Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Elizabeth Bachner: Alternative Medicine, Acupuncture & Adrenal Failure - Doulas Do it Right

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Elizabeth Bachner, acclaimed midwife, acupuncturist and healer, explains how her life was seemingly perfect on paper but simply didn’t feel right. By unraveling this thread, she was guided on a path of personal and spiritual transformation that many will relate to. Elizabeth brings her extensive exploration of Easter healing and Mayim and Elizabeth delve into the neuropsychological underpinnings of naturalistic medicine. Elizabeth even leads us in group meditation (Prepare to smell some lemons)! The show examines the hardships of human experience, from cancer, birth, death, and much more. BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes when you sit with me, I remember like my gums start feeling weird, or I'll get like an essence of a color or like I'll feel really nauseous. Like, yeah. What are you doing, woman? I'm holding space for your body to speak its language to you. Why? How do you make it do that? It's a somatic language. It's the language of see, hear, smell, touch, taste.

Hi, I'm Myambiolic and welcome to my breakdown. This is where we break down the things. that make us break down. Today we're going to break down. We're breaking down east meets west. L.A. and New York? Battling? No.

That's not what we're doing? No, different East Meas West. I got the wrong memo. We're going to be speaking with someone who is a practitioner of many Eastern things, as it were, holistic things and modalities. Modalities. She also is a licensed midwife and owns and runs a birthing center here in Los Angeles. Babies keep needing to be born.

Yeah, they do. Her name's Elizabeth Bokner, and she was my dula for my second child's birth, which happened in the next room. Before we start talking about what we're going to be talking about with Elizabeth, let's say hello to Jonathan, but we don't talk about that, Cohen. Hello, my name. In our trailer, that's your funniest line. It's my only line. You drop the fact that your family might be related to Leonard Cohn, but we don't talk about it.

Correct. Jonathan, would you like to tell us a few things about this podcast? People might need to know a few key words before we get started. So I thought, for the word of the day, you might describe to us or explain what she means in this context by the nervous system. The nervous system, there's a central nervous system, and there's a central nervous system, and there's peripheral nervous system, and the central nervous system is the brain and spinal cord. So like the brain, and then it attaches, it's all connected, to a spinal cord that runs literally through your vertebral column. And that spinal cord has all these special nerves and ways to communicate

to your body. So the central nervous system is the brain and the spinal cord, but the peripheral nervous system is everything that comes off of that spinal cord, which goes to the periphery. So, for example, if you move your hand, it's the premotor cortex and the motor cortex sending a signal down from the central nervous systems, the peripheral nervous system, and the peripheral nervous system is also responsible for how you feel things in your organs and really your whole body. But what we talk about with Elizabeth is the emotional nervous system, which means the way that our emotional experience impacts the nervous system. This is something that scientists like me love to say. There's really no such thing as emotions as a free-floating, you know, concept separate from science.

Everything you feel, you feel because of a shift in chemicals and then a conscious experience to process those chemicals as what you perceive them as. Yes, those are highly subjective, but really, for the most part, they're not. We know that there are certain habits. happy chemicals and there are certain more depressive chemicals. This is a super simplification, very simplified. The emotional nervous system then is talking about the interaction between the systems of your body that are generally governed by the nervous system and how they are impacted by our emotional experience. And everyone's emotional experience is going to be different for different reasons and different things. Someone who's experienced trauma views the world very differently from someone who hasn't. People who have been traumatized in war, for example, will experience an

entirely different existence when they come home many times. And that's actually a very strong example, you know, in trauma of an impact on the emotional nervous system. So yeah, that's kind of the concept of the day. Word of the day has really turned into concept of the day. I'd like to welcome Elizabeth on. And first, I'll just say a couple things about her. As I mentioned, she's a midwife. She's an educator. She's the speaker. And she's the owner and director of the graceful clinic here in Los Angeles, California. For over a decade, She's combined her medical board licenses as a midwife and also an acupuncturist with a diverse body of skills in pre and perinatal psychology to educate and inspire women to understand their bodies and the birth experience. She has a degree in child psychology from Tufts.

She's been celebrated in some press. I actually didn't know that. Not because of my relationship with her. I think she might have famous clients. They're kind of roaming about in Los Angeles. They're everywhere. They're everywhere with their big pregnant bellies looking for enlightenment. Anyway, Elizabeth is also a skilled writer.

She's a really, really, she's a lovely, lovely person. Let's welcome Elizabeth. Break it down. Thank you, Elizabeth, for being with us today. You're someone, obviously, who's been a really kind of a pivotal person in my life, you know, not only in, you know, assisting literally with the birth of my second child. But, you know, also you've kind of been one of the windows I've had into, really understanding healing and the the kind of larger impact of, you know, an experience with

something that we can't always explain or quantify the way we can other things. So I'm really, really grateful for you to be here. Your bio is, it's impressive, as are you. I first met you as a dula when you were, you were at that time already studying to become a midwife, correct? Right. And I don't know if you remember this, but it came to me and a woman. a very unusual way. Oh, tell that story. So I'm 35 years old kind of minding my own business and being like, my plan for my life is to get married and have kids, you know, and I kept having these dreams. I was already an acupuncturist then. And I kept having dreams. And in the dreams, I'd put my hands out and babies would fall into them and I'd look up and go, I don't know what to do. And, you know,

I'm from the East Coast. I'm 52. Like, not in my wheelhouse to birth babies outside of the hospital, Right? Nothing I even thought about, nothing I went to school about. And it had been told to me by Anna Verwal, who's in the business of being born. Some people might know that, that I had received the calling to become a midwife. And I'm like, you're out of your mind. I didn't have a spiritual path. I was like, no, no, no, no. You go to the doctor. You go to the white male doctor. You get drugs. You go to the hospital. And then they wash your baby, clean it up and you live happily ever after because I was also living in a fantasy world. But yes, it come to me through dreams. And I like to say that receiving the calling to become a midwife was the singular greatest thing to happen to me because it helped me grow up into an adult. And it opened my eyes into a way of thinking of how amazing that anatomical female body is, you know, when you listen deeply. And it opened that doorway up for me. What was your path to acupuncture? How long had you been an acupuncturist at that time. At that time, it was in, oh, God, it was, I think, 1998 when I started school. And when we met, I was probably about three-ish years licensed. But, Ma'am, you're going to give me

way too much credit. I literally stumbled into that also. My personal life story is, is I did everything society taught me to do. You know, I went to the right college. I was, you know, having the right career. I was kind of married to the right guy and living in Europe and I just wasn't happy. Like, nothing was landing inside of me. And that was the first time I started to explore the somatic realm or the intuitive realm. And in that process, it was literally somebody told me, I was living in London at the time and they're like, you're going to move to California and you think you're going there for one reason. You're going to be there for another. And it's got to be about a school with healing. And I was like, what are you talking about? And that's how. And that's how.

how I kind of stumbled into acupuncture. I actually signed up for school, never having acupuncture myself because I just knew that's where I was supposed to go. And again, when you had met me, because I was an acupuncturist, it had started to deprogram how I was thinking. And I was coming out of this like nail hammer way of thinking. That's not how you think as an acupuncturist. You think and you you think about the whole person. You're looking at the mental, the emotional, the physical, the spiritual. You're looking at the organs and how they interrelate. It started the process for me of seeing and hearing somebody and being in relationship with that.

