Episode 392: Unlock Your Soul Print for Radical Healing
8 Nov 2024 · 44 min
In this episode of the Whiny Palooza podcast, host Rebecca Greene interviews Dr. Lisa Cooney, a psychotherapist, author, and creator of the ROAR healing framework. The conversation begins with an introduction to Dr. Cooney’s background and her concept of a "soul print"—a unique, fingerprint‑like imprint of a person’s inner essence that she first encountered in her dissertation work. Dr. Cooney explains how recognizing one’s soul print and impressing it onto reality can guide personal growth. She discusses common barriers that keep people from accessing their soul print, such as denial, defending, dissociation, and disconnection, and offers practical ways to become aware of these patterns. The interview moves to concrete somatic tools: Dr. Cooney leads a brief guided breathing exercise that emphasizes mouth breathing, hand placement on the chest and abdomen, and a simple mantra of greeting the body, self, and Earth. She describes how this practice can help listeners reconnect with their bodies, release shame, and shift from numbness to presence. A major portion of the episode is devoted to the ROAR technique (Radically Orgasmically Alive Reality). Dr. Cooney outlines the 12‑step model built around three clusters: the 4 Ds (Denial, Defending, Dissociation, Disconnection) that identify the invisible “cage” of trauma; the 4 Es (Embrace, Embody, Expand, Elaborate) that guide movement out of the cage; and the 4 Cs (Choosing, Committing, Collaborating, Creating) that empower sustained change. She provides a concise set of reflective questions (presenting problem, bodily location, childhood memory, decision‑making patterns) that listeners can use to begin the ROAR process. Throughout, Dr. Cooney shares personal anecdotes about her own healing journey, including body‑related shame, addiction, and a pivotal moment of writing "You're killing me" in a journal that revealed an underlying health issue. She promotes her books—The Body of Change (with a multilingual workbook), Radically Alive Beyond Abuse, Lies of Money, Creating After Abuse, and the upcoming Doing What Works—and provides URLs for her website and Amazon listings. The episode closes with standard podcast calls to action, sponsor messages, and a reminder to laugh, learn, and love each day.
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No need to whine, it's whiny palooza.
Have some wine and join us on the whiny palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.
Welcome to the whiny palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.
Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Whiny Plousa Podcast, and I am already having a fantastic time talking to the fabulous Dr. Lisa Cooney. Uh, Lisa, thank you so much for doing this with me today.
I am so happy, uh, to be here today, and thank you for inviting me, Rebecca Greene.
We're, we're gonna have so much fun talking. Um, she is just so fascinating to me. I wanna tell you a little bit about her. Um, Dr. Lisa Cooney is a dedicated psychotherapist and published author at your service. She's gonna serve us today.
Oh, yes.
She's passionate about facilitating soul therapy, which I'm so fascinated by. Life coaching, and spiritual transformation. She specializes in guiding individuals toward inner healing and personal growth. Dr. Lisa's new book titled Body of Change is a profound exploration of how reconnecting with our bodies can unlock our highest potential. Her unique approach combining scientific and spiritual insights offers practical tools and techniques that empower individuals to break free from emotional and physical limitations and live a radically alive and fulfilling life.
Oh my goodness, who is that person? I want to talk to them right now. Oh, I'm here. It's me.
It's you. And I am so excited. I have so— I have like lists of questions and I'm going over questions, and before you came on, I was adding more questions.
Go for it, fire them away, fire away.
Let's jump in and start with, can you explain what a soul print is and why it's important for personal growth?
I love that. Yes, I can. And hello everybody, thanks for listening to this when you listen to it, and I hope it's a contribution to you all. And again, thank you, Rebecca Greene Greene. So a soul print The soul print I used in my dissertation years and years and years ago, and it was actually coined by a rabbi from Jerusalem, actually. And it was interesting for me because I grew up in New York, had— and while my father was with a lot of, um, Jewish, uh, fraternity brothers in his college years, I spent my childhood in a lot of shuls and synagogues and things like that. But I was Catholic, so I didn't really know much about it. And then here I come in my doctoral program, and I based my dissertation in Judaism, unbeknownst to me, because I found this phrase, soul print, which actually is the contour. I'm gonna— it's video, so I'm putting my thumb up here. It's the— you know how our thumbprint or fingerprint is different and unique for each of us? It's likened to that of the contour and character of our soul, which is unique and different for everybody, just like your fingerprint. And so what's true for my soul print is unique, and so is yours, Rebecca Greene, and so is everybody out there doing what they do, whether it's what profession it is, what your qualities are, um, who you are. What you do, what you choose to be and do, and all of that. It's the nature of your soul. And so the highest goal I learned from this book on Soul Printing, which I use as part of my dissertation and use every day in my practice, is to impress your soul print on the lips of reality is the highest goal or target of spiritual living.
