Healing Trauma Through Somatics, Breath, And Everyday Rituals

What if your tight shoulders and shallow breaths are not bad habits but your body’s best attempt to keep you safe? We sit down with somatic practitioner and clinical hypnotist Gina Waterfield to explore how trauma takes up residence in tissue, breath, and posture—and how simple, daily practices return the nervous system to trust. From co-regulation and mirror neurons to fascia and vagal tone, we trace the science and the stories behind real recovery, including why falling asleep in a sound bath is a win and how handwriting a journal entry can change your brain.

Gina shares a striking moment when a buried infant memory unlocked years of staircase anxiety, showing how the body often knows before the mind understands. We dig into hypnosis as a gentle way to revisit origins without re-wounding, then anchor insight with breathwork and movement so new patterns can hold. Along the way, we talk yin yoga, humming, chanting, guided prayer, and binaural beats; the role of morning sunlight and hydration in sleep and cognition; and why posture is a nonstop signal to your midbrain about safety. Music and art join the toolkit too—tactile, rhythmic practices that quiet rumination while building new neural pathways.

The conversation is personal and practical. Heather reflects on choosing to break generational cycles after a traumatic childhood, while Gina discusses her recent stroke, the brain’s resilience, and the patient pacing recovery requires. If you’re navigating grief, midlife change, or the lingering hum of stress, you’ll leave with tools you can start today: five minutes of slow exhale, a walk in the sun, a page in a notebook, a weekly sound bath, and posture check-ins between emails. Healing doesn’t ask you to be perfect; it asks you to be consistent.

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Transcript

Why Breath Shapes The Brain

Gina Waterfield 0:00

If we're not breathing wholly and completely, we're actually not activating parts of the circulatory system and the respiratory system, which also impacts the brain. The brain is is it's incredibly resourceful.

Show Open And Host Welcome

Speaker 3 0:16

Your next favorite podcast pick starts now. Here's the Professor and Heather Ann.

Heather Anne 0:23

Welcome to the Professor and Heather Anne. Although we don't have all the answers, we hope that we can encourage and excite you. We're here sharing our lives to inspire you to live to make the most of the second half of your life.

Why Trauma And Healing Matter

Joe 0:40

And in this episode, we are going to be dealing with the topics of trauma, grief, and profound life changes, things that well, some of which all of us go through, and or at least that most of us go through, and uh and how how we can uh how we can heal from those things and recover and and and even become become better.

Heather Anne 1:06

And chain learning skills and different things to change the trajectory of your life, then even if you've gone through some trauma, it doesn't mean that that has to be your uh that has to be the path that you continue down for the rest of your life.

Joe 1:25

Yes. And so our guest who we'll introduce in a few minutes uh calls herself a transformation alchemist. Um she's a um uh holistic practitioner. Um but before we introduce our guest, uh we we ought to uh recap again for for viewers who who haven't seen or heard all our episodes uh why why this topic is is so important to us and and well so important to this podcast. So um so you grew up in trauma.

Heather’s Childhood And Breaking Cycles

Heather Anne 1:58

And a lot of people do grow up in trauma. And um, I grew up in um I had a childhood that was full of trauma, but then the main catalyst of everything and how it came to an abrupt end was uh we became front page news. And so that not only shaped what I had dealt with as a child, it was it shaped how things that I was learning and taking into my adult life. And even though I was not, I didn't grow up thinking of the white picket fence and I'm gonna have children and all of that stuff. Um after all of this trauma that happened, um my mom went to prison and my father had died. That if I did decide to have children, what was I going to do with my life at that point? What are things that I was going to have to do to ensure that I didn't, if I did had children one day, that I didn't bring that trauma into their lives. So that was something that set me on the path for my adulthood. Was what can I do? What are the things I needed to put into place that if I were bringing children into the world, that my childhood, my family's trauma was not going to be passed down to them. And I I'm I'm I'm excited for our next guest because she has all kinds of information. Um, but you didn't grow up the way I did. You you had now everybody has their own family things and nobody's life is perfect.

Joe 3:46

No, no, it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, leave it to beaver.

Stress Tracking And Daily Vigilance

Heather Anne 3:51

For me, I think your life I love hearing the stories compared to my life. But no, your childhood was not a leave it to beaver, everything wasn't perfect, which and leave it to beaver behind the scenes. It was not a perfect show. Uh but we've had to deal with, even though I had a previous marriage. Um I some of the things that I learned as a child and stuff came into our relationship, especially at the very beginning. One of those things was I was very adamant within the first few months of our relationship that uh we were not going to get married.

