What Excites Us!

Episode 67: Feel Safe in Your Body Again

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Gwyn: This podcast is about sex and sexuality, so please only listen if you are an adult without kids or other ears around that cannot, or do not consent to sensitive language and content. Thanks.

[00:00:19] Hello and welcome to What Excites Us! My name is Gwyn Isaacs. I am a certified clinical sexologist who has been helping people since 2017 feel better and pleasure and all of the wonderful things, and I'm in the middle of a move and I can't find my microphone. Nor did I have the episode ready for y'all that I had hoped to.

[00:00:44] Gwyn Isaacs: This is Misu. She is also in the middle of a move. Any who. What I've got lined up for you is a masterclass that I did with a wonderful woman named Arci Grey and you can learn more about her at ArciGrey.com. This is a masterclass that I did with another one of her projects, uh, where we talked about the slow steps that you can take to start to trust your body again after trauma.

[00:01:12] The quality on the video is not great. But it's still worth paying attention to. If you are a listener, you're golden. No sweat. If you are watching this on YouTube, you might want to just listen, go wash your dishes or what have you. In any case. I wanna thank you for watching and listening. I also want to remind you to please go to WhatExcitesUs.com and sign up for the newsletter or check out some of the free resources I have there.

[00:01:41] I'm also going to be speaking at the Women Thrive Summit coming right up March 17th. It's free. There are 50 women talking about all sorts of amazing things from my talk, which is using pleasure for confidence. And people talking about business, all sorts of different aspects. Style, healing after narcissistic abuse.

[00:02:06] There are so many amazing women. Please go sign up. The link is in the show notes or at whatexcitesus.com. And lastly, I'm doing a retreat in April, a small curated group of women. It's myself and my good friend Kim, who does a DHD coaching and is also a nurse who does nurse coaching.

[00:02:33] We are gonna be having just an amazing time. Uh, hanging out with women and we've got some cacao ceremonies lined up and boudoir photography from a fantastic photographer. All of that is available. I'm so tired. All of that is available@oneexcitesales.com. What excites us.com? Please go check it out.

[00:02:59] There are also ways to help benefit the show there and get stuff for you. Who doesn't love shopping? And I'm trying not to ramble too much and apparently I'm not doing a very good job. So be it. Better done then. Perfect. Right? Yeah. If you enjoyed this kind of rambling me, please let me know because, uh, it's easy, it's natural.

[00:03:27] And if you don't let me know that too. This podcast is for you. Thanks so much for watching or listening, and please enjoy

[00:03:37]

[00:03:37] Arci Grey: The goal of tonight's masterclass, and really the goal in our healing journey in general is to rebuild trust. Trust within ourselves, trust in the relationships around us, and to be able to enjoy life again. And in order to do that, we do need to reconnect with our bodies and we need to feel safe. Now, the problem that we often have in trusting others in a relationship is that we put that outside of ourselves.

[00:04:04] We often put that in the other person when in fact, it's really about trusting ourselves. And the problem is that sometimes this requires intimacy. It's not that we don't want intimacy, it's that sometimes we don't really understand what intimacy really is. So it can become really scary. So the truth is.

[00:04:24] Pleasure is personal and you can't experience pleasure with someone else unless you can experience it with yourself. And the same is true for safety, and the same is true for trust. So that's why in order to reconnect and build stronger relationships and build trust in our relationships and experience, pleasure and joy in our relationships and safety.

[00:04:47] We need to connect with ourselves and find that safety and trust and joy in ourselves first so that we can bring that forward into the relationship, into all of our relationships. So. With us here today and I'm very excited for this is Gwyn Isaacs. She is a certified sex coach and she's also the, uh, host of a podcast called What Excites Us.

[00:05:09] So she is the perfect person and we're a day before Valentine's Day. So she's the perfect person to help us dive into this in a really safe space. So Gwyn, thank you so much for being here.

[00:05:22] Gwyn Isaacs: I am really just so delighted, Arci.

[00:05:25] Arci Grey: So Gwyn First, let's kind of dive into this because I know there's a lot of questions. Um, we got a lot of questions ahead of time, and I think there's a lot of confusion about the difference between sex, which there's a lot of stigma around and there's a lot of shame around physical pleasure, intimacy.

[00:05:41] Can you help us get some clarity on

[00:05:44] Gwyn Isaacs: Yes.

[00:05:44] Arci Grey: On these topics?

[00:05:45] Gwyn Isaacs: I would be happy to. Yeah, I would. It stop me when I get to be too much, um, because this particular thing drives me a little bit nuts. And it, and it's getting worse as our culture is getting more conservative or people like me who, I'm a certified sex coach, I've been trained specifically how to help people have more satisfying sex, but I can't use that language because the.