Hmm.
And so spiritual living has always been very important to me because I know that we're a physical being in a physical body, but our spirit and our soul is a spiritual and energetic energy. And so I always felt from a very young age that I was here to do something in the physical, in the body, but from the spiritual. And when I was introduced to Soul Printing, I was like, Oh yeah, that's it. I'm using that. And what else can I learn? And I gobbled it all up.
Wow.
Connecting.
I've never heard that term before, so I'm fascinated. Never heard it before. I mean, we all have a unique soul, and— right? And I know that we have some— so you're describing something so beautiful, but there's so many barriers. Okay, so we have so many barriers to living our full potential of what our print is supposed to do. So can you talk about the barriers and how to work on that?
Well, the first barrier is actually to look at yourself and realize, yes, you do have a soul print, whether you believe in yourself, even if you don't believe in souls particularly. You do. For instance, everybody you touch, you leave an imprint on, good or bad, right or wrong, right? Everybody that's touched you, and I don't just mean physically touched, your teachers, your parents, your siblings, your partners, husbands, wives, children, um, you know, vendors that come to your house and help with the lawn or help clean your house or things like that. Or, um, well, you get the point. So acquaintance, right? You just— interaction. Buying, buying, uh, an engagement ring, you have an interaction with somebody. Shopping, you have an interaction with somebody. And how you meet and leave, say hello and greet and leave the situation, you leave your soul print with them. That's what first impressions are for. And I know we all haven't been very good. I know I haven't with our first impressions, but I really try to work on it when— all the time, actually, just to make sure, is this how I want to be remembered to the best of my ability? How can I handle this situation different? That's all a marking of your soul print. What do I want to leave here as a legacy? Of course, that's something of a soul print. And how do I want to live myself as a, as a being and as a body, despite my own tragedies or traumas or agonies or ecstasy? What's important to me? That's the contour and character of your soul. Your soul print?
Hmm. Well, I think we hear, you know, there's like this beautiful part of loving ourselves and being kind and compassionate to ourselves that I try to spread and teach to people because there's so much negativity, there's so much self-judgment, there's so much self-hatred. How can we help people with that part of it?
Well, funny you should mention that. I say sarcastically, but not so much, because this book that you mentioned in the beginning has just come out and it's called The Body of Change by moi. But I'm using this right now not just as a plug, but as a plug, but also because the tagline is using your body to heal, love, and empower yourself. And that's exactly what you're asking. About. And when I first wrote this book and uploaded it, self-published and all that, um, I— there's exercises in each chapter. And the publicist that helped me publish the book and, and was more— had a history literally with publishing books than I do personally. And she's like, when she read it, she was like, those exercises— I went, I never read everybody's whole book. I read your whole book and I answered all the questions. And I was like, wow, wow, thank you for letting me that I would never expected that or known that and never knew that you didn't read all the books. And sorry for the other people, but it is what it is and it's not negative. It just is what it is. And I got to thinking when she told me that. So while it was being published, I was like, you know what, I could add more. So I added another 20 pages of workbook to the back of the actual book. And then I re-uploaded it to Ingram and Amazon and all those things in 11 different languages and got it all transcribed so that people of any gender, any ethnicity— well, maybe not any right now, 14 different languages, um, English being the first, of course, and then Spanish being the second, and then, you know, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, Portuguese. And I wanted people to be able to go to this book and have it as like a guide, like their own inner physician, right? And then open it, read it, or sometimes put it down and not read it, but maybe just open to the workbook and fill in the questions from their soul, from their body. From beyond the mind. And so how do we help people from, you know, reading these, uh, their judgments and their self-hatred? We'll do the exercises in the book. But one particular thing is, if you don't know what your actual issue is, then how do you change it? If you don't know what's the barrier, or if you're not self-aware, Or maybe you just don't know where to start because I know I wasn't— I didn't grow up. I was born in 1969. Yes, that's, you know, a certain different than being born in the 2000s for sure, and definitely different than being born in, you know, 1930 and on. But I wasn't taught how to live in my body. I wasn't taught to be friends with my body. It was more of an enemy, and especially as a woman. And I was, you know, judged for being heavy. I had very thick— they called it soccer thighs because I played soccer, 16 years of soccer. My thighs are very strong. Yeah, you know, but it was different. My body type was different than whatever the body type was, even for my own mother and father and siblings. And so I was judged a lot for that, and I internalized that. As a self-hatred. Didn't know that at the time. It started as shame. But when I started doing— because I've done these exercises. Yeah, they're from me and my body, literally. Now, I didn't get them from a book. I learned that I had so much internalized shame. And shame is different than guilt. Guilt is like, oh, I stepped on your toe. Using a slight example, a silly example. Yeah, shame is I am defective.
