Trauma Lives in the Body: How to Finally Release It

What if your chronic symptoms aren't the problem, but the body's memory of unresolved trauma? Today, somatic practitioner Jacob Grieco reveals how suppressed emotions, poor boundaries, and nervous system patterns keep us sick, and how healing begins when we finally let the body speak. Welcome, Jacob.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really excited about this episode because when people think conditions, they think body. I really love to get this sort of information out because more and more people, I think, need to come to the understanding that our emotions play a significant role, if not the primary role, in becoming sick, having symptoms, or whatever they are from, you know, skin all the way through to gastrointestinal problems, cancer, etc. We're going to be talking basically about the importance of resolving traumatic imprints and how stuck emotions keep us sick. But let's just touch on first, because a lot of people hear about the term somatic therapy but aren't 100% sure what that is. Can you just give us a brief overview?

So somatics in its essence just means working with the body. So that's why we keep hearing somatic breathwork, somatic therapy of this, somatic IFS, somatic CBT, whatever. You can attach somatic before anything as long as you're using the term like body with it, right? What I'm specifically talking about here is using the body as a portal by tracking sensations in the body to see where something is stuck or unprocessed. And in particular, we can use chronic illness for that as well. So I was dealing with a chronic skin condition when I was 13. That's what got me into this work as well, when in my early teens. What I realized is when I was tracing the sensations inside of my body, when I was paying attention to my chronic skin condition, to everything that was attached to it, each sensation was traced to another one and they were connected with each other.

Yeah.

Up until the point where I could get to the root of it all, which was a stuck emotion. suppressed emotion. It was traumatic imprints. So once we get all the way there, when we follow it all the way to the root, we can resolve it on the— at the root as well. And that's what somatic therapy is about.

That's fantastic, because that's what we want, isn't it? It's finding the root cause. You know, I think that's why people are in talk therapy for so many years, because that's like the end result. It's not necessarily where it started. I find it interesting that people become more open to change and doing something or changing their mind, mindset, when they have a chronic condition or something very traumatic has happened to them, um, especially during times of stress and trauma. They seem to be more open to change then.

Mm-hmm.

than when nothing's happened. Why is that?

From my understanding and from my point of view as well, through my own story, and you know some parts of my story, you know it wasn't always easy. We have to be brought down to our knees sometimes in order to want to change something, right? The biggest enemy of like really wanting something powerful, profound, different for your life is if you have a life that's good enough and that's comfortable. So when I work with like pretty high-level entrepreneurs and they're like wanting to go to the next stage, the biggest enemy is not failure or rejection. The biggest enemy is not trying because they already feel comfortable or good enough. Majority of the people live somewhere within like the comfortable and good enough. And the way human mind works is we want more comfort, right? So we seek more comfort and we create more comfort in our lives. And sometimes what has to happen is to be brought out of the space where nothing is comfortable. And the chronic illness provides us with just that, because there's no place to escape, right? When we're constantly in a body that is feeling sick, that is feeling diseased, right? And once we're in that space, then the pain of staying the same is larger than the pain of change. And only in that moment I can see, you know, a lot of people actually start looking for like, wow, okay, I really need to do something right now.

Most people are propelled into doing something completely different. Even so many do become health coaches or authors, you know, writing out their story once they've gone through something traumatic like this and they've done that miraculous change. And what do you think it is, Jacob, when someone is going through such stress, trauma, or health condition, mental health? And they are feeling that much pain, they are feeling that much burden, and still can't bring themselves to make that change?

Oftentimes what happens is we either, one, don't have a good enough blueprint of what to do, right? So that means if we still are stuck in the sense that we believe that we need to deal with the symptoms instead of looking at the root cause, then we get stuck in chasing of the symptoms. For a lot of people, some places are still easier to be in. We call that rackets. It's the persistent complaints or behaviors that we keep doing over and over again that have a certain payoff, but they also have a certain cost, right? So if I'm saying, for example, I can't do that because XYZ, my— the payoff of saying that and complaining about that could be that I just never have to put myself out there. I never have to do the things, you know, and then therefore I never have to fail. So for majority of the people, even though they are uncomfortable, they're not uncomfortable enough. So only once a person gets to the point where they decide, and that happens in an instant, right? That doesn't require years and years. Transformation actually happens in an instant, which is the decision like, I've had enough. Like, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to change something inside of myself. And that's where it doesn't matter what resources are available to you, it's how resourceful you are with what you have. So again, I started when I was 13, 14. I was reading books in Slovenian in a library, right? I didn't have access to all the online courses and coaches and like deep profound information and somebody holding my hand and guiding me through it. It's the resourcefulness, not the resources. So it just needs to get to the point where the pain of staying the same is larger than the pain of change. And majority of the people don't get that. They stay in the loops where they consistently complain about how bad it is but don't do anything to change it. And that's something that's just got to happen in the mind. That's a mindset challenge, right? But then the process of going into the body, into the roots, that's where somatics comes in, where when we start unraveling all these deeper layers.

