the bossbabe podcast - 371. Retreat Debrief: Deep Somatic Work, Kundalini, Nervous System Rewiring + Connecting in Marriage After Having a Baby

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Let’s do a full life catch up today w/ Natalie! It’s been a few weeks since she’s picked up the podcast mic and it’s time to share where she has been. Natalie’s sharing all about her past few weeks, how she’s been rewiring her nervous system, deets on her 4-day retreat with her husband, and so much more. It’s a raw + REAL episode including insights on manifestation, sex magic, somatic work, kundalini practices and beyond. You are going to love this conversation!! TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro To The Episode 00:53 - Coffee Talk + Full Transparency 04:05 - Where Has Natalie Been the Last Few Weeks? 06:23 - The Doubts and Emotions Natalie Has Been Feeling 08:48 - 4-Day Retreat Insights + Details 11:20 - What Natalie Discovered About Herself 17:16 - Rewiring the Nervous System 21:59 - Takeaways on the Retreat 26:53 - Closing Thoughts RESOURCES + LINKS Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Natalie’s new FAVORITE OBSESSION – Gloci, a daily beauty supplement to transform your skin and gut from the inside out. Click here to get 15% off your order! FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

are you going to share on the podcast? And instantly I was like, no, I'm not sharing. It feels like something I want to keep private. And then I was making my coffee this morning and I thought, you know what? I talk about full transparency. Why would I not share, you know, this experience that I've been through that has really fundamentally shifted me. It feels like we're not connecting and I'm not just talking about sex, but I mean like we're not connecting on that deep intimate level that we used to and I was like what is this what is going on I felt unhinged you guys I said I was gonna go all in like I'm gonna share the real the real because behind the scenes I'm pretty woo woo

welcome back to the boss way podcast I am Natalie Ellis I'm your host for this episode. And okay, I wasn't going to record this, so let me set the scene. I took a couple weeks off of work. I got back onto our stand-up yesterday and our team was saying, how are you feeling? I was saying, yeah, I'm feeling great. I needed that retreat more than I knew. I needed that. And they were like, oh, I can't wait to hear more about it. Are you going to share on the podcast and instantly I was like no I'm not sharing it feels like something I want to keep private and then I was making my coffee this morning and I thought you know what I talk about full transparency and I've been really open about my journey the last couple years especially why would I not share you know this experience that I've been through that has really fundamentally shifted me.

And so here we are. I just poured, if you're watching on video, I just poured the biggest raw milk cappuccino. And I also have my Glossy. I am obsessed with it. I'm going to put my link in the show notes. It'll give you 15% off. It's so freaking good. It's a skin routine you can drink.

It's got probiotics inside of it it's amazing but you know what I love the most this is so niche but when I'm drinking coffee as well as glossy so it's got like a light lemon taste but it also has the tiniest bit of spearmint in it completely gets rid of all of the coffee taste in your mouth I know that is so niche and specific but it makes your mouth just feel really fresh even when you're drinking coffee and I'm like I'm a details person that detail matters to me so anyway that's where we're at and that's what I'm drinking right now and I've I've wrote down a couple notes of things that I'll share but the way I want to approach this is honestly just like okay

if I was catching up with a friend what would I be saying and that's how we're going to approach this episode so I'm going to talk all about the retreat that I just attended and what that really has done for me and the shifts that it has brought upon me because it has been really significant you guys so okay so before we dive in I also want to let you know about a little thing that I'm doing so you've probably heard of Brendan Bouchard especially if you're in the coaching and personal development industry he is absolutely incredible he has been my business mentor and friend for years and really helping us build Boss Babe behind the scenes and I'm really really excited because once a year Brendan and I host a really special call for coaches and it is coming up we're going to show you exactly

how to build a really successful coaching business in 2024 it's completely free you're invited and we're going to show you the simple proven framework used by world-class coaching experts so you can really consistently attract and sign dream clients who are willing to pay what you charge and deliver really really great results to keep your clients for the long haul this is something I feel like people don't talk about it's well it's all well and good learning how to sign clients but if you're not getting them results and no one's re-signing with you there's kind of a leaky bucket in the funnel right and so we're going to teach you what it really looks like to

keep your clients from the long haul so whether you're brand new to coaching or you're actually already an established coach but you're wanting to go to the next level this would be amazing for you it'll be about an hour we'll walk you through things step by step so if you want to sign up it's totally free go to bossbabe.com slash framework to join us that's bossbabe.com slash framework to grab your spot all right so let's dive in so a couple weeks ago I flew to the UK, actually about three weeks ago, and one of the big purposes of flying there was Stephen and I had enrolled in a mastermind together and there's two retreats that are part of that mastermind. I am such a big advocate of investing in myself.

