Ep 102: My Experience of Where Trauma Met Awakening

Updates on the Liberated Being podcast and studio, and The Healing Arts Business Incubator at  www.brookethomas.me/incubator  

Today I’m talking with Dr. Ginger Nash. Ginger is a naturopathic physician who has been in practice for over 20 years. Her practice centers around nutrition, herbal medicine and homeopathy, with a focus on personalized care and treating the underlying causes of disease rather than just symptom management. Her practice offers some of the best technology available for evaluating whole-body health and her particular specialties are women’s hormone balancing, and immune dysfunction such as allergies and auto-immune disease. She also treats a tremendous amount of patients suffering with the long-term effects of infections like Lyme and its common co-infections and many different types of chronic disease. As you may know if you are a regular listener of this podcast, I don’t often talk with Naturopathic Doctors on the show. This show is dedicated mostly to manual and movement therapy as it relates to our being-ness or how we experience ourselves and the world. So it was probably inevitable that I would have a naturopath on the show eventually to talk about true mindbody medicine from a different point-of-view. So today we’re merging the worlds. Usually I’m coming at things from how our soma and nervous system effect our physiology. Today is a glimpse from the other side, talking about how how our physiology effects our nervous system states and mental health and so much more. Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community and we don’t have any social media accounts anymore- so if you want to stay in touch and hear about special events in the embodied practice studio, head to the website and subscribe to our newsletter. You can find more of Dr. Ginger Nash’s work at www.gingernash.com

Today I’m talking with Emory M. Moore Jr. A health and fitness pioneer and innovator, he created the EM LifeWork TM & EM technique TM methods for holistic fitness, wellness  and body harmony. Emory is a multi-certified exercise & movement master teacher and pioneer. With over 35 years of experience, Emory has immersed himself in the study of a myriad of disciplines including, but not limited to martial arts, dance, chi gong, yoga, bodywork, Pilates, Gyrotonic,  somatic training & strength conditioning systems. Not content with having a taste of all things he went for total involvement pursuing decades of study on three continents. Emory has taught and trained hundreds of teachers in the US, Germany & Switzerland some of whom went on to sculpt the fitness landscape and help develop the fitness industry as we know it today. A resident of Brooklyn, New York, Emory’s passion for teaching and the education of young people, led him to found the ground breaking Embora Studio and to create the wellness-arts organization EM Arts exemplifying the belief that the way to a better healthier society is through inner harmony and the arts. Currently EM Arts serves schools in New York City and we’re going to talk about their work in schools and with teachers and students a great deal today. It’s really beautiful and needed work, I’m sure you’ll enjoy hearing about it. You can read more about his work at www.em-arts.info. Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community. We don’t have any social media accounts anymore so if you want to stay in touch and hear about special events in the embodied practice studio, head to the website and subscribe to our newsletter.

Today I’m talking with Brea Fisher. Brea is the founder of Quan Yin Gongfu and has spent the last 13 years dedicated to the disciplines of Qigong, Taiji, and Gongfu, drawing on focused study and knowledge of Daoist philosophy and lifestyle, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yin Yang theory, and Five Element theory. Brea unites the visual arts and the written word with the Chinese internal and martial arts. She carries the lineage of Eagle Claw Turning Style (Ying Zhao Fan Zi Men), teaching Gongfu Palm + Sword, and Taiji forms handed down by Master Sing Chui. You can read more about her work at www.quanyingongfu.com Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community. Our embodied practice studio is www.liberatedbeing.community/studio

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with David Treleaven about his book and training on Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. If you missed that episode- it’s a good one- and you can find it in the podcast player you’re on now or at liberatedbeing.community at the podcast tab. This episode is a personal experience with where trauma met what is often referred to as "spiritual awakening" and how my practice, my approach to the practice (and the goal), and some harmful ideas of what awakening is and what it requires dysregulated me and put me into a tough place. And also how I recovered from that and I view the subject of "waking up" these days. Spoiler: it's still in progress. I hope it can be helpful for anyone who is suffering as a result of their practice. We also go through a specific pointer you can use to make sure your practice is working for you instead of against you. Also this month Liberated Being is partnering with David Treleaven's Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness training to bring you a chance to go through it at a reduced rate and with some support. To sign up you can go to https://bk738.isrefer.com/go/LB/LB/ and use the code LB400.

