Somatic Healing, Brain Retraining & Nervous System Regulation for Trauma Release

Ooh, ah, eee. What if I told you that many of the chronic physical and mental issues people struggle with today could be addressed by learning to understand the secret language of our bodies?

In 3 days, I changed the state of my physiology.

We're not just talking about managing stress, but actually retraining our nervous system.

All of the feeling information in the body is equal, if not more important, Information that your brain is processing, responding to, navigating, making decisions by as the verbal language that you're aware of.

What role does somatic healing come to address?

Tuning into our emotions and the ability to do that really helps resolve some of the deep patterns of physical symptoms and things like anxiety and depression.

Maybe we could define what brain retraining is.

It's the way that we deal with stress, the way that we move through life that can help us increase that window of tolerance Welcome back, Kwik Brains.

I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Our guests today are Jennifer Mann and Cardin Raeban, the co-founders of Somya and authors of a brand new book called The Secret Language of the Body. What a fascinating title. Both Jen and Cardin teach from a lived experience. I believe the life we live are the lessons we teach. I love Talking to experts who practice what they post, where they have had to battle chronic conditions affecting their mind and their body. So in this episode, we'll learn how to speak and listen to our bodies. Our nervous system is the key to communication between our brain, which is part of our body, and practical somatic techniques can help to regulate it. And we're using some words here that we will define if this is new for you listening. By moving us from a dysfunctional state into a space where we reduce stress and overcome chronic conditions. So get ready to experience some eye-opening mind-body wisdom and try to get in an experience also as well. You know, you hear it, you might forget it, you see it, you might remember it, but if you do it, I feel like we understand it. So I encourage you, if you're driving or working out, to be able to just take a couple minutes and this is really time well spent. So welcome to the show, Jen and Carden.

Thank you for having us, Jim.

Thanks for having us, Jim.

Yeah, I know we could talk for hours and I'd encourage people to, to get a copy of your brand new book. We'll put it in the show notes. JimKwik.com/notes. So, often we're talking in our show a more cognitive approach, a top-bottom, but there's also an amazing way of creating transformation, more a bottom-up, you know, a somatic approach. And somatic healing has become fairly popular in recent years. I think a lot of our listeners are pretty sophisticated, probably have been hearing about it. I'm not sure how many people have delved deeper into it, but I'm sure people I think people would appreciate maybe if you could give them a short intro about what it is. You know, what are these techniques, this philosophy, and how can— who could benefit the most from this form?

Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. So who could benefit for the most is anyone with a brain and a body. I think they would all be candidates for the somatic work. And so, you know, you really brought up that distinction between top-down and bottom-up. And although most of us relate to our brain really via our mind, which is our thoughts, our mindset, That's our belief, our perceptions of the world. Most of the gray matter in your brain developed over hundreds of millions of years in a nonverbal capacity. And so, in somatics, we hold that the sensations, emotions, behaviors, postures, basically all of the feeling information in the body is equal, if not more important information that your brain is processing, responding to, navigating, making decisions by, as the verbal language that you're aware of. And largely throughout, you know, kind of psychological history, they referred to this area as the unconscious. And Jenn and I, and a lot of us somatic therapists, we don't really use that word as much because we just say it's just a place where you've never been trained to direct your attention to and to be able to Listen to that secret language of the body to interpret what feelings, sensations, emotions, actions, behaviors, all of that means to your brain so that you can respond to it meaningfully and take meaningful action. I love it.

And despite this, I mean, the environment we're in right now, you know, so increasing advances in, let's say, medicine, the rate of chronic disease has been increasing at an alarming rate, some would say. So how can somatic healing help us address these issues? You know, I know from a learning perspective, if someone's nervous system is locked up and, you know, imagine listeners like you're in your survival mode, you know, and safety is prioritized, not necessarily growth and transformation. And we're almost held hostage from those other areas that give us more of that limitless potential. What role does somatic healing play? come to address, you know, some of these issues that people, our listeners might be facing?

