French Kissing Life

Ep 27: Health and Wellness Through a Body-First Lens with Janis Isaman

• Shawnna Stiver • Episode 27

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Your body is speaking. Are you listening? Janis Isaman, founder of My Body Couture and a trauma-sensitive movement specialist, lends her expertise to this fascinating topic. Learn how your body writes the story of your life and why understanding its language could be the key to unlocking emotional regulation and overall well-being. From distinguishing between trauma responses and emotions to practical tips for building body awareness, this conversation will change how you think about the mind-body connection.

Topics covered:

  • Janis' background and her body-first wellness approach.
  • Difference between trauma response and emotion.
  • Understanding physical and mental connections.
  • Importance of integration over healing.
  • Impacts of modern living on health.
  • How regular physical activity contributes to long life.


Here are some actions you can take whether you have 5 minutes or 50:

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Connect with Janis:
Website: https://www.mybodycouture.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybodycouture
https://www.facebook.com/mybodycouture/

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Until next time, muah!

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to French Kissing Life.

Speaker 1:

I'm your host, shauna Stiver, and I am thrilled to help you discover what makes your heart race, your soul dance and your spirit soar. Every week, you'll get a fun dose of inspiration, laughter and a sprinkle of magic as we explore stories, insights and conversations that empower you to ignite the spark within, in a world that demands you be anything but yourself. This is your permission slip to be a little more you Together. Let's shed the shoulds, embrace our unique brilliance and welcome more joy. Are you ready to French kiss life? Welcome back to another episode of French Kissing Life. I am your host, shauna Stiver. Welcome back to another episode of French Kissing Life. I am your host, shana Stiver.

Speaker 1:

And it's raining here again in Iowa, which is really not anything newsworthy, except that this season has been unusually rainy and we've had a ton of severe weather, including some crazy tornadoes, not to mention this godforsaken wind that never leaves. I literally don't understand it. Every nice day that we have it is like 50 mile per hour winds. So if your hair is down and you're wearing lipstick, forget about it. Your hair is now stuck to your lips and stuck to everything, and it's the most annoying thing in the world, and I really just want someone to explain why we keep getting this windy weather, because that's not normal. It's like this is abnormal. Why is nobody talking about this? I've literally thought to myself that if this was the weather every day of the year, I think I would have to move, which sounds so dramatic, but I'm telling you it's so annoying. So if you hear thunder in the background, it's because I'm currently under yet another thunderstorm warning, and if you hear a siren, well then that means I'm going to be back momentarily. Why am I mentioning the weather? Well, because weather can have an effect on our moods, and when we think about moods, we typically associate them with our brain, but there's actually a body component that largely goes unnoticed.

Speaker 1:

Today's guest is going to talk all about this, and I have to say this is a bold statement. This is one of my favorite episodes I've done so far. For one, because my guest and I actually got the entire thing recorded and then realized that the audio didn't save properly. And then realized that the audio didn't save properly. The joys of technology. And it was so good too. So when we recorded a second time and somehow nailed it a second time, the taste of victory was just that much sweeter. And then for another reason, my guest is a big name in her industry and I'm just beyond excited for you to hear this conversation.

Speaker 1:

So, as the founder of my Body Couture, a one-on-one private movement studio, janice Isman is a trauma-sensitive movement specialist focused on providing customized, personalized, body-focused services to clients with chronic pain, illness, injuries and other movement limitations. She's a leader in approaching mental health and wellness from a body-first lens. Her trauma credentials include the compassionate inquiry psychotherapy approach developed by the one and only Gabor Mate, no big deal Trauma Center, trauma Sensitive Yoga, somatic Experiencing International, developed by Peter Levine, and Trauma Research Foundation's Traumatic Stress Certificate Program with Bessel van der Kolk, who is the best-selling trauma research author of the Body Keeps the Score. I'm sure some of you have heard of that book. It is one of the, I guess, preeminent titles in this whole movement and body correlation to mental health and wellness. Janice is known for her whole-body approach to movement, focused on addressing the root cause of limitations and aesthetic concerns. Her practical, functional and discipline agnostic approach blends physical and evidence-based mental health modalities into a relatable, innovative and effective body sustainability program. This approach offers clients education and usable tools and has changed how thousands of people have related to the experience of their own bodies. Janice is a keynote speaker and has been a guest on over 250 podcasts since 2020. She's an award-winning writer for the Elephant Journal and has been quoted as a health expert in Reader's Digest Prevention Women's Health Cosmopolitan. In Reader's Digest Prevention Women's Health Cosmopolitan.

Speaker 1:

Working Mother, Spark People, myfitnesspal and Beachbody. In her personal life, she is a mother and passionate community volunteer with the Calgary Stampede, 17th Avenue Business District, heritage Park and Kids Up Front. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Alberta. So after all that and she's a Canadian. As a side note, I learned that Janice also worked in magazines at one point, which truly means she's a kindred spirit with me.

Speaker 1:

Here's the thing you guys, we get into all of it. This is such a juice-filled conversation that there was zero time for games and we didn't even do my standard rapid fire questions, but this episode is so jam-packed with insights this is literally going to blow you away. We talk about how Janice approaches wellness from that body-first lens and what the hell that means. She shares the difference between a trauma response and an emotion. I give her an actual example of a time recently when I was having a body response to a health scare and what I could have done to help myself in the moment. The cues you can be looking for to get more in touch with your body, and why, in the Sam Hill, it even matters in the first place body, and why, in the Sam Hill, it even matters in the first place. Can you tell I'm fired up about this episode. I'm telling you it's a treat and a half and I cannot wait to hear what you all think about it.