Joe 4:35

Yes, and this this was very distressing to me because I pretty quickly thought that I did want to get married. But um I this we might have mentioned this in previous episodes, but uh there's this um app that uh I guess by measuring variability and heart rate, it it it it measures things like stress, stress and and general health and so forth. And so, you know, we would, you know, first thing in the morning, we would both use this app and it would almost always show your stress like up near the very maximum, you know, 100%. Um, and and mine was always much lower, and you and you would it was almost perfect. You get annoyed at me.

Heather Anne 5:20

I was always I'm still annoyed because mine is better than it used to when we first started using this app than it used to be. But um, you're always like, you're calm, you're ready to take on the day. Mine's like, you probably should just go back to bed and just start over. And it was first thing in the morning, and I would get so annoyed that this is uh still things that I still have to deal with.

Meet Gina The Transformation Alchemist

Joe 5:46

That that uh the childhood experiences of the kinds that you went through permanently sets the stress response system at this high level of of being always uh vigilant for the possibility of of danger. And so, you know, it's manifest in things like cortisol levels and so forth. And so yeah, you're you're like you're always at a pretty high level of stress. Um, so I guess it is it is a measure of that you know, my childhood was was was pretty darn good because because my stress is usually pretty low. So uh I I okay, so this brings us then to our guest who um helps people um heal from trauma, among other things. Um and so we're very pleased to have with us Gina Waterfield, uh, who again calls herself a transformation alchemist. Uh she lives and works in Texas. She has over 25 years of experience in holistic healing. She works with people, especially women, dealing with grief, chronic pain, and emotional exhaustion. So welcome, Gina. Thank you so much for being with us.

Gina Waterfield 6:58

Thank you so much for having me, Professor and Heather. It's just it's wonderful to be here with you both. We really I'm still laughing at what I just heard a few minutes ago.

Heather Anne 7:12

Well, let's dive in a little bit. Tell us a little bit more, let's dive in a little bit more. Explain to us your title, which um you and I have had multiple conversations. It's it's even more than that um on how you help people with their healing.

Titles, Methods, And Somatic Work

Gina Waterfield 7:32

Well, titles, that's uh such an interesting word in itself. And you know, what does it really mean? What does it really mean? You know, um, I think like a lot of us who are entrepreneurs and business owners, we wear a lot of hats, and so we're all we could we could put on a lot of titles, right? And uh, but I am a somatic practitioner, I am um a clinical hypnotist, I have uh worked with people through coaching and speaking and writing written word. Um I worked with people in my office uh from all over the country for many years now, uh doing private um intensive healing sessions, which lasts about a half a day. And so I think that I also work with people in a grocery store, in a in an elevator, in a airport, um, you know, because I think that we we interface with people all day long every day in different ways. And yet how we communicate with people really is says a lot about that heart coherence that you were talking about earlier, Professor. You mentioned something about that, you know. Um we have the ability to co-regulate each other or set each other off, right? Yes. So we're all doing these things almost every single day, and maybe all day long in some form or another, right? If if we're involved in other human relationships or human relationships with other people.

Co‑Regulation And Human Connection

Body Wisdom And Subconscious Beliefs

Heather Anne 9:29

Well, and and let's talk a little bit about that, that connection and stuff. That's actually how we met. I I went to a conference summit, and while you were up on stage talking, I just could not, I just felt an instant connection with you. You um I just sat on the edge of my seat, wanted to absorb everything that you were talking about. And literally right after you got off of the stage, you just walked straight up to me and we instantly clicked and like we need to talk and let's get to know each other. Because you like you said, it's not necessarily about the titles, but your relationship coach with people and their relationships, their relationships with themselves. Um, you're one of the things that I love is the mental real estate coach. There's just so many words that can describe the things that you do and how you help people.

Hypnosis Use Cases And Limits

Gina Waterfield 10:37

Yeah. Well, and there that's true. And the whole that's why I've always struggled with finding one word or one term to define what it is that I do uh with people. And it, you know, I am a holistic healing practitioner overall. Uh oh, that's my overarching title, I guess. But it's there's so many elements and nuances to that. You know, the there's the the body, the information that comes from the body, the body wisdom, what guides us primarily more than anything else. And if the body doesn't feel safe in some way, or the body is triggered by something that feels unsafe, we're gonna feel it there first, you know. And I I remember, well, let me just go on. There's there is the mind, and uh, you know, in working with clients using hypnosis for many decades now. Um I've in my experience, it's we are shaped by all of the experiences that we've had in the past. We are shaped by our early childhood relationships, our core family relationships. There's generational um DNA markers that come along, you know. So we we know so much more about that body wisdom and then the mind and how our subconscious beliefs can shape everything um for us, and then you know, we can alter that with our conscious mind, but there's a lot of interplay there, and there's some big gaps for a lot of people, right? So when I'm using hypnosis, I'm using hypnosis to help people overcome the worst of themselves. But first, sometimes we just need permission, sometimes we need a reminder to go back into the past and see where the problem originated that might be crippling you today in some way, right? Or stopping you in some way, limiting your progress. And it could be anything from test anxiety, it could be to performance um enhancement in any arena, it could be um a physical issue that you just can't seem to get resolved anywhere else. Uh I mean, it could be removing words. I mean, there's all kinds of applications for this work. Um, but it is interesting to me that there is such a strong body-mind connection. And we used to say mind-body-spirit. My philosophy is in league with a lot of others who say it is the body first.

