Financial Feminist - 197. Calming Your Nervous System (Financial Trauma, Anxiety, and More) with Somatic Healing Coach The Workout Witch

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

TW: domestic violence,  financial abuse Have you ever felt like your body is holding onto stress and trauma in ways you can't quite explain? Well in today's episode, we're discovering the transformative power of somatic healing with Liz Tenuto — also known as The Workout Witch. Liz specializes in helping people heal the physical effects of trauma and long-term stress through accessible somatic exercises. We'll explore how simple, gentle movements can release tension, process emotions, and bring balance back to your nervous system — even during the most stressful times.  This episode couldn't come at a better time, especially with the collective anxiety many of us are feeling right now. If you've ever wondered how to truly let go of pent-up stress or are seeking practical tools to navigate emotional turmoil, this episode is for you. We're talking about healing from the inside out, reclaiming your body's natural state of ease, and living a more balanced life. Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/197-calming-your-nervous-system-financial-trauma-anxiety-and-more-with-somatic-healing-coach-the-workout-witch/ If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, there are resources available to you: National Domestic Violence Hotline  Liz’s links: Website Instagram Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz Special thanks to our sponsors: Squarespace Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Masterclass Get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD. Rocket Money Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/FFPOD. Third Love It’s time to get your Bra-blems Solved™. Use code PODCAST15 for $15 off your order at ThirdLove.com. Netsuite Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/FFPOD. Quince Get cozy in Quince's high-quality wardrobe essentials. Go to Quince.com/FFPOD for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Mint Mobile Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at Mintmobile.com/ffpod.

Trauma, whether it's big T trauma or little T trauma, causes you to disconnect from parts of yourself and suppress parts of yourself to keep yourself safe, right? So if, for example, you were bullied a lot, maybe you wore glasses, right? And you got bullied a lot as a kid for wearing glasses, you might not feel as comfortable like expressing yourself out loud, being your full self at school. And even though that's not considered big T trauma, it's still this suppressing of who you are authentically. And that still has the same physiological effects as big T trauma does, especially when it happens over a prolonged period of time.

Okay, here's the deal. I'm not going to say the E word. I say it in the episode, but I'm not going to say it here. Welcome, financial feminists. Today is a calming, soothing episode with some trigger warnings. The trigger warnings, sexual abuse, financial abuse, but it ends so happily. It ends so fucking happily. And the reason we're releasing this episode on a super random day

that has nothing to do with anything going on in the world right now is that I imagine you need to get some rage out and you need to be soothed. So we're talking about somatic exercises today and how we can release tension and trauma and fear and shame and rage from our bodies in a healthy way. And I'm really excited for today's guest who is also a fan and follower of her first 100k and who has said many times to me privately and also in this episode, which is so sweet, that our work has changed and impacted her life, which is very kind. So let's talk about today's guest.

Liz Tinuto, AKA The Workout Witch, specializes in healing the physical effects of trauma and stress and is on a mission to make somatic healing popular and accessible. As a narcissistic abuse survivor, Liz learned what rage was at an unusually young age. She experienced chronic pain and unexplained health conditions in her early twenties. After trying everything, yoga, massage, chiropractors, doctors, acupuncture, usually a young age. She experienced chronic pain and unexplained health conditions in her early 20s. After trying everything, yoga, massage, chiropractors, doctors, acupuncture, meditation, Liz tried

somatic exercise. After her first four lessons, her chronic pain and years-long battle with insomnia were almost entirely gone. With a degree in psychology from UCSB, somatic certifications and Feldenkrais, and Pilates, with a specialization in injuries and pathologies and 15 years of teaching experience, she has been changing the conversation around how trauma and anxiety affect the body for 15 years. Liz has helped over 120,000 women heal from trauma and long-term stress with her viral online courses.

Liz has now more than 3 million followers on social media with over 15 million views on her TikTok videos. She has thousands of testimonials from students who have had huge transformations with her courses, many of which are published on her website and Instagram highlights. We talk about how you can use very, very simple, easy exercises that you can even do from bed

or just sitting to help you process emotions and trauma and stored up energy in your body. We talk a bit about Liz's personal story and how she went from having a history of childhood abuse and a emotionally and financially abusive relationship and partnership into a thriving seven figure business owner. So fucking cool. We also talk about how to deal with stressful situations. Definitely not like what we're experiencing right now. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it. But first a word from our sponsors. Fall is my absolute favorite.

