Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup
Hi, I’m Russ Tellup, a Trauma-Informed Somatic Coach and Level 1 Brainspotting practitioner. In my podcast "Trauma Talks," I dive into the neuroscience of trauma, exploring somatic healing practices, Polyvagal Theory, and IFS (Internal Family Systems) parts work. I also occasionally address the complexities of narcissistic abuse, offering insights and tools for healing. Join me each week as we navigate the journey of recovery, resilience, and self-discovery together.
Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup
Body Wisdom: Finding Your Voice After Losing Everything
Michelle Hollingbrooks' extraordinary story begins with a mosquito bite that changed everything. At thirteen, this seemingly insignificant event transmitted equine encephalitis, causing her brain to swell and plunging her into a seven-day coma. The aftermath was devastating – she awoke blind, deaf, partially paralyzed, and with no memory whatsoever. Unlike a newborn baby with established connections from the womb, Michelle describes awakening as a "blank slate" with no understanding of who she was or even what it meant to be human.
This profound disconnection forced Michelle to develop extraordinary body awareness. Unable to communicate verbally and with no memory to draw upon, she became hyper-attuned to energy and somatic cues, learning to read others' bodies as a survival mechanism. These skills now form the foundation of her work as a trauma-informed somatic coach, where she helps others reconnect with their own body wisdom.
The most remarkable aspect of Michelle's journey? The very creature associated with her illness – the horse – became central to her healing. After establishing her nonprofit Unbridled Change, Michelle discovered how horses provide unparalleled opportunities for trauma recovery. She shares a powerful story of a traumatized teen whose breakthrough came when a therapy horse named Barry chose to move toward her during an emotional outburst rather than flee, creating a safe container for authentic emotional processing that no office-bound therapist could replicate.
Michelle's approach blends somatic awareness with spiritual dimensions, recognizing that true healing requires addressing body, mind, and soul as an integrated whole. She views healing not as "fixing" something broken but as "remembering we're already whole" – a profound perspective gained through her own journey back to embodiment. Today, she offers coaching both in-person and virtually, hosts the Soulful Practices podcast, and has authored "The Horse Cure" with a second book on somatic healing coming in 2025.
Ready to reconnect with your own body wisdom? Explore Michelle's work at unbridledchange.org and discover how somatic awareness can transform your relationship with trauma, helping you find the medicine within your own wounds.
Hi everybody, Welcome to Trauma Talks with Russ Tellop. I'm Russ Tellop, your host Today. We've got a guest with us. Her name is Michelle Hollingbrooks. Michelle is a trauma-informed somatic coach just like me, and we're going to chat a little bit and find out her story and kind of what brought her into this space and I hope you guys enjoy Michelle, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm really excited to be here and to dive into, you know, the body and healing and all this good stuff. I love it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So we had a little chat before we got going here and, um man, you've got one heck of a story. Do you mind sharing with us um kind of what led you to coaching and got you started in this space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's a little bit kind of like made for Hollywood movie kind of thing. So I do like to invite people to use my story as a vehicle to see the different ways in which they've experienced a similar maybe not a physical symptom of like what I've experienced. But as far as that journey of that wounded healer, you know, like we all have had a past, especially if you come into this podcast, what you have, which is all about helping to heal trauma and stepping into that and reconnecting with the body, you know there's something that has got us into this threat and that is that wounded healer, which is the medicine, is within the wound right, which means, unfortunately, for us to wake up to our medicine, we have to have a wound.
Speaker 2:And so that's the unfortunate thing. So I invite people to just kind of presence themselves and witness as I'm going through my story, like feel into your body, like what is happening in and around your body, what is it bringing forward, and if you have a little piece of paper, you can just write it down, because I would love for it to help you recognize, maybe, the breadth of your own experiences and really honor them and the medicine that was held within them. So if that feels good to y'all, then definitely. Oh, I'm in the South, by the way, sorry about that.
Speaker 1:Ah, the y'all.
Speaker 2:Then you feel free to do that. Okay, so here's the short version of my healer's journey. So when I was 13 years old, I was bit by a mosquito that had equine eastern encephalitis, and so, for those of you who don't know, encephalitis is is an infection inside the brain and the lining of the brain and they start to swell, and since it's viral, there's nothing you can do except for try to manage what's happening. But it's your brain, so it's a bit of a problem. Um, and at the same time that my system was trying to fight that, it happened to domino into spinal meningitis and it was viral as well. So these two viruses were inside of me. My brainstem was swelling and pushing on everything, my lining of my brain was swelling and they ended up putting me in. I slipped into a coma for seven days and during that time they cut the back of my skull, put me in a halo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trying to just, you know, alleviate that pressure as much as they can during that time the virus was causing your brain to swell and you said you also got meningitis. Was that a different virus or the virus spread to your spinal cord?
Speaker 2:It was a different virus that happened to be in, I guess, the school or in the environment that I was in, because my system was compromised here.
Speaker 2:It just ended up having to work with two at the same time and it lost balance. It couldn't do both. And so that's when I went into the coma, and when I was in that coma, they were telling my parents, you know, like we don't know what this was back in 1990. You know they didn't know too much about all these different things and they were like, you know, like we don't understand quite what's going to happen. This is the areas of her brain that are really vital to her as being able to function, and so we don't know what will wake up, and when I did wake up, I like to preface it and say my family has their version, and this is one of the things that I invite people to remember when they're doing trauma work is it's not about tending to the other people in your world with your? When you go back and you're healing and you're working with those parts of you, honor them for their experiences, you know, and so I honor that. My family has their experience, but this is the experience that I had and I'm not here to try to tell theirs. That's their job to do.
