Feel To Heal with Laura Haraka

Host Kris LeDonne welcomes guest, Laura Haraka- proud mother of two daughters & former high school math teacher. Laura healed from a life of chronic pain & now her focus is offering somatic experiencing sessions with mind body tools + breathwork so others can live the life they deserve. 

She shares her healing story with joy and gratitude and offers countless ways to be supported and inspired, regardless where your journey takes you. Her optimism and generosity inspire and support her audience. 

Laura also shares how photos helped her identify her growth and practice gratitude for her healing journey… she is the epitome of picturing love!

Visit Laura Haraka’s website: feeltoheal.live where you can find a free test to help you see if your pain condition is a mind-body condition. Listeners of Picture Love podcast can use code FREEBREATHER for one free breathwork workshop.  Find Laura on Instagram as @feel.to.heal.wellness or insight timer to listen to somatic breathworks for pain relief, grounding and energy.

"Welcome to the Picture Love podcast! I’m your host Kris LeDonne and it’s my purpose to see the good in others and mirror the love back to them, and photos are one of the ways I love to do this. You’ll hear a mix of solo episodes with lessons I love to share and heartfelt interviews and valuable resources to support you with the parts that resonate. As an encourager, it’s my joy to help you picture love better in your life and if you need help curating photo evidence of lives well lived… I

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Find me on Social @KrisReminisce or visit my website krisledonne.com

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Happy Reminiscing!
<3, Kris

Support the show

You can help other photo lovers and storytellers find this podcast by sharing and leaving us a rating/review.

Find me on Social @KrisReminisce or visit my website krisledonne.com

Grab Kris's freebie HERE: Obliterate The Overwhelm

Happy Reminiscing!
<3, Kris

Transcript

0:36

Oh, Laura, welcome to the picture love podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited to talk with you today I met you when we were networking with a group of like really, really unusually enlightened and Amazing, vibrant women. And I noticed you, I noticed you right away and I was so grateful at the end of the meeting when you said that you were interested in the podcast, but that you also like to share your story on podcasts. So I am grateful to you for saying something I'm glad we connected And Laura, in your own words, will you share a little bit about why you said you wanted to have this conversation with me on picture love podcast today? Sure, you know, I love to share my story because I had chronic pain for four years. So the reason I like to share my story is because it can give other people hope that they can heal from what's inside of them, these physical pains that they can heal using different modalities. So I like to bring these modalities to their awareness that they're there and that

Laura Haraka: 1:51

we have the actual ability, our innate ability to heal ourselves.

1:56

That's amazing. When you think about it, you know, in this day and age, we are so used to everything, having an instant reply and instant solution. You know, I mean, dating ourselves. We remember before times of dial up and internet and all that and where we had to wait for things to happen. We had to wait for photos to be developed. We had to wait for that connection to actually happen. But we're quite spoiled for better for worse, um, by having instant reactions. And I've noticed that, you know, there's the trend that got a headache, grab a pill too tired, grab a cup of coffee. And we're so go, go, go, but that's really not part of healing is it it's really more about patching the moment to get through the day. Yeah, what we're not doing is we're not listening to our body. When we're not listening to our body when we have a headache now certain things can happen, right? Let's face it There's physical things like you could be getting a roof done and you could get a headache So I don't mean those kind of things right but a lot most of the time stress and unprocessed emotions every thought, every response, everything that happens to us has a response in our body. I'm not saying don't take a pill ever, to help yourself because these things are great. They were out there to help us. But if we can examine what our body's telling us, maybe our body needs to rest. Maybe there's something, an emotion that needs to be resolved or looked at. Things like that. Things that maybe we don't think about consciously because we're just at such a pace and our focus is elsewhere. Whether we're caregiving for other people or organizations or our job is our baby or right. The things that, that get our focus. Because these, this pain or signals that are happening to us. And would you agree that that pain doesn't always happen in the moment when the, whatever the cause takes place? Exactly. Most of the time it happens after our body has time to digest it and then we'll get the headache. Then we'll get the stomach ache. Right. Well, tell us about your story. So my story started basically May 2nd, 2015. I remember that date so well for me, and I'll be honest with you, I was. I'm doing some air quotes, like a normal mom. And I was a soccer mom, cheerleading mom, and I took my kids to school. And that day I came home and I had to go to the bathroom. And a few minutes later I had to go again. And I was feeling this urgency and frequency and I was like, this is really strange. So I kind of blew it off. I had things to do that day and I said, Oh, maybe I have a UTI. And honestly, I never had one in my life before, so I really didn't know what it was like. So a couple of days later I went to the doctor, I said, Oh, let me get a UTI test. I'll get on an antibiotic, fix this, right? Like we just said a minute ago and pop a pill and I'll be on my way and better. Well, it was not a UTI, so I really didn't know what to do. so I decided to go to a urologist. And they did a cystops cystoscopy and a Eurodynamic study. And I don't know if you know what those studies are like, but they're very invasive and it's a, it's very vulnerable to be in that situation, to have these tests done on you, to check your bladder. So I had these things done and they couldn't find anything wrong.