I love the football. I love the PSLs. I love the leaves. It is my favorite season and what I'm really most excited about and what I'm already loving is slipping into my cozy sweaters from Quince. Quince is known for their Mongolian cashmere sweaters and they start at 50 bucks. That's cashmere. Really good quality cashmere for $50. They're able to do that because they partner directly with top factories and they cut out the cost of the middlemen, which of course means that we get the savings. I love quints. I've been wearing them for a year now. I discovered them because they started

sponsoring the show and I'm obsessed. I have gone out of my way to purchase from them. I have their cashmere sweaters. I have their knit sweaters. I have their active wear. I'm getting sent some pants. I just love them. Get cozy in Quince's high quality wardrobe essentials. Go to quince.com slash ffpod for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, quince.com slash FF pod. ["Fly To The Sky With You"] Liz, how are you? It's so nice to meet you finally. It's so nice to meet you too. I am so excited to have you on the show. I have been following your work for a very long

time and we've been kind of like internet friends ships passing in the night since this is the first time I've ever gotten to sit down with you. So I'm just very excited about that. I want to start with how you got into this work. You were dealing with narcissistic abuse as a child. Can you share about that experience and how it led you to where you are now? Absolutely. I grew up with a parent who is narcissistic. As I was growing up, I didn't know that. I didn't have any vocabulary for that or any understanding that what I experienced was abnormal. I experienced a lot of rage and a lot of anger in the house, and it was kind of written off that it was cultural. You know, that's just like how men

from this culture are. I was also sexually assaulted as a child by someone in my family. And then I started having a lot of pain in my body, like chronic pain and insomnia at a really, really young age. My therapist has kind of classified my extended family as like next level violence. But a lot of this I didn't understand until doing some healing work and understanding that what I experienced was really abnormal. Even what you're just describing, first of all, I'm really sorry that happened to you. What you're describing is I think what makes your work so interesting and that I think is only just starting to be understood at the mainstream level, which is that

the body keeps the score, our trauma and our pain is not just emotional, but trauma can show up physically. So you mentioned insomnia, you mentioned pain in your body. Tell me more about that. Where did it live? How did it manifest?

The pain in my body really started in my shoulders and in my neck. And I can even see in photos of me as a kid, like my shoulders are visibly tense and can kind of tell that I'm clenching my jaw. And so it started off with a bunch of muscular tension in my upper body that progressed into my lower body where my hips were really tight. I was having back pain as a young child. Then when you have all that muscle tension that's habituated in your body, you start to have gut issues, it

starts to affect your HPA axis, I was getting random stomach aches all the time, you know, and then from going through so much trauma and just like, having to suppress my emotions so much as a child, then you know, you're not sleeping anymore because you're really scared and you're really anxious and you're in this hyper vigilant state. And I was a dancer as a kid. So a lot of my chronic pain got written off as like, well, you're a ballet dancer, like this is normal for you to be in pain. But there

was something so deep in me even as a child that knew that what I was experiencing wasn't normal. And that is what really prompted me to keep searching for answers. Well, and one of the answers you found and what your focus is really on is somatic healing now. So can we define what that is? And how your journey brought you to somatic healing now. So can we define what that is and how your journey brought you to somatic healing as a potential solution? Yeah. Somatic exercises are really great for people who have experienced long-term stress or have lived through trauma. Soma is the Greek word for body and somatic exercises are literally like these really tiny gentle exercises that you can do in bed or on

the floor that release pent-up stress and pent-up trauma out of your body and bring your nervous system back into balance. And I initially found out about them in my early 20s. My dance teacher noticed that I was dissociated pretty much all of the time when I wasn't dancing and was like, you should come to my somatics class. And I was so skeptical because I was also like intellectual in my head and I've been to so many doctors. Yeah, it's not logical. Yeah. I was like, I don't know what rolling around on the floor in my pajamas is going to do. But I was also desperate. I had tried so many things like acupuncture, yoga, meditation,

like I had tried so many things that didn't have a long term sustainable result. So I was desperate and I went to her somatics class. And after the first lesson, I cried in the bathroom because my physical tension was so much better. Like it was noticeably better after one lesson and after four lessons, I was sleeping through the night again for my first time in decades. Yeah, I think that that's a common thing and I encountered that too in my mid-20s as I was going through a grief period. I was the intellectual person who, you know, understood at a certain

level that like my body and my mind were connected. Of course, right? It's one body, my brain is in my body, I got that. But like, I started doing energy coaching with someone. And there was so many interesting things that I discovered that, yeah, it's just like where your body keeps pain and that for me, every time I would cry, I would try to analyze why. And now I've just gotten to the point where I realized sometimes my body just needs to release why. And now I've just gotten to the point where I realized sometimes my body just needs to release energy. And the way I describe it to people that helps me, and that helped me get to the point where realizing this is all connected is you know how you stub your toe

and you start crying before you've even registered pain. Like before you've realized, oh, that hurts, right? You've just stub your toe and your body has a reaction. It has an emotional reaction. And that is the example that I give to myself that helps me clarify a lot of this, which is like, sometimes you just have stored up energy in your body and it manifests.

