131 Living in Alignment with Emily Wishall

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Lyme Voice. With me today is Emily Wishall. Emily, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Sarah.

Yeah, so in preparation for this interview, I was actually going to go meet Emily in person at her practice because we're only a couple hours apart, and we actually got snowed in, so we didn't get to meet in person.

We still can. We've We're getting— we're in the summer weather. You've got the four-wheel drive now, so it'll happen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Emily knows what it is like to feel insecure, ashamed, tired, overweight, and constricted in your body. Because of her own story, Emily is passionate about supporting women through the path from disliking their body to loving their body. Through her own journey and transformation, she is able to better understand and help her clients overcome their own limitations in a much shorter time. Emily is an embodiment coach, which we're going to talk about, certified Rolf-er, Art of Feminine Presence teacher, and certified Animal Flow instructor. She graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's degree in exercise science. Emily believes that your mind, body, and spirit are connected. When you take care of your body and enable it to function optimally, inevitably other aspects of your life are affected. Emily helps her clients to release pain and the old posture and mental patterns that are keeping them stuck, small, and limited. This enables them to feel more at ease and confident in their bodies. Wow. That's a lot.

Uh-huh.

That's a lot.

And you and I have talked about this off air, but when you are living with chronic pain, when you are living with a chronic illness, it impacts how you perceive yourself, how you perceive your body, how the energy you're putting off in relation to other people. And so this is a big, big part of what you do is help people come to this healing place where they do appreciate their bodies once again and/or can connect with them and feel safe with them.

Exactly. Yeah.

So Emily, how did you come to launch Wishful Wellness?

Yeah. So, so it started with my— so I'm a certified Relfer, as you mentioned. Which for those, so that's the start of Wish All Wellness, the start of my work. And if you're unfamiliar with what Rolfing is, it's called Rolfing Structural Integration. The word comes, it comes from Dr. Ida Rolf. And so in that, I have a private practice in Boulder, Colorado doing it's a hands-on manual therapy. And in that practice, I'm working with the fascia of the body. And if you're unfamiliar with the fascia, to simply put it, I think of it as our— it's like our soft tissue skeleton, right? So it has both elastic and fibrous properties. It's holding everything together. It's what's giving us our ability. It's holding organs in place. It's giving muscles their shape. And with repetitive movement patterns, with emotional trauma, with chronic pain, with chronic illness, just moving through life, our fascia becomes overly fibrous or dense in certain areas. And we start to lose some of our elasticity or ability to move with ease. And so what I'm helping to do in rothing is help to restore some of that fluidity back into the structure and system. And I got into that work— how far back you want to go, Sarah? I won't go so far back yet, but ultimately with the idea of being really inspired to help people reach their full potential through the physical body. And so that's been the foundation for the work that I do. And then, you know, I have expanded on from that to offer more because it is what I see time and time again. You know, I now probably have like a 50/50 half split between my hands-on work and my coaching work. And it's also interconnected and related, right? Like somebody might come to me in Rolfing for a very specific, like, oh, I have knee pain from running. And some people are, you know, we might go even from that to some deeper emotional stress, life things that are happening. We might not, we might just be looking at a more biomechanical model. I really try to meet my clients where they are, but similarly with some of my coaching clients, I might give them a very physical, almost like a structural practice to do at home, whether it be like laying on a tennis ball or a foam roller, but I can sense and notice where is maybe even in the fascia blocked and how can we help open that in a way that might also support them to release some emotions, to release some old belief that might be connected and anchored in. So it, yeah, my, I feel like both, wow. Sometimes it can feel like two different worlds, but they are continually in my daily life weaving in and out together. Yeah.

So I just developed a fascination with fascia.

Yeah.

Like in 2014 when I was recovering, I'd gone out to Invita Medical and gone through treatment, but I had been in excruciating arthritic pain for 7 years at that point. And it was off the chart pain. Pain meds barely touched it. I was on a ton of them 24 hours a day, barely touched the pain, went through treatment, and that pain went away, all that structural bone pain that I called it. But that was when I actually started doing yoga for the first time. And I had been an athlete, but I had never done yoga. And I remember just one time in class sitting there and it's stretching all the fascia. Well, Lyme disease hides in your fascia. It hides in soft tissues, and so it hides all over. But just having the ability to be in the yoga class to stretch deeply for the first time, because I would stretch before I went through treatment. When I would stretch, it could trigger tremors for me.

Oh, wow.

Which is kind of called like a Herxing reaction sometimes. But yeah, it would trigger horrible physical events for me. So you avoid them. You don't do things that are going to trigger something. And so just being— and I started doing hot yoga as part of my recovery and being in those hot yoga classes where I'd just be like, okay, all I have to do is stretch, like be present and stretch, like whatever level I was at. And just being able to stretch after so many years of not, like, I literally love my fascia now.

