The Bolton Inc Effect
Join Louis and Bridgette Bolton as they pull back the curtain on what happens when two people dare to build something remarkable - a business, a life, a legacy. Through candid conversations about, relationships, entrepreneurship, video production, and the art of building together, they're redefining what's possible when you combine creativity, strategy, and partnership in a new land.
The Bolton Inc Effect
Eps 08 The Body Keeps Score: Conversations on Healing with Terri Ewart
As our first guest on the Bolton Inc Effect, Terri Ewart shares her journey from personal trauma to becoming a somatic healer who helps others navigate their painful experiences with compassion and presence.
• Complex PTSD from in-utero experiences shaped Terri's feelings of being "broken" and not belonging for much of her life
• Somatic healing addresses trauma physically embedded in our fascia and body, working beyond what talk therapy alone can achieve
• Early shame around pleasure and sexuality can create lasting patterns that affect adult relationships
• Safety is crucial for healing trauma—our bodies need to feel safe enough to release long-held tension patterns
• Internal Family Systems therapy helps identify different "parts" of ourselves that need compassion and understanding
• Menopause represents not just physical change but an opportunity for wisdom, clarity and renewed purpose
• Our physical ailments and pain often connect directly to unresolved trauma and emotional experiences
• Sex education should start much earlier and focus on body autonomy, agency, and the birthright of pleasure
Learn more about Terri's work at www.staycurious.co.nz where she offers individual sessions via Zoom, in-person work, and occasional workshops and immersions.
www.boltoninc.co.nz
The Bolton Inc Effect. Hey there, I'm Louis and I'm Bridget. Welcome to the Bolton Inc Effect podcast, where we are navigating new horizons. Each week. We're pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to build something remarkable A business, a life and a legacy. So join us as we share honest conversations about relationship, entrepreneurship, video production and the art of building a life together in a new land, because sometimes the biggest risks lead to the greatest rewards. How can we help? Can I ask you a question? The Bolton Inc Effect?
Speaker 1:Today, on the Bolton Inc Effect podcast, we're talking to Terry Hewitt. She's somebody that I followed for a fair bit of time. I met Terry quite interestingly at a talk that you were giving to some homeschooling parents. I did, yeah, and so I'm eternally grateful that we met, to be honest, and so thank you for being our very first guest, please, you and I are going to step into some interesting spaces. We may not get everything said that we need to say, so there may be some follow-on conversations and, as I said to you earlier on, I feel like you're the centre of a wheel and there are all these spokes and they're all really interesting. So I'm going to try to bring all of that together and get a sense of who you are and what drives you and opinions that you have about various things. So welcome, terri. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Would you like to just give me a little overview about who you are? So who is Terri?
Speaker 2:Oh God, that's a big question, who you are. So, who is terry? Oh god, there's a big question. Um, and that question, interestingly, as you've said, spokes has got lots of answers to it. So, um, I am, I am a daughter, I am a mother, um, I have, I am a therapist, um, and then there's all of the other pieces of me that create lots of fun in my life. Is your question in terms of who am I professionally?
Speaker 1:So let's go to. Who are you professionally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. So I call myself a helper and basically because of who I am, I have a. I have an ability to walk with people through the really hard shit that they have to deal with. So people's pain, people's hurt, is something that I find more ease for, maybe, than the normal person to walk through with. And so, because of my experiences in life, the complex PTSD that I have lived with and my belief systems around being broken and everything that happened earlier has enabled me to be the person that I am today. Do you know, jesus?
Speaker 1:I want to be here too, dad. Okay, come then, silly girl. That was amazing. So now that we've covered what you do, who do you do it for?
Speaker 2:I do it, for, again, there's no, there's not a specific gender, there's not a specific relationship type that I work with. It's really anyone. I really trust that the people that I'm meant to work with find me and lots of them do that through referrals so someone will have a great experience or get some learning or find some space and some ease from working with me, and then they refer out and so, again, I will work with anyone that that really has this deep sense of wanting something to be different in their lives and that's not dependent on gender or relationship structure.
Speaker 1:Okay, terry, in your you alluded to some of your own PTSD and some of your own experiences. Yeah, so are you comfortable to share what those were and how those have given you a depth of understanding?
Speaker 2:point in my late 30s maybe it was early 40s when my relationship once again fell down and I became the mum to, you know, pretty much full-time to two boys, and it was like, well, what the fuck is wrong with me? And so that, really, that was really the question when I that was the point in my life where I decided to take responsibility and go. This isn't just always about the other person, because I would quite often project out, and so it started this really big dive into who am I, what's created the way that I am in the world, and, if I want to make that different, how do I do that? And so I trained as a sexological body worker in 2018 and really noticed in that training that I needed something else. So I then hit Compassion Inquiry, which is Gabor Mate's body of work, and basically what I figured out from that is I was born to a mother who she had a child about 14 months before I was born, who she gave birth to, who died, and so she had a cleft palate.
