From Trauma to Triumph: Angie Barrett's Journey Through Intuitive Movement and Healing

When Angie Barrett, a trauma-informed intuitive movement coach, stepped into my studio, we didn't simply chat; we embarked on a profound exploration of healing. Angie's shift from nursing to yoga is an odyssey of self-discovery and triumph over her own experiences with abuse and professional burnout. This episode is an intimate look at how Angie harnessed the power of movement and play to not only reclaim her joy but to guide others through their journeys of trauma release and recovery.

Our conversation takes us through the transformative world of trauma-informed yoga, where the lotus flower becomes more than just a symbol—it's the embodiment of our ability to emerge from murky waters into full bloom. Angie illuminates the challenges that come with peeling away the layers of mental barriers to authentically engage with our body's sensations. She bravely shares her battles with self-worth, revealing how these personal trials have fueled her mission to empower others on their path to healing.

As we wrap up, the focus shifts to the therapeutic magic of gentle body movements, recognizing the signals our bodies whisper to us, and the art of self-soothing. Angie's emphasis on honoring our limits and advocating for autonomy in the healing process is a powerful reminder of our capacity for resilience. With live events on my horizon, I'm excited to carry Angie's insights with me, inspiring others to weave play and movement into their own tapestries of recovery and self-discovery.

Connect with Angie here: https://angieberrettmovement.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Bite Size podcast. I'm your host, lorraine Michaels, former EMT and nursing assistant, now business owner and wild entrepreneur. I walked away from over 15 years in medicine to pursue my passion and my God-given talents. Now I get the honor of helping other women discover their passions and purpose. If you're feeling stuck in life, unsure where to go or what to do, welcome. If you're exactly where you want to be great, you're welcome here too. If you have faced any kind of hardship or setback, you have found a safe place here. In other words, no matter who you are or what you've been through or what you're going through, this is the space for you. On the Bite Size podcast, we'll discuss life, business and faith. There's something for everyone. So grab a cup of coffee and something to take notes with, because there will definitely be things you won't want to forget.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Hey, fam, welcome back to the Bite Size podcast. I'm your host, lorraine Michaels, and today I have with me such an incredible, energetic guest. Her name is Angie and I am so, so excited to get to talk to her and have you guys listen in on exactly what she does and the fun that she has and has bringing to the world and healing. So that's very near and dear to my heart. Plus, she's a nurse, so we have this commonality of medicine background. I'm so excited you guys. Welcome to the show, angie.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Lorraine, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here today, awesome, awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:55

So I just want to dive right in. I was playing around on your website and I love everything that you talk about and teach and I just resonate so much with all of it from, like I said, medicine to nature and yoga and stand-up paddle boarding and just how you incorporate all of this stuff. Can you share a little bit about you and what you do and how you arrived at how you're helping people now?

Speaker 2: 2:31

Yes, absolutely so. Like Lorraine said, I'm Angie Barrett and I am what I call a trauma-informed intuitive movement coach. So I coach people how using play and movement helps them connect to their bodies so that they can release stress, anxiety, tension, depression and trauma, bringing more joy and fun to their lives. So I got started. I am a registered nurse, but my story starts even before that. I actually, when I was very little, I was abused as a child, so I experienced pretty significant child abuse and it was so significant that I actually had blocked it out, had no memories of it, and went off to college, got married, got my nursing degree, worked in hospitals, still had no memory of it, but I just had this. I called it a black hole of pain inside of me that I never could quite figure out or understand, and I did go experience an abusive marriage. Generally, people who have experienced childhood trauma tend to repeat those patterns until they're able to deconstruct them. And about at age 30, I got divorced from my husband, and so that started me on a journey towards healing and I have worked in nursing emergency department and intensive care units are my specialty, and so I've always worked high anxiety, high adrenaline, which creates its own trauma in and of itself, that constant being in a state of fight or flight or survival mode, which is what oftentimes nurses are doing when they're caring for patients on that edge. And then I got burned out. So I decided I was going to go to graduate school and become a nurse practitioner, and halfway through my master's program I realized I hated it. I thought it felt like all I was doing was learning how to prescribe medications. I didn't feel like I was able to really connect with people to really truly help them make changes in their lives. And as I've been on this healing journey what are the differences noticing? My own transformation became really important, and so I took a break from graduate school. And because I just didn't know what I wanted to do and I've practiced yoga for many, many, many years and the studio where I practiced yoga at was offering a yoga teacher training and I thought, well, I needed something to do, so I would take this yoga teacher training to keep my mind and body occupied while I figured out what I was gonna do with my next step. And I loved it. I loved teaching people. It felt like that was really kind of what I was looking for as a way to help people connect to their bodies to really truly make changes and heal.

