millie 25:34

Yeah. Yeah,

James 25:36

and it's'cause quite often I notice like at festivals there's loads of grief. I think sometimes, especially people on the path of spiritualism, they tend to feel grief more probably because they're more attuned to it. But I feel like sometimes we hold onto this collective grief, owning it as our, because it gives us a purpose sometimes, and I feel as though like working with Dragon Energy. I feel almost like probably you are probably this quite similar to myself in that we'll take on the grief because we know how to get rid of it.

Millie 26:11

Yeah.

James 26:11

So we take on more than we can choose sometimes for us to realize, for myself to realize that it's not mine. I can burn it and let it go. But then at the same time, SAP is mine. That's part of my tribe.

Millie 26:26

Yeah.

James 26:26

And fight it. Fight it in. Don't, hate even things like racism underneath the surface. They're all ours.

Millie 26:33

Yeah.

James 26:33

Take it in, make it part the tribe because you try and push it away. It's just gonna come back twofold.

Millie 26:40

Oh,

James 26:41

absolutely. But if you embrace it, it's a tribe. It's you become friends.

Millie 26:45

Yeah, absolutely. And that's completely it. I actually had a discussion with a guy and I did an Instagram post about like the women community and women's support and women and how that completely coincides with feeling, jealousy, feeling, any sort of human emotion that comes with that competition comparison, how these are normal human emotions and. The person I was speaking to was like, no, they're stupid. You shouldn't feel like that. And I was just like that's exactly it. When you view your humanity as stupid, you push it to the side and put it in your unconscious, and we live out of our unconscious, right? 95 plus percent of our life is us moving from our unconscious habits, beliefs, patterns, triggers, all of that stuff. It's from our shadows. So the more you shove it to the side, you're not ignoring it, although you might believe you're ignoring it. What you are actually doing is giving it, almost this fire to come into your life in skewed sideways. Ways and for example, anger. Such a perfect one because if when you are younger, your family member is really angry, you'll either not be angry at all or you'll be overly angry. If you're not angry at all, you're then not gonna stick up for yourself. You're not gonna know when your boundaries are crossed, right? So every single. Bad emotion that we think is bad has gold to it. And it only starts coming out bad when you shove it to the side.'cause it wants to be known. It wants to be part of your tribe. It wants to be loved, and that's what you need to do. You need to bring it back in. Hey, let's have a relationship together. Oh, I feel anger. That means my boundaries is crossed. I can feel that in my body. Let me go and feel that anger come back and say, Hey, this is a boundary. Whatever I need to do to have this conversation with someone, it's powerful. It's powerful when you bring people and parts into your tribe and just honor them for what they are and who they are.

James 28:51

You said the word unconscious and I was just, I've been ing all of this question for to let's 20 minutes or, but that's it. We can't change anything unless we become conscious of it. How have you started to,'cause obviously it's quite easy to be in that place of unconscious. And even though we like to think we're conscious all the time, we're probably not. We're not. So how do we get outta that phase of unconscious?

Millie 29:20

Yeah, I think the most important part, first and foremost with Shadow work and yeah, coming into contact with these is, get a journal and just write down the things that have happened right in that day. So you might have had a trigger, someone might have cut you up in front on the road and you might have just burst out in anger. Write it down, become aware of these things, like shadows are almost like it's jumped from A to Z and not done the middle thing, right? So you can't see it. So when you start writing down your judgements, your perhaps patterns in relationships, writing down these things and becoming aware of them, you've just got a whole book of shadows. Here you go. You just got angry, didn't even realize and just completely burst out. I was on the road the other day at Cross Crossroads and these two cars had started pulling out, trying to fight each other. This guy's come out the car trying to, and I was just like, my God, number one, I was like, please move. I'm trying to get home from work. But also I was like, looking at it, these two people have gone into anger and shadow and it's we wanna fight. They would write that down, and even to the most smallest things ever. Oh, my mom said this to me, and I, replied really quickly and sharply and defended. Cool shadow. Write it down. And you don't have to go into every single one of them. I actually would say don't do that because it's overwhelming, but pick one. Pick one and be like, cool, let me dive into that. I felt this anger. How do I feel about that? Oh, I don't actually really like being angry. Ooh, why not? My dad was really angry when I grew up, and I don't ever wanna be like him. Cool. Now we're getting somewhere, so just noticing how you show up in life and writing it down so you can see it.

