Kelly Lubeck, shamanic healing practitioner, shares simple strategies you can use to connect with your body, release stress and trauma, and embrace change to magnify your contribution.

We dive into Kelly’s journey of healing from vicarious trauma while working in Africa and post-war Central America. She recounts her big “It Has To Be Me” moment when her body shut down, and she literally lost her fingerprints!

Through a variety of healing modalities, Kelly learned to listen to her body and embrace self-care not as a luxury, but as an act of service and revolution for positive change. She now helps other women prioritize their self-care in order to pursue and fulfill their purposes. 

Kelly walks us through simple movement, breathing, and sound techniques that can be woven into everyday life to calm and shift your energy. Regulating your nervous system, releasing stress, and holding your experiences in balance are things you get better at the more you practice them.  

Kelly’s call to action: Ignore your body and it will demand you pay attention. Listen to your body and you have a greater capacity to heal and serve.  

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS: 

• Self-care is not a luxury, but a form of service and revolution. 
• Befriend your resistance to self-care as a way of embracing change.  
• Your brain doesn’t like change, but your body demands it.  
• Cultivate a practice of listening to your body’s signals for better wellbeing.  
• Movement, breathwork, and singing help you regulate your nervous system.  
• Keep in a place of healing to be ready for whatever comes.  
• When you show up well, you help others to show up well.  
• Let go of what you believe is not safe about your dream and pursue it. 

KELLY LUBECK BIO 

Kelly Lubeck, MPH, RYT is passionate about helping changemakers stay embodied, heal holistically, and lead with clarity, confidence, and compassion, without sacrificing themselves to their mission.

She creates positive change in the world through private client work, group programs, workshops, and speaking engagements. 

With a Master’s in Public Health from Columbia University, Kelly has over 25 years’ experience developing and leading public health initiatives in the United States, Africa, and in post-war Central America.

Combining that work with her training as a yoga teacher, soul-centered coach, and shamanic healing practitioner, she uses the science of the nervous system and a variety of holistic health practices to help women leaders heal from trauma and balance the demands of life and leadership.

CONNECT WITH KELLY 

Website: https://www.kellylubeck.com/ 

Free Workbook: https://winning-experimenter-7416.ck.page/936220dabe 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/weavingthehealing/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lubeckkelly/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellylubeck/ 

Meet Tess Masters:  

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of The Decadent Detox® and Skinny60® health programs.     

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.   

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.  

Connect With Tess: 

Website: https://tessmasters.com/  

Podcast Website: https://ithastobeme.com/   

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theblendergirl  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/  

Get Healthy With Tess 

Skinny60®: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Join the 60-Day Reset: https://www.skinny60.com/60-day-reset/ 

The Decadent Detox®: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/  

Join the 14-Day Cleanse: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/14-day-guided-cleanses/ 

The Blender Girl: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

Thanks for listening!  

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If you want to manage your stress better and have more peace and calm in your life, you are going to get some amazing strategies from Kelly Lubeck. Today I met Kelly through the skinny 60 community when she joined the 60 day reset, and she's done multiple cycles now, and I'm always inspired by how she moves through the world and handles challenges. She's a really gifted healer and so committed to creating positive change and helping other people embrace their version of change and lean into the impact that they want to make in the world. She uses a combination of shamanic healing and yoga practices and the science of the nervous system to help you tap into your intuition and listen to your body in order to move into an empowered place of deeper healing and wellness. Oh, I think you're going to just love what she has to say in the way she makes sense of the world. So let's get the skinny from Kelly Lubeck.

Oh, Kelly,

I was just feeling like yummy when I got up this morning, because I thought I get to relax with Kelly, and I get to just drink in Kelly and get all of these beautiful strategies for how I can relax my nervous system. So I want to start with this. It has to be me moment for you when you were working in public service, and, you know, helping people for in war torn districts around the world, and you just knew that you needed to do things differently. So can you talk me through that it has to be me moment where you went, No, this does not have to be me anymore. Have to make some changes. Yeah,

absolutely. So short story is that I was living in El Salvador, doing service work. I was building a community mental health program for youth and children in this area that had been living through a civil war, and I was there working with EX combatants and ex refugees and running a mental health program for the youth and children, right? And so I, I went down so eager, my 20 something year old self was, like, so eager to do healing and to offer up well being and and really, really serve and show up. And I was seen as the local psychologist, because I was the gringa who went down there, and I was like, no, no, I'm not the psychologist. But everyone wanted to tell me their stories, and I listened to story after story after story, and I was drinking them up. I wanted to, I wanted to be there. I wanted to hear, I wanted to be witness to all of what they had struggled with, and I knew quite a bit of it. And then my body started to just just shut down. I was I was losing my hearing. I kept getting ear infections, and literally, my eardrum burst five times. I was breaking out in these tremendous rashes. It's where I learned about the importance of gut health tests. My gut was just in such bad shape, and yes, was living in hard conditions, for sure, hard physical conditions that I'd never lived in and what have you. But there was so much energetic and so much stress and and really vicarious trauma in in the world that I work in now. It was like understanding as I was listening to everyone else's trauma that they'd lived I was actually experiencing in my own body what I was hearing, and so I got so, so, so sick. I really, to be honest, wasn't sure I was going to make it. It was, it was scary sick, and nothing was quite addressing the issues when I go to the doctor, and I, I, you know, did a number of things, including, like, really, really cleaning up the diet, which was pretty healthy, but I, you know, just cut out all the stuff that was troubling my system. But started to learn in that moment. I mean, it took me a few more years, if I'm being really honest, but in that moment, started to learn I had to do things differently. I could not go from house to house to house and hear these incredibly traumatic and hard stories of so much loss and grief and and trauma, and not tend to myself and not take breaks. I couldn't work 18 hour days in really, really intensive conditions without tending to my own system. And so even though I didn't have the words for it at the time, I I was starting to see that things needed to shift later on, when I got back to the States, and had a whole other resurgence of systems that was of symptoms, that was a moment where I really that was my come to Jesus. We got to do this, and we're not going