I—
my thighs are wrong for this body, for being a woman, for being feminine, for being this, for being that, and being the other. And I learned that from what was intimated to me in my environment. And I figured if I could help one person, not just women, but women as well, um, take a little judgment and a little shame off their body, because shame, once you acknowledge it and you can find someone to talk about it to privately and confidentially, and/or journal it in the book and in your own computer or whatever, you can release it. Because 50% of any problem can actually be a solution if you pay attention to what the problem is. But our ego— not negatively— our ego has a job. And that job is to find the problem. I mean, to identify the problem and then find the solution. Well, that doesn't heal your body. That just moves you to the next situation. I wanted us to get inside our body and have a communication with our body because that's what healed me. It healed me from illness. It healed me from addiction. It healed me from trauma. It healed me from self-judgment. It healed me from hiring people in my business that just you know, maybe wanted money and, and I couldn't potentially see this, that, or the other thing. Not blaming them. I am the creator of my reality. I, once I say yes, I'm responsible.
Yeah.
However, if you say no and you've never said yes, that's a totally different subject which is too long to go into here. Um, free will, you know, your own authority. Say yes when you mean yes, no when you mean no. And that's what My books, and this book particularly, is about navigating your own physiology and getting a communication with your body.
I would say— I don't want to say most people, I don't want to generalize, but I would say a lot of people feel disconnected from their bodies. Absolutely. So you know that I'm excited to receive your book and do your exercises, and now I'm really excited.
Thank you.
But let's take— let's— I want all of you to go get her book because I think it's going to help all of us. But can you give them a step to take today to feel more connected to their bodies?
Sure. Oh, we could do it right now. This is what I do and suggest with my clients every day, and it— and it's— it's simple, but you do have to close your eyes. It's a little bit more beneficial if you do.
Okay.
I mean, you don't have to, Rebecca, but as I tell to the— you know, you might want to— you might hit your microphone if you do, um, and we don't want that, but at least you'll wake up. But what I instruct people is like a slight meditation to get into their body, and it's like wherever you're listening to this, and if you're driving, do not close your eyes and do not do the eyes, okay? Okay. Um, that's a public service announcement by me. Yes. One hand on the center of your chest, and can't really see it on the video, but one hand on your lower abdomen, which is just below your waist, or if you're wearing a belt or something like that, and your feet generally on the floor and your back against the chair, whatever you're sitting on, and just take 3 deep breaths. But here's the trick. Please take the breaths inhaling through your mouth and exhaling through your mouth, not your nose, which is gonna be a little awkward for some at first. And that's okay. It was for me too. Essentially, when you breathe through your mouth in and out like you're surfing a wave in the ocean, just in and out. When you don't fight the wave in the ocean, it just— you just float. And it's so very relaxing, can almost be soothing and put you to sleep. And you might have to swallow, you might have to breathe through your nose, you might get dry, you might even get a little dizzy. All normal because you're getting oxygen and new oxygen into your cell. You might get thirsty. I understand it happens because we're not breathing in here, but the mouth somatically connects the mind and the body.