Sometimes you're crying and you don't need a reason why. Sometimes you just need an emotional release. Sometimes, yeah, you stub your toe and before your body even goes, ow, that was painful, you're already in tears. And so it's so interesting to me that that seemed like such a quick solution. Now, obviously, you keep it up over a long period of time and do these exercises, but were you surprised at how quickly this was able to help? And yeah, you're saying rocking around on the floor in your pajamas, but like,

talk to me about like what this work actually is and like what the science is behind it. Yeah, I was truly shocked. I was like, okay, cool, I feel fine now, but like, how am I gonna feel in four days or five days? Cause you know, sometimes yoga would make me feel good for like a night and then, but then the next, two days later I was back to having a clenched jaw all day

and just being in pain all the time. So what was so different for me about somatic exercises was that it really, the effects were immediate and then they lasted long term. Even when I'm not doing the exercises regularly, my body's different now and the way I relate to my body is different after doing somatic exercises. So scientifically, what happens is that

anytime you perceive stress or a threat, it goes into the limbic system in your brain, your amygdala is the fear center in your brain, and then that signals down to your adrenal glands to pump out some cortisol in your body. And in small amounts and in a threat, this cortisol is good, right? This cortisol is just part of our evolutionary response to stress or to threat. It's a literal steroid that gets spiked to help you fight or flee in the situation. What's happened is that our, you know, this evolutionary survival response has been around for like 4 million years. And now we're not getting attacked by bears

anymore. We're like having an altercation with a boss or, you know, someone cut you off on the freeway. And so we're having these like really big reactions in our body to our modern day stressors. But what's happening for people is that they're just having these constant cortisol spikes all the time. And then they're never, like what you were saying, they're never like releasing this pent up energy out of their body. They're never recovering from the stress. So scientifically experiencing a little bit of stress, having that cortisol spike, and then recovering from stress, that's fine. The issue is that most people aren't ever finalizing their biological stress cycle. So they perceive the stress, they have the chemical reaction in their body,

but then they just don't do anything. They're not moving, they're not doing any sort of releasing or any sort of like breath work to recover from that stress. And when that happens for years and for decades, because you have a stressful job, because you live in Manhattan, because you're, you were in a toxic relationship, whatever, you have a horrible boss, whatever it is, that stress accumulates in the body and it starts to, you know, shrink certain parts of your brain, like your prefrontal cortex,

it starts to make your amygdala, your fear center larger, it starts to cause all this muscle tension, it starts to keep your psoas muscle contracted, it affects the nervous system. So somatic exercises essentially bring your body back into homeostasis, where all of the systems are functioning optimally again. And it does this through these really tiny movements, but it also teaches people,

so that releases a lot of muscular tension and a lot of habitual patterns of holding stress in your body, but it also goes deeper than the muscles and it gets into your nervous system. So as you're doing the exercises, the teacher is going to cue you in certain ways that bring your focus onto your internal space.

And that's gonna help you build new neural pathways out of the stress cycle and into the physiological cycle of a much more balanced, peaceful body. We'll do one of these exercises, I think, at the end, especially as this episode is coming out before the election. But just so people have, I'm a visual person. Give me an example. I know because I've been following you for a while, I have a lot of friends who are familiar with this work. It's sometimes rocking back and forth.

It's lying on your side and moving back and forth. Like give us maybe an example or two so we can understand what this looks like. Yeah, so the first exercises that I give to people are rocking exercises. And rocking is so, so soothing on your body because when you're rocking side to side, like right to left, it uses bilateral stimulation, which naturally regulates your nervous system and activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the state of peace and ease. The even rhythm in the rocking is also really, really soothing for you. There's a reason why people rock babies when they're crying. It's incredibly soothing for our bodies.

That's kind of the first place that I have people start is with the rocking exercises because it allows them to just release some tension. And it's a little meditative in a way because you start to get into the even rhythm, the right, left, right, left, right, left. You do that for about a minute and all of a sudden you're not like in your busy brain anymore. Your body's just kind of taken over and you can kind of have this experience with that. For those who are not watching and just listening, I've started swaying back and forth. Yeah. I'm leaving myself back and forth. Yeah, it's so interesting because a lot of my students will tell me like, oh my god, I did these movements to self-soothe as a kid. And then I stopped.

And it's so interesting because our bodies are really intuitive. Like they do know, but, but in culture, like we can't just start shaking when you experience stress in the middle of the street, if you just started shaking afterwards, it may be looked down upon, but why not? I would love to see a world where we all just like did some somatic shaking after stress in public. Well, and that's actually something I wanted to talk to you about is even if you live alone, even if you're a, you know, you're alone in a room and you're stressed, I think there is just this misconception that like, I can't do this because it's crazy. Totally. Yeah. People think I'm crazy or it's embarrassing. And I actually

