#282 Rewiring Your Nervous System: Your Body's Hidden Map to Healing Trauma with Dr. Aimie Apigian

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal. Hi and welcome to How Humans heal. I have Dr. Amy Apigian here with me today. She's the author of the Biology of Trauma book. And I'm so excited for you to join us today, Dr. Amy because this is such an important topic for everyone and especially it's been of great interest to me to understand how trauma affects us as humans and, and how we can recover from the trauma that we've experienced. So thank you so much for coming to share about the book with us today.

Well, I'm excited that I do have a book. I'm excited that I wrote a book. It's still a pinch me moment that, oh my goodness. I actually, I actually wrote a book. And here it is. And it is. You know, I never actually realized how much goes into writing a book. I never. Until you do something right, like you can have your opinion about it, but it's a whole different thing to actually write down. And just like the forcing your brain to think in a certain way of the reader. And they're going to sit down, they're going to start at chapter one. And where do you want to start them with? Because, you know, the topic of stress and trauma is so huge, I can start anywhere. And so it actually was quite the process. I rewrote the book eight times. So this is the eighth edition of this book. It took me that many times to get it right in the sense of this is. This is the experience that I wanted to create for the reader.

Thank you so much. And it's. And it is, again, it's such an important topic. I can see why you put so much care into helping people to feel like you're. You're taking their hand and saying, let me help you understand this in a way that isn't scary. Because when we talk about stress and trauma, it can re trigger our stress and trauma.

That is the challenge, isn't it is sometimes in the attempt to heal, we end up just retraumatizing ourselves. And we find that there's been a reason why our body and our mind have wanted to keep everything stuffed down Keep everything packed tightly away and to, yeah, it, to experience that fear in the healing process of. I don't even know if I want to look inside because of all the stuff that I'm afraid that I'm going to uncover. Some of it probably, I don't even know. And that's, that's scary. Why, why would we want to do that? It seems much safer to just keep packing that stuff down until distracting ourselves and keep distracting.

Right. That's. What, what do we do instead? Looking at the trauma and then comes.

A moment when we can't do that anymore. And my intention is to help people not feel as scary about that so that they don't have to get as far in that breaking down process as I did. And if they have reached that breaking down process, to have a clear path forward so that they. It's like a map to your inner world. Here's how to safely, safely unpack decades worth of experiences of being hurt, being betrayed, being alone. That stuff hasn't gone anywhere, Donnie. It's all just been waiting for us.

And, and this is the thing is, I think a lot of times people may be listening and, and thinking, well, do. Was that really a trauma that I experienced? Do I really, Do I really fit this definition? So maybe, you know, just starting off like you're starting to do already, just what does that look like? What does that. How does someone know that this book could help them? What are some ways they might be like, oh, that sounds like me.

Well, the good news is that this book is actually really written for the person who doesn't think that they've had trauma because it's going to show them otherwise and it's going to show that to them. In, in the science of this is how you would know that your body's holding onto trauma now. So this is what's different about other books, because I feel that other books in this, in the field have done a great job of really learning how to qualify events. What, what constitutes a big T trauma? What constitutes a little T trauma? Let's label these events to help us understand what we've been through. And I take it a different route. I say let's not even look at the past. I'm going to look at your life today. Do we see trauma patterns showing up in your life today? Do we see patterns in your relationships that would suggest that you are holding on to beliefs about yourself, about others that would have come from a traumatic experience? And then what about your health?

Right?

What about your health? Do we see patterns Showing up in your physical health today, because that is what will happen when the body has been storing trauma. Things happen to us earlier, and our body doesn't immediately show the manifestation of that pain, fear, or overwhelm. It takes years. So that's what this book is about, is the years of a biology of trauma that forms. And that's one of the primary mechanisms by which the body is holding on to trauma, is in our biology. So how would you even recognize that by your physical health, whether symptoms, conditions, or maybe you already have a diagnosis. But that is one way that we can actually recognize whether we think we've had trauma or not, whether we acknowledge it, whether we remember it. Donni. Our body is telling us, I'm holding trauma, which means that we need to do some work.

