How Dance and Movement Can Help You Heal... and Even Transform Your Life!

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and today I get to introduce you to Jenny Cohen. She is an outside in recovery coach. And I am so excited for this conversation. Thank you so much for being here today, Jenny.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh my goodness. It's going to be fun, right? Because you and I have a lot in common in that we both love movement and, and I definitely see movement and dance as part of my medicine. It's one of my best medicines is dance. I've been dancing most of my life, so I'm excited to connect with you about that and share and share with the audience of listeners. What is that about dance and movement that's so healing and what have you discovered along the way? Also, you and I both love animals and in cats specifically. So maybe we can even touch on that how animals can be so healing. So anyway, tell us more about what is an outside in recovery coach. What is it that you do and how did you start doing that in the first place?

The secret to dance is that it is this therapeutic modality. And even though there's only recently been more research about it, we actually are instinctively drawn to it because it puts you in your body, it puts you in the present. You know, when I was a little girl, we immigrated to the States when I was 6. And I went from a country where I was the majority. Everywhere I looked, people looked like me, right? And the next six we came to this country and I didn't speak any English and my parents just stuck me right into first grade. So they're like, here you go. Yeah, welcome to America. And so I, I learned, I made friends. I was very lonely for the first, first three years. And then I finally convinced my parents to put me in a ballet class about third or fourth grade. I love that class. I felt so present and safe. I love to dance the tutu, I mean, the little pink outfit, everything. And then unfortunately, I was the only child whose parents didn't come to the little recital in the studio because they, they newly immigrated to the States. Even though they're professional people in Taiwan, in Taipei. Exactly the. When they came to this country in 1970, in the 1970s, early 70s, they owned a restaurant. And so that means dinner hour is very, very gotta be there. There's no one to take over for your company. And the lesson I learned though was how important and how safe I felt in that studio. Fast forward throughout college all the way through to once I became a mom of fraternal twins through in Vitro fertilization. They were a miracle baby. So I poured my heart into them and I got no breaks. So those of us who are moms, you know, you get so involved with your kids, you forget who you are. And to this day, I still remember the story that people told me when I first walked in. I had, I been. I hadn't showered, honestly. I had a baseball cap, sweatpants, and I walked in with this curved posture because I was chasing twins around the house for, you know, they're almost four. Four years of this. And I also breastfed, so it was like, you know, breastfeeding, like internal. And I walked into this belly dance class and it was as if I opened up like a flower. My posture opened up. I remembered what it's like to be in my body before marriage, before being a wife, you know, and I wasn't a daughter, I was a woman. And it also brought me to the present. Once you have kids or any type of even pet babies, you worry about them. It's like a little piece of your heart is that outside with no security. Right. And so we're. We're thinking, how do we keep them safe? We're coming up with all kinds of plans. There's pet insurance. We have over, oh goodness, $7 million of insurance for our kids in case something happens to us. Right. So we are really over planners. The belly dancing from a very early age of my children's childhood helped me be safe and let go of the past and stop planning for the future. I could just focus on how my body felt and I would dance and come back and be rejuvenated. That's how that started.

It's like a meditation. I mean, a lot of times what I find is like, if I. To me, like, because when you're dancing, when I'm dancing, I can only really be focusing on that. It's hard to focus on anything else when you're. If you're really paying attention to your body position and your movement and you're reminding me. Actually, I did go to a belly dancing class a few dad a few years ago. And I really. It was. It's really such an amazing. Because it's not just like you just go in and start doing belly dance. You're really doing this connection with each part of your body and how it moves on. And like you said, it gets you out of your head and into your body and. And in like a movement meditation for at least an hour, however long the classes, and you can go back to your real life.

If we think about Even though we were learning it in a culturally removed setting, oftentimes the cultures that this movement form comes from is our women who endured.

That's amazing.

It gives the inspiration. Right. And so we are borrowing from that way of still being present, aware of how life is precious and you only have the present. And that's what we have to. When you're in a long enough like I started really delved. I dove a lot into the culture aspects of it because, you know, belly dancing itself, it's called many different names in many different countries. There is one prevalent thing is that it is a dance of celebration. It's also a way to grieve because to be. Well, I'm Jewish faith by faith. I'm Jewish faith by choice. And there is a very important thing that I loved about the Judaism thing because my. My husband's brother passed right before we got married. And there is a celebration of life and the acknowledgement of goodbyes. Correct. And dance is very much like that. We still have to dance. We're in the middle of this coming out of this pandemic where we lost so many people and a lot of people are still grieving the culture that this dance from comes from. They dance throughout that. They dance throughout that. Coming back to our own lives and reclaiming and also in memory.