Speaker 1:

So please enjoy my insanely useful conversation with Jana Isman. Hi, janice, it's so good to see you. Thanks for being on French Kissing Life with me today. Hello, I'm really excited to be here. I am one of those people that really geeks out on all of this type of stuff. I have talked about it before that I've done quite a bit of work myself, and your area of specialty is actually one that I'm just starting to scratch the surface on, and so I'm so excited for this chat and just everything that you bring with your expertise. So I'd love it if we could just kind of start out with you telling me, like who you are and your story and sort of how you got into this kind of work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm Janice Eisman and I am the owner of my Body Couture, which is a private one-to-one studio where I really help people feel better in their bodies. So that's a really broad category. I do a lot of physical work with people. That is actually my title. I'm a trauma-sensitive movement specialist, so I'm using movement as a facilitator for feeling better physically, but also working with the intersection of movement and mental health.

Speaker 2:

So how I got in I mean, it's kind of packaging up a 20 year story into like a couple sentences but I became kind of the practitioner that I was looking for and, as these things go, that has also evolved over time. So it really started with I had pain in my knee that I couldn't really figure out what to do with. No, you know, I went to a whole bunch of different practitioners. I couldn't kind of crack the secret to it. And then, um, I eventually discovered Pilates. That became something that my body was like oh, we, we can do this life without knee pain and I've actually never had knee pain again. Um, and then, quite a few years later, I was. I've really always felt like my body is different than other people and the more I studied, the more I'm like oh, it's just the most average body that humanity's ever created. But I wasn't athletic as a kid. I can have a hard time with like catching balls if you throw them at me, things like that.

Speaker 2:

Often in a lot of the trainings the way that they're set up is you watch somebody do an exercise once and then you replicate it. I have a hard time doing that. I often have to kind of strip it backwards. Um, this isn't a real term, but it's. It's like I have body dyslexia. Working with other people. It turns out, so does so, did a lot of people. Um, it's, it's actually the model of watch somebody do something, do it ourselves is actually it's. It's quite challenging for a lot of people because there's a lot of different ways that we learn things, but we mostly learn things by doing them.

Speaker 2:

So I I really felt for a long time like something was, was, not, was not working here. So even though I started taking my teacher trainings, I struggled with it more than most people. That's probably still true, but that's that's one of the reasons I kind of started moving into the mental health area, not because I was incapable, but because I was curious, like what is actually happening with my body. Why do I feel like there's something not functioning the way that it does for other people?

Speaker 2:

The second reason I got into it is because I noticed, as we do body work with clients, um, the the book the body, when the body keeps the score has kind of blown this out into the open. But when we start moving the body and working with the body, we often will start talking and we will start revealing things. So I had a ton of clients that were revealing really challenging pieces from their past. So between my own experience with my own body and having experiences where I would just be like totally emotionally, physically overwhelmed with things, and then what was happening in my clients, that's what took me down the road of like what is actually happening in the body. It's clearly not just we do the exercises and it's in our physical body. There's something else. And at the time when I was looking for this information, we didn't have a cultural conversation about trauma, so it was actually I had to ask around, I had to actually look into where would I even take a training like that?

Speaker 1:

And you said that you approach mental health and wellness through a body first lens.

Speaker 2:

So is it?

Speaker 1:

safe to say that a trauma sensitive movement specialist, which is your title, is someone who helps another person heal by going through their body.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes. So a couple of things I really. For anybody who has read Bessel van der Kolk's book, that really is what I do where we look at what is that inner experience of a person and we're moving the body and using the body as a tool. The second piece is I don't love the word healing. I love the word integrating. So when we use the word healing, we're kind of implying that it's like a medical term where something is cut or broken and it repairs itself.

Speaker 2:

And when it comes to emotions, that's actually one of the sticking points for a lot of people is that we feel like we either shouldn't have emotions that's kind of often coming from the yoga world, and even if nobody tells you that, it's that idea where you could sit and have blank brain for five minutes, or that we would never, ever get upset or disturbed or angry or any of the other emotions that we've tagged as undesirable in our culture um so, so I actually steer away from that. It's about having an integrated experience where we can have experiences that flow through us. It's really fair to say that probably the average person listening to this probably sits too much, so we have literal physical blockages in our body. Many of us are sitting way too much. There's some great research on that, um, and so our hips and our pelvis are just tight. They're fixed. We're not, we're not using um.

Speaker 2:

Part of how we digest and how we process things is actually rhythmic movement of the body. It's use of our voice, et cetera. So, so a lot of us are actually in voice, et cetera. So so a lot of us are actually in. Our bodies are actually really sticky, um, they're, they're actually stuck. So when we go to to push weights, we don't have the strength to do it. When we go to be flexible, we don't have the flexibility to do it. So I'm working really with the physical body. That's what the body first means. So I'm not, I have skillset to. That's what the body first means.

Speaker 1:

So I'm not. I have skill set to. I took training with Dr Gabor Maté and so I do have training to do a modality where we sit in a chair and and do the work. But I'm really glad that you mentioned the integration part, because I had a therapy session yesterday actually, and one of the things that we were talking about was that like, um, I also have ADHD, and so there's this like perfectionism for me, even as it relates to like mental health, and so if I like get into a little Valley which I'm in at the moment, I am like, oh gosh, but I was doing so well.