Speaker 2:This was what my experience was, and so when I woke up, there were a couple of things that were problematic. I was deaf because of all the swelling and the trapped fluid that was within and the pressure that was within that area, because the most of the swelling was on the back, where the visual cortex is. I was blind, but not like dark blind, I was like white blind, so the light absolutely hurt if and it was so it's like the aperture on a, on a lens, was too open, um and so everything was just absolutely excruciating and my system didn't have a way to to adjust and do what it needed to do.
Speaker 1:How long were you in the coma?
Speaker 2:Seven days.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so those were two problems. 13 years old, I'm now deaf, I'm now blind Wow. I also was paralyzed from the middle of my back down due to where in the spinal cord there was just too much damage from the swelling that was happening, and so I was a little. Push me, pull me. But I wasn't really little because I went into the hospital as I was about five, nine, five, eight ish. When I came out of the hospital three months later, I was six one, so I grew four inches in the hospital yeah, In three months.
Speaker 2:So brain pains are real and they really really hurt and they're very painful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a lot of growth in three months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like my body was trying to give itself more room. It was like going into its genetic coding, being like what can we do? And took like what would have happened over three years and said let's do it in three months to try to disperse as much as this. And so I was. I had no catch. If you pushed on me, I could would fall over, but I could move my arms and I could feel like I didn't have a word for it back then, because you're about to find out why I had no work. It was like like you go to the dentist and you get numb. You know it's there but you can't really feel anything with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what the lower half of my body was doing, and so I kind of had an awareness of it, but at the same time, I had no ability to communicate with it or send signals or receive signals from it. It was just this weird dead weight that was attached to me, so that's problematic.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And the biggest one, though that was the big problem is that I had no memory, and so I woke up completely a blank slate, no awareness of who Michelle was, no awareness of who my family was, that I was human, what that meant to be human, and so, because of that, I had nothing to link to. I had no tether to the world that I woke up in, because I didn't remember it, I didn't know it, and all I knew was I was an immense amount of pain, disorganization, and that eventually, my body had zero sovereignty. Anybody could do anything to it, and I didn't understand what those like shadowy things were that came in and touched me and moved me and were putting me in different machines. You know, I had no point of reference for any of that, and so it just became a permanent fight, fight or freeze, and eventually my system just went all the way down to to freeze because they kept restraining me, because I was like a little wild animal, you know.
Speaker 1:So this is the part that fascinates me is so you're. You wake up, you're paralyzed from the waist down. You can't see anything, you can't hear anything, you're in an incredible amount of pain and you have no clue what's going on, or even who you are, or or even what you are. You're like a blank slate Right and I asked you this question before almost like a baby, and you had a response for that yeah, so a baby.
Speaker 2:And you had a response for that. Yeah, so a baby actually has memory already, like when we're in utero, we are sinking, we're having conversations, our nervous system is talking to the mom. It's talking actually through the environment, through mostly how the mom's interpreting the environment around us. But it can feel sound, sound and it works with sound frequencies and heartbeats and all these other things. So it's syncing to the environment. The environment might be a hot mess, but at least it's feels that there's a predictability. It's starting to adjust what it needs to do to be in that space. What my body went through with this was it was completely blown apart. It was completely disorganized by the disruption to the nervous system and because of the lack of cognitive um connection. I had nothing to reach for. There was a little baby reaches. I didn't know to reach, I just knew to push and to fight.
Speaker 1:Sure, well, like you said, it's almost like a, like a wounded animal right, that doesn't know what to do. Wow, that is incredible. I'm assuming you still felt body sensations, somatic experiences while you're in this state, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't have language for them and so I just really had the impulses for them. But the problem was my impulses were always overrode. So if I did a guttural sound that just like was like a baby crying, like there's something wrong with me, I didn't know how to ask for that in a clear way and continuously. Every time I would do something that would ask for help from a somatic point of view or just a nonverbal point of view. It was corrected by I couldn't move my body because I couldn't walk, so I couldn't run away. You know my body was cueing me, run away, that person's scaring you and I couldn't run away. You know my body was cueing me, run away, that person scaring you and I couldn't do it. And so, and because I was so spindly at this point, having grown so much, people could just move my body. They just picked me up and moved me and put me down and strapped my arms down and you know I didn't have a voice of what was happening to me when it was happening and they just kept doing hand over hand with me to try to get me to eat, to push the button when I felt like I need to go to the bathroom or something like that, and none of this made sense to me. But I realized that if I complied, if I've just followed the bouncing ball of whatever the people around me I didn't know that word at that time wanted everything got better because they went away. If I just pushed the button, the person would come in, they'd figure out what was wrong with me, move me and not be as upset at me because I didn't have an accident in the bed, you know what I mean, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Or frustrated with that process of if I would just let them pick my arm up and prick it, well, that was them drawing blood. You know, I didn't know what they were doing or why they were doing it, and I didn't even really feel a lot of desire to eat because I didn't even feel connected to my body. So it was a whole hot mess of a disorganization that was happening and I just learned to mimic. I just called myself a great. When I look back and I feel into those versions of me I was not even like a chameleon, because a chameleon kind of knows it's changing shapes that those early years it was just a parrot. You know, I just would match whatever thing was around me, because it was the passive least resistance, because I had figured out I couldn't fight and I couldn't run. So there's only one thing left in the nervous system to do.
