Burnout, Identity Crisis & Self-Trust: Why So Many Women Feel Lost in Midlife with Natasha | Hot Flushes & Higher Self

0:00 Soraya: So hi Natasha, welcome to the podcast. Give me a little about your personal journey and what led you into embody integration coaching.

0:10 Natasha: Yeah, um, so my work now is um supporting women who are high functioning, hyper-capable, um, but they have reached a point in their life where something has ruptured. And it's a profile that I'm very familiar with because this is my journey as well. Um I sort of, you know, from my mid-20s, I stepped into this survival um fight energy of, you know, getting things done. Um, I sort of inherited from my family of origin this blueprint that was really fear-based and really, you know, about securing the future.

1:00 Natasha: But the problem, and of course, there's nothing wrong with you know being safe and secure, but it was at the expense of being present. And so it was kind of this orientation to always focusing on that which was coming and always focusing on preparing today for tomorrow and never really knowing how or learning how or experiencing being in the present, in the now, playing, you know, experiencing joy and pleasure in real time.

Natasha's Journey from Burnout to Embodiment

1:33 Natasha: This just wasn't part of my um my worldview, even really. Um, I mean, I saw it in others, but it wasn't something that I knew how to do for myself. Um, I spent uh about 25 years in adult education supporting newcomers and refugees to Canada. And so in that work, um, you know, we were learning English and we were talking about settlement, but at the heart of it was creating community, creating a safe place for these newcomers to land, and of course, being somebody who could hold space for their identity rupture, which was quite um significant as because many of them were coming as refugees.

2:18 Natasha: And so that my experience with um the students that I worked with, my own experience with identity rupture, you know, coming through my life.

2:29 Soraya: Can I just interrupt for one moment, Natasha?

2:32 Natasha: When you say identity rupture, what does that mean? Um identity rupture is you know, we're more familiar with the term midlife crisis, right? And the reason I prefer identity rupture is because I think when we think about a crisis, we focus on managing the external elements of the crisis. Like, okay, I know I have to get in touch with this person and I have to, you know, fill out this form and I have to, we know how to check the boxes, or we can find out how to check the boxes when we're in a crisis.

3:07 Natasha: But an identity rupture is not about the external, it's about what's happening internally, and it's it's a profound transformation of the self because we have something in the different ways that we self-identify, something in the way that we have understood ourselves, whether a relationship, our work life, um, our environment, our health, our relationship to our body, something has changed and shifted so that we can't use that as a way of understanding ourselves and defining ourselves. And so there's this rupture that happens because we've lost that anchor that we've been using to understand ourselves.

3:56 Natasha: And the new thing that is eventually going to have to become in its place is not yet clear. Like we have no map, we don't know what it looks like. And so there's this sort of no man's land in the middle where we feel very disoriented, very lost. Um, we feel very unfamiliar to ourselves. And particularly for you know, hyper-capable women who have identified with their ability to be reliable, to be somebody who can get stuff done and who knows how to uh be the one that everybody counts on. It's incredibly destabilizing to feel like I don't know who I am, where I where I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to be doing to get out of this discomfort.

4:49 Natasha: And of course, as humans, that's what we want to do is get out of the discomfort as fast as possible. And in some cases, that's what we do. We rush into the next thing, um, ill-informed, not giving ourselves time and space to be with that rupture. But I think that comes at a cost because we just end up recreating another situation that's going to have to rupture uh our identity again, because we didn't actually recognize that the rupture is an invitation to really uh go into a deeper level of self-understanding.

5:30 Natasha: And when we do that, when we prioritize that, we're able to move into the next thing more true to ourselves, more sustainably and on a more solid ground.

5:42 Soraya: Why do you think it happens for so many women in midlife, this identity rupture?

5:47 Natasha: Yeah, it's it's it's a very common pattern that we see, right? And I think the reason is because when we're younger, we're often in a survival pattern. We're also in a survival pattern when we're older, but when we're younger and we're in a survival pattern, we almost have a bit more capacity to push and to, you know, have a dysregulated nervous system and move from that energy and still manage to get things done. Um, you know, some of these, some of these toxic beliefs that we hold about ourselves, although they're not ideal, they can still get us to a point.

