Healing From Trauma | Moving From Pain to Possibility

0:00 Hello, and welcome to 2023 and to the eighth year of real men field. Wow. I can't believe this has been going on for eight years, but I'm very, very glad that it has been. I'm your host author coach and healer and Ygritte, you can visit the Andy Grant.com to learn more, about me, real men, feeling gauges and conversations that most men aren't having, but that all men can benefit from remind men that you are human, and you have the right to experience and express all of your emotions I have yet to meet anyone. One who hasn't suffered some form of trauma in their life. No, it seems that the Human Experience was made to include trauma for Saul and Trauma, doesn't just mean the physical abuse, sexual, abuse wore the big things.

0:43 It could be much smaller things. Trauma would have with a small T it can be not having your needs met at any point in your childhood. The simplest definition of trauma that I've heard is anything that was too high at magnitude for you to deal with. At the time my guest today Greg Whiting helps leaders and entrepreneurs. Course, he'll anxiety depression. Chronic pain and Trauma so they can lead with bold and courageous hearts for two decades. He's helped hundreds of clients reduce or eliminate their dependence on antidepressants, anxiety, pain, and sleep meds. He addresses the unresolved trauma that causes, inflammation compromises, immune function, stagnates emotion fogs thought and creates him mortal imbalance.

1:24 He is the founder of Prisma a framework. Overlaying trauma neuroscience and Energy Medicine with somatic. And And mindfulness based practices he developed this while healing his own anxiety, depression, and chronic pain rooted in trauma. This included unraveling a severe spinal curvature and standing three inches taller today. Again, I must say, wow, welcome to room and feel, Greg. Thanks for having me, any good to be here? Yeah, let's just jump right in and tell me a bit about your experience with trauma as when you were growing up. Sure. Yeah. I appreciate kind of your intro. Just not having developmental needs met can very much signal life or death in early development, right? And that gonna is going to set the system up for hyper-vigilance for fight.

2:12 Flight, freeze, appease, where we're losing access to our upper brain of logic and reason, and we're defaulting to our lower brain. That is completely organized around survival, and that imprints, upon us, and sets up an entire cycle of behaviors and beliefs. And You know, nervous system drives that can in the long run although they're trying to protect us and save us, can really deplete us can really wipe out, you know, our life force energy and I appreciate that definition of trauma, two. You know, trauma is not just the bad things that happened to us. It can also be an early development, not getting enough of the good things. So trauma can be too much too soon or too much for too long or not enough for too long.

3:01 And so yeah, my my journey into the world of healing was first and foremost to start to address. You know, what was debilitating, chronic pain and anxiety, and depression. That at first, I really didn't understand was, you know, symptomatic of unresolved trauma. And I found that a lot of traditional approaches to therapy and Healthcare were really ill equipped to address the residue of trauma that was stored in my body. That was keeping Me stuck in these cycles of pain depression and anxiety which there's a big relationship between those three all being trauma response. So yeah over the years I've just been on a path of Discovery and growth and as I've unraveled my spine and you know no longer live in pain, anxiety, or depression.

3:51 I've really learned how to reverse engineer. What? I have learned to now make as practical and accessible of a healing system. Possible. It's really helped. People have the power to heal themselves in their own hands. Boo, that's what I find time and time again. And everything I've ever done with with a client is something that I first saw it and used on myself for my own healing. So it sounds like that's your experience as well. Yeah, and I think the value in that I was just speaking with a client the other day that they are learning and growing and healing just as much from my example as they are from what I teach and practice. And that's really just helping to normalize just The Human Condition.

4:34 I think there's so much stigma around mental health. And, you know, my take is that. What if our anxiety and our depression and our pain are actually healthy responses to an unhealthy environment, and that implies, then that perhaps that is really coming from a place of our own Humanity, at our own sensitivity, to The Human Condition. And that is actually a really good thing and To dissolve and set aside any stigma around mental health, gives us the opportunity to develop a healing practice, that is not just about resolving pain, but actually helping to open us up to our human potential. Yeah, I could not agree more.