Speaker 2: 5:14

And then, about seven and a half years ago almost eight years ago I was dating a person and they ended up cheating on me, but let me know that they were in a new relationship on Facebook. It was a very public betrayal is, I guess, probably one of the best ways to put that and what that did was that betrayal by someone that I loved and was supposed to be in a relationship with unlocked the memories of my childhood. So I started dealing with dueling traumas and so I really hit rock bottom and really had to go to some dark places in order to start to pull myself out. And then, when COVID hit, another yoga teacher friend of mine was gonna take a training on how to become a trauma-informed yoga instructor, and there's some differences in teaching trauma-informed yoga versus more traditional yoga, and so I wanted to do it, joined and a couple of things happened around the same time.

Speaker 2: 6:14

So as I was doing my yoga teacher training, I learned how powerful play is in helping us to release trauma that we have in our bodies. Play is one of the ways that we're able to actually disconnect from the mind programming that we have to feel into our bodies and to let some freedom happen. And that's actually where a lot of healing occurs is with play. So I was learning that in my trauma yoga training and at the same time, my therapist was. So I've been in intensive therapy for many years and my therapist was working on a protocol with me that's designed for children who've experienced young children who've experienced trauma at a young age, because what happens is when we experience trauma at such a young age, our brain forms under those high anxiety, high adrenaline, high stressful situations, and so she describes it as your brain marinates in those stress hormones, and so being able to feel at peace is foreign because your brain is marinated in the stress hormones. So this protocol was designed to help children reprogram their brains or help people who were abused as children, and I learned and this was fascinating to me, so then I started delving into it.

Speaker 2: 7:32

All mammals, humans included, we're born with our brains prewired with seven circuits, so we come out as fetuses knowing seven things that are prewired in our brain, and play is one of those things that we're born with, and so I'd learned these how powerful play was in two different arenas, two different areas, and so I started using playful movements in my own body to see if I could release some of this emotional itchiness, this angst, this pain that I had, or the black hole of pain like I call it and it was amazing, it was astounding to me.

Speaker 2: 8:06

I was so when things like I would feel like I was small. I would pretend to be an elephant, stomping around the room and just not really carrying what was in my way, and then all of a sudden I would notice a bubble of laughter came out and it just changed and shifted how I felt about not only me but the environment, and so doing that just really changed my own healing journey. So I told a couple of friends about it and they wanted to try. They haven't experienced trauma to the degree that I have. I think most people in our lives we experienced trauma to some varying degree, and so I tried it on them and it worked for them. They were able to release all this angst, this anxiety, these negative beliefs about themselves, and so that has really snowballed and become the business that I do today, which is coaching people how to use play and movement to heal.

Speaker 1: 9:00

That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 9:02

I just there are so many things where I was just like, oh, oh, oh, I can very, very much relate with the whole when we with our career I came from also working in ICU, trauma, icu, emergency department and it's that constant state of fight or flight and I thought I mean I did, I did very well in it and I thought I loved it and it just was like, yes, I'm in my zone and da, da, da, da.