Fascia, Energy, And Stored Stress

Heather Anne 13:31

And that's interesting that you talk about that. And I just don't think um that people realize that, even with everything that I went through as a child and uh things, I've I the it's only been the last few years I've learned more about the body. And, you know, like my hip flexors are the tightest part of my body, no matter what I do. Um I just have issues with them. And I was in a stretching session, and the the trainer hit this one spot, and I literally instantly started crying, not crying because it was painful, crying that I just felt my whole body was just releasing years of whatever's been built up. And even the trainer stood back for a minute and he goes, Are you okay? And I'm like, keep going, it's okay. I need you to do this. And it was very fascinating. And it wasn't until then, and this was only a couple of years ago, that I started paying more attention to the body and what my body was doing, and uh thinking back of the traumas and stuff. And even with, and you'll you would know more about this, having on my right side of my body is where I've broken most of all my bone bones. And I know that has something to do with something. So uh, so talk to us a little bit more just about the body and well, I'll give you a couple of examples here uh that I think story is so so precious, isn't it?

Breathing Patterns And Safety

A Staircase Memory Unlocks Fear

Gina Waterfield 15:13

Storytelling. Yes, it's real life experiences, and when we share that, we kind of get a glimpse into something deeper, it's deeper wisdom, right? It's going into a little bit of a dive, and I love that, but um I've I remember working with clients. I was for a 16-year period of time, I was a massage therapist and an aesthetician. And I remember primarily working as a massage therapist and also as an energy healer practitioner. And you know, I would be working on a client, and all of a sudden I would notice I'd be in one part of the body, and some other part of the body or an extremity was moving, or they would say, I feel something moving. It's like traveling up my leg. And it feels like like tinges, or it feels like maybe a little ball, a little mass moving up my body. And I started really getting more curious about what that meant. What was that about, right? And then I started understanding a little bit more about energy, and um, and then there's the fascia tissue. So there's a soft tissue, there's hard tissue, there's you know, the skeletal body, then there's the um muscular body, then there's the ligaments and tendons and all the connective tissues, and then there's the circulatory system. So all of these systems, I you could go on and on. These systems are so closely connected, and one triggers another. And so, if for instance, you haven't been uh you you haven't healed certain elements or certain elements of your being haven't been healed, you could, for instance, be breathing in a really very shallow way, we say from the neck up, right? And so taking a full breath doesn't feel safe. The body's restricted so much that it's not allowing that openness. And so, as a yoga teacher, I'm also a yoga teacher. So, as a yoga teacher, we would say open a chest, open a chest wall, spread the diaphragm, exhale, ex inhale and exhale deeply, bring it all the way down to the belly, bring it down to the core of the body. You know, you're gonna really feel the breath moving down. And so we're giving people these signals, and it's really developing a body awareness that we didn't have otherwise because we've been so busy protecting ourselves and keeping ourselves safe. Our nervous system has been overly activated for so long. Now we are in a rigid pattern of holding, and so we don't tend to realize that happens because it happens generally slowly over time, and it's supported by us over time, right? And so we actually need reminders, and sometimes just touching the body in a certain location can do that. I apologize for that. I thought I had shut that down. I have do not disturb on, I don't understand that. Um but it but it is so interesting to me. Another um element here I'll give you, and there's just been hundreds and hundreds of case cases that I worked with people where it was just completely evident they were holding on to this trauma in the body. Um, but I'll use myself as an example. I struggled walking downstairs for a while, and this was a long period of time, but I noticed a glitch. You know, I kind of like hold on, I'd hold on to the rails, I'd get this feeling like I was gonna miss a step, and I'd kind of jerk a little bit, and um, and then over time, I remember I was in a really anxious period of time um where a lot of things were kind of falling apart. And I remember it getting worse. And I would even in my own home going down the short staircase, I would feel that glitch in my gut and it would tighten up and it would make me take a deep breath, like a quick breath in, like I was going to fall. These are body responses that are automatic, you know. I went to my parents one day and I we were sitting at the table, and I said, Do you guys know any reason why I might have an issue with the sense of going downstairs as a uh you know terrifying ordeal? I said, I it's bothered me over time, but now I'm feeling like it's maybe almost even going into a little mini panic attack. So it's getting worse. And they're eating, and my mom stops eating, and she looks at me and she goes, hmm, maybe that's the time. Maybe it's about the time that you fell down the stairs at your grandmother's house in the cellar stairwell in a baby walker at the age of eight months old.