Oh, that's huge. Yeah.

It just, it makes me so happy because when it is working right, you're right. It does do other things for you.

Yeah. And I mean, some of the new research is even, you know, refers to it as like our largest sensory organ. Really? I think for years fascia has been ignored until the last 15 years or so, as far as in the scientific world. And so that's why I think we still like new and new information continues to be uncovered about it. But it's so much more than just like connective tissue, right? Like it's so much, there's so much more to it than that. Wow. Yeah. Huh.

I've never heard that the largest sensory organ.

Huh.

Yeah.

And I mean, I don't know that all research backs that up, but yeah, because we think of like, if you think of interoception, so interoception is how it's like our own internal body reading. Like, so for example, like, like a craving for a food or even like, you know, your heart rate shifting, that's in your sense of that is your interoception. So when I start even talking about like embodiment, for some people, that's a really foreign word, or being embodied as a foreign concept. And so if we can start even putting it in some of those labels of like, okay, well, what happens when you can internally sense hot or cold with your body? And so interoception is a big piece that's actually occurring from receptors within the fascia. Wow. I know. So much.

I love nerding out on stuff like this. So, okay, you mentioned earlier that sometimes a client comes in and it's just that they actually have knee pain or there's something physical going on. But you also talked about releasing old emotional traumas and how those are stored in the body. Let's talk about that.

Yeah, I guess to start kind of being even what I was saying is from that, like, I often, especially like in my work directly on one-on-one with clients, will get like intuitive hits or reads like of like, oh, I think this is coming from this or this. And the depth that I go with each client varies a little also depending on what are they like, where are they really at, if that makes sense. And what are they really coming to me for? So sometimes somebody really is just like wanting just that physical release. Now that doesn't mean that it's not going to affect them in other areas of their life. You know, maybe they're aware of that, maybe they won't be. I have some clients, so there's an example of a client, she came to me years ago to go through the Rolfing 10 Series. And if you're unfamiliar with that, the 10 Series is 10 different sessions that work through the body. And it's like a recipe, meaning, you know, a recipe that can be shifted and altered and individualized for each client, but each session has its own goal and own anatomical territory. So we were going through that process, and for her it was to help resolve pain from old injuries back in high school. And she was like in her 50s at the time. Like, there's this knee pain and it's from back in high school, and like there's still pain. And so we very— I very much just stayed like I was doing tissue work. We, you know, talked. We were like developing our relationship, give her suggestions of stretches or foam rolling, but we never— I never really— we didn't really talk so much about maybe the emotional impact of what she was feeling or what was going on until like a long while into working together. And actually she sent me an email and that really like once, and I think for her it was just like her feeling open and safe with me and to feel that. But you know what she shares, like for the first time she actually felt like herself in her body and she noticed like how she related to other people was shifting, right? She felt more connected to her family, to her colleagues, but at the same time more connected to herself. Like she didn't care as much about what other people were thinking or feeling. Like she actually felt connected to her, to her essence. And a piece of that was because some of these injuries, you know, showed up early high school and created pain and limiting factors within movement that held her back in ways that I think she wasn't even aware of until that finally released. And she felt more at ease even in walking and more just like she could be in her own body. And so now our relationship has expanded to go much, much deeper level and even into some, like, coaching sessions, right? Like, where she— it helped her, I think, to have that tissue work first to open some things up to now go into this deeper side. I have another client, you know, we've been working together. She's a coaching client, like the opposite spectrum. She doesn't live locally to me. Um, we've been working together for the past 3 months, and she's actually going to happen to be in Colorado on vacation. And so she's going to come in for a couple Rolfing sessions, which I also feel really supportive. Like, I know we're in this other capacity and in the way that I coach, we're very much tracking physical sensation and being present with it and getting curious about it. And so now she's done, we've done a lot of work together and she's released a lot, but now it's awesome that like we get to come and work in another capacity. I don't think I'm quite answering your question. No, you are. No, you are. Okay. Just wanted to give some like kind of specific examples. To start answering that as far as—

No, you are, because when you start a relationship with a therapist, for instance, and that's a whole thing, there's certain therapists that you're not going to jive with. And I left a therapy session. I had gone to 2 sessions with a certain therapist, and her office was such a mess that I could not focus in the room. Like, her books were not stacked at all. They were like stacked the wrong way, and there were paper everywhere. And I was like, no, I can't do this. Like, yeah, you know, so you have to And when you're going into a therapy session, you're building an emotional muscle. That's an emotionally— I always call it emotional weightlifting in a therapy session. And what you are doing is you're incorporating some physical stuff into the emotional side. And the reality is our whole mind, body, spirit is connected, and we have to do those things anyways. But we're not taught that within Western medicine, within American— or I wasn't. I mean, I think it's the exception.

