In this week's episode of 'Healed, Now What?' Lisa Dawn shares a deeply personal story about her transformative weekend experience with plant medicine. She explores how this experience was integral to her journey of healing and connecting with her body.
Lisa reflects on her past struggles with spiritual bypassing and the pivotal moment that led her to reclaim her body and address her trauma.
She delves into the importance of operating out of needs rather than fears and emphasizes the interconnectedness of our physical, mental, and spiritual bodies.
The episode concludes with key takeaways about self-advocacy, the importance of embodiment, and the realizations she attained through her spiritual and healing practices.
In this week's episode of 'Healed, Now What?' Lisa Dawn shares a deeply personal story about her transformative weekend experience with plant medicine. She explores how this experience was integral to her journey of healing and connecting with her body.
Lisa reflects on her past struggles with spiritual bypassing and the pivotal moment that led her to reclaim her body and address her trauma.
She delves into the importance of operating out of needs rather than fears and emphasizes the interconnectedness of our physical, mental, and spiritual bodies.
The episode concludes with key takeaways about self-advocacy, the importance of embodiment, and the realizations she attained through her spiritual and healing practices.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to another episode of Healed Now What? A podcast where we discuss life, relationships, connection, and trauma through the lens of somatic and attachment psychology, nervous system health, relationships, and self discovery. I'm Lisa Dawn, and I'm on a mission to teach people how to transform their deepest wounds into their greatest strengths by first transforming the relationship they have with themselves. So whether you've had trauma, years of failed partnerships, or just want a better relationship with your body, I've got you covered. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Educator, Relationship Mentor, and Trauma Survivor. With a lifetime of experience helping not only myself, but countless others transform their lives by learning how to become the fullest versions of themselves. Learn more at www. somatic. com We do this through self awareness, connecting with their bodies and changing the way they perceive themselves and others. I have coached innumerous people how to heal their wounds and create lasting change so they can live a more joyous, passionate and fulfilling life. Thank you so much for tuning in and enjoy the show. Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to this week's journey of the podcast Healed, Now What? With your host, me, Lisa Dawn. So it is approximately 5. 43 on Wednesday afternoon. And typically I would have already. Recorded this podcast episode, potentially would have written it last night or sometime earlier today, but had this whole other idea about what I was going to talk about, but kind of scrapped that as I wanted to share about an experience that I had over the weekend that quite honestly, I'm still integrating and processing and likely will be for a while. Weeks, months, if not years to come, but felt called to share a bit about it. So I won't. get into the details or name the kind of ceremony or the medicine involved, but I will share about my experience with how it connects to my journey, um, an integral part of my journey of who I am today and how it relates to connecting with our bodies. So we're talking about plant medicine, we're talking about consciousness, um, Yeah, we're talking about some fantastical things. So thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoy the show today. So this past weekend I found myself enveloped in a profound ceremony with some of the most beautiful and loving people I've encountered. The experience was so miraculous, in fact, that words still seem insufficient to fully capture its essence. The sensations that I felt, the visions that I beheld, and the people who are now kind of just an inseparable part of my family. Like, all of it was amazing. But nothing short of extraordinary. And then there was the environment. So picture this, it was solstice, a full moon, indigenous day, and the fireflies made their summer debut in rural Alberta. So the air was alive with a sense of wonder and transformation. And just to give some context, it had been probably about seven or eight years since I had been in such a, a sacred container. And to be quite honest, I thought that that chapter of my life was closed forever. So I want to take you back a bit and provide some context. Many years ago, during what I would describe as a dark night of the soul. I sought refuge in my spiritual practice, and that is a beautiful thing. It became my sanctuary, a place where I felt supported and held as I sat for hours and hours chanting and offering my life to spirit. It was a comfort, a safe haven. However, over time, I had developed an unhealthy attachment to my practice. So some folks may call this spiritual bypass. I spent countless hours in meditation and mantra while simultaneously neglecting other aspects of my life that really desperately needed my attention. So one day after a six hour long sit of staying in the same position, chanting and deep devotion, I received a message and it kind of just dropped in. And it was as clear as day. And it said, Lisa, this is not where you need to be. And that was it. Whew. Well, I felt a severe sense of abandonment. So I thought, my God, not only have some of the most impactful people in my life have abandoned me, but now I'm being abandoned by spirit too. It was actually quite excruciating. But somewhere deep down, there was like a little nugget within me that knew that it was true. There was something that, What I was missing about this journey, there was something that I was not paying attention to, but I was gutted for I probably the next few months, my life suddenly felt devoid of meaning. I was gutted in a typical response to feeling abandoned. I decided to kind of completely turn off my spiritual practice. If I didn't care, it couldn't hurt me. If I walked away and never looked back, I wouldn't feel the pain of being left out in the cold. But now what? I had been devoting all of this time to my spiritual practice. And to be honest, my body still wasn't feeling much better. I had a lot of anxiety. I had a lot of chronic pain. Things just were not working out. I felt panicked and shaky on the inside most days. It was probably two or three months after that. that I received a book and it was called Waking the Tiger. Some of you may know it. It's by Peter Levine. And as I was looking at this book, I just knew that this was going to be a big part of My journey, so I opened the book to a random page as I do and it read to heal trauma We must first feel it. Oh shit. And so began the process of reclaiming my body Welcoming her back to life. Over those years years that started with that book. I learned to be with challenging emotions. I learned to be with challenging sensations, feelings, and behaviors. I developed the skills to separate myself from my trauma. I became a more solid, secure version of myself. I was regaining my strength, my courage, and my love for not only myself, but those around me. I reconnected with my pleasure. I healed so much, and I began to see myself through the eyes of love, compassion, and trust. I recognized how my wounds kept me in a state of fear, pain, and panic. During that time, I was also working