Speaker 2:And that's just to freeze.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're aware of all of this as it's happening, right Like you can think back and remember all these things, or are people telling you about what happened?
Speaker 2:line panic and terror, like anytime. I would go back and feel into that timeframe. It was just utter terror, utter like um. People would ask well, where did you go when you went into the? And I was just like I just went into nothingness, just into darkness. It's not like I had a fun fantasy place that I would escape to, because I didn't know to escape. You know, I had no memory to build off of an imagination of something with, and so it was just pain. I became a very cellular. Thing that I had to work on later in life was that earth was nothing but pain, disorganization and absolute helplessness. That's all the earth school is. There's nothing else in here, and so that took a while to undo.
Speaker 1:I could imagine yeah, so eventually did all this, all your memory return, or everything that you've got now, stuff that you've developed since then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the hearing and the eyesight came back first. It took about two years. Well, I guess the very first thing that came back was my ability to walk, and that's where horses we'll get into that later kind of come in. There's a story about how horses were a huge part of my healing journey. We can go there now if you want, or I can keep answering your question. We can go there now if you want, or I can keep answering your question.
Speaker 2:But and then the site came back and then the hearing came back, because I was traveling and I was going up and down different really high mountains out west and so, and when that happened they popped and like this grotesque fluid came out.
Speaker 2:It was really gross and all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, I can hear, but they were teaching me to sign and start to to communicate that way at that point.
Speaker 2:Um, so then I had to go back through speech um to learn how to talk, and if you listen really closely, you'll hear that I have some garbled words and it's a little bit more guttural, because the hearing came back like 80%, you know pretty good, but still, I was trying to learn through the, the scar tissue of how I hear things and to work with things, the memory, yeah, eventually I tried everything. You know, you know you do hypnosis as well and other stuff, like, like you name it. If there was a technique out there to try to get memory back, once I was like in my twenties, I was there, I was up for it, I was trying and it just every single time I would hit, just like the people that were guiding me and working with me. They would literally I'd walk up to a blank sheet of paper, that's it. Nobody could ever get past that blank sheet of paper.
Speaker 2:And that's persisted until today past that blank sheet of paper and that's persisted until today.
Speaker 2:It changed, but it changed.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of how long ago I had a cancer healing journey six years ago where I really had to dive in because the type of cancer I had was neuroendocrine sarcoma, which is on the nervous system, the endocrine mist within which is the fight, fight or freeze of the nervous system, and so I had just been swimming in toxic chemicals for so long.
Speaker 2:My body lost balance and through the really deep work that I was doing in that realm, I was able to get through that blank sheet of paper, but I needed all the tools in my toolbox to do it. So I understand why my memories never came back before that I would not have been able to maintain balance with that version of Michelle. And this you know, because one of the things that happened in my family is why I say there are two different stories is originally with my family. Once I became, once I figured out I had a voice and I started to use that voice. They said the minute I woke up was the minute there Michelle died, and so that was a whole situation amongst itself.
Speaker 1:So you are a trauma informedinformed somatic coach? Yeah, you do somatic, spiritual and equine healing. Can you talk a little bit about the spiritual side of what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the spiritual side was definitely something that I came into kicking and screaming. I was the science person. Like, once I decided to come back into earth school I wanted to know why my body had healed, like, why had it figured out how to walk again, why had it figured this out, like, why was my mind struggling the way it was? And so I dove like crazy into neuroscience and to attachment work and all these other different modalities to understand why it was happening. And that's where I was willing to sit, because my family, with their story, has a very strong religious point of view of, like, why I was saved and blah, blah, blah and all that other stuff, and I didn't want to have anything to do with that Sure. So it took me a while. I was very willing to go into shamanism because I could feel the energy of everything, because when, when part of your senses are taken away, the other parts that come in come forward. And so I like to say I speak body first or somatics first. I got very good at being able to feel people's auras and energies way before they ever physically got to me, because if I waited for them to physically get to me, I couldn't adjust my body, and since I had no other chatter telling me that this was not how people communicate, I had nothing to stop me from learning how to talk that way.
Speaker 2:And eventually, though, I really came to understand that I could go mind-body all day long, but unless I put in this third leg, mind-body-spirit, I really wasn't viewing myself as a whole being, and I wasn't allowing myself to have inner wisdom, and a wise one. I was taking myself down to just nuts and bolts and pathways and firing of synapses. I was taking out the soul, the essence of me, and I had to go on a quest to find her of me. And I had to go on a quest to find her and to bring her in and to really start to work with her.
