This week’s episode with movement and embodiment expert Manuela Mitevova focuses on the power of somatic movement in releasing emotions and healing trauma – particularly in women with ADHD. 

Manuela teaches people to release trauma and rid themselves of mystery pains and unprocessed emotions in the process. 

In this deep conversation, Manuela shares her journey to discovering the profound impact of gentle movement on emotional wellbeing.

Togetheron the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast, we talk about:

• Somatic movement for emotional release: how gentle movements such as neck rolls and pelvic tilts can release stored trauma.
• Polyvagal theory: understanding the body's survival response, and how core, back and pelvic muscles help with emotional regulation.
• Practical movement tips: how simple movements such as neck rolls and pelvic tilts can release tension in the body. 
• Emotional dysregulation and perfectionism: how somatic movement helps to manage emotions, particularly in ADHD women.
• Children and emotions: how encouraging children to express their emotions through movement prevents long-term emotional issues.

I loved this empowering chat with Manuela and loved her recommendation to start gently and listen to your body compassionately – without the pressure of perfectionism. 

Connect with Manuela Mitevova on Instagram, discover her free somatic movement resources on YouTube or explore the Hips Like Honey course.

Timestamps

The role of polyvagal theory and somatic movement [08:20]

Gentle movement practices for emotional release [13:23]

Addressing emotional dysregulation and perfectionism [20:11]

Specific movement practices for different emotions [23:30] 

The importance of somatic practices for children [31:23]

Try Kate's new Apple podcast subscription, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, here

Try The Herbtender's products here with 15% off using code kate15

Have a look at some of Kate's workshops and free resources here.

Kate Moryoussef is a women’s ADHD Lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity. 

Follow the podcast on Instagram here.

Follow Kate on Instagram here.

Find Kate's resources on ADDitude magazine here.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EfT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me, and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with ADHD.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm, and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

I'm so happy to bring my guest in.

Her name is Manuela Mitibova.

She is based in Lisbon and she is a movement teacher who specializes in releasing emotions through the body.

Now, if you know me and you will have listened to the podcast, you know how much I think about somatic movement and somatic healing.

And this is just yet another conversation to dive a little bit deeper into how we can release so much of our stuck trauma and our stuck unprocessed emotions through our body and not necessarily having to intellectualize it and have to talk it through hours and hours in therapy.

We can gain so much from some movement and understanding it through these experts.

So, Manu, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, kid.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I'm just delighted to have you here because I followed you on Instagram.

You've got a huge audience, and I love what you do because you simplify so much of the movement side and you help teach people, through gentle movement, through different somatic tools and strategies, how we can access these emotions and move through them and release them in a very gentle way.

And I guess I would love to start with Rahel, did this begin with you?

Because very often when we do these journeys and we're guiding people, there's always a personal story.

Would you mind telling me a little bit about what led you to this work?

Yes, of course.

So I started with movement pretty young.

I was into so many sports.

I still am into so many sports.

I started yoga when I was about 18 years old.

I'm 35 now.

So this is a long way that it's been brewing.

And I think I got into it very much like everyone else.

I was just looking for a movement practice to move my body, completely disregarding anything emotional, completely disregarding any kind of mental therapy, anything.

So it was all about moving the body.

Yoga was just starting to come up, and I thought I might as well do some stretching because I was doing a lot of sports and I was lucky enough to have a wonderful teacher.

Back in the time when I was living in Holland, I didn't know anything about yoga.

And I remember sitting there in class one day and the only thing she had us do was just do some simple neck rolls, just side to side, back and forth, and just releasing the neck.

And I felt such incredible release in my body from such a simple thing that I'm able to do at any point of the day.

I don't need someone to tell me to do that, but I was there in this class, just rolling my neck around.

And the release that I got from that was so incredibly powerful, that informed kind of my whole path forward, even though nothing really happened in terms of me going more into somatic movements for many years.

But I think that was the first 1st spark of oh, I actually don't have to get into some crazy back bends and God knows what and do all these crazy flows, which anyway, I got into doing because of course that was the path for all the yogis at the beginning.