Yeah. And it's still like a quote unquote, like, newer concept and idea that's starting to become more widespread, which is great, right? Is like, what happens when we get to look at these mental emotional aspects simultaneously with the physical body instead of, oh, I go to this, I do this, like, instead of piecemealing things together.

Yeah. And you said something really fascinating that I want to go back to. You said we learned to tracking their physical sensations, but then being curious about them. Because you tapped into something really huge. Most people, and I'm using very general broad terms here, when I do coaching calls with people who have suffered for a long time because of chronic pain, because of chronic Lyme disease, and you come to when you feel something weird, and Lyme has so many weird symptoms that you're like, oh, I can feel my kidney. Why can I feel my kidney? Or, oh, now my left knee hurts. And so you become accustomed to these rotating, weird, unexplainable symptoms, but you also become afraid of them. And people are afraid often of pain. And what you're saying is you're saying, let's track what's going on and not be afraid of it. Be curious. So how does that play out?

Yeah. And I want to name, like, it makes sense. Of course we don't want to feel pain. And especially if you're going through Lyme or chronic pain or illness, it can be debilitating and it is really freaking scary and like, because it can feel like it consumes you. And so I don't want it— one, I just want to name, I don't want anyone to feel wrong or judged of like, they're like, well, I can't do that, or I don't feel like I have the capacity. So I do think like, especially if you're on, you know, that like, and more into the spectrum, as far as like, it's so intense, like, good support, we're not supposed to do this alone. It can be like even just like having somebody holding your hand, whether it be in person or, you know, virtually, is huge and being able to feel just a little bit safer in exploring some of these sensations. Right. So it's like if there's been a lot of trauma, there's a lot like I just want to name, like, don't just like feel like, oh, I just have to be able to like feel this and do it alone and like do it. And if I can't feel it, then I'm doing something wrong. I'd be curious. But so what I mean is, yes. So, so often when there's pain, when there's discomfort, when there's anxiety that we are feeling, our automatic response is to push it down, to not feel it, to want to fix it, to get it to leave, which makes sense. Right. It's not comfortable. You don't want it like me feeling that, but when that happens is we are resisting it. And I think most of us have heard the phrase, what we resist persists. And so if we can start to first be able to come into a little bit more like a parasympathetic state, like if we can first like, where can we find a little bit of ease and space in our system and body? Is that through taking a few deep, easy breaths? Is it through sitting in a certain position. So first find like, where can you find just a little bit more ease, just a little bit more relaxation, because that in itself is going to help you be with some sensation more. And then, and yeah, and then just actually allowing it. And allowing it doesn't mean you're going to allow yours like, okay, pain, you can just be here indefinitely. Okay, anxiety, like, I'm full acceptance of you. Okay, I guess now I just have anxiety. But no, it just means like, even maybe for like a 5-minute period, set a time. Like, a lot of times I'm like, you know, let's just set a timer 5 minutes, right? Like, feel into— I work a lot with women, even, you know, we're going back into old heartbreak or childhood traumas and hurts. And I'm not asking them to like sit in that space and wallow for days, but I do want them to feel it because feeling it is the way through to healing. And it's not comfortable. It's not, you know, the growth path isn't an easy, easy process, but it can be more easeful. There can be more ease there.. And so, you know, what I'm saying by like allowing or getting curious is, yeah, this is just one example, but maybe setting a 5-minute timer on your phone and, you know, either alone or with the support of a coach or a therapist or someone to just, what would it be like to say, for example, if it's pain, you know, like hip pain, what would it be like just to feel that pain, to connect into that sensation? And I find even, I'm a huge fan of language and I think how we name things and language things is important. So even starting to shift from pain to sensation is automatically— it's actually a significant shift, right? So like, wow, this is really uncomfortable sensation. The sensation, it's hot, it's tingly, like it's sharp. It's not— so we were even— you're not just like, oh, it's just pain, it hurts. It's actually like a deeper level. And I think even our brain has different judgments and connotations of pain versus sensation, right? Yeah. And then I think it's just asking that sensation, asking that body part questions. Is there something you want to tell me? And you might, that might sound silly or weird for people if they've never done something like that, can feel kind of awkward, but just like, I, one time again, I feel like I repeat it so much, but like just having a state of like gentle, playful curiosity. Yeah. Is there a message that you want me to know? Because we can then start to, you don't know what's going to come up right in those moments. And that's not saying like that 5-minute period is going to get rid of the pain. You're going to be cured and be gone. No, but you're starting to uncover from a deeper layer instead of just surface level. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. You're tapping into so many things because you had mentioned too, right before we started recording, like healing isn't linear. And I say that in almost every coaching call I do. Healing is not linear. And so sometimes, especially if you've been sick for years, you are having to heal. Sometimes you're in a physical healing cycle, sometimes you're in an emotional healing cycle, sometimes you're in a financial healing cycle. Like, there's just all this stuff going on. And so to, in a sense, honor that and befriend it or come alongside your own self, your own body, instead of shutting it down, telling it it's bad. Like, so much of what you're saying reminds me of Louise Hay.