with my nervous system, delving into neurobiology and neuroplasticity. I trained and became a somatic experiencing practitioner and a dynamic repatterning therapist. And I sought out somatic practitioners and began working with attachment therapy to heal my attachment wounds. All the while during that time, I was reprogramming years of terror, angst, and fear that was trapped in my body. I found my footing again. I started feeling passion, and joy, and welcomed, fulfilling, and loving relationships back into my life. I discovered that my body held The pain, but it also held the answers. So understanding my biology brought me back to life. I was no longer relying on others to save me, and I knew that the things that I needed were within me. And so now we'll go back to this past weekend and the re-emergence of my spiritual practice. So. And the opportunity to sit in ceremony whispered to me last September, so September of 2023. And I really took my time with the decision. And to fully understand the impact of this, I was someone, when I was really dysregulated, that would just go from experience to experience. So it didn't matter. what thing was happening, whether it was an intense meditation retreat or like shamanic drumming or an intense breath work session, I was just always game. So I didn't necessarily know how to check in with myself, how to integrate and how to embody the things that I was learning. So what ended up happening for me was that I was just. shocking my nervous system over and over and over again without really embodying most of, of what I was learning. And so this time was different though. I used the skills that I'd learned to allow my body and my whole being really to decide whether or not to join the sacred container. So I spent many months listening, watching, waiting, feeling my body. And when the time came, I said, yes, and felt really, really good about this decision. And when I say I felt really good about this decision, it felt just very relaxed in my body. My body could just kind of take an exhale. It's, it was almost like it was something that it was waiting for. So skipping forward to probably the, the second, evening, or the first evening actually, as I lay open and bare, ripped open on the floor, I saw many different versions of myself appear before me. So these were all little Lisas from ages five to let's say probably 21 and beyond. And they were all looking to the adult 43 year old Lisa to see them, to relate to them, to be with them and to witness them. And the pain was. was pretty intense. But then something arose within me. It was compassion, love, self trust, self reliance. My strong adult self, who had spent the last decade rebuilding and loving herself back to life, embraced all of the parts of her that still needed some love care and support. And in that moment, I knew that that was the work that needed to happen before immersing myself back into an intense encounter with, with spirit. And all of my experiences seem to fold in on themselves. So my, all of my spiritual teachers, my caregivers and my eternal support team, um, They joined me there and together we held all of these versions of me. I saw all the ways I still held on to my fear of abandonment. All the times I didn't receive the support I needed and all the times my body froze when put on the spot. And the pain eventually passed and was replaced by a feeling of utter reverence and regard, self regard, a high self regard. And again, I now understand why it was important for me to learn how to be in my body. I understood why I had to take a break from my spiritual practice because it had become more of an addiction of avoidance than something that was nurturing and expansive. So now, if this is something that resonates for you, only you can know if this is true for you or not. But for me, it was definitely the case. I was hiding because I didn't know how to be with the pain. of everything that I was experiencing. So the truth is that really none of these things are separate. Our physical body, our spiritual body, our mental body, all of these things are working together for our expansion. But the order in which I was to engage with them was crucial and how beautiful was it that I had the really realization that I hadn't been abandoned. I just had another path to take first. And that was the path of embodiment. Ah, big shares. So one of the fundamental ways that we can help ourselves heal is to begin to operate out of our needs rather than out of our fears. So I had to learn this lesson. I had spent so many years operating out of my fears, out of my dysregulation. The ability to be able to look at what our needs are in any situation so we can develop a stronger sense of self is huge because a stronger sense of self helps us to determine what is correct for us and what is not. There was a moment that I'm recalling in one of the nights where I felt, So weighted, so bogged down, my body was just sinking into the ground and one of the facilitators came over and asked if she could help lighten my load. Whew, what a sigh of relief that was. And in that moment, I saw all the ways I had always been there for people in ways I wished others had been there for me. And it unearthed a lifetime of buried truths. I saw all the ways my personality was molded by survival. And I truly realized that we cannot be our true and authentic selves while stuck in a trauma response and bracing for danger. And in that moment, I realized that this is exactly why the first step to healing isn't necessarily about, you know, the deep dives or the digging deep to discover who we might be. It's actually about convincing our nervous systems that the war is over. We're here now. We're safe. And that's when the real magic can happen when we can finally start to chase those dreams and do those things that just felt too risky before. We can do them now because our bodies know that we're safe now and that it's okay. When our brains aren't focused on protecting us from potentials of betrayal or rejection, life gets juicy. When we don't hold back from taking risks, or pursuing our dreams because our brain equates any potential failure or criticism with disapproval and fear, life gets juicy. When we don't avoid setting healthy boundaries with friends and family because our body is convinced that asserting itself will lead to abandonment. Life gets juicy. And so this is a bit of a smaller share today, because again, I, as I said at the beginning, I am still figuring out what this means and how this all fits with the Lisa that is sitting here with you right now. And this is different from my usual sharing, but it felt too relevant and important not to share. And I know some of you out there will resonate with this journey of coming home to yourself in many, many different ways. We are so much more than we could ever possibly imagine. So to end, I just wanted to give a few takeaways. Everything we do here matters. Nothing is wasted. Sometimes we get kicked out of things that are not for us and it hurts. Let it. Our bodies are our allies, not our problem. Life is always working to expand us. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. What you are looking for is not out there, but within you. Pretty sure that's a Ram Dass quote. Things aren't always as they seem. Become your own best friend first. Learn how to advocate for yourself. Be you. Well, friends, that is all for today's episode. As always, I'm thankful that you're here. I look forward to connecting with you again next Wednesday. Bye for now.
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