E55: Trust Your Gut, Not Fear with Jenny C Cohen

In this powerful interview, Jenny C. Cohen shares her journey through cancer, trauma, and self-discovery—and how dance became the bridge to healing.

We dive into the power of embodiment, self-care, and trusting your intuition, along with practical tools to help you reconnect with your body, build resilience, and show up more fully in your life.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected, stuck in your head, or unsure how to navigate life’s challenges—this conversation will give you a new path forward.

Key takeaways:

• Why self-care is non-negotiable
• How movement and dance can heal trauma
• The role of visibility and authenticity in growth
• Simple somatic practices to ground and reset

This episode is your reminder: Trust your gut, not fear—and find your own rhythm in life.

Connect with Jenny:

https://www.dancetohealpodcast.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:12

Work is something expected. It's discipline. It's consistency. And most of the time, it's not recognized. But what happens when the sucky parts hit harder than expected? Imagine being on the verge of making it as a professional dancer, only to have everything slowed down from a breast cancer diagnosis. For most people, that moment breaks them. For Jenny C. Cohen, it became a pivot moment. In this episode, we dive into something deeper than motivation because the truth is we're not naturally wired to heal ourselves. We resist. We fear change, even when it's better for us. Jenny challenges that by asking a powerful question. Do you trust your gut or your fear? From making self-care non-negotiable to reconnecting mind and body through something as simple as dancing after a shower. This conversation is about learning to listen to your breath, your body, and the internal chatter that shapes your life. Let's roll right in. All right. Welcome to the Work Sucks But I Like It podcast. Today we have Jenny C. Cohen. She's a cancer survivor, a mother of two, is a visibility and embodiment master. She has integrated her experiences in performance, psychology, and somatic coaching in what she now calls Dance to Heal. She is also an author and podcast host of Dance to Heal. Jenny, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

I'm so excited to be here, Tony. I can't even talk, apparently.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

It's all good. It's all good. So, Jenny, I love the concept of your dance, and I really want to dive into that. I think of it people as their have their song and dance, if you will, in life that they're trying to find. But first question, just to establish kind of this the definitions of what we mean by the word work, how do you define work today and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

That's a multi-layered question for me because so I'm Asian presenting. I'm Asian American, born in Taiwan and I and I've grown in the States. And in my culture, work is something expected. It's associated with discipline and consistency and not necessarily being recognized for it. For me, it's become more of an experiential thing, meaning we can think all we want unless you physically or emotionally and or uh energetically do the work. It's incredibly hard to move forward in life. That's a newer definition recently I've come upon for the word work.

SPEAKER_04 2:37

So I'm my mother was born in the Philippines, so I'm half Filipino. And I love kind of like the Eastern kind of philosophy and approach to things. There's definitely a difference, right? In the West, where in the West it's all about achievement. In the East, it's kind of like you love the process. So that's that's excellent. We're definitely gonna vibe off that. So, Jenny, how do you apply this definition now, working definition in the West, right? Where you're bombarded by expectations of getting so many likes and followers and blah, blah, blah. How do you navigate that? That's gotta suck, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Well, similar, similar to the title of your podcast, right? There's always this balance for me. Now I am 50, I'm level 57. So I'll be 58 in July, right? And I've noticed that. As I celebrate being a cancer survivor now 12 years, and revel in the second chance of being alive and on this plane of existence, because you know, there's many other plans of existence that we're not even aware of, we haven't achieved yet. I I enjoy having the sucky parts because that's part of the growth. I used to resent it. I used to be really angry that life was hard. And I realized, whoa, it was too easy, I wouldn't appreciate it. Is that be is that because I'm Asian? I don't know. When it's too easy, it doesn't feel like I deserve it. And when I say easy, I mean giving myself permission to strive for something and not necessarily hitting the goal. And I'm not referring to mindlessly grinding, there's a difference there, all right? As I age up and become an elder in training, and I have fraternal twins through in vitro fertilization. They're now 27 and they are hitting their end of their 20s. We're starting to navigate this. What does it mean when I love what I do and there's still hard parts about it that I have to self-motivate through versus it's really a dead end and I need to move in another direction, I need to pivot so into something else. And for me, it's it's been this realization. When I'm looking outward, I'm looking to other professionals for answers. If I would just sit still and ask myself that question, usually it's my body, the embodiment of the storehouse of everything that's ever happened to me since I was in my mother's wound. Right. So if I was to ask myself and to apply kinesiology and just ask myself yes or no questions, 95% of the time, I have the answers. Whether or not I could provide the answers to something else. So for example, today, I just came from a doctor's visit. I have a long history of asthma. So if I get a minor cold, you too, right? We're like family now. But for me, it's this toggle. I take a lot of antihistamines to keep my asthma in control because I also have 10.8 cats currently. I have a lot of cats and two dogs.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