Speaker 1:

And there is this like idea that you're somehow, you know, done with the work which we're never done with the work we're just sort of like incorporating the tools and things necessary to you know like thrive more in an in a day-to-day setting.

Speaker 2:

Right, and I think that that's super important, especially if we're getting a lot of our mental health tips from TikTok, which, honestly, a lot of people are. So you know, that's where we take these concepts that take 60, 80, hundreds of hours for a practitioner or facilitator of some of this work to learn, and we're seeing it kind of blasted out onto the internet in these 15 second little bubbles and reels and it's oversimplifying it. So a lot of people do indeed have the idea that if we actually had if we quote unquote got rid of our traumas, that we would never be angry. Because what I've actually noticed is that some of the normal human experiences have been almost pathologized. So we're starting to call normal human emotions traumas, and that's not the actual definition of trauma. So a normal human experience definitely is going to involve some ups and downs and it's going to be our nervous system and our bodies. Everything is going to kind of ebb and flow. That's just how it is and this calm space with perfect bodies, and then we fix that in time. That's not real.

Speaker 2:

So that's one of the great pieces about working with exercise is that we quickly learn that every day is different.

Speaker 2:

So I actually have a practice that I do and I call it a practice because it's yoga every single morning, and when I started doing it, I was really shocked at how different every day was. So every day seems the same because I actually often do the same movements, but it just depends on, I mean, it's how I slept the night before, it's what I ate the day before, it's water, it's. You know, the sun is beaming through my windows. It's obviously going to be like a different experience than in the middle of winter, when it's not. So there's there's dozens of factors that have nothing even to do with my emotional state, that create change in our bodies, and we never, ever, talk about that. Like how's the weather impacting you? What about the air pressure, the temperature, the sun, the wind? You know all of these things that we just see as invisible, but they actually do impact our body, and then we have all of that emotional load on top of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, why do you think that, like with traditional, you know, mental health topics and such, we really do focus so much on the brain and the body part is sort of not talked about as much? Or at least like in my experience, like I told you when we first started, I'm just kind of now like thinking about this, whereas someone like you would say, oh, my gosh, like this should have been part of the all of the modality from like the beginning till now. So why do you think that is?

Speaker 2:

It, just it really. If you go back in history and look at how mental health and psychology was founded, it was. It was really, you know, white European men who were actually at the time. To be fair, there wasn't a lot known about the brain and about mental health. So that was revolutionary, but it really wasn't. It wasn't a full system from the lens of today, but back in those days, you know, it was revolutionary because there was people prior to that that had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 2:

So I think every system needs to evolve and this is an evolution and it's taken 100 to 150 years to get there because we've had that system for so long that there still is a huge emphasis on the brain operating the whole system.

Speaker 2:

So we basically cut the body at the neck and we say this is the only part of us that matters. So you know, I see the word mindset over and over and over and I see intentions and I see, you know all of these things that can be tools, but they are into. We need to integrate that in with the experience of the body and we know, through Stephen Porges and the polyvagal theory, that we have bottom up as well as top down. So what that means is it's not just our brain impacting our body, but our body actually takes in signaling and sends it up to the brain. So when we have a fear response or when our nervous system state shifts, how we perceive things shifts too, and so we can try to tell our brain hey, let's think about this more clearly or let's not have black and white thinking or all of these things, but that's going to be really challenging when our body is in a state of fear or shutdown or what have you around the world.

Speaker 1:

He's never had like really any. Like he said, he's had a very small stroke, but it was like such a little blip that they wouldn't have even known that he'd had it. And so of course I was asking him questions like Jim, what is your secret? Like you know, you're 97 and you're just doing so well, and his answer was both like revolutionary and not. He said I just keep moving, and so he's, you know, out in his garden and he's doing his vegetables and he's doing all these things. And it strikes me, as you know for him, that he didn't grow up with just technology and, like you said, the sitting constantly, like you were very, you were just a more physical way of living.

Speaker 1:

And so it's. It's interesting to me that, like somebody like him who's 97 and is like just literally still thriving, there's that key to it where his experience of life was much different and it really was more physical if you looked at it from, you know, a high level point of view.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, this is like a whole podcast. So my grandma is 101 years old and so it it because it's somebody that's in my own family. It gives me kind of that perspective of comparison and to be honest, I think that probably this is not a scientific fact. But I think generation X is probably the first generation in all of human history that has not had to move their bodies. So we start with X, and then we add the millennials, and then we add the Zs, and then we add the. I don't know. I've heard them called both A and Y, so I'm not sure what they are after disease. But you know, we have four generations of living people right now that have had no imperative whatsoever to move our bodies Prior to that in history.

Speaker 2:

That was unthinkable, unfathomable, unreasonable and impossible. You would die, you would literally die. So when I look at my grandma's childhood, literally die. So when I look at my grandma's childhood, she had the only way to get to school was by horse. So that's obviously physical in some aspect. They had chamber pots. Still, there was a lot of work in the winter to stay warm, whether that was fires or lighting, you know, kerosene lamps, things like that so you didn't get to just kind of sit on the couch on your phone and let the whole world come to you. Food was incredibly challenging to acquire, preserve, cook et cetera. So there was no. You know there was no. Pick up your phone and order it to your door like, skip the dishes and door dashes and what have you.