6:34 Natasha: You know, they can still get us to a place of success. I'm using air quotes here because it is success by one measure. It's success by the measure that we usually understand as we're coming up. And so it's not that these things, that these um this these different states of the nervous system are not functional in a in a in their own way, but they're just not sustainable, right? It's like a fuel that eventually is going to clog at some point, and and it's something's gonna break down. And I think that at midlife, women have gone through enough decades of pushing and using sort of those toxic fuels that they just can't anymore, that something has broken in the system and they have to look at it.

7:26 Natasha: You know, in my in my case, I it was chronic back pain that got me to stop because I just couldn't push past it. I just couldn't find a band-aid. And you know, up until that point, I had had other mini ruptures, nudges to stop, to slow down, to look at my life, but I found ways of you know, putting the band-aid on and carrying on.

What Is an Identity Rupture?

7:51 Natasha: And then finally, it just reached a point where it's like, uh-uh, you're not getting out of this. You have to, you have to really get real and get honest. And and so sometimes it's our choice, um, and sometimes it's forced upon us. But I do think that, yeah, it's a very common point in in the life of a woman where she realizes that she cannot continue in the way that she has been. Yeah.

8:22 Soraya: How old were you, Natasha, when that happened to you and you had the chronic back pain that you realized you had to change?

8:28 Natasha: So that was in my 40s, my early 40s. Um, leading up to that, I had a diagnosis of endometriosis, but I have, you know, the medical system had the band-aids. So, you know, I was able to do the surgeries, I was able to get the the treatments that helped me to um put get the symptoms to quiet down so that I could continue pushing, right? Um, and I the I believe the chronic back pain is actually linked to the endomeuturosis as well. Um and yeah, it just it eventually came to a point where I had to stop.

9:13 Natasha: And the only option I had was to put my attention on healing. And so I did, and that's when things completely well, that's one of the points in my life where things completely changed and transformed. And so looking back, I can see so clearly why that happened that way. But in the moment, it just felt like, you know, terrible bad luck, right?

9:39 Soraya: Yeah, of course. But what did you change at that point when you had that aha moment when you realized, you know, it was all kind of like a signal going off in your body telling you to change? What did you change in your life at that point?

9:51 Natasha: Well, it was more that I couldn't continue to do my life without focusing on healing. And then through my journey of trying to understand like what's going on with my how did this happen? What's you know, what and what am I gonna do about it? Um, I came into this world of understanding mind, body, health and the connection between our all of the different systems and I lit up inside. So at the same time that I was, you know, healing my own body, I was also recognizing that everything I care about, everything I've ever been passionate about, everything that's ever given me a sense of purpose and meaning is here in this work.

10:39 Natasha: And and so I couldn't ignore that. And I, you know, changed, changed my life in order to make space for that to be at the center of things. And you know, that's where spirituality and embodiment and you know, evol our personal evolutionary work and expansion and all of these different things kind of intersected. And and then that is where my orientation to life completely changed. Um, you know, I stepped into a new career where I could be immersed in this all the time. And um yeah, it's it was it didn't seem like it was a blessing when it was happening.

11:34 Natasha: Looking back, but looking back, I can see that there was purpose in the pain.

11:40 Soraya: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so thanks for explaining how you kind of had your signal to change your life. What about when your clients, what common signs do you see when someone's um living a life that no longer aligns with who they truly are?

11:57 Natasha: You know, there's so many, there's so many different ways that it shows up. Like a lot of women experience chronic pain, a lot of women experience uh more of a mental chronic anxiety or depression. Um sometimes it will manifest as you know, anger and rage. Uh, and it just feels like a constant battle to keep it all kind of tamped down.

Why So Many Women Feel Lost in Midlife

12:27 Natasha: Um but for a lot of women, I think it's just the burnout that comes from trying to manage and and suppress all of that, all of those nudges, all of those little voices within that are saying, hey, there's some stuff to pay attention to here. Like, I don't have time for that. Let me just keep going and let me push harder and let me find the hack or you know, the the controlling mechanism that is gonna help me to just get past this and get onto the the to-do list. Um yeah, so it, you know, it really does manifest in a lot of different ways, but at the heart of it, the through line that I see is women recognizing that you know, because the other thing about high-functioning, hyper-capable women is that they're incredibly self-aware, right?

