From Ignoring Signals to Freedom from Addiction, with Erin LoPorto

Join host Tessa Lynne Alburn and Erin LoPorto, a somatic wellbeing and intimacy coach, for a sparkly episode of “Say YES to Your Soul” podcast. 

Erin shares her personal experiences with trauma and eating disorders, and how she found healing through somatic practices. On her addiction recovery, Erin recounts her stories of life-changing moments where she realized that the body was key to her healing. She listened to her body with all the courage she could muster that it completely transformed her life. 

Together with host Tessa, they discuss the importance of embodiment in healing and therapeutic work. They offer insights into how the body can support emotional healing and freedom.

Tessa’s Free Gifts: Get access to Tessa's Roadmap to a Soul-Connected Business and spice up your life with her Reignition Roadmap

Check it out!

• Erin’s personal journey of self-discovery and how she learned to listen to her body's signals and honor its needs

• The concept of triggers and how they manifest as sensations in the body and how somatic practices can help manage and transform triggers

• The importance of building an intimate relationship with one's body, as it influences all aspects of life, including relationships with others and the planet

• The idea of treating the body as a friend and cultivating kindness, trust, and understanding in the relationship with one’s body

• Listening to body and making space for the intention and clarity of where you want to go in life 

• The true happiness of being versus doing 

About our Guest Erin LoPorto

Erin LoPorto is a somatic well-being and intimacy coach and the creator of the Embodied Freedom Formula for transformation and healing. After her own recovery, she studied with experts in yoga and somatic therapy, energy healing, bodywork, meditation, and trauma. She's been coaching since 2011 with a focus on trauma, eating disorders, and relationships. She brings a playful, intuitive, and compassionate spirit as she speaks on topics of self-love, self-care, and the importance of embodiment.

Erin’s Free Gift 

Receive Erin’s Free Gift, “Unlock the Secrets to Lasting Self-Care! Maximize Your Potential and Well-being”

Erin’s Website & FB

https://erinloporto.com/

https://www.facebook.com/erinloporto.yoga

* About the Host * 

Tessa Lynne Alburn is a soul connection business coach, author, podcast host and explorer. Tessa believes that every woman has the ability to learn to express their true voice, be heard, and fulfill their dreams.

Her mission is to help women entrepreneurs bring their ideas and authentic feminine voices into the world, so they make a real difference and receive compensation that reflects their brilliance!

Tessa’s Free Gift: Get access to Tessa's Roadmap to a Soul-Connected Business and Say YES to Your Soul! http://www.tessafreegift.com/ 

Check Us Out on: 

Facebook 

Linked In 

Thank You for Listening!

Thank you kindly for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and feel others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons found on this page.

We love hearing from our listeners. If there’s something you want us to cover, we’d love to hear your ideas! Send them to us here:  https://www.sayyestoyoursoulpodcast.com/contact

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to any of your favorite podcast apps. Otherwise, visit us on the https://sayyestoyoursoulpodcast.com/ at any time for all episodes.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts Review

https://apple.co/4bwsAC8

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.

Spotify Listeners

And if you’re a Spotify fan, then Spotify now has a star-rating feature! https://open.spotify.com/show/1aeExmacYRGfKmjCOw6zxD

May You Say YES to Your Soul!

Hello there. I'm so happy to have this wonderful young lady, uh, brilliant sparkly, like I would say, she probably embodies the essence of a sparkly soul. And she is a somatic wellbeing and intimacy coach, and the creator of Embodied Freedom formula for transformation and healing. Her name is Erin Lo Porto. And after Erin's own recovery, she studied with experts in yoga and somatic therapy, energy, healing work, body work, meditation and trauma stuff. So she's been coaching since 2011 with a focus on trauma and eating disorders and relationships. And we had just like this great conversation about a month ago at an event, and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm just so happy she's gonna be here. She brings a playful, intuitive and compassionate spirit as she speaks on topics of self-love, self-care, and the importance of embodiment. And I really wanna welcome her here today. Welcome to Say Yes to your Soul. Erin,

Thank you so much, Tessa. And I love being described as a young woman, .