literally just posted yesterday an Instagram story that was a little vulnerable, but sometimes yesterday did not want to make myself breakfast. I like my inner child was just like, I don't want to do this. I had gotten back from a walk and I know, adult me knows, you need to eat, right? Because you have a big day, you need to eat. But I didn't want to do it for myself. I wanted somebody else to do it. But there was no one else to do it for me. So I literally will sometimes say out loud, like, hey, Tori, I know you don't want to do this. Yeah. But you got to do it. We're going to fuel our body. We're going to do this. And so I actually recorded myself like talking to myself. we're going to do this. And so I actually recorded myself like talking to myself and we got, you know, thousands of people tell us that it was really cool to see and validating and that, you know,

that was something they were going to start trying and experiencing in their life. And I'm like, I feel like something like this is the same kind of thing where even if we're alone in our rooms or alone in our houses, it feels embarrassing. So how do we overcome that so we can rock back and forth and we can talk to ourselves and we can actually give ourselves what we need as opposed to feeling, I don't know, stupid or embarrassed for doing it? Totally, totally a thousand percent. I love that you did that and that you recorded yourself talking to people or talking to yourself and how much it resonated with other people. Yeah, it's like there's like this shame of doing movement sometimes in general for people. A lot of people are just afraid of moving or moving their bodies or they have a fear

of dancing or like looking weird. I think the best way to start to do that is to do it privately by yourself. You know, everyone kind of has this like space that they go to to cry, like whether it's like your shower or, you know, in your car. Like this is my safe cry space. And so my proposal for people is to do somatics in like your safe private space, whether that's in your shower, in your car, you know, in your room by yourself. But start by yourself because you are rocking and it is vulnerable and you can experience crying or shaking when you're doing some of the movements. And so I do think being in a private space is better to start with. But it's interesting now when I go out, I don't like to be in crowds very much because of trauma.

But if I'm in a crowd, I have all of these like little movements that I'll do that are a little bit more culturally like appropriate that no one could would really know that I'm doing something to regulate my nervous system in that moment, but I do it in public and no one says anything. Bras are usually not comfortable. Third love's bras are. And as someone with bigger boobs, it's really hard to find a bra that isn't going to dig into me and isn't going to make me miserable.

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we're using the words trauma. We've talked about trauma on the show many times. But when we say trauma, it does not have to be capital T trauma of sexual assault or of abuse or of, you know, these really big, what we would classically consider trauma. It can be little T trauma as well. And I am someone who has been privileged and lucky enough to not experience any of the big T trauma, but I got plenty of little T trauma too. So maybe talk to me about how trauma in this way is not, we're not just talking about like the huge things, the big T, like what do you tell someone who is like, I don't feel like my experience warrants seeking help. It's not like bad enough. Yeah, I think acknowledging that the little t trauma is valid is really important. Because, you know, if you were bullied at school, or if you experienced financial insecurity, or any of that, even though it's not like getting sexually assaulted or like going to war, it does impact you a lot

and it does prohibit you from functioning as if it didn't happen, you know? So essentially trauma, whether it's big T trauma or little T trauma causes you to disconnect from parts of yourself and suppress parts of yourself to keep yourself safe, right? So if, for example, you were bullied a lot as a kid, maybe you wore glasses, right?

And you got bullied a lot as a kid for wearing glasses, you might not feel as comfortable like expressing yourself out loud, being your full self at school. So you're suppressing yourself, you're suppressing your emotions. And even though that's not considered Big T Trauma, it's still this suppressing of who you are authentically,

and it's still, like, emotionally, you're not able to express yourself. And that still has the same physiological effects as Big T Trauma does, especially when it happens over a prolonged period of time. One of the things that we've kind of been talking about a bit, but I want to delve into more, does, especially when it happens over a prolonged period of time. One of the things that we've kind of been talking about a bit, but I want to delve into more is where do people commonly experience trauma in their body?

If someone's listening, for me, I have recently started seeing a dietician because all the stress and the trauma of running a business over the past few years has showed up in my gut and my digestive health. You were mentioning neck and shoulders. For a listener, like how can they scan their body? How can they start figuring out where are they keeping their stress? Where are they storing all of that? And how can they identify that better? So there's different emotions that tend to get kind of stored in different places of the body. And there's an academic study that went through this

that's emotional mapping of the body. So different emotions show up as physiological sensations in different parts of your body. So the hips are generally associated with some form of betrayal. So it's like, you know, a toxic relationship or childhood abuse or unresolved trauma, generally in the hips.

So you'll feel tense hips, your hips will be clicking or popping or cracking. Even sometimes like sitting down or standing up without using your hands feels kind of difficult. If you have lower back pain, that's generally like connected to feelings of not feeling worthy and not feeling supported. Also can be like financial issues or workaholism for lower back pain. Stomach is generally connected to fear, feeling afraid, being scared. Shoulders is like burdens and responsibilities. You feel like you have a lot of responsibilities with not enough social support. Neck tension is generally like oppression.