5:20 I've so I was diagnosed as bipolar at age. I think 13 and had felt depression anxiety as young as I can remember, but and it always seemed that getting any of those labels met. You you're doing something wrong. Something was broken. It wasn't working, right? But as you said sometimes, the, the most ideal proper reaction to something is being depressed about it or being anxious about it, that that is part of our natural. So it's part of our natural healing to have those reactions at times. Yeah. You know, I find well, you know, a lot of folks and, you know, I think there's a time and a place for pain and symptom management, you know, I want to honor that but a lot of times when we get a diagnosis it makes it real easy for the pharmaceutical companies to slap a drug at it.

6:09 And again, there's a time and a place, but a lot of folks are being told we need to treat this chemical imbalance, even the research hasn't proven that Unbalanced is the cause of anxiety or depression. And the implication there is that, well, you have a chemical imbalance. So something's wrong with you. That needs to be fixed. That needs to be addressed without actually looking at. Well, what if that chemical imbalance is actually just a symptom of again, attachment wounding not having our developmental needs met and unresolved trauma and those pieces are very much related to the environment, right? But in treating the individual, it's putting all the focus on the individual as if it's their sole problem to resolve.

6:55 When this is much more of a larger societal, you know piece where that's the other piece around trauma. I think it's any lived experience that we that is overwhelming, historically that we have had to carry the weight of in isolation, so a lack of safety and a lack of support. And so we're living in a culture that feeds off of fear that feeds off of division. Which is going to have a very caustic effect on our bodies, our brains our nervous system. I remember one of the biggest leaps I had in my growth and healing was the day. I realized, I wasn't just some random collection of chemicals and that I was more to that. And you know, I wasn't just this meat suit that there was more to me and there was a source energy and there was something the ability to heal anything. I had gone through did exist.

7:43 And another thing you mentioned was was being overwhelmed by something and I find that that state of being overwhelmed, It is just different from every person, the same experience might make trauma in one person and not in another is, do you find that? Sure. Yeah, I mean, we all have a different window of tolerance, for different circumstances, right? So what has one of us lose access to our upper? Brain reason is going to have logic and reason is going to be different than what overwhelms and flood someone else's nervous system. So yeah, this is very personalized and, you know, there is a story of a child Witness 911. And that experience did not imprint upon them as PTSD because they had support.

8:31 And it was actually the lens through which they saw the experience, they drew like a drawing of the experience. And what the drawing actually really centered and focused on was all of the First Responders, right? So, they were orienting their brain and their awareness to the helpers as opposed to just the harm and the danger, right? Right? So the the brain wasn't focused on just what was bad and wrong, it was focused on what was positive and good. So that didn't imprint as a traumatic experience for that child. You know, they didn't walk away with PTSD and there's something to that, right? And that's the mindfulness.

9:11 That is so necessary and healing is the Mind training to reorient, the brain from Pain to possibility. And also to help dissolve identification with the Experience because there's a big difference. When we say I'm overwhelmed versus I'm experiencing something overwhelming, right? So that distinction helps us create a space between us and what we're experiencing. So we don't assume that experience as who we are because that identification with experience, then starts to embed it. And then instead of it just being a passing experience that comes and goes it starts To stick around so that the chronic pain, that you grew up with, was that all related to the spinal issues.

9:59 So, you know, I came into this world with scoliosis which, you know, there's a hereditary component or genetic component to that and I look at that anything that's hereditary or genetic can become kind of the flypaper for, you know, trauma and other adverse experiences to stick onto and to then aggravate. And a lot of Folks would say that, you know, healing or unraveling a severe curve on my spine. I can't tell you how many doctors told me that that's impossible, despite that being my experience and the more I talk about it, I'm podcast I'm meeting other people who have had similar experiences. So you know, that I think there's a limitation in prognosis as well because if we start to believe in what's possible or what's not possible that's going to either expand, you know what we can experience this.

