How to Reduce Stress Through Mind-Body Therapy with Manuela Mischke Reeds

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide, and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Manuela, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Kwame. Great to be here.

It is a pleasure to have you, my friend. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

I wear multiple hats, so I am a somatic psychotherapist and I teach globally on somatic psychology, which includes working with mindfulness embodiment, our patterns of how we resolve internal belief structures. So as a somatic psychologist and teacher, I also write and I also work with business executives and do team development and executive coaching. So a lot of education, teaching, therapy, coaching, a whole variety of things.

Awesome. And can you tell the listeners about your incredible book as well? Books, Plural, right?

Yeah, plural. I wrote a book on mindfulness called the eight Keys to Mindfulness, Practical Mindfulness. And then I also wrote a book on somatic psychotherapy tools which is geared for people who are therapists or coaches who want to bring somatic psychology into their work, which was really about embodiment. And then I'm also finishing a book on movement and how to bring movement techniques into the therapy or coaching space as well. And then I'm working on Another project which is around somatic psychology and psychedelics. So how to bring embodiment techniques into the psychedelic process.

Well, you know, I use audiobook, but I'm not even finished with it, Manuela, because I had to take a second. I need to. I said let me slow this down. But I already have. I'm probably. I'm over halfway through it and I went. I kind of just. I went on a binge. So I. Within a week of meeting you, I was over halfway through that book and approximately 30ish pages of notes, single space size. Oh, wow, it's so good.

So listeners, that's so sweet.

Yeah, no, my pleasure. Thank you for writing it. We'll put the link in the description for that book. And it wasn't until I met you that I learned about trauma informed leadership, which I thought was such a fascinating concept. Can you tell the listeners about that?

Sure, yeah. This is a program that I developed with a company called Abroad that I served as a chief mental health officer. This is really bringing all my learning and teaching and practice. I've been in this field for about 30 years now of healing and health and well being and therapy and coaching. So I feel like it's all kind of one umbrella. But I've been in that field for a long time and really brought a lot of the trauma techniques and understanding of how we understand trauma now to date, which is based on neuroscience, into leadership. Because there's a lot of trauma at the workplace that people don't want to acknowledge. They would talk about stress and they talk about burnout, they talk about psychological safety, which are all components of becoming trauma informed. But really at the core is understanding how do we as humans operate when we are under a lot of stress and trauma. Stress and trauma is on a continuum. And I could talk a little bit more about that, but we often like to avoid the word trauma because we think it's a car accident or something very horrific. And that's true. But really the most pervasive traumas really in our lives are relational traumas which happen at workplace. So being bullied at the workplace or having a lot of stressors or not getting along on a team. And so when we become trauma informed, we're learning about how humans process high stress through the body and how their behavior and their emotions are shaped because of it, which then impacts any kind of relationship on your team and the organization and your family life and your personal life. Becoming trauma informed is understanding how we as humans are biological creatures and we respond to stressors in particular, Ways. That's what really trauma informed means. And when we become trauma informed leaders, it means I understand my own nervous system and I understand how my own, what we call dysregulated nervous system impacts other people. So if I'm getting very stressed and very anxious and I haven't really processed my own stressors, I might get very aggressive with you, Kwame, or I might get very withdrawn or I freeze or have all these kind of behaviors that you then might read as, Manuela, you're being weird or you're being strange to me, or being aggressive. But if you have a trauma informed lens, you might see that I'm actually just very anxious or very frightened or very dysregulated in my emotions. And having that lens then enables you then to say, oh, let me respond compassionate to you. Let me have some understanding. Let me be patient. And so our relationship is a very different quality of interaction and being. Your leadership style improves because of that lens of understanding.

It was a very efficient answer because you've answered all of the three questions that I had as follow ups. So this is great. That's perfect. And I love the answer because it was so thorough. And it helps us to recognize that this isn't something that is soft and woo woo and out there where it has no validity or practicality. This is something that, yes, just as people, it's better for you to be able to regulate your emotions and have better mental health and stability, just as people. That's true. But then let's say you're a competitive person who doesn't care about those type of things. This is still beneficial for you because it helps you to be a much better leader. And when we had the opportunity to present in San Diego together, listeners, I love presenting, I love talking, I love speaking, I love talking about this type of stuff. This is interview number two out of three interviews for today. And I just want more. Right. And so this was the first time that I felt like I did not want to speak. And here's why. Because Manuela went up first and she was dropping so many gems that I said, I don't want to hear this Kwame guy. Can we keep on talking about this?