[00:06:12] Ways in which I would promote that will immediately shut me down just for using the word sex. So, so it's really, really tricky. But you can have sex with intimacy and you can have sex without intimacy. You can have intimacy that isn't pleasant. You can have intimacy with sex. You can have pleasure that isn't intimate or sexy.

[00:06:36] There's just. Any number of ways that those things can go together and not because they are three very separate things. When we talk about sex and, and even this can get me a little bit, is, is most people think of sex as penis and vagina. And I know that's like, that's, ooh, that's a lot for at first, but that's, sex is so much more than that.

[00:07:00] intimacy is. You know, going to a movie with your best friend can be an intimate experience. It doesn't have to be sexually motivated at all. And, and again, pleasure can be any number of different things that have nothing to do with either of those. So yes, the way that it gets confabulated. Is, is frustrating from where I sit for sure.

[00:07:27] And it's important to have good times in all of those buckets.

[00:07:32] Arci Grey: Absolutely, absolutely. And, and safety, right? Whether it is in, in intimate setting or a sexual setting or going to the movie with your friends, safety is absolutely paramount. We know that from, especially from a trauma healing perspective.

[00:07:47] And we can also, reiterate that we have the same issue in even, you know, social media and marketing and publicly communicating about, you know, a good portion of the people that we work with have experienced sexual violence and for some reason we can't talk about that. Publicly. And it's not because it's triggering to the victims.

[00:08:10] It's most often because it's triggering to the perpetrators. Um, it's an uncomfortable subject for people. We spend a lot of time just breaking through stigmas and taking the shame away from things like topics about sex and intimacy and pleasure, and even just being human right.

[00:08:30] So, um, and that is another thing actually, that I really want to, um, kind of break the ice and, and maybe ease, even ease, ease some minds here or maybe ruffle some feathers, right? Maybe this is about ruffling feathers today. So we do need to talk about shame and. Like I said, from a survivor's point of view there, we often carry a lot of shame on our shoulders because it's an uncomfortable subject for people to hear about.

[00:08:53] And therefore, when we're the victim, oftentimes we are shamed for something that's happened to us that we don't want, we don't wanna participate in. And I think in general there is a lot of shame put on people for sex and sexuality and pleasure and intimacy. And I really want your take on this.

[00:09:14] Before we, before I, I open that, 'cause I know that's a door that is going to crack wide open. I know you've got a lot to say on this and I love it. I wanna just quickly define the difference between shame and guilt because I think sometimes people get this a little bit confused in them, in themselves and it's hard to identify.

[00:09:30] When we feel guilty for something, it's because we didn't live up to our own standards. But when we feel shame for something, it's because we aren't living up to someone else's standards. Sometimes we wanna live up to someone's standards. Maybe we maybe they're a role model or we really respect and value what they have to say.

[00:09:48] So we wanna live up to their standards. And sometimes the shame that we feel is other people putting their standards onto us. And sometimes those standards are way lower. Than our own. So I really want that distinction that when we feel shame, that has more to do with somebody else than it does you. So, Gwyn, I'm gonna, I'm gonna open that door and I'm gonna let you unleash this because I know you have a lot to say about this and I love it.

[00:10:16] Gwyn Isaacs: Well, first of all, I really love that definition. I don't think I've heard it, said that way. I really, I really like that a lot. The way that I've. Taught, heard, used. The, the two as a distinction is guilt is, I've done something bad. Shame is I am bad.

[00:10:35] Arci Grey: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:36] Gwyn Isaacs: And none of us are bad. That that's, that's just wrong.

[00:10:41] There's, it doesn't exist. I mean, even the most horrible person, there's some little. Kernel of goodness in there somewhere. They've just been hurt a lot. And I'm not gonna go down that path 'cause oh boy, not, not today. Um, yeah, but more than that, nothing that you've done is so egregious that you need to feel shame in general and, and then I'm gonna talk to the sexual violence piece about it because I know that a lot of sexual trauma survivors have a lot of shame at largely because of that. Trying to incorporate other people's beliefs, which is nonsense. But you can't just say that to your inner psyche, right?

[00:11:24] You can't just be like, stop it. Don't do that. Like that doesn't work as much as we wish it did. It doesn't. So there's a little piece that I wanna make sure people know, um, in regards specifically to what your body does during a trauma. There's a term that I learned from this amazing book called Come As You Are called Genital Non Concordance.

[00:11:49] Basically, your body just reacts because it sees a thing and it reacts to the thing. So if you found yourself, your body reacting in ways that you look back and go, oh no, that was horrible. What does that actually mean? It doesn't mean anything. It means absolutely nothing. Except that your body is a physical manifestation of a body on this planet, and that is how it's been trained to react.

[00:12:17] Furthermore, sometimes it will do things that are actually protective. It just doesn't feel that way in the moment. So. If I can just alleviate that one little piece of shame, that's, that's a, a really good step towards a much longer journey that takes a lot of practice. But knowing that that piece exists can be really helpful.

