0:05

Welcome to Live Free Ride Free,

0:07

where we talk to people who have lived

0:10

self-actualized lives on their own

0:12

terms, and find out how they

0:14

got there, what they do, how we

0:16

can get there, what we can learn from them.

0:19

How to live our best lives, find

0:21

our own definition of success,

0:24

and most importantly, find

0:26

joy. I'm your host,

0:28

Rupert Isaacson. New York Times bestselling

0:30

author of the Horse Boy. Founder

0:32

of New Trails Learning Systems and

0:35

long ride home.com. You can find details

0:37

of all our programs and shows on

0:39

Rupert isaacson.com.

0:42

Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free, where we

0:44

talk to people who are living self actualized

0:46

lives, living life on their own terms

0:49

and making a go of it in whichever

0:51

way they are interested

0:54

in following their passions. Making

0:56

a livelihood. What can we learn from these

0:58

people? It's what we all aspire to

1:00

do this week I've

1:02

got Suki Baxter now

1:05

if you don't know who she is just go on YouTube

1:07

and type her in you're gonna find some

1:10

videos that an awful lot of people watch

1:12

and I like many of

1:14

you I'm always a bit Curious about how

1:16

do these people get so many people to watch their videos?

1:19

I mean, yes, their content's amazing

1:21

and her content is amazing. We're going to talk about

1:23

it. So obviously you can't get that without

1:25

amazing content. How

1:28

do they take it beyond that? How do they make

1:30

a living from it? More than that. How

1:32

did they get to the point where they were making that amazing

1:34

content in the first place?

1:37

So what is Ziggybax's amazing content?

1:39

Well, it has to do with your nervous system. It

1:41

has to do with your brain and it has to do

1:44

with Feeling better about

1:46

stuff in a real way not

1:48

in an ephemeral way I don't want

1:50

to give too much away because Suki's gonna

1:52

talk us through some pretty interesting

1:55

stuff about how to live happier Not

1:57

just to live free ride free more self actualized, but

2:00

really genuinely some secrets of happiness

2:02

here So without further

2:04

ado welcome Suki. Can

2:06

you tell us please?

2:07

Who you are. Thank you so

2:10

much for having me. I am

2:12

an embodiment coach. I, as you

2:14

said, have a YouTube channel that has gotten

2:17

quite a few followers. And

2:19

I came into this work through the

2:21

door of the body. So, I spent

2:23

about 15 years having a clinical

2:25

body work practice where I worked 1 on 1 with

2:28

clients and in

2:30

the process of understanding

2:32

how bodies work. A lot of people

2:34

who came to me had a lot of physical pain and postural

2:36

complaints. I had

2:38

to really start asking myself some questions about

2:41

where the symptoms were coming from

2:43

and all of my questions.

2:46

Continuously led me back to the nervous system.

2:49

So, over the course of the 15 years that I was working

2:51

on people, I just kept coming back to the nervous system

2:53

as the foundational piece

2:55

that was contributing to a lot of these

2:57

challenges that I was seeing in people. And

3:00

when I really began to delve into the

3:02

nervous system, I. Discovered

3:05

that it was related to far more than just

3:07

your physical posture and pain

3:10

or lack thereof, but really to

3:12

how you were experiencing how person

3:14

experiences life, whether that's

3:16

in a positive way, a pleasurable, pleasant

3:19

way, or whether it

3:21

creates a life that is challenging

3:23

and full of struggle.

3:25

Okay, you said very Quickly

3:27

there. You had a physical

3:31

therapy practice. What

3:34

did you do? What were you doing? What was your hands on? Were you

3:36

a massage therapist? Were you, what

3:38

were you? Yeah, so I

3:40

am technically a licensed

3:42

massage therapist and I

3:45

practice a form of body work that

3:47

is called rolfing, which some

3:49

people may have heard of. Some people may not have, it's got

3:52

kind of a grassroots following. But rolfing

3:54

is a. Way of approaching

3:56

the body from a structural perspective.

3:59

So really looking at how all the parts and pieces

4:01

of your body work together

4:03

to create optimal

4:06

posture and, and movement. So

4:08

when a person would come in, I would do

4:10

a posture and movement assessment, have a conversation

4:13

with them observe them walking,

4:15

standing, moving in various ways. And

4:18

then approach helping them to be

4:20

more integrated and to have basically

4:22

less friction in their movement from

4:24

a very holistic way. So, oftentimes,

4:27

when we go to a practitioner, a specialist

4:30

for maybe we have a sore shoulder

4:32

or a sore hip a lot of times the work

4:34

is focused on that region of the body.

4:36

So you go in, you say, I have a sore shoulder. Your doctor looks

4:38

at your shoulder. Why is this shoulder sore? When

4:40

someone would come to me, I would look at their shoulder. And

4:42

also, how is that shoulder connected to

4:45

a ribcage? And a torso and how is that rib

4:47

cage balanced on the pelvis and so on and so forth.

4:49

So really backing up and looking at

4:51

it from a systems level

4:52

approach. And when you do this

4:54

Rolfing thing, are you, is it like

4:56

a massage and that you're going in and you sort

4:59

of squeeze with your hands in the way that we think

5:01

of, or, you know, put your elbow on or whatever

5:03

the way we think of as a massage therapist? Or

5:06

are you doing something else? Something

5:08

more specific? Yeah,

5:11

I think that's a really great question. So, yeah,

5:13

a lot of times it looks like classic

5:15

body work, right? So some, you have somebody come in,

5:17

they, they're standing in a room, you do a movement

5:20

posture assessment, and then typically I would get them on

5:22

a table and do various things that

5:24

look like massage, right? Applying pressure. I may have

5:26

them move while I'm applying pressure.

5:28

But yeah, there's, there's physical contact.

5:30

So it is manual manipulation, manual therapy,

5:32

however you want to classify that which is

5:35

why it's classified under massage. But

5:38

the experience of it is usually a little bit different,

5:40

which is something that's a little bit hard to verbally

5:42

convey. But when people experience it, they're like, oh, yeah,

5:44

this is different. But really,

5:47

I, I think what's really interesting is that this

5:49

is what led me to the nervous system. Right? So when

5:51

somebody gets. A body work of any kind.

5:53

What's really going on there? And

5:56

what I was noticing was that I would have these clients

5:58

come in. Some of these clients, I

6:00

swear to you, just being in the room with

6:03

me, they would start to change and shift, like just having

6:05

a conversation. There was no physical contact

6:08

whatsoever. When these people started to change,

6:10

it was so easy to have their bodies

6:12

shift other people. I. I'm

6:15

telling you, like no amount of pressure that I applied

6:17

seemed to have an effect. And that's really where

6:19

I started asking the question. Okay. I've

6:21

been told that what I'm doing here is

6:24

like breaking up adhesions in

6:26

their fascia. So rolfing uses a lot

6:28

of myofascial release, myofascial type techniques.

6:31

And I was, I was told in my training, like

6:33

we're, we're doing all these things to break up adhesions

6:35

or separate different sheets of fascia.

6:37

So they glide, but all these mechanical things. And

6:40

I was like, but. I'm applying

6:43

pressure to all these different people with differing

6:45

results. So something else

6:47

might be going on here. And I just, even at the

6:49

inception, I was like, I think it's in the nervous system. I

6:51

didn't know. I didn't have a lot of you know,

6:53

this is, this is BG,

6:55

as I say, like, before Google. So there wasn't

6:58

nearly as much information available.

7:00

And I, I didn't know where to go and who

7:02

to ask, but I just started Thinking that

7:04

there seems to be a nervous system component

7:06

here. It seems to have something to do

7:09

with how a person senses

7:11

the contact that is being applied.

7:14

And over time, as I learned

7:16

a lot more and learned how the body works,

7:18

I was like, yeah, actually, that is true. And I filled in many,

7:21

many, many holes and gaps and knowledge and I'm still

7:24

learning as we all are, because we're still discovering

7:26

how all of this works, but. But

7:29

over and over again, I kept coming back to, yeah, it's

7:31

in the sensing, it's in the body's ability

7:33

to feel and to have that sensory information

7:36

processed by the brain. That's what's actually changing

7:38

the map of the body and the posture,

7:41

but there's also all these other wonderful

7:44

effects as, you know, as you mentioned, that

7:46

make us so much happier. When our

7:48

nervous system is optimally functioning and

7:50

that was the other piece of it was that some of my clients

7:52

would come in and I would just see their entire lives

7:55

change where people would You

7:57

know, leave really toxic relationships.

8:00

They would leave careers that were burning

8:02

them out and making them miserable and unhealthy.

8:04

They would make these dramatic changes

8:07

in their lives. And it seemed

8:09

coincidental. It seemed to, it seemed to coincide

8:12

with the work that we were doing and

8:14

I want us to know, okay, so why are these people

8:17

like, really coming into their own, really having

8:20

more agency over themselves, really

8:23

Finding a way to follow what feels good for

8:25

them and create that life that makes

8:27

them happy. Like, how is this

8:29

physical contact creating

8:31

that kind of a change? And again, it led me

8:33

to the nervous system.

8:34

Okay. So before we go to the nervous

8:37

system, it's interesting. I mean, we, we, this

8:39

podcast called Live Free, Ride Free, and it sounds

8:41

like you are helping people to do that,

8:44

to liberate themselves and self

8:46

actualize through the nervous system. We're going

8:48

to go back to that. And I want to know how,

8:51

however, there's some questions I've

8:53

got based on some things that you said, which

8:56

some terms I want to clarify, because I'm

8:58

sure that a lot of listeners might not know.

9:01

So we should tell them what is fascia,

9:04

what is something that is myofascial,

9:07

and when you talk about sensing, what

9:10

is that? So can we start with fascia? What is

9:13

fascia?

9:13

Yeah. So fascia is a type

9:15

of tissue. It's a connective tissue within the

9:17

body. It's one of the most pervasive tissues

9:19

within the body. You have quite a lot of it. Oftentimes

9:22

you will hear People say that it wraps around things

9:25

like wraps around the muscle bellies and kind

9:27

of is under your skin. So it covers

9:29

things, but it actually permeates

9:31

your body down to the cellular level. So

9:33

if we could magically put you, Rupert,

9:36

into some kind of a solution that would dissolve

9:38

everything in your body, that was not fascia,

9:40

we would have a 3d imprint

9:42

of Rupert, which is different from

9:44

a lot of things, right? So if we just had your skeletal structure,

9:47

you know, we would, we would see your bones, but we wouldn't

9:49

actually see your. Your facial features and

9:51

your, you know, the musculature of your body and how

9:54

all of that was developed. If we just had your

9:56

skin, we would see the outside, but there'd be no, you

9:58

know, in no inside no innards. We wouldn't

10:00

really be able to know what the inside organization

10:02

of your body looked like fashion gives

10:04

us all of that. It would give us almost like

10:06

a spider web, like, imprint

10:08

of your body. And fascia has

10:11

been something that people have been looking

10:13

at as there's, there's quite a lot of cells

10:15

in fascia that sense. So we'll talk about that in a second.

10:17

That sense where we are in space, that sense stretching

10:20

and vibration and movement in

10:22

our bodies. And so, fascia is kind

10:24

of the organ of. Consciousness

10:28

or interoception, or people quantify

10:30

that differently, but it, it's a, it's a

10:32

type of tissue that both supports

10:34

our body and then gives us a lot of information

10:37

about our body state and our body's movement.

10:40

So you say an organ, do

10:42

you think of it as an organ?

10:44

Well, I

10:46

don't know that it classically is considered

10:48

an organ that's just a word

10:51

that people use to describe it. Right, but do you,

10:53

do you feel that that's an apt description with

10:55

it, with the work that you've done?

10:58

I think it's an organ similarly to

11:01

the way skin is an organ. Okay.

11:03

Like an internal skin, an internal sense

11:05

of skin.

11:06

Exactly. But it doesn't it doesn't

11:09

do the same things as skin, right? It doesn't sweat. It doesn't

11:11

do all of those things, because that would be awkward

11:13

if you're sweating around your stomach or something. Yeah,

11:16

exactly. So I, so I don't

11:19

know if like, if we were being like really,

11:21

you know, linear, like Western

11:23

medicine type of scientific, is it technically

11:25

an organ? I don't know if but yeah, you could say it's an

11:27

organ of consciousness or an organ of something.

11:29

Okay, so consciousness. So is it, so

11:32

when you were describing it, it sounds, the

11:34

first thing that I thought was it sounds wet. It

11:36

sounds like a

11:38

watery thing. And I remember

11:41

from the days when I used to hunt deer and things like

11:43

that, and I would skin them and you

11:45

would, you know, peel back the skin and

11:47

then there would be this. Jelly

11:50

like thing that was like

11:52

a bubble wrap around things

11:54

and I presume that that is the fascia

11:57

or part of it. Anyway it was

11:59

pretty wet. I suppose our bodies are,

12:01

you know, 75 percent water or whatever,

12:03

but it's interesting that you talk about consciousness

12:07

there. Do you feel that your fascia

12:09

is a conductive part of the body

12:11

that, that conducts information

12:15

from one part of the body to the other? And if so, how

12:17

does it differ? I know I'm going down a bit of a rabbit hole. How

12:19

does it differ from your nervous system? Or

12:22

do you think it's part of?

12:25

Yeah, I think, I think it is. I think everything is

12:27

everything to be honest. So,

12:29

so, so, and

12:32

this is kind of, I think a question

12:35

that I come up against a lot in a lot of different

12:37

areas where people like, well, you know, they look at

12:39

this piece of us now, like, this seems really important. They

12:41

get really fixated on that piece. Fascia

12:43

is an important piece, but it's not important

12:45

on its own. In my opinion. I think it's important in

12:47

that it's connected to a system. It's

12:50

it's sensing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our internal

12:52

environment, it's sensing our external environment,

12:54

and then it's conveying that to our

12:56

brain via nervous system processes. If

12:59

we didn't have those nervous system processes to

13:01

receive that information, it wouldn't really matter that

13:03

we had the fascia. So the whole system

13:07

is what's important.