13:28 Natasha: So they listen to the podcasts, they read the books, they they do the work, the research, they understand the issues and they understand why they're suffering. Um, oftentimes they have a really, really good understanding of their own trauma, their own survival patterns, but they just can't shift it. They just can't seem to change it. And I think that that's where embodied integration comes in because what we're doing is we're moving out of the head and into the experience, the data, the intuitive information available to us from the body and returning to being in the sensation of our body is ultimately what kind of cracks something open and brings an entirely different under different way of understanding our our human experience and our life and what it means to be inhabiting our life fully.

14:29 Soraya: Yeah. And I think it also goes back to I think a lot of us, you know, we are conditioned to just be people pleasing as well as women, and like culturally as well, and that that's just how it is. So you've been doing it for so long, it's so hard to just change it.

14:47 Natasha: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

14:50 Soraya: So you sometimes mean like a massive wake-up call, like you said, like a signal from the body or whatever, to really kind of change something about what we're doing.

14:59 Natasha: Yeah, that's a really good point because oftentimes, you know, if it's uh uh ending of a relationship, right, or if it's a career collapsing, or if it's um something gone wrong with our body, and up to that point, we've been doing everything right, right? We showed up, we were the best partner, we gave everything we had to this person, and yet we lost the one thing that we thought we had earned or deserved, you know. Same thing with the job, you know, you show up, you give your all, you do all the things, you go to school, you get the papers, whatever, da-da-da-da-da, and then it collapses.

15:48 Natasha: Same thing with the body. We we do the, we show up, we eat right, we try to take care of ourselves, and then we get this diagnosis. So that is almost that point of reckoning with oh, well, if all of these different things that I believed were the right way for me to be living my life, they can't keep me safe from life. Then what's up? I need to really like take a look at this thing that I'm doing and and really understand it in a different way. I think that was what COVID, the COVID shutdown did for a lot of people as well, right?

16:28 Natasha: It just shook our autopilot. So we had to stop and actually look at our life and say, huh, why am I doing this again? Like, why does this look this way? And really get honest.

16:46 Soraya: Yeah. Yeah. But it is uncomfortable though, when you're so used to doing a certain thing a certain way for so many decades in some cases. It is uncomfortable the unfamiliar doing something different, and people around might not be happy either that you're changing. Absolutely, and that's why I think the divorce rate is quite high, you know, middle in mid-life, because you know, like the other person might not have evolved in the same way, and they want things the part that they had from before to stay that way, but yeah, yes, absolutely for sure.

17:22 Natasha: We have this idea that we figure it out at the beginning of our life, we put the things in place, and then if we figured it out properly, it lasts forever. And I think it's such a broken narrative, and I don't even know where that came from. But life can't possibly just be one solution, one size fits all, set up at the beginning and then never check in again. Like it just doesn't even make sense. We are constantly evolving and changing and creating our lives and being open to checking in and making sure that this is still what I would choose is an ongoing practice that we owe to ourselves.

When Your Body Forces You to Slow Down

18:13 Natasha: And if the job or the relationship or um the experience of being in your body or any of these other things doesn't feel like it's a good fit anymore, it's okay to shift things, and it doesn't mean that you failed, it doesn't mean that because something is at completion that it wasn't a success. And I think you know, if we can give ourselves the freedom to let that be so, um, we can find we can access a lot more authentic joy and meaning and alignment in in our life.

18:57 Soraya: Yeah, I think that's a really important point because that's it, that's life. You kind of and also I think it's not about having any regrets about what you've been through as well as women, because it's all learning, everything that will happens, the good and the bad, is all kind of part of who we are and who we're evolving to become as well. So yeah, would you agree?

19:18 Natasha: Absolutely, a hundred percent. Um, I often say today is just practice for tomorrow. So that's a great way of looking at it, yeah. Right. So that you can't you can't do anything wrong if it's just all practice, right? We're just getting better at things or you know, understanding ourselves better so that you know, tomorrow we can make more informed choices, or maybe we won't, and then and that's okay too, because it's still just practice, right? Exactly.

19:50 Soraya: Yeah, and going back to what you said earlier as well is that when we're younger, we have an idea about how our lives will hang out, and that I think usually comes from like the generations from before our parents, our grandparents, you know, kind of traditional in the way that you the idea is to get married, to have your home, and to live your life a certain way to get your qualifications, but we're in a different generation now, and it's more kind of being more in the line with what you want, and you you you can make changes, you don't have to stay on that pathway for the rest of your life.