Speaker 2:And that was when I really started to realize oh, wow, it doesn't matter which doorway we come through working with the mind, working with the body, working with the soul, it's all the same thing. It's all about helping us build a connection to ourselves as a whole unit, and seeing the beautiful essence that each one of us has to contribute into that whole interconnected weave. And once I got that, I was like oh, this is healing, this is wholeness, it's not just a mindset hack or a nervous system override of forcing my breath to trick my system into going into parasympathetics. It's actually a willingness to exhale and then a willingness to breathe in that takes essence, that takes spirit. It's not just body and it's not just mine, it's, it's my presence coming to that willingly and that's the magic you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm curious during this time, because it sounds like it was a couple of years that you were dealing with all of this, or was it longer than that?
Speaker 2:The physical body it took a full two years to to work with.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, keep going with your question and then I'll. I'm just curious if, if being basically isolated with your body essentially I mean you're basically, you're blind, you're deaf, you're paralyzed, you're bedridden the only thing you can do is feel your somatic experience Right? So did that help you connect with those like trauma responses and different somatic experiences and feeling that, did it help you identify those things and kind of come to terms with? Is that kind of what helped you? I guess I'm having a hard time asking this question because I'm not sure how to ask it. I think you kind of get to terms with is that kind of what helped you? I guess I'm having a hard time asking this question because I'm not sure how to ask it. I think you kind of get it, though I see you nod yeah, I, I think I go and know where you're coming.
Speaker 2:It's like was I able then to start to like build awareness and acceptance of what's happening in my system through my own body? Yes, the short answer is like no in the beginning, because it was so disorganized. I just wanted out of my body and so every time I dropped into my body, it was giving me so many signals of things that it needed and I didn't know how to communicate that with anybody that I just decided to stop, and I think that's what happens to so many of us. It's why, when we start to learn somatics, it's like one we hear crickets, we're like I don't feel nothing. We'll tune into your tummy, you know, see what it's saying, and you're like it's not saying anything. You know, and you're like do you feel tight? Do you feel? And they're like it's I don't know, it's a stomach, you know. And that's a common response, because there's so much information happening in our body that if we don't know how to communicate with it and it doesn't have a place to go to get the help that it's being a messenger for it's overwhelming. And so we do just numb out, avoid, disconnect and separate, and that's what I did early on.
Speaker 2:It took me into that journey of waking up, to be willing to turn towards my body in a helpful way. Now, what I did figure out how to do was to read you. I figured out how to read your body from a mile away and start to realize, okay, they're agitated, they're irritated, they're tense, their jaw is tight, they're this, that and the other. Okay, how do I need to adjust to like be 2D and not trigger a time bomb or wow, this person is coming to me, needy, it wants something, you know, like it.
Speaker 2:What I've what I would say I honed in that timeframe was feeling the energy of the person walking up the stairs so I could get my body prepared If they were upset with something that had happened before. When they came in to attend to me, they were quick, they were harsh, they removed me in ways that wasn't like inviting me to be a part of that conversation, in ways that wasn't like inviting me to be a part of that conversation. If they were sad and upset, they would be coming to my space and get even more sad and disappointed and upset because I wasn't doing something they wanted me to do, you know, and so learning to track the other person became more of a priority to me, because that's what I needed to survive versus tracking myself, because I didn't know how to tell anybody anything. What I needed to survive versus tracking myself, because I didn't know how to tell anybody anything that I needed.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a heck of a story man. That's wild. Um so, being a trauma-informed somatic coach, how long have you been working? How long have you been working, cause it looks like you've been doing mental health for about 20 years. How much of that time have you been a coach?
Speaker 2:So in the beginning I started off solidly on the equine side, because that was how I literally brought myself back in. Horses were what was the carrot to get me to come back into reality and not disassociate as much. And so I wanted to have that same environment for somebody else to provide that for them. And as I was doing that, I started to really recognize that what was being created in those moments between the horses and the client and myself, or a therapist, if they were in there, like a speech pathologist or office space there, like whoever that was that was in there as well, and part of that team is that it was if the person's body didn't feel safe. It didn't matter how amazing the interventions were, how brilliant the questions were, it didn't go anywhere, it didn't do anything.
Speaker 2:And I also realized very early on the horses were reading the body and the energy and the field and the non-verbals. I was reading that, but nobody else in the room was reading it. And very quickly people started to be like Michelle, how did you know to pause that whole conversation and just say, hey, let's go for a walk, you know, and let me just walk with the person and let me start to match, you know, like in a rhythmic motion, with whatever they're doing. If they're erratic, I'll be a little erratic, but then go into a rhythmic sway with my body and then I'll go back and pretty soon I realized that in talking to the body, that was the gateway, that was the gatekeeper to the whole rest of the system, that if I tried to go through the mind I'd get kind of far, but not too far because I would hit all the protectors.
Speaker 1:If.
Speaker 2:I tried to go through the heart. It would be too much, too soon and it would flood the system and they would say we don't have enough capacity for this, we're out of tolerance. But if I went through the body, that was the thing. So that became pretty early on in 2008, when I started on bridal change, that was a core concept of what we were working with, as somatic work was in there, in addition to the best practices and all the other good stuff that was in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and imagine which is a great segue, by the way, to talk about your equine therapy I would imagine working with the horses helped a lot with like mutual self-regulation, co-regulating with the horses Is that kind of what the main benefit of that was.
