The Resilient Mind - Your Nervous System Remembers What Your Mind Forgets - Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Dr. Arielle Schwartz is a licensed clinical psychologist and internationally recognized expert in trauma healing. She is a sought-after teacher and award-winning author of eight books, including The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook. Her work centers on applied polyvagal theory, which addresses the imbalances in the nervous system that underlie many mental and physical health conditions. As the founder of the Center for Resilience Informed Therapy, she teaches a mind-body approach to healing and shares practical mental health guidance through her writing, speaking, and online community.Connect with Dr. SchwartzFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/drarielleschwartz/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielle-schwartz-0756b62a/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arielleschwartzboulder/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5LUxnXbReV7I5cEzvb46sQTake action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So how can people learn to trust the healing process when progress can feel slow or nonlinear? Tending on the nature of the trauma. Can healing trauma change who we are attracted to and how we love? And do you think it's common for people to think that they have not had traumatic experiences? That were struggling in relationships. How would you define true resilient from a trauma-informed perspective? Welcome, Ariel, to the Resilient Mind podcast. We're super excited to have you here. The feeling is mutual. Thank you for having me.

So let's start with what got you into studying and working with trauma. Was there a personal experience that got you interested in it? Was there a moment that you realize that this is a very important topic and you wanted to dedicate your life to it? I think that working with trauma has been with me all along, although I think for a long time I didn't know I was working with trauma. if that makes sense. I know that personally growing up in my own adversities in childhood certainly paved the path and my mother is a psychologist. And I think that in many ways, her influence on me was to help me talk about hard things. And I watched her navigate her own healing journey and it inspired me. My mom and my father got divorced when I was very young. I was three with the very high conflict dynamic in our home. They were, you know, both remarried by the time

I was five. There was, or seven, somewhere in there, but basically it was a lot of upheaval in my early childhood. And I didn't know that to be trauma. I just know that it led me to feel unsettled and anxious and sometimes depressed and at risk as a teenager. But I didn't have to have the words of trauma or dissociation at the time. Fast forward, there were certain things that helped me to feel better, like yoga and practices that got me in touch with my body and certainly psychotherapy. And so I went into the field of psychotherapy, not specifically knowing I was going to work with trauma. But then, you know, when I started working with clients and their challenges and adversities and struggles. Trauma became a more common language in the field. And then I trained

in modalities that were specific for treating trauma. And all of the dots started to come together, not only about how I worked with others, but understanding myself better as well. And do you think it's common for people to think that they have not had traumatic experiences? And maybe they have normalized what happened in the past and then be like, oh, I, I'm okay, but it was actually a traumatic experience. Yeah, I love that question, and it certainly fits with my own share with you about not really having the understanding that what I was reckoning with trauma, right? And I do think that's quite common, that we might know that we're anxious or we're quick to get irritated or angry or that we're struggling in relationships, that

maybe sometimes we feel depressed. But we also, especially when the events of trauma, in childhood and they're ongoing and repeating, we just think this is what life is. We don't think about it other than that. And so, you know, having some language, especially around the different kinds of trauma, developmental trauma, or complex PTSD, has broadened out our understanding of what we might look at through the lens of trauma. And how would you define trauma? Well, I define trauma in a variety of ways, but maybe most simply that it's, and it's the, experience of an event or a sequence of life events that overwhelms our own coping capacity. So we are left with the symptoms of what we would refer to as post-traumatic stress as the kind of reviewing

or sometimes ruminating about the events of the past or anxiously anticipating the future and what's yet to come in ways that interfere with our ability to feel safe and grounded and present here and now. Sometimes we construct all of these ways that we avoid thinking about the past because we don't know how to cope with it still. And so we have our symptoms of trauma that we call re-experiencing symptoms or avoidance symptoms or vigilance about our environment, kind of a hyper awareness of what might still be unsafe for us. One other thing that I'll kind of name around this definition of trauma is that we can look at not only the trauma is related to the event or events out there, but really what we're talking about is how it impacted us on the inside.

So a definition of trauma is much more about our internal, overwhelming our own internal coping capacities. And two people or 10 people can experience the same event and not everyone is going to experience post-traumatic stress. And when you talk about healing trauma, one of the statements is one vagus nerve at a time. What does that phrase? truly mean to you. Sometimes I refer to it as one nervous system at a time, but we'll, you know, get even more specific, one vagus nerve at a time. So, boy, there's a lot to unpack in that statement. So if we look at how trauma impacts us and how the symptoms linger post-traumat, you know, post-the-event, one of the biggest ways that they linger in us is within our autonomic nervous

