Healing Trauma Without Therapy: Is It Possible?

And Duke University, for example, is doing studies on generational trauma, and they found that next two generations of Holocaust survivors are showing on their epigenetic data, meaning on their biometric data, that they suffered a severe trauma even though they weren't even alive during the Holocaust.

Tell me about internal family systems. This is really interesting. I've heard a lot about this. Many people rave about this. I've, honestly speaking, have very little experiences with it. What's your understanding of it? How does it work?

Yeah, so, um, like, actually, a session I did a week and a half ago— she's got a big podcast, she's an influencer as well, her husband's a very successful entrepreneur— and they were in a state of conflict as a couple. They're both high achievers, they want to reach another level, but they, they had some fear and anxiety, right? What I tried to do is walk in with her and go into her psyche, into her subconscious. And so, I'll like have people go in, imagine they're in a cafe, and this will explain the IFS. IFS is basically, the philosophy is there's no bad parts. It's like there's your higher self and all these different subparts of you, and you can label and name and envision like this part, little 3-year-old, you know, Espen or little 3-year-old Mikey. Shown up. And then, you got the 17-year-old that was dumped by his girlfriend or whatever. And, you have all these different parts, but they're trying to control and guide and be seen and understood, but they won't rest until they are acknowledged and until that emotion where they experience some suffering or some fear or excitement or whatever until they're acknowledged. And so, I almost have to move. We want the appropriate part to guide at the appropriate time. That's their core goal. And we want to create integration, not disintegration, where all these parts are vying for attention at a time. Does that help explain IFS?

I love it. I'm going to look more into it. So basically what you're saying, what you do is kind of one, understanding the trauma, traumatology, and the issues in the tissues, the programs of the subconscious mind, as you did with your wife. And then once you've had a breakthrough in that area, using often a help from Mother Nature, then you apply different kinds of modalities. You mentioned NLP, you mentioned somatic experiences, which I'll ask you about in a moment, and internal family systems as some of those tools. So listeners and viewers, this is a great opportunity to go back, pause this, write notes, research these methodologies and modalities and see which ones resonate with you the most. And of course, as always, if this is useful, share this with as many people as you can because you just don't know sometimes how sharing this podcast interview can help someone that might be dealing with depression or something of that nature. This is very important to, as I say, share the love. Tell me about the somatic experiences, Mike. I love this. I do the same thing in my 3 days. I have a breakthrough in— I teach that there's 8 areas of life, right? And in each area of life, there is a particular interference pattern, such as, you know, a lower frequency emotion— fear, guilt, shame, etc. And if we can clear that, heal that, then we can be become more coherent, and then we can have more beauty and wholeness in an area of life. An interesting thing has been, I've realized that it's great to do that in the mind, but unless we get into the body, unless we have that somatic experience, we don't really get to release the emotion. As I say, thoughts are the language of the brain and emotions are the language of the body. What is your experience with somatic experiences, which means moving, breathing, getting into the body? I'd like your interpretation of what is a somatic experience and which ones do you apply for the results in your work.

Yeah, yeah. And let me, let me underscore what you're sharing here too, of how important it is to get in the body. So, you know, the average red blood cell lives 115 days. The average skeletal muscle cell lives 15 years, or 5,475 days. So our muscle cells have been alive since 2009. They remember. The body keeps the score. It remembers, right? And so then, yeah, so good. And then you look at the epigenetic side. Epi means it's like above, and the genes are not the reason. The genes are basically influenced by our living, right, as Bruce Lipton talks about. And so if, if our muscle cells are remembering then we need to affect their, their memory. We have to pay attention to the memory of the muscle cells above and beyond, and that's where the somatic comes into play. So when you go back to my 15 years—

it's a long time.

Yeah. And then here's a crazy study that just came out, uh, not too long ago. It was on rats and pomegranates. So they would feed these rats pomegranate seeds But guess what they would do? They would shock the rats after a little bit. They'd shock them as they're about to eat the pomegranate seeds or as they're eating them. And guess what? The next 7 generations of rats would not touch pomegranates even though they weren't alive because the gene, the life experience had told the genes what to turn on, what to avoid, what was scary. And Duke University, for example, is doing studies on generational trauma and they found that next 2 generations of Holocaust survivors are showing on their epigenetic data, meaning on their biometric data that they suffered a severe trauma even though they weren't even alive. So now, if I'll go back to Candace and Eric, that would— they— we have a podcast interview coming out, uh, where she publicly shares this, so I'm not violating any confidentiality around that. But I could tell, um, actually I think it came out yesterday, um, I could tell that during the session— so I started guiding her into a trauma to release a trauma because medicine, MDMA in particular, floods your body with a feeling of safety and love. That's why it allows you to associate, and then these traumas will bubble up to the surface because they want to get out of your body, and your body finally feels safe to release. Okay, uh, psilocybin is dissociative. It takes you out of your body. Ayahuasca, dissociative. So we think of medicine— I think of medicine in 4 main categories: heart, body, mind, and spirit. And the first ones that I want to start with are heart and body for trauma specifically. And then, so as I started working with Candace, I asked her, she could see, like, we walk in a cafe, we see ourselves walking in cafe, she sees herself in a cafe, her subconscious mind is speaking, her conscious mind has agreed to relax. Ask her, hey, what's a memory that your body would like to release? And she sees, So again, her body is leading and her conscious mind is relaxing. She pops up a memory on a wall on a YouTube thumbnail and I ask her, "Okay, let's watch that memory." Boom, she starts watching it. Then I ask that version of her to come out of the YouTube thumbnail and she sees it and she's talking to it. But then pretty quickly, about a minute or two in, as we're about to do the deep work, all of a sudden that thought vanishes. She can't access the memory anymore. And what happened is her protector part no longer felt safe. It was too scary. And so then I realized, I was like, oh, I'm— my assumption is because her and her husband were in a little bit of conflict at the time. I was like, I think there's an issue here where her nervous system doesn't feel safe because I also knew she had been through some significant trauma as a child, as a little girl.