But I was lucky enough to get this guide and to realize how powerful, very simple things can be in the body and to actually listen to that and to not forget it.

Because I think that a lot of people experience it in their practice even early on.

Because when you start moving your body, everything is very sensitive.

So if you've never moved at all and you start to move, it's enough to do that tiniest little bit and you will notice such a difference.

It has a huge impact.

So I think the important thing there is to just go slow and notice and listen to all of these small things that the body is trying to tell us.

And so back to your question.

This was kind of me back in my teenage years still, how yoga can be very daunting on one way, but also very transformative with the simplicity that it can bring.

And then I went into Ashtanga, which is a very rigorous type of yoga.

I was practicing that for many years and I absolutely loved it.

It's basically set poses that you do every time exactly the same.

You can do it by yourself, you don't need a guide there.

But it's nice to go into a community of people doing that.

And it was the ritual of it.

And that, I think, was my breaking point, where I realized that yoga can be much more than just going for a random class to move your body.

Because Ashtanga yoga is a very much spiritual practice.

It's all about deep breathing.

It's all about connecting to your body, to your limits, to your boundaries, what you can do.

And every time at the end of my practice, I would just lay there in my shavasana, and I would be the most emotional human being ever.

I cried, I was angry.

I was experiencing all of these emotions just at the end.

And at the same time, it was not overwhelming.

It's a very different experience to experience those emotions after you've physically moved your body in a very specific way that it was designed to move stuff out, rather than to experience emotions just in the moment where you don't really know what to do with them, for example, when you're in your car or in an office or having a fight with someone.

So it kind of teaches you how to navigate a lot.

And for me, that was absolutely wonderful.

And I did have a lot of cry sessions in my savasanas.

And I wondered, how does this work?

Why does this happen after I spend 2 hours on my mat?

What is it that is driving my nervous system to experience this?

So from there, it kind of developed into me exploring much more about somatic movement, much more about trauma studies.

This was also back in the time where polyvagal theory was starting to kind of become quite popular, because it's not such a new concept, I think, but it's just gained so much popularization in the recent years.

And with the book, the body keeps the score, but also going more into Stephen Porsche and all the polyvagal theory content that suddenly there was out there.

And I was so interested by that, and I studied so much about it and how that can be applied to movement, because it can be, and it's just such a light bulb kind of moment when you realize that, oh, okay, this is why.

This is how we function as humans, and this is why we do the things that we do.

This is why we feel the certain ways that we do.

It was kind of like a full circle moment for me, where all of the somatic practices and all of the somatic theory and everything that I was learning and studying kind of brought me back to all those years ago when I was in that yoga class doing my simple neck rolls and just noticing how it feels in my body and being present in that moment without being completely in my head and just thinking about all the work that I still have to do, about what I have to cook for dinner and so on.

So I think it was, everything was brewing from the beginning, and I think for so many people, there's all these small signs along their path.

And at some point, it does come full circle.

Maybe sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it takes less.

But we are already gravitating towards what we are meant to be going forward, I think.

Yeah, I love that.

I mean, there's so much to say on that polyvagal theory.

For me, I had a very similar experience.

I did a week's course with Deb Dana, who is like the queen of Polyvagal, and it was the most enlightening week ever.

But similar to you, I was applying it to my knowledge in ADHD and seeing how powerful it was to understand our nervous system and understand how we can regulate and we can calm it and we can reset, we can reheal through this understanding.

And especially, you know, we were talking just off camera before about ADHD women, especially, that until we're diagnosed, until we understand, we will have had a history of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, autoimmune issues, gut issues, anxiety, sleeplessness.

I mean, the list just goes on and on, and the dots have never been connected.

And I'm not saying that if you go and do half an hour of, like, gentle somatic movement, everything is cured.

But it's a really lovely, gentle exploration to seeing if that potentially could help you begin this new journey of letting things go and being really sort of compassionate and gentle in yourself.

And I want to ask you, do you notice an area in the body that holds the most trauma?

And I wonder, is it the hips?

Because I hear this so much.

And why, if it is the hips, why is it the hips?

So, for this question, I always answer that every person is completely unique and different, and at the same time, we are built in a very similar way.