Are you familiar with her?

I am, I'm sure. Yeah. She wrote many books, but one of them is called Heal Your Body, and it was fascinating. Like, a third of the book is through her coaching calls, or in person at the time, her coaching sessions, where if someone would come in and they had extreme amounts of facial hair, like, that can be just a genetic thing. It can also be a sign of fear and living with fear where you don't feel protected. And so she dives into all that stuff. And that's what you're talking about is healing isn't— the healing side of things isn't linear. And so sometimes even by speaking a different word to describe your pain, you begin that onion layer of healing process.

Yeah, I love that. And even keeping that onion layer, I think analogy is helpful and it's supportive. And because too, I think we can, and we all do this, like, judge ourselves. Say you're on the path of healing from pain or chronic illness, or you're in the personal growth path of feeling more fully expressed or embodied or vulnerable or confident. You have a moment and you're triggered and your primary pattern, whether it be like the pain or the illness, sickness, or limit, just feeling really insecure is back and, you know, and you maybe you're going to— for, I'll speak from my own experience. For me, like my most of my life, like, like you named before, Sarah, my bio is like, I felt really insecure in my body. I felt, you know, like not enough because of the shape and the size of my body. And one of my sabotaging patterns to numb that pain of feeling that was overeating and can still show up sometimes for me. And I used to, Well, one, I'm writing a book and at the start of writing the book, it actually really came back for like a week or 10 days, where not that I never overeat, but more in like this emotional numbing capacity. And I was like, "What the hell's going on? I'm writing this book on how I've overcome this." Part of me, I realized like, "Oh, I needed to refill this pain to move through it." But I was also diving deeper into my pain that I had never felt. But sharing that there of like, it's not like I don't believe, I mean, I always wanna hold the potential and possibility for this, But ultimately, the fact is, is we're humans and living in the human experience. And typically, it's not like we just feel better and better and better and better, right? Like that growth, that like success chart that's just going up. There's bumps, right? There's deviates. And we typically, I think, can name those like whams or those times when we have a pain response or we fall back on sabotaging patterns and we judge ourselves or we feel wrong or we're like, oh my God, I'm never getting anywhere. But if we can even reframe it, I love how you say on every coaching call, the healing path isn't linear. Just acknowledging that is huge in allowing ourselves to be more gentle and have more acceptance for where we are. And instead noticing, oh, aha, this is coming up because I'm at the next layer. I'm going a little deeper. I am now ready to feel and experience more of what is desiring to be felt in order for me to feel like— not just that we want to feel like pain or sadness or loneliness or agitation or anger, but when we can feel that and when we can move through it, then that's opening us to that opposite end of the spectrum of emotions, right? Of the joy and elation and love and contentment and all, all of that.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

You know, I want to read a quote. I wasn't planning on sharing this, but it's so pertinent, and I texted it to several of my coaching clients this week. I heard it from James— author James Clear, but it's from a book called Living by the Word, but it's so pertinent to what we're talking about. As some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don't even recognize that growth is happening, we may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel As a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant, often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening, those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be. It is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life, and that in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.

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That's a beautiful quote. Isn't that powerful? That's really powerful. Yeah, I love that ending.

Yeah, a new level of the personality. I'm like, oh, so healing isn't linear. It just never is. And yet I think what you addressed earlier, those patterns, those patterns of anxiety, those patterns of insecurity, those patterns of overeating, if you aren't at a place where you are feeling and acknowledging what's actually going on, then you're not going to move to the next level. Yeah. And that sometimes feels like failure when you're like, oh, I'm feeling this again.

And it's like, no, actually, actually, I'm human. Yeah. Whoa. Actually, there is a reason you're feeling this again. There's a message. There's a message. There's something deeper there.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's powerful. Yeah, because then we— I feel like that's— instead of feeling like we're victim to how we're feeling or pushing it down, or really, I think, like, turning away from aspects of ourselves and aspects of our humanity, we're integrating and claiming more of who we fully are.

I like that.

Say that again. I think you said we're integrating and claiming more of who we fully are instead of, like, turning away or shunning or suppressing down aspects of ourselves.