13:08

Is it a bit like the silica in a master keyboard?

13:10

I don't

13:11

know. I don't know how

13:14

keywords are put together. Maybe.

13:17

But, but I, I think people

13:19

get sort of like, aha, this is the

13:21

thing. And they get really fixated on that. And that is

13:24

very it's very science based. It's, you

13:26

know, science seeks to kind of take things apart to their

13:28

smallest component, which is really beneficial. It helps

13:30

us to understand things. But we, we

13:32

often kind of get fixated on these smaller pieces

13:35

and lose sight of the bigger, Picture so fascia

13:37

is part of our system. You asked about myofascia.

13:40

So when you say myofascial myo means muscle. So it's

13:42

muscle fascial. So you're talking about the,

13:44

the muscle and the fascia together.

13:46

So, myofascial release,

13:49

what that literally means is

13:51

we're releasing the muscle. Like lengthening,

13:54

you know, relaxing, reducing tension

13:56

and we're stretching the fashion, but

13:59

that, that brings me full circle back around

14:01

to what I was saying, which is that what

14:03

I was taught was, you know, we're, we're, we're

14:05

doing that. We're stretching, we're mechanically,

14:08

like, if you think about like a plastic bag,

14:10

like a grocery bag, if you stick your thumb in it

14:12

and you kind of stretch it out how

14:14

it, how it kind of creates a pocket

14:17

or a pucker in the, in the plastic, that

14:19

was how I was taught. We were affecting

14:21

the body. But my, my

14:23

actual clinical experience did not

14:25

bear that out because I was like, I'm

14:27

the same person for all of these people. I'm applying,

14:30

you know, pressure from my body to their body, but

14:32

I'm getting different results. So why is it working

14:35

for this person with a feather

14:37

touch and that person with extreme

14:40

amounts of pressure? We're not having the same results.

14:43

Okay, and this process

14:45

goes on for how long? You're, you're rolfing,

14:48

you've got your practice, people are coming in, they're lying

14:50

on your table, you're, you're, you're

14:52

noticing all these different things. Some of them are having

14:55

these huge life, positive life changing

14:57

events. Some you don't even have to touch

14:59

and you seem to get a positive

15:01

effect. Some, no

15:03

matter how much you touch them, not

15:05

so much. How long is that going on

15:07

before you go, I want to do a deep

15:09

dive into the nervous system?

15:12

It was an ongoing process. It was more

15:14

that every time I tried to learn something new, I

15:16

sort of came back to the nervous system. So,

15:18

I started with studying a lot of energy

15:20

work because I was like, is there an energy

15:22

work component? And I think there is

15:25

but it was, it was ultimately unsatisfying

15:27

for me because I, it still felt like.

15:30

Okay. But it's very random. How do I actually,

15:32

yeah, exactly. I love energy work. I think

15:34

it's really great, but I just didn't feel like it was tangible

15:36

enough for me to feel confident that when a

15:38

person came into me and I also do this work

15:41

on horses or have done this work on horses. So

15:43

when, when a human would come in or when I was working

15:45

with a horse, I was like, how can I

15:47

kind of. I don't know

15:49

tangibly that I'm having an impact

15:52

here. And energy work was just, like,

15:54

vague is a really good word. And some people

15:56

are, you know, they feel it and they're really into it.

15:58

And other people, it's like, they can't access at

16:00

all. So, so, so That

16:03

was a piece of it. But then also the nervous system

16:05

runs on, you know, electricity,

16:07

which is energy. So again, I was like, okay, let's go

16:09

back to the nervous system. And

16:11

I just sort of everything that I did kept bringing

16:13

me back to the nervous system is our essentially

16:16

our human or mammalian really, because not

16:18

just human, but our mammalian operating system.

16:21

And if we're affecting that, if we can understand

16:23

how we're affecting the nervous system then

16:26

Like you said, we can really liberate people because the other

16:28

thing that I kept running into in my studies was these

16:30

sort of like limiting blueprints

16:32

of how to, how to control your thoughts

16:35

or how to excavate, you know, quote,

16:37

limiting beliefs, or, you know, basically

16:40

how to control yourself in a way to

16:42

be happy. And. And

16:44

that didn't seem to really work for me because, because

16:47

not all people are the same. For me,

16:49

I wanted to strip away all the layers of

16:51

what a person isn't so

16:53

that they have the ability to grow into

16:55

what they naturally and inherently are, which

16:57

is going to look different for you than for me, than, you

17:00

know, for, for everybody out there, we're all

17:02

individuals. So let's

17:03

go from vague to

17:05

vagal. Tell

17:09

us what you found out about the nervous

17:11

system.

17:13

So when I landed on what

17:15

is called polyvagal theory, and I can define

17:17

that term, but it's called polyvagal theory. It

17:19

really My mother's

17:20

name is Polly and she can be a bit vague. It's true

17:22

sometimes.

17:24

And probably in many ways. When

17:27

I landed on that, I It

17:30

seemed to really map with

17:33

what I was observing in people. So, polyvagal

17:35

theory is a theory that was put forth

17:37

by a gentleman named Steven Porges. And

17:40

what Steven Porges found is that there's

17:43

a very large nerve, which we did know about, but

17:45

he didn't discover the nerve, but he found that this very

17:47

large nerve called the vagus nerve it's

17:49

called the vagus nerve because vagus comes from

17:52

the vagus nerve. It's not Las Vegas Vegas. It's,

17:55

I was, I was hoping it's

17:57

from the Latin word for wandering and it's

17:59

a very long nerve. So it, it wanders from your

18:01

cranium down through your neck through your

18:03

upper torso and then into your viscera

18:06

deep into your viscera. And so if you look

18:08

up, you know, an image of the vagus nerve, it's this,

18:10

this big tangly long wandering thing.

18:13

And what what Stephen Porges found

18:15

is that this vagus nerve is it

18:17

functions to help regulate

18:19

our stress response. And his theory

18:21

is that there are multiple branches of this

18:23

vagus nerve and that these branches have

18:26

different functions, which is why it's called polyvagal

18:28

theory. So poly coming from many. The

18:31

word for many vagal from the vagus nerve

18:33

and then theory because it is a theory. And

18:35

I always want to emphasize that because there's a lot

18:38

of people talking about exactly how this all

18:40

works physiologically within the body.

18:42

We're still learning. I think in 10 years, we're

18:45

going to know a lot more and we may have a

18:47

completely different. Map at that time.

18:49

It's growing. It's evolving. But it's a, it's

18:51

a theory. And so I always

18:53

like to keep in mind that the, that it's a map.

18:55

It's not the territory, which is the common

18:58

saying in lots of fields, but it's common

19:00

in body work. The map is not the territory. So.

19:03

It's just, it just gives us a framework

19:05

for beginning to understand the stress response

19:07

and it does map. very

19:09

cleanly with what I and a

19:11

lot of other practitioners of various fields

19:14

have found observationally

19:16

in our clients in terms of how stress functions

19:18

and what it does to us and how that is

19:21

observed.

19:21

Can you give us the sort of breakdown

19:23

101 polyvagal

19:26

for dummies? Yeah.

19:28

So the polyvagal theory the, the simple breakdown

19:30

is that you basically have three states in

19:33

polyvagal theory, you have the ventral vagal ventral

19:35

meaning front. So this is the front branch

19:38

of your vagus nerve. Stephen Porges

19:40

identified this as the branch of your

19:42

vagus nerve that is responsible for social

19:44

engagement. So the ability to connect

19:46

to other people and animals, the ability

19:49

to have empathy, the ability

19:51

to co regulate meaning that we can kind

19:53

of. Symbiotically feel what the

19:55

other is feeling and come into a similar state

19:57

as another

19:57

person. And I'm listening to reggae and having a beer and

20:00

feeling iry and having

20:02

a hug. I'm in my bedroom. There you go.

20:04

Okay.

20:05

Yes. Cool. Got it. Absolutely. It's,

20:07

it's basically where all the good stuff in life is. The,

20:09

the, the love, the joy, the happiness, the,

20:11

you know, the excitement, the, all the,

20:14

all the things that we think of as things we want to

20:16

experience.

20:17

That's all down the front of my tummy.

20:18

Ventral. Front of your tummy. Ventral bagel, according

20:20

to the, gorgeous. Yep. Then you

20:22

have your sympathetic nervous system. So,

20:25

your sympathetic nervous system is responsible for

20:27

your fight or flight response, which a lot of people

20:29

are Is ventral

20:30

parasympathetic?

20:31

Yeah, so your vagus nerve is the main nerve of your

20:33

parasympathetic nervous system. Although I will,

20:36

like, little asterisk here. There

20:38

is research that is finding that the vagus nerve

20:40

can have an activating

20:43

effect when stimulated. So

20:45

I, I'm still looking

20:47

into this because I'm, it's really hard

20:50

to get

20:52

a grip on what

20:54

exactly that means.

20:55

But for dummies at this stage,

20:58

front ventral parasympathetic, good.

21:01

Yes. And then, so the

21:03

other one is dorsal, right?

21:04

Yes, so your vagus nerve is

21:07

parasympathetic, your sympathetic is fight or flight. Your

21:09

parasympathetic is rest and digest,

21:12

your sympathetic is fight or flight. If you can just

21:14

kind of get that piece down, that's the simple

21:16

explanation. But

21:17

are there not two branches of the vagal nerve

21:19

doing both? Right. So front one

21:21

ventral, back one dorsal.

21:23

Correct. So, so if we go down

21:25

one step from your ventral vagal, we've got your sympathetic

21:28

nervous system, different branch of your nervous system,

21:30

but that's your fight or flight. This is what people think of

21:32

when they think about, I'm stressed. This is tension.

21:34

This is anxiety. This is

21:37

agitation. This is, you know, like clenching

21:39

jaw, tight neck and shoulders, all of that stuff

21:41

lives in the sympathetic. It's a, this

21:43

is a mobilizing branch of your nervous system.

21:46

So it's what gets us up and doing

21:48

stuff basically. Hey, there's a

21:50

threat to your survival. You better take action

21:52

or you're going to get eaten by the lion which

21:54

is bad. So one step

21:56

down from that, you have what you mentioned, which is

21:58

your dorsal bagel. the

22:01

dorsal branch of your vagus nerve. So

22:03

the dorsal vagal response or dorsal vagal states

22:05

dorsal being like a dorsal fin, meaning

22:08

the back. So you've got your ventral front dorsal

22:10

back of your vagus nerve. And this

22:12

is your shutdown or immobilizing

22:15

branch of your nervous system. You can think about this like

22:17

you're playing possum. And like you

22:19

mentioned, the vagus nerve is the parasympathetic

22:21

nerve. Parasympathetic can be I'm

22:24

connected to another person,

22:26

but it can also be I'm shutting you down because

22:28

you've been in sympathetic for so long that we need to pull

22:30

the emergency brake or your heart's going to explode. You

22:32

cannot live in sympathetic all the time. We

22:35

are meant to have a sympathetic response

22:38

to dispatch the threat. You either

22:40

run away from it and survive or you fight

22:42

it. And survive, or you die which,

22:44

at which point, game over. It's

22:47

supposed to be

22:47

over pretty quickly. It's

22:48

supposed to end, and then we discharge

22:50

it. Unfortunately for humans, because

22:52

of the way we live in this very contrived

22:55

world we have a lot of stimulation

22:57

coming at us all the time. Just

22:59

a lot of noise, a lot of sensory noise

23:02

and just a lot, and we even have mental stress,

23:04

which is not, I don't think zebras sit

23:06

around worrying about how they're going to pay their taxes.

23:09

I don't know, I haven't really chatted with a lot of zebras,

23:11

but I think it's probably unlikely. So

23:13

these things are all essentially threats to our

23:15

survival that keep us. In

23:17

sympathetic quite a lot. If you

23:19

stay in that state over a prolonged period of time,

23:22

it does a lot of really bad things. So short term

23:24

stress is very beneficial. I think that's

23:26

1 of the misnomers of stress is the people think it's

23:28

always bad. Short term stress can actually

23:30

activate your immune system. It's how you

23:33

you know, get over being sick. It can, it

23:35

does a lot of really good things in short

23:37

duration. Right. For prolonged

23:40

or chronic stress is very, very

23:42

damaging to our health. It decreases our brain

23:44

matter, it unravels our telomeres, it does all kinds

23:46

of horrible things. What's a telomere? A telomere. That's

23:48

a good question. A telomere is let me find

23:51

the actual definition because I

23:53

am going to get it wrong. It is a compound

23:55

structure at the end of a chromosome.

23:58

So it's a structure inside of our

24:01

nervous system that basically

24:03

They protect our body from aging

24:05

and they naturally unravel

24:08

over time. But what,

24:11

when you have chronic stress, they unravel more quickly.

24:13

So it accelerates aging. It accelerates degeneration

24:16

within your body. It accelerates the,

24:18

you know, we, we have a natural degradation over time

24:20

of our body as it copies itself. And we

24:22

produce new cells. Each Xerox copy is

24:24

a little bit less accurate, a little more

24:26

fuzzy. But when, when.

24:29

We have chronic stress. Those telomeres

24:32

do, as I understand it, get shorter. How

24:34

do we spell telomere? Telomere

24:36

is TEL T-E-L-O-M-E-R.

24:43

Etel. T-E-L-O-M-E-R-E?

24:46

Yes. Telomere. Okay, cool. Interesting.

24:49

All right. Yes. Something I didn't know. Okay,

24:51

good. So by the way, just

24:53

I have a quick question to clarify. You're

24:55

saying that the ventral vagal nerve.

24:58

is a one branch of the vagal

25:00

nerve. But you see, I couldn't tell if

25:02

you're talking about the dorsal as

25:06

something that's not the vagal nerve, but

25:08

surely are they not two branches of the same

25:10

nerve? One is about feeling good, one

25:12

is about feeling bad, effectively.

