37. The Body Doesn't Keep the Score? A New Perspective on Trauma, Healing, and Nervous System Patterns

What if the patterns you've spent years trying to change aren't flaws in your personality but predictions made by your nervous system?

In this thought-provoking episode, Leanna explores a controversial paper that has sparked widespread discussion in the trauma and nervous system world: The Body Does Not Keep the Score. While the title may sound contradictory to everything we've learned about trauma, the conversation opens the door to a deeper understanding of how healing actually happens.

Leanna shares her personal experience with EFT tapping, explores the concept of predictive coding, and examines how survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn may be less about who we are and more about what our nervous system learned was necessary for safety.

Through a generational lens, you'll discover how nervous systems learn patterns through relationships, attachment, and repetition and why many of the traits we identify as "just who I am" may actually be adaptive responses passed down through generations.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the phrase "The Body Doesn't Keep the Score" may not mean what you think it does
• How predictive coding influences trauma responses and nervous system patterns
• The connection between fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and learned predictions of danger
• How generational trauma shapes the way nervous systems develop
• Why nervous system flexibility—not perfection—is the true goal of healing
• The difference between viewing symptoms as problems versus messages
• How flow states, creativity, nature, movement, and connection support healing
• How the Four N Framework (Notice, Name, Nurture, Navigate) helps create new nervous system pathways

Whether you've struggled with anxiety, people-pleasing, overworking, hyper-independence, or feeling stuck in patterns you can't seem to change, this episode offers a compassionate reframe:

You are not broken. Your nervous system learned to protect you.

And with safety, awareness, and practice, those predictions can change.

Because healing isn't about becoming someone different—it's about creating enough flexibility that the past no longer has to dictate your future.

Sources for Episode:

Kotler S, Mannino M, Fox G and Friston K (2026) The body does not keep the score: trauma, predictive coding, and the restoration of metastability. Front. Syst. Neurosci. 20:1812957. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2026.1812957

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-hope-circuit/202605/the-body-doesnt-keep-the-score

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Disclaimer:
Although I am a licensed Associate Clinical Mental Health Counselor, The NeuroHeir℠ Podcast is not a substitute for therapy, counseling, or medical treatment. The tools and practices I share are for educational and coaching purposes only. Every nervous system is unique, and what we discuss on this podcast should not replace your own individual therapeutic work or professional support.

The focus of this podcast is my coaching work, which centers on education, nervous system practices, and generational healing tools designed to support—not replace—your personal journey with a qualified provider.