Speaker 1: 9:33

But it wasn't until having after been removed from it and after going through healing, because I also was in an abusive relationship, abusive marriage, very toxic and it wasn't until after being out of it, after being out of that environment in that relationship and going through the healing that I'm like, oh my gosh, there was complete chaos, like my body and my whole mental state thought that chaos was normal, chaos was safe. And it wasn't until getting into that safe space of, oh, this is uncomfortable, it's quiet and it's safe, but it doesn't feel safe to me. Yeah, it's nuts, like once you heal and you go through that and you realize what once was your normal was not safe at all.

Speaker 2: 10:25

And it's chaos. You're just perpetuating that cycle of Not being able to heal because you're constantly in that state of fight or flight.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Absolutely yeah, yeah. Um, I have never heard of so I've heard of like the movement and the trauma.

Speaker 1: 10:45

What was the other thing? The somatic Healing? I've heard of that, but I've never heard of the trauma-informed yoga. Because I absolutely love yoga. I love being able to Disconnect from the world and connect to my body and connect to the earth. I don't know if you're, I'm sure you are, but I absolutely love grounding. Yes, that's something that I I promote and I talk about all the time on my stories, on socials, with my clients. I'm just like the importance of grounding in earth. Grounding is so beneficial, um.

Speaker 2: 11:22

It is, interestingly enough, a lot of people actually have trouble grounding. We may think that we're grounding, but our brains are, so we're not able to be in our rational thinking brain and our emotional feeling brain at the same time. You can only be in one or the other.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:41

And so this became a problem for me with yoga and I see this when I work with a lot of people is yoga and I love yoga. So please don't think I'm saying anything negative about yoga anybody out there I am not because I love yoga, but yoga even became More of a mental practice for me than a mind-body practice because I was thinking, oh, or my feet in alignment, am I grounding, am I touching the earth? Rather than feeling into the sensations of what are the four corners of my feet feeling? Do I feel four corners of my feet? Where do I feel it? In my legs it was more the mental Am I in the right pose? Am I, am I ground? It was a me thinking through it rather than actually feeling any Attic, and so many of us in this world today we're so disconnected from our somatic or our sensory input, from our bodies that we think we might be, and I'm not.

Speaker 2: 12:35

Please don't think I'm saying anything about any of you out there. You may really actually be able to connect to your body better, but oftentimes we're really thinking through the sensory experiences rather than entirely feeling it, because feeling and sensations Feel so unsafe to us. Yeah, there's a disconnect there for most of us, and I find that when I'm working with people, they'll say, oh yeah, I'm feeling it, and then I'll say, okay, well, are you really feeling all four corners? You know, try this, try that. You know all four corners of your feet. And then they'll say, oh gosh, no, I do wait, I just feel one heel, but I have a right side and a left side to my heel. Am I feeling both of those? And so it's Grounding. So trauma-informed yoga becomes Finding ways to let the brain shut off in order to truly feel the sensory experience without overwhelming the system.

Speaker 1: 13:27

Yeah, yeah, absolutely 100%. Another thing that I absolutely loved Well, and it's kind of off topic, but I really want to dive into it, so your logo.

Speaker 2: 13:38

I.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Logo caught my attention Because I have a tattoo that is very symbolic. I had and it's got lotus flowers all in it and an elephant, and so like the symbolism of an elephant and a nurture and protector, but, like you know, a Very big, strong presence, but it's so gentle and nurturing. And so talk to me a little bit about the lotus flower and why you used it.

Speaker 2: 14:06

Yeah. So for those of you that have not seen my logo, it is a lotus flower with a person sitting in the middle with their arms up overhead, doing Kind of. It looks like a lotus pose in yoga, which is a seated pose with hands kind of in prayer pose, but up above the head. And so, for me, the lotus flower, I love the lotus flower it represents.