25:14

It's, yeah, I mean, yes,

25:17

there are two branches of the same nerve. Okay. That's,

25:19

that's the whole polyvagal, right? Multiple branches.

25:21

And I've got one down the front, one down the back.

25:24

In general, my front one is associated

25:26

with feel good. In general, my

25:28

back one is associated with not.

25:32

Yes. I, I'd

25:34

say, I, I'm, I'm always

25:36

hesitant to use the words good and bad. One

25:38

is a little bit more pleasant and one

25:40

is a little bit more unpleasant.

25:43

But they're both there to, to serve the function

25:45

to keep you alive.

25:46

And yeah, and, and, and I, I think

25:48

it's really important to say that there's no. State

25:51

of your nervous system. That's wrong or bad. And I think this

25:53

is where like, I get a lot of people

25:55

saying, well, I, I've done some work to

25:57

heal my nervous system and I felt better for

25:59

a short period of time. And then and then

26:01

I, I felt anxious again, or I felt depressed

26:04

again, or I felt whatever again or

26:06

I felt lethargic or I felt exhausted. And

26:08

this seems wrong. Like I I'm doing

26:11

it wrong, or it isn't working or whatever. They're,

26:13

you know, whatever they determine is the story

26:15

around that. We need all of our nervous

26:17

system states. We, they're there for

26:19

a reason. And so the goal

26:22

is not to get rid of any of these states or to live,

26:24

you know, eternally in ventral vagal. That would

26:26

be great. But when that lion comes around and

26:28

you're in ventral vagal, you're gonna be like, hey, dude. Yeah,

26:32

pretty kitty. Can I pet you? And you're gonna

26:34

get eaten. Like we need our sympathetic

26:36

response. We need these aspects of our nervous

26:38

system. The goal isn't to get rid of

26:40

them. The goal is just to not get

26:41

stuck in them. Right.

26:43

Got it. And as you say,

26:45

you know, a shot of adrenaline, a

26:48

shot of cortisol to make you act, not think,

26:50

get yourself out of trouble. Sometimes

26:52

that could even be fun if you

26:55

enjoy a dangerous sport or something like that,

26:57

but you don't want to live there. Why,

27:00

apart from the unraveling of

27:02

telomeres, And I also know that

27:04

cortisol, the stress hormone, is a neurotoxin,

27:07

so that obviously is toxic

27:09

for the body over too much time.

27:12

What else does stress do

27:14

over time? You mentioned this

27:16

word, friction, early on. Is

27:21

it tied to that? Is stress

27:23

tied to friction in the body? And

27:26

is friction tied to this nervous

27:28

system response?

27:30

Yeah, so this is where,

27:33

this is I spent a lot of years

27:35

trying to figure this out because we

27:37

didn't have the information we have today. It's

27:39

actually really funny to me to see how much

27:42

body mind information is around

27:44

right now, because for years and years, I was

27:46

like, I think there's something going on with the body

27:48

talking to the mind and people thought it was crazy.

27:50

They were, they just like, they could not get there. And

27:53

now it's, we take it for granted, I think by

27:55

and large there's a collective understanding.

27:58

And so when you ask about like. Stress

28:01

and friction. 1

28:03

of so our bodies are not

28:05

these just machines

28:07

that carry our brains around. They are expressing

28:10

our state of being all the time. But

28:13

they are also communicating inwardly

28:15

to our brain. So the state of your

28:17

body tells your brain something about

28:19

what's going on for you. It tells you, it tells

28:21

your it tells your brain. I'm safe. I'm

28:23

not safe. At its essence. I'm either safe or I'm not

28:25

safe. And that's

28:26

what the brain needs to know moment to moment

28:28

as a bottom line.

28:29

Correct. And that's how it determines your nervous

28:31

system state. We don't choose our nervous system states.

28:34

Our brain, it's in a non conscious

28:36

process, assesses a whole bunch of data

28:39

that it's getting beneath our awareness.

28:41

And it then measures

28:43

that with your past experience. Past

28:45

experiences and any conditioning you may have and

28:48

kind of, you get this, like, I think of it like a little

28:50

computer printout, like, not safe,

28:53

you know, so, and then there's like, someone

28:55

pushes the panic button and that's your sympathetic nervous

28:57

system or safe. And someone's like, okay, we can

28:59

go into rest and digest. Let's get a good night's sleep

29:03

at a very, very basic level. It's, it's more complex

29:05

than that, but,

29:08

but I just want to say, go ahead. So

29:11

on the, on the question of like tension and stress

29:13

and friction, if

29:15

your body is tense, which is what happens

29:17

when you're in sympathetic, then you're

29:19

sort of in this like feedback loop where the

29:21

tension in your body creates

29:24

a lot of friction. You're having to use a lot more energy

29:26

to literally move your body. Right? So, like,

29:28

lifting your arm, you're actually pulling

29:30

against yourself. You're

29:32

actually, you're literally holding yourself back

29:35

by having these tight muscles that create

29:37

a joint that doesn't move in a free

29:39

way, so you have to use more, you have to,

29:41

you have to actually burn

29:44

more calories in essence to move that

29:46

arm because you're pulling against resistance,

29:49

which is your own internal resistance.

29:51

And presumably put more stress on the joints as

29:53

well. the

29:56

tendons and sinews to, yeah,

29:57

potentially, absolutely. And, and

29:59

what I noticed in working with people is that

30:01

we just tend to move in these very limited patterns,

30:04

right? So we only move in ways

30:06

that we habitually move in, which is because

30:09

of the kind of environment we live in, usually fairly

30:11

limited. So we get these very narrow pathways

30:13

and anything outside that pathway becomes almost

30:16

inaccessible, sometimes completely inaccessible.

30:19

And then that limits the amount of

30:21

sensory information that's sent to our brain and the sensory

30:23

information that is sent to our brain is one of

30:25

tension and stress, which then creates

30:27

more tension and stress, which then sends more information

30:29

about tension and stress, right? So it's, you're, you're

30:31

getting this kind of loop, not safe you

30:34

know, not safe information. Your brain's like, I'm not safe. Let's

30:36

be tense. We got to be prepared for, to deal with

30:38

this threat. Okay. But now we're getting more not

30:40

safe information and it's just this cycle.

30:42

Right. So if I come to you with

30:44

my tense shoulders but

30:46

I'm. In a state

30:49

of tension internally

30:51

because I'm afraid

30:54

of my neighbors because I'm reading

30:57

a lot of negative social media stuff because

30:59

I'm, I've been brought up in

31:02

a, in

31:04

a conflicty sort of a culture,

31:07

household, blah, blah. And this has

31:09

all been going on for so many years and I don't even know

31:11

any different because I've just been raised that way.

31:14

And I come to you and I say, Hey Suki can you work

31:16

on my shoulder please? And.

31:19

You start massaging me and that

31:22

stays tense. And then you put your elbow on me and

31:24

it stays tense. And then you and

31:27

then I get up at the end of the thing

31:29

and I'm still tense. Is

31:33

is that the sort of experience of

31:35

a client like that where you're going? Okay,

31:37

look, something internally now needs to

31:40

change. We need to understand

31:42

what this stress response is. How do we,

31:45

how do we guide this person internally?

31:48

To release that stress

31:51

in a way that's not external. No amount

31:53

of, as you said, no amount of me backing my

31:55

truck repeatedly over that guy's shoulder

31:57

is going to release that shoulder, even

32:00

though that's exactly what I'd be asking you

32:02

to do. And then you have to charge me for wear and

32:04

tear on the truck. I

32:08

can see how you would come

32:11

to need to do this research. When

32:15

you then

32:17

began to tell people in your

32:21

practice about this, did

32:24

you find that it made sense

32:26

to them? Did you find that sometimes even perhaps

32:29

hearing about this and

32:31

understanding this mechanism

32:33

within their own bodies,

32:36

did you find that it helped them to release

32:39

their stress without you necessarily

32:41

having to manipulate physically?

32:45

What was going on? Or at least, did you

32:47

find that if you did manipulate physically once you gave

32:49

them this information, they could release

32:52

more meaningfully? To

32:54

an extent.

32:55

I ultimately have moved away

32:58

from doing hands on work because there

33:00

is just so much that needs to happen. Like, you just

33:03

described so well internally

33:05

for a person in terms of

33:07

them understanding their own physical body

33:10

responses, life circumstances. And this is,

33:12

it can be very complex, right? It's not, it's

33:14

not a simple thing. There's a lot of circles of influence

33:16

here that that combined to

33:18

affect a person's, State internal

33:20

state and not all of them are the fault

33:23

of that person, right? We live within these systems

33:25

as well. So there's there's personal stuff. There's cultural

33:27

stuff. Anyway so I I moved

33:29

away from doing the the hands on work

33:31

because I found that

33:33

the context of a bodywork session

33:36

is So it's so

33:38

entrenched in people's heads that i'm going to go in

33:41

and basically deposit my body

33:43

In the office of this person, my brain can go

33:45

on vacation for a little while, thinking

33:48

about whatever and this person will fix me and

33:50

it, it works to, to an extent.

33:55

the people who are available for it,

33:57

for whatever reason, this is, this is not a judgment, right? It's

33:59

because I, I do hear people say like, Oh, well,

34:01

they just weren't ready for it. You know, and it's in

34:04

sort of a judgmental way of like, Oh, this person

34:06

is more evolved and more ready. That's not it at

34:08

all. For whatever reason, a person

34:10

is in the, in the state to be able to receive

34:12

it and actually integrate that work and take it on.

34:14

That's great. Other people aren't for

34:17

whatever reason due to no fault of their own

34:19

most likely. And And

34:22

when people would come in, there was so much backing

34:24

up I had to do to explain

34:26

that your body and your brain are this

34:29

integrated system. And that it's

34:31

not just a muscle. It's this, this muscle

34:33

that's tight in your shoulder is not just a rubber band

34:36

that is too short. That needs to be pulled longer. Like,

34:38

there's a whole culture in

34:40

that muscle, as you just described,

34:43

right? There's a whole belief system in your body.

34:45

And there's a whole lifetime and actually

34:48

multiple lifetimes because we, we take on

34:50

a lot of these things from other generations, both from

34:52

a genetic standpoint, but also from a just a

34:54

mirroring and a learning standpoint. So

34:56

there's, there's whole belief systems living

34:58

in your body and my elbow in your shoulder

35:01

may help if you're at that state

35:03

where you're able to release this

35:05

tension and integrate that. But if you are not.

35:08

Then we could be

35:10

here all day. It's, you know, you're, and you, most

35:12

people do feel better at the end of a session. It's

35:14

whether or not that work stays. Yeah. So my,

35:17

my goal wasn't to have people come in every week for

35:19

the rest of their lives. My goal was to actually help people

35:21

get to where they want it to go. And I saw that

35:23

for some people, the body work was the missing piece,

35:25

but by and large, there was so much more

35:27

education that needed to happen.

35:30

And so I really transitioned into

35:33

teaching this information and, and,

35:35

and helpful tools to people so

35:37

that they could start to integrate this in a different

35:39

way.

35:40

Okay, so now there you are, your

35:42

livelihood is putting hands on

35:44

people, so you actually rely on these people to

35:47

come trooping into your studio

35:49

so that you can pay rent and

35:52

so on. And then you start

35:54

thinking, oh gosh, you know, I've got

35:56

to really tackle this in

35:58

a different way. You go off and

36:00

learn about the nervous system. And

36:03

then there you are on YouTube with like

36:05

6 million, 5 million, 4 million people looking

36:08

at us. Was it

36:10

that sudden? Dot, dot, dot?

36:12

Yeah, it was one of those overnight successes that

36:15

took 20 years to get there. Oh good, I'm glad we can stop

36:16

the podcast right here.

36:19

Yeah, it actually, that

36:21

was a long journey because I,

36:24

I was trying to teach this stuff forever. I've been trying

36:26

to teach this stuff since like 2000. I mean,

36:28

honestly, since the day I started my practice and I started

36:30

figuring this out, I was trying to find the words. I

36:33

was so very new and also so very young. I

36:35

really didn't know how to, you

36:37

know, how to convey this. It took a while to figure out what

36:40

I Was even trying to say. So there was

36:42

that journey of just getting proficient

36:44

at what I was doing and having enough

36:46

experience with putting my hands on people to

36:48

be like, I think there's some patterns here. But

36:50

then there was the experience of trying to explain

36:52

what it was. I even did with

36:54

people. So there was that segment of my

36:56

journey, which as. As you've probably

36:58

noticed in this podcast, it's not easy to quantify

37:01

what, because a lot of this stuff is just not, it

37:03

doesn't fit in the boxes we already have for

37:05

body work and psychology and all of that. I was

37:08

like, no, they're the same thing. You know, actually

37:10

a body worker is a mental health practitioner. People

37:12

were like, no, I have no idea what you're talking about. So

37:14

there was that journey of kind of figuring out how to

37:16

even talk about this. And then

37:19

there was the journey of, Trying

37:21

to share this, as you said, this was my livelihood.

37:23

And so, you know, I would work with mentors and business

37:25

mentors and people who were kind of helping me to get,

37:28

you know, get the word out

37:30

and talk to people. And how do I, how do I communicate

37:32

this? And I had a lot of setbacks.

37:34

I, I had a mentor

37:36

who really said something very hurtful.