Calling out one.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Right. Yeah. I foster kittens. I'm I'm a miracle worker with baby kittens. They're very fragile and I can keep them alive. And to date, I've only lost three out of the hundreds of babies I fostered, right? And so we ended up with some that just stayed home with us. And I manage this very bad asthma allergy thing. And I know there comes to a point when I cannot do it at home anymore and I have to see the doctor because it's time for the pregnose and the and the antibiotics. Now I know when exactly that tipping point is because I really don't want bratitis. I really don't want to open myself up for other infections.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

That's almost like a skill where you realize you have to kind of pivot. Walk us through those feelings of anger and the transformation you needed to have to start seeing this clarity in yourself. Was it the cancer experience? Was it something before?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Was it multi-layered answer again to that question? So when we pivot, remember our lives are very similar to the ship that's in the Titanic. When we want to go in a different direction, it's never immediate right turn. It's little, little corrections, correct? So when I first got cancer back in 2014, I was at my most fittest since before my kids were born. I've been seven months vegan, working out. I was full muscle. You look at the pictures and you think, wow, she looked fit, but was I really fit? I wasn't because I ended up with breast cancer. All right. And you think, well, did that, did that slow you down? Yes, it slowed me down. Did it completely stop me? No, it just pivoted me. I was about to launch an international career in fusion belly dance because I was being recognized. I was winning titles, and I was ready to just run away from my life and become like a star internationally. And my body went, no, thank you. No, thank you. Your husband was just in this in the hospital, your son just coming out of three years of type 1 diabetes, and she hasn't told you yet yet. But your daughter, when I have full permission to discuss these things, your daughter is now basically uh borderline suicidal and about to start self-harm. And I did not know any of this stuff. So the breast cancer slowed me down. And then I didn't really, really begin the full pivot until my daughter went into big, big distress and we had to slow everything down to keep her alive. And that's basically the point of it. And her getting better and us being present to keep her safe. I realized, oh, Jenny, how much healing do you need to do? And then I was able to really look at myself fully in the mirror. Most of us are not motivated to self-heal for ourselves. We do it for the ones around us that we want to be around for. That's one of the arguments that helps my now adult not go down that path of self-harm. Because we talk about, well, do you know what would happen to us if you chose to end your life? I mean, we would respect your decision, but you would destroy our human, our whole family. You would take away one half of my reason to be here as your mother.

SPEAKER_04 8:56

No, thank you for sharing that, Jenny. I also love the fact that you're vegan. So I've been a vegan for over a year now. So that's so funny. We got a lot in common here.

unknown 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

I'm no longer vegan now, but my husband is so gosh. I can give you tons of recipes. There's lots of yummy stuff to do.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

We'll have to definitely exchange that afterwards. Love that. So, Jenny, one of the things we talk about on the show is that success is not a matter of good luck. It's good skills. In your transformation, when you had all these things, you know, hitting you at life, these sort of traumatic events, what was the skill that you felt that you were building to steer yourself in that other direction, right? To take you one kind of click, you know, further in the right direction where you want it to go. What's that one skill that you were developing?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

That one skill that I was developing was the ability to trust in my own gut. Most of us don't trust it. We will start to seek guidance from other people and hope it coincides with what your gut is telling you. We want to be careful, my friends, listening to this and watching the it, you know, if if you ever go to video, I don't like watching and listening. There's a big difference between fear, like you're afraid of change that's better for you, versus gut going, This is not for you at this time.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Right?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Learning the difference between the two, because a lot of times I listened to my fear in the past, but then I would ignore my gut and still go in the direction because of FOMO, fear of missing out.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Absolutely. Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Or fear of causing someone to be alone. You can always go, you could always get me on that. It if I was worried about you, I would be more loyal to you than me. And we have to be aware of how often we'll serve other people before we serve ourselves.