system within the nervous system where we're either stuck in states of sympathetic activation, fight and flight and worry and being on guard, all of that kind of hyper arousal type symptoms. But our autonomic nervous system has two primary branches and the other one is a parasympathetic branch, which in an ideal world allows us to deeply rest and digest and feel safe and nourished and all of that, that kind of quieting. From the perspective, of the polyvagal theory, and this is what will take us to the vagus nerve, polyvagal theory looks at the vagus nerve, which is always going to involve some parasympathetic expression, some downregulation of our system or quieting or stillness quality. And sometimes we can move into

that immobilization into rest and digest. But sometimes that parasympathetic nervous system, driven by the vagus nerve, takes us into a kind of overly parasympathetic state of collapse, shutdown, fatigue, depressed, hopelessness, powerlessness. So the vagus nerve, what is that? The vagus nerve is our 10th cranial nerve. And it's the nerve that helps us regulate our autonomic nervous system into an out of parasympathetic and sympathetic states. It's a mind-body super highway of connection and communication.

And when we regulate or cultivate what we call vagal tone or the tone of the vagus nerve, we create more optimal well-being. And I'm going to want to touch on like how to do that. But before we get into that, one of the questions that I was really curious before meeting with you was when we talk about trauma, especially when it's unresolved, how does it quietly shape someone's identity, the way they make decisions, their sense of self-worth without them realizing? So when we look at post-traumatic stress, and we can speak about this when it begins in childhood, and we can also speak about it when it comes in later. But single incident traumatic events maybe don't impact our overall sense of self unless they are unresolved. If we don't have the support to navigate that, then the symptoms linger, and sometimes they stay with us for many, many years. But if we have support to navigate a single incident trauma, let's say,

It's an earthquake, a flood, a car accident, a fire, an act of violence. But we have the support. That event doesn't have to shape who you think you are, what you believe about yourself, what you believe about the world or your future, right? Because we've worked through the adversity. And we could talk more about how we work that through. But the challenge happens when there's a big event or maybe a whole string of events that keep happening repeated and chronic.

And we don't have the resources, the coping, the people, the support systems. In that case, we are still living inside of those post-traumatic stress reactions, even if we don't know it's trauma. And we start to experience ourselves as highly reactive. Maybe someone that doesn't handle hard conversations well. Maybe someone that retreats when things get a little bit overwhelming. maybe we're someone that is always going in kind of, you know, with that fight energy, right? We can look at the different ways that we respond, but the more that we're continuing to live in our trauma reactivity, the more that that shapes, this is just who I am.

This is what I believe about myself. This is what I believe about relationships. This is what I believe is possible for my future. And then that continues to run inside of us. And we actually often will recreate what we know because that's our attempt to resolve it, except that sometimes we are just stuck in patterns of recapitulation. And based on the people that you've worked with, why might someone resist changing from that pattern? I think that there's a certain amount of comfort in living inside what is known, right?

Even if we just look purely at the nervous system, the nervous system is built around conservation of energy. And one of the ways that we conserve energy is repeating something that's known because it's energy expensive to do something new. And it can feel scary to do something new. Even, you know, the problematic life or the problematic relationship can sometimes feel safer than doing something that feels new and uncertain. Yeah, and I'm trying to remember this quote. that I heard that like encapsulates that that will rather, like will prefer a familiar pain than an unknown potential of something positive happening. And that known gets us, like keeps us stuck where we are. That's right. It can keep us stuck in relationships, in jobs that, that we're

afraid to leave in patterns that we're repeating that we don't know how to get out of. Because stopping that and doing something new, even if we cognitively know it feels good for, for us might feel threatening at some level. For someone listening to this and understood what you have just said, and they're like, okay, how can I take my first step into the unknown? Or what could it be like a little maybe dip my toe into the water a little bit? What like what suggestion or advice would you have for? Here's the funny thing is that like the fear of the unknown is in many ways a, I mean,

I'll call it two things. One is like it's a bit of a mental construct. But that mental construct also then is drawing upon historical experiences of times in which maybe things didn't work out, times in which things were scary, times in which life was unpredictable. And so we also have this kind of bodily felt sense of, I don't really trust myself or the world that I can handle that challenge. And so when we're looking at building the capacity to try something new or do something different or step out of the known, right? We often use that metaphor of like, I'm holding onto the trapeze. I think there's another trapeze, but somewhere in between I have to

let go and trust. Even if you were on a trapeze, you'd have a safety net. In fact, I once did trapeze and we wore these, you know, belts and someone had a rope attached to us. So it was a soft lowering down when I missed the second trapeze. Like I didn't have a crash landing. And it's a kind of apt metaphor. here that when we're trying to let go of the ever-repeating known, in service of trying something new, we want to have our safety nets in place. And when we look at cultivating that from a psychological and also a neurobiological perspective, we actually need to sense the ground of safety that would be beneath us and that which would catch us. So from a trauma treatment perspective, trauma treatment typically occurs in a predictable set of phases.