Speaker 2:She had a whole lot of things that I'm not actually sure of what, 100%, what was wrong, but basically she didn't survive. So I was imagine, you know, having another child then and the amount of stress and worry that your nervous system is under going back then we didn't have the technology that we had today, and so my mum is in this place of and even as I talk about it, I'm really noticing what's going on in my body, this real sense of my senses. She would have been hugely stressed. And then we add to that so she's already experiencing that I was conceived then. And then we add to that the fact that a few months later, or a few months into her pregnancy, she lost her father. Now her father rolled down a tractor on the property. So we've got a stressed nervous system that is now going through exceptional amounts of grief.
Speaker 2:And to put this into context, my mum and my her family emigrated when she was two, and so there was literally the four of them in New Zealand no extended family, a rural family. So yeah, you know, not connected. She loses her father. So again, the effect of that on a nervous system three months later she loses her brother. That's unreal. So she's now lost 50 of her family unit yeah, her touch points to the yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so she's going through this incredibly. Oh, I'm choking up as I talk about it. You know what and this is part of my healing is that I can now feel this, and so she's bringing a baby into the world, and I have experienced that. Our nervous systems come online super early inside. We can hear, we can feel, we can sense, and so I'm in utero, having experienced these, you know, being conceived in this tension and this stress going through, this sense of grief, not once, but twice, and so that has an effect, effect, a huge effect on a human being.
Speaker 2:So I had colic for three years that that created the sense of not being able to bond with my mother, and so we've always had this relationship where I feel like I'm not. I mean, I've never felt connected to anyone. I've never felt like I've belonged. I've I've always been the like I've belonged. I've always been this sense of broken, and so I've always been trying to claw my way back into life and into connection. And so it's yeah, when you get to early 40s and you turn around and you go, okay. So what are these pieces of me that need to be different or need to change? What are these belief systems that I've created. How are these ways in the world in which I show up that have affected who I am as a human and who do I want to be? And so that's really the process that I started undertaking. Where are we? You know, five years ago.
Speaker 1:And I guess that when we think about how we want to show up in the world, it's also very powerful as a daughter to think about how you want to show up to your children, to your sons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, so you have two sons okay, yeah um, and so that that strikes me that there's that missing part of our curriculum, and I don't necessarily mean strategic and schooling. I mean there's a part of our makeup that we never really address. We don't necessarily mean strategic and schooling. I mean there's a part of our makeup that we never really address. We don't necessarily understand how we were conceived.
Speaker 1:Some of the things that happened while we were in utero, I guess, and I have a similar story in that when I was, my mother was married really early to get out of the home because the relationship with her mother was so stressful, and she married a man who was possibly not he was definitely not the easiest man to be with, and when I was about 18 months old, his effect on her was so bad that she went home, and so she went home back to her parents, and it was very much about the pain that he'd inflicted on her. But I don't think that that was the first time. And so there's all of these experiences, as you say, that that that she's experiencing while you know we're in the womb, and so, yes, so you come into life with, with, with some bruises and and then.
Speaker 1:So I don't know what the relationship was was like with you and your father. How, how was that?
Speaker 2:um, so I spent most of my childhood I didn't connect with my mum, and so I spent most of my childhood trying to connect with my dad. Okay, um, and unfortunately I don't again. I don't have very, very many childhood memories at all, so it's really hard to tell, but all I remember is this desire of wanting to connect with him and never kind of being able to being given, you know, scraps of attention. I had a younger brother and apparently, from what I've been told, he got, you know, he got all of the attention. Again, I can't say yes or no to that, but I know that there was never.
Speaker 2:There was always a desire in me to connect with my dad. My parents then split up when I was 11. And so one of my coping mechanisms was complete you know stonewalling and so I didn't speak to him for two years, and then the relationship was re-established, but we were living away from him at that stage, and so really, if I look back at my relationship with my dad, probably the biggest emotion that I have towards him is pity, because I could. You know, as an older teenager I didn't again, didn't have much to do with him and I died when I was 18, but I just saw a deeply unhappy, a deeply unfulfilled human being. So, yeah, I didn't really have a relationship with my dad. I, I wanted to um, so he died when you were 18 and he died when I was 18. How did he pass away? Um, he died in a bulldozer accident. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah, again, completely out of the blue. But yeah, my relationship with my dad, I didn't, I didn't have one.