James 31:12

Just quickly, just give us a what's a shadow? Just everybody knows.

Millie 31:16

Yeah, so a shadow is the parts of ourselves that we reject, exile, feel ashamed about. It happens mostly when we are children. So we are born 3000% percent authentic. We are absolutely in the world doing us for us. I'm laughing'cause I work with children. I just see it so well in there and I'm like, oh my God. But there comes a point where're about two years old, where, the people around us, our environments, religion, whatever it might be, says, Hey, to be loved, you actually need to be like this and not like that. And so we'll adopt the hey, be like this to get love and accepted and belong, and we'll push aside the things that don't get us That, and the things we push aside, we reject, feel ashamed of, like I said, is our shadows. And our shadows are in the unconscious that rules our life. In short.

James 32:10

Yeah. It makes sense. It makes sense. It's but it's also the light. We can quite often push away because yeah, you can see it in like cons, concerts and football games. People idolizing pop stars and a-list celebs, and in fact, I sometimes you give see them given a power away.

Millie 32:31

Yeah, absolutely. Young says 90% of our shadows are actually out in a gold and that's completely true and that's why I love it so much because. When you start realizing that everything, God, you just have complete power over your life again. But when you idolize and pedestal people, what in them, may maybe they're just really confident. What in them is your own untapped potential. And that's an amazing thing to recognize, oh, I love this person.'cause they're so confident, they're so loud, they're authentic, they do them. Hey, that's also inside of you. Are you gonna choose to step into it and then you can do shadow work around that. So I think it's amazing, right? It's always mirroring what's either not touched within us or that we reject or any of that sort of stuff. It's just, it's incredible.

James 33:20

Have you noticed a shift at the moment? No. I say a shift. I so like. Last year, end of last year, I was very big into healing, healing myself, doing the work kind of thing. But I feel like I'm almost a little bit resistant to healing now. Because I've almost feel like we've shifted into a new phase of our lives where we're not looking at necessarily healing as a whole, but we're looking more at the, our higher identity. Who are becoming rather than, oh, I need to look at this because it needs healing, or that needs sorting out when looking now I feel like, who do I want to be? Yeah. And then shifting into them kind of embodying things like trust, faith, embodying courage, that kind of stuff.

Millie 34:07

Yeah, absolutely. And I know what you mean. I think I ebb and flow with. Healing and wanting to heal. I don't really love the word healing either. Oh, I need to heal it. For me, it insinuates that something is wrong and something needs to change within me. And whilst yes, it's true, maybe I rejected a little bit. Maybe that's the shadow. But for me I'm not here to heal. I'm here to transform and I love the healing space for a lot of the stuff that it does, but I think the healing space often stops at a certain point where then it's not, you're not transforming, you're not stepping into your higher self. You might believe you are, but you're avoiding the harder parts of life and that are within you. That actually. Allow you to transform and allow you to be that higher self that allow you to, handle rejection and take accountability when you've hurt somebody and step into truth and integrity and own up to your shit, really. And I find this, that's very difficult to do, and communicate effectively without jumping to defense. And yeah, I would say I'm not even on a, he a healing journey anymore. I'm just. Stepping into who I wanna become. And that person is someone who takes self accountability, is who is aiming to be integral and authentic and honest and kind, and not people please. And to do that, I have to look at the shadows, if I wanna be authentic, I have to look there. Yeah, I feel you with that, with the kind of stepping away from. Healing, perhaps I more go towards now transforming. Yeah.