And the first phase that we cultivate in trauma treatment is cultivating that sense of stabilization and safety. So we pay very close attention to the cues that let me know that it's a safe enough time now to heal, to do something new. Literally, we layer into the nervous system, to the cognition, to the felt sense in the body, the cues that let us know that now is a safe enough time to do something new. We find those cues in our environment through relationship. Therapy becomes one of those safety nets, right? We find any support systems that we can tap into and access that will provide that sense of it's safe enough. It's not going to be 100% safe. It's not. We don't know what's going to happen. But we create some predictability that serves as the solid ground so that we can let go of something that's not serving us.

You mentioned that few of the unknown being a mental construct. So for someone who's hearing the concept of the mental construct first, could you define that? And then the second part is talking a little bit about safety. You talked about the environment, but is it more like you're choosing the environment to create that safety? the other specific ways in which we can create that. So the first part, what is a mental construct? What we're really speaking about here is that our brains are wired to help us survive, to help us survive challenge.

And how our brain does that is it uses the information from the past to try and predict the future. Some research suggests that about 90% of what we believe is possible about our future is based on the past. I know, right? And sometimes, especially if we've lived through a lot of adversity, that sense of what's possible gets very restricted because all we see on that playing field of our future is all of the horrible, terrible things that have already happened. And that's what we expect is going to continue to happen. But why does our brain do this? It makes a lot of sense, right? I use this kind of funny metaphor, but you'll get it. Right? It's like, if I went into the woods, And here in Colorado, we don't really have too many dangers, but we do have mountain lions.

And unfortunately, and this is actually a very true story, in the last month, there was a woman that was running on one of the trails in Colorado. And she got killed by a mountain lion, right? And so we want to know where the dangers are. If there is a dangerous mountain lion out in our world, we want to know what's out there. right? And we also want to know that maybe I'm not going to go into that woods. Maybe I'm going to make different choices about, you know, if I am going to go out there, I'm going to go with a whole group of people because a group of people is a lot safer than going out there alone. And so using the information about where the dangers are is going to help keep us safe if indeed that danger is still

there. But here's the tricky thing. What our mind does, and this is that mental construct thing, is it generalizes. And the next thing that happens is that we basically assume that every woods has a lion. And then we start to avoid going out into the woods altogether, even though there are hundreds of trails out there that don't have an active, aggressive mountain lion, right? And so this tendency to overgeneralize, if we now bring it into a very relatable topic, because not all of us are dealing with mountain lions, but maybe you've been harmed in a relationship. Maybe we're experienced that relationships are risky because somebody once really hurt you. And then we make this generalization that all relationships could potentially hurt me. The consequence of that is that I start to avoid putting myself out there and being vulnerable in relationship.

And the more that I avoid relationships, the more that that actually confirms all relationships must be scary because I haven't challenged the belief that I've cultivated. that mental construct. And so how do we get out of that? Ultimately, we need to reenter into relationships that don't harm us. And therapy is a great place to experiment with that, right? Because when we go into a therapeutic relationship with someone who is literally trained in the healthy qualities that relationships can offer, we have this experience of allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and accessible to another person who's not going to hurt us. And we have to update like, ooh, not all relationships are harming. Some people are really kind. Some people are really generous.

Some people will allow me to feel safer and to know what's possible. And now that I know that that's possible here, maybe I test that in other relational spaces. Group therapy. Oh, right? Not, you know, other groups of people that are kind. And I expand. Maybe I go back out on a date again and I'm better able to judge who's going to be a hurtful person and who's going to be a kind, generous, warm, safe person to be vulnerable and open myself up to. And it expands from there. The other question that you asked in there is a big two-part question. If I remember it correctly, it's like, how do we cultivate that sense of safety? Right. Is it all external? Is some of it internal? It's both, right? Like, I want to know that I'm going to enter into external space.

that feel safe enough, that feel kind and generous and warm. I want to be around people that are going to be sources of kindness and safety and compassion. And internally, I can start to create changes on the inside that let me be a more predictable, reliable person for myself. So I learn to talk to myself more kindly. I learn to generate more self-compassion. I learned that I learned that I can cultivate an inner sanctuary of what safe feels like inside of me, even if the world around me is still not quite so predictable or still has problematic aspects. And when you're talking, one of the things I think of what I've heard is people that like either push through or just cut people off or say that they're never going to go into a relationship

again. And they think they're being strong. They think they are being resilient. How would you define true resilient from a trauma-informed perspective? I don't tend to take the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, which is kind of what you're alluding to here, like just push through, right? Like resiliency, when we really look more deeply at the research, and sometimes we do have to push through temporarily, but that's a temporary state. Like the willingness to persevere, the pushing through maybe helped you survive.