It's so beautiful.

Yeah.

Well.

And.

And a lot of what I see I was sharing with you that I. I do mostly now ballroom dancing. All different. Fifteen different kinds of. Of what would be considered ballroom dancing. And what I find is there's such intelligence and brilliance in the specific. Not just the depths and the rhythm, but the patterns. The patterns we're using that these were really acknowledging that they were determined by someone who spent a lot of time moving with their body and figured out what our nervous system needs in order to heal. And so I look at it as this. These movement patterns that we may. May give it a name, a certain type of belly dance or even yoga or. Or let's say salsa. It's. These patterns were developed over time because they're healing to the human nervous system. And as our nervous system heals from any sort of stress, like you're saying, from grief, from. From loss, from trauma, from anything. We. Our nervous system needs this as a. As a medicine. And if we can start to see. See movement in that way and that it's not necessarily the one's better than the other, it's that they all can be so healing and it may be one person might prefer one over another. What is your Tell us more about your experience with other forms of dance and even yoga. And because I know you've really spent a lot of time mastering these, you've become, in some cases, what they call a master in these forms of movement. What does that mean? And. And how would. If someone's thinking about it, they might be thinking, hey, what. How would I know what to choose?

What.

What would you. What would you tell them?

Okay, so there's so much I want to answer in so many different fronts. First of all, there is a whole branch of science called the neuroscience of dance. So any type of movement married to music actually marries and ignites your entire brain. It's one of the few activities, okay, so we acknowledge that first, and we meet on that understanding, and everyone accepts that right now, listening to this, right from there, then you want to understand that everyone's perception of music is different because we're culturally different. Gender difference, you know, life experiences are different. Right? As long as you acknowledge that, then the next step is then, because in my discover process, we talk about one, acknowledging with gratitude that you are here now, not in the past, and not worried about the future. That's being present. And so the giving gratitude every day. The second thing is being present through tuning into your five senses. So, you know the smell. Like, I always drink tea, not because I'm addicted to caffeine. Okay, I'm a little bit addicted to caffeine, but the. And the smell of the Earl Grey ties, too, right? Yes.

Cheers.

Cheers, everybody. So the Earl Grey smell and the Earl Grey taste ties me into the present with my five senses. Then you have the sound. You know, I have cats tearing apart my room right now as we speak. I feel my. My. My feet in my shoes, my butt in my seat. And then the last thing that I learned recently, which I really love, is if you tune into your peripheral vision, it takes your nervous system immediately down out of alarm and survival state. And that those tuning to those five senses and then going, all right, I want to move to music. And from there, you then say to yourself, right, because everybody's so different, what music do you instinctively want to move to? I talk about this in my podcast because some people don't like music. They love the sound of birds, any type of bird song, and they're swaying because everyone's neurology is a little bit different. So if you do those three steps first, that will start gearing you towards a direction that you know is going to be very therapeutic for you individually. For me, it's hip hop. Music and belly dance, the lot of polyrhythms in the format of belly dancing itself. I used to take hip hop with young babies, like in, in my 20s and 30s, I discovered hip hop in New York City and I would be taking classes with 18 year olds who study dance. And my class they were in was their warmup and I'm. It's a 90 minute class back in the day and I'm like, yeah, warm up, right? And yet over time, when I started starting the belly dancing, the polyrhythms, because I could hear all the complicated rhythms and you know this from your ballroom dancing. The music is so different, right? And the accent, you have to hit it. It made my hip hop better, so I was even sharper and cleaner after that. So there is a cross training you want to explore also and that will also inform you where you want to grow and where you don't, you can say no to. A lot of times we have fomo, right? The fear of missing out and that will sometimes get us into trouble, sometimes, like me signing up for this interview with you. That works to everyone's advantage. And at the same time, you want to sit in your body before you explore things. Because for every one of my decisions Now I'm almost 55 in July, I now will sit in my body and go, is this for me right now? And the answer is yes. I'm full steam ahead. My very thick program. I'm picking up two neonatal kittens on top of launching my book in my program and dancing on three different productions this month.

Amazing, right?

And if my body goes no, I go, okay, no, thank you, not. You know, let's try again with this thought or this new fangled music dance thing I might want to try next month. I'll revisit it.

Yeah, yeah. And I love that you're. Because as you said earlier, when we're busy, whether as a mom, as a running a business, you know, launching a book, you know, we get busy and we, we lose ourselves, we lose track of what is it that I really feel? What is it if I do I even like music? And which music would I pick? We're so, we're so much listening to music that someone else wants to listen to. So maybe even just starting there, even just kind of reconnecting with yourself and saying, hey, if I could listen to any music, what would I listen to in this moment, in this situation? And that might be different than what you might listen to in a different situation and just starting to play with that a little bit and open up those possibilities.