Speaker 2:

But you know, there was also no microwaves. There was, everything was challenging and everything was physical and that's already an advanced state of human living. You know, you can go back centuries from that and there wasn't even there wasn't even what she had. So but within that lifetime, you know, I look at my own child and he currently walks to school. But in his elementary school years we lived a little bit far from the school. So you know, walk down 10 stairs down to the car and then he'd get dropped off outside the door. Well, that's obviously very different than a horse to school. And I have a washing machine and we go to the grocery store and buy lots of food that is already kind of in its whole form, et cetera. So the labor on me and the labor on my child is very, very, very different than what we had 100 years ago.

Speaker 2:

Now, clearly, everybody that was born 100 years ago is not currently alive, but there is an incredible wealth of research and an increasing wealth of research that's showing exercise and the benefits to I mean, everybody knows this already but longevity, heart, heart, health. There is an incredibly burgeoning amount of research on the link between exercise and mental health and I've seen this sliced and diced different ways because research studies tend to look at a small sliver. But some of the modalities actually I will say one of the modalities that I am trained in trauma-centered, trauma-sensitive yoga has increasing evidence that shows that the yoga, therapeutically delivered in a very specific way, is actually as effective as our cognitive behavioral therapy and participants tend to enjoy it more and they actually complete the program. We also have other studies outside of that modality that have been done specifically around exercise and depression or exercise and anxiety, and some of them are looking at you know what is the impact. Some of them are looking at what is the mechanism, but basically you don't need a study for any of it. Are looking at what is the mechanism, but basically you don't need a study for any of it.

Speaker 2:

In terms of we all know this, we just resist it terribly. Exercise is good for our health and for our mental health and we are living currently in an environment where we can opt out of the whole thing and so many, many, many people do. They don't like it, they don't want to do it. We have incredible conservation drive in our body to like, save our energy and save ourselves from effort in that way. Plus, there's nothing in our society that's actually other than aesthetics and lacking shame Somehow there's. Really typically we're not getting financially rewarded for exercise, so a lot of people are just focused kind of on those practical, day-to-day components of what do I have to do to survive in the world yeah, yeah, oh my gosh, it's so interesting.

Speaker 1:

Um, I want to read something that that you wrote previously about this connection between mental health, our bodies and that being sort of the key to emotional regulation. So you wrote our bodies both write and record every moment of our lives. While our culture currently tells us that our experiences of the world live largely in our minds and that we can change our lives by amending our thoughts, we often neglect to include mention of our body as a co-participant. Our somatic experiences sometimes lead and sometimes follow, but are always co-creating with our brain and deserve equal care, mention and attention. And then later on, you talked about a specific example for you where you said my brain didn't even have time to coordinate a thought before my muscles, voice, eyes and stomach wrote the story of my response. Can you tell me more about just sort of that key between the two?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I think that most of us kind of have the idea and that is shifting with time but that our brain and our ration are running the whole show so that we control everything. And I think that that's part of why we like that idea, because if we think that we can change our thoughts, we can control everything around us and there is value in learning skills to help us self-manage. So I just want to be clear that I'm not disparaging any therapeutic technique that focuses on our thoughts or skills around our thoughts. But what I'm really talking about is we literally have experiences where our bodies react and respond our muscles tighten, our throat might tighten, our voice might change, we might actually even start crying or freeze and we haven't even had a thought yet. So that is really our body scanning the environment, scanning the situation and indexing from something in our past that says this is dangerous. And we've all had this experience. Some of it actually might be dangerous, some of it might not be, and that doesn't mean that your body is wrong. What it means is that your body is taking an experience that you've genuinely had in the past and it's responding and reacting to it. So where trauma kind of comes into this is that when and there's a huge focus on childhood trauma it could be as an adult. But when something that has overwhelmed and shut down your system hasn't been metabolized or processed through, you might be more sensitive to some of those body cues. And that's why we wanted to kind of do some of that trauma work, because we want the responses to be aligned with what's actually happening in the environment. So we don't want to be reacting to something that's old news when in fact it's not dangerous. So you know, there's a lot of conversation out there about how we we're human animals, we are, we are biological animals and about how our bodies have animal responses. But I think that where we can kind of get into trouble is thinking that we can use this brain to override all of that. We actually don't even want to. So there are validly times that we want to. When we meet somebody, when we encounter somebody, we need to use our whole body to size up Do we feel good around them? Do they feel safe? Do they feel like we want to spend more time or less time? Do we want to move towards them or get away from them? We're doing that every time we meet somebody and we don't want to shut that instinct off. That's helpful, that's beneficial. Same thing with you know, if you're walking down a dark alley where there's you know, dangers, you don't want to be like, oh brain, there's nothing happening here. You actually want to leave the alley, right.

Speaker 2:

So we, so I think that we can almost take it to an extreme where we think that our brain should just never have this response or reaction, and we should. We should actually be very attuned to what that is and respond and react accordingly. But in order to do that, we have to recognize that our body is part of the process. So we have to develop those skills of it's called interoception and neuroception. But basically that's where we're scanning the environment with our body and we're understanding that when the hairs on your arms raise up, listen and. And neuroception sorry, sorry, interoception means that we're we're able to actually take those cues from the body and and and hear them. So can you feel your stomach tensing up, can you feel your throat tightening, can you feel tears springing to your eyes, and then can you actually accept it and and be with that in the present moment, and that's a hard skill for a lot of people because again, we've been taught take the brain, move us out, change your thoughts.

Speaker 2:

Reframe is a big word that's being used at the moment and again, there's a time and a place to do that, but there's also a time and a place to be like okay, this is, this is a genuine signal for my body. This is I'm going to move away or I'm going to say no, or I'm going to terminate my relationship with this person or whatever it is and the human experience, and not just kind of focus all on the brain and saying the brain is the boss and so everything that's happening that I don't want to be happening needs to be changed in the brain.

Speaker 1:

Not necessarily. Yeah, yeah, I just thought of two things that I want to ask you. So one I had an experience recently and I want to get your thoughts on what I maybe could have done a little bit differently through my body. But I got a tetanus shot not too long ago and it'd been obviously a very long time since I'd had one. The only thing that I recall was just that my arm was going to be sore. And so 48 hours after, I'm sitting at home and I just like was adjusting my shirt or something, and I was like how I had a lump on my collarbone and I didn't know what it was. It was very tender.

Speaker 1:

And, um, so I work out with a personal trainer. We just do weights and strength training together. And so I text her and I was like, hey, like you know any idea like what that could be, cause we had just worked out together. And she, hey, like you know any idea like what that could be, because we had just worked out together. And she's like I don't know, maybe you have like a swollen lymph node.

Speaker 2:

So I make the dire mistake of Googling swollen lymph node.

Speaker 1:

And I even said to myself don't do it, shauna, don't do it, and I do it.

Speaker 1:

And of course it says that this is cancer and basically that you know I'm I'm gonna die in 24 hours, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And so immediately I have this physical, very physical response which is my entire body starts shivering and shaking and, um, I, I knew that it was anxiety because I used to feel that sensation whenever I would get into a dating situation and so obviously, like you know, worked a lot with my therapist about like sort of that and doing EMDR and things like that to kind of reprocess what where that was coming from.

Speaker 1:

But at the time that I'm thinking that I have cancer, I'd love to know your perspective, like what could I have done to sort of move that through me? Because what I ended up doing was I reached out to a friend who I trust very much, if I'm, you know, feeling super anxious or having a panic attack, and she kind of approached it as you sort of talked, you know feeling super anxious or having a panic attack, and she kind of approached it as you sort of talked, you know, through rational, logical, and that's not where, you know, I was at at the moment, and then I ended up just sort of falling asleep, which you know was fine, but I didn't get out of that for, you know, probably a good 30 minutes and I was just shivering and shaking and like couldn't, you know, get that to subside. So is there anything I could have done to move that through me?

Speaker 2:

That's a really good question. So I think there's a few answers I have for that. So one is and this is super important it's really hard in the moment, especially for having kind of that anxiety or panic attack, to start changing or shifting. So everything that I'm doing is really focused on practice preparation and really noticing and naming and being aware when we're not in that state, Because when we are in that state, that's a really hard place to be like okay, right now is my starting point. So that's kind of like being mid marathon and being like how do I train for this Right? So that's important to say, because I think that that is actually quite a common question that I get and the answer is there's stuff to do, but there's also nothing to do because, because we have already, we're already in the space, Um. So a lot of the work that I'm doing is really focused on a couple of kind of core principles. One of them is being in the present moment. So in that present moment, your body was having a huge response. We be with it, we, we are with it and we accept it and instead of trying to change it, we actually start applying things like compassion, self-awareness, acceptance and man, these are hard things. They really are, Because, especially when we've been taught and trained that there are certain emotions and sensations that we want to not have, because our society and our culture really focuses on happy and peaceful and blissful and active and excited and things like that, we are not really that open to shaking and crying and fear and things like that. So I would actually have encouraged you to reach out to a friend who wasn't going to kind of go into that intellect and somebody instead who's going to say you know, Shauna, that sounds really hard. I would also be scared. Can you be in your body? And mostly there's actually research that shows that emotions kind of peak out within about 90 seconds. So if we can kind of be in that emotion for about 90 seconds in our body and really be in the body where we're not trying to reframe, we're not trying to shift, we're not trying to actually apply any kind of mental thought to it, we're actually really, really. I feel this sensation. I feel that sensation. I noticed that my throat has closed up. This is fear. That tends to be helpful and, again, that tends to be helpful when we practice that skill over and over and over again and we have that body awareness and we're not kind of like, oh, we've got to stop. This is no good. What it sounds to me is that your nervous system and your body actually moved into a response and you needed to finish that cycle, so there probably wasn't a huge way that you could have cut it off or made it shorter. Yeah, and that's okay too, because that is again that is.

Speaker 2:

I think running is a great analogy for that, where we train so that we can, we can run and you might get a little faster, you might have a little bit more pain tolerance, but it's not going to mean that that, you know it. It might not be the optimal experience that you're looking for, necessarily. It's not gonna. Training for a marathon doesn't make you a world-class marathoner. It just means that you can finish the race right. And so that's often the case with emotions as well. We may not actually be able to stop responding to things. We might shorten that cycle or we might find people in our environment who are like a little bit more aligned to helping us, be accepting and compassionate, and then that tends to shift it over time. It's when we're trying to stop things that our body's like Whoa we. You know, please don't like. We need to experience this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the second half of my question. Um, and I've I'm, of course, approaching this from my brain, I'll just make that clear. Um, so I mentioned that I used to feel this like shivering and shaking about dating situations. So I knew that. So I had a new dating situation last summer that I was feeling those sensations again and my question for myself at the time was is it this person's behavior that is the reason that I'm feeling this, or is it my interpretation of the behavior? Because this is an old wound that still needs tended to? Is there a way to sort of say or or like figure out is it really this actual situation with the person, or is this something that still needs like kind of some work, like tending to, or does that even matter?