37:39

Where I was trying to talk about, you know, the connection

37:41

between pain and stress and the mind and the psychology

37:44

and the culture and all of these different things. And

37:46

I was pretty far into my nervous system journey at this

37:48

point. And I was pretty sure that I

37:51

was on to something, but I also didn't know of anyone

37:53

else who was really talking about it at that time. So

37:55

it was, it was, I felt like I was bumping

37:57

into a wall a lot when I talk about it and

37:59

this mentor said, well, I don't

38:02

even know why a physical therapist is talking to me about

38:04

my emotions. Why don't you just stick to telling

38:06

people what height to set their computer monitor

38:08

at? And I

38:10

was so just

38:13

distraught. And I just felt so much despair

38:15

at that because for one that. It's

38:18

just so it doesn't matter. It

38:20

doesn't matter. If

38:23

setting our computer monitors at the right height

38:25

was the solution, we'd be fine. We wouldn't need

38:27

this work, you know, because I think

38:29

that information is out there. I think we can find that

38:31

at this point. It's accessible. And what

38:33

I wanted to do was so much more

38:36

in my, you know, in my opinion, much more profound

38:38

than that, which was really get to the core of people and really

38:40

help them to live more self actualized lives

38:43

not just. To eradicate

38:45

the pain that they were feeling so they could go on living lives that

38:47

they didn't really enjoy living in

38:50

unhealthy ways, which is kind of what a lot

38:52

of pain relief type. Practices

38:54

do is like allows

38:56

you to keep going with what's still hurting you.

38:58

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah It's

39:01

it's basically it puts you on this spectrum

39:03

of of pain to like numbness where

39:05

it's like we don't we don't then replace the pain with joy

39:08

or fulfillment or Desire

39:11

or anything pleasant.

39:12

We're just or even a way of of moving

39:14

away from that pain towards something. Yeah. Yeah.

39:16

Yeah Healing. Yeah.

39:17

Yeah, so so I was

39:19

very distraught. I struggled for a long time I

39:21

tried very hard to talk about posture

39:23

in a very Posture y sort

39:25

of way. And it Really

39:28

didn't work. I, I wrote a book, a

39:30

little ebook that I have. And I found myself

39:32

like, I'm going to write this book about posture.

39:35

And as I'm writing this book, I kept coming back to the nervous

39:37

system and I was like, I can't do it. It's like,

39:39

it's physically impossible. I can't talk

39:41

about how to sit in a chair without

39:43

talking about your nervous system. And

39:45

so I, I had started putting

39:47

things out on YouTube and I was kind of

39:50

like dabbling in it here and there

39:52

and when did

39:53

you start messing around with YouTube?

39:55

So I actually put a couple videos out, like, way,

39:57

way back in 2009 and

39:59

then I abandoned it for a very long time, like, a decade,

40:02

and then I was like, maybe I'll go back to that YouTube

40:04

thing maybe around 2018, I

40:06

want to say, ish, and kind of was

40:08

dabbling in it and then. I

40:11

just sort of started to decide

40:14

that I wanted to experiment a little bit. So

40:16

I was like, I'm going to put out videos

40:18

that are more on the nervous system side. I

40:21

just, I need to get this out. I'm having these conversations

40:23

one on one, like these conversations would come up with

40:25

my body work clients. They would come up. While I was

40:27

working on horses and I was talking to the owner

40:30

about nervous systems and why I didn't need to

40:32

pound on their horse to get actual change, why

40:34

their horses movement would change with

40:36

what looked like me, just kind of gently touching

40:39

their, you know, their animal. And they're like, well, how is this,

40:41

you know, how is this happening in their horse's eyes or, you know,

40:43

doing that third eyelid blank and big yawns

40:45

and, you know, signs of release. So

40:48

these conversations were coming up over

40:50

and over and I was like, I just want to, I want

40:52

to try having this conversation, not

40:54

on a quiet secret one to one

40:56

level. But like, let's just try putting it out

40:58

there more widely and

41:01

it was an experiment. And I

41:03

found that there actually

41:05

was quite a lot of interest

41:07

in that material. So,

41:10

to my surprise, it

41:12

was exactly what everyone told me

41:14

not to talk about. Don't

41:17

talk about the connection between the body

41:19

and trauma and. anxiety

41:21

and mental health and your

41:23

physical self and all of these things that are connected.

41:26

Don't do that. No one's going to understand it. And

41:28

it was when I did that exact

41:30

thing that everyone told me not to do, that

41:34

it actually connected with people.

41:36

It's interesting how many people on

41:39

this podcast say something

41:41

similar to that. It was when I

41:44

did what everyone said not to do that

41:47

things began to move. I,

41:49

I know that's been true in my life. When

41:53

I was going to go across Mongolia with my kid and everyone

41:55

said he was completely nuts. And it's just

41:57

in my gut, it's like, no, no, it's, it's the right

41:59

thing, but I totally understand why you think it's

42:01

nuts, because on the face of it, it is a bit

42:03

nuts, but life is nuts. So,

42:05

you know, I, that, that bold step

42:08

it seems that perhaps your own

42:11

sympathetic nervous system had gotten to a point

42:13

where you were feeling

42:16

maybe that you had Your

42:18

foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same

42:20

time just like these clients who were in distress

42:25

with you were and

42:28

Do you think it's true that you

42:31

felt in some way even if that was instinctive and unconscious

42:34

that? Until you sorted that

42:36

out in yourself. You couldn't really help them

42:38

in the way that you would

42:41

like to And

42:44

then that happened on

42:46

a public forum Do

42:49

you think that that

42:53

was also part of what was motivating

42:55

you? A sort of feeling

42:57

of, well, physician heal thyself

42:59

sort of thing. If I can't, how

43:01

can I tell these people how

43:04

to set themselves free from the inside? If

43:07

I myself, I'm sort of feeling frustrated like

43:09

this.

43:11

Yeah. If I'm not letting myself be who I

43:13

am, then how can I tell other people how to do that?

43:16

So, yeah, you know, there's

43:19

a really great saying, and I don't know who originally said

43:21

it. I'm sure it wasn't the person I heard it from. But

43:24

it's don't talk about it, be about it. And

43:28

I, I really, I find it That was God,

43:30

wasn't that God? Didn't God say that? I have no

43:32

idea,

43:33

possibly. But I think

43:35

that I had to be, you

43:37

know, be that example. I had to go out and do the thing

43:39

and it was, it was really terrifying. I, you

43:41

know, I get a calm, I get lots of comments on YouTube

43:44

because YouTube is YouTube. Many,

43:46

many, many, many wonderful positive comments. And I

43:48

love those. But of course, as many people do,

43:50

I see the negative ones and they hit me

43:52

more intensely than. The

43:55

positive ones.

43:56

The old sympathetic nervous system reaction.

43:58

Looking for those threats. And one of the

44:00

comments that I get that does make me laugh is

44:02

people say, well, she really likes to hear herself talk.

44:05

And I just, I always chuckle to myself because

44:07

the reality is I hate watching

44:09

those videos of myself. I don't actually

44:11

love being the center of attention. I

44:14

don't love a big crowd around

44:16

me. I'm kind of a, like not a hermit, but

44:18

I'm, I'm an introvert. I, you know, I,

44:20

I'm not somebody to go in and. You

44:22

know, take over a party or something. And

44:25

so it was hard to get out

44:27

there and start talking about this stuff, especially at a time

44:30

where it really wasn't like, so this is

44:32

about 4 years ago. Now that I really

44:34

started talking about this. I've been talking about it

44:36

for like, 10 years or more,

44:38

but that I really kind of was like, okay,

44:40

I'm going to do the thing. It was about four

44:42

years ago and things have dramatically

44:45

changed. There's so much more content out

44:47

there. That's really similar in tone

44:49

and, you know, and in material, like where we're

44:51

talking about how the body and the mind are interconnected

44:54

and related. But

44:56

at that time, no one was really talking

44:58

about it. And I didn't know if everyone was

45:00

going to tell me I was crazy. I

45:02

mean, I could have made those YouTube videos and

45:04

we could be sitting here and like three people could

45:06

have watched them. I have no idea.

45:08

Were you surprised by

45:11

how many people flocked to them?

45:14

And why do you think they did?

45:15

Well, I think it's a combination of things. I

45:17

think one, the timing was right because

45:19

it was in the middle of the pandemic. So we

45:21

were all very stressed and people were looking for help

45:24

and we didn't have a lot of resources because we couldn't

45:26

go to our, you know, I mean, you could get therapy.

45:28

From zoom, but you couldn't go to your

45:30

therapist. You couldn't go to your massage therapist by

45:32

and large. There was a lot of, you know, things were shut down

45:34

or very limited staffing was very

45:37

low. Everyone was, you know, freaking out. It was a huge

45:39

pattern interrupt. You know, our whole lives got

45:41

turned upside down. And I was no exception

45:43

to that, but so, so people

45:45

were looking for resources. So

45:47

that was 1 thing, but you, you mentioned,

45:50

I think, at the beginning that your content

45:52

can be good. And then people

45:54

don't see it, right? So you can have really

45:56

great videos and there are people who have really great

45:58

videos out there, but no one's watched them. And

46:00

the reasoning is that

46:02

there are ways to figure

46:05

out what people are looking for and position

46:07

your video so that it's the thing that

46:09

they find when they're looking for it. And

46:11

I was able to, to do that. And

46:14

I, Thanks. You know, I, I did it strategically

46:16

and I was fortunate in that. I happened to land

46:18

on some things that people were actually looking

46:21

for at that time. So it, it kind

46:23

of

46:23

blew up. So you say you did it

46:25

strategically. Did you do it strategically from the get

46:27

go? Like, did you sit there I

46:30

looked at a wiki of Mr. Beast the other day

46:32

and if you don't know who Mr. Beast is these days,

46:34

I mean, you're probably, like, one of

46:37

three on the planet, but nonetheless, if you don't know who

46:39

Mr. Beast is, he's this incredibly

46:41

successful YouTuber who has made

46:43

billions and given a lot of it away, actually.

46:46

Planted lots of trees and things. And I remember him reading

46:48

this thing where he said, I sat for five

46:50

years in a room eating Uber Eats,

46:53

only figuring out, learning how to

46:55

make videos go viral. I became

46:57

obsessed with it in an unhealthy way, but it sort

46:59

of paid off. That's what he said. Did you do something

47:02

like that? Or did you just start putting

47:04

stuff out there that you were interested

47:07

in and thought other people should mention or was

47:09

it something in between?

47:11

It was a little bit in between. I had

47:13

a strategy of I'm going to, I'm going to put

47:15

different things out and see what hits. So I would make videos

47:18

on different topics because I didn't

47:20

know what people were gravitating towards.

47:22

So, I would do some research and there, there

47:24

are ways. So there are tools. If I

47:26

think people don't know that these things exist, there are tools.

47:29

That will tell you what people are searching for on

47:31

Google and YouTube is a Google product.

47:34

So there are tools to, to become aware

47:36

of, like, how many people are looking for a

47:39

term on, you know, on

47:41

social media or on Google

47:43

and that tells you what the interest level is. And

47:45

then there are. People who figured

47:48

out ways to name

47:50

your video. Well, so basically there's, there's lots of

47:52

elements, but like the title is one of them and there's other

47:54

elements as well to position your video

47:56

in a way that YouTube knows

47:59

Hey, when someone's searching for this thing, this

48:01

video is kind of like, I can, I can do the matchmaker

48:04

here. Like I can, I can give

48:06

them. This video content, because that's

48:08

what they're looking for. Now, if your

48:10

video is terrible or like you

48:12

spend, you know, five minutes of rambling on

48:14

maybe the last part of your video is great, but five minutes

48:16

at the beginning, are you rambling on about something irrelevant?

48:19

People aren't going to watch it. And YouTube's going to be like, ah, that didn't

48:21

work. Let's try it. Let's serve them up a different

48:24

video. Right? So there there's lots of elements here.

48:27

But there are ways to be strategic about

48:29

when you make your video, making

48:31

sure that you're actually creating a resource that people

48:33

are looking for. So I, I was

48:35

looking to balance that when I would

48:37

do my research. I was like, okay, I have something

48:40

I want to share. How does

48:42

it match with what people are looking for? What's

48:44

the Venn diagram here? And you

48:46

did that from the get go. You, you, you

48:49

thought, I actually want this to go

48:51

out as wide as possible. I'm going to

48:54

research how to make a video

48:56

go out as wide as possible on YouTube before

48:58

I make it.

48:59

Not exactly. I didn't really want it

49:01

to go out as wide as possible. I wanted

49:03

people to see it. I wanted to know, you know,

49:05

I thought, I thought a few hundred people, maybe

49:07

a few thousand people would watch

49:10

it. I didn't think, you know, 5

49:12

million people would

49:13

watch a video. Why do you think 5 million people

49:15

did watch

49:15

it? Because it was the thing they were

49:17

looking for and because they watched

49:20

because of the way so I I actually worked

49:22

with mentors like so when I want to learn something, I find

49:24

a mentor and I learn it from them. And this is true in every

49:26

area of my life. I go find somebody and learn. I'm

49:29

like way past the point. Well, I still read

49:31

books, but I'm way past the point of self study at

49:33

this point. I want to learn something. I'm like, you

49:35

seem to know what you're doing. Teach me. So

49:38

I found people who are really good at YouTube. And

49:41

they taught me us. How did you find them? They

49:43

use, how did you find them? They, they were a referral

49:45

from somebody else that I knew, from

49:47

somebody else. Like I So you

49:49

did, you know some people who, who had been successful

49:52

on YouTube and say, who do you, who would

49:54

I talk

49:54

to? They, they were, they

49:56

are successful. The people that I followed,

49:59

I liked their ethos. I, I

50:01

like them as people, there's lots

50:03

of

50:03

people that you were, you were subscribing to their

50:05

YouTube channel.

50:07

Actually I wasn't. They were, I was referred

50:09

to them, so I had not subscribed

50:11

to their channel. I

50:14

was referred to them by a,

50:17

it was somebody in another community

50:19

of creators and business

50:22

people that they were like, this is, it

50:24

was somebody else. In that community

50:26

had done YouTube had taught YouTube previously

50:29

and doesn't anymore and they were like, this is the person

50:31

I send people to now and

50:33

I went

50:33

online or this was someone you knew in your

50:36

up there in the Pacific Northwest where you live where

50:38

people go online. Okay, it's all online.