10:52 Truth or limit it. And so I suspect that a lot of the scoliosis was aggravated and intensified because of the trauma that latched onto it. You know, I kind of geek out on how the body works and you know, trauma gets stored in the connective tissue and fascia and the connective tissue and fascia is also where we're storing beliefs and we're we're storing emotions and memories. You know, the conscious mind is 5% of what we Think, and what we believe, you know. So the majority of what we actually, it's what we think we believe, but what we really believe, the 95% is the subconscious and unconscious mind.

11:32 And that's stored in the body. That's stored in the tissues and stored in the cells and that starts to get reflected in our posture, the connective tissue, where we're storing all of this information pulls on the muscles and Bones. So, you know, the posture I was assuming when I was identified with pain identified with wounding was one of Of guarding and protection, right? And so closing in on my heart, you know, that's very much a depressed state right to breast barreling into self. And so, as I was able to start to repattern these behaviors and beliefs using tools, that actually help to flush it out through the body, the somatic system, the Energy System, then I was no longer carrying that same costume, right? I'm no longer carrying the same belief system. As and behaviors and then musculoskeletal skeletal patterning that mimics, you know, the wounding. And so there's a very direct link between what we think and what we believe and what we feel. And you know what, we're Howard, experiencing our bodies, and that's going to have a ripple effect on our physiological function.

12:42 Hormonal balance, you know, our brain nervous system in all of it. What were some of the first programs or experiences or things that you did that, that gave you a sense of hope and that you you could heal everything. You've been dealing with. Yeah, I had a friend who was a massage therapist and she offered me a massage and at the time I was living in so much. Chronic pain that I did not want physical touch. I did not want a massage. I thought that would be too painful and she said, well, how about some Energy Medicine, some Reiki? And at the point, I had never heard of energy medicine or a key that was completely foreign to me, but I had implicit trust in her and I was in a lot of pain and she said, well, I don't even have to use physical touch.

13:30 I can, you know, or just use very light touch and within moments, I realized I found something. I didn't even know it was looking for it was as if I had suspended above my pain body because at that point, all I knew was my pain. So I was identified with my pain That's that's all that was and I started to get a glimpse or a taste of myself outside of my pain. Which was yeah, really transformative like okay, there's really something here and I get to now investigate that, you know, and a lot of folks, especially if we're used to taking a drug to medicate to suppress or chase a symptom of where you were really condition to have these quick fixes in these silver bullets. You know, I got a glimpse of my My who I am outside of my pain body but once we get a taste of that then that made me really hungry to seek out, what are the other practices and tools and wisdoms, that can help me cultivate that relationship my relationship to that part of me, right? Because up until that point, you know, my brain, my nervous system and my body were just creating this vicious cycle that were perpetuating.

14:43 This relationship I had with my pain body, which was continuing to activate this. Sympathetic nervous system which is this fight/flight response, right? So I was just always on guard and so that Glimpse gave me a sense of oh who am I? If I'm not in this chronic state of fight or flight if I'm not on guard and that's the essence of a mindfulness-based practice to give us a glimpse of what it feels like to have a relaxed alert awareness. So it sounds like they were his Decades of chronic pain before you discover the energy Energy Medicine. Yeah, at that point, you know, through high school and college.

15:25 I was just medicating with alcohol. And, you know, once I left College, I realized that that didn't want the, I didn't want that to be the path forward. That just didn't seem like a smart safe, sustainable pathway forward and I literally was inches away from antidepressants and pain meds because I thought that's all I knew, you know, as A kid I grew up with chronic ear aches and strep throat so there's nothing more. I wanted them to go to a doctor, take a pill and get better. I wanted someone to fix me and so I was you know really going to continue on that path and then I just had this this experience that really put me on a new trajectory that I'm so grateful for because, you know, we I think there's more and more conversations like this happening today. So there's more awareness of healing and Alternative Health. Alternative approaches to you know, supporting Body Mind Spirit.