Laura Haraka: 5:46

And I remember so vividly, the doctor called me in his office and he said to me, There is nothing wrong with you. You need a psychiatrist. That's devastating, because they're saying you're not sick. You're crazy. It's all in your head. It's like name calling

6:04

basically saying you're crazy. And

Laura Haraka: 6:08

I knew what I was feeling was real because, and for everyone listening, all pain is real. Okay, all pain is real.

6:18

Anything you're feeling is absolutely real and I went to the car and I just cried my eyes out literally so from that moment. I started a four year quest and I traveled to Texas to a specialist there. I traveled to Tennessee. I'm from New Jersey. So I had to hop on a plane every time I did this, uh, for experimental procedures. I went to Washington, New York city. I went all over the country for consults and specialists. And I had injections. I had ultrasounds, MRIs, cat scans. I even had a surgery to correct what was they thought was wrong with my body. So I had constant pelvic pain now for a period of three years where I was really suffering and I tried the medical route, and I also tried the holistic route. I tried anything I could come up with. There was those freeze tanks you could go in. There's water tanks you could go in. I tried acupuncture, supplements, you name it. I did everything I could to try to relieve my pain. And nothing was happening at all. And I was almost starting to believe I was crazy because they, they, sometimes they found things in my body, but they weren't the cause of my pain. Because I had a surgery to correct one of them and it didn't even work. So frustrating. And at this point in time, I lost my connection with my kids. Um, I was addicted to oxycodone and morphine and I was addicted to Klonopin and they're very hard to get off these things once you're addicted to them. I had no relationship with my husband or my friends. Those things numb you. They numb you on the whole. They don't just treat the symptom or the pain. And so that just shuts off your ability to have relationships functioning, absolutely. And when you take these things and they wear off, sometimes the pain comes back worse. So I was in a bad situation. And then. It all changed. This is, this is the best part, but it's important to understand like what I went through beforehand. All of a sudden my daughter came home from work one day. And she said, mom, there's a girl there that used a hypnotherapist to get better. And I said, okay, great. I said, I'll give it a try.

Laura Haraka: 8:55

I was still willing to try anything. I'll never give up on myself and no one should ever do that.