Well, and it comes in so many forms. It comes in— it can come through physical work of working fascia. Yeah. Removing toxins from your body, massaging out fascia after an accident or something. But it can also just come through trusting someone like yourself who has been through this process and can say, hey, here you go, like you're on the right path. Yeah, it's powerful stuff.

Yeah.

So what do you see? So Louise Hay, when she has her book on Heal Your Body, she really talks about there being something associated to the pain, the trauma, the inflammation that we're experiencing.

Have you found that to be predominantly the case with your coaching clients, that there's some sort of previous trauma? Is everything too? Yeah. Or that there's something deeper. Yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think as a coach, we're usually able to track where did that really come from? What's really going on here? And again, there's usually layers and sometimes it's like we open up a little bit and it's like, yeah, that's kind of it. And then we do some work and then that actually helps us to dive in and see more clearly, like, this is where really what's going on, if that makes sense. I love Louise Hay's work. I'm a big fan. My one thing I want to name is I think sometimes she has one of her maps for areas in the body and different pain and what that means emotionally. And I would say often those seem to be true, but the way that I work is I don't personally— I don't want to say that I don't agree with it, but I don't allow— I don't use those maps. There's lots of different maps that different people have created as far as physical pain or physical sensation, and then what emotion or what that means that you're working through. I think that those can be helpful to use as a lens or a reference. But I think where the disservice happens is sometimes people will automatically lump— oh, you have headaches, you must be resisting life. What is it you're not resisting?

Right.

I agree. It's not always so. It's not so universal. And I think, too, it can cloud our perception. And so even as coaches or healers or practitioners, of you must— this is what you're going through, right? So we're projecting more on the client, and maybe, you know, they're like, oh yeah, I can kind of see that, instead of allowing and inviting the client more into, like, through asking questions or through guiding them, they're actually uncovering the answer. I'm not. I'm just supporting them and uncovering their truth, if that makes sense. Versus totally, oh, you have elbow pain, this is what that means about you, this is what you should do. I'm more about, oh, you have elbow pain. Interesting. Let's explore that. When did that start? What is the sensation? When is it aggravated? What are you feeling? Going more in that.

Yeah, I love that a lens is a really good perspective. And I have felt the same way about her work. I'm like, yeah, it's a lens. Like, even for myself, I was being told my pain and arthritis was psychosomatic over and over again. It was all in my head.

And I was watching the worst things to heal. You're like, what?

That's like—

or to hear. I mean, like, I'm sure, but awful.

Yeah. And I heard this Dr. Phil episode one time and he said like, well, basically like, well, what are you gaining from being disabled? What are you gaining? Like, you— if you're repeating a pattern, you're gaining something from it. And I was like, am I gaining something from being broken and disabled? Like, I feel like I'm just losing, you know, I'm losing my profession. I'm But it was a good lens. And all those books and all those instructors are a good lens. But I remember just thinking like, oh, no, actually, I just have massive bacterial infections running through my body because of Lyme disease. And when those were treated, the pain went away. That was my reality.

You're like, whoa, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not creating this on myself.

Yeah, right. And that's a huge thing is like, am I creating this? Am I manifesting this in some capacity? Sometimes it just is an infection that has to be dealt with.

Totally. 1000%. Yes.

Yes. Okay. So you are about to release a new book and I am.

Yeah. Tell us about it. So it'll be published sometime this fall. We're currently in the editing stages. So fall of 2021. Yeah. So the working title is around is How Hating My Body Was My Greatest gift. And so as I alluded to earlier, you know, from— yeah, I did hate my body most of my life. And the reason why I do believe that, like, strong disdain for my body was my greatest gift is because it's what propelled me into my own healing path and journey, which has now opened up like my whole work in my world, because I needed a way out of that hate, right? Like, of completely always feeling not worthy of having what I wanted in relationship and career and anything because of the way that I physically looked. So the book is sharing deeper on my own journey as well as sharing, you know, different case studies and stories of clients that I've supported. In the book, I take readers through my 7-step process. So each chapter ends with a practice that they can do to, for themselves to begin to learn more what it means and how it feels to actually inhabit your body and start to reclaim these different body parts that that maybe you've hated. Like for me, you know, I always hated my thighs or that maybe because of a chronic illness, like there's been pain and so you haven't been in them. So how do we start to begin to reclaim them and begin to notice our own limiting beliefs and stories that we tell ourselves? So the book is really bringing together both the worlds of looking at the mental aspect of what is the story you're telling? What are those limiting beliefs? How can we start to rewrite those and And part of the book is encouraging you, we're writing it positive affirmations, but you're not just like trying to stay positive. Like, "I love my body, I love my body." You're going, please say, I don't wanna make any, like say that, but there's so much more to actually integrating that into your system. So I bring in my Rolfing expertise and knowledge around helping people learn just even a little bit about their own anatomy and structure to even, how can you sit in natural alignment with more ease, right? 'Cause if you can sit with a little bit more ease and natural alignment, then you can go through some of these guided meditations with a little bit more ease and supporting your structure, which will allow you to go deeper into exploring and feeling sensations of noticing, you know, we teach like how to go into these different energetic centers and what does that mean? And yeah, so I'm really excited and scared and all of it.