Speaker 2:

um, no, that's a really, really good question, and I think that that's where the the lines start to blur a little bit, and that's also why we need to do a lot of this work. When we're not triggered or we're not having emotional responses, there is a difference in our body or at least there is in mine between a trigger and an emotion, and so when I'm triggered, it's kind of a whole body. I'll feel my stomach kind of clench up, my throat will tighten up and then I turn into rumination. So I will call 42 friends and if I don't get the response I want from one, I call another and and it becomes really a preoccupying thought for me. I have to figure it out, I have to solve it, and it's really me trying to come back into safety.

Speaker 2:

When I'm having an emotion, I don't have that same thing.

Speaker 2:

And that doesn't mean that I never ask friends for advice. It's just not an all-encompassing component, and so when we think of something like a dating situation, it would be within the realm of like most people are going to ask a friend for some advice or we're going to kind of call somebody else in if we don't know. But if you find yourself unable to do anything else that day because you had a date last night. That's probably a triggered response. Now that doesn't mean that that person is safe for you, and I think that that's part of it. It's coming into that place where we accept that that situation might not be a fit for us, or that it's too much for our nervous system or that it's it's not workable. But I think that that's a really important skill set is to learn the difference between I'm triggered or I'm having a an emotion. And I can tell you like I didn't know the difference before practicing it, and that practice was over and over and over and over and over again to actually recognize.

Speaker 2:

I'll give you actually a concrete example. So a couple of years ago I was picking my child up from an afterschool or a summer activity and there was a woman that was walking towards me and because I was already doing this work, I was like whoa towards me. And because I was already doing this work, I was like Whoa. I could feel my stomach clench, I could feel my throat getting dry, I could feel my shoulders up in my ear, and this was just because she was kind of she was, she was kind of broader in the shoulder and she was walking really quickly and I could kind of see her shoulders, moving rapidly towards me, and my body went into like a full scale response to this, like I was prepping myself for danger.

Speaker 2:

that's obviously a trauma response, because she hadn't even spoke to me yeah, she was she was approaching me, I didn't even know what was happening.

Speaker 2:

Um, and I did find like I was already in hyper analyzed mode, hyper hyper intellectualized mode, already a bit defensive. When she approached my car and that you know the conversation we had, I was like, okay, it was like not really a huge deal, so I could peel that off and say, okay, maybe that person isn't my favorite person, but the response that I'm having is actually outside of her, that's not a her thing Versus. I recently had an encounter with somebody that just wasn't like a great fit for me on a friendship or dating level personally, and there was a bunch of reasons why, but I wasn't ever triggered by it. I was just like, okay, let me analyze if this person is a fit or not, and there was things that just weren't working, or I could notice myself doing certain things that just were not working, but I never had kind of that body response to oh no, I'm in danger.

Speaker 2:

This is terrible and like the rumination that happens in the full body response. So it's, the problem with a lot of these is that we're looking to bucket them as binary and they're often not. It's on a spectrum, and so that's why we need to practice working with the body, because the body is a huge part of this, and we'll move into those coping mechanisms which, for me, are hyper intellectualizing. There's some avoidance that gets tossed into that, rumination, things like that, and I could tell my brain 1000 times to stop doing that. But it's really my body that's like danger, and so it doesn't mean that we need to remain in the situation. Whether we're triggered or not, we can move away from the situation. But it's really understanding. Okay, this is a trigger versus my body's picking up some not cool information and I don't want to move forward.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and I'm I'm guessing that. My next question is is that it obviously varies, but are there any like? If somebody is sort of new to this and they're not very in tune with their body, are there specific cues or signals that they can start to pay attention to? Or will that just vary wildly from person to person?

Speaker 2:

It tends not to actually so I would say that the average person that comes to see me has what I would actually describe as low body literacy. That is not typically a variance from person to person so unless somebody has.

Speaker 2:

The only really exceptions that I've ever really seen are somebody who has a background in something like cheerleading, dance, figure skating, things like that. Sometimes I get other sports in there, but typically part of the low body literacy is actually quite cultural. So if we think about being a child in school, or those of you who have kids that are in school, where do we learn about our bodies? Typically, at least for myself, it was through kind of two main mechanisms. One is your phys ed classes, which I would argue had no body literacy whatsoever. It was about sports skills, team sports, team development. In my case we had to learn like the rules of volleyball and then do exams about them. That isn't body literacy, that's actually a skill set for volleyball, a skill set for a modern kind of game that we play etc. And then the second channel that we learn about it in school is through our biology classes and for myself and I know it hasn't really changed we take pictures of a skeleton and we learn the muscle names or the bone names and I've had people tell me they didn't even learn that much Like they dissected a cow eye or a frog leg. It's not even a human. So those are very intellectual pieces of information about how to exercise or how to play a team sport really it's not even how to exercise and about the biology of our body. There isn't a lot of focus anywhere in our culture of what is the experience of your body, so we aren't really taught that that's ever important. We aren't taught how to do it, we aren't taught where to do it, when to do it, we aren't taught that it's a valuable practice and I think obviously, with kind of the uprising of all the trauma work that's happening in our culture, we are quickly learning that it's more important than we thought. But how do we get started?

