45: The Body Never Lies: Trauma-Informed Yoga for Nervous System Healing with Rachel Posner

You’ve pushed through. You’ve achieved. You’ve held it together for everyone else. But underneath the surface, your body has been keeping score—and it’s tired. In today’s episode of You Have the Power, Darla sits down with yoga therapist and mindfulness coach Rachel Posner to explore a healing path most high-functioning women overlook: trauma-informed yoga.

This conversation isn’t about yoga poses or flexibility—it’s about learning how to listen to your body when your mind is screaming at you to stay strong. Rachel breaks down how trauma-informed yoga supports nervous system regulation, builds emotional resilience, and helps women who feel “too much” or “not enough” reconnect with their power through agency, choice, and sensation.

If traditional therapy hasn’t worked, if you're constantly anxious, or if you feel like your body is betraying you—this episode will show you what your body’s actually trying to say. And how to finally listen.

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Transcript

Rachel (00:00)
It's not that there aren't physical things that are happening in our bodies, but what happens when we're anxious is we often start to tell a story about our anxiety.

And that story makes the stressor feel worse and more overwhelming. But when we are starting to feel overwhelmed, if we can ground ourselves, if we can settle ourselves a little bit, that helps shift us out of the stress response and back into that window of tolerance. just like a better image, if you're imagining a circle at the very center of the circle, this is where you feel the safest, the most comfortable.

you know, everybody has one of those places. Like I just want to escape to my comfy chair with my blankie, right? That's where we feel the safest. It's also not where we learn or are challenged. That's okay. We still need these places where we kind of regroup.

Darla Ridilla (00:49)
Welcome to You Have the Power, the road to recovery from trauma and narcissistic abuse. I'm Darla Ridilla, a certified somatic trauma informed coach and relationship expert who's been where you are. I work with high achieving women who feel invisible in their relationships and are exhausted from attracting the same emotionally unavailable or toxic partners. This podcast is your invitation to stop settling, to stop shrinking and to start rewriting your story. Each episode offers raw.

honest insights into trauma, nervous system healing, and what it really takes to break the cycle. So you can finally feel seen, safe, and powerful in your own life. If you're ready to reclaim your worth and reinvent your relationships, you are in the right place. Let's get into today's topic.

Darla Ridilla (01:37)
Thank you so much for joining me today. We are gonna have another guest on this show and she's gonna be talking about trauma-informed yoga. And there are so many different healing modalities that we can have. There's never one per se that is good for everyone, but I like introducing different ones so you can find something that works for you. And listening to this episode, I recorded it a few weeks ago, reminded me that I actually haven't been doing my yoga weekly like I used to. And part of it is,

It's summer in Colorado. And so I've been exercising more outdoors than indoors. But when fall comes back and the temperatures start to dip again, I definitely need to get back to yoga. While I don't do trauma-informed yoga per se, I do vinyasa, which is more of the traditional type. The wonderful thing about trauma-informed is for those who get too triggered in a regular yoga class, this offers you a way to have choice versus being told what to do.

A lot of times in yoga class, they'll say, do this, hold this position where someone who's highly triggered, that might be too much. So just inviting them to possibly do that and how does that feel is a big game changer for some people. So let's get to it.

Darla Ridilla (02:55)
Hello friends. I'm so excited that we have another guest on our podcast today.

And Rachel is going to be talking about trauma-informed yoga. So let me introduce you to our guests. So Rachel is a yoga therapist and a mindfulness coach, and she helps people reduce stress, build resilience, and thrive. She offers individual yoga therapy, mindfulness courses, yoga memberships, and retreats. Her work is informed by the intersection of mindfulness, neuroscience, and psychology.

and her teachings integrate best practices for the mind, body, and brain. Rachel has been in the wellness field for 24 years and is driven by a deep desire to help people feel calm, connected, and engaged in their lives. Thank you, Rachel, for being with us today. I'm so happy you're here.

Rachel (03:49)
I'm glad to be here with you.

Darla Ridilla (03:52)
Awesome. So we're going to just dive right into this wonderful topic here. And my first question for you is that you've been in the wellness field for over 24 years. Is that correct? I get that right. And can you just share a little bit about your journey? What drew you to yoga therapy and mindfulness coaching?

Rachel (04:12)
Sure, I mean, it's long journey. let's see, ⁓ in my late 20s, was getting a master's in counseling. And what I was noticing was that the body wasn't much a part of the conversation at that point. Things have certainly changed by now. But at that point, when you were studying psychology and counseling, you weren't talking much about somatics.

And at the time I did already have some experience in semantics. I was doing yoga. I was in the middle of training to be a yoga instructor. And I was also guiding wilderness rites of passage programs, which were quite body oriented. So as I was doing that master's program, I knew that as soon as I finished, I would do additional training in some sort of semantics psychology.

And because I had an interest in yoga and had started training as a yoga teacher, yoga therapy was a great bridge. And there's lots of different kinds of yoga therapy and some are a little bit more physically oriented. Some are a little more emotionally oriented, spiritually oriented. There's lots of bridges. But the program that I did was very emotionally oriented in terms of using the body in the therapeutic process. And so more focused on our psychological experience than

and improving an injury, for example, it wasn't focused in that direction. And so that sort of started the ball rolling quickly because in those few years I was doing all of those trainings, all of that learning and starting to integrate all of the pieces to create whatever it is that I offer, which is kind of a hodgepodge of a lot of different kinds of training and continues to evolve of course over the years. But that spark happened.

