How to keep the body in mind as a psychologist or therapist with Dr Nancy Bancroft

In this week's episode of the Business of Psychology, I am really pleased to be here with Dr Nancy Bancroft. Nancy is a clinical psychologist who you should be following on Instagram @thebodyinmind. She has a passion for mind-body connection, and is making the shift from the NHS to building a business based on that passion.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Nancy:

Instagram: @thebodyinmind

Blog: www.thebodyinmind.co.uk

Email: hello@thebodyinmind.co.uk

References & Links:

The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living by Hillary McBride

The Art and Science of EMDR: Helping Clinicians Bridge the Path from Protocol to Practice Paperback by Rotem Brayer

Beyond Healing Centre

Notice That Podcast

Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power by Alexandra Pope, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer

Red School

The Menstruality Podcast 

Business of Psychology:

Episode 94: Starting an Enneagram coaching business with Clinical Psychologist Dr Rebekah Tennyson

Episode 106: A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I introduce Nancy and she tells us about who she is and what she does 00:00
• Nancy tells us how she took her journey of personal discovery and decided to move it forward into her professional work 08:49
• Nancy talks about what she thinks we can do about it as a professional group, and what her hopes are for how Body in Mind might take some of these ideas forward 24:12
• I ask Nancy how we incorporate these idea into a therapy setting 29:32
• Nancy tells us what to go and explore if we're interested in this type of work 37:13
• Nancy gives us the info to connect with her 39:22

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SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Nancy Bancroft

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I am really pleased to be here today with Dr Nancy Bancroft. So Nancy is a clinical psychologist. And if you don't know already, you should be following her on Instagram @thebodyinmind. But in case you're not already following her, I'll get Nancy to introduce herself. So hello, Nancy, welcome to the podcast.

Hello, thank you for having me.

Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and who you help?

Yes. So I am actually currently in transition. But I work in the NHS and work in an adult community mental health service, and have done in this team for about six years in Herefordshire. But I have a passion, hence the Instagram account for mind-body connection. And I think probably over the last few years, I've also been unconsciously building up the confidence to do something exciting through my Instagram, and through a few other things. And I'm making that shift now in the next couple of months. So I've handed my notice in, and I am building a business, Rosie, which I know you know a few things about.

Very exciting times. And I have to say, actually, I really do recommend that people take a look at your Instagram, because I think I got in touch with you quite a while ago, because I saw one of your videos, and it just had this real energy and enthusiasm to it, which I think is the secret to good content on social media. It's not about algorithm hacking, it's about that kind of authentic, I want to put this out in the world and I'm kind of excited to do that. And that's something I really feel from your content. So I'm really glad that you're doing more of it.

Thank you. Yeah, that's definitely... if it was about the algorithm, the algorithm business, I probably wouldn't be doing or enjoying it so much. But that is exactly the case. I do have a lot of fun.

Exactly. And it really comes through and I think often people have too much strategy, and not enough fun with their social media. But it's not all about the fun, because I know there's a real mission behind what you're doing on social media, so could you talk to me a little bit about what the Body in Mind is all about, and what the project is aiming to do?