SPEAKER_04 10:40

No, I love that. I mean, we so we live in such a consumer society, right? So we always feel like we seek externally these things. And I also love the fact that you're a yoga teacher. You talk about breath. So there's a lot of things I'd love to dive in with that as well. Talk to us about that sort of like turning point for people when they start to go from that extrinsic to that intrinsic sort of reward and that sort of internal mastery, I guess if I'll call it that.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yes, it is a mastery. It's a mastery of tuning in with your self-care. You don't have kids yet, do you, Tony? You look very young yourself. Yeah, like that's the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

I just cleaned up her puke before this call.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

So there you go. I mean, yeah, pretty much. So here's when you have distractions from your self-care, right? That is a lesson you'll keep learning cycle to cycle in your life. That your self-care still has to come first, no matter what. And none of us are taught this. I did I did not have this role model to me by my parents. And I only is just I'm just starting to learn this now in my 50s, that my self-care is non-negotiable. And that includes when people like my dear husband was just in the hospital for back-to-back surgeries and he lost he's a vegan, he lost like 30 pounds. He's like skin and bones walking around, right? And I still had to learn that lesson that if my self-care is non-negotiable, then what energy do I have left after? That's really important. None of us think about even oh, what do you mean self-care? Like you mean like do I get enough asleep? I'm talking about everything, sleep, sunblock for your face. Like, are you washing your face and glossing your teeth every day? These are the bare minimum non-negotiables. And most people think that's negotiable.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

What are some other things, Jenny, like that you could provide the listeners with with the self-care? I like this. I like the basics of brushing your teeth, hopefully. You know, the sun block. What are some other things that you integrate in your day for that self-care?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yes. Make sure your sleep is quality. So there are a lot of biometric things we can buy off of online now to measure your heart rate when you're sleeping and your oxygen levels when you're sleeping. And I say this because my husband's snoring got worse as he aged. And then when he finally acquiesced to a sleep study, he had pretty severe sleep apnea. Once we got him better, it turned out that I was snoring, but you couldn't hear it uh under his snoring. So he jokingly said, We need to get you worked up, and he ordered an online O2 monitor for my finger. And I had worse sleep apnea than he did. My heart rate was going up to 90 in my sleep. I was not breathing 40 times an hour throughout the night. That will affect you. And everyone thinks, oh, well, it's because, you know, I got fat or um my pillow was wrong. Yes, and sometimes um one of the side effects of menopause or perimetopause or decrease in testosterone for men, and menopause I call it, is the development of sleep apnea. Right? Or even hydration. If you're not waiting, if you're not hydrating before you get thirsty, it's already too late. These basic things, I call this the outside of the inside mastery, outside in mastery. If we're not tuned into our bodies, then how do you listen to your gut?

SPEAKER_04 14:15

How do you trust it too, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

How does it trust you? How did your body trust you? Right? No. Because we're always thinking, oh, I have to teach my body to allow me to trust my body. And I I'm gonna put the question to everybody what are you doing to have your body trust you? Because your body's already set up to do everything you want it to do. Think about every marathon runner. What body wants to run 26 miles? But your mind decides, I want to run 26 miles. And then your body will give it to you.

SPEAKER_04 14:48

Yep. Yeah, it's definitely what you feed it, right? So it's like you feed it good food, you feed it good thoughts, right? You feed it good relationships. I really like that. So I love that, Jenny. So now that we've got the self-care, walk us through how you now integrate this into like the work-life balance. What are your thoughts surrounding work and life? Is it the right question we should be asking?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I want you to, the listener, because Tony and I already were because you you're a yoga practitioner and I do dance daily because for me it's a trust T-R-U-S T connection with the body, all right? Where I'm literally allowing my body to move how it wants to music. And I'm gonna redefine dance for everyone. We're not referring to the westernized, codified, monetized forms of dance like ballet, which my son is a graduate, he has a degree in ballet, he knows how to properly extend his leg so everybody ooze and ahs. He also knows how to move in a way that will pull the heart out of your chest and throw it on the floor, right? So we're not at we're not asking you to do either one of those. We're saying giving yourself the birthright. When you dance and you're happy right out of the shower and you're naked, wiggling around in your bathroom, that's the movement I'm referring to. When you're so gleeful and happy and free, that's the beginning of actually building the conversation between your mind and body.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