So we all have certain muscles that are much bigger muscles.

So, for example, your hip muscles, your glutes and your hip flexors and so on, they're much bigger than, for example, the muscles on your wrists, right?

So just because of the surface area, just because of energetically where they are positioned around your.

Below your organs, your pelvic floor and so on, there's a lot going on there.

So there is a much bigger, energetic charge to your core, to your back, to your pelvis, rather than to your limbs, for example.

Of course, it's easier to think about it that our core, which is basically our torso, is the part where the most amount of energy is being stored.

That's where our organs are.

And if you go into traditional chinese medicine, you will see that the organs are what holds the energy.

We have the meridians, which go through the whole body that are basically moving this energy, dispersing it.

But the meridians are the energy holders.

So the torso is very important.

And I also, I always like to focus on the torso on, as I said, the back, the core and the pelvis.

So these are the three big areas for me that can potentially hold so much tension.

And if we go back to polyvagal theory, the reason for that is that these are the biggest muscles, the big muscles that we need to fight or flight.

Of course, if you want to start running, you need to brace your core.

You need to start, you know, you need to create that movement in your body.

And how you do that is by engaging the biggest muscles.

Of course, if you want to run or fight, this is how you do it.

So it's not so necessary to kind of engage your fingers or your wrists or your forearms.

Right.

So it's the bigger muscles in the body that are directly connected to our survival response.

And therefore, if we experience trauma or events that potentially can be traumatic to us that we were not able to process at the time, that energy, of course, as you know, does not dissipate out of these muscles.

And then it's as if you're stuck trying to run, but there's a wall in front of you.

I really like to use this example because it really exemplifies very well what that feels like in the body.

So if you're trying to run as fast as you can, but then just as you're about to begin, there's a wall in front of you and you can't, and your body still holds all of this energy, but it needs to go somewhere.

However, when we experience these events, we are not necessarily given a way to process that.

So we are not allowed or trained or shown how to, for example, do the natural shake or to scream or to stomp our feet and to shake off the body.

Right.

We are not allowed to do this, and therefore, that energy just has no way of dissipating.

And it stays in the muscles and mostly around the muscles of the core, the back, the hips, the hip flexors and so on.

So this is why it's so important to talk about the big muscle groups and how they're connected to our survival response, because this is then how we begin to understand how stretching them, moving them, activating them, can help release all of that tension that has been stuck there because of that traumatic or potentially traumatic experience.

Yeah, it's so fascinating.

And I was just, when you were saying that, I was thinking about, like, when, you know, a child has a tantrum, you know, like a two year old.

And they will not hesitate to throw themselves on the floor and stamp and bang their fists and shake and cry.

And then you kind of think, oh, my goodness, like 20 minutes.

They're like a different child.

They are laughing and they're joking and they're hugging you and you kind of go from day to night so quickly with kids who are not afraid to release those emotions in the moment.

And that's why we, as parents say, it's okay.

Let them experience it.

Let them do it.

Don't shush them, don't tell them to be quiet.

Don't be embarrassed if it's happening in the supermarket, because let them just move through that process.

But as we, especially as women, are told to contain ourselves, to not go crazy, all these words, to not be hysterical, and we are frozen in the moment, like you say, and then we don't have any place or space or safety to then process them with somebody that can handle it.

And very often in a traditional male female relationship, the male can feel maybe quite threatened or scared or not know what to do with us if we want to process.

So I agree with you.

I wish that we are taught from a really young age, you know, from our.

From the age of like, whatever age it is that we're told as girls, especially, to keep a lid on it, to keep quiet, that actually some hip stretches or shaking, whatever, is like a really healthy way to process emotions.

I wonder what you could say to somebody that's listening right now.

And they want to start with very gentle movements, somatic movement, whether they're experiencing the jaw release or the neck pain.

For me especially, I have had years and years of lower back pain, tight hips.

It's something I have to work on pretty much every day to loosen it all up.

I know that's a lot of stored emotion, a lot of childhood stuff that I've kind of like, stored.

What would you say?

Or kind of like, where would someone begin and what resources do you have?

