#33: Your Body Isn't Broken: Trauma, Chronic Symptoms, and Nervous System Healing with Cindy Costley

Your body isn’t failing you, and it isn’t being dramatic. It might be trying to protect you the only way it knows how. In this powerful conversation, we talk with Cindy Costley, founder of The Underlying Answers and creator of the Electromagnetic Body Desensitization Technique (EBDT), about what it looks like to treat symptoms as meaningful signals instead of enemies to silence. Cindy shares her personal story of living for decades with extreme sensitivities and “allergies to everything,” and how a deeper look at trauma and the nervous system changed the entire trajectory of her health. 

We get practical about nervous system regulation in a world that constantly feels unsafe. From negative news cycles to family conflict to the everyday pressure to push through, stressors stack up and keep the body in fight, flight, or freeze. Cindy explains how patterns form, why symptoms can become normalized, and how healing often starts by creating internal safety through stillness. We also explore how stillness does not always mean sitting quietly. For some of us, stillness starts as movement in silence, a slow walk in nature, or a guided grounding exercise that helps the mind unclench and the body settle. 

We also weave together faith and science in a way that feels human and hopeful. Cindy shares how faith helped her reject the “incurable” story, how God can speak through the body’s signals, and why opening to multiple supports like Western medicine, Eastern practices, and spiritual care can make healing feel possible again. You’ll leave with simple next steps for body awareness, including how to ask better questions, notice patterns, and respond with compassion instead of fear. 

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Podcast: The Underlying Answers 

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Transcript

Stillness Over More Doing

SPEAKER_02 0:00

When we learn to listen, which for me, doing that just meant really starting to understand my signals and my symptoms and what it means and why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting and what this trigger might be coming from.

Gillian 0:16

If your days feel full, but your heart longs for more meaning, you're not alone. Between the screens, the schedules, and the never-ending noise, it's easy to lose your sense of peace. But what if the way forward isn't found in doing more, but in learning to slow down, to simplify, to be still. Welcome to Be Still and Live, a podcast for individuals, couples, and families longing for calm, connection, and a more meaningful way to live. I'm Gillian, speaker, coach, and founder of Sileo Health and Wellness, and I'm here to help you create space for stillness and step into a life that feels whole and good again. Today we're exploring the topics of faith, healing, science, and the body's incredible capacity to communicate what needs our attention most. My guest is Cindy Cosley, founder of The Underlying Answers and creator of the Electromagnetic Body Desensitization Technique, or EBDT. After healing from a complex trauma-driven condition once considered incurable, Cindy began a journey of understanding the body not as something working against us, but as a divinely designed messenger, pointing us toward deeper healing. In this conversation, we talk about the connection between trauma, the nervous system, faith, and the body's signals. We explore what it means to create safety within ourselves, how healing often begins with awareness, and why listening to our bodies may be one of the most overlooked spiritual practices of our time. Whether you're navigating chronic symptoms, emotional stress, or simply curious about the deeper messages your body may be communicating, I think you'll find this conversation both thought-provoking and encouraging. Let's dive in.

Meet Cindy And Her Story

Gillian 2:08

Hi, Cindy. Welcome to Be Still in Live Podcast. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Gillian. I'm so grateful to be here today. I'm excited for you to share your story and all of your wisdom with us. Yes, absolutely. Your work today, from what I know about you, focuses on helping people understand the body as a messenger rather than something that is broken. And I think a lot of people feel like their body is broken. But the understanding that you have came through a very personal healing journey. Can you take us back to the beginning of that journey and share what you were experiencing at that time?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Sure. This has really been a lifelong journey. Um at age 15, I suddenly just woke up one day and I was allergic to everything. My body had uh manifested the allergies as severe rashes all over my body. And after testing and everything, I had been allergic to almost all chemicals, almost all foods, almost all plant life, and all animal life. And I lived that way for 34 years. Kind of in a way, a girl in a bubble. I didn't realize it because I was so blessed and I just always felt so joyful and happy and kind of felt like, well, this is all I have. It could be worse. That's the attitude I took on. And then at age 48, uh, my body, I my family and I went to a lake water skiing, and we had never been to this lake before. And within about two hours of being in the water, I was rushed to the hospital or taken to the hospital and in a massive anaphylactic reaction of the skin. And I just never recovered after that. Usually a big severe reaction like that would take a couple weeks, and then my body would bounce back. And this time it just didn't. I could feel it. It was, it was just tired. It didn't, like I just couldn't do with this anymore. And I told my husband, eight months later, I told my husband, I said, My body, like my soul wants to dance, and it's gonna dance here on this earth or somewhere else. Like I am losing this battle. And the doctors had told me that my liver and kidney enzymes were, you know, completely dysregulated. And I had the liver of an end-stage alcoholic, and I don't I didn't drink because I was allergic to alcohol. So I just had all these things shouting at me from my body and basically saying, You have two choices here, you know. And I decided to look into it a little different and look at what I have not done, because all those years I had tried what I knew, everything I knew, Western and Eastern, right? I had done what I thought was everything. So I sought out a two things, a spiritual um practitioner to kind of guide me spiritually, which I had never done, and then a functional medicine doctor who was kind of like a doctor house. He was, you know, very he didn't he didn't specialize in anything specific. It was just really rare cases, and I was definitely one of those because the doctors could not figure me out. And I had it took me six months to get both of those appointments, which is so interesting, because I ended up having them back to back within one day of