Speaker 2:Mostly yeah, because it's not that the horse is a magical healing being. When I hear that, I kind of get really, because the horse is its own sentient being. Because the horse is its own sentient being, you know, it's its own being, living its best life the best it can, and whatever environment it happened to land in, because it doesn't have really truly free will, it gets bought and sold, you know. And so if that horse is given free will within the environment that they're in, they'll move away from you. When you're all over the place, they'll. If you are willing to seek co-regulation, they'll work with you, you know. And so it becomes a really clear message. That's that we're taught to blow past, you know, oh, I'm fine, it's, it's all good. And the horse is like, yeah, no, that's not fine, I'll be over here until you figure it out. But they also have the ability to hang with extreme energies when they can feel that it's what's in somatic thing, which is, if you can, you know, pat Ogden says if you can stay with it long enough, it will bring you in through and out the other side. You know, and that's the tricky part, because when you go in it's a buck and Bronco ride. You have no idea where it's going to. You know it's. It can take some, some, a lot of courage and a lot of trust to come into that, to ride that wave of that body messenger and and let it bring you out the other side, let it unwind, resolve and release, and working with the horses is a way to visually see it, um, and to work with that conversation.
Speaker 2:I have stories I can share with you if you want, but I'd love to hear one, one of the ones. It's in my first book, the horse cure, that I love to share because I think it really brings this in and I do want to say this has a bit of a trigger warning to it. You know as, but I do trauma work, so you know my stories are going to have it in it. Um, there was a beautiful, uh girl and I worked at a residential treatment facility at the time before I started on bridal change and, um, that's a home for kids who have been through a lot, a lot of trauma and she had a history that just your heart just broke open for her. She was trafficked by her parents, um, all these other things. I mean, she just had absolute reason to not trust anybody and she was getting to the point where there was a foster family who really liked her and was really wanting to like, adopt her, and she was starting to have visits with them.
Speaker 2:And she had gotten to this point a couple times and every time she would throw a stick of dynamite in and walk away with like slow motion movie background, you know, because it was just too scary to believe that a family could be safe to her. You know that they were going to switch on a dime, they were going to give her a sales pitch and then change and she would be stuck, or at least at the residential home. She knew what to expect, she knew it was predictable to her and she also happened to be remember, I'm 6'1", she's a little bit taller than me, but she's built like a linebacker, so she was substantial when she got revved up. And when she would get revved up she would like go through walls to get to somebody. If she was mad at somebody she would just turn red and everything would blind rage and she'd feel horrible afterwards. But there was no way to stop her if she got started. But there was no way to stop her if she got started and in that moment she was really struggling with that. And so the house said, hey, she's starting to rev up. We don't want her to rev up to that point. Everybody stopped her before her threshold would get to that point because you'd have to call cops. It's a whole situation.
Speaker 2:She had gone home, she had gotten into a little bit of fight with one of the foster parents and she just thought it was game over. She was like I've lost it, there's no point in here, I'm going to blow everything up, I'm going to go back to Juby and it'll all be fine. And they were like, can we bring her down to the barn? And I was like, yeah, sure, I've got time, bring her on down to the barn. And the horse that she had been working with was an off track thoroughbred and so he was a high strung, you know, like wiry little thing. He'd been with us for a while, so he'd done a lot of his own healing journey and but he was still pretty reactive and he was working with her and they were working on this one particular activity. And it's never about the activity, it's about the conversation that we're having.
Speaker 2:But she was asking him to kind of stand in an imaginary box and she could walk around him and he would stay, put kind of like a sit stay for a dog, you know, and so, without anything tying him, he would choose to stand there. Well, it takes a lot of trust. He's got to trust that she's not going to walk away and leave him and she's got to trust that he's actually going to be able to stay and they have to be able to communicate with each other from a distance. So all these hidden therapy skills are in this activity, working with it, and she's had some moderate success in the past with it. But she hadn't gotten to the point where she could make it a full circle around him and the arena that we had at that place was a grass arena, so it kind of didn't help but it could be done. So the horse, you know, can get distracted with the grass easily. So she came down, she's proceeded to just snatch up Barry with his halter and like drag him to the middle of the ring. And first I was like no, you did not just like grab my horse that way. But then, luckily, something grabbed me and was like Michelle, just look Barry's. Fine, he's 1200 pounds. If he wanted to shake her off, even though she's tall and big, you know like he could. He still outweighs her, so just let it ride. And she put him in the middle and she was like, just stay. And she started to just stomp away. Well, he didn't even stay a hot second, he just turned, walked over to the side and started eating, and that just pissed her off and so she came running back in. She grabbed him again and like dragged him back to the middle of the ring and again I was like no, you are not treating my horse. And I looked at Barry and I realized he was going and I was like that doesn't make sense, because he knows he has the right to say no, he knows he doesn't have to listen to her at all. And he let himself come back and he stood in her little imaginary box for a hot second and then he was like yeah, no, I'm not staying. And off he walked again. Well, that was just too much for her. And she just exploded. I mean cussing, screaming, yelling, you name it. She was doing it. And the therapist was like Michelle, we got to stop. And I'm like no, we don't actually, because look at Barry. He's just over there eating munching like nothing's wrong. There's a tornado happened next to him, but he's not responding. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't match, because he's a flight animal, so why is he staying? And so I was like let's just wait it out and see what happens.
