Trauma Responses With Aimie Apigian

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. Here I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast. So I have been doing meditation for the last year plus and if you've been listening to the podcast or following me on social on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or Facebook, you probably heard heard about some of my journeys and how I was teasing with Dr. Joe Dispenza, who is my meditation teacher, that I started meditating and I would go to his retreats and literally you're meditating for hours a day, you know, and not doing my usual exercise and all that. And I lose five pounds. And no, I didn't lose five pounds of muscle. I lost five pounds over the course of time, not by changing my diet or exercise, but purely by calming down my nervous system and letting go of trauma. And so I've really been interested in this topic and really how to have a healthy nervous system. And so I'm super excited about our guest today, Dr. Amy Apigian. Dr. Amy Opyon is really leading the leading expert bringing out this whole idea of the biology of trauma. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her. She's a double board certified medical physician in both preventive and addiction medicine and holds double master's degrees in biochemistry and public health. She is the leading medical expert in addressing stored trauma in the body. And again she has this methodology she calls the biology of trauma. And it's really a new way of looking at trauma that up levels the old methods of trauma work in medicine by reverse engineering trauma's effects on the nervous system and body on a cellular level. So she specializes in trauma, attachment and addictions. And this was all after having a personal experience in foster parenting, adopting and then having her own health issues that were a result of childhood and life experiences. And you know, I think if you've known my story as an adopted child, I have an amazing, amazing parents that raised me. But there's just some trauma that was stored in there that as I've learned how to work through this has been incredible, the shifts. So that is why I'm like so excited to dig into this with with Dr. Amy. Dr. Amy also is a functional medicine certification and she has just been deep in in trauma therapy training. So she is my go to for all things around the biology of trauma. And I will be right back with my special guest. Stay with me.

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Dr. Amy Opigian. Welcome to the show.

Ah, JJ, thank you. I'm excited.

I have been waiting for this one. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting. I am just such a huge fan of everything you're doing and really bringing trauma to the forefront. And one of the first things that you talk about. I remember us having this conversation a couple of years ago, and you said, it's the biology of trauma, not the psychology of trauma. So what. What does that mean?

Yeah, this is the biggest misconception from my standpoint. And granted, I have a different standpoint. I'm a medical physician, and so I've worked with the human body. I've worked with the nerves. I've dissected the nerves in anatomy lab. We don't need to talk about that. Trau. But the.

The.

Yeah, like, trauma is stored in the body, and it not only is a result of your biology, but then it affects your biology. And so understanding that it's actually the body that experiences an event or a situation as a trauma, the body decides that. The mind doesn't decide that. The mind just makes up a story about what. That. What you just went through. Because the mind creates meaning about things. And so we all get stuck in our heads, and our thoughts we're analyzing or, you know, you've seen the ladies, jj, who just go around and talk to their girlfriends about all the things that have happened to them. And. And they keep telling the same story. Right? Like, that's our brain, but that is not where the trauma is. Our brain is just trying to make sense of what the body went through. And what the body goes through is a direct result of our biology going into that event and coming out.

So how did you get interested in all this?

You know, I was one of the most conventional medicine doctors that you could find, jj. I went into medical school also with a master's in biochemistry. So I'm like one of those geeky, nerdy scientists that just love to be in their heads. In their heads in a book. Right. If I didn't go into medicine, I would have been a librarian. I love to read. I love to study. So I was.

You look. You're. You're rocking the sexy librarian look right now, I must say.

I could. I. Right. Like, think of what I could bring to the librarian field. Bring some spice and life into it.

The.

So I was the farthest away from trauma. And I would even say that even as a physician, jj. I was one of those who went into general surgery. I started in general surgery because I hated psychiatry. I even hated primary care because they wanted to talk about feelings. And how do you feel about this? And I'm like, I don't care about how you feel about things. Let's just fix the problem. So I went into surgery. But then that's like the same approach that I've had with trauma. And the way I got into that was I started foster parenting during medical school, and you started foster parenting during. I was hoping that you wouldn't catch that. I was just trying, but maybe I paused long enough. Too long to let you get in there and say something. Yes. So that was part of my nervous system. And I've had my own work to do, jj. I've had my own work to do because that. Those decisions. Those. Yeah, that decision was certainly coming from. From a. Not a healthy place that I would add that much onto my life and feel that that would even be helpful to me or helpful. Helpful to the kiddos. But that. That was my story. That was my experience. And so they actually placed two kids with me, and I adopted Miguel. And he came to me at 4 years old, and he came with a lot of pain, a lot of trauma, but I thought that my love would fix him. Jj, I, like, I didn't even. I didn't even question it. I knew that I had so much love to give. To give him specifically that I knew that it would. That it would heal his broken places, and it didn't. And so I had to go on this journey of trying to figure out how to fix trauma and have learned a lot, to say the least. But that's what started me on this journey.