Yeah, I guess 24 years ago now.

Darla Ridilla (06:06)
Awesome. You know, it's so exciting to be talking about somatics. It's something that ⁓ I just started studying a year ago. I finished a master's equivalent just a couple of weeks ago in trauma informed coaching and somatics. And I have to say through my studies, I was not even aware of how much my body was talking to me in any experience, good and bad. And now it's almost like this thing I can't shut off, which is good. Yeah, but it's a fascinating subject for me.

⁓ and the wonderful thing is while it's really scientific, I think it's really easy also to make it relatable to people like use it term terminology while, you know, polyvagal theory is a big fancy word. You know, when you, when you get rid of that term and just talk about how our body sensations react to our experiences, it's so relatable for just the average person.

Rachel (06:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, I agree. It's very resonant because when you start listening to your body, you're right. I love how you just put that. I realized my body was talking to me all the time ⁓ because our minds are talking to us all the time, but we're not always as aware of ⁓ how accessible it can be to listen to the body. And ⁓ our minds are wonderful, but they lie a lot. ⁓

Darla Ridilla (07:24)
They do.

Rachel (07:25)
Our bodies don't. So sometimes the information we get through our mind can be confusing. It can be a very fine line between intuition and ⁓ fear, honestly. But when we settle into the body, I think the messages can be clearer than the minds that come through our thought processes.

Darla Ridilla (07:44)
Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of just goes beautifully into my next question, which is that what you do just really sits right in the middle there of the mindfulness, the neuroscience, the psychology. And how do you think that these ⁓ fields, how do they help you to support your clients when you're reducing, helping them to reduce stress and build resilience?

Rachel (08:09)
⁓ Well, I think there's so much overlap between the fields. So what we have learned, especially over the last decade, is that what we have been teaching in mindfulness has come to fruition in neuroscience. We can see that what we're teaching makes sense scientifically, ⁓ as well as, you know, there's a lot of overlap between yogic philosophy and mindfulness and psychology, and they all go hand in hand. So I like to work with all of them because

For some people, learning the science, understanding the neuroscience is more helpful. And for others, coming at it from just a mindfulness approach without talking about the science is more helpful. So when we have all three, one, we find out that they all support one another. They're not in conflict. I think years ago, we would have said that they are in conflict, that we can't prove mindfulness theory, that kind of thing.

But now we find out that they're supportive of one another. And at the same time, there's still three different languages. When we think about the traditional language of psychology, of neuroscience, and of mindfulness or yoga, we speak about those things differently, and different people hear language differently. So what I like about dipping my toes into all of them is that I can meet clients where they are and use the language that resonates with them. For some people, if you start talking about poly-vagel theory, ⁓

and you know things just kind of turn off it just doesn't resonate and they just don't want to hear it that way but I can talk about polyvagal theory through the language of mindfulness or psychology and then they can light up so yeah I like being able to meet people where they are using different kinds of language

Darla Ridilla (09:56)
I love that. One of the things that ⁓ I studied under Caroline Strossen and she used to help us to explain it to our clients was she called it the traffic lights of tolerance. And so we had green for when we feel stable and when we feel grounded. We had yellow for the fight or flight that's where mostly I've been in most of my life where you're anxious, anxious all the time, kind of hypervigilant. And then we had the red light when we're in shutdown.

when severe depression or you are at a standstill. know when I get, sometimes when I get overwhelmed, I just stop. I can't do anything. Like my brain is flooded. I get the brain fog. And I loved how we had the lights. And so as I was talking to people in sessions, I didn't have to say all the other terminology, which escapes me because I'm having some brain fog today.

But it doesn't matter. And yeah, so they could relate like, ⁓ OK, I understand what that is. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel (10:57)
Yeah, yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Yeah, I love

the traffic lights. Those are great metaphors.

Darla Ridilla (11:05)
Yeah, she used use like a ladder but then she switched over because the lights, we all know what those mean, you know, as drivers and yeah. So let's talk about the yoga therapy. So those who aren't familiar with what trauma-informed yoga is, how does that differ from your traditional yoga?

Rachel (11:10)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

There's a few ways that trauma-informed yoga differs. So probably all of your listeners have had an experience of going to a yoga class and not necessarily feeling safe, right? The way that yoga is traditionally taught doesn't preference keeping people safe, right? It preferences the movement if it's a physical yoga class or an asana class.

And in trauma-informed yoga, we're coming at it with the understanding that not all bodies come into a yoga class and feel comfortable or safe. And so when we put ourselves into situations where we move out of our window of tolerance, which means we're starting to get dysregulated, we're starting to move into that yellow or red light, we are not going to have a positive experience. And it can also be re-traumatizing.

