Ep 46 with Ailey Jolie.

[0:00]

Welcome to In This Body, a podcast where we dive deep into the potent power of embodiment. I'm your host, Ailey Jolie, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life fully from the wisdom within your very own body. This podcast is a love letter to embodiment, dedicated to asking important questions: How does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And how can collective embodiment alter the course of our shared world?

Join me for consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own body. This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcasts, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body with me, Ailey Jolie.

[1:16]

We're right at the start of a new year here together. And if you're anything like me, you've already been bombarded—the emails started a month ago, the subtle messages on social media to lose weight or become more optimized, to finally be the person you've put off becoming. "New year, new you." Set your intentions, choose your word, make this year the year you actually follow through.

We all know the messaging, and even though every year it seems to get a little sneakier, a little more stealthy, a little more subtle, the message is always the same. I understand why the realm of capitalism and marketing would choose such a significant moment to try and convince us all to change or become better—whatever "better" means for you. It's quite a seductive fantasy: the promise of a completely clean slate, the idea that we can just decide with our minds to be someone else and then become that person.

It is a fantasy. In years past, it was definitely a fantasy I held. But it's not a fantasy I'm holding this year. This year I've been sitting with a different question. Not what I should do next or create or produce or achieve—not who I should become or what I should optimize or how I should heal. I've been sitting with this: How do I want to spend my time?

I know that sounds simple, maybe even clichéd. But I don't think it is. It's actually the question that's been underneath everything that happened to me this past year and the past few years. I've been quite guarded about much of it, and for good reason. For a significant amount of time, I didn't have the capacity to share what the experience of being in my body was like.

[3:06]

Being so unwell was an oxymoron. I was deeply in my body, connected in a way I had never been and didn't know was possible. I don't even have words for it. People who have been really sick or struggled with chronic illness probably understand: chronic illness creates a deep intimacy with your body that your mind doesn't get to consent to. It just happens.

At the same time, there was this meta-awareness—this quality of observation I needed to hold so I could be so connected. Being so deeply in my body, but also having this meta-awareness that didn't feel disembodied—it felt like my mind and body were finally on the same page. I don't like using the word "out" because it implies not being in the body. For me, struggling with my health has been the most unwanted teacher in how to really be present inside myself. It's the essence behind this question I'm sitting with at the start of 2026.

The last time the podcast was released, I had just hit my one-year anniversary from the start of multiple surgeries and something quite scary. I was excited to focus on some other health matters coming up. Then in September, I found out I hadn't passed the one-year mark after all—or that's what it looked like.

I was quickly brought back into surgery, so grateful to live in a place where you can find something out on Monday and get scheduled for surgery by Thursday or Friday. When they went in, the growth that had shown on the ultrasound—it wasn't there. All my biopsies came back completely normal.

It was this strange experience that lingered with me longer than the good news. For about ten days, I had to really reflect on my choices. After being sick, I had a story that I was going to take care of myself better, move slower, be more grateful. You can hear the emotion in my voice because it didn't come from the healthiest place—it came from quite a judgmental voice.

When I didn't think I had taken care of my body well enough—when I was scared—and then finding out it wasn't there, that we'd had surgery again and everything was fine, it was a really healing experience. It brought this question: What have I done over the past fifteen months since this started that I feel really good about? Where has my time gone? Where have I invested it? Where have I not invested it?

I did a ruthless inventory on my time—the people, the places, the tasks. It wasn't comfortable. For about five weeks, I was in a hermit hole, and I didn't like my answers to where my time had gone or what I had invested in.

That's one of the hard gifts of being unwell: you constantly have to reconcile with the reality that our time here is finite. We are not limitless beings with endless amounts of time. When you deal with illness constantly, you're reminded of this again and again.

I could share so much more around the medical stuff. A tumor in my jaw that turned out to be benign—I almost had complete reconstructive jaw surgery on my face. A growth behind my eye being monitored. Just one thing after another. I hate the spiritual salad we can put on life experiences because I don't think everyone needs to. Often it's not appropriate, and sometimes it's just a way to soften what's really stinging. But I can see that it's when I needed to really question and be honest with myself about where I was putting my time and energy and the resource of my body's wisdom.