But that might have also been. been a trauma response or a survival response. Resiliency, if we look at the willow tree as an example, right, versus the strong oak that doesn't bend with the winds, right? Like the oak is going to be more likely to be uprooted or to be pushed down. Resiliency is a lot about flexibility, but it also has the suppleness to it. And when we look at that and what that really means for us as humans, there's a way in which we want to be more willing to be vulnerable, more accessible to our inner world in a way that brings in that kindness rather than just the strength. And so we might recognize that sometimes, yes, I needed that strength. I needed that push through. But can I also at

the end of the day rest? Can I sleep well at night? And I soften with myself and with my loved ones, right? If we look at a child, for example, and what helps a child feel safe, they feel safe when the adults around them help them process their inner world and help them navigate their emotions wisely, right? So if we tell a children, you know, don't cry or that's weak or, or you should just be able to handle this, right? The messages of pushing past, they might ultimately figure out how to survive But when other hard things happen in life, and they don't know how to wisely be with their own emotions, they never cultivated that emotional intelligence to be with something with support and to know that I can be vulnerable and that that's temporary.

It's going to hinder that ability to tolerate stress and to come back into recovery. And just thinking about what you said, like the Willow Tree example, I think if someone has experienced trauma or an emotional injury, if they don't want to use the trauma word, it's probably as if they bend a little bit, they feel like they're going to break. So that flexibility feels so unsafe, but it's just saying it's necessary. Yeah, it's absolutely necessary. And, you know, another metaphor that I find along those lines of, if I bend, I'll break is sometimes clients come in and they feel like if I open, up to my emotions at all, the entire floodgate is going to break. And the, you know, I'm going to have

to feel all of it at once. So when we speak about trauma recovery from a ground of safety, one of the other key elements of this is something that we call titration, which is that you don't have to feel all of it at once, right? You don't, you're not going to, you know, just because we are turning towards the storms that happen doesn't mean that we have to turn towards every storm that happened at once, that probably would uproot the willow tree, even a really well-rooted tree, the very flexible tree, right? But I think that the titrated approach, and I'll define titration for anyone that's like, what are you talking about, right? Titration is a term from chemistry. It refers to the mixing of two chemicals. So if we imagine, for example, an acid and a base,

you have, let's say, some baking soda and you have some vinegar. Now, when my son was little, we had some fun science project. I'm going to say like the third grade science project where we took a whole bunch of baking soda and vinegar and we made a volcano. Right. And you mix it all up and you shake it all up and the whole thing, you know, kind of overflows, right? Titration is when you take a spoonful of your baking soda and a dropper full of the vinegar. And you put a few drops of the vinegar on and it bubbles up and then it settles back down. Right. We don't get the big explosion. So from a. trauma healing perspective, what we invite someone to do is how much of that horrible, terrible event, that storm that you faced can you think about right now without feeling like it's going to blow you over, without feeling like it's going to break the dam and be too much. And we might think

just about one small part of the event. And then we process the emotions and we allow the sensations in your body to move through and it's going to bubble up and it's going to settle back down. And we do that from this ground of, I know that I'm safe now. I can literally look around this room. And I can see you and your smiling face and I can see the plants and the art behind me and whatever it is, right? Like I can find the cues that let me know. I can handle that emotion, that much of the sensation, that much of the memory. And I know I I'm okay. A question that came up to me is, I know like you have some workbooks around trauma. And so when we're thinking about processing emotions, going through this work, titrating the emotions,

do you always need to have someone who's able to create that safe space? Can you create that yourself? Does it depend with the person and the trauma? Kind of, yeah, I guess that is the question. Yeah, yeah. The first book that I wrote, which is called the Complex PTA, workbook was written with two purposes in mind. One is that it was written to make trauma-informed tools widely accessible, right? For about the cost of either your expensive latte or a few cups of coffee, right? Like the book is about $16 US dollars. It's very accessible. And what we know is that trauma-informed care can sometimes be hard to come by. Now, there are a lot of therapist in the world, and there's a lot of really good therapists in the world. But sometimes

starting with a book in the comfort of your own home, feels like the best accessible first step, where I can get to know myself, I can start to identify what is trauma, and maybe start to inquire about whether that might be shaping why I feel anxious or why I'm struggling in relationships. And then this question of, is just working through this by myself enough? Sometimes. And so, sometimes not. And the reason why I'm going to lean in towards sometimes not is that if the trauma was relational, if I experienced a wound interpersonally, somebody out there hurt me. I've started to experience that all people are sometimes, all people could hurt me. I don't trust anybody in the work. A therapeutic relationship is that opportunity to restore a sense of trust in another person

that then helps us to broaden that out to maybe there's good people out there that are trustworthy. And in the healing process, because there is talk therapy, but there's also other forms of therapy, somatic EMDR, why is the body such a critical doorway to healing that sometimes just talk therapy alone may not be able to access? So one of my colleagues and mentors Bessel van der Kolk wrote a book called The Body Keeps the Score. And that book, that came out in 2014 has been sitting in the top of the New York Times bestsellers list for 12 years now. It's pretty extraordinary, right?