That's my current— Wow. That's neat. So, okay. When you say inhabit your body, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, that's a good question. So what I mean is sometimes the simple example I can give to give people like a really felt sense of— so there's a difference, like if you were just to like think about your hands, right? Like think about your hands right now. And then if you like even just like rub them together, which I think we've all probably done, and then pull them apart. And after rubbing your hands together and pulling them apart, can you feel that tingly vibrating sensation inside your hands? Like actually within your hands? So that like inhabiting your hands I'm just using your hands as an example. Now let's bring it to body. That is actually feeling that internal sensation. That's being inside your hands. It's not just like thinking about being in your body. It's not just thinking about being in your hands. It's bringing your attention and awareness there. Most of us, for so many reasons, spend most of our time through our days, through our lives, not in our bodies. We're more lost in our head. We're actually even like often popping out of our bodies. So we're more— we're lost in thought and worry, worrying about the future, worrying about all of our to-do lists, worrying about something that happened in the past versus anchored into the present moment through our body. You know, I think that, you know, there's more and more conversation around being mindful and wanting to be present, which is huge. And the key to being able to be present, to be in the present moment, is actually to be able to be in your body. Like our body is our anchor to the present present moment. And so, yeah, what I mean by inhabiting it is actually shifting your awareness and your attention down and inside and within you versus popping out. Yeah. Because I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, it does. Yeah.

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No, that makes a lot of sense. I'm a huge affirmation fan and I'm going through a lot of transitions and I probably have 200 affirmation cards now.

Wow.

Yeah, I have mine on index cards because I like to— I write it out and I actually do a practice where I write out— I look through my 200+ cards every morning and then I write out 3 pages worth of affirmations almost every day.

That's an amazing practice.

It's probably about 5 days a week, Monday through Friday type thing, but it's so helpful for me. And once you start practicing addressing those limiting beliefs, being present, not judging yourself, like, okay, I approve of myself, I approve of the decisions I'm making, I can make decisions. I mean, some of them are simple, and yet when you feeling what you're feeling when you're conscious of those thoughts and beliefs and then you practice— and I'm a big fan of language as well— when you actually practice saying what you want, what you're hoping for, what you're envisioning versus what you're being dragged into, maybe through anxiety, maybe through depression. Like when you start that process of speaking the new truth out loud or writing it out loud, you then realize, oh my gosh, I tell myself something negative 100 times a day. Yeah. And most— so many people, like, we can be our own worst critics.

Completely. Yeah. And we don't even— most often we don't even realize we're doing it.

Yeah. And so you're addressing the physical structure of things. You're addressing the deep-rooted emotional stuff that can come up. But you also talk about on your website helping people change their posture. And that is intriguing to me. So I'd like to focus on that for a little bit. You're not the only person I've heard talk about that. And I know even for myself, I have a headset stand that my son made me.

He does—

he has a 3D printer and it's a Jordan Peterson quote where it says, but it says head back, shoulders squared, head back, basically sit up straight and put your shoulders straight is the summation of it. And I will correct my— I work from home like so many people, even during COVID right? You're sitting at your home office desk over your laptop or whatever. And I can correct my posture sometimes 30 times a day just at my desk, just from that one little, okay, make sure I'm sitting up straight, shoulders back, like, here I am. So what do you do? How does posture impact your clients? Like, I know you can restructure them, but I'm curious to know how you view people's posture.

Posture?

Like if you see someone in public, are you evaluating their posture?

And is it sometimes often?

I believe that.

You can't tell me not to. My eyes are just like, woo woo.

No.