9:01

So I went and I didn't really have high expectations. Right. And, but I said, let me give it a try. I had nothing else to lose. So I went to her twice a week and I would get to her office usually before she got there. I was very sick. I even looked sick and I would sit at the end of this hallway waiting for her to come and she'd walk down the hallway, we'd have our session and then I'd go home. So maybe it was like a month or two later into our meeting and all of a sudden I'm sitting there at the end of this hallway and I hear someone come in the door. And I see a head just peek down the hallway at me and jump back and I was like, okay, what is she doing? What is this lady doing? Right. And then all of a sudden I hear dance music blasting, playing from her phone. And this woman starts dancing down this hallway. Now, at this point, I'm like, do I look at her? Am I supposed to laugh? What am I supposed to do with this? And why is she even doing this? I had no idea. So, she does this every single meeting now. For a few months, it was a long way to me each and every time. Okay. I'm thinking each time I'm like, what do I do with this? Does she want me to get up and dance with her? Like, I don't even know what she wanted me to do. Right. So. There was a part of me that wanted to smile. There was a part of me that wanted to experience joy again. And I recognized that part of myself. And I recognized that when I went to her, maybe my pain wasn't going away at first, but I felt like this woman had hope that I can get better. She had a belief that I could get better. And that was the reason I stayed alive. Because if it wasn't for her and those appointments, I don't know if I would be here with you today. So because I was so grateful, even though I was in a lot of pain and suffering, I was so grateful to her and her birthday was coming up in three months. So I'm like, I'm going to do a dance for her now. Thank God I decided three months early because. I'm a bad dancer. So I enlisted dancers, and they started teaching me the steps to a Mandisa dance. I started practicing and I'm practicing and I'm enjoying time spent with my kids and I'm practicing these steps, which are very hard for me to learn actually. And it was the weirdest thing and the coolest thing I started realizing that my pain started going down as I was doing these steps, as I was practicing this dance, as I was having fun. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh my goodness. The lost art of play. Exactly. That's amazing. And what happened with you and your kids during that process? Our connection started growing again. It was something I could do to connect with them. And even though I was still on painkillers at this time and still wasn't the mom I wanted to be. It was our first form of connection together from the beginning of this pain. Beautiful. Now that right there is hope. That's hope. I'm mom of a dancer here. So I totally thoroughly appreciate that. And I've promised myself that from now on, I'm going to dance every day, but I mean, we're talking about stand up at your desk dance party, that kind of dance, not the kind of performing that she is capable of, but I believe dances for every anybody. Anyone, you don't have to be a performer. No, you don't, you don't have to do it's purpose, right? Exactly. Just to have fun. Yes I want to let you continue to tell us about the birthday. Okay. So I danced down this hallway and she might've even started crying because she was just so touched by the fact that I did this for her. So nervous to do this. I've never really gotten up and danced for just a woman standing there for me before but I felt like she was worth it and I was worth it. So I, I decided to, to do this dance and we put together and realized, and I explained to her what was happening over the last few months. That my pain was getting better, it was decreasing. So it was that moment that I realized that this was a mind body condition. It's so amazing how our bodies can communicate things to us, but our minds have to catch up with that. And that's when I started searching the internet. So I learned about somatic therapy because I realized that somatics is a way of, it's a therapy aimed at basically treating trauma. Okay. And stress related and unprocessed emotions that are in our body along with chronic pain. So I found a somatic practitioner and it really helped me develop a felt sense of what was happening in my body. So, I was able to, in these sessions, look at my symptoms with a lens of curiosity. Okay, bring awareness to them and notice my symptoms without judgment. And once you do that, you can let go of some of the fear of the symptoms. And I also realized that there are sensations. In our entire body, our hand right now, like you're probably not paying attention to your hand right now, right? You know, don't even really know it's attached to your body But if you took your hand up and if you lifted it right now, if your listeners are, you know, just listening, just even do that right now. And you can start noticing your hand and noticing maybe that there's a weight to it, noticing that there's a warmth to it or a coolness. There could be a pulse or a tingling, right? So I'll let you put your hand down now. So every part of the body has sensations in