Heather Anne 20:30

Oh wow.

Family Healers And Lived Experience

Midlife Reinvention And Presence

Gina Waterfield 20:33

Now I looked at her and I kind of went internal for a minute, and it was as though my whole body was responding to that information because I felt this strange sensation, almost like energy, waffling like this around my whole body, especially in my abdomen and uh my gut. And I remember letting out this sigh, like then this light bulb moment. It went to my brain, it went to my mind. That was my brain being triggered to say, okay, my now your mind can be relaxed. That was it. It was all almost like autonomic. Um, and I I realized then, and I I had been working with clients. The reason I asked my parents that question was because I had been working with hypnosis clients for so long, and you know, uh, and and healing the clients coming to me for healing work. And I knew instantly that was it. And so I had I was able to connect the dots. And but this is a story of how my work developed. Over time, really. I could go back to the time where, as you and I talked before the show, Heather, that one of my grandmothers was what we will call a healer. Just I'm gonna say that. Knowing that words matter and somebody's gonna have an issue with it, and somebody's gonna go, oh my god, really? You know, so I'm usually very cautious about words I use, but uh sometimes it's just completely apropos. And she I watched my grandmother, who was a very uh faith-based woman, um work with people to help them heal from some kind of experience that they were having that was not a feel-good experience in a number of ways. And that early, she she really um I worked with her as a little girl. And over time started thinking that was a little weird, and I didn't want to be weird. So when I was old enough to decide that that was weird and I didn't want to be weird, I wanted to be like everybody else, I kind of stepped back from that for a while. Um, but you know, necessity out of need comes familiarity with a lot of things that we'll explore deeper at some point, right? Um, all of these experiences that I've had, whether it was my grandmother and my mother, who's clairvoyant, my mother's basically clairvoyant. I have several aunts who are as well, um, and all the clairs, you know. But I think living all over the world too, and seeing people everywhere, it doesn't matter who you are. Um there's a myth about transformation is that strong people don't fall. It it doesn't have any boundary. There's no it doesn't matter what your life looks like externally. People suffer. And I think having experience meeting people that have suffered greatly all over the world, just in a lot of different locations.

Seeing People And Emotional Release

Heather Anne 24:29

You you have this uniqueness about you, even uh we talked about that your daughter, your granddaughter has even asked you about um how you just seem to be in a room and be able to pull people in or feel them, uh, just like with us. We we we were up on that stage that we had a lot of people there, but you and I kept having eye contact. We instantly connected afterwards. Um and it it just was a great feeling to be around you and your energy and everything. And so many people, I feel our age and everything, and and what we talk about here on the podcast is, you know, for midlife and in transformation and you know, reinventing your life and everything, is that I think because of all the different childhood traumas we've dealt with, that people are sometimes afraid of that. That um, and I have that, we've talked about that. That uh, you know, Joe teases me a lot of times is that I can walk into a room, start talking to somebody, and the next thing they know, you know, I know they're telling me their whole life story. They just feel comfortable with me, but you are on a whole nother level. So t talk about what your uh granddaughter had asked you about and how that how that energy just draws people to you.