Interesting. That's—
and I know yoga and spiritual meditations, I do them too. All breathe through the nose and I love it. But this is something that worked for me in these almost 30 years now of working with clients, but also I'm going to be 55 this year. In my 55 years on the planet, you know, at least since 20-something, so 35 years of doing personal work, I've been breathing and practicing breathing through my mouth so I could get into my belly, get into my heart, instead of bypassing and numbing them. Because I was numb. Most of us are numb, as you've said, disconnected. We're anesthetized. Where— because we were violated or infiltrated just by energies in the world. It doesn't have to be and things like that. But just breathe through your mouth, hand on your heart center, hand on your lower abdomen, feet on the floor. And I just say, after your 3 breaths, you just go, hi body, hi body, hi body, and breathe. Hi me, hi me, hi me. And breathe. Hi Earth, hi Earth, hi Earth, and breathe. Hi. And what that does, because as you have your hands on your body and you're breathing, you should or could feel the reverberation under your hand, especially under your chest, the center of your chest. And if you breathe enough into your lower abdomen, you will feel the vibration there too of your voice. Most of us keep our breath up in our chest because we don't want to feel our feelings in our gut. Or some of us bypass our chest because we were so heartbroken and disappointed that we go right to the gut. Think about smokers, so to speak. Yeah. So, so those are— it's just a coping strategy. It's not a problem. But if you want to get connected to your body, Do that for 5 minutes. Start with a minute every day. It takes just a couple minutes like we did here. Hi body, hi body, hi body. Hi me, hi me, hi me. Hi Earth, hi Earth, hi Earth. And breathe. And this kind of, I call it the check yourself before you wreck yourself.
It feels so peaceful. I feel, I feel like, like I was just like given like a set of I gotta wake back up.
I mean, this world in this day and age where, you know, we get the iPhone, whatever, and then next month, as soon as you buy the new one, the next one comes out and you're like, wait, you can't keep up. It's like, you don't need to keep up. Go in and get present. I love it.
I love it. And I'm really fascinated. So I'm gonna move to my next question because I'm dying to know what the ROAR technique is.
Okay, thank you for that as well. So the name of my business, actually, even though it's doing business as Dr. Lisa Cooney, for years before COVID I had a business and trade and still have it and still do it called ROAR, R-O-A-R, Live Your Roar. And predominantly it developed from working with, uh, survivors of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, and sexual abuse. And I also had a history in that, the first 23 years, in all of that actually. I call it, I took one for the team. And I can say that because it's my story. I'm not making light of anybody else's experience. This is just, I use levity now that I'm past the many different things And, and it took a lot to get there. Wasn't— it wasn't light when I first went through it, but it is now, which I think is also part of why people are attracted to me in that particular work, um, because they know that I, I lived a lot similar, and I know what it feels like when you actually are stuck and can't break through, where you actually do feel victimized because you were victimized. Where you are actually angry and resentful because your parents knew, or it was a family member, or, you know, you got screwed out of the will or something, whatever it is. There's a lot that I've been through and that I've moved through, and I write about that in my books, and I work with that in my, in my practice. So that's where Roar came from. Roar just by itself. Yes. First thing you think about when you think of roar, Rebecca Greene, can I just ask, like, what's the first thought?
Roaring like a lion.
Exactly. That's exactly right. I have my hair up today, but my, you know, my hair is very, very curly sometimes. It's— I used to get joked about when I was— but fondly joked that my hair is like a lion's mane, you know.
Love it.
It partly comes through me and my experience, but I had to find the tenacity and the ferocity of the roar of a lion to save myself when I was on the floor in the fetal position working through trauma and addictions and recovery and things like that. Despite having access to therapy and education and all that, it still took me down a very dark road, as it as it would, right? Um, and so I had to find that drive, that ferocity, and that tenacity inside of me to say, no, that is what I lived through, but I'm here now and I'm still me, even though you invaded this part of my body or invalidated this part of my being or anesthetized this part of my consciousness, or said yes when I said no. Regardless of all of that, I'm still me, even though I don't feel like the me that I know in my soul. And then I got mad, but the mad that's empowered. And that's ROAR— Radically Orgasmically Alive Reality. And I purposely put in orgasmic because it wasn't— it was, you know, a dual message of like orgasmic with sexual abuse and those sorts of things, like reclaiming that for sure.
Yes, yes, my creativity.
But not just that, because having some of the things that I've gone through— and many, everybody goes through something. I haven't met anybody without, with it, without a herstory or history. We all have our stories, we all have our tragedies and traumas. Some are more egregious than others, but Trauma doesn't have a scale, you know. It's just— it just sucks, and it's insane, and there's no explanation of it. It's just insane. Um, and we have a lot of that in this world. So finding that roar inside of me was to preserve my soul print, my soul, who I was. That just because these things occurred did not mean that I still wasn't who I was intrinsically, divinely oriented to be. I just maybe had to work a little harder to reconnect to it because of what happens with trauma— fragmentation, depression, anxiety, um, leaning on certain substances, potentially bad relationships, um, you know, conflictual relationships, uh, business relationships, just things that your mind gets a little— neurotransmitters and neural pathways gets all fucked up. Excuse my language.