Speaker 2:

So I'm working with people who are typically adults, who are kind of 35 plus, who never learned any of this, and trauma wasn't on the radar when they were teenagers. They weren't parented in ways that kind of invoked what is your emotion or what are you feeling, or what is your experience? What is your emotion or what are you feeling or what is your experience most typically? So I'm tending to work with people who have the capacity inside them to feel their body, but they just have no practice ever at doing it. So the one of the first things I do is I actually use a Pilates machine to do this, but I have people do um. They they're effectively squats and lunges, where you're laying down with a little bit of weight and then I'm observing their body and they're going to tell me what their experience of their body is. So what are they feeling? What are they noticing? Are they noticing some of the things that I'm seeing with my eyes? And there's no right or wrong answer to any of it. It's just starting to notice things in the moment, when they're happening, and then articulate those out of the mouth. And one of the cool things with this is that different people have different ways that they explain that experience. So some people talk about heat, some people talk about you know, it's quite precise in terms of where their pelvis is, or things like that. Some people it's body length, so one side might feel like it's pushing more weight or that it's actually longer, or that the machine is crooked or things like that, but it is that. That's that's where I start to develop that.

Speaker 2:

So we're not working with emotions right away, we're working with let's do a physical exercise, what do you notice? And the vast majority of my clients have never been asked that. So when we think about going into a fitness class, typically that is not an environment where the teacher is saying class, can you, can you tell me what you felt when you did that aerobic exercise in your body pump class? Typically the instructor is standing at the front giving instructions. They're not kind of adding or inviting that participation, and I think I do have a few group classes and what is actually interesting for people is then they can hear what other people are experiencing too, and that is also helpful.

Speaker 2:

It's not kind of so when you're working one-to-one with me, I'm saying this is what my eyes observe. It doesn't mean that I'm right, but does that match kind of what your experience is? It doesn't mean that I'm right, but does that match kind of what your experience is? Or, yes, I noticed that as well. When we're in that group space, I invite people to all often even call out their names and what did you experience? And then other people get to hear and that helps them build confidence as well that you know whatever it is that they're tempted to say. It's probably quite similar to what somebody else is going to say and these things aren't novels. It's like you know what do you feel when you open your arm, a little pull at the front, correct, yeah, great, perfect. You know it doesn't need to be like a 1850s Victorian novel about what that feels like, but the more we practice that, we're practicing the skill of present moment awareness. We're practicing that opens the door to choice making, we're practicing being in our body and we're practicing that vocabulary building, which is then what we need.

Speaker 2:

If you actually did EMDR, you'll be very familiar with this. Um, we actually need that skill in EMDR. So that's often an area where people kind of start trauma therapy. Emdr is great, um, but the therapist will actually ask you where the disturbance is in your body, and so that body awareness will help you a lot, because then you actually have body literacy to say it's, and then you can also help. It helps you sort out what is an emotional experience versus what's a physical experience. So like I have a rib that dislocates, that's not an emotional experience, it's actually like physical pain and I need to go to a doctor. Yeah, yeah, um, and so that's part of where that helps too is because not every experience that we're having in our body is from our emotions. Some of it's just like you need your hip replaced.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Is there a way to tell, like between the two, like which one is more of a, an emotional versus a physical?

Speaker 2:

So I would say that's I'm gonna give this answer again but it's practice. So it's it's being able to do that every day where we're in our body, we're feeling, and then we can actually start to notice. I I mean, this is a huge oversimplification, but a lot of emotions are actually occurring in the trunk, so it's between the top of your head and your pubic bone, front and back of the body. Quite often and this is by no means a scientific answer but if it's your knee or your foot, it's probably actually not emotional, whereas if you've got, you feel like you're going to throw up. Maybe you're sick, but also it could be from an emotional experience, and then that would be where we would practice that nuance.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So as far as, like somebody who wants to start a practice or start practicing, this is any kind of exercise, a good outlet into it, or are there specific things that you'd recommend people do if they don't have access to like somebody like you or you know?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love this question. So I've read many research papers on that exact thing. So I mean, some of them are studying anxiety, some of them are studying depression, some of them are looking for different mental health outlets. At the end of it, they all say it's all good. So, yeah, it's all good. So you know, there's increasing evidence that weightlifting I've seen cycling, I've seen walking, I've seen yoga, I've seen a bunch of different ones and they all have a positive impact.

Speaker 2:

What I would say and this is really hard for people, again, due to the kind of exercise culture that we've broadly created and that we're part of, when we are moving too fast to notice things or pushing too much weight plyometrically, etc. That is not going to be an ideal exercise. So, typically, what I like is something that is replicable, and what I mean by that is I do I already referenced this I do a yoga practice every morning. I'm doing yin yoga, which doesn't have that many shapes in the first place, but I'm mostly doing the same thing every day, and that allows me to not focus on the skill or the intellect of doing that shape. It's a comparable set. It's a comparable set. So, like when I have clients come in every single person. Every single time starts with the first couple of minutes being identical, because it gives that measuring stick of this is last time, this is the time before, this is the time before. That. That can be really helpful for our body, because the more we're trying to focus on new choreography and new skill sets, the less we can actually typically kind of lock into ah, I noticed the sensation.

Speaker 2:

The second thing is and I referenced this already, but again it's speed. So we're going to find a lot of success when we work with rhythm, and so things like walking and cycling are quite rhythmical. So even if you know we might hit a hill or we have some change or variance, but basically our body is finding a rhythm. That again is going to be much easier to start to notice and be in that present moment experience of our body because we're in rhythm. So our body, our body, regulates through rhythm and that's where we can kind of start to notice some of those things. What is? What? Is my heart racing from exercise versus my heart racing from something I'm thinking about? Yeah, and then the biggest thing that I recommend and I'll be very clear about this, we're not going to do this. Let's say you go out for an hour walk, you're doing an hour of yoga. Even if you're an hour with me, we're not doing this for an hour. So we might start with, once or twice during a session, really tuning into the body.