[00:12:44] I, I found it really helpful. Let me just say it that way. And I know that others have as well, so, uh.

[00:12:50] Arci Grey: Yeah, I, I completely agree. I think that this is one of those things that, it's a question that people are afraid to ask. I think that it's a, it's a, there's so much shame around something like that. Now to demystify the technical term of genital non concordance, it means that your body can physiologically react.

[00:13:10] In other words, orgasm or create fluids or anything like that during activity, whether you want it or not. And this, it's really important to understand that because a lot of times that's confusing to us when our body does something that we normally associate with pleasure during an event that we are not interested in being part of.

[00:13:31] It's really confusing to the thinking mind and the feeling mind, but there is this other part of our brain. The survival brain that is connected directly to our nervous system, and it does all kinds of things whether we want it to or not, right? It's why we get the hiccups. It's why we sneeze and we can look into a bright light.

[00:13:50] It's why a loud noise makes us startle and jump, right? It's these are things that are designed to keep you physiologically safe and alive.

[00:14:00] Gwyn Isaacs: I just wanna, yeah, I have one more little anecdote, um, about that. I had a, a, a client, a very young man who came to me very confused because he found himself getting hard while watching animal shows.

[00:14:16] Like, you know, like Wilds of London or, or not London, but you know what I mean, like I don't remember the name anymore, but yes, like monkey's having sex and he found himself getting hard and he was like, ah, this does not turn me on. What is happening? That's just your lizard brain, the little animal part of your brain back in.

[00:14:34] Back there that just does things

[00:14:36] Arci Grey: taken over and it doesn't, it doesn't define who we are. Right, exactly. Um, so, and there's, there's a, yeah, there's a lot of instances where something like sort happens. So. In the interest of eliminating that shame around it, right? It is actually normal. It sucks that no one else wants to talk about it.

[00:14:53] We totally understand why. It can be uncomfortable to admit that, especially when you don't know if you're in a safe space to admit that things may or may not be happening. You don't, we don't know how people are gonna react around us and shame is this really, it's, it's, it's its own weird animal in that shame is one of these things that we associate with being, um, accepted into or rejected from a group.

[00:15:15] And when we are very, very young, rejection from a group equals death. When we're infants and small children, we, if we're rejected from the group, we do not survive. So we associate shame and rejection as death. It is absolutely one of the primal, like primordial, like high up on the list of important things inside your brain.

[00:15:39] So. We wanna erase it, we wanna get rid of that shame because it's stopping us from doing Oh, so many things. We could talk for hours on this subject, Gwyn and I know, and maybe we'll at a later date, this might be a good podcast episode to dive into. Totally. Um, but tonight's call is, or tonight's masterclass is actually all about starting where we are and working towards rebuilding a connection with our own bodies.

[00:16:04] So, I'm gonna hand this over to you so you can help us. Okay. Actually rediscover that safety inside of our body so we can have all the things we want. And so we can feel shameless and so we can feel amazing and joyful and ful in our bodies. So the floor is yours, lady. Run it.

[00:16:20] Gwyn Isaacs: Okay. Well I wanna actually start by going back to something that you started with at the beginning, which was that you can't feel pleasure with others until you can feel it with yourself.

[00:16:32] I know I'm a little bit of a word nerd. I. Totally own that. But you can feel pleasure with other people and not feel it with yourself. It, it, it's sort of along those lines of you can't love anybody until you can love yourself. Also not true. It might not be a fully satisfying pleasure or love.

[00:16:54] There might be lots of other things that could benefit from all sorts of help and practice and that sort of thing, but, you can feel pleasure. It's just so much better when you can feel it in your own body, when you feel safe in your own body, when you trust that your body is gonna do the things that you want it to do most of the time, and we're not gonna talk about menopause.

[00:17:18] So that's a whole, whole other ball of wax that I am experiencing. And so a big part of why I do this work is because I believe that everybody deserves to feel pleasure in their bodies and all over the place. And pleasure is, and I sort of touched on this when I started my tangent about sex and pleasure and intimacy.

[00:17:44] It's more than just feeling good. It feels good, and that's really important, but it's also a healing tool. It helps us with stress, it helps us with connection. It even helps us with physical health. And it's not limited to just physical things. Pleasure you find it everywhere. Music, art, laughter, hanging out with your friends, laughing because the person on the podcast said something silly.

[00:18:10] Anything that you genuinely enjoy. So I want you to just take a minute and. Think about something that you genuinely enjoy, like what do you like? And you can tell us, or you can put it in the chat, or you don't have to if you don't want to. But most importantly, I just want you to feel that thing.

[00:18:29] Pickles. I love that. Epsom salt baths. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Just that like. That feeling. I'm so curious about pickles. I hate pickles, so that's highly entertaining.