Speaker 2:Well, she walked over, picked up an orange traffic cone you know the big ones and she picked it up over her head. I was like, oh, she can throw it, I thought she. But instead she threw it at the horse and the horse just moved to the side as the cone whizzed past him. And I was just like whoa, this is crazy. And yet Barry's doing something. So she proceeded to walk around that arena, cussing up a storm, grabbing everything she could, from like mounting blocks to cones, to poles, if you name it, if it was in that arena and she could pick it up and check it. She was doing it and Barry just kept dodging things.
Speaker 2:And what I realized about five minutes into this explosion that was happening is he was closing the gap.
Speaker 2:He was getting closer and closer and closer to her and I was like I wonder what's going to happen when he gets there, like what is's going to happen when he gets there, like what is that going to be?
Speaker 2:And there came a moment where she had thrown everything around her. She couldn't find anything else and she was kind of paused and looking around. And Barry took that opportunity on his own he's at Liberty, he's not attached to any of us to close the gap and I thought at first he was going to run over her. I'm very grateful he didn't. Instead, he just kind of pushed into her with his chest and she pushed back into him and he met that and he put his head up and over the top of her and just held her and she was like wailing on him, like stop, I hate, you, get away from me. And eventually, though, she just you could hear she shifted. She just started sobbing and sobbing and she's holding him and she locked her arms up over his head and he lowered his head slowly, brought her to the ground and she just sat there in front of his legs Like she's right in front of his legs with his head up atop over her and she just sobbed.
Speaker 2:I mean just those full body sobs and the therapist is like, oh, I need to get in there. And I'm like, don't you dare interrupt this, we need to wait. And she just kept doing that. Eventually you couldn't hear any sobs, but you could feel and see her body still kind of moving. And see her body still kind of moving. And eventually, after that kind of stopped, barry picked up his head. Her arms were still on his neck and she wanted to go with him. So she stood back up, she buried her face kind of like in his mane and she just breathed for a few seconds. Therapist was like, can I go now? I'm like, no, don't go, they're still having a conversation.
Speaker 2:And once she got done she came back and her poor face was just smeared with dirt and sweat and tears and she stepped back and he just stood looking directly at her. And as she stepped back she started to walk in that circle around. He didn't move a muscle, russ, he stayed perfectly still. She walked all the way around him in a full circle. He didn't move. She did another one just for good measure. And eventually she got all the way out to the edge of the arena, like 90 feet away from him, made a full, entire lap. He followed her, just with his eyes, just turning his head, stayed completely in attention to her, had stayed completely in attention to her. They came back together. She gave him a huge hug and a kiss and said thank you. And then she turned to us. I was like okay, therapist, now you can go.
Speaker 1:That is amazing man. I got goosebumps from that story.
Speaker 2:And it was that moment that her body, because of her size, no therapist could do that in an office. I mean, how could you ask a therapist to ride that wave? But all those times her body had been overrode, you know, all those times her voice had been silenced, all those times people did leave her. So what she said to me when she came back is she goes, he didn't leave. No matter what I did, he didn't leave me.
Speaker 2:And I said, yeah, this family, they're not going to leave you, they're in it. And that was the moment we could then be like, okay, so do we need to get that big? And we could keep working with it. But that's our bodies. They're so constricted. There's so many times that we just explode. And and what is that explosion? That's a. That's a message of saying I need help, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Wow, man, I got goosebumps. Like I said, um unbridled change, so you started a 503. Um, um bridal change, so you started a 503. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So once I kind of had done the working for other people, I really felt, um, that I wanted to bring in an organization that could do horses, if that's what people wanted, but then also could offer the somatic coaching, the healing coaching and wellness, the energy work and the spirituality that could offer the freedom of all of that. And it was really hard to do under anybody else's program. So when I started on Bridal Change, I did it with that specific intention that I wanted it to be a sanctuary, a place that people, no matter which doorway they wanted to walk through, could find a place for first to have hope and then to start to heal, whichever doorway Again, maybe that's the physical doorway, maybe that's the emotional or the mental, or you want to come through the esoteric Okay, cool, but eventually we're going to bring you to your body and eventually we're going to bring you to that connection with your true self and being able to liberate that from all the different ways that it had been burdened.
Speaker 2:And so unbridled change seemed like a pretty fitting name for that, and I wanted it to be a 501c3 because I wanted it to have an educational component, I wanted it to have the ability to work with people across the spectrum and sliding fee scales and meet them where they're at and be really a community. So that's why I did it as a nonprofit.
Speaker 1:That's amazing Website for the nonprofit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's unbridledchangeorg.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then I'm assuming that it's a local thing, right? So so it's people locally that come in for coaching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the beauty about running your own business. Originally it was like that bricks and mortar, so you had to be local to really access. And then in about 2016, I started to really get the nudge. The horses were like, okay, we love doing this, we'll keep doing this, but you really need to bring this to a wider population. I can't bring a horse everywhere, and so it really challenged me to come out from behind the horse because that was my comfort zone.
Speaker 2:I liked partnering with them, I liked having them with me and these riding these waves with people. And so in 2016, we branched, we did a pretty big pivot and opened ourselves up to distance work. So we now coach, you know, via online and working with other things like that, and I like to say all the things, the tricks in my toolbox. I learned from a horse first, but now it can come into anyone's and we also offer workshops. I have my second book getting ready to come out in summer of 2025. So I'm super excited about that and that will be it's based in somatic work and bringing you into that bridge of connection which is my method.
