Your Body Isn’t the Problem — It’s the Map

In this episode of She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, Anna McBride sits down with breathwork facilitator and somatic coach Naomi Rogoff, founder of Big Emotions, for a powerful conversation on healing, the body, and what it really means to feel.

Naomi shares her journey from a high-pressure career in finance to navigating an eating disorder, exploring psychedelic healing spaces, and ultimately finding her way to somatic work. Together, Anna and Naomi unpack the gaps in both traditional treatment and alternative healing—and what’s often missing when we try to “think” our way into change.

This conversation explores the idea that the body isn’t the problem—it’s the map, and offers a new way to understand emotions, disconnection, and healing from the inside out.

In this episode, we cover:
– Naomi’s personal healing journey and what led her to this work
– The limitations of both clinical treatment and unregulated healing spaces
– What somatic healing actually is (and how it works)
– Why understanding your emotions isn’t the same as feeling them
– How to begin reconnecting with your body in a safe, grounded way

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body, overwhelmed by your emotions, or stuck despite “doing the work,” this episode offers a compassionate and practical starting point.

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✨ Work with Anna McBride:
If you’re ready to move beyond insight and into real transformation, Anna offers coaching for women navigating relationships, identity shifts, self-worth, and healing. Learn more in the show notes.
Instagram: @iam_annamcbride
Website: https://annamcbride.com

🌿 Connect with Naomi Rogoff:
Website & Instagram: https://bigemotions.co

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Transcript

Welcome And Coaching Invitation

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to She Ask: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am really glad that you're here today with us. This is a podcast where we rewrite narratives so we can change our lives. Before we dive in today, I want to take a moment to speak to you directly. Because if you're someone who is listening to this episode, there's a really good chance that you are ready to shift and change. Not surface level change, not more information, but actual transformation. If that's you, I want to invite you to work with me. My coaching is designed for women who are navigating big life changes, whether that's in relationships, identity, self-worth, or healing from something that feels deeply rooted. This podcast is where we open the door and coaching is where we walk through it together. You can find more information about the coaching in the show notes. So please reach out because I truly want to support you. Okay. Today's conversation is a powerful one. Today I'm joined by Naomi Rogoff, a breath work facilitator, somatic coach, and the founder of Big Emotions. Naomi's work is rooted in a simple but transformative idea. The body isn't the problem, it's the map. She helps people who feel disconnected or at war with their bodies learn how to listen, express, and metabolize what's underneath through breath work, somatic coaching, and parts work. Before this work, Naomi worked in solar project finance, where she saw firsthand how high-functioning people rely on thinking their way through everything, even when it stops working. Her work today bridges something I find incredibly important: the gap between deeply emotional, spiritual healing, and grounded, safe, structured care. She's trained in breath work, somatic coaching, IFS, and EMDR-informed approaches. And she brings both lived experience and deep compassion to everything she does. Naomi, welcome to our podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Thanks for having me.

From Finance To Breathwork

SPEAKER_00 2:38

As always, we like to start with a story. So I'm hoping that you can take us through your journey from your career in finance to the navigating your eating disorder and to where you are today with the work you're doing with big emotions. So please share with us.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Definitely. Yeah, my background's in environmental science and sustainability. And so I really chose my career in renewable energy and solar very intentionally. And I was doing a job that was very intense. And I think it was more fast-paced than I anticipated. And suddenly I found myself needing a lot of healing. And so I had heard that psychedelics cure eating disorders. I had heard that they can be a cure for some people. And that's what brought me to breath work. I find that breathwork can be so powerful and so similar to a psychedelic journey. It's almost like imaginal in a dreamlike state. And there could be profound healing from that without necessarily needing to engage in the psychedelic underground where things are somewhat unregulated. And once I made it through the underground, I also found that it was still lacking for me because I wasn't getting that focused attention on my eating disorder. And so I found my way to residential treatment for eating disorders. And I think I spent some time being in a bit of shock in terms of what was being offered, not because I wasn't getting the attention on my eating disorder that I had been craving, but because it felt very disconnected from the powerful healing that I experienced in the underground. And so coming out of all that, it made me passionate about finding ways to fill the gaps in the space for eating disorder treatment. I was someone who did a ton of research and put a lot of energy and effort into finding something that would work for me. And I think on the other side of it, it's important to me to try to make a difference in the ways that I can, whether that be some advocacy around what I saw, but also finding ways to provide what I think the space could use.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Okay. But an interesting story where you were really, it sounds looking for a solution to help you. And yeah, psychedelics is such a popular approach to healing. It's everywhere, it sounds seems right. I myself have done quite a bit of healing through the use of psychedelics as well. And yet I I shared with you in an earlier conversation that I too have a an eating disorder in my background. And yet I kind of did the path opposite of you, where I went to a more traditional clinical treatment before I got to the, as you described, the underground, the unregulated approach. And I find that for our listeners who may be familiar with all of these options, how did you find yourself navigating that? Was it something that was easy to do, hard to do, or even made you apprehensive about it?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