So you've experienced some form of oppression in your life, whether that's systemic oppression, like racism or misogyny, or you kind of grew up in a household where you weren't able to express your emotions, or your emotions were completely neglected. And then jaw is generally like someone has crossed your boundaries and you're angry about it, but you feel like you can't speak up. So those are the general areas and associations that were found in this study.

Liz, my favorite pastime of this podcast is getting read for filth. I muted myself, but while she was talking about certain areas of the body, I was taking a sip of water and I ended up mildly choking because I was like, oh, that's me. Interesting. Okay. I'm going to file that away for later. Okay. Do you see commonly, I think that a lot of women have tight hips, myself included. Is there one or two that keep coming up for women all the time? Oh, yeah. Women all the time, hips and all the time, throat, neck,

and all the time throat, neck, jaw. And they're actually physiologically quite connected through your fascia, which is your connective tissue. So if you have tension in one area, it generally translates to tension in the other area too. Biologically speaking, your hips and your jaw are the first responders to any sort of threat. When you experience a threat, your psoas muscle clenches, it's this huge muscle that connects your upper body to your pelvis, to your lower body, and then your jaw clenches as well

as part of the fight flight response. Yeah, the first time I ever learned about the psoas was about a year and a half ago and I had a massage therapist who was like, your psoas is like the tightest I've ever seen. And I was like, great. Yeah. Great. Thank you for that information. I think it's yeah, it's very common for women. And while you were mentioning all of those things that you said, I think jaw, right is a crossing of boundaries. Remind me what hips was it like that's like very common for women, right? We like we don't set and keep our boundaries. What was hips remind me? Yeah. And he sort of like so with so many women

that I worked with, too, it's like, they'll be like, Oh, I don't have trauma. But I did have a my serious boyfriend cheat on me. And my hips have felt tight ever since. And I'm like, I like that's trauma, babe. That's the thing, you know, is like that betrayal, like that that's betrayal of trust is like, it can cause you to be tense in your hips, because that's where you're supposed to be physically intimate, you know, and if you've had that rupture, it's natural for your body to create this like bracing and holding pattern to try to protect you from experiencing that again. Yeah. One of the things you have been kind enough to share with me, and we can cut this if you're not comfortable or speak to your comfort level about it, is that you realized you were in a toxic, abusive relationship

during the pandemic and that some of that abuse was also financial abuse. Was this a different experience physically from what you had been through before? And how did you find your way out and through that experience? Physically, I experienced much more severe symptoms of stress and of like a trauma response in my body. So before the pandemic started, we were married and I was living in Manhattan and I was having panic attacks every day and I was fainting every day. And it was like, I was really scared. I knew something was wrong.

I went to urgent care. I went to the doctor and they were like, maybe you're dehydrated. You're working too much because I was the breadwinner and like was financially supporting us. So, you know, it's hard when doctors tell you those things because you're like, okay, well, I'm dehydrated and I'm working too much, like something must be wrong with me. And one of my like hopes is that doctors become more trauma informed so that they can even just start asking the question like, hey, are you in a dangerous situation? Are you in a bad relationship?

Like just start asking some of those leading questions. But then when the pandemic hit, I lost my job. I was teaching Pilates at the time. I had moved back to California at the early 2020 and in California, all of the gyms closed, so I couldn't teach Pilates anymore. And my body went into like a full on freeze where I couldn't get out of bed at all. I didn't have like enough energy to make or even order food. Like I was, I was so shut down. And I knew that at that point, I knew that I was being financially abused. I knew that he was abusive. But it was the early pandemic where you couldn't,

it was like stay in place, shelter in place. You weren't even allowed to go to your parents' house or a friend's house or anything. So that was a really difficult position for me to be in. And I was experiencing a lot of physical symptoms. So sorry that happened to you. I know that unfortunately that was a huge issue during the pandemic was folks not being able to leave, especially women not being able to leave abusive situations because they weren't allowed to. There was no other alternative.

So what were those steps for you both somatically, but also financially and emotionally that helped you move through that experience and end up where you're at now? Financially, when COVID hit was when I really did a deep dive into our finances and had really because prior to that, I was working like six days a week to support us. And working teaching Pilates six days a week is like labor, you know, it's not easy. Very physically demanding. Very physically demanding.

And so I dove into our finances the first time I had time, which was at the beginning of Shelter in Place, and had realized that he had been regularly transferring tens of thousands of dollars out of our joint account into these other accounts that he had. He was married before me, I'm pretty sure he had a lien on his income from his first marriage. And, you know, since he and I have gotten divorced, his first wife reached out to me and was like, play by play, he did the exact same thing to me with the financial abuse, isolation, like this is what he does.