So, how do we know one of the things I explored, Jenny, in my first book was this concept of song and dance, right? I believe that everybody has one, but there's like this idea, and I was playing with the music thing, right? You have to resonate with the beats, right? You have to resonate with the music. How do people know that they're playing their right song and dance in life? Like, how do they know if they're doing the movement right? I love your thing, like you get out of the shower, like, yeah, you know, karaoke too in the car. Walk us through how you kind of like determine this is really resonating with me.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

The level of resonance depends on where a person is in their lives. Okay, because right now I'm currently in a year-long study on understanding the science behind dance and what is happening inside our brains, because it will depend on where you are operating. For example, there are different systems in the brain that are activated when you're just learning a new move, has an experienced dancer versus a new dance. So we go through different systems of learning in the body in the brain. All right. So if you're learning the song and dance, like I said before, if you're not even doing a consistent self-care routine, and I'm gonna be really honest, like hands up here, folks, I'm level 57. I would say I now have a consistent self-care routine, and I've been trying for the last five years. Right. So it is a process because my needs five years ago were different from now. Right? No, so this, right? So this is active listening with your body, and your body will tell you this isn't working anymore. Try something else because I'm not gonna give you this result that you want. Right. And so for me, it was this listening and realizing, oh, wait a minute, I'm breast cancer positive hormones, but now I've been in menopause from chemotherapy, but now my osteoporosis are is rising. And then when I did the research, it's because your menopause dropped. That's why you have the bone density decrease in your body. All right, so wait a minute, but I had no history of breast cancer in my body, no history in my family. Why did I get breast cancer? Oh, wait, it is related to trauma that's not resolved. And then this, oh, wait, but I do need the hormones because I don't want to get osteoporosis. Because that leads to hip fractures for women. And three out of ten women do not survive a hip fracture once we get a hip fracture, it doesn't matter what age. Then three out of three, ten of us, we we pass away, right? So this listening process, some of us, though, if you're really, really connected already, it becomes a am I in something that I'm doing that I'm happy in? Because some of us will, like my husband, will convince ourselves I have no other choice. He's the main breadwinner. He has to do this work. Even if he's treated poorly, taken for granted, it's you know, increasing the stress in his life. Right. And and sometimes there's no one holding you in this situation of stress. Just you. I didn't want him to stay working at a job that causes so much stress. I was like, we can work around it, right? And now he's willing to open up a um a side hustle. He's gonna coach mental intelligence and something else, right? So he has a feeling like he's not so trapped in his current job.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

So, Jenny, I think you just share for the audience something really critical here. So we have a lot of internal chatter, and you as a yoga teacher know the goal of yoga from the sutras of Patanjali, right? Sutra 1.2, Yoga Chitta Viriti Narodaha, which translates roughly to calming the fluctuations of the mind. Why is it so difficult for people to kind of like work with this internal chatter? Why are they so afraid? Why are we so afraid to open that up? Are we afraid? Am I just phrasing it wrong? Maybe people are. Like I am sometimes. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

I love I love your candid conversation about this because um we're not often raised and allowed to acknowledge how much internal chatter we all have. I never realized how much I've internalized my mother's trying to help me, but really just completely causing me so much trauma voice. I don't even hear it, even though it's talking nonstop. I've internalized it so much. I don't hear his words, I hear his feelings, right? I hear I feel it has tightness in certain parts of my body. And so for for many of us, learning to acknowledge this chatter and then allow to us the power to shift some of that chatter and or redirect the chatter, right? Because we're now overlapping into so many different theories. There's Carl Jung with the subconscious, there's internal family systems, there's um just so much, right? And we don't need to know all of it, just to acknowledge. Oftentimes, we look at ourselves in the mirror, not through our own eyes. And just to understand that that shifts throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the months, throughout the time of year. And you just acknowledge that, and then you do this daily connection of mind and body, understanding that your body is saying more than you're willing to listen sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 21:37