He struck a chord in not only the therapist community, but the community of our world seeking to heal from trauma. And the community of the world who recognized that I've gone to therapy for years and I've talked and talked about my difficulties. but things aren't changing. And he started to illuminate both through science and anecdotal stories about really our experiences out in the world about what happens when we don't include the body and why the body is so important. What we know and, you know, honestly, I wrote my first book, the complex PTSD workbook, to accompany the body keeps the score. Like I literally had the body

keeps the score on my dining room table for the entire year as I was writing this book, right? And just really trying to give people the tools of like, how do you work through what happens in your body? So what happens in your body is that not only is there this event out there, but there's the felt sense inside of you in relationship to that event. And the felt sense is what comes with us into our lives, right? the event, it ended. It's over. But I still remember what that felt like. Yes, I have an image. Yes, I have a story and a narrative. In all honesty, what lives most strongly is the way that it impacted how I breathe,

the way that it impacts how I carry myself in the world, my posture, my willingness to make eye contact, my voice, all of these are felt experiences, the knot in the stomach, the jitteriness that I when I feel scared, the nausea that comes back up, the fatigue, all of these somatic experiences. And as clinicians, if we don't have the ability to help someone navigate not just the story, but the soma that accompanies the story, there's this beautiful phrase that one of my colleagues says, her name is Deb Dana. She also works with applied polyvagal theory in the therapeutic arena. And she says, the mind narrates what the nervous system knows. So we build these mental constructs and stories and narratives based on this felt experience in the nervous system and in the

body. So a somatic approach to healing basically says if I change what I'm feeling here in my body, I can update my mind. I can create a new sense of what's possible. So literally, by changing my posture, by changing how I'm breathing, by feeling in my body that the event is over, that I have new possibilities and choices available to me now, I ultimately can start to think about myself, my relationships, the world around me, and my future in a new way. So many thoughts. But the one that, like I was almost smiling, because I also teach communication skills. And recently we have started realizing that I did.

that past trauma impact, how you show up. And one of the things I've heard quite a bit is sometimes we know this information, or we know we need to have a difficult conversation, or you want to set those boundaries. And you know how to do it here. But your body, when the time comes, refuses. And so is that in alignment with what you're saying, where you're like we have to work through the body

because it's going to narrate what's coming here, as opposed to maybe the process that we are trying, that more information here is going to influence my body. It's such a powerful example. Literally, I was consulting on a case this morning where exactly that was happening. Every time there was the need to have that hard conversation, she froze, her mind went blank. She felt like she couldn't speak. She felt small inside, right?

All of those elements that basically bring us back into the trauma state, the physiology, the felt sense of that. And all the concepts and the ideas and what I wanted to say was not available from that place. And is there a somatic practice that we can practice at home? So if I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, that's me. I now understand that I have to curl my body down. Are there some effective ones that people can use at home? My most recent book, so the Complex PTSD Workbook came out in 2016,

My most recent book is the Polyvagal theory workbook for trauma, and that came out in 2025. And that whole book is filled with somatic practices that we can do to basically rewire the body towards health and resilience without having to relive the trauma. And I'll share a few practices from that book because I think they're going to be really beneficial for our listeners. So one of them is the practice that I refer to as embodied self-compassion. The reason why I emphasize the embodied part of this is that probably most of us have heard of self-compassion and maybe we've even read about its benefits. But if self-compassion is just a concept, sometimes it doesn't anchor in to create the meaningful change that we're looking for.

So when we embody self-compassion, we are also cultivating a new felt sense that accompanies the concept of, can I be kinder to myself? Can I speak to myself with more generosity and more softness and more loving awareness? And so to embody self-compassion, we can do something as simple as placing your hands over your own cheeks, right? Yeah, exactly. That's sweet. And what's nice about this as you hold your own face is that we know that the vagus nerve travels into the face, the muscles of the cheeks around the eyes, around the jaw, around the mouth, around the ears. And when we make contact with the face, we're giving this sensory feedback, even in the same way that we might hold a beloved child or a pet, right? Like imagine just like, oh, you're so sweet. I've got you.

this together and we're giving this feedback into the nervous system that I've got you. I'm going to hold you in that same loving way. And then we might add in a loving statement like even though sometimes I struggle, I know that I deserve loving kindness. We can repeat that as often as we need. Another version of this might be to place your hands over your heart or into a self-hug. And we're giving that sensory feedback. We're holding ourselves with kindness. And then we have to ask. And then we ask you. add in these words, like sometimes life can feel so hard. Sometimes I feel so stuck that I can still hold myself lovingly. Yeah. And even as we do just that to notice, what does that feel like on the inside? I'll share one more that I think is really powerful. And it kind of speaks to the other side.