Speaker 1:So Okay, cool. So so you work with people all over the world.
Speaker 2:All over the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you also have a podcast too, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Soulful Practices. I got a wild hair and my team was like Michelle, why are you doing this? And I was like you know, cause we had had a membership podcast. But yeah, I wanted to bring this concept of dialoguing with the different I call them beings of the body the body, the mind, the heart and the soul and how to do that in a somatic way. And so Soulful Practices podcast is the name of my podcast and I share a quick little quote, build a little bit of a teaching about what that invites us into exploring, and then I lead you through a process with it.
Speaker 1:On the podcast.
Speaker 2:On the podcast.
Speaker 1:Very cool. And then where can they find that? Are you on all the platforms?
Speaker 2:Two working my way it's on YouTube right now and Spotify and working my way to the other ones.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, let's see here. And you I didn't catch this in our pre-talk, but you've got a book and you're working on a second one. Can you tell me about the first book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the first book is the horse cure. It was kind of a swan song in 2017 and 18, I was working through a cancer healing journey and I really didn't know what direction it was going to go, because the type of cancer that I had was on my nervous system and you can't cut it out and you can't irradiate. It doesn't respond to the additional, so I kind of had to put my money where my mouth was and go to my healing toolbox and and pull all those out. But during that time I really felt like I wanted to capture some of the stories like I just told you, and the power that can happen when we give horses choice and a voice, and how I partner with them, because it's not how everybody in the equine industry who does the equine therapies works with horses.
Speaker 2:Um, so the horse cure is kind of a pun on it, you know like, and so it's, it's a, it's some of those stories and it doesn't have as much of the how to. It's just really invites you into recognizing and finding that hope within yourself that there is a way to heal complex trauma in our system. Right, and so that's what that book is. It's a caveat of a couple different things of stories of different clients that come together through that part of my world. The second book, though, that's coming out in 2025, that book is more of like an actual like soul workbook, as I like to call it, like it's. It's there, it's, I'm meeting you and I'm walking you through, as if you had had me, as a coach, sitting right there next to you helping you on your healing journey. Or and it's a beautiful book, I'm super excited about it. It's been two years in the making, but here we are. We're getting close to being born.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, let's see here. So, okay, I've got a question for you, because this popped into my head just a few minutes ago while you were talking what was the name of the infection that you had in your brain?
Speaker 2:Encephalitis.
Speaker 1:Equine encephalitis right. Equine encephalitis. Equine encephalitis right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it came from a horse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so is this your connection there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it did come from. There was an outbreak, I didn't, we didn't have horses growing up, I just rode at the local barn. But somebody who had had horse went down to Florida that had there was an outbreak of equine encephalitis down there and when they came back this little mosquito took a ride in their trailer and that little mosquito and I decided to have a dance and, yeah, I ended up with it. So it's kind of that's why I like the archetypal pattern of the wounded healer is the medicines in the wound. The wound came from horses and that did the healing medicine yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I did a show with another guy. He's a grief coach and he lost his son about two years ago and he refers to those things as gifts and crappy wrapping paper, which I really enjoyed. Yeah, it's really good, and it's true, because, you know, like for me, I had an immense amount of childhood trauma and abuse, um, and then some really really traumatic relationships over the course of the last 20 years. Uh, but those, those are the things that led me to to wanting to help you, helping myself first of all and then wanting to help others. So, yeah, it's true that trauma can do some pretty amazing things for you once you start to heal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it can become a catalyst. And I always like to put the caveat right here, because I fell in this trap. I don't know, rosa, if you've fallen in this trap or you might've heard other people. It's like I had done a weird thing where I was like my purpose was to have the trauma so that I could do my purpose work. And I did this weird like thing where I had made it to where that trauma was a part of my life and like all this other stuff. And, um, you know, when we do that, we wrap ourselves in this weird savior kind of a thing you know like, where we have to take our trauma and turn it into something. And sometimes our trauma healing is just for us and sometimes, yes, you do turn into the wounded healer with it.
Speaker 2:But I also like to tell people that trauma is the crappy paper. That sometimes just happens right and we can ask why all day long for it? Because they're like oh, that's why you were born, michelle. When some people hear my story, I'm like whoa, hold up, I wasn't born to be traumatized so that I could then do what I do. It just happens to be. This is my life path and this is what I'm inviting myself to do, yeah the trauma is not your purpose, but the trauma can give you purpose.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there is a big difference in those two statements, right?
Speaker 1:Right, Absolutely. Wow, Michelle, this has been a heck of a conversation. I really enjoy. Enjoy talking to you. I thank you so much for your time and coming on and sharing this story with us. I would imagine that out there there's probably a few listeners that have been triggered over the course of the last 30 minutes or so that we've been chatting. One of the things I like to do on this show is invite the healers that I'm talking to to walk us through maybe a somatic exercise or something to help these people who have been triggered during the conversation to kind of reground themselves, reset, get back to the present. We've covered some pretty deep stuff, so would you mind sharing an exercise with us to help reground?
