Why Your Healing Journey is Failing Without This Secret Technique with Anat Peri.

And I imagine, my guess is that the rigid pattern is one of yours because the feeling is that they're so good at living in their head and solving problems and figuring it out and tackling that to-do list and accomplishing and being the best. There's no heart connection. It's rules. There's a right way and a wrong way and stay in this box, stay in this lane, do this.

Choose.

Yeah.

Irrational. And my wife would probably agree. If you can break down what did change through the AYA ceremonies— I'm about to do my first one in September— what changed? And then why did some things not change? What was the aha of why certain things were not changing from the AYA experience?

I think what changed was the experience of having somatic releases instead of just coming from years of processing with the mind. I was actually now processing with the body. But under medicine, it's just you feel so safe with AYA that it just allows your nervous system to discharge whatever you've been holding on to. Well, I think this is where it's so important to tie in the mind. That's why I say mindset work is very valuable. So is somatic work working cohesively together, because it was 9 months later that I met my mentor who was a body-mind psychologist. And it was working with him that I started, that I completed the missing piece of understanding that, okay, great, you had all these ceremonies where you grieved and you purged all this stuff and it felt amazing afterwards. Maybe not during, but it felt amazing afterwards. But yet you didn't know what it was tied to. You didn't know the beliefs, the limiting beliefs that you had. So what never shifted was my unconscious beliefs. And your beliefs create your behavior. So I attracted the same type of guy again, say, who actually— who I met at an ayahuasca ceremony. So you could say, and it was that relationship that finally led me to my mentor. So you could say Aya led me to my healing, just, uh, you know, indirectly. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, was it those experiences though on Aya where you're having the somatic release that you're like, oh, the healing pathway is through the body, not just through the mind, and not Like, because we think of, like, you know, talk therapy is going to heal us, but it really doesn't, except for light anxiety or light cases. It, you know, even Bessel van der Kolk talks about in Body Keeps the Score that CBT does more harm than good for extreme cases of trauma and PTSD.

Exactly, because you're only trimming weeds, you're never getting to the root of it 100%. Uh, I think it was really the work with with my mentor. It was delving into, on a conscious level, understanding your inner landscape and, and knowing that you could do it without the medicine, that you can learn how to move your own energy and uncover what the beliefs are that are there and rewire those beliefs. It was having to do that for myself. Like with his guidance, of course, it was showing up for myself every week and being willing to do the work and look at myself, which I know takes time, but I was in that much pain and discomfort that I was willing to do it that I feel laid down a new foundation for myself. I realized that transformation isn't always a walk in the park on a beautiful sunny day where it's just like aha moments and this feels great, that it's not. That there's dragons to slay. And that means that at times, like, I have to show up for me. I gotta double down in this, um, as much as there could be help of plant medicine. So like, I'm a fan of plant medicine for sure. I'm actually sitting in a ceremony in a couple weeks myself in Pasadena— not ayahuasca, um, um— but I'm a fan of it. Like, when my clients or people say to me should I do this? I always say, well, you should never do it. Only if it calls to you. But if you know yourself, if you know your inner landscape, meaning you know your beliefs, you know what you learned from mom and dad and what you inherited in that way, and you've learned how to regulate your nervous system and be in your body and you've experienced actually moving your own energy, then you go into ceremony and it's, you're working with the medicine as opposed to needing the medicine to heal you. You're now able to go so much deeper because of that, 'cause you've trained yourself for it. I've had multiple clients over the years say to me after they go through my sessions, they're like, this is ayahuasca without the ayahuasca. So learning that we are the medicine and that's just a tool in the healer's tool belt. Um, and I love the work you do because I agree that if you are going to do plant medicine, have a guide, especially first time, early times, first time with a new medicine. And I don't mean a guide like the shaman. Yeah, yeah, I mean a guide that has all the— that knows you, knows what you're dealing with, and has all the other skills like NLP and all that stuff to really— while you're under the medicine, they're more malleable.

Like, okay, yeah, we got inner Play-Doh.