The Trauma Link Behind Symptoms

SPEAKER_02 5:20

each other. And the first one was with a healer, and the first thing she said to me is, Tell me what happened to you at age 14. And I told her about a story that happened to me at 15, and she goes, No, tell me what happened to you at 14. And I had had a major trauma at 14 that I had never ever spoken one word about. I protected the individual involved. It was a group of individuals, but one of the persons was somebody I trusted very much, and I trusted him, and I knew he'd go to jail, so I kept my mouth quiet uh for all those years. And when she said that, I just started bawling. And she says, This is everything that your body's been speaking to you about.

Gillian 6:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

And she says, Your body, you're not allergic. Your body's sending you messages trying to get you to heal. The very next day I go see this functional doctor, and he says the same thing. Tell me what happened to you when you were a child. And those were the first days that anything from my childhood was ever corresponded with you know, what like all these years of chronic illness. So it was pretty amazing. And then I embarked on a journey of desensitization, uh, where I just slowly healed one aspect of my life and here I am fully healed and thriving.

Gillian 6:41

Oh my gosh, what an amazing story. I'm just curious to know were you aware of what happened when you were 14, or was it it, was it pushed down so far that you weren't even aware of it?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

That is a great question. I was aware of it completely. It's not something I suppressed. Um, but what happened? So let me back up just a moment. A few years into my healing journey, I learned of another trauma at age six, and that one was fully 100% suppressed. I had no concept of it at all. And that was actually my starting, my very first big trauma, where my body told my brain, my brain and my body sconnected and said, We're not going to feel these emotions. This is too much. It was a very physical and sexual abuse situation at age six. So it was too much for me. So my body said, my brain said, We're gonna process your emotions somatically. And so the other traumas after that, there was the big one at 14, which was a group event, and then there was another one at 15, and then that's when my body said, enough, and I became allergic to everything. Wow. So at the six-year-old one was fully suppressed, the 14-year-old one wasn't. But the interesting thing is, is because I never felt the emotions of it, I thought I got away unscathed. So I literally told myself, I am so blessed to just not be depressed and not have anxiety and not be like so many people that we see that are just really have been through such terrible traumas, and they're just, you know, mentally and emotionally, you know, experiencing those traumas. And I wasn't. For me, it was just all somatic. So I had no idea or thought to correlate the two.

Gillian 8:29

Right. Right. And this is the first time that there are people in your life who are drawing your attention back to those experiences. Yes. So I just want to take a pause here because I'm I'm being mindful of any of the listeners who have experienced similar traumas. And just this conversation alone, they may be caught off guard and it may be servicing some really difficult emotions. Do you have anything that you can say to that listener

A Message For Triggered Listeners

Gillian 8:57

at this point in the conversation?

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah, I want to say that if you're experiencing something right now, if you're feeling something from what I'm saying, that is a message from your body. You're holding more than your body and your nervous system wants to hold. You're caring so much. And it's okay to acknowledge that. It's okay to just say, yes, I'm caring so much. That's the first step, is just acknowledging that you're actually holding on and carrying all that trauma that's that's bringing up those emotions. So if the things I'm saying are bringing up emotions for you, that is a message in itself. And it's actually a beautiful message. Because the first thing we want to do is push away those time periods in our life because they're so hard, but they're actually sitting in our body, creating so much pain and anxiety and physical dysregulation as well, that allowing ourselves to feel it emotionally is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves.

Symptoms As Signals Not Enemies

Gillian 10:06

That's a beautiful beautiful way of saying it. And it's it's what I want to touch on next. It's um this is this is really powerful work. And uh it's this belief that your body isn't working against you, it's actually communicating something very important. Your body wants you to heal, your body wants you to be free and to feel that peace. So, how did you begin to understand your own body in that way and make that shift in that perspective?