50:40

Yeah, it's an online community. Okay,

50:42

so you joined an online community of

50:46

people interested in creating

50:49

videos around. the

50:51

subjects that you were interested in or was

50:53

it some different online community?

50:55

It was a different online community. It was a

50:57

more of like a business online community where people

50:59

who have who have businesses get together

51:02

and share resources and information

51:04

and help each other out with, you know, I

51:06

need to do this. I need to do X, Y, Z thing.

51:08

What tools do I use or who knows

51:11

somebody I can hire to do this, that kind of a thing. Is

51:13

that still exist?

51:15

Oh, yeah. What's it? What's it called?

51:18

It's somebody's private community, so

51:20

I wouldn't necessarily share it, but

51:22

I've been a member of many, many,

51:24

many, I've always, but you must've found

51:26

your way there somehow, right? So how

51:29

did you, if someone's listening

51:31

and going, well, gosh, I would like to become, you

51:34

know, part of a mentor community like

51:36

that, a mentoring community like that, what

51:38

would be the steps that they would need to take in order to find

51:40

their way to something like that?

51:42

That's a, that's a really good question. And

51:44

the reason I'm so hesitant to say more

51:46

is because the online community,

51:49

the online business coaching and mentoring community

51:52

is it's a bit of a minefield

51:55

to navigate. There's a lot of really

51:57

manipulative practices that

52:00

happen in that space. There's a lot of people calling

52:02

that out right now too. So there's some really good conversations.

52:05

But like you, you can,

52:07

on the internet, you can find a business coach and like.

52:11

So, so they're, they're

52:13

out there. It's just that,

52:14

so

52:17

what's the, well, let's, let's stick around

52:19

on this topic. Cause it's, I think it's useful

52:21

for people. There'll be people driving their cars right now that

52:23

want to do this. And, but don't

52:25

know how if you were to,

52:28

what, what, what would be the. Way

52:31

to know if it's a good business coach, what would be

52:33

your test questions? For example, i'll

52:35

give you people often ask me about

52:38

two things that they'll say to me because you know, I teach

52:40

dressage with Horses and so people

52:42

will say how do I know if it's a good dressage

52:45

teacher and i'll say well There's two test questions.

52:48

How do you teach your horse? The

52:50

language is important piaf, which

52:52

is a particular movement that's important

52:54

in that thing, and

52:56

they must be able to tell you in a more or less understandable

52:59

way. And can I ride

53:01

him? Meaning, can I sit on him? Have

53:03

you got a horse that can show me? And if the answer is

53:06

something vague and no, you

53:08

need to keep going until you find someone who says, Oh, I

53:10

did it like this. And yes, you can. He's over here. Similarly,

53:13

people know my background with, you

53:15

know, shamans and healing. And they say, well,

53:17

how do you, how do you find your way? Not, you

53:19

know, how do you not get Involved with the charlatan

53:23

and I'll say, well, usually the

53:25

really good shamans are in very

53:27

remote areas of the world. And

53:29

they're so busy healing

53:31

their communities. You, you wouldn't necessarily,

53:33

you wouldn't find them online. But what

53:35

I often do if I'm going to a place

53:38

where there's places, parts of the world where I just

53:40

know the people because I was partly

53:42

brought up there and partly because of my

53:44

work with journalism and human rights. And

53:47

then I might. Actually give someone

53:49

a contact but let's say I need to go

53:51

to a part of the world where I don't know anybody I

53:54

take a counterintuitive process. I

53:56

will often contact a Listen

53:58

up guys if you're looking for a shaman I will

54:00

often contact a hospital

54:03

or a clinic in a remote

54:06

tribal area Like let's say I

54:08

wanted to go up to alaska and find a healer

54:10

I would look for a hospital in

54:12

a native american reservation up there and

54:15

I would contact The

54:17

administrator and I would say by

54:19

email and I'd send an email saying have you got a

54:22

funny old guy or a funny old lady who comes on the

54:24

wards from the local community

54:27

and does odd things and the

54:29

people just seem to sort of get better. And

54:31

frequently I'll get a response from

54:33

the hospital administrator saying actually

54:35

yes. I mean sometimes they won't come back

54:37

to me at all. Sometimes they'll tell me to bugger off but sometimes

54:39

they'll say actually yes. And

54:42

then I'll say, oh, and then we'll begin a conversation

54:45

and I'll find my way to something

54:47

that way, but there's a sort of step

54:49

by step onion

54:52

peeling back thing

54:54

happening. So if someone is wanting to find

54:56

their way through that minefield that you're talking

54:58

about what do you think would be some sound

55:00

steps for them to follow and questions for them to

55:02

ask?

55:04

Yeah, I don't think it's a straight

55:06

at least I haven't figured out is a straight ahead

55:09

way for them to figure it

55:11

out as clear as that. I

55:13

think that it can be really helpful to speak

55:15

to their students. I

55:18

personally, if I'm looking at someone,

55:21

I will kind of stalk their

55:23

social media for a while. I like to

55:25

look at the testimonials on their

55:28

pages and then Google those people

55:30

and go and, and kind of investigate

55:32

like what those people are up to. Mm-Hmm. in

55:35

particular to find out like, you

55:37

know, are, are all of their clients kind of the same

55:39

you know, are they all doing the same thing?

55:42

Yeah. And then one of the biggest things is

55:44

if you come across a business coach who has

55:46

a lot of clients who are also business coaches.

55:49

And everyone's kind of teaching people how to make money.

55:52

That's a big red flag. Because there's sort

55:54

of this weird, it's not MLM, but it's MLM

55:56

like. It's a bit MLM y. Yeah. Yeah.

55:58

Where it's like somebody who

56:00

wasn't, wasn't very successful

56:03

often. Not always. Sounds

56:05

like a midlife rapper. Sorry.

56:06

Somebody who wasn't maybe that great

56:08

at building their own, you know, business

56:10

then decides to teach other people how to build

56:12

their businesses. But the only thing they really know how to do

56:14

is how to teach people how to teach people how to build businesses.

56:17

So then their clients start to teach

56:19

people how to make money too. And

56:21

it just becomes like, everyone's almost saying the same

56:23

thing. So if you, if you start looking around somebody's,

56:26

you know, business and at their clients, and it seems

56:28

like a big echo chamber and everyone's kind of saying

56:30

the same. thing in

56:32

that regard, then that's,

56:35

it's not necessarily a solid no, but

56:37

it's a red flag. And then for me,

56:39

I am at this point in my

56:41

work, really intentional

56:43

about choosing people who acknowledge

56:46

the systems in which we live. So I

56:48

will not work with people who have

56:50

this sort of ethos of like, if you just

56:52

change your thoughts, the whole, you know, like all

56:55

of your problems are in your thoughts. Because

56:57

that's just simply not true. We, you know, there are

56:59

limitations and, and situations that people

57:01

find themselves in. There's, there's all kinds of things

57:04

that happen to people. There's all kinds of different

57:06

circumstances that people find themselves in that

57:08

mean that their resources and ability to do

57:10

something are important. You know, different

57:13

than somebody else's. So if someone just has

57:15

this sort of like, well, if you have problems, it's all in your thoughts

57:17

and you just need to journal. It's not for

57:19

me at this point.

57:21

Okay. So, you through

57:24

these researchers, you found your way to some mentors.

57:28

What if you were mentoring

57:31

the listeners now, what is

57:34

the way that you create

57:37

a title for your YouTube

57:39

video that will position it, as

57:41

you said, in a way that

57:43

people have a sporting chance of finding

57:45

it.

57:47

So there is something called search

57:50

engine optimization. It's

57:52

been around for a long time. It's not new.

57:54

It's been around since Google has been around. Basically

57:57

it is figuring out what people are searching

57:59

for on Google. It's

58:02

people don't lie to Google, right? So they type their actual

58:04

questions into the search bar. And the funny

58:06

thing is that a lot of people have the exact same question

58:08

and they type it in the same way. Okay, and so

58:11

there are tools that that you can

58:13

use, as I mentioned to know how

58:15

many people are searching for these things. So the 1st

58:17

thing that I do is I try to figure out. I

58:19

might have an idea, a general concept

58:22

for a video. Okay, so I'm going to take that general

58:25

concept and I'm going to go look

58:27

at Google to see what are the questions that people

58:29

are actually asking about this,

58:32

and then I will use that information

58:34

to craft a title. There's no guarantee.

58:37

Right. We none of us actually knows what the algorithm

58:39

is that YouTube uses. So you might have what

58:41

seems like a bang up title and it doesn't

58:43

get picked up or sometimes it doesn't get picked up for

58:46

three months or six months. And then all of a sudden it just. That's

58:50

where

58:53

it

58:55

starts. And then, then

58:58

from there, once you've got your

59:00

title, you want to take

59:02

into account the related questions that people are asking

59:05

about that and make sure you incorporate that into

59:08

the actual body of the video. So the things you're saying,

59:10

So, some of my videos, I literally write

59:12

them out. a script word for word

59:14

and say them because I can't necessarily

59:17

think when a camera is pointed at me so it's helpful for

59:19

me to just have it there. Sometimes

59:21

I will do bullet points and I will, I

59:23

will present that way. But in all,

59:25

whether I do bullet points or script it word for

59:27

word, I'm making sure that the way

59:30

that I've structured the outline of this video

59:32

is to answer the kinds of questions that people

59:34

have. And that doesn't mean That

59:37

I won't say something like, well, people ask this

59:39

question and actually I want to say, I want to

59:41

tell you why that question is not helpful, or I want to tell you why

59:43

we need to be asking a different question, because

59:45

if you understand this, then it changes the way you

59:47

understand the whole challenge or something

59:49

like that. But I want to address the fact that

59:51

people have that question so that

59:53

they're, they're getting their, they're getting the resource

59:56

they need.

59:57

What is the tool? What are, what are these

59:59

search engine optimization tools

1:00:01

that people can access?

1:00:03

The two that I use are key.

1:00:05

Is it keywords anywhere or keywords everywhere? I think it's keywords

1:00:07

everywhere. Let me make sure. Keywords

1:00:12

everywhere. Keywords everywhere. Interesting.

1:00:15

Yeah. Okay. Keywords everywhere. It's a plugin.

1:00:17

I believe it only works on Chrome. And

1:00:21

the other one that I use is called Tube

1:00:23

Buddy. They're both very affordable

1:00:26

tools.

1:00:26

Okay. Why those two? I'm, I'm

1:00:29

sure there's other tools out there. What is

1:00:31

it about those two that works better

1:00:33

than the others

1:00:34

that you found? Well, Keywords Everywhere tells you,

1:00:36

it gives you psychic abilities.

1:00:38

It tells you how many people are searching for something.

1:00:41

You can use it on YouTube. You can use it on Google. It

1:00:43

does cost it does cost a little bit of money to,

1:00:45

you know, every time you do a search, it'll give you these

1:00:47

little numbers next to your search term

1:00:50

that tell you how many people are searching for it. And

1:00:52

every time you do that, it costs you a little bit of money, but it's,

1:00:54

it's so, I mean, I think

1:00:56

it was like, I don't know, 20 bucks. And

1:00:59

I've been using it for like a year or something. It's not,

1:01:01

I don't remember exactly, but it's really affordable.

1:01:04

But I, I turn it off when I'm not using

1:01:06

it just so I'm not running down my credits. And

1:01:08

then TubeBuddy, I don't use as

1:01:10

much. I use keywords everywhere more. TubeBuddy has a bunch

1:01:12

of tools that you can use that will

1:01:15

allow you to see comparisons

1:01:17

with other channels. So if you have somebody who's like got

1:01:19

a similar channel, you can see like how their videos are performing

1:01:21

compared to yours. It gives you some.

1:01:24

Weighted search predictions. So like when you're popping a title

1:01:26

into youtube, like maybe i'm going to consider this title

1:01:28

It'll kind of tell you for your channel. We think

1:01:31

this is a really good one It gives you data

1:01:33

like how many other videos are in that

1:01:35

search? So you kind of know what your competition is So

1:01:37

it just it gives these two tools Between

1:01:39

the two you get enough data to be able to make

1:01:41

an educated guess about a solid title

1:01:44

Okay, this is really useful. So,

1:01:46

okay, so you are Putting

1:01:49

out this content through the pandemic

1:01:52

about the nervous system and stress and what

1:01:54

people can do, what,

1:01:56

apart from understanding They're

1:01:59

vagal reactions to things.

1:02:01

How, what, what tools

1:02:04

are you giving them in these videos that

1:02:06

you're putting out back then that

1:02:08

are like the 1, 2, 3 steps that people

1:02:10

can take? And it, if you are someone,

1:02:13

again listening to this podcast right now, you're driving,

1:02:15

you're feeling stressed, you've got adrenaline

1:02:17

and cortisol waring around in you, you

1:02:20

feel your sympathetic nervous system even

1:02:22

is not being sympathetic to you. I dunno

1:02:24

why it's called sympathetic when it seems to behave

1:02:26

so unsympathetically. But there you go. What's

1:02:29

your 1 2 3 that

1:02:31

any of us should do to

1:02:34

begin to bring our nervous systems back

1:02:37

into a sort of a coherent

1:02:39

state when we're all jangled? What's,

1:02:42

what do we, what do we need to know? Yeah.

1:02:45

Well, the information in the YouTube videos is a lot

1:02:48

of education because as I mentioned, a lot

1:02:50

of times people are just asking through no fault

1:02:52

of their own, but people are asking the wrong questions simply

1:02:54

because of the way that we've been taught

1:02:56

to conceptualize ourselves as like this sort

1:02:58

of disembodied brain that, that

1:03:00

is, you know, this is where we live is like in our brain

1:03:03

over here. What's the wrong

1:03:04

question? Yeah. What's an example of a wrong question

1:03:06

that I might ask?

1:03:07

What's the best way to stretch my hamstrings? Okay.