Oh yeah, they're Play-Doh. And I've done that, and I've taken clients on journeys in that way, but always after they've also experienced doing it without. There's a power there, I feel, to know yourself and to know and therefore to not be reliant on it. So, yeah, so that was my experience of saving myself. 4 months I worked with him and he said to me, you're here for finishing touches. You're different. I'm like, oh, yeah, I have a lot of awareness. I've been in this game for 10 years. I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to graduate. And on the other side of it, it was the first time that I experienced inner peace and freedom. I actually quit my job 3 months later and wanted to travel by myself. I wanted to just be with me. I didn't want to be with people.

Yeah.

Um, that feeling of freedom, I, I, I never knew before. And it was at that point that I'm like, I want this. For people. This freedom, this hollowness that I used to feel in my chest, I don't feel anymore. It's now filled with my own love. I feel enough. I don't need to prove anything. I love being with people, but I could also enjoy my own company. Wow, this is amazing. And so yeah, it was about 8 months later that I started my business. I started just wanting to help people in that way. And, uh, never thought I'd be where I'm at today, which is certifying other coaches and healers in my method. That was never ever my vision or plan, but God has a different plan for me. And my clients that would say to me, I wanna learn from you. I wanna learn to do what you do. And I was like, I don't know how to teach. What am I doing? Huh? And then after 4 years, Hearing that, I've set an intention to really, like, map it out, get clear on what is it. And, um, yeah, it's been, uh, it's been 4 years now that I've been running my, my certification programs. And, uh, that, that fulfills me the most, to now see the people. Because as you know, this is an industry that's exploded since COVID Beautiful. People want to, um, help and coach and really care in that way and have had their own transformation and want others to as well. But there's definitely a lack of, um, of embodiment or, or tools or method or experience for a lot. So let me just feel that.

Yeah, let me ask you this too. What— like, two major questions: what is somatic healing? Like, what's your definition for somatic healing? Why is it important? Like, because sometimes this feels like a vague concept for people that are newer to somatic healing, so I'm curious. How would you define it?

Yeah, yeah. So the way I define it is, you know, your nervous system is always working for you. It's listening for safety or threat. And when it senses safety, it will metabolize whatever's there. It will learn it. And suddenly you, you know, you have more capacity for whatever that new thing was that you weren't scared to do. Whether it's, you know, mom says, hey, help me cut these veggies, and you're just like, I'm using a knife for the first time. Okay, I'm cutting, I'm doing it. Okay, great, this isn't scary, I could do this. Um, or, you know, getting into sport for the first time. But when it senses threat, uh, and, and the reality is most of the time what we sense is threat, it's not real threat. We're no longer being chased by lions. Yes. That's somewhere that we are scaring ourselves, that we have forgotten how to feel safe. It puts us into this protective bubble of fight, flight, freeze, or please. It says, okay, well, I'm gonna keep working for you, and you're telling me this is— I'm gonna protect you from it. And so it puts you into this heightened state. And so what's happening somatically is that we have forgotten how to feel our feelings. We've forgotten how to be, self-included. I had forgotten what it is to be in my body, to feel safe, to feel these sensations, to express these emotions. And I learned to intellectualize it or to stuff it down or to resist it or to run from it. And this is that protective bubble that we get stuck in. And so a lot of people don't even realize that they're constantly in this state. Some may call it, well, I feel anxiety all the time. I'm like, what are you running from? Anxiety is not the fuel. You're running from feeling something. So to me, the somatic work or understanding how to heal somatically is learning how to feel again and how to feel is how to work with your nervous system because it's on board. It's like ready, just waiting for you. And so there's specific ways of doing that, of, of having this relationship again with our nervous system, from regulating our breath so we can actually feel safe to be in our body, to then when something arises for you tracking where you feel that in your body and then naming those sensations, because sensations are the language of the nervous system. So when you speak in sensations, you're basically opening the door to your nervous system and saying, yeah, this is safe. Come help me with this. Let's process and digest this because it's neutral, right? Sensations, it's not good, bad. Is. Like, okay, I'm angry. Where do you feel it? In my chest. It's hot, it's tight. There's no judgment there. There's just is. And so right there, there's no judgment, there's acceptance, there's more safety. You're already working with the nervous system.