What does that knowing feel like? Like when you say that you knew you were supposed to do that, is it a place in your body? Yes. Okay. It took me a long time to figure it out because at the, the beginning, the knowing for me I like to say was just dumb luck. It was kind of like, I don't know, nothing else is working. I guess I'll do that. And as I have gotten older and started to learn to listen to it, it's actually a felt sense inside of me. And I've actually learned that there's a

language for this, and it's called somatic work. And I've done enough of that work now so that I can actually identify what it feels like, its movement, its color, its shape. And what happens for me is that I get, it's a settling feeling. And I don't think enough people talk about the felt sense of intuition. You know, when I was going through this process, you know, for a hundred, like 20-ish years, it was always like, I'm looking for a voice to tell me, right? Which never happened. It's more of this inner sensation.

And it was like, oh, I could take a breath. It created spaciousness. And I felt connected to something bigger than myself that started on the inside and then moved all around me. When I met you, you were a doula and you're now a midwife. Correct. And your degree is in child psych, correct? Yes, from Tufts University, child psychology. You know, for people who don't know what a doula is, you know, a doula is, you know, the simplest definition is it, like, it's a labor coach.

But what you actually, you know, were and are for me and Fred forever was, you know, you were the bridge between him existing inside of my body, you know, and him existing outside of my body. And beautifully said. Yeah. And that involved us preparing together and, you know, processing after. The beautiful thing that you just said is preparing together. I don't think there's enough emphasis on the relationship transitioning from inside the body out into the world. It's not just a single one person, one thing. It's a relationship. So well said. Thank you. I mean, you probably taught me to say that. Just as Fred was born, your world was rocked in a very specific life-changing way. Yes, absolutely. Tell us what happened.

So here I was, you know, I was a licensed acupuncturist. I was like, I know about nutrition. I know about nutrition. I know about about complementary alternative health and I know about clean eating and clean body and, you know, I'm the only one in my family who's going to therapy and I have, like, you know, I'm exploring this spiritual thing and that spiritual. I was like, I thought I had it all going on and I was like, I've listened to the calling. I am now a licensed, I'm going to be a licensed midwife, right? And I was like, I'm going to be of service. And then, as I like to say, I got handed my PhD thesis. And I was the first person in the history of my family on both sides to ever be diagnosed with any kind of cancer. And it was really humbling because I literally thought at that time that if you eat well, if you exercise, if you do the mental emotional work, you know, you know where your anger is.

If you got anger, you're going to, you're going to be able to, you know, go scot free through life. And that wasn't what happened. And, you know, as I like to say, I was handed that PhD thesis and I journeyed through breast cancer. I'm very specific about that. It was very clear to me. I started a bit of a meditation practice. And I went into a deep meditation. I believe I went into the Akashik Records, which is what they say is where the story of your life is.

And I was all excited. I'm like, oh, my God, the Akashic Records is going to tell me what to do. And I'm going to figure this. Like, I'm going to be in charge, right? I'm going to figure this out. I open up the book and it's blank. And I'm like going to my guides. I'm like, you guys, there's nothing in here. And they're like, Elizabeth, it doesn't matter. Like, do you want to go through cancer now? Do you want to go through it when you're 60? Like, you're going to have this experience of whatever this is. When do you want to do it? And I was like, well, it just turned 40. I might as well do it now before, you know, where I got great resources and people around me and I know stuff, I don't want to be too old. That was, you know, literally the thought process. And I was like, and the funny part was, I, like, when I got diagnosed in August, it was like, oh, I don't have any clients in September, October, really.

Like, what am I going to do? Maybe I'm going to go hang out with my sister and see her and the kids, my nephews. And then it was like, oh, I guess I'm going to be busy with going through the time. My MBialx breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data.

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You know, that's very anxiety provoking and it can be terrifying. But can you talk a little bit about sort of at that time, you know, for people who may not know what a spiritual experience is or what that means. What were you drawing on? So I was really fortunate. I, again, my extensive background in pre-imperinatal psychology, and I just done a full training with Ray Castellino up in the Santa Barbara Ohio area in pre-imperinatal psychology. And what I, and that somatic work. And what I was drawing upon was the skills of being able to name what was going on for me. When I had the diagnosis, I had been in a place in my life where I stopped like kind of judging things as good or bad. I was still thinking I was

in control, but it was more like something Ray always taught was like, oh, well, that's information. You know, as opposed to going, what's wrong with you? You're so angry. It's like, oh, I'm getting angry here. All right. Well, that's information. And also something that, Ray taught that was so helpful was learning how to be my adult self. So understanding that there are different ages within all of us. And if we can understand trauma and how that works, and by the way, I believe we all have trauma. Sometimes it's called trauma with a big tea. Sometimes trauma with a little tea is how we talk about it these days. But, you know, everyone has different experiences and how it lands in the nervous system and in the brain. And so what I had spent most of my life doing

before I'd met Ray is these younger ages that were traumatized and it was stuck in the nervous system. Those younger ages had created a survival skill in a way of looking and seeing things. Because of the work I had done with Ray Castellino and the training, all of a sudden I had the skills to be able to go, oh, that's my 13-year-old self right now, who's really nervous and really scared. Because, okay, my adult self, oh, my adult self knows what healthy support looks like. My adult self knows how to ask for healthy support. And my adult self knows how to make boundaries with things it perceives are not healthy. And I'd also learned the power of a pause.