[00:18:46] Oh, that's fine. Food in general. Yes, I am a huge, huge foodie. Um, yeah, that's, and, and we'll get to that piece in another bit. These are all great, totally useful things and I just want you to like, when you feel that thing. Like, does it do anything to you? Can you feel it resonating in your body or in your brain or in your fingertips or whatever?

[00:19:13] Just, I just want you to remember that feeling and just because we're gonna go a little deep and it can be Oh yeah. Relaxation and ease. Yeah. It's good to know what that feels like as sort of a stick a pin in it kind of thing. Oh yeah. Arci says the involuntary happy dance when she eats good food. Yes. Yeah. It reminds me of Wallace and Grommet cheese.

[00:19:42] I love cheese. So why pleasure matters. Science has proven that touches absolutely vital to our wellbeing, right? You can think of the, the babies and the orphanages that get failure to thrive, right, get failure to thrive, um, because they aren't cuddled. They don't grow. Our brains need the sensation of another person on occasion.

[00:20:08] It doesn't have to be all the time. Um, I recently heard a statistic that seven hugs a day is what everybody should be getting. Like that's great. I don't. Remember, I don't think I followed that particular statistic to see how they figured that out, but I think it's fun. Fantastic. Physical pleasure stimulates oxytocin.

[00:20:29] It lowers our cortisol levels. It reduces blood pressure, it improves our mood, our sleep, and even our immune functions. So like it's better to not get sick. But if you're struggling with accessing pleasure, whether it's due to trauma or shame, or just disconnection from our bodies you're not alone, first of all, and you're not broken.

[00:20:57] These things can be, I don't wanna say fixed because that indicates broken, but it. It can be, it can grow over time. You can relearn how to access that pleasure and relearn how to like actually fully relax and how to trust and how to feel good in your body again. Because it's not just about trusting all the other people around, although, you know, driving.

[00:21:27] It's really about trusting yourself. Like how do we feel good in our bodies so that we can fully enjoy that pleasure. Fully engage, fully, be satisfied with the things that we're engaging in because why do it if it's not deeply satisfying? Right? So for years, years, decades, probably I minimized my own traumas and my trauma responses.

[00:22:00] For me, it looked like dissociation, sometimes deep dissociation, where it felt like there was a tunnel between me and the rest of the world. Sometimes it was just going through the motions. And that was not just about sexuality, that was about all sorts of things I would just sort of checkout. And you know, I would be there, but I wasn't really there.

[00:22:22] I wasn't really present. And I didn't know that that wasn't how you were supposed to be. I had no real concept that it was different. I just sort of thought, this is what it is, this is what life is, this is how we go. It wasn't until I started studying coaching and, and the program that I went to was pretty intensive.

[00:22:43] And then a little later after that, I read The Body Keeps the Score and that's how I understood how deeply the trauma was affecting me and probably all these other people around me. Yeah, for sure. Sometimes full presence is not possible. Sometimes it's helpful to not be fully engaged because of the things that are around us.

[00:23:09] But sometimes it is nice to be fully engaged and you wanna be able to have the option when you wanna have the option. We'll just leave it that way. So I, I'm assuming that not everybody knows the body keeps the score. The author has been shown to be a bit problematic. Some of the text has been shown to be a bit problematic, but guess what?

[00:23:30] We're human and humans. Human right? Like that's part of what we're doing here is figuring it all out. So even though all of that was not great, all of him is not great.

[00:23:45] But the, the text, the wording, the what he wrote it groundbreaking, truly, truly groundbreaking. It was the first time. At least in mass knowledge. I have no idea. I'm not actually a psychologist, nor do I play one on tv. So I don't read the journals, but it's the first time that the mass public got this concept of, oh, wait a minute, we're holding trauma in us.

[00:24:10] The basic idea is that when a trauma happens, we file it away somewhere in our body. And there it lives. And when the trauma is happening, if it's a major trauma, and this is not all major traumas, even little traumas can lodge somewhere and they make our muscles tight. They dysregulate all of our various somatic systems, including our nervous system.

[00:24:40] Our brain functions get wired weird and change. It screws up our cortisol levels, it screws up our immunity systems. It basically wreaks havoc. And then because we aren't gazelles in the wild, so if you, it. Back to those nature shows. If you watch an animal get chased down and then they don't die, the lion goes off and eats something else.

[00:25:05] Instead, the gazelle will sit there and shake, and shake and shake and shake for a while until it then gets up and carries on with its life, goes and finds a nice. A piece of grass in a watering hole, but we don't do that. We're trained to yes, to only use our brains and brains can fix everything, but that's, that's just not true.

[00:25:31] We are, as we started the conversation with, there is a lizard brain in us. We are part animals still, and so. We don't deal with that trauma and it just stays lodged in us and creates havoc for a really long time. I believe. And I think science is starting to come around that this is where fibromyalgia comes from, people who are just dealing with complex PTSD after another, after another, after another until they just cannot.

[00:26:06] Managing their anymore and their body just hurts all the time. Chronic fatigue syndrome, all sorts of things. some of the ways that these things have presented themselves in my life, my friends' lives, and my clients' lives. Is crying for no good reason or for something that feels so tiny in the grand scheme of things, right?

[00:26:34] Um, recoiling from people touching you unexpectedly, like at the office. Like, ooh, like actual, you know, don't wanna be touched. Startle responses can be a, a reaction from a trauma that. Is never dealt with. And then more along my lines, avoiding intimacy or treating sex as an obligation or the other side of that, which is being super slutty.

[00:27:04] And just using sex because you don't want to actually feel things. Numbing through drugs or food or alcohol or shopping, hi or. Or sports or shutting down any sort of pleasurable thing, whether it's a physical pleasure or just even allowing yourself to relish extra long in the bath. These are ways that unresolved trauma presents in our bodies.

[00:27:40] So lots of trauma survivors struggle with intimacy and not just with others, but also with themselves. And I run into this a lot. People who grew up in purity culture, which can be a whole series of complex PTSD realities have no understanding of how to really feel in their body. And, and not just sexually or pleasure, fully pleasure intimacy,

[00:28:15] but also with just. Lingering in the shower, enjoying yourself, enjoying self-pleasure. And in this particular instance, I do mean masturbation. Is that, is this making sense? Am I going off the rails? Yeah, we're good. Okay.

[00:28:32] In order to be able to really find that safety in your body and to to be comfortable being who you are in your own body, it's really important to give yourself some grace to understand that things have happened and this is where you are, and that's okay starting where you are. Is the best way to start.

[00:29:00] Because if you try to be like, oh, well I should have done it this way. I should have done it that way. You're just adding more fuel to the fire. You're adding more shame and guilt for not being somewhere that you thought you should have been. It's not helpful. So reel it back and just take a moment and understand that healing takes time and repetition and it's okay. And it can be really frustrating, but that's the way it has to be. It has to take time and repetition, AKA practice.

[00:29:40] Before I tell you how we do that, I'm just gonna tell you real quick about one of my clients. I'm gonna call her Sarah. Her name is not really Sarah, but Sarah was in a place where she had grown up in purity culture. She had gotten over it, gotten to a place where she was feeling good. She and her husband were, were like, they were newlyweds, so they were still really happy and all cute and adorable.

[00:30:08] Oh, I'm sorry, Kim. Purity culture are usually Christian, not always, but deeply embedded in sex is bad and wrong. So the, uh, women who, or young girls who take a chastity ev vow and get virgin rings, that sort of thing. It's similar there. There's a whole Islamic reality about it, but it's usually a religious based thing.

[00:30:35] Thank you for asking. Anyway, so Sarah, she had grown up in purity culture. She had gotten a. To a place where she and her husband, as I said, newlyweds, they were very, very cute. Um, had found a really happy place with their sex lives. And they were delighted. They were still Christian. They were happy with that.

[00:30:55] But things started to go sideways after the honeymoon period had worn off. Which is about a year, two years. And she found herself in that place where I mentioned the recoiling from touch. She was okay with touch at work, but if her husband would walk by in the hallway and just sort of, you know, gently touch her shoulder, she'd be like, Ooh.

[00:31:16] Because it, it was bringing up in her this sense of obligation that she felt like, oh, he's gonna try and make tonight a night. And for some reason she didn't want that. And she didn't understand what was going on. So she came to me to try and figure that piece out. Why am I recoiling? What's going on?

[00:31:37] And so we started with sort of the basics. How's your sex life? What's you know, can do? You have good communication? And all of those things were good. And it took us a while of peeling back the onion layers to realize that it wasn't just purity culture. She had had some other. Intense sexual traumas in her life that she had just buried.

[00:32:00] She thought she had healed. She thought that everything was fine. She didn't worry, think about it. She didn't have nightmares or any of the, like what you see on law and order type of symptoms, let's just say law and order is fiction. Is fiction. So she didn't understand what was going on. So we went through the beginnings, you know, of like, let's just talk about.

[00:32:24] How do you communicate? How do you get what you want? These sorts of things. And nothing was really getting to the place until she had come to understand these earlier traumas. And so then we were able to start leaning into it, which feels icky to say, but it was the way to get to what would help her heal.

[00:32:50] And now we didn't go and do like deep like rebirthing sessions. I'm not, not that person. But we did do some, like, let's just think about it for a moment and write down how you're feeling. Like some really easy, gentle, she was also still working with the therapist, so she had a lot of support and after about.

[00:33:15] I dunno, six months, give or take. She got to a really good place and then from there it was Pew just flying. And, um, we stopped working together after about a year. And I just heard from her, I don't know, a few months ago. And she told me that her life with her husband was better than ever, like better than before the honeymoon period because they were able to have such an intense and deep communication and satisfying way of relating to each other. And she had gotten to a place, and this was what I felt like a personal trauma or personal I keep saying the word trauma, so that's what came out. Personal satisfaction.

[00:34:00] She was enjoying her self-pleasure time as well. And it wasn't like, oh, this is your homework. You have to go do it. Like, she was like, Hmm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go have some fun. Honey's away. That's great for me. So how did we do that? It is a very simple roadmap. It's not easy, but it's simple. And here's how you do it. So the first thing you do. Is you set up some guide, guide, guardrails, guardrails. I was originally thinking of it as a, as a bowling metaphor, so I kept wanting to say bumpers, but that's not right.

[00:34:38] Guardrails. And you only have to do this once, and this is because a lot of times, sometimes, I don't know, occasionally, I don't know which, whichever one of those works for you. You discover a boundary by tripping over it. And then you go, oh, ow that hurts. Why did I do that? But you're, I, I'm gonna speak from the I place for the, when I'm in that state, I can't think about how to fix it.

[00:35:14] So I have a file that lives on my phone and my computer, and I really should put up a post-it note that says, when you are feeling bad because I am talking to me open this. Inside that file, I swear to God, is a bunch of links to Neil Patrick Harris, musical numbers and, um, some David Tennant goofy things because these are things that I know will always raise me. A tiny bit. So if I'm absolutely like ugly crying, it'll take me to where I'm just, you know, quietly sobbing. Or if I'm quietly sobbing, it'll take me to, I'm not crying anymore. It's enough to move me forward a little bit.

[00:36:04] So I'm not stuck in that rut. So. That's the first step. And I recommend this to all my clients for everything all the time, and to friends sometimes too. Create something that is painfully obvious for you to go and do when you trip over a boundary or when you are feeling bad.

[00:36:27] Now, once we have that in place then you start doing the actual practice. This first one is optional. I highly recommend it, and when I am working with people, I have them do it. You just sort of take an assessment. You just start by figuring out, just take. 10 seconds if even that, and be like, where am I now? What am I feeling right now? You can use a number system. You can use a letter system. You can just give it a name. Doesn't really matter. Whatever works for you. This is highly personal. Once you do that, you pick the thing that is going to be your exercise.

[00:37:11] There's a variety of exercises and they range from something pleasant like a bath, which is on my list of exercises to journaling, to using a journal prompt to maybe doing some nervous system regulation exercises. There's a thing that we, in the sex coaching world, call the mirror exercise, which is where you're talking to yourself in the mirror.

[00:37:38] That can be intense sometimes. It could be going for a mindful walk. It could be, you know, anything that really just is work but not hard. Right? So it's, it's intentional. You're doing something intentionally to move yourself forward, then I highly recommend. A grounding exercise. Just something to settle you and to calm you before you do the thing.

[00:38:14] So you do the grounding. Could just be a couple of deep breaths, and then you do the thing. Then you assess how you're feeling after you've done the thing, whatever that thing is that you've chosen to do. And then, and this is the important piece, you celebrate because you have done a thing and even if it was an easy thing or it felt good to do the thing, celebrating the fact that you've done the thing is really, really, really important.

[00:38:49] It helps create new brain pathways. And our brains are super busy. They're, they've got a lot going on. We take in millions of bits of information. Yes, we are absolutely going to do this all the time, all the, there's so much stuff. And so because of all of the things that our brains are doing, they get.

[00:39:16] I don't wanna say lazy 'cause it's not lazy, but they rely on habit, right? So if you have a habit of always feeling bad when you look at a green bench, then you're just gonna feel bad whenever you look at a green bench. But if you start building the habit. Of celebrating yourself for doing something that is work.

[00:39:38] Even if it is pleasurable work or when it's hard work, then you are more motivated to continue doing that work and you're building the habit. Feeling good about it and celebrating can be as simple as going. I did a thing

[00:40:00] which I literally did on Facebook after I recorded my first Instagram live today about four hours ago. So I'd like to invite us to take a breath just as my friend and mentor and colleague Reid Mihalko goes, take a deep breath. Ah.

[00:40:20] Now let's do that one more time 'cause I'm a little amped.

[00:40:30] I would like to run us through this process. Obviously you can't have set up your bumper thing, but it's, we're not gonna do anything really intense, so I'm gonna get myself seated in my chair. I'm gonna make sure that I haven't missed anything. Now, because we're just doing this as a group, you don't get to pick from your list of choices what your, what your exercise for the day will be.

[00:41:03] So I'm gonna pick, and the pick is we're gonna do a very nice nervous system healing tool.

[00:41:13] Okay, so I'm going to invite us to, we're gonna do some deep breathing and then we're gonna do a grounding. And then we're gonna do the nervous system thing. So this is all like super duper nervous system stuff, and then we're going to celebrate ourselves.

[00:41:35] Okay? So deep breath in and let it out a little longer than it took to come in and hold for a second.

[00:41:52] And then again in.

[00:41:57] And hold it for a second at the top and let it go

[00:42:08] and hold, and when we're in

[00:42:17] and hold and release just a little longer.

[00:42:27] And then just get back to whatever your regular breath pattern feels.

[00:42:35] I like to do this thing where I imagine, and I want you to try and do it too, if you have an imagining brain, imagine roots coming out from the bottom of you reaching all the way down deep into the earth and these roots are luscious and thick and can hold you, and they tap into that earth energy, that mama earth energy and send up all of this warmth and loving kindness up through those roots into your body, up through the base of you.

[00:43:22] Into your body at large, up through your shoulders and your neck and your face up through the top of your head and out of the crown of your head until it meets with the universal warmth, which then comes back down into you. And so you're just connected up and down by the universe supporting you and the earth around you.

[00:43:54] Just feel how that feels for a moment. The warmth and the love, and the kindness and the support. And then we're gonna move into the nervous system thing. This is called havening hands. I just want you to take your hands and rub them together. Like super slowly, really intentionally and feel how your fingertips feel on your palm and on your wrist, and how your wrist feels with your fingertips.

[00:44:39] And is it cold? Are they warm? Maybe sometimes the thumb feels a little different than the rest of the hands and just really lean into that for another, I don't know, 10, 15 seconds.

[00:45:06] Like my fingertips are really cold, but the rest of my hands are really hot. Bodies are weird,

[00:45:19] but it's good. It's good to feel this, this scar that I've got on my wrist from when I opened a can badly. All these things, this is all a part of, of me, of my body. Okay, just one more.

[00:45:46] And that's it.

[00:45:53] And how do you feel?

[00:45:58] Is that good? Not good. The wonderful thing is that it's different for everybody and some tools are better than others for your body. Tingly. Oh, that's nice. I like that.

[00:46:18] So if we were working together Oh, that's great. Relaxed and sleepy. I hope it's a good sleepy. I would now tell you to, to just sort of make a note or journal how, how that tool worked for you. And 'cause if it's a good one, you, you're gonna wanna come back to it. And if it was not a good one, which happens sometimes you're not gonna only come back to it.

[00:46:46] It's good to note. But now we celebrate, we did a thing.

[00:46:55] I like deeply wanna celebrate all of you for coming to this. Whether you're coming to be supportive or coming to learn how to do these things I deeply appreciate you for taking this time to do this with me. And yeah, I, uh, does anybody have any thoughts or questions that they wanna. Spill.

[00:47:21] Arci Grey: Well, Gwyn, so first of all, thank you so much for kind of taking this on this journey.

[00:47:27] And I know this is barely. Cracking the, the surface here, right? This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of reconnecting with ourselves. But I love that this is incredibly approachable. There's zero, like you're not pushing anybody outside of their comfort zone here. This is actually tiptoeing into our comfort zone.

[00:47:47] This is what does make us feel comfortable, right? That's what I love about this. I think a lot of the, a, a lot of what people think of alternative healing methods, they're like, oh, it's gonna be weird. It's gonna be woo woo. It's gonna push me outta my comfort zone. Right? This is not about that at all.

[00:48:03] This is, let's find the comfort. So I love this. You are also going to be running a workshop. For us as well, that's gonna help us peel back some layers and get a little bit deeper and maybe start to uncover the things that don't feel safe in our body. Right? And we, we actually get to do some of the work to really break through the, what I call those invisible barriers to trauma, right?

[00:48:26] Those things that we can't put our finger on, but we know are there. So not to put you on the spot, 'cause I know that we haven't even put that on the calendar yet, but talk a little bit more about what it's like to work with you or to go through this process of sort of peeling back the layers of, of you know, those walls that maybe traumas put up and how we can kind of break through that.

[00:48:49] Gwyn Isaacs: Sure. Well, I can try. Basically it's, it's similar to this except. Well not accept. We start with where you are because that's, that's really just so important and I feel like it gets overlooked a lot. And as we heal, as I talked about the onion, more things show up and more things show up. So, um, I am, you might have noticed a fairly gentle person.

[00:49:19] Um, I'm never gonna push somebody too far too hard. And if I do, I really wanna know about it because that is absolutely not what I'm interested in doing. But it is a lot of taking note of where you are. Seeing where the, the pointy bits are and looking at them first. I'm not gonna, we're not gonna go ripping off these spiky spines that you have that are protection because they are protection.

[00:49:46] But we're gonna look at them and we're gonna talk to them and we're gonna see how they want to, the spines deal with who you are and, and. When you work with me one-on-one, I always start with, uh, what are your goals? What is it that you want to get out of this? And then we craft a thing that is in line with that.