There are even deeper mindset issues there around— because there's a lot of attention can be given to someone when they're sick.

Mm-hmm.

Or so— I'm trying to choose my words carefully here— and we can tend to act a little bit like a victim around it. We can get a lot of attention because then people start feeling sorry for us. Which I think disempowers us from becoming resourceful, like you were saying. And so we can sit there because sometimes people don't get the attention they want, either from their partner or their friends or family, and that can be a way of actually feeling like someone cares about me. One of the important things that I've noticed people doing is that they Start becoming their diagnosis. It starts becoming like their identity, like, I am this, I am that, as opposed to saying maybe, I am, I am me and I'm experiencing this condition. How does languaging help us around that identity? And, uh, and how do you help people change that thought process.

And I'm also wanting to be mindful because my way of being is quite unconventional. For the ones who don't know my story, I spent a lot of years between India and the Amazon studying one traditional jnana yoga. So that's the non-dual traditions in India, studying in the ashrams with the yogis, and then spent close to 2 and a half years working with plant medicine with plant medicine keepers in Latin America, in the Amazon, between Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil. So I come also from that lineage and that perspective a bit. So something that is in the language is the magic of spelling, right? So when we say I am, whatever we add behind I am, it's almost like a curse that we give to ourselves. A curse?

Yeah.

So like if you say I'm an addict, right? Identity is fixed. Even in Ontological Coaching, identity is fixed. When we say, I am sick, I have a chronic illness, you own a chronic illness. So the language is so important to see how we either identify ourselves with us, which identity becomes a fixed concept, or we own something. My illness, my identity. I have this, I have depression. So inside of the language, whatever you add after I am is like what you position yourself as, as a fixed identity. Then in jnana yoga, in non-dual tradition, the only I am that exists is I am the one with all, right? The non-duality, the understanding of self through the spiritual perspective. But coming back to the language, I want to throw that in so that I don't go too far into the that space. The first thing that one can do in the language is to differentiate oneself from the experience one is having. So even addiction, right? I'm an addict. A lot of frameworks are following the once an addict, always an addict, right? Even the AA, which has been super helpful for so many people, like millions and millions of people, but it comes from the place of once an addict, always an addict. Like, I am an addict. And then you become, I am a recovering addict, right? I am an ex-alcoholic. And whatever you identify yourself as, that's your entire identity, and your entire life will be revolving around your identity. So even if I'm recovering alcoholic, even if I'm a recovering smoker, even if I'm a recovering drug user, my entire life will revolve around avoiding the drug or the alcohol or the smoking. If I am sick, my entire life will revolve around sickness. So the important thing, just from a lens of personal development, growth, and like overall liberation, is I am. I am me. I am that. I am, you know, I am that I am, and I am experiencing this thing at the moment. I, you know, I use certain behavior practices in order to cope with nervous system dysregulation. That's how I describe addiction. It's just using certain behaviors or certain substances in order to cope with nervous system dysregulation. So then we look at the core root, which is like the nervous system dysregulation. In terms of sickness and illness, it's like, I am experiencing these symptoms as a result of this, as a result of a traumatic imprint, as a result of suppressed emotion, as a result of not taking care of my body in the past, right? That happens too. And you own the fact that you haven't taken care of your body in the past, but now you move into the space where you are experiencing the symptoms. And it's not, I am sick, it's, I am experiencing skin challenges right now. And that automatically liberates you from the identity of it and creates a little bit of spaciousness between them. And once I look at the space between, between us, between me and the skin disease, then I can say like, hey, why are you here? Let's look at why are you here. Let's look at the root cause. And then like deal with the root cause, pull that out. But as long as there is the identity in it, the root cause Is the identity, and it becomes like the holding on to the sickness, the illness, the addiction, the whatever that is, right?

