👨‍🏫 Guest Masterclass: The Science of Touch & Leveraging our Human Physiology w/ Eddie Ulm

Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Lovely to see your faces. Hey, John, Chris, Tessa, Alex, Don, Erica, Rodrigo. Okay, so while we're waiting for people to join, if you'd like to share in the chat how you're feeling in three words and a question that is alive for you, which we could potentially speak to with Eddie today. And we'll start in a couple of minutes time it.

Sa.

Okay, welcome. And for those of you who've just joined, please share in the chat how you're feeling in three words and any questions that are alive for you that you'd like Eddie to speak to today. And we'll start in a minute or so.

Sam, it.

Okay. Welcome, everyone. So I'm just reading through some of the. Some of the. The comments in the chat, and it sounds like people are feeling a little bit frantic, tired, unenergized. So before we begin, let's everyone just sit up in our chair, and I'm rolling the shoulders back, feeling your butt in the seat on the ground. And we'll just begin by taking three full breaths and sighs on the exhale. So get comfy. Maybe move your neck from side to side. Stretch anywhere. That feels good. Okay, let's take three full breaths and then sigh on the exhale. So inhaling through the nose all the way. And two more. One more breath. Maybe a little twist in your seat, twisting out the lower spine and then coming back into the space. When you're ready, let's unmute you. Okay. Okay. Well, welcome, Eddie. I'm. I'm so excited for this conversation. We've been. We've been friends for a while, but we've never really had a chance to kind of fully drop in and nerd out. And I'm honestly in awe of what you've created with Science of touch and the insane depth that you go to with your research and with what you teach. And so it's really a privilege to have you on here today, and I know there's a lot of people that are excited to learn from you as well, so welcome.

Yeah, I'm deeply grateful. Thank you for having me on. It's so lovely to see so many faces on here, and it's truly an honor to get to talk with you today.

Beautiful. So for those of you who maybe aren't familiar with your background, could you just briefly share how did you come to be a body worker and neurotrauma lecturer and these things, like, where was the impulse and the inspiration of this work and kind of what have been some of your lineages, like, who have you learned from?

Yeah, absolutely. It started with my journey into kinesiology and understanding human body movement. I went to school for that and sports psychology. And the goal was to be a physical therapist. Here in the United States, physical therapy is kind of beholden to an insurance system. So when I was working in physical therapy, I saw that that wasn't necessarily a path that I wanted to go down professionally, but at the same time I was working one on one with patients, elderly patients, at this particular moment in time. And, you know, the goal with physical therapist to put someone through a workout routine to, you know, strengthen and also get flexibility back into the core muscles. But what I was noticing was that even simply the act or the gift of therapeutic touch was super meaningful and deeply important to this geriatric population that I was working with. Even just laying them on their side, getting them to breathe into a diaphragm, just lightening the load of gravity was super valuable. So I had a window into what I wanted to do and how I wanted to gather myself to present an offering of touch, a therapeutic touch. I became a body worker on the advice of a friend. And since then I dove very, very, very deep into the work. I've become a somatic experiencing practitioner, which is a trauma informed approach to utilizing not only talk therapy, but touch therapy, recognizing the felt sense within everyone. Because not everyone realizes that touch is not just an external sense, it's an internal sense as well. So I went on, I became a trauma informed provider. And then to further this deeply valuable and important work that we don't often get on a consistent basis, I went into neuroscience. And now I'm in a neuroscience master's program. And the goal is to study embodied cognition, the information that our body's telling us at any given time. So that's, that's kind of where I'm at now.

Well, thank you so much. And just for those of you listening, like if any questions come to mind as Eddie's sharing, feel free to just write in the chat or raise your hand. And we can kind of come to people as we go, but as kind of an entry point. So here in nsm we've been covering interoception, polyvagal theory, and this week is mostly focused on kind of self regulation practices and shifting our state. And so I guess a couple of questions here. One, firstly, how do you think about kind of the process of self regulation? And as someone who is a incredibly experienced body worker, what might be some ways for people who maybe don't have access to high quality bodywork or manual therapy. Like how can people kind of self release and identify tension in their own body and then work to release it on their own? Maybe that's a good jumping off point.

