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[00:00:00] Welcome to Move With Deb. I'm Deb your friendly neuroplastician. And this is a podcast that explores the relationship between the body and the mind from a health at every size, judgment, free perspective. I teach you how developing a new internal conversation based on curiosity, self friendship and simple neuro-plasticity techniques can rewire your bodymind out of pain and emotional overwhelm to help you build the rich full life that you want to live. Disclaimer, this is not a replacement for medical care.
[00:00:50] Hi everyone, this is Deb with Move With Deb, the podcast, and I'm gonna change some things up a little bit. One, I'm gonna stop telling you what number episode this is, because I, I really wanna change my format a little bit because, uh, I've been avoiding doing this podcast and that's really not what I wanna do at all.
[00:01:19] And noticing that I have to like know what number episode it is, is one of the small things that. is kind of bugging me, so I'm gonna just let that part go. You know, I think the system will number itself. I don't think it really matters, uh, how many I do, the frequency with which I, put them out. But what I do notice is that I love learning and sharing and creating pathways to change, for other people. Which is probably why I do my job as a coach and now a hypnotist. And even before that, when I was a massage therapist and when I owned a plus size clothing store, it was always about creating change in an embodied way. Creating change, creating connection, creating a belief that whatever you're experiencing now in this moment is not fixed, it is changeable.
[00:02:25] Whether it's a belief that we have about ourselves, whether it's a unwanted physical sensation, all of it is malleable. So oftentimes we notice what are the things that we don't like, and when we associate things that we don't like experiencing with traits, with, fixed ideas of self, then change becomes this pretty intense ego conflict.
[00:02:53] And one of the things that I have discovered over these years of doing, a process of embodied coaching, as well as my own mind body studies and now becoming a hypnotist, which is like, oh boy, the express train, that we wish we had in this country. It's like the express train to change, it's like change, uh, on speed.
[00:03:21] I don't know if that's a good analogy, but it's like really what people come to a hypnotist for, right? Is to, to change old patterns and habits and experiences, One of the things that I am going to change with this podcast is it's just gonna be a deeper reflection of me, of what I want to share, when I want to share, how I want to share what lights me up. Because I want a life in which I am more lit up. I want a life, in which I am creating and the experience of creation, is pleasurable, enjoyable, reflects me in the future that I want to be having. Right now that means no more episode numbers . So we'll see where this takes us and where it goes.
[00:04:11] But I notice that I have a lot of desire to share. I have a lot of ideas. I have a lot of things that blow across my brain because, you know, it's moving fast, this ADHD brain of mine and, you know, not everything is worth sharing. But there are a lot of things, especially ideas and beliefs and research and science and, you know, n=1, stories of people changing.
[00:04:42] And I think that it's really important to know that change is possible for you. Like sometimes we don't know how to make the change, but it doesn't mean that change is impossible. And I just want to crack the door open there. Because I think we believe that when we have a thought, when we cognate something or when we have an experience in our body, that is some kind of fixed experience, that is true in a way that is, um, oh, I can't even. The thing is, I don't believe it so much that I almost can't articulate the opposite of it, but you understand what I mean when I say like, we believe something is fixed and unchangeable. And for so long, you know, I just believe things like that about myself. So fixed, unchangeable, broken, blah, blah, blah, doomed.
[00:05:47] What I wanna say is, last night I had a fun day with a friend of mine. We went to see some theater, we went to a diner. We were having a great time, and we were just talking about some, part of her life. She's a lovely, amazing human being who is like open to her emotions and able to be vulnerable. And so, she started talking about something that's hard for her, and her tears came on very quickly and she talked about a deep fear. And now as a person who knows that everything is changeable and understands that what's going on right now in her mind and body is she's lit up this neural network of what my hypnosis teacher calls the problem state. And so her mind and body are just making, you know, rolling down that road or even more so rolling down the hill, right? Like you wanna imagine like a snowball on a hill rolling down the hill of that neural association. We all have those things, like we think this thought or we see this thing and then it associates us into other thoughts or it associates us into sensations in our body, right? Usually we're aware of the ones that are highly unpleasant, which oftentimes then sparks another snowball to go down, another parallel hill of fear that of course this has always happened, so it will always continue to happen.
[00:07:23] And then that fear snowball continues to roll down the hill and we have rolled ourselves down this hill in the blink of an eye in which there is only the bad outcome. It all makes sense. It's a very reasonable experience to have because especially if it's one that you've been having, this is how our brain works. It works on predictive coding. So we are more likely to have the experience that we've had. I think there is some study. It says like we repeat the same thoughts that we've had the day before. So we are the sum total of the things that we've done before until we create what is called a prediction error. We need to interrupt, and update that neural pattern.
[00:08:15] So I was sitting with my friend in the diner and we were talking. And I was just listening as a friend. I was not listening as hypnotist, even though she knows that I do hypnosis and she's into hypnosis. And so, you know, I asked her if she wanted to do a little work on this? She agreed. We just did a little bit of change work in the diner.