I think that's where like dance and yoga come into play, right? I think that's I like what you said it, like redirect the chatter. I mean, that's where dance can kind of realign it, redirect it. So I really want to dive into your work now. So walk us through how you got into dance and psychology and somatic coaching. Like, how did this all integrate? Because I love this, right? Because to me, I think you fully embody. What I think of as work for what that's worth on the show. And I really look up to that. It's almost like because I hate when people come in and say, I'm just a coach. I'm just this, right? But you're integrating all the things that you love into your work. Walk us through how you've gotten to this point where you could integrate and find the connections and these seemingly different things of your life.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Isn't that the beauty of life though, right? When you start to Yeah, right. I know. Right. When you start to find the you okay. Anyone who's listening and they're like, oh, I just don't know what I'm supposed to do, understand that where you are right now, you're actually gathering skills for where you need to be. I had no idea when I married my husband that being married to someone over 35 years would be a skill that I needed in coaching other people and understanding how important that was. I had no idea that when he got to clear cancer, we would have to go through in vitro and go through that whole scientific thing that happened, that that would help me in helping people in the future. I had no idea that when I had fraternal twins and they became elite athletes and I homeschooled them and then they were junior Olympians, that that would help me with my people. I had no idea that my breast cancer journey would help me help my people. I had no idea that when my son transitioned female to male, that would help me help my people. Right. That when my, you know, when my daughter went through her very, very stressful mental health time, that that would help me help my people. All I knew was just, can we just make it another day? Cause it just like it sucked. And now I was so grateful that I still have my kids around to work through the sucky part of the life.

SPEAKER_04 23:35

So tell us more about Jenny, how you've used the breath through all these moments and all this time, right? I mean, I find it interesting. Do you do I was looking at one of your videos before the call here? And at 1111, is this true? You take a breath, you have your phone kind of have a reminder and you say 1111. Tell us why you do that. I really like that. Why, why do you why did you do that habit?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's it's correlated with, I have breath reminders because it's correlated with being present. We are really often, even people who talk about being present, we're really not present. Because we are wired to be protective. And we only are protective from what we know. And most of us in the healing industry, whether you're a client or a coach, we're still resolving our layers of trauma. No one's ever fully healed. Once you're fully healed, you're dead. Okay. Then it's time, time to go. None of us are hanging out and like helping other people because we're ready to go on to the next level, next level of existence, betterment for the world. At least that's what I believe. So we're always only a few steps ahead. That means we're still actively working ourselves, at least I would hope. My coaches are doing that because, you know, unless we're source, we're always trying to refine what we know. In terms of breath, though, because I realized how often I struggle with being present, which then means my clients struggle just as not much as not more, is that I have hourly reminders, which I turn off when I'm in these interviews. That's fine.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

We could actually do it along with you. That'd be pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah. Because the the thing with the breath is I tie it in with your five senses. So if you tune into vision and smell and taste and hearing and touch. So we could do it right now. Like smell your favorite smell. I always, like right now, I have a mug of tea, that's earl gray tea in there. Bergamot oil is a natural uh D antidepressant. So I always have bur Earl gray tea. So I taste the early tea. I smell the or gray tea. I even have clients, Tony, that like to smell the butter. I'm like, go for it. If butter makes you happy, smell butter. Yeah. Or whatever your favorite smell and taste is, and then you hear what's around you in your room. You have a cat, so that means things are being knocked down in your room. I have 10.8 cats, so something's being kicked, knocked over. This cat fights. Hear what's in your surroundings, smell and taste. Then you feel your butt in your seat, feel the clothing in your body. And then the gaze means that you're going to stop being very pointed in your focus. And you open your peripheral field so that you can see everything with a soft gaze. When you open up your peripheral field, you actually start to go into your parasympathetic nervous system. That's a quick, like it's it's a quick switch. You're just you're backing up that switch by turning to sense of your smell, taste, hearing, and touch.

SPEAKER_04 26:30

So when people go inward, Jenny, I love this right now. Like how you kind of framed it, like opening up this peripheral field. Most people are afraid to go inside their thoughts. And when they think of like doing the internal work, it's like, okay, I gotta clear my mind. I gotta why is that the wrong way to think of it?

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Well, I listen, I remember getting really angry in the beginning of my journey when people asked me to do that. Because I I honestly, I only knew that I was holding everything together by a thread. And my internal words in my head would be, are you ready if I let it go? Cause it's gonna be a whirlwind hurricane tornado. Like, I don't think you're ready for it. I'm certainly not ready for it. But you really want this? Like, I you really want me to really let go and feel everything or empty my mind. I don't think you understand what you're asking for. And I think the deline the the people just if you're just present, meaning right now in this moment, that means you're letting go of what you're worrying about from the past and the future. Because most of the time we're I I never processed my past. So I was afraid, oh, my past is gonna totally hit me. That's different work, folks. That's the work with like a um a complex PTSD therapist that's really knowing to how to keep you safe, right? That's with a trauma-aware coach that has ways to handle when you're feeling your feelings, right? We're asking you just to be present in the now. And when you're present in the now, like the monks who just did that peace walk from Texas to Washington, DC, they're actually very at peace because they're very in the now.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