If someone saying, yeah, I would love to just start very gently.

Yeah.

So starting very gently, as I mentioned at the very beginning, it's extremely important because I wouldn't want people to think that movement means that they're going to do a sweaty session or they're going to do a super bendy session where it just becomes unaccessible to even begin.

And then it becomes unsustainable to keep doing it for more than once.

So setting the bar kind of low for yourself in terms of what you're willing to do, I think, is very important.

And especially with people who live with trauma or chronic stress, in burnout, or with.

Live with anxiety or chronic fear, it's really important to start being very accepting of yourself or where you are and not comparing yourself to others and saying that you now need to do a 1 hour movement session.

That's not realistic.

That's just not happening.

It's enough to do two minutes.

That's all that you need to do.

Maybe it's even a 1 minute.

Maybe it's even 30 seconds.

It's just that moment that you dedicate to yourself and to spending some time with your body.

It's not the length is the quality.

So even if you just sit in your chair, in your work, in your office, and you just do those neck rolls or you just do some gentle pelvic tilt, it's the practice.

That's it.

There doesn't need to be anything else.

And I have some wonderful resources for free on my YouTube channel about somatic movement, expressing emotions, moving emotions.

And they are very gentle.

They are extremely accessible to any beginner who has never moved in their life, who cannot sit on the floor, do a downward dog from yoga.

It's just moving energy.

It's energy work.

This is what we need to do at the very beginning, and it's not difficult to get into.

So I invite people to just start with very small movements.

One of my favorite ones, and I have this a lot in so many of my classes on YouTube, is just the pelvic tilts.

So it's just laying on your back and just tilting your pelvis up and down.

So you're kind of arching your back and then flattening your back, I find that a lot of people are almost unable to do the movement.

If I tell them, tilt your pelvis up and down, like they cannot move the pelvis, it's so stuck, and there's so much stuck energy there that is so difficult for them to do that.

So I usually lead with actually doing flattening the back and rounding it because that seems to be a little bit more easy.

And it kind of moves into the same shape that we want to get the body into.

And it's such a deeply restorative and awakening movement for the body.

And that's all that there is to it.

You can just spend a few seconds to a minute or a few minutes just tucking and untucking your pelvis.

It's just like doing a small wave with your lower back, and that unlocks so much stuckness around your hips and lower back as well.

So many people are struggling with lower back issues, and they don't realize it's actually tight hips.

We have so many students like this.

It's just crazy.

So there's always a gentle way to start than you think there is.

I think that would be my biggest advice to anyone who's listening and who's just finding the prospect of, oh, now I have to start moving.

Daunting.

If that is daunting to you, then please know that there's a very simple way to do that, very accessible way to do that.

You don't even have to have a yoga mat.

You don't have to have space.

You can do it in your bed.

You can do it on.

On your couch.

It is all accessible, and it is there, and it's.

It's a portal to something that is potentially so extremely healing to you.

And as you.

As you mentioned at the beginning, it's not that one session is going to heal all of your problems all of a sudden.

Of course not.

But it's a portal.

It's about choosing the right way to move your body rather than just having this umbrella term of, now I need to be moving in order to heal my trauma and my.

My stuck emotions and my pain.

So, yeah, it's always starting like this.

Just very, very simple and accepting towards your body that you're not.

No one's asking you of anything.

You don't own anyone.

Anything.

You don't have to show up for a 1 hour practice.

It's all your choices.

Yeah, I love this because you're speaking so directly to so many women, ADHD women, neurodivergent women who have spent a lifetime of perfectionism, and this all or nothing thinking of, well, if I don't do it perfectly, and, you know, like you say, this hour, brutal class where I'm sweating and I feel like I've done, like, a huge workout, then it's just not worth it.

Or if I'm not doing it all perfectly, then, you know, I've done it.

I've done it wrong, and I'm just not going to even bother.

And this loop that so many of us have been in of perfectionism, of this very negative, self critical voice that has been driving, I call it sort of like this drill sergeant that has been running the show, and that internal dialogue is much more difficult to remove than the external.

Can I ask you a little bit about other movement?