Speaker 2:Sure, why don't we do like a quick, what I call like a check-in on the system? And so the way I like to work with, and I've been taught to work with, somatic one is we don't try to change anything right off the bat. We don't try to change our breath, we don't try to change the way we're sitting right there. All of that is beautiful information. So if you and your listeners are willing to just kind of go soft eye and tune in what is happening in and around your body right now, without changing a thing, without judging it or bringing it into, it's doing something right or wrong. So what is happening? Maybe? Notice your breath. Has it been kind of clenched? Does it feel free? Kind of go through the zones? What is your head feeling in this moment? Is your jaw tight? Does your abdomen want to take a nice deep breath in and out? Check in on those shoulders. What are they doing? Are they up by your ears? And so maybe just give them a little bit of love, see what they want. Yeah, check into those forearms and often forgotten part of ourselves. We realize that we clench and we hold our forearms, we hold our wrists, our fingers, everything in odd, weird ways. So just check into what are they up to do. They want to kind of relax and stretch, release and then, moving down into the lower part of the abdomen, the hips. So notice what they're doing. Do they want to kind of stretch and wiggle? Can you feel your seat bones touching the surface that's holding you Down into your thighs, your knees, to your lower legs, the calves?
Speaker 2:Now, here's an odd little one. Try not to change it, but as you bring your attention to your feet, just notice what they're doing. Are your toes clenched and pulled up? Does it feel like your foot's letting itself meet the surface that's holding it, or does it feel like you're having like the foot itself is trying to pull itself away from the ground? And this one is the key to grounding, because our feet are our first messengers.
Speaker 2:When we feel scared, when we feel nervous, we pull our energy up and our feet get constricted. They get nimble, they get ready to move and shift and do they don't want to soften and flatten. So I always invite people to kind of see if let them wiggle for a second. Wiggle those toes, maybe pull the feet up so you're going from your toes back down to your heel. Maybe bounce your heels a couple of times on the ground. There's some science in that, but I won't bore you right now. And then let them relax and see how that changes. What does that change in the rest of your body? What are you feeling? Maybe different in your body, russ?
Speaker 1:You know, as you were talking, I realized that my feet were kind of crossed across each other and very pulled in Um, and then, as I relaxed them and took your suggestion to kind of lift my heels off the ground and then replant them, as soon as I felt my heel touch the ground I could feel my body release tension.
Speaker 2:So it's huge. And people say, well, michelle, why don't you start with the feet? And I said because we got to get the information from the rest of the body. And then the feet say oh, you've heard me, you've heard your shoulder, you've heard your hip. You might not understand them, but at least you've shown a flashlight on them, right, right. So by the time we get to the feet, they're kind of willing to give us some information. And that crossing, that tucking that, pulling themselves up, yeah, that's all completely, really typical actually. And and so the first step of grounding, coming back in your body, is letting them do. I want to let my feet connect to where I'm at right now, and that's a hard question. That's a whole nother podcast.
Speaker 1:So we'll stop there for me yeah, and I think the the part, like you just you nailed it earlier in the conversation where you said trying to avoid the way we're feeling is is I mean there's definitely hacks out there, like you said, the different breathing patterns to try to get rid of anxiety that's that we're feeling is. I mean there's definitely hacks out there, like you said, the different breathing patterns to try to get rid of anxiety that we have in our bodies. But the act of feeling it, sitting with it and understanding it is so much more healing and that's really ultimately how we feel safety and can identify safety right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And to me the word healing isn't safety, right yeah. And to me the word healing isn't restoring wholeness, it's remembering we're already whole, like we don't have to be perfect to feel a sense of safety in our body, no matter what it's doing, you know, like if it's doing something odd with a illness or a trauma story that is still unwinding. If we can feel that wholeness, if we can soften our feet, we can come home just a hair more into our system. That's wholeness, that's healing.
Speaker 1:Michelle, I am 100% sure that someone that is listening is touched by your story and would probably love to work with you if they wanted to do that. How, what's the best way to reach you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the best way is to you know, meander around the website. It's got tons of freebies in it so that you can start working with me. Soulful practices is a great way. And then you can reach out and sign up for my my mailing lists or get on my social channels. And then you can reach out and sign up for my mailing list or get on my social channels. Then you'll know about different programs and offerings that are coming up, of ways to get into classrooms with me and get into healing spaces with me. Those are the best ways to start that process.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Now you have a beautiful energy. Michelle, I really appreciate you coming on and chatting with me and sharing your story. It's such a powerful story.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Russ, for taking your wounded healer journey and your crappy wrapping paper and being willing to open that up and put together this beautiful podcast and the offerings that you have, because that really is what this is all about, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely offerings that you have, because that really is what this is all about, right? Absolutely Okay, guys. If you are interested in getting in touch with Michelle, she can be reached on unbridledchangeorg or one of her social media outlet channels.
Speaker 1:addresses however you verbalize that I'll get all that stuff from Michelle and I'll include it in the show notes that you guys can reach out to her. Michelle Hollingbrooks. Thank you so much once again for coming on. I really appreciate it. You've been such a blessing to me and I'm sure everybody else is listening. Well, thank you. Yeah, All right, guys. So this has been Trauma Talks with Russ Tellup. Once again, my name is Russ Tellup. I am also a trauma-informed somatic coach. If you are interested in working with Michelle once again, you can reach out to her via unbridledchangeorg. If you're interested in brain spotting, hypnotherapy or somatic work with me, you can reach out to me on brainspottingcscom. That's brainspottingcscom, and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks again, michelle. Have a great week.