If you are struggling with your mental health or experiencing overwhelming emotions, please seek support from a licensed professional in your area. You don’t have to do this work alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Nervo Air Podcast, the show for cycle breakers, parents, young adults, and helping professionals ready to understand their nervous system through a generational lens, heal what isn't theirs to carry, and consciously choose what comes next. Hi, I'm your host, Leanna Hunts, an associate clinical mental health counselor and certified performance coach. Each week you'll get stories, science, and somatic practices plus my signature for N framework. Notice, name, nurture, and navigate to help you honor resilience, break silence, and build deeper connection with yourself and those you love, all while shaping a legacy of safety, freedom, and possibility. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the NeuroAir Podcast. Over the last several episodes, we've been walking through the survival states. I'm sure most of you know them by now. They are fight, flight, freeze, and appease. And we've talked about how these patterns can become deeply automatic, how they can begin shaping the ways we communicate, including the ways we attach, the ways we protect ourselves, the ways we move through relationships and the ways we experience stress and how we show up in our bodies, often without realizing it. And this episode feels like the perfect bridge after all of that, because recently I came across a paper that has been generating a lot of conversation online in the trauma field. And the title immediately caught my attention. It is called The Body Does Not Keep the Score. And when I first saw it, I had moments of wait, what do they mean by that? Because if I'm being really, really honest, reading The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. I always say his name wrong, Bessel van de Koelk years ago was incredibly meaningful for me, both personally and professionally. And not only have I read his book multiple times, but it became one of the starting points that led me deeper into somatic work, nervous system education, turning to brain spotting, and so many of the trainings that have shaped the way I work today. I remember finally feeling like someone was putting language to experiences I didn't understand yet, why my body reacted before my mind could explain why, why stress felt physical, while panic could often feel so consuming, and why I could understand something logically and still feel completely dysregulated inside. The body keeps the score helped so many people and continues to help people realize something incredibly important that trauma is not just in your head. For many people, it's the first time that maybe they have realized my body isn't broken. My nervous system has been trying to protect me. And I think realizations like this can change lives. And I know that they have changed mine. I remember one of the first times I experienced just how powerful body-based work can be. I was on a group call led by an EFT tapping expert, Brittany Watkins. She is known all around the world for her work with emotional eating. And now, if you're unfamiliar with EFT, we have not talked much about tapping yet. It is a practice that combines gentle tapping on acupressure points around the body while bringing awareness to emotions, thoughts, memories, and physical sensations. And one of the things I love about it is that it doesn't just ask you to think about what's happening, it invites you to notice how it is showing up in your body too. Before that group call with Brittany, she asked us to have a food with us that we could not keep around the house because we would eat the entire thing. And for me, the answer was immediate. It was Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups. If you know, you know. That's all I'm gonna say about that. But they are hands down my favorite. Anyways, she had us on the call, taste one of the things that we brought before we started, and then guided us through multiple rounds of this body tapping. As we tapped, we tracked the urge in our bodies. We noticed what we were feeling. We noticed where we were feeling it and how it shifted from round to round. For those of us whose intensity was not dropping, we kept going deeper, guided by her. At one point, she asked us to think about a person who felt controlling in our lives. And there's a lot more about that. I'm not going to go into it right now, but this was just kind of the overall next level. Okay. So if you're sud's level, which is that subjective units of distress, we rate it on a scale from zero to 10, 10 being the most intense, zero not intense at all. So for those of us whose intensity was not dropping with the tapping rounds, she took it to this deeper level based on an attachment figure that felt like they had a lot of control over us. And for me, when I was doing this tapping session, that person for me was my dad. Now, at the time, I didn't fully understand what that connection mattered. I just stayed with the process, though. And I was tapping with everybody else. I was noticing, I was tracking what was happening inside my body. And by the very end of this group session, which I think was about an hour and a half, something remarkable had happened. The desire to eat those peanut butter cups was completely gone. Even after she asked us to taste it again, it just did not taste the same. Like the sensation, the desire was just gone. And this had never happened to me before in my entire life. I had never done work like this, and I had never just been able to that quickly in 90 minutes shift even how something tasted. And I left that box of dark chocolate peanut butter cups, that clear box. If you've been to Trader Joe's, it's just a clear box. You can see the peanut butter cups. I actually left that box on my desk for an entire year afterward. And I continued to have no desire to eat them. That experience changed something for me because it wasn't just that a craving disappeared. It was watching