I invest in masterminds, retreats, coaching, therapy, courses. I invest so much money in my personal development, my business development. And with my relationship, it's no different. And speaking quite honestly, Stephen and I have been feeling just different since we had Noemi. You know, we're coming up Noemi's second birthday next month, which is wild. And we go through seasons of being so intimate and connected and other seasons where it feels like we're just tag teaming and we're like housemates and not really, you know, intimate in our relationship.

And it's, it's really common seasons, you know, seasons where it feels like Noemi's not sleeping. It feels like we're not connecting. And I'm not just talking about sex, but I mean like we're not connecting on that deep, intimate level that we used to before we had Noemi. And we both had recognized, hey, it feels like some months

things are a 10 out of 10 amazing. And some months we're like passing ships. We're working, we're taking care of Noemi. It's like tag teaming a lot. We know we want to have more babies and we also know how important our relationship is to each other and we just decided okay if we are really serious about our relationship being the most important thing we have to invest in it and so we invest in this mastermind so that we could both create intentional

time together and be facilitated together and learn some new things together and yeah that was the the big intention of it so I was really excited to go to this retreat but I was really really nervous because we hadn't we've never left Noemi the two of us um and so we were leaving here with my sister-in-law and my cousin who listen I trust them beyond belief Noemi absolutely loves them I'm so grateful that I have family like that so we were we have a house as you guys know in the countryside in the cotswolds in the uk so we were flying in a few days early so no i mean go get accustomed to that house again and then our family was coming down and we were driving up to this retreat and this all landed around the same time as the solar eclipse and i I feel like, I don't know, that just threw me off.

And I think also knowing that I was going to this retreat, my nervous system started to recognize something was happening. My body started to recognize something was happening. And it felt like I was having so many emotions rise to the surface. And I was like, what is this? What is going on? I felt unhinged, guys so the week leading up to it I felt all the feelings about leaving Noemi I felt so anxious and then I just started to feel

really sad really upset I just was having waves of so much emotion and definitely was projecting some of that on Stephen like you know um I don't really want to go with this with you like it feels like I don't want to leave Noemi I don't feel great in myself like I don't know that I want to spend a whole four days pouring into our relationship I feel like I need time alone like that's what was coming up for me and I was just like really feeling it really really feeling it to be totally honest with you and when I was in the UK I decided I was also going to take a break from work and I deleted the apps off my phone and of course I was still doing certain calls but I really we didn't have any child care and it was really just doing the bare bones and I think slowing down a lot also all of it being in the countryside where my nervous system feels most

relaxed plus the eclipse plus knowing I'm going to this retreat it just started to let so many things that I didn't know were there start to bubble up to the surface and I'm like okay let's see this feels like it's going to be a ride so it was meant to be a three-hour drive there the the trains run strikes was actually a seven-hour drive which was a whole thing in itself and so we got there late I'm feeling really frazzled and we get there and it feels like all these couples are just like head over heels in love with each other and so connected and Steve and I are like we are fucking exhausted we haven't slept in days we're jet lagged they had a seven hour drive like there's just a lot going on for the two of us and already I'm looking

around the room comparing myself like oh you know is this really for me should I even be here maybe I need a retreat on my own so I can just recharge on my own maybe this isn't what I need right now so like all this stuff was coming up and now I just really recognize it for what it was and I'll get into that a bit more later so yeah all of this started to come up. So it was a four-day retreat and it was just set in the most beautiful, beautiful place. It was on 300 acres. It was just so beautiful. You could feel the history of this place. It'd been in the family, this, I mean, it was kind of like a country estate I guess it'd been in the family for 87 generations and you can just imagine the kind of history that a land like that has and what's really beautiful

is the family was really quite spiritual and put a lot of let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi you know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting

organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe took a took a lot of the history of that and um just really put a lot of thought into the energy that that place is going to hold and the kind of transformation it's going to facilitate and they had so many elements that was amazing like they had this arch of transformation it was this old uh big stone arch that you walk through with alpha and omega signs on and and they say you know