SPEAKER_02 10:37

It was a process, uh, it's not an overnight experience. Getting to know and connect with your body on such a deep level is what we're actually meant to do. You know, my theme at work is like restore the design because we are designed to live in harmony and peace. And our body knows how to do that. But then we come into this world, and I call it woo, like we talk about woo-woo being bad, but woo to me is WHU, which is worldly hangups. So, our worldly hangups, the things that happen to us, change for very specific purposes, for very specific reasons. They they change the cellular structure of our body. They change us on a mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, energetic, and behavioral level. And so when we learn to listen, which for me, doing that just meant really starting to understand my signals and my symptoms and what it means and why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting and what this trigger might be coming from. And that just takes practice, it takes a lot of you know, connecting, sitting down, listening. And I'll give you an example this morning. You can hear I'm a little bit plugged right now, and it's because I woke up this morning and I was very plugged. I was like, in the past, I would have woken up and said, I'm sick, or I would have woken up and said, you know, I need I'm having an allergy attack, I need a medicine, I need something. But now I can sit and listen. And once I had the time, I did the whole morning routine and took my dog out and all of that, right? All plugged up. And then I I took out something out of my morning so I could sit down in stillness, which is why I love this podcast you're doing. So I could sit down in stillness and ask my body, what is it you want me to know? Because my plugged sinuses are a message, they're not the message, they're just the way my body's sending me a message, right? So the message isn't you're plugged, the message is I'm plugging you up because I need you to hear something. And so when I sat down, I realized I'm really sad. I'm really, really sad about a situation that's happening in my family right now. And I have been bypassing that emotion. I haven't allowed myself to feel it. I'm not going to get too much into it because I will start crying right here on your podcast. But um, that's what this message is. So today, throughout the day, I know my body now, I'll let myself cry and just feel what it wants to feel, and then this will be gone because I've done what my body's asking me to do. So getting connected to your body at that level takes time and it takes practice. But the first step is to realize that our symptoms are a friend and they're trying to tell us something. And uh, the more regulated we become with our nervous system, the easier it is to listen to what our body's actually trying to tell us because we're not being triggered, right? In the past, I was always having allergic reactions. So sitting down and figuring out, what are you trying to tell me when I'm getting rashes and I'm plugged up and my nose is running and I've got headaches and you know, I have heart palpitations and all the things that I was having all the time, it's almost impossible to sit down and say, What are you trying to tell me? Because my body was literally trying to tell me a million things at once. But the more I healed and peeled away each layer and really went back and healed those traumas and the messages that the traumas left sent to me. So the one thing I haven't said is all my quote-unquote allergic reactions were my body feeling threatened by anything that was in my digestive system, anything that was in my sound within sight, within sound, within touching, anything that was in my surroundings during those three traumas. So the first one at age six was in a house on monoleum, which is why being on certain flooring always triggered me. Um, certain smells always triggered me, certain clothing uh textures triggered me. At 14, it was outdoors in the dirt and the grasses with trees all around me and humidity, because it was in Georgia, and so humidity became a threat, trees became a threat, grasses became a threat, dirt became a threat. Um, and so everything that happened in those three events, my body saw as a threat for anything around me. So that was the message it was trying to tell me all those years. Every allergic reaction was a trigger from something that was in those surroundings. But it did take time to start doing the desensitization work and understanding the correlation between my symptoms and my traumas in order for me to really get to connect with my body.

Gillian 15:31

Oh, absolutely. And it's it's so powerful to hear this connection because it does feel like to me, I mean, your body wasn't portraying betraying you. This was this loving source that was trying to heal you and to continually turn you towards these things so that you could tune in and go back to that space so you could heal and so that you could thrive in the moment that you're in today. So to me, it feels I love this shift in perspective because you can look at your body as betraying you when you're feeling all of these symptoms, or you can see this as this invitation to have a loving relationship with your body where you're in tune with your body and paying attention to all of these nudges and you know, the the your body's way of communicating something to you.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah, and I want to add one piece in the middle of that because those are two extremes, right? My body's completely failing me, or these are beautiful messages. And then there's the middle, which is most of us, which actually was me, because I don't I don't know if I really saw my body's betraying me, but I normalized my symptoms. This is just me. Right. Oh, yes, I love that you're saying this. Yep. So I didn't think I was betraying or my body was like failing me. I just felt like until the end, when I towards the end, when my body was screaming louder and louder and louder, and I was having one reaction after another reaction. And my world got so small. My husband and I sold our house. We moved into a place at the beach, we took out all the carpet, we took out all the drapes. He had to take his clothes off before coming into the house. We were changed, like my world got smaller and smaller and smaller because my body was screaming at me louder and louder and louder with every scent, you know. And the more I started believing I'm the girl allergic to the world, I won the allergy lottery, all the stories I told myself, the more that reinforced all of this. So at that point, I was feeling like my body was failing me. But for most of my life, I just normalized that I'm just the girl that got this is just my fate in this world, and I just ended up with these allergies. And I didn't seek a lot. I I mean, I did, I tried everything Western and Eastern, but I gave into it.

Gillian 17:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

And so I just thought that's important to say because so many of us normalize our symptoms.

Gillian 17:54

Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. So many of us feel icky, we feel off, we feel exhausted all the time. Yeah. But because that seems to be the norm now, we all just kind of accept it.

unknown 18:06

Yeah.

Gillian 18:06

But there's there's so much, there's so much out there for us. I mean, we're we're supposed to thrive, and we'll move into this later, but we were designed to thrive. And when we start believing that, everything changes. But I want to talk about this this idea that you don't necessarily have to experience trauma to have these symptoms surface in your body.