Jim, I think you had a big part of the answer in your question, which is the world is moving at a fast pace. There's so much going on, so much speed, so much distraction, and it's pulling us away from the experience of our body. It's pulling us away from feeling our emotions. And now there's a lot of research that shows that tuning into our emotions and the ability to do that Really helps resolve some of the deep patterns of physical symptoms and things like anxiety and depression. So somatic therapies helps you to feel emotions in ways that you are not repressing anymore. You're not dissociating. You're opening up your nervous system to a world of feeling comfortable with stress because stress is not bad. Too much stress Stress can also be okay. It's the way that we deal with stress, the way that we move through life that can help us increase that window of tolerance, that capacity to move through today's modern world. And somatic therapies are brilliant in this because learning that language of the body, learning to feel more, learning to access that nonverbal communication that we're constantly getting Through headaches, through stomachaches, through low back pain is so, so important and can be life-changing.

You pointed out that when you're in that stressed out or survival mode, it inhibits the brain's capacity to learn, right? When you're in survival mode, when your body's stressed out, it inhibits its capacity over time to do just about anything, including maintaining your basic homeostasis and health. So immune function can be impacted. Or is impacted. Endocrine and hormonal function is impacted. The brain's ability to process pain signals becomes compromised and impacted. So in the same way that learning degrades the moment that the brain and body enter survival mode, which also, by the way, turns off that prefrontal cortex, turns off those higher brain centers and activates arousal zones and like the limbic system and the amygdala, the way to undo that logjam in the brain is through the body. Because remember, that top-down brain isn't working too well in those instances. So if we can enter through the body, bring regulation to the rest of the brain, then we can function better. And not only can we learn, but a lot of those chronic conditions that have become epidemic start to resolve spontaneously.

You know, the issues that we struggle with, um, they didn't— it's interesting because, uh, I'm sure there's different forms of talk therapy that are, that are helpful, you know, in certain cases, but also talking isn't necessarily what You know, created the situation or the challenge. And it's really hard to, for people, you know, to intellectually want to make a change, but, you know, their body's not just responding. And in the book, you talk about brain retraining. And I know, Jen, you use this to be able to help you to bounce back and even bounce forward from chronic illness.

Yeah.

Maybe we could define what brain retraining is. And maybe share a little bit about your results personally.

Yeah. So brain retraining is extracted from neurolinguistic programming, which is a beautiful technique and therapy that allows you to investigate your language and your thoughts. It's a top-down approach that also includes postural changes, visualization, actions, and essentially rewiring Not just your thoughts and your behaviors like in a CBT model, but also those cognitive processes that express in your bodies as feelings and emotions and experiences. And so rewiring those. So the state of our physiology is always reflecting the state of our nervous system. As Karden was saying earlier, as we were saying earlier, if the state of your nervous system is in survival mode, as you said earlier, Jim, about energy conservation mode and learning and how that process, how those processes are inhibited when we're in the state of fight or flight, chronic freeze, chronic shutdown. The same is happening throughout our entire body. What are our organs doing? If you think about when you have to do public speaking and you're nervous about it, all of your nervous system is focused on helping you to feel safe in face of threat. And so instantly you feel so many symptoms so quickly, right? You feel sweaty hands, you feel tummy ache, your heart is beating so fast. That experience of stress that comes coupled with thoughts and feelings and behaviors and past memories and experiences. And so what we do in brain retraining is take the experience of the nervous system in a state of stress and a state of illness, and we help it get to the root of the unconscious patterns that are running you on survival states. So we get sick and stuck not because of what we know, but because of what we don't know, not because of what we feel, but because of what we're not feeling. So brain retraining helps you get to the bottom of that, and then through thoughts, visualization, and physical movement and posture changes, gives your brain a new perception of itself and allows your physiology to go from a state of survival mode, energy conservation mode, shutdown, fight or flight, to a state of safety, soothing. And Jim, when I tell you that I went from being a high-achieving perfectionist, seeing clients before and after school, I went back to school as an adult, which is why You, Jim, taught me to read faster because of some of the exams that I timed, exams that I had. And I was like, I can't read all this medical stuff in 3 minutes. That's crazy. But that time was so stressful for me. And my body already from a young age showed so much stress through, I had a bad stutter. I used to have panic attacks. And so my body was already hosting all of this stress. And when I went back to university, it just, everything magnified. So I went from being, I would say, high-functioning anxiety to what I thought overnight, completely bedridden with 30-plus symptoms.