Well, to me, you are, and you know, I think it's like your, just, your energy is just shining right and radiant, and you have like a beautiful smile. Um, so hint, hint, everybody out there if you're wanting to . Totally.

I totally, like, every time somebody says that, I'm like, I am doing the good work, ,

There you are. And

I'm taking ages off my, uh, my impressions here, ,

. So Erin, I would love just, you know, give a little framing to like what a somatic wellbeing and intimacy coach is. And, and then I, we will get, we'll get into a little bit more here. I'll, I I've got a, I've got a track that we'll follow, so,

Okay. Sounds good. Um, yeah, so a somatic coach is somebody who takes you into actually feeling and experiencing your body. Most of the time we're trying to get out of our bodies or away, or looking for resolution or looking to make the feelings that we're having a certain way that we're comfortable with. So, somatic understanding is like really just being with our whole beingness as it is. And from that work, the intimacy is, you know, I really feel like the most intimate relationship that we'll ever have is the one that we have with our body, and that, that ripples out into our relationship with others, and even into our relationship with the planet. So when we are like, drawing more from our body than we our body has to offer, like that's what we do to each other. That's when we're like, come on, I need you to be here faster. I need you to do more. And then we are from the planet, like, let's take more from you. Let's, you know, like, so when we can come back to like a somatic understanding of natural boundaries and limitations of ourselves, we have that capacity to give that to everything else in our lives. And that's why I think it's so important.

That's really beautiful. And it is really important. I'm in agreement with you. And so how, how did you get inspired to get on this, this, um, into this world of somatic wellbeing?

Yeah. Well, I experienced some childhood trauma that led me to develop an eating disorder, uh, that I wrestled with for 10 years. And it was like a full on wrestle with my body. We were at war every day, not just what it looked like or what it felt like, but that it even existed. Like I just wanted out of it. Um, so it was really some deep soul searching that I started, like going into it instead. And it started when I showed up at a therapist's office early one day, and I watched her chain smoke cigarettes before our appointment. I know some people just tear at me dead face. And some people get the, like, how could you be doing this when, when you're supposed to be helping me get over my addiction? So I really left that appointment with like, this fundamental, there are no heroes, and if I'm going to heal myself, I'm going to have to figure it out myself.

And it, that was the, the pivotal moment that I turned inside and I started doing my own work, um, and understanding through doing the work that, like, the work is, it's not just supposed to be there, but our pain is supposed to be there. The hardness of this life, it's all supposed to be there. And what I've found is on the inside of every piece of pain, every piece of struggle was incredible wisdom that I never would've accessed without going there. And personal strengths, personal gifts, personal, you know, just lightness that doesn't exist in the things that people can give us. Easy in the easy kind of pain management or, you know, the, the things that are just treating the symptoms rather than really getting to that root of the cause. So that was what inspired me. I started a, a little, I put myself in a retreat pretty much for 10 weeks. And I didn't realize, well, wait

A second. So how did you, how did you go about that?

Yeah, so I, I literally, like, when I left that the therapist's office, the first place, like I detoured, I was gonna drive home. I like did a u-turn to go to the library. I was like, I need reference materials, . And I read everything on eating disorders, on recovery, on personal growth that I could get my hands on. And I just kind of made a plan that I stuck to. And it was like that I had to walk every day. And that usually what would happen was I journaled every day and I would journal a lot of the things that would come up as I was moving my body during the walk. And it was really interesting 'cause I had been in like therapy for several years at that point, and I would be walking and I would be like, why don't therapists walk with you? This is so much more productive. I'm feeling so much more, I'm making so many more connections when I'm stimulating right and left hemispheres of my brain Yes. When I'm stimulating my whole body and moving. So I started to feel, um, the power of the body and actually helping to access some of the wisdom that usually we just sit on and keep still and try to talk through, but we need to move it out. So that was like big deal number one.