Because it's true, when it comes down to it, I would say, and I'm curious what you would say, but 99% of health issues are related to stress and trauma exposure. So, like, you're saying, if you have health issues, there's at least some percentage of it that's due to exposure to stress and trauma as humans. Because ultimately, as. As humans, that's. Life includes some exposure to what we would consider, you know, a stress or potentially a trauma. And so it's like, if you're human, there's going to be some of this exposure. And if to the extent that we just ignore that or dismiss it, it's just delaying the inevitable of realizing, oh, gosh, I need to look at that. And it doesn't like you. I think you're saying we don't necessarily have to recall because that's a lot of times people's fear, Right? We have to, like, relive it or recall it, and that's not necessary for healing. Tell us more about that.

Yeah, so this was what happened to me. So I was a physician, and I was a general surgery resident, which, as an empath, was not the best career choice for me. But I didn't realize it at the time because I was so disconnected from my body that I much preferred being busy and doing things to being and feeling. So I was running away from my feelings without even knowing I was running away from my feelings. And I would always just be frustrated at those patients. You know, those patients, they come in and they have a bunch of symptoms, but there's not that much wrong in their labs. And as a physician, you're like, I don't know what to do for you. And that's very frustrating because I'm trained to help people So I prefer the patients that I can help, that I. I know what is wrong, and so I can get out my pen and prescription pad and prescribe the right treatment for you. So then when I became that patient, I became the patient who was sitting in the chair with symptoms that wasn't being explained. That wasn't really explained. My labs were mostly normal. And that was when I realized I've got to do my own trauma work. And this was coming out of my experience foster parenting and then adopting. So that's why I knew that it was now my time to have to do my own trauma work, stop focusing on everyone else, and do my own trauma work. I was scared. But I'm also a perfectionist. Well, I. Now I'm a recovering perfectionist. I was a perfectionist then. And so my approach was, I'm all in. If we need to do trauma work, let's get this done. Sign me up. Let's do the. And I did it all. So I would go into all this therapy and I would just get overwhelmed. Donnie I remember coming home after great, amazing therapy sessions thinking that I'd done such great release and, you know, processing of stories, and then I just lay on the couch, completely exhausted, binge watching movies because I didn't have the energy to even think or move. And then, of course, there would be some form of emotional eating involved with that. And I didn't realize that I was doing the therapy in the wrong way. I was actually re. Traumatizing myself in the process of trying to heal.

And I've been there, too, believe me. I've been in that. On the same couch doing that same thing, because it's, you know, this is what we were told is the way what to do. You know, if you're feeling stressed or you're feeling overwhelmed, you have anxiety, then go to this process, and this is gonna help you. And yet it's, it's, it's. It's only helping to some degree or exactly.

Maybe, maybe not. And what I would want people to know is that, especially those who have any health issue, you can't do therapy like everyone else. Your body is already carrying a burden. Being unhealthy is a stress. It is a burden, which means that it's taking up energy. And therapy requires energy, change, healing, that requires energy. And if all of your energy is going into trying to clean up the inflammation in your gut, trying to clean out the oxidative stress that's accumulating, trying to clean out toxins that won't budge because your nervous system is in survival mode and your detoxification pathways are shut down. And now your mitochondria are being affected and they're not even making as much energy. This is all going to impact your ability to go into therapy and to have the capacity to do deep trauma work. So that's what happened to me. And I realized that I was experiencing this effect where my own biology was what was holding me back.

And that's why you went into researching the biology of trauma and writing the biology of trauma.

Everything that I share in this book in terms of the biology that can hold a person back, I learned from personal experience I had, that I had the head injuries from the past, the concussions and the whiplash that I didn't know were still affecting me and were going to be creating signals of danger for my nervous system. And so knowing now that my nervous system is really what it's all about, it's what state is my nervous system in. My nervous system can either be in the state where it engages the healing pathways of the body, the own innate healing strategies of the body, or it can be in one of the two survival modes where this is not the time to heal, this is the time to survive and to do whatever we have to do to survive. And really, that is one of the essence for how the biology of trauma is created, is the body adapts to survive. The unsurvivable.

And that thing is, I think a lot of people are existing in survival mode most of their lives.

Most of their lives, Donnie. And at least when I discovered this, I didn't realize how much I was living in anxiety because it had just been how I lived for so long. I didn't realize that it had become my normal. It had become my normal. And to realize then slowly, over time, over the years that it took me to piece together this biology of trauma understanding, to realize the impact that that had had on my body. It wasn't just that. Well, I had some negative self thoughts and I would criticize myself and judge myself. Yes, that was part of it. Yes, I had formed beliefs about myself that I was unlovable, that I had to perform and achieve in order to be worth someone's time. Yes, I had all of those beliefs, but the cost had also been in the form of my own physical health because it was building under the surface over time, and I had been able to ignore it. So I hadn't seen it until I started having these health issues. And it would just be one thing after the other, one thing after the other. And my Body just was not even in a place where it could engage the healing strategies that our body does have.