[00:08:39] And part of why I wanna share this is the narration in her mind around this experience that she's been having for so many years. One, she's been having an experience of fear and terror for years, and her first belief is, it's stupid. I know better. And so it should be different. And I was like, but that's not the way that it works. We don't just know something into being, we need to change it on different levels and when we think that it should be different, which leads to self shaming. Which leads us to that deep feeling of despair, which then often we don't wanna hang out with that feeling, so we distract ourselves, you know, we disconnect.
[00:09:36] All of that makes so much sense. When we are in deep pain or fear is we leave. And we leave in lots of different ways that are personal to ourselves. But when we leave that moment because it's so painful that staying feels like self harm, then we create that pattern. We create that pattern of sensing into that really difficult thing, and then letting that fear take us away.
[00:10:07] And so we, that becomes its own neural network that becomes its own habituated pattern. So when you start to see this embodied experience, this like embodied cognition or whatever you wanna call it, there's so many different words to describe the same thing. When you start to see the pattern that you're operating in, the schema, it helps a little bit. And there's always a positive intention behind it, right? It's for your survival. Like most people don't run into burning buildings. If you're trained to do it, you know, then you do, but most people don't. We don't like to stay inside the burning building of our mind or our our body. But to create the change one, we need to work on a lot of different levels, which is to recognize that we're shitting on ourselves with our own self-talk. Like anytime we're telling ourselves this should be different. I'm stupid for having it continue on this long. Even if we turn down that voice that experience, how much relief would you feel? How much better would it feel to be able to look at something that we're doing in our thinking or doing in our feeling experiencing and be like, that's what's happening right now.
[00:11:28] I'm thinking this and I'm feeling that, bringing in that kind of neutral, curious observer. And I've talked about this in the, I notice practice. I've talked about this on the podcast before. Where when we stop running away, when we turn around and look at, through that lens of safety, when we start to turn towards whatever it is that we've well practiced to turning away from, we already are beginning to change.
[00:11:59] And what we were able to do through this amazing and creative power of hypnosis, we had some fun in the diner and we were able to create some beautiful change. So in those moments she could tell that that trigger would create the sense of tears welling up, like that feeling that you get before you're gonna cry, and the feeling in her chest.
[00:12:25] And one of the things is, I imagine it almost like we're kind of sniping the threads away. We're disconnecting that quick trigger. We're releasing that neural pattern from that trigger, even that alone is change. And you know, we got to this kind of very neutral place. We brought in a bunch of good feelings and associated all of that into the experience that she was having. It was so interesting to watch her body change. Right there in that moment in the diner. We didn't spend a lot of time talking about the thing. I knew a little bit because I know her. All I needed to know was in this moment, in your today body, in your today mind, in your today brain, cuz that's really all that we're experiencing. There's this habituated pattern, there's this neural association that is happening and being reinforced. Uh, not obviously by choice. You know, not being like, this is the neural pattern, I am so excited to keep reinforcing every day. No, we just live our lives and we do our stuff, and we do it the best we fucking can. And when we just live our lives and do the best we can, you know, we just, uh, encode in a bunch of things. And that's just how the mind and body work together.
[00:13:56] So I knew that today she was gonna wake up and feel different. I pretty much knew it, but I was like, okay, well I'm not gonna maybe say that with a hundred percent feeling sure, but she did. She woke up today and she felt different. She felt relief. She felt, already that shift of change is happening. And what happens sometimes with change is that like, okay, well we've changed something and then we're still kind of in that place of like there's a gap. The brain will always be like, yeah, but then there's still this other thing.
[00:14:29] I'm like, okay. So let's just for a moment be in the change, knowing that you woke up and it felt different. That's really important. I like to always take that and spotlight that and highlight that. It's the same in pain reprocessing. When does this feeling not occur? When is this back pain different? When do you sit in a chair and not feel this? Right?
[00:15:01] We're always trying to break open and create space in between this really tight narrative about the mind and body. I sometimes like to think of it as slowing down the movie that we tell ourselves. And looking at each frame and then looking at the space in between the frames to see that when we slow down, there's actually so much more there to be aware of.
[00:15:31] And in those gaps, in those spaces in between, there is often the absence of the thing that we're trying to avoid. The thing that we're afraid is going to be forever. But we're not usually used to slowing things down that slow, that you can see the space in between. We're usually used to going at the speed that we're we're going on. And oftentimes when we're afraid, we're actually going really fast. When we're afraid of fear, when we're afraid of the pain, we're actually speeding up. When we speed up, there's like this nervous system response, which is like when you speed up with fear, it's signaling to your brain there is something to be afraid of.
[00:16:19] So the fear becomes this kind of self reinforced experience in which you're like, I'm afraid there's something to be afraid of. And then the body feels the fear, and then you're like, well, yeah, here's the fear. So we are afraid. So there is something to be afraid of, right? So we're experiencing the thing that we're afraid of, but only because we are feeling it. When we feel something, it's like we believe that that is the proof, that the fear is real. And in mind body work, what we want to do, what really benefits us to do is to see that we are feeling fear and recognize that that is a temporary, associated physiological experience that we are having in this moment. And maybe in this moment, there is nothing threatening in this now. Sometimes there are. And so it's really useful to start to be able to have accurate neuroception, right. And I don't mean to say this in a way where I'm saying there's nothing to be afraid of. I can't make that promise, but once we start to look at our fear in a different way, then we can begin also that process of change.
