Sometimes there are specific traumas that are an obvious cause of phobias and sometimes not. For example, we may have had a close call with drowning in a bathtub as a toddler, and thereafter have a fear of water. Or there may be no obvious cause like this. Either way, we work with it the [...]

The first thing to know about this, is that these thoughts are just another symptom of the underlying activation and dysregulation. It is the threat response living in the mind and presenting as worry, fixation, looking for threat, etc… So yes, as we get more and more regulated, these mental manifestations become less of a [...]

This can certainly be frustrating! The best answer we have found is to make peace with just doing those tiny bits, consistently, and with plenty of space after to integrate. ‘Less is more’ really is true with this work! Go at your own pace. We really cannot stress enough how important this is. In our [...]

Have a look at this letter we drafted precisely for this purpose. Feel free to modify or use this as is (this was written for our SmartBody SmartMind students, so if you are in the 21 Days program, just modify it a bit to reflect that). 

If you at least have access to a safe room that is your own, and have the ability to have boundaries about who enters (a lock is a good idea!) then you can begin the process. But, in order to fully heal you WILL need to eventually be in a safe living situation and be [...]

This is such an important part of healing trauma. The key to processing internalized toxic shame lies in finding our way towards feeling and expressing disgust. This doesn’t mean that we feel disgusted about ourselves, but that we allow ourselves to feel and express the disgust that our body feels at having to hold such [...]

Orienting is the single most important basic tool in this program, and for good reason.  Being simultaneously aware of both the environment and our internal response is something ALL mammals (except for us) do automatically and all the time, except for when they are asleep. It’s an awareness we are supposed to have ticking away [...]

When we are holding unresolved trauma in our system, it is always there. Whether we are awake or asleep, that survival energy is running in the background, affecting all levels of the mind, including the unconscious and subconscious landscapes that we often traverse in dreams, and so we often experience impressions of those survival energies [...]

The purpose of this work is to first educate you on what is happening in your system, so you can understand it and have a more conscious, and less reactive, relationship with your internal experiences. And, the work itself is meant to guide you into your system in different ways such that the old, stuck, [...]

The difference between a coping mechanism and a healthy impulse or resource can be blurry, as sometimes a thing is both. But if I have to make a distinction it would be this: a coping mechanism is used to keep one from going into overwhelm or to manage habitual stress, while a resource or healthy [...]