I love the way you, you said to question. Once you separate yourself from it, then you can look at it and say, well, why are you here? You know, what is it that I have to learn from you? You know, this experience or this condition or whatever it is. That I— that's fantastic. I just love it. And you touched on The nervous system. And that's what I was— my next question I was going to ask you. So what sort of signals does the nervous system give us when our emotions are suppressed? Like, some people don't know their emotions are suppressed. They just think that, well, this is me, I don't know any other way, I don't know any other way to be. So they don't understand that maybe those emotions are suppressed. So what does the nervous system— What can we do to give us an awakening around that?

I want to just break down a few different parts in this question. So we've got the theory is that we've got something called a triune brain. The reptilian, which was developed millions of years ago, the limbic, which is the emotional part covering the reptilian brain, which is the brainstem and cerebellum and a few other parts, and then the limbic brain, and then we've got the prefrontal and neocortex and the frontal lobes, which are in charge of the thinking, right? So what happens is that when we experience an emotion, some emotions are very primal and ancient, which are like fear, right? And like shock and those things that like just happen. Our natural state of being is bliss. Our natural way of being is joy and bliss and contentment. So when something happens, that's a really rapid emotion, right? When we experience a loss, that's a little bit of a longer emotion because there's grief involved, right? There's like sadness. Oh, we lost something. And that's natural because like our brain is reorienting to change in the environment. But then the prefrontal cortex gets involved, which is the story-making machine, our meaning-making machine, the narratives, right? And then we're like, oh, let's say, let's take grief for example, I experienced a loss of a loved one, and suddenly the brain gets involved. And now we imagine all the images of how beautiful things were and how they're never going to look the same again and all of these things. And it's almost the emotion is no longer inside of the limbic brain, it's now in the prefrontal cortex because we keep looping in the same story over and over and over again. And what majority of the people do in that moment is it's too painful to feel, right? And those, those few seconds that emotions really last— it's said that emotions have a lifespan of about 90 seconds if they're fully moved through immediately, right? So you can experience the anger. Anger is really just boundaries in motion, meaning that if somebody crosses my boundary, I'm like, no, get off! But basically anger expresses itself and then it's gone, right? Unless we're persistent in this situation. Basically what happens is that the sensation of the emotion is often too much to feel. And a lot of us have been told, both men and women, although that's really been pushed on men very strongly, is don't cry, don't feel, right? You're here to protect, to think. For women as well, majority of the cases, but not all of the cases, has been like that— don't feel, right? This injunction early in our childhood that's evolved into belief. So we tend to suppress these less pleasurable emotions away so that we please the world around us. And when this is pushed away, then the body keeps the score inside of it. So we have this experience of emotion that expresses through the body. So every— if you've ever experienced, which you have, the emotions, then you know that there's a sensation to it. The grief oftentimes has like the, oh, the heartbreak has like the breaking of the heart. You can really feel like you're The heart is being broken. The betrayal has like the tightening in the stomach and like the pain in the stomach and almost like somebody stabbed you in the stomach or in the back or heaviness in the shoulders, right? So all of the emotions have sensations with them, and that's our nervous system communicating with us. So when we talk about sensations, we're talking about our reptilian brain, our primal brain, the nervous system that's connected to the brainstem. And the nervous system consistently gives us these signals. So if we're in touch with the body, we can notice the sensations inside of our body, and we always feel, notice sensations in the body. And then when the feelings arise, the emotions arise, we can point them to our body and we can let them move through naturally, right? So now there's sadness, and I let the sadness move. I cry, I move through it about 90 seconds, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. I I'm through with my wave of sadness, right? Then somebody crosses my boundaries. I, I notice that feeling in my body, like, oh, the energy rushing up. I want to scream, I want to shout, I want to do something. I pay attention to it because I'm aware of it. Then I express it in a healthy way. I express my boundary to the other person, and I notice the anger goes away, right? So that's our nervous system, the sensations communicating with us. But what happens is, like, for example, we don't know how to express a boundary And now this anger gets suppressed inside of our body, and we're like feeling all of these feelings inside of our body, but we don't know how to express it outwards, right? Or we feel the sadness, but we don't feel like if I cry then I'm weak, or if I feel sad then, you know, I failed, or whatever that is. So therefore we push it away. And the thing with the nervous system is it's very subtle and it's very soft. So when we pay attention to the sensations, things are moving. And when we don't, when we're used to numbing— TV, alcohol, smoking, drugs, binging on food, even like going out with friends, consuming personal development, that was a big one for me, love relationships, right, as well, like chasing relationships to not feel like a sense of being alone— all of these are ways of coping and escaping things inside of us. So even if the addiction doesn't look like taking drugs, it can look like consuming personal development, right? Listening to seminars back to back all the time, right? Personal development should have an endpoint as well. So yeah, basically that's when things get stuck in our body, and then instead of nervous system whispering to us, it starts screaming, starts getting louder, starts getting louder, louder, louder, louder, louder, and then suddenly we have a skin disease or a chronic pain in the stomach or like back pains, or our whole entire body breaks out in hives or rashes, or, you know, that, that's where like the chronic disease comes from. It's actually the end part of a very long chain of events.