From Mirror Neurons To Self‑Soothing

Yoga, Sound, And Vagal Tone

Gina Waterfield 26:04

Thank you. I I feel like I was blessed with a number of gifts to bring forward in this world. And it's not to say that I haven't suffered because I have suffered as well. And I think maybe sometimes we recognize each other on the street, you know, through that suffering. And it feels very familiar. So there's a lot of elements to that energy that you said you felt that day. Um I think there's a lot of ways that we can look at that, and there's different ways that we can explain what that looks like or sounds like or what it is. And um I remember being the story that I was sharing with you was that I was uh in the company of my granddaughter visiting from Hawaii. Uh she was 11 years old, and um we her mom and let's see, I can't even remember who was there at this point. I'm not exactly sure on what trip this was, but my son had died. And this was two and a half years ago. He had a brain tumor, and um he died at the age of 40, I think it was 42 at the time. Um I've had a lot of deaths in my life in the last few years. Unfortunately. Um there's more, but suffice to say that I was surrounded at the airport with my granddaughter, who was 11 at the time, and I was with my um one of my son-in-laws. And we were my dog, granddaughter and I had gone to the restroom at the airport, left the gate, gone to the restroom, and while we were in the restroom, she we I was washing my hands, and the woman who came out of her stall to wash her hands was standing beside me, and she looked over and she said, I saw you in the airport earlier. She says, You are stunning, and I love your energy. She's you're there's something about you, you just radiate this beautiful energy. And um, and I just looked at her and I put both of my hands on her arms at her elbows, and um, and I said, Thank you so much. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with me. And when I did that, she started tearing up, and so I just immediately gave her a hug and we embraced for quite some time, and she really did start sobbing at that point, and she said, You have no idea what you've just done for me. And we I got teary-eyed because it was a very emotional time for me anyway. And uh we left. Uh, my granddaughter and I left the bathroom, went back to the gate, we sat down where her dad was sitting, and she looked at me and she says, Gigi, how do you do that? And I said, Do what, honey? And she says, How do you make people cry everywhere you go? And I just looked at her and I said, Because I see people. And I said, You do too. And um I said, that is a beautiful gift to have and to share. And it just really resonated with with me, and I know that it's it's gonna be something that's gonna stay with her for the rest of her life, too. But you know, that happens almost everywhere I go.

Why Slowing Down Heals

Heather Anne 29:53

I it did with us as well. I I you and we've become friends since, but it was uh five and a half years ago uh for us when we met, and I had just separated uh from my ex after 26 years, 28 years of being together, and you made me cry as well. And I just thinking about it still uh you know brings tears to my eyes because just like you said, in that moment, in the chaos chaos I was in that moment, I felt a relief and that you had seen me. Not only had you seen me, because we got to talk later that evening, not only had you seen me while you were up on the stage, but you saw me in that moment when we were able to have one-on-one conversation. So uh I love that your daughter, that your granddaughter gets to see has seen that, because I will be with her uh for the rest of your life. And I and I know that's something even with my boys that they've seen growing up, is how people just come to me and tell me the same thing. So let's I'd like to dive in a little bit more about what it is for you when you're in that moment, seeing that person. Obviously, that moment really affected you as well because of all the things that you were going through and all the things that you had been going through, because I know personally that was a very traumatic time for you in your life. What is it that you're experiencing? And maybe for our listeners to because I know a lot of people are afraid of those feelings and everything. What are some suggestions on how you tell our listeners how to kind of embrace that moment?

Stroke, Hydration, And Brain Care

Gina Waterfield 32:00

Okay, that's a great question, Heather. And I want to ask both of you in answer to that. Do you remember a time when you were children and you saw someone else cry? Like as a child? Do you remember seeing someone sad? Like your mom, your dad, your your siblings, your a friend, somebody that you didn't know on the playground. Can you is there a time where you can remember seeing somebody cry? Yes, very much so for me. How do you remember the emotions that you felt or the sensation that you felt in your body?

Heather Anne 32:42

It was deep sadness. And and even as an adult, I have a tendency. If somebody's crying, I have a tendency to start crying myself. And um, I I could, it's like I could feel their sadness. I feel their pain that they're feeling at that moment.

Journaling For Recall And Repair

Art, Music, And Neural Pathways

Gina Waterfield 33:00

Okay, so there's heart coherence, there's mirror neurons that we have, there's that um just human nature that we feel seeing someone else hurt or sad or even joyful. It could be any of this range of emotions, right? That we that if you see somebody yawn, like right. I mean, there's so many different ways that we actually um had those natural feelings originally when we were children, and then people, places, and experiences and time taught us, you know, you need to guard yourself or don't express yourself, or somehow circumvent those feelings from being moved from a sensation in the body to an awareness in the mind to an activated response, right? Like a willful response, like I let me hug you. You remember, you know, anytime somebody that you know you see them crying, your natural impulse was always to hug them, to comfort them. You see little children doing this, toddlers. I had it ran on daycare for some period of years. Um, and the children were very naturally good at helping each other and soothing each other and telling each other it's okay, you know, but in very rudimentary terms and expressions. And so we've learned over time, we've unlearned that over time. In the sense, in essence, we have unlearned how to self-soothe ourselves, right? I mean, I will sometimes if I'm struggling going to sleep, I've got a lot of things on my mind, I will actually rock myself in bed, you know. Um, and so there, you know, there's so many ways to self-soothe. I mean, just so many ways we can hug ourselves. Um you know, in in yoga class, there's all kinds of measures that we take to self-soothe and comfort the body and make the body feel secure, right? And also time to open up and expand the body and stretch the body and strengthen the body. Um, and it's all in conjunction with breath work. Now that's what I found very interesting over time when I was learning all of these skills. Um, that we can use sound to comfort the body, the nervous system. We can use water floating in a in a warm pool, right? Um, we can use uh um things like even humming to comfort our nervous system, the vagus, you know, stimulate the vagal tone. Um reading out loud, listening to a guided meditation, listening in church to the pastor guiding everyone, listening to the entire congregation or gathering, uh humming in sequence or singing together. Those are all ways that we can manifest healing, right? Because we're using frequency, the energy of frequency and brainwave frequency, what happens when you go to sleep? We go through these different frequencies. Um and these stages are very important because if we don't reach certain stages, we will not sleep completely as well as we could.

