41. Healing Without the Memory: When Your Nervous System Knows Before You Do

Sometimes, what hurts us today isn’t only about today. In this deeply personal episode of the NeuroHeir Podcast, I share a vulnerable experience that left me feeling cracked open and how, just days later, a Level 3 Brainspotting training led me into a profound encounter with my own nervous system.

What unfolded wasn’t about uncovering a specific memory or finding the perfect explanation. It was about allowing my body to feel, process, and release something it may have been carrying for far longer than my conscious mind could understand. Because sometimes, healing doesn’t require us to become detectives of our past. Sometimes, it simply requires enough safety for the nervous system to finish what survival once interrupted.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why healing doesn’t always require remembering or understanding every detail of your past
• How the nervous system can carry experiences that the conscious mind cannot recall
• What I experienced during my own powerful Brainspotting session
• Why the body often responds before the thinking brain has time to make meaning
• How eye position can influence what the nervous system accesses
• A gentle somatic resourcing practice to help you find even 1% more calm in your body
• How the Four Ns—Notice, Name, Nurture, and Navigate—can support greater regulation and capacity
• Why creating safety can help your world, perspective, and awareness begin to expand again

Your nervous system has been protecting you your entire life. And when enough safety is finally present, sometimes the body can quietly whisper, I don’t have to hold this quite so tightly anymore.

Healing can happen one breath at a time, one emotion at a time, and one small moment of safety at a time.

Resources Mentioned:

Vitalis, T., & Verney, C. (2026). Stress during the first 1,000 days of life in humans, when everything begins. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2026.1781545

Available on PubMed:
 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42205780/

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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 0:31