It's why I've been quite reclusive and silent, not just on the podcast but everywhere in my life. I've done a disappearing act, and it's been incredibly painful, but it's given me some potent answers around where I want to spend my time.

[8:15]

While this was happening, I found myself writing in a way I haven't in a really long time. I had done this disappearing act from so much of my life, and in that disappearing act, I had an abundance of creativity and honesty—this purging energy through myself. I just wanted to let these stories go, write and write and write, and let them come out as something different.

This year, while navigating all this, I had a few posts go viral. Some of you may have found me through them. They had millions of views. I won't say growth metrics don't matter to me—they absolutely do. I want more people to read not only my work but other work on embodiment and healing and intersectional feminism and trauma. So I was curious: Why had this writing done so well?

I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't think it was the words exactly. It was where the words were coming from. When you are in a deep relationship with your body and something is actually happening in that relationship—when you're paying attention the way I had to—the words that come from your body change. They come from somewhere else. There's less effort and more truth. The words aren't reaching for something; they're reporting from inside something.

This year, my relationship with my body has been intense. It's been demanding attention, and I've been listening—really listening—in ways I always haven't had the privilege to. Illness puts you in conversation with your body, whether you want to be or not. I really didn't want to be. I liked my comfortable, juicy, sensual version of embodiment. I didn't want to listen to all the other signs and statements my body was making.

But I eventually turned toward it. I let go of one relationship with my body and accepted a new one—I'm still in that process of acceptance. I think that's why the words landed differently. I wasn't writing about embodiment conceptually. I wasn't trying to teach embodiment. I was writing from inside a body that was going through something. The ideas weren't theoretical; they were lived. People can feel that difference. I know I can, and I'm sure you can too—your body has the capacity to feel when something's coming from the mind and being directed at you versus when something's coming from the body and resonating with you.

When I wrote about women needing capacity, not calm, I was in the middle of finding out what happens when your capacity gets tested. When I wrote about the cost of self-abandonment, I was learning in real time what my body would and wouldn't tolerate anymore. All of my writing came from that place—from being in it, not above it.

This writing has all been pulled from the book I've been working on. I wanted to bring it forward in my first solo episode of the new year—something I'll be doing more of—to go deeper into some of that writing, to give it more nuance. I believe the written word and voice are two totally different experiences. I can read something on paper and be moved by it. And I can listen to the author's incantation, the resonance the words have in their body, and feel something so different.

[10:31]

One piece of writing that did really well was about how calm is a con. I didn't mean that as just a catchy phrase. I was trying to articulate something I see all the time—in my practice as a therapist, in my own life, in my friends, in the wellness industry or the longevity industry. They kind of merge into the same thing for me.

Both sell this image of nervous system regulation as serenity, as peace, as calm. You've seen the branding: the woman in white linen meditating at sunrise, unbothered. The message is that if you do yoga or Pilates, drink enough green juice, regulate your nervous system correctly, journal your intentions, you'll arrive at this calm place. Calm is presented as the goal. Calm means you've healed.

But calm usually means dissociated. Or suppressing something. I do have moments of true, authentic calm, but for myself, so much of my journey was learning to break the calm in my body—to break the ice that was keeping everything frozen underneath. To have the courage to step into conflict, into repair, to not keep everything under the surface. That's been my journey, and it continues to be, because as a cis heterosexual woman, that's what I've been conditioned to perform.

My training tells me the nervous system wasn't designed for perpetual calm. It's designed to move, to be fluid, to go up and down, to titrate, to spiral, to mobilize and fight and flee, to rest and connect. The nervous system is intended to fluctuate. The goal from a nervous system perspective—from a polyvagal theory perspective—has never been to flatline your arousal into serenity. The goal has always been to have capacity.

Capacity is the ability to feel everything without collapsing. To be activated and trust you can come back down. That's resilience—the ability to be water, not ice. To throw a firework up to crack the thing so you can come out and say the really scary thing, then get scared and go back under the ice. That's not the goal. The goal is to be fluid.