Heather Anne 36:56

Well, and one of the things I've done that has helped my nervous system is the yoga. The yoga I do, the relaxing yin, surrender yoga, that really makes a huge difference. I've gotten Joe into yoga. We do uh we go to sound baths.

Joe 37:14

Um I always fall asleep during the sound bath. I'm not sure if that's what's intended, but uh but that's what happens when we go.

Heather Anne 37:25

Yes, right?

Gina Waterfield 37:27

And so that is the purpose of it to get you.

Heather Anne 37:30

And that's my next question is for the listeners that are new to this, because I know a lot of people our age, you know, have never done yoga or the breath work. This is something that's tremendous has tremendously helped me in the last 10 years, what does that really mean? How do how do we talk about the importance of slowing down and listening to our nervous system?

Posture, Movement, And Daily Habits

Practical Tips To Calm The System

Gina Waterfield 37:56

It's critically important. Um, it I mean, just take sleep. We were just talking about sleep, for example. If you deprive someone of sleep, it doesn't take that long. The mind starts going off the rails. Yes. And so, um, and then there's, you know, people have breathing issues and that prevents them from going to sleep, right? So it's critically important. This breath peace is so critically important to our well-being. If we're not breathing wholly and completely, we're actually not activating parts of the circulatory system and the respiratory system, which also impacts the brain. Yes, right. So the brain is is it's incredibly resourceful. I had a stroke myself. I will wasn't really sure if I was going to mention this on this call, but I had a stroke um six months ago, about six months ago. And um, and they also discovered a brain tumor. It is a slow-growing brain tumor, and it's a relatively manageable size right now, so we're not worried about it at this point. The stroke is a bigger issue, and um so one of the things that I learned after I had the stroke was the importance of hydration for the brain. So the body is so reliant on us taking care of ourselves so that we can function at our best. If we're circumventing our breathing, we're circumventing our healing process, right? And if you follow Chinese medicine, which is all about the energy systems of the body and the correlation between organs and emotions and all that, it's very important. We've made so many, so many advances in the field of neuroscience, neurobiology of trauma and healing from trauma, that it's it's there's no reason at all why not to go and explore this. Yoga can be helpful, journaling can be helpful. Journaling is really an important, it's one of the measures that I use for any of my ongoing clients. They must journal. If they're not willing to journal, then I'm not willing to take them on as a client.

Releasing Pain Beyond Logic

Heather Anne 40:21

Oh, that's interesting. And one of the things um that I just recently heard too, for uh Stevenov uh keeping dementia at bay is uh they talked a little bit, the journaling, the people, the older people they've done this study is the ones that handwrite, that writing and not typing or anything like that, but writing is making a uh huge difference for older people and dementia and memory loss. So that I I like that you bring that up uh because I am a big journal. I journal a lot. I really started picking that up about 15 years ago. So what is it that you won't take on a client unless they're journaling it? Is that just another way of releasing the emotions?

When You Need Outside Help

Gina Waterfield 41:15

Yes, it is. Yes, it is, and it's also a uh form of record keeping. You know, I've gone back and looked at some journals in some parts of my life because I I will tell you that a lot of the work that I've done has been stimulated in part by my own choices in life and some of the fallout that I've had. And um, you know, I've had a lot of experiences that would probably surprise most people. Um, but it was a catalyst, those experiences were a catalyst for me going deeper into the work of healing and what that really meant. And so, what all of the modalities that are out there that can facilitate healing, and a lot of these things are absolutely at no cost. Like it's no cost for you to practice breath work, it's no cost for you to practice yoga. If you do want to do it at home, find a channel on YouTube. I mean, it's or a book or whatever. It's so there's no reason not to do some of these things anymore. Um, and then uh it's journaling and reading uh anything that you can um to enhance your brain. You know, your your awareness, your awareness of your body and your body systems and how they can work for you or against you, you know. Um there's art. I'm also an artist, um, and I and I picked up that habit again after I had the stroke because I was thinking, you know, part of it's part relaxation therapy for me, and it's part creativity, and putting together the pieces, you have to evaluate, you know, colors, color schemes, color blending, blocking, um, layering, um, texture, types of brushes, types of brush strokes, using a palette knife versus the brush. It I mean, look at the shading, look at the context of the room. What is the contextual? There's all these elements to a lot of these tools that are so helpful in connecting neural networks for us.