20:21 Natasha: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, uh generations before us maybe had different circumstances, so their capacity just wasn't uh they just didn't have the capacity to experience freedom, you know, like if freedom's a funny thing because it's it's one of the existential fears of not having freedom, but also having freedom is terrifying as well. Because when you have freedom and you have to embody freedom, you have to also acknowledge the fact that oh, I am a hundred percent in control, or not in control, but I'm a hundred percent the creator of my experience, and that's a that's a burden, you know, from a particular lens.

21:13 Natasha: Um but the funny thing is that life all the way along has been showing us that our ability to be flexible and change and adapt and you know, understand what is the present moment and then respond from that place, um, it's been showing us that all the way along. And it's just how long are we, how long do we spend resisting before we finally feel like we have the capacity to stop resisting that truth. And I mean, like right now is a perfect example. Everybody the world over is so terrified because we've got AI coming in, and everyone's like, I don't know what this is gonna do to my Job.

22:00 Natasha: I don't know what this is going to do to humanity itself. I don't know what this is going to do to, you know, huge things like war and crime. And yeah, that's 100% true. And also, if we are learning how to reorient to a place of presence and adaptability, and you know, not bracing and resisting change so hard and thinking there's one right way, and that we that success means maintaining that one right thing until the end of time, uh, we're so much better prepared for whatever it is that's going to unfold because life is always going to be bringing new, crazy, unfamiliar, like it's just inevitable.

Burnout, People Pleasing & Living on Autopilot

22:54 Natasha: And that's in our individual life, our personal experience, and also in the collective experience. And I think that there are what we go through in our personal individual experience is like a microcosm to learn from, like a training ground for all of us to contribute to the collective in a way so that we can manage the inevitable changes that are going to happen to all of us here, sharing this earth together. Um, so you know, again, like just so many levels of purpose to the pain and to the practice and to the suffering that that we inevitably go through.

23:36 Soraya: Yeah, but that's a really great explanation. I agree completely. It's like the life, you know, the world is a school, a life school. We come here and we're we're learning our lessons, and that's how we're evolving. And you have to have the bad and the good. And and also it's not necessarily the bad or the good that are changed, that is the perception because it's how you see it, right? It's it's how the lens you're wearing on whatever event is happening around you, you can see it in a bad way or a good way.

24:02 Soraya: So we kind of navigate around that, and that's just part of life, isn't it?

24:09 Natasha: Yeah, actually. And the better that you're able to move between those different, you know, contracted, expensive states, the the easier life feels. And I and I I really think like you know, we talk a lot about alignment and we it's sort of a buzzword, yeah. Um, but at the heart of it, I think what it means to feel aligned is to be in a state of more ease, right? Where it feels like you're not fighting against your life, but you're just letting life unfold and you are in it as fully as you can, and experiencing all of it, you know, the challenges as a as opportunities to learn and grow, and to a pathway to deeper self-understanding, and also remembering that the joy and the pleasure and the connection make it worth it, and really, you know, inhabiting those moments as much as you can.

25:16 Natasha: Because it's all fleeting, it's all changing.

25:20 Soraya: Yes, absolutely. That's it. But it's again, it's like being in the present. I think a lot of us that you were saying earlier, we're always constantly thinking the next thing, like you know, that's how you were brought up that preparing for the future, the future, the future, which is great, but it's about balancing out and actually being in the moment, enjoying the present, and just you know, limiting how much negativity we bring in in. So, for instance, the news, I limit how much I listen to that because I feel that that you know just brings on that anxiety.

25:50 Natasha: Yeah, absolutely.

25:51 Soraya: These are the choices we have, yeah, but those are choices that we have as well. Yeah, we don't have to take it all in.

25:59 Natasha: That's right, that's right. It's a it's a big shift away from uh being a victim of fear um into being empowered by your ability to feel into your heart, right? And sort of you know, in your own love and compassion that you show for yourself, your grace, the patience, um your understanding, your acceptance, and then also to the other people in your life, to your loved ones, and then to strangers, and then to I mean, if you can really take it to the furthest place, to um your opponents or to the people that you view as villains in the world, and can you can you reach a point where you are understanding all of it from that lens of practice and learning and growing and evolving, and not so much the good and bad binary that you were referring to before?

27:09 Soraya: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And then going back, I just want to talk again about how you had that wake-up, you know, your your body, the physical illness, um, how does the body hold onto emotional experiences, stress or unresolved trauma?