16:20 But at that point, it was all, you know, new news to me. Yeah. Yeah. Mary for me it was I think was 2008 before I had ever heard Energy Medicine and had an experience of like, really feeling energy come into me and feel me or not. I had thought meditation meant, you know, sitting silently and having no thoughts. Not that a sort of meditative experience could be energizing and full of energy. But you know what? I wanted to ask what you thought were some common mistakes. He's around trauma and healing. And but I feel like you've hit a couple. At least already is so medicate with alcohol. So self-medicating or, you know, looking for that silver bullet and perhaps overmedicating like a body's proper emotional response to something. What else do you see is common mistakes? No, so, you know for me the Energy Medicine was a really critical piece that helped me start to heal. Some of the pain that I found I was unable to think or talk my way.

17:14 Real. And don't get me wrong, I think talk therapy can be very valuable. It's helped me a ton but to some degree as much as it gave me a good intellectual, understanding of some of my pain, some of my wounding, some of my developmental trauma didn't do the trick in terms of helping to flush it out of where it was being held within my body, right? So I was still struggling with pain, so I think it's understanding that. There's just some pain, we can't think or talk Talk our way through. Because actually, the more we talk about our pain, the more it activates the sympathetic nervous system and the more that will actually make our pain chronic. And so finding alternative ways to actually address the are wounding, whether it's anxiety, depression, chronic pain, or trauma more through the body somatically and more energetically through different types of energy medicine.

18:10 So I think that's really important. And yeah, I think this whole idea, Idea of that, there's nothing bad or wrong with us. So, again removing the stigma as we kind of touched on already to realize that, you know, because I put up until that point, it almost felt like there was a monster living inside of me that you know, this this pain was this monster that I was so bent on fighting against and, you know, trying to fix and that just aggravated it that just made it stronger. So realizing that, what if this pain is An earlier part of ourselves that needs loving attention. So I think healing is developing a really robust compassionate, relationship from ourselves to ourselves and, you know, the essence of how I think I work through a trauma-informed. Lens is we can't force that process, right? It's more about slowing down to speed up and developing more of a capacity to be with what is and instead of fighting against what is, you know, a big piece of my Work is how do we start to cultivate a sense of radical acceptance and love for what is which can feel really counterintuitive to love our pain?

19:24 Because we want the pain to go away. But actually that sense of acceptance helps to disarm it. It helps our system start to integrate it. And, you know, I think a lot of these trauma responses that are organized around isolation and alienation also have a lot of us thinking that it's not safe to get Get support. And we've had to figure out so much on our own. So I think a lot of folks think, well, I'm just gonna have to figure this out on my own, and as mammals were social creatures, and we are not meant to live in isolation and we certainly can't heal in isolation, you know, everything is relational. So, you know, we have been hurt relationally and we then he'll relationally.

20:11 So that's a big piece. I like like too many others have felt hopeless and helpless plenty of times in my life. Do you believe that all trauma can be healed? It's your question. I Have come from a place of complete Despair and just you know putting my arms up in the air and a lot of folks who come to me. They literally are at the end of their rope, you know? I thinking of one client who came to me, after literally Decades of talk therapy and their psychiatrist, referred them to me because they realized that, although they were medicating for their PTSD and their complex trauma, that was just helping them kind of tread water and stay afloat.

20:56 It wasn't actually addressing the Underbelly. So yeah, I think that there's a great possibility for us to heal, you know, and my Approach isn't so much on focusing on the pain or the trauma. My Approach is actually helping people reconnect to their innate wisdom and innate. Wisdom was a term developing Chiropractic decades ago. That if we get a paper cut there's some healing mechanism inside of us that since platelets and proteins and It's all these biochemical transmissions and just trauma, wounding stress accidents injuries hereditary environmental factors, you know, short circuit our connection to our innate wisdom. And when we lose connection to our innate wisdom, then it compromises our ability to heal to, you know, work through just the adverse experiences that kind of get piled onto us through life.