I mean, I get excited, so I speak a lot, but it's like all of a sudden, And it was like, oh, I learned how to kind of settle, find that space connect, and make a decision from the place of spaciousness, of a pause, and for me, connected to something bigger than myself. And that's just really important. So I'm learning these adult skills. And I think having the adult skills is the reason why I'm here today. I'm giving that credit. You know, my adult chose chemotherapy.

therapy. My adult chose a double mastectomy. My adult chose radiation. Kemo, the double mastectomy, the radiation, that did not save my life. My adult chose those things to support the journey through this and what I needed to learn, along with choosing, you know, other things, acupuncture, nutrition, herbal supplements. Those are all things that I chose. Stupid question. Oh, there are no stupid questions. You know that. Can you? do acupuncture to yourself? Oh, yeah, you can. But you can, but you know what, it's, it's not as effective. I really think there's something important with almost any healing modality of being in relationship with another person and kind of having a witness. I think

it's important. What did you do nutrition-wise? And obviously this is not an endorsement for any particular nutrition, but I'm curious what you did. Yeah. You know, it was really interesting because back then, this is in 2008. I had read about some studies online. And I've done a lot of cleanses and fasting by then. And I'd read a study online that said to fast two days before the chemotherapy because all the healthy cells in the body will kind of be like, oh, we're fasting and like cover themselves up and protect themselves. And then the cancer cells aren't protected. And so it's almost like the chemo will go there. The healthy cells protect themselves. Now, when I had done this back in 2008, my doctor was a little like, Elizabeth,

you can't be doing that. You need nutrition. You can't like all that stuff. You know, fast forward to 2020. They actually recommend it. Right. This wasn't like you read this in, you know, elf tree unicorn journal that like cells will hide them. Like there was actual research that was indicating a protective mechanism when cells are fasting. Got it. Correct. And this is from France. And again, 2020, we know so much about fasting and intermittent fasting and how helpful it is for cell regeneration. Right. So this is all science. Back then, everyone was like, that's not science. I mean, Maya, remember back then everyone's like neuroscience. Oh, everybody was like, well, everybody was like home birth and breastfeeding. What are you living in the dark ages? Oh, my God, right? But now it's like, we know the science behind it. And we know the science about the brain. Back then everyone's like, oh, that woo-woo stuff. And it's like, now it's like, no, that's the hippocampus. That's the frontal load. Right. Well, and this is also, you know, a large part of.

Jonathan and my motivation also for wanting to do this podcast is there is science to acupuncture. Yep. While people don't always understand the intricacies and kind of complexity of energy work, there also is science to energy work. I mean, even yoga, right? This is not just something trendy that people, you know, should do to stay skinny. Like there's an actual science to the many, many branches of yoga, poses of which are actually only one branch.

Okay, so, okay, but back to sort of the thing. you did. So you said acupuncture, nutrition. What was the other thing? And nutrition, like, there were things like I was craving apples. Like, I couldn't get enough apples into my body right after chemo. And then you'd look and be like, oh, the pectin is like really good for what's going on in my body. So you just start listening to the cravings. What were the supplements? That's what you said, supplements. So I guess I'm curious, is that something you did kind of on your own? Did you have an Eastern practitioner. Obviously, you have, I know you have a lot of training and experience in a lot of different realms. Is Chinese medicine one of those? Is that the supplements you took? What did you do?

Yeah. So first of all, it was all about hydration. Now you got to remember, back in the day in 2008, if you want a coconut water, you had to buy the coconut and buy a cleaver. That's what we were doing. Right? Back in the day, I wanted hydration. It was like, okay, so chemo is like fire in the body. It's like poisoning my body. So coconut water for hydration, and then I wanted IV fluids. But back in the day, no, you know, there was no IVs come to the house. So I got all of my, you know, midwife friends to come over and give me IVs. There was that going on.

The herbal supplements, a lot of Chinese herbal formulas. And what was interesting is my doctors are just really honest and they were like, Listen, Elizabeth, we don't know anything about the Chinese herbal formulas. So I worked with friends who were really great herbalists, and there's actually formulas out there specific for chemo. There's formulas out there specific for going through the radiation. And Chinese medicine looks at things differently. Again, it's not that nail and hammer. It's more the whole person.

What was going on in my body? Oh, my body was hot with toxins, like literally. I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, a lot of college was spent like hung over, like poisoning. myself with alcohol. I wasn't a drinker, but I was hung over from studying so hard. So for me, it was like, it felt similar because it was like, oh, I'm poisoning my own body to heal itself, which is another odd concept. So it's like, what is cooling? What is nourishing? And so I was doing specific formulas from specific companies to work with what stage I was in in the Western medicine stages.

You know, another thing for me, and I'm just going to say it, I could not wait to poop after the chemo. Like my body was so hot and dry, and we know this in Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine, we look at the poops all the time. But it was just like, oh, my God, like I'm so constipated from all of those medicines. It was like, when am I going to poop? As soon as I had that first poop, I was like, great, I'm on the other side of this. You know, so it was taking lots of things to help move that through my body so that would

happen also. Mm-hmm. Here's a difficult question, but I feel like one of the special things about you is there are no difficult questions because not that you have the answer to everything, but you seem to always receive, you know, my questions the way that I intend them. And so I know that, yeah, I trust that I can ask you this. Do you think everyone can heal the way you healed? Like, if everyone were to do what Elizabeth did, could they, could ever, like, did you face? figure it out? Yes and no. What I figured out was how to navigate this as a human being with real feelings. And I can't say this enough. Learning how, like learning what healthy support looks like and owning that and being in relationship with it. That is what I think everybody can do. Now, what it looks like on the outside is going to be different for everybody. You know, some people resonate with herbs. Some people don't.

Some it's homeopathy. I think on a very physical, literal level, and they figured this out, chemo and hydration are so important. Like, get hydrated. But I think that if someone was to be able to look at it as an adult and then allow for the temper trantrums of the younger one who is just so upset that she's even going through this, I think it's an easier navigation. So, yeah, I think with some really good mental, emotional support through it, yes.

And as I'm speaking to this, what I'm starting to understand is I had the capacity to see and hear myself. I had the capacity to have people around me who could see and hear me. And I think that's part of the key. For people who don't know what that is. What is that? Well, on an esoteric level, I really think that's what love is all about, seeing and hearing another and seeing and hearing yourself. It's an action of love. And I think it's listening, it's acceptance of your own unique being. There's no cookie cutter

one way of navigating through cancer or navigating through COVID or navigating whatever, or childbirth, whatever life gives you. But if you have the ability, to express yourself without shame and with some acceptance or find somebody who can accept that for you, I think you're able to listen to what goes on better on the inside. I mean, and sometimes it was, you know, I was going through chemo and I wanted to be fully conscious and they were like, no, no, no, you're going to have to have that Benadryl. And I'm like, like, shut it off. Like, can you hear me? Shut it off because I am losing presence. And I'm, I want to be present. Like I had a moment and I had a support person with me helping advocate for me.

And they were like, can't you hear her? She said no. Yeah. You know, that was like the first round of chemo. I think by the sixth round, I was like, okay, I'm going to take that now because I need that. Like now I'm like that's what I need for support. You know, so I had an understanding of my body. And I wanted to be as present as I could to feel everything. I went with a friend to to a chemo treatment and, you know, it's a really, it was a very lovely facility, you know, as they go. And it was very, it was very calm and like the nurses were really nice. It always makes me really happy when, you know, when you go to, you know, to the chemo hallway and everybody's nice. Like they should be, right? Like everyone should be nice there. They were.