Wow.

And the overnight started in my childhood. This is so important for people to understand that when we experience something in our bodies, it began so much earlier than we think. Our body is so smart and it has all these systems of remembering patterns, recognizing these habits that have been familiar for so long. So why change them even if they're unhealthy, even if they're unhelpful, even if they create traumatic experiences on our body? So When I completely experienced this chronic illness crash, coming from a medical degree in physiotherapy, that's where I went first to get answers. Help me, you know, help me get back on my feet. But I saw so many specialists and everyone, PhD neurologists, the best in the country, in the UK, scientists, Immunologists that had written famous papers and everyone was telling me, we don't know why, we don't know how, we don't know for how long. And they were just, there was no answer. And a lot of the prognosis was, it's going to take a long time. You might not ever recover. So I was bedbound for a year and a half, Jim, and then I found brain retraining.

Wow.

And in 3 days, 3 days, 3 days, remember what I was saying, that the state of your nervous system is reflected in your physiology? In 3 days, I changed the state of my physiology and I learned over the course of the next few weeks and months through neuroplasticity and those kind of beautiful ways in which the brain changes itself to switch off immune responses, fevers, achy lungs, pain flares in under 5 minutes. And all through this process of rewiring thoughts, visualization, creating a state in the body that was so positive that every cell of my body was bathed in it.

Mm-hmm.

And then my brain hooking onto that and being like, oh, this is good. This feels good. And we know that through novelty, repetition, and practice, our brain finally begins to choose new pathways. And that showed in my recovery so quickly.

Outstanding. It is a testament to our limitless potential. You know, our physiology, psychology doesn't really come with an owner's manual. Not always user-friendly. And I like where this conversation is. So we're thinking about the elements, awareness to agency. It's a reminder that we are the— we don't have to be the passenger of our nervous system. We could also direct it and be the pilot. Maybe I know our community is probably really interested in, you know, as you talk about visualization and brand breathing, hey, getting in your body, maybe we could give people a little bit of a short exercise.

Yeah.

you know, maybe compressed to maybe a couple of minutes so that they could experience it and get a, you know, a little bit deeper sense from what you're describing.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I almost think Jen and I might wingman this because I'm going to— I think I'm going to invite us into receiving some of those messages from the body and really getting a sense of, again, how quick it happens, right? How quick our body responds to things. Often in a negative sense, but also how quickly with the right tools we can move it into a much more positive neurophysiology, to be really fancy. I could also say mind-body state to be just what it is. So hopefully, if you're driving, I don't invite you to close your eyes, but otherwise, what I'm going to invite you to do is close your eyes for a moment. And the goal here is not to relax or change anything. We're not We're not looking to change. We're looking for information, for awareness. And I'd like you to direct your attention to the area of your chest, your breath, and your heart. And I want you to just be curious. Get a sense of whether or not the breath is open or restricted, deep or shallow. Easy or hard? And also, why don't you subjectively rank your stress level from 1 to 10 based on what you're feeling in your chest, in your heart? And keeping 80% of your attention on that area of your body, I want you to use 20% of your attention To either remember or think about waking up to an urgent message from your boss. And as you recall this memory or visualize it with that other 80% of your attention on your breath, your chest, and your heart, what information are you noticing coming up from your body? In the form of sensation, in the form of maybe contraction. Maybe heart rate is speeding up, maybe breath is getting restricted. What's happening, hey, in your neck or your shoulders, your jaw? Can you even feel your body maybe preparing for action, like it wants to either respond or maybe it wants to hide? All of this is happening under your awareness at all times. This is what the rest of your brain below your neocortex is processing and doing all of the time in relationship to your environment and your internal state to determine action. And it's this realm that one needs to become adept in if they wanna make next-level change. So because that might not be the best thing to feel, I invite you to open your eyes, shake it off a little bit, come back to us. Well, thank God that was just a memory or a visualization. Um, but before we just pass it off to, to Jen to make us feel good, because I'm the bad cop here, I'm just wondering, Jim, did you notice anything?