Safety And Nervous System Stacking

Gillian 18:28

We live in a world that often feels unsafe to our body. If we're going back to how we respond to threat and fear and all of these things, our nervous system can't handle all of the negative input that we're exposed to from moment to moment in the 21st century. Yes. Just from having exposure to the media, the news media alone. Yeah. It makes us feel like we're on edge, like we're unsafe on a regular basis. And when life is constantly rushing and we're constantly reacting and feeling overwhelmed, the nervous system stays activated. So, from your perspective, why is creating safety in the body so essential to healing? Which I believe is creating space for stillness where you can feel safe.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Absolutely. I believe that stillness equals nervous system regulation. That's what, to me, that's the definition of stillness. When my nervous system is regulated, like right now it's not, right? It's not fully regulated. It's it's only slightly off, but I can feel it. And when it's fully regulated, I am just all I experience is peace and joy and laughter, and I'm just smiling, and life is just beautiful, right?

Gillian 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

But when we have these, let's take your example of the overexposure of so much going on in our world right now. Even if we don't have a lot of traumas, our nervous system can't handle the stacking of all the different things that we're exposed to, right? So it might be a situation at home, like right now. My husband and I are going through probably one of the hardest experiences of our life in terms of the extended family situation. And some people might want to call it drama, but it's not. Every single person has truth in their story, and every single person is coming from a place of fear and safety for themselves. Yeah. And it's creating this conflict because our bodies are meant to protect ourselves. The number one thing our brain is to is to do, the number one responsibility of our brain is to protect us. And it will do that at all costs. And so when we feel when our brain, when our body feels threatened in any way, it goes into that fight, flight, freeze mode. It doesn't have to be a big trauma. It can be something like listening to the news. And if you start feeling that anxiousness, that's your body trying to tell you this isn't right. I don't want to do this. I don't, I don't, I can't handle this right now. It's too much for me right now. Like there are times I can listen to the news, and there are times I can't.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Yeah.

unknown 21:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

And the key is listening to that, right? But when we're listening to the news and then we're arguing with family members, and then we're going to work and we're stressed out, or I took my dog out this morning and I let her off the leash to play and she took bolted, right? That's a stress on top of another stress. And these are small stressors, but when they stack on top of each other, our nervous system starts to just not be able to regulate itself back again. So if we have one issue, oftentimes our our nervous system could just, you know, we're feeling that anxiety watch, you know, watching the news. We get up, we walk away from the news, our body calms down. It's like, thank you, right? It's saying thank you for for listening to me and not not and turning off the news. But when it's stacked on top of each other, it kind of ends up in a loop and starts creating. Patterns of behavior to protect ourselves. And the patterns, whether they stem from early childhood or they stem from you know, traumas or just stressors in life, whatever it might be, those patterns, finding the origination of that pattern is so important because throughout life, for instance, my origination of my body telling my brain we're not going to feel the emotions started at age six. But then my trauma at age 14 and my trauma at age 15, and then my dad dying at age 24, and then on and on, right? Those stacked on top of it reinforcing that I have to, my body needs to continue this pattern of trying to show me what it's trying to show me. Yeah. And that's the same with things that are not big stressors, but like I guess what I'm trying to say is when we pause for a moment, we start looking at the patterns in our life and how our body speaks to us. Then when we're experiencing some of these, you know, life events or watching the news and starting to feel it, we can start to recognize oh, this is my body's pattern. I'm suddenly getting an upset stomach, or I'm suddenly getting heart palpitations, or you know, my back is getting achy. And that's the way your body speaks to you, no matter what level of, no matter where that dysregulation came from. Does that make sense?

Fog To Freedom Quiet Reset

Gillian 23:30

Before we continue, I want to offer you a quiet pause. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, mentally cluttered, or like your mind never truly rests, I'd like to invite you into a quiet reset. Fog to Freedom is a simple grounding exercise designed to help you slow down, release the mental load, and reset. There's no fixing and no pressure, just a quiet pause. So clarity can return and your nervous system can settle. Many people describe feeling lighter, calmer, and more clear after just a few minutes. And it's something you can return to anytime the noise starts to build. If your soul is asking for space, you're warmly invited to begin with Fog to Freedom. You'll find it linked in the show notes or at saleocoaching.com. Come exactly as you are and offer yourself the gift of space and clarity. Thank you for taking that pause. Now let's return to the conversation.