Right?

And then start to go, okay, how would I want to move to this music and. And almost create your own experience?

Oh, yes. You want to tailor your own journey using music and movement. We have different needs depending on our settings. If you've read the book Five Love Languages, which I first picked up when I was homeschooling my children, and it was the first version was the five love Languages for children. And I figured out, oh, wow, my kids have five love languages. I had to fulfill all of them. So then they don't act out when they're little, right? Because I was homeschooling them. So I homeschooled them all the way up to college and we made sure their five love languages were always being expressed to them. So their love tank was full. However, now I'm learning because I also apply that to my husband and I. That's why we're going to celebrate our 30 year anniversary in June.

That's amazing.

1. Thank you. Has you mature and change in your life, your love languages will change. That's 1. 2. Depending on the setting you're in, your love languages may change also. So then when you're using music and movement to be very present in those different roles, because let's be clear, right? We're never one person, we're different people in different settings. Those. If you apply what we're talking about to those different settings, it feels compartmentalized and it's not, because what happens, it starts to overlap and it keeps you very present. We're entering a stage where everyone's acknowledging. We all make ripples in our own settings, right? You make ripples, I make ripple. Every single person listening to this podcast, they have their own ripples. And some people are like, no, I don't talk to nobody. That's not true. You energetically make ripples even in your own space. That's how I adhere to it. And I think it really, it makes a difference now because then we all have a responsibility to make right choices for ourselves. That's how we're all going to heal communally and globally. That's what I think. And I will say something about the being busy thing.

I didn't realize I was running away for my life during my breast cancer. Also during my breast cancer treatment, I bribed myself with damn things every month, Dr. Donnie. Like I was, oh my gosh. And then when I was done with the recovery, I thought, I'm just gonna go back to my life because, you know, I'm busy. I'm a mom. I want to teach belly dancing. I was starting to compete in in Europe and I had placed very high up amongst many competitors and I thought I'm just going back to that. I missed all the signs of my precious children who were struggling. So I had, I had fraternal twins through ivf. They're the center of my universe. For me to have them was a miracle. Is a miracle continuously today. And one of my kids, they were starting to veer towards Dangerville and I missed all the signs because they stopped talking and it wasn't until they came up to me and this was, this is a trigger warning for some of our listeners. Right. They were self harming and making plans to not be on this plane anymore. And when they told me that at first I was like I got it. I went to clinical mode. I was an occupational therapist. I can do this. We locked up all the knives, put them into therapy and I thought I got this. And two weeks later when they had a severe relapse was when it was. I got stuck cold in my and realized oh my gosh Jenny, you're not present. You're not even missing when they're in danger. So I had to do real talk with myself and then staying present and using all the modalities that, that are that are presented and explored in the discover process. In my book I have been present. So now even though I'm really starting to expand out now, I know immediately when my kids are in danger. Like I enj I energetically feel it and I can be like are you okay? What's going on? And even if they like you know, sometimes they're not honest with you. Right. Even friends. I'm fine. You're like no, no, I feel something's going on. What's up? So I'm finding that balance and I do that with myself. Am I strong enough to do this?

So tell us Hellas yeah. You mentioned a little bit of your discover process before but is it, is it something you could go through and say here's Absolutely. And of course I'm going to be sharing the your link to your book. It's the book is the this outside in Recovery. Right. Is the name of the book.

Yes.

So and that's available already now so people can get the book and read mentality. Give us a little a sneak peek at the discover process if you don't mind.

Absolutely. I would love to share because one of the things I struggle with.

Everyone needs to heal. Right. Not everyone can afford to get the coaching right because you have to heal to be able to be productive and make money and then really heal on another level. And I. I wrote the book and produced it so that everyone can get their hands on it right now. We can all heal together and elevate together. You know, the rising boat. The rising tide lifts all boats, right? So the discover process, the. The D stands for really confronting and acknowled, especially for the breast cancer survivors, that this is geared towards that even though discovery process is applicable to everybody. Okay. For us specifically, did I almost die? That we have to confront because a lot of times we kind of blow over it. I should be happy, I should be lucky. How could I not feel anything but grateful every moment of the day? So then we just deny it. And that is essential for us to be like, wow, it's a miracle. I'm alive.

Like the elephant in the room that.

Needs to like, yes, it's the elephant in the room. And then that means that for us to. To acknowledge that. And I think it applies to everybody has. That has survived this global shutdown, right?

Yeah.

We need to celebrate every day. Every day needs to be a mini celebration. The I stands for movement is essential because everything that's alive moves.