to make it, or it has to be me. Moment that was your body literally crying out. It has to be me. You've got to put me first. Even though you didn't have the words, it was so wonderful that your intuition kicked in, you know? To practice self care. So take me inside of that, your journey of healing, and what you did your body that paved the way for this panic healing chapter of your life, and all this beautiful nervous system work that you do helping others to heal. Now, what? What was that journey?

Yeah, so. So in that piece, I want to share just a quick moment of this moment. It was probably seven or eight years later where I had this resurgence of symptoms. A lot of things had had shown up. And I remember, I was living in New York City at the time, I was really in a state of, are we going to make it? Are we not going to make it? I'm looking in the mirror. I looked 60. I was only 30, and I was, I was literally like, are you trying to kill me? Are we like, Is this the end? I had so much anxiety. I had so much gut issues, so many gut issues. My skin was just erupting. There was so much happening, and I I had this moment where I just, I was literally looking in the mirror, talking to, I don't know who, just being like, Okay, if we're gonna do this, we gotta turn things around. But what do I do? And I literally hear this voice say, you have to learn to sit still. And honestly, yeah, trying to sit still. And I go, and I remember so vividly, I'm like, sitting on my little couch in my New York apartment, and I hear, you have to sit still. And I it was something just shifted. And I was like, Okay, I have to learn to sit still. And so from there, I started doing yoga. I started slow. I started slowing down. I learned to sit still. I learned to say, no, really a hard one.

So hard for you, so

hard. It's like, I live for service. It just thrills my heart to be in service to people and and and communities and missions and what have you. And so I I really did, and I started slowing down, and I also worked with an acupuncturist and herbalist who was just masterful in supporting my healing process. I really, I credit him with saving my life really, truly and and completely reoriented my diet and what have you. And then was so interesting. Years later I got it was kind of a similar like we've been talking to you, you listening? Yeah. Was like, go do the shamanic stuff already. And that's its whole own magical path. But I was really guided to start doing energy medicine work through this, these shamanic practices that just rooted me and connected me in with the earth and with community and with these ancient healing techniques and ways of walking and being on the earth and relating to other humans and relating to the natural world, that just shifted everything. And what I want to share in that is it was this, this moment of really crossing a threshold or having sort of an unplanned rite of passage, we could say. But as my, you know, my skin was erupting, I mentioned, but I literally lost my fingerprints in these, in these health crises, like my fingers split both. I lost my fingerprints. I had no like, identifying fingerprints. It was so it's so wild to me, this thing that our body does, right? And at the time, it was devastating. I was like, what is happening? I have erupting rashes, like, everywhere on my face, on my hands, on my arms, my neck and and then when I began my shamanic healing path, the the first initiation, or the first sort of pathway in was the path of the serpent, and understanding how the serpent sheds its skin. And so then when I began the path, I was looking back at this healing path and seeing like, oh, this was me shedding my skin, like I was literally being invited into a whole new way of being on the earth and doing my work and showing up in service, but in a way that was really in a new skill, right? And so that I feel like that piece is so important to speak to, even though I know we just dove in super deep right at the beginning. No, I

love it. I love it. Let's go deep. I love going deep with you. I love going

deep. But I think that piece, like for so many who struggle with health and healing, whether it's nervous system, emotional health, physical health, which, honestly, they're all in the same package. In my world, you know, when we're walking through them, it can just feel so devastating and so hard and so all consuming and like it's the end of the world, and so often it is this place of an opportunity for renewal and rebirth and coming into its. New way of being when we integrate it well, it is our best medicine. What happened, what I walked through, is what gave me the medicine to both heal myself and then to help others heal themselves as well.

Yeah, and you know what you're describing, it's very much the caterpillar into the butterfly, right? Like we there is this misconception like the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. The caterpillar actually goes into a cocoon, dies decompos.

It's just muck, right?

And then this whole new thing is reborn and actually comes to life. And this, this idea that you were talking about before, of sit still, like I really struggled with that too, and that we, we don't think of being and regenerating and healing and slowing down as having value in the Western world. Typically, it's just forward achievement, more, faster, better there, right? And that this idea of sitting still and being and resting and balancing and looking inward is actually being. If it is actually doing, it's actually the most powerful form of doing.

The most powerful what you're describing

is, is that knowing that actually is the promised land, and it's so incredible. So take me inside this shamanic journey. Then of you know the different iterations of your journey as a practitioner and really coming into being with your understanding of these practices and how you want to share it, because everybody's got their own way that they communicate these practices, and I love your way of doing it. So take me inside. You know, the the evolution and the growth and the development of of you within these practices.