21:56 So yeah, I think it's really remarkable how we can. In fact, reconnect to our innate wisdom, you know, and another piece, something you said earlier, just made me think of it. But in Chinese medicine, there's a concept of shen or spirit and it's like into the light that shines through our eyes and the idea is that it's one light that is shining through all of our eyes. And so, you know, when I've been depressed and you can, we can see it in ourselves and others, if we're going through a hard time. It's like Eyes can kind of glaze or fog over. And it's like, there's just not as much of that brightness coming through our eyes.

22:36 And so, it's like a disconnection to Spirit a disconnection, to the hole. And so, you know, I think it's sometimes could be a long windy and bumpy road to reclaim that connection to Spirit and to community and to ourselves and others, but I think with the right tools and support it's very much as possible. Yeah. So it's not as if someone had their innate wisdom removed or they were somehow created without it, it's just the connection to it. Is what's missing? Yeah, that's the connection gets distorted know, another way to think of it and I kind of this is how when people ask me, how does energy medicine work? You know, I talk about how the body Mind and Spirit are like a symphony orchestra and all the different parts of the body from every muscle to every cell to every thought to every hormones. Every tissue ligament, you know, hormone you know, are in constant communication but when we lose connection to that innate wisdom, because of stress or trauma, and the nervous system, short circuits, then all of a sudden these different parts that were in harmony start to, you know, lose their communication with one another.

23:47 So it's like they turn their backs on each other and so healing is just going back in to restore that communication, right? So it's breaking up the noise, Or the interference patterns of the distortions so we can come back into the harmonic resonance that we are, right. So when we're experiencing Health there's this musicality of being and that resonance is really innate to who we are. It's the natural expression of our wholeness. So yeah, healing is just about breaking the Distortion patterns, that noise that is getting in the way of just us, remembering Who We Are. So it could be the culmination of The Lies. We Tell ourselves through negative self-talk, or what Society, parents School, whatever is told us about, you know, that that you are your scoliosis. You are your depression.

24:38 And the only thing that works is this medicine and that just that that that gnomes are innate wisdom. Yeah, and yeah, that numbing piece is a big part, right? Dissociation. Just kind of like a bird that flies into a window and drops to the ground and it's frozen. You know, it may look dead. I mean, in some cases Says, it may be but oftentimes the bird is just in shock, right? It can't absorb and fully process. The impact of flying into the window. And so that experience, it takes time for the system to absorb and as it is able to absorb it, the shock wears off that freeze response wears off and then it starts to Twitch and get the wind beneath its wings and it can take off again.

25:23 And so, when trauma continues to pile up on our body, Dr. Brain and nervous system. It becomes too much for us to feel right? So healing is very much helping us develop the capacity to feel what historically was too much and in doing so we start to reclaim our own ability to feel ourselves and you know that sense of touch interception is the pathway to more presence in agency, right? And that's often what gets hijacked with trauma, you know, both presence and agency. So it's reclaiming. Them, I'm always amazed at how natural it is for every animal. But us to that debit, little Shake It Off ability, just physical release. And you know, I don't think shivering is close to that that's response to cold normally. But do you think, you know, early man was just like other animals and we got a wormhole we could literally shake it off and have some physical release or do you think we've just been different since creation when it comes to that? Skip question, that's a good question. I'm not sure of that, but I know that movement and actual shaking is very much one of my go-to S.

26:36 And you know, I have as much as there's no silver bullets to actually heal trauma. I do think there are some facts that when our nervous system gets flooded and you know, we are in that state of overwhelm that we can help to come back to a baseline of nervous system, regulation and shaking is. one of them you know I saw just on a nature show a gazelle being chased by a cheetah and the moment the gazelle realized it was safe because the cheetah gave up the chase it instantaneously just shook and then went back to rest and digest just like eating grass right so what the gazelle does that we can learn from is shake the stress response off instead of think about it, retell the story you know in that case for the gazelle that was Life or death stress incident then.