They were. They are. And, you know, even despite that, it's a very, very high energy environment because it really does feel like the stakes are so high, you know, even for a single treatment. Like, it's a very, it's very, it's very stressful. And I guess I'm wondering, what did it look like to manage that? Like, what was the support you sought for that level, that fear, you know, and sort of the heightened sense of presence that you have to have. What did that support look like? Was that energy work? Was that, like, what was it? Dulas. I mean, I was a dula. I had a great community of doulas. I had two amazing doulas that came with me during and then afterwards, you know, Sufi Erter and Anna Paula Markell. Anna Paula Markell.

Anna Paula Markele opened up her home and I literally lived with her. for each week after chemo because I'm a single woman, you know, single woman living by myself. So I had doulas du laing me. And then, you know, a midwife that you and I both know and I both know and love, Catherine Williams. Catherine Williams said to me right at the beginning, she is like, Elizabeth, you need to go through cancer as a woman and not a midwife dula. Right?

And again, part of that is learning to take off the different hats that I wear. You know, I wasn't an expert. I wasn't, I didn't know what was going on. It was like, okay, I'm 40 years old. I'm single. I will probably at the end of this be menopausal. My chances of having a child for myself are now taken away. You know, being present with all of that.

Having the doulas there with me at the visit, someone there to advocate for me. So I didn't have to do it myself. so important. Having a place to go to where I could be taken care of. I could be myself. I could not, I don't know, to sleep, to hate it, to have as many apples as I wanted, you know, for a week after while I was kind of waiting for that recovery was really important. And then, you know, something for me at that time that was really important is, you know, I've always had a challenging relationship with my parents. And during that time, it was, I didn't feel seen and heard by my, by my mother and father. And so I had to make a boundary. And that boundary was putting up a no. And it was really

interesting because everyone kept saying to me, oh, you're going to be wanting support and you're going to be wanting your mom and, you know, you're going to want that there. And I was a little like, yeah, that's, that's not, the dynamic that I have with them isn't the dynamic I want and doesn't support my healing. You know, and I want, I want anyone listening right now to know I've got a great relationship with them right now and we've got great communication, but, you know, I have to make a lot of boundaries to make it work. And so that was the start of it. It was learning where the yeses were, learning where the nose were. Also, all of my doctors that I, that I had, I interviewed them and I asked them all the same question. After finding out, you know, what college they went to,

what their specialty was, I asked all of them, the same. I asked all of them, the same question. I asked them, same thing. Why did you choose this? What was your reason for getting into oncology or wanting to help people with cancer? And that answer led me to the right people. And it wasn't, you know, and some of the people I chose were not the like, you know, the top three in Los Angeles that everyone's like, go see. It was like, oh, no, no. Some of the people I chose were the brand new people who I knew got into this for a reason that really connected with me. And I knew they were were going to have the time to listen to me and to what I had to say. So what was the right answer? I still, I can see it right now with my oncologist. He was like, you know, it was inside of me.

I felt it inside of me, inside of my heart, that this is what I wanted to do. And it was something that I knew would come through my hands. And I was like, you're my guy. So shifting a little bit from kind of your journey to our journey. My first child, who Miles, who's now 15, he was a, he was supposed to be born at home. I had gestational diabetes and I ended up doing a non-emergency transport at 9 centimeters, which is just about as fun as it sounds. And he was born otherwise, you know, without any pain medication and he was born at a hospital. He was put into the NICU for four days, which is literally, you know, a first parent's nightmare.

That's literally the worst fear is that your child will be, you know, for some reason. And indeed, I had that child who was there for four days and literally was released. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. You know, he had a low heart rate, like so does his father. And because I had diabetes, that's a thing. And they're concerned. Whatever. He was tired.

I said, well, he just got born. I thought that was normal. And it is a very exhausting process. Very tiring. For some more than others. Anyway, I was also, I was 35 pounds over my normal, my normal weight when I got pregnant. So I had a lot of weight to lose. And also like even though I was a home birth person and I was a breastfeeding person

and I was a safe bed sharing person, there was a lot about me that hadn't really, like all of my weirdness hadn't come out. All of my holistic, you know, energy loving hippiness hadn't all come out. And I remember that when we started preparing and working together for my second birth, I think you were the first person who said, you have birth trauma. And people had said to me like, oh, that's a really, like, you know,

my first labor was three days on and off, and I did what's called a natural induction, which, you know, is trying to avoid a C-section with a baby that your backup OB wants out of your body, and there was a lot of fear and a lot of, well, some women don't just know how to go into labor, you know, they need to be helped, you know. Anyway, it was not a great experience,

but, you know, I felt, I felt like everybody's got a crazy, you know, sometimes first, not everybody, but many people have a first time experience that's not ideal. And it was really just working on kind of the, you know, the shame. At that time, home birth was really, really very fringy. And so the notion that like I couldn't do it was very, it brought a lot of shame with it. Because there were so many, I told you so's. And it was almost, you know, even from my parents, it was like, see, but at least he's healthy. It's like, well, after four days in the NICU, Okay, at least he's healthy. So I remember when you said that, I didn't really know, I didn't really know what that was. I think you might have been the first person to do energy work with me. And you put me on the table and you essentially did a session with me to try and help heal some of that trauma. Now, I'm a really big believer in you don't have to be able to explain.

it for it to work. Because the fact is, while there are certain things that, you know, it helps for you to be on board with energetically, my feeling is if it's going to work, it's going to work. And I think also you, you therefore were the first person who introduced me to this notion that this is not like a go-no-go system, this human existence thing. It's not like here's the thing that works and here's the thing that doesn't. There literally is no black and white, really in our existence. Everything that we think is black and white, it is. It's an illusion.

It's an illusion of control. So this gray, you know, that you really introduced me to, I had zero idea what you were doing with me when you put me on that table. And I remember a lot of other sessions. You know, I had a significant car accident. And I remember the work that you did, which was incredibly painful, but also really, really healing and was so much also about being held. you know, by you and being in your presence. Talk a little bit about, let's just use this as an

example, this like birth trauma thing. What is the work? And I know this is, and I, this is outside technically of midwifery, meaning these are things that you have as part of your toolbox because you're a healer of a lot of different modalities. But I don't, I don't want people to think like, using a midwife means they put you on a table and you don't know what's happening. No. But yeah, talk a little bit about, you know, for someone who's never heard of what this is, explain, and you don't have to remember specifically exactly, but explain what this kind of work is, and especially, you know, you can lean into or I can the science and the chemicals that are produced, you know, in the brain and in the body when we do this kind of work. So just kind of walk us through a little bit. Right.