Speaker 1:I really didn't, and that in itself has consequences for how we deal with ourselves as women, how we relate to other women and how we relate to men, and I think that that was maybe what shocked, what triggered me so badly when I first met you in that talk that you were giving to those homeschooling parents. I can't even remember how I cobbled my way into that one, but there were a few points where I had to get up and walk out because I couldn't actually handle the truth of what you were saying about, and I guess I can't even remember the conversations that we had because it was too triggering. But it was about how, um, our children relate to themselves, their own presence, which I guess encompasses their view of themselves, their view of the world, their view of their own sexuality, and and I guess that was it was a bit of a sex workshop, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, for parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so I look at how I got in. Interestingly, how I got into this work is because my relationship was with pleasure, so I used to masturbate as a child. I didn't actually know what I was doing, but I used to masturbate as a child and I used to ask my brother and sister to sit on me on the lounge floor just because it felt really nice and it intensified and I would get. I would get told off, um, I can't even remember what we used to call it, maybe it was, I can't remember. It might come back to me, um, and all I knew that it that it wasn't allowed and I wasn't meant to do it. So I then learned to hide it, um, and so there's shame yeah, yeah, absolutely, and then so I would.
Speaker 2:but then it became the place in my life because there was so much unhappiness or lack of connection, lack of belonging outside it. That became the place where I could connect with myself and I loved it and I used to spend hours doing it and then, interestingly enough, I still love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could absolutely say that it was also a coping mechanism. And then it comes to 18 and I ended up falling in love with a really wonderful human. Thank you, kieran, if you happen to be hearing this. Love with a really wonderful human. Thank you, kieran, if you happen to be hearing to this, hearing this um, and it took me two months before we ended up having penetrative sex for me to feel safe enough. But basically what I then wired in at that time is sex equals love. Yeah, so lust, this really hot sex thing, is love.
Speaker 2:And so I then spent the next, you know, 20-30 years chasing that and and connecting love with sex. And I can't, you know, I look back and I think of the. I am astounded that I got through unscathed. You know, there were no unwanted pregnancies, there were no STIs, you know.
Speaker 2:Yes, there was probably a whole lot of trauma that I wasn't where I was creating for myself, but I managed to get through kind of physically unscathed and that then, you know, I've always been kind of hyper pleasure focused and then I became hyper sexual focused and the beauty of that is that I, you know, I got really good at sex and I figured that the way of finding that really slow pleasure that I loved as a child. I found a way into my body. I never lost that connection. So I had this beautiful connection with my body even from a really, really young child, and so I then found my way into doing more and more of that. But I wouldn't have done that had I, you know, had I not had that original pathway into that pleasure, I wouldn't be where I am today.
Speaker 2:So it's, it's enabled me. The gift of my coping mechanism, or my trauma, if you like to say, has become the strength of who I am today and I'm really comfortable in that space. And it doesn't matter what you want to tell me. I've probably done it or seen it or been part of it. So yeah, and there's no shame in anything. And now I feel like I've completely gone off. What even the question was.
Speaker 1:Me too. What on earth did you ask me? I can't remember, but I knew we went down a rabbit hole. I knew we would do that. I think I went back to curriculum and not about school, but how shame and pleasure and power and our experiences as children and how they interpret those experiences then play out, play a role in who we become and how we become those people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this piece around shame is huge. It's the one thing that you know out of any. You know, our sexuality is actually a huge part of us. The energy that comes from our erotic selves, when we allow it to flow and that doesn't mean that it needs to flow into eroticism our erotic selves, when we allow it to flow, and that doesn't mean that it needs to flow into eroticism Our sexual energy can flow into our work, can flow into our relationships.
Speaker 2:It's almost like I can walk down a street and tell you who's really connected to their pleasure and their erotic self. I can tell it They've got this kind of you know, there's a glow about it and but you know, shame is the biggest dampener to that and we do so much of that in our, in our culture, around sex. And so, yeah, lifting that for our, particularly for our kids, being able to have open conversations, even if they don't want to have those conversations, just knowing that they can have those conversations, they're not going to be judged for them, they're not going to be made wrong for them is so important, you know the challenge there is that we play as our children age.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the joy youngest 16, our youngest is 14, and so her peers have 95 percent of her attention and we really only have five. Yeah, and in those, in those, in that five percent, you've really got to say the right thing at the right time in order to make a proper contribution to how she sees herself. And so there is so much shame around it, there are so many giggles and, oh my God, we had that sex talk today. It was so embarrassing the way Mr So-and-so said such and such, and I went to the sex talk initiation conversation that they had at school and I looked at these slides. I was like, oh my God, really Is that what we're showing this generation of kids Really? But he was ill-equipped to handle it. He was just as bloody awkward, as you know, and the parents were trying to put him at ease.
Speaker 2:And what are we telling our kids when a person presenting this conversation is awkward? You know, again, it's sex in schools. It has to be done by people who've done their own work or, better yet, work and live in this environment. That can create openness and curiosity and compassion for people's experiences. And the other thing is that we need to be having these conversations way earlier, like it's too late to have these conversations at 13 even, or 12 even.