Speaker 1:

What do I notice right?

Speaker 2:

now oh, I notice a sensation in my back, and we have to be willing to not try to rush in and fix it. So there are kind of some sensations that are, that are what I call injurious, that we want to get out of. But there's a lot of times we just we can just say, oh, I noticed a sensation, and we don't need to apply any other tool, sets or their skills or fix anything. That's where you would want to go to a trainer or someone like myself to try to to try to repattern some of that. But if you're just on your own, just notice, just name and the naming part is the hardest part for people. We want to say it out loud, we want to say it in our side of our head, we want to write it down. So a lot of folks can have the oh okay, okay, that's a good idea. And then we just sort of bypass the oh yeah, yeah, I noticed some stuff, really put words to it, and that can be really hard because it feels almost silly, it feels or it feels unimportant.

Speaker 2:

But that's actually for me and my work that's, that's the kind of diamond in the rough is actually putting words to the experience. So if you're with me, you're going to say it out loud. I don't know, like when I'm walking down the street or cycling, I'm not like noticing sensation, my left hip, so I just say it inside my head. Um, so I just say it inside my head. And so what you want to do is, if you're out for a 30 minute bike ride twice during that session, just really be like okay, what sensations do I notice in my body? Oh, I feel a little tingling in my spine, I feel my abs engaged and you can kind of go through the body.

Speaker 2:

Just do that for three or four different things, move on with your cycling, do it again later in the session and then, as you develop that skill, you might want to do a bit more. There's something in the trauma piece where we work with what's called dosing and titration and that's basically how much you do it. So if you are a heavily trauma exposed person, that can be something that you actually even respond or react to, and it's not always positive. So start with that small dose, and that dose just means how many times you're checking in and to what extent you're checking in, and then, if you're good at it and you like it, you can increase it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that's so great. This is all so fascinating to me. I know that I have to let you go, but if people want to learn more about this, where can they find you and what would you suggest there? Second word is body b-o-d-y. Third word is couture c-o-u-t-u-r-e. So I am at the dot com and on any social media site where I'm basically active and engaged same. So you can follow me, you can reach out to me, you can email me, you can text me, you can call me, you can do all the things, um, and just kind of get that dialogue going.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, amazing. Well, one of the questions that I ask everybody who comes on the show. So French Kissing Life here is about finding a zest and being more you For you personally. What does French Kissing Life mean to you?

Speaker 2:

Being more you means actually being in your body and then living your best life, and so I think that the goal for most people, including myself, isn't to, you know, win any exercise awards. I will never be an Olympian, but I want my body to be in a place where I can go to Hawaii and hop on a surfboard, even though I've never surfed before, and I want to be able to explore the world in my daily and extra daily life, where I can do what I want with my body and really experience the joys and magic of the planet and the people on the planet and the different experiences around me. So, for me, that's why this work is so important to me personally.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, amazing. Janice, thank you so much for your time today. This is like incredible. I could talk to you all day. I geek out on this stuff, so I think this is gonna be so beneficial for everybody.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. This is great.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, as if you couldn't tell, I literally could not stop asking Janice questions because I am that fascinated by this topic. And here's the deal this week's kindness in action segment, where you can take what you've heard in the episode and apply it to your lives, whether you have five minutes to spare or 50, it's for me too, because I'm just starting to learn more about this and I can't wait to dig into this further. So if you have five minutes, I have an article here from Calm that talks about what the mind-body connection is and how to strengthen it. If you have 50 minutes, I have another article here from Positive Psychology called Exploring the Mind-Body Connection, which also includes five different techniques you can try. And then, as an added bonus, I'm suggesting an article that Janice wrote on Elephant Journal called A Simple but Difficult Daily Practice to Connect Our Physical Bodies to Our Emotions. Just one heads up Elephant Journal is a subscription-based site, so I believe you are allowed one or two free articles before they ask you to sign up. So just one note on that, and then, if you want to connect with Janice or read more of what she's had published or listen to the other podcasts she's had, I will leave her information in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

As always, a little different of an episode this time. Always a little different of an episode this time. So I didn't go off script with Janice because, quite honestly, I had way too many great questions I wanted to ask her. So what did you think you like this more honest, getting into the weeds approach without the fluff? You know, I love playing games and I love connecting with my guests, but sometimes, when the excerpt is this good, I just have to do my best, barbara Walters, and go deep. So let me know what you think by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1:

Reviews and ratings not only help a baby show like this one gain momentum, but it also helps me tune into more of what you want to hear. So if you could leave your feedback there, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been another insanely insightful episode of French Kissing Life. I am your host, shana Stiver, and I will see you next time, hopefully with better weather. I'm out. See you next time, hopefully with better weather I'm out.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the French Kissing Life podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you're enjoying the show, shower us with a five-star rating and hit that subscribe button to make sure you never miss a future episode. And if you would be so kind and give the show a review, I'll sweeten the deal for you. Since you know I live for good conversation. I want to hear from you. Share your favorite takeaways and aha moment you had, or a fun emoji that represents this week's show, along with your Instagram handle or email address, and you'll be entered to win this month's giveaway. The French kissing life movement is gaining momentum, and your ratings and reviews play a pivotal role in propelling the show to new heights until next week.