Well, yeah. And, and you know, and to me it almost sounds like you were really being guided that day. Like, no , you're with an addiction and you show up and the therapist has an addiction. And it was just like, bam. I mean, you were just, you were driven, literally. You took the detour through the library. Yeah. You were making a plan. It just, suddenly all this information came in. So I want to give some cheers to your spiritual team ca, who was clearly in action and supporting you. But I also love, like, you, you just sound like you were so determined, like, I have to get over this. Like, what, what was it cost for you back then if you didn't

Get over? I think that I was holding the cost of like, if I do not figure this out, I might as well kill myself now. Like, I should just die. Like there was, it was like, I am either going to accidentally kill myself engaging in these behaviors, or I'm going to get so caught up that, you know, I'm out. Or like, but I know that I got to a place that it really felt like I either do this and figure it out, or life is not worth it. I might as well die. Those were the, those were the two things that I was at at that moment. And I really leaned into life like 100% I think before that, you know, like death floated around. But I didn't really care that the idea of death was floating around. Mm-Hmm. . But that was like the, the first moment that I was like, it is not my job to die.

It is not my job to let that, it was like, I need to figure this out. And just every ounce of energy came with so much clarity and I just pulled all the energy back towards myself. And I wanna name that I'm one of those people that are fairly empathic, definitely heart-centered, definitely care about other people in my life. And I think people like me, we constantly have to check our boundaries and be like, how much am I giving away? And how much am I actually holding to take care of myself? And there was a big shift in like, you know, I, for the first time really gave myself permission to say no. And I was like, Nope. Taking care of myself right now. Nope. Life or death matter. I need to like focus here. You know? And that allowed me to actually receive some of the love that I was so used to giving, but I was always feeling empty inside.

Mm. So it sounds like you were really courageous. Like you, you just didn't even, it didn't matter at that point. You were, you just knew the stakes were really high. You were like, I've gotta figure this out because the alternative is death either quickly or slowly. Mm-Hmm. , that's not okay with me. . Mm-Hmm. . And so you didn't, you didn't go to some class and try to learn how to set a battery. You're just like, no, , this is what I need . And was there any fallout from that or no. ,

I remember one time I lived with, or I hung out with a lot of people who would be like, so, you know, I don't know what your, your rating is, but you know, the B word that sometimes girls call each other. And all of a sudden that was like, not okay with me. And I remember being like, I'm not going to be spoken like too, like that anymore. . Oh,

Really? Deeply feeling cared for. 'cause one of my friends was just like, wait. And I just like, I just hung up the phone and went for my walk for the day. And then she drove up in the car and she was like, I am really sorry. I love you. I think she had called like, you know, just the, it wasn't just that word, but it was like all the C word and the S word, but as like, just the means of speaking to each other, not as an insult. So she, she drove up and she was like, I'm so sorry. I love you so much. I didn't mean anything. And it was just really interesting because I realized how much I was tolerating from the world around and I didn't really know what it was like to have a boundary and have people actually take care of that boundary willing. I did not know that people were willing to drive to me to make sure that I was okay because I was usually the one taking care of and like putting on the face that everything was good and I was okay.

Yeah. It sounds like that was really stirring up some stuff for other people because their support link, you wasn't available to them.

. That's

True too. . Well I love that, that you notice like people will drive for me. Oh, I'm actually wanted . Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that sounds amazing. So did you, was that relationship, did that heal and everything like repaired and went

Forward? Yeah, I think there were some relationships that kind of fell out and um, and you know, I also ended up leaving that area after college. So there was like a distance between them, but there was never any animosity towards anybody in my life. And I would be happy to hear from anybody from back in the day anytime. But yeah, so that was, that was a big piece of it. And there was also the, the awareness that I wasn't aware of myself or what I was doing or why I was doing it. So even so everything in me was like so impulsive at that time. And one of the things that I came up was just like a mantra that was like slow down. I remember I had it written on my wrist, just slow down. And I would say that to myself a million times a day.