And he was married literally days after our divorce, primalized. So he's a quote unquote musician, but he's a professional grifter. Like that's his full-time job. The financial abuse actually was, that was really scary for me because I had, you know, I was a Ply's instructor so I didn't have like a ton of money but I did have like 30k

in savings that I had been saving since I was like 18. I like had enough to be able to get through the pandemic and with unemployment and not be struggling, you know? But he had transferred all that money out, like anything that I had inherited from my grandparents was gone, like everything was just gone. And realizing that caused this like deep sorrow in me because he had like I had never given him access to my my like Merrill Lynch account like that I had been working on since I was like 18. He like hacked into my computer and got into the accounts that way and then like changed the passwords and he did all this elaborate tech abuse. He would like installed a remote access device on my computer. So I was like learning about all of this.

I didn't even know that this was a thing or that this was possible, but I was learning about all this. And so I knew we had like no money, like we had no savings whatsoever. And I got a pretty decent size unemployment check, but he blew it within days, even though I told him not to.

So I just started creating this emergency. I walked to a bank because he was tracking my car too. So I left my phone home. I walked to a bank. I opened a checking account with $5 in cash that I had gotten back from groceries. And then I would just, anytime I got groceries, I just like stash $5 in $5 in and I had this plan to have a certain amount before I would exit the relationship. And then that like the physical abuse got escalated and got a lot worse and I was really scared. And so then I just, you know, I've said it much earlier and left much earlier. And luckily have a brother who helped me out. And I stayed with my aunt and uncle for a week

until I found a new apartment. And my brother helped me pay for the apartment, which I wouldn't have been able to do by myself. But in terms of rebuilding my finances, you were super helpful for me because prior to learning about you, I had followed Sue Orman, who was like, pay up all your debt first and then create your emergency fund. And he had also maxed out my credit cards, but like, I didn't feel good paying off all my debt first when I didn't have like any funds.

I started following you and I shifted over to saving my emergency fund first and then paying off all the credit cards after that, which I did. And having that like pivot in my strategy made me feel so much more secure because I was like feeling, and I think there's something to be said with like somatics and financial securities. I was like feeling, and I think there's something to be said with like somatics and financial securities, like you're reestablishing that safety within yourself, you know? And like having that safe feeling and that safe relationship with yourself, whether it's with money or with how you treat your body and how you treat yourself is just, it's like life changing. So thank you so much.

Oh, Liz, I want to hug you. You also did that though. I know we've all had that experience. We go to a big wireless provider, and we think we're going to pay one price. But somewhere between the store, where you got your phone and your first month's bill, the price you thought you were paying is completely different than the price you actually are paying. And that's why Mint Mobile is amazing. Mint Mobile is 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three-month plan. And they actually mean it.

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You're thriving now. Can we talk about that? Give people a life update because you're running a business, you're thriving. You are, yeah, good riddance to that motherfucker. And like, you're doing great. Yeah, so when I was in this freeze response and not able to get out of bed,

my goal was to do one somatic exercise per day. And then I thought of myself as successful. And I was like, I'm going to film it and I'm going to post it on TikTok where I have zero followers and no one will ever see this. But it was like my way of keeping myself accountable. And I was so like, you know, I was like, you could tell something was wrong. Like I had like bags under my eyes. Like I just looked like I was struggling because I really was. And I started posting on TikTok and within two months, I had 10,000 followers.

And like so many other people were feeling the same way and going through the same things. And so people were like, hey, do you, you know, do you coach do you teach and I was like, I'll make these online courses with the sequences that I do for stress and trauma release and for nervous system and I've taught for 15 years with, you know, Pilates and I've taught somatics for all my Pilates clients. So I was like, I'll do what I do with them in the studio and I'll just make it into a course. So I did that. I launched the courses on 2222

and we're now a eight figure business. It's just blown up. Like it's gone mega viral. We have a really high success rate with our courses. I'm just like super, super, super happy with how everything went. And it came from such an authentic place of me struggling and sharing that struggle in a real way with people. As so many successful businesses do. Liz, congratulations.

That's so amazing. I'm just so happy for you. Thank you. And you should be so proud of yourself because hell yes, I'm just okay. I'm just really excited. I can't keep talking. Yeah. Okay. Me too. I like never would have thought. It's, it's so incredible. I'm just I'm so happy for you. Okay, we talked on the show about money trauma. How might this

manifest when someone is feeling anxious or stressed about money? Where does this manifest in your body? What might start happening? Money trauma, like lower back is lower back pain that's lasted for longer than three months is super connected to worth and money. Feeling like you're worrying about finances all the time. Also sleep issues too, if people are having a hard time falling asleep

or staying asleep or they're waking up like three in the morning, in the morning with racing thoughts. That's another way that money trauma often manifests physically. And then behaviorally, you talk about a lot of this, how it's not spending on things that bring you joy. You're so worried

because maybe you have gone through moments of having less that you start hoarding money and you're not enjoying it at all. Yeah. And I think that it's very easy to have any sort of stress manifest, but specifically financial stress. We know it's the number one stressor for Americans is financial stress. And then that's themes, again, like such a cerebral issue of numbers and money, right? But like, that can show up that scarcity, that fear around money, that shame around money can manifest physically too. So are there ways to use somatic healing? And I am assuming the answer is yes. When engaging with finances, is there something to like help settle you even before you like sit down to look at your budget or like log into your student loans?