Cells move, atoms vibrate, right? And for us to get better beyond the trauma that we're healing. Because for me specifically, anyone who has gone through any type of cancer treatment, you have to sit still for them to pump the medicines in you. You have to sit still for them to do the biopsies. And those of us who have had to do mammograms, you have to sit still with a mash, a part of you that should not be mashed to that thickness. And then hold your breath. And then try not to like, punch the person who's really sweet, whose job it is to do that. And different angles too. Like, you mash this way, you match, right?

Yeah.

The movement, the I move, you move of the I part is reasserting our power.

Right now. S IS stands for somatic intelligence. We are now starting to really discover and acknowledge how we say, well, my brain controls my body. Correct. The heart has a hundred thousand neurons that are reflective of the same as the brain. The our gut system is so complex, no one even quite understands it yet. So when we want to do something, our brain, right, our conscious part, our body tries to fulfill it, even to the point we. It hurts itself, correct? Athletes do this. My kids were with me. Gymnast, gymnast, Dr. Donnie. And the torture, you know, under the guise of training that people go through, marathon runners you have to turn off the pain centers in your body and then we'll run in spite of a sprained ankle because they have to train those certain number of miles per day. Correct. And so we need to acknowledge that your body is a sentient being in an intelligent system inside of us. And it actually has to be a back and forth.

Yeah. It's a two way communication. It's not just top down, it's body up and, and I see what you mean. Like we maybe have been ignoring the signals from our body from so long that we need to learn how to listen.

We have to. It is actually very essential. I, I love this curtain, this current movement towards introducing children to yoga that needs to be for every child in the entire continent.

I agree.

That's how we're going to change global consciousness.

C is can I self love. So self love. Right. We think self love is be like well I was raised, I'm 55 in July. Right. So back in the day it was like tough love.

Self love is tough love. Like you're not gonna like, you know, there's no grace given to you. It's how dare you eat that extra cookie. You know you can't afford that. I'm in menopause versus wow. What part of my childhood that I'm healing from is asking me I want that cookie when I know in my menopausal, my post menopause body from chemotherapy, that cookie is not going to help me feel better.

Yeah, it's like it's, yeah, it's that, that you know, acceptance of self and, and, and love of yourself to be willing to ask the questions versus just being hard on yourself.

You know, I, I, I've been celebrating Jomo. The joy of missing out. Not omo, I meant I met Jomo. Yeah. Right. Because Jomo is really literally saying I come first and even in, in every culture. Unless we're talking about Wonder Woman's culture. Right. We are all expected to be caretakers more than self caretakers. So we have to caretake the whole world first before we're allowed to take care of ourselves to the point that we get depleted. Right. We're we, it's no, no, no, no. Then how do we teach our children how to care for themselves and say no boys and girls and everything on the outside of those spectrums.

Absolutely.

Right.

Yeah. Like yeah, we can't do, we can't say we can't do both. We can't be not taking care of ourselves and then trying to teach our children to take care of Themselves. It's not going to make sense to them. We're not. Our behavior doesn't match our words. And that.

Exactly, exactly. O is for organic rage. So if any of us have had childhood, which we all have had adulthoods. Right. Unless you were lucky enough to have parents that could handle anger. We bottled up anger all the way to our adulthoods. There's no healthy way to express it.

And you know that saying if you, if you.

If you eat poison, expecting it to kill your enemies. Right. You end up just poisoning yourself. That's what anger is like. It doesn't hurt anybody else, but you really honestly, unless you're physically hurting somebody else and it's still hurting you.

It'S poison to your body.

That's such a good way to say it. Yeah.

Right. And so the organic rage of having had cancer, being survivors in this pandemic, that has to be expressed and then released. The acknowledgement is super important because there's parts of me from childhood that even though I have loving parents, there were situations they. That was out of their control. But you can't explain that to a three year old or a four year old. There's rage from there that I carried with me 50 years that needed to be expressed. That I know inherently in my bones.

It was a vital part of me getting breast cancer all the way through now. So it's important to release that. I don't want my cancer to come back. Ain't coming back. Sorry. We got things to do. Yeah.

B is the Venn diagram of your life. Everything overlaps over everything. I'm the center. Like what? Like the bagel from everything. Everywhere at once. That's us. And then everything else overlaps around us. My logo is overlapping petals. Because when we like to compartmentalize and sometimes our human brains can't compromise a compro. Comprehend too much of it. So we. We compartmentalize until we get a little bit more developed and then we can then go from there. Okay. Two more steps. E is elevated self talk. And that does relate to the self care and saying no in the self love.

There is a huge acknowledgment.