So in trauma-informed yoga, we look at how we can create a situation that is preferencing safety first before the movement. And there's a lot of ways that we can create safety. One of the ways is we use language of choice. So instead of, I'm sure you've heard some yoga teachers say things like, I want you to step forward, go ahead and relax. You know, there's almost like a command.

and for a request of you and in trauma informed yoga, I will always use language of choice, meaning I will say, you could consider bringing your arm over your head or consider what it might feel like to take a longer exhale. So the way that I'm expressing some options are with different kinds of choices and language that gives more space to say no.

I am not much of a hands-on teacher these days for this reason, because not everyone wants to be touched. And what yoga teachers have traditionally done is often ask first, but people might not feel like they really can say no. It's an uncomfortable thing to have a perfectly nice yoga teacher come over and say, can I give you an adjustment? It can feel uncomfortable to say no, even if you don't actually want to be touched. So some ways to explore that are either to

and just let everyone know that you're not a hands-on teacher or to put something on their map that has a yes or a no, they can turn it in either direction at any point. It's a little bit easier. People feel the deeper sense of permission because you can switch it throughout the class. You don't ever have to really make a final decision about it. So that's another aspect of trauma-informed yoga. And probably maybe the biggest one in terms of ⁓

neurological shifts is to really focus on interoception. So interoception is simply the skill of paying attention to the sensations in your body. We are good at noticing pain. We're not that great at noticing more subtle sensation or neutral sensation. And sometimes we notice pleasant sensations, but those two are more subtle than pain. So when we've experienced trauma, we tend to have less

access to sensations in our body. We don't have a great skill of interoception and that's just because when we are in traumatic situations we often check out, we dissociate. This is a fantastic skill that our nervous system offers us when the situation is really too scary to stay present for. So when you're in a traumatic situation checking out can be very valuable.

But it teaches the body to check out. So over time, we can find ourselves in a not serious situation and still be checking out. Or we have, because of traumatic experiences, have the impression that our body's no longer a safe place to dwell. So paying attention to sensations in the body helps us to build that skill, which makes us more comfortable in our bodies.

gives us more access to responding to the needs of the body. If I don't have great interoception, I might not notice that I'm dehydrated. I might not notice that I have to go to the bathroom until my bladder is full. There's all kinds of very practical ways that a lack of interoception affects our day-to-day life. Because when we're not meeting our physical needs moment to moment, we start to move into fight or flight. If I have to go to the bathroom, if I'm hungry, if I'm thirsty, if my back hurts,

and I'm not responding to that, then I'm sending a message to my brain that I'm not safe, my body's not safe. And then my brain will start to turn on that fight, flight or freeze response, even though there is nothing wrong except that I'm just not meeting a basic bodily need. So there are lots of ways that building that skill of interoception is helpful for us. ⁓ And yoga is a perfect place to do that.

because when I'm teaching a trauma-sensitive yoga class, I'm gonna give more questioning cues around what you're noticing. I'm gonna ask you over and over to notice what it feels like to inhale. What does it feel like when you're in warrior one? When you're balancing in tree, can you feel the sensation at the ball of your foot or at the heel or both? So we don't often think about sensations in that way, but when we're offered,

and opportunity to pay attention in all different ways to different spaces in the body, that can be a really safe way to enter back into paying attention to sensation. Because we're not asking ourselves to pay attention to a sensation that is scary, necessarily. It's simply, what does it feel like when you bend your elbow? Can you pay attention to that? So it's a really easy place to build this skill of interoception.

Darla Ridilla (17:24)
I love what you said about in the beginning about how the trauma informed is more of suggestion versus request or demand. Because I know that particularly for someone who's new to yoga, it can be really intimidating. There people doing all these poses. And while we're told not to compare ourselves, our human nature is to look around the room like, oh, they can do that. Why can't I? I feel stupid. And so

That's a wonderful way to, I love yoga. try to do it weekly. That or I just started trying out Tai Chi too, which is a little bit of a different, but still it's mind body. ⁓ But what it invites me to do in that typical vinyasa that I do is I love what you just said about pay attention to the ball of your foot in tree. I'm more of worried about my balance and not having my foot touch the floor. But ⁓ I think I'm actually mentally inside myself.

going to try it when I go to a yoga class next week. I think I'm going to try it and see how it makes it better for me. I love that.

Rachel (18:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I love what you just said in that, ⁓ yes, you can go to a trauma-informed class, but anyone who has some tools that they can bring with them can practice this way of doing yoga, even if the teacher isn't trauma-informed. Certainly, they have to be in a class where ⁓ there are some classes where there's a clear willingness of the teacher to allow for people to move in their own way. Many teachers speak about that from the beginning. And there are some classes that are really

Darla Ridilla (18:56)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (18:58)
organized in a very specific way and they don't have that kind of spaciousness. But as long as you can find a teacher that allows you or that you feel that sort of permission to really do your own thing in moments, if what the teacher is offering doesn't feel right for your body and you're paying attention to that and you can make a different choice and feel safe and comfortable in the confines of that class to do that, then you don't really have to have a trauma-informed

teacher to practice trauma-informed yoga.

Darla Ridilla (19:29)
Yeah, I think it's going to be good. ⁓ Because I'm having a lot of duality in my own body right now. So I've got this wonderful excitement of moving to a new town and back into Colorado, which is energetically where I belong. But in that process, nine days after I got here, I lost my dog. So I've also got this grief thing going on.