To engage with the underground, you mean?

Plant Medicine Risks And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

I had heard once someone said on a podcast somewhere that psychedelics could be compared to brain surgery, where you really want to trust your surgeon just because you become so vulnerable and just susceptible under the influence. And so I definitely had to navigate that. I'm not someone who's so connected in that way, in a typical sense, but I started to ask around and I think I started to connect with people who were similarly interested, and it brought me to different spaces, but I can definitely say that I had to learn some lessons. I think I'm someone who engaged with the underground and had a lot wash over me all at once that really changed my life profoundly. And also there were things that I learned the hard way. There are things that I had to learn because I had never experienced them and I didn't have anyone to ask about them. I think there's so much power in the underground in that there's so much space for the mystical, the mystery, bottom-up, engaging with things that we don't necessarily cognitively have an understanding for, but having a lot of reverence for it. There's also a ton of warmth and community and connection in ways that I had never experienced. And I think in that space, because I don't know if it's necessarily causal, but it does seem like it's because it's unregulated. There's not defined boundaries. So to navigate it is to hopefully have a very strong sense of self so that you could have your own boundaries to know what feels like an overreach and what feels safe and what feels secure. And sometimes you there is a process of figuring that out for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yeah. So I this almost seems like it's a difficult area to navigate when you are seeking treatment for something that is deeply rooted in trauma, right? And yet has so many layers to it that I'm not sure. You'll have to tell me, were they able to address what was the underlying cause of the disorder when you went for the plant medicine treatment?

Why Integration Support Matters

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, I it's a great question because I had gone in with such a singular goal. I didn't go in looking to transform. I went in because I wanted something to be fixed. And as I went through those processes and found my way with it, I found that not only was I not getting the attention I needed because people, for better or worse, didn't have the expertise, but there also are some aspects of those spaces that are somewhat they could bring in forms of diet culture. There there are a lot of ideas and philosophical beliefs about clean eating or health that can sometimes feel counter to eating disorder recovery. An example is that to prepare for ayahuasca journeys, a dieta is required, which can be really triggering for someone with an eating disorder. And that's something that you don't always have knowledgeable forms of support where people can bring that type of expertise to support you through that process.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, I would having again gone through plant medicine treatment as well as clinical treatment, I could see how it could be triggering. And certainly, unless they're trained in that disorder, to just think of it as a cure-awa is probably why it's important to be cautious about the approach. So what did you feel like to suddenly access parts of yourself that you couldn't before?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

It completely shifted most paradigms that I had. I have always, I think the way my family is, there's a lot of emphasis on our brains, on our intelligence, on using our brains for every single problem under the sun. And suddenly things were moving through my physical body in a way that I didn't have a framing or an understanding of. So when I started to experience it, it was extremely powerful and pretty overwhelming, actually. It felt like all these different languages, all these different types of information were flooding in ways that yeah, I wasn't used to.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Yeah, I could see how that could be overwhelming and hard to understand. And so I imagine I know the answer to this, but let me ask you, what do you feel is really missing in terms of integration or support through that process that being now having gone through the other side of it and your own personal work that you know that was probably important an important thing to not have?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

In terms of integration, I think one of the biggest support forms of support for me through my journeys have been having friends who have any type of frame of reference or concept or understanding. Being able to talk to people who could understand was massively important for me. And I think that could also come in the form of an integration therapist or just or an integration coach or just someone who has some type of frame for for what I was talking about, just because it felt very overwhelming to me. So I needed to process what I had gone through. And other than that, I think there's something about going into those spaces where it almost feels like another universe, and then coming out to the everyday world that I had been, like the life that I had been living. I think it can help to prepare for that. Like it's just very intense, and I think it it can feel so consuming on both sides. So I think finding ways to ease the landing. And for me, my my yoga studio was a place where I felt like I was in the middle area just because I was like engaging with my body. There was a lot of softness and warmth, but it wasn't necessarily going right back.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

But it sounds like you had to navigate that on your own and figure out your own integration process. Am I hearing that right?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Absolutely.