Yes.
Yes. You got to learn it. You got to pay attention to it, and you got to fix it. And it is repairable. I'm a clear example of that.
Well, and you're a wonderful inspiration. And I think that there's somebody listening who's probably feeling very— I don't know that they're in the fetal position. They might be, but someone who's feeling very defeated and down on themselves right now. You know, how— what is a step they can take to start to find that roar? Because that, I mean, it's wonderful.
Thank you for that. And my first book, and all the books all talk about roar. I think I even put it in here, The Body of Change. Basically, there's 12 steps, not necessarily related to, um, the 12 steps of recovery, but however it was downloaded to me, it became in 12 steps. Essentially what ROAR is, is think about a cage, right? And it's an invisible cage that energetically, um, fronts the world. You front the world with it without even knowing. It's invisible. And it starts with 4 Ds: denial, defending, dissociation, and disconnection. So first you got to become aware that you might be living in a cage. Yes, ages. It's not all at once. You don't do all 12 steps at once. And so denying— to be in the invisible cage of abuse, you have to deny that you're, um, in a certain way, maybe that your mom judged you, or your father, sorry to say, abused you, or your neighbor stole money from you. Whatever it is, you have to deny it like a coping strategy. Because that's how we survive.
Yes.
And you have to defend against it. No, that didn't happen. No, they were fine to me. No, I had the greatest childhood. But all the while, inside, you know that that's not true, right? Right. So the cage bars get locked in, and then you dissociate. But the worst part is you dissociate from yourself. Put your soul print somewhere else, tidy back in your childhood somewhere. Or maybe some people have found their soul, like up in the moon and in the ether somewhere, right? Yeah. You completely dissociate from who you were intrinsically, invisible cage of abuse. So first, you can get aware of that just by listening to me. And I see you're having some insights just by listening, or some recognition.
Well, yeah, you're describing it perfectly, what people go through.
That's it. Thank you for that, because yes, to do that because I never knew that. And no therapist— and I've had a lot of them and I've been fortunate— no therapist described that to me. And I'm not blaming therapists for that, right?
Right.
We all learn something, and I learned this from my own experience. And through those therapy sessions and my own healing and my spiritual connection, it came through me as ROAR, the 4 Ds, right? And then the 4 E's for your ease— this is how you start moving once you become aware of the 4 D's for your ease— is to embrace how you're in the cage, right? And embody in your body what it feels like to be in, in the cage. And then expand yourself to just kind of notice who you would be without the cage, and then just elaborate, if you will, on that, um, expansion about who you actually are. And then you kind of remember before the abuse and before you didn't exist that you were pretty phenomenal and that you're still pretty phenomenal. It's just trauma and abuse on top of you, and you locked yourself in a cage because you had to exist, but you didn't know that you existed as a fake personality, like a fraud. Ah, because you left your soul over there. So we start to reconnect you, embrace, embody, expand, and become aware of that. And then you move into what's called the 4 C's, which is choosing for you, committing to you, collaborating with the universe conspiring to bless you, and then creating from there. Most people that have been defeated don't want to create. Most people that have been, um, debilitated don't believe they have choice. Most, most people, um, that have been and suffering from some of these mental illnesses that I'm talking about— PTSD, depressions, anxieties— never believe that the universe collaborates on their behalf. They actually believe that the universe is against them, and they don't know how to choose for themselves because how could you choose and commit to yourself when your soul print is left in your childhood and you're living in a cage. So that's the whole model that I work people through with ROAR, and I do have a video online series. They are in my books for all of this because I know it's a lot. Um, but what I've pragmatized for people is these questions. So like, if you weren't gonna look at the whole video and the 12 steps, if you maybe didn't want to read the book Maybe you were just gonna listen to this part here. There's just a couple of questions. Whatever you're triggered by in the present is real. However, the lesson is in what it reminds you about, because that's the unresolved cage coming and saying, knock, knock, knock, time to let this go, time to get back to your soul print. But most of us go, F you, that person, can you believe that, they, they point, point, point. It's like You know, you know, and they're like doing all that for all the time, judging, judging, judging, pointing, pointing, pointing, that they don't— my body, my body, my body, what is this bringing up about me? So, um, pragmatically, I've made it into a couple of questions, which is: what's the presenting problem? Where do you feel it in your body? What does it remind you of in your childhood, which is the original event? And that is the key to the ROAR technique. Who was there? What did you decide? How are you still living that decision? Connect with the child. Have the child connect with the adult. Have the adult connect with the child. Change the decision together. Uh, do a soul retrieval, child and adult together. And then state basically and ask yourself, you know, what will I do to live this way now? And no longer what I decided because I'm 35 and I'm not 2, because I'm 53 and I'm not 10. Um, and it's not even about an age, it's just because you want to connect with yourself, self-love. That's the roar, radically orgasmically alive. And never, never, the being you are can never be broken. And the more you actually let yourself think that you're broken because of what happened— which I did too, I'm not saying it's wrong— the more you let it for decades and decades and decades and decades and decades and decades and decades and decades and decades and never stopping and going generational trauma after generational trauma after generational trauma, you were giving that perpetration the power. And it did in the moment absolutely, as it did for me. But it doesn't today. See that? That I'm talking like that?