1:03:11

Right. Because How

1:03:13

many people stretch their hamstrings every day and

1:03:15

get marginal or no, you know, maybe

1:03:18

you get some, some benefits to an extent, but

1:03:20

then you hit this wall and that they, you know, you never get beyond

1:03:22

that. Right. So, so then the education

1:03:24

has to happen around understanding that.

1:03:27

It's not that your hamstring muscles are

1:03:29

physically too short, it's that your brain

1:03:31

is literally sending a signal to your hamstrings

1:03:33

to contract them to protect

1:03:35

you from going into a range of motion

1:03:37

where you don't have control. Why is it sending that

1:03:39

signal? Well, that's the million dollar question. Could be a

1:03:41

simple physical issue that you don't have enough strength

1:03:43

and mobility, or it could be that you have a trauma

1:03:46

response in your body that you've been living in sympathetic, so

1:03:48

you're gripping and protecting. I mean, there's so many different things. Why

1:03:50

are you living in sympathetic? And this, this is what

1:03:52

got me out of body work because I was like, this is, it's a rabbit

1:03:54

hole. You know, I would say. This is not

1:03:56

a conversation. Yeah, but that actually was a very nice one,

1:03:58

two, three that you just said. So you got, okay,

1:04:01

why are my hamstrings tight? Because

1:04:04

I've been stretching them every day. Is

1:04:06

it because my body thinks I'm not

1:04:08

safe if I do that? If it

1:04:10

thinks I'm not safe and, and contracts

1:04:13

when I do that, why does it think

1:04:15

I'm not safe? Well, that is a very

1:04:17

good one, two, three. Yeah, exactly.

1:04:20

Yeah. Yeah. Why? Why does

1:04:22

my body think it's unsafe when I do that? Yeah. And

1:04:24

surely just giving. Attention

1:04:27

to that question is going

1:04:29

to set me on a road towards

1:04:33

asking my brain, well, is

1:04:35

it possible that I might be safe in

1:04:37

that? And then might my brain

1:04:39

then begin to say, alright, well I'll let you

1:04:42

stretch a little way to find out Mm-Hmm,

1:04:46

So it would is posing

1:04:48

the, is it, it is funny. Is it, is it like the algorithm of

1:04:50

your brain is posing the right question

1:04:52

to your brain? One of

1:04:54

the. Like keywords everywhere. Is

1:04:57

it one of the secrets of unlocking

1:04:59

the nervous system? Which

1:05:02

is interesting because that does bring one back to the

1:05:04

thoughts create things. Or

1:05:06

changing your thoughts, but it's, but

1:05:09

in ways that are thoughtful,

1:05:12

I suppose.

1:05:13

Yeah, well, thoughts are sensory

1:05:15

information, right? So like, I think, I think

1:05:17

we need to, we need to downgrade

1:05:20

thoughts from like this exalted thing up here.

1:05:22

That's like, we've got thoughts and then we've got all this sensory info.

1:05:24

They're just part of it. Right. So it's

1:05:26

not that having a positive mindset

1:05:28

isn't helpful, right? Like if you're walking around telling yourself

1:05:30

horrible things all the time and

1:05:33

beating yourself up in your head. Yeah. That is bad. Which

1:05:35

a

1:05:35

lot of us are, by the way.

1:05:37

Yeah. Right. But also. Oftentimes

1:05:40

we will try to change our thoughts and

1:05:42

and struggle with that because our bodies

1:05:45

are in this sympathetic state and we feel unsafe

1:05:47

and the brain

1:05:48

calls bullshit on us and says, no, I'm going to keep that

1:05:50

relationship. Right.

1:05:51

Right. Exactly. And so if you change that state

1:05:53

through these other sensory processes, it

1:05:56

then unlocks the ability. I mean,

1:05:58

this is. This sounds very similar to when I hear you talk about

1:06:00

the unlocking the learning centers and autism,

1:06:02

right? It's like when we change the state of the body,

1:06:05

it sort of opens up the mind to be

1:06:07

receptive to new thoughts. Right?

1:06:09

So it's, it's not that that piece is wrong or bad.

1:06:11

It's just that you can't sit, you can't suppress

1:06:14

negativity. You can't sit around being like, I'm not anxious.

1:06:17

Everything's fine. You know, I am

1:06:19

happy and well, and everything is

1:06:21

perfect. And then your body's like, no,

1:06:23

like, a lion basically

1:06:25

has its teeth around your shoulder, like, we're gonna die

1:06:28

any moment. You know what I mean? It's, it's conflicting.

1:06:30

And then even that conflict, I think, makes us

1:06:32

feel even less safe, because your, your thoughts are

1:06:34

telling you one thing, you're biased, and then you're another, your brain's like, I don't

1:06:36

know what the truth is, but this does not feel okay to

1:06:38

me. Right.

1:06:41

Okay. So, you've got to pose

1:06:43

a question as to why your

1:06:47

brain is saying

1:06:50

that something is

1:06:52

unsafe. When?

1:06:55

All evidence suggests

1:06:58

that, say, bending down to pick

1:07:00

something up off the floor, hence

1:07:03

the hamstring stretch. is actually

1:07:05

okay. There is no elephant charging

1:07:07

at you currently while you do it. So

1:07:10

if I can tell my, ask my brain,

1:07:12

why am I having

1:07:14

this response? Do

1:07:16

you think that there's a value? Do you think

1:07:18

the nervous system responds

1:07:21

to when we begin to pose

1:07:23

questions to it? Because let's just, let's

1:07:25

also assume that the brain is an extension of the nervous system,

1:07:28

right? It's receiving information from the nervous

1:07:30

system. So it's connected. Is posing

1:07:32

that question going to

1:07:34

automatically set the

1:07:37

nervous system going along some

1:07:39

more functional pathways,

1:07:42

perhaps? I think it can. I

1:07:44

think it's the start. I think it opens the door.

1:07:47

Okay. Right. So now if we understand that this

1:07:49

is a safety issue and not a tight rubber

1:07:51

band issue. It,

1:07:53

it completely transforms the way we then

1:07:55

approach it. Now we can be curious. Right.

1:07:57

And I'm

1:07:57

acknowledging that I am feeling this, right? I'm

1:08:00

not denying that I'm feeling this. Yeah.

1:08:01

Okay. Yeah. No, no, absolutely.

1:08:04

And that's, that's a really important thing is that like

1:08:06

when people are feeling tightness or pain, sometimes

1:08:08

they get, you know, especially when you go and you get medically evaluated

1:08:11

and they take all these images and they're like, well, we can't find any

1:08:13

reason for this. You must be cracking up. And

1:08:15

they don't usually say it like that, but that's the, the impact

1:08:18

of what they say is like, well, you should go see a psychologist.

1:08:20

Cause we can't find anything wrong. And I've had

1:08:22

many a client come to me and be like, like

1:08:24

kind of secretly thinking maybe they're going crazy

1:08:26

because there's no reason for this

1:08:29

pain. So maybe it's not real and they're making it up.

1:08:31

No, it's absolutely real. Your anxiety

1:08:33

is absolutely real. Even if there's no reason

1:08:36

for it. What you are experiencing

1:08:38

is completely real. But

1:08:40

like, like you said, you know, I'm gonna ask, okay, so why

1:08:43

am I experiencing this? What is the lack of safety

1:08:45

about it? Whether it's anxiety,

1:08:47

which is just, I don't feel safe. I think something

1:08:49

bad is going to happen in the next moment. That's

1:08:52

what the brain is saying, that you may not consciously

1:08:54

think that, but non-consciously your brain's like,

1:08:56

I feel like I may die at any moment.

1:08:59

Mm-Hmm, or a hamstring stretch, or, you

1:09:01

know, lifting your arm, turning your,

1:09:04

turning your head. Then we can be curious.

1:09:06

It's about, you know, well,

1:09:08

well, what if we change the

1:09:09

context? Well, that

1:09:11

is, I think what I'm, was

1:09:14

feeling my way towards there. Thank you for

1:09:16

saying curious. So

1:09:19

when we're working, for example, with

1:09:22

learning receptors in the brain, with what

1:09:25

I do with autism and learning with, with

1:09:27

movement method, one of the things that we know is that

1:09:29

the, the curious brain

1:09:33

is actually the happy brain. You, you

1:09:35

can't learn in a

1:09:37

state of great distress, not really.

1:09:40

And, but when

1:09:42

you're in your seeking, hunting brain,

1:09:44

you're like, Ooh, I don't know what's over there. You're curious

1:09:47

brain. It's an,

1:09:50

it's an automatic happy state and

1:09:53

it's also a a learning

1:09:55

state. We're curious monkeys. We

1:09:58

like to learn. So

1:10:00

again, that thing about posing questions,

1:10:02

becoming curious rather than

1:10:05

resistant. Like I've got this. Pain,

1:10:07

painful shoulder and I want it gone. I want to resist

1:10:09

this. I want it gone. I want it out I want to kill it.

1:10:12

I want to I want to slay that dragon

1:10:16

or Dragons

1:10:18

are sort of interesting. Is

1:10:20

this a toothless or is this

1:10:22

a white crested? Lesser

1:10:25

spotted, you know Samoan

1:10:28

dragon And

1:10:30

if so do I need to ride it with

1:10:33

a a large padded

1:10:35

Samoan saddle? Or will my Portuguese

1:10:37

dragon saddle that I've been using actually

1:10:40

work? Was it a bit too low on the dragons withers in it?

1:10:42

But what, you know what I mean? It's suddenly, it's

1:10:44

getting interested in the

1:10:47

whole thing. Actually,

1:10:50

one of the keys. When we're talking

1:10:52

about our body's response, because so

1:10:54

often we are completely

1:10:56

mystified because so much of this is going on

1:10:58

in our subconscious, right? We

1:11:01

don't know why, you know, on

1:11:03

the face of it, most of the people that are coming into your office,

1:11:05

their lives are probably quite good. Why are

1:11:08

they so stressed? Why are they in a state where

1:11:10

their nervous system is saying, I might die? It's

1:11:15

getting curious about it. The

1:11:17

first step to healing.

1:11:19

I think so. And I think

1:11:22

that when we are curious, there's a

1:11:24

lot of richness that can be discovered,

1:11:26

but it's also not necessarily,

1:11:30

I become curious and the solution arises

1:11:32

immediately. And now I understand. Sure. And

1:11:34

oftentimes there are many layers to

1:11:37

this, right? So there's the surface

1:11:40

answers. To the question, right?

1:11:42

Like, we can become curious about a stuck shoulder

1:11:44

or a tight hamstring and change some

1:11:46

physical context and maybe have some shifts.

1:11:49

But on a more global level,

1:11:51

you know, there can be. A

1:11:53

challenging relationship. There can be

1:11:55

a challenging life circumstance. There could be

1:11:58

past trauma or past conditioning about

1:12:00

what's acceptable. I, I worked with many

1:12:03

particularly people who were raised,

1:12:05

socialized as women in the fifties.

1:12:08

And. It's a very interesting thing

1:12:10

when you start working with them around tension around their

1:12:12

hips, that there's a lot of conditioning

1:12:15

around how, if you move your hips,

1:12:17

if you allow your hips to move, then you were considered like,

1:12:19

you know, loose, or, you know, it was, it

1:12:21

was suggestive in a way

1:12:24

that proper girls did

1:12:26

not, you know, should not do.

1:12:29

for the time period. And so, so when

1:12:32

you start to become curious, you, you unlock

1:12:34

so much more of a person. So that's

1:12:37

not, it's never a simple answer. It's, I should

1:12:39

say, it's not never a simple answer, but it's rarely

1:12:41

a simple answer. There's rarely like a

1:12:43

night and day, you know, today, you're like this

1:12:45

tomorrow, you're like that. And we move on.

1:12:47

Surely that's the nature of curiosity is that we

1:12:50

want to go down rabbit holes. I mean, that's,

1:12:52

that's the nature of humanity is we like

1:12:54

going down rabbit holes, right? Going down rabbit holes

1:12:56

as long as they're not. negative ones

1:12:59

that panic us is

1:13:01

actually the great joys of life, isn't

1:13:03

it? You know, I mean, to go find out, Oh,

1:13:05

and I can go, Oh, and this leads, Oh, and this leads

1:13:07

to here. When you, when

1:13:09

you were working on these ladies though,

1:13:11

that's an interesting thing. And

1:13:14

you identified the tightness in

1:13:16

the hips, or were they already coming and complaining

1:13:18

of this, or they complaining about other things.

1:13:20

And then you realized through

1:13:22

looking at their nervous systems that it was

1:13:24

in the hips, how aware

1:13:28

of it in the pelvis,

1:13:29

were they? It depends on the person.

1:13:31

So sometimes the complaint is localized to the area.

1:13:34

So sometimes it was a like a hip

1:13:36

issue. Often it's a low back issue.

1:13:38

Okay. You know, because the pelvis if the pelvis

1:13:40

is restricted. Yeah, exactly.

1:13:42

And then the hip joints are hugely influential.

1:13:45

Right on the low back. So a lot of times with low back

1:13:47

pain, but not always. I mean, again, everything

1:13:50

is everything. It's all connected, right? So I'm

1:13:52

looking at the entirety of a person. So regardless

1:13:54

of what they come in with, if I have them

1:13:56

walk across my office and you know, and,

1:13:59

and this is just true for people if I'm or horses

1:14:01

too, if I'm watching them walk, what I'm looking

1:14:03

for is essentially what I call the rocks in the

1:14:06

stream. Like what's flowing

1:14:08

in their movement. What's not

1:14:09

flowing. Is that your term?

1:14:12

Looking for the rocks in the stream. I

1:14:14

don't. I think so. I

1:14:16

think that it has, I've

1:14:18

heard it from various sources and

1:14:20

I don't remember where I was first exposed

1:14:22

to it, but it is, it is how

1:14:24

I conceptualize it. Yeah.

1:14:28

And then when you say, okay,

1:14:30

I think it's in the hips. At

1:14:32

what point do

1:14:35

you find yourself in a conversation with

1:14:37

them about that 1950s

1:14:39

good girl conditioning and

1:14:42

then strategies about letting that perhaps

1:14:45

go? How?