Diet Culture Triggers In Healing Spaces

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah. Wow. Wow. I can't imagine. That's that must have been very difficult. So now you eventually made your way to a clinical treatment center. And uh, after doing some research, what did you find there? What surprised you?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, I found it to feel somewhat sterile and cold. I was getting expertise that I had been desperate for. And I think especially going to something like residential treatment, they really strip you of any type of potential liability, but that also strips you of some amount of agency. And I think I would have been fine with that if I had also felt like I was getting the care that I needed. There are some sentiments that I've noticed in the residential treatment space around the need for tough love. And I've always felt a bit confused by that because I didn't necessarily need that. I'm sure that there are people that do need that, but it did seem to be their approach to everything was just very harsh. And I also noticed it's very top-down. It felt very cerebral. Every type of treatment felt like it was approach basically tending to my brain first. And because it's eating disorder treatment, there was a ton of attention given to the structure around our meals, which would take up most of the day. And I got therapy once a week for an hour, which I probably got more at home. So I just found that to be a mismatch. I could go on about my experiences of treatment, but I can't say that I didn't get a lot out of it. I do feel like there was a fundamental shift that happened before and after that made a huge difference in my life. But I do think I was astonished at how much healing I had gotten from the underground that just felt completely absent once I had gone through more normal pathways that were available.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

So, what felt most misaligned or outdated when you were there?

Residential Treatment Culture Shock

SPEAKER_01 15:47

My impression is that their conception was to meet a very specific type of patient that sometimes I wonder if it exists at all. But in any case, there was a lot of attention paid to what they would have called weight restoration, which is just someone who's restricting their food and they need to be restored to physical health of a certain number in their weight. And there was also a lot of attention given to pharmacological approaches. So I could not necessarily like I had to state very clearly that I wasn't interested in medications, but there was a lot of time and attention given to that, and less so on any type of therapeutic care. So in my eating disorder, I struggled with a combination of orthorexia, which is an obsession with health and healthy eating, and nutrition, and then also binge eating. And I felt that in treatment there was like almost no understanding of how they would have helped someone deal with anything beyond what they understood, which was probably very simplified versions of anorexia or bulimia. So I yeah, I found that there was, like I said, a lot of structure and a lot of rules in service of something where I wasn't necessarily feeling like I was getting help. I felt like I was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

So it almost sounds like it was generalized care as opposed to personalized and not individuated. Does that sound right?

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Definitely. I definitely felt lost in the system and I kept getting feedback from people of praise of how I advocated for myself. And I just kept feeling like I I don't feel like I should need to advocate this hard for myself, be able to get the help I need.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Wow. Yeah, because a big part of the disorder is not being able to communicate what you need, not even knowing what you need, right? The distortion there. And then to be required to self-advocate, that you're right, that is a big need, a big ask for somebody who's there to receive treatment. And so both the treatment center and the plant medicine journey were lacking in what you specifically needed in order to heal. So I'm happy to hear that there was a turning point, a specific moment where you knew I need something different. I'm going to find and create my own path. So tell us more about that. How did you get there?

Outdated Models And Self Advocacy

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, and I'll share one more story from treatment, which is that I at some point encountered the executive director of the first facility, because I went to two facilities looking to see if I can get what I needed. And at the first facility, I encountered this executive director and I asked her, I'm so curious why we don't have group therapy. I just feel like we're around each other all the time. Wouldn't that be a good use of our time? And she said, People with eating disorders can't do group therapy. And she just said it outright like that. And she said, because they romanticize, they they're competitive with their eating disorder. There's a lot of that type of manipulation. And I just felt something did not feel right about that. I felt convinced that couldn't be true. And the second facility that I went to, we had group therapy like all day, every day. So I do feel vindicated in spotting some generalizations about what healing could look like for people with eating disorders. But yeah, I for me it was more of a process. I came home from treatment and found the right professionals for me to work with. I had been working with a eating disorder specialist therapist for years at that point. But I had slowly assembled my team after the fact. And that's really where I started to really do the heavy lifting of the work I needed to do. It was a slow process. It wasn't necessarily one moment, but treatment definitely set me up to do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