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 and 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. Welcome back to the NeuroAir Podcast. Last week, I had an experience in my clinical work that stayed with me long after the session ended. I'm not going to share the details because they belong to my client and not to me. But during our work together, my client's level of activation intersected with something inside of me. As therapists, we often talk about how our clients can bring up our own unfinished places, not because we've done something wrong or because we haven't done our own work, but because we're human too and we have nervous systems just like our clients. This particular interaction touched something really deep in me. And that night I realized I felt completely cracked open. It was something that felt so super vulnerable for me. It's felt like one of my deepest core wounds had been exposed, which is so interesting. And I found myself sitting with thoughts like, Am I enough? And did I somehow get this wrong? And even though another part of me knew I had remained grounded and had done what I believed my client needed in the moment, my nervous system was telling a much older story. And I think that's something so many of us experience. Sometimes what hurts us today isn't only about today. Sometimes an interaction in the present brushes up against an old wound or a younger part of us that has been living more underneath the service. And I realize you guys, that's exactly what happened for me. And then just a few days later, I walked into three days of level three brain spotting training with Dr. David Grant himself, who is the founder of brain spotting. And looking back now, I do not think the timing was an accident or a coincidence. One of the things I've come to believe over the years is that healing doesn't always happen in the order we expect. We think healing starts with understanding, or maybe with insight, or maybe with words. But sometimes, you guys, our body begins speaking long before our mind has language for what it's experiencing. And this past weekend reminded me of that in one of the most profound ways during one of our practice sessions in this brain spotting training, because every frame or technique that we learn, we practice in dyads. And there was four total through the three days. So everything that I use in my clinical work or in a coaching space with brain spotting is something that I have had to practice at least once with myself. So anyway, during one of our practice sessions, I found myself returning almost immediately to that same feeling I had experienced earlier in the week with my therapy client. I felt cracked open. And without trying, my mind somehow drifted towards my birth. Now I want to be really careful here. I don't actually remember my birth consciously. And it wasn't that I was suddenly uncovering some unforgotten memory. I wasn't even seeing some vivid picture of my delivery. And normally when I do work and go back and work with my younger self, I'm very, very visual. This actually felt just pretty, what's the word? When I say dark, it's not like it was scary, just kind of like there wasn't a picture there, if that makes sense. But I knew, if that also makes sense, that that is where my body was taking me. But I do know also too that when I was born, I was born with a broken collarbone during my birth. So whether my nervous system was connecting to that or to something later in childhood or simply to the emotional pain that has been stirred up and had been earlier that week, I honestly don't know. And interestingly, for the first time, I realized that maybe I didn't need to know because what happened next wasn't really about the story at all or about the memory, but it was about my body. So as the practitioner guided me back, I knew that this is where my body was telling me to go, sometime around my birth. Again, it's not like I was visualizing anything, but I began feeling tremendous pressure throughout my head, my throat, and my shoulders. It was incredibly intense. And for nearly 20 minutes, I was just noticing this pressure. It felt like somebody was squeezing all those parts of my upper frame. And I really tried to allow myself, like we do in brain spotting, we're not trying to like think much about it. I wasn't trying to analyze it, I wasn't trying to make sense of it. And I wasn't trying to ask, what does this mean? I was simply noticing what my body was experiencing somatically. I was just allowing my body to feel. And I was also trusting that my body was doing something it needed to do that maybe it couldn't have done before. And then almost as suddenly as it began, about 20 minutes later, the pressure just released. And I was able to take these deep breaths. And underneath that came some very deep sadness, and I just started to sob. And again, it's not because I suddenly understood everything or because I had recovered some hidden birth memory, not because I could point to one specific event and say, oh, this is what this was, but because my body no longer seemed to need to hold it in quite the same way. And as this just happened, I am just very, very aware of it. And it still feels really tender. And I think it for me, as I've reflected on this the last few days, it's helped even change even more the questions that I've been asking about my own life. So for many years, I think I believe that healing meant becoming a detective, finding the exact memory, maybe the exact moment, the exact explanation for every feeling. But this weekend also reminded me that healing doesn't always require perfect understanding. And sometimes it just requires enough safety for your nervous system to finish something that survival wants interrupted. Let me say that one more time. Sometimes healing requires enough safety for your nervous system to finish something that survival wants interrupted. And one of the fascinating things we've learned from neuroscience is that our nervous system begins developing long before we have conscious autobiographical memories. As newborns, we don't have the ability to remember events the way we do later in life, but our nervous systems are constantly learning. They're learning about stress, about regulation, about connection, about protection, and ultimately about safety. And research has shown that experiences during pregnancy, birth, and early infancy can shape the developing stress response system and autonomic nervous system, even before we have explicit memories of those experiences. You guys, that's so crazy. And if you want to read this study, I have linked it for you in the show notes because I don't know about you guys, but I love reading things like that. And that doesn't mean either that everybody and everybody sensation is a hidden memory and that everyone will remember things that way. And it doesn't mean that we should assume our body is replaying one specific event, but it does remind us something incredibly important. Our nervous systems have been learning our entire lives, even without our conscious awareness of what we were remembering about our past. And maybe that's why I no longer ask what memory is this. Instead, I have found myself asking more and more in my own work, what is my nervous system trying to show me? Because whether what I'm experiencing connects to something from last week, from childhood, or from somewhere I may never fully understand, my body