So I'm curious, so when you say sensations are the language of the nervous system, why do our— why do our wires get crossed with our nervous system and our sensations? Where we— like, some people are like a walking head. I used to be kind of a walking head, just unaware of your body, unaware of what the channel, the communication channel that's happening. So, so how do we undo ourselves if we, or unlearn if our wires are completely crossed and we're disconnected from sensation?

Yeah. Yeah. So it depends on like what your safety strategy is, right? There's a great book and I know you love reading books. Because I listened to one of your recent podcasts called The Five Personality Patterns by Stephen Kessler. Have you read it?

I have not. That's going to be a new one.

This has been a game changer. Like, when I delved into this book 4 years ago, and it's a huge part of how I train my students in my certification program to understand your personality patterns, your safety strategies, that that were formed out of a developmental need that wasn't met. And so in overwhelm, you have a primary pattern and a secondary pattern that kick in. Primary kicks in. If that one can't make you feel safe, secondary kicks in. And most people are operating in these personality patterns. I like to call them safety strategies. Always. And there's beautiful gifts to them all. So it's not like, oh, that's the one I have. It just— it is what it is. And as you learn to cultivate real safety, you come out of needing the pattern. Think of the pattern, the two patterns, kind of like your two bodyguards. And you're just like, okay, now I'm old enough. I don't need— I don't need babysitters anymore. I know what I'm doing. So as you learn to cultivate safety in your system, you'll come out of the pattern and tap more into the gifts of it. So I shared earlier in my story of feeling this hollowness in my chest and not being able to be with myself and always needing to be with people in order to feel better. And that's because my primary pattern is what's called the merging pattern. And the merging pattern is formed around age anywhere between 6 months to age 3, when the developmental need of an infant, of a child, is nurturing. And if that nurturance wasn't there, whether it was emotionally or physically, like literally mom did not give me enough milk. She had no idea that I was still hungry after all that bottle that she fed me. So, uh, whatever it is, there was, there was a lack of nurturance, or mom didn't know how to nurture herself, so she never learned how to nurture me, uh, and, or didn't model that to me, so I don't know how to nurture myself. And so there's this, this gap there. And the, the statement, when you read the book, the statement of those that run this pattern is there isn't enough. It's not enough. So as I learned to feel safe and give myself what I needed, because each one of these patterns has something else that they need to heal in order to feel safe. So to answer your question of, like, the miswiring that's happened is because of whatever we learn. Like, the other pattern that I have is the leading pattern. Which happens anywhere from in utero to 3 months old, which is not feeling safe to come into this world to occupy this body, which is why I always lived in my head and being in my body, like complete, like dissociation. Then there's the enduring pattern where people learn to just stuff down and just endure and hunker down and they could just hold on to their shit forever. Then there's the aggressive pattern, which is like, I'm all alone, me against the world. And you just feel alone and that you— and, and you're angry and you have to fight for that. You have to be in control. But at the same time, when we do that, it's exactly what has people not want to be around you. Yeah. So, and then there's the rigid pattern, which is, I am my accomplishment. And maybe formed because mom and dad only celebrated you for what you did well. I'm trying to give a real quick synopsis on this here. And I imagine, my guess is that the rigid pattern is one of yours because the feeling is that they're so good at living in their head and solving problems and figuring it out and tackling that to-do list and accomplishing and being the best. There's no heart connection. Yeah, they're just rigid about it all. It's rules, the right way and wrong way, and stay in this box, stay in this lane, do this.

Irrational. And my wife would probably agree on that. Yeah, that's beautiful. Too stiff.

Yeah, but beautiful gifts in those. So what's great is when you learn this A, about yourself, and then about your loved ones. Or if you're in, you know, if you're a coach yourself, it's gonna change the game of how you work with your clients. Because you could have a great method, but if you're coaching every client the same way and you don't realize their, their safety strategy, you're, you're missing a huge opportunity. I mean, I know most sessions, I'm like, okay, well, until I work you out of both your safety strategies, healing is not really— we're not going to tackle yet the thing that you came to me for. We have found new ways to rely on that work. For those that— it worked for me, or so I thought, to just merge with others. It worked for me to just leave my body. And then you hit that point where it doesn't work anymore and you start to want to heal, truly heal. But there's plenty of people that are healing and are still running it. So it's— I think it's the deepest you could go when you understand it. Yeah.