I love that question. Okay, so one thing that I think is important to say is, while I was in El Salvador, I was doing public public service work, and when I came back to the States, I studied public health, and that was when I had my next kind of healing crisis. That's when everything kind of research, yeah, and, and, so call

it the fingerprint,

okay, perfect. And, and, you know, my public health work I came to because when I originally went to El Salvador, I was really interested in doing work with trauma survivors, so I wanted to help people heal from their experience of trauma. And while I was there, what I ended up being tasked to do at the time was to build a community mental health program that was all focused on more of the collective well being, rather than individual supports. And so I was going to stay there for six months, nine months, and then come back, you know, study my PhD in Psych and then work with trauma survivors. But while I was there, I really got this public health model right, and so I came back to the States to study public health, and it was, it's a path that I just appreciate and love so much, because it's looking at, it's looking at collective healing in my in my frame. It's looking at collective healing. But my work, my the stuff that really excites me is the stuff people are generally least excited about, which is the primary prevention work. Which is, how do we how do we heal before you have a problem, right? Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, it's actually so much work to bring somebody back from a really hard thing that if we start with the practices and and the preventive work, right? Yes, it's not very sexy, but it's so sexy today,

proactive and preventive and keeping yourself in balance so that

you have prepared. Yeah? You say that again when

the ship gets rocked. Yeah,

totally. So the way that I see the shamanic work actually is it can it can work on like the primary, the secondary and the tertiary levels, but so much of it is about, you know, the primary level. I've actually never thought of this. This is just coming through right now. But that primary level is doing the work of connecting, like it's it's connecting. It's connecting the heart and the belly and the brain, and it's getting all of these pieces working together in the, you know, Western world, the modern world, we are so disconnected from our bodies and our hearts. It's like we're supposed to be all brain and you. That, you know, it just we actually don't do well when we try to be all brain and generally, it lands us in crisis of one form or another. And so in the shamanic work, it's, you know, for me, it's about connecting, you know, in the more woo expression, it's connecting earth and heaven and standing at the center and being like a channel for all these things, but in really basic terms, it's like using your breath remembering that. You know, I look out the window these trees out here, and we're breathing together, like I breathe out, and they breathe in, and they breathe out, and I breathe in clean air and and actually, the ancestors who've lived on the land where we stand right now, both of us across the ocean, like the breath of the ancestors is here, right? Like, oh, when I think of that, it's just so stunning, right? Like we are breathing all the life that's come before us, and we are breathing life into what comes after us. And it is Oh, like that. Just that alone, I drop into that awareness. And I am I am so calm, I am so still, I am so steady. And

when you can tap into the power, collective power, of all of that, you actually realize you're not alone. Yeah, as you receive, you give, as you give, receive. And it is just this beautiful flow of energy that that comes in and out and yeah, oh yeah, being in the flow. Yes, totally

Yeah, just connecting in with this natural world that this is the primary part, right? It's understanding that, through the shamanic lens, we are not different from the trees and the rocks and the four legged animals we we're other creatures on the belly of Mother Earth. And that, to me, is it is primary. And when I connect in with that, I'm, well, it's it's like the we have to remember that, that that is good medicine. You know, we spend all this time. I spend all this time sitting at my computer in these, you know, 90 I always think about the 90 degree angles where, like little robots, and then we get in the car at 90 degree angles, and we drive and but it actually okay, I'm like, jumping to techniques here, but you know, one basic thing that we can do is just go out. You're reading

my mind, because you're you, because I was just about to say, give us a practice for how we can get into that flow. Yeah, yeah, totally.

So one thing, one really basic thing, is just to move the body, like coming back to the 90 degree thing. It's so easy to sit here every day I do yoga. Every single morning, it is my sacred practice. I don't miss it, even if I have 10 minutes, it's what I do. But literally, looking away from the computer and turning your body or swinging, you know, swinging your arms from side to side, crossing the midline is really, really helpful for our brains and our nervous system. So looking from side to side, just moving the body, wiggling, shaking the shoulders, like

animals, do they shake themselves when they

totally shake and when they're okay, I'm totally going to jump ahead here. But one thing that I think about so, so we this is shamanic, but it's also a nervous system, which is, for me, the nervous system work. When I sort of discovered that piece, which was in another, like healing crisis moment, I was like, Oh, this is the next level. And it was understanding that our nervous system is just recording all of these different events and the understanding and interpretation of events and our our engagement with other humans. And from this, we create these patterns in our nervous system that are basically oriented towards helping us to feel safe in the world. We want to feel safe and we want a longing it is it is so deeply held in us. We want safety and we want belonging, and so we go and we lean into these patterns that could be completely self sabotaging, but they weren't at one moment. They kept us safe in one moment, and then they became a pattern. And then we get to a place where we actually need to unwind that pattern or release that pattern, right? And

the brain doesn't like to surrender.

No, no. The brain is here. You know, we have these different parts of the brain. Our like reptilian brain is like, you just focus on, focus on the basics. Keep that heart rate going, keep the hormones pumping and doing their thing, keep your breath going, and then our limbic system is like, Oh no, no, no, we don't do change. Change is scary. Change is danger. Change could mean change could mean death, right? And so the brain will do what it can to keep bringing us back to what it believes. Safe, which is these old patterns that we

have, we know, even if it is not serving us anymore. Yes,

totally. And this, this is the part where, when we try to do that from our brains, it is nearly impossible, like trauma. And when I say trauma, I mean big T trauma, little T trauma, but information, old experiences, all the things that create the patterns in our nervous system, and which is really our ways of relating and behaving and being in the world. Though those patterns get woven in, and then we have to find ways through the body, the body, tucked them away, and so the body and the nervous system, when we can learn to work with them, to help release these things, that is when we can do the really deep healing. But doing it talk therapy is amazing. It's so important. I love it. I do it. I think it's a really valuable thing. Coaching is so important. But when we really dive into understanding how the body and the nervous system all these patterns into the deeper healing to unwind those patterns. That is when we can do, you know, the deeper, the deeper healing work. So,