Absolutely, yeah. The let's, we can do one together. So I would love that. Okay. You can do this one sitting down. We'll do it together. These are called butterflies taps. You're gonna cross your wrists and place your hands on your shoulders. I kind of look like a mummy for audio listeners. That's where I'm at. Yes, we're in the mummy position. Yeah. And then you're going to tap your right hand, left hand, right, left, right, left. We'll go a little faster and you can do medium pressure so you can

feel it but you're not like hitting yourself. And then as you do this you're just gonna keep tapping in this even rhythm. You're gonna just notice if your belly's clenched right now, if the sphincter is clenched and if the jaw is clenched. And we'll do about five more taps on each side. And when you're ready, we'll just bring that to a pause. So that is a somatic exercise. It's really simple. You can do that in the carpool line. You can do that, you know, before you open your Amex bill, like, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to do it. And uses bilateral stimulation, which is the right left, which activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is this the rest and digest. So it just brings your nervous system out of fight flight, out of sympathetic activation, and turns up the rest and digest part of your nervous system, which is called the parasympathetic nervous system.

I'm not just saying this because we're online. I feel calmer. Like I actually legitimately feel calmer. I love that. I'm just like, oh, that was kind of nice. And just like, it was very soothing. It was very nice. Okay. In the theme of exercises, there's a reason you all that were releasing this during election week. Okay. I'm feeling anxiety. I think everybody listening probably feel some anxiety about the election and even maybe some like past feelings from previous elections coming up for us. Is there another centering exercise to help us connect to our nervous

systems over the next couple of days? I imagine the tapping would be helpful. Is there another centering exercise to help us connect to our nervous systems over the next couple days? I imagine the tapping would be helpful. Is there anything else that you would suggest? Yeah. So this one's great if you feel irritated, annoyed, frustrated, super anxious. And so I feel like it's perfect for election week. So you're going to grab a pillow and you're going to stand with your feet in like a sumo wrestler position with a soft bend in your knees. And then you lift the pillow over your head and then you slam the pillow onto the floor. You keep your back long so you don't hurt your back at all.

But then you grab the pillow, lift it back up, soft bend in your knees, belly button in towards your spine so you don't hurt your back and then just slam you just throw the pillow onto the floor. And you can repeat that like five to 10 times. And you'll start maybe you feel frustrated or annoyed, or you know, angry, but then by the end, you're kind of laughing like you've gotten essentially what any anger release exercise does. Yes, she's going to go do it. What any anger release exercise does is it gives you like a safe container. Yes. Again, audio only listeners. I've grabbed a pill. Yes, she's going

to do it. I'll talk you through. Okay, here we go, hold on. I gotta make sure I have enough cord so I don't like rip my mic out. Okay, perfect. Okay, hold on. Okay, so sumo stance, yeah? Sumo stance, soft bend in your knees. Okay, pull up. Lift the pillow up over your head as high as you can. And you're just gonna throw it down with force.

Throw it down, yeah. Why is this so immediately cathartic? force. Throw it down. Yeah. Yeah. Why is this so immediately cathartic? You can throw it down as hard as you want. You can even let it go. Oh, this feels so good. Right? We've been talking about with our team how we need a rage room like I need a TV. Yeah Well, when we get off I'm doing about 15 minutes of this

Okay. Well, that was helpful. Yes. I love it. Nice job The reason why those are so effective is because we don't really have like a culturally appropriate way of releasing anger Especially as rain like special as women, we don't. And so those exercises give you this really clear container physically for releasing anger. But because they're contained with the pillow, there's another one with twisting a washcloth. You're not going to hurt your body while you're doing it. You're not going to hurt anyone else emotionally.

And you still get to express that anger or that frustration, so you're not suppressing it either. I don't know if this one is somatic, but it's something I learned in theater school, which is just to, like, shove the energy into the floor. Do you know what I'm talking about? Mm-hmm. Like, I'll demo it, because it looks ridiculous, but it's the, like, huh!

Like, it's just, like, shoving energy into the floor. That's one that we did all the time during my time but it's still like, huh. Like it's just like shoving energy into the floor. That's one that we did all the time during my time in my theater major in college. I love that. There's actually a lot of crossover with somatics and like ancient forms of movement. And, you know, I started off as a dancer.

So it was interesting as I was learning somatics, I was like, oh, this is really similar to like West African dance. So and somatics does acknowledge that it does pull from, you know, more like ancient forms of movement because we all used to dance around the campfire. We all used to sing and these are really natural ways of releasing stress and releasing and spiking your feel-good hormones too. That was so cathartic, everybody. Again, I'm not just saying that for the show.