And you're fun to listen to.

Thank you. So it's so good. And what was really interesting to me was the connection between what you were talking about with the trauma informed leaders, leadership and understanding your body interoception and all of those things, and conflict resolution and negotiation. I remember when we were supposed to be meditating, I was there taking Notes. Because I'm like, I don't want to lose these thoughts.

What a bad meditator you are.

This is great. And you said something in passing in your explanation here, and I want to really zero in on it because it's so important. You talked about how with trauma informed leadership, we're learning how to process high stress through the body. And one of the things that I realized is that we are a heady society, so we focus exclusively almost on our. On our brain and our thought process. And if we want to improve our performance, we have to focus on our brain. And it wasn't until I heard you speak and started to read your book that I started to recognize true connection between the body and mind. Can you go a little bit deeper into that?

I love that you're pointing that out. Also, in particular, you're right. We're very heady culture. And then we recognize the value of exercise, right? And. But we even often approach our exercise in a very heady way, right? We don't really spend time really sensing and feeling our body. We kind of work our body out, right, to look better or feel better or because it's good for our health. But there's a whole other approach to what I call embodiment, which is really spending the time sensing and feeling. And this is where emotions and sensations also interact. So when we're cultivating, really, the feeling and sensing body, we're learning how to read our emotions just as they are. But we have often this compartmentalization that anger is bad, sad is bad, grief is bad. I want to be happy, and I want to feel good. And we don't really recognize there's a lot of intelligence in our emotions, and there's such. And we need to learn how to be with these emotions and understand them without the charge of it. So when I am angry, I can simply feel the energy, or maybe that's too abstract, but can feel the movement of anger even in my chest. Right? So if you're feeling angry, Kwame, where do you feel it in your body, mostly. Where do you feel it?

I feel it in. I do feel it in my chest. I feel it a lot. In my shoulders. Yeah, I feel it in my shoulders. They get a little bit higher, and then also my breathing changes. Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we Offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed.

So what you just did is a kind of what we call a body awareness. So you're scanning your body. I just ask you, where do you feel your emotions, right? The emotion of anger. And then you described it to me, and that's kind of deconstructing it in that moment. So by feeling, oh, my shoulders, my breath is getting more shallow, I feel it in my chest, right? Basically in that moment, you're deconstructing that emotion versus like, I'm angry and I gotta, you know, do something about it or fueling the anger, right? That's fueling the anger. But if you're actually taking the moment, this is where mindfulness comes in or reflection comes in, you're going, oh, how is this actually happening in this moment? My shoulders, my chest, my mind maybe speeds up so you're noticing. And by doing that, you're not fueling the anger. You're actually having this moment. You're allowing it to be there. And here's the wonderful thing about it. If you're allowing it to be there, the energy and the charge usually dissipates. I no longer have to go act out the anger. I'm just having it and giving it its due. And then I can go the next step, okay, I can take a breath. I don't need to be angry right now. I can maybe have a little bit more patience. I breathe into my belly. Oh, we call that resourcing, right? In that moment I can go, why am I, why am I so angry? I've got me so riled up here. But now I can have more choices. Because the thing about emotions and our trauma moments is they kind of snatch us, they become very involuntary. We don't have consciousness about it, right? So when we have trauma in the past that we haven't processed, begins to live in our present very strongly. And then we roller coaster with our emotions. I'm angry, I'm sad. Go up and down and up and down. And you're kind of becoming tethered to the roller coaster of your emotions and it feels out of control. So you don't have to be that way because you can actually go, okay, I have a strong emotion. What's it actually feel like it's. How do I sense it in my body? And that deconstructing itself and feeling that moment, it's quite magical. It takes out this intensity and the charge. And then I have choices again, like, do I really need to yell at this person right now? I don't really need to do that. Where's this anger coming from? Maybe I just need to complain. But I can complain very calmly. I don't have to yell at this waiter right now, right? For not bringing me my food quickly enough. Oh, I'm being very impatient. What got me impatient? It's not about the waiter. It's what happened to me maybe five hours ago at a meeting. So you're beginning to have more of an intelligence of working with your emotions. Because anger in itself is not bad. Sadness is not bad. Grief is not bad. All of our emotions are not bad. It's how we relate to it that makes it difficult or challenging. So learning how to be with the discomfort of emotion, learning how to just deconstructive, learning the language of the body, which is really sensations and feelings, learning how to be with that is really quite the recipe of understanding our own emotional life, our traumas. And then we become intelligent how we use our own experience going forward.