27:28 So, we can be back in the safety and comfort of our own homes after a stressful incident, and we're just replaying it undermines. We're picking up the phone telling, friends about it, were texting about it, so we are replaying it instead of shaking it off. And so that's, that's a practice that we learn how to develop that capacity. It's funny an experience I had I told so last month, I was in Las Vegas. And I did is 855 foot jump off the the strap Tower and it wasn't a bungee jump. It was as funny that I did it without asking how is this work. But I was on a cable and it was somehow at the last, you know, 30 feet had breaks built into it. So it was I was in a free fall.

28:10 It lasted, 19 seconds. I went as fast as 45 miles per hour and I was able to just land on my feet and when I did I was I was all chipped up. I was like well and life. It like felt like every cell was tingling and A good 90 minutes for it to wear off. And yeah, I need to do something else. Physicals, I could never tell someone I want to get in a fight. I like I'm jacked up. I'm gonna go do some things and they're just probably walking along the strip after 90 minutes. I finally felt normal again but that would been a terrific time it just really shake it off and they needed some physical release to get rid of that that excess adrenaline that I had produced in my body. Yeah. Now there's that extra that extra charge that we just need to learn how to yeah discharge release. So tell me more about what you've developed the Prisma. Sure.

28:59 Yeah. So Prisma is a trauma and Neuroscience roadmap which is an eight week course that when folks drawing my community or work with me, one-on-one have access to this course. And that has a bunch of tools and practices that help people do just that learn how to First identify the nervous system and understand how the brain and the body function in relationship to stress and Trauma. So we can start to bring awareness, awareness is the first step, you know, and I developed this roadmap because I found, you know, on my healing journey I was going to therapist and healers actually, for probably years before I even understood with the nervous system was and if I just had this knowledge base, it would have number one, helped me have a better understanding of where I am and where I'm headed.

29:46 But it also would have helped me to normalize my experiences to not pathologize my own pain in my own wounding and how my ADI brain and nervous system are responding to my pain and wounding. So within that roadmap of the seven Prisma pillars, which really help people kind of map a journey from Pain to purpose and that's from nervous system regulation to embodiment getting into our body to emotional Attunement. So that's working through the unmet needs of early development to values alignment. So we can shift from fear-based motivation to what were inspired to move towards instead of away from Narration where we can really flip the script on the Sub Conscious and the unconscious, you know, behaviors beliefs.

30:31 And narratives that were telling ourselves, that can be organized around pain and really keeping us stuck so reorienting to possibility identity which is really shifting our identity. So we're not organized around pain and wounding but possibility so we can experience ourselves as Dynamic change in process, you know, in bringing that back to health, I look at disease. These as stagnation and I look at Health as movement and expression. So can we have an experience of ourselves that's moment-to-moment? Then that's not stuck and static and then impact can we redefine purpose from intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic motivation and can purpose?

31:14 Be more about who we are and less about what we do. It's more about how we how we are showing up instead of the actual thing. We're performing. And so yeah, there's a lot of research around how purpose is really necessary piece to developing resilience. So the 7 Prisma pillars kind of touch upon, you know, really integral components to finding a sense of Greater wholeness and cohesiveness within ourselves. So then that's paired with the somatic in the mindfulness based practices, which is the Mind training that we kind of spoke about to shift from Pain to possibility and to continue to dissolve, that identification with whoo. Wounding and then the Energy Medicine piece. That's really the vehicle that helps us to heal the Subterranean patterns of trauma stored in the body. That yeah, we otherwise can't think or talk our way through, you know, the function of Energy Medicine to helps to calm the cardiovascular system regulate the nervous system, it strengthens immune function and so in doing. So it's reconnecting us to that.