Today I’m talking with Isha Vela. Isha is a psychologist and somatic trauma professional who works as a somatic expressive coach with healers, weavers, change agents, bridge-builders, connectors, and other folxs who feel called to make an impact on the world. She runs the Revolutionary Rompe Reglas community and you can find more of her work at www.revolutionaryrompereglas.com. Her program for conscious leaders, Devotion, is via her work with me page. Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and we don’t have any social media accounts anymore- woohoo! So if you want to stay in touch head to the website and subscribe to our newsletter.

David Treleaven is a writer, educator, and trauma professional working at the intersection of mindfulness and trauma. He is the author of the acclaimed book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness and founder of the Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM) Community—a group of practitioners committed to setting a standard of care through mindfulness-based practices, interventions, and programs. David focuses on connecting mindfulness providers with the knowledge and tools they require to meet the needs of those struggling with trauma. Through workshops, keynotes, podcasts, and online education, he is closely engaged with current empirical research to inform best practices. His work has been adopted into multiple mindfulness teacher training programs around the world, including UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, the Engaged Mindfulness Institute, and Bangor University’s MA in Mindfulness program in the UK. David is currently a visiting scholar at Brown University and has worked with a number of organizations to bring Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness to their staff and programs. You can find more of his work at www.davidtreleaven.com and his book, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness is available all places where books are sold. You can go through the TSM training with us this May! When you sign up at https://davidtreleaven.com/trauma-sensitive-mindfulness-complete/ use the code LB400 (code must be used by May 10th) to get $400 off the cost of training, and two live q+a sessions with David and I.

Today I’m talking with Diana Winston. Diana is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and the author of The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. Called by the Los Angeles Times “one of the nation’s best-known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulness since 1999 in a variety of settings including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, and schools in the US and Asia. A sought-after speaker, she developed the evidence-based Mindful Awareness Practices or (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide. She is a founding board member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. I hope you enjoy the conversation. You can find more of Diana’s work at www.dianawinston.com. Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community. We are no longer on any social media, so if you want to hear about when we have retreats or other special events, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter on our website.

This is a practice-based episode that speaks more deeply to the issues that were brought up in the last episode, with Jane Clapp, about how social media is changing us. This is from the point of view of a podcast/body-centered mindfulness studio that wants to "make the world a more embodied place" and that is "in the inquiry of being fully human". In the episode, host Brooke Thomas asks if it's possible to be more embodied and fully human and still connected to the social media algorithms with how they are designed to change our brains and behavior. She also gives a guided practice for becoming present by receiving through the senses, a way of falling back in love with the world. Retreat month in the Liberated Being studio begins April 1st. It will be a flexible container for disconnecting from social media and doomscrolling and most importantly reconnecting to our bodies, our beings, our natural environment, and our actual lives. You can sign up at liberatedbeing.community/studio. It’s not an extra program, just a part of monthly or annual membership. RESOURCES mentioned in the episode: The Social Dilemma (documentary) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff Jaron Lanier Feels Good Man (documentary)

Jane Clapp is a mindful strength and movement coach, an embodiment educator and a Jungian analyst in training. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work that goes beyond mindfulness, to enmesh each client’s physical condition with the psychological and emotional aspects of their selves while always factoring in that the oppressive systems we live in play out in every system in the body. She has worked as an expert coach and educator that brings together expertise in the effects of chronic stress and overwhelm on the fascial and autonomic nervous systems, movement and breath patterns since 2006. Bringing together her many years of somatic study while supporting others through their bodies, with her personal journey through Jungian Analysis and her training as a Jungian Analyst, she has developed what she refers to as Jungian Somatics. And why do I feel like of all the episodes THIS one is a don’t miss? Well Jane and I are getting into territory that isn’t discussed that much in our circles- that being how social media is quite literally changing us, changing our brains and changing the world. It’s like we’re all hooked up to a neurofeedback machine now that works on us to make us more polarized, more in our survival/reactionistic brains and more dualistic. Among other things… Jane and I have been swimming in these waters separately but simultaneously, so this was our chance to talk about it with each other. I think we all need to be talking about this more and finding ways, as we are able, to unhook from the algorithms. RESOURCES MENTIONED How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell (book) The Social Dilemma (documentary on Netflix) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/the-internet-doesnt-have-to-be-awful/618079/ How Humans Get Hacked Yuval Noah Harari and Tristan Harris on Wired https://www.wired.com/video/watch/yuval-harari-tristan-harris-humans-get-hacked It Will Never Happen to Me by Claudia Black (book) Dr. Iain McGilchrist James Hillman Jaron Lanier