I did. Um, wasn't thinking about boss, um, but I, uh, I was thinking about the dentist. I have something coming up, so that was like a trigger, uh, kind of, kind of the kind of future Future pacing that, but, um, yeah, restriction in my breathing became more shallow and my heart rate definitely, uh, increased. Yeah, I was ready, I was ready to galvanize because that's kind of like, you know, I just don't like sitting in those, you know, in those sensations. But, um, yeah. But that's, that's amazing. The awareness. And then I like the 80/20, where 80% of my, my focus was still, you know, on, in my somatic awareness, and then 20% was just thinking about, you know, just visualizing like the situation.

Yeah. Brilliant. And, uh, that's, that's the information that's going on there. I was listening to your Master Communicators episode with Charles Duhigg, 'cause I, I love him and it was so good. And this is kind of the practice of becoming a master communicator with the information coming up from your body and the rest of your brain. And it starts with that just right. What does a master communicator do? They ask a lot more questions and they ask better questions and they're curious and they care. And in this case, it's directing that attention into that quality of communication and understanding with the body. Well, we'll get to what to do with it after, but it starts with that listening.

That's perfect. Are you ready to activate your competitive advantage and achieve unparalleled success in your personal, professional, and your financial life, welcome to the Limitless Learner Virtual Summit on August 5th, 6th, and 7th. By registering for and attending this free 3-day virtual event, you'll learn how to double your brain power, to double your earnings, and maximize your free time. Just go to thelimitlesslearner.com So you alluded to Jen to be able to take us into a state where I don't have to, like, still have to, guys, I have some, I even have some residual thinking about.

Oh, oh yes. So as you know very well, Jim, our brain is so powerful and limitless and it likes to stay comfy in patterns that it already knows because it needs to save energy for the rest of the body, for memory, for all the things that it does. So we want to help the state in our body and help the state in our mind by giving the brain information to process. So when you touch your body, when you jump up and down, when you exercise your brain, why exercise and movement is so good for the brain, it's because your brain is processing new signals coming up into the brain. So if you're in a state of fight or flight, Or anxiety, your brain is now all of a sudden, as you said, 80/20, maybe, maybe 50/50, like 50 on the anxiety and the stress, and 50% of the brain is, is focused on processing that somatosensory information coming up. So I'm going to give you a vagus nerve exercise. We haven't talked about the vagus nerve on this episode yet, but it's a big part of our work. Polyvagal work combined with brain retraining combined with Somatic therapies like somatic experiencing is what helps you get that holistic experience in your mind, in your body, and in your human. Because we're not just— when you go to chronic illness healing, when you go to a place of healing your anxiety and healing those very stubborn patterns, there's so much more than just neural pathways that we need to rewire. There's an experience of the body. And then the experience of the human. So I'm going to take you through the experience of your body to help you switch. We call it switching from a state of nervous system survival to a state of nervous system organization where it's reorganizing these pathways and your vagus nerve is being stimulated, triggering a parasympathetic response, overwhelming your brain and your body with a sense of soothing. So Jim, when you go to the dentist, you'll remember this feeling, hopefully.

Yeah.

And just before you go in, you could do it again. So I'm gonna instruct you through a brief minute of this beautiful exercise. And my invitation is, if you can, and if you find it helpful, to do it for up to 5 minutes, a couple times a day, or when you feel triggered and you're aware that you are in a trigger, whether it's emotional or negative self-talk, et cetera. So this is going to be a vocalization exercise. So whatever you're doing, follow along. So I'm going to invite you in a moment to take a deep breath in, and on your exhale, I'm going to ask you to say vu ai. And as you say vu ai, I'd like you to move your face like you were miming, like you were trying to tell someone the vu and the ai and the i. Because our facial nerves are so powerfully connected to the social engagement system. You know that I feel comfortable with you, Jim, because I'm smiling, my head is tilting, the muscles in my face are relaxed. If I was uncomfortable, I'd be like, you know, I'm having a great time here, Jim. And you would know through my facial expressions that something isn't quite right. So we're gonna dive into the face. And then through the vu ah i, your vagus nerve is going to be stimulated. And our voice box, our pharynx, is innervated by the vagus nerve, which increases the blood flow to the area as you hum and say different sounds upon exhalation, stimulates the vagus nerve and helps you feel soothed. So in a moment, we're going to inhale and exhale in one breath saying vu ah i. While we're tapping on our chest, like so. Inhaling through the nose, vo i chi i, and resting for a moment, feeling the vibration moving through your chest. Through your face, down the back of your spine, down your arms. We're going to do this again, inhaling through your nose. Voa i i i i Oh, that feels so good. Mm-hmm. Feeling a sense of vibration and soothing, a wave moving down your body. If you're standing up, Jim, you'll feel it even more cuz that vibration gets a chance to move all the way down to your feet. So we're gonna invite you to do it one more time. Then for anyone who's listening, the invitation is up to five minutes. Keep doing this Wu Ai practice. So inhaling through the nose.

Wu Ai.

Jen's got lungs. She goes forever. I'm jealous.

Yes, I love that sigh. Anyone who took that beautiful sigh that Jim just took, or, or yawn, that is your parasympathetic nervous system saying yes. I needed this. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, I hope you all enjoyed that.

What a wonderful exercise and experience to be able to access and even harness the positive nervous system states. And what I love about this is it doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take any money. It just takes time for, you know, ourselves, which I think is like the most important time well spent. Yeah, so I hope everybody got a chance to experience that. And then are they doing the The humming, or is that part of the finish? Was supposed to the that vibration?

The fu ah i. Yeah. So the reason why we move our face aside from stimulating the muscles in our face, which are triggering that social engagement, is also to change the shape of our voice box that massages the vagus nerve in a different way. So when we say different Sounds, the shape inside, the way that our vocal cords are contracting changes, and that massages and stimulates the vagus nerve in a way that helps to stimulate the parasympathetic response. And so there's that. Humming is also a great way. It's just, I love that voo, ah, ee of the expression. Yeah. So helpful. And your whole face is like, yeah.

I'm feeling it.

Yeah.

I love it. So all of this is in your book and so much more. Where can people find out or connect or get the book or connect with you?

The best place to follow Jenn and I is on that thing called Instagram. So Jenn is @iamjennman and I am @cardenrabin. And then our company is @somiainternational. And that's just the best place because we're Always on there sharing, educating, offering many practices. It's just the you know it's the it's that first place. And then the home of our both our our online program and book is at somiainternational.com.

Okay.

So in addition to the book for people who want to go in even deeper, for people that are struggling with chronic illness who really want to profoundly get trained in more of that brain retraining that Jen describes so. Well, that's our Heal program. And then the books, The Secret Language of the Body is available anywhere books are sold in audio format, read by Jenn and I. So hopefully you like the baritone and the soprano, in which case you do get us there. And the audiobook, because our book is really just filled with practices, it's just really meant to be an actionable manual. Whether you get the audio— if you get the audiobook version, it comes with a remarkable PDF of exercises as well.

That's outstanding. We'll put all the links to all of that in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. Jen, Cardin, this was awesome. Yeah, I love it. Thank you. Thank you both for leading us through that. Also those quick practices. I hope this gave our listeners, our viewers inspiration to learn, to speak the language of our bodies and to start really looking into utilizing somatic techniques to retrain their brains, their nervous system out of the You know, patterns that might not be the most empowering and useful. And we have, it's a reminder that we have so much more power than we realize to be able to self-regulate, to be able to reduce chronic stress, overcome chronic conditions, and unlock new levels of human potential. Because I feel like we're all on this path to reveal and realize our fullest potential. So thank you both.

Thank you so much, Jim, for having us.

That was a lot of fun.

As always, everybody, uh, don't forget to subscribe, join our 1.6 million, uh, YouTube subscribers there. Uh, leave a comment and make sure you follow both of our guests on, on social media so, you know, we can keep that consistency. Uh, we always want to be a source of, of resources. Um, leave a comment on whatever platform that you are Consuming this episode and make sure if you do take a screenshot of the 3 of us, post it, tag the 3 of us on social so we get to see it. You know, I'll repost some randomly and we just really appreciate it. This is your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Until next time, be limitless.