you know, talk therapy. I go and see my therapist once a month just to check in about how I am processing things. But I also do shamanic work and spiritual dance and all kinds of other healing modalities, you know, acupuncture and Reiki and, you know, somatic work and all the stuff we're talking about. And when you put these two things together, oh, you're able to just keep the healing going, you know, being be present in a healing space every day, which is what you're describing,

yes. Oh,

okay, I want to ask you about some calming techniques. And I love what you have said to me in the past, which is beginning with giving yourself permission for self care. Can you talk me through that? Because as women in particular, we really struggle with giving ourselves permission to nurture us, nurture ourselves. We should be nurturing our children, our elderly parents, our co workers, our anybody, right? Yeah. And so let's just start there about the commission piece. Yes,

I love that. So So with that, what I want to do is just make sure we're all on the same page for what self care is. Because I think so often we think of it like the many petty and the massage, which are awesome, right? We're not knocking those. They're they're amazing, and what we really want is self care in the form of giving space and taking time and allowing our self room to go do some recovery if something was hard or traumatic or scary or upsetting and and to do the movement practices and the practices that I'm going to share with you today, and the way that I like to frame it when I when I teach about this, is to talk about self care as its own form of service. And, you know, I work with a lot of change makers, and people who are out like making making a difference in the world, right, and wanting to make change, and Mother Well, and, you know, lead a mission driven business or or do humanitarian aid. And when you're out doing that, it can be so easy, whether you're mothering or doing humanitarian aid, or, you know, serving front lines, or doing medicine work or what have you so easy to think, Oh, well, I'll do that when I'm done with X, Y or Z. Or they really need me right now, so I should show up for them. Or I just don't have time for that right now. Or, or even, like the the sneakier one that gets hidden and disguises other things is, Am I really worthy of taking this time for myself, right? Or that's

a big one. It's

such a big one, if you

don't, yeah, in skinny 60 talks about this, right? You've been on my office hours where, oh gosh, this is a huge one. Yeah? Talk, talk,

yeah. And so what I like to do is kind of turn the idea of, you know, self care being this luxury thing. It's, you know, it's when you have a moment or go on a retreat and do it again. Those are lovely. But I really like to think of it as its own form of change making as its own form of caregiving, not just for us, but for those that we attend to as its own form of revolution, if you're into like making making change and ultimately, its own form of service, like self care is service, because when we show up well, we're actually able to do so much more, right when I learn to sit together. Right, yes, yeah. When, when I learned this, and I see this, the deeper I go in this work, the more I learn this. Because I still, you know, I still want to do my busy thing. I love doing the checklists and getting all the things done. It totally makes me happy. But I have my to do list every day. I have my awesome planner, and at the end of the day, I still write down the extra things that I did that I did that weren't in there because but in this i i have found that when I take more space, even when it feels like I don't have time, even when it feels like there's just not space for it, there's way too many things to do, my creativity goes up. My decision making, power is like spot on. I am. My client sessions go so much better. My teaching is so attuned, like everything goes better when I give myself more space and I work with I've worked with hundreds of people, and watch this with so many of them when they and, you know, it's a revolutionary right to to be witness and guide with somebody, and watch them step in and start to make these shifts and be like, Whoa. This actually works. So, so I feel like that piece is so important. But what, what else I want to say on that is, you know, you can go get, I'm going to share a number of techniques, and you have tons of techniques as well, and you can go online and get all these techniques for free. They're all free, right? And and most of them involve doing things with your body that are really easy to do, but the that is not the biggest, most important part of the teaching, like the biggest, most important part of the teacher teaching is looking at, how do we really create space for this and overcome the resistance to what gets in the way of us doing this for ourselves, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. And so. So for me, that's, you know, I'll, I think we should go in and, like, do a few techniques, but I feel like that piece of really befriending the resistance, which is something that I learned from beloved teacher of mine, and that I work on with my clients in classes. It is the biggest thing for people, because it is totally what gets in the way of doing all the free things.

Oh, gosh, that is the truth. So how do you help people befriend the resistance to loving themselves,

yeah, should we go? Should we go there first? Or should we do a technique?

Let's go there first, because

then we can set the container, yeah, to really drop into these practices and receive them. Yes,

absolutely. I love that test. Thank you. So obviously, this is, you know, a bigger, longer process than what we have today. But I'm just going to give some tips for kind of tuning into it and and understanding, just understanding the process and where, you know, where our resistance comes from. So as we were talking about before, our brains work really hard to keep us safe. They don't like change. And for so many of us, we have been in the world in ways where, when we are self sacrificial, when we are even for some of us, I would totally put myself, my past self, in this category of being kind of glamorizing martyrdom. And, you know, working, working so hard, right? And like, can you really with that? And how many people do you work with, right, that can relate with that? And it doesn't matter if you're, if you've never encountered this work before, or you're really high level. I work with the highest level people who still have, still have these pieces to overcome. I still work on this in myself all the time, right? It's really, really important. And so we often have these beliefs that have been born from understanding that we are safer or better or what have you, because we don't do this self care and resilience building and what have you. And so when, when we encounter this resistance so often, and we've also been in the camps where they're like, just push through, overcome it, override, go for it, right? And you just push through, push through, push through. And that is, that's totally great. It works for a minute.

No, I take you're not a fan of CrossFit, that was a good presentation.

But truly, there's lots out there about how to just push through an override. And to some extent, we we need that like there's a little bit of override that needs to happen, but it's subtle, but if we are always overriding our essential needs and overriding the real nervous system responses and overriding the. Desire to rest, or the need for rest, and the need to do deeper healing. What will happen is that nervous system has that pattern, and it believes it unsafe to step outside of that pattern, and so in befriending resistance, what we're doing is creating safety around change, and so what I love to do is help people get into their bodies and like, really understand, what does that resistance feel like? What is it? What does it look like for you? Where do you sense it first showed up? How has it shown up for you? And then, how do we love on it, and just let it know you're here and you see it and you understand it, but like, how do you just, like, hold it and love on it and take care of it and let it know that you're not here to threaten its existence. It's totally working to protect you. But what we want to do is create, essentially, create safety in the body and in the brain and in the nervous system to then work on whatever whatever health goals we have, whatever life goals we have, whatever business goals or or whatever vision we have for the future of our children or the planet or our mission or whatever It is, right? And so we create safety in that by really befriending it and then working somatically to help the body shift into different patterns. And well, let me just pause there. So that's

that's how I love it. So let's talk about some of these calming practices that we putting into our toolbox. Because, you know, when something derails you in the day, or someone says something, you you watch something on the news, or you just wake up and you've got the big long to do listen, and you just can't tap into your resilience, your ability to hold it all and focus on the next thing. What? What is let's talk through some of these things that we can be doing. Yeah,

great. So one thing that we can all do, and I bet you have a lot of Yogi listeners, but people who Yoga will know this, the breath work, or pranayama, is a really, really helpful, soothing, soothing tool. And there are all these different breath forms that we can use, and basically what they're doing is they're giving shape to the nervous system. The way we breathe shapes the nervous system, and it helps tell the body, what it is that we're asking it to do, right? And so when we want you could, you essentially could slow down the breath. Let's just we can do that. Now I'm going to teach a couple different breathing techniques, but you could slow down the breath, just breathing in through the nose, and then breathing out through the mouth, just a gentle sigh, and then breathing in through the nose

and a gentle Sigh. Then one more time like that, breathing in, breathing out.

So Tess, how did that feel? Like? What are you noticing in your body right now?

Yeah, everything just drops. Yeah. It's just kind of Yeah. I mean, it's just just something simple, like that. It's so just reminds you, I am safe, I'm alive, I can handle whatever I'm being given right now. It actually just makes me feel kind of also more in my own skin,

too. Yeah, right, yeah, it's amazing. There's I heard this beautiful thing when I was first starting my nervous system study that was simply slowing the breath to like a count in a four to five and a count out of four to five. So just long, deep breaths, we are literally signaling to the body that we are safe. Because if there is an emergency or if we are in a traumatic situation, or if our systems need to be on guard, it is actually physiologically impossible to do what we just did. So if you are not safe, you can't breathe like that, and so it literally tells the brain and the nervous system, you are safe. And so that is a really beautiful one just to start with. I love just starting with that, because it's so simple, right? And you can do it on a bus, you can do it in a meeting, you can do nobody has to know, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. So now I want to. Each one that everybody would know about if you did it, but I think it's a really powerful one. It's one of my favorites, and that one is Lion's Breath. And again, you may know this, you being your listeners, but you as well. But with Lion's Breath, what we're doing, it's like detoxifying, but it's really great for releasing stress, releasing anger, releasing anxiety. So if you're just feeling in that really stirred up, like frustrated or limited, like tapped out, you know, anxious place, whatever it is, like whatever form of too much, too much energy surging. This is a beautiful one to do. So basically, you breathe in through the nose, and I like to do this one. I don't know if we'll be able to see on camera, but, um, I like to do this one in, like, a big, deep Maui squat, which is, you know, Maui from,

I love that movie, yeah. Do you love that? Maybe,

yeah, yeah. I love it. I think we've seen it three times in our house. Yeah, correct. So you stand like a big, deep Maui squat, and your hands on your on your thighs, and you breathe in through the nose, and then you stick the tongue out as far as you can. And then again,

you one more time. And

then, if you want to do like lightening, pause, you can do that too. This is a really great one to do with kids. I love it so good. They love it. And I have, you know, I teach this. When I speak at conferences and do workshops and stuff, I teach this to people, and it's one of the things people always come back telling me, I'm doing my Lion's Breath.

But if you're interested in a state of play, yes, yes. Like, just oh yeah, what's going to happen? Yeah?

Totally. Um, yeah. Wow. It makes me very dry too. But, yeah, it puts you in a state of play. It releases this energy. It's, it's actually detoxify, like literally detoxifying. It's really good for bad breath and for exercising the facial muscles and all the things as well. But it's really good for the nervous system. So that's, that's another beautiful one, and then another one, which does fit in the pranayama world specifically, but it also comes from the somatic healing world is, and actually, I'll say you go into any spiritual or religious tradition utilizes this. So we can go into a church or a mosque or a synagogue or a Kirtan, if you're into the yoga thing, or and all these different in these different spaces. And this is used, and it is used in collective which is a really important part of the nervous system, like our our social nervous system needs connection with other humans. It is, it's, it is hardly spoken about in terms of the nervous system. We always hear about fight, flight, maybe freeze, but the social connectedness one is so essential for our nervous systems. So you can do this one alone, but I totally recommend doing it in community, and that is making sound or humming. So in in the yoga world, it's called brahmari, but, but in churches, people sing in in synagogues, people sing in mosques, people sing and chant, right? And so joyful. It's joyful. And it makes sometimes it's joyful, and sometimes it's like grief outpouring, yes, right? And, but it's, but it's basically moving things through and it stimulates our vagus nerve, which is an essential part of the nervous system as well. One of my, one of my teachers that I follow and love, talks about it as the love nerve, so it stimulates that. And basically we can do this just by humming. So let's, let's just do this. So you breathe in through the nose, and you just hum out, mmm.

How'd that one feel?

Oh, you know me. Any any chance to hum and sing, and I'm in what's so great is it connects you with your spine, yes,

yeah, and your belly. So

beautiful. It's so beautiful because we don't often feel the resonance in our back cavity, because, particularly in West. In society, it's all just forward, forward, forward. And so when we can be resonating into all of these different parts of our body, it's and also just it feels like you can connect your chakras too, right, like your root and like it connects to your crown, and you can feel it in your heart. And yeah, at least that's what I experience. You know, it's just love it.

And actually, on that chakra note, one, a teacher of mine, years and years and years ago, taught that with we would do the humming, and it was within yoga space. But actually the idea was to move the hum to where there was body discomfort or pain or an area that needed attention, and so you'd move the sound up, so it's like, and like, moving it up and down. Yeah. So you can imagine, if you're familiar with the chakra system, you know, if you want to, if you're feeling some heartache and you're just feeling or tightness in your chest or your lungs, like you want to move it into that heart center, like, do the tone that reaches the heart and really becomes a resonant in the heart. Or do the tone, if you want to, you know, really focus on your digestion. Or you're just really wanting to feel stronger in your gut or, or, you know, wanting to feel more self confident. Like, move it into the belly. So you can do it in the chakra system, you can also just do it with by feeling. You don't even have to know the system just where, where is it that your body wants attention and wants support right now? And where would the humming feel like it's waking up or feeling good for you? So that's a beautiful and so I'm glad you mentioned that, because we can be very directive in it as well, in terms of what we want to wake up or stimulate, yeah,

and also being unattached to a particular sound, yeah. But it doesn't need to be in tune. It can be ugly and guttural. So so called. I mean, I hate to use that word, but, but whatever's coming out, it can be primal. It can be, I mean, I've done practices where, oh my goodness, like you said, it sounds like an alien is being birthed, if you know what I mean, and it's just Whoa, you know. And actually just surprising yourself, yeah, what? What's in there? Yeah, be really extraordinary, right?

Absolutely, yes. So extraordinary. I love that. I want to come back to that guttural piece that you just mentioned. This was a piece that I was thinking would be helpful to touch in for people on and, you know, you said when we started this, this piece of it that, you know, something happens during the day and you feel stressed out, and you just don't feel like you can tap into your own resilience. So these are really, you know, these, and many others, are good tools for being a resource or being sort of a trick that we can use to help soothe the system and calm the body and and and meet the moment of dysregulation, like the nervous system dysregulation, or just feeling, Oh,

I love that maybe of dysregulation,

yeah. So it's like, how do we, how do we come back into a place of regulation, which is a whole but what I like to do is, like, bring this into real life. So one way that you could use this technique, and I think there's other things too, that we could look at, if there's if we're good on time, is just to think of a time recently, not like a super terrible traumatic event, but just something that was stressful or upsetting? It could have been a conversation at work or something went wrong on the website, or you got a rough piece of news about health or a family member, or just something that led to a feeling that was very unsettling, right? And what I like to do is ask people just to notice, like, how did you feel in that moment? So you're just tuning in what happened in that moment, what was what was feeling unsettling. But rather than going to the place of analyzing from our brains what happened and why it was upsetting, I want to, like, invite people to just tune into the body, right and notice. And so often what happens is there's this feeling of being trapped or stuck, or I can't say anything, or I can't breathe, or My heart is racing, or, you know, I don't know what to do, or, or the spinning feeling, like, I know a lot of people get a spinning feeling and or sort of deer in the headlights feeling. And so what's happening is the nervous system is responding to whatever is there. And we want our nervous system to respond right? We actually want our nervous system to be able to, like, upregulate and down regulate, and have moments of, like, heightened sensation, and then have moments of less sensation. And so, rather. A than sucking it up or tucking it away and and just like doing the stiff upper lip thing or choking back the tears moving on which there, there is a time and a place for that. If you're sitting in a in an important meeting, that's what you do. That's important. We're not going to go howling and making guttural sounds.

Magic.