It is so true. I love the, I love the fact that you touched on the personal development side because that was my vice. As well. That was what I always turned to. And then until I got to a certain point where I thought, how much more do I have to know? This is actually just keep telling me that I'm not enough, that I'm not good enough, you know? Like, I'm always trying to change, change, change instead of just embodying and maybe transforming what it is that was affecting me. And you did touch on boundaries, which was really— because that's my very next question. It's amazing. And I was going to ask you, how does this unresolved trauma shape the way that we set boundaries in, you know, relationships, in our health, and things like that?

Um, boundaries are— the way I look at boundaries are like walls around us, but they're not the walls we build to keep people out. They're the walls we build so that we show people where the door is, right? So the boundaries are not like, get away from me, I'm never talking to you again, unless it comes to that. The boundary is more so, this is how I like to be spoken with, right?

Mm-hmm.

This is how I need to be treated. This is what I'm expecting from the people around me. So when this isn't happening, what most people have never experienced is an immovable boundary. When this isn't happening, what you have to do is something called an immovable boundary, which means like, this is what I stand for and I will not move from this because this is what the boundary is. If it's not immovable, then it's just a desire, it's a want, or it's a request. When a boundary is being expressed, it's actually giving to the health of the relationship because over time, if we keep betraying ourselves— and I see that with a lot of women I work with— it's A common theme among women I work with is self-betrayal. Not so much for men.

Yeah.

For women, it's like they want to please their partners or the masculine in their life in general, right? The fathers, the father figures, partners. So therefore they see, if I express a boundary, I am not pleasing the masculine in my life. Therefore, if I'm not pleasing a masculine in my life, I won't be protected. Therefore, I'm unsafe. And it goes like much deeper than that, but if we look at just the part about boundaries, the boundaries end up never being expressed. However, if the boundaries are expressed, it actually adds to the health of the relationship, whether that's romantic or any other relationship, because it shows the person like, hey, this is how I need to be treated, these are my needs. And again, it's a different conversation than wants or desires, like, these are my needs. So the boundaries, when they're not expressed what happens is a person ends up just harboring a lot of resentment over time. It's like, oh, I keep being treated this way, I keep being treated that way. Yeah, but in some form you're adding to that, right? It's enabling it. If we look at, for example, addiction, oftentimes the people around a person who is engaging in addictive behaviors are enablers, right? They set a boundary but then they don't uphold it. There's no immovable boundary, it's just a desire or a need A desire or want, right? So it's like, yeah, if you don't stop doing drugs, then I won't talk to you again. But then a person talks to them again. So basically they're telling themselves, my boundaries don't matter, my needs don't matter. But then they're also telling the other person, like, you can do whatever I want and it's still okay. The thing is, love also has truth in it. Love also has boundaries. Love isn't just like soft and movable and You know, it does require there to be a boundary in motion. So yeah, when the boundary is set, it gives to the health of the relationship. When it's not set or when it's not spoken, it often just creates a lot of like self-betrayal and harboring of resentment. And that's where a lot of disease actually comes from. Even with the women I've worked with, even with some women in my life that I've noticed that even in some past relationship when certain boundaries were not expressed, when certain needs were not expressed, Like, over time they became like chronic conditions. For example, chronic UTIs are the not expressing of the boundary quite often.

Why would you think UTI?

We can also tie— I would say a lot of things are, right? We can also tie the part of the body to the part where the boundary has not been set, right? So UTIs are generally around like the boundaries of sexuality. If we look at cold sores on the mouth, they're oftentimes not in the boundaries, but they're a separation conflict. So we long to be connected to somebody in an intimate way, but there's a separation or there's a breakup or they keep pulling away or there's the avoidancy of it. And oftentimes what happens is the separation conflict creates in the resolution stages quite a lot of like physical symptoms to it. So again, it's looking at like the symptoms as the end part of something that hasn't been resolved, as opposed to looking at like, what's the antibiotic that I can take or antiviral or antibacterial or creams or injections or surgeries or whatever, right?