32:16 Any wisdom and restoring that Symphony Orchestra that we are by just breaking up all that noise. So over the years, I found that those pieces when paired with each other, just give people a really comprehensive set of tools and practices to to make sense of their pain and to then set their sights on, you know, a life that is more meaningful, a sense of purpose, place and significance. With all the things that you have experienced and studied and put into your own programs. Does any one thing stand out as boy? I wish I knew this one at a younger age than I had found it up.

32:57 Gosh, I mean all of it. Yeah I mean had I had access to these tools. I would you know, I could have I remember literally being in Junior High, I mean I was in pain and elementary school but you know, So when you're that young, like your, you kind of override it and, but by Junior High, I remember just like that pain body that residue was like, like starting to drip in more like molasses, it's also when my parents split up. And so, I think that kind of was, you know, because sometimes we have all of these subconscious and unconscious patterns, and then that are stored in the body creating an imbalance.

33:39 And then, you know, how to client years ago, who they said, but then they went and like It's a reach for a pencil and that's what threw their back out, right? So it's like that one piece of my parents splitting up in seventh grade was just like the last straw, but then I just felt like the accumulation of all this wounding, really start to to grip. And so, you know, I could have saved myself over a decade of like going to this chiropractor. Nothing Chiropractic can be really valuable but when there is a lot of trauma holding the spine out of balance. It's like You may move it into a new pattern and then it just gets pulled back through the connective tissue and facha.

34:20 So I could have saved myself a decade of yeah, self-medicating and finding going to, you know, healer and practitioners and therapists in, you know, treatments that just weren't really meeting the where I was at or moving the needle on my pain. So once you dealt with the unresolved trauma and your mindset and energy work your spine, literally unraveled and extended on its own. Not, it wasn't a one and done, so I'd say yeah. But I do remember my second when I, after I had that first experience with my friend who introduced me to Energy Medicine, I had a handful of sessions with her throughout that year. She looked two hours away at the time. And then when I moved to Seattle, I started to study Reiki.

35:07 Intensely, and my Reiki teacher, was a therapist. And she also practice a Healthcare System called bodytalk which is another modality that I practice and within my second session with her. Her, you know, she balanced some hormones to some emotions to some memories, and I got off the table. And my spine just started to like crack and adjust. And it's a I probably reclaimed about a half inch and that further than that second session with her and then gradually over time, you know, with more meditation and with more, you know, Energy Medicine and all these pieces just bit by bit just continuing to unravel. So gradual process over.

35:47 Yeah, the last 20 years This is just amazing, whether it whether took the entire lifetime. Just that again, I'm sure so many doctors said, a physical impossibility yet yet here you are. Yeah, cool. I wonder if there's a particular book or a practice or program that you've experienced that you would recommend as someone's like, very first step if everything we talked about so far are just as going, like, over someone's head, you know what's like a nice introduction. You know, I think the breadcrumbs that lead people to a healing path are unique for each person. So for me, even before I was introduced to Energy Medicine, I was probably just starting to read some books on mindfulness and meditation.

36:35 And so and for me time and nature was just a really good way to reconnect with myself, a lot of my students like in my work to the book, the body keeps the score. So for folks who Want to develop a better understanding of how we hold trauma inside the body that could be kind of triggering for folks to and, you know, I so what I like is to actually give people actual practices to help them heal, instead of just having an intellectual understanding of, you know, pain and wounding but give people practical access to just ways to heal. So I'd say Reiki, I'd say meditation. I'd say mindfulness movement are all big pieces. I think it's just the most important thing is to do something and if what you've been doing has been working, do something different.

37:27 Yeah. And just follow keep following those breadcrumbs where you know you may work with a practitioner or a therapist or a Healer and you know that may not be the right fit but then, you know, don't just throw out that no healer or no therapist or you know, this or that is valuable you just have so much of the therapeutic benefit of any Experience is not just the actual modality. It's the the relationship you have. So it's about finding you know someone who you can really build rapport and trust and that's where you develop the psychological safety for the body and the brain and the nervous system to start to re pattern.