deserves the same thing, just like all of your bodies. Our bodies deserve our curiosity. Our bodies deserve our compassion, our presence, and enough safety to continue healing. Because remember, if we want to finish those cycles of what we've stored in our body as far as somatic sensations, like what I experienced with the pressure in my head and my throat and my shoulders, we have to recreate safety in the body now so that it can process and it can feel what it maybe didn't feel like it could before. And the experience I had reminded me of something I don't think I'll ever forget. Sometimes our bodies process before our minds make meaning. One of the things David Grant said during training that I haven't been able to stop thinking about also is this idea that when trauma overwhelms the brain's ability to process an experience, the nervous system encapsulates it almost like placing that experience into a protective storage space. And when he said this, I was reminded of how our brain, you guys, is so brilliant. Our nervous system says, this is too much right now. Let's help you survive first. And survival is exactly what the body does. But then again, we have these things that are in these protective spaces. And oftentimes they are going to be stored without words. And that is dependent on a lot of things. It can be dependent on our age or the experience or the state of our nervous system at the time. So I think too that the world has thought, as far as quote unquote talk therapy, we often think healing open like just happens through our talking. And don't get me wrong, our words do matter, our insight matters and our understanding matters. But also we can see that through research and neuroscience continues showing us something fascinating. The thinking parts of our brain are actually slower than the survival parts. The neocortex, where reasoning and language happen, takes roughly half a second to process information. And the subcortical regions responsible for survival begin responding in a fraction of the time. In other words, our bodies often know before our minds do. Isn't that fascinating? Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt uncomfortable before you maybe even knew why? Or you met someone and instantly felt safe and you're like, I don't even know this person. Or maybe you felt your stomach tighten before you could explain what was happening. That's your nervous system. And we've talked about this so many times, but remember your nervous system is constantly scanning, constantly asking, Am I safe? And long before your thinking brain catches up, it's asking, Am I safe? One of the most fascinating things I learned again this weekend is that where we look can influence what our nervous system accesses. That's kind of the point of brain spotting. Where we look affects how we feel. And I know this might sound unbelievable, but when you think about it, I think it's actually pretty cool. The retina isn't simply connected to the brain, it develops from the brain itself during early development, meaning the matter that makes our brain also comes out to make our eyes. Our eyes are literally an extension of our central nervous system. In brain spotting, we use eye position to help locate areas of activation and areas of greater regulation. And again, we're not trying to force anything here. We are following the nervous system of the client. We're listening to what the body body already knows and is trying to let us know in that moment. And that made me think about my own framework with the four ends of notice, name, nurture, and navigate. I realized too in my training this past weekend how beautifully my framework fits into this because before we can change anything, we first have to notice, then we name, then we nurture. And only then do we navigate. So today, I love for you guys to practice this a little bit with me. Not brain spotting where I am guiding you to access stored trauma or stress. We are going to call this resourcing. And this is a big part of brain spotting also and all somatic work. It is helping your nervous system remember safety. And if you're driving, please don't do this right now. Or if you're in a spot you want to pull over and take a break, you can do that and come back later. But if you are somewhere comfortable, let's practice this together. First, I just want to invite you guys to take a few slow deep belly breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. And let's just do that a few more times. Slowly in through the nose and expand the belly outward at the same time. And then long and slow out the nose or mouth. I want you guys just to do a few more of those at your own pace. In through the nose and fill the belly outward. And then long, so exhale out the mouth. And one more. And all I want you to do is invite yourself to get curious. Just notice your body. Maybe there's tension there right now, maybe there's some anxiety, maybe there's some heaviness, and that's okay too. But now I want you to ask yourself something different. Where in your body feels the calmest right now? Not perfectly calm, just calmer than the rest of you. Even if 95% of you feel activated, there will be even just a smaller place that feels just a little bit more settled than the rest. Maybe it's even your hands or your feet or your chest or your forehead. Maybe it's just simply one fingertip. Sometimes I'll have a kid client when we're doing this A, I think it's just one toenail. We just go with it. So just notice. And another way to check in if this feels hard, I like to have my clients do just a very gentle body scan where we start at the top of our head and we just imagine that we're just in this giant x-ray machine, and we're just noticing as we move down from the top of our head throughout our body to just find the place that feels a little bit more settled or grounded. And when you've found it, just name that spot, which is our second end. Maybe it's I notice a little bit more ease in my left hand or my feet feel supported and connected. Or my shoulders feel even just a few percent softer. Whatever is true for you is fine. There's no forcing, we're just noticing and naming. And now keeping your head facing forward, I want you to slowly move only your eyes all the way to the right along the horizontal axis. So if you're looking straight ahead, we're just going to move our eyes all the way to the right with our head looking forward. And notice from this place as you pause for a moment, notice what happens inside your body when you think about that calmer place. Does it change anything? Does it feel less calm? Does it feel more calm? And then slowly, slowly from that right place, keeping your head straight, just take your eyes and slowly move them back across your visual field toward the left. And as you move, just simply notice notice what the slow scanning does internally to your body. Is there a place where that calmer feeling becomes just a little bit easier to access? Maybe it's just increased 1%. Maybe nothing changes, or maybe you find a spot that feels more activating, which is what we call an activation spot. And both are okay. But for today, we are trying to find the place with your eyes which helps your body seem to settle just a little. And I want you to pause there. So let's say it's just straight in front of you as an example. But if you have another place, I just want you to be there. And now we're going to move our