No wonder why they keep coming back. Everything expresses itself again and again and again until it's resolved. When there is trauma, you know, one of the most fearful things to do is to tap into your emotions, feel the things that you don't want to relive or know. So when someone feels numb to their emotions, you know, due to grief or anger, whatever it is, what is the first step that you do with them to reconnect them with their emotions safely?

That's why I use the body as the portal into that. Because moving from the gross to the subtle, you can get to the place that we call the felt sense. And in the felt sense is where a lot of healing happens. So gross would be, now I'm noticing my hands on top of my knees, I'm noticing the position of my shoulders, I'm noticing my sitting bones in the chair, I'm noticing the temperature of the air in the room. And all of these things are gross. Everyone can feel that, right? Everyone can notice that. Then I start moving to the subtle. So if I just close my eyes, then I notice that if I notice all of these things that I've mentioned, I also notice my breath and what else is there. And then when I talk about the thing, I might feel heavy. Oh, when I talk about, you know, my skin condition, I might feel some heaviness in the heart or some tension. And that's where we're starting to get to the place that's a little bit more subtle. So what I do with a lot of people people that I— when I work with people directly, I just take them straight into the root cause. Well, when I work with people that I just give them advice, what I tell them is like, just start slowly, start getting to know the sensations in your body, because eventually they're going to lead you to more. They're going to lead you to tell you a story, right? And again, it's important to know how to resource yourself, how to feel safe inside, how to come back to the place of safety. So I don't recommend starting to think about your most traumatic imprints and then going into the body because that's gonna like bring everything up. But just knowing how to make yourself safe first, what makes you feel safe, and then from that place like gently starting to get to know sensations in your body. And I would say that is like an entry point. And when you say people who feel numb, in somatics, specifically in the modality that I'm using, We consider numbness as a sensation too. So it's paying attention to, okay, we've got numbness. Numbness is also a sensation, right? So what is the numbness wanting to tell us? What is the numbness wanting to show us? And starting to just become like really aware, like really mindful and conscious of all the sensations that are there.

That's really when we have to slow down and take time and give ourselves Space to do that. I mean, you can't do it in— if you're busy, busy, busy running around like a spinning top, always doing something for someone else. That, that makes me— the betrayal I actually found very interesting in what you said, you know, because straight away when you said that, it reminded me that we're not here to be sacrificed. We're not meant to sacrifice ourselves. For an addiction or for a partner or even for a health condition. We're not meant to be sacrificing ourselves for that. You know, we were meant to be looking after ourselves and putting ourselves in a position of, you know, nurturing ourselves or reparenting ourselves in a way that feels good for us. When it comes to doing this type of work, Jacob, you know, we go from Um, that awareness, there's usually like a collapse in the beginning, you know, like we collapse into it before we come to like what some people would like to call a rebirth. But that bit in the middle, that bit in the middle, like you've collapsed and then there's the end result, that bit in the middle can feel so messy and scary and fearful, and people don't know What is going to happen? Because they've identified as— that we were saying before— they've identified as their condition, or they've identified as, you know, I'm an alcoholic. Well, you take away that identity, well, they don't know who they are anymore.