And so. So what we want, though, is to in a moment that is safe, like maybe it's in the car, or maybe it's later in the shower, or when you get home at night or when you vote on a nature walk, but just to tap back into the body. And just notice, what is it my body is wanting right now, and in that we can be asking, like, does it want to make a sound? Does it need to shake like animal? Shake Right? Like an animal after a stressful situation and going into freeze? I mean, again, freezes a whole like we could spend an hour for a week on that one. But like, what they do is they shake and they release all this energy, which is essentially stored survival stress. But we are walking around all the days storing survival stress by tucking things away and and sucking it up, or joking back the tears and then not taking care of it, but when we leave room to take care of it, even if it's an hour later, even if it's later that evening or a few years later, as you know, as is the case for many of us who go on a deeper feeling journey, and many of the people that I work with, what we want to do is check in, like, what is it my body wants? And the more we attune to that and listen to it, and the more we learn to do the release that the body is asking for, the more that we contribute to healing. And so yes, we want to use resources. We want to, like, deep breathe in the moment. I'm not going to scream at the boss. I'm not going to lose it with my child. I'm going to stay calm. Like, yes, we want to do that in the moment, but in another moment, we might, might need to make some gut roll sounds, or do Lion's Breath, or go shake it out and just like, move the body and and, you know, let things release, and whatever it is that's needed and what I find. And the more that I teach this, and as people deepen into understanding what it is to do, body listening, as I like to call it, the more that they're just attuned right away, like, boom, oh, I know what to do. Just drop in. Oh, I need to do this thing. I do that, and boom, ha, we can move on. But it is, it is, you know, a practice to be able to explore and discover this and then have have the go to ways of moving in and through these harder moments. Does that make sense? Oh yes,

yes. So in terms of the way that you work with people, you know, this is a practice just brushing your teeth, just like the yoga practice that you have in the morning, being able to regulate your nervous system and self regulate and balance and hold all of you and the world is something that you get better at the more you practice. So talk me through how you work with somebody, and how we get ourselves into a place where we can self regulate? Well, is that a good way of saying it? Do I need a difference? What

I want to do, how I want to answer that first is to use this analogy that I really love, that I find so supportive, which is, and I always put this up with a screenshot, so you can just imagine that I'm holding here this picture of a river with rocks in it, like the rocks are sticking out of the river. And the analogy is that the river represents our bodies and our nervous systems, and the rocks sticking out of the river represent survival, stress, traumas, big T, little T, traumas, so big things that happen in other ways that it just gets stored. It could be like a hard conversation you had that like you always remember. And it like bring brings dysregulation on board when you think about it. And it can also be like over responsibility, over committing to things, and then the flow of the river is the the health of our nervous system, the capacity of our nervous system and the resilience that we have. And there are two ways that we can increase the flow of the river. One is to take out rocks, which is doing the bigger, deeper healing and and like really moving things out of the way that creates more. Flow, and the other way is to widen and deepen the river, which is by doing these practices that really help to support us in the moment. But we do not want a river that is always steady and slow, nor do we want a river that is always moving like the rapids, right? What we want is a river that can move quickly sometimes and slowly sometimes, and it's responsive to whatever is happening. So I love that analogy to support the understanding around and I'm, I'm, I know I'm going through this kind of quickly, but I but I feel like this piece is important, um, around self regulation, because I feel like it's a term that gets thrown out so often, and we can do self regulation for sure, but we don't always want to be forcing self regulation or being self regulated. We actually want fast flowing river and slow flowing river, and we wanted to do both things in different moments and to be responsive. We want our heart to be really, really fast and our our attention to shift when we're on the highway driving and a car cuts us off. We that is a healthy nervous system response. You know that the 20 minutes after, where your heart's like heart's like going pitter Pat and you're you're responding so quickly like we want that we need that we also need to be able to sell our systems at night and go to sleep and digest our food like that is totally down regulating, right? And we want to be able to do these with a level of flow that's really healthy and responsive to what the needs are at the moment. And so in terms of how I go in and work with people, part of it is this teaching, because I do think it's really helpful, especially we have so many Smarty fans, people out there who just who love to know why and how. I think

Brian needs that, like we need it. It's safe, and now you give some of this over to us. Our brain just needs that information

totally and so in working with people, what I find it's really helpful to to, you know, understand the importance of all of this and and understand how it came to be. I think it is really helpful for many of us to understand where some of these patterns came, came to exist, and just peel back the layers on that, and then to understand the different functioning of the nervous system, but, you know, all the different parts of it, and then the the ways that we do freeze and shut down, And then how we work with it, and then we start looking at resistance, and what is getting in the way of doing the things we need to do, and and how do we work on befriending that resistance and coming to a place of peace and friendliness and compassion with the resistant parts of ourselves, and then really deepening into the body, listening. And the more we deepen into the body, listening and learn to attune to its signs and learning to understand when our body is telling us you need to say no and stop overriding the note or listening to how the Body Keeps the Score. It's one of my favorite books. Oh, sorry. Oh, good, yeah. And when the body says, no, like, these are really important pieces, but everybody's body is going to respond in different ways, right? And so learning to attune to that and understanding it's a journey, and it's a practice and and we do this by deepening into the practice and getting really friendly with our bodies so that we know what they need, and it starts to inform like ideas or decisions around nutrition and around how we move in the world and the relationships we want to keep. And if you're a business person, you know moves you want to make in your business, if you're doing other change, making work and supervising teams, like how you're going to supervise, if you're parenting, it just tells us there's just so much. It's all rich and it's all right here, like there's so much for us and so so much of this work is really helping people deeply attune and befriend their bodies in ways that just go beyond what they ever knew their bodies were capable of communicating and and understanding and moving out of, I think this is one last piece I'll say is no two more pieces. One is moving out of the body. Is the enemy, and when it gets sick, or when it's giving me trouble, it's just something I've got to conquer and overcome, but actually understanding it's just, it's just talking to you. It just wants attention, that it needs you to give it. And then the, you know, the piece there, the next piece is like really creating rhythms and rituals that support the nervous system and that create these practices and and and routines that support us moving into the place of um. Understanding how to befriend our bodies and understanding what makes change, and then from there, we can just go super deep so

and just surrendering to your intuition and wisdom and and trusting it. Yeah, that's coming up for me as you're talking is that your body knows what it wants. Oh, yeah, often the brain just wants to keep ruling the show, and our bodies actually know exactly what to do. Yeah, coming full circle to the beginning of our conversation about giving ourselves permission to want what we want, yeah, no matter what. Yeah, it's, I love what you were saying about the rhythm. You know, if something feels like it's out of tune, out of step, it is. It's just not right. If you can't get into the rhythm, then it's not right, and we often just ignore those things. So oh gosh, I could talk to you about this all day,

loving nerding out.