So I feel it, like my body is tired and I can feel that tiredness, but my mind is actually starting just this week to come alive. It's this strange like yin and yang. But I think that being really aware of my body is gonna be really good for me to do just a process. that's yoga to me is really about relaxing, letting go, surrender.

Rachel (20:01)
Hmm.

Darla Ridilla (20:21)
but also awareness.

Rachel (20:24)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, ultimately, yoga is a mindful practice and mindfulness is simply noticing what's present without judgment. Really just can we be aware of what's happening moment to moment and bring a soft kind of self-friendly warmth to whatever is happening, whether that's grief or anger or joy, whatever it is, we're just meeting that, we're noticing it.

Darla Ridilla (20:34)
Yeah.

Rachel (20:54)
and we're not judging it. That's all mindfulness is and yoga is a mindfulness practice.

Darla Ridilla (20:59)
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Darla Ridilla (21:40)
one of the things when we talk about trauma recovery, and we're talking about our our body sensations, and our how our nervous system reacts.

While it's important to understand what our body is telling us so we know how to react, what is really beyond that? How important is that in trauma recovery? Would someone be able to recover from trauma without being aware of their body sensations?

Rachel (22:11)
That's a serious question. My gut response is no. I think that there's a reason why ⁓ sort of the cutting edge of psychology is somatics. I think there's a reason why when nothing else has worked, trauma-informed yoga can be the thing that creates healing because

Darla Ridilla (22:14)
It is.

Mm-hmm.

Rachel (22:37)
As long as we can't be in that conversation with the body, we can't be having the full picture of what's happening for us. So there's always some part of us that's sort of annexed. So I think that part of doing somatic work is the mind and the body being in relationship with one another and not in conflict with one another. I think that the

the aspect of working with the body and at a minimum, feeling comfortable in our bodies, feeling like we can feel what we're feeling. mean, part of somatics is emotions. It's not just about physical sensations. It's about being in relationship with the emotions that we're having. And those emotions are moving through our bodies. If you just think about something simple like crying.

Darla Ridilla (23:19)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (23:30)
We feel that in a physical way. We feel the buildup of it. We feel it in our throat. We feel it in our face. When we hold it back, we feel the tension and the bracing around holding back those tears. So emotions are a very physical experience. So I don't know how we heal from trauma without experiencing emotions and sensations.

Darla Ridilla (23:54)
Yeah, I would agree. I've kind of referred to it a lot as the needle in the record that gets stuck in the rut. because our brains and our body remembers and our brain will release that memory so much easier. But often I've had an experience where I'll feel something in my body or I'll react in a certain way. And I'm like, where did that come from? And it wasn't until I learned about somatics that I can, you know, kind of

go off by myself when I have a moment and say, okay, what was going on? Where in my body was I feeling that in that moment? And where in the past did that connect almost always to childhood, but it can be an adult experience as well. And then when I can identify it, I've kind of learned even when I've identified the emotion to say,

I see you instead of stuffing it like, that's uncomfortable. I have to be happy and positive. But part of what I'm learning with my intuitive coaches, have to sit in the dark to see the light and honoring those negative emotions, honoring our fears, but then saying, how can I work through that? And it's the same kind of thing with the body. I'm feeling my throat's tight. gosh, I don't feel heard. It's about...

my car being repaired, but it's really not. It's really about mom not protecting me when I was four years old and my dad was threatening.

Rachel (25:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're bringing up examples of the way that your body remembers everything. So we don't always consciously remember, you know, every experience, every thought, everything that's ever happened to us is imprinted on our brain and it exists somewhere. We can't always catch hold of those in our thinking brain, but our bodies remember things differently. So...

And when you feel that catch in your throat, you can simply just notice what that feels like, breathe into it. Our tendency when we feel a catch in the throat is to brace a little bit because we don't like the feeling. It feels uncomfortable and we wanna feel something different. So we distract from that until it goes away. That's just a natural tendency and I'm not knocking that, right? It's appropriate to also function in our life. And so we can't in every moment notice the catch in the throat.

Darla Ridilla (26:02)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right.

Rachel (26:09)
But when we do give ourselves space to notice the catch in the throat, we may also have a memory. It may remind us of something. It may have us kind of on a train of thought about something that's happening in our life. So sometimes we make mental or cognitive connections with the physical sensations we're experiencing. We don't have to, however, sometimes the body works things out for us.

⁓ if we can give ourselves a chance to feel what we're feeling, some things just ⁓ in a way get digested without having a cognitive ⁓ conversation around it.

Darla Ridilla (26:48)
Yeah, sometimes just sitting in it, what I've found over the past year is that when these things and they bubble up, is intense and it feels very uncomfortable. Like there is this tendency of, I don't think I can handle this. I don't want to do this. I'm uncomfortable. This is too much. But what I'm finding the more I do it, it actually dissipates. And I think it actually gets quicker. Not that it's going to have like a, it's going to get quicker every time, but the knowledge of

Rachel (27:14)
Mm-hmm.