I'm literally gonna like, I like my arms feel good too. It feels like a workout. Yay. I thought about bringing a different exercise in that was more soothing, but I was like, I'm gonna bring in one that's soothing and then one that's cathartic. Oh, that's rage.

That's all I just got off. We literally just recorded an episode an hour ago talking about Project 2025. So I really could have used that after we finished recording that episode. Now you have it in your back pocket. No, it's beautiful. It's lovely. A lot of people's favorite budgeting app changed last year. I can't mention it, but you know the one. It got bought and then it changed and everybody says it sucks now.

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show. Okay. You're working on a book and a fund to help women break free from narcissistic relationships. Can you share more about that? Yeah, the book that I'm working on is with HarperCollins and it should be out in 2020, late 2025, early 2026. The book is essentially a bit about my story about somatics, kind of what are they, why do they work so well for stress and trauma healing?

And then the third section of the book are a bunch of exercises, almost like an encyclopedia of exercises that you can use to release different emotions and to release stress out of your body. The cool thing about the book is, and the courses that I teach is, it's normally not just like one exercise that you want to do. You want to have like a sequence of a few exercises so that you have enough duration that your nervous system registers the change. That's how it starts to get more integrated long term. Whereas doing one exercise will provide you relief, but when you do them in

a specific sequence, it just starts to have a more long term effect. And then the fund that I'm working on is a dream. It's not quite a reality yet, but I have this dream of helping women with fight like emergency grants when they're leaving narcissistic relationships or toxic relationships, whether they have kids or not. There are a lot of funds out there for women who have kids. And there's a lot of funds out there for women who want to go back to school if they're leaving domestic violence,

if they're leaving abuse. But the issue though, is that there are a lot of women who are experiencing abuse or domestic violence who don't want to go back to school or who don't have kids and they still need emergency money to help them transition because the lawyer fees and like the like getting a restraining orders like $800 like there's a lot of financial things that you have to do to get yourself safe after that situation. And I really want to help women navigate that because for me, it was really stressful and I wouldn't have been able to do it if my brother hadn't helped me. Well, please let me know if I can support in any way financially or otherwise, because that sounds incredible.

And it's so, so needed. We've talked a lot, unfortunately, about financial abuse on the show and in my work, because you're exactly right. And I'm so sorry that you had to experience that. But it's true. It's very hard to get out of a toxic, abusive situation when you don't have money, when you don't have the financial stability. And especially if your partner has financially abused you, too, has limited access to money, has stolen credit

cards from you has tanked your own credit. It's very, very difficult to navigate your way out of it. Yeah. And you're scared of that person, right? You're physically afraid of them, you're emotionally afraid of them. And so that's how people get stuck is because they both like practically and emotionally can't get out. If you could leave us with one key piece of info or advice about the connection between trauma, the body and healing, what would it be? That your body is not supposed to feel like shit all the time. And I think like we we've

we have this cultural story that after 30, our bodies are supposed to feel like shit. And that's just what it is. And we just eat Advil all day and we feel like shit. And, but your body's not supposed to feel like shit like that until you're like 70. So it's not supposed to feel like shit all the time. And you can, even if, even if you've been through a lot of stress or a lot of trauma, or even if you're currently in a stressful job right now, you can learn tools to release the stress out of your body so that you're not holding on to so much stress and so much trauma and so many emotions in your body.

So you can learn the practical tools to manage stress. You don't have to be stress free, but you can release it out of your body and your body will feel so much better. And you definitely deserve to feel at ease in your body because that's where you live. Liz, I'm so excited to go by one of your courses because I need more pillow throwing in my life. So thank you.

Where can people find out more about you and your work, which is so incredible and so moving? Our website is theworkoutwitch.com and we have our courses on the website, the Release Stress and Stored Trauma 30-day course is our super viral course that most people start with. You can also find me on Instagram at the workout witch with a little underscore at the end. And if you comment release on any of my posts on Instagram, we'll DM you a free one minute exercise that you can do to release some stress

out of your body in bed. I love that I don't have to get out of bed to do it. That's fantastic. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for sharing your story. And thank you for following us and listening to our advice. It means a lot. So thank you. I'm such a huge fan. Thank you so much for your work and it has impacted my life in such

a great way. And I just love the work that you're doing too. Thank you so much to Liz, the workout witch for joining us. You can find her at the workout witch underscore on Instagram or the workout witch.com. Her best selling courses are at theworkoutwitch.com. Get out and vote. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a her first 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields and Tamesha Grant, research by Sarah Shortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda LeFeu.

Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K. Kaylen Sprinkle, Masha Bachmacheva, Taylor Chil, Sasha Bonar, Ray Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Karonen, Darrell Ann Ingman, and Megan Walker. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100k community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100k, our guests, and episode show

notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to herfirsthundredk.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan.