Well with Arielle Lorre - 294: How to Use the Body to Unwind the Mind, Release Stored Emotions & Heal Your Nervous System with Dr. Liz Letchford

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Dr. Elizabeth Letchford, PhD, ATC, is a Certified Athletic Trainer, clinician, researcher, founder of Body Church, and earned her PhD in Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. With over 17 years of experience working with patients to approach health and movement through the lens of emotional wellness, Dr. Letchford has committed herself to bridging the gap between intuition and science and helps thousands of people demystify the body and its functions while simultaneously realizing their greatest potential. In this episode, we discuss the impact of unprocessed emotions and trauma on the physical body, how relationships affect our nervous system, and what to do when your body is dysregulated. We also get into the causes of internal misalignment, how to interpret our own behaviors on our path towards healing, the impact of the stories we tell ourselves, tools to unlock our full potential, and so much more.This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.Go to SundaysForDogs.com/blonde or use the code BLONDE at checkout for 40% off your first order of Sundays.Go to VEGAMOUR.com/blonde and use code blonde at checkout to get 20% off your first subscription order.Kajabi is offering a 30-day free trial to start your own business if you go to Kajabi.com/blondeProduced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So, would auto-hue without your rice-adviseur or SunnyCars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome to the Blonde Files

podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I have such a cool episode for you. today. I truly was blown away by my guest and I know that you will be too. This episode is unlike any episode that I've done before and I really think it's going to make you look at your body and your mind in a completely different way. So my guest is Dr. Liz Letchford. She is a clinician, a researcher,

an artist, one of the founding coaches of Tonal and founder of Body Church. And despite her training, which you hear about in the episode, she approaches health, movement, and relationships through the lens of emotional wellness. She has traveled the world, researching the human experience, and its effect on whole body health. She is leading the charge

in uncovering the impact of relationships on the body's systems, and she describes her work as equal parts, science, and intuition, the bridge between science and artistry, and she is just poetic. I feel like listening to this episode, it's almost like kind of spoken word poetry at points. At a young age, she developed a love for science and went on to get her PhD in kinesiology

and rehabilitation science with a focus in biomechanics and sports medicine. She has helped thousands demystify the body and its functions by unwinding the intelligence of the nervous system to discover how disharmony in relationships can lead to disharmony in the body. And this episode explores all of that, this concept of using the body to unwind the mind, exploring how mental pain shows up in the body, unprocessed trauma, how your body is sending you signals, why we have to reframe the stories that we tell ourselves, how to navigate fear and anxiety and release stored trauma and pain and heal our nervous system, our hormones, all of that good stuff. So please enjoy Dr. Liz Letchford. Welcome. Thank you. Really excited to have you here. I was just telling you

before we started recording about how much your work has resonated with me and the things that I've been going through lately. And I know that it's going to resonate with so many people. I've been listening to other podcasts that you've done lately and just deep diving into your work. And I feel like this is one area that I haven't really tapped into on the podcast, almost five years of doing it. I definitely have had people on who talk about the mind and the body and the mind-body connection, but not in the way that you approach it, which is really like using the body to unwind the mind and vice versa. Is that accurate? Yeah, a lot of people approach it from the mind, like observe your thoughts, observe what's going on in your mind. And that's really important to make us feel safe. But,

when we're able to give the mind a different story and watch the stories and we're able to feel safe actually feeling, then we can really approach it from the body to the mind. So I always say I use the body to unwind the mind. So you've had an interesting trajectory. Sure. I know that when you were, I believe when you were in school studying, you were also an EMT, right? So tell us a little bit about that and how that all led to this. Oh my goodness. It feels like so many lifetimes ago. When I was in school, I was studying for sports medicine. So I was studying to be an athletic trainer, which is the clinician you see running on the field when like a football player gets hurt. It looks like so much fun. It's really a lot of fun. I was debating between physical

therapy and athletic training and physical therapy. I was like, I don't want to stay in an office all day. And so athletic training, you're on the field, you're with the athletes, you're traveling with them. So I always love to be immersed in my patient's lives. And while I was in school, I also became an EMT. So I just went full into like, what's the disaster and what do you do when shit hits the fan? I don't know what chip is in my brain or what I came in the world with, but I'm like, what do we do when we're on the worst day of our life? And the more that I studied, the more that I understood about the body, I went on to master's degree. I went on to get my PhD in kinesiology and rehabilitation science.