So I think the first thing is a shifting of perspective, which is why I don't ever say, say, I beat breast cancer. It's not this like, I failed or I succeeded. It's a journey. And it helped me solidify this perception of everything's a lesson. And my perception is not only is everything a lesson, but everything is there to teach us to shine light on the dark places, which goes back to the languaging of being seen and heard. You know, it's not let's see and hear all the good stuff. You know, it's let's see and hear. You know, having that curiosity. That's one layer to it. And there's another layer which is everyone's body knows how to do this. Like, I'm not doing the healing to you. I never did the healing to you. Your body knows how to heal itself. Your body, Jonathan's body, everybody's body does. But what I feel

is necessary is a relationship of someone else holding space, someone else seeing and hearing, somebody else being a witness, you know. Okay, but sometimes when you sit with me, I remember like my gums start feeling weird or I'll get like an essence of a color or like I'll feel really nauseous. Like, yeah, what are you doing? What are you doing, woman? I'm holding space for your body to speak its language to you. Why? How do you make it do that? It's a somatic language.

It's the language of see, hear, smell, touch, taste. You know, how do I make it do it? It's how our minds work. Have you ever done the, like, the lemon meditation? No. Do you want me take you through a lemon meditation so you get a sense of this? Okay. And so everyone can do it also.

I love doing this. Okay. Do I need to lay down on my meditation? You can both sit. Jonathan, you can do this with us also. Do I sit in Jonathan's lap? for this part of this now? Okay. So if anyone is watching me, I get really into it, so you'll see me with my eyes closed. All right? So giving your, closing your eyes and just taking a moment.

So first thing you want to do is just connect to where you are. Feel your butt on the chair. It's that simple. Feel your butt in the couch or leaning back into something and taking a deep breath in. Just relaxing everything down. All right. Again, just feeling your butt sitting where it is. Now, what I want you to do is I want you to imagine that out of nowhere, if you extend out your hand, the most amazing lemon drops into your hand and you feel the weight of that lemon. And that lemon is beautiful yellow color. And as you touch it, it's got that silky, oily skin. And you bring it up to your nose and you inhale. Oh, my God, that is the freshest lemon scent you have ever smelled. And that yellow color and that weight you know, it is the juiciest lemon you've ever had. It is so silky smooth. And magically, a cutting board appears. And you put that lemon down on the cutting board and magically a knife appears and you safely start to cut that

lemon in half. And as you do, the juice starts to run out and you smell that lemony smell. Oh, my God, it is so fresh and juicy. And you're looking at that yellow color and the juice is dripping down. Oh, my God. It's literally the best. So you take half of that lemon and you safely with the knife, you cut it into a quarter and you go into that silky, smooth, oily skin and it releases that fragrant yellow, that yellow smell, that lemon smell. Oh my God. It is so juicy.

You're seeing the juice drip down. Oh, my God. And that smell, that lemon smell. Wow. You put the knife down. and you grab a quarter of that lemon. And as you touch it, you feel that oily, silky, smooth, lemony skin and that yellow color. The juice is dripping down.

You start to bring it to your mouth. You can smell that lemon fragrance. The juice is just so right there. You open your mouth. You take a bite. And what is happening in your body? right now. That face right there. Are you salivating? Yes. Now open up, uh-huh, go ahead. And it's puckery, because I'm, yeah. Now open up your eyes and look at your hand. Is there a lemon there? No.

Right. It's the senses. Right. It's the sea, they hear, the smell, the touch, the taste. It's the senses and your body, your brain has gotten your body to viscerally react as though there is a lemon there. I had a cut on my finger. I literally was thinking about the paper cuts. I was thinking about potential paper cuts. Why in my imagination is it hurting me? Right. Right. So that's the body's wisdom. The body can do that. So what am I doing? I'm using the tool of acupuncture with the needles, with a medicine, with a study that's been around for years, and putting them in syphilis to move the chi. I am holding the feet at certain points. Some people call them the chakras, minor chakras, major chakras, right?

I am sitting in trust in my own self, in my own body's wisdom, and your body is like, oh, there's some trust there. Oh, what does trust feel like? And it starts to find its own rhythm. and then your body would speak to you in the colors, in the shapes, in the smells. And your version of that, Ma'am, is different than Jonathan's version than that. Mine is nausea. And sometimes the nausea's got to come up and out.

They call it a healing response. Can I pick another healing response? You know, there's, for some people, it's like, there's a difference between a sick response. it's like, you know, you're feeling run down and you're feeling tired and now you got the sniffles and now you got the eyes and now you got the nausea, you know, two days in, now you're in bed. And then a healing response, they say, is the reversing of it backwards. It's all of a sudden you're doing great and all of a sudden you're doing the healing work and then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, it's like the sniffles and the nausea and it's like

and it moves through quickly and then it's out of your body. It's like working it backwards. Ma'am, what is the science or is there science around this? idea of witnessing or and being seen. Yeah, my experience with people who are healers is that not a lot has to be done for you to start feeling something, which is very disturbing for those of us who are, you know, programmed in zeros and ones and choose to live that way. It can feel like different things and it can feel disconcerting. You know, my younger one, Fred is very, very, he's tuned into something that since he's really born that we felt he sees things other people don't see

and he feels things other people don't feel. And sometimes when he's around people who are healers, it's like it's like he knows it. And so I feel like we all have that. We just have it to different degrees. So I'm going to answer your question, but what the reason I'm leading up to it this way is that this is one of those things that, you know, I always want to explain a way. oh, it's just because I think they're going to do something. You know, it's because I think they're a healer that I'm going to feel something weird. Or I'm supposed to believe that Elizabeth's going to make me experience something.

So that's why it's happening. But what we do know, and Elizabeth may have better references for this than I, what we do know is that no matter how technologically advanced we are, no matter how much we have progressed in terms of culture and science and literature, we are primates. and we are designed to be in the presence of others who support us. And that looks very different for Homo sapiens sapiens than for other primates, but also it doesn't look that different.

And we have a culture and a language that has evolved so that, you know, Elizabeth's sitting with me is, it's not the same thing as her grooming me. you know, which is what our primate cousins would do. There is activation of the mirror system, which I do think, yeah, the mirror neuron system, I think is a really, really strong culprit here. And that would indicate also, and like this is taking it, you know, to a different level, that would indicate that I don't mean to talk about you like you're not here, Elizabeth, but that would indicate that people like Elizabeth historically, people with this

genetic predisposition, you know, in some ways for an activation of that circuitry and the ability to see, you know, historically we called those people shamans and we called them guides and they were spiritual guides. And in every culture, there are people who serve this purpose. And indigenous communities have these people still. You're going to make me cry. Oh, I didn't mean to make you Climped. No, but I'm being seen and heard, and I haven't heard anyone explain it that way about me. So, like, thank you. Well, you're welcome. Thank you. Well, and also, you know, Elizabeth also, you know, introduced me to the person who was my healer for many years, who we lost this year. And that's a very big loss for Elizabeth and for me and for so many people that this woman touched. This was a world that was opened for me,

you know, by Elizabeth, which I don't feel like as a scientist, I have to explain it, because I do believe there are things we can't explain. And, you know, I'm a person of faith. So I have no problem with that. Okay, but I'm going to make you try a little bit. No, so. I have some things to break down for the people who are listening and are like, okay, I hear all of this, and this sounds great. And there's a lot of amazing information in here. And personally, I have experiences that validate a lot of this stuff. But I'm going to play the, okay, let's break it down into a little bit more specifics. So there is a, and I'm going to bot.