Here's my loose theory—take it or leave it if it doesn't resonate: if calm, serenity, or peace are presented as the optimal nervous system state or place of healing, then we're more manageable. We won't break the ice and say the hard thing. We won't move like water away from situations that don't serve us. We'll stay calm and manageable, because calm women don't make demands.

We've all been told at some point to "calm down." It's commonly said to those who identify as female—don't be so reactive, you don't want to be seen as crazy. The whole narrative of calm being the goal is just the wellness version of telling women they're being hysterical, and this is the way not to be.

The instruction to regulate, to soothe yourself, to be less reactive—it's not neutral. It's gendered. Women have always been told we're too much.

I know that post may have come across as cute. I try to write in a way that's palatable, that engages on the surface, but there's something underneath that's much more meaty and challenging to digest. I meant it quite politically. Shaking the foundation of this constant messaging that we need to be calm is actually about recognizing how it keeps us manageable and complacent—quite literally while the earth is on fire.

I don't know how helpful being constantly calm is to the crises in our environment and world. Having capacity is probably much more helpful for both our individual lives and our collective lives. If we have capacity, we can also hold how we're all interconnected.

I want to share more about this because it took me a long time to alchemize and make sense of—that all this messaging to be calm had worked on me. It really did. And it had actually stopped me from growing my capacity as a human being to be with hard things, not only in my personal life but my professional life, not only in my individual experience but in the collective experience as well.

[22:31]

Another piece that did really well was about how your body isn't tired—it's tired of pretending.

I think that landed because women know that exhaustion. The kind that doesn't respond to rest. You sleep nine hours and wake up depleted. You take a vacation and come back just as tired. This happens because it's not physical fatigue—it's existential. It's the cost of abandoning yourself to get through your day or your life.

I always say to my clients, in subtle, soft ways—never this directly—something to get them thinking about what it takes to perform. What it costs them to say yes when they mean no. What type of exhaustion happens when they smile while breaking. This brings awareness to the enormous amount of energy it takes to pretend. The body pays the bill. I could not believe something to be more true than that statement. I see it all the time.

People come in thinking they need better sleep hygiene or supplements or maybe an antidepressant. I have no problems with those—they're great things to try, and sometimes they really help. But often what people need is permission to stop pretending. To feel what they feel, want what they want, need what they need—no questions asked. To stop performing a life they maybe never chose. A life they thought they had to have to be good, to do it right, to be successful, to be happy. So often we don't even question these things.

So here's another question for 2026: What do I actually want? Just a heads up—that's a hard one.

I wrote about this while writing the book because I really had to stop performing. It was so uncomfortably challenging to step back and say: no emails are going to get answered. I'm sorry, but I'm not answering an email. It's not happening. I can't perform that I'm okay. I cannot do it, I will not do it, and there are going to be consequences for that, but I need to stop here. I am not okay. I need all of my energy to be on me being okay. And whatever energy I have left that actually feels rejuvenating and replenishing, I shall give.

That was such a hard practice because I had to be ruthlessly honest about what actually felt good and what didn't, what felt deeply authentic and what didn't. I've done practices like this earlier in my life, but there was a certain combination of privileges this time where I could really do it and say: No, I'm not performing there. I don't have capacity. I can't do it, so I'm not going to do it.

It's not easy. People were upset, feelings were hurt, relationships were broken, projections occurred. It was uncomfortable—it's still uncomfortable. But it allowed me to authentically know what it's like to say: the performance stops, the mask is off, the show is done. This is what it is. And I never want to go back to performing. I'm not here for it. No thank you.

[26:00]

The last piece of writing I want to spend time with is about how we're told to self-regulate alone.

The whole post was about how wellness or longevity culture hands us tools—breathwork, meditation, journaling, polyvagal theory—and says: Here's how your system works, now go fix it. As if the body is a machine that needs better settings. As if trauma or intergenerational history or personal circumstances are just glitches to be optimized away.

I wrote this because there's so much research that hasn't been shared about the importance of co-regulation. Neurobiologically, we're wired for it. Our nervous systems aren't designed to regulate in isolation. They're designed to regulate in connection—through eye contact, through voice, through the felt sense of another person.