Studied biomechanics, like hooked people up to the retro reflective markers like you see in the video games and like really studied how the body works. Cadabarin out of it, you name it. And at the end of it, when I was working one-on-one with people and really helping them understand why does my hip hurt and I can't figure out why or why is my spine a little twisted or how come every time I do this movement, my muscles lock up. there was actually no biomechanical reason for it. There's no physiological reason for it other than, you know, we dove deeper and I kept asking questions and I kept staying curious and always questioning my schooling and it always came down to emotions and unprocessed, unfelt emotions and unprocessed unfelt trauma. And so unfortunately, all of the studies that have to do with injuries, sports and injuries, people in injuries, or what's going on with my shoulder and my knee and emotions,

all of the studies are on how do you feel after you've got the injury, not the other way around. How are you feeling before you got the injury? So that's what I am so curious about. And I've been working with people and have developed a practice because of this very question. And it's been amazing to see how our unprocessed trauma affects. affects our physical body and it's our body's natural ability to heal to do this. It is innate in our nervous system if we can just train it to do it. I know that you were working on your dissertation, right, about specifically injury and female athletes. And I heard you say that when

you would work with these women, you would ask them how they were doing and so many of them would break down because like nobody had asked them that before. So I'm curious, like, is it the emotion that precedes the injury or is it the injury that precedes the emotion or is it kind of both? As a scientist, I don't have a answer. I have a theory. My theory is that from observation and from observing people's nervous systems and when they're performing well and feeling in their body versus when they're not performing well and not in their body. The difference there is are you living in the past or worried about the future? So not presence. So when we're not in presence or some people call it the flow state. You hear athletes like,

I don't know. I just blacked out. I was so in flow. That's such beautiful presence. And we all, we all experience that too in our bodies. So that's embodiment and present. When we're in anything other than that. Say we, I worked a lot with high school athletes, high school female soccer players and volleyball players. And whoa, they play all year round and they're trying to get into college and they're on all these rec teams and they're on all the, they never get a chance to rest, but they're just warriors just pushing through. And so this constant lack of presence in their body is actually important for them because if they've chosen, I'm the path of the warrior, I'm going to go and I'm going to play sports. If they chose path of presence, they would feel all of the self-abandonment.

They would feel all of the pain. They would feel their body. So we have this culture where you have to decide, am I going to, am I going to be an advocate for my body, rest and feel my feelings, or am I going to choose the path of the warrior? And myself, I'm sure, just based on your story and everything you've been through, we know what the path of the warrior feels like. And so many of us are so tired just putting on our armor and being like,

I'm going to go out and fight the day. You know, it's like there's a consequence to that. And so my theory is that we're really pushing, our athletes beyond. It's amazing. Human potential is really fascinating, but at what cost? These athletes go to college, play in college, very small percent become professional athletes. And then what? Then they've had an entire lifetime since they can remember of self-abandonment, of pushing through their pain. I worked with professional dancers. And that's so common. And then smile through it and make it look really graceful. And it's like what's really happening,

in the nervous system is so disconnected from what's happening in the brain and what the story is. The body's like, please help. And the brain's like, everything's fine. And so for me, my goal is to reconnect those two. That's mind-body awareness. That's presence. That's embodiment. To just help us to heal and feel and our hormones get better and our nervous system gets better and our lives get better. our relationships get better. So like that's the cost of not choosing the warrior's path or like relinquishing the warrior's path. When it comes to nutrition, it's not only important what we give ourselves, but what we give our pets. We want them to live long, healthy lives. And when it comes to Harvey, we absolutely love Sundays for dogs. So Sundays has air-dried dog food made from a short list

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I've heard you say that the human body is not binary, but we treat it as though it is, especially with injury, right? It's like you are experiencing this injury because of this. But can you talk a little bit about how maybe something like our nervous system being so overactive or stimulated or just being in that sympathetic nervous system all the time? And how does that affect our body to make us prone to injury or have all these weird symptoms that we can't figure out what they are? Yeah. For sure, the longer you go, the worse it gets.

I mean, some of us have been in sympathetic response and that panic response as a baseline for our entire lives. I was there. My whole, I had no idea. I mean, you don't get a PhD unless you're like insane, right? And so I'm like, I got something to prove. I'm going to keep going. I can't find something that I love.

So I'm just going to keep learning, I guess. But I also wanted to ask you, were you in that sympathetic nervous system when you were an EMT? Because I would imagine, like, it would just be trauma after trauma after trauma. It was like something in me. Our behaviors are clues. What we're drawn to is a clue. For me, I wanted to stimulate.

I wanted to feel emergency. So I was drawn and I was the kind of person who was like, I want to be a. high adrenaline because it was going to kick me into eventually my desire was driving me to kick me into oh my gosh let me actually feel this panic let me actually feel what's going on in my system but what happened was i just numbed it even more and so we've got two choices in that matter i did at least i can just the god view of me right that my higher self whatever you believe in was like okay hey baby, go, like, yes, EMT. Like, we're going to give you little clues.

Go feel that. And it's like, oh, you just numbed more. Dang it. And so we see all these behaviors that are just our desires to heal, our desires to complete a trauma. So, sure. And I was in a parisempathic state my whole life. My pupils were actually really big.

Once I healed one of my really big traumas in my body, which I was six months old. and I would hold my breath, turn blue, and pass out. So my mom took me in the hospital, of course, panic. Like my baby is turning blue and not breathing. Why is she doing this? And as part of the standard protocol, they test for meningitis. They gave me a spinal tap at six months old. So they take a baby, they fold it in half, and they stick a needle in the spine.

And so for my whole life, and I had to have no memory of this. For my whole life, my nervous system was so like, what the heck just happened? and I didn't I couldn't get into a squat position my low back wouldn't flex literally that very position was dangerous and was living in my system at all times my legs hurt they were weak they wouldn't gain muscle they were swollen of course I tried everything everything everything everything under the sun to try and heal whatever was going on in my legs but the real root of it was hey when you were six months old you have this trauma living in your body you have no conscious memory of So it wasn't until I did some somatic experience, some somatic excavation, in the body excavation, that I started kicking my legs and I said, get off. And I had no memory of anything like that ever happening. And it just felt very preverbal. And it was. I afterwards, I asked my mom, like, you know, I just have a feeling. Something happened. Did anything happen when I was a baby? And she knew right away. Wow. So you didn't make the connection until after.

Yep. She knew right away. And I was like, oh my God. Because I, of course, you know, my brain would go to like, what's the story here? I wanted to kick someone off when I was a baby. You, you just go. I'm like, I don't even want to know. So like when I called my mom, I was like, what is this story going to be? And so oftentimes you don't even need the story. Just be grateful that your body was able to process that. And so the journey since then has been incredible. I wish it for everyone. It's hard, but I wish that we could all find and unlock those stories to be more present. I experienced that on some level, maybe like two months ago. So I mentioned you before we started recording. I've been going through a really difficult time physically and emotionally the last four months. And for a while, I didn't really want to talk about it because I feel like for my job at least, I have to present us okay. But, you know, I connect to people when they talk about their pain and their struggles and then how they get through them. So hopefully it's valuable to somebody else. But anyway, in my pursuit of feeling better, I went to, I don't even know what they would be considered integrative, functional, all the words. chiropractic, but really like energy workers. And it's called Shen Generation. You've heard of them. They're here in L.A. And they were like kind of doing this work on my body to release certain things. And we did, you know, kind of an intake where I told them my whole story before. And there was one point where he did something inside my mouth. Do you know what I'm talking about? She's nodding her head.

I, first of all, am not a very emotional person and especially not in front of people and especially not in front of strangers. And it was like I felt the most profound grief, like, agonizing that I've ever felt in my life. I just started like wailing, crying. And I was like, oh my God. I couldn't stop it. And then after, and they were like, you know, really like coaching me through it. And I felt safe. And oh my gosh. And then I was like laughing after. And I was like, I was like, does everybody do

this? And they were like, yeah, we've had like Navy SEALs in here that do. But I was like, what was that? You know, it was so, I've never experienced anything like it. And then when I left, I felt a hundred pounds later. Yes. So can you talk about like how things are stored in the body? How trauma. how pain, how fear is stored in the body and how people can go about releasing it. First, congratulations for letting yourself feel all of that. And the jaw is in the jaw. Yeah, the jaw is actually connected to our pelvic floor. So, you know, it can be a lot for us to release anything in our pelvic floor.

It's, you know, can be an internal experience. But there's a huge connection between those two points. And so that's our safety. That's our speaking up for ourselves. That's our communication. That's boundary setting. So there's, oh, my gosh, there's so much in the job. Control, control.

So to finally let go of control, your body was like, oh, yes. And the grief that comes with an emotional release is so beautiful. Yeah. It's like, oh, so the laughter, the bliss. That, okay, so I want to just step by step. kind of walk people through what was happening based on your experience. So you go. Ideally,

they make you feel really safe. And intuitively and kind of listening to your system, where do I need to push? Where do I need to help stimulate sensation where there is none? Where there is lack of embodiment. And so the opposite of embodiment is fear. So basically they're going in with a. laser-focused pointer and being like, where is the fear? And so they start pushing. They start pushing. I can imagine, was it painful? What is the sensation like? No. And he really prepared me

beforehand. He said, it's going to feel like I'm pushing hard, but he kind of did it on my, my arm and said, this is the strength that I'm using. It's really not that hard. And, you know, it can't hurt you. Oh. Yeah. So it was not painful. It wasn't, it was a little uncomfortable because it's like right, you know, in that corner part of your jaw where it's very sensitive. But I wasn't painful. I just didn't know what was happening because it was like this wave, you know, where it was like, I couldn't even identify what I was really feeling initially because I was like, wait, I think I'm sad. I think I feel. And then I was like just so overwhelmed. And then it was just like it exploded. Yeah. And then when he did it again.

then it was kind of a lesser because it was like it released. Yes. Yeah. So not too painful. No, no. Okay, that's great. Sometimes it can be and it all has to do with the stories we're telling

ourselves about that sensation. So I like to re-story, recodify our word of pain. Oh, that's painful to, oh, that's intense. Because pain, we automatically associate with like, oh, I don't want to do that. Yeah. And so he was so brilliant. in holding you and like this is not going to hurt you you know this is safe and so your brain already had like oh sensation safety but when we have sensation and lack of safety it registers to our

system as pain and so sometimes when we're doing stimulation work and pushing on places in your body that need to be felt by the brain by the nervous system it can be very painful and it's going it's trying desperately to provoke the reaction that you experience which is an emotional release. Now, the work that I do is from an observation that there's a lot of emotional release work. Like, have you seen you go to a, you go to a room and you like just break a bunch of stuff? Yeah, I did that in rehab. Yeah. Not stuff, but they would take us outside to get snow and throw it like against the wall to just like release. Gosh, I would just want something a little more solid than snow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you don't have many options in rehab. Yeah.

Listen, we'll take what we can get. Yeah. Awesome that you were in some snow. That's beautiful. Yeah. Well, when we're pushing for emotional release, we're sometimes overriding the nervous system. So oftentimes we can push for emotional release and then experience like a frying of our system. And we'll need, there'll be a huge come down after it.

Just like a huge, you know, when you're like at a party and you just have this huge ecstatic experience, we're stretching our emotional experience. And there's a come down for. it. So the goal, what I've found, kind of where I've fine-tuned this practice and this philosophy has been in allowing the body's intelligence to guide me and to guide ultimately the person. But if I'm holding space for someone, if I'm working with someone on the table, guide me to say, are you ready? Are you ready to release? And if not, then we're going to go in and find the stories. So our stories help us make us feel safe. And the story that makes us feel safe could very well be, I'm not good enough because we know what that feels like. We are,

we know how to exist in the world when we believe we're not good enough. But damn, if we are existing in the world, can we even imagine feeling I am good enough? I'm powerful. I feel so confident. We don't have that reference point potentially. So that's actually more scary and more startling to the nervous system, then I'm not good enough. So we go into the stories and listen to what your stories are. So the work that I do, and I've created a place to do this called Body Church, but this place is, can you just say all the things that you're afraid of? Like, say all of your stories. Speak them out loud. Let your body hear those stories because all we're doing all day long is trying to avoid that very thing, I'm not good enough or I am good enough, whatever,

wherever you're most afraid of. And so every single behavior, as if we're a puppet, as if we're a marionette, is guided by the fear in our nervous system. And so that's what we're trying to get to is like, can we unleash the fear without blasting our nervous system so that we stop entering into relationships and making decisions based on a past version of ourselves that's terrified or anxiety that that's that's that's driving our nervous system yeah there's a saying I'm in recovery and there's a saying that fear is the evil and corroding thread that's like laced through all of our lives fear was the biggest thing that I had to confront

when I got sober and that's my area everyone has their area and you know when you look at the things that we look at in sobriety, we really have to pay attention to our resentments, our honesty, our focus on others versus focus on ourselves, you know, selfishness and fear. And I'm like, good in all the other areas. Fear is my thing. You know, I'm constantly taking inventory of what my fears are and why I have them. And if you peel the layers back, at least for myself, when I peel the layers back on all of them, if I trace the fear as far as I can, to the root, it's all pretty much the same root, kind of the weirdest things that you wouldn't even think would have to do with any of that. It's like, well, you just ask yourself, well, I'm

afraid that this. Why? I'm afraid why, why, why? And you get down to it. And it's like, it all pretty much comes from the same place, at least in my experience. I work with somebody when I do this. And if I say, I'm afraid of doing this thing. And she says, why? And I said, well, because this might happen. She says, okay, well, if that happens, what, then what happens? And I'm like, then this would happen. And she's like, well, why, you know, and it just, and it all kind of comes down to, I don't know, being alone. Yeah. Being unloved. Yeah, yeah. Not being worthy, not being seen, like all of these things, you know, and then we die. Yeah. So I've observed that. And there's so many people working to ask the brain, why, the brain.

why, hey brain, what do you think? What do you think? But our brain is actually being governed by our fears. Yeah. Yeah. So it's great. It's one way in to be like, okay, now I'm aware that I have this like fear of dying alone being unlovable. It's the same universal experience for all of us. I can totally relate. But imagine if you could actually act out dying alone in a safe environment and let your nervous system actually experience what it would be like to die alone. Imagine that discharge. Oh, my gosh. And then it clears everything,

every single one of those intrusive thoughts. Every single, it clears it because you've gotten to the root in your, in your fascia, in your bones, in your muscles, in your nervous system. And now that's not running the thing. It's not running the brain. And so that's what body church is. So that's the work that I do with people. And it's kind of like, it's kind of like acting class meets like somatic experiencing

meets parts work. And so we actually take these parts as if they're characters. So you have a character in you, a part. I don't know if you're familiar with internal family systems. So that is, that is one of my favorite systems that helps you understand that you, it's not just me, one entity. There's many different parts of us. So there's like little girl parts, little.

boy parts, dragon parts, like what are all these kind of crazy parts. And what I do at body church, and when I do in the work with people that I do one on one is I give them a chance to actually let those parts speak, but through the body. So I let the parts move. And what happens when you do that is you get cricks and pops and unwinds and oh my left hip finally unlocked and like, whoa, my neck has been hurting for so long. And it does. necessarily need a big elaborate story or the brain to just like figure out why it's happening. It just needs to move and it just needs to move safely. And so creating a safe space to have a scene or to create the safe space for the body to go

into the fear, to go into the pain, to go into the intensity is I think the next frontier of emotional and the physical well-being. As a creator, you work hard to build your brand, so you deserve all of the benefits, including all of their revenue. With Kajabi, you can build your business the way that you want and keep everything that you earn. So Kajabi is the ultimate all-in-one platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs build successful online businesses by unlocking predictable, recurring revenue. No matter your niche, Kajabi makes it easy to turn your skills, passions, experiences into enriching online courses, membership sites, subscription podcasts, thriving communities, personalized coaching, and more. And the best part, Kajabi doesn't take a cut of your revenue because everything is owned and everything

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Blonde.cajabi.com slash blonde and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over $6 billion. In every area of life, we know that if we want to achieve a goal, real change happens when we are consistent. And the same goes for achieving the hair of your dreams. So you guys know that I've been on a hair health journey. I feel like I am really making a lot of progress. I am not where I want to be, but I am so much better off than I was even a year ago, thanks to some tried and true products that I love. Vagamore is one of my absolute favorites. For one, their products are 100% cruelty-free and are never formulated with potentially harmful chemicals like parabins or hormones. Why I'm mentioning this is because a lot of brands that are clean, cruelty-free,

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brain that is experiencing the anxiety can't necessarily talk us out of the anxiety. So, same thing with fear. The brain that's experiencing the fear can look at it. rationally and that exercise that I told you, it's been so helpful for me. And then I, you know, have other things, you know, I give it to the universe or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But I understand what you're saying about that being the next frontier because I think that, again, I can only speak for myself. I'm so sensitive. And my body tells me when something is not right. And I can do all the work and all the therapy and the breath work and the meditation and all the things. but I still feel like there's just something under this surface, you know, that hasn't really been

dealt with. Yeah. And I've been talking about this. It's funny. It's come up a lot with guests lately. This theme of like, the body whispers until it screams. And it seems like so many people are going through shit or have recently gone through shit where, you know, they're maybe ignoring some emotional thing that keeps coming up or they're in the wrong relationship or they are not living authentically and they start to have all these physical things happen. And it's like the body is being like, hello, hello until it becomes a scream and you can't ignore it anymore. But I'm curious. Like, how do you, how do you work with someone when you're like, okay, we're going to live out that fear? Yeah. So if I came to you, what would we do? What would that look like?

So the fear your brain thinks is often not the fear that is really going on in your body. It can be something that happened to you while you were still developing in the womb. It can be something that happened to you or a belief that that you have or someone else's story that you've believed for so long. And so what I do with people is I don't like to necessarily listen to what stories that they're giving. their physical manifestations of these stories, this pain. Instead, I just have them tell me, hey, what's going on in your body? And so we'd start by talking about what's going on in your body. Same with Body Church. I lead a group through this experience. And it's just focus on your breath. And then the breath practice holds you. So when we allow the body to speak, we have to be really

careful because it can start playing out, you know, the old school psychology called it flashbacks. It can start playing out and living as if it's in the past. And we have to be really careful and set up a container, a place, a safe space for you to not just blast your nervous system by living in the past. So what we do is I keep you attuned to your full breath and we just all the way in, all the way out. And if you breathe all the way in, so everyone listening now, if you just breathe all the way in, like you're trying to blow up your lungs, like all the way. And then all the way out. Oh, keep going out. Keep going out. Keep going out. And if you do it again, you'll start to notice there's some tension on the inhale. So it's like the straw gets smaller. So it's easy to breathe in and then it gets harder to breathe in and it gets really hard to breathe in. Same with the exhale. It's like, and then you start to meet some resistance. that doesn't really make any sense physiologically, like physically. It's like we have a diaphragm,

we've got some like lungs in there. But so that tension that's acting on the breath when you're breathing all the way in and all the way out, it's called the tension field. And it's a measure of how present you are in the present moment. How much of your past is showing up in the present.

So if you're experiencing a tension field, so for me, it was hard for me to breathe out. It was harder for me. There was more tension, which is surrender. It's harder for me to surrender right now, right? And so there's, I'm sure there's a part of me showing up that's like, oh no, last time I, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, I don't want to say the wrong thing. And who knows what's showing up right now. It doesn't matter the story, but it's here. And so what we would do is, according to that breath practice, I would help you unwind at your nervous system's pace so you'd keep with that breath practice, which is your guide. That's what keeps you safe. That's what keeps you

with your nervous system. Not my idea, not my nervous system that doesn't have that story telling your nervous system, hey, it's okay. Don't worry. Don't be afraid. Because if we go back, say that whatever symptoms are manifesting for you, maybe it was from something that happened to you when you were one years old. There are so many fracture points after that at three, at five, at seven, 17 at 25 that we have to that we don't have to but it is important for us to navigate through important for your body to navigate through before we get to the very root and so what we do is we just let your body unwind at its own pace and maybe today it feels so nourished so safe so resource that we go right to baby you and we go right and we do a rebirth and we re-pattern and so

the overall experience is feel safe enough and resourced enough to meet that thing that we called fear that meet that thing we were previously afraid of let it unwind in your body and then re-pattern the story tell a new story so i actually guide every session in poetry and it's all completely spontaneous freestyle improv and the poetry so what we know about the brain is even baby They have a different brain state when we're listening or experiencing the poetic cadence. And so, sure, it's beautiful art and sing-songy and helps us experience emotions more deeply when we're hearing a story told in poetry or in rhyme versus not. But it also anchors you to a different story.

So I'm telling you a story in poetry as your body's unwinding so that your brain is now listening to this story and I'll say words that'll trigger you. I'll say words that will that will make you react. And then we're like, yeah, there we go. And so then we go. It's just a word. It's just a word. And I might say that even like, it's just a word. And then I'll redefine the word. And you'll be like, oh my gosh. And so the entire session, the entire premise of Body Church, the entire reason I'm here even researching this stuff is to ask the question, what stories are you believing? Why? And what other stories can we tell ourselves to live our most magnificent, wholesome, healthy life? I am a big storyteller.

I've talked about it on the show before. But my friends and I even joke about it. I'm like, I am batting 0%. Like, I'll make up these crazy stories about things going on situations in my life. And I'm like, zero percent. Not one time have I been. Right. And, you know, we talk about this in recovery too. Like we have these amazing imaginations. Yes. We can dream anything for our future. And we sit in the scary movie, you know? It's like not something that somebody who has since passed, but when I was newly sober, he would talk about, get out of the scary movie. Go to the good movie. Go to the comedy. Go to the happy movie. Like, you know, mentally just. And I try to remember that because it's like, it's like.

like my baseline is to go to what's the worst thing. But I think that's kind of innate for a lot of people because of, you know, survival. Like we're primed to have to be alert and aware of all the things that could go wrong in order for us to survive. It's protective. Yeah. We can think that part of us that's just trying to be like, I don't want to get hurt again. And more often than not, we're batting zero, our catastrophizing or like fantasia of whatever's going on. Yes. isn't true. And so can we start to trust ourselves and have the courage enough to not know what's coming up, which is really scary and really difficult if we're not resourced enough? And so, yeah, story medicine. We use stories as poison. So I might as well use stories as medicine.

I want to touch on something really quickly that I thought was so interesting, but didn't you go to dominatrix school? Yes. So can you tell us how that helped you with this work? Because I know that you talk about how the BDSM community can actually, they've actually gotten some things right, right? When it comes to dealing with some of these things that come up. So can you talk about that a little? Because I thought it was so interesting.

Oh, my gosh. If you ever get a chance to go to Dom School, I highly recommend it. Where does one go to Dom School? Yeah. So I went to school in New York with a man. named Omar Pani and a woman named Lauren Harkness. And it was really, really brilliant six-month program. But it allowed me more importantly than learning all the techniques and all of the, you know, if anyone's, if you're not familiar with BDSM or the Kink community, you might have seen in movies or what have you, like a lot of leather and whips and chains and like pain and sadism and

masochism. And the brilliance that I took from it was, and the reason. I went was number one, I knew that my dominant archetype, which I called a dragon, we've all got a dragon inside, my protector, my dominant, my, hey, I'm going to exert a boundary if I need to, had a story that it wasn't safe to be a dragon. And so I went first and foremost to like, dragon school, like 101, how to be in your power and was able to really find her in me. And that was the, day one and I got it and it clicked into place. And so that was the biggest, the biggest impact for me. And now I've started something called Dragon School at Body Church where you don't have to