And introduction in the E step of how your subconscious is actually doing all of the goal achievement in your life. We set goals here consciously, but subconscious does everything to get us there. Right. And. And I know because I'm. I mean I don't know if you notice. I. I know you know, I Jenny Cohen, but I am very Asian and it's like centuries of this very.

Debilitating internal boundaries.

Yeah. It's in my cells. This very negative cell talk. There's no individualism where I come from. It's in.

It's. It's cultural. But then there's also transgenerational. You know, just to be able to acknowledge like, hey, this is. You know, it's. And I'm so glad you bring awareness to this, you know, like. And just say, say it in a way that's like. It doesn't have to be victimhood either. Right?

Correct.

It can just be. I'm acknowledging this as part of me and how can I then support myself through it, with it, transform it?

Yes, yes. When I am feeling guilty, it's not my voice, it's my mom's voice. It took me years of therapy to get to that point and understand, oh my gosh, every time I feel guilty, it's the shadow of a voice that is inciting shame when there's no need for it, you know, and. And that's also part of this pro. And so you gotta move outward to inward and r. The most important thing. Similar to what you were saying before. You know, Carl Jung has this very famous quote that I love. Right. Until we make the subconscious conscious, life will happen to you and you'll call it fate. And that's basically. That's what this book talks about. And I give a lot of personal stories. I just think this is essential for everybody to do. Like, even if you have never had cancer, you want to do this because prevent cancer big time. I think so. I really do.

I. I can totally see it. And I think not just cancer, but any cut. Heart disease, autoimmunity, dementia, I mean, every health issue, even I teach this. These aspects in the women I work with who are at risk for cervical cancer. Right. Another cancer. It's this HPV virus that we most all are exposed to. But why in some women, does it cause cervical cancer or other types of cancer? I. I see that it's come. Sometimes does come to these aspects that could be considered on an emotional, spiritual level.

But it's like we can so easily want to just push it under the rug and go on with whatever we're doing. You're saying it's worth it to stop whatever you're doing and work through these even. Do you encourage people to go like step by step, one by one, or do you.

Do they.

Do you encourage people to kind of work on all of them together integrated?

Those of us who are not familiar with movement that are listening into this interview. And you don't move much. You gotta Start there?

Yeah. Okay.

So they get you present immediately. Right. And then some of us who are doing a lot of movement, you still want to start there because you want to retrain yourself not to use your movement as a form of escape, which is what I did after a while, you know, after my treatment was done, I went back and really threw myself into movement. You know, I was belly dancing. Huge performances, standing ovations, and I would look in the mirror. I put a mirror here to remind myself, and I could not see myself. I would see the outlines. I mean, like full on makeup. If you go on any of my social media, you'll see pictures of me competing and doing huge things. I was a wizard for wizard of Oz and this belly dance production. And I see and I look now and I remember back then I could not see myself in the mirror.

Interesting.

And that is really important to acknowledge when that happens, and that's okay.

And yet at the same time, if you're not in your body, then you can't be of a support to yourself and the people that you love around you. I'm very motivated by my family. And I think if it were not for my children needing me, I would still be running this book never would have been written. And it was this. If I didn't, I would lose my children. This one particular precious baby of mine. They're full grown. To me, they're still that little baby that I went through in vitro from. You know, it was. It was vital because we would have lost them. We would have lost them. It really.

Does it touch you deeply when you realize, wow. And to then allow our life experiences to transform us, you know, allow. Oh, this. You know, it's okay to like, make choices then based on what you. What are your priorities? But, you know, right. Who's your. If the priority is being able to spend time with family and be there for them, that sometimes that's what gets us to change our. To look closer and. And really figure out what we're missing and what we could do differently.

Absolutely. And you know, there are people who will say, when I tell the story, well, I don't have kids. And I'm like, well, you still have people waiting for you to help them live their life. So we only heal. Very few people can heal in isolation. We heal in community. Right. If you've ever. I've never planted cabbages, but I love this story. If you plant your cabbages a certain depth, a certain distance apart, they grow very closed off, like very tight heads. If you grow them a little Closer together, they all open up. Wow. Right? So heal like a cabbage with us. Heal in community. Because even if you feel like you're alone right now, you're actually not. You're really not.

If you, if you.

And then if you feel alone, that's a part of your trauma state. And so if you're hearing this and you're like, I'm alone. And then, and then, and then a little part of you, like, no, you're not, then this is a call to arms for you to find ways of therapy to take that isolation mask you put on yourself and take a look at that. You know, it's different if you're in a very toxic, toxic situation like a family or workplace. We're not discussing that. That's a whole nother episode.