1:14:50

Do you find that when you begin to look at it

1:14:52

that way, and talk about it that

1:14:54

way, that there's a kind of a yes? That's

1:14:57

it response or do you

1:14:59

get denial

1:15:02

it really depends on the person. So sometimes

1:15:04

you never have the conversation, right?

1:15:07

So we don't necessarily have to consciously know these

1:15:09

things Sometimes it's I think it's helpful

1:15:11

because our brains want to have explanations

1:15:13

for things So for most people

1:15:16

having some sort of story and there's some

1:15:18

sort of cognitive Understanding

1:15:20

is helpful, but you don't have to, you

1:15:22

can actually work on someone's body and it can

1:15:24

shift their internal state. And then for

1:15:26

example, I had a client who one time

1:15:28

said. That they had a negative

1:15:31

memory of their father. I don't know what

1:15:33

the memory was. They never shared it with me, but that

1:15:35

they had devoted many a yoga practice to

1:15:37

it. Many a meditation to it, you know,

1:15:39

really worked on this like experience

1:15:41

and that after doing some body work

1:15:44

for whatever it was, that was the key

1:15:46

for them that like they could think about this memory

1:15:48

and it just didn't have the charge that

1:15:50

it used to have. It just seemed to be not, and not

1:15:52

that the memory was gone, but that.

1:15:55

The, you know, they could remember it, but they didn't feel

1:15:57

the, whatever it was, the, the unpleasantness.

1:16:00

They weren't locked in the same

1:16:02

response that they

1:16:04

were all those decades ago.

1:16:06

And I had no idea. I mean, this person never

1:16:08

told me about that memory before we, we

1:16:10

worked together. We didn't have a conversation about it. It just

1:16:12

was the piece that helped it to dissipate. But

1:16:14

with other people, you know, specifically

1:16:16

if you talk about, you know, women in the, from

1:16:18

the 1950s who was raised during that time.

1:16:22

Who received this kind of messaging, it

1:16:24

might be that as we work together

1:16:26

and their hips are moving more, maybe

1:16:28

she's, you know, she's walking, she's feeling it. She

1:16:31

might be like, this feels uncomfortable.

1:16:33

And then we have a conversation. Why is it

1:16:35

uncomfortable? Unfamiliar? Is it uncomfortable?

1:16:37

Painful? You know what, what, tell me

1:16:39

more about this discomfort that you feel. And

1:16:42

sometimes it comes up, like, I just feel like I shouldn't.

1:16:44

Do this or I just something about this feels

1:16:47

wrong or vulnerable, then

1:16:49

we might have that conversation. Okay. Well,

1:16:51

well, you know, you're moving your hips. What does that, what

1:16:54

concepts do you have around that? Well,

1:16:56

you know, I was always taught you

1:16:59

shouldn't do that. Oh, okay. Well, isn't, isn't that

1:17:01

interesting? And that may be the extent of the conversation.

1:17:03

We don't need, need to have an hour of psychology

1:17:05

on that. You know, isn't that interesting

1:17:07

that moving your hips brings up this conditioning?

1:17:10

You know, and what's your experience of

1:17:12

that now and, and, you know, they, they

1:17:14

may take, they may take that with them

1:17:16

that day and they come back for the next session and things may have

1:17:18

changed. We may have another conversation about it. We may not.

1:17:23

So you gave

1:17:25

up your practice and to some degree

1:17:27

your practice is also taken away from you by COVID.

1:17:30

You started

1:17:32

putting these things on YouTube. Was there a,

1:17:35

an oh shit, I can't pay my rent bit? Yeah,

1:17:38

there was.

1:17:41

I, yeah, COVID was simultaneously

1:17:44

like the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst

1:17:46

thing that ever happened to me, which, you know, I think

1:17:49

it was a huge, just upset for so

1:17:51

many people. But in, in my case, I

1:17:53

essentially lost everything because overnight

1:17:55

I, a business that I built over 15 years was

1:17:57

just gone, just gone.

1:18:00

Like literally, I didn't, I didn't know that I

1:18:02

went to work on a Thursday. And I came

1:18:04

home and I never went back. That

1:18:07

was it. And, and when

1:18:09

you build a practice like that, it's no

1:18:12

joke. That's a lot of work. There's a lot of talking

1:18:14

to people over time. And I

1:18:16

had a life, I have two horses that

1:18:18

were boarded. I had a condo and

1:18:21

I had an office with you know, rent that I

1:18:23

had to pay and all of the associated things

1:18:25

that go along with life and a cat. And, and

1:18:27

so, yeah, I was, I was, but nobody else

1:18:29

could pay anything either at that time. So it was a little bit of

1:18:31

a blessing that I was like, I mean, what are they going to do?

1:18:34

You know, like I it's COVID my,

1:18:36

this, I can't work. So

1:18:39

I just figured it out

1:18:41

and I'll be honest, like I could go back and figure

1:18:43

out how I figured it out, but I don't know how I figured it out. I

1:18:45

just did.

1:18:45

Well, here's a question. Did you, did you start immediately

1:18:48

helping people privately on zoom?

1:18:51

I did a little bit of that, but I was very

1:18:53

quickly frustrated because my clients

1:18:55

essentially wanted me to do body work

1:18:57

on them. And I, you can't, you know, there

1:19:00

was a huge educational gap and you

1:19:02

just, you can't do body work over zoom. It's

1:19:05

not the same. And so what people were

1:19:07

coming to me for, like they, I have

1:19:09

a lot to offer people in

1:19:11

terms of my knowledge and, you know, all the research

1:19:13

I've done, but what people, what my clients really

1:19:15

wanted was. Yeah.

1:19:18

And I really couldn't provide that

1:19:20

to them. So I did start helping people over zoom.

1:19:22

I did some somatic meditations

1:19:24

I just started kind of flailing about, to be

1:19:26

honest. I was like, I don't know, let's just help people. Let's just

1:19:28

do this. Let's just do that. Here I am. I've got a smartphone,

1:19:31

I've got a computer, I've got internet. I don't think

1:19:33

anyone's going to kick me out of my condo in the next month.

1:19:36

So, you know, let's just do something.

1:19:39

And I filmed a bunch of stuff at home and

1:19:41

I started putting together some programs and honestly,

1:19:43

it was. It was kind of nice

1:19:46

because I had a lot

1:19:48

of time to focus because

1:19:50

I wasn't going anywhere.

1:19:52

Do you think your,

1:19:54

your research and knowledge of the nervous system

1:19:57

and the brain by then helped

1:19:59

to stop you from going into a

1:20:02

panic and a negative spiral? Do you

1:20:04

think it helped you to?

1:20:09

Leverage the situation in a way. I

1:20:12

think it was that, that old quote

1:20:14

about preparation, meeting opportunity. Because

1:20:18

yes, I think the nervous system work helped.

1:20:21

I think the fact that I

1:20:24

know how to cook on a budget was helpful. I was able

1:20:26

to like reduce my food bill quite a bit very

1:20:28

quickly. And and then I

1:20:31

just got really resourceful and I was

1:20:33

like, okay, I can't put my hands on people, but

1:20:35

I have all these other skills. I don't

1:20:37

know if any of them will provide

1:20:40

income for me, but they don't cost

1:20:42

me anything or they don't cost me much to

1:20:46

do. I have, you know, like what resources

1:20:48

do I already have that I can use? Well, like I said, I have

1:20:50

a smartphone, so it has a camera.

1:20:52

I have internet. I already I'd

1:20:54

been doing a little bit of YouTube because I was

1:20:56

so busy with my practice. I wasn't as consistent as

1:20:58

I had wanted to be, but I already had some

1:21:00

of the things like I had a microphone. I had, you know, I had the

1:21:02

things I needed. I didn't have really

1:21:05

great lights, but I had a window, so,

1:21:07

you know, I just kind of was like, well, it's not

1:21:09

perfect. I don't have a professional studio,

1:21:12

but. I'm, I've got these

1:21:14

things, so what can I do right now

1:21:16

with what I have? And

1:21:18

at what point did you get

1:21:21

your first bit of money from YouTube

1:21:23

from these videos? From,

1:21:26

in the pandemic?

1:21:27

I don't remember,

1:21:29

but it wasn't very soon. I think it was

1:21:31

like 2021.

1:21:33

So you started going for it in 2019,

1:21:36

and you were just like, well, you know, I'll just put

1:21:38

these out there.

1:21:40

I think I was making a little bit, but like a

1:21:42

couple hundred bucks, you know, we're not talking

1:21:45

livable wage. Even that for most of us is like, damn,

1:21:47

I made 200 bucks off my YouTube video. There

1:21:50

must have been a sort of a, shit, this

1:21:52

is possible moment. Even

1:21:54

when you got those first little bits of trickles.

1:21:57

I think so. I think that I, I mean,

1:21:59

one of the reasons I do what I do is I'm prone to anxiety

1:22:01

myself, right? So I think my anxious brain is like,

1:22:03

well, I'm making somebody, but I don't know if I can really live on this and

1:22:05

it's not really, you know, So, so I don't

1:22:07

know that I was like, you know, popping

1:22:09

champagne and celebrating, but I was, you know, it's like,

1:22:11

well, thank God I have that, you know?

1:22:13

But given that most people that put something on YouTube never

1:22:16

make a dime, I mean, that must have been

1:22:19

an interesting transitional

1:22:22

life moment of going, oh, I

1:22:24

see this as possible.

1:22:27

So I knew conceptually that it was possible because

1:22:29

I see other people doing it, but I, I had

1:22:31

a really hard time believing it was possible for me.

1:22:34

Right. At what point did

1:22:36

that get blown? You said 20, 2021.

1:22:38

So two years in that

1:22:40

gets blown out of the water.

1:22:42

Yeah. Then I started making quite a bit, but I don't,

1:22:44

I don't rely on YouTube and it's not reliable.

1:22:46

It's, it's very up and down. Right.

1:22:51

So, what else were you doing

1:22:54

in that two year period to keep body and soul together?

1:22:57

I sold my

1:22:58

condo. Got out of the city I

1:23:00

moved my horses to a lower cost of care

1:23:03

facility, was quite far away. That was very hard

1:23:05

for me. And I

1:23:07

started, so I had been teaching online

1:23:09

since like 2014 in terms of having like

1:23:11

digital programs that people could buy with, you

1:23:13

know. Educational materials and coaching,

1:23:15

but already been putting together courses

1:23:18

online I

1:23:19

had, but, but they were like, I

1:23:22

actually recently went back and was looking at the content

1:23:24

from one of those and I was like, this is not, it

1:23:26

was, it was interesting. It's not bad. I was surprised

1:23:28

because in my memory I was

1:23:30

really having a hard time again, building that bridge

1:23:32

from like, I'm trying to talk to people about how their body

1:23:34

influences their mind, you know, put these programs out there

1:23:36

and I would have all this like information

1:23:39

around that for these people. And then like, the feedback

1:23:41

was like, you know, but how do I stretch my hamstrings

1:23:44

kind of a thing? It was, it was. It

1:23:46

was a little bit of a struggle for me. I wasn't

1:23:48

really, it wasn't connecting in the way that I

1:23:50

wanted it to connect and it never was like,

1:23:52

yeah, I mean, it was a little money on the side. It was

1:23:54

not livable at all. So my practice

1:23:57

was my, my bread and butter. So

1:23:59

I, but I had that foundation and

1:24:01

then. I started really talking

1:24:03

to people as these YouTube videos gained traction and people

1:24:06

were like, you get it. Like that, that was what I kept

1:24:08

hearing was people would come to me and be like, I've

1:24:10

been trying to figure this out for years and you've

1:24:12

explained it in such a way that it connects for me. And I'm like,

1:24:14

okay, thank goodness we're finally connecting. Like

1:24:16

I'm, I'm finally understanding what people want to hear.

1:24:19

They're getting the information they need. This is good.

1:24:21

And as I talked to people I figured

1:24:23

out that they really needed some, some

1:24:26

Education and support in doing nervous

1:24:28

system work for themselves, not me doing

1:24:30

it on them, not me fixing

1:24:33

them, not me being the mechanic, but like, let's empower

1:24:35

them to do this work for themselves, which is really

1:24:37

the only way it will be lasting and sustainable.

1:24:40

So I started teaching a course. Online.

1:24:43

And again, I didn't, I didn't know

1:24:45

how it would work when I put it out there.

1:24:47

I was like, let's try it. You know, I have,

1:24:50

that was a live

1:24:51

course. So that was film content that people

1:24:53

would go through step by step.

1:24:54

It was live. And then I

1:24:57

converted it to something that

1:24:59

people could access on their own time, because

1:25:01

I. Thought it was a little

1:25:03

bit, it ended up being, I'm,

1:25:05

I'm an overdeliver general.

1:25:07

It's a lot for people. To me, it seemed

1:25:09

like this is very, very reasonable

1:25:12

for the amount of time we had. For them, it was probably

1:25:14

worried that people are going to think they're shortchanged. Yeah,

1:25:16

probably. Yeah. Yeah. So

1:25:19

I converted it to something that was

1:25:21

more self paced and now I'm actually in the

1:25:23

process of converting it back to

1:25:25

to life because we find that that

1:25:28

group. community going through

1:25:30

it together is much more potent

1:25:33

than people doing it on their own. But

1:25:35

regardless of whether it was live or self paced,

1:25:38

like the feedback has been really wonderful. I've learned

1:25:40

a ton working with people I've had. I mean,

1:25:42

when I get to interact with the people, the students who

1:25:45

are in my community and who are in my programs,

1:25:47

it's, it's amazing to me to

1:25:49

look back over that journey and just. I'm

1:25:51

so glad I was able to do that because

1:25:53

it really it is that piece

1:25:55

that I was kind of frustrated bumping up against

1:25:58

in my practice was that I wasn't able

1:26:00

to give people this foundational knowledge. Once

1:26:02

they have this, the things that people are doing

1:26:04

with it are just, they're just really fantastic

1:26:07

because then, like you said, it opens that door and they

1:26:09

can be curious. I, I

1:26:11

just had amazing feedback and I haven't

1:26:13

asked specifically. I'm going

1:26:15

to be asking some of these people if I can share their stories

1:26:17

soon. But generally,

1:26:20

people are able

1:26:22

to set better boundaries.