[00:17:39] One of the things I told my friend today was, it's gonna be weird. It's like change is weird. Like it's gonna feel weird to not have this thing that you have hated every morning when you wake up for years. It's gonna feel weird when it's not there. And I want you to just embrace the weird, like there's oftentimes a gap between when we started unhooking those old habitual neural associations, when we stop automatically doing the thing that we hate doing, that we want to be changing. When we stop doing that, because we've done that change work in the mind and the body, there's still this kind of weird spaciousness in which we haven't quite filled it in with the other stuff.
[00:18:32] And if we can learn to hang out in that space, we might make some amazing discoveries about who we are, what we want, what we like, what our body is capable of, what our mind is capable of. But weird. You know, we're not really sold on weird is good. And I just want you to let that be okay. Let it be weird when the pain changes. Let it be weird when you don't wake up with a panic attack. You know, change is weird. And maybe if we can be like weird, cool, weird, awe., Letting go of that needing to know, that sense of control and just floating a little bit. Letting that big deep breath come in and be felt. Maybe bringing in, a belief of safety, knowing that this change is the change in the right direction.
[00:19:35] That's what I wanted to share today cuz I'm kind of over being stuck. Not because I think I have to create this podcast. If I decided like, I don't wanna do this anymore, I'd be totally fine. You would be totally fine. It would really be okay, but it's not really what I want.
[00:19:55] I'm like, all right, self, I hear you. Let's see how weird this can get. How much I can kind of meet that desire to learn and share and create and help people understand how we create change in our mind and our body because this is what we are looking for, we all need help. And when we only identify help as being something we take in a pill or in a surgery or in an injection or that we have to be somebody else to experience things differently. I just don't think that that's true, and sometimes the change is happening. And we're just not able to perceive it. So I wanna invite you to slow down and notice, maybe what's different.
[00:20:53] I'm excited to keep working with my friend. In her comments to me today, she's like, oh yeah, that was really cool and, but it's still not dot, dot dot. And I was like, okay, well if that is what you want, we can do that. We can get there. But also revel in that space and that spaciousness of Hey, this thing that used to bother, it doesn't bother me quite as much. When we really, really let ourselves see our own growth, our own majesty, our own process, then you know, we can actually really embody the change that we make for ourselves all the time. The times that we make things 1% better for ourselves.
[00:21:43] There are two more days of hypno zoom. There is the 29th, and then there is the 30th. And on the 30th I'm doing my insomnia protocol at 10 o'clock 10:00 PM Eastern time. So if you have a trouble sleeping, please hop on.
[00:22:00] So, for 2023, I'm gonna be shaking up my practice. So I have my 12 week pain recovery program and that comes with a lot of pain science education, that comes with kind of all of the learning that I think really helps somebody understand the mind body process, understand the current neuroscience, and really helps support how we create change in the mind and body, and that includes, weekly coaching session. Some people are doing it every other week, and I wanna say for that kind of work, it's really helpful to do it weekly or every other week. We want consistency. We want to be practicing new things on purpose. And we need, you know, time yes to metabolize information and change, but not too much time.
[00:22:56] But if you have been on this road, on this journey, created changes in your mind and body. If you understand this work on a deeper level. If you have gone through working with a pain reprocessing therapist. If you have read Dr. Sarno, if you've been through the Curable app and been to curable groups or whatever it is, if you have done this work and there's just still some stuff hanging around and you want to take it deeper, you want to like really feel the embodied shifts that you know are possible for you and maybe you feel stuck or you have like a goal that you want to achieve and there's still this kind of gap. Please book a curiosity call with me. Really opening up my practice for people to work with me one on.
[00:23:47] And in that work, you know, I've got people who want to do work just monthly, once a month. Right. As a kind of support, as a kind of anchor. They've got all these other supports in their life. Maybe they're in different programs, but there's some deep knowledge. And then there's some stuckness. And one of the things that I have come to love about my life is when I feel stuck. I know that I can find help. And help might mean a podcast. Help might mean read this book. Help might mean watch this video or help might mean be inside of a container in which I can be supported and scaffolded in this embodied experience, this like mind body experience, safely where I feel held and welcomed, curious. I think that's one of the things that I'm very good at, is creating that space for people. And now I've got all of these new tools and it's so much more fun to play, to play with change.
[00:24:54] So if that's you, if you want more like hop on a curiosity call and let's see if we're a good fit and if you are interested in working together. Thank you for listening to Move with Deb, the podcast. I'm excited to share more about what I'm calling my mind body hypno coaching practice. It keeps evolving because I keep evolving. I look forward to sharing more about change and how it is possible for everyone who has a brain and a body. Right thank you so much. Bye.