Yeah, that's a great jumping off point. Also. Questions are super welcome. So if, if anyone wants to, to ask them, I will go ahead and answer them because I can tend to go into the reads with this stuff. So I will, I will make sure, I'll make sure to reel it, reel it back in. I would say that and, and I'm sure all of you are learning at this moment in time that our, our body is a series of feedback responses. So we are where if you think about a ripple, you know, if you think about a rock being dropped into a water, that ripple like goes out and then bounces off the wall and comes back. That's our body at any given time where we just have, we have small ripples, we have big ripples. It's always like a feedback response. And so that feedback can be affected by many, many, many different things, most commonly stress. And the way we take on stress in the world, the way we perceive stress not only in our bodies, but eventually in our, in our emotional and mental cognition. And so it's really body state over any story that we have. And I always say state over story. That's what I always tell, tell individuals like we are. If we get to address our state first, we get perspective on how to manage our story. So often with talk therapy, it's narrative focused, it's story focused. And so we're learning so much more about how the body's involved with that. So if we take a state over story approach, if we regulate our bodies first, we can help, we can help our narrative down the line as far as regulating ourselves. I, you know, it's really one thing I do see is that like our feedback does get, we do take on adjustments in our daily lives. We, our feedback gets adjusted to our stress response. So absolutely the most simple things are what can be done to help our stress responses is getting in a sensory deprived like area. You know, we take on sensation all the time. If we get into a place where we can deprive ourselves of that situation, like a silent room, a dark room, spot on the floor that gives us like that we could just lay down on and give us all points of contact. These are important ways that we can, you know, take away that sensation that might be informing us at any given time and give ourselves a pause and arrest. Breath regulation is so important. And then we can Also do self myofascial release, which I'm open to talk about here shortly.

Yeah, yeah, beautiful. So thank you for that context. And then maybe two. Yeah, a couple of questions here, if you notice. So maybe this is two parts. Like if you notice yourself in a kind of state of reactivity or in a trigger yourself either kind of sympathetic overwhelm or. Or dorsal. What are your kind of go to practices or rituals or things that help you to kind of return back to a place of ventral. And then maybe the second part, when you notice a client, let's say, going into that state. What are some things that you do to help bring them back to that place of safety?

Yeah, that's a good question. And everyone's different. It's hard to always necessarily pinpoint what is dorsal overwhelm. And, and so, you know, people may like in a state of dorsal overwhelm, like it's sympathetic parasympathetic, going like this, like a. It's like a big bounce. The most important area, and I'm convinced in on the entire human body, the place I start and finish all my sessions is the thoracolumbar junction, which is this band right here. Just underneath the Diaphragm is your T12L1 vertebra. That if you draw a big circle around your body, that's where the most important things occur. That's where. That's where your. That's where your diaphragm is. That's where your vagus nerve is dropping down through it, your aorta, your blood vessels, the nerve information in your spine that goes down to your legs. This is one of the most important junctures of the entire body. So getting pressure or sensation into that area is super helpful for even getting somebody to come out of their head and into their body. We can do this by. You know, my favorite activity is to take a really soft ball and just trace my abdominal cavity and get up in there, up by the thoracolumbar junction, breathe into that area, do twists, seated twists in hatha. Yoga is a really important activity that we get into. And getting people just to focus on exhaling all the way before they take an inhale. These are all super useful ways to focus in on that area. It really gets people out of this, like, state of overwhelm. And if they can get back into their bodies even for a second, it's a different feedback that they can utilize.

Beautiful. Thank you. And do you. Do you use a belly stone or like, do you find it's helpful to kind of have weight on that area as well and breathing into that or using the floor as a form of resistance. Is that something that you find helpful?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

There's quite often I'll get into the yoga, the bow pose in yoga, and I'll just have like all four corners of my tummy, like pressing into the ground, and then I'll, I'll breathe into that area. That's a really good, useful tool. Anything that's giving tactile sensation to the front, a lot of us forget that the front, like our spine is like, everyone that comes in and complains of back pain to me, they'll usually be surprised when I'm working in the stomach region or the abdominal region because I have to remind them, like, hey, this is the front of our back. This is the front of our back. And it's really useful to get to gather sensation in that area because when I talk about feedback, it takes a long time for feedback to get down to that area. And we start to lose that, that knowledge of the lower half of our body. And so it's really, it's really good to give that knowledge back to back to individuals. Whenever we talk about trauma or trauma responses. One of the most common, one of the most common descriptors is I can't, I can't really feel the lower half of my body. I'm not really always. I, I can't like, I feel like I'm not always in contact with it. I feel like my hips are exploding. You get a lot of different descriptors. But yeah, getting down on the ground, getting all four points of contact on, on the stomach region is usually the, the best place to start.

