Ep 49 How do we get better at being with our emotions and regulating ourselves

Many of the clients I work with, whether they be senior executives I am coaching, or clients I am doing relationship coaching with, often have a goal of wanting to get better at being with their emotions. They want to be able to respond better to the challenges that life throws their way.

The only way to do this is to work with the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Your ANS state drives your thoughts, feelings and emotions. When you feel safe, connected and regulated you will experience different feelings and think different thoughts than when you feel unsafe and disconnected.

Most of us, over years of experiencing chronic stress or traumatic events, have a nervous system that is really struggling with the capacity of what it is experiencing. That means our band width gets very small and we can get overwhelmed quickly. The key is working with the nervous system to build the capacity to feel all your feelings. You cannot just block one out and expect to feel everything else. Our system is not that clever. When you repress one, you repress them all.

My other observation is that many of us experienced emotional neglect growing up. Our parents are the children of people who were very traumatised by wars, the depression and who lived in survival mode. There are many parents out there who think that their job is to provide a house, warm clothing, food and schooling and that that is enough. There was no capacity, focus or understanding of how to nurture the emotional life of their children because this was not role modelled to them. In the broader context of what these generations experienced this is understandable.
It doesn't have to be this way anymore.

We can be the generations that change that, we don't have to continue these patterns.

Talk therapy or coaching does not work because it does not work at the level of the nervous system. You have to work with a somatic approach with someone who is trained to work with the nervous system and trauma.

The benefits to your overall health and wellbeing are huge. You will have more energy to function each day and doing this nervous system work frees you from constantly having to spend huge amount of energy to calm yourself down when you feel anxious, reactive and unable to switch off. It helps you make some choices and start to take action when you are feeling constantly stuck and disconnected because your body is in shutdown.

Best of all it allows you to put your precious energy into what matters most to you. Into the relationships you care about and to enjoy life. It reduces your needs for experiencing big highs and lows and to learn to feel safe to feel contented and even sometimes bored. That life is made up of long period of contentment and experiencing joy from the simple things in life.

Ep 48 Women, Power and Deep Knowing with Celine Levy

When it comes to midlife we often talk about the concept of ‘women stepping into their power”, what does this actually mean? Well in today’s episode I will unpack that with my friend and colleague Celine Levy. Celine is a Sex and Power coach who works with women to help them gain a sense of agency and connection with their bodies.

Celine and I talk about power and how it is relational and what is actually happening in the neurobiology of the body when we are not in an ‘empowered’ stance; by the way we both really dislike the word empowered.

Celine has a really interesting story and her path to this work, showed her that ‘power over’ another can be devastating, and how the cultural conditions in an environment can set us up for these experiences as we adapt to cultures to try and belong and feel safe. This close shave with a cult has propelled her forward into work with women so that they can learn to listen to their bodies through building a strong connection with their nervous system and the messages it sends.

In this podcast we talk about:

• What power is, how it can only exist within a relationship and how the state of our nervous system drives our responses to what we are experiencing.

• How when we interact with another person there are two conversations going on at the same time. There is the conscious dialogue that comes through the mouth and at the same time our nervous system is having a conversation and when there is a mis-match between the two we notice this in particular ways.

• How we can rewire and re-pattern the nervous system to achieve a different outcome.

• How estrogen creates a biological behavioural drive for soothing, connection and accommodation and when in our post menopause life we don’t have those high estrogen levels, this impacts on our behavioural response.

• You can do all the fancy communication classes you want but if you don’t do the work on your autonomic nervous system you won’t get the result you are after.

• We all have a sense of deep knowing in our body. When we disconnect from our bodies we lose this connection. Reconnecting with our bodies builds reconnects us with our deep knowing.

• How our cultural conditioning impacts on our acceptance and willingness (often unconsciously) to demonstrate certain behaviours.

• How learning to hold the energy of sensation and emotion within the body, gives you more power and therefore more options in how you are able to choose to respond to what life throws your way.

You can find Celine at www.celinelevy.com or on instagram at @thelovedwitch or her french language instagram account @sorcierotique

Ep 42 Barbie and the bucket of frogs - Tales of Sisterhood

I recently went to see the Barbie movie and loved it. There were so many great messages in there, and they dealt with what are extremely complex cultural messages and phenomena, in a way that was digestible for even the youngest members of the audience.

So today I wanted to reflect on those messages and points and unpack the patriarchy a little bit and how it impacts all of us and share some stories of my own about how I have seen how patriarchy gets in the way of women mentoring and supporting each other. Of loving and complimenting each other, of being able to brag and cheer for each other. This is where the bucket of frogs story comes in.

Sisterhood wounding is a real thing and many women suffer from it. It is both collective and ancestral trauma that impacts us individually. Let’s face it, most of us have many wounds from our teenage years when it comes to the sisterhood. Patriarchy pits women against each other, we learn to not only hate each other but we hate ourselves. We hate the feminine aspects of ourself and this is what disconnects us from our bodies. In the long run, that wound causes signifiant damage. In stops us from speaking our truth, we lose our voice. It stops us from having deep, honest, vulnerable relationships with each other. We disconnect from ourselves and from each other. We disconnect from our hearts.

I offer some tips and guidance about where to start when it comes to sisterhood wounding and healing the collective trauma that lives within all of us.

If you want to join my Magnificent Midlife course click on the link and sign up, or you can go to my website www.kelliestirling.com

Ep 40 Embodiment is Liberation

Embodiment, it is a word that we hear a lot. What does it really mean?

It is our ability to sense and be present with our internal feelings, sensations and emotions. The skill of being able to sense this all of this is called interoception. Interoception is available to all of this but most of us don’t know this, it often takes a bit of practice. Sometimes when we have trauma or lots of stress, it can be difficult for us to be with our interoceptive awareness.

In the podcast I talk about:

• What embodiment is, and the difference between feelings and emotions. They are often used interchangeably as the same thing. They are not;

• Why does embodiment matter? How it helps us to be more present to our life in the moment, it builds our resilience, it improves our mental and physical health, it connects us to our pleasure - both sensual and sexual;

• How our life experience leaves a trace in our nervous system. Our body creates meaning maps in our implicit memory which is important for our survival but sometimes these old maps hold us back and get in the way of our personal growth;

• Why you can’t think your way out of being with your emotions and feelings and a somatic approach is the only way to heal these old stuck patterns of stress and trauma;

• Why embodiment is liberating. Our body is the house we live in, we become less reactive and make better decisions and choices, we project our emotions less and this deepens and enriches our relationships with ourselves and others. We let go of the old stories and rewrite the story of our life going forward. This is empowering and it improves not only our experience in the world but the connections we have with others.

Ep 34 Why nervous system healing is important when it comes to connecting with our sexuality

Hello and happy new year. 2023 is the year of the Rabbit and it is a yin year in chinese astrology. So given it was Chinese New Year yesterday I feel its worth mentioning this and that this year is supposed to me more of a YIn energy year. Here’s hoping. Today I’m talking to you about why we have to start with working with our nervous system when we want to connect with our sexuality.

The autonomic nervous system drives all our behavioural states and the emotions that are affected by that. One of the keys to connecting to and working with your sexual energy which is your life force energy, is being able to use your skills of focus and attention to be present with it and this requires, calm, surrender and the ability to focus and track pleasure in our bodies. It is very hard to do this from a hyper aroused or frozen state in our nervous system.

So in this podcast I break it down for you so you can understand how it all works and why we start with the nervous system when we want to connect with our sexual energy, when we want to develop a stronger relationship with our emotions or when we want to improve the quality of our intimate relationships in our lives.

In the podcast I talk about:

• Tools to regulate yourself, like resourcing that will support better interactions with the people in your life,

• How our sensuality is a gateway to regulating our nervous system but also connecting with our sexuality,

• The six holistic sexuality tools we can use to enhance our connection with our sexual energy,

• Why working with a coach or therapist who is trauma informed is super important when it comes to sexuality work,

• Why is is imperative that we go slow in this work,

• How our cultural narrative around sexuality has shut has down to feeling our life force energy.