Wow. I am really fascinated by all this, as, you know, like this last year and a half, and I think going to these Dr. Joe Dispenza events, and one of the big things that happens as people are meditating is you'll see some people, they start to flop, and I'm like, the flopper. I'm like, what is going. And, you know, it's a thing. It's a thing. So the first time. And for those of you who haven't been to one of these, you go to this meditation workshop now. I listen to all. I'm a good student. And you're supposed to listen to all of the tapes before you. All the tapes. I just totally date myself. You're supposed to listen to these trainings before you go the audios down, and then you're supposed to do the meditations. Well, I figured I not going to do the meditations. I'm going to the meditation. Why would I do that? I'm going to the treat. I'll just listen to the training, which I totally loved. It's fantastic. But I'd never gone through in these meditations. I had no idea what they were. I'm like, piece of cake. I'll go do that there. I get there, and as we start to go into these meditations, first of all, I have no clue what he's doing. So now I'm like, everybody else does, but I don't. But you. And you can't see anything because everyone's got their eye masks on. But after it. And while you're doing the walking meditations, you see people really shaking, and you'll hear people yell. And I'm like, what is going on? And the first couple times, I'm really judgy, and I'm like, what is that person doing? And by the end of the first week long, I'm like, I want to do that. You know, how do I get to do that? Like, I want some of that.

Whatever she's having, I'll have that.

I want to. I want to flop. But you realize what they're doing is they're releasing all this stored trauma. And he's explaining it to you. And I'm like, it took me, you know, I had to go through three of these meditation retreats before I even got to the point where my body was like, even willing to go there.

Right.

So, you know, I mean, let's talk about this stored trauma, because I didn't even know it was a thing, you know, and now I'm really obsessed with your nervous system and how this all happens. So, you know, what. What is this mechanism? How is trauma stored and what does it do to you?

Yeah. So let me walk people through the neurobiological response to a trauma, and then we'll understand clearly, like, how it actually gets stored in the moment. But then, of course, there's all these downstream consequences, especially when it's been integrated into your biology for years and it becomes chronic. And then, of course, you're adding more stress and more trauma, the more life you experience without the right tools to process it as we go through a life experience. So in a trauma response, there's always a first startle response of the nervous system. And the startle response is in response to your nervous system thinking that something might be a threat or might be a danger. We don't know yet, but it might be. And so when there is that startle response, then there's this hyper vigilance. Our nervous system goes into sympathetic state. So there's the faster heartbeat. Heartbeat. You start breathing faster, you may start sweating a little bit. And what is released is adrenaline, and that's the. The chemical, the messenger that's making all of this happen. And you can literally feel the blood start to move in your body, and you want to move like you're moved to action and you're looking around, your eyes actually dilate so that you can take in more of your environment. Your sensory input, like the amount of information from your environment that your nervous system is taking in is incredible. Like, this is the most sensitive time of your nervous system to take in your environment. So you hear everything. Because your brain, especially your amygdala, is having to decide in the moment, usually within a few seconds, do I need to respond and how do I best respond? What's my best strategy here for survival? And so say that this is going to be a trauma response. So, yes, we're going to say that this is a real threat, a real danger. And then your body goes into an even more activated or sympathetic state, because now you have to either run or you have to fight the sympathetic state. This first stage of the trauma response is a very active state. And so I'm even thinking of a lot of the work that you've done. J.J. right. And people live with inflammation all over their body, right? Like inflammation galore. And so if they're going into this high metabolic state, they're not going to be able to sustain that as long as someone without inflammation. And so at some point, the body, again, this is all the body and the. And the peripheral nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, it decides when it can no longer use that active high metabolic state as the best survival state. And at the moment that it decides that, there's this switch that happens in the brain stem and it switches to the brakes. And this is the dorsal vagal system, or the polyvagal theory, for those who may know, Dr. Stephen Porges. And it literally shuts everything down for the purpose of survival. And so a person will actually feel that collapse. They'll feel that moment where it's like, oh, like, what? What just hit me? And I can't even, like, I feel heavy. There's not the. The high, like, motivated motivation for action with the sympathetic. And so once that switch happens, that's actually the trauma response. If we stay in an active response to our life situation, it stays as a stress. JJ and so for a trauma response to happen, we have to have that collapse. We have to have that moment where our body decides, this is too much for me. The other reason for switching into that trauma response is going to be, this has been going on for too long, and I have too little Resources. And those resources can be external in terms of support, family, friends, money, sometimes. But sometimes there are internal resources like magnesium, like ATP. Right? Like. So all of this is going into the factor, the equation for deciding when do we switch from it being a stress to a trauma. But what happens is that when the body goes into that trauma response and that collapse, we usually get stuck there. And we don't give the body the time or the energy in order to come out of that and be able to complete the trauma cycle. And so whenever we don't complete it all the way, it gets stuck, it gets stored. And what happens is that all of that adrenaline that was released during the first stage of the trauma response, it has to go somewhere. And since we didn't completely run it off or punch it out, for example, that it's like a charge that gets stored in our tissues. And so it starts to. It starts to form this dysregulation of our nervous system, where now we chronically go just back and forth between stressed and overwhelm, and that collapse, stressed and overwhelming. You can see all of the coping mechanisms that people do when they go into overwhelm. There's emotional eating, there's, you know, binge watching movies, there's numbing. Any form of numbing out is this trauma response. And so it's fascinating to see how many people are actually living chronically with this trauma response and don't even know how disconnected they are from their body.

Is there a way to know? Like, is there a way to test for this? To know? Like, if your nervous system is dysregulated, is there. Like, how would someone know? I mean, they might be hearing this, going, oh, you know, I binge watch movies. But I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, your Netflix issue is not necessarily indicative of that. Like, what else? Like, is there a way to know?

There are lots of ways to know. You can look at things that are more what you might call subjective, where you're looking at your. Your behaviors, you're looking at coping mechanisms, you're looking at your emotions. When you wake up in the day, how do you feel? Are you excited to wake up? Are you like, oh, man, bummer, it's another day, right? Like, that's dysregulation. Because anything that is out of that parasympathetic state is dysregulation unless it's an appropriate stress response. And more often than not, it's a exaggerated stress response. But when we're in the freeze response, sometimes it's an under response, like, things are happening, and we're just kind of watching our life go by being like, oh, isn't that a bummer, huh? Yeah, I should probably do something about that, But I'm not, right? And so when you see people not taking action for their life, that is nervous system dysregulation. When you see them using things to manage emotions, that is dysregulation. When you see people overreacting, that is dysregulation. So anything that's not in parasympathetic when they're supposed to be in parasympathetic is dysregulation. So one way that I have people who, especially those coming into my 21 day journey, that are taking this journey into their nervous system. This is exactly where we start, jj. We have them map out their nervous system for an entire day, and they see, like, where did you even start the day? Because most people aren't even starting the day in parasympathetic. They're starting the day already stressed, right? Like, they're. They're like, oh, my goodness, I'm waking up late. I have so much to do. Let me do, right?

Like, there.

There they go, right? The hamster's already on the wheel.

Wow.

Or they're waking up in overwhelm. Man, I don't want it to be morning already. I'm already overwhelmed by my day, and I haven't even gotten out of bed yet. So then it's fascinating because then you see those people, right? And you see that they are waking up in a dysregulated overwhelmed state rather than a dysregulated stress state. And they are different because in order to get through their day, they have to give themselves adrenaline because that's the only way to bring in energy into their system from an external source that will allow them to come out of that freeze long enough to get stuff done. And then they're the ones at the end of the day that are going into a collapse. They're the ones that are just, you know, kind of. They wish that they could curl up in a ball. More often than not, they're just kind of mindlessly doing things. And that would be the form of dysregulation is, you know, when they're sitting down with that Netflix, right? We're not going to judge their Netflix, jj. Right, right. We're not going to judge them, right?

But it's so funny. I never watch Netflix until I'm like, oh, did this turn into a. Am I. What am I doing right and so the.

The. The key for everything, whether it's Netflix or anything else, jj, even if it's driving somewhere, the key is, are you doing it mindlessly? Are you just on remote? Are you just going through the motions? Or are you actually doing it fully embodied, fully aware of your environment, fully engaging and responding with your environment? Or are you doing it in a way that's like you're all in your thoughts and. Or you're kind of numbed out. You're. You're escaping even. I'm at Bo Eason's training right now, and one of the ladies was talking about how, you know, when she doesn't like something, she notices that she just tunes out. And it's like, that's half of the world, at least, right?

Wow.

Like, we. And that's. That is the trauma response. So this is where I look at people, and I'm like, you know, one of the common threads that we all have. If we have a human body, most of us have these trauma responses stored, and we don't even just recognize it as a trauma response. We recognize it.

I don't even know how you wouldn't.

Right.

Like.

Right.

So backing it up because you said something. And then I went, oh, I got to ask about this. I'm just listening to this, going. I know. I'm like, okay, we're going to unpack. But you were talking about, you know, completing the cycle so that you wouldn't store the trauma. Yes, but we're never trained to do that. How would you know? And I'll tell you something interesting that happened when Grant was in the hospital. You know, so Grant gets hit by a car. He's. He's left for dad. My son and I and my ex husband are staring at my son on a stretcher with glass sticking out, and it was her, like, you know, the thing you. You can never unsee. And then I go to the hospital, and all I can do is I'm at the hospital with him, and then I'm running up and down the stairs, you know, And I was like, going. I had to go and, like, do something. Do hit training. I was like, I just. It was like, I had to get it out of me. And so now I'm thinking, well, I was just, like, shaking. I was like. It was like when you see the animals that will go into that whole, like, shake, and then they're. And then you trot off, you know? But is that how you would complete the cycle? Is that how you get the trauma out? Is that one of the ways. And, you know, I'm just thinking about all the stuff from the bullies on the playground to now the bullies on, you know, social media, to all the things that happen on a daily basis that we are never taught to deal with. And then you go to talk therapy, you know, which has its place. But if you're. If it's not addressing the stored trauma.

Exactly. Like the talk therapy is going to just be kind of reliving the trauma, if anything. Right. Like, our bodies are meant to move, and we have to move through life. We have to move through these experiences, or else they do get stuck and stored. Anything that we are going through does not mean that we are moving through.

Hmm.

And I even think of grief. Grief is another one of those things that's very uncomfortable for people, especially people who've had these trauma responses as part of their life, because grief, sadness, loss can bring up a lot of things that we have not moved through yet. And so many times people going through grief are just like. They're kind of putting it in boxes. Right. And like, stuffing it in closets, metaphorically in their body. It's just too uncomfortable. It is so uncomfortable. So one of the things with completing that trauma cycle is actually being able to sit with the emotion. Right. Dr. Joan Rosenberg talks that.

I was just thinking about Joan.

So actually being able to sit and allow yourself to feel that emotion as it is presenting in your body in the moment. It's not at the thoughts knots. It's, oh, like, my stomach feels in knots. I feel like I want to just curl up into a ball and feeling how that's presenting in your body. And then your body will move through something in the moment. And many times, like, you. You'll then afterwards want to move to action because we've got all of that adrenaline that we need to then discharge. One of the. One of the interesting things that people can practice is when they're driving and if they have anything that it's that they have that startle response of, oh, my goodness, this is a near accident. Right. Like, I almost got it or almost got into an accident. What do we do, though, jj? Right. Like, we don't pull over. We just keep going. Like, this is how we somehow think that we're supposed to live our lives. Like, oh, we're supposed to pretend that that doesn't bother me, that I'm not hurt by that, that I'm not. Yeah. Having fear about that or scared about that. And so we. We have all of these pretenses that we have to look like we've got everything together, so we don't even allow ourselves to feel these things. But if somebody who's having that near accident on the highway or on the road, if they were to pull over and just let themselves feel what's going on, they would start to shake. And so I encourage people to do that because many people like you are like, what's this shaking thing? And that's a perfect opportunity. The adrenaline is fresh and, you know, your foot had to slam on the brakes or your hands had to, you know, yank on the steering wheel, so you have that motor memory that's pretty fresh. And if you stop and let yourself feel that in the moment, it will shake, it will discharge, and then you're going to be like, oh, glad I survived that. And the cool thing is, is that you're not going to still be thinking about it for the rest of the. Because you were able to process it in the moment or every time a.

Car comes up on you again.

Every time a car approaches in that same way.

Yep. I was just thinking about when Grant got hit. First of all, I was, like, vigilant on highway, watching every car. It was, like, ridiculous. But I was in the hospital and someone did something really crappy to me business wise. And I remember calling him on the phone and.

And.

And the entire nursing. I mean, it was the. It was at top of my lungs. I'm in the little, like, waiting room area now. This is the pediatric icu, you know, and. And I am, like, calling him every name. And at the end of all of it, he's like, all right, do you feel better? And I go, yes. He goes, totally good. I. He says, you know, sorry that happened. But if I, you know, I go, gosh, you know, I. Sorry I yelled at you that way. He goes, I really. I think you just needed it. I go, I really did. So, you know, I mean, and I'm just thinking that was just like that discharge, you know, this discharge that. Gosh, why aren't we taught this?

I don't know. But that is honestly one of my goals, jj, is to bring this into elementary school. Because this, this is life, right? This is the manual for how to go through life and not accumulate trauma.

Yeah. Just like the little. I think of, like, when I was a little kid and Grant did this too, we'd have these little temper tantrums, and it was like, stop that. I was like, well, maybe you're supposed to just let it on out. So now we have this stored trauma in us and what do we do. How do we get it out? Because I'm assuming it's like a toxin. It's better out than in, right?

Oh, it's definitely a toxin.

And what is it doing to you? Before we talk about how we're going to get it out, what does it do to you? Hanging out in there?

Yeah. And this is where it's so fascinating because we have all the research, like, we know this stuff, and yet it's not yet really incorporated into mainstream medicine. And it's not because there's not a.

Lab test and there's not a pill.

There's not a pill yet.

That's what we got pills that they use at. Right.

This is our new business idea. We need to create a pill together.

Because we need another.

Think of it. Think of how. Think of what it could do, though, J.J. right. Like, just take this one pill and all of your trauma will go away.

I think of our. I don't know if you know, Robbie Richmond, he's part of Mindshare and he created the X pill. It was sort of like the red pill, blue pill. And you would, like, do all these intentions around the pill and people would have these amazing transformations because of the law of attraction and intentioning. So we'll just. Yeah, we'll do the blue pill anyway.

Yeah. If only it were that easy. And I think that this is really where we need to understand the seriousness of it, because if we did, we would be treating our children very differently. We would be creating different social constructs even in order to really prevent trauma, not just try to address it, manage it, treat it later on. Because I think of the ACE studies. Right. And Dr. Vincent Felitti and I have been working on a project together where we're bringing. Trying to bring ACEs into mainstream medicine. We're going to.

Let's explain what ACEs are for people who don't know what they are are.

Thank you. You mean there's people that still don't know A is. Right. Like, how is this possible? Because this is over 20 years old. Right. Like, this is for. For me as a medical physician, one of the big gaps in medicine, one of the. I want to. I want to say the hurtful things that medicine is still doing for people, that this is not just as ordinary as something like diabetes.

Yeah, no, it's not. I mean, you know, and I'm assuming just a lot of consumer audience, not medical audience, has not heard of adverse childhood events. It's just not.

They should be talking to them about that. Right. Like, that's the role of their physician in their life.

Well, here's the thing. We should go to school and learn how to be great humans rather than study English. I mean, those are important. But like, number one, you should learn to be a kind, purposeful, generous human first and live with integrity and know how to take care of yourself and eat correctly and move and meditate and all that. Then, you know, learn one plus one equals two, you know, but none of that stuff is really taught, and especially not taught, just even relationships or how to stand up for yourself or what's appropriate and inappropriate. So, you know, we got a lot of work to do.

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So, adverse childhood events.

Adverse childhood events.

Aces is what aces.

And so Dr. Vincent Felitti with Dr. Robert Anda. They were the first to study this and it was as a result of a weight loss clinic that they were running. And they found that their most successful patients were the ones dropping out. And it irritated them, it made them angry, right, because it's messing up their numbers. They need the people who are losing the most amount of weight to stay in the program so that they can really boast about their results. So they went and started investigating. And that's when they uncovered that the ones that were losing the most amount of weight and dropping out had some common things in their life experiences. And a lot of those were from childhood. Everything from sexual, physical, emotional stress. Right, like adverse childhood experiences. Very stressful experiences for children. And so then they started looking at, well, what else is this related to? And they have now basically uncovered that every chronic disease is associated with adverse childhood experiences. And so for us to understand that.

This disorder, every chronic disease, every, every, every, every 100%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, right? Like, yeah, like let that sink in. And again, like, why aren't we, we talking about this? But the important thing for us to take away from that is understanding that this dysregulation in the nervous system that we've mentioned happens years before one may have actual symptoms, let alone a full blown disease. And yes, you can have symptoms of anxiety and depression, and more of our kids now have those than ever before. It is scary, the number of kids that are being put on medication for ADHD anxiety. There's like a quarter of a kid of kids on antidepressants already by the time they reach adolescence, like It's. It's. It's scary how much this has just become a normal part of our life that we're not seeing, that trauma is really at the root of this. And by trauma, again, I don't mean big events. What I mean by trauma is dysregulation of your nervous system, because that's how we measure it in the body.

Well, I mean, here's the thing. How can anyone have gone through life and not have trauma?

I'm still looking for that person. Jj.

It's just like when they do that, when they do the studies and they go, we looked at this group of women without stress. I'm like, where were they?

Right?

Who is that? What are you talking about? I mean, so when you look at it and go, I don't know how that'd be possible. I don't know how it'd be possible. And yet we have no tool. It's the first tool that a kid should have. So, wow, this makes me so sad to hear. Okay, so I'm going to take a deep breath.

It is. And one of the things.

And shake it off.

Take a deep breath and shake it off. I think one thing that would be really helpful to mention here is the attachment. And so for many people, they think that childhood trauma and having dysregulation of their nervous system coming out of childhood means that you had to have been abused or neglected or in foster care or adopted or, you know, some. Something big. And yet what we're finding is that, no, most people are coming out of their childhood with a degree of dysregulation. And that degree of dysregulation is the degree of insecure attachment that they have. And so they'll throw around numbers like, oh, 60% of the population has an insecure attachment. That is.

So, wait, wait, wait. Insecure attachment means what?

So you have. There are. There's been four different attachment styles, but at the very end of the day, you can break it into two categories. Secure, which is what you want. You want to have a secure attachment style, which means that you have a certain belief system about yourself in the world that you generally experience and see the world and other people as safe. Whereas those coming out of their childhood with an insecure attachment, they have a different belief system and view of themselves in the world. And they are generally going to see the world as not safe and themselves as not good enough or not lovable. Where they've got to prove it now or they've got to. Yeah, prove. Prove their worth. Prove their. That they are lovable and that relationships can be scary. And so then they go into all kinds of bracing patterns and tension patterns and relationship patterns based on their attachment style and whether they feel safe with intimacy and authenticity and integrity and even know who they are in the world and, you know, are able to. To communicate well and all of these things that you need for a good, healthy relationship. Those with a secure attachment coming out of their childhood do that naturally. They actually don't need to be taught that. But as I say that, I'm like, well, no, they were taught that. It's just not in the. Not in the school sense.

They. Right.

They experience that, and that's how they were taught that. So coming out of childhood, then with this dysregulation, is most everybody. And then you go through life and so you're already seeing yourself as in constant danger. Right. And whether it's because your friends might not like you or you don't know, they may be talking behind your back, you don't know. There's just, just all this insecurity. And that actually is what unfortunately brings. It almost attracts more trauma. Right? Like we. We talk about. We talk about vibration, we talk about the law of attraction. And we know that trauma and this dysregulation of the nervous system actually attracts more trauma, more stress, rather than the opposite. And so how important it is to kind of have this teaching and this manual for. Hey, as early as possible, let's process this. Let's learn how to move through life experiences so that we can be discharging this stuff, not have it be stored, because then it has all of these downstream effects on our biology, resulting in disease, physical, mental, emotional health symptoms. And why, like, we have the knowledge and the tools to get off of that pathway now.

So the knowledge and tools to get off the pathway. How do you get off the pathway? That's the ultimate thing here. Because I think that the majority of people, unless they've actively done something, probably are suffering.

Yeah. So I'm gonna speak to adults because by the. I mean, most of us are. Right. Adults and we're here trying to help ourselves.

I haven't heard any kids listening to this podcast, so I think we're safe to say. Pretty safe to say. Yeah. So I.

And yet, right. Like jj, you being a mom, like, and. And have, you know, having the experiences that you've had, you know, how moms fight for their kids. So I have just as many moms going through my 21 day journey program for the sake of their kids and even Becoming a better mom for their kids, which I think is, is very beautiful. I think that really shows the heart of a mom, the, the fierce, the fierce warrior moms. Right. So as adults, the problem with, you know, the problem by now is that it's been so ingrained into the nervous system that it's not a simple fix. And by now it has affected your biology. By now it has brought on inflammation. By now it has brought on hormonal changes, digestive system changes. You do have much more intestinal permeability problems when you have stored trauma in your body. Your vagus nerve is not working as well. And sometimes it's working well and then sometimes it's in that freeze response and has shut down. And so now your, your absorption is affected and now you've got gut inflammation. That gut inflammation is traveling back up the vagus nerve to your brain, causing brain inflammation. Let's also add brain inflammation to the equation now. So you've, you've got all of this stuff now that's part of your biology. And until you also address that, you're not going to be able to successfully reach the potential that you could using the different therapy modalities. Some of the most effective therapy modalities, though, let's just talk about those are going to be the movement based, the somatic based. Somatic just is kind of the Latin term for tissues. And since the tissues are where the trauma is, we got to work with the tissues. So movement based, embodiment based rather than cognitive thoughts and talking about it. Now, I will say that for many people, depending on what type of trauma, depending on the degree of dysregulation, they may not even be ready to go there. J.J. right. Like there's this capacity that we need to, we call it titration in the trauma space where you're, you're titrating how much you're able to be in your body and it not be too much. And so we start with just very little bits. In my 21 day journey program, people are usually just starting out and we're doing 10 minutes a day. And even with that, like they're noticing, okay, I'm at my max and it's like, yeah, for right now.

Wow. And what are you doing in that ten minutes a day?

We are doing somatic exercises where we, there are things like supporting your stomach, supporting your heart, supporting your back. So they, these are exercises, I want to call them exercises because they're movement based exercises that I've pulled from my trainings in somatic experiencing for Those people who are aware of Peter Levine's work with somatic experiencing. It's been one of my trainings as a medical physician. Imagine, imagine that, right? Talk about a trauma, a medical physician sitting in a room of therapists for, for all of these days of training. And then neuroaffective touch. And so neuroaffective touch is one of these somatic based modalities that really is able to address a lot of the early neurodevelopment and attachment stuff and how that resulted in different bracing patterns. So even bracing with your thoracic inlet, your clavicles, people can walk around with shutting off their body sensations just by bringing their shoulders up because they're cutting off their vagus nerve, they're cutting off that midbrain part of their brainstem that processes sensations. And we do that unconsciously. People who have kind of a sense of feeling lost in life. We've got a, usually a lot of work to do with their hips and with their legs, because that is where their source of strength should be coming from Their, their, their sense of groundedness. And so some, many people didn't get the amount of movement, even in neurodevelopment as a baby, on their tummy, for example. And that has resulted in a disorganization of their nervous system that predisposes them to trauma. And so that's another piece that I look, that I look at. I just finished my attachment and neurodevelopment module for my certification course. And, and it was fascinating because I actually have my practitioners send in a video of them getting on the floor on their tummy and figuring out how to scoot themselves across the floor, keeping their belly button on the floor. This is actually a sign of how I can measure how their early life was zero to six months of life. And it's fascinating. Jj, I know. I would love to show you videos of some of these tummy time crawls because it's so obvious, the dysregulation of the nervous system. Just based on that, I can tell you so much about not only your childhood, but your life as a result of your childhood, based on what I see in your tummy time crawl, even as an adult. So we want to bring in all of these pieces once we are an adult, because otherwise we can, we can address one piece. Even if we go to say, somatic experiencing, we can address that. But then what about, what about the biology? What about that inflammation? What about that brain inflammation? If you have neuroinflammation, which I include gut Inflammation in that and all the food sensitivities. Because with the enteric nervous system, which is all of your nervous system in your gut, that is your second brain, There are. There are. I mean, almost, if you look at imaging just as many neurons and clusters in your gut as in your brain, it's fascinating. And so you have this inflammation surrounding your nervous system. Your nervous system is bathed in inflammation, and how do you expect to shift to parasympathetic? How do you expect to get your nervous system out of survival mode when it is literally bathed in this inflammation bath? So we have to address these aspects of the biology that will keep people stuck. So I see people going to therapy for years and years and years and years and years, right? And it's like, you know, we can. We can actually do a lot more. We can accelerate that healing journey when we are able to bring in these biology pieces that are very predictable, that are a downstream consequence of trauma.

Wow.

I know. I feel like I've thrown a lot.

At you, but it's so. It's. You know, this is. I'm just going to share this fun story. I think I told you this, but for everybody to hear, you know, so I start going to Dr. Joe, and I am the classic person you would have described. I was like, I want nothing to do. Like, oh, no, I'm not going to do this. Right. And I don't even know what finally got me over the edge. But one of the things I did was I just brought a group with me. That's how I always do it. I'm like, I'm gonna bring. I'm not going alone. Buddy and Chippy. I've got like, we're all going. We're all going in. So summer, Bach, you know, there's a whole crew. We're going. And again, they're having these amazing experiences. And I'm like looking at this, going, huh? You know, I'm watching. It's like Harry met Sally. And you're watching Harry or Sally having breakfast, having orgasms. I'm. What is going on? So I knew what was possible, and I knew none of it was happening for me. And I just thought, you know, I think this is like going to the gym. You wouldn't expect if you were totally out of shape to go to the gym. And the first time out, you're like, wow, look at my muscles. So I decided to give it time. And fortunately, the next time I went, I got to have breakfast with Dr. Joe. And I'm like saying, so these type A people who, like, never address their stuff. He's like, yeah, it might take you a while. So, you know, that's the second time. The third time kind of scratched the surface. But the third time in, and these week long events, I dropped five pounds. And I go, that is the wildest thing. What the heck happened? Like, what happened? Nothing happened. I didn't change anything. And I'm sitting at dinner with Dr. Joe and he goes, yeah, it's the no thing diet. I'm like, yeah, that's cute, you know, because he tells you to go be no one nowhere. No thing. But, you know, I'm just starting to feel the buzz. Like, I'll sit down to start to medit. Whole body starts to vibrate. And I go, that is weird. You know, and then the, the last time I went, I was a coherent Healy where they have groups healing you. And at first when they. They picked me, I'm like, no, no, there are people wheelchairs. They can't, you know, people have str. Like, Like, I'm fine. Like, I'm totally good. They go, no, no, no, we picked you for a reason. I'm like, oh, gosh. You know, I'm trying to get out of it, but I had the craziest experience going through this where. And you know, I like to think of myself as critically open minded. So, like, you know, I'm not suggestible. I want to look at it. See. So I've watched enough of this, but all of a sudden I am starting to like, what happened was my stomach and heart were where everything was happening. I was having all these contractions and weird stuff going on. And I realized afterwards that the trauma that I went through was. Was at the time I was adopted, you know, having a broken heart, my birth mom having a broken heart, me having a broken heart. I could feel my womb, I could feel my. My heart, right? And then, you know, never really, really connecting with my mom. My. My adopted mom, who is my real mom, that is, who raises you. It wins that title by far. And just. It was like, it was. It was crazy what, what happened. And gosh, this is. This is such key, critical work. And, you know, it's always challenging to do something where you can't step on a scale and go, oh, I, you know, lost this body fat or put on this muscle mass or put a blood pressure cuff on or a continuous glucose monitor. I'm like, where's the nervous system testing unit? You know, it's like, what can we do here? We can point to all of these things. You Know, we can point to, but, but the challenge is that you can't do the thing and then you go and do something like the commitment to daily meditation. And I know I feel better, but there's not like, where's the nervous system tester scale? So I can go, look, I got a nine instead of a six, you know, so I think that's part of the challenge with all this is it's not a, there's not a scale for it. You know, there's not a thing for it and you start to feel better, but it's not like overnight, all of a sudden your blood pressure dropped 20 points, you're like, whoa. You know, so, you know, for me it was, I said, I'm going to give this six months and I'm just going to do it. And if nothing happens in six months, then I'm out. But I'll do it for six months. And you know, it took six months, took just under. So, you know, and now I'm like, okay, got it. I get why this is, you know, and then you have the thing where with a lot of these different elements, you've got, you're adding 20, 40, 60, 90 minutes into your day when we're already overwhelmed and over scheduled and too much to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right. But when you start to really break it down and especially when you say the statement of every illness, like every person, you go, how does this not be the core thing that you address? I mean, how can you. You know, I look at food sensitivities and it's been my big work. And when people say, how did these happen? I go, the number one thing is stress. Well, now I realize it's the stress from restored trauma. And so what do we have to do? Well, we have to pull out those foods that are hurting you and, and probably keep them out until you resolve this, you know?

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Like they've been able to measure that stress. Right. And for me, that's where I can tend to disagree with some of the research because I think that what they call stress is actually trauma. But that's fine, let's use their terminology. Stress increases the intestinal permeability and especially to certain types of things like the dairy products or to gluten. Like it actually makes it even more susceptible if it's wasn't already susceptible. And so, yeah, you have to pull those foods out because otherwise you're just feeding the cycle of inflammation and trauma and dysregulation.

So here's what's Interesting, because. And I remember. I remember early on in my career, I was working with a gal, and she lived in this beautiful house, and she had one child who was a perfect child. And. And, you know, I had. I was like, my husband wasn't working and I was killing myself, and I had two. Two children. It was clear. One had some. Some real challenges. And she had, like, perfect life, right? You know, wealthy husband, was a doctor. She didn't work, and she was so stressed out about an upcoming bat mitzvah for her daughter. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, my gosh. You know, but. But you realize that wasn't what was stressing her out. She probably had so much stored in her that that was just. She just couldn't take it. You know, it just was the thing. So I think it's what we call stress because we don't know what else to call it. But your body, you know, I always like to say your body's not a bank account, but it is a history book. It is.

And specifically your nervous system. Your nervous system is the history book. The. The purpose of your nervous system is to both experience and record your experiences. And so everything, every experience is stored in your nervous system in one way or the other. Both positive, right? Fill up your tank. Fill up. I call that cellular resilience. Fill it up. Fill it up. And you want it full before you go through a trauma, because that's going to set the point for whether, again, you can stay present to something and. And move through it, or if you're going to get overwhelmed and find yourself going into that. I can't take this. And I'm going to go have a drink. I'm going to go have a smoke. I'm going to go watch movies. I'm going to go do something in order to not feel.

So it really feels like, to me that there's two things that you have to do that the first thing you have to do is kind of go back and almost detox the trauma with these. With this movement therapy. And, like, it's like what I see happening at these Dr. Joe things where people literally are wheeling in. In a wheelchair and then they're flopping, and then all of a sudden they're walking. And I'm like, what? You know, the stuff you would never believe, but now I've seen it so many times. I'm like, all right, you know, okay, you can't not believe it. It's obvious, you know, something's going on. And so the detox or release of these Stored traumas and then the ability to have that resilience so that you don't store more.

Yes. And even I would say that your biology of your nervous system dictates the capacity for your healing. And so if.

Which is another huge statement. Right?

And that. And that's for me, where it comes down to like, look, we got to see trauma as biology, because without that, you're going to be doing the work and you're going to be hitting up against the ceiling effect. And if you want to push that ceiling effect and have more potential for your healing journey, we gotta address these issues that are keeping your nervous system stuck in. In either overwhelm or in that stressed mode. And so your capacity, your capacity to be present is based on the biology of your nervous system. The capacity for you to be alive is all based on the biology of your nervous system. It's not based on your psychology. It's based on your biology, your nervous system. And then that's what. That's what from. From there, like, you can have, you know, the outflow of your body and your mind acting together and what you want to do in life, because otherwise your mind may come up with things, but your body's like, nope, not gonna do that. Not gonna go there. And so for me, right, like you were talking about, how do you measure, you know, success and progress on this healing journey? And for me, that's what it is, is being able to see when different life circumstances happen that you can't always know that they're coming. Right. But when they come, you are almost, like, looking at yourself like, is this me that's going through this? Because I've never been able to stay present for this to this degree. I've always, you know, gone and gotten the ice cream. I've always gone and, you know, gotten the chocolate. I've never. I've never been able to go through this and. And respond like this. I've always just reacted. And so you see yourself doing differently in ways that you've never been able to do before. And that's when you know, like, all right, what I'm doing, we're on the right track.

So good. All right. I know people are going to want more. Like, I don't know how you listen to this and not say, whatever you're doing, sign me up. I know, like, this is, you know, this underlies everything. It's why I've been so big fan of everything that I've Learned over with Dr. Joe, et cetera. Because once you see it, you're like, oh, wow, there is no feeling, there's no health, there's no wellness without this. So we always have something cool and awesome for our listeners. So what are you going to be providing them?

Well, I can share with them my guide to understanding the three states of their nervous system so they can help, help, know and learn. What state are they in? Are they in that parasympathetic state where they want to be or are they in the sympathetic state? Or are they in that freeze and trauma response? And then they can even use that as, as their guide to map out their own day. Like I talked about, I have my people do in the 21 day journey and they can get a sense of how healthy is their nervous system, how, how regulated or dysregulated is their nervous system and have that baseline for knowing how much work do I maybe need to do.

Perfect. That is fantastic. I'm going to put that@jjvirgin.com biology at first I was thinking I'll put it at trauma. I'm like, no, I'm not putting it at trauma. You know, no trauma.

No. Not owning trauma.

No, no, no. Releasing. So, all right, so JJvirgin.com forward/biology for that guide. It has been amazing having you here. Like everything you're doing, it's like Nobel prize worthy stuff.

Thank you, jj. I think that just seeing the amount of people walking around with burdens that they don't even know that they're carrying, right, it's what motivates me. And then when I see people doing the work and I see just, just those layers falling off and the, the energy and the smile, like, they, they look alive. They're looking forward to life now. It's like, yeah, this is why I do what I do.

And thank you for doing it.

Ah, thank you.

Okay, so I was so excited for that podcast and for good reason. Boy, did Dr. Amy over deliver and, and I am super excited about her guide that she's giving you. So be sure to grab that@jjvirgin.com biology and share this one with your friends. This is such an important message and if you've not yet subscribed to the podcast, come on, it's easy. All you do is go to subscribetojay.com There you go. I'll see you next time.

Foreigners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.