This is from what I was reading on your instagram, are the releasing emotions such as anger, sadness, fear.

Like, what other movements would there be for these different emotions?

How I like to think about an emotion, for example, like anger, what is happening?

Something is arising in the body.

That is a very strong energy, right?

How do we usually, if that wasn't, if, if we take away the polarity of the anger, if something strong arises in the body, how would we usually get that out?

So we would either strongly push away something or we would jump around or we would try to disperse it in one of these ways.

Right.

So for anger, I really like to use pushing.

You can even just sit in your chair, pray your hands like this, and press, press, press super strong towards that.

And that's already helping you navigate that surge of energy that is happening in the body because of the anger.

And at the end of the day, all of these emotions are just energy arising that wants to be expressed so that it can leave your body.

That's the only reason for that there.

Of course, then we have the part that maybe it's guiding us to try to understand why that is arising in the body and maybe to fix something that is causing us to be angry.

But at the same time, that energy is not meant to live in our body.

We're meant to process it.

So if we're angry, we're meant to scream it out or punch out something or punch a, punch a pillow, or scream into a pillow or just move the energy out.

So I think for everyone.

Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to ask you, because with ADHD specifically or neurodivergence, we see emotional dysregulation as one of the hardest things for us to manage.

And especially, it's one thing when it's a child, and it's kind of expected for kids to have this dysregulation.

But when you are an adult and you find it hard to contain your emotions, or you feel your emotions so intensely, I don't like the thought of saying, right, we have to contain because that means it's being suppressed in the body.

But we do feel a roller coaster of emotions and this sort of just not being able to feel completely in control when we want to feel in control.

I love the idea of the pushing.

So would you say you can use, you use your hands, but can you use the wall?

Like, what are the ways if you're in that moment and you feel like you want to be able to feel in control and not feel so reactive, what.

What else could someone do?

So pushing the wall is a wonderful practice as well.

You can split your stance and just push into the wall with, with your elbows bent.

I always suggest people never stretch out their joints too much when they're doing anything, because then that's stopping kind of the flow of energy through the body.

This is why when we're doing any kind of qigong practice or anything that's more inspired by traditional chinese medicine, we're always doing it with soft joints.

So we're always kind of sinking to the ground with soft knees and with soft elbows so that the energy can flow through the whole body.

And since we're working with energy, which is the emotions, we're trying to open up the meridians and the channels so that all of that can move.

So if you're pressing against a wall when you're just experiencing a surge of anger, just try to still kind of keep a small bend to your elbows and keep that softness, even though that you're very kind of activated and tense, but sinking into the ground and allowing also the wall and the ground to take up that energy and connecting with those points of contact.

So your hands and your feet are now the place where that energy can drive out of your body.

So we do a lot of this as well in yoga.

Well, in traditional yoga, I don't think that people do this very often in classes these days, but it's noticing where the body is in contact with the ground and then guiding anything that is excessive in the body, any emotions, any energy out of those points, because now we can imagine how that is moving out.

Right?

So we need to give it a place to go.

So always thinking of kind of connecting to something that is a hard surface, the earth, and allowing that to be dispersed there, giving that energy a place to kind of go.

So if you're doing this pushing practice, it's just wonderful to imagine that all of it is kind of being driven out of your hands and of your feet out into the earth and the walls of.

So, of course, then there might be a different practice, like shaking.

So it's just starting to skip on 1ft on the other and shaking off the body completely.

And this is now more about just dispersing the energy out of the muscles, and it's just relaxing the whole body.

And this is wonderful.

I also have these practices on my YouTube channel, and it's just beautiful to notice how people are experiencing in their bodies, because it is all about getting rid of any kind of toxic energy, even though if you don't know what that is.

So some people might be experiencing a surge of something that they identify as uncomfortable, and they don't necessarily know, what is this now?

Is this anger, is this frustration?

Is this jealousy?

And in some sense, sometimes there's not even such a point in naming that.

Just let that go.

Because as soon as we start labeling all of these things, it becomes, once it becomes a story, and once it becomes a story, now we start asking questions.

Now we start going into the why and what if this and what if that?