Like sometimes when we look at compassion, we think of nurturance. But we also sometimes need what we'll call fierce compassion. When we look at the body, the body is sometimes, you know, keyed up. Like we're constantly on the lookout to how do I protect myself? And we want to honor that that instinctual impulse for self-protection is very smart. And let's imagine a scenario where no matter what you did back then, you couldn't protect yourself. Maybe you were in a harming situation and you couldn't set that boundary. Maybe you were in a situation where you couldn't leave, where you couldn't say no. Maybe it began as a child where no matter what you did, you couldn't get parents to stop hurting each other or to stop hurting you. And that leads us to feel pretty powerless. And in the body,

when that powerless comes over us, it shapes our posture. It shapes. our gaze, all of that shapes what we believe about ourselves, right? When you're in this shape, what is it that are the common thoughts? It's not going to make a difference. What's the point? And so from the bottom up, from the body to the brain, we can begin to give a felt sense of a new experience of ourselves, right? So one example would be to change the posture, right? To sit upright. Another example would be what happens if not only do I sit upright, but I actually push through my arms in such a way that says, no, stop, not again. I'm out of here. I have my voice now. Right. So going back to the example that you gave with communications, right, maybe I need to do

this in a safe enough space where I hear my voice, I hear my truth. I embody in this new empowered way, not in a way that's aggressive, not in a way that's forceful, but that lets me know that I have choice now, that even if I just change my posture and I imagine going into that situation of that hard conversation, what shifts in terms of being able to have mental clarity, being able to free my voice, being able to say, this no longer works for me? Here's what I'm going to ask for. Here's what I need. One of the other tools that is popular now and in general wellness is yoga.

But a question I have is, can yoga be unsafe for trauma survivors? And is there trauma-informed yoga that is sensitive to our past experiences? I love this question. So, you know, I've been a yoga teacher for 30 years. I've been a trauma-informed yoga teacher for a good chunk of that. I think, you know, honestly, I've always been a trauma-informed teacher before it became popular. And I'll share just a little story about this. And then we'll talk about when yoga is unsafe and versus safe. But when I first developed my own yoga practice when I was 19. I mean, I was introduced to yoga as a kid when I was seven.

But I developed my own yoga practice. I practiced like a lifeline of yoga when I was 19 because I was suffering a lot. I was suffering from anxiety. I was suffering from depressive thinking, and I didn't know that it was connected to trauma, but I just knew that I didn't feel good in myself. I carried so much shame. I carried so much self-doubt. It was challenging, right? It was very, very painful.

And a friend of mine kind of dragged me to a yoga class. And she said, I think this will help. I will tell you that at the end of that yoga class, I felt different. My mind was clear. I felt kinder. My body felt settled. I slept better at night. Even one class, my anxiety settled.

Now, of course, the next day I woke up and I fell anxious again. So I went back to yoga. And I started going back again and again until by the end of that year, I practiced every single day because I felt better every single time I practiced. Now, that was not trauma-informed yoga, but it was yoga that allowed me in a safe enough environment. And that's the key. I felt safe in that class to be voluble.

vulnerable to feel my emotions, to breathe, to move my body, and I consistently felt better. And I could do those practices on my own at home and they worked for me. Now, fast forward a few more years. I graduated from college and I got a job and I was working with youth at risk. I was working in a residential treatment center and I still had my own personal practice. and I would on breaks or, you know, sometimes in the morning, do a little bit of yoga just because we're all in the milieu, we're in the environment together. I wasn't even a therapist yet. I was, you know, just had my bachelor's degree here in the States, but I was working as a staff at the center. And the kids, I was 21. The kids were 14, 15, 16, and they were watching. What is she doing? And they would come up and say, can we do that with you?

And I said, okay, right, sure. And so by the end of that, I don't know, maybe like within two months, I started teaching classes. I wasn't officially a yoga teacher yet because I hadn't done my yoga teacher training, but I started teaching classes to the kids in the treatment center. And it was playful and we laughed and we roared like a lion or we hissed like snakes and we stood like trees and we would do these practices together. And at the end, we would do a shavasana and the kid or they would sit in meditation. And the other staff would come through and the therapist at the center would come through and they'd say, what did you do? You're all completely still.

And I was like, I don't know. I did yoga. And then I thought to myself, well, maybe I should figure out what I'm doing. So I went and did my yoga teacher training. And that same year, I started my training to become a therapist. And that was all when I was 22, 23. I did all of that and that, I started all of that in 1996. You know, fast forward 30 more years. I have now been teaching trauma-informed yoga. But like I said, the trauma-informed components were probably there for me all the way through because it relies upon feeling safe enough to play. It doesn't have to be too serious. The way that I teach is not about perfecting the posture or getting just the right alignment. It's about listening to your body, making the practice yours, right? Really fine-tuning so that you feel safe enough. And I think that sometimes the classes