I said mirror and neuron system. That's science. Okay, let's dive a little bit deeper into that. And there's a quote that I'm going to 100% botch because I don't fully remember the science around this. But it's the idea that the system that is witnessed is different than the system without being witnessed. By the way, I'm loving this because I'm, I don't, there's a lot that I know, like the the work of Stephen Porges and the social nervous system, mirror neurons with a history of abuse in the family. But this idea of witnessing, if we look at the spiritual texts, I mean, you know, can I get a witness? It's all over the spiritual text.

Literally. Can I get a witness? It's literally there. Yeah. So I've had an experience of going to a practitioner who, you know, I won't put a label on them, healer or not healer, because I think some people have. Okay, but it wasn't a dermatologist. No, it was not a urologist. Technically, this person is trained as a traditional chiropractor, but she does not do any chiropractic.

She does a system of network chiropractic, which is a simple pushing of different parts of the body. I have had an experience where I've gone into that person and I have had releases, physical shifts. My body has moved without her touching me, her standing in the corner of the room. I'm trying to leave my personal experience out of this to sort of represent the skeptics. We think you're crazy, Jonathan. We don't want to talk about it anymore. The somewhat skeptical listener, exactly. If our body has a natural ability to heal and we are constantly fighting to be in a state of homeostasis. And so if we bend one way, our instinct and our drive as a human being is to try and get back upright, then the trauma, the experiences, the things that we're carrying around with us are impediments to that.

and as Elizabeth said, our body has a natural ability to self-correct, but it either needs to be stimulated or the space needs to be held for that to happen. And what Elizabeth was mentioning about being in relation with someone else, often it's that person who comes in and anchors or witnesses or creates the space for us to feel safe because otherwise we would just be. Okay, so the experiment, first of all, yes, I believe you can have those shifts. I've experienced them. I mean, I think the three of us belong in a commune together with these experiences. With the padded walls in the commune. With padded walls in the commune. The experiment to do, like from a scientific perspective, is you have to create a room

and you have to do this with several thousand people where they don't know if the person's in the room or not. And you have a placebo group and there's a wall or partition or some false double mirror situation. where you would have to see if it could work if the person didn't know that the person's there. Go ahead. Okay, no, no, no, no, no. So this is, so this is the new work of Stephen Porges, right? Do you know about the social nervous system? No, I mean, like, like, go ahead. I know about the mirror neurons. Like, I know other scaffolds, but now. This is all the new work. This is all the new exciting stuff. So the social nervous system, because we're social animals, right? You know, it's not just the sympathetic, parasympathetic, but also the social nervous system. So I think it comes, I think it's from the hippocampus or the limbic system.

Yeah. Right, the limbic system. Thank you. So where does that go to? It goes to the eyes. It goes to the mouth. It goes to the ears. Oh, isn't that interesting? It goes to the senses, right? It goes to the smile. So, right? And then it goes down into the heart, goes down into the stomach. What do we say all the time? We're always saying, ah, the gut instinct. It doesn't feel right in my gut. Coincidentally, it's the nervous system, right? Oh, my heart rate. Oh, it's just palpitating. Coincidentally, it's the nervous system. So I don't think it would work if you were walled off because of a relationship. So, Ma'am, how are you today? Myam, how you doing today? Right? You're sensing the smile, social. So then in that sense, so then in that, sense. So then the answer to Jonathan's question is, yes, it is possible that for someone to know they are being observed, even from a distance, to know they are being held, stimulates in them

a different set of chemicals that are then going to facilitate a cascade if that person is in a place to be open to that cascade. So that's what the non-touch observation is. Now, people, People also do energy sessions by phone, by Zoom. I'm not going to say it can't be done, but it's a different kind of work than is done when someone's in the room. In addition, there are pheromones, you know, there are invisible chemicals. There are ways that we sense that we have a proprioceptive sense also of people around us. When I first met Vera and she was going to do energy work on me,

I still, I had very little idea of what was about to happen. I mean, I think for four sessions, five sessions, she didn't put her hands on me. She said I wouldn't let her. And I was like, I don't know what this lady's talking about. I had zero idea because my ability to access what it felt like to meet a strange person and have to lay on a table, I was completely cut off from even having that knowledge. So once I started to work with her, I started to understand what she meant. And this can go, you know, I also worked with a fantastic woman who also passed away this past year, who, I mean, she was the most detailed scientific explaining human being about things that otherwise people would say we're not scientific. She had a whole thing about the different levels of energy rings around you and like the different penetrative levels that you could go. And this was just like around everybody's body. But as she talked about it, I remembered the work I did with Vera.

I remembered the work I've done with Elizabeth. That is, that notion of energy, that does exist. So now you explain the energy of chakras to us to validate for all the entire scientific community? I'm happy to do that. I don't know if this episode is the time to do that. You want to know right now. I'll tell you later. And then we'll do an episode about it.

But, I mean, honestly, it's for me as a scientist much easier to explain Chakras than even this. And I feel like I got a little bit close here. So Chakras is like, it's like a walk in the park. All the meridians. Easy peasy. Blood flow. That will be episode 657. Do you do or believe in past life regressions?

So back in the day, back before I received the calling, I used to sit with my pendulum and I used to do past life readings on people and chakra readings and all of that. There was a place called Audrey's Good Vibrations down in Venice. I don't know if you remember it. I think so. Yes. Flower essences, all the stuff that the millennials now are like, oh, I love it. I got my crystal and my bra. I was like, I've been doing that since the 90s. I've already passed that, right? So I used to. Now, Here's the thing where I came to personally with all of this, and I don't want to invalidate it for anybody. I got to the point where I was like, I got so much going on this lifetime.

I got enough to deal with this lifetime. I can't worry about those past lives. Like, I again, I believe everything's a lesson. You're learning lessons all the time. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to keep it really simple for myself. I'm going to learn the lessons this lifetime. They probably relate to past lives also, but I don't have time. Jonathan, do you have experience with people in past life regressions? Is that a thing in your world that has existed? I'm not saying you. I'm saying you know a lot of people. Yes, I've heard of these, and I know people who have dabbled in them, and I think that... I mean, I've had them done to me. I'm not being shy about that information. I'm just curious, your take on it. My take is that the most important thing

about a past life regression is how does it impact you in the current time period? And if it can shed more light on a pattern that you're experiencing now and a behavior that you have now, then great. If it's solely isolated to some story that may or may not be true based on that person's interpretation of it, then I don't see the value. But what does come up for me is like, if I was a peasant or if I was a street merchant in London in the 1600s, how is that related? your mustache would be out of control. I would have, it would twirl. How does that relate to what I'm going through right now?