27:25 Natasha: Yeah, so with the back in particular, um there's a lot of work. Uh, John Sarno, he's um he's now deceased, but he did a lot of work when he was alive around how chronic back pain is often connected to suppressed rage. Um, and so I think that that is something that definitely shows up a lot. Um I think that there are different ways that our body will hold on to emotional energy. Um, you know, if we have a traumatic uh traumatic event in our life when we're younger and we don't have the opportunity for the body to complete the cycle that the body knows how to do in the traumatic experience, we can get stuck in that loop and you know, kind of connect into different uh narratives and kind of spiral on the story, which just has us re-traumatizing ourselves.

28:24 Natasha: Sometimes we get stuck in different nervous system states. So I'd mentioned before that fight energy of kind of like overproductive and um everyone's out to get me. I have to like I have to be on the defensive all the time. But we've also got the flight energy where we are, you know, constantly feeling um like we need to get out of situations we can't commit, all different kinds of things like that. And then we have sort of the freeze state where we've really, really shut down and we are at a place where life is is too difficult.

29:05 Natasha: And so, you know, depending on capacity, you we might experience different uh nervous state, nervous system states. Um and sometimes we'll move, you know, from that freeze state up into a fight state, and even though we're still in the nervous system, um and we're not in that sort of connection place, we're still making progress because we've kind of come out of that freeze and we're able to actually advocate for ourselves. And so yeah, again, it can it can be something emotional, it can be something physical, um, it can be something mental, uh, but something is not aligned, something doesn't feel easy in the body.

29:59 Natasha: Um and it's it's really fascinating when we take time to reconnect with what things feel like in our body, how much can shift. Yeah. And it's such a simple, I mean, it's not easy, but it's simple.

Why Midlife Can Become Your Greatest Transformation

30:21 Natasha: Um, and it's it's a little bit incredible that we have lived, you know, such a long time without this being such a being in the zeitgeist, which it is starting to be a lot more now, which is wonderful. Um, but these kinds of conversations around emotion and energy, and these were not things that we were talking about when I was coming up. So it there is, you know, a big remembering that needs to happen for a lot of people. And I feel like right now is the time people are um realizing that this is a missing piece for them.

31:00 Soraya: Yeah, no, I agree. And why do you believe so many women have become disconnected from their bodies and intuition?

31:08 Natasha: Well, I do think it is that sort of survival state, you know, we live in a culture that is hyperproductive. The the pace of life has just continued to speed up. You know, we're at like right now, the speed of life I find completely unsustainable for me personally. And I find a lot of the time I'm daydreaming about growing up in the 90s and the 80s when things were so much. I miss those days. I miss those days so much, and I I miss like just the spaciousness and we have time to be boards, we could just hang out and not have to do stuff.

31:53 Natasha: Absolutely, and so much time spent in person with people without things being filtered through a screen or everything being centered on something digital. Um, I really long for that, and I think a lot of people do, and we are slowly finding our way back to creating those kinds of spaces. But in order to do that, we have to slow down. And when the world is going so fast, the only way for us to be able to slow down to that level of stillness is to be very deliberate and very intentional about it. And and that's also another reason why I think this identity rupture is such an important place to take that time, you know.

32:46 Natasha: Like if you break your leg and you have to be out of service for eight weeks for it to heal, I don't even know how long it takes to heal a broken leg. I'm just gonna guess eight weeks. But we understand that that's a requirement of healing, our broken leg. And yet when something massive, you know, breaks in our life, and we have to completely reassemble ourselves and and pivot and change the trajectory of where we're going, we don't give ourselves the same amount of grace and recognition and realize like this is a big deal.

33:24 Natasha: And taking the time and the space to really be with yourself, um we need that time. And because we there's really no way of rushing the process. And I think because of this culture that we live in, in order for us to rush the process, we have to stay in the head because the head is where we you know can continue to check off the to-do list and stay in hyperproductivity. Um, and so the only way to come into the body is to slow down and to be still enough to and quiet enough to reconnect and and really listen to what your body has for you because there's so much wisdom there.

34:13 Soraya: And yeah, but you're right. I think you know, this just society how it is, we're always we're always rewarded for like being more productive. And I think as women, especially, we always feel that we have to be moving. I mean, me, myself, my memory of my mum was she's always doing something, she was working, taking care of the house, and it's like that imprint that that's how we are as women, we have to be doing something, or otherwise we're lazy, right? Yeah, and that's not very good for us, obviously.