Joe 43:36

Would playing music be uh most. I I've for the past just ten years, I've been playing recorder. And of course, you know, when you take up an instrument as an adult, right? You never get as good at it as if you had started as a child. But I I find it very therapeutic in that um because most of the time, you know, my attention is absorbed. Both abstract ideas and you know symbols and such. And whereas, you know, playing recorder, it's I mean, of course, I mean, there is a kind of an intellectual component to it. You know, there's understanding the structure of the piece and so forth. But a lot of it is just, you know, it's sensory motor. You know, you've you've got you control your fingers, you control your breath, um, and you listen to what you're doing, and it's a way of sort of getting all the all that abstract, symbolic, conceptual stuff out of my head for half an hour.

Closing Thanks And Subscribe

Gina Waterfield 44:31

Yes, and that's because it's tactile and it's pragmatic and it's systematic. And so you have you you learn what systems you want to adopt with it, right? And what systems you need to, and what's you know, that would be basic core tenets of the instrument, right? Yeah. And the recorder, you you am I right? You had to blow through recorder. Yes.

Joe 44:55

Yes, it but it's a very simple. I see it doesn't have a read, you know, like it's it's in some ways, in some ways it's like singing. Although I but see, I can't I can't sing uh on key, and so this is like my substitute for singing. Um but yeah, there's no there's no read. There's no there's really almost no dynamics. You can't if you play louder, you just you just play at a higher pitch. I mean if you blow harder into the instrument, uh you just you play at a higher pitch, and you don't want to do that. So there's very little in the way of dynamics, but there's a lot of very subtle things to do with breath control and finger control, and that's where you sort of get the like the character, the musicality of the playing.

Gina Waterfield 45:35

Yes, absolutely. Uh music is a great tool, especially. I mean, I have I have Native American drums, I have um that's a rattle. Uh any um, I have singing bowls. Um, I'm looking at getting some other equipment too, that is just beautiful, uh beautiful form of energy healing work, which is the resonance of the body, you know, the body. And um, and also that means movement too. So this this is such an easy thing to get up and move your body. You know, a lot of people are sitting in a C posture like this all day long.

Heather Anne 46:23

You know, some people are as she says that we both straighten up. Easy hypnosis. So let's dive into that for a moment. So we live in a 24-7 society. We have let ourselves go. People are afraid to shut down, turn their phones off because they might miss some business or different things like that. What are, you know, you just talked about breath work and you talked about just the simple thing of like what we just did. We just both straightened up our backs and was like, uh, okay, we're we're sitting more uh, you know.

Gina Waterfield 47:04

I would wager to say you did the same thing when you when we were talking about breathing a while ago.

Heather Anne 47:09

I actually I did that and I looked over at Joe because he has a tendency to breathe shallow, and I've been helping him with that. But what are some practical everyday tips that you can give our listeners um that they could be starting right now? We you know, you talked about the journaling, we've talked about the breath work, but we all need to just be slowing down, slowing down our nervous system. What are some things that you can share with our listeners on how they can walk away with this from this podcast with some practical tips?