Speaker 2:So, I was having conversations with my kids at eight or nine. We were looking because, again, I was training so I had access to this. But you know, we would look through books and look at people's vulvas and look at people's vagina, um, you know, at the inside of someone's vagina or someone's scrotum. We were having these conversations before the kids realized that it was, that there was a taboo, a taboo about it, yeah, and so that for me, you know, you look at countries overseas, some european countries, sex education has started in preschool and it's not sex education but it's body awareness, it's age appropriate, and then when we're having it when they're older, we need to do it in the way in which it creates as much safety for them as possible. As much comfort and having someone be uncomfortable presenting is absolutely the wrong thing, wrong message to be done to themselves and what that person does to other people.
Speaker 1:That in itself is is quite a complex little yeah ball to. To unwind on top of that um, there is quite a lot of um and, and I always struggle a little bit to get this out of my mouth but kids have experienced what's the word being, have experienced something unpleasant around sex, whether it's through a family member, a brother, a cousin, an uncle or a parent, and so it's then perpetuated because it's not being dealt with. And I think to myself how do we heal those wounds? So what does a person take into their life if they've been dealt a blow that twists their sexuality because they've had a father or an uncle or a cousin? How does that person then show up in their lives?
Speaker 2:how does that person show up in their relationships and and and it's, it's just, and actually, as you know, I also want to just go back to something you've just said which sparked something we don't teach you but and which is related. We don't teach you know, we explain the mechanics of sex, but what we don't give our young people is this birthright and this sense of them being worthy of pleasure. Yes, and that's the piece, because if people understood that they are worthy of pleasure, that they have agency in their body, that it's their birthright to feel safe and to feel pleasure and we don't teach our young people how to communicate in those spaces, then we perpetuate exactly what it is that you're talking about. You know, I look at my experience and I don't believe I was sexually abused, or if I have, I've completely blocked it out. There's something else there but which is related. But.
Speaker 2:But if I look at how I've showed up as a human being, I would say whoa, this person carries a huge amount of trauma.
Speaker 2:You know, the fact that it took me two months to feel comfortable with someone who was such a wonderful human didn't put any pressure on me. Let me move at my own pace. I mean. I look back at that experience and I'm just like so grateful that he allowed me that because it would be so easy to put no, no, come on, give me what I want. Give me what I want, rather than having this conversation around hey, does this feel really great for you? Are you a real, are you a hell? Yes for this, but being able to allow giving our kids the tools to communicate that with each other, rather than this is what I deserve, or this is what I see on porn and this is what you like. You know, and our kids are getting their information from porn and that should be scaring the fuck out of us absolutely like 100, because that's just violence a lot of you know a lot of it is.
Speaker 2:But a lot, a lot, yeah, a lot of it just goes to this Western heteronormative narrative of a man's job is to penetrate and they can do that whenever they want to. And yes, there is a massive level of violence in it. But again, the woman's pleasure is not authentic in it, it's just pleasure, doesn't you know? Sometimes in ethical porn I'll give it its nod there, but not in mainstream, no.
Speaker 1:So and we're going to keep picking up points about our conversation so if somebody at a very young age has had experiences that have disempowered them, they don't have that ownership of of their body, so that's already been annihilated. Yeah, um, like, how does a person like that heal?
Speaker 2:firstly, they've got to recognize that there's, that that there isn't more available to them, and a lot of people simply don't because of fear.
Speaker 2:But yeah, this is the way you know, this is the way my. I've had an experience. I've created constriction and tension in my body, and then my experiences are just topped on top, and it may not be that I've not had a another negative experience, but I've now created belief systems for myself. Another negative experience, but I've now created belief systems for myself. And again, this is the piece when we have an experience, it's the belief that we create. So two people can go through a traumatic experience and one person can come out without trauma and one person can come out with trauma and the person with trauma will continually attract Potentially yes, yeah those negative situations.
Speaker 2:But if I'm not worthy, then I'm not going to say no, this doesn't feel right for me, I'm just going to carry on with it. And again, society tells me it's my job to make you feel better, so I'm just going to carry on doing it. And I work with lots of women that come into sex from a place of obligation and it's you know. I signed up my marriage vows. This is what I think they believe to me, and so it's. Firstly, it's understanding and wanting something different for yourself, even if you don't know what that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But even yeah, even if you don't know what it is, just knowing that and it might be. I've seen, you know, the movies tell me something should be different. My writing, the reading that I do tells me something that I'm different. But you've got to. You've got to. They've got to want to make that change. There's got to be part of them and they've got to be. They've also got to be okay at taking responsibility and ownership for that.
Speaker 1:And to walk that path? Yeah, and if you've got somebody that you trust that you can walk that path with them.