This is really, really interesting because I think when you think about Western society, when we think about solving problems, we solve problems through what we would describe as proactive action. We have to do something. We allocate efforts into addressing the situation. And so a lot of times when people ask me about managing emotions in difficult conversations, first of all, they're focusing on other people. They think they're stable and other people need to chill. That's one thing to explore at a later date. But when they're talking about managing their own emotions, I think a lot of times people are looking for quick fixes, not just how can I manage my emotions, how can I do it quickly, and how can I get to a place of stability so I can perform faster? And so essentially, it's not really honoring the complex nature of emotions, but it's just saying, this is something that I don't want and I'm pushing it down. And I think one of the things that holds people back from understanding themselves on a deeper level and managing their emotions is their desire to get rid of it so quickly. And what you've talked about here is the value in learning how to sit with that emotion, being at peace with that emotion, feeling it, and carrying and understanding the message that it carries. And so there requires A mindset shift to even be willing to accept that as a possible alternative to just getting rid of the emotion.

It requires some training actually. Right. So we need to train because we're often not taught that and it's uncomfortable. We also need to recognize that emotions aren't comfortable and they should be. They're our alarm system. There's a reason for that. We are feeling uncomfortable. If you go back to trauma, if you look at it fight, flight, freeze and appease, those are the responses that we have to a traumatic situation. We are equipped with those responses in our body that are coupled with emotions in order to survive a threatening situation. Way back when we had to run away from the saber tooth tiger, it was a really great idea that we froze and the tiger didn't want to eat us, or we ran away and we outran the tiger, or we fought them with all that we got and survived, hopefully so that we have all these biological defense mechanisms to survive. But when the danger is over, we usually discharge this. So we discharge it through the body through shaking, through crying for having emotions. Right. And that completes a cycle. So when we experience a high threat situation, we discharge it when we have safety. Here's the problem. When we don't have safety, when we're not in a safe environment, then we cannot discharge those experiences in our body. And then they begin to live or stay in the body as memory. Sometimes memory without content, they become memory in terms of pattern in the body, tensions in the body. Often we don't understand quite what it's connected to, but they become then habits and patterns. And then when we're later on, we're no longer in that threat. But maybe we're in a social situation where somebody is emotionally hostile or we're getting shunned, or we don't feel like we belong, or all those very core emotions of humans, those feelings in the body get triggered again. And now I'm behaving as if I'm running away from the tiger, the saber toothed tiger. So the body remembers how it felt to be under threat. But I'm in a social situation or I'm on a team or in an organization or in my relationship, but I'm behaving as if I'm under threat.

Listeners, when you have the opportunity to speak to incredible authors, what's funny is that you might speak to the author and then it reminds you of a story that you heard. And then you remember that story that you heard was in the book that they wrote.

Which story did you remember?

I was thinking about the. The story in the book where you talked about the woman who was. Had that fear of basements. Do you remember the story? Yeah, actually, I was going to tell the story. Maybe it makes more sense for you.

To tell the story because you read it just recently. Go ahead.

Okay. I am glad I'm not the only person who does this, because sometimes people quote my work to myself. I'm like, wow, that's really good.

Who said that?

They're like, that was your book. Did you write it? I was under trauma. I'm trying to forget that experience of writing a book. But anyways, yes, so the story goes, this woman, she would have really strong feelings of anxiety whenever she would smell mold or was in, like, a dark, damp type of area or a dark place. And it was kind of like an irrational level of discomfort that she was feeling. Never really understood why. And it turned out that when she was a toddler, maybe 2, 3, 4 years old, she had an experience where she was being watched by her grandfather, who fell down the stairs in the basement, and there was nobody else around. And so she was by herself. And so she just had to be with her grandfather. As her grandfather slowly died as a baby, she couldn't do anything about it. And it didn't really create a crystallized memory that she could truly access mentally. But it's like you said, the body remembered it. And so whenever she was in a circumstance or in a place that reminded her of a basement, her body would respond with that trauma response. But she never fully understood why until she was made aware of that story.