So that's a great question. And I love, yeah, you might. So there's a few things I want to say about posture. So one, I like primarily within my Rolfing practice, posture is one of the main things that we're working with, like main results. Where people, especially one of their most immediate things they feel after getting off my table is, oh my God, it's so much easier to stand up or sit upright with ease. Like, whoa, here, like I can sit upright and I'm not like purposely trying to pull my shoulders back or suck my— any of that, right? There's more inherent ease because ideally it should feel easeful to be upright. And we all have that ability. It's just learning. And I believe, and you know, studies show like our posture does also impact the way we view and see ourselves, right? And so it is like, if you think about if I'm hunched forward, right, all day on my computer, whatever, you might start feeling bad about yourself and crappy versus if you have a more erect, more upright posture, you naturally not only give off an air of confidence, but you can start to feel that way as well. And there's actually so much I'm realizing I could say on posture, because even that actually, when you have that more upright posture, you're naturally allowing yourself to breathe more fully and you're taking up more space. But I think one of the most significant things that I want to really make sure I name about posture is to help address this idea. I think we often, we, when we think of posture, especially when people learn a little bit about the work I do, they automatically, you know, adjust themselves and try and pull their shoulders back and sit upright or do whatever. And it's usually coming from a place of effort and exertion. And it's not wrong that they're doing it, but usually when we're taught about posture, we're taught the quote unquote good posture. Which is pull your shoulders back, suck your stomach in, like bring your chest up. And more often than not, in order to get that quote-unquote good posture, we're overexerting and using our large muscle groups in our body in order to get that. So one, it's not sustainable because we're tensing and using the energy of all these large muscle groups, so we're gonna fatigue. And actually trying to posture and armor yourself through standing or sitting in that way is going to actually result in some residual tension and holding as well. My own story, most of my life I had, people would give me compliments on my posture. And actually I sometimes still get that, but it feels very different. In the past when I used to get, like I have a story of, I won't go into now, but complimenting me on a canoe of like, "Oh my God, Emily, you're sitting so upright." For me, I found out from a very young age, like the age of 8, if I purposely sat in that super rigid, correct spine posture that we're all taught, then I actually felt like I could look skinnier, like I could suck my stomach in more. You couldn't see my, you know, rolls as much. And that uncle, when he complimented me, we were on a family canoe trip. So I was this like 8-year-old girl in her canoe trying to sit super proper and upright because I felt like it made me look smaller. And for most of my life, I held myself in that way as this, in this effort of projecting out into the world that I was good. I had it put together. I knew what I was doing. But when I— if somebody would even mention, like, or compliment me on it, it actually felt really awful internally because I knew how hard I was efforting to hold myself in that way. Versus when I started to learn how to— and through support, it's not just like I learned and do this on my own, I had a lot of support— of how can I experience more ease and openness in my structure? How can I help my bones find more of their natural alignment? And there's this one particular walk that I was on after receiving a Rolfing session where we worked deep into my soas muscles. The soas muscles, if you're unfamiliar, are the only muscle that attach the legs up into the spine. So they attach kind of from the front of the low spine and they, they merge through the pelvic floor, the pelvis to attach to the inside of the femur, the thigh bone. And most of us have dysfunction and shortening in our soas muscles. And so this particular session I had received a lot of work in opening that up. I was out for a walk that evening and I realized I had this moment of like, oh my gosh, like it feels so easy to walk. Like I'm gliding. And so I did this body scan and realized like I'm standing up totally upright. Then I had this huge emotional wave come over me, just like tears, tears, tears. Because I realized all my life I had been pretending through this posture, through this good posture that I had put on. And for the first time in my body, I had this sense of what can it feel like to be open and receptive? And vulnerable, but feel really strong. And like, I felt like this inherent strength internally. And so to the— I don't want to make this sound judgmental, but to the non-trained external eye, those two postures that I had may have looked very similar, but they were actually significantly different, and specifically how they felt internally. And so one of my things is even just helping, you know, whether it be a Rolfing client or most of my coaching clients, I do give specific anatomical cues because I think it's helpful. How can we even just start to learn very small things about our bony anatomy to even help us sit upright with a little bit more ease? There's subtle things you can do that can help you have more of that uprightness, but it doesn't have to be so hard and so efforted.

Wow, that is fascinating.

Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, I could, I could have talked, I realized this whole time on just posture.

Well, I mean, it is. All this stuff goes so deep. And again, we are always scratching the surface in a 1-hour session. But I think that's fascinating that you, at such a young age, thought, okay, I can make myself look smaller, or I can make myself look— be more acceptable if I hold this rigidity. And then decade plus later.

Yeah, 2 decades.

2 decades. You are naturally, having gone through your own journey and addressing those limiting beliefs and developing healthy practices and all that stuff, you look similar on the outside, but internally it was a completely different dynamic. And you had used the word, like, if you're using effort and exertion versus just being natural and present. And it's fascinating. Yeah, it's fascinating because how powerful it is. Right. Because so what happened? You had a— when you were there in that emotional moment when you realized, oh man, I'm standing upright on my own and I am who I am. Like, what happened after that for you?