And then that emotion, that energy lingers because we are creating this whole thing around it versus it was a surge of something.

If we let it go, then there's no story around it because no longer are we attached to it.

So I would say that whenever something that is very overwhelming arises, allowing that to exit the body through having some practices that work for you.

So for some people, the shaking is a really easy practice to do because they can do it everywhere, or even stomping your feet, just being somewhere and just starting to stomp your feet and just throw a tantrum.

Basically, if you're experiencing some of these more agitated emotions.

And then of course we have emotions that are a bit gentle and not so agitated, not so frustrated.

So we would have grief or we would have sadness or depression.

And then how we would deal with that is slightly different also depending on the state that the person is in.

So some people might be stuck a lot in free state, and this would be the survival response that they have been kind of nurtured to keep because of any of the experiences that they had in their life.

And now they're kind of stuck in this numbing freeze mode and they cannot, they cannot even move their body.

So it's very difficult to do something as a practice like shaking or pressing because this is already activating my sympathetic nervous system even more.

So it's very difficult for people who are in a free state, for example, experiencing depression, which is very common with free state, that it's just such a lowering of the, of the energy.

Everything is numbed down, everything is, is going kind of downwards, and there's no joy and there's no agitation at all.

So what we want to do in this state is kind of introduce just very gentle activation to the body just by maybe nodding the head yes and no, just side to side or even just looking around the room.

And this already is helping to bring the system alive so that all of those emotions, even of depression or sadness or grief, can start to be moved outside of the body.

So there's kind of, there's, it does get very specific based on the, the state that the person is in, the emotions that they're experiencing and so on.

So I invite people, if they're very curious about this, to check some of the classes that I have on YouTube that other people have on YouTube about expressing kind of emotions thematically.

And I would even say going through all of the emotions, not just going, oh, I think I'm angry now, so I'm gonna skip the grief and I'm gonna skip.

Skip the anxiety.

I would invite people to actually go and do all of the practices and to see what comes up for them, because oftentimes we are holding so much more than we think and that we put a label on it and we think this is what it is.

And actually, there's a lot of layers behind that.

So anger can also be a result of.

Can be a part of grief.

So it's very important to acknowledge all of the different emotions that we might be holding in the body and just give the body a way to kind of express that.

And I really liked how you mentioned at the beginning that there's actually no reason for us to have to go into the history and the story of what has happened in order to heal.

And it's wonderful that in somatics and in more holistic therapies, we are basically working with the body to express and allow those energies and those experiences to be processed and to move out of the body without having to go back into it and re traumatize ourselves and relive the experience, because it is something that is stuck in the body, and we can remove that out of the body without having to relive it.

And I think a lot of people don't realize how potent this is.

And this is why we have so many thousands of students who are crying in classes, who are angry in classes, who are experiencing all of these emotions.

And a lot of them are, at the beginning, very confused.

Why is this happening?

I didn't think of anything.

I didn't.

I wasn't processing any kind of memory in my brain.

So why am I feeling like this?

It's very sudden.

And just goes to show how powerful these movements are, because they really press that button, that exact button that you need in order to release that without actually having to know what you're releasing.

And it can be confusing, but at the same time, it's so healing, because for once, you don't have to go back into history.

You don't have to go back into everything that you've been through.

Just let that go.

And it happens through the body.

Yeah.

While you were talking, all I keep thinking is this should be introduced as, like, a practice for kids, you know, in school, and it should be just part of, like, a daily five minute routine, especially as we're understanding more about neurodivergence.

We're understanding that kids who are being sent out of school, being excluded, who are seemingly sort of, like, chaotic and disruptive, are actually have probably gone through some childhood issues and trauma.

There's probably dysfunction and chaos in the house.

And if we can get to these kids and have maybe a practice for five minutes that a teacher can do, it could be some gentle yoga practices, just stamping on the floor, pushing against the wall, and just allowing kids this moment to process so they don't have to hold on to all the things that we've held onto.

I think maybe we're coming out of this generation of understanding.

Yeah, therapy.

Therapy is a good thing.

But I wonder, the next generation, are they going to be realizing, like you say, that somatic work and not having to re traumatize ourselves and understand that the body knows a lot more than we can, we can articulate through our minds.

And like you say, we sometimes don't even know what's going on.

Like, we don't know.

Is it anger?

Is it fear?

Is it resentment?

Is it grief?

And we don't have the words.

And especially kids don't have the words.

The kids don't have an understanding, but they know if something feels wrong in their body and it comes out in being naughty or being, you know, hyperactive or whatever that might be.

There's so many different, you know, things.

I think this conversation is vital, and I think it's so important.

And I'm so glad that I've had you on the podcast, because I hope that this has just dropped a little kind of nugget or like a little nudge of curiosity for people who might think that maybe medication or therapy is not working for them or they've not seen enough of a change.

And perhaps somatic movement therapy, healing, nervous system regulation, however you want to look at it, might be something that they consider.

And I know you mentioned that you've got free resources on your YouTube.

How else can people work with you?

Yes.

So I do online courses.

These are longer journeys that are focused on a part of the body.

The most popular one, which is.

Which has thousands of students in it and everyone loves it, is hips like honey.

And it's about releasing kind of the tension, emotional and physical tension from the hips and basically dealing with anything that might be stuck for you in the pelvic area, and especially for women, this is extremely powerful.

We do have so many, many men in the practice as well.

I would like to say that it's also very, very important for men to take care of their pelvic health and for their hips, because it's almost as if, because we are now, as women, kind of coming out of this era of empowerment and so on, that men are also being kind of relegated to not have to care about these things.

And they do.

There's so much trauma that they have also experienced.

There's so much that's been held in their hips as well.

So hips like honey is a wonderful practice for anyone to do.

I still do most of the practices on a daily basis, and it's just such a releasing way of treating your body with acceptance and love without having to push it into anything crazy.

I do have other programs as well, for the back muscles and for releasing any tension that's stored there and for opening your heart, as well as the meditation program and so many more other things.

But I think hips like honey is the one that I know that has been the most transformative for people.

And, yeah, the hips just hold so much for us.

And I know that it's such a helpful way to just go into a journey of that rather than just do one class.

This is why I wanted to do something that is a little bit more journey like, so that people experience the progress, and it's something that also allows them to have accountability and not just give up after a first class, but also be a part of a community that are healing together.

So it's just been a wonderful way to see how that is making a difference in people's lives.

Even if, as you said before, with your audience, with a lot of people who are struggling with perfectionism and hdhd and really kind of sitting down and doing something, even if it's for 510, 20 minutes, this is a way for them to have something to just click on open every day, and they always know what they're doing, and they always know that they have a community there to support them throughout that.

And everyone is kind of in the same boat.

You know, we're all healing together.

We're all exploring the emotions together and kind of navigating everything.

So is it a live class or they recorded classes and how long is it for?

Yes, it's recorded.

It's recorded prerecorded classes.

So everyone can do it at any time.

Anyone can join.

We have students from literally every part of the world.

It's for, I believe, one month you can basically also choose which I love.

You can choose what kind of focus you want to have.

So whether you want to focus more on flexibility, or if you want to focus more on releasing emotions, or on balancing your emotional and physical state, we even have ways and pathways that you can do for menopause and how to combine that with my other programs.

So there's a lot that you can do there.

So people are really kind of working through it, and it's, you can do it once, you can do it multiple times, and it's still going to work like magic because it is energy work.

It's not physical work necessarily.

So if you're interested in anything that is more about bringing you in contact with your subtle body as well as your physical body, it's the perfect way.

Well, I just want to congratulate you because what you've done is amazing.

You've built this huge audience and, and you are serving them in such a wonderful way that is so needed.

And hopefully there's a collective healing that's going on through your work.

And it's amazing to hear that you're hitting so many people around the world and may it continue.

So, Manu, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for being on the podcast.

And yeah, I would love to talk more.

So, yeah, let's keep in touch.

Thank you so much, Kate.

It was such a pleasure talking.

I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And please do check out my website, adhd womenswellbeing dot co dot UK for lots of free resources and paid for workshops.

I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there.

Take care and see you for the next episode.