Right. Until she. Prosthetic therapy. Part of it is that the olfactory sense is the oldest, and it's the one that also alerts us the first to any kind of danger. So smells. That's why we're often, you know, triggered by smells and then sound also. They're part of our ancient neurological system, so that's often like that. People have smells and they go like, oh, I don't know why I'm being triggered. And then they're having the fight, flight, freeze, and appease responses come up because they're triggered by a sound or smell or touch. And they don't have necessarily the memory, concrete memory, especially if they're under three, to really remember what actually happened. So it often comes through body experiences like that, because the way our brain develops until age 3, we have a lot of neural growth, and it's very sensate. The young child is their whole world is feeling and sensing. And so these traumas that are Experienced under three, but also, you know, until about six as well. It's very sensate based. So, you know, clients often come in and they say, gosh, I know something happened, I don't know what. Well, they can't often remember, quote, what happens because their body remembers it. They maybe heard a story, but they don't remember a concrete story, but their body is completely remembering the story. And it's often for people who are working on early childhood trauma, it's very confusing because they go like, did it happen? Did it not happen? Right. It can be quite crazy making. But the experience of terror happened no matter what the actual story is. But the experience of terror happened. And that's what you can work with. That's what's so beautiful. This is really the work of somatic experiencing. Peter Levine, who I studied with and learned from where, you know, the recognition that trauma really happens in the body. And then we kind of make meaning of what happens through our mind and trying to understand what actually happened. But if you're too young, like under age three, where you don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, you can't even understand your experience because you have no context for it. Right. So all of your experience is very body based. So you walk into a room and it feels unsafe and people are smiling at you. So what is the unsafe part about? It is something that your body recognizes and it could be a glance and probably, you know, this like people can look at you in a funny way or give you a fake smile. It's called the Duchenne smile, by the way. That doesn't feel genuine and it feels like a threat because it is. Right. And if you grew up in an environment where there was a lot of dissonance or disconnect in authenticity, then you can feel it's like, this doesn't feel right to me and I don't feel safe. The experience of not feeling safe is a very sensate experience.

Yeah. And this is what we. Sorry, go ahead.

No, no, no. But this is why we talk about psychological safety being so important in work environments. Right. Because you can say, oh, we create a safe work culture. But if you don't feel safe, that's real. So what is it? Right. And what's your body telling you? And it doesn't necessarily mean other people are doing something. Things like, I don't feel safe, so I need to listen to that. So what do I need to do to make myself feel safe? And often it's starting with the discomfort, the feelings giving it some space really tuning into it as intelligence. Not to fuel a story. And that's really the important part. Not to fuel the narrative, but to go, what's actually happening? What is actually happening right now? Is this really true? I'm in this group, in this room. I feel unsafe. People look really friendly. I feel unsafe. So what's happening right now? Oh, I need to stand up, I need to walk around, I need to get a glass of water, I need to feel my feet on the ground. I need to connect with one person that I feel safe with. Oh, now I'm calming down. I'm regulating my own nervous system. And suddenly this room doesn't feel so unfriendly anymore. Very interesting. So I just got triggered, but I could also go in this room. These are terrible people. I never want to be with them again. Run out of the door. And now I have reaffirmed my narrative that the world is unsafe and people like that are not safe. Right. And that's unfortunately a lot of people live in that quite a bit. They fuel the narrative and don't really understand the interoceptive experience and deconstruct it and give it enough space to feel the intelligence of what can be done about that moment. There's a lot of control and choice you actually have.

Yeah. It's so interesting because the term interoception, I didn't know of that term at all until I met you, which is fascinating. Spending my life dedicated to conflict resolution and having a degree in psychology. The fact that that has never been in my consciousness, I think is indicative of the challenge that we've been describing where we are a heady culture and there's almost like a bias against something that doesn't have a solution, that is head oriented or head centric. And one of the most liberating things about this approach for me is that I don't need to fully understand what I'm feeling. I just need to feel it and honor it. And that is understanding enough. And that, that is something I'd love you to go deeper in because it's almost like internal body language.