1:26:25

So we have students who are chronic

1:26:27

people pleasers, you know, who

1:26:29

are they'll bring up situations. And then, as they understand

1:26:32

how the what what's going on in the nervous system

1:26:34

in regards to situations where

1:26:36

they feel they need to, sort of

1:26:38

morph into whatever it is that someone

1:26:40

needs them to be in order to keep that person calm.

1:26:42

And then they understand the nervous system implications

1:26:45

of that. And what's driving that they're,

1:26:47

they're able to be more true.

1:26:50

And it's not, it's not about everyone can just

1:26:52

F off and, you know, I'm going to do what I want to do. That's

1:26:54

not it at all. But they're able to be

1:26:56

more discerning about. Setting

1:26:59

boundaries in ways that protect them

1:27:01

and their own, you know, agency

1:27:04

in life, which has been

1:27:06

really cool to watch. I've had clients,

1:27:08

a lot of clients who are health practitioners

1:27:10

in some regard, a lot who are in

1:27:12

coaching or mental health. We have people

1:27:15

who are in all kinds of different disciplines, but Including

1:27:17

massage and acupuncture and all that, but

1:27:20

we've got people in coaching and mental

1:27:22

health who are saying like, okay, this is helping me put

1:27:24

the pieces together so that I'm now able to help

1:27:26

my clients better. Like I'm understanding what's going on with

1:27:28

them much better so that

1:27:30

I'm able to bridge that gap

1:27:33

with them and support them better. So that we're

1:27:35

getting, they're kind of like secondhand client

1:27:37

stories of, of change that are happening. Recently

1:27:40

we had somebody who injured their back. Who

1:27:43

was just, it just did something that they didn't

1:27:45

normally do and was able

1:27:47

to, the, I think the clinic said

1:27:49

that it would take like six weeks to heal,

1:27:51

but they were able with the understanding

1:27:54

again of what's happening in the nervous system around this

1:27:56

quote injury it wasn't, it was just

1:27:58

kind of a diffuse injury. It wasn't diagnosed

1:28:00

as like, you, you know. You actually

1:28:03

broke something. It was more like you

1:28:05

strained yourself. And with some understanding,

1:28:07

they were able to work themselves out of pain into a

1:28:09

functional state in about two days, rather

1:28:12

than six weeks. So it's,

1:28:14

it's kind of all over the map because it's

1:28:16

so individual. And again, this is, it makes

1:28:18

it a little hard to quantify, but it's also what I

1:28:20

love about it is that it gives people what they need.

1:28:23

It's not, it's not a program that is

1:28:25

one size fits all. It gives you what you need

1:28:27

for your next step, your next evolution.

1:28:31

If it's me and I'm saying, okay,

1:28:33

gosh, Suki, this sounds fantastic, I'd like to learn

1:28:36

all about my nervous system so that I can make

1:28:38

certain changes in my life, you know, in

1:28:40

my body, in my brain, and therefore,

1:28:43

by extension in my life. I presume

1:28:45

though that people are coming in at different stages

1:28:47

of knowledge. So you must, you must have

1:28:49

people doing your online

1:28:51

courses now who are Somewhat

1:28:54

far along in their education. Others who are just

1:28:57

beginning. How do you integrate? How do you, how's

1:28:59

it, how's their inclusion in that? Yeah, because you've

1:29:01

got to catch certain people up to speed. Other

1:29:03

people are over here. Or is everything individualized? How do you,

1:29:06

and how do you have enough time in the day for

1:29:08

that? There's lots of different

1:29:11

No, it's a good question. It's been something that we've been working

1:29:13

with that I've been working with. I have a couple coaches

1:29:15

who work with me as well. So I've, I've done

1:29:17

a couple of things. So one, I implemented a shorter

1:29:20

program that is newer as of last year.

1:29:22

That's kind of like a first step. It

1:29:24

is a first

1:29:25

entry level course that somebody would do.

1:29:28

Correct. And so I, and now I've,

1:29:30

I've created that as a prerequisite for

1:29:32

the, the now we had

1:29:34

it more self paced, but now live again, of course

1:29:37

and that just kind of, it's kind of just a little bit of a checkpoint

1:29:39

of like, is this something you want to go deeper with? Is this

1:29:41

something that's working for you? So they actually get to

1:29:43

have the experience of it. And then

1:29:45

I can have a little bit of a conversation with them. As

1:29:48

needed to find out if the next step

1:29:50

is right for them. So, so that we've got people coming

1:29:52

into the longer program

1:29:54

who are at a place where like, we're pretty

1:29:56

sure this is where they need to be. But

1:29:59

the other piece of that is that I am a huge

1:30:01

fan of iteration. So

1:30:03

we have students who go back to our course two and

1:30:05

three times easily because when

1:30:07

you go through it, it hits you one way. And

1:30:10

then once you've kind of. Gone through the whole

1:30:12

arc of it. You're like, Oh, wait a minute. I need

1:30:14

to go back to the beginning. And

1:30:17

it lands differently. Right. And so then

1:30:19

you can, you can go through it multiple times and

1:30:21

there's so much richness there. So

1:30:23

there's that piece. But similar,

1:30:25

you know, I, I came and spent some time with you

1:30:28

and you took me through like, Really

1:30:31

basic stuff, but it's important, which is like,

1:30:33

here's how you walk with the horse. Can

1:30:36

you walk in a straight line? Right. You did those checks

1:30:39

with me to make sure, because if we had progressed.

1:30:41

And you were like, okay, let's jump into this other thing

1:30:43

over here. But we didn't check to make sure I could actually

1:30:46

balance and walk with a horse in these different

1:30:48

configurations, then I might've

1:30:51

fallen over and it would have been a real problem. And

1:30:53

so, you know, you, you did those checks and

1:30:55

it was important to do them. And

1:30:57

it prepped my nervous system for then

1:30:59

doing it later, even though I was able to do it.

1:31:01

Right. Similarly. When

1:31:04

I'm going through this with people, yeah,

1:31:06

it might be basic information, but there's probably

1:31:08

a few holes in there for them, and it kind

1:31:10

of sets them up. It gets their brain and their body

1:31:12

in the right state for the next piece and

1:31:14

so on and so forth. So even if some

1:31:17

of it isn't new for people, I still think

1:31:19

it's beneficial for everyone

1:31:21

to go through all of it.

1:31:23

No, I would agree. I mean, it's interesting. You,

1:31:25

you talk about me checking those

1:31:27

basics with you when you came and worked with the horses

1:31:29

with me. The reason I do that is because of

1:31:31

course I used to jump in further

1:31:34

up and then I indeed did have people

1:31:36

fall over and things like that and go, Oh my gosh,

1:31:38

I, I didn't know that that that was

1:31:41

possible. I realized that I had to absolutely

1:31:44

check every step along

1:31:46

the way because. If you didn't,

1:31:49

there was almost a negligence to it that because

1:31:51

if someone can do it, well, they're fantastic. You just breeze

1:31:54

through that in five minutes and then you off you go to the next thing.

1:31:56

And I'm also always thinking

1:31:59

I'm training someone to be a teacher. So

1:32:02

I would like them to

1:32:05

do those checks as well. No

1:32:07

matter how apparently

1:32:09

experienced the person in front of them is because you

1:32:12

just don't know. But

1:32:16

when you are teaching

1:32:19

is a time consuming thing. You

1:32:23

now have a lot of people signing up to

1:32:25

your online courses about the nervous system. And by

1:32:27

the way, listeners, we're going to tell you how you can

1:32:29

do that, and I really would recommend it. Learning

1:32:32

about my nervous system happened to me through

1:32:35

my son's autism, and it was life changing for me

1:32:37

in terms of Me being able

1:32:39

to have more agency in my own life

1:32:42

having had to learn a bit about it because of

1:32:44

my son So I really really really

1:32:46

really would recommend taking

1:32:48

the time to do a course with Suki

1:32:51

But so how much time do you actually spend

1:32:54

in your day sitting in front of a zoom screen? Does

1:32:57

it not take over your life? How do you how do you

1:32:59

balance that and you have horses? I know How

1:33:02

do you find time to get out to them because that does I know

1:33:04

there's an awful lot of people out there Wanting to do

1:33:06

your stuff

1:33:08

Yeah, well, and this

1:33:10

is a balancing act that I'm always working on

1:33:12

because as you mentioned, you know, I have

1:33:14

to go 1st and and live

1:33:16

my life in a way that works for me so that I can

1:33:19

share what that's like for, you know,

1:33:21

people who want to do that. They're not gonna live my life, but

1:33:23

they're gonna live their life in a way that works for them. And.

1:33:26

So I, I have to make choices in my, in

1:33:28

my work that allow me to have the lifestyle

1:33:31

that I want. And that means, you know, both having

1:33:33

the finances that support me and allow

1:33:36

me to live, but also the time freedom, which

1:33:38

is really important to me, because like you said, I have

1:33:40

horses and. As

1:33:42

much as I value the time

1:33:44

that I did in my practice and value

1:33:47

the people that I was able to meet and work with it

1:33:49

was always very hard for me to have a life

1:33:51

that was so heavily scheduled because

1:33:54

literally every hour and a half you've got

1:33:56

a person coming in, there's no flexibility there

1:33:58

whatsoever. And that was really challenging.

1:34:00

And I just, I think I hit a wall with that where

1:34:02

like, I sort of, I can't do it.

1:34:05

So, so I'm very careful to keep time

1:34:07

freedom. So I've played with different

1:34:09

structures in my business. So, you know, my

1:34:11

YouTube videos are always available. So people can

1:34:13

24 seven go out there and watch them, which is fantastic.

1:34:16

Because people sometimes at one in the morning, whatever

1:34:18

that is for them are looking for that.

1:34:20

Right. And what might watch and rewatch something

1:34:22

like I watch and rewatch stuff on

1:34:24

YouTube. that I find interesting. I might watch it 10

1:34:26

times because there's stuff in there I've missed.

1:34:29

Yeah,

1:34:30

absolutely. So that's a resource for them. I have other

1:34:32

resources like that as well. So there's things that

1:34:34

people can do on their own time and schedule,

1:34:37

which don't require my presence, which is really great.

1:34:39

It also means they don't have to then say the same things

1:34:41

over and over again, because sometimes you're not

1:34:43

getting paid for that when they go and watch YouTube at

1:34:46

this particular stage on that thing. I

1:34:48

mean, I, I am, but not

1:34:50

reliably, right? Like I don't base my

1:34:52

business on that. So there's that element of

1:34:54

it, but then my courses. So that

1:34:57

prerequisite course that I mentioned, that's that entry

1:34:59

level kind of first step course is self paced. So

1:35:01

people again can access that. It's

1:35:03

always there and it's always a bit as of now, it's

1:35:05

always there and always available. I don't have

1:35:07

any plans to change that, but someone

1:35:09

can enroll in that at, at any time

1:35:11

at their leisure and have that

1:35:13

course without me being

1:35:16

there, walking them personally through every step.

1:35:18

So that, that works for both of us again, right? Cause

1:35:20

they get the entry level information. They're

1:35:22

getting the practices. They're getting their learning.

1:35:25

They're setting themselves up for further work if they

1:35:27

want to, if that's the path they choose.

1:35:29

And then again, I have that time freedom where

1:35:32

I've provided that for them and then I can be

1:35:34

working with my horses, teaching people, helping

1:35:36

at a clinic, you know, doing something else, maybe

1:35:38

working with a client when I'm with, you know, it allows

1:35:41

me almost to duplicate myself, which is fantastic.

1:35:43

Yeah. And then the course

1:35:45

that I'm teaching live, that was a difficult decision

1:35:47

because I've made it self paced for that reason, right? Like,

1:35:50

you absolutely can go through this material

1:35:53

on your own and it has worked for students. But

1:35:55

in observing my students, I felt it was in their

1:35:58

best interest to reset

1:36:00

and actually teach it live again. So this

1:36:02

year, I made that decision to do it. But when I made

1:36:04

that decision, I sat with it for a couple of months

1:36:06

before I decided to do it. And

1:36:09

then when I decided to do it, I looked at

1:36:11

when in the year am I okay with

1:36:14

Basically being on every week and having

1:36:16

to consistently show up and teach

1:36:19

and, and I'm okay with that, but I don't,

1:36:21

I don't want to do it every

1:36:23

week of the year, all year long, because

1:36:25

again, I need some time freedom. I

1:36:28

need the ability to travel and do workshops. I

1:36:30

need the ability to travel for my own. Learning

1:36:32

and my own enjoyment. I, you know, I need the ability

1:36:34

to have some flexibility. So

1:36:37

I picked basically, we're gonna have two courses

1:36:39

this year, and they're each 12

1:36:41

weeks in length, and I picked times where

1:36:43

I am okay with having to

1:36:46

be in front of the computer more during

1:36:48

those times of year. So

1:36:50

when are those times of year? When are you doing them?

1:36:52

So our, our first run

1:36:54

through will be basically we've divided it

1:36:57

up because we have so many practitioners in our group and

1:36:59

there was a profound need for more mentorship

1:37:01

for practitioners. So our, our personal

1:37:03

course, so if you want to do this journey for yourself,

1:37:05

whether you are a professional or not our

1:37:07

personal nerve apprenticeship course will be taking

1:37:10

place starting in March and it will run for

1:37:12

12 weeks. And then people

1:37:14

who are in that who are professionals and would

1:37:16

like to get practitioner mentorship and,

1:37:18

and start to learn how to apply it to their own clients

1:37:20

more intentionally. That aspect