Right. We're talking about when you've been so enveloped in trauma, you feel isolated. Isolated and alone, in spite of obvious signs that you are not. That is an absolute call to arms. You. You want to address that, do this process and see if it helps. And of course, you want to book a call with me. Go to outsideinrecovery. Com. I have all these bookings available. We'll chat. You don't have to buy anything from me. I'll tell you how to apply the. These steps. That's fine too. It's vital that we all start healing.

I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, that. I'll put a link outsideinrecovery.com and yes, and I saw your. One of your cats there a second ago. You know, like, like, for me, animals have been so, such a healing part of my process even since childhood, because they can. And you're talking about, you know, feeling alone. A lot of times it's, it's having an animal, a pet, that really can help you connect. Even when we've had difficult or toxic situations, traumatic situations with humans, sometimes, then we can connect with an animal in such a way where they can be so healing for us. And of course, there's research on this too. But I'm curious your experience with animals, because I know you choose to have animals in your life.

So the universe provides the animals for us. I'll be very frank. People will kind of look at me aghast and be like, you have 13 cats. I'm like, yeah, well, technically we have 12.3, because my 13th is very small. But yeah, we had 13 cats. And every one of them is related to trauma in our lives. If we really acknowledge. Look back over it. And, And I was so Present during those times that I did not say no, when those cats came to find us. They talk about that, right? Cats find you. You don't find the cats. They come into your lives for a reason. It's universe. People who believe in God, Source saying, you need healing. So here is this little bundle of purring joy for you. Yeah, it's got nails, but that's, you know, it's like roses, they have thorns. Just be aware of it, right? And I know, right? She's giggling, but it's just, it's perfect. I love that. Yeah, great.

And I always joke, you know, my house, when I moved in, came with a colony of cats. I didn't, you know, like that, right? Like, I didn't. They were just here. I realized I moved onto their property.

Bingo.

Bingo.

And, and I didn't do it alone for my child who was in danger. We had just moved to Salt Lake City and I signed on to volunteer because I was fostering in New York. And then we moved to Utah and I signed up. And just as my child had the relapse and was really, really bad, I got a call from best friends here in Salt Lake. We need you to take three kittens. I'm like, heck yeah. And I. When the babies are very small, you just feed them every two hours. You wake them up, stimulate them, clean them, feed them. They fall asleep again and they would purr. So I put them all around my daughter, my, my child's chest. And, and, and. Cause I have a twin girl and a twin boy and they, you know, stay together when they. During this rehab thing. Cuz, you know, the other twin would support the one in danger. And the pictures of them sleeping with these baby cats, we kept one of them, his name is Apollo. He's this white Siamese mix, blue, blue eyes. And he's become the emotional support. That was the first one we kept for that. And so in caring for the cats to relate back to people who feel they need to find a calling and caring for a pet. And that's been part of the rehab too. First you gotta take care of yourself so you can take care of your pet. Because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't be there. You can't figure out cat pets and animals don't tell you I have a tummy ache. You have to intuitively, energetically feel what do they need. So it gets to the point that both of my kids will know instinctively what's going on with the cats themselves because they're so in their bodies. And they get in trouble too. Right. When they don't take care of the pets. And it usually happens when they don't take care of themselves. And it, it's just this, this avalanche, snowball effect. Correct. So my encouragement would be for people who can't have pets because some people go, I'm allergic to cats and dogs. Okay. There are a lot of nonprofit people raising pets like Dr. Donnie, you know, and there's a man in Turkey saving injured animals off the streets and he has a Patreon account. You can support those people in that way. And it's not for nothing, aren't kitten videos the hands down most popular videos everywhere?

Tune into those to help cheer you up. Don't watch the ones where they're injured. Okay. Don't do that. If that, if that's some of us that actually makes us more sad and trying disassociate more. Look at the cute little kitty videos and then use that to bring you to the present. Then do the movement with the present, then do the discover process and really you're going to find your life is going to turn around.

Amazing. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Jenny, for, for sharing here today and writing your book and sharing your experience and your, you know, really it's like what you learned in your life and your healing process and is, is such a gift to others in terms of how they can then apply that in their lives. So thank you again so much for that. And you, even though you, you mentioned you live in Utah, but you people can access you online right from there, wherever.

Please, please, the, the booking a call link with me, it's on the platform of book like a boss. Make sure you get the full like put in your phone. Not because I'm going to bug you, but I did that platform because I'm so busy I don't remember the appointment unless my little text goes, hey, you have a call, right? I mean this interview, I have it written everywhere. I'm so excited. If I have other things, sometimes your subconscious will make sure you don't make the call. Because anything new your subconscious thinks is dangerous. It's unknown. And we want to make sure when you set up a call with me, you're set up for success. The text option will remind you, you book a call with me, have a little chat. I record everything. So you can just go back to it, reference it. You don't have to take notes, you know, because my job is to take notes. Your job is to listen and share and be in the present and you get a recording the call. And then if you want to work with me, you can do like an app of classes or you can do the whole program that goes through all, through all eight of the steps.