[00:50:14] It does involve this type of work. I do like to incorporate some breath work and I'm not a breath work expert by any stretch, but just deep breathing can be so helpful.

[00:50:27] Arci Grey: You also do some meditation work too. I think you had mentioned as well that you have a resource for for people to help them. And, and I know meditation, um.

[00:50:37] I use hypnosis a lot in meditation and they kind of go hand in hand. And it can be difficult, I think, initially for people, especially with trauma, to quiet their minds. And we, we tend to be afraid of meditation 'cause we're afraid of all the things that are come. Mm-hmm. Gonna come rushing in. But can you speak a little bit more to this and, and how this helps us kind of go inside in a safe way.

[00:50:58] Gwyn Isaacs: Yes. So the thing that is really important that I think most people that the piece that, you know, I don't wanna do meditation 'cause I can't quiet my brain and it's just gonna be another thing that I'm wrong at. Yeah. There's no wrong way to meditate. And you don't get it wrong. There is no wrong here. It is just where you are and with more practice, you may get better at that particular skill, or you may not, you might have a brain like mine where there are constantly three or four streams running at all times, you know, and at least two of them are songs.

[00:51:33] So so I use a lot of guided meditations. I do occasionally do just music, but. The, the thing is, no matter how you're doing it, you're doing it right, that if you can listen and, and focus on the words for a little while and you go off and you start thinking about something else, that's okay.

[00:51:54] You can come back and, and refocus on the words, or maybe just lying still for a few minutes is enough. It doesn't have to be. This way or that way. There's no wrong involved.

[00:52:09] Arci Grey: It's very much a practice as well. I wanna kinda reiterate that and that what that means is like there is no end all be all.

[00:52:17] You've done it. Oh, I got it right this time. It's, it's practice. It's just, that's the intention of it, is that you do it on repeat. Not that. You do it once and magically everything's all better.

[00:52:27] Gwyn Isaacs: Uh, you're all fixed. That's it. We're good. We're good to go.

[00:52:30] Arci Grey: Oh, one take. You're done.

[00:52:31] Gwyn Isaacs: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I won. I I've won there, there.

[00:52:34] It's life is over. I've won. Um, that no, it just keeps going. And, um, we get better at the things that we set our brain on doing. Yeah, totally. Kim, it's so boring.

[00:52:46] Arci Grey: Do you, um, do you have a link to that? Because I know you had said that you have a meditation that you can share with us that'll, that can help us.

[00:52:51] Um, yes. Kinda either go through this process or kind of maybe go to the next step and kind of get into, so do you have,

[00:52:59] Gwyn Isaacs: so the meditation that I've created is just a super simple body scan. It's nine minutes long. Um, it is not at all sexually minded. It is really just starting at the bottom of your feet and moving up through your body, and it's about connecting to your body.

[00:53:18] Which is super important. I am crafting a whole program based on chakras and that there will be another meditation about that, but that's not here yet and we don't need to talk about that.

[00:53:28] Arci Grey: Maybe we do. Maybe that's something you can introduce in the workshop that you run for everyone. Maybe there, maybe we can get a little teaser.

[00:53:34] Then I, I'm gonna push you for it. You

[00:53:37] Gwyn Isaacs: okay?

[00:53:37] Arci Grey: You said it. You already promised it.

[00:53:39] Gwyn Isaacs: Okay.

[00:53:40] Arci Grey: You all heard it? She's gonna do it.

[00:53:43] Gwyn Isaacs: That's it. It's done. I have to do

[00:53:44] Arci Grey: that. It's done.

[00:53:45] Gwyn Isaacs: No, that's fine. It's actually delightful because sometimes

[00:53:47] Arci Grey: Do you have,

[00:53:48] Gwyn Isaacs: I need a

[00:53:48] Arci Grey: link. Yeah. No, it's awesome. Do you have the link to, I'm, I'm, do you have a link to that meditation?

[00:53:53] Can you drop it in the chat so everybody can get that? Sure. And then also make sure that's in the replay description as well for anyone.

[00:54:00] Gwyn Isaacs: Yep. Earthly desire.com/free.

[00:54:04] Arci Grey: Okay, I'm gonna type that in

[00:54:06] Gwyn Isaacs: here now when I made my website. I didn't think about how difficult it was gonna be for people to go. Earthly desires doesn't exist.

[00:54:17] No, it doesn't. It's one desire, earthlydesire.com/free. You can also get there by going to whatexcitesus.com and I find that a lot easier for people

[00:54:29] Arci Grey: and it does link a similar, yeah. That's true. So,

[00:54:32] Gwyn Isaacs: and What Excites Us is my podcast. If y'all are listening, podcast listening folks, please listen.

[00:54:38] Arci Grey: Yay. Okay. Awesome. All right, everyone, have a great night. Thank you so much.

[00:54:42] Gwyn Isaacs: This has been really great. I am super appreciate it