Yes, so, I just, I mean, I just feel from my training and from mostly what I do in work at the moment, there is too much of an emphasis on our heads and our thinking, and perhaps not so much attention goes to kind of the fact that our mental health is influenced by things going on below our necks too, not just physical health and physical fitness, but the things we eat, the way we move, and also how kind of our bodies respond to stress and trauma. And obviously, I've been quite influenced over the last 10 years by a kind of rising energy around somatic psychologies and people reading the Body Keeps the Score and some like some really massively famous texts out there. So I've definitely been influenced by that. And by my EMDR practice, but also very much from like, via my personal experience of being someone who feels stressed quite a lot. And knowing that my body has some quite incredible ways of showing me that I'm kind of on the tilt of tipping over, sometimes before my head can make good sense of it or really understand it. And certainly that was the case around the time that I had my first child, Jim, who's nine now. And so it was around that point, you know, it's not an unfamiliar story, but we had perhaps six months or a year of some quite stressful periods with some tummy pains and some not being able to sleep. And I think it was at that point I, I found lots of information about polyvagal theory, and started to understand how his experience really early might have been, might have influenced the way that his nervous system was in the world, and then impacted kind of how content he was or how uncontent he was. And then how much that influenced me and how my body said that to me in ways that weren't so obvious initially. So you know, there are like some physical health pains and problems that come up that I now know are my body telling me, enough you need to stop. Before that time. I wasn't very good at doing that. And so actually linked with that I, since that time I've had some personal therapy myself with an emphasis on linking my mind and body more intricately. And yeah, I've learned tons about how much of my body I was ignoring, and how much value and sense and wisdom there is in the communication that happens if you listen. And I think maybe in our culture, we just are not that great at listening. Or we listen to our heads, and we listen to our thoughts and we try and make sense and we try and override. And even in our therapy, we do lots of cognitive things and we don't give a huge amount of respect to like, some really good stuff that's down there if we give it an opportunity to speak. And sometimes our bodies just shout down to say, well, you're doing you know, you're too busy, you haven't slept, you can't handle this, it's too much. So yeah, I'm pretty passionate about that idea, too.

Absolutely. That passion really comes across. And as you're talking, I'm thinking, I've got to get that reference from her, the book you read when your son was struggling, and I think, you know, we're probably, a lot of us, curious about exploring these things. But it wasn't part of my training. It really wasn't, I can't think of anything we did that related to the body in therapy, I really can't think of anything. So this is, for a lot of us, a journey of discovery. As you said, there's energy around it now and we're reading books and articles about it now, but maybe feeling a little bit lost about where to go. So if you don't mind sharing some references with us, I'd love to put those in the show notes.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm a book collector, I think maybe a bit like you, so I do have a really full library that I often just peruse, and I'm like, oh, yeah, so good. Not all of them I've read, but I've definitely, I've always read the first chapter. And one recently that springs to mind is The Wisdom of Your Body by Hilary McBride. She's an American psychologist who has a kind of brings together lots of the, like the key texts that you, like more of the textbook texts that you would read, like the Body Keeps the Score and The Wisdom of Your Body by Babette Rothschild, I think that's seen as like quite a, quite a foundational text for understanding the body in therapy. But Hillary writes it in a really accessible way, it's got lovely exercises that you can try just in the moment to explore the connection between your mind and your body. And also similar to me, I guess she brings in some of her personal experiences of how she came to this place, through a car accident, actually, and her process of connecting more to herself, which is just really accessible, isn't it? You know, when you, when you hear how someone else does it, it makes it possible, because I think maybe one of the problems with I don't know, the somatic wealth that I see, at least out there is sometimes it can feel a bit inaccessible. You know, like, even the idea of like, feeling into your emotions, like how, how do you speak to that, without it having been part of what you've learned to do as a child, which for most of us, it wasn't, you know, what does that actually mean? And so that's a really, that's a really practical text that I'd recommend for everybody.

Oh, thank you, that's really helpful. I'm definitely going to go in order that straightaway after this conversation, it can add to my library books I'm desperate to read properly. So how did you take that journey of personal discovery, and decide to move that forward into your professional work?

