From Survival to Serenity: What Changes When We Learn to Feel Safe in Our Own Bodies with Sharon LaFlamme

Yeah, I think that distinction matters tremendously in leadership too, right? We talk about, you know, trusting your intuition, following your gut, listening inward.

And if our nervous system is activated, sometimes what feels like intuition might actually be protection.

So really what I'm hearing is developing self-awareness isn't just a personal wellness practice.

It can change how we make decisions.

It can change how we communicate and it can change how we lead.

Now you use somatic experiencing as part of your work.

For someone hearing that phrase for the first time, what is somatic experiencing and how is it different from simply talking about what happened to us?

So I'm going to give you an example from my teacher, Peter Levine.

who created and registered trademarks, schematic experiencing, because he was trying to help people with trauma.

And this was 60 something years ago, but he recognized that as somebody talks, they were getting really worked up because, A state of danger doesn't have to be, I see danger.

All I have to do is think about, I've got to have a conversation with somebody or a memory of something that was scary or traumatic.

And it sets our autonomic nervous system into full activation.

And so he started realizing that there's this energy inside the body.

And that body in Latin is soma.

So there's this energy that's deeply hidden in here because it wasn't able to come out for the exact same reason I was saying earlier, the ventral vagal that we need to build when we're born didn't get built.

That's the pathway for emotions to move energy.

And so oftentimes they get stuck and we feel broken because that energy is stuck inside, inside our soma.

Oh, I want to take one second and make a distinction for our listeners.

Our conversation here, we're not saying that every difficult emotion or physical health problem can be reduced to trauma or nervous system dysregulation, right? It's understanding the nervous system can give us another lens through which to understand what we're experiencing.

Is that fair, Sharon?

That's fair.

I would want to say in clarifying that decisions mean you're talking from your head.

You're making this decision in your head.

And when we become embodied, meaning we have connected ourselves to all that we are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, We come from a whole different perspective and the perspective of I'm safe.

I can hear you for what you're saying instead of the defensive that I usually come from.

Yeah, I think that distinction matters tremendously in leadership too, right? We talk about, you know, trusting your intuition, following your gut, listening inward.

And if our nervous system is activated, sometimes what feels like intuition might actually be protection.

So really what I'm hearing is developing self-awareness isn't just a personal wellness practice.

It can change how we make decisions.

It can change how we communicate and it can change how we lead.

Now you use somatic experiencing as part of your work.

For someone hearing that phrase for the first time, what is somatic experiencing and how is it different from simply talking about what happened to us?

So I'm going to give you an example from my teacher, Peter Levine.

who created and registered trademarks, schematic experiencing, because he was trying to help people with trauma.

And this was 60 something years ago, but he recognized that as somebody talks, they were getting really worked up because, A state of danger doesn't have to be, I see danger.

All I have to do is think about, I've got to have a conversation with somebody or a memory of something that was scary or traumatic.

And it sets our autonomic nervous system into full activation.

And so he started realizing that there's this energy inside the body.

And that body in Latin is soma.

So there's this energy that's deeply hidden in here because it wasn't able to come out for the exact same reason I was saying earlier, the ventral vagal that we need to build when we're born didn't get built.

That's the pathway for emotions to move energy.

And so oftentimes they get stuck and we feel broken because that energy is stuck inside, inside our soma.

Oh, I want to take one second and make a distinction for our listeners.

Our conversation here, we're not saying that every difficult emotion or physical health problem can be reduced to trauma or nervous system dysregulation, right? It's understanding the nervous system can give us another lens through which to understand what we're experiencing.

Is that fair, Sharon?

That's fair.

I would want to say in clarifying that decisions mean you're talking from your head.

You're making this decision in your head.

And when we become embodied, meaning we have connected ourselves to all that we are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, We come from a whole different perspective and the perspective of I'm safe.

I can hear you for what you're saying instead of the defensive that I usually come from.