Gillian’s Crash And Regulation Lessons

Gillian 24:29

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I I've just recently dug into the nervous system and nervous system work because I've mentioned before in this podcast, I had my own nervous system breakdown about a year and a half ago, and I was a health coach. So I was actually embarrassed about it because I crashed and burned. And um, I had tried all the things. I was I was being super healthy, but I didn't understand that my nervous system was completely fried and that I was living in survival mode and my trauma was nearly watching our youngest slip away. He was very sick his first year, and I just didn't give myself the space to recover from that. I just felt like I should be grateful and keep pushing forward. But um, it's it stuck, it stayed in my body. It definitely did. And when I went to my doctor, they just tried to medicate the symptoms, which only made it worse. And it wasn't until um a homeopathic doctor helped me to understand that it was my nervous system and that my cortisol levels were completely through the roof. And there was no way to really break through that until I started regulating my nervous system. And it was the first time I heard that term. So since then, I've been learning so much about it and helping my clients with it because I can see the symptoms in people now. And what I've noticed is this is an epidemic. We're all dysregulated because of the culture that we live in and because of what is constantly imposed on us through, like you said, the news media, through social media, where we're always plugging in to these external threats, I want to call them, even if it's as simple as comparing yourself to somebody else and feeling like you don't have enough compared to the next person. But it's also, you know, in the food we eat, in the air we breathe. So that's why I started this podcast because stillness is essential to regulating your nervous system. And we absolutely need it as a way of life right now, just to keep ourselves level. If we are going to be imposed on by all of these external, we could call them threats, our body sees them as threats and not have intentional ways to balance those threats out with stillness and reflect and remind our body that we are safe, then it's a recipe for disaster. It just gets compounded. And that's why so many people in midlife, age 35, 40, 45, 50, they start to really feel it because their body just can't handle the chronic stress anymore. And this is a very common thing, it seems, with autoimmune diseases and people just not being able to handle life. Well, take a breath and understand that it's not your fault. Exactly. It's the environment that has become normal, and our body is responding in a natural and normal way. It's our physiology that's responding to the environment that we now live in. Yeah. So let's let's let's use that and step into some optimism here.

Faith And The Four Pillars

Gillian 27:36

You talk a lot about faith and science and divine design, and you pull it all together with scripture and eastern and western medicine. Let's piece it all together because your work really does beautifully bring everything together. Western science, eastern practices, scripture. How how did your faith shape the way you understand the body and healing?

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Well, what I've learned through my process is like I got because I I look at why did I just why was I able to just jump into healing? So here I am. Doctors are telling me we just need to keep you comfortable, we just need to, you know, focus on quality of life right now, and um come, you have to come every week other week and get a shot for the rest of your life, and you know, yeah, and I just we're not gonna worry about longevity, right?

Gillian 28:29

Can I just point out because I I know that you said that you were labeled as incurable. Yes. Yes, like incurable. Can you imagine hearing that? You are incurable. This is your lot in life.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Yes, and that's where spirit my spiritual path came in because I didn't believe that from my core. I didn't believe that. Now I used to believe that this was just my my um path. This was just gonna be what my experience is in this lifetime. But when this happened and it came down to life and death, I went, no, no, no, there's more for me. There's more. And it that trust and belief came from God, not from anything outside of me or even within me at the time. Now it can come within me. But at the time, it had to come strictly from God because I I knew there was this innate per like feeling inside me that knew there was something more possible for me. But I was so sick. I mean, I had to stay in the house for almost eight months when this when I first started healing with a functional doctor because I was so dysregulated, everything triggered me. And I had a nap every four hours, and that's how sick I was. And then, but during that time, I listened to you know, everything spiritual that I could, and I sought out spiritual counselors, and that was the one thing I hadn't done all those years. And I was getting healings, and I was just doing the things that I hadn't done before because I was just like, I may as well try this, right? And what I realized is that spirituality, that's the first level of healing. If we don't believe in a higher power, if we don't believe in something bigger than ourselves, then we can't get our it's very hard to get ourselves to believe that we actually can heal, especially when you're at that level of illness, right? So I had to give it up and give my faith to something bigger and trust that, okay, I'm handing it to you, God, and you just show me the way. So every single day in that eight months that I was bed writ or I was housebound, I woke up and said, God, show me the truth of who I am. Show me more and more of the truth of who I am. And this is what I said every day for years and years while I went through this process. My journey was very long. Um, desensitization is a slow process, but I literally just throughout that process really started learning more and more and more about the power of God through our body because God designed us to be this perfect, you know, um, process. Like our body is this beautiful engine that's designed to heal anything it needs to heal. But then we have these worldly hangups that come and they send us into dysregulation, and then we start seeking outside of ourselves for answers as opposed to within ourselves. And I'm not against Western medicine, that's a big part of my process, is actually allowing ourselves to incorporate all four of these because, in my opinion, God brought in healing modalities in all four areas for a reason, right? So, Western medicine, there is a need for that. Eastern practices, absolutely need for that. Spirituality, scripture, the more we can allow ourselves to connect with a higher power, the more we can allow ourselves to benefit from the energy and the words and the power in the scripture, the more we're allowing ourselves to, we're opening ourselves up to all the modalities that God gave us to heal. Right? So the reason I talk about those four pillars is because oftentimes the way we're brought up or things that happen to us, it blocks and creates a fear of one or two of those pillars. So a lot of individuals that are all science-based, they won't look at Eastern practices. And I have several clients that are just won't even touch anything medicine, you know, Western medicine. And that to me, I keep saying, like this will help you with your symptoms while we heal the underlying causes. You don't have to suffer. You can take some things to get rid of the symptoms temporarily while we're healing these underlying causes, but there's so much fear there, it's difficult to get them to do that. So when we open up and we release and clear and heal the fear around those, it opens up and allows us to heal on a much deeper level and in the way that God designed for us to heal.