Yeah, And I think I love how you're talking about it as. It's a different way. First of all, you're. You're helping us to see that the mind and body are connected. But we think that stuff that happens in our, like, in our. Like a trauma or a stress is all in our head, but it's not. It's in our. It's in our whole body. And then to say that it's really about the healing is about paying attention to your nervous system. And I, I so much see this too and agree with you. And I want to highlight it because, like, I think that this has. Is a real turning point for people to understand better how stress affects us and how to heal it and to realize that our. The signals that our nervous system is giving us when we're in survival mode versus in recovery or calming mode. And to learn, like you're saying, little by little, how to choose these more calm signals for ourselves. Because it's only, of course, when our daily routine is giving us signals of safety that we can finally heal. And so the only way we can choose signals of safety is when we. When it feels good to us. And when we've been through trauma, we don't. Unfortunately, being in survival mode and being stressed is what feels normal and good, like you're saying. So we have to retrain ourselves to be like, actually, no, this is what I'm choosing. Maybe you can speak into that a little bit. How do people start to understand how that shows up differently in the nervous system and how to start choosing differently?

Oh, this is so important, Donnie, because part of the trauma response is feeling helpless. Part of us experiencing a trauma was that we didn't have a choice or we didn't feel that we had a choice. We had to go along with something that wasn't what we would have wanted. We had to experience something that we would not have wanted to experience that was not what we chose. And whether it was another person forcing their choice on us or life happening and life forcing its choice on us, either way, there's that strong element as part of every trauma response, this aspect of, I can't make this stop. I don't have a choice here. And so it's really important then for a person to allow that choice. We call it agency. Right. Like, I actually can do something and I can make a difference. In my book, I describe that moment where we go from stress into trauma. And it's realizing that there is nothing else that I can do that will make a difference. And in that moment, then you've lost your sense of agency. And so then that's when our survival strategy changes and we use the, the three survival strategies of the trauma response. So this idea then is we have to start to regain my sense that, no, I can do something and it will make a difference. And I mean, there, this, this goes so deep. And I'll just, I'll just say something, Donnie, that in my book I talk about a very enlightening psychology study that was done with dogs that showed how learned helplessness gets wired into our body, not our mind, our body, learned helplessness. And it was a shock for me to see myself as a very high functioning person. I have medical degree, I have two master's degrees. I have two board certifications. I've been through several different trauma therapy trainings. I have my functional medicine training. I am very high functioning. And to realize that I had learned helplessness wired into my body and my nervous system was a shock to me. But this is all part of then again, this importance that you've brought up of moving into. I have choice. And here's where the choice lies. There is not everything that we have a choice about right now when we're starting out. We can't choose to. I'm going to wake up and I'm not going to have a trigger today. That is likely not something that you have truly a choice over, because it's not in your logical conscious mind's ability to stop a trigger from happening. That trigger happens in your survival system, which is not your logic. It is your survival system. So you don't have a choice over your survival system at this time. But what you do have is, what you've mentioned is that I can create safety for my survival system so that it doesn't kick in, so that it is receiving messages of that is a problem, but it's not a survival threat. And so we start to create moments and signals of safety. This is what we can do. Now, I do this through a number of ways, but what I'm really teaching them to do is to be able to feel in their body when they feel like they are in survival mode and when they are in safety mode. Because if they don't know that, Donnie, how do they even know when they need to shift their body from survival to safety? So that's the first thing that I teach them to do, is being able to recognize what state is your nervous system in right now. And if it's in stress or trauma survival modes, let's shift that. And then I give them something to do in order to shift that. And then that starts to build their sense of I can do something. I have been confused by my body, but I can learn to work with my body. And that then starts to open up these doors that had previously just been locked of. It's not even an option to go in and do this deeper work safely because I don't even feel my body or, or I can't shift my own system out of survival mode. I don't know how to create safety for myself. Those are the essential. I call it the foundation. That's the foundation that you have to have in order to be able to do the deeper work safely.