James 35:59

Yeah, that makes complete sense. It's it's also, so like I've done 94 episodes to, as this one will be. Yeah. And I've done, I think I did a, I did during COVID, I did start a podcast, never uploaded it, and 84 episodes then. But it's, my realization is that. Even though you do this thing again and again, there's still underlying emotion like I don't know. I wouldn't say traumas, anxiousness, and fear and all this stuff underneath the surface, and even though you do it again and again. You, your natural intellectual thinking is, I've done that many times. I should be courageous. I should be having it like that should be like perfect. But that's not life. That's not everyday life. Everyday life is still engaging and being with these parts. Even though I might have done like 200 episodes,

Millie 36:56

absolutely. And I just love that and I'm smiling when you're saying that because all I can think is ah, the joy of being human, the joy of just like experiencing that full humanness, yeah, we are gonna feel afraid and scared and fearful. And what if people reject me and what if they judge me and, oh, I have done this, but what if I forget? I just think that's such a beautiful part of our humanity that does bring us to our humanism is how you connect with other people. Like I love seeing people who are just absolutely out there and when someone I find so confident comes onto the stage and goes, Hey, I'm absolutely bricking it right now. I'm like, Ugh, a human. I love you. I feel you. I get it. I've been there. I can relate to it'cause you're a human. And I just think. It's such a joy. It's such a joy to, to jump in and out of all of those emotions and also, feel the fear and do it anyway. Something I did last year was I had so many what ifs come up for me. I shaved my head. I was like, what if people judged me? What if they say this? What if they do that? And I thought, all right. Do it. Then, become comfortable in that discomfort. I grew up my body hair'cause I was like, Ooh, I'm insecure. People might think this or whatever. Cool. Get comfortable with it. Because when I start loving myself and when I free myself from my judgments, that's all that matters.'cause people are always gonna judge. I judge, we all judge. It's just, it's a normal part of life. It's evolutionary. We all judge if you can free yourself from your own judgment as best you can, or if you can feel it and step into it anyway. Amazing. There you go. The path to freedom,

James 38:39

definitely. It's it's powerful just doing it. And even though it's difficult It's like I was saying earlier about the website and I took the jump with getting this guy, and initially, beforehand I was just going from one thing to another thinking, oh, should I go over them? Should I not? But then what I tuned in with trust.

Millie 39:01

Yeah.

James 39:01

And it was like. Just go.

Millie 39:04

Yeah. Bang.

James 39:05

What's your idea of trust? Just out of interest?

Millie 39:09

Yeah. I think it number one, it's again, somatics helps so much'cause you have to have that relationship with your body to know what that feels like. I think sometimes people can. Confused. It's such a massive topic, but if you are, for example, so used to like living in somewhere that's not safe for you, right? Sometimes if you're not aware of your body, you'll go for the unsafe things because you're used to it. So it feels safe, but it's not safe, right? So I think this is where you have to build the relationship with your body to discern, oh, this is actually, yeah, my body completely trusting it, and this is my body. Good. Absolutely not right? Or this is my body going, Ooh, I'm a bit scared. But yeah, underlying, I know this is right for me. And the opposite, right? So for me, I had, I, God, I spent years building that relationship and learning to trust. I had a lot of trauma surrounding males and that's still something that I have that I'm learning in my body to be like, oof, what's a response to trauma? And what is just. Maybe a little bit of discomfort'cause I don't know the situation. So trust is built and earned both with other people and within yourself as well? For me, in my opinion.

James 40:31

Yeah, I think so. I can, when I tune into trust in the body, it's, at the moment it's next to the belly button.

Millie 40:38

Yeah.

James 40:39

But it's, if I wanna make a decision. I would shoot into that part of the body wherever I feel it. Yeah. And so it's almost embodying it.

Millie 40:47

Yeah.

James 40:48

And if you trust yourself. Then nothing else matters.

Millie 40:53

Yeah absolutely. Minds kind mines. I always do this'cause it's how I explain it, but it's just like a solid knowing from yeah, my, my womb up to my heart. It's yep, this is right. And even if the, the protective mechanisms come over, anxiety, blah, blah I'll always feel that knowing and I'll know that it's the right thing to do. So again, yeah. Tuning into your body, like you said, it's that relationship you have with your body, isn't it?

James 41:19

That creates that connection.