Gina Waterfield 47:47

Yeah, so I would say look up the vagal, vagal tone practices, number one. That's so simple. It's it's very simple. Things we've been talking about then with noise, with humming, with singing, with playing an instrument. Um, you could put headphones on and listen to binaural beats, everything that's designed to um relax your center, your nervous system, your central nervous system. And we want to get out of sympathetic nervous system mode where we're like uh, you know, just hyper-vigilant and humming all the time, and it's not in a positive way, but it's uh we want to go to the parasympathetic side of it where I always remember parasympathetic because it's like paragliding, pair, you know, like an umbrella, you know, it's protecting you, it's uh opening the umbrella. But um, you know, get out of nature. Number one, get out of nature for a little bit. I mean, we need the sunlight, right? Vitamin D, and we don't need extreme doses of it, but we need sunlight, and our eyes, this is really important. Our eyes need that sunlight too. Um, ideally in the morning, they say. Um, and then so it could be just getting up and going sit, sitting outside, sitting in the sun porch, sitting at a park on a park bench. But walking too is so simple. Everybody can do that. Uh like almost everybody, unless you have some kind of physical limitation that you can't. But that is simple, moving your entire body. Some people go swimming. I have a girlfriend who's uh um she's a PhD writing, I don't know how many books, third book, fourth book, and two workbooks right now. And she's she goes walking or swimming every single day. And she runs a restaurant, she has two teenagers at home still who are twins. She's married, she's a realtor. She I she is literally involved in so many things, but she goes swimming every day. And um, it's it's it's not impossible. People say, I don't have time. You have time for what you deem is important, and our health is important. So it's very simple things that we've been talking about on this podcast that we can do to just start, you know. Um, the the thing about journaling is that I was gonna tell you, I went back and read some of the journals that I had written during a certain period of time. It was really rough, and I wrote in that journal every single day, and it was like slam journaling. I didn't filter anything. Do you know? I went back and looked five years later, I could not even read it. It was so painful to read. But I literally poured out, I emptied out everything that I was feeling during that time. And, you know, a lot of that was what I was feeling, but I wasn't ex like actually letting it out, releasing it in my real life. You know, I was putting it on paper, so I'm releasing it that way. But it was a great indicator of I needed to exercise, like exercise more at what was going on and leave that situation in order to become healed, you know, more healed. And I want to add this too before I forget, healing, we say, you know, get get over it. Um, but you can't think your way, you can't logic yourself out of some of this pain. You have to you have to physically release it, you have to believe that it's leaving your body. Do you know what I mean? You're you're oh I know. It's not just manifesting it, like saying it, it's feeling it, breathing it in and out, like letting it letting it go go physically.

Heather Anne 51:51

Um and thank you so much. I mean, we we can keep talk for hours with you as we normally do when you and I have conversation. And I think you've shared some very valuable information for our listeners, and we've all no matter who you are, you've you've we've all gone through trauma. You've talked about how our body holds on to that trauma. You've shared with us some information on how we can release that and release our bodies and release that negative energy that we're carrying around with us. Um and you can start that now. It it doesn't matter if you didn't know how to do this, it doesn't matter, you know, what trauma you've gone through, uh what trauma you're going through now. You can actually start some of these practices now to let your body start healing. And we really appreciate you being on with us today. We hope that um you come back in our second season and have more conversation because this is definitely something um I think that we all need to hear. Um last words or anything that you'd like to share with their stuff?

Gina Waterfield 53:11

Yes, I thank you for asking. I was just sitting here thinking, you know, sometimes we need outside help. Sometimes it's not we we're we're limited in our belief systems and our thinking, and sometimes we need external help. And this is where I think my work with people has been so uh uh interesting. I mean, it's just been fascinating about the ways that people hold on to beliefs and experiences. And I have heard the most traumatic stories you can imagine. I mean, I don't even want to repeat some of them, but I there are plenty that I could share that I know would people would find fascinating um things that happened in my office. But um, sometimes you do need external help with certain things.

Heather Anne 54:07

And I agree with that. I I think killing's possible, and one of the things that we've been taught is to not honor our own stories. Um I think that uh you have definitely given us lots of information. Um and we hope that we get some good response. And if anybody has any questions or anything, uh to leave comments um about this episode.

Joe 54:38

Yes. Um and uh we'll do what we can.

Gina Waterfield 54:44

I look forward to what we can. I feel like I should there should be an after show here. I I think so. I need you guys to come over to one of my little dinner parties and you know uh started hosting some intimate dinner parties just for getting to know people on a deeper level, just as friends and no real agenda, but you know, just sharing interesting information with each other.

Heather Anne 55:14

I agree. We love doing the dinner parties as well. I think uh we we need to go back to that. We used to do that, our parents when they were younger and stuff.

Gina Waterfield 55:24

There are some things that we could do with bring bringing back. Yes. Like writing cursive is one thing I can think of right off the right off the bat.

Heather Anne 55:34

Writing and I still do, but again, Gina, thank you very much for joining us today. Really a great pleasure. We look forward to having you on uh on future episodes.

Gina Waterfield 55:47

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, you guys. And we'll talk to you later after the show.

Heather Anne 55:52

Yes, yes, thank you very much. So please subscribe and support our podcast as we have so many more exciting discussions coming up, including guests. We can't wait to have you along for more episodes.

Joe 56:07

So join us here each week, my friend. You're sure to get a smile. From lessons learned to mishaps, the adventures go on for miles.

Heather Anne 56:14

Here among the Professor and Heather Anne.

Speaker 3 56:22

Thank you for listening to The Professor and Heather Ann.