And I started to realize that something would happen and I would find myself in a behavior real fast. And when I slowed down, I realized that what was actually happening was something would happen. I would have a thought about that, that would lead to another thought that would lead to another thought, and then I would get to the behavior. But when I slowed down, I found that each one of those thoughts was a place to get off of that train was like a choice. Yes. And I didn't actually have access to that because I was in such a kind of traumatized, you know, PTSD reactive state for so much of my life that I couldn't tolerate. You know, it's so funny. I'm a yoga teacher, I teach meditation, but when I started back then I could not lay down and do Shavasana, the relaxation at the end. Oh my

Goodness. , I could

Not sit and do a meditation. Walking was my meditation. Like I needed to be moving. And that was a time that I would regularly just have panic attacks like randomly. Mm mm Um, and usually my panic attacks would not call a bunch of attention. They would just be something internal and I would usually get quiet or something because I didn't ever want to draw more attention to myself in that space. So you'd

Like just wait them out or something?

Yeah, sometimes I would say, can you do something? You know, and I would just like put somebody else on task for a second so that I could like disappear. But it was just a regular kind of thing that my nervous system was so, so, so, so hijacked. And I say all of this because like I know how to calm my nervous system down. Now I know how to sit . I've sat for 10 days in silence at this point in my life. Like, and you know, like I know how to be present now to each thought, to each feeling to make space even in between the thoughts. Um, and I know that I came from such an extreme opposite where I would've said a million times to anybody, I can't do that. And to just know that with intention, and it doesn't have to be perfect when you start practicing, but just the intention and the clarity of where you want to go and to keep doing little bit at a time, you can do everything that you can't, you think that you can't do . I don't think we have limits on human potential. .

Isn't that amazing? Yes. Thankfully. So. But we do, I think you're right. You know, we do have to have the intention otherwise we just spin around in the same little orbit.

Absolutely. And I talk about all that all the time. Like a lot of times, you know, in therapy we're taught to like go in and go into, you know, what's your memory? What's your story, what's your pain? And sometimes there's not always the intentional aspect of that when we do therapeutic work. And I always like to bring intention in is like, where do we wanna go? Because when we have intention and we're clear about where we wanna go, we'll find plenty of darkness. That's in the way of us getting to that intention. Mm-Hmm. , but only the stuff that's relevant to that. Because I feel like we can otherwise dig around the swamps of sadness forever and uncover every stone, but the direction we wanna go isn't down that way, it's like through or this way. So to really be, as I do healing work, I do one little piece at a time that is directly in the way of where we wanna go and what we wanna open our lives to.

Hmm. I love that. So when, okay. I wanna, um, know from you, I would like to know from you, Erin, when you were in that 10 week Yeah. Uh, inner world experience, like at what point did you realize like you had crossed over into something different?

So it was really funny. I will, I will tell you, um, two parts of this. I think the first part was just realizing how I would get stuck in these moods that I did not know how to get out of. But I knew the places that would get me out of them. And it's so funny, there were two places that I would regularly go to. One, I was living in Savannah, Georgia at the time, so I would drive down to tithe island and get to the ocean, which makes a lot of sense. Mm-Hmm. , the ocean's very big, it can hold everything. Mm-Hmm. . And the other was Walmart, , which I'm not proud of.

That's surprising.

Something about like, I could for the most part afford something in Walmart at any given time. And there was just something about being able to provide something. I don't even know what it was, but it was like, I would, I was regularly, Walmart was closest also, so I would regularly take myself to Walmart or the beach to kind of just shift my energy and that was an awareness. But then what started happening was I would be doing something random, like walking across the street and all of a sudden this happiness would like bubble up within me and I would

Be like, oh my goodness,

Yes, I'm so happy. I don't even know what this is coming from. And it was something so different than, um, any other happiness that I had had before, which was like based on the entertainment that was around me or based on the accomplishment that I had done. But this was just like the happiness of being rather than doing. And it blew every other happiness that I had experienced out of the water.