Darla Ridilla (27:18)
I kind of like surgery, you get your D replaced. The pain of the surgery for a short time is gonna hurt more than the current pain. But the long term benefits are, I won't chronically have to experience this. This is a very short, uncomfortable thing that's gonna happen. But I find after like 10 minutes or so for me, that the intensity starts to lessen up. If I allow whatever's going on and just allow it.

and be a discomfort, the body then will start to kind of re regulate on its own.

Rachel (27:53)
I And I think there's all different ways that you can work with bodily sensations in this way, different ways you can do somatic work. So for example, when I'm doing trauma informed yoga, I'm really just teaching a yoga class with these concepts in mind. I'm not asking anyone to process childhood trauma. We're just doing yoga and we're doing it in a way that builds that skill of interoception. There's a lot of other benefits to interoception. So I mentioned

Darla Ridilla (28:09)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (28:22)
and it helps us attend to our physical needs. But it also builds this mind-body relationship. also, because when we practice the skill of interoception, we strengthen our insula. This is a part of the brain that's kind of a bridge between the mind and the body. It helps with emotional regulation. There's a whole bunch of downstream things that happen when we pay attention to sensations in the body. So we can do a yoga class in this way where we're also building

agency because we are giving ourselves choice, giving ourselves permission to not necessarily do what the yoga instructor is suggesting. That is a very healing experience that does not involve actually processing any trauma. Now, I also do yoga therapy where I work with people one-on-one and we do in both a cognitive and somatic way process trauma. And I do say things like, what are you noticing in your body? Can you tell me more about that?

when you pay attention to that sensation, let's say it's in the shoulder, are there other thoughts or images or emotions that arise? We could wind up doing parts work where this part in your shoulder maybe is representative of some younger part of yourself that's been protecting you. You know, there's a host of things that can sort of unfold in that kind of yoga therapy experience where we are more explicitly working with our emotions.

And, but those are two very different paths and both can take you to similar places. So I think it's important for people to recognize that whatever way they want to approach the body, there are again, lots of options. You don't have to be in ⁓ kind of a one-on-one therapeutic situation talking about trauma. There is a huge benefit to simply doing body work like yoga.

Darla Ridilla (29:53)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (30:17)
with this trauma-informed perspective.

Darla Ridilla (30:21)
I love what you said about the agency and a choice too, because the immediate thought that came to me is that's a form of taking back your power. If you are deciding for yourself, regardless of how others are doing things or maybe outside pressure or lack thereof, just deciding in general, that and that to me is a healing because the more power we have, the more in control we feel. And that also is very grounding. I mean, it's kind of to me like a full circle thing, that alone.

Right?

Rachel (30:52)
And when I think about those two examples that I just gave, a sort of scenario for ⁓ informed yoga class and yoga therapy, ⁓ one of the things that arises is ⁓ just what you said, so much of it has to do with agency. And ⁓ part of agency is recognizing what makes me feel safe. So when you imagine yourself in a therapeutic one-on-one situation,

Darla Ridilla (30:58)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (31:22)
having a conversation, feeling your feelings in the presence of another person, does that make you feel safe? Or does that feel like a bridge too far? Does that feel like that's just taken me out of that window of tolerance? And if I do that, I will wind up in fight, flight or freeze. Obviously, a good therapist should be able to help ground you and help sort of help you track that situation for yourself and not take you somewhere that you don't want to go. But safety is the key. And I think

When I talk to people, always do discovery calls with people before I see them one-on-one. That's a big piece of what I'm talking about. What's the safe route for you right now? And by safe, I don't mean cozy. Like we can be uncomfortable and do hard work and still ultimately feel safe and build resilience. But when we move out of that window of tolerance and we're starting to move into fight or flight or freeze, we can't do healing work there.

Darla Ridilla (32:21)
Yeah, I mean, I even just in talk therapy, I've had part of why I started doing what I do with narcissistic abuse is because in the typical talk therapy, I did not feel safe with my therapist. felt judged and I felt like I was expected to make promises that there was demand made on me and I didn't feel safe and I stopped seeing her because of that.

Rachel (32:41)
Mm-hmm.

Darla Ridilla (32:45)
And so that's a different modality, but it's still the same concept. If I had felt safe to express myself, if I had felt safe to say, no, I don't want to make that promise to you. I don't want to do that and still have her respect me and say, okay, let's talk about what you are willing to do. Then I would have continued my therapy. And so your clients, they need in their bodies to feel safe, no matter what they choose. And you talked about meeting them where they are. I found that experience too, because all of us are in different places.

Rachel (33:04)
Mm-hmm.

Darla Ridilla (33:14)
All of us have, depending on our personalities, our experiences, where we are in our healing, there are certain things we can handle and some things we just can't. Maybe later we'll be able to handle a one-on-one. Maybe never, that's okay too. But maybe right now, because I'm in shutdown, any little thing is going to trigger me. I need the softest experience possible.

Rachel (33:25)
Yes.

Darla Ridilla (33:34)
So you did talk a little bit about your services and mindfulness. For someone who is listening and they're feeling a little bit of disconnection with their body, they're uncertain where they should begin, what would you recommend?