Okay, so there was a point at which I think so interweave with this process, I've had a second baby. And both of them have been, yeah, so I, I've spent a long time, and still do with both of them because there was the five year gap. Sitting with going to sleep for an hour in the evening, and for a while that time felt like wasted time sometimes. And so I filled it with podcasts and audiobooks, I needed... like I found a way to kind of make it feel like I was doing the thing that I needed for them but also using the time well for me too. And so for a while it was just reading and listening and exploring. And then I bit the bullet and took some private therapy because I could see so much value in me being, like being with someone to explore some of the things that were happening for me. And at the same or a similar time to that I was looking for practical ways to connect with my body. I run and so that was one real quick way for me to just you know, I knew there was some kind of process going on when I was running that meant when I went outside, after a few, like, you know, after being wild for five minutes, I felt different. I feel like good things happened for me. And I understand that to be my way of connecting with my physicalness. But the second really important part of that process was, I found something called menstrual cycle awareness, which is essentially like, you know, and I guess this is a different journey for anybody but my version, my, one of my roads into getting to know my body better was understanding my cycle, and how it powered me at points and how also, my mood and my energy were massively affected in the other direction at points. I get, I knew that all my life, but I think the menstrual cycle awareness I had before told me that there was a period of time leading up to my bleed, where I will be moody and tired and not want to be in the world. But I did, I was also aware that as well as that there was a time in my cycle where I felt the opposite. So I got that from sometimes I'd have like, I'd sometimes notice there was a day where I was like, I'd listen to a song, and I just wouldn't be able to believe how much I love it. Or I'd listen to a podcast and I'd be like, I gotta send that to someone, or you know when you just, you just get that umph, and as I started to track my cycle, and keep a really easy, brief record of my moods, I noticed that was often around ovulation time. And so over the years of doing that time and time again, I have learned that there, that my, my clever body, and yours too, has a natural rhythm. And it hasn't necessarily been encouraged to be free in that rhythm because we all live kind of, I think a bit more according to a man's hormone pattern, basically, which is on a 24 hour cycle. But women's hormones ebb and flow through a whole month. And so your body is trying to guide you that there is, like there is a time in the month for rest, and going inwards, and being quiet and self exploration and sleep and all those things. And then there's a time when you're really up for sharing and talking and socialising and learning and swapping. And if you know that in yourself, you can, you can really use it to kind of prevent burnout and prevent stress. And this was another really exciting opportunity that I saw coming out of the NHS, that there was potential for me to build a business that could be informed by those energies. And I did a short course which I would really recommend, which was basically learning to do that. And it was Menstrual Cycle Awareness for Business. And, and so I have some kind of really kind of exciting foundations that mean that I might do a few things slightly differently when I start this process, to allow me to respect my natural rhythms and then hopefully get the best for my project. Because I'm, I'm leaning into what my body needs rather than fighting against it.

I love that. And it has to be true, doesn't it? I mean, so we have so much ill health in our society, from people saying I'm exhausted, I'm burnt out, I've got no more creative energy, I just can't keep going, we must be doing something wrong on a very large scale. And I think that there's been resistance to exploring that. We've just been trying to make the same model work with a few mindfulness sessions or yoga sessions in the middle of the day. Actually, maybe we need to fundamentally rethink that model and make it okay to have, you know, maybe shorter days on sometimes and longer days when you're able to lean into that. And also the type of thing you're doing. Just when you were talking then I was thinking, yes, I have days where you can't get a social media post out of me. I can't, there's nothing there, it's like pulling teeth. And I see the internet stuffed with content that people have made on days like that. And I can tell. Whereas your content, it was like humming with energy. And, and I was drawn to it, and I wanted to engage with it because you can feel that when somebody's made it in that kind of state. And I think when I look at my posts, I could probably track them alongside my cycle. The ones that have done really well, are the ones I've made on days where I've been like, oh my god, I just have to talk about this thing. And I'm really excited about it. And it can unlock so much.

For sure. I have made myself a rule that like I will never post or make a post or work for a post when I'm not feeling it. And that is pretty simple, but it's really effective. And you know, that is very much cycle led to like, if you track my posts, you'll see there's a week or 10 days where I just go completely off, you know offline, and then suddenly you start to see me like, boop, boop, boop. Getting braver and braver. Day 14, I'm like doing a dance. And then slowly, slowly, I disappear again. And that like, that just feels healthy. It just feels like honouring my body. We shift and change, don't we? And like, we promote it with clients all the time. Some days you feel energetic and confident, and sometimes you don't, and like, that's fine. It's really healthy to be able to respect it.