And I talk about it as like creating a toolbox, right? Like you can. And it's not the same for everyone, right. We all just have to kind of see what is it that for my body creates that safety. What can I start to put in my toolbox or, you know, first aid kit or whatever you want to call it that you can. My survival mode kit that I can. And then it. You have to start, you have to remind yourself first, oh, I have a toolkit. Where is it? What's in it? What can I start to choose? Right. And it just takes practice to catch yourself. Or even sometimes at first you. It's after the fact and you realize, oh, I really could have chosen something in my toolkit at that point. Next time I'm going to try to catch it earlier, right? And then we, we catch it earlier and earlier to be able to redirect because we start to realize that the, the anxious thought or the, the trigger is not us.

Well, I would say sometimes it is if it's our biology, for example, so quickly, right? Yes. Yes. In that sense. In that sense, yes. That is not our true self. That is not our true authentic self.

But we have to kind of like pull back enough to be like, okay, that's the fear talking, or that's the trauma response talking. How can I have enough awareness that I can go, okay, I see you.

And Exactly, I see you and not the, no, I don't want to see you. I'm going to avoid you. I'm going to try to stuff and numb and distract myself. No, it's. I see you. And we have different resources now, and we're not stuck anymore. And we're not that little girl staying in front of her daddy anymore. So this idea that safety for everyone, it starts with safety. And that, I think, is a really helpful thing to orient people to. So in that sense, like, that is the first thing for everyone, creating inner safety. Now, how you do that can be different for different people. There are different specific principles that we can use. But let's take a specific example so people can understand this. Let's take lavender. Now, lavender, for many people is a very calming scent. The scent smell is a very powerful way to shift our nervous system either into survival mode. If we smell burning toast, or if we smell roses or lavender, it's the smell that will shift our nervous system. But what if you as a child, grew up next to a lavender farm and your family was one of chaos, created fear, created a sense of terror for you? Sometimes you smell lavender and it takes you back to that home for someone next to you. Yeah. Lavender for them is calming and creates that sense of safety for you. Lavender is not going to create safety. So this is where it still requires safety for everyone. That is where everyone starts. But exactly like you said, we each need to learn our body, our nervous system, and what creates safety for our nervous system. And what are those triggers that we just want to avoid right now, because we're not developed yet in our toolkit to choose something different in that moment. And we need more practice to be able to handle those bigger triggers that we do want to be able to navigate differently at some point in the future. But choosing right now to keep things in a manageable place.

Having optimal cortisol and adrenaline levels is essential for health and longevity. And yet the stress in the present and in the past can affect our cortisol and adrenaline levels, causing them to be too high or too low. The thing is that we're not all affected by stress in the same way. So over the past two decades, I've been researching and discovering how to help my patients recover from stress. And I've identified the that fact five stress types, which are the five common patterns of disruption in cortisol and adrenaline levels. The reason why this is so important is because the treatment is different. When cortisol is too high, we use different herbs, nutrients and other modalities to bring levels back to optimal than if the levels are too low. So that's why I, through research, developed the Stressed type quiz, which allows you in under two minutes to discover what likely your cortisol and adrenaline levels are. So then you can make decisions about which herbs, nutrients and other healing activities to choose to help optimize your cortisol and adrenaline again and improve your health. Now and into the future. Just go to stresstypequiz.com where you can take the quiz and take it from there. It just gives me goosebumps talking this through because it's so. Because I've been there and I've lived it too. And I. And it's. It just. It's getting to the core, you know, like, so much of the time. And too, when I'm talking to both colleagues and patients, we. People will say, well, I've done all this therapy and it's like at the superficial level, you know, it's like. And like you're saying it could even be re triggering and making you feel worse along the way. And it's just like. But it feels like it's just so superficial. But what we're talking about is like getting to the core of the wound and actually doing the healing. And it's tricky because it's an invisible wound. We can't see this wound. Right. But it's there and it can heal. It's just how to gently, softly heal it effectively without making it worse.

And that's it. How to actually heal it effectively, gently so it doesn't make it worse. You know, I spent years in surgery, and when a patient would come in, say they had a tumor needed to cut, needed to be cut out, just.

Like you can see.