34:41 Soraya: But um, for women who need to reconnect to themselves after years of people pleasing and overfunctioning, what are your tips for them to start reconnecting or themselves? Slowing down, yeah. Like what kind of things would you suggest that they do to slow down?

34:56 Natasha: So, yeah, slowing down is probably the most important thing that we can do. Uh and so, you know, the easiest tip is to come back to the breath, because one thing that I, you know, learned through my own lived experience, but I see it in almost every single client that I work with and all of the women that I work with in person in groups that I facilitate is this disconnection from deep breathing. And we sort of when we're young, we habitualize these shorter breath patterns because that's what enables us to not feel so deeply.

35:40 Natasha: Um and so when we're coming back to this work, that requires slowing down, requires presence, requires feeling our feelings in a deeper way. Uh, we really need to remember how to breathe deeply and fully. And it's kind of one of those things like if you notice that you haven't been drinking enough water and then you intentionally decide, okay, I'm gonna get my eight glasses every day. I've got my bullets. Yeah, totally. And so once you, you know, intentionally start making sure you're drinking enough water, after a little while you notice that your body gets thirsty for it, right?

The Truth About Self-Trust

36:26 Natasha: Like your body reminds you that you need to drink water. Um, and it's the same thing with breath. Once we start getting more intentional about breathing more deeply, our body starts to call for it and we find that shorter breathing pattern just intolerable. And anytime that we notice, oh my goodness, I'm not like what's going on with my breath. For me, for example, it's an immediate signal that I'm carrying some kind of stress or some kind of urgency in my body because now I've sort of reoriented myself to somebody who's breathing deeply more often.

37:04 Natasha: My pace has really slowed down and shifted a lot in doing this work and some of the different changes I've made in my life. And so now when I'm pushing, when I'm in that energy, uh, I feel it right away. And my body tells me, hey, slow down, look inside, like something's something's up with you. Um, whereas in the past, I know without a doubt that I would have just pushed past it and you know, pushed harder. Like if I push harder, maybe I won't feel this thing. And and you know, that's that's what leads us to that burnout, that exhaustion, that free state of um not functioning.

37:48 Natasha: Um you know, and another, another layer, like because you had asked about women at midlife, um, another layer I should add is uh being in perimenopause and sort of reaching that point, um, and recognizing that, you know, any of the things that you maybe were not paying too much attention to, uh, perimenopause is another place of rupture, isn't it? And that's more of more of a like um standard point of rupture for a lot of women. It shows up in different ways, but it's kind of like okay, that drop in estrogen is gonna make you wake up to a lot of things in your body that you may have been ignoring and you no longer can ignore.

38:42 Soraya: Um, and so and situations I have to add, Natasha, not just your body, but I think that you just can't be dealing with the stuff that you've thought for so many years. Yeah. You just have that awakening there. What am I doing?

38:56 Natasha: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So again, like it's kind of the perfect example of a rupture which is not comfortable, it's deeply disorienting, deeply destabilizing. And yet, if we give ourselves the time and space, it becomes an opportunity for deeper self-understanding. It becomes a point where we can shift and change and you know, step into something better because of the rupture. But if it didn't happen, we would, you know, just kind of continue forcing our way through things that are not aligned and not in our best interest.

39:38 Soraya: Yeah, yeah, very true. And um, what does self-what does true self-trust feel like in the body?

39:48 Natasha: I would say initially it feels terrible. It feels awful at first because it it's actually a lot of doubt and it's a lot of um you know uncertainty. Like, do I am I right to trust myself? Like I feel like I can trust this, but then there's other parts of me that are telling me I'm irresponsible, I'm foolish, I'm looking for excuses, I'm, you know, all the different stories that we tell ourselves. So say initially it's deeply uncomfortable to lean into our self-trust. Um, but I think that there are different sort of strains of it as well.

40:36 Natasha: And we can come into experiences of self-trust where, oh, I don't want to say yes to this gathering or this event or this social occasion, and I feel a hundred percent okay saying I'm not gonna go, and then just you know, choosing to do what I want to do with myself without feeling FOMO and worrying that that I'm gonna be judged for it, or um worrying about you know not being significant if I don't go, all these different stories, or um you know, making choices in relationships or in um different things that we do for ourselves and feeling empowered rather than um like a victim in in these different dynamics, that I think is where we start to realize oh, I actually can show up for myself and make choices that feel good to me and not be flooded with emotions of shame and guilt and that inner critic, right?