Millie 41:21

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

James 41:23

What about devotion,

Millie 41:26

huh? Yeah. That's it. I feel that in my heart and. The things that I feel devoted to. It's so funny'cause it's not necessarily people, it's like my practices and things like shadow work. It's my life journey. I'm like devoted and I almost have a all in feeling, heart opening, leaning forward. And again, it's what you have to tune into. And I also wonder, this is just what comes to my head, like how many people do feel that feeling of devotion. I have so many questions around devotional devotion, unconditional love, they're all things. I'm like, what does that even mean? Do people feel that? What's going on? So yeah. Yeah,

James 42:11

I feel it. Just

Millie 42:12

yeah.

James 42:12

And it's quite a a big. It's quite big. I feel like it's quite, it takes quite a lot of space. Yeah. And trust is all almost an underlying budget kind of thing.

Millie 42:24

Yeah.

James 42:24

I've got faith on the shoulders. In a big way.

Millie 42:28

Yeah.

James 42:28

So it's just the thing, it's when we start to take ourselves from being numb in our body, or not even understanding what all this means. We're able to connect with something, a deeper wisdom, and when we connect that deeper wisdom, there's this level of exploration.

Millie 42:46

Yeah, absolutely. You just completely change how you show up in the world to for yourself to other people, family members, relationships. It's, I honestly always think like you can do whatever healing work you want. Somatics for me, it's so important because you need to understand your body. You need to know how it works. You need to be able to connect to these different feelings and emotions and allow them to be, because it's just, it's, it should be the way of life, and I think. That connection is so important, and that's also why I believe that we have been, almost divorced from it since such a young age. We're told, even, I always think about it when children are eating their food and they're like, oh, I'm full. I know some children are just like, refuse, but. When a child is actually full. I remember for myself, when a child is actually full and you're told keep eating, like no, you have to finish what's on your plate. You're essentially being told no, ignore what your body's telling you and eat more. Keep going. And the same with gymnastics. And there's so many subtle ways that we're told to disconnect from our body and ignore what it's saying, but it's a little bit scary. And so I think it's imperative for people. To question that and be like actually I need to start understanding what's going on and making my own choices about my body.

James 44:15

Yeah. It's being seen and not heard.

Millie 44:18

Yeah. Yeah. Being seen and not heard. I've had that, I've had so often in my life. I'm such a loud person. Like just, and I get so happy and excited and I'm like, wow. And people always say, God, you'll, you'll hear merely before you see her. And I used to be ashamed about that. I used to feel really ashamed about it. And then I was like, you know what? Fuck off. Yeah. I am joyful. I enjoy being alive, i, and it's one of my superpowers. Come from a shadow shamed, oh, actually let me harness this, and now it's a superpower for me. So it's, yeah, it's crazy.

James 44:56

Can you tell us what is it that you do and how can people get in contact?

Millie 44:59

Yeah. So I weaved together, like I said before, the stuff that I have dived into on my journey, somatics shadow work, Reiki, earth-based stuff. These are all Yeah. My, the things that I'm devoted to it's my life path. I always say to people, I wanna work with people who want to actually do the work and who are ready to do that work and who would just, instead of. I dunno, learning how to just regulate themselves are actually on a path to becoming alive again, right? To becoming playful and joyful. For me that's regulated is when you find the joy and beauty in life. So people can find me. My business is at the Free Soma, Facebook Instagram. I'm on both of those platforms. Email. I don't if people email nowadays, but that's millie@thefree.com. I'm assuming people do. So that's where you'll find me. On Instagram I just share my journey, the things that I've learned, my beliefs, my values and I really just say it as it is and I really love doing that. So I feel like I have a lot of my wisdom is just shared on my Instagram. And a lot of how I am in my work, which is very playful and joyful and loud and just accepting of all of these parts, even the parts that you maybe don't like. So yeah, that's the work I do. And that's how you can find me.

James 46:28

Thank you very much, Millie.

Millie 46:29

You're all good. Thank you.

46:33

Thank you for listening. If something in today's conversation resonated, take a moment to sit with it. And if you feel called, share this episode with someone who might need it to you matter. I matter is a growing space, and if you would like to stay connected. You're welcome to follow or subscribe wherever you are listening. It really helps us work to reach people. It's meant for. These conversations matter. You matter. I matter. Until next time, take care of yourself and the relationships in your life.