Rachel (33:53)
I would start with something really simple, like notice what it feels like to breathe. Breath can be really transformational. It can also feel scary. So if your breath rhythm tends to be very shallow, not so much in the belly, then suddenly coming into this deep diaphragmatic breath can feel quite uncomfortable. So I don't recommend anyone does, you know.

a one hour pranayama class if they're not accustomed to it, but really just something simple like you don't even have to shift the way you're breathing. Just notice how it feels to breathe. Notice how it feels where your feet are in contact with the floor. Can you feel any sensation at the sit bones where your hips meet the chair or the ground? So just really, really simple prompts that I just...

Darla Ridilla (34:20)
Yeah.

Rachel (34:44)
Yeah, I advise just simple prompts to help you notice what's happening in your body and to notice if there's any place in your body that feels like a safe place. So if your tendency is to not really want to pay attention to your body, because it starts to make you feel uncomfortable or anxious, maybe you've had experiences in your life that weren't physically safe, to notice, could I find one space where paying attention to it doesn't make me feel yucky, doesn't make me feel anxious?

And then let's pretend it's the palm of my hand. I might gaze at the palm of my hand. I might notice sensations. I might notice the difference between making a fist and spreading my fingers wide. This might sound really simple, and it is, but it's a powerful thing to find a place in your body where you feel safe or that makes you feel grounded to pay attention to it. So you can start there.

and give yourself a couple of minutes just to breathe and notice simple sensations. And then maybe from there you start to notice, you just ask yourself more often, am I thirsty? Am I hungry? Do I have to go to the bathroom? Simple, simple, simple questions, but these are basic needs that we often ignore, again, because we're kind of checked out of the body and we're spinning around in our head a lot.

So anything that you can do that pulls you out of that spinning and into just the physical experience of having a body can help to make the shift into feeling a lot more comfortable. From there, maybe you notice the sensation of anger or the sensation of sad, know, an emotion is coming in. And instead of telling a story about that emotion or distracting from it, you notice how does that land in my body? When I feel sad, I, I,

can settle in and notice where I feel sad or what I feel physically that's connected to that sadness. So these are steps you can take. I'm not suggesting you start with the emotion, but just giving sort of little ideas of how you can move through the layers of the body and begin to pay attention in ways that don't feel too scary.

Darla Ridilla (36:55)
And I like that because a lot of times we're like, when I used to be an employee, I would get triggered a lot at work. And some of that was I was in the wrong job. But there was also where I'd go to the bathroom and cry. That's fine. But sometimes we don't have that opportunity. Like we're stuck at a counter. We're stuck at a desk. And these are things someone could do without anyone around them knowing that they are actually doing them. And it's a way to kind of, you

reorient yourself, get grounded. And for the beginner, it's just the simple things they build on and grow, and then you just can continue down that journey.

Rachel (37:35)
Yeah, I mean, truthfully, when we're really stressed, we're in the stress response, right? So stressors are coming at us all day. And some of them just feel like challenges like, Yep, there's another one, I'm going to add that to my list. I'm okay, I'm going through I'm getting things done. And these stressors are just becoming challenges. stressors that overwhelm us trigger the stress response.

So we could have a million stressors coming in, but that doesn't mean we're in fight, flight, or freeze. We're not having a stress response. We're just dealing with these challenges that come in throughout the day. ⁓ So when we get overwhelmed, generally, anxiety is mostly a heady experience. It's not that there aren't physical things that are happening in our bodies, but what happens when we're anxious is we often start to tell a story about our anxiety.

And that story makes the stressor feel worse and more overwhelming. But when we are starting to feel overwhelmed, if we can ground ourselves, if we can settle ourselves a little bit, that helps shift us out of the stress response and back into that window of tolerance. just like a better image, if you're imagining a circle at the very center of the circle, this is where you feel the safest, the most comfortable.

you know, everybody has one of those places. Like I just want to escape to my comfy chair with my blankie, right? That's where we feel the safest. It's also not where we learn or are challenged. That's okay. We still need these places where we kind of regroup. And as novelty comes in, as challenges come in, we move farther away from that safety zone, but we are still in a place where we can learn, be inspired, be excited.

When we get to the edge of that safety zone, we start moving into that outside of that window of tolerance. And that's when we get dysregulated and we move into the fight, flight, or freeze response. So the more tricks that we have in our toolbox to keep us in the safety zone, not necessarily in the center, right? Because that's not really where magic happens. It's just where we feel nice and cozy.

Darla Ridilla (39:47)
You're right.

Rachel (39:49)
The more tricks we have to keep ourselves in that circle, the more we can also tolerate being in our body, right? Because if being in the body can feel a little uncomfortable, we learn to do it by staying safe while we do it. So how do we stay safe? How do we keep ourselves in that parasympathetic or regulated response? We take a diaphragmatic breath, which means we can feel the bottom of the rib cage kind of expand a little bit as we breathe in.

and come back to the center as we breathe out. And we bring ourselves into the present. So the more we are spinning about the past or the future, the more dysregulated we get. So what are the ways we bring ourselves into the present? We might be using our senses. I might just take a moment when I'm stressed out to notice if there's a smell in the room, if there's something I can look at that's right in front of me that is calming or beautiful.