Speaker 2: 14:27

So lotus flowers start in the bottom of a waterbed, buried underneath muck and mud and grossness, and they have to overcome and Grow out of the water in order to bloom and sit on top of the water. So it's very symbolic for me the idea of having this overwhelming grossness, trauma, muck, mud, whatever term you want to use that we overcome, that we have to push through in order to. Once we get onto the top of the water, we get to bloom and be Whoever and our most magnificent sense of self, and that involves movement. My logo has a fair amount of movement to it. It's not really a stationary, or at least that was my intention when I had it created Was to have a fair amount of movement because we're always growing and changing and we get to bloom, overcoming whatever we have.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Hmm.

Speaker 2: 15:24

I love that. I love that.

Speaker 1: 15:26

That's exactly Exactly how I feel and it resonates with me, so, so well, um and so, having said that, we all know, or you and I especially know, that everyone experiences difficulties, traumas big tea trauma, little tea trauma. Yes, in your life I Can you share with us a time where you felt stuck and uncertain, and how you were able to overcome that? Was it through your work or is that what brought you to your work?

Speaker 2: 16:02

Both. That is what brought me to my work and that is how I have continued to heal on my own journey. I can actually give you a fairly recent example. The way that I work is when I do my own personal work is, instead of necessarily delving into the specifics of the trauma of what happened behind the event. A lot of times we don't need to know that, and for my own personal self, I got to a point where I did not want to know anymore about what happened to me because it was enough. I knew it was enough. So instead I work with the negative beliefs that I and others carry about ourselves and we all have negative beliefs.

Speaker 2: 16:50

We all believe these negative thoughts about ourselves and are working to overcome them. For me, one of my beliefs has been that I don't deserve anything good based on the impact of my life.

Speaker 2: 17:04

Because of that, I have felt stuck. I find I'm self-sabotaging in my business. I'm self-sabotaging in relationships with people. I just kind of hermit a lot of times when that gets really activated and like to withdraw. I've been working with that. I'm on the other side now, which is why I'm able to talk about this.

Speaker 2: 17:30

But working through that, so believing I get what I want, I'll put on some of my favorite music and I'll use creativity, so I'll think through what is it that I feel like I'm experiencing right now? I'm experiencing I don't get what I want, I don't get to reach for what I want. So I'll do some sort of movement where I'm actually reaching and then I'll pretend like I Well, okay, so this is what I have been doing the last little while. I'll pretend like I'm a lion and I'm chasing what I want out on the desert and then I get to jump on it and pounce it and pull it inside of me. And so playing that playful movement and actually pretending like I'm a lion, running after what I want and then jumping on it releases that buildup of negative emotional angst that I carry and then has allowed me to shift that mindset that I don't deserve anything good, I don't get what positive things in my life and I think, oh, no way I do get to.

Speaker 2: 18:31

And so that makes it easier for me, or has made it easier for me, to start saying, oh, I want this, and then to go after it. And so it's using play to shift and release that energy that's holding that negative belief so tightly inside of us.

Speaker 1: 18:47

Yeah, so if Correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm hearing you correct you try and identify the emotion or the stuckness that you're feeling, I'm feeling like I don't deserve, or whatever the negative emotion is. You identify it and then act out the opposite. Is that what? Am I understanding you correct?

Speaker 2: 19:10

Yes, except instead of negative emotion, I would say negative belief or negative cognition. Yeah, because when we tap into those negative beliefs that we carry, we oftentimes have multiple emotions surrounding them Shame, fear, anger, whatever. Those are ones that come up for me, which is why I mentioned those. But we have so many emotions surrounding that if we isolate one emotion, we're kind of doing a disservice to the entire system. So, it's taking into the negative belief, and then I do playful movement around shifting into what the positive would be if I actually believe it.

Speaker 1: 19:49

Yeah. So do you do this in group at all or just strictly one-on-one?