when you walk through that the intention when we were putting this together and building it with these um this old brick was that when you walk through it you really are claiming the next the next transformation that you're going through and every little detail of this place was absolutely incredible and so that first day that we get there steven and i and listen i'm gonna get a bit woo woo with you guys i said i was gonna go all in like i'm gonna share the real the real shit because behind the scenes, I'm pretty woo-woo. I know I talk about business a lot, but behind the scenes, I'm pretty woo-woo. So Stephen and I, that first night, there was a ceremony where we set up our temple together, which was basically just the space we'd be in, in the retreat. There was so many of us in the

room. It was this really big room, but each of us had our own like sacred space, set our intentions for what we wanted to get out of it and then we did this fire ritual it was beautiful and I remember walking through that circle of transformation that first night and really my intention being I'm ready to step into the next phase of myself whatever that looks like and I didn't have any idea what that looked like, but I've been feeling for a while that something's brewing. And so that was my intention. We did this beautiful fire ritual and we had so many ceremonies and all the things. So yeah, so the first night was that and there was definitely a lot of crying. Like I felt like I was crying and I didn't fully

know why. And then day two is when it all unraveled for me and we did a lot of really deep somatic exercises and deep somatic processing and it really hit me on that second day how much I've been holding being totally honest how like I've just held and I've been holding a lot and over the past couple of years I have felt like there hasn't been a lot of space for me to have emotions or express like you know I've shared a lot about going through the business changes like that was very challenging and I really the whole time would pride myself on bringing my best self to those conversations or reacting in a way that I would be proud of. And that's all well and good. But I didn't realize that that and so many different experiences that I've had, like, you know, taking over a business that was really not doing very well at all when I took it over.

And completely reworking the whole team the whole offering like all of that plus you know coming out of going through postpartum coming out of postpartum there's been a lot going on I got some really really hard family news a few weeks ago and there's just been a lot a lot a lot going on and I didn't realize how much I'd kind of just been telling myself that I was fine and pushing all of these emotions down when actually I wasn't feeling fine at all and that second day of the retreat going into so many of those embodiment practices expression exercises deep somatic processing started to bring up all of this old stuff that I didn't realize was there. And I mean, I'm talking stuff with my birth, pregnancy, postpartum,

my relationship, business, business partnership, like all of it. And so many different kinds of emotions that I had just repressed and pushed down and you know even with work I hold a lot of space for a lot of people I host a lot of CEO mama retreats where I'm facilitating a lot of the time and holding space you know we run a lot of programs where I'm facilitating I'm holding I do it for a lot of family members team members it just, it's been a lot. And this was the first time in a long time that I felt like I didn't have to hold for anybody else. And I just got to fully unravel and be in my own expression.

And that was absolutely incredible. And I also, I had this realization of how much I don't necessarily tip tap into my full expression you know growing up there wasn't a lot of place for me to have emotions in the household that I grew up in it was a very very turbulent house and there was a lot of shame around certain emotions or there wasn't space for certain emotions because they were already being taken up if that makes sense so it was it I started to really realize yes I've been pushing things down and I also for growing up didn't have a lot so I kind of became quite stoic and quite

able to just get on with things and not let things like really affect me and all those and all that but actually underneath all of those layers and I feel like the past couple of years has been such a process of me de-layering underneath all of those layers was a lot of expression and was a lot of emotion and I feel like I fully emptied out my body that's the best way I can describe it I fully emptied out my body of all the stuff that I'd been holding for so long and it was fucking hard like really hard that first couple days I think I cried non-stop it was just challenging to just feel it all and to let every emotion complete and not have to like jump out of something midway because I need to feed Noemi or take care of this or take

care of that or like there was none of that there was no distraction it was purely just me and even though it was a couples retreat I'm really glad that so much of it was individual and individual processing because I really know I needed that and for me and Stephen to come into a place of connection that we wanted to be in I think we both needed to do our own individual work and have that space like we were both just saying one of the mornings sitting having coffee and breakfast without a baby screaming at us like yes we love our daughter and it's been so long since we've had breakfast just the two of us and that is a conscious choice that we made because I only wanted a certain level of child care and I have really wanted to spend every week and hour with my baby that is a conscious choice