necessarily go in and learn how to peg people. But you can find your dragon, find your power. And second, I hadn't yet found a modality that didn't just treat people's bodies so precious and only chose the good movies. sometimes we'll call them angels our angels will come by and be like sweetheart i really want you to heal this relationship with your father honey i love you we're going to send you such good men and oh oh oh you let him go or like oh no you didn't oh you're still choosing and so the the angel does the little whistle like and it's like calling the demons and so then the demon has to be like boo here's a terrible

relationship and you're like ow and and so Sometimes we actually don't have the capacity to react to the good, to the loving, to the kind, mommy, nurturing, yummy, heavenly sensations. And so our system is only able to respond and get a shift in state from being provoked. And so what I took from that was we don't have to just provoke, provoke, provoke, provoke, pain, pain, and then aftercare, you know, and then take care of you because your nervous system is now blasted open. And so I observed through all of my training, oh, wow, interesting. We can provoke just enough that they're actually receptive to the angel. They're actually receptive to the good. But sometimes it's a little like on your knees.

And you're like, oh, oh, oh, you know, your butthole gets a little tight. And so that's the state that I need you in in order to finally, oh, my gosh, let go. it's the same. If you think about if you've ever done like a contract relax technique for somatic relaxation, it's the contraction we need sometimes before our system can actually feel, oh, oh, I need to feel the tension before I can know that I'm just holding it all in and I can actually let go. And so, oh my gosh, it was it was so powerful. And so now in my practice, I use some of those somatic techniques. Like sometimes I will blindfold people. And we need to take away one sense in order to open up another sense.

Sometimes I will tie them. They need to feel contained. They need to feel containment. You know, everyone's got their clothes on. It's not necessarily blatantly, intentionally sexual. We're not putting pleasure in the pain. We're allowing you to feel as much as you can. That's it.

Feel sensation. And whether that sensation is terror or beautiful grief. or sacred rage or bliss. And it might back and forth between those two things. And in our society, we've called that crazy. Yeah. You're not crazy, baby. You are just finally feeling.

Keep going. I love you. Keep going. And so that's the work that I do. And it is so fun. It is so beautiful. And it's, oh my gosh, it's sacred. It's just absolutely sacred.

and honors the nervous system first and foremost. Well, to close, even though I have so many more questions, is there an example that you can share with us or anything that really stood out for you? If somebody going through this process where they had some physical thing, I'm sure you have so many examples, but maybe just to give a listener hope, you know, if they're like experiencing something really debilitating and, you know, the traditional route is not getting them anywhere. Oh, I worked with someone who couldn't like contract her core.

She would try so desperately to do these workout programs. And at like 12 weeks, she would always quit. She felt a lot of pain when she worked out. She couldn't lose weight. She couldn't gain muscle. And when I took her through this process, she experienced a lot of rage. And then sadness.

And then finally bliss. And when her body was able to be able to re-pattern whatever was going on, she had a vision and there's some stories associated with it. The stories don't matter. When she came back to me, she had access to her core. She was starting to build muscle. She was able to hold a plank immediately one minute longer than the day before, which is insane because we.

learned so many times, like, oh, you got to slowly build up. But just that alone tells me that we're not looking at the whole picture when it comes to strength training, when it comes to healing, when it comes to embodiment, when it comes to injuries. So if my client could have increased her strength so profoundly in 24 hours just by feeling her feelings, what else can we do? personally i was able to lose weight i was able to have my my hormonal profile change i'd really high estrogen really low testosterone and and so there are hormonal changes chemical changes physical changes that can happen and so if you're somebody who feels like i've tried everything try finding a safe space to feel you know and and and

Body Church is a really beautiful place to do that. Find me, you can find me and ask questions. I'm so here for you. But yeah, it's a, it's a journey, y'all. It's a journey. Well, tell everybody where they can find you and find more about Body Church. Sure. Yeah. So my name is Liz Lechford. You can find me on social at Liz Lechford and bodychurch.com or Liz Lechford.com. And you'll be able to reach out to me from there. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way. And it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. You can go to Arialori.com. And I'm always posting about each episode over on my personal page at Arial Lori. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.