Beautiful. And then maybe one last question on the, on the self. Myofascial release. I sometimes find myself, particularly if I'm in like a sauna. Like I had a sauna this morning and I find that like massaging the side of my neck or like underneath, underneath the jaw and sometimes even the face and the eyes can just relieve a lot of tension. And I noticed myself taking like deep breaths and sighs and it feels like, it feels like tension is being released through that. And so are there any particular other points on the body that might be good? You know, if someone's sitting at a desk and they just want to give themselves a little bit of soft tissue massage, like, what would you, what would be a good starting point there?

When we talk about the sympathetic nervous system, right here is a grouping of sympathetic. It's called, they're called chain ganglia, but they're. It's a grouping of sympathetic nerve tissue. And so one of, one of like one of the therapeutic approaches to PTSD is a nerve block or they'll inject a nerve block into that area called a sympathetic chain block. But aside from injecting things into our body, I think that, I think we can, I think it's really useful to kind of grab into this area and just lift. And when we grab into this area and lift, don't do both sides because you'll, you might like have to cough. But if we grab one side at a time and then breathe and like it'll kind of lift up and then like sometimes it'll, that, that muscle will pop off of your grip. But if we breathe into that area as we do, that's a really, really, really good one. And it's also super relaxing to that whole sympathetic chain ganglia that can be firing at most times because we, we have a head, we have a big head, it takes on gravity and you know, like our head is never always symmetrical. We, we tend to carry it like this. So this is a really useful tool to alleviating some feedback and some feedback that could be affected by stress. So that's a good one. I really like to get into.

A.

And yoga is huge for me. My wife's a yoga teacher, as you know. But you know, holding yoga postures for more than holding yoga postures for more than a minute, somewhere in the 60 to 122nd range is where we see bodily reflexes finally start to change. And in this world of like power yoga and fast paced yoga or workouts that are super concentric and go, go, go. To hold a posture or to hold a pose for over a minute really affects these. And what I study is somatic reflexes. So all of the reflexes informing your brain, holding a pose for more than a minute, more than two minutes really allows us to I guess tap into all of those somatic reflexes on a deep, deep, deep level. And I would say somatic reflexes are what tell us who we are, where we are, what we're doing. So it could be very deeply meaningful to hold those poses.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm really glad that you mentioned yin yoga. And that's something which really for the last five years alongside nsdr, I think it's really helped me to downshift and unwind. And as you, as you say, I think it is, it's almost like the medicine for our times. And I find for myself. I remember I was actually doing a yin class, I think with, with Kelly, your wife in Bali. And, and I remember some, like, tears ended up coming through. I was, I was doing a pigeon pose for, like, three minutes and tears started coming through. And I realized that by holding my hip flexor in this way, it just elicited this kind of this, this sadness and this grief that had been there. And this links to a question which was asked by one of our alumni yesterday. And, and he, he was asking, when people say that trauma is stored in the body, what is it that they're actually saying? And what is it that's being stored? And my understanding is that it's more the memories that are being stored in the lower brain stem. But these cortical maps kind of map on to different areas of the body. So I'd love to hear, how do you think about this? And could you maybe also articulate what do you mean by this kind of incomplete reflex language that you use? Because I think that it's super interesting and not really very well understood. That was a big question. Sorry.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. You're onto it. I will start with reflexes. Our entire body is made out of reflexes information. It's happening all the time from when we are born, actually when we're in a womb growing to the adult, eventually adolescents and adults that we are, that's all informed by reflexive patterning that's kind of ingrained in our nervous system. We are called innate reflexes. We don't, we don't control them. They happen so that we grow up into a human. Sometimes these reflexes are incomplete and we have developmental disorders. And that's, that's the way of life. But we have somatic reflexes, which is everything in my outer body. And we have autonomic reflexes, which is your vagus nerve and everything informing the inside of your body. And so the. So those reflexes also inform what's going on inside your body. And that includes your fight or flight responses, your reactions to fear and learning and memory. And so I love this question when people ask me, like, I heard trauma stored in the body, I heard trauma stored in the body. It is stored in your predictions. And what we learn about the brain is that it's a prediction machine. It is only assuming what it knows from the last time it experienced something. And it is informing your best decision to keep you alive at any given time. And so this is in your muscles, this is in your heart, this is in your gut, this is in your breath. All of these predictions happen based on your learned environment. And if we've experienced something overwhelmed or even overwhelming over the course of several experiences. That trauma being stored in your memory and in your fear responses and in your automatic reactions and predictions. The one thing that bodywork is absolutely important for is introducing what's known as a prediction error. So taking somebody into a prediction error and basically surprising the body, surprising the system, into learning that there's an environment that I can be safe in, there's an environment I can let go in, there's an environment I can take agency of my own body. And I say this about bodywork because I'm passionate about it. But this could be breath work, a therapy session, and even being in a safe environment with friends and family can inform a prediction error that is really healthy for you. So this is available to us at all times. We always want to know that the brain is a prediction machine. It's informing our automatic reactions. And so that's where trauma is stored in the body. If we look at, just to go on about it, if we look at World War I veterans that had returned from the war, you'll see that they have these big tremors occurring. They're very old videos of tremoring World War II survivors or World War I. And so what their brain is doing is predicting that they're still in war. And this body, like a body reaction like this is just a response to what they were informed by or overwhelmed by. And they, they can't. No one really knew how to take them out of it. A lot of them were sedated and they saw that had therapeutic value. But eventually, eventually we caught on and we started to learn about the embodied cognition and what the brain is actually doing in that moment. So fortunately, now we have a lot more tools at our disposal than back then.