41:57 Natasha: Yeah, and when we're able to kind of shift into that, I think our understanding of self-trust becomes bigger and fuller and more dynamic.

How Trauma & Emotions Become Stored in the Body

42:07 Soraya: Yeah. And how important is nervous system safety when it comes to healing and change and personal growth?

42:15 Natasha: Oh, I think it's everything. I think safety is the basis of everything that we do emotionally, and emotions are what drive our life. So usually our patterns and our survival mechanisms are running below our conscious awareness, and then they have a lot of power over us, and they're kind of creating the life that we're living. And we decide we want to make a change, and but it's at the level of our cognitive understanding, and then we push and push and push. But if our system doesn't feel safe in the change because it's not familiar, because it doesn't feel like anything we've ever experienced before, we are going to find our system will find ways to sabotage that change.

43:08 Natasha: So for me, I and I think many people in mind body work agree that safety is everything. Um, it's the it's the base for being able to sustainably do anything in your life, really.

43:27 Soraya: Yes, foundation, right? Yeah, absolutely. So before building the house, you need to have the firm ground. And without that, you can't do anything really. It's like quicksand or just go through.

43:39 Natasha: That's right. And I think that, you know, what does it mean then to about safety? I think the main shift in that is we understand, we generally come up understanding safety as something that's externally referenced. And so the shift is learning. How to internally reference safety. And that again requires us to come back to the body. And that coming back to the body requires us to slow down enough to be able to come back to the body. So yeah, the safety is the main piece, but there's all these little things that we have to be able to do step by step in order to get to a place where we can learn how to experience safety in our body.

44:30 Natasha: And like I can say, with the women that I work with, one of our foundational practices is something called resourcing, where we are practicing being in a safe or supported or even just a neutral experience of being in our body. And the spectrum for how difficult or how easy it is for women to do that is it's just huge. It's enormous because for some women, it can take months and months of repeated practice to be able to find a way to feel safe in their body. And for some women, they drop into it rather quickly and can kind of feel into that right from the get-go.

45:16 Natasha: So um, yeah, it's it again, it's one of those things that's simple, but it's not necessarily easy. Uh but it is, it's everything. Safety is everything for sure.

45:29 Soraya: Yeah, it's when when you're talking about just reminds me of the like Maslow's um hierarchy of the needs that have to be met. So he talks about like shelter, but like that's external, whereas what you're describing is more kind of like internal home, it's being comfortable in our own body, our best of, which is our home, right? So yeah, but I think you're absolutely right, it's so important, and it differs from one moment to another depending on her trauma, her experience, and her life. Yeah, absolutely.

45:56 Soraya: Um, and what are some grounding or embodiment practices listeners can um begin using to incorporate into daily life?

46:04 Natasha: Yeah, so I'd mentioned about the breathing um and resourcing, which for me those two are my my ground zero in terms of doing embodiment work. Um, and actually, I have a free guided audio that I'd love to offer to your listeners.

46:22 Soraya: Yes.

46:23 Natasha: And it's a guided audio for a resourcing practice. So guides women into their bodies. Um, and so for women who are kind of like, what do you mean, feel safe in my body? What does it mean to land in my body? Um, this is a really great starting point. And it, and even for women who are experienced, um, it's just a very slow meet you where you're at, uh, feel into the body and kind of reconnect with that felt sense through sensation, through breath. Um, so it's a really beautiful practice. Uh and yeah, I think that I think that that's really a great place to start because we don't know how disconnected we are from our body until we try to go into our body and experience what it feels like to be there.

47:11 Natasha: And that's when a lot of awareness around, oh wow, this is really feels really like a return home versus why can't I get in my body? Why is this so hard for me to get in my body? And just noticing, you know, how easy it is to jump on a thought and be carried out of your body. Um, so yeah, I think resourcing is a really great place to start.

47:39 Soraya: Yeah, we'll drop that in the show notes. Um yeah, and what role has your own healing journey played in the work you do now with others?