So as you started to assemble your team, as you said, what was the right combination that worked for you?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

For me, the core of my team is my therapist and my nutritionist. My nutritionist sometimes talks about how she's more of a food therapist, which I think I don't know why there isn't that title. I think it's super needed. But through the years, between my continued work with plant medicine, I was working with a somatic coach for a while. I was going to a ton of events in and around the city in New York City that were either warmth of community or some type of ecstatic dance, that type of thing that was really healing in combination.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Okay. So counseling, uh, community, and then even doing some other personal work on your own around somatic breathing and all that. So what now you've created your own path to help others, and it's called you're building the organization called Big Emotion. So tell us about that and what that offers, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Definitely. Primarily, what I offer is group breathwork experiences around New York City. I also offer them virtually. And then I also do somatic coaching that incorporates IFS and parts work, EMDR-informed care. There's some elements of that, but very much focused on addressing the body first and being able to make it safe for people who don't necessarily feel safe in their bodies to get the benefits of somatic work.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

And and so who is it really for? Who would be drawn to this and what would be the right fit, do you think?

Building A Team That Works

SPEAKER_01 21:48

I definitely work with people of all different levels of experience. I'm very comfortable in terms of building that language versus someone who might be already up and running. But Sometimes I describe the people that I work with as being at war with their body. So if you feel at war with your body for any reason, it doesn't necessarily have to be eating disorders, but there's just some type of conflict between you and your physical system. That's where I'm really interested in providing support.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

And the core mission is the core mission.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

I one way I would say the core mission is to just based on everything that I've already shared is to bridge the gap between the light and the shadow that I found between the underground and treatment. I want to make sure that a healing container is warm and compassionate and communal and makes space for the mystery while at the same time being grounded and boundaried and safe. Finding a way to balance that is really important to me.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Oh, I love that. I love that this is a place where people can learn to love their bodies again. In fact, something you said, the body isn't the problem, it is the map. So tell me what you mean by that and how that works in your program.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Definitely. I think, especially in what I went through, which was contending with orthorexia, there was so much emphasis on my body being this system that I just I couldn't understand and I wanted to control it. It felt like something to fix. And so I was constantly trying to look for more information about how to optimize it, how to fix it, how to get it to do what I wanted it to do. And one of the biggest shifts that I went through is an understanding of the intelligence of my body, of it being this really ancient technology in a lot of ways, that it has so many systems that are honestly beyond our comprehension. And shifting from trying to control it to actually learning to communicate with it, to actually listen to what it's trying to communicate, to take everything that comes through as information, to make space for my big emotions. It's part of why that name spoke to me a lot, to be with all of the complexity, all of the contradiction that's there, and to give that space and to trust that ultimately there I have some belief that the body knows what it's doing, that when it does something, it's for a reason. And if I could let it almost complete the process that it might allow for things to move.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

So many of our listeners and my clients are self-aware. They read the books, they have had life experiences, and yet they still feel stuck. What's the difference between understanding something and actually healing it? Do you think yeah?

Big Emotions And A Safer Container

SPEAKER_01 24:47

I struggle with that a lot to this day because I've never had a larger vocabulary for how I'm feeling. But sometimes it's still hard to actually feel the feeling. I think it's hard to say because it's such a lived experience. I think once you've felt an emotion through, once you have a sense for what it could look or feel like to do it again. But I do think the place to start is the somatic experience of what does this feel like? What does this need? Where does this want to go? Where does this want to move? I think listening and paying attention in that way could allow it to actually, I don't know, come alive as opposed to finding ways to put in a box of categorization of now I understand it, so now here it is. But how does it actually have a place to be expressed?

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think my experience with my own emotions is that I was afraid to feel them. I was afraid to entertain them, particularly certain ones. When I know everybody's history with emotions and in family systems is different, but there are those that felt dangerous, right? And so then what I'm hearing you say is that when we learn how to get to know them, befriend them, and just actually experience the flow of that emotion, it can open us up to a new experience, which is great. So a lot of your work is about helping people feel safe in their bodies. For someone listening who feels disconnected, numb, or even afraid of their emotions, where do you suggest they begin?