I hope you enjoy this episode and don’t forget to pass it onto a friend who may find it helpful AND to give it a rating on the podcast platform you are listening to if you like it.

Ep 32 How experiencing more pleasure in your body can be a pathway through pain

This week I’m talking about pleasure and how experiencing the expansive energy of pleasure in our body can be a pathway through pain. When we have trauma and stress stored in our body it has a very constrictive quality to it. You would know this be either a tight jaw or pelvis, or maybe tension in the shoulders and the back between your shoulder blades.

In this episode I talk about:

• How it can be tricky when we start doing somatic healing work at first because we might be stuck in a constant state of constriction so to feel anything other than this can make us feel unsafe,

• The different survival responses in our nervous system and what they are,

• How some food and drinks can actually mimic the constricted state we are in,

• How we all learn to push through the boundaries of our body and come to ignore its messages to us all the time,

• How pleasure expands our capacity in our body and that gives us more choice and breadth in our nervous system and how this improves our ability to be with our emotions,

• Why micro doing on pleasure is more effective at slowly building your orientation toward it,

• What some pleasure practices are.

At the end I mention my free Feminine Embodiment course and my ReConnect course. Reconnect is on sale all through December 2022 for AU$149.50.

Ep 29 The power of Slow with Casey Hall

Today I talk with my friend and colleague Casey Hall, who is a sensuality coach, about the power of slowing down. Casey is both a sensuality coach and holistic wellness coach and has studied and worked in the wellness landscape for many years. She is the best person to talk to about this subject because not only is it the centre of her work but it is her life story also. She learned that slowing down was helped her heal and grow after many years of living a fast paced life.

In the podcast we discuss:

• How Casey moved into corporate wellness and realised that 90% of the cases Doctors deal with are related to stress,

• That sensuality is a key to helping us slow down and live a life with more presence,

• That the emptiness and loneliness many of us feel is a disconnection from self and slowing down helps us to reconnect with ourselves,

• How pleasure is a great tool to help us to slow down and be more present in our lives,

• That many of us have internalised cultural belief systems around slowing down and pleasure that stop us from pursuing both and this lives largely in our unconscious so most of us are not aware of our blockages toward pursuing both,

• Our bodies speak their own language and they are talking to us all the time, we just learned to ignore their messages,

• Slowing down helps us to make better conscious choices and decisions in our life.

You can find Casey at her website www.sensualitycoach.com on instagram @sensuality_coaching. Casey does a podcast with her Business Partner Elizabeth Menzel called “Slow the F Down” you can find it on all major podcasting platforms.

Ep 28 Breathe to Create Flow with Timmy and Jackie

People have been asking me to do a podcast on Breathwork for a long time. So finally here it is. Today I talk to my friends and colleagues Jackie Verinder and Timmy Noad who are both Breathwork teachers about Breathwork. Jackie and Timmy have a great story about their own journey to breathwork and how it has helped them release trauma from their body, connect with their emotions and feelings, grow into emotional adulthood and how it has improved their overall sense of wellbeing, self-acceptance and self-love.

Timmy and Jackie between them are trained in a number of different modes of breathwork including , Oxygen Advantage, SOMA breath, XPT Performance Breath and both are Zen Thai Shiatsu (level one) practitioners.

In the podcast we talk about:

• Jackie and Timmy’s own story and how breathwork has helped them in their lives,

• What is breathwork?

• What are the different styles of breathwork and how do they help,

• How you might go about picking a style that suits your needs and what questions to ask of your potential teachers,

• What to expect in a group session and one on one sessions and how to determine what might suit you between the two delivery methods,

• Questions you can ask potential teachers to work out if they are a good match for your needs,

• How our current culture impacts on how we experience our emotional lives.

Jackie and Timmy are based on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. They do individual and group sessions there, on the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Melbourne. You can find them at www.create-flow.com.au on instagram @createflowbreathwork and facebook at Create flow Breathwork