You can see exactly. It's in their body. It is definitely in their body, and it is definitely not. It's causing problems. It's causing problems. So just like the stored trauma in our body, it needs to go. But what if, as a surgeon, I just say, okay, let's do it right now, and I take them immediately to surgery. Maybe there's even no anesthesiologist because they haven't had time to prepare. I haven't done any of the lab work. I haven't done any of the imaging. I haven't done all the preparation to make sure that they are actually stable and ready for this surgery. If I cut them open, Donnie, I may have good intentions. I have very good intentions. I want to help them and remove this tumor. But it's actually going to make things worse because I'm not doing the preparation. I'm not doing the foundational work that allows their body to even be ready for a surgery. For many people with cancer, we needed to have them do nutritional plans first. Why? Because if we took them to surgery as they were, they were so malnourished, it was going to make them worse. The surgery was going to make them worse. And so this is the Same approach with trauma is that we've got to do the foundation, we've got to do the preparation in order for it to be something that helps us and not something that just makes it worse.

It's so important. And to, to start to be able to put some imagery around, around it, to, to say it is significant. We do see it, even though it's not visible. We can, we can sense it and we can, we can validate it and ignore it.

We can see the effects of it.

And then we can say, and then there is a way to approach it that's, that doesn't have to be more traumatizing and, and if, and not even to disrupt your life. Because I think that's. A lot of times people think, oh, well, I'm too busy right now. I'm, I've got kids, I've got work. I'm too busy to deal with my trauma. So I'm gonna go to addiction. Right. This is where people go to addictive substances or addictive behaviors or, or just work, workaholism, you know, to avoid it. Right. Because we can't. There's something we're gonna do. It's. It's, it's inevitable. Something's gonna, you're going to do something to try to either avoid it or address it. What do you say when people are like, but I'm so busy. How can I do this when I'm busy?

And that is what I get a lot. Of course. And my, I mean, what, what I see is that when we are doing the foundational work, when we're doing the preparation work, it doesn't take a lot of time. In fact, Donnie, I don't want you to spend a lot of time doing these exercises. So I'm going to give you exercises. I'm going to give you somatic self practices. I'm going to want you to do them every day. But do you know how long I want you to do them? Two minutes.

Do I have two minutes? I can do two minutes, right? We do two minutes. Two minutes of not scrolling on social media that we can do for two minutes.

Yes.

Exercises you're going to teach.

And that is why I. It's, it's baby stepping our way into even learning how to feel safe. And that feeling safe is safe. So many people don't realize that their busyness is the mask that they use to avoid stillness. Because stillness is actually terrifying. Feelings start to surface.

Nothing is, is like. We avoid. Like the plague.

Exactly.

Because we might be considered lazy or, Or. Yeah. Or what might. What are we gonna. What's gonna come up in those moments?

Exactly. And, you know, when I. When I. Even as I look back at my own experience, there was this fear of, I can't do therapy right now because I can't fall apart. And I think that if I opened everything up, I would fall apart. And I can't fall apart right now. And so this idea that I want people to understand is that that's not where we start. We don't start with the deep stuff. We don't jump in like what we've been taught. Instead, we baby step our way into it. Which is why at first, I don't want you doing these exercises for very long. In fact, I want you to be doing less than what you think you can do because your mind has one idea of, oh, yeah, I can handle this. And your body has a different idea of, no, you don't understand how much pain I'm carrying. You really don't want to see all of this. And so just 15 seconds here, 30 seconds there, two minutes here. But it starts to form the neural pathways of connection. We have been living disconnected. That's one of the primary patterns of trauma. So we live disconnected. How do we form the neural pathways? That connection is now our new way of living life, connecting with ourselves and with others, but with ourselves first and foremost. That takes baby steps. One of the reasons why I became an addiction medicine physician was to be able to study this aspect of the nervous system and, and trauma and how to safely change someone's life drastically. And this was it. If I. Well, I, I wasn't doing this. If they tried to cut themselves off cold turkey from whatever they'd been using, some of them nearly died. This is too big of a change. And the same is true with us. Our nervous system has become dependent on a certain level of stress, on a certain level of busyness, on a certain level of people pleasing. And if we try to change that and cut that off cold turkey, say, no, I'm never doing any of that again. It's so unhealthy. I'm only going to do this. It's too big of a change. Our nervous system can only do small changes at a time. And then it embeds that through the neuroplasticity. So that's what, that's how we do the stabilization, the preparation, the foundation. And that's what allows the more regulating of a nervous system. And then it's safe to do the deeper work, Donnie. Then it's safe to do the surgery and actually cut that out. If we want to use that terminology for the tumor, but have it be something that is the next best step, because we're ready for that step. We've done the work ahead of time to lay the foundation for us being ready for that.

I wanted to highlight a couple words that you were using for people, if they might be new words. Neuroplasticity is one word that I love, the concept of neuroplasticity, because this is where science shows us that our nerves can heal.