Awesome. And it really brings me back to thinking about, as you said, our subconscious is kind of creating our reality and.

If we're not paying attention, it'll just recreate what we've already experienced in the past because it tends to do that. It tends to recreate what it's used to, what is familiar to. And so if, if we want to create something different in our health or our life in any way, in our relationships and our experienced, then we're going to need to take some actions to shift that.

Right.

That state that, to process what we don't need anymore. Let go of, you know, process the anger, let go of resentment, process the grief. Like you're talking, encouraging people through your process. So then we can choose more intentionally going forward. And so that's what I hear when I, when you describe your process and what you do is just really helping people to get to know themselves again, to let go of things from the past and be able to then choose more intentionally in the future. And that's, that's such a beautiful, such a beautiful thing to be able to offer people. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

I just, I'm so excited to meet you. I feel like we're going to be lifelong friends, especially since you live in Long island, where we lived for years when I was working in, in the city, New York City. The thing I want to just encourage everyone to do is it's okay to give yourself grace when you set these goals and you're not achieving them.

Yeah.

Or, you know, you want to have friends and they don't come to fruition. Oftentimes that's relating to this unrecognized script you come up with to survive your life. And our goal is for you to find that script, change it so that it works for your benefits so you can thrive. You know, we, I, I meet a lot of people who are go getters and they're, they're, they're out there and yay, I'm cheering you on. And then there's a lot of us who set all these goals and nothing actually takes off. Why isn't that happening? Right. And so you want to start looking. Well, maybe I want to work with someone or at least do, oh, this is really cool thing that our therapist did. If you're right hand dominant, you get two different colored pens and you ask yourself a question, and then you answer it with your non dominant hand. Now, sometimes you can't read the writing. That's okay. Over time, it becomes more legible. And then you can ask yourself, do I have a script? What does your left hand say? Because sometimes it can be very honest. It depends on what level you are at. If you do the dancing movement, being present, and then ask yourself questions, I think you're gonna be surprised. Some of the answers that you weren't aware of that your subconscious will answer for you. There's another thing called soul cards. Like, you can put yourself in that five senses, present state, and then think of one question you have, and then start collaging it and put it on a little card.

And then look at it and see kind of like what subconscious thoughts, like what thoughts you don't normally just look at and go, what does this have to tell me? And you'll start getting thoughts and feelings that will answer you regarding that thing that you were collaging about.

So amazing, right? The information's there, but we just need to know how to access it for ourselves. And then. Because then once we have that awareness, then we can. We can work with it. We can transform it.

Yes, yes. I used to think a lot of times when I was younger, when I first started belly dancing. I love the community. And then as you get more meshed into a. Personalities come out, right? And people. There were a lot of instructors where their whole entire paying their rent is actually associated with their classes, right? So, you know, that shifts that a little bit when you're a business owner, when it comes to dance, that overlap. And I worked in occupational therapy, so it wasn't something I relied on. It was this awakening, a form of living prayer for me. And there would be misunderstandings, right? And for me, it'd be like, oh, my God, nobody likes me. You know, what did I do? And over this whole discover process, I can look back now and go, wow. Hmm. Jenny, that had nothing to do with you. One, two. Your subconscious was so busy setting up another setup where you would not feel safe, where you not feel seen, where you would not feel worthy. Because that was my babyhood, like, from before birth until about 12. That's how I felt. The. No. That I never acknowledged until maybe the last five, six years of intensive therapy and working on quantum physics and letting the trauma out of my body through yoga, that I realized, wow, I was just reinventing that script. Every setting. And really, the only common denominator. The only common denominator was Me it.

Started, we started to realize you're like what am I doing to myself?

Right? And you know, I was really lucky. I met a man that, that loves me and adores me and supports me. I mean he gets a lot back too. So it's been this giving of both sides and we put together this beautiful family and we went there in vitro because my husband had cancer. So you know, we had to go through that for that. And then we ended up being able to homeschool them.