Yeah, that's the roar.
That's not— that's the roar.
That's good. That's good stuff that you got going on there. I mean, I'm hoping that you're giving people hope. Like, if you can identify what the event is in your life that is holding you back and making you feel how it's making you feel, then I hope that you're giving them hope. But I'm thinking about the people who might be saying, I don't know to all of this? So if someone is listening and they're saying, I don't know, I don't know what it is, I don't know why I feel this way, any advice to them?
Sure. It's a beautiful question, and thank you. I get that all the time, even every day.
Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Basically what I would say is, I hear that you don't know, but how about for this moment right here, right now, since we're live on this podcast, right here, right now. What if you just closed your eyes, put your hands on your body, and let yourself acknowledge and validate yourself that you just don't know right now? I just don't know.
I love that.
And so, and I even say with people, this is kind of a harder example, but it's very, very common, um, with people that have been sexually abused, and they feel like, they feel like they know something happened, but they have no memories that something happened. And I say to them, for this session, let's say for right now, for these 60 minutes when you're with me, would it be okay for us, just for today and just for these 60 minutes, that whatever your body says, you believe? Just for now. You don't have to— when you leave here, you— and when you come back here, you can choose to turn it on or turn it off. But— and they always feel so relieved and say, Yeah, that would be great. It brings me such angst and more anxiety and more spinning in my head to ignore that I just don't know. But like, I could just trust and talk to you for this moment right here about what I'm feeling. And then we just— I guide them into their body and I just say, so if you did know, what does this seem like? Does it seem like fear? Does it seem like sadness? When you felt this, it feels like anxiety. Okay. Anxiety is the experience, right? Where is that anxiety? Oh, it's in my chest. Okay. If your anxiety could talk, what would it say? I'm anxious that, and then they fill in the sentence. So I help them because I'm helping them navigate a dialogue with their body. I don't expect you to have it, and I don't expect you to know. Somebody like myself can help you know, but first you have to be okay with not knowing, and that that's okay because it's a coping strategy to not know. Animals are born with this coping strategy, and I use this example all the time. Think about 9/11 here in America. Yeah, sure, you can probably— what do you see right now as soon as I say that, Rebecca?
I mean, terrible things. The, the tower's coming down.
Exactly. Everybody says the same thing. Yeah, right, exactly. So you associate to that and you see it coming down and you have a reaction in your body and it stays so many decades later. Okay, so that's just an acknowledgment of what's in there, and that's all you're doing is acknowledging what's in there. We all know where we were at certain times, and it stays in your body. The thing is, no different than driving a car, a deer or something crosses the road, you slam on the brakes, you're holding the steering wheel and gripping it, holding your breath, and then you realize everything's okay, but you're still holding on to the steering wheel and gripping the steering wheel and holding your breath, and you go to work still holding on to the steering wheel, gripping your breath, and you don't realize that it's over. Sometimes we just have to update the body because the coping mechanism is what keeps us from literally having a screw loose and ending up, you know, in a padded cell. I always say that it's— I am so surprised that I'm not locked up in a padded cell, given, you know, what I— but I felt crazy for sure. For sure. But I just knew that it was what I was dealing with. And what I was dealing with was crazy, but I wasn't crazy. Hmm.
I like that distinction. And I'm wondering how they will know, how we will all know when we are at one with our body. What does that, what does that look like? Hmm.