Right.

For a long time, we thought, oh, the nerves are just somehow, like, set in stone, and they're going to be just that way the whole. Our whole lives. And actually, now we know that nerves and the nerve pathways can change. We have this power. This gives us the power to heal from trauma. So it's so exciting, the concept of neuroplasticity. Maybe just say if there's a couple words of how you talk about or think about neuroplasticity.

Yeah. Neuroplasticity is this feature of our nervous system to make things easy for us. Literally, that's its job. Its job is to make things easy for us. So when it sees us doing the same thing every day or every week, it's like, oh, you know, I could make that easier for you, and I could just create a neural pathway that you then can do it without thinking about it. Thinking requires energy. So our nervous system, through neuroplasticity, tries to make things easy for us so we can save our energy. So. So whether it's brushing our teeth, whether it's driving home from work, we have these things that we've done so many times. We can do them on autopilot because of neuroplasticity. That is neuroplasticity. Unfortunately, what we have also wired in through neuroplasticity is our patterns of responses to problems and people, which means that we are responding in the same way that we've always responded because it's become our default. Our nervous system has said, oh, this is how we respond to people and problems. Okay, well, let me make it easy for you. Let me automate it. Let me make it the default way of responding. So now it actually takes energy to do something different. It takes energy to change that neural pathway into a different pathway that will give us a different response. So one way that people can know that they have stored trauma in their nervous system is by seeing that sometimes when there's a person or problem, they're overreacting or they're underreacting. Both of those are a sign of a dysregulated nervous system. And we want. I. I figured that's why I was like, just put that. Dysregulated.

Yeah, you're going to hear about. When you're. When you're reading out there, listening, you're going to see regulated versus dysregulated nervous system. Yes. So tell us, Amy.

So a regulated nervous system, you can think of it as flexible, as adaptable. So it's. It's a healthy response for whatever the situation calls for, knowing that our nervous system adapts to everything. So, for example, if we walk outside right now, it's hot right now, outside where I am. So if I were to walk outside now, the environment is hot and my nervous system is going to start sweating, so it can cool me down. So that is a response of my nervous system to help me. But if I have a dysregulated nervous system, I may not sweat for some time or I may start sweating too much. So there's even just this temperature regulation. There's the regulation that it does with my hormones. There's regulation that it does with my blood sugar levels. There's regulation that it does with my emotions. So if my emotions seem to be on a roller coaster, well, then that is dysregulation of my nervous system. And that is one of the features, it's one of the patterns that I talk about in my book is how to know you have stored trauma in your body.

So then that's. That's amazing. So then the concept is we can. Then we can reprogram the autopilot and we can regulate our nervous system through these baby steps and in doing so, create this. I would. This connection you're talking about, which is I. I'm thinking the goal is how do we reconnect with ourselves? Because I think that this is if people really take a moment to step back from their busy lives and be like, what's really happening in the conversation inside of you? And we. So many people share with me how disconnected they feel from themselves. Sometimes. I hear it as when women are talking about how angry they feel at their body, right? Like a lot of times it's that we. We feel disconnected from this body that we're living in. And ultimately our body is. Is our human experience, right? This is where we're our home through our. Our human experience. And so. But we can. I think it's really common to be disconnected from our body, even though we're existing in our body all the time.

And that's that's the reality of the effect of trauma. And I want to say the cost that we're paying a cost to be disconnected. We can't choose to just disconnect from the uncomfortable feelings. We can't choose to disconnect from the grief, from anger, from loneliness. If we disconnect from those, we also disconnect from joy, from happiness. So it's come at a cost. So, yes, I agree with you that so much of the healing journey is about reconnecting, reconnecting first and foremost with ourselves, even learning who we are because most of us have lost ourselves, lost ourselves. And so to regain that and regain it in a different way so that it's not, it's not the same relationship that we've had with our body. It's a completely different relationship. It's actually a friendship with our body. That is how we are going to heal.

Beautiful. It's so beautiful. And I. It's so rewarding to see patients go through this process. I know for myself, I like, I just get goosebumps when they, when I meet with them and I hear them talk, you know, then we see the signs of them healing, right? And we see them speaking from a completely different place where you can just know that they, they are connected with themselves. They've found this way of regulating their nervous system and finding that safety. And then they start choosing in a way that is leading them toward their passion and their purpose and the things they love and they want to be choosing and doing in their lives. And it's so beautiful. Maybe you can share. I don't know any. If you want to share any stories of people you've guided through this process.