And so we've been cha. I've been changing the script a little bit. But certain things like the belly dance community, I could never feel community until I did this healing. And this shifted the whole perspective for me. So now I'm doing it again from this very healed state. And it's phenomenal because you know, be different, right? You will attract what your subconscious thinks you need. So if your subconscious thinks you need to stay feeling unworthy because that's safe and known. No matter how much you're consciously go I want friends. Your subconscious will still keep setting up that old setup because that's what you know, right? Versus oh my gosh, wait a minute. What do you mean? I can actually make real friends? Like real friends? That's kind of scary, right? And you're Sometimes I go yes, it's scary. Let's not do that. So be in more in your body and then do more of this type of work. You don't have to do it with me. Anybody that does neuro linguistic programming, I would just ask you to do it with people that are more trauma aware because there's no shift now in that work to being more trauma aware from a cultural and race based understanding and especially in our country in the U.S. right.

I'm glad you're mentioning the neuro linguistic programming because I, I, I see that in your certifications and I hear that that's a lot of what you're implementing. So that's also part of now is yes, yes, yes.

That is the E and the R part. The unconscious subconscious and our bodies. If we're not familiar with it, if you, if your subconscious even gets an inkling that it's dangerous, it will do everything it can to undermine your learning and healing process. Not because it wants to undermine you. It's just something new that's gonna shake the foundations that we lived our lives.

It's a protective response but then just ending up protect, sometimes protecting us from something that could help us.

Exactly that. Exactly that. And it was for me doing the, the whole movement Based, somatically informed that when the opportunity to train with Avalon empowerment came up, I was like instinctively right. That whole. Is it FOMO or Jomo? Right? I was like, no, I want to do this like that. I did the interview and I put a. A deposit down and it was the best thing I could have ever asked for. And so it. It because they're involved, they're very, very trauma aware. And so that's enveloped in the. And the. That's one thing that I really love about it is evolved neuro linguistic. There's a huge focus on forgiveness.

And related to that organic anger and the O that we talked about forgiveness, again, you have to acknowledge the feelings, every part of us, all the past parts of us, stuff in the trauma, right. That we're trying to bring forward to the present. They're still enmeshed in the anger. We have to help them acknowledge that. For me, part of my youth was always feeling it. Nobody recognized how unfair my life was and how hard it was for a four year old.

And that part of me needed me, not nobody else. Just need to be like, oh my gosh, that that's.

That's really hard.

That's not fair.

That's oh my gosh, you know, and then be like, well, okay. And then from there you bring yourself forward, right? Consciously we don't remember everything, but subconsciously we remember every single detail in our lives from before we were born. And it. And that subconscious has categorized everything in our lives to make a safe system to get you to where you are now. So we just got to figure it, figure out that system and then kind of reset it so that it comes and works in your favor. It's like that song Pronoia. Have you heard it?

I don't. I'm not sure that I have.

Okay, so the. She's the artist is called Carly Pearl.

Okay.

And she just produced a song called Pronoia. And it is the belief. It's the opposite of paranoia. So pronoia is the ah. Is the belief that the world is conspiring to work in your favor. And I listen to the song every day. I'm not gonna like, you know, I'm not gonna blow your eardrums by singing it. It's part of my. My live talk that I'm doing for this go all in Summit in Arizona the end of this month. And I just love this song because I, I've lived my whole life in paranoia. You know, I am one I. I mentioned with $7 million worth of insurance for my kids, my Children do not need $7 million of insurance. But that's what my husband, because of his cancer, my cancer, this and that. We're so worried about what happens if we just, we. If we disappeared. What would happen to our precious miracle babies that we work so hard to bring into this world, right?

And reshifting and healing and knowing that everything is working in our favor. It's helped me be more understanding of the fact that one my kids souls before I'm gonna get. Woo woo. Sorry. But my kids souls picked their challenges before they came to this earth. I'm gonna get emotional and they picked me as their mother.

And I'm doing enough for them. And then me. All the things I went through.

Were to prepare me to do my life's work.

And that's the pronoia part, right? No more paranoia for us. Pronoia for everyone.

I love it. Oh my gosh. That's a perfect way to, to wrap up this conversation. And it's beautiful and it is. And so to be able to realize that is so powerful because then you recognize your purpose and who you are and, and then can feel the gratitude for experiences in your life that even, even experiences that, you know, you're like, why did this have to happen to me? But then you're like, oh, it happened to me because then I was able to do these other things in the future. And so it just gives that perspective that I think a lot of people are seeking. And so anyone listening, if you are touched by and resonating with anything that Jenny and I have been talking about, you know, make sure you reach out to her and read her book or get her book. And if I can help at all put any of these topics in or if you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. And that's the thing is one I know for myself when I experience this level of healing for myself, I just want more people to know about it and know that it's possible for them too. And so we're glad you're here and listening and, and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much, Jenny, again, for being here.

Yes, Hearts.

All right, I'll talk to you more soon.

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