The Body Is The Map

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Yeah, it's a great question. I have a few ways of thinking about it. One metaphor I like to use is that it's so simple to compare it to how we think about exercise and our physical health. So if you were to ask the question, well, how does someone start exercising? I think something that could be difficult or something that could be somewhat joyful is actually trying things out and trying different modalities. Going the equivalent would be going to a workout class, but maybe you try out a modality that someone's offering either through an event or through working with someone one-on-one, and to see what your language is, what feels good to you, what is exciting to you. Another way that I think about it is I was thinking about it this morning, my sister-in-law is uh OBGYN, and I thought about it, it's like almost you might go to a hospital when you're in labor and you're like, ah, where do I start? Because it's such an emergency. But what if you actually set yourself up ahead of time so that you have a doctor you trust so that when something like that happens, you feel safe and taken care of. So I do think there could be a really fun, almost speed dating process. I sometimes I sometimes talk to my friends about this idea of a soulmate professional. I just feel that they're out there and it does take a little bit of time to find someone that you feel super safe and supported with, but I think it's so worth the effort just because so much of it I think has to do with chemistry.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

But on the other side of things, if it's even just the cognitive understanding of where to start, I think what I really needed when I first started was some help with, okay, someone said, What are you feeling? I said, I have no idea. I don't feel anything. And then I think some prompting questions that could help in those moments are, well, how do you know you're not feeling anything? And what does nothing feel like? Does it feel cold? Does it feel stiff? Does it feel loose? Does it feel empty? And that really helps me sometimes when I feel stuck with myself when I just feel like I don't know what I'm feeling. Sometimes accessing it from that perspective of what would it feel like if someone inhabited my body today, what would they notice? Sometimes those crumbs can really help. And then all of a sudden things start to show up and move.

Starting When You Feel Numb

SPEAKER_00 28:51

So what I hear you suggesting is getting curious about different ways to explore getting to know your body and your emotions, and finding someone to help you navigate that is often a first good step, whether it's some sort of speed dating or waiting to quickly connect. Because you're right, there are a lot of options out there. Not all of them will work for everyone. And I think that's the important message that we want to make sure our listeners get is that you really do need to self-advocate and ask questions, not only with yourself, but with whomever it is that you're going to be seeking guidance or care from. So I always like to leave the listeners with something practical. Is there a simple practice or process that maybe breath work or awareness or some way for our listeners that someone who would like to try or start reconnecting with themselves, where they could get started? What would you suggest, Naomi?

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Yeah, something that we were taught in the early days of my somatic coaching training was around, they call it following the breadcrumbs. And the idea is that whatever you notice in your somatic experience, like you ask the question, like, what is it like for me today? How am I feeling today? And once you get one sensation to just give it total and complete space and just notice and see what happens, and then follow that wherever it goes and continue to do that twice, three times, it could take 10, 15 minutes and it could be extremely powerful.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

So I definitely recommend so just for our listeners who aren't familiar, can you describe what the somatic experience, what it is, and what it would feel like?

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah, somatic coaching, the way I describe it sometimes is that it's instead of talk therapy where you're engaged with the narrative where you're engaged with the story of what's happening to you, we're starting with the body. So we're the first question is what's going on in your body, and then we move from there. So we're actually in a bottom-up approach as opposed to a top-down. And it's built on the premise that we trust and believe that the body knows what it needs to heal, and that if we just give it some space, it could actually show us the way.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Okay. So the body is guiding you through the process, is what I'm hearing you're saying. And are they narrating what they're experiencing to you, the coach? Is that how it works? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

You help them to understand that exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah, it's just a lot of space, a lot of attention, and just following whatever form that takes. It could be words, it could be images, it could be a description of sensations. And sometimes their language isn't always available, so we just let it happen. Yeah, with breath work, it's much more structured, but the what's present in both of them is the space.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Okay. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Well, I want to thank you, Naomi, for joining us today and sharing your story. It's really a powerful one because I think what I hear is such resilience, such determination to heal. And for anyone who's listening, I imagine they definitely heard that through your whole storyline. Now, where can people find you if they want to contact you for some work?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

They can certainly reach me either through my website or on Instagram. It's the same address for both. It's bigemotions.co.

Breadcrumb Practice And Closing

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Okay, great. If this episode resonated with you, and I'm talking to our listeners, I want to encourage you to reach out and or share it with someone that you love, someone who might need to hear this story today. And if you're ready to take the next step and do deeper work, don't forget you can reach out to me directly. All the details are in the show notes. Until next time, you've been listening to She Ask, where tools meet practical hope. And until soon, be well.