it, right? We're just not paying attention to it. And the ones that are, let's say, scary to us are amplified in our brain. So if we can look at it through a sense, a lens of curiosity, no judgment, almost watching it kind of like a TV show and noticing what's there, our symptoms can actually change. That's amazing. It is amazing just by putting a color to it. A weight to it, a shape to it, and just noticing it, what's there. It can also help you somatics to lean into positive sensations in your body. So if your hand isn't what's hurting you, you could start leaning into the sensations in your hand and just noticing those sensations. The other thing I'll share with you about somatics, so when someone has a symptom in their body, a sensation, and I'll give you a story so I had a client and she had something called restless leg syndrome. Okay. I know some of us have probably heard of that before. And this woman had a history of a son that was abusive. He was addicted to drugs and alcohol and through her life, she was not able to escape this abuse. She was not able to flee or fight back. So the brain was actually producing these symptoms in her body that we call a diagnosis of restless leg syndrome. So I actually encourage people just to drop the diagnosis. And just look at the sensation or the symptom and what's happening in their body. So through our somatic practices, what we were able to do was give the legs a voice and we were able to go back to talking about her son and talking about the legs and allowing her legs through a picture in her mind, okay, to run. or fight because what somatics does is there's an action in our body that never got to be completed and it lets the action complete itself. Now it doesn't actually have to mean that she physically kick. You can, and I've done that with people and you can physically move your legs and run, but it can also be done as a visualization in your brain, which is really just a picture in your brain. So we would imagine her moving, running. In a place where she liked, okay, where she brought into her, imagination. And we were able to incorporate all of her senses into that picture, having her smell what she could smell, see, hear, and allowing the legs to move. And over time, her legs calmed down, it was released, and she's better. That's amazing. The things that our bodies are able to do, which is just, it's really fascinating when you think about it and, and the visualization part really matters to me. I'm very visually oriented working with photos and so to actually visualize that memory. In a new way, in a new script and framing it out allows her to see she's not stuck there and trapped in her new visualization. She's seeing a more positive outcome. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. There's a new positive outcome. We can't take away what happened to us, right? That's part of who she is today because of it. Right. You can't have the triumph without the story. Exactly. But we can reframe what happened and let that action be completed. Reframe that's reframing. Yeah, that is key. Absolutely. You know, when I, um, work with people's photos, I often find, um, photos that trigger smiles. And then there are things that are sticking points because it might not be a quote unquote bad picture, but it might have emotions that were attached to it of the negative exactly. And, and I'm not suggesting Um, that we have to throw them away, but, but reframing them or maybe just setting them aside with the intention to reframe them if it can't happen right this moment. That's why the healing doesn't happen necessarily in a snap, right? Right. Exactly. No, it takes time to integrate. Right. And to decide, is this thought something I'm willing to think, right? Absolutely. I think that's why we can find healing in any number of scenarios because like I find healing working with with the soil and my in my garden, you know, and being out in nature and but that's a movement. My body is actually moving. And when I'm talking to you about it, I'm visualizing movement yeah. And your brain doesn't know the difference between a visualization and what's actually happening. Yeah. Okay. Let's park there for just a moment go back to what you just said sure. There are multiple studies done that when you visualize something. It actually has a physiological change in your body just from visualizing something. You can put yourself. I, I'd have to get the exact name of the study, but they put, um, a group of older individuals into a room. Okay. And they made this room actually with all things that were from a younger part of their life. Okay. So the TV was, you know, older TV shows were playing when they were younger pictures on the wall, the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when they looked at these men and women, when they came out of this room after a certain time period. There was a physiological change in their body. Their heart rate was better. Their pulse was better. They acted like they were younger again. So it's almost true. You can go back in time. They say you become who you surround yourself with. Exactly. Exactly. And there's actual physiological change in the body from doing it. So anybody can, can really heal in theory from pretty much anything that's happening with our bodies.