that are not trauma-informed are about putting yourself in a posture and perfecting that. And it kind of sometimes can in itself become a reinforcer of some of the trauma-related internal dynamics. I have to be perfect in order to be loved or, you know, I have to do it that way because they're telling me to do it that way. Foundation of a trauma-informed approach to yoga is choice. The, you know, when trauma happens, we don't have choice. It happens to us. We don't have choice about that event and we don't have choice about very often what we get to do inside of that event. So a trauma-informed approach to anything, including yoga, you get to listen to your body. You get to say no at any point. You get to decide whether you want to opt in or opt out. If I introduce a breath practice, you can listen to

your body and see if that feels right for you. Now I'm like evaluating my past yoga classes. Can healing trauma change who we are attracted to and how we love? Oh, I love this question. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, speaking from personal experience, absolutely, right? I think about the people, I've been married this year, my husband and I will be married, 25 years. I am really proud of that. I'm really proud of that. And then I think of my dating experiences before I met him and how much in those early experiences I can look back now and see that what I was recreating in those early relationships were repeated patterns of relationships where I was drawn to people that weren't available. I was drawn to people that were dismissive of my

emotions. I felt insecure in those relationships because of the dynamic of the relationship in which I wasn't being seen or treated with utmost respect and kindness. And I didn't know I deserved more. The truth is, is that many of us can relate to that, right? Like how many of us have had some version of relationships in which we settled for less than what we truly deserve? And when I began to attend to my own trauma in therapy. And I give so much credit to the therapist that we're just so patient and so kind and helped me really listen to what I knew deep inside was not okay. And yet I let myself stay in those situations that weren't okay. And, you know, it helped me refine what was possible in relationship, helped me to heal and grieve the earliest ways in which painful relationships

with, particularly with my family, led me to internalize that maybe I didn't deserve more. And healing that opened up a new pathway where when I met the man that is now my husband, I sensed something different in him. I sensed his trustworthiness. I sensed his kindness. It took me, oh, at least a year and a half of dating him before I trusted. I probably tested him so many times because I was still not sure that I deserved all of that. Why don't you say the difference between intuition and the trauma responses?

Because I think talking about trusting that fits. right here. Yeah, it's so true. So what's challenging about the trauma response and intuition is that they both live in the body. The trauma response is often somewhere in there actually our intuition lives, but the trauma response is relating to the past and our intuition is responding to the present. You know, they're connected because the trauma response is some ways our intuition still knowing that something wasn't okay back then. So here's this thing. Like listen, you know, check out, we'll use relationship as an example, but like say I was in an unsafe relationship. And I'll give a very personal example. It's a true story, right? This is a relationship I had before I met my

husband. And for the entire three months of that relationship, it was, thankfully it ended after three months. I had a stomachache. I had a chronic, anxious tummy ache for those three months. And the whole time, I thought there was something wrong with me. I kept telling myself, what's wrong with me that I can't relax with this person? Once I finally listened to the tummy ache, the tummy ache was my intuition saying, actually, he doesn't treat you very well. And it's not something wrong with me. My tummy ache was my intelligent, my gut belly brain, saying, no, this is not digestible. I don't want this. Get this out. So this is an example. where it was a trauma response, but it was intuition.

Sometimes we're in a very safe relationship, but the body can't differentiate that yet. And so the first year and a half of testing my husband, he loves him when I talk about him on podcast. He pulled up something on YouTube the other day, and he's like, really? Did you have to talk about me again? Anyhow, that aside, he's gracious enough to let me do this.

So that first year and a half where I tested him, I really was bringing into that relationship all of my fears that I was going to get rejected again. All of the fears that I was going to get hurt again and the memories of times in which I was hurt. And I spent a year and a half trying to tease apart. Is that accurate about him or is that my past? leading me to not trust. Now, how do you tell the difference? That's your question. That was my question.

I'm like, how do you tell the difference? Time. When we rush, you know, past that feeling and we jump in and we say yes, and I'm going to not really pay attention, we risk missing the cues that either tell us it's safer, it's not. And in his case, that entire year and a half was actually very important because he kept proving himself to me that he was safe and trustworthy and not going to hurt me. And the wisdom in me that in that case tested for a year and a half allowed me to ultimately decide, I think this guy passed the test. He was consistent. He was reliable. He did what he said he was going to do. He called when he said he was

going to call. If he didn't, he took accountability and responsibility and apologize for that. Like when we're listening for like what is trustworthiness, accountability, reliability, consistency, warmth, kindness, respect, we can start to like kind of check these boxes that let us know, like, those are green lights. And if there were times, and he's not perfect, and I'm not perfect, that there was things that I questioned. I learned that we could talk about that and that we could have hard conversations and that we could navigate that. And if I had not tested or paused or taken a year and a half to determine, maybe I would

have, as one of my clients once said to me, I would have taken all of those red flags and painted them white. Oh, my God. I haven't ever heard that. Wow. So how can people learn to trust the healing process when progress can feel slow or nonlinear? Right. Good question. So slow. We'll start there and then we'll talk nonlinear. You know, depending on the nature of the trauma, sometimes we need to really move slowly and gently, right? like it's that titration and if we rush ourselves we get what we would call the rubber band effect right

I put myself out there too fast too many feelings the floodgates opened I scared myself and then the rubber band goes back into contraction so the titrated approach helps us heal at a pace that we can digest that and be with those emotions and trust ourselves that's dependent on every individual Some people move a little more quickly and some of us need more time. But, you know, when we experience what we call complex trauma, complex trauma is the result of repeated ongoing events that happened recurrently over time. And that is more woven into our sense of self and our identity. In that case, healing generally takes longer.