Speaker 2:So that brings me what is somatic healing? So somatic comes from the Greek word soma, which is the body, um, and so somatic healing is about recognizing that. You know, our, our, our trauma gets triggered in our amygdala and our limbic system, and from our limbic system it then sends all of that information down through our vagus nerve, so we have physical reactions. So you know my, if I look at my body, I've got extremely tight hips, I've got extremely tight knees, I've got forward facing. You know, I'm like this, I'm crunched up, I'm in the fetal position, and so, even though being born has loosened a lot of that, there's still all of this in my body. And so somatic healing is about recognising that our trauma affects us physically and that actually we can also unwind that. And this is why talk therapy, in my opinion, doesn't work. We've got to allow it to happen in our body so that we can unwind. And I look at what the differences that I've made in my body somatically by going through these healing processes. I've got to let you know our trauma is a physical thing that we feel and we've got to allow ourselves in the company, because our trauma happens in relation to people. We've got to heal it in relation to people. But when we allow ourselves to touch those really deep parts of ourself and we have someone that sits there, that walks through it with us, that tells us that it's okay, that I can see it and I can feel it and I'm right here with you in this and it's not going to last, that's when we have a compassionate guide, that's someone that doesn't judge us.
Speaker 2:And if I look at one of one of my beliefs, one of my, one of my stories and narratives, is that I'm a disgusting human being. I am abhorrent. There's a part of me that's believed this for a very long time. There's probably still a little, you know it comes out every so often, but I've done so much healing.
Speaker 2:But when I was able to sit in front of my therapist and you know I work on Zoom with him he's in Ireland and I'm able to be there with him in these places of this and I allow it to cycle through, I allow my body to process it and feel it, and then I allow to be, I allow myself to be looked in the eye by someone that's sitting there with his hand on his chest telling me he's right here with me, that he doesn't judge me for this, that I am a beautiful, wonderful human being.
Speaker 2:But how do you know to believe that? Because you feel it, you feel that within yourself and you feel that because he's mirroring this might be a big part of me, but there's also different essences of me and when someone can mirror that back to you and that trust can take, you know there may be parts that kick and stream and don't want to feel that, and so it's working with all of these elements of yourself, all of these elements of yourself. You know, yeah, it can be a really easy, deep, simple process and sometimes it can be a really challenging, hard process that takes a lot of time.
Speaker 1:And I guess, when you talk about the two or the many parts of you, there's that part of you that is the brain, where all this cognitive stuff is happening, where the self-loathing and the hating and the sense of self, but then there's also this higher self, and maybe it's on that level which is really the connection to source and the connection to love and the connection to all of that. Yeah, that um, and and I suppose, in those moments of real sheer vulnerability, that that some of that can start to shine its light on, on this, on this darkness, that that we all have in ourselves in some manner or form.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I was to phrase that in the language that I use and I work with a system called internal family systems as well. We all have this access to self and we have these very exiled, vulnerable, really unsupported parts of us. But when they feel us there with them, when they feel someone else there with them and my therapist sometimes is or most of the time is using his self energy to anchor me so that I can start to feel it and and see it then that's healing. But there's self, there's even in the most traumatised individuals. There is self here. Self never goes away.
Speaker 2:This connection to all of us. You know the compassion, the curiosity, the calm, all of using IFS, language or coping mechanisms, defence mechanisms, all of these parts that are working really hard to protect these really little, vulnerable elements of us. And when we heal them and when we connect with them and show them that we're there for them, then all of our system has to do less and less and less work. I look at who I am now compared to who I was five years ago and the interesting thing is that there's more creativity, there's more fun in my life, which tells me I'm connecting more and more in self. You know we were having a conversation about bread earlier. I love learning. I've got a part that loves learning, so I'm doing, you know, I'm always learning something which brings me this sense of joy. But, yeah, connecting to these, these deeper parts, allowing them to be seen and heard. Heard then allows all of the rest of my system to take, you know, to, to soften and and to take these seats back.
Speaker 1:Does it involve? Touching?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So yeah, I work with I really work with somatics, and so what I've found in my parts and so somatic is of the body. So it can be. I use a lot of in terms of supporting people to feel their body, to connect with their body, supporting people to feel their body, to connect with their body, to understand what it feels like from the inside out, and I use what works in my body, but that can also be from outside in and that can be a person supporting themselves.
Speaker 2:I had a client the other day who said to me I asked know, where do you feel this little part of you in your body? What is it showing up right now, in this moment? And he was like, oh, on my chest. I'm like, okay, I'm going to invite you really slowly, really mindfully, I want you to just place your hand on your chest and I want you to let him know that you can feel him. And he has a beautiful emotional experience. And afterwards we were reflecting on the session and joining dots and reflecting and he was like man when I touched it. It was so powerful.