If you really wanna attain a form of spiritual liberation, I would say there's a Beauty in learning to fall in love with that moment. Because the harder we grasp the identity, the more painful it's gonna be when it eventually gets ripped out of our hands. Imagine holding on to the rope really tight and there's a, there's a truck pulling the rope and you're trying to hold on to it, hold on to it. It's going to burn your hands, it's going to drag you along, there's going to be a lot of injuries that happen. And eventually you're gonna let go of the rope. Within our identity, eventually there's death in the end of all of it, right? There's always the sense of ending of every form of identity that we've been in. So how quickly we're able to— it's the second part of the 4 qualifications in Jnana Yoga, which is the dispassion, it's called, or non-attachment. Which is how quickly can we let go of something that no longer serves, right? So I had an identity of a martial artist, for example, when I was a teenager. So as soon as my skin disease started getting better, I got confident, I started training a lot. I was going to the gym every day, working out every day, competing every day, going to international competitions. And then a few years later— I was really good at it. And a few years later, I had a knee injury. And I just had this existential depression. That was a narrative trauma, what I like to call it, right? Where we have an identity that we associate ourselves with, and then suddenly the identity is gone. For example, the loss of a loved one. Like, if I consider myself a husband too, or a wife too, or a son too, right? Or a daughter too, a mother too. When that's no longer there, then there's like the identity crisis that happens. So if we're just able to let go, let go of that, like the keyword here is let go, like let go, let go of that, like surrender that, then you can just be in what's next, like what's happening there, right? For me, it was like when that happened, it was a period of like depression that I went through, like pretty intense. And then only after that I was realizing like, oh, this is opening up so many new doors for me. And now looking back at it, 10+ years later, I'm looking at— I would not be who I am right now if I didn't have all the challenging moments that were there. So every single thing that I look at as the most transformational part of my life in the moment felt extremely challenging. So now when challenging things happen, I celebrate them because I'm like, oh, I know this is going to be another one of these, right? I can fall in love with the messiness in it. I'm like, I don't, I don't know what's gonna happen here. And it's exciting because I know that like my identity is being ripped apart and dissolved and something new is being born out of it. So just learning to celebrate these parts, the parts in the middle, right, the space between the notes, because that's where something is falling away, means that something else is coming in place. But if we keep holding on to what is falling away, you know, that we're a little bit more closed to what is coming in, and it might take much longer, it might be much more painful. We might be a bit too beat up by the time we get there. So the name of the game is like learning to like let go.

Let it— like you're saying, letting go. Let that part of you go, die off, you know, like leaves fall from the tree, they turn brown, they die off, they go into the ground. Then what happens? You know, new leaves grow. But it's that in-between part, it's the unknown. And it's like anything, if you remove something Well, then it has to be replaced. We don't like voids. I don't think humans like to live— they can't feel like they're living in some void. It has to be replaced with something. Pick a somatic therapy that someone could do that's really easy to do at home, that's to help them, you know, feel safe in learning to let go.

Words of caution: do not do somatic therapy at home. Find a practitioner I have been in this work for many, many years. I worked with some of the best of the best in the world in terms of somatics, like literally people who pioneered the movement. I worked with extremely capable facilitators in plant medicine spaces. At the space where I'm at right now, I can guide myself through a lot, like a lot, and yet I still hire somatic Therapist for a lot of things that you know I'm like okay like I could take myself through it maybe but just like there's nothing wrong with hiring a therapist for it so I would say whenever there's like something that feels big hire help do not feel shy or like embarrassed about looking for help outside of yourself in terms of just like being in touch and in connection with the body I would say vipassana style. Meditation is likely the best one to start getting to know oneself. So Sam Harris has a really good app called Waking Up that I highly recommend. It's kind of like a starting entry point to the vipassana-style meditation that allows you to do it 5 minutes a day. I'm in no way affiliated or associated with it, I just really like it. It's one of the best ones I found. You can also just learn to sit with yourself For 5 minutes every morning and every evening, just being in stillness, in silence with your body. What it took for me to overcome my chronic skin condition, when I was 13, I got into meditation and I would meditate 2 to 3 hours every single morning. So that was— or every single day, pardon. So that was like Vipassana style, Zen Buddhist meditations. There was Joe Dispenza. work and just like reprogramming my mind. There was self-hypnosis involved, and I just came up with all of that by myself. Like, I would find books, I would seek all of that knowledge and understanding. So something that I would say, recommend to anyone that wants to start on their own without a therapist would be meditate.

Yeah.

Like, find ways to meditate that bring you into the body, not out of your body. So there are styles of meditation like guided visualizations and manifestation stuff, and like, the world is full of that right now. But just look, are you trying to escape, or is it bringing you closer inwards, closer to yourself? And everything that's bringing you closer to the present moment and to the sensations that are there, to what is present, is going to serve you at this capacity.

Like you're saying, like breathwork is, I believe, is part of the somatic therapies, etc. And if you're doing that properly and you are doing it at home, you are bringing up a lot of things that Then you may not be skilled in helping yourself with. I really love the way you said do something that reconnects you, brings you into yourself, not bring everything out without a skilled practitioner like yourself. Now, language is so incredibly important. You know that. You've studied NLP as well. To leave our listeners with some language tips, around? Because if you've got a health condition, or you've got— sometimes you're so angry why this has happened to you, you're not understanding, or you've had a traumatic experience. Our language can be so negative, which I think keeps us stuck, keeps, you know, the condition alive in us. What would you suggest people use to reframe what they're going through?