Speaker 2: 19:56

Generally, most of my clients see the biggest improvement one-on-one, because I'm able to tap into your specific body. I do offer a weekly class. That's where I pick the theme. I do movement surrounding the theme, so I do have a class that people can come to learn what it's like. It's really just kind of a play some traditional yoga but we had a play element to it so you can see what it's like. But when I work one-on-one with clients, that's where we're able to tap into your specific negative cognition or negative belief and shift that, rather than me picking the theme, which are themes that I hear from people all the time, and so I'll pick a theme around the class. But one-on-one we get into your specific stuff. So I offer both.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Awesome, awesome. So I want to kind of lean back into the uncertainty and like, if people are feeling stuck and unsure of what is the next step, how do I? I know there's something inside of me that needs to be healed. I'm not exactly sure, and that in and of itself can be paralyzing at times. I know for me personally. I just was so overwhelmed with the trauma and I don't know how to move forward. So I can very much resonate with feeling paralyzed. What are some practical steps that you can suggest to help women overcome the fear of the unknown and maybe step into this healing and this freeing, this movement? How would you kind of guide them in this?

Speaker 2: 21:32

Yeah, absolutely. One of the first things and one of the best things that I recommend to people is to start with the sway, and so I'm going to invite you to do this with me. We'll talk to it right now. So start. You can do it seated, you can do it standing laying on the floor is a little challenging because we want the sway in motion. And so start with the side to side sway and start to notice what's happening in your body, what's happening with your shoulders, maybe explore what's happening with your toes, notice what's happening with your gut.

Speaker 2: 22:01

A lot of times we carry tension in our intestines. Our gut will clench up. Now switch and go front to back and start to notice what happens when you go front to back. So all of us have one way that feels more soothing to our nervous systems. So when I go front to back, my shoulders start to clench up, my toes start to kind of grip into the ground, my belly grips, and then maybe go side to side, and then when I go side to side, I feel more fluid, more open. My shoulders drop. I don't know if you just saw that, lorraine, your shoulders just dropped as you were doing, and so it is exploring, even just front to back and then side to side, starting to tap into the information in a way that's safe you get to control how much movement you do but starting to realize that your body's really trying to give you information. And so you start to notice. What does it feel like when I'm tense versus when I'm relaxed, and so, like we were talking about at the beginning, learning, oh, that chaos of my shoulders, up around my ears, my toes gripping my belly just clenched. That's when I'm in fight or flight, but I can feel a sense of relaxation and then, if it gets overwhelming, stop, stop when you're overwhelming, empowering yourself to start to feel these sensory input information that's coming from your body. And then, when you're done, when it's overwhelming, stop, you get the autonomy and the ability, the empowerment to stop and then maybe start adding bigger movements in. And so it's.

Speaker 2: 23:34

And then I don't recommend people start right away going into big movements to work on their negative beliefs until they've built up learning, their what's called the window of tolerance. So and I did this myself, which is why I'm recommending don't do this I was like, oh, please, great, I'm just gonna jump right in, I'm gonna go right into the deepest stuff and really, really get that out. Yeah, put myself into a flashback and ended up like in a ball of tears, crying, sobbing on the floor, having to call my therapist. So I would recommend start small, don't go. If you're like me and you wanna go right in, just get it done. I would say please don't do that because that can put your system into overwhelm.

Speaker 2: 24:19

So it's starting with small steps. Maybe it's when you practice grounding, bend your knees, feeling into all four corners of your feet, and then rolling side to side, do you feel under your big toe, under your pinky toe and two sides to your heel? We have a right and a left side to our heel, and so how do you shift to adjust to actually feel into all four corners of your feet? And so it's starting to do small movements like that and then coming out when you're done, so that you start to feel that sense of safety with having sensory experiences, because that can be overwhelming and just know when you're done, be done, it's okay, you don't have to keep pushing yourself.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Yeah, oh my gosh, I love this, and everything's flying by I know and I can talk her.