And can I bring back something from that? We all are existing in some form of archetypical experience. And there are similarities. There are themes. There are patterns to our existence. And if that can be explained to me from some story, I'm into it. I do want to say for myself, one thing that I have learned, I spent the better, I don't know,

know, 10-ish years of, 10, even more, probably 15 years of my spiritual journey, actually being in spiritual avoidance, you know, exploring all those past lives as a distraction, going to the drum circles, doing the ayahuasca. Like, a lot of this was just like, I didn't know how much my younger cells had internalized trauma. And disassociation was one of my, you know, go-toes. and it was like, oh, great, we're going to go meditate and, you know, go off here. So I do know for myself that it was, it fed into my propensity of disassociation and leaving at first. That's really fascinating. You said that. I was actually talking about that with my therapist, my regular therapist, who knew that psychotherapy was the most boring thing about me in terms of

the people that I see to try and heal me. But we were talking about this and disassociation, we've actually talked about a little bit on this podcast, you know, that's a real science thing. It's a thing. That's where I, you know, just in my personal journey, feel like I come to all my out there stuff very honestly. You know, it is hard earned. You know, when I had, I mean, I do. I'm a person who has chronic pain, you know, I have trauma that stored all sorts of, you know, nooks and crannies all about me and it'll make itself known really at any given time, you know, in any different part of my body. When this started happening more and more, and when walking and driving became difficult because of the pain I was having, I did a crazy thing. I went to a brand new Western doctor that I've never seen before.

And I was just, I told him very little about me. I gave him my symptoms. I mean, I had like, my gums were bleeding, like all sorts of things. And he said it's a past life issue. No, he didn't. He was a very, he was a lovely man, but he was exactly what I wanted. He was a 65-year-old white Jewish dude. You know, who went to medical school back east.

And he was really lovely. I gave him all my symptoms. I didn't keep anything from him. I told him, I know I have a thyroid condition, you know, and I've had it, and here's this at the other. I told him I have a complicated psychiatric history. And this man did the workup of all workups. And by that, I mean, he tested me for things that I literally told no one I was being tested

for. He tested me for cancer, leukemia. He tested me for, well, he couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. because based on these symptoms, like nothing was sounding good. You know, he asked a bit about my life. He did a very good job. He did a very good workup. And I know that I'm in a very, you know, privileged place.

And it's also devastating that you have to drop a couple thousand dollars to try and figure out what's wrong with you. Because many people, most people live not having the ability to do that. So several thousand dollars of tests later, which were not covered by insurance because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. there was nothing wrong with me medically that he could tell. Yes, I have a thyroid condition. And that's literally all I needed to know. I needed him to confirm for me that this was not the path. The path was not to now go to a different specialist. The path was not to go to a gastrointestinal doctor. The path was not to go to a dermatologist. Like that was not the path. The path was to know

that what was wrong with me was that, I mean, what we call it is adrenal. failure. It, you know, that's in, you know, in holistic circles, we call it, you know, it's the, it's workaholism is what it is. It's extreme stress and anxiety bearing down on every part of your body and your body will just shout as loud as it can. And sometimes it'll get quiet and you'll think, oh, I figured it out and then it'll come back. So that's sort of, you know, for me, entering the world and continuing to enter the world of, of going to, I see an alopathic doctor who, you know, takes care of all the Western things, but being able to say there are things that happen in my body and in my mind that need a different

kind of support. And I always felt I was born in the wrong time. I always felt I was living in the wrong time for all sorts of reasons, you know, because when I read Camus, I was like, I should have been a North, you know, a North African princess so that I could meet Camus. You know, I had all sorts of identification with the other. But that's more what it feels like when I've gotten, you know, to embrace energy work and especially to get to embrace this kind of healing stuff, you know, as a scientist. We may have to have Elizabeth back because we didn't even get to cord cutting. We didn't even get to cord cutting. Well, I think before we let Elizabeth escape this conversation. I don't want to go. We could do this for hours. I have questions for you, Mayam.

Elizabeth, why don't you tell people how to start to develop an intuition? So I can only speak from my experience. Here's the thing from what I know to be true, Jonathan, is that when one is looking for an answer outside of themselves and the one thing that's going to make it happen, you tend not to find it because what I have learned is it's multi-layered. You know, it's like knowing what is true for you. And it's the same with any pregnant person. person who gives birth. Everything really does come back to birth for me. It's like this well-oiled clock or machine. It's like, you know, you get this little one circulating that gets the big one to go, that gets this other thing to, it's like it all starts to move together, and it's not just

one thing. And what had happened for me, I spent so many years, like searching, you know, following Amma for a while, you know, doing the drum circle, again, the ayahuasca, this, that, And then all of a sudden what happened for me, I had it all along, but I thought it was going to look a certain way. That was my biggest failure was thinking I know what it's supposed to look like because all the books said you're going to hear something or see something or like, you know, where's the technicolor? You know, where's the big Vegas arrow pointing? This is it. It didn't happen for me. It was much more subtle for me.

And I think when I started to acknowledge that the somatic body was real, the body. the body of see here, smell, touch, taste of the non-physical senses was real. I started to have a felt sense on the inside of that, as I said earlier, and then it started to come around me and I started to feel safe. I started to have a relationship with it, and then I started to learn what my language is and who I was as a unique human being. And for me, I am learning, I don't think I am psychic. I actually think I'm a big observer. And I see patterns. You know, you go back to numbers, and it's also for me nature. I'm seeing birth and death. I'm seeing beginning, you know, pre, beginning, middle ends and afters. I am constantly,

seeing patterns. And I'm watching where things will land within a nervous system. So where's the intuition in that? It's the trust that I have in being held and being in relationship with what that is for me. It's the trust in knowing I'm not in charge and there's something bigger holding me. and in that I can trust that I might make a mistake and I'm still going to be held so I can listen to it knowing it won't be perfect. So I think there's many layers to it for me. I think that's beautifully said. And what I can say from being a person who literally was on the other side of this lady with no idea what she was

doing or what we were, you know, really embarking on. I can say that Elizabeth also, she has led by example. So what are some of the things I would say that Elizabeth has indirectly taught me in order to find that instinct? I know you were asking her, but I'm taking it like you were asking me. I'm always asking you. Finding a person who is a guide is one of, like, I don't see this as something I could have necessarily done. alone. I think there were parts of it that I could have done alone, but having someone who is guiding you, I need to be told what to do. And I think a lot of people search for instinct the same way that they searched to feel like they knew what they were doing in the first place. So what Elizabeth has