It just opens up a whole new world. So thank you so much for the way that you show up, and you're a beloved member of the skinny 60 community with our 60 day reset. And you know, gosh, I again it you the work that you're doing is so important. So you can find Kelly at kellylubeck.com and just enter her world and all of its wonder. So Kelly, I always close every episode with the same question, and it'll be interesting within the context of this conversation that we've been having about tapping into your body intelligence and listening to the guidance of your body and the signs, if somebody has, well, everybody has a dream in their heart, and if somebody has a dream in their heart right now and doesn't think they quite have what it takes to make it happen, What would you say to

them? I love that question. I so deeply believe, and I'm in the world of not just healing, but dream weaving. And when there is a dream in your heart, it is there not just for you, but it is there in service as your unique expression in the world, as you this embodied human who's come here to do and make change in the way that you're here to do that, and in light of all that we've just talked about, what I would say is The work is to clear away the parts of you that are holding back from believing that it's safe to live into that dream and to make that dream happen. And the more that we can clear the way for safety in the body, for listening in the body for buttuning to the dream. And what the dream wants this is it's coming through your body, through your brain. When we do that deeper healing, the dream can't help but come forth through you. And I just want to share one last thing, which is just that I always say to my people, the world needs you well. And I've been saying it for years. It's like my little signature sign off. And I I just have come to believe it and embody it so much, because when we go out in the world and we're doing whatever we're doing, when we show up from well, what we can do in the world is so much more powerful and potent, and we help others be well and and if you have a dream, you're doing it from, well, you're going to be able to create that, that change that you're seeking to create. Yes,

the world needs you Well, show up. From, well, Oh, those are yummy hashtags. Oh, I just love that so much. And you know, because I know that you are committed to your own wellness. You know, having coached you in skinny 60 I you know, it's always so thrilling when you meet coaches who choose to be coachable. Yeah, that we are all teaching and learning. We are all holding space together and learning from each other. And it always inspires me when. I meet healers who choose to walk the talk and keep themselves in a healing space. You are definitely one of those healers who chooses to keep yourself in a healing space so that you can, as you say, show up from that place of being and, well, oh yeah, I love that. Thank you so much. Thank

you so much. And thank you for modeling that too. Tess, it's just extraordinary and beautiful. And, yeah, thank you. You've been such a fun conversation. I'm so glad to be here with you. Oh,

me too. Thank you. Thank you. I love the way she expresses herself and sees the world. I love this idea of being proactive and moving yourself into a healing space before you have a problem, so you have the capacity to handle whatever life throws at you. But through our experiences, we're being invited to come into a new way of being and into a deeper understanding of ourselves and what we need, and that we can tap into the energy of the world around us and be in the flow of the giving and the receiving of that energy, that we can't be all brain. What she was saying about how our brain responds to change. It sees it as death, as scary, and it will do whatever it has to do to bring us back into a place of safety, even if that doesn't serve us. So that information and those old experiences can create patterns in our nervous system that our body tucks away trauma and we need to be releasing it. I love when she talked about self care as an act of service, that it's a form of revolution of change, making that everything's get everything gets better when you give yourself more space and befriending your resistance to self care so you don't override your essential needs and your real nervous system responses and the desire for me, you know, the desire and need for rest, that by befriending your self care, you can create safety around change and shift your body into different patterns. When she talked about glamorizing martyrdom and that we see acts of service for others as better than acts of service for ourself, that really spoke to me. And boy, she gave us some good practices, but don't take a lot of time or money right that gives shape to our nervous system as she as she says, By slowing down our breath to the count of four or five, you're signaling to your brain and your nervous system that you're safe. I love the lion's breath to release stress and anxiety and anger when when there's too much energy surging, as she put it, loved the humming, and I really liked when she talked about moving the sound around into places where there's discomfort, through the chakras, and just noticing, where does your body need attention and support? How do you meet the moment of dysregulation, in tuning into what your body needs and cultivating a practice of body listening that we need to release the stored survival stress, and that we when we take care of that, we can release it more and move into deep healing. That it's a practice, you know, we can shake it. We can make noises, you know. Just give yourself permission to do whatever you need to do to move into that place of feeling regulated again. I loved the image of the river and the rocks that we can be in the flow of resilience and be responsive to whatever's happening. When she said, It's all rich and it's all right here for us, that when you befriend your body communication, and you move away from this idea of my body is my enemy, if it's not feeling good, that it's just talking to you, just needs attention. Just listen to that and the importance of creating rituals and rhythms that support what your body needs. I loved when she called dreaming dream weaving. That was a really great visual for me, that your dream is in service to you and to others. So it's coming from your body. Honor the need to make change in the way that you want to make change and releasing the things within you that believe that your dream is not safe to pursue that the word The world needs you. Well, I loved that. Show up from well, and then you help others to show up well as well. Ah, I loved. It should be a hashtag so you can enter Kelly's world@kellylubeck.com and yeah, tell me in the community what your key takeaways were from this episode. You.