All right.

And so what happens for the feminine, they don't feel safe in their body. Especially if they experience any sexual abuse. So I was like, okay, I got to get her into her body to feel safe. So I was like, I got to go to Eric first. I got to work on Eric, help him get into his body, into his heart, help him release some trauma so she feels more safe. And then I'll come back to her. Sure enough, I do that work on him for about an hour. She's sitting on the couch. Come back to Candace. I'm like, Candace, Let me guess, you're not really feeling too much of the medicine right now, are you? She's like, no, how could you tell? Like, also, you're not really feeling safe, are you? And you're not feeling like you're in your body? She's like, yeah, I feel really floaty. I was like, okay, cool. So I was like, Eric, Candace, stand up. And then I had her do a ground— I had him do a grounding exercise. Where he just put his hands on her, not like pushing her into the ground, but also not letting her float up in the sky like a feather. Firm enough that she feels his support. And then literally within 5 seconds, tears start flowing. And then her head starts falling into his chest. And then her knees, another 30 seconds, her knees start bending and almost to the point she's going to fall down, but she's leaning into him. She felt safe in her body and felt safe with him. And frankly, she felt probably safe in her body for the first time in her life. She's 35. And then I was like, boom, now we can go in. And I helped. And that was such a beautiful, sacred moment for them as a couple, because they really connected without words. And they could feel the connection and belonging. And then, then I had her sit down. And this time, because every time before Eric would sit further away on the couch after he would come to the restroom, I was like, what's going on here? That was another clue. I'm paying attention to somatics because their body is speaking. 93% of our communication is nonverbal. Then this time he sat right by her. And then we went through the memories and we went through the traumas. We went through like 4 or 5 major memories and started releasing them one by one by one. Letting go. And the emotion— you could see her body go. You see her body relax and release. I was like, okay, I got it. And I can give you one story about polar bears to explain somatic further that really helped me understand it. But I'll pause because I know I shared a lot.

I know, I think that's really great, buddy. I really love that. And I could just sense the sincerity and your care and your compassion in your voice. And so just honoring you for holding such a space for people in general, even on this podcast, to be able to drop into that, to that feeling of being safe. Because you're absolutely right, very, very difficult, if not impossible, to do the real deep healing work through our traumas if we don't feel safe. So good on you for creating such a sacred, safe space and allowing that to happen. And I just wanted to bring this up before we go into the last question. If you're interested in learning more about Mike's work, check out geniuswithinbook.com. That's geniuswithinbook.com. And also neurowiring.com. Go and check that out if you want to learn more, because I think there's certainly something in here. Or go to Instagram, which is @themikezeller. T-H-E-M-I-K-E-Z-E-L-L-E-R. Mike Zeller. Zeller, @themikezeller on Instagram. So thank you for, for just bringing this up. And I love podcasts like this, you know, we're going in talking about owning and operating businesses around the world and changing your life and it just goes a completely different direction, of course, following the flow and where it needs to go. I've got one last question for you straight off the cuff. Are you ready?

Sure, let's do it, baby.

Let's do it. So here's the question. I want you now to imagine, Mike Zeller, that you are on the world stage. Every sentient being alive has gathered, watching, listening, and fully present with you. When you're ready, take a breath, tune in, do share. What is your message to the world right now?

Every sentient being is listening and watching in. Then my goal would be my invitation to everybody would be the highest state of life is, is basically this consciousness, the sense of oneness, the sense of connection. And, and my invitation would be that we all can access it. It's all available to us, whether on the medicine— some of us need the medicine. I kind of need the medicine to get past some of my significant blocks. Some of you can get there with breathwork, with prayer, with service. But ultimately, all, you know, there's no bad people, there's just brokenness. And we get stuck in pain and suffering and misery, but we can release it. The pathway to release and the pathway to receive are similar journeys, but we have to start with the release. Release of the old dog-eat-dog world and receive the world of abundance, because we were born into abundance, not born into scarcity. We were born into a world that tricked us that there is scarcity. There's plenty enough for us all. And, and I invite us all to step into love, forgiveness, and joy, because that is where we're going to feel life to the full, which is the invitation of Jesus, the invitation of great spiritual leaders, and it's accessible for all.

I love how we can talk business and life mastery and end it on such a sacred spiritual note. I personally want to thank you, Mike, for your time today. I want to honor you for your path and devotion and dedication to this work and, and for how beautifully you've held space for your wife. I'm sure she's held space for you too. But to be able to share such a story with what you've gone through and bring that to our listeners and viewers today is very special.