I know, because it's my experience, that for a large part of my life there really wasn't anyone safe to co-regulate with. I deeply know what it's like to hear "co-regulation is the thing that heals" and not have anyone to do that with. But what I love about this research is the beautiful nuance. We can listen to someone's voice—a meditation teacher, an author in an audiobook—and get some of that co-regulation. We also get it from nature, from animals.

I'm a big animal person and a huge advocate for the role dogs play in PTSD healing. If you're unaware of that research, I highly recommend checking it out. I fully believe that yes, I did a lot of therapy around my experience of PTSD, but the thing that really moved the needle was my pup—having an animal so attuned to me that the minute I started going into a flashback, whether visual or sensation in the body, that dog was licking my feet, laying on them, barking, doing all types of crazy things to get me into the present moment.

I know that changed how I eventually reacted to my PTSD symptoms and allowed me to break a pattern because it slowed it down. The dog's presence made me more conscious.

I say this because we can get caught in "Well, I don't have someone to co-regulate with." And to that I say: it doesn't have to be someone. It can be an animal, nature, a voice. Give it a go.

We never fully outgrow the need for co-regulation. It's not childish, not codependent, not needy—it's biological. Unfortunately, our individualistic, capitalist society has pathologized it. We've made self-sufficiency the highest virtue, and there are so many reasons why we've done this. But no amount of breathwork erases the ache of being unsupported. You can't resource yourself out of relational poverty.

I think that's why this writing resonated with so many of you. A lot of women have been told they can and should do it on their own, that asking for support means they're weak or codependent or needy. That's simply not true. If the tools aren't working, it's because you weren't supposed to use them on your own. That's a really important thing to hold and be curious about.

You could even take that question to 2026: What is mine to hold, and what do I need to be held in? Beautiful question to sit with throughout the coming year.

I don't know about setting intentions for the start of this year—I don't know if that's something that works. But I do believe in being in a process of self-inquiry and holding ourselves to questions. Big questions. Important questions. For you, that might not be a question about how you want to spend your time. It could be something totally different. But being in that process continuously of self-inquiry, looking at our values and questioning them, being okay for them to change, shaking them and saying "Actually, not a value"—that's so incredibly important and potent, specifically at the start of this new year.

[33:20]

When we look back over 2025, can it be a question that we hold for ourselves as a point of inquiry? One that maybe leads us through the next thirty days or the next year or five years—whatever that is for us. I invite you to find a question that's been stirring inside you, one that brings some of the stinginess from your 2025 experiences, and hold it close.

This question of what's mine to hold and what I need help being held in came forward for me. My diagnosis coincided with a dear friend passing away. Those two things intersected at a moment where I made the choice to release my role as therapist to many of the clients I'd been working with.

It wasn't easy. It was heartbreaking and sad and confusing because I wanted to still be there. I love those clients. I love the work we were doing, their progress and commitment. Not being able to see something through is a really sore, tender wound for me. I like beginnings and ends—I like them to be clean and caring and held with integrity and sacredness.

It wasn't in my plan to pivot my whole professional life because my personal life and what my body needed required so much care—and my heart needed so much care as I grieved.

When I was told I'd need eight weeks off work, when I heard estimates of one hour of work a week, or one to three clients a week for the first several months, it made me feel ruthless around capacity. What is my capacity? What is my capacity to give?

This led me to honor a pull I'd been feeling toward something different—toward the collective, toward reaching more people, even if not as deeply or in the same way. There's something about this moment, what's happening in the world collectively, that makes me want to cast a wider net, even if it means less depth.

I don't think I would have come to this clarity if those two events hadn't coincided. My friend embodied community and generosity and care. If that loss and grief hadn't happened right at the moment where I found myself in this vast reckoning—What does it mean to have all this time away from using my voice and my face? What does it mean for my future?—I wouldn't have sat in those questions with the depth and time I needed to get this clarity.

I'm excited, even though it's scary, to close down my private practice in some ways. It still exists—just small and intentional—so I can put my energy into writing the book that hopefully you'll one day hold in your hands, into this podcast that spotlights individuals who