Laura Haraka: 22:13

Our brain is listening to us all the time. And it's believing every single thought we tell ourselves. So it's really just becoming aware of those thoughts, but you have to really be careful. And I give this scenario to my clients too. You know, if we say to ourselves, Oh, I'm so sick of my job, I need a break. I need this. I need that. This is awful. The brain is hearing you. So don't be surprised if a week later your brain gives you what you want and maybe you're sick with the flu because you needed that break and your brain gave you exactly what you wanted.

22:47

That's not the kind of break we probably would have ordered off the menu consciously. Exactly. Exactly. Oh my gosh. All right. So Laura, can we change gears for just a minute just unpack a little bit about this subject and the context of gratitude? Sure. When I look at an image and I frame it with a statement of gratitude I feel like I'm pouring fertilizer on that relationship. Yes. I feel like every time I do that and I love on this relationship, that love grows in me. But then when I share it with somebody else, it, it compounds it even more. And so can we talk about pictures and gratitude in your language for a minute? Sure. Well, I guess when I think of this, I'd like to start with. Memories on Facebook. Right. Okay. Okay. You know how it comes back to you. What I used to do is I would look at that picture from before May 2nd, 2015. And I'd look at it and be really sad. And I'd say, Oh, I remember being here. I remember I used to have people over for karaoke parties, and there's a few pictures that pop up like that and I go, Oh, that's when I felt good. And it used to make me feel really sad, but now, since I've gotten better and healed my pain, I have a new picture that comes in my mind. And another way of looking at the old pictures now that's shifted. So there's one picture that I really love I went on a trip last year to Bali on a retreat. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. I'm actually going to be running one myself next year too, as well. And I was in a big brimmed Bali red hat because red is my favorite color and red brings me joy. So I had this big red hat on and I had a grin on my face like you can't even imagine the smile. It was so big. And I was just sitting in this rice field, basically drinking tea and that they were giving us to sample. And I. I was so grateful. And I realized looking back at that picture, like I actually could cry happy tears looking at it because I am so grateful. I was so grateful to be there. I was so grateful to not be in pain. Was so grateful for all the support I have gotten from my therapists, my coaches, and My friends and my family, so there was such a feeling and I can see the picture in my mind right now, so I'm not even looking at you. I'm looking at this picture and you're smiling so beautifully and like if you can see what just happened to me. Yes. Yeah, like I can't. The smile can come out. Your voice is warmer and fuller. Yes. And you have a rose that just popped up in your cheeks. Yeah. So just knowing I,

Laura Haraka: 26:04

I have this picture on my phone and it just brings me such a warmth, such a happiness, such a sense of gratitude. And since that picture, I am now able to go back to older pictures and I don't look at them with sadness. I look at them and say, wow, look how much I've grown since that picture. Look how much I've learned. Look how much I've taught my children. Because I can't get that time back. That I was, and it is sad that I lost some time and I was, you know, not feeling well. But I choose not to look at that. And I choose to look at, wow, I'm teaching my kids resilience. I'm teaching them never to give up.

26:57

I'm actually even teaching my daughters and her roommates in college breathwork. You're modeling hope. What you said about that photo and identifying the deep, deep gratitude.

Kris LeDonne: 27:14

It's like you're taking the frame from that photo and holding it over other photos since then. It's exactly what I'm doing. Yes, the framework that comes from that photo can now be used to look. As a lens through all my other photos, especially the ones before May 2nd, 2015, and to look at it through growth. Yeah, it's like an emotional picture frame now that I can now see growth, um, hope, purpose, and I can, it also shows people.

27:49

The one thing I'm actually really grateful for, too, is

Kris LeDonne: 27:52

it shows people that you can actually, at any age, change. And you can reach a goal and you can have a purpose and you can go for it. Absolutely.

28:06

This is just really filling me up and, and it's gotta be helping somebody else as well. Yeah. That's the whole purpose, right? Yes. That's the whole purpose of sharing is really so that we can just shine our light and let somebody else see the way a little bit better and learn from each other and grow. Together. Exactly. Exactly. Grow together. Grow together is the word. I always say I'm on a twin journey. Yes. With all my clients. Yes. We're all growing. They're no different than us. Right. Even people who are not your clients are serving. Exactly. You know, just by being and showing up. I love this. I love this so much. So if somebody is listening to this and they're saying, I might be ready to ask for help, what would you, what would you want to whisper in their ear? You're worth it. Thank you. Yes, you're worth it. Just what you said about yourself in the beginning of this conversation. Maybe I'll say I'm worth it. And it's not selfish in a negative way. It's allowing yourself, to be whole for yourself and for the greater, for the collective. Exactly. Exactly. We have to find that love for ourself first. Laura, how can somebody get some more of your knowledge and expertise if they wanted to follow you after this conversation? Well, my website is feeltoheal.Live. And I am@feeltohealwellness on Instagram and Facebook. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for picturing love in the world. And thank you for the way you have transformed your healing journey into serving others is just absolutely beautiful. And, I appreciate you so much. I appreciate you too. So thank you for having me. My pleasure.