Yeah. I mean, you start with that, right? You start with what is this? What is this feeling? Right. Letting. Letting it be there, not having to fight it, make a story about it, push it away. You're just letting it be there, Give it some space. And you're absolutely right. Earlier said, shifting the mindset, you have to shift the mindset that actually all emotions are intelligent. I really want to repeat that all emotions are intelligent. People don't think that way. Often they think, oh, as I said, they're categorized. This is good, this is bad. But what if you sit in this mindset that all emotions are intelligent and I'm having whatever emotion right now, and it's often the one like, yeah, all emotions are intelligent except this one. People will tell you, oh, yeah, all of them, but except this one. Well, that's exactly the one that's now your teacher. That is the teacher, right? The one that you struggle most with. Oh, I'm okay with being sad, but not okay being angry. Usually people struggle with anger a lot, right? Because anger has often this feeling of it's bad or causes a lot of damage. But anger in its purest form is actually what I would call discriminating awareness. You actually have a lot of awareness that something is maybe right or wrong, or I need to set a boundary or something is not okay, or I need to stand up for it. Wanted to speak my truth. But you can't get to this knowledge until you give your emotions some space. You don't have to analyze it. You don't have to do anything about it. You're simply allowing it to be there. So let myself feel it. Oh, it's uncomfortable. I feel this heat. Like earlier described, all these bodily sensations that went with the feeling of anger when I asked her to recall it, right? Oh, that's how I process anger in my body. And what are usually then my behaviors that follow the feeling and the sensation. Do I lash out? Do I yell at people? Do I get passive aggressive? What are some of my repertoire of how I discharge or offload my anger? Do I need to do that? Right. So because often we feel very involuntary with our emotions, we feel like we have to just like, be. You do our emotion, right? Especially around conflict. Because you do a lot with conflict negotiation. And there's a lot of heated emotions, right? But we often believe the intensity of those emotions versus, like, oh, there's a lot of intensity. Let me calm this down. Let me regulate. This is the language of the reception and nervous system language. Let me regulate this down. I don't have to have anger go away, but can I use the intelligence of anger to tell me what is actually the next step? Do I need to be very clear or very decisive or very sharp or make a point? And I'm sure you can tell me a lot about that. I'm negotiating. I need to be clear and I need to be without, kind of charged to really be heard. Because when people hear you clearly without the charge, they can Actually take your argument or they can be in a negotiation versus defending against their charge and the emotion that you're bringing to the conversation, because then you're just triggering each other. I'm sure you have a lot to say about that. Interoception is really learning about the skill of inhabiting your feeling and allowing it to be there. And then again as a deconstructing a little bit, like, what am I habitually going towards versus what actually are the choices that I have?

So interesting. Tell me what you think about that. Let me allow you to see my mind wanderings here. And if I'm off on that, let me know where I'm off.

Go for it.

And yeah, So I like the teachings of Carl Rogers. And one of the things that he would say in his Rogerian approach is that he likes to think of your body as like your human. Like, what does your human need? And I've been looking at it kind of through that lens and just recognizing my human. My body has intelligence. Like you said, the feelings carry a message. And trying to figure out what that is. And almost in a metacognition type of way, having a conversation with my body. Okay, you're my body, my human, my kwame is feeling something. It's registering through my stomach and it does not feel good. I would prefer not to have it, but I'm going to sit in it. I wasn't feeling this way in the morning. I wasn't feeling this way when I came back from the gym. But then when I got a message from somebody, that's when I started to feel that. What is that? That's interesting. What I've found is that separating my body and mind to a certain extent, in order to have that kind of almost conversation with my body to see what message it's carrying has been beneficial. But I can also see how that could potentially be problematic because I am adding narrative to something that may not.

That's right.

Have a discernible narrative.