Speaker 2:So even self-touch can be, you know, can be really powerful when I work if I use my sexological body worker skills, with someone again noticing, inviting them to feel my touch on their body and, especially as we're getting into sensuality or sexuality, allowing them giving them a lot of it is about creating agency so that their system learns that they can say no, and when they can do that, then we look for pleasure in their system and we titrate it and we pendulate it, which means we take little bites of it and sometimes it can become too much. So we have to back off a bit. So teaching people to learn when all my systems going and this is too much for my system I'm above my window of tolerance or I need to, I need to growl myself, I need to back down and knowing and giving them the power to do that in their system and then going back for another bite. So yeah, somatics can be simply, in my opinion, simply feeling your body. It can be connecting physically with your hands, it can be somebody else physically connecting with your hands and it can also be working with the likes of chiropractors, craniosacral, anyone who creates and can hold.
Speaker 2:I've had some astounding results working. I'm working with a myofascial massage therapist who knows now that sometimes I might burst into tears on her table and she just holds that for me. I've dropped the forward rotation of my shoulder, working with the lady that I do craniosacral work. She's also a witch and does a whole lot of other stuff. I love that. But, yeah, my body has felt safe enough now to be able to drop that, and that may just be my body being touched by people that I feel safe with.
Speaker 1:Because that keeps coming up for me is that safety?
Speaker 1:You must work an extraordinarily long time. I would imagine somebody would have to work with me for a very long time to get to that level of safety. And it's so interesting because I've been very drawn to reflexology and there's a lovely lady, a local lady, who does the reflexology for me. And that's about as much as we're going to do. It's my feat, yeah, and that's where the healing is starting. And it was so interesting because she said to me the last time it was so interesting because she said to me the last time I'm feeling I have to share with you that I still get a lot of resistance.
Speaker 1:I'm like, but I'm here, I'm practically half asleep, part of yeah, and she's just, and she just said you know, I've wanted to say this to you before, but I'm definitely feeling some, some, some resistance there. Um, yeah, but I guess we all have our yeah, and what you're languaging there crosses to be yeah, what you're languaging there.
Speaker 2:I can see the emotion, yeah, yeah, and what, and you know in that experience, as it really clearly shows us the difference of where we have to start working with people. As you said, the thought of me touching you would be it would just be war, and so this is sometimes what we, sometimes it takes us us years to create that, that, you know, that relational bond, and so that we can invite that curiosity around things. And it happens at the rate. It may start literally with your feet. It may literally, you know, it may start before your skin barrier, so that we're actually energetically, you know, touching your nervous system first and then, okay, what does it feel like if I bring that down and can we be there and can we breathe? And so it's a really for some people it has to be an extremely slow process. We can only work at the rate of your nervous system and what is comfortable for you.
Speaker 1:So how do we know that our nervous system is under stress?
Speaker 2:Probably what you've just experienced is an exact example of that the fact that we notice that it would be abhorrent to be touched by someone, okay. Or if we do get touched, there's a whole lot of tension. Sometimes there's a whole lot of numbness or nothingness, yeah, and that's a barrier, and again, some people are happy with that. So it has to be client-led, it has to come from the inside of that person that knows that there's the potential of something different. It has to be driven by that, okay.
Speaker 1:You talked about your work with Gabor Mate. How was that?
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, astounding, life-changing. Yeah. When I first started that work with him, I think, as I shared earlier, I had to look up the definition of compassion. I didn't actually understand what the word meant because up until that point, compassion hadn't been anything that really I had experienced, because I obviously attracted this. You know, I was trying to heal my core wounding from childhood and so I attracted the same people that would create it. So compassion wasn't anything that I actually understood and I had no idea what self-compassion meant. And so just simply even that word compassion and understanding it and then applying it into my own system has, just simply that word has been incredible.
Speaker 2:And, if I look at it, the reason that I did these trainings is that I knew that I had enough groundedness. I knew that people kind of always came to me for this anyway, but, to be perfectly honest, I follow my own interests and the pieces that work with me and the flow of my body, and so there was something in me that just said that's where I need to be. That's amazing and learning to hold other people, and I love the way that Compassionate Inquiry has actually presented the first three months, in fact the whole training. You're working on yourself. You're looking at your own experiences, you embody the work. You've been a client for a whole year before you sit in front of clients, and so you've, you've, you've done, you've learned the work by doing the work, and I just happen to learn in the most perfect place for me and so what does self-compassion mean?
Speaker 2:um, so my understanding the way, the way it works in my body, is that when a part of me comes up and so one of my big coping mechanisms is judgment I have always judged myself really harshly and judged other people really harshly, compassionate around that part. I then understood what that part was wanting for me, that it was wanting me to actually be safe in this environment. It was wanting me to be okay.
Speaker 2:So are you observing yourself criticizing somebody and then saying, okay, what is it that I'm getting out of this? Yeah, I'm being curious, so I have to have you've got to have self-energy on board in order to do that, and sometimes I had none. I was completely blended self-energy on board in order to do that, and sometimes I had none, I was completely blended. But, yeah, understanding that when I'm judging something, there's part of me that's feeling something, being able to, rather than go at what's being delivered, so the sense of, oh, my god, look at her like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm sitting here going.
Speaker 2:There's part of me feeling something and you're wanting me to be safer, you're wanting me to feel better in this situation and being able to connect with that. So when I can connect with what this part wants for me it just wants me to be feeling better about myself in this situation I can then be compassionate towards that part. So it's displaying as judgment, but it wants something different for me, and so when I can connect in with what that want is I'm able to be compassionate, I can go oh, I can see you working really hard, okay, and so then I can go in and heal the piece underneath, but it also gives me an ability to go okay, right, hang on, we can do this differently. I can get what I need differently, so you can work on different levels is how it works for me, okay.
Speaker 1:In NLP, which I did many years ago, you do this parts integration and you've alluded to that quite a lot. So it's not that we have fragmented personalities, it's that we have different parts of our personality absolutely that show up at different times and they're triggered by whatever's happening in happening in our environment and they're triggered by the way we perceive the world. And so what you're saying is you bring in the observer, notice what's happening and then kind of go to the thought behind that and say okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I would say we, we invite in self, as you know, different words, same thing, most probably. Um, yeah, can I? Can I really ground myself in self-energy? Can I see this as a different part? Can I almost? Yeah, can I have a conversation with it? Can I yeah?
Speaker 1:so your experience with how trauma embeds itself in the body is is. Is is core to how you heal and work and work with people. And so trauma lands differently for a lot of us, but your, your impression is that it lands on a certain part of us. Is it different for men and women?
Speaker 2:so you know my, my sense, my sense is that it's a lot of the research backs this up, that our trauma is caught in our fascia. So if you know, our fascia constricts and saying that, um, you know, sometimes it may not, but it still is felt in different parts, in different places, um, and so, working, you know, I don't, I don't gender it, I don't, I haven't found any, any link in genders. You know, there's a, there's the same amount of numbing happens in each gender. It's not, yeah, I don't think it's gender related, I think it's human being related, if that makes sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's because we have this fascia that runs through our whole body, and so does it constrict.
Speaker 2:Does it get stuck?
Speaker 1:And then is it almost like a little grain of sand that just gets more and more debris around it until eventually there's no flow. Yeah, yeah, and so does that sometimes manifest as aches and pains.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, absolutely so. And then? But what we do then is we go to the doctor? Yeah, yep, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then we take yeah, aspirin or whatever the case is, to dull the pain, when, in fact, there is a clear message that somebody needs to, something needs to be dealt with yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Gabor shares a story and I and I think it's his book the myth of normal um, and I also could have got this wrong, because I'm hopeless at details where they had a clinic that was run and there was kind of okay.
Speaker 2:So I cancer cancer people go this way, someone with IBS goes this way, someone with arthritis goes this way, or yeah, and so what he said is that the lady on the front desk got really good at figuring out who needed to go which way, simply by how they showed up as a human being. So someone that was very kind of you know, numb and nothing and and very rigid in themselves would go this way. Someone that was overly nice, the people pleaser, kind of, you know they would go this way, and someone else would go this way and she could almost tell by their defense mechanisms who went what way. Um, yeah, and so a lot of you know a lot of gabor's. A lot of gabor's work is exactly that that actually our physical ailments, and not only our mental health but our physical health also can be deeply related to some of our trauma.
Speaker 1:And that is often a childhood origin trauma Most of it, yeah, and as people we're too little trauma Most of it, yeah, and as people we're too little to make sense of it, to make sense of that trauma, to figure out what's behind it or why that person impacted us. So it really does take us a certain level of maturity. And is there maybe this is a naive question is there a point in our lives where we do start to become more introspective?
Speaker 2:I think so, um, and I, yeah, absolutely. So I noticed it in myself, um kind of. You know, when I got to my 40s I was like, okay, you know, let's look at the common denominator here and all of this failure and taking self-responsibility, yeah, yeah, I think absolutely, and then add menopause into that, which is a deeply insightful process.
Speaker 1:I'm certainly finding that.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of growth to be had out of menopause.
Speaker 1:It's not just a thing that's happened to your body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:If you look at us as cavemen or how we evolved once you hit menopause, it means that you are no longer creating or contributing to the tribe in terms of population and numbers. Your role now is somewhat different because you carry the wisdom you were there, yeah. So you know how to heal the wounds and heal the hurts and talk the tribe up and carry them through war or carry them through famine or whatever it is, mm-hmm yeah to channel that energy actually.
Speaker 1:You know we have, and maybe it's just our lives. You know, louis and I have shared this on the podcast before. We're immigrants. We have a really small social circle, so I guess the podcast is a way that I'm expressing yeah.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I'm going to challenge you on that because we've just had a conversation. Hang on a minute Exactly. So we do. You know a lot of as we hit. We've got this beautiful opportunity to.
Speaker 2:You know, menopause has been seen as this really horrid thing in our lives. We're actually, I think the tide is changing and we've got more awareness around it, but actually my sense is it needs to go one step further, as in what is the yeah, what are the gifts of menopause, and so you know, as you say, you're noticing it, I've my, my reproductive years, all of that energy that was once in my system. I can actually share it in a, in a different, in a different form with things, and a lot of that energy, my senses, is driving what you guys are doing right now. There's a vitality, there's an interest in it. It doesn't have to be this doom and gloom and oh, I'm losing all this stuff. It's actually an opportunity.
Speaker 2:And if you want to talk in women's empowerment, you're heading into your crone age and most people look at the crone as like ugh and it's like actually no, the crone is full of wisdom, she does have energy, but she's grounded and she knows what she wants. There's this real sense of power that comes through this transition. Yeah, women, I find, are getting way more clear on what it is that they want. They've, you know, they've been able to put down the child care reins and they've created this space, and it is about it's like, yeah, what creates aliveness in me yeah, what is it that drives me, what is my purpose, what is my joy?
Speaker 2:and this is the conversation. Yeah, this is a conversation that we get to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're very lucky that we have the openness and the space to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even five years ago, this wasn't as big and bright. And up here and also we're getting really. You know, this is the journey I'm going through. I'm in Peri at the moment and I'm looking at all of the. There's lots of it's almost like I'm going through another, another phase of of reflection and introspection.
Speaker 2:You know, I I'm working with a personal trainer and he's like what. You know, why are you here? I'm like I want to squat, and he's like what? And I go yeah, well, I'm trying to keep out of a retirement home and I know functional fitness, I know there's a direct link. The research says the stronger my legs are, the longer I'm going to live. Yes, so, like, I want to, I want to be able to squat. I want to be able to. I want to be able to do all this functional stuff in my body. How can I support my brain health? What are the supplements that are going to work, that they have researched, that they've shown work? Like what are all these pieces that are going to support me to age well and to do the things that I want to do? So, yeah, as I head towards 50 and I head towards menopause, the last six months, lots of my, lots of my inner work has been around getting really clear on this and going down the rabbit holes of all of this absolutely.
Speaker 1:yeah, I also have a personal trainer and also love, also love to spot Shout out at Sean from Aspire Love that man.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, but it's all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that and we have to embrace it as part of our journey because you're going into it. Yes, there's nothing you can do to slow that ship down.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, you've got to embrace it and really own it and look for all those wonderful pieces in it. And how can I make this more wonderful? Absolutely. And just have a bit of fun with it, because we're here for such a short time. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Tia. I feel like that's kind of a natural place for us to pause our discussion. I think that there are many more rabbit holes that we could go down. If somebody wants to find you, how do they get hold of you? To learn a little bit more.
Speaker 2:The best way to find me is wwwstaycuriousconz. Stay Curious.
Speaker 1:Okay and we'll put that in the show notes and somebody can give you a call. They can send you an email. A little bit of investigation and then potentially go down a road of healing. So I hope this gets to whoever needs to be connected with you. Are you happy to do long-distance healing?
Speaker 2:Yes, I work via Zoom and I work in person if people are local, and I also create group works when there's a need and I do immersions for people so people will come and spend a day with me.
Speaker 1:So it's really about figuring out what's best you know what best serves people, and have you got any plans for a workshop in the near future?
Speaker 2:um, I haven't, I am.
Speaker 1:I'm actually, I'm actually here.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm actually it's not my strong point give me an audience and give me the content and I'm fabulous but it's just, I arranged the workshop. You arrange the workshops.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll do it Sweet, yeah, yeah, okay, lovely, I think that's a nice challenge. I'm going to address that as a side quest.
Speaker 2:The other thing is I actually have very little capacity right now. That's true. My wait list is closed right now. Okay, okay, yeah. So I, yeah, by all means reach out, but yeah, I don't have a huge amount of capacity. We could do it for next spring. Mm, here we go. Okay, let's book it in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll set a date in September.
Speaker 2:I'm in Europe dancing in September, that's not going to work. We didn't even touch on your dancing Part of my bringing myself back to my joy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yay, what dancing do you do um, I dance kizumba, which is, um. That is so sexy. I love it, it's beautiful. Yeah, mm-hmm. Okay, all right, we'll talk about that the next time, okay, great thanks, terry can I ask you the bolton inc effect?
Speaker 1:that's a wrap for today on the Bolton Inc Effect podcast. The world doesn't need more noise. It needs bold voices and real stories, people who are willing to show up. So if something here sparked an idea, made you rethink the rules or reminded you that you're not alone on this journey, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, talk about it. Better yet, take action, because, at the end of the day, it's not about waiting for permission. It's about showing up, doing the work and making something that matters. So thanks for being here. Now go build and create, keep pushing forward, and we'll see you next time.