No, that's excellent, Jenny. So I want to dive into kind of the work and how you describe it. And this what stood out to me was why did you pick visibility and embodiment to describe what you do? Why did those two words come to your attention and you want to share with everyone?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Visibility is what keeps everybody safe, Tony. We think, oh, if I'm if I'm more seen, then I'm more vulnerable. I'm more of a target. And I'm gonna argue it's the opposite. When you're invisible is when you're more in danger. Right, the squeaky wheel gets oiled. If you're visible, and I'm I'm not asking you to be a a a negative Nelly. I'm saying you can be a beacon of happiness or willingness to ask for for what you need in a positive way. You can be firm about it, but you don't have to be nasty about it, right?

SPEAKER_04 29:06

So is visibility just like expression, or is it just like I need to get all these followers on my social media page? I guess I'm trying to figure out how you're defining it.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Visibility is just the understanding that you are the star of your life. Right? You're the star of your life. And if you know and understand that, that's gonna direct how you decide to behave at every moment, whether or not there's witnesses or not.

SPEAKER_04 29:32

That's the So you seeing yourself is that visibility. Love that. Love that. Yeah. So walk us through the embodiment part of that.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Embodiment gets used a lot right now, Tony. Everyone's doing embodiment. I just got an ad from a coach saying, you know what? The key right now to authentic authentic coaching is that you need to teach everybody how to be embodied in the somatic approach. And I'm thinking to myself, do you know what you're saying? Like, do you even you know what that means? Are you just throwing that around because you want to get a like or a click on your on your offer, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:04

My definition So what's the proper way to use it?

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Well, there's no proper way, right? I just want people to understand like, how are you defining it? I define embodiment as actually doing the work of connecting with your body.

SPEAKER_04 30:17

So that's something that I feel like I really want to dive into this. So there's like kind of this idea that we got to hustle culture, right? And people think that they're putting all this effort in and that's doing the work. Why is that not doing the work?

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Doing the work means if your body says, I need to rest, are you listening? And when I say rest, I'm not talking about a a a cursory bath where you're scrolling on social media or you're you know, you're playing with something so you're not present in the moment. It's it's a we are we have a hard time with silence in our culture. Right? Because then we get the chatter or we want to fill it with chatter. If we were really to be honest ourselves and really be clear on what your body really needs, it's a different answer than what you think it is. It's it's not what people are telling us what it is. It is a very individual answer though. So you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, this makes sense. Something in my gut is telling me this that I need something else than what I have in my life right now to be present or be happy, then you want to explore it. There's an exercise that I have a lot of my clients do, and I've started suggesting it when people have me on as a guest. Um, you can ask yourself questions through journaling in a different way. So, what you do is you take a pen and a paper. Typing doesn't do anything. You have to write. I agree. Okay. Yes, different pathway in the brain. And when you use the pen, make sure it's a glide pen, not a scratchy one, okay? First of all, no scratchy chalky, just a gliding ball point or what is it, the the liquid ones.

SPEAKER_04 32:09

They're I love that because I've bought those crappy pens, but go ahead. I just laughed like you said that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah. You know it's a good hotel when they give you a nice glide ball and so in your dominant hand, so if you're right-handed naturally, in your right hand, you ask a simple question. Like you write the question, Am I doing enough self-care? Let's relate it back to the beginning of the conversation. Or is what I'm doing makes me happy? Or am I with the right group of friends? That's a good question. Then you take the pen and put it in your non-dominant hand and let a script out whatever it wants to write. In the beginning, it can be very, very non-un in the you can't read it. It's just scribble. Over time. Or if your body's just been desperate for you to listen and finally saying, oh my God, they're finally, are they gonna listen? Let me give them a real straight answer. You'll start getting answers you have no idea. And they'll feel right in your heart. For example, my son, very resistant to this exercise. We have a therapist working with the therapist. I've told him, please ask your subconscious. You don't want to have the answers from us. Listen to it from your body.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

When he finally did the exercise, and he is right hand dominant, his left hand answered him in poetry.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Love that.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Poetry, we're gonna publish it soon. Like it's a good thing. Oh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 33:34

That's even more amazing.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Right? And then my husband, who's he's a Virgo, very, very detail-oriented, you know, he's open to my think, my suggestion, but very resistant. And then he started doing more work. And his subconscious answers in these stories that break your heart about his childhood. So, what stories are are waiting to be told or shared with you that you have not been willing to listen? Do that exercise.