Like you say, the stories are so inspiring. You know, I consider myself just a guide, a guide for those who want to create change in their life. And so I have so many stories, it's hard to know even where to begin. But as. And I, and I want to say I've also been impressed with how fast the body can change when it has what it needs, when it's actually given the right tools and the right sequence. Even though someone can have been living this way for decades and I see their body making such big shifts in such a short amount of time as a person learns to create safety. So, you know, I have a whole year long program walking people through all the different aspects of the biology of trauma, biology of attachment and grief and their stress and letting go, all of these aspects. But even just in the very first process, that foundational work, people start changing and having tremendous changes. John was one of them. So John came through my program, and just in the first 21 days, he cried as he shared this with the group. He was able to call his daughter, who he had not seen for eight years, and go out to dinner with her. And he said, I had. I had great time. For the first time, I was actually really able to be with her, to listen to her, not get into this, you know, triggering dynamic where then she storms off and she's mad again. Like, it was actually a really good time. And I hadn't been able to do that, hadn't been able to see her for eight years. And I just. As I listened to his share, I was thinking of the impact not just on him and the rest of his life, because now he can do. He. He can know that he can do these kinds of things. He can do hard things in relationships. But what was the impact on his daughter to receive that phone call and to hear from her dad, I'd like to see you. Can I see you? I mean, that's going to heal so much of her life as a result of the work that he did. And then I actually just got off a call this weekend with someone who has been in stuck. Like stuck in chronic health, specifically autoimmunity. And it had gotten so bad that she was having to take naps every single day just to get through the day. And in those first 21 days of setting the foundation, she no longer needed naps. She's now five weeks into it and hasn't needed daily naps. Something is shifting inside of her biology as a result of creating safety in five weeks. And she's in her 50s. And this started happening as a teenager. In fact, she shared with me that she didn't even think that she was going to live past 18 based on her family, their dynamics, and how her health was going. She was having to drive herself around at age 16. As soon as she could drive herself, she was having to drive herself, herself to doctor appointments to try to find answers. Her parents were not emotionally available to her. And so this led to 30 years of being on medical disability and to see this degree of changes and shifts in just a short amount of time. I am so amazed and truly honored to be able to work with people's nervous systems in this way and. And just guide them through the process. I can't create the safety for them, but I can show them how to do it, and I can show them the sequence of how to do it. And then the body does such amazing Things as if it's been waiting the whole time. And as soon as we give it what it needs, it often is able to shift. It's just, and those are just two stories. Got thousands of stories now from course members who've gone through and I mean their life, how they live life is completely different. I have some going through cancer treatments and they're using these exercises on the radiation table in order to create safety at a time when normally they would not be feeling safe, they would be in survival mode and they'd have all their thoughts of well, what if this, what if that. Literally contributing to their biology of trauma. Not anymore. Now they know how to create that safety, stay out of overwhelm and actually use the tools to create inner safety that will do so much for their healing process even during cancer treatments.

Oh my gosh, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing those stories. And I was so, so happy, so appreciative of you to share all of this in your programs and now in your book the biology of Trauma and to it is. It's. I see it too. It's so amazing. And once you once, once we experience it ourselves and we see that other people can access it too, of course we want others to know this information because you're not going to find it in the standard medical doctor's office or it's just unfortunately not integrated into the standard of care yet. And so it's something that you really have to get to that point of saying I'm choosing this for myself. So I don't know, is there something you could just for those who are listening here with us, anything that you could share with them that they could do now just to start to choose for themselves to choose into this a little bit and as a first step, absolutely.