Well, one, I didn't want to lose it. I was like, oh my God, how do I keep this? So also, I think our minds were like, oh, this feels so good. But I mean, I had never— I didn't know before what I was doing, if that makes sense. I had no awareness, that 8-year-old girl, that that's really what what I was doing. I was just like, oh, my stomach has rolls, right? I sit in this way, I don't have as many rolls. The one after me at the moment is— I mean, I just, I remember the feeling really strongly of that walk of just like feeling more open and receptive versus feeling like constricted or blocked to people. Because this was a time I was new in Boulder, I didn't really know anybody, I had tons of social anxiety. And so I think what actually naturally started with time, little by little, to shift from that experience was allowing myself to be seen more. It was that anxiety started to lessen. And it wasn't like I never found myself kind of reposturing up again, but what I was able to do was then I had a reference, right? Then I at least had the awareness of, oh my God, like I've been doing this my whole life. Like what feels different in my body? So if I notice I start trying to be rigid or efforting or something like that, not making myself wrong, but at least now I can notice and be curious about it. Like, what is that coming from? Right? Like, am I feeling insecure? Did somebody just say something that triggered me? Am I needing some more support or resource? And is it possible for me in this moment to make a subtle internal shift to come back into myself, to let that go, to not need to protect? I'm a huge fan of having contrast and having comparison, right? Whether it be how we feel emotionally or physically. Because when we have that reference internally, and sometimes we might be able to articulate the difference, sometimes not. Like, sometimes it might just be our own internal felt sensation, but that in itself is enough because then you have your own parameter to start to notice when things are getting out of alignment, when you're starting to take on projected modes and ways of acting, and, and then can empower yourself to perhaps create a pattern interrupt and try something different.

All this self, all these aspects of healing and different modalities and therapies. I mean, for people in the chronic illness realm, you have to dig for this stuff. I was sick for a long time and being told it was in my head or being told here, just swallow these pills. And there was no solutions being presented for physical stuff. And really outside of seeing a psychiatrist, there was no emotional emotional stuff happening. And it was when I went off of Western medicine and started looking at alternative practices and therapies, stuff like coffee enemas and high doses of supplements. So many doors of healing opened for me that I never would have had access to. And I felt like I was digging. And I had grandparents who were chiropractors, and my parents were like hippies, and they didn't vaccinate us. I had some level of understanding. And yet I feel like you have to dig. And I think you have to dig because there are so many layers to the onion. And if you're being told, oh, your pain isn't real anyways, or ignore it, or, oh, okay, this is just midlife, this is how it works. I tell people all the time, don't ever accept that. Don't ever be like, oh, it's midlife. It's fine that I'm on 4 prescriptions. I'm like, that's not fine because it's not setting you up for success, which is really what you're talking about. These deeper layers is where success and breakthrough really come through. Yeah. All right. As we end, tell us about how people can get in contact with you and then about your online course that's available for people if they're not in the Boulder, Colorado area.

Yeah. So my website is wishallwellness.com and people get confused and hung up on my last name, Wishall. It's a compound word. Like it's telling for the being like wish all a Merry Christmas. So wish and then all and then wellness.. And if you're curious, check out my work. I have a free guide on there, How to Find Peace in Your Body Now. So that gets on the— will be on the homepage, but you can, you know, just give your email and then you get an automatic email delivered to you. That'll have the audio. It's just like a 20-minute audio guided practice. So if you're curious and any of this resonated with you and you're kind of desiring to just like tap into and what is it like to, to be in your body or to find peace in your body now? That's a great practice. It's completely free. And then there's more information too. Yeah. On Body Love. And that's a 9-week program right now. It is just for women. It's all online. I do cap each— it's not rolling. It goes different times. So I do cap the limit to 8 women at a time. So it's very intimate group container and you're getting a lot of one-on-one support from me and that's for women. Yeah. The Body Love for if you're really desiring to dive deeper into your own relationship with your body. You have felt insecure or ashamed, or, you know, if you feel like, oh, I just, just when I lose those 5 pounds, or, or when I just like get this physique or gain these muscles, or, you know, whatever the story is for you of how do you get to feel good in your body right now? Because you are like all of us, no matter where we are, have the capacity and ability to, we get to feel good now. We deserve to feel good now. And so that program is really centered around supporting women and discovering and finding that for themselves.

Wow. That's awesome. How to Find Peace in Your Body Now.

Cool. Yeah. How to Find Peace in Your Body Now is, yeah, the 20-minute free guide that you can download from my website. Okay. Yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here and sharing your own personal journey.

It's so powerful. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much. I am truly, truly very, very grateful. So thank you for having me and for everybody listening. And I am deeply grateful.

It's powerful stuff we talk about here on the show. And it— yeah, you have to dig and you have to look for it to some extent. But then once you've been digging and looking for it, then you just have so many new layers of opportunity, new layers of that personality being revealed and just you being yourself.

Gosh, what a gift.

Yeah. All right. Thank you for being here, Emily.

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Got it.