Can I feel my physical body in contact with support from my chair or the floor, wherever I am? And can I take a diaphragmatic breath? These are the things that bring us into a more regulated state. And what brings us out is a lot of past and future worries. Most of our worries are past and future. They're not actually what's happening right now. Sometimes what's happening now is stressful, but more often, it's our imagining about what's going to happen that stresses us out.

Darla Ridilla (41:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel (41:14)
So if we can do a couple of things, even if it's just for two or three minutes, to bring ourselves into what's actually happening now, a mindfulness practice for a few minutes, that can generally very quickly lower that stress level and bring us back into that window of tolerance.

Darla Ridilla (41:32)
Yeah, one thing that happened just last week, so I had to drive my moving van from Arizona to Colorado. It was a 15-foot van. I was towing my car behind it. I was terrified, to be honest. A man would be like, no problem. I mean, it's not that I haven't driven a vehicle that big before, but I'd never done it completely by myself with no one with me. And I kind of used some of those tactics, some mind, some body.

Rachel (41:45)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Darla Ridilla (42:01)
I had to go an hour away to Prescott to pick it up, which was an unexpected glitch. So I had to kind of talk myself down and be aware. Yeah, I'm feeling really dysregulated. I've caught myself going into tunnel vision, which is what I do when I get in anxiety mode. And so I just voiced it. I'm having tunnel vision right now. I am really scared, but I have to do this. I need to do this. And when I'm done,

Rachel (42:18)
Mm-hmm.

Darla Ridilla (42:29)
I'm going to feel empowered, which is exactly what happened. But I broke the trip down and I said, okay, you are going to feel dysregulated when you approach Flagstaff. There's going to be traffic. You're going to have to merge onto 40. But once you get above Flagstaff, are two, there's two pain points merging onto the highway and merging onto another highway. Once you get north of Flagstaff, you're all on reservation roads, which are pretty much just two lane, couple right turns. You're good.

So in that moment, I allowed myself to feel scared. I turned the radio on. there you talk about that something to ground you into the present because my fear was in the future, I'm going to side swipe side swipe someone and wreck my car in theirs and everything I own is in this truck. OK, the radio is going. I'm grounded in now. Once I get past these two pain points, I can feel as anxious as I want. I just have to get through these two

Rachel (43:03)
with me.

Uh-huh.

Darla Ridilla (43:29)
Two minute points. Home free.

Rachel (43:31)
Right. So

that's such a great example of one of the ways that one of the concepts that we bring into trauma-informed yoga. So let's say we're coming into a difficult pose. And if you're in that difficult pose and you don't know how long you're going to be there, right away, your brain starts going, I don't know if we're safe here, because it's already jumped to the future. And it can't imagine, like, how much longer are we going to be here? But if you say, we'll be here for

Darla Ridilla (43:40)
Hahahaha

Rachel (44:00)
five, four, three, two, one. As soon as you start hearing that counting, you start to kind of wrap your brain around, five seconds, maybe it's 10 seconds, whatever it is. Giving your brain a sort of heads up of here's what's gonna happen, we're gonna have to merge, that's a scary point, and we're gonna have to merge onto another highway, that's another scary point. Now your brain knows, ⁓ that's actually what I'm scared about.

So I can worry about that when that actually happens without saying that your brain is just sort of wandering around through all the possibilities and you're basically just sustaining the anxiety around it. But breaking it down and giving yourself kind of almost like mileage is really helpful, is a really helpful way to get into that again, back into the window of tolerance. And you can imagine all kinds of ways you can do that with all of your stressors.

Darla Ridilla (44:54)
Yeah, other one.

Yeah, I mean, and I don't know if I would have been able to do that even just two years ago. I don't know if I would have. I wouldn't have had the knowledge because the old Darla would have freaked out the whole seven hours, 400 miles, like, my God, I'm going to wreck the truck at any second. But then I also might be a self-fulfilling prophecy too. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to share?

Rachel (45:14)
with them.

Uh-huh. Great.

Yeah.

⁓ I guess I would say that there's just so many approaches to this work. So we've talked about trauma-informed yoga and the particular brand of yoga therapy that I practice, but I also teach lots of mindfulness classes on nervous system regulation, on ⁓ vagal tone, on compassion. Compassion is another phenomenal pathway to ⁓ what we're talking about.

Doing trauma, healing, I think you cannot do it without self-compassion. Part of the work is to bring in that sort of self-warmth and friendliness because so much of what happens in trauma is that we doubt ourselves. We lose agency, we doubt ourselves, we're not sure if we handled things correctly. When you bring self-compassion into the mix, everything changes.

So I guess I would just want to say that there are so many different pathways to take in a healing journey and to explore for yourself, like find out what pulls you, what resonates. And if anyone tells you that this is the way it should be done, then you should go the other way. If there's anything you take away, take away agency and choice. Look for what resonates, which doesn't mean it's easy. It can be uncomfortable.

Darla Ridilla (46:40)
Yeah, it's different for everybody.

Rachel (46:51)
⁓ But it shouldn't be spiraling you into a feeling of a lack of safety. Go ahead.