It's going to be individual to a person. The best way to go about it is to ask yourself better questions. And in order to ask yourself a better question, you need to know what's the question that you're asking yourself. So I noticed for myself, even not so long ago, it was a couple of weeks ago, some things were happening in my surroundings, in my environment, in the situation that I was in. And I asked myself a question, why is this happening to me? And as soon as I asked that question, I've done so much work that I caught myself in it, right? And I'm like, oh, I'm asking the question again, my question, the question that I was asking myself in every space where I was depressed, in every stage of my depression, in every stage of my illness. There was this one question that I kept asking myself, why is this happening to me? And if you ask a question, your brain, your subconscious will automatically come up with the answer. Right? Why is this happening to me? Because you're worthless. Why is this happening to me? Because you're coming from a less fortunate background. Why is this happening to me? Because you did this and you did something wrong and you're being punished by karma or God or sin, hell, whatever you believe in, right? So instead, you just ask yourself a different question, and a question that is more empowering would be like, what's trying to emerge here? What can I learn from this? How is this a really powerful growth opportunity? Opportunity? What is this part wanting to teach me? What is this person coming here to mirror to me? What is this emotion trying to show me? Um, where have I betrayed myself and what can I do about it? Like, what can I do moving forwards in the future, right? How can I learn from this experience so that I'm showing up better? So I would say with that, you're going to find out your own language that you can reframe it with. Right? So you just need to ask a better question, and then what comes up as the answers is going to be your reframes to this question. And just generally, some things that I would like remove from the language would be, I'm stuck. Again, I am giving yourself the identity of stuckness. You're never stuck. You're just doing something or you're not doing it, right? What are you doing that you shouldn't be, and what are you not doing that you should be? So if you remove stuck from the language is one of the most powerful things. I'm looping in my mind. I'm depressed. So anything that comes after I am, I would just take all of that away. So I experience like periods of depression. I have experienced periods of depression is even more powerful because it assumes that you are no longer experiencing that, right? So you can see each moment you can just reinvent your life completely fresh. If you just use a different language about it. So if right now I'm feeling really intense and life is feeling chaotic, and I say, wow, that was a really chaotic moment in my life, I'm like instantly like I feel like, oh, I'm out of it now. And I just— all I did was just reframe the language about it, right? But if I'm like, oh my God, I feel so bad and everything is fucked up, and like, why is this happening to me? Then just suddenly like, oh, I'm still in it, right? And I continue to be in it. Oh, I'm stuck, I'm stuck. Why do I keep being stuck? If you ask yourself, why can I not get out of this, you're going to find the reasons why you can't get out of this. So again, ask yourself bigger questions to come to better answers. And then things I would just completely remove from language would be like, I have to, I should, I must, this has to be a certain way, I am XYZ. I would just replace them with more playful language, more lighter language. Because ultimately, when you want to liberate yourself, like on a spiritual level, that's what we're aiming for.

Mm-hmm.

It's like we want to get to the place where, you know, we just enjoy playing the game of life without the attachments to it. So, oh, I get to have this skin condition right now because it's teaching me something. Oh, I get to have this really chaotic moment in my life right now. I get to have Periods of depression, and then as soon as you use get to and let instead of what you were having, it's like get to gives it a space of like it's a blessing. Therefore, in a blessing, there's a possibility, there's the opportunity, there's a growth, right? So yeah, just playing with the language like that. And of course, I would just invite everyone to whoever is listening to this, do it yourself, like really play with it and see. See what comes up as opportunities as you ask yourself different questions.

Honestly, what a powerful way to end. That was amazing. And I really hope that everybody who's listening gives them the permission, once they've listened to Jacob's wisdom there, to allow themselves to change their language, to stop and think. I think it's Interrupting as you're about to say something negative. Interrupt it, interrupt it, and say, I don't have to say it like that. I can become more consciously aware of the words I use. That was fantastic, Jacob. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all that wisdom around somatic therapy, mindset, trauma, and the fact that we can do something about it. But it is The best to do something with a trained professional like yourself. So everyone, please go to the show notes. Jacob's details are there. You can contact him. He can take it further with you. Thank you so much for coming on, Jacob.

Thank you so much for having me. What an absolute pleasure.

Thank you.