Yeah, I think that's really powerful. I mean, how have you been able to bring this kind of knowledge into the room with clients? Have you had any space to do that in your NHS role?

No, to be quite honest, that... so the menstrual cycle staff has felt like a personal development process for me at the moment. And actually, there's been something to this point, that's felt quite, quite nice. It kind of feels like this is for me right now. It's definitely having a massive impact on my plans and my hopes, and at the moment, I don't feel like I'm necessarily ready or even yeah, like, ready, or even wanting to share it out that much, apart from - I think this probably links us really nicely into a conversation about also, there's a part of me that knows, this kind of isn't the standard work that I would be encouraged to share in my NHS practice. And I am conscious in that role that I, that I share the kind of, the kind of things that people would expect to hear from me, I guess that I'm sharing the evidence base, and that I'm offering kind of the advice and practice that I could justify with the research. And whilst I know from all the knowledge I have about nervous system regulation, that actually that could look like anything, you know, it literally, we've all got a different nervous system, haven't we, so what regulates you is going to be so different than, than what regulates me? I haven't necessarily made it part of my practice, but I am excited to in the future. And there's and there's one other thing that's come from personal development perspective, that's influenced me massively. And I know, you know a little bit about that, because I've seen you spoke to Rebecca Tennyson, about the Enneagram. Yeah. And that was something that I discovered through my personal therapy that has hugely influenced my kind of confidence to be okay with who I am, and just accept my strategies, because I'm human. And that, too, is something that I don't necessarily use in my therapy practice at the moment, but has informed my personal development, reams and reams. Yeah, I think, I think this might change in building a business of my own, because I think, just naturally stepping out of the NHS means that my decision to do that too, is influenced by my kind of need to be able to express my creativity a bit more than I have previously. And I think those things will naturally come out when I feel a bit freer to do that.

I mean, these are all really powerful reasons for wanting to step outside of the NHS model and offer something that at the moment would be tricky. But how does it feel to you to make that decision? Because I often find that sometimes the evidence based practice, I'm doing quite marks that nobody can see, obviously. But that can sometimes act as a bit of a security blanket for us. And it can be quite difficult sometimes to say to a client actually, I think we should step outside that and maybe try this thing which it doesn't have that gold standard research behind it, but these are the reasons that it doesn't because perhaps it can't because it's not suitable for an RCT having those conversations can feel quite difficult, so how's it feeling to you the idea of maybe stepping away from the comfort blanket?

Yeah, I mean, not 100% smooth because I've lived in that comfort blanket and like I've trained in it and it's all I've known and like comfort like it's always going to be exactly what they say on the tin aren't they like that it feels good in some ways, but you know, someone else who you've spoken to you recently, Bridger and the team at Beyond Healing developing the SIP model that I, which that is another wild enthusiasm of mine currently. They, they have taught me a lot about the evidence base and the, and to be fair, I did, I studied my DClin at Liverpool and I do, my education around kind of questioning the evidence base started, I felt I had a good foundation to kind of critiquing the evidence base back then. So it's, it's run through me. But yeah, Bridger has pointed me to this... so the APA, years ago now, released this paper where they spoke about kind of therapists needing to be aware that, like, evidence based practice is made up of three things. One, it's the available research. Two, it's therapist or professional experience. And three, it's like person choice, personal preference, and culture and all the things that would influence what someone's after. And since so, I think Bridger made a podcast about this, and I'm sure, so there, there was a paper that he spoke about that basically spoke about, wrote about all the reasons that we are kind of making a mistake when we talk about the evidence base, meaning just what's got an RCT or systematic review to kind of support its use, actually, evidence based practice is way wider than that. And when you think about it from those three perspectives, essentially, we're coming back to our formulation, aren't we? Like, if we have an understanding with someone about why something might be happening, then there is our evidence, and our skills are formulating and our use of models and theories, they are all from the evidence base. And so actually, I think it's appropriate that we should be feeling comfortable to make decisions that feel right. And what, we're taught anyway, aren't we to use an intervention that's based on a formulation, use it as a hypothesis, and if it doesn't go the way that you intend that's, that's a new information, and that's really helpful as well. So I think I'm, I'm more excited than I perhaps would have been five years ago. But there is no doubt that we work in a system that really likes categories and boxes, doesn't it? And we fall into that trap too. Even you know, even when we talk about attachment, we're talking about categories that don't exist, really, we just... western science does that doesn't it? It's just like, and maybe it's necessary to some extent, I guess we have to have a language for talking about complex processes. But we have to also remember that it does, it's just a model, these theories and this, this evidence is just a model; a way of talking about some things that can't be captured in that way.

It'd be wonderful if that's how it was explained to people, wouldn't it? I was having a conversation with a couple of my family members about attachment recently. And, and I said something to that effect, and they were like, no, you're either secure or you're not. And I was like, oh, okay, that's really not how I understand it, but I can see why you would, based on what's out there and available. And, and part of your standard education about these things, because it you know, it is being spoken about now much more than it used to be, but it is spoken about in this kind of medicalized way where things are or they are not, which is yeah, pretty unhelpful I think a lot of the time. So what do you think - I mean, and this is putting you on the spot slightly - but a, what do you think we can do about it as a professional group? But b, also what are your hopes for how Body in Mind might be, you know, challenging some of that, taking some of these ideas forward?

I think... so, this is a bit of a personal fear, but I've always been aware that like, a part of me has a foot in the world of science and likes that, likes the comfort of that. But also part of me is a bit, likes to be a bit wacky and creative and different. And I think probably previous to feeling a bit more established in my life, I would have, like the science felt like comfort and safety for me. And maybe as I get a bit older, I've had children, I have some experience, I've learned a bit more. Now I am just seeing the value and importance in leaning into the creative and the art side of therapy. I've just read another really fantastic book about called The Art and Science of EMDR. And basically, it's written with the viewpoint that like, yes, EMDR is based on, like a manualized protocol, but the content, the change process within EMDR doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to feel manualised. Like we, we know, the magic probably is happening between us and the client. And, in fact, the magic that happens in EMDR is probably happening all the time, even when we're not using that protocol, sometimes, even when we don't know that protocol. So just being able to play with the edges a little bit. And, and, yeah, and I think you're right, talk with clients about the value of doing that and share it on social, you know, do what we're doing, perhaps take the world of clinical psychology outside of the library and outside of journal papers, and books and make podcasts like you do and make silly reels like I do, and make this information accessible. So another of these kind of categorised... like accepted categories that I'm really interested in at the moment is the idea that we give therapy for an hour a week, on a weekly basis, because that's, that's what we do, isn't it? And actually, I love the research coming out at the moment telling us that there's masses of value sometimes in seeing someone for extended sessions, and for what gets called intensive therapy, especially in the EMDR world, but not necessarily where you might, you might see someone for a day of therapy every two months. And I started to look into that option, when I was having my therapy because finding an hour a week felt really stressful with young children and late nights and work. And if that model had been available to me here, I would have gone for it, you know, I want to do this work, I wanted to devote this time to myself. But having a day a month is much easier than having an hour on a Tuesday evening when I know I need to make spaghetti bolognese when I get home. So one of the things that I'm really excited about doing and developing that I wouldn't have been able to do in the NHS at the moment is offering extended intensive sessions. Maybe even in the future, overnight opportunities and retreats, but very much from a kind of clinical therapy perspective. And you know, in all my searching, I haven't been able to find any scientific evidence that tells me, therapy is best delivered in 50 minute sessions per week, you know?

No, I've not found anything about that either.

It's just what we do. It's what we do, isn't it? So I like the fact that now, I've got this energy in me, especially at certain points in my cycle, where I can be like, Why, why are we doing that? How can we do this differently? It doesn't have to be like that. Let's just try something different. And see how it goes.

Yeah, I really liked that idea. And I think the last thing that I read about intensive trauma therapy was a few years ago, about a week long session for veterans in particular. And it seemed really sensible to me. Nothing about that seemed odd, and yet, the people that I was with at the time, were really concerned about it, like, where will the boundaries be drawn. And there's so much anxiety there, about changing that 50 minute, once a week model that I think that's probably blocked us from actually, you know, testing this, you know, what works best for people. But there's also something in there about what you said about the wisdom of the client. And if they want something we need to attend to that. Because I think sometimes we get stuck in this expert position of I'm going to tell you what you want. And we sort of disregard people asking for something different as oh, you know, they've got boundary issues, or, you know, pathologizing that actually, when really people might have very good reasons for wanting to mix up the way that therapy is delivered. That's an absolutely fascinating avenue. And I can imagine you doing so much good creating a service which offers that flexibility to people.

Thank you so much for talking us through kind of where you're coming from with the Body in Mind and your vision for getting more of the body into the therapy room. One thing that I'm always wondering is how do we incorporate this into a therapy setting? Can you talk us through how that might look in reality?

Yes. So, I might tell you a bit of a story if that's okay, that maybe illustrates the way that the process has happened or become more easy for me over the past year. And it is directly related to learning about somatic integration and processing, which is a formulation model that I've been training. And part of the, part of what SIP teaches, is, or reminds us, essentially, is that we are, like the course talks about the human as an organism and kind of back to this idea that essentially, we're kind of animals that are base and that we develop through relationship and through experience that manifests in who we become. And I remember when I was when I was listening to podcasts about SIP, the trainers were describing a comparison between being a therapist and having some information about somebody's problem presented to you in a referral, having lots and lots of story or information about their difficulties, and their history, compared with being in a room with someone for 10 minutes, and talking about something unrelated, perhaps, but for example, their job or even observing that person in a coffee shop, and seeing how they are in the world, kind of how they move, their eye contact, you know, like, literally the way that their body is. And I remember the trainer saying, given the choice of two, as a therapist, what gives you more information. And at that time, immediately, based on my training, so far, I went to, I want to know the trauma history, I want to know what this person has been through, it doesn't make sense for me not to go for that option. But all three trainers on this particular podcast said no way, like, for now, not that the story isn't important, but I can take so much more from observing someone and feeling their presence in the room. And I can honestly say, now that I have understood a little bit more about the idea of how our experiences that are absolutely really important, contribute to the way our nervous system develops in the world, which then can be seen literally in the way we walk and the way we talk and the way we smile, or don't smile and look or don't look. And it's that information that is kind of like the living representation of all the experiences that we've been through. And so a really simple way, and maybe a long answer to the question, but is, is to learn in the therapy room to observe movements or feelings, or to notice things about someone's body, and simply bring attention to that. And so to allow yourself to ask the question, like, when we, when we started speaking about this issue recently, I saw your chest went red, and then you shuffled in your chair a bit and not in an accusing, like, what was that sort of way, but just in a curious, like, I'm so interested, you've moved your position, and you kind of look less comfortable than you did a couple of minutes ago? Do you understand what that could be about? And sometimes accepting that to the client in the room with you that might be an entirely impossible question to answer alone, but then to be curious, and to explore. What did that mean, is just an entirely different approach to understanding how something might be kind of visible through your body. And I suppose I would add them to use your own body to do the same. So to notice when something in the therapy room just feels different or difficult or heavy, or you have an experience of sadness or joy and to name that with somebody and to ask, does it make sense why I might be feeling like that right now? Is this connected with your experience? Or might it be something separate, and to just be really, like just to have that curious stance.

So it's almost like you're retraining both us and the person that we're working with to pay attention to that link between the body and our experience of emotion, and, and distress sometimes, because actually, often we've learned to sever that link, haven't we? It's just really putting me in mind of, in my early career when I worked in prisons, and one of the psychologists said to me, if you get a feeling in your body that something is not right, get out of that situation right now. We're talking about when riots kick off in prisons, and you often have no idea it's coming. And she's like everybody says there was no warning, but most people when you talk to them afterwards, then you're sort of debriefing say they felt something, at that point leave. She was 100% right and nobody could say, oh, I heard something or it was nothing conscious, it was in the body somewhere. But so often, sadly, you hear of victims of crime that have ignored that, that they felt that there was something wrong and they ignored it. And on a like, you know, more humorous level, we often ignore things like you can feel the rain is coming, but your phone says there's no rain today, so you still go out without your raincoat. I think we've become really detached, haven't we, from listening to that bodily system?

Yes, yes. 100%. I think we have, and I'm sure like this, you know, this might seem quite far disconnected, but I grew up on a farm, and animals, you know, animals were around me all the time. And I'm sure it's the same for people who grew up with lots of pets. Like, I just think being more in touch with the fact that like, there is more than language that we have to communicate between us and others, is so important, and not to forget that. You know, the way that you feel safe around animals is not relying on them telling you how many times they've hurt someone in the past. It's from you reading their body and understanding how yours feels in relation. And, yes, I think probably our culture, to some extent, has just taught that out of us. And I guess that leads us right back around then, to the way that I tried to look after myself by being more in touch with natural rhythms in my body, because that, too, is not necessarily something that we have the privilege of doing in a society where we work nine to five, Monday to Friday, and no matter how tired we feel we're expected to show up. And yeah, I understand that often that, that is for a reasonably good reason, but it takes us really far away from respecting and reading our natural, our gut responses, our needs, and paying attention to and ideally attending to what our body says it wants.

That's so helpful, I think talking to you today has really brought it to life for me. And I'd really encourage people if they're interested to follow up on some of the references that you've mentioned today. Can you just say again, for us where you'd like people to go and explore if they're interested in this type of work?

Yes, well, of course, this is just my version of it, or my journey to it, but I could not recommend more the somatic integration and processing training that I have done with Beyond Healing Centre. I found them via the Notice That podcast, and I guess that's famous, or more, more known for its EMDR focus, but the podcast is just so full of useful information outside of the EMDR world too that I would massively recommend that. And then if it's okay to, you know, if anyone has been more interested in the menstrual cycle awareness aspect of the discussion, then I read, my first introduction to that world was a book called Wild Power, and it's written by some women who have built an organisation called the Red School. There, you'll find them online and on social media, and, in particular, Sophie Jane Hardy hosts a fantastic podcast for them called The Menstruality Podcast, which is really worth a listen. And she runs their cyclical business courses as well, which I would highly recommend.

That sounds absolutely fascinating. That's definitely somewhere that I'm going to have a look. Really, really interesting stuff. And also, just to mention to people that we've got a podcast episode on this podcast with Mel Lee and Bridger Falkenstein where we're talking a lot about SIP and the Beyond Healing Centre. So do go and have a listen to that one if you haven't done already. So I guess just to finish up, then what is the plan for, for Body in Mind? What are you going to be doing next? And where can people follow that journey?

Yes. So I have a website. And in the next couple of weeks or very soon, it will have a lot more information about my offers over the next year. But I would say if you're interested to be in touch, then please do just join my newsletter and that will be the place that I share any new information about what I'm doing. And that's www.thebodyinmind.co.uk and also on Instagram, I'm, you know that that's where I'm updating things kind of on a weekly basis. And I've just taken a massive dare for myself into the world of speaking more about what I'm doing by planning some Instagram lives, which I'm really excited about with some people who share similar passions, so watch out for those over the next few weeks. And, yeah, I think that's, that's, you know, email me; if this is a passion of yours, I'd love to hear from you. I'm sending emails out everywhere I can to offer teaching and training in this area and if people are interested in me coming and doing a bit of that for them, then I'd be really welcome, I'd really welcome contact about that too.

Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. I'll make sure that all of those links that we've talked about are in the show notes, because I can imagine there's lots of people who like me are going to want to follow up on lots of the stuff that you've mentioned today. So thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Rosie. Thanks for having me.