Gillian 33:09

Yeah, that's beautiful. That's that's beautiful. And and um having this belief that God designed us to thrive and to feel good in our life and and for that to be normal. I I feel like if we came back to that truth, then we would start to be more open to these healing practices. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

And that's that that's the work I do is trying to help people see when you when like if all of a sudden you think about taking uh medication and your body goes, no, that's a fair response. Right? That is there's res there's reactions and there's responses. And when we're reacting constantly out of that fight, flight freeze, we're not doing what's best for our body, right? We're creating more distress because we're not able to get ourselves to do the things that our body needs because we're so afraid of it.

Gillian 34:04

Right, right.

How EBDT Restores Homeostasis

Gillian 34:05

Well, let's talk about your method, Cindy. You developed the electromagnetic body desensitization technique or EBDT. Can you explain what that technique is and how it helps the body return to regulation?

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yes. EBDT is a form, it actually incorporates Western medicine, so kinesiology, muscle testing, using the body to give us the answers. Um, our body has all the answers we need. The key is learning how to ask the right questions. And so um it that's the scientific part. And then also understanding the nervous system because what EBDT does is it we create remedies for clients that allow your body to go back into homeostasis based on each life event. But we have to look at the patterns that were created and that caused the dysregulation in the first place, and um, and it does that through a series of different steps, which was first like finding out does the client need stabilization or do they need a core remedy or a micro remedy? There's different types of remedies. And then the second piece is understanding the core dysregulation pathways. What are the pathways that are fully dysregulated and what are the time periods in their life that created that dysregulation? So, for instance, if I tried to heal the MCAS reactions, the allergic reactions based on age 14, it would not fully heal because it's that pattern started at age six. So it's really about going back and understanding where our patterns, the identities we take on, when did that identity start, the behaviors we uh we that influence our lives that we that we show up as because of our life experiences that are no longer serving us, where did those originate from? And then um EBDT basically is an electromagnetic process that allows your body to restore every individual event, every pattern that's created in our body back to health. So basically, where it's telling your body you're safe. We no longer need this pattern. Thank you very much. This pattern is now done, it's in the past. It also releases the trapped emotions from the life events, and then it retrains the brain that we are safe. So it's a and we go back through timelines. So we start with you know, birth. A lot of times it's starting in utero because so many of us took on emotions of our mom just being in utero, and you know, the anxiety if they had anxiety or stress or they were fighting with a spouse or whatever it might be, that's those stressors came through to us, and so we clear those first often, and then we move through the different time periods of life, looking at the patterns and the behaviors. I call it the six frequencies of regulation, um, which is spirit, uh, spirituality, energetic, or spiritual, energetic, phys, mental, emotional, physical, and behavioral. And they actually go in that order in terms of healing. Because again, it starts with spiritual, because if you don't believe that your body has that ability, has that innate ability to heal itself, it's gonna be really hard. Your body will keep saying, Okay, you don't believe, okay, that's fine. I'm not gonna heal, right? So it's understanding that I might not get this, but I trust that there's something bigger and possible for me. And then we move into helping the client understand the energetic aspects of healing and then the mental, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual.

Gillian 37:47

Right. Sounds sounds like what Dr. Joe Dispensa teaches.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

In a way, yes. It's just the the biggest difference is this is these are literal remedies that the client uses in their electromagnetic field. And so it it's a it's literally going back and not just sitting down and doing it mentally like he teaches, but actually putting it into your electromagnetic field and telling your cells we're reversing, we're going back to homeostasis based on these different events. So clients will do one remedy a week until they clear all the life events that need to be cleared.

Gillian 38:25

Wow. So what kinds of what kinds of transformations have you seen in people when they begin doing this work?

Transformations After Clearing The Origin

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Oh, so many beautiful transformations. It's it's really amazing. I'll I'll tell you one client came to me and she actually overheard me talking at a garage sale. And she came back to me, she goes, I need you. We need to talk. And we sat down and I started working with her. And this woman had had 40 years of the deepest sadness and the deepest pain that I've ever experienced in anybody. When her son was four, she was in charge of him and his best friend. And, you know, as a mom, she's like, Come in or out, right? Come in or out, stay in or out. But you're dragging mud in the house, so either go in or stay out. And so they went outside to play. And a few minutes later, she's like, they're kind of quiet. And I won't get into the detail because it's too triggering, but she lost both of them. So they both passed away. And it was in her eyes, she blamed herself, everybody around her blamed her. Um, you know, the pain of losing your four-year-old son, like just all of it she lived with for over 40 years. And after doing my work, she's like, Cindy, I have never known what joy is. She's like, I now see him and I just feel love. I don't feel pain, I don't feel sadness, I can see the event, and there's no trigger. Like, it's just completely gone. Nothing but love. Because it doesn't erase the events from us, right? Like, my I can still look back and see my traumas, but there's no trigger anymore in my body. My body knows those are safe, right? Yeah. This is another client I'm working on. I'd say she's probably my most, she's definitely my most physically challenged client. So we're still in the process of working through this with her. But when she was two years old, she was run over by her mom by accident. Her mom, she was in the back of the car on a tricycle. Her mom didn't know, and she ran over. So she was in a body cast from from her neck to her leg for eight months. And her body stopped processing emotions because it was too painful, right? So it said, we're not going to process emotions. So it started pushing their emotions through her muscles. So she ended up with muscular dystrophy, and now she's really starting to see, oh my gosh, this really is all fear. This is my body saying that emotions aren't safe and processing them through. So the transition transition for her at this point isn't, we haven't seen a lot of the physical yet because we're not there, but she is now just in this huge space of understanding that this isn't her body failing her. This isn't, I'm just stuck with this. This is all patterns of fear and protection. And you know, it went on because she had a lot of other traumas. Um, the most recent remedy that I made for her, we looked at the fear of control, that the moment she started having to control everything, because she overanalyzes everything with her health. She over-researches everything with her health. She can never shut her brain down. And we tracked that back to her pregnancy. And being so disabled and being pregnant, it scared her, and she started over-researching. So that was the moment that that pattern began. So that's the remedy I just sent to her, which I'm super excited to clear that for her. So there's, you know, from physical to mental, emotional, all of it, but it's really about truly understanding the origin of where things started for us and clearing that origin and clearing all the dysregulation and patterns and behavior that happened because of that. Just like you were saying, you know, you're with your son, right? You had this tough first year. That's the origination of a lot of different situations for you. That's why you recognize that I need to take care of myself and my body's calling me, you know, talking to me about this, which is beautiful.