You know, and oftentimes what I share first are the somatic self practices. Just because that's easy. It's easy for me to teach, it's easy for me to share and it's easy, easy to implement and it already starts to shift into that biology of safety. So what I'm actually doing is for those who order my book now, I'm giving my five day nervous system somatic reset for free, just included. So if they want to do that, then you know, they can go to biology of trauma.com and they can get my five day nervous system somatic reset. And you know, one of. I've pulled out five of the exercises that I teach in this foundational journey in that reset. And even those people who've gone through that five day reset. The changes that they've experienced in just those five days gives me a lot of hope that for those who will want to take me up on that, that this, this could change your day today, not something tomorrow or in the future. Some vague idea. No, like you can get it today and you can implement those exercises today and it can actually start to change how you feel today and start to shift your biology. So one of the exercises that I teach is the push away. So this is one where I imagine, I have people imagine that there's a huge rock in front of them. And what I want them to do is to push that rock away. Now some people choose to say, well, I don't want it to be a rock, I want it to be a problem. I want it to be this other thing. And I'm like, I don't care, I don't care. Because at the end of the day, what is actually the more important thing is just that physical movement. Because that's how our nervous system engages with the world is through the senses. So what we feel, what we see, what we touch, what we hear. So the more that we can bring in those senses, the more that it will help us learn how to shift our nervous system. So what a person would do is bring their hands up all the way to their shoulders and then slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, more slowly than you think that you would like to go, you push that heavy rock away. And the pushing away is creating the experience of having space. And when we have space, that is often a source of safety for us. Having space to breathe, space to think. How often time, how often do we find ourselves thinking or saying that I just need space, give me space to think, give me space. Space and time are signs of safety. So push, push. That's it. Yeah, just push, push, push away. Go very slowly and then be able to feel that. Like what, what changes in your shoulders? What changes in your chest? I, I feel like I've. I've got a deep breath coming. Hasn't come yet, but I feel it coming.

I definitely do.

There it is for me. Oh, Anna, yawn. So it's just that sense of this is a signal of safety to my nervous system. Now, for some people, because of their history, their background, their experiences, having space may not feel safe to them. Maybe they prefer to just be small, be in a small enclosed container to hide away from somebody or something. In which case then there would be a different somatic exercise that would be more powerful for them for creating that safety. But this is what we get it. It's like trying on clothes. Right? Let's try this one on and let's try this one on. Let's do both so that we can see what creates the strongest and fastest sense of safety for your nervous system. Because that's what we want in our toolkit.

Love it. Oh my gosh. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for, for sharing this. So you. So people can go to biologyoftrauma.com and click to order the book from there. The book is available many places. I'm sure it is.

Yeah. And from there they can order it, they can order it from Amazon. I've got the link for them to order it from Amazon or wherever they would like to order it. And then they just put in their order number, click submit and I give them the five day nervous system Somatic reset.

Love it. That's such an amazing gift. And then as they are reading the book, they're already being able to implement and be able to get, move, get, implement, get benefiting, start the benefits of healing from trauma. It's such a beautiful gift. Thank you so much, Amy.

Wow. Well, you, you and I both are here to, to help give people hope. And we give people hope through tools, practical tools, not just theories, practical tools.

It, it's, it really is, it's like again, going through, when you go through it yourself and you go, I have to share this with others. You know, it's like, of course we want everyone to be able to benefit from this. And as, as doctors, as, as, as care providers. It's, it's, it's from, it's part of our purpose is to be able to help others. And this is, I, I'm completely with you on this being the ultimate way to help others heal because then we can, we know we can prevent so many health issues so much and we can, like you're saying, prevent generational trauma. The effects of generational trauma.

That'S really where it's at. Right? Is not just improving our life, but improving the lives of our family members, improving the lives of the people around us like John and his daughter. Right. It's when we become more regulated people. It allows other people to see and experience more balance, a more centered, a more authentic us, which helps them choose the more healing and authentic themselves.

It's a beautiful ripple effect.

Yes.

Well, thank you again so much for joining us here today on how humans heal. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?

I just would like to share the hope right that it doesn't matter. It does not matter. It does not matter what your past has been. It does not matter how bad it's gotten. It does not matter. It does not matter. There is something that you can do and understanding the framework, understanding the layers that need to be healed, and understanding the order in which to do things can make all the difference in the world.

I completely agree and thank you so much for sharing that hope with us today. And we'll make sure we have all the links with the podcast notes so when you're listening, you'll be able to find Amy's book, the Biology of Trauma and get in contact with her where you can also get more help. Because you also lead programs online so people could be joining you from around the world to learn how to implement these techniques.

They do, yes. They join from all over the world. It's quite beautiful to see this global community all showing up for the single purpose of I want to create a better life for myself. And then I have the practitioner training for those who will want to become a Biology of Trauma professional.

Love it. Amazing. Very good. Well, thank you again and I can't wait to see you again soon myself and we'll stay in touch for sure.

Thank you so much, Dani.

Thanks everyone for listening in and I acknowledge your courage for listening into this topic and stepping into what's possible on your healing journey. And if you haven't already subscribed to this channel or How Humans Heal, I welcome you to join me for future episodes. I'll see you all soon. Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani. Com.