Speaker 1: 25:06

So, yes, it's okay. So am I? One thing that I did want to say when I was doing the movement. It made me think about how, because I do both of those movements the front to back and the side to side and I started thinking to myself, as you're talking, like, when do I do that? And it's normally I will subconsciously go side to side. It's like that's self soothing to me. It doesn't matter where I am, what I'm doing, it's just it's soothing to me. And then I ask myself well, when do I do the other one? Because I know I do it, and it's usually when my anxiety is elevated or I'm feeling nervous and uncertain. I used to have really bad panic attacks and I would do that. I would start to hunch over, tighten everything up and I'd start to move front to back.

Speaker 2: 26:01

And doing that is valuable. So even and I say to people a lot of times, I'll do movement so that we can release that anxiety. So when you're back to front, that's a way to release that nervous energy. And when you're feeling that, maybe try coming to the side to side or whatever variation for those of you listening feel is more soothing to you. That one that creates more tension can release energy and is great. But if you want to come out of it, to come into more that relaxed state, then maybe try switching to the other one.

Speaker 2: 26:33

It's that learning how to feel safe in safety and peace, rather than that anxiety area where most of us tend to live in.

Speaker 1: 26:43

Yeah, that's so awesome. I love this.

Speaker 2: 26:50

We all do self-soothe. Think of once again coming back to our wiring and our brain for play. That's how our nervous system is rhythmic and repetitive. That's soothing to us. Think of how we soothe babies. Soothe yourself that way. Give yourself a hug. If a hug is uncomfortable, hold your own hand and then do the sway Taping into healing ourselves the way that we, in theory, would like to treat babies. Not every baby is treated that way. So many children don't know what that feels like. So start to learn to give yourself that.

Speaker 1: 27:24

Another one is tapping, tapping yeah, sometimes.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Yes, I love tapping and I'll have people tap all over their body to actually create a sense of where your boundary is now versus. Are you a small child versus a grown-up?

Speaker 1: 27:39

Yeah, yeah, oh, my goodness, I love it. I know I can go for hours on this, but, wrapping up, I do want to ask and give you the opportunity Is there anything that you're working on or doing or going to release, or how can people get in touch with you?

Speaker 2: 28:00

Yeah, so I actually just released a free how-to guide on not only what trauma-informed intuitive movement is, but how to use it, how it heals, and some movement exercises that you can start to play around with. So I would say, go check that out, see if this is something that would help you, and you can get it through my website. My website is angiberitmovementcom, and I spell my last name differently. We spell it B-E-R-R-E-T-T, so angiberitmovementcom, and then you can see what classes I offer. If you want to work one-on-one with me, I do have a limit to how many clients I can take and I have space for a few more, so if you're interested, I'd love to work with you. Awesome, yeah, so my website. You can get to all my social medias from there. My website has everything.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Yes, I will make sure all of that is in the show notes. Man, it has been. I absolutely love talking with you. It has been so insightful. I hope people have gotten and gained some knowledge and maybe some spikes, some curiosity, and I would love it, love it, love it if people would find you, find your website and find some healing, because ultimately, you know, we were created to live, evolve and grow and be healthy and be connected to the earth and to one another. So, thank you so much, angie. It has been a pleasure. Oh, thank you for having me, lorraine. I've enjoyed it Absolutely. All right, guys, if this episode resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you would share it, send it to anyone and also if you would please leave me a review, but, most importantly, go find Angie and say hello and give her some love as well. Until next time, guys.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Hey, it's Lorraine. As you know, it's my joy and passion to teach and encourage others through this podcast, but my heart is actually at live events. Currently, I'm available for booking, so if you're organizing a live event, I'd love to share my story. Your audience will walk away with tangible tools on how to overcome limiting beliefs, break down obstacles and discover their gifts, talents and abilities in order to live a life that God created them to live. It's not the size of the audience that's important. It's the connection and impact that I will bring. For more information, email me at Lorraine at theboldbeginningscom.