Darla Ridilla (46:57)
can you explain

⁓ vagal tone to someone who may not know what that term is?

Rachel (47:02)
So vagal tone is really just another way of saying you have a strong parasympathetic response, meaning when a stressor comes in, you are able to calm yourself down and deal with the stressor. So oftentimes parasympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic response, vagal tone, they all get kind of wrapped into the same sort of language, but vagal tone is coming from your vagus nerve.

which is a very long, windy nerve. Vagus means wandering. It wanders through your head, down through your organs, and it is having a bidirectional conversation with your brain. But the majority of that information is coming from the body to the brain. So your vagus nerve is telling your brain what's happening, what's working, what's not. And when you have strong vagal tone, you can just think of it as like exercising a bicep.

When you have strong vagal tone, your vagus nerve is able to kind of hit the brakes on that stress response more quickly. And most of the things we've talked about today will increase vagal tone. So if you want to sort of exercise that vagus nerve or your parasympathetic response, you're wanting to take diaphragmatic breaths, you're wanting to notice sensations in your body, and you're wanting to do things that feel calming and nourishing. That's how we create more vagal tone.

Darla Ridilla (48:24)
Awesome. Thank you.

Rachel (48:26)
You're welcome.

Darla Ridilla (48:27)
Well, how can people find you? We'll put it in the show notes as well so people can contact you if they want to work with you and any parting final thoughts that you have.

Rachel (48:38)
⁓ the easiest way to find me is rachelposner.com. I am hardly at all on social media. Like, I don't know if I could even say I am on social media. my, so my website has all of my information and yeah, I work with people in lots of different ways, which you can find on the website, including, ⁓ I have a yoga membership. So I teach four classes a week on zoom. That's a way to work with me or a one-on-one.

Darla Ridilla (48:49)
Hahaha!

Rachel (49:06)
⁓ And I answer all my own emails. So through my website, you can send me emails if you have questions about anything we've talked about. I'm happy to start an email conversation. And I think that you'll have a free link actually to offer people that'll give them ⁓ actually a vagal toning practice. So it's a five or six minute video and it just ⁓ works with the muscles in the face.

Darla Ridilla (49:24)
Great. OK.

Rachel (49:34)
When the muscles in the face get tense, it again, through the vagus nerve, sends a message to the brain that things are not okay, but we hold habitual tension. So we might be sending that message even when things are totally fine. And so there's a video when you sign up for that link that kind of teaches you some, gives you a few extra tools to relax and drop into that parasympathetic or vagal toning response.

Darla Ridilla (50:02)
I'm going to have to sign up for the link. ⁓ I could use that sometimes. Thank you. I have so appreciated this conversation. I can just totally geek out for hours on polyvagal theory and somatics, but thank you for sharing how trauma-informed yoga works and how it's helpful and what you do.

Rachel (50:15)
Perfect.

You're welcome. It's been a pleasure talking to you. It's been really fun.

Darla Ridilla (50:25)
Awesome. And to my listeners, you have the power.

Darla Ridilla (50:36)
So here are my takeaways from this episode. First of all, being trained in semantics as well, I have to say I totally loved this conversation. And while our mind is recording experiences in our life, particularly trauma, it's a reminder that our body is also recording that in a different way. And I love what Rachel said that basically, in order to heal from trauma, you really do have to have some form of awareness of your body sensation.

Trauma-informed yoga is a fantastic way to get in touch with those sensations in a safe way that won't further trigger or traumatize you. So I absolutely loved that there is this option and that it is in line with somatics because from my own experience, traditional cognitive behavioral therapy by itself

really wasn't effective for me, which explains why my entire life I've been in and out of talk therapy. But being in touch with those sensations is so important. know, when she mentioned about how when we're traumatized, we often go into shutdown. And in some instances, that is actually what is needed to be able to cope with the trauma. But over long term, or if that continues in other situations, that can actually really be detrimental to our

daily experiences, but even more so to our healing experiences. So getting in touch with sensations and knowing what those are really can help you to move through the trauma a little bit easier. I really like

when she's saying that you feel safe, that doesn't necessarily mean what she said the word cozy, we can be safe, but feel uncomfortable at the same time. Sometimes when we are exploring experiences, there is a level of discomfort that comes up. But if we feel safe to experience that discomfort in the presence of the person we're doing it with, no matter what modality

that is, that is a great opportunity to process those emotions, feel the uncomfortable sensation, whether it's emotional or physical, and move through it. Thank you again for joining me.

Darla Ridilla (52:56)
Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the road to recovery from trauma and narcissistic abuse. If you're a high achieving woman who's been tired of feeling stuck, unseen or unfulfilled in your relationships, this podcast is your wake up call. The road to healing starts with reclaiming your power and you don't have to walk it alone. If this episode hit home, don't just keep it to yourself, subscribe, leave a review and share it with another woman who needs to hear this. You never know whose life you might change. Wanna connect directly?

Tap the link in the show notes and send me a message. I'd love to hear what landed for you. And remember, this show is for education and inspiration. I'm not a licensed therapist, so be sure to seek professional support when you need it. We're not here for surface level fixes. We're here for real transformation. Keep listening, keep rising, because you have the power.