how something shifted through my body in real time and in a short amount of time. I literally felt a pattern change. I was able to feel my nervous system, even though I did not have full nervous system language then. I was able to feel my nervous system in my body feel different. And that was one of the moments that made me realize there is so much happening beneath our behaviors than we often realize. And now I look back on that experience as one of the most profound moments in my own healing journey. Because you guys, I literally watched this pattern change. I felt it, I experienced it in my body. Something that had felt so automatic for years with food just shifted. And maybe even more importantly, I got to experience what it felt like for my body to respond differently, to not be pulled by that same urge of the craving, to not feel stuck in the same loop. And that raised a much bigger question for me on my road of healing. What actually changed? What was happening underneath the pattern? And maybe that's why this newer paper that's out there, The Body Does Not Keep the Score, has caught my attention so strongly because I genuinely wanted to understand and have been wanting to understand what is actually happening underneath those patterns? What exactly is changing in the body when healing occurs? And what if the answer is even more fascinating than we originally thought? Now, before we go any further, I want to say something I feel really strongly about too. Your body, no matter what people say in research or what new paper comes up, I truly believe that your body was never making anything up. Trauma absolutely impacts the nervous system and we feel it physiologically. This is goes for myself and in all the clients I've worked with. Often for those with anxiety, it's somewhere in the chest or in the stomach. We feel trauma and our life experiences when we talk about them or think about them. We can feel that in our breath rate, in the tension that we hold. We also can feel it in shutdown, in those states of hypervigilance and maybe even in numbness, because sometimes numbness is a form of protection. We also might feel it in disassociation where we're checking out of our body because we can't stay with it or in full emotional overwhelm or flooding. The body participates in all of this. And I think that's part of why the body keeps the score, the book, has resonated so deeply with so many people. It has given language to something that they have been experiencing for years. It's that reality that trauma isn't simply a thought, it's an experience that affects the entire system. So when I first saw the title, The Body Doesn't Keep the Score, I'll be honest, part of me felt resistant to even read it because after everything I've experienced personally, and after everything I've witnessed and continue to witness professionally, the last thing I wanted was a message that minimized what people are carrying. But as I read the article further, and a link is in the show notes, so you guys can read it yourself if you want to, I realized the authors weren't arguing that trauma isn't real. They weren't arguing that the body doesn't matter. They weren't arguing against nervous system healing. What they're really offering is a different explanation for why these patterns persist. And the more that I've sat with it and the more that I've read it, and I've read other people's articles and posts about it, the more I realize it actually fits surprisingly well with so much of what we've been exploring together inside the neuro framework. Because maybe trauma isn't literally stored inside the body the way we've often imagined. Maybe the nervous system, though, has learned something and it has adapted and it has become incredibly skilled at predicting danger. All those things we've already been talking about on the podcast so far. And maybe that those predictions that the body is making of danger are what keeps the pattern going. So this paper, The Body Doesn't Keep the Score, talks about something we may have talked about on the podcast before. I'm not recalling, but for sure I talk about it in my book, which is called predictive coding. In simple language, it basically means that your brain is constantly trying to predict what's about to happen so it can keep you safe. In fact, your brain is making predictions all day long. When you drive a familiar route home, when you hear a sound and immediately recognize what it is, when you reach for a light switch in a dark room, your brain is constantly using past experiences to predict what comes next. And according to this theory, trauma can influence those predictions too. After trauma, things like chronic stress, unpredictability, relational pain, or overwhelming experiences, the nervous system can become incredibly skilled at predicting danger. Not because your nervous system is trying to make your life harder, but because it is trying to keep you safe. We talk about this all the time. It is your brain's number one job is to protect you and keep you safe. And I think that this explains so much of what people experience because the nervous system learns patterns through repetition. The more often a nervous system experiences something, the more efficiently it learns to prepare for it. And eventually those preparations can become automatic. This is where I immediately thought about the survival states that we've been talking about throughout this series. Fight predicts things like I need to protect myself. Flight predicts I need to stay ahead of the danger. Freeze often predicts something along the lines of it is not safe to move. And that fawn or appeasement predicts I need to keep everyone okay in order to stay connected and safe. And when those predictions get practiced over and over again, they start feeling less like learned responses and maybe even more like personality traits, less like protection and more like quote unquote, this is just who I am. But they're not necessarily who we are. They're often what your nervous system learned was necessary. And I think that that's such an