So I would say going more. The somatic approach. Soma, by the way, means the body squeak going. A somatic approach is you would just go like the stomach. What's that feel and sense like right now? Is it a clenching? Is it tightening? Is it kind of coming in like a little ball? So you're getting very nuanced with what exactly is the sensation. And right there, so much information gets revealed. Because what happens is you're. You're allowing the creativity of your brain to open up verses like, I have a stomach. It must have been because I Ate that sandwich or because I had this bad conversation that's very literal, trying to search for me, which is fine. But if you want to go a little deeper to understand really the beauty and the complexity of our emotional and somatic life, you first, you give a space. You literally give it space. Just go, okay, I have this clench or this sensation in my body. Then is it bigger? Is it. Is it like a ball, is a tightening? And when you get those little details, first of all, you're beginning to regulate. You're actually calming down the intensity, which is always good. And you're allowing, allowing another, what we call resourcing to come in. You can do even a breath, right? Let me calm it down a little bit. Let me resource my body and then I begin to shift my perception rather than the kind of, what is this? Like that, what you call heady, right? That thinking mind, what is this? You're relaxing that. And then you go like, huh, what's the sensation now? Wow. It feels kind of. I feel vulnerable. Oh, my God. I didn't realize. I feel like weeping. But you don't get there. Usually to the more tender feelings, usually vulnerability or shame or some kind of sensitivity. We don't get there because we're so defended most of the time. But we get there when we give it a little bit of space and we have this kind approach to the body. The body wants to be invited, not told what to do. If you really want to work with your body mind, you want to invite the body, not like, tell me now, what is it? You don't want to have this conversation with the body. The body goes, no, I give you more tension. But if you say, hey, you're having a kind of a jumble in the belly there. Let's just breathe into it. Let's just give it a moment of space. Let's just relax into it. Let's really relax into it. Guess what? The body goes, thank you. Because you know what? I feel really scared. That conversation really freaked me out. I feel scared about the future or whatever it is, right? Usually it's some kind of vulnerability that we're defended against or some kind of pain that we're defended against. That's usually what's underneath those things. How does it resonate with your stomach right now?

Oh, no, I felt it. It's, you know, it's. It's interesting that I felt it at that time. Good call out there, by the way. That was good because. Because I think that again, I'm. I'm very heady. I'm trying to become a little bit more, have a little bit more of that body intelligence. And I'm recognizing that, just accepting the fact that releasing a little bit of control is the key to where, to getting to where I want to go. That's a scary proposition. And I think a lot of people struggle with that element of letting go of that control.

Yeah. It's such a nice little trance that we think we're in control of our lives. We are not. We are really not. Doesn't mean we can't be ambitious or go for our dreams or none of that, or be efficient and productive. All good stuff. Right. But we also have some humility towards life itself that we're not in control. And so why struggle? Like just relax into it, you know, it's like, oh, I'm just scared, I'm just vulnerable. Or this really got to me. And that's all right. You know, that kind of. She talked about Carl Rogers and his humanistic approach. Being a human, right? Being a human is being vulnerable. And there's so much power and strength and being vulnerable and that's what we connect. It's how this is the beauty. Right. So we talked about trauma, but the other piece of trauma is also that we're wired for connection. We're also, we're wired for survival, but we're also wired for connection. And how do we get to connection? Through vulnerability, through sharing our humanity. Who's sharing our struggles. Right. And then we feel connected and that's when we belong and we go, oh, you struggle the same thing as I do. Oh gosh, right now I feel not so alone in this world, in this life journey. Right. But we, we somehow feel like we need to be in control and got it all figured out and charge ahead and. Yeah, how has that worked out for humanity so far?

Funny. Yeah, I see some flaws in that approach. Right?

It is, it makes things harder. And then, you know, the truth is we're all vulnerable beings on this planet and we all want the same thing. We want to be thriving and productive and connecting and have contentment. And I avoid the word happy because it's short lived, but we want contentment. But we all want the same thing.

Oh, this is so good. And listeners, now you can see why I love hanging out with Manuel and talking to Manuel all the time. This is great. Well, Manuel, I appreciate this. It was another masterclass for me and I know the listeners got a lot out of it too. But before you go, let the listeners know about how they can get in touch with you. And about your work.

Yeah, through our institute called Embody Wise. So we teach courses in somatic psychology and a body of work called Hakomi. It's a mindfulness based psychotherapy that we teach and we teach all kinds of different classes and workshops. But through Embody Wise, you can reach me.

Appreciate it. Manuela, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you so much, Kwame. Thanks for having me.

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