And to be patient is so important. It's just going to be part of the process. Now, nonlinear healing is. non-linear. It is by nature. We, we, you know, progress and then life happens and we get triggered and we go back into regressions or we relapse in some way or another or we drop back into struggles when we are faced with more stressors. And that reveals to us another layer of our own trauma that that is ready to be healed. And so learning to trust the nonlinear, I often describe this as this circuitous path. And the circuitous path says that I'm going to loop around certain areas of the landscape

until they become familiar. And we're talking the interior landscape of me. I'm going to circumambulate myself again and again around times in which I felt so powerless, times in which I felt voiceless, times in which I felt so scared. And I'm going to revisit those places until they're so familiar until I can hold all of those places with the utmost compassion. And then they don't feel quite so scary and overwhelming. But depending on how scary it feels in the first place,

it takes a little longer to befriend those parts of ourselves. Yeah, befriend, even want to recognize them and peer through the caretend sometime. Yeah, that's right. So what gives you hope when working with deep long held trauma right now? There is this phrase that I often refer to when I'm teaching about a resilience-informed approach to trauma recovery, which is what I call my work. It's this term that is vicarious resilience. We often talk about vicarious trauma, right? The impact of bearing witness to trauma that can lead us to feel hopeless, lead us to feel hopeless, lead us to feel. feel the intense burdens of traumatic stress. But what we also can recognize is that people are amazing. We are as humans profoundly creative, profoundly capable of overcoming adversity. It's incredible what we can survive. And when I bear witness to people that have overcome adversity,

I feel hope. I see what's possible for us as humans. And I sense not only that it's worth trying, it's worth staying the course, staying on the path, but that also I deeply trust in my own capacity to overcome challenge, even challenge that, you know, as humans, we all face adversity, trauma, challenge. The research shows that about 90% of us will experience at least one traumatic incident in the course of our lifetimes. And most of us experience multiple events. And, you know, I'll share one other personal story here. The year after my husband and I married each other, we went through a trauma in our family. His brother was suddenly killed in a helicopter crash. He was in the special operations after 9-11. And he was in an al-Qaeda mission. And he was in a al-Qaeda mission.

his helicopter went down. He and everyone on the helicopter were killed, and he was 34. It was such a tragic loss for our family, especially my husband, losing his younger brother for his mother. And we had been married not quite a year. And one thing that really, I think, solidified us as a couple was how we navigated that loss. And we stood by each other. We emoted together. We grieved together. every service and memorial both within the family, in the community and with the military, side by side. And the recognition that we can go through hard things and that, yes, it takes a toll, but it can also grow us stronger. That's post-traumatic growth. And we don't talk about that enough. But that's one of my books, right? The Post-Thrmatic Growth Guidebook is a path that literally

you can walk yourself through from trauma towards your own growth. And I've been studying resilience and post-traumatic growth for my entire career. And I pour into that book the researched factors that help us grow and build resiliency. So many more questions. I'm looking at the time. We must have you back. We have so much to talk about. For people that want to learn more about you, your books,

your organization, where can they find you? So if you just Google, Dr. Ariel Schwartz, you'll find me. Not that hard to find, but Dr. Ariel Schwartz on Facebook, Dr. Ariel Schwartz on YouTube. Dr. Arles Schwartz is my website. I also have a website that is Resilience Informed Therapy. I have currently eight books out there as well as an audio program on trauma recovery as well as a video program on polyvagal approaches to trauma recovery called Let Your Body Hold You. There's a lot out there.

And I really hope that for those of you that resonate with this topic, we'll go out and find some of the resources because that's why they're there. And we're going to include all those links in the show notes, so you'll be able to click on them. So if there's one thing that you can leave listeners with, one truth about the capacity to heal, what will that be? Man, we've covered so many of them in here. And I think that, honestly, one of the questions that you highlighted is the one that I'd like to revisit, which is around trusting your pacing.

There is no rush to a finish line when it comes to trauma recovery. And you can use that metaphor of the tortoise and the hair, right? Really let yourself progress slow and steady. and know that every single step, when it's the right pace for you, will ultimately bring you to exactly where you need to be in your life. Thank you. Dr. Strauss for being here. It was such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.