There's, um, there's a poem that I write in my first book called Radically Alive Beyond Abuse, which is like when you wake up with a spring in your step, ready to greet the day, and you're like, hello world, I am here, and what wonderful and joyful things can we create today? What adventures can we have today? Now, most people don't wake up like that, as if they're to the world, right? And myself, I don't live that way every single day, but I do a lot of the time. So where I can kind of pragmatize it here for everybody is like, there's— when you're more at one with your body than you are now, it only needs to be like a 1-degree shift. If you're a cat on an ocean, changing the Nautilus just 1 degree on a yacht, let's say, or a Disney Cruise. That's a huge trajectory in the ocean that you've changed. That's it, a 1-degree shift. So if you feel a little lighter, which could be a little less pain in your legs, a little less heaviness or fog in your head, a little less inflammation in your gut, a little less, uh, anxiety and palpitation in your heart, and maybe a little more joy, a little more gratitude, a little more excitement, a little more time for your puppy snuggles or your, you know, little fur baby snuggles, moving a little slower, being kinder to the person at Whole Foods or Safeway, you know, and just saying thank you or how are you or something like that. Turning to your partner, your husband, your wife, your significant other, and just saying thank you for something, or doing something— things that you couldn't do because you were so bogged down. And then all of a sudden you sprang forth one degree and you're like, oh, there I am, there I am, I've embraced myself, I'm choosing. That's one way. Also, you could do something like I did. I didn't know that I was ill, but I knew something was wrong. One day I sat down at my computer, closed my eyes, and just started typing on a Word doc. And the next thing I know, I felt tears coming down my cheek. I opened my eyes, and what I saw was the first line on the paper, and it said, "You're killing me." Welcome to how The Body of Change started, actually.
Wow.
I was like, whoa. And what I realized is it wasn't essentially what I was eating or what I was drinking. It was the why. Mm. What was eating me that I'd never dealt with. And that opened up that one degree shift to look at what actually is an allergy to alcohol, which I never knew that I had because I just loved alcohol. Um, but I learned about that and then I removed it from my life. That's just my story, doesn't have to be everybody's, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. Um, but also I got myself checked out at that time too because I was sick with a bacterial— an undiagnosed bacterial infection for, um, probably decades, and I got it taken care of and all of that, which was a nightmare, but I got taken care of and I'm healthy and well and living radically and orgasmically alive just by listening to that one degree shift. Take a moment, close your eyes, face yourself. Well, I didn't even know I was facing myself, I'll be honest. I just said, okay, talk to me, body. And I just let it type without thinking. And first thing I saw was, you're killing me. And I was like, you know, the kid from Home Alone. That hit me when I saw that from my body, and it changed my whole world. And I'm so grateful my body did that. I didn't pay anybody to do that.
It's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. Well, I mean, you know that we could go on and on and on, but, um, people are going to want more from you. I have no doubt. I have no doubt that people listening are like, okay, more and more and more. Tell them where to find you, where to find your books.
Tell them all the things. Thank you so much, you're so kind. Um, you can go to drlisacooney.com, C-O-O-N-E-Y, for my website, and there's a lot of information on there. If you can't find something, you can email us at customer care, because we care for you, at dr.com. And any hashtag— I mean, not hashtag, any social media thing, you know, Dr. Lisa Cooney, C-O-O-N-E-Y. Amazon, wherever there is Amazon, even for the other languages, um, uh, I am on the author page there under my name, Dr. Lisa Cooney. And also IngramBooks has links for all the languages as well, uh, for all my books. There's 4 of them. Um, I'm in the process of writing another one. There's— wow— 5 for this whole trilogy. It's called Radically Alive Beyond Abuse. Lies of Money, Creating After Abuse, The Body of Change, and then, um, the, the final one in this series would be Doing What Works, and that speaks more to recovery and things like that.
Oh, well, you are an amazing lady, as I knew when we began talking, and I have had such a great time learning from you and talking to you.
Thank you so much, Rebecca. It was really, really fun. I really appreciate the time and consideration, and I love your questions and I thank you for the gift you gave me of just being able to share my story and how I've transformed that story into hope, as you called it. And I hope that one— I hope many of you, or even if one of you, take a one-degree shift because of this. It's just like the captain changing the Nautilus in the ocean. It's a huge step in the right direction. And that is my wish for you.
Oh, I couldn't agree more. That's so beautiful. This is Rebecca Greene, and I want to remind all of you to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving.
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