and it was just really nice to sit there and have this space, just the two of us. So yeah, it felt absolutely incredible. And I definitely just had this feeling of the last couple of years, I feel like have really worn me down and I have worked so hard to turn things around. And at the same time, I just wonder, did I neglect part of myself in the process you know I was doing the therapy I was doing the coaching I was doing the things and I didn't really have space to take a lot of time to reflect for me because so much of it was so much of my life changed and needed change in the business and just lots of things changed and I just realized you know what I think I think my light went out a little bit and so that was just really beautiful to realize and

to be able to see glimpses of it coming back so that was really really incredible um like I said it's always really powerful to just drop into the body and work through those emotions that we know the body holds we know we've heard the body keeps to go the body holds all of this the body is so intelligent that when we get our head out of the way and really drop in and do that work it's powerful and another big thing for me was um rewiring my nervous system you know before I took over the business and made the changes that have been really great for my life before that the business was a lot and there was a lot going on in there let's put it that way and my nervous system constantly felt like it was on high alert and wasn't safe and I grew up in a very chaotic household and I had to do so much work to rewire my nervous system

to not be wired for chaos and I feel like that's been an ongoing journey for me and I have gotten the business to a point now where it really doesn't feel chaotic it actually feels so rhythmic and so good but I still felt like my nervous system was a little jacked up from just all the stuff that it went through. And almost like things feel really, really good and have felt really good for a long time. But I think my window of tolerance had changed and almost shrunk. And I wasn't allowing myself to really feel and enjoy how good things had gotten. I had been in a place where I was kind of used to walking on eggshells and now I'm not and my window of tolerance was very different then

and I was realizing that and doing a lot of rewiring over that weekend of actually things are really good and I'm really proud of the work that I've put in and where we've gotten to. And that's just work too. There's like so many facets outside of that. Just the whole way that I feel like I've rejigged my life. And I really need to expand my window of tolerance again so that I can let things feel really good. So that I'm not feeling in scarcity or I'm just not going back to that old patterning which I can see creep in sometimes I can see that fear creep in sometimes I can see those old patterns creep in and all of

this is a practice none of us are perfect and there's no real destination to get to but I really realized that I was rewiring a lot of my nervous system over that weekend and that was really powerful work and actually and I'm like sharing this before it's fully formed so I'm just putting it out there listen I told you I'm chatting to you as if we're just like best friends sitting having coffee I really feel called to do more work with the nervous system I have went through so many of my own iterations of rewiring my own nervous system growing up I had no idea what it even felt like to have a calm nervous system because I grew up in such severe chaos and with a lot of trauma and things like that and I didn't really learn what it a calm nervous system felt like till I was in my 20s till I started doing a lot of really really

deep work and I feel like as how like as life's evolved and honestly gotten better I feel like I'm constantly rewiring my nervous system to hold more abundance to hold more happiness to hold more peace to hold more joy and that has been a really beautiful journey for me and it was really great to see how far I'd come and how powerful the nervous system is and it's interesting because I've been doing like retreats and work like this for a long time but it's not always integrated and landed like I remember I did a Joe Dispenza week-long advanced retreat um quite a few years ago now and one of the big downloads I got there was you're gonna work with entrepreneurs with the nervous system and I was like well I don't know what that means

so I just kind of put it on the back burner. And I got that same download again this time round. And I'm still figuring it out what it means. But I've been definitely on a journey the last few years of trying to understand the nervous system intricately. And I'm doing even more work like that now. I've enrolled in a few more things to really intricately understand because I know how to do it for myself. But I always want to help other entrepreneurs with this where I really see themselves creating the same patterning over

and over and again because of their nervous systems or they don't have the freedom that they want because it's just not even available to them internally so it's reflected externally and I want to be able to take the work I've done on my own nervous system and share that with others so I'm putting that out there as like it's not a formed thought and maybe it's not for a while but I do think that is going to form part of my work I think the nervous system as an entrepreneur and when we talk about money and safety and growth is such a massive part of all of this and we cannot talk about having freedom-based businesses without talking about having freedom in the body and I think that comes from the nervous

system so that was a really big thing for me and it felt like I could integrate a lot of stuff that I did with Joe Dispenza and then speaking of Joe Dispenza so his retreat was absolutely amazing and he brings a really scientific approach to all of the spiritual stuff and so he has you in your your meditations do a lot of kundalini um energy work and chakra work and things like that but he describes it in a very scientific way like one of the ways he talks about moving energy of your body into your pineal gland is actually moving spinal fluid up into your pineal gland and when you're able to move it it kind of knocks on the door of the pineal gland and then when it goes

through that's when you have those false spiritual experiences and I had that at Joe's and my life has never been the same I've been able to work with energy and move energy in such powerful ways since then and this retreats I would say the first two days were like just getting deep into shedding all of that emotion that I was holding and the second two days was like fully getting into the woo-woo we didn't take plant medicine this for this retreat and it was really just a lot of energy work and breath work and stuff like that when it comes to like the woo-woo stuff. But we did so much kundalini breathing. We did so much chakra breathing. We like went deep into the woo-woo.