important shift. And we have talked about it on this podcast, but so important to bring back that because it moves us away from what's wrong with me, and it can move us towards what did my nervous system learn was necessary for survival? And this is where my mind immediately went next was the generational piece in this. Because if trauma is in part the nervous system learning to predict danger, then we also have to ask, where did those predictions begin? Because nervous systems do not develop in isolation, they develop in relationship long before we had language and long before we understood beliefs, long before we could explain our experiences, our nervous system was already learning. It was learning from the faces around us. It was learning from tone of voice. It was learning from touch. It was learning from presence. It was even learning from absence. And it was learning from what felt safe and what didn't. And that's why the generational lens matters so much and why I bring it into my work and why it is a part of my work. Because generational trauma may not mean you inherited someone else's exact memories, but you may have inherited nervous system stuff, we'll just say. You may have inherited things in your genes based on the environments before you, based on belief systems and protective patterns shaped by unresolved danger. You may have grown up around hypervigilance, which is that increased focus. It's kind of like turning up the dial on focusing on am I safe or am I not safe? You may have grown up around people pleasing or around a lot of anger, or maybe for you it was a lot of silence or perfectionism or emotional shutdown. Maybe for you it was overworking or hyperindependence or chronic anxiety. And when we're surrounded by those patterns long enough, they actually can stop looking like patterns and they can start looking more like normal day-to-day behaviors. And the nervous system learns this is just how we survive. This is the pattern that we need to stay safe. This is how we stay connected. And over time, those predictions can become so familiar that we might mistake them, again, as I said, for personality traits. We might think this is just who I am. And sometimes what we're actually looking at is a nervous system that adapted brilliantly to the environment it developed in. And remember, for your people and your family, their nervous systems also adapted to the environment they were in. And we can just go back and back and back. And so now your nervous system might be adaptations of multiple ancestors and their adaptations to environment and stress and trauma. And something I want you to remember is this today that nervous systems teach nervous systems, not only through biology, but through relationships, through modeling, through attachment, through repetition. Because children don't just learn what we say, they learn what we practice. I'll say that one more time. Children don't just learn what we say, they learn what we actually do, what we practice. They learn how we respond to stress and how we handle conflict. They also learn how we rest. And that might be what rest means to them. They also learn how we connect and even how we repair. And that's why healing matters so much, because when one nervous system becomes more flexible, more regulated, and more capable of connection, it doesn't just change one life. It begins changing the environment that future nervous systems will learn from. And that is also why this work is so beautiful. Because we, at any time, no matter what environments we have been in, no matter what environments our ancestors survives through, at any point, we can decide a certain pattern, a certain trait, a certain type of behavior can end with us. And this is where my mind goes back to that tapping session I mentioned at the beginning, because I've thought about that experience many times over the last several years, especially the moment that Brittany asked us to identify someone who felt controlling in our lives. At the time, I remember thinking, what does this even have to do with dark chocolate peanut butter cups? Seriously, how did we go from chocolate to my dad? But looking back now, I think that's exactly the point because the session was never really about the peanut butter cups. The food was simply the doorway. The real question was, what had my nervous system learned? What had my nervous system learned in connection to that controlling person in my life? And honestly, I don't think it was a coincidence that when we started exploring deeper emotional experiences and relationships, the intensity around the food began to shift because our nervous systems are constantly making associations. Our nervous systems are constantly connecting experiences and creating patterns. They are learning what brings comfort, learning what brings relief, and learning what feels safe. And sometimes those patterns begin long before we are even aware of them. Like my pattern with food started about the time I was 15, long before this tapping session. When I look back on my own life, there were absolutely patterns that felt normal to me growing up, things like working hard, being the responsible one, having to push through and bypass what my needs and my emotions, staying productive because that was really rewarding. And being the one in the family and my siblings who could handle things. And for a long time, I really did think that this was just part of my personality. I thought maybe this is just who I am. But now I wonder how much of that was personality and how much of it was a nervous system learning what felt necessary and doing what felt necessary because that's what nervous systems do. They adapt, they learn. Nervous systems predict, and often those predictions become so familiar that we stop seeing them as adaptations and we might start seeing them more as an identity. And I think that many of us don't realize how much of what we call our personality, again, may actually be practiced nervous system protection. Just really something to think about. And when I started looking at the survival states through this lens, everything began to make a little bit more sense. Because what if these states, again, aren't character flaws or aren't these quote unquote things built into our personality that we cannot be free from? What if they are predictions? What if they're your nervous system's best attempt to prepare for what it learned might happen next? Because fight may predict attack. Fight may predict disrespect or a loss of control or danger through conflict. So the nervous system prepares to protect. Flight may predict danger unless everything is managed, unless everything is handled, unless everything stays under control. So the system stays busy. The system overworks, the system overthinks, it may be overfunctions, it may be always moving, maybe always looking for the exits. If we think about freeze, freeze may predict overwhelm, it might predict helplessness or the inability to escape safely. So shutdown becomes more protective. And for that fawn or appeasement, appeasement may predict disconnection. It might be trying to predict conflict or a sense of rejection or relational rupture. So self-abandonment actually begins feeling safer than authenticity. And when we can start to view these responses through this lens, they might become a little easier to understand for you. And not because these patterns are healthy or what we always want or because they're helpful, but because they can make sense. They make sense in the context of what the nervous system has learned. And honestly, I think so many people carry shame around these responses. I see this all the time, especially when they keep repeating the same patterns over and over again. And consciously you know you want to change something, but it is just not shifting. But what if these aren't signs that you're broken? What if they're signs that your nervous system became incredibly skilled at predicting what it believed was necessary for survival? And remember, the coolest thing is if a pattern can be learned, it can also be updated. One of the concepts back from this paper, the body does not keep the score that really stood out to me was this idea that trauma creates rigidity. It doesn't just create fear or anxiety, but a sense of being rigid, which could be connected to the inability to shift a pattern, the inability to adapt, the inability to move flexibly through life anymore. And the more I've thought about that, the more that this makes sense to me too, because trauma doesn't just change what we feel, it can also change what feels possible. Maybe you've experienced this yourself too. Like a sense that you want to rest more, but your body will not let you. Or you want to trust others more, but something keeps pulling you back into protection. Or you want to learn to slow down and be more intentional, but being still feels really uncomfortable and maybe even unsafe. Maybe you want to receive support more, but independence still feels like the best option. And maybe you want to become more vulnerable. Your system immediately braces at even the word vulnerability. And over time, life can start feeling smaller and it might even feel like it's shrinking around you. And again, not because you're consciously choosing that, but because the nervous system became organized. Around survival. The goal becomes stay safe, avoid danger, and don't get hurt again. And eventually the range of available options gets smaller because trauma often narrows the nervous system. And remember when I talk about trauma, the definition I go with is from my colleague Quinn Stevens, where trauma is a high, it's like a large level of impact on the nervous system with a low level of processing or awareness of how to work through it, if that makes sense. So really anything could fit in this. When I work with a client too, I know I am not the determiner of what their brain has stored as trauma. Again, those things that are unprocessed. And for some people consciously, it might look like something really small when we get into it. And oftentimes it's very surprising to the things that are what we call the sticking points, the things that the client hasn't moved past. So again, just want to bring that in there. So when I say trauma, that's what I mean. And so again, trauma often narrows the nervous system. You might stop feeling safe enough to rest, to play, to trust others, to receive support, to slow down, to create, or even take those deeper exhales. And when that happens, life can begin revolving around protection rather than exploring what else is possible. And I want you to remember this, if nothing else, from this episode today. Remember that regulation in your nervous system is not and will never be perfect. Regulation is about becoming more flexible. A healthy nervous system can move, it can shift more easily between stress and rest, between focus and openness, between protection and connection, between effort and recovery, and between independence and support. A flexible nervous system can respond to what's happening now instead of only reacting to what was unprocessed. But trauma can trap the nervous system in fewer and fewer options. And when flexibility disappears, again, it can feel like we are closing in, our life is closing in on ourselves. It can feel like we are smaller or really, really stuck. And this is where that tapping session comes back into the story for me. Not because I think my dad caused a craving for Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups, but because this session made me curious about something much bigger. What if some of the things I thought were simply my personality or things I couldn't control, like food, were actually adaptations. For a long time, I thought being productive was just who I was. I really got a high off of things like being busy, off of achieving and being recognized for what I was doing. I also really liked having big, big goals. I liked being the person who could handle things. And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. But over time, I started noticing something. Rest did not feel natural or even safe to me. Slowing down did not feel okay. Even when there was nothing urgent to do, my body often felt like it should be doing something or fixing something or planning something or working on something or preparing for something. I even get exhausted just saying all of that. And maybe you can relate to that too. And the more I learned and worked with my own nervous system and I've worked with so many others, I started getting even more curious. Was this ambition and drive, or had my nervous system learned that staying productive felt safer than slowing down? Had movement become a prediction? Had achievement become this form of protection? Because when I really started paying attention to my body and slowing my work down, I realized there was often tension underneath the productivity. There was a lot of bracing, which makes so much sense now when I think about that in connection to my jaw pain and my TMJ that I dealt with from the time I was young. There was a feeling that I needed to stay ahead and stay prepared. And the more nervous system work I continued to do, the more I continue to realize that healing wasn't about becoming a different person, but it was about having more choice. And it was learning to be able to work hard and also rest, that I could still set goals to achieve things, but that I could also receive support and I could also do things without nobody else knowing, without needing that validation or recognition. It was about being able to care deeply about myself with and with others and for others without having to feel like I was the one to carry it all. And I think that that's why healing can feel so emotional sometimes, because the nervous system is not only learning regulation, it is learning expansion. It is learning through possibility and exploring that. So as we kind of go back to this article, one line that really stood out to me is this the body participates in trauma, but as messenger and not as archive. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in this actually, because remember, your body is communicating with you constantly. It's communicating through things like that racing heart, that tightness in your chest, that sense that your whole system wants to just shut it down through that nausea that maybe you feel in your gut or that like you want to throw up, or that hypervigilance, which is that hyper focus, or the exhaustion, or the urge to want to leave and shut it down, or the urge to fight, or to disappear completely underneath it. And those responses are all very, very real, very real responses from your body. But what if those sensations, again, are not proof that there is anything wrong with you? What if they are information and what if they are messages? What if they're your nervous system actually telling you, hey, I'm predicting danger right now. And I have seen this in my own work and in the work that I support others through. The work wasn't happening because we were ignoring the body. The work was happening because we were listening to it. We were paying attention to it, we were following it, allowing it to tell us something and to be the messenger. And maybe that tightness in the chest isn't the problem. Maybe it's the messenger. Maybe the anxiety that makes it feel like you can't breathe isn't the enemy. Maybe it's information. And if that is true, then the goal is not to fight the body, but the goal is to understand what it is actually trying to communicate. And I think that this is such an important reframe because healing can stop becoming how do I fix myself and can become how do I help my nervous system experience enough safety that it no longer has to keep predicting danger all the time. Because when the prediction can change, the experience can begin to change too, which I think is just so cool. So I want to take a minute and tie this into the four ends. Because the more that I've sat with this paper, the body doesn't keep the score, the more I realize how beautifully it can fit into my framework notice, name, nurture, and navigate, which so many of you are understanding so well, which is just so cool. But if we think about the four ends, we can think that every step of that process helps update a prediction. So with notice, we are becoming aware of the pattern instead of judging ourselves. Name. We are able to slow down and recognize the survival state or the emotion a little bit sooner. Nurture. We are bringing safety, compassion, maybe co-regulation and support to the nervous system. And with navigate, we are helping create new experiences, which also help create new pathways and help the brain explore new possibilities. Remember, because every time your nervous system experiences safety where it once expected danger, the prediction begins to soften. And that is what I believe healing often is. It is not about perfection, guys. And I've said this so many times, it is never going to be. And it is never not getting triggered again, but it is slowly expanding flexibility. One of the favorite parts of the paper was its discussion of flow states, including things like music and movement and being creative and being in nature and all types of athletics and just being more present. And I love this because healing can become so focused on pain that we forget something important. The nervous system does not only heal through processing, it also heals through living. Flow states are those moments when you're so engaged in what you're doing that you temporarily stop monitoring yourself. You stop scanning for danger, you stop bracing for impact, you stop rehearsing everything that could go wrong, which are that brain's job of bringing in those worst-case scenarios. And for a moment in flow state, you're simply in the experience. Maybe you felt this when you're hiking or playing an instrument or painting or running or gardening. Gardening right now, where we live in Utah is a huge one for my clients and getting their hands in the earth, playing with your kids. Maybe it's in having a conversation that makes you lose track of time. One of my favorites, maybe for you too, it's watching a sunset or being fully present in a moment that feels meaningful. And what I found so interesting also is that these moments don't necessarily require us to think about our trauma at all. Instead, they give the nervous system an opportunity to experience something different, including things like presence, including things like connection, and all ways and types of creativity. We can experience more joy in our flow states. We can experience more wonder. And again, that idea of possibility. And I think that's why things like breath work, walking outside, music, worship, and deep connection can feel so regulating because they expand the nervous system and they can also expand our sense of safety. They can remind us that we are more than our survival patterns and that life can be bigger than protection. And that's really what this entire conversation keeps coming back to. Think about trauma narrows, safety expands. And I've been thinking about this a lot too in my own life and my own patterns. Just a few weeks ago, my aunt Leah, who is a professional harpist my whole life and my first harp teacher growing up in California, came over for an early birthday present and helped tune up my harp. And many of my newer friends and followers and listeners probably don't even know this about me, but music has been a huge part of my life. For years, I worked as a wedding harpist all over Southern California. I spent countless hours practicing, performing, and completely immersing myself in music. But somewhere along the way, life got busy and motherhood happened and work happened and some really hard life events happened. And I haven't really played the harp consistently during my younger son, Grayson's entire life, and he's 13 now. And as I've started sitting back down at the harp recently, something fascinating has happened. I have found myself completely losing track of time, not worrying about the podcast episodes I have to make or deadlines or an event I have to speak at or what I'm gonna send in my next email. Not planning constantly, not mentally running through my to-do list and not thinking about the next thing, but just being in the music. And what's amazed me is how much my brain and hands still remember songs I haven't played in years, finger patterns that somehow never disappeared, musical phrases that feel like they're still living somewhere inside of me. And every time I have sat down to play the last few weeks, I'm reminded of something this paper also points towards. Sometimes healing isn't only about processing what's painful. Remember that healing is reconnecting to what makes us feel alive. Man, didn't know I was gonna get so emotional about this. I'm so excited to bring the heart back into my life for a lot of reasons, but also because it reminds me of a version of myself that existed beyond survival, even when she was so stuck. Even when she was so struggling and in so much pain. And I think that that's part of healing too. And I want to say something in closing. I do not think this article invalidates somatic healing. If anything, I think it actually helps explain why somatic healing works, because the body does matter. Embodiment matters, nervous system work matters, and maybe healing again is about helping the nervous system experience enough safety and flexibility, connection and agency that it no longer has to keep predicting danger all the time. And I actually find that incredibly hopeful. So, in closing, I want you to think about this too. Maybe healing, including generational healing, is not about becoming someone entirely different either. Maybe healing for you is about helping your nervous system experience enough safety that inherited predictions no longer have to define your future. Remember that predictions can change. Patterns that have been there even for hundreds of years can soften. Flexibility can return to a nervous system that has been inflexible for a long time. Safety can expand and life can begin to feel bigger, more hopeful, happy, joyful, and positive again. Your nervous system, you guys, I promise, is not trying to ruin your life, even though it feels like it. It is trying to protect you with the predictions it learned through life's experiences. And many of those predictions were shaped through your relationships, through attachment, through environments, through stress, through survival, and through the generations that came before you. But predictions, as I've said one more time, I'm going to say it again. Predictions can change. Healing may not mean erasing the past, but it may mean helping the nervous system discover again and again that not every moment is the past anymore. And maybe that that's what healing really is. Thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for being on this journey with me. It has literally been so beautiful and so expansive for me. And I just want to leave you with the invitation that for you to think about this idea that you are not broken and that you can expand and that you can grow and that you can become more flexible. And that these things that have maybe been frustrating personality traits maybe are just nervous system patterns. So the invitation is the same as I always leave you with it. Please try to find ways to make it a beautiful rest of the week, even in the moments that feel hard, invites you to explore maybe where you find yourself in a flow state. So until next time, bye guys. Thanks for joining me on the NeuroAir Podcast. This work is about honoring resilience in yourself and also those who came before you, all while finding freedom from what was never yours to carry. With the help of stories, science, somatic tools, and the four ends notice, name, nurture, and navigate, you have a path toward deeper connection with yourself, your loved ones, and the legacy you want to pass on. If today's episode spoke to you, share it with someone who's ready to step into this work too. And follow the show so you never miss an episode. Remember, you may not have chosen what you inherited, but you can choose what comes next.