Gillian 42:21

Yeah, yeah. But I I I wasn't able to make that connection. I thought there was something wrong with me, and I was blaming myself, which I think a lot of people do.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

A lot of people do. And that's why I think my message is so important because it's not our fault. It is our responsibility to heal it once we start understanding so that we don't suffer. Or I don't responsibility might be a heavy word, but it's our choice. But at that point, it does become a choice because once we know, we can't turn that back, right? We can't turn our back on it and we get to choose to heal it. Right. But it's not our fault. My what happened to me was not my fault. Yeah, certainly. All the allergic reactions were not my fault. But once I started learning what my body was trying to tell me, then it became my choice. Am I gonna listen and heal or not?

Stillness With God That Feels Safe

Gillian 43:10

Right, right. But learning to listen to the body, it requires slowing down enough to hear what's happening internally. So, how has stillness, particularly stillness with God, played a role in your own healing journey? Did you did you you felt like that was a key piece?

SPEAKER_02 43:29

I definitely felt it was a key piece, and I want to I want to say that stillness for me while I was healing did not look like stillness because stillness was a threat. So for me, every time I would sit still, my full my symptoms would actually flare up because of whatever happened in my past, stillness was a threat to me. It meant that emotions might come forward. It meant that, you know, I it was too scary. So for me, what during my healing? Process once I could go back outside, what stillness meant was walking on the harbor. So I was moving my body in quiet, no ear plugs in, no music running, right? It was moving my body while allowing silence in my mind. And that's where I connected with God more. If I tried to sit down and meditation, I could do guided meditations easier than trying to meditate on my own. But for a long time, while I was healing, stillness meant movement, which is contradictory to what we think. It's but stillness is really about calming our mind. It's not necessarily calming our body, right?

Gillian 44:41

Yeah. Moving your body but without distraction, no earbuds, no podcasts, no music, just exactly your body and nature. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

And that's why the walks on the harbor, because I'm so connected with water, we're always so powerful and still are. That's still my number one way to feel and connect to God. And I do a lot of um manifesting, like you know, in terms of what I want and what what I'm supposed to be doing in this lifetime and what God wants for me, like all so much of that happens in meditation now as well, because I can do that now. But on the harbor, it's my favorite place. Wonderful. But we get to find where where stillness works best for us, right? What works, yes.

Gillian 45:23

Yeah, absolutely.

Start Listening With Touch And Prayer

Gillian 45:24

So if someone listening today feels like their body has been trying to get their attention for a long time, what encouragement would you give them?

SPEAKER_02 45:34

I would say if if you resonate with this and you feel like my body is trying to tell me, but I don't know where to start, I would start by saying, start touching yourself. So if there's a pain, let's say you're you're feeling pain in your heart, just touch your heart and just ask, what do you want me to know? What are you trying to tell me? And if you have faith in your life, ask God, show me. Because sometimes we can't see it yet or we can't hear it. And sometimes even now, even though I'm so connected, I communicate with my body so directly all the time. Um, but every once in a while I'm in my head and my ego's going and life is happening, and I can't. And so then I'll just say, God, please show me. You know, show me and and and and the key is tapping in, closing your eyes, and just feeling that sensation that you're getting, right? This morning when my nose was plugged, once I came in after my dog, because it really got worse during that time, because again, that's the stacking, right? Yeah, she ran away. I was trying to catch her, so my nervous system was stacking one stressor over another. And I sat down and I just started asking, and I could visualize my sinuses in my head, and I'm like, what do you want me to know? What are you trying to show me? God, I can't figure this out on my own. I need your help. And then I saw, oh, I'm sad. I don't, I haven't been able to feel the sadness. I've been blocking it because I've been just trying to push through this and support my husband. But I'm grieving too. And so I got to just allow that to feel. And then I had to get ready for this podcast. So I made an agreement with my body, you know what? We're gonna push this aside for now because we need to, I need to do this. But I promise you, I'm gonna let myself feel this sadness today. And then it kind of settled down a little bit and calmed down enough to be able to be on the podcast. So it's just starting to have those conversations with your body and bringing in your faith to support that. Right. One thing I'll say is that I just recently learned and understood from this concept, we're always seeking God outside of ourselves. And in reality, God speaks through our body because God created our body.