38:08 But again what I find the value of synthesizing Energy Medicine with cymatics and mindfulness and Trauma and Neuroscience is so you can actually heal on all levels. You know, there's an idea that the body heals top-down or bottom-up, meaning, for some folks, depending on how they're wired, they need to actually figure some things out in a lecture Ali before it trickles down and shifts things in their body. For other people, they process bottom up. So they need to feel something shift physically in their body. Before the light bulb goes off in their brain. What I love about working with Energy Medicine, is I look at healing is happening.

38:49 Ting multi-directional e. So for example I had a client years ago that had a football-sized fibroid that you know through our work together, started to dissolve and Shrink. But really what we were doing was addressing how that was the overwhelming experience of grief and fear and shame from lots of lived experiences that at that time at one point we're too overwhelming. So helping her system have the capacity to process those Oceans help to shrink the the fibroid but in doing so, you know, behaviors and beliefs started to shift. So moving into healthier relationships and you know moving forward on a career path that had felt halted. So it's like when we start to shift things in one area of the body, it's signaling to the brain and the nervous system to start to re pattern as well.

39:43 And so there's something really elegant and profound about how effective Energy Medicine. In is to heal Body Mind and Spirit simultaneously instead of just kind of top-down or bottom-up. Yeah. That that really describes my experiences with it as well, that it's again. Neurosurgery. Oh, we're multi-dimensional beings. And when you really get into indirect missing like, oh wow, yeah, we are and I can kind of feel the healing Ripple through through all those different aspects of me. So also, so while we're just a few days into this new year, I wonder what are you looking forward to Greg? I love it. Well, in the this past year, in the fall, I started doing some Open Water swims.

40:26 I live here in San Francisco, and so as the weather continues to get a little colder and foggy here, I'm looking forward to continuing to challenge myself, to get out into the Open Water. That's been really invigorating, and just a whole new. Excuse me, a great practice to just help me move beyond the limitations of My mind and the fears that I have and creativity, you know, I've choked years ago that I'd reach a point in my own healing path that it would just open me up to more of my own creativity. So yeah, I'm looking forward to making more art and to spending more time in nature and I have a background in activism. So before I was on this healing path, I was an activist, so very purpose and Mission driven.

41:14 So I'm kind of feeling into how to all these worlds, collide. Terms of my healing and my activism and just my artistic kind of sense. So I'm kind of in that inquiry and just looking forward to carving out more space for all of that. Sounds interesting, powerful and needed. So, cool. So Greg, what's the best way for people to learn more about you and everything that you're up to and and are creating sure? Yeah, correct. Waiting.com is where folks can learn about me. I have limited space to I work with clients one-on-one, and then I also have the person, of course, and community, that has the entire training program with the energy medicine. And so, yeah, folks can learn about me there and it all starts with a phone call.

42:01 So you schedule, you know, a discovery call and we get to learn where you're at. Where you want to be, you know what you've tried? What's worked? What hasn't, what are your goals? And it's really an opportunity for us to vet each other out so we can discern. If working together is going to create a win-win No, I'm all about getting people results. So there's like dozens of testimonials on my website. So folks can get a feel for how I've helped other folks, and if they see themselves and some of that potential within themselves. Yeah we get on a call and we feel into can you know an arc of transformation together? Be the right fit? Awesome. Well thanks for joining me today. Greg, thanks for this this this great in-depth talk.

42:44 Thanks for the notes for joining us for listening in wherever you were discovering real men. Feel please, Subscribe follow like, share this, share this. Somebody else post a review or comment. You can always email me at real men, feel at gmail.com. Always glad to hear from you and now you can also directly support this podcast. There's a link in the bottom of the show notes allowing you to give as little as 99 cents a month to support. This podcast, help us reach. More men, save more lives improve more lives that URL. In case it's not, they're anchored on FM /, real men, feel / support, and until next time, give some support to yourself and be good to yourself. And we'll talk again soon.