47:50 Natasha: Well, you know what? It is exactly at the center because everything that I'm doing in the work that I do to support women is from my own embodied, lived experience of you know, being in discomfort and learning how to meet that. And and I'm still a hundred percent in it, you know. Um every day, new things are coming through into my awareness, into my understanding. And it's like, you know, we're having this conversation today, and in a month from now, I might be like, oh, all the things I said on that podcast have shifted now, and I feel like a bit of a fraud for anything I said on that day because my life feels and looks so different today.

48:43 Natasha: Yeah, it's like that, right? Like we're just constantly understanding ourselves better and getting more pieces dropped in. Um and so that orientation, I bring that to my experience working with other people, and I invite them into that orientation for themselves as well. Um, and so yeah, it's it's a it's sort of a beautiful, it's a beautiful evolution, um, both personally and in my work, and they kind of have paralleled each other in a really nice way.

Reconnecting with Your Body & Intuition

49:22 Soraya: Yeah, I find the same thing. I always say when I work with clients, I always see a bit of myself and each of them as well. So when I help them, I'm helping myself, and it's just because we are all humans, we all have our experiences, and I really believe everyone that comes into our world they're there for a reason. Um you know, like you said earlier, it's this collective consciousness all part of one.

49:42 Natasha: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

49:44 Soraya: Right. Um and what daily rituals of practices help you stay connected to yourself?

49:51 Natasha: I know you talked about breathing already, yeah, breath, the water, sleep, those are really big, really important. Um, but another one that's a little maybe less obvious um is this commitment to listening. And I mean that sort of across all different areas of my life. Um, I have a commitment to listening to my body, I have a commitment to listening to the world around me. So sort of allowing myself to be more present and engage my sense of hearing to connect to the moment at a deeper level. Um, and I have a commitment to listening when I'm engaging with other people and really being with them and you know, uh being open to learning about their experience from their perspective and their interpretation of their experience, rather than just sort of waiting to judge it through my own um interpretation.

51:10 Natasha: And that's not easy to do. Um but I find that when I commit to that, it really makes my interactions a lot more fulfilling and the connections feel a lot more meaningful. So yeah, that's that commitment to listening, I think is a really great daily practice for me.

51:37 Soraya: Yeah, and I think that goes back to you know how difficult it is sometimes to say present. You know, you might be having a conversation with someone, but your mind is elsewhere, so it's all about bringing yourself back into the present, right? Yeah, and that's what you were talking about earlier.

51:51 Natasha: Yeah, for sure. And slowing down, slowing down so that you have the space to be present with people, yeah, which is important.

52:02 Soraya: Um, so what simple mindset shifts can listen to begin to use data data for more presence, regulated and aligned?

52:19 Natasha: Well, I think that the one that we touched on before about you know today is just practice for tomorrow is is a really good one. Um I think as well sort of a reorienting to um rather than I'm here living this human experience in order to force and control my life into place, I'm here to learn how to receive my life. Like life is unfolding, I'm in it, and what I can do is learn how to be a better receiver of all of the information, um, of all of the experience, and and that can serve me in figuring out how to take my next step.

53:21 Natasha: So it's kind of another way of framing that we're not here to always be doing, we're here to be in our experience. Um it's just another way of kind of understanding that. Can I shift into being a really good receiver of my life?

53:41 Soraya: Yeah, love that. And my final question I always ask my guest is what does living as your limitless self mean to you?

53:51 Natasha: Limitless the first word that comes into my mind is potential. And I think that you know, I'd mentioned before growing up under uh a very fear-based um understanding of what life is, it was really radical for me to see that actually the potential for how you can live a life is infinite. And we if we are able to figure out how to get out of our own way, um it is the potential for a life that feels really good to you is is so vast. Um, so limitless for me, that's the first thing that comes to mind, just like the massive potential that's out there if we let ourselves trust in that.

54:55 Soraya: Yeah, love it. Thank you. And before I let you go, Natasha, um, for listeners who want to work with you or find out more about you, what's the best way of reaching you?

55:06 Natasha: Uh, best way is just to jump on my website, which is humanistcoaching.ca. Um, everything that they would want to know, they can find through that.

55:16 Soraya: And the program you mentioned earlier to reconnect to themselves, is that in the on your website or is there a separate link?

Nervous System Safety: The Missing Foundation for Healing

55:23 Natasha: Yeah, so on the on the homepage there is a banner at the top that they can use to click to that. Um yeah.

55:31 Soraya: Perfect. Thank you so much, Natasha. Loved our chat and speak to you soon. Bye. Bye, thank you.