I love that. That sounds really beautiful. A natural organic happiness. And it was just coming from within you.

I just want everybody to have that. That's like my biggest wish is just like, to just have that happiness that comes from deeply loving, respecting and caring for yourself. Because when we land there, we have everything that we could possibly need.

Yes. May that be so, so Erin, you, I know, you know, like when you were, when we were talking, you were talking about the body in some really specific ways. And so a big component of this and why you are in doing somatic work is the body in that relationship. Can you help, um, our listeners understand a little bit about how the body could support them?

Sure. Um, well one of the things that kind of like started with me when I first started thinking about building a relationship with my body, which I don't think we really think about. I have a relationship with my body . We usually think my body is supposed to perform for me. Why is it not performing? It should be looking this way, it should be feeling this way. Gosh, I don't wanna have to go to the bathroom right now. Let me sit another, you know, let me ignore this signal and let me ignore my sleep signals and let me ignore this. Rather than understanding that the body is constantly communicating what is true for us. And I really like that word truth when it comes to the body because our mind can tell us all sorts of different stories. It can tell us what we can do, what we can't do. It can tell us that so and so likes us or doesn't like us. You know, it can come up with things from the past, the future and imaginary worlds. And we often just automatically believe what our mind is telling us. Whereas when we get into the body, the body is giving direct feedback about what is happening right now. The body grounds us to this present moment and the body gives us information about what is, what either is true and happening now or what is locked inside of it that needs Oh goodness,

No worries. You can just pick that up. Okay.

or the body tells us what is locked inside of it and what needs attention.

So yeah. So that's, that would be like the case of, for example, um, a trauma that's trapped in the body or unprocessed feelings, um, that have turned into physiological states like anxiety.

Definitely. Definitely. And what I like too about when I started working with the body, it's so interesting because in, in therapy, in psychology we're all pretty familiar with the term trigger, you know? Mm-Hmm , I'm triggered by this, I'm triggered by that. And when you start working with the body, then you're kind of learning that the triggers are outside of you. It's all very neutral out there. Otherwise we would all react the same exact way to the same exact things, but we don't, we all have individual things. So the triggers are very neutral and where the triggers actually live are inside you. And it's always a sensation that is coming up that actually tells us how we're feeling our, our emotions. If you're not connected to your emotions or you're not an emotional person or you're an overly emotional person, all of the things around emotions are about feeling the sensations in our body.

That's how we interpret emotions. So to get clarity and gain, um, more capacity for emotions, it's actually capacity for feeling what is in our bodies. Um, but being able to hold and comfort and be with those triggers so that we don't have to react to them. But understanding the worst thing that can happen to us is a sensation . It really interesting because our poor little nervous systems, especially when we've been hurt before, it can't really deduce the difference between, oh, that sensation is something actually physically happening to me and it's dangerous. I could lose my life. Or some of the sensations, like it felt like somebody were stabbing me in the chest or you know, like my guts were ringing. You know, like there's these words that we use to describe very visceral sensations of like, that sounds dangerous, right? Like, and you say like a stab in the heart. And oftentimes our nervous system responds to emotions like they're physical dangers. So when we Yes,

Because it's not like it, um, it actually is experiencing as though it's actually happening,

Right? Yeah. And it's just like, whoa, this sounds dangerous, let's get outta here . So to understand that if we just start relating to our bodies, letting our bodies know in those situations, it's okay, you can calm down. It's just a sensation. And I really, in that I'll usually, um, refer to Pem TROs. The first one I heard say, you are the sky, everything else is the weather. Mm. So when we can start to hold ourselves as the sky and let all of these sensations just be the storm that's moving within the sky and that we can keep that calmness and keep that bigger perspective, then we start to really be able to transform our own triggers without needing to change a thing in our environment, which is really powerful.