Gillian 47:42

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

And our body speaks God's language through us, right? And so that's why it is so powerful to connect with ourselves and ask, what are you trying to tell me? Because those messages are spiritual.

Gillian 47:58

Yeah. It it does feel counterintuitive to, you know, we're kind of programmed to seek outside of ourselves to find the solution for our problems and to find the things that we desire. But the truth is it's in the stillness, it's in the silence. And uh that that's a beautiful thing because it's accessible to everybody at any point in time, no matter where you are, no matter what you're experiencing.

Ways To Connect With Cindy

Gillian 48:25

So that's a beautiful thing. Cindy, I'd love to give you the opportunity to share a little bit more about what you do and how people can connect with you. Do you um do they need to be local to be able to work with you?

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Uh no, I do have, I do Zoom uh sessions. I will say that my private practice is pretty full. Um, my biggest thing that I'm doing right now is my podcast, which is the underlying answers, and then I'm also teaching this curriculum. So starting May 1st, uh, 2026, my certification program to teach others, practitioners, healers, um, intuitive individuals how to use this process with others, because God brought this to me, and this was definitely like came straight from spirit, and it's meant to be out in the world in a bigger way. I can only take on so many clients. So I have a small availability right now, but mostly my goal right now is to bring this out to other healers and other practitioners so that they can use this in their practice as well, because it's such a powerful healing modality. So if that resonates with you, you can look up theunderlyinganswers.com or check out my podcast, The Underlying Answers. And um, yeah, that's really where you can find me.

Gillian 49:42

That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. You definitely um made me curious, and I'm looking forward to learning more about what you do. Thank you so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

And you're just your message is so important. Stillness is the number one way we find peace. Whatever that stillness looks like, right?

Gillian 50:04

Yes, yes. Well, this is something that was put on my heart, and I do see it very clearly that this is the missing piece right now. Yeah, and this is where we all connect as well. I I heard this amazing analogy the other day, just looking at nervous system regulation, and one of the last steps is connection and it's connection with other people. Yeah, connection with yourself, connection with your creator, and connection with others. And it described, you know, trees in the woods, all of their roots are interconnected.

SPEAKER_04 50:33

Yeah.

Gillian 50:34

And when one of those trees has a disease, when one of those trees is struggling in some way, the other trees actually nourish that one tree through the root system. I just thought that was the most beautiful thing. So I feel like that's that's what's accessible to us when we when we step into that space of stillness. We we start reflecting on how much we have in common rather than all the things that divide us. There's far more that we have in common, and we've just forgotten that truth. So I believe we're returning to that place, and it's through conversations like this and sharing it with people that you know it becomes more of the norm, the normal perspective. So I just love that you're willing to come on the show and just share your story because it's a powerful one. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Yes. I never would have guessed this would be where God would lead me, but I know I know now that everything I went through was to help the world understand this message. Like I really feel that from my core, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that mission. Wonderful.

Gillian 51:37

Well, thank you so much for answering the call.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

Yes. All right. Thank you for having me on. This has been a beautiful conversation.

Gillian 51:45

My pleasure. I agree. Take care, Cindy. You too, Jillian. Thank you.

Closing Reflections And Next Steps

Gillian 51:52

I want to thank Cindy again for this beautiful and vulnerable conversation. One of the themes that stayed with me is this idea that our bodies are not the enemy. So often we try to silence symptoms, push through discomfort, or ignore what we're really feeling. But what if those signals are invitations? What if they're pointing us toward healing and wholeness and a deeper connection with God? I hope today's conversation encourages you to slow down, become more aware, and approach your own healing journey with curiosity, compassion, and faith. If you'd like to learn more about Cindy's work, be sure to check out the links in the show notes, including her body awareness audit and her podcast, The Underlying Answers. And if this episode resonated with you, please take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who might benefit from this conversation. And as always, thank you so much for being a part of the Be Still and Live community. Until next time, remember, stillness isn't about doing nothing, it's about creating the space to hear what matters most. Thank you for listening to Be Still and Live. As always, my hope is that this conversation offered you a little more space. Space to breathe, to listen, and to come home to what matters most. If this episode resonated with you, I invite you to subscribe to the show and consider sharing it with someone who could use a little more space or clarity right now. That simple act helps this work reach the people who need it most. If you're ready for a gentle next step, you can begin with Fog to Freedom in the show notes or at salecoaching.com. Until next time, be still and live.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

This podcast is produced, mixed, and edited by Cardinal Studio. For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit www.cardinalstudio.co or email Mike at mike at cardinalstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.