taught me is that I have to be open. I have to be open to not knowing and to trusting someone else, which is exactly why I have all the ailments that I have is because I have a trust problem. But I would say that Elizabeth has taught me. I mean, she's led by example. Pausing. Breathing. I don't think I had had a minutes quiet, really in my life, until she made me, you know, sit on the table and work on me. Like, finding those quiet places is when we get back to the natural state that we exist in, which is a human being and not a human doing. Elizabeth has also taught me to prioritize my healing and also be open to the places where I don't prioritize it because it takes me a long time sometimes. And that's also part of my stubbornness is part of my

journey too. So that's, I think, what I see as Elizabeth's teaching me to have my instinct. You know yourself well enough, Mayam, to know you need someone to tell you what to do sometimes to find it. Yeah. You know. And, And in Chinese medicine, this one's always stayed with me, that yin yong balance, it's like you you have a vessel, you have a boundary to hold the water. If you have a vessel with no water in it, you just have a vessel, right? If you have water with no vessel, the water just goes everywhere. It's like that container, that being held, that boundary that the water comes up against

to then move to another place that comes up, you know, it's that flow that starts to happen. You know what? It's different for everybody. Thank you, Elizabeth. Oh, that was really nice. Thank you for having me. We should have her again. Cord cutting.

Who doesn't want to hear about cord cutting? Thank you so much. What did you think? I think there's a lot of future episodes. I think she needs her own podcast. Instead of Ask Miami Anything. She makes me happy. And instead of you might need helpivs, we'll do, we might need more

podcasts if people don't fully understand the somatic experience of the non-physical world. What? That's not self-explanatory? The energy of the nervous system. Same. Fasting before chemo. Building intuition. Energy healing.

Holding space. The mirror neuron system. The social nervous system. A couple words I don't even know. She knows a lot more. I think she speaks Sanskrit. Everyone speaks Sanskrit that does that work. It's a prerequisite.

She's awesome. I also love that her journey is, you know, she did. She went a very conventional route in life. Like that was what she thought was going to be her life. And she started having dreams about babies. She just went to become a midwife to satisfy the dreams. So she would know what to do when the babies were dropped into her hands in the dreams. I mean, if that was the case, then I would go to flight school.

I often have dreams that I'm flying. That's really? What I hoped is that we made some of these, some of these concepts sound a little bit less crazy. Because Elizabeth is, she's an intelligent woman, she's a scientifically minded woman, she's a woman who has a licensed midwife, who has a license, she has a birthing center.

Like, she's entrusted with things. She's like a real person. And I think a lot of people feel that, individuals who talk about these things are really fringy, maybe unreliable people or, you know, people who like have to do that for a living. She's very serious about the work that she does and she's very serious about the impact that it has. You know, she's very humble. She's very modest about it.

She's a very serious energy worker. She's like a, she has power. She got power in her hands. She has power with her presence. She's a very serious energy worker is something that not that many people have said. I just picture her taking her little energy briefcase and going downtown Manhattan to... She's made a career out of understanding the human body and the human nervous system, and in particular, the journey from, you know, the prenatal world to birth and beyond.

Here's what I'll say. And it connects to our episode with Eliza where we're talking about chronic pain. And Elizabeth was talking about capital T trauma and lowercase T trauma. Everyone goes through something in life, many things often that cause us to have shock, cause us to have big emotions, cause us to have lowercase trauma, and some of us have uppercase trauma. And without some witnessing, some processing, I'm not saying it has to be in any particular modality, but without working that through, that stuff doesn't go anywhere. And it just kind of gets stacked under everything else that we're doing.

Well, the idea is that some people have a set of coping mechanisms which help them move that trauma through their bodies in ways that they may not even think about. And other people just absorb it, don't move it fully through. move on to it and then build coping mechanisms around that and you don't even... Usually they just suffer, though. You know, they have unexplainable pain. I mean, I don't mean that like a bad thing. They have unexplainable pain. They can't sleep.

They have all these ailments. They get diagnosed with all sorts of things and nobody can figure it out. Often though, I'd say more often than not, those people are living with trauma. And also, what I'm suggesting is that it might not be chronic pain and sleep immediately. It might be, oh, I have this. Oh, that shit will build. That's what I'm talking about is the continual and gradual process of trying to keep going forward in life. Yes.

Keep standing up straight. Oh, the body gets louder and louder. It's like an unruly toddler. Like it'll start with like, Mama. Mama. And then it'll be like, okay, she's not responsible. I'm going to tug. I'm going to tug at her skirt.

And then all of a sudden, all the kitchen cabinets are unpacked and the pots and pans are on the floor. And the child is laying on the floor in the middle of Target. And everyone's like, why don't you know? how to parent. Well, that pretty much sums up the episode. That was the episode. No, super, super grateful for Elizabeth spending time with us. I mean, there are many other things I could talk to her about, namely, cord cutting. Cord cutting.

And placenta eating. And placenta eating. We're going to post resources on biolic breakdown.com. Not for cord cutting and placenta eating. But for all the other scientific terms that were discussed today, and we're going to try to bridge some of this. It's older than the science that we consider old. But it does feel like in some ways the fringes of Eastern philosophy and energy work and mindfulness

are current science is catching up or proving some of these facts. Oh yeah, which makes, which makes, you know, crotchety old hippies like you and me very annoyed. I'm not annoyed. I'm happy that these things are being explained. I'm happy and also annoyed because like... Previously, my parents were like, what the heck are you talking about? And now I'm like, look, the science. Now they're like, we still hate it, but at least we know it's.

It's true. There's a big shift in the last 25 years. I find tremendous legitimacy in Eastern traditions and Eastern medicine. And I did not need, look, I know for FDA reasons, you need certain things proven for it to move into different phases, blah, blah. But like, I've had psychiatrists say to me, have you tried St. John's Wart? Which is a, you know, something that 15 years ago people would have been like, that's poppycock. Is that a word? I just became John Mullaney.

Not a word that we. that we use. 15 years ago, 50 years ago, like St. John's war, this is now a regular psychiatrist, like an MD. And soon he'll be telling you, go out and cut those cords

from your last relationship because they're blocking your... So this is a subject for another episode. A lot of this is language. You know, when someone, if a therapist says to you, forget about him, move on, he's just not that into you.

He's not available. the holistic community says, let's do a cord cutting ceremony. To be continued. Everything is, okay, yeah, to be continued. Everything's relative, is what Jonathan was about to say. From my energetic breakdown to the one I hope you never have. We'll see you next time.

It's my and biolics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One, fix you. And now she's going to break.