Yeah, thank you for that answer. And something that a question that comes to mind for me is, based on what you've just shared, what would you say is the connection between our somatics and the brain as a kind of prediction machine? And, and to speak from personal experience, if I'm, say, guiding myself through a breath work journey and I bring breath presence awareness down to my psoas or down to some areas in my, like, iliacs, often fairly reliably. Shame and grief seems to like, arise and say, could you maybe speak to what is the connection between these predictions and numbness or held tension or patterns that might be stored in different areas of the body?

I will say that we have. So these predictions are also known as somatic markers when we're talking about the body There's a whole theory, somatic Marker Theory, that speaks to this. Antonio Damacio was the creator of that. He also had an amazing book called. Oh my gosh, I'm Drawing a Blank. It's the Scarf Error. It's called the Dark Error. Very important book. Yep. So his, his whole thing is that our internal landscape is guiding us on our decision making processes at a subconscious level and also informing our reactions. So when we are. Oh, and a lot of his work is on emotion. And so a lot of these. Yes, a lot of these somatic markers are being fed into areas of the brain that, like the insular cortex, that help kind of congregate sensory information and tell us what emotion this is going to be presented as. Or what's this emotion that, what's this emotion telling us? So the thalamus, the insular cortex, and the hypothalamus are all involved in just our body's regulation of emotion. And so, you know, when we are kind of in a protective response, we're isolating some emotions and we're prioritizing others. And so you see that, you see that in the outward representation of an individual based on, you know, based on their trauma responses at any given time, a lot of them, a lot of people aren't also taking the time and the space necessary. A lot of people have very busy lives and a lot of go, go, go. So there's not a lot of time and space for us to go internal and tap in and check in. And I think that one of the most beautiful part of the past decade is like teaching everybody how important these moments are. Yeah, I say silence, space, stillness, and sleep. So four Rs. And, and we need to seek these out on a consistent basis. Silence, space, stillness, sleep. And, and, and that is kind of the way that we are able to get back into our, you know, being.

Thank you so much. So I have a bunch more questions, but I kind of like to open it up to you guys here in the room. If you have a question for Eddie, would you like to raise your hand? I see. John, you have your hand raised. The floor is yours.

Hello, Ed. Really cool stuff. I, I really love the story follow state. It really resonates with me, so many stories that I have developed about myself. And it was all because I was dysregulated. And then I kept on believing them. So it's really good to see that. I'm wondering. So I'm, I'm going through a period of grief right now because a chapter in my life has closed. And so I'm having a hard time being with that grief and that anger.

And I'm.

I'm always looking for tools to optimize. How can I be with them without getting overwhelmed and without, I don't know, being really activated? And, you know, and so I'm wondering how the science of touch or your experience has led you to discover some tools that are useful when you are by yourself.

When I'm by myself, Yeah. I mean, the therapist in me is like always wanting to be in the, in the, in the presence of another and being able to share things with another. And so when I am not able to seek that out when I am, When I'm alone with my thoughts, it's really just a matter of, you know, I, I do a. I do an inventory check of what sensations are important to me at any given time. What sensations am I feeling that may be informing anxiety in my system? And what, which ones may. Which one can I back out of? Which one can I prioritize? Like, for example, you know, is my. Is my apartment too cold right now? Is my, is my, you know, could I, could I change the temperature? Could I move from a different room to another room just so I'm like. Just so I'd have a different perspective on like moving rooms? This is very surprising. Moving rooms to me has been a super important method for gathering perspective. So if I'm thinking a certain emotion or if I'm feeling a certain emotion in one room, I'll actually go like, work with that emotion in a different room and see how it changed me. And if I can even get a different perspective over what that story is starting to build up in my head. If I'm overworked. I do actually drink too much coffee sometimes. So if I'm overworked in that regard, it's just, I will commit to a gallon of water right after that. Like, a gallon of water is so important. I actually, it's like these are very small things, but they inform my senses in a different way. And so if I'm able to just kind of change a internal landscape for myself, I know that like, I'll be able to reframe and re tackle like a difficult topic or re. Engage in a. Something that's been bothering me. So yeah, I hope that helps. Was that a decent enough answer?

It.

It helped, but it wasn't the exact. My. The point of my question is how, how are you able to support yourself, to release these feelings and to go through to the other side? If you have any practices around that with the body work and all that or the science of that, how can you do it by yourself?

I will, I will get into, I will get into self. Myofascial release. I will. I think I, I think I alluded to laying over top of a ball, breathing into a ball, gathering my fists and kind of digging them into my diaphragm and then moving over top of them and then breathing into those. If I don't have a ball available, you know, a lot of, a lot of like self touch and self care around the head and the neck and then you know, if I need to get into the presence of other people also I prioritize that as well. So like I will go and see a body worker. Yeah, thank you.

I'll just add, I'll just chime in there because this is very relent for me as well. Well, firstly, next week is kind of going to be focused on exactly this question of like how do we create the set and setting for healthy emotional expression and release. And my housemate actually here, her name's Kim, she lost a dear friend of hers who took his own life recently and she hosted a grief dance in our house last night and there were 20 something people from the neighborhood who came and there was a kind of semi professional DJ who put on like a grief set and for two hours everyone just danced and moved their bodies and gave themselves permission to like to cry, to release, to move through the sensations. And it was profoundly powerful to be a part of that. And I think part of what I'm going to speak to you next week is that we, we lack the spaces where there is the permission and the safety to go into these emotions. And so taking initiative to create these spaces for yourself is, is a big part of this work. But thank you for the question, John.

I'm a, I'm a huge fan of and I'm a huge proponent and my wife and I go every Sunday to a static dance. It's a safe, it's a safe environment for us to like in a complete non judgmental environment for us to basically like dance the energy of the week off or get into community and it's like church for us. So yeah, it's been very valuable.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Tessa, you've got your hand raised.

Hi. I was just curious where it is that you're studying neuroscience.

King's College, London. Yeah, so I'm part of an applied neuroscience program. There's eventually I would like to move over to the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami. Thanks. Cool.

Thank you. Tessa. Mattia.

Hey.

My question originally was going to be what John asked, so we're going to skip over that. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that I was going to ask about how to do this by myself, but really I need to see somebody because I have resistance towards that. So that's what I need to do. So the question becomes, in this field, how do you tell if somebody's good?

I always tell someone to interview their practitioner. More, more than the practitioner. You, you seek somebody out and you, you say, hey, I'm moving through something. In your experience, have you worked with individuals that have, you know, experienced grief or experienced anger or experienced strong emotional ties to something? Are you a trauma informed provider? Have you like, are you understanding about the physiology of trauma? Do you, do you see people for, do you see people? I like to go in for sessions over an hour, somewhere in the hour to 80 minute range. I think that's my personal attention span. So like, does someone facilitate a space where you can see them for like over an hour maybe, or these are all questions that you can personalize, deeply personalized. And so yeah, whenever I get more questions than I'm asking, I know I, I know we're going to get some good work done. I know that that person's appreciative of their, of their body, of their place. So I, I would get the sense, I would just say, you know, if you're interviewing body workers in your area, you know, be upfront, come with, come with some meaningful deep questions in regards to body work.

And then yeah, it's great. Last, last bit of this then just because again, completely new to the field. Sounds like somatic, like, yeah, what are the schools like what are the keywords basically that you will give for somebody to research? Because like these are at least in Canada where you can see I'm at, I just became Canadian.

I'm very proud of that.

Anyways, here in Canada all this stuff is non licensed, right? Like it's basically it's. Yeah, it's not regulated at all as far as I understand, like versus schools. So I'm just like curious to understand again.

In Canada you would seek out an RMT that's had over 2000 hours of licensure or an osteopathic doctor do. Dos are, dos are my favorite people on this earth. They really are, they really are understanding of the deep physiology of the body. They're not doing rapid adjustments. Everything is very slow, methodical. They're working with the tendon, bodyworkers going to like anyone. Bodywork also doesn't have to be deep. It can be very even. Just holding somebody's head for an extended period of time is super important to the tendonous structure of the head and the spine. So it doesn't have to be deep. In fact, I've worked on NFL players or very heavy sports players and we can dig and dig and dig into their muscles, but the greatest work that we ever did is when they're breathing and I'm holding the back of their head and we're not even going deep into the muscle at all. So. So someone who is able to hold, present, hold a space for you is really just the key thing that you're looking for. Thank you so much.

Of course, yeah. Just to again, maybe pull us the thread a bit more. I think it's such an important question and one of my desires with NSM is actually to create a curated directory of trusted skills somatic based bodyworkers and therapists. And just to add to Eddie's answer, I found that Hakomi practitioners also can be really powerful that combines touch with kind of a somatic experiencing approach. Also in the west of Canada, there's a great conscious connected breathwork school called Breathwave by Robin Clemens. And conscious connected breathing, again combined with manual touch can be really powerful at eliciting some of these incomplete reflexes. And there was one more I was going to mention, it's gone. But I think it's a great question and as Eddie's speaking to, whilst we can learn to hold space for ourselves, which is, I think vitally important, learning how to find and suss out someone who is a skilled practitioner who can allow us to go deeper is a really important part of this process too. So thank you for the question.

And I would just say more and more practitioners that are, you know, seeking out bodywork education for themselves, they're moving in this direction of understanding nervous system physiology and trauma informed approaches. So Hokomi is an amazing school. I believe it's in Colorado. That is a, that is a great resource. There is the Bowen Institute and there's one in, there's one in Deutschland, which I'll actually have to. I'll have to get, get to you, Johnny. So you can get to everybody.

Yeah. And I just remembered what I was going to say was I have a really great craniosacral practitioner here in Boulder as well. And I think that, you know, the standard does vary, but I've experienced some really profound breakthroughs with craniosacral as well. Alex, if you'd like to ask your question.

Yeah, I am a craniosacral therapist.

Amazing.

Yeah, yeah, it's. Right. It's really been appreciating this conversation and just more learning and resources for myself as well. And I think what comes up for me, and that really is a big question for me right now is how to like, I'm super sensitive and also I work with clients and so, and I think this applies also just in social situations for me as well, where how do I attend to myself and my own nervous system in real time when I'm like interfacing and co regulating with either clients or with, you know, my friends who are, you know, having their own experience. Like, are there practices or things you do for yourself in the moment when you're like, what? Like this person is like really, like, you know, in a different state. And I don't want to like, take that on.

Yeah, that's an amazing question. And it's one that I, you know, it's constant work. I would just say I lean heavily on routine. And I learned that the hard way. You know, a routine for myself is even a morning routine and evening routine is good for me to just dispel everything I took on in the day. But in the moment I really just have to remind myself that, hey, this is about them. And I'm sure you've experienced this before. It's like, okay, right now it's about them and I'm going to do, I'm going to get to work. And then like, and then once they're out of a, like once that bond is broken just for the day, then it's, then it's you time, you know, that's really. Then it's really okay. I am, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna take five minutes, I'm gonna dispel that. This, all the information that I took in. But you know, with me personally, like, I ran into the issue of like not doing that. Like, I wouldn't even remind myself of that. I'd just be like, okay, whatever, next thing. But you know, as I've gotten older and I've burned out once or twice before, so I've come to the realization that my boundaries of time are important. My boundaries of energy investiture are important. My wife is a Tantra Katha yoga practitioner. So it's really important that we, that we are talking about energy exchange and what's involved in that. So when I'm interfacing with somebody, I just have very strong boundaries and let Them know about my time commitments and stuff like that. That's usually been helpful for me so that I can navigate those waters. Yeah. Is that helpful?

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the routine that's been. And doing it like actually remember to like be mindful of like right like now I take care of myself and that's what the breaks for.

Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean that's, that's, that's a, it's a simple answer to give to you. But like I would just say like my, what my issue was was reminding myself like, okay, this, this is that breakdown.

Yeah. Especially if like in this world where it's just, it's so easy to just go to the next thing.

Right.

There's always something else to do. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah, I'll just add a couple of thoughts to that as well because this is something I've experienced myself as a breath worker as well and kind of holding space through very powerful and emotional experiences. Two things are. One, there's this phrase that this guy Rick Smith says where he says hold space without holding. So it's like you can really be with someone without like holding, with any tightness and just reminding myself that I can just be kind of like at ease even if someone's going through something powerful is. And you know, I'll notice myself like clenching or like you know, really kind of narrowing my awareness into that person and just, I'll just like expand my awareness back out and actually learning some of the basics of the Alexander Technique from my friend Michael Ashcroft has been really helpful. And just. Even when I'm kind of. I have hands on with someone in a breath work context, I'll be shifting my awareness to feeling into their sensations and then shifting back into my body and like grounding even as my hands are doing whatever they're doing. And so I think just knowing that you can move your awareness between your client and this, you know, this works outside of a therapeutic context as well. Just like bringing awareness back into yourself.

Have you, have you covered Alexander Technique with everyone?

Uh, we've mentioned it in, in passing, but one of the students is an Alexander Technique teacher. But if you want to speak to it, please, please do.

No, absolutely. The, one of the most cool ways. And I'm, I'm sorry I didn't lead with this, but one of the cool, one of the cool tools that you have at your disposal is Alexander Technique is, is basically envisioning the space between each joint, each vertebra, each version, the lifting sensation of your spine of your head, off of your spine, getting into a, getting into like the. It's almost a thought exercise of moving space into your body. And so I'm just a big proponent of that. I see that Scott asked a question about a pre and a post session routine and also Alex, this would be a good thing as well is getting into Alexander technique. It's all it takes is 10 minutes, seated five, 10 minutes. So it's a really good way of envisioning space and space in your body and practicing that.

Yeah. And even space outside of your body as well. It's like bringing your awareness to the space behind you or the space side of you or even the whole room. It like expands your awareness so that you're. So that you're less contracted into whatever the experience is and it creates spaciousness. Beautiful. Thank you. Alex, Are there any other questions from you guys? And if not, then one other. Yeah, one other question that I had was related to. You wrote a blog post around the importance of touch and how in a kind of post Covid space, you know, it's even more important. And you mentioned like depersonalization and derealization. So maybe you could speak to that just a little bit.

One of the most tragic cases, case studies, psychology case studies that there IS is the 2000, 2001 Romanian Orphanage Study where a lot of orphans were raised in these dark rooms without any sort of tactile sensory information or any caretaking. Many of them didn't, many of them died and then many of them didn't develop into these fully grown individuals. Like a 17 year old would look like a 12 year old. And it's because they weren't getting tactile sensory information. They weren't getting touched. And when we went back and looked at that study on a physiological level, like parents and mothers in particular, when they're holding and cradling their child, touch is the external sensation, that force that we like build our, like we, we start to grow and build bodies from. It's such an important, absolutely important sensory tool in, in our own development. So if it's an important tool in our development, it's an important tool in our sensory reg. And our self and self regulation, sensory regulation and emotional regulation. And you know, with the current of the, with Freudian era psychology, when that came into effect, you know, we had the therapist over here and we had the client over here on a, on a couch. And this kind of barrier in between the, the healer and the. And and the patient is what we carried on for, for years, decades and so eventually, you know, and I take my, I actually take my lineage from a Russian line of, of psychotherapists where we, they look at reflexes and how reflexes inform our emotions. I can go into that. But it's. They eventually their work kind of got glossed over. Anyway, coming back, we have this now system of psychotherapy that's talk based and it's separate. And so we're now seeing how much emotion is tied up in the body and how much emotion is informed by the body. And unfortunately, when we went into lockdown, our front forward facing experiences kind of went by the wayside for many, many months. Many almost probably over a year. And that can be quite devastating for somebody. And so like who knows what eventually the outcomes of that will be. But I am very adamant that now is the time that we need to get back into our body work rooms. We need to be meeting with touch centered therapists because it's such an important tool for our emotional regulation.

Thank you. And there's a question or a couple of questions in the chat. One is speaking to the, I guess the balance between co regulating with others versus self regulation. And. Yeah, and perhaps to kind of add as an example, let's say someone doesn't have a romantic partner or an intimate partner, what might be some ways to get that kind of touch in daily life? Yeah.

Okay. So on a bodywork therapeutic, in a bodywork therapeutic world, there's two things that are so essential that we can't do on our own. We, we can't stretch tendons at a very fine level. And we usually don't have an atmosphere where we can go into what Andrew Huberman calls non sleep, deep breath. So we're offering a space where someone can stretch these very fine tendinous insertions that have very, they're called gold retendant organs. They're these very fine sensory organs in our body. It's really hard for us. We can't stretch those on our own. So having somebody else stretch that is extremely therapeutic. And then offering a space where someone can have their head in a faith cradle and get this deep rest that the nervous system needs kind of reset. Like there's a moment right before we sleep that our nervous system goes into a, it's a theta state. It's a resetting of our entire nervous system. So that's why we go see a practitioner is for those two environments. They can be super important for us. Now on, on the, on the personal end, you know, not having a partner that engages in touch or not having A partner around two engage in touch. You know, I don't say that necessarily. We, you know, I would say that if you know that that's important to you, like communicating that to people is always good. Asking someone, hey, can you, can you rub my shoulder? Seeing what their response would be, like a close friend or someone involved in your life and see what they say. And, and, and like, say, hey, listen, like, eventually it could be like a, like there's no strings attached to this, but like, if someone does, if someone, you know, like, is open or accepted to that, like, you can always ask them, like, communication is the most important part of my job. And so we can always practice that with the people around us. Um, especially in regards to touch. It's good practice for them too.

Yeah, great answer. Um, so maybe to wrap up, there's a great question from Scott. He says if he had £500 or 500 to put towards a somatic training or practice, what might you point him towards? And obviously. So Scott's in, in Brighton in England. If he was living in Austin, I'd say book a session with you. But for people who are, say, you know, outside of the major hubs in the States, what would be some good starting points, resources, things to look for?

Oh, you know, I, I always like to point people towards thematic experiencing trainings that are international. It's called the FDPI Thematic Experiencing Training International in England. You know, I would, I would have to look this up, but I'm sure that there is a pretty predominant school in, in England and I know that there's one in the Netherlands. So if I could just get that information to you, I, I'm there. I'm drawing a blank on the names as well.

Beautiful. Well, are there any other reflections or, or comments from you guys in the audience before we, before we wrap up? Alex? Yeah.

This might be. Maybe this is a really personal question, but maybe not for those of us who sense that we have like, developmental or just like trauma that has accumulated over time, like, what do we. What do.

What do.

How, you know, what do we do with that? How do we like, you know, in thinking about like looking for body workers even, or searching for people to help with that, like, what does the process of like, coming out of that look like and how do we find it?

Yeah, I, and this is actually where I say, you know, we should really start with the combination of a mental health professional and a, and a body worker. Someone that, like a body worker that is working with a mental health professional or a mental health professional. And I am adoring of my therapist because you know, I seek them out because they know how important touch is to the equation. We cross reference. We, you know, like, I'll just go into my stuff a little bit. Like we, we get my narrative straight through my body experience. And that's really been a key player in my like getting my stuff back online. So, so I actually, you know, I do always tell people, you know, like mental health professionals are still there for a really important reason. And that is the narrative part. And so if we can address the narrative, address the body, address the narrative again, address the body. It's like it's this very important back and forth and if they're in communication with each other, even better. So it's this like triad of really good work getting done.

Sweet. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'll just add to that as well. In, in my experience it's been a combination of experimenting with different mostly body based practices. For me, facilitated breath repatterning which I experienced in Bali was my like doorway in that allowed me to kind of go deep. But I know other people for whom somatic experiencing. Hakomi. Eddie has a.

No, I just, I. Now that you're, now that you're mentioning this like the, the, the absolute like honing in on what your spiritual practice is or what your spiritual environment, environment or landscape looks like or what my spiritual landscape looks like or Johnny's, like that's also been like the fourth piece of the puzzle. So it's like like narrative body self regulation and then like whatever spirit looks like is, has been. Go seek that out relentlessly.

Yeah. And as, as Eddie was saying earlier, just really interviewing and like find like choosing your practitioner as someone who you would trust with some, you know, really important things. And there's a lot of great ones out there. So I think, and that's something that I'm hoping to do here in terms of curating practitioners too. Okay, well thank you so much Eddie. This has been amazing. I knew it would be. Is there anything that you would like to leave listeners with? Any parting words, any closing comments, any invitations to give before we wrap up here?

If I haven't convinced you yet, just go seek out body work. Go find a body worker. Go find someone to work with. Like absolutely. Like, and, and don't ever. And, and, and seek them out relentlessly. If they don't necessarily work or vibe with you, there's going to be the next person. The next person. But touch is so vital to your well being. So my parting word.

Beautiful thank you. And where, where can people find you on, on the, on the interwebs? I know you have the science of touch website, Instagram. What would be some places that they can learn more about your work?

Science Touch website sciencetouch.com I'm@scienceoftouch and I do have a four stage learning platform on for bodyworkers. So if you are a touch provider, super useful for amalgamating that information. Everything I started to kind of allude to here is way, way more in depth on that thing. So I have that as well. That's on my website.

Yeah, yeah. There is hours of amazing content on there. I've got access to this myself and it's really phenomenal. And obviously, if people are passing through Austin, they can maybe see you for a session as well.

Absolutely. Yeah.

All right. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Eddie. Have a, have a wonderful afternoon and see you all very soon. Thank you all for joining. Feel free to unmute and say thank you as you. As you leave.

Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you so much.

Bye. Thank you.