eyes upward along the vertical axis as far as I can go. So if I'm looking straight ahead, I'm gonna keep my head straight and I'm just gonna have my eyes go to the very top. And just notice does that help increase the calm or no? And then slowly, slowly, slowly bring your eyes downward. And again, we're simply observing, just allowing our eyes to settle wherever the body seems to feel just a little bit more supported. And once you find that spot, just take another slow breath. In through the nose and out through the mouth or nose. And some clients, once they find this calm spot, they actually want to close their eyes, and that is totally fine. Even in brain spotting, once we find that spot, sometimes we want to go more inward. And that is just great. And so this is one way that we nurture ourselves by offering our nervous system even a small experience of greater safety. Because remember, as your nervous system begins experiencing safety, your brain has greater access to the parts responsible for reflection, for that curiosity, for creativity, for problem solving and for connection. Okay. And this is the nurture step of the four ends. And from here, we can go into the fourth end, which is navigate. From this slightly calmer place, we can ask the question what's my next best step? Not what am I going to do with the rest of my life or even the rest of my day, but just what do I need next? And just allow yourself to get curious about this. Maybe you get a sense that you are dehydrated and need more water. Maybe you need to take a 10-minute break. Maybe it's calling or texting someone or actually talking to someone that you feel supported by. Maybe it's going outside for a little walk or just sitting where you are and taking a few more deep belly breaths. Because remember, you guys, healing usually happens one next step at a time. There's another connection I absolutely love too, as you're sitting in this calmer place, it's for you guys to think about. Remember that when we move into sympathetic activation, which is that fight or flight, our nervous system becomes incredibly efficient because it is trying to save our lives. Our heart race increases so that we can run faster. Our breathing changes, our muscles are preparing for action. And for many people, if you didn't know this, your attention actually narrows. We can see that even in the eyes, it's like our eyes go into the state of tunnel vision. And think about that. Your brain isn't interested in smelling the flowers, it isn't looking for beauty, it is looking for the exit. It is scanning for danger. And as we begin to feel safer in the body, which is kind of that flip side, we can also see something so beautiful that our brain does to help us out. Our attention begins expanding again. So as we feel safer in our body, as we create more calm, we can actually notice more. We can notice more colors around us. We can hear more sounds. We are aware of more people around us that love us and care about us. We can feel the breeze on our face. We can notice the mountains or the ocean. We can hear laughter and we can notice the glimmers. The glimmers, you guys, are just those tiny moments that remind us life is still here and that we are still here. Our peripheral awareness broadens as our body can live in the parasympathetic state of rest and digest. It's so beautiful when I think about it that way that we have this built into us that our capacity expands the calmer that our body feels. It's kind of like as our nervous system finds greater safety, our world can actually get bigger because our perspective expands too. Our capacity grows, and we're not just surviving our life. We are beginning to see again. And this weekend reminded me that healing isn't always about remembering every detail. Sometimes it's about allowing the body to finish what survival once interrupted. Sometimes it's simply creating enough safety that your nervous system can whisper to you, I think I'm ready now to finish working on that. Maybe I'm ready to soften, I'm ready to feel, I'm ready to release what I've been holding for so long. And for so many years, I believe that if I could just understand enough and read enough books and learn enough neuroscience and read enough research and analyze enough, I'd eventually heal. And all those things have mattered and they have changed my life and they have contributed to what I know and what I do now. But this past weekend in my training reminded me of something even deeper. Healing is so much more than what we think. Healing happens in what we feel, in how we breathe, and what we notice, and in what we allow our body to experience. It's also in what we're willing to witness with compassion instead of judgment. Your nervous system has been protecting you your entire life. It has carried things your conscious mind couldn't. And not because our brains and bodies want us to stay stuck, but again, remember, it's because it's been helping you to survive. And when enough safety is finally present, sometimes the body can quietly whisper, I don't have to hold this quite so tightly anymore. And maybe that's what becoming a neuroware has always been about. We're not trying to force anything to heal or fix, but we are creating enough safety that healing can naturally unfold by one breath at a time, one emotion at a time, and one moment of presence at a time, and even one small expansion of capacity at a time. And before we close today, I want to leave you with one more thought that has been sitting with me since this weekend. Just a reminder that no matter how overwhelmed you feel, no matter how heavy life feels, no matter how much it seems like everything around you is falling apart, there is always a resource somewhere inside of you. Maybe today it's your breath, maybe it's the feeling of your feet on the ground, maybe it's your faith, maybe it's a memory of someone who loves you. Maybe it's your dog curled up beside you. Maybe it's the warmth of the sun on your face. And maybe it's simply one small place in your body that feels 1% calmer than the rest. And you guys also too, it doesn't have to be big. And it's not going to change everything at once. But it does simply remind your nervous system, I'm not completely alone in this moment. And sometimes that's where healing begins. So this week, I'd love to invite you to practice what we did together today. When life feels overwhelming, just pause, notice, and ask yourself, where is the calmest place inside of me right now? It is okay if it is tiny and barely noticeable. Then spend just a few moments nurturing that place, offering your nervous system one more experience of safety, one more reminder that you're here and that you're breathing, that you are alive and that you are choosing to support yourself. And if you do try it, I would love to hear how it goes. Send me a message, share your experience. I'd love to know what you've discovered when you gave your nervous system permission to slow down and simply notice. Because my friends, you were never broken. Remember that your nervous system has simply been doing its very best to protect someone it loves so much. And that person is you. Until next time, be gentle with yourself, keep noticing, keep nurturing, keep expanding your capacity. And I hope that you can find beauty throughout the rest of your week. 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 is 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.