SPEAKER_04 34:03

What a powerful exercise. Thank you, Jen. I feel like that's great for the listeners too, because sometimes I feel like we're almost embarrassed to kind of like show our insides, right? So the fact that you can do this in a very personal space, right? Your journal, your notebook, if you hate it, I guess you could throw it out and burn it, you know, if you will. But thank you for sharing that. That's an excellent one to definitely take away. So, Jenny, what is one aspect of your work that sucks today? And what are you doing to make it not suck?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

I love dance and I still it still sucks to do it every day. Let's just be honest. Why? Because it is a reminder that it's hard, and that lets me know I still haven't been able to put myself first. That makes me acknowledge that. Because if it wasn't hard, right, and it was just automatic, then I could focus on something else that's hard. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 35:05

It's I guess it's yeah, go into that a little more because I mean you're a professional dance, you got all these awards. So what is hard? It can't be the technique. Is it the mental side of it? Or are you trying a fancier trick? I don't know, dancing. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

No, let me let me explain what I'm doing when I say the Daily Trust Connect. On all it's mostly on Instagram that I'm doing a reminder. Like, here's day 64. Here's the prompt. Remember, you're going to journal how you feel before, and then you're going to dance to the song with this prompt that I gave you, and you're going to videotape yourself. And then at the end of the dance segment, it's two to three minutes, you're going to journal how you feel. And then you're going to go back and watch yourself in the video. And you're going to give yourself three compliments about three things you like that you did. And then you're going to take one thing you can do a little bit different.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

And I love these exercises. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

And this exercise, one, it improves my ability to perform because I perform regularly. Two, it allows me to not worry about whether or not it looks good. Why is it hard? Because it is something that requires me to watch myself in a video. None of us are geared to love that. And it is a muscle we need to use because uh, do you remember the care bears?

SPEAKER_04 36:31

Uh yeah, yeah, a little bit, a little before my time. But yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

I know you're sure you weren't born.

SPEAKER_04 36:36

That's okay. No, I mean something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

The idea of care bears is that they have the care bear stair where they just look at you with love and acceptance. It's an exercise of doing that. You look at yourself in the video with love and acceptance. And a lot of us have conditioning that's the opposite of it. So if you think about my healing journey, I'm now 57. I've only been doing these exercises since 12 years ago when I started my cancer journey. I started to use 100 days of improv. Right? So that's only 12 years versus 45 years of hatred of how I looked in these videos. So I'm not even halfway post my lifetime, lifetime of not being able to just love myself for who I am.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

So it's been definitely been a pleasure to have you on the show. Where's a good place for people to land if they want to have more visibility and embody their dance in life? Where's a good place for them to land to reach out to and connect more?

SPEAKER_00 37:36

You can find me under Jenny Z. Cohen under all social media. And I have a free masterclass that they can sign up at MoveToBloom, M-O-V-E-T-O-B-L-O-O-M.com. And there's one coming up end of this month. It's mostly towards the end of the month. And because it's backed by a nonprofit, it's free. And then we just do more of these type of exercises to help people start to build it into their self-care.

SPEAKER_04 38:01

Awesome. We'll definitely put that link in the episode details. Jenny, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Thank you for having me, Tony.

SPEAKER_04 38:08

There's something powerful in what Jenny shared today, doing something you love and still feeling like it sucks sometimes. Even as an accomplished dancer, she reminds us that fulfillment isn't about removing the hard parts. It's about learning how to be present with them. And most of us, we're not actually present. We're protective, guarded, reacting instead of listening. The real skill isn't perfection, it's connection. Connection to your breath because that's what brings you back. Connection to your thoughts, maybe even journaling them out with your non-dominant hand to truly hear yourself. And most importantly, connection between your mind and body every single day. Self-care isn't optional. Trust isn't automatic. So ask yourself what actually resonates with you? And are you listening? Because success isn't a matter of good luck, it's good skills. And today's skill learn to trust yourself. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time.