That's very powerful. Okay. I want you to just repeat that.

, when we can learn to hold our own triggers, the ones that live in our body as sensations, then we can find peace, we can find change, we can transform our lives without needing to change a single thing in our environment.

Beautifully said. I love that. I'm just like resonating with all kinds of tingles right now. I'm so excited that you brought this to share today. Uh, the, so the power of the body is really the power of freedom.

It really is. And I always am like, it's not real until it's in your body, which is why, you know, my work is called embodied freedom because it's like how do we really get to that place where we are actually living from a free place where we are fully in choice, where we are fully conscious, um, and we have to, the only place to do that is landing in our bodies.

Hmm. Beautiful. Erin, I would love to keep talking today, but this is, this is our time for our episode. Thank

You so much for having me.

Oh yeah. I'm just super excited about what you've brought here and, and getting to know you even more. I'm, I'm glad we had that other meeting, . We got to be together a second time. That's, so I wanna make sure that, um, my listeners have a way to reach out to you where I know you have a free gift for them. So why don't you go ahead and share that with them now.

Yeah. My, um, website is my name erin la porto.com. And there is a free gift at aaron la porto.com/self-care/jour, no self dash care dash journal. So it's a self-care journal. It's about 70 something pages. There's a bunch that's all content for you and what are the best self-care things to put in. And it's really a self-awareness journal of what works for you, what doesn't. So it's a place to experiment to try on to self-discover. And then there's, um, the, the second part of it is all the places to write and take notes and to do the different practices and kind of study yourself and what really gives you the most back. So yeah, that's what I offer you all.

I I think that's a wonderful gift. I know a lot of my listeners love to journal. You know, they're not new to self-growth, but the, I think this journal could really give a kind of a new interesting structure to things and, um, support a lot of people on their journey. So I encourage you all to go there, Erin, ERIN lo Porto, L-O-P-O-R-T o.com/self care journal, and we will of course have that in the show notes. Erin, before we go, I'd love for you to, if you have one other, one other thing. Well, I know you do, when we were talking earlier, we were talking about this body as your friend piece. And I'd love to know if you wanted to share a little bit more around that, or maybe a way people could get started with making the body, helping the body to be their friend.

Yeah. Um, to just think of it as a friend and to think about your body as like, how, what is the, what is the health of my relationship with my body? Not as what is my body's health, but what is the health of the relationship I have with my body? Because if you were to treat probably anybody in your life, the way you treat your body, most of us, that person would not hang around. That person would not open up to us. That person would not trust us and reveal all of themselves to you. So I invite you to really treat your body, talk to your body like it's a friend. Sometimes our body's very young or has a very young part presence, so sometimes we have to talk to it like it's a child. But if we hold ourselves with the kindness that we would tend to hold any friend, then that is when the body reveals its love and its wisdom and it's light to you. So to just be a good friend in that direction and, and do your part to listen, to understand, and to make adjustments for this different kind of consciousness than our mind is, speaks a different language.

Yeah, it certainly does. And thank goodness for that. Thank you so much for that. So the holding with kindness Yeah. And creating trust. I, I think that's a wonderful, wonderful, um, comparison that you just made that will help people remember that Right. Treating their body, the health of the relationship you have with your body. Yeah. Um, as at least as good as the best relationships you have with people. Yeah. .

And it'll make all your relationships better too, I promise. .

Mm. Nice. Yes. Well, thank you so much for being here and say yes to your soul today. Erin,

Thank you for having me. And thank you for this incredible work that you bring into this world and thanks for people to reflect on that up level us all. I do believe one person's effort affects us all. So, um, thank you for this work.

You're very welcome. Alright, it's time to go for today. I look forward to being with you again next week as we dive into something else, juicy, meaningful, and deep stuff. All right. Lots of love and light. Bye-Bye for now.