And the experiences I had you guys were like. It's so hard to even put into words. I feel like I met God. I went into different dimensions. Like it was absolute insanity. And I've done a lot of plant medicine too so I've been there I've gotten there through those realms I've never gotten there purely through energy work or like kundalini breath work or chakra breath work it was absolutely insane and so while the first two were days were emptying out I would say the second two days were filling

up so really I feel like I filled up my body from such an energetic standpoint I just felt so alive and turned on by life and I just felt like my vitality came back like I would it felt like it was the perfect time for me to do all this work. I don't think I've been ready to just like fully process everything, rewire my nervous system and fill up. Like this was the perfect timing. So that was beyond,

like there's so much more I can say about that, but that was absolutely incredible. And again, just reiterated the power to me of our bodies. Like there was no plant medicine involved and to just get there through your own breath your own body your own energy just shows how much magic is out there that we don't eat that we can't even see but that we are capable of tapping into you all already know I'm so into manifestation and stuff like that I always feel like I've manifested everything that I've got and I've always been that I've got. And I've always been into manifestation.

And this just took it to a whole nother level. I mean, we were doing sex magic, which is, that's probably a whole different podcast. But that is a form of manifesting through sex and a lot of Kundalini stuff and chakra work. Like it was on another level. And I feel like I tapped into a whole different energy level that I didn't even

know was available to me like I've always been really interested in raising my frequency my vibration and manifesting from that place but this kind of work that we were doing just took it to a whole nother level so that was incredible and then beyond that Stephen and I just got to connect in such a deep way again not as parents but as husband and wife as human to human and it was absolutely incredible I'm so grateful that we took that time for ourselves to be able to drop in and connect and really speak about how the last couple of years has been for both of us and you know what we're excited about moving forward what we're manifesting together as a family what we both need individually that we're maybe not getting and it was just really incredible like we just spent all weekend as though we were like teenagers again like fully

in that honeymoon phase and it still hasn't worn off it's still still feels incredible and I'm really just glad that we put that time in to do that because it can be really tempting to just put your relationship on the back burner to deal with kids deal with business deal with day-to-day life you know like all this stuff and it just felt really good to not do that and it brought us so close and we just got to see each other on such a different level and tap into each other's spirit and what we both are wanting out of this season of life and what we want to build together. And it was really, really special. So overall, I'm so, so glad that I did it.

Every time I invest in myself like this, it pays off in dividends. And I feel like I could never have predicted going into this, what would have happened. But it was amazing. So if any of you have more questions on this, like, I don't know how woo-woo I can get on this podcast. I don't know where we're at. So maybe get back to me, but maybe leave a review and be like, we want the woo. But so there's so many places I could go but definitely I'm gonna really maintain this and take it levels deep on myself I'm really gonna deepen my own spiritual practice my own kundalini practice um go even deeper into the nervous system work and figure out how I can share with others what I've been able to do for my own nervous system so it's all

brewing something's afoot something's brewing but it just felt really great and then since then you know I've been kind of able on social I haven't I took a week another week off work essentially after that to just integrate and I haven't felt called to be on social media I've just felt like I'm in a really intra introspective is that the word introspective place where I'm just figuring out what I want and what brings me joy and who I am outside of motherhood and being a wife and being a business owner like who am I as this individual who has changed a whole lot over the last couple of years and that's where I'm spending my time right now is figuring out what brings me joy what lights me up beyond all of those titles that I wear and all of those roles that I sit in and so that's feeling really really good I'm just spending a lot of time investing in myself and it feels like

it's time so I hope this was interesting maybe it inspired you to tap into something like this for yourself it has got me so fired up about the retreat we're running um in the UK our CEO Mama retreats like it really has got me so inspired about bringing even more depth to what is already incredibly deep experiences but yeah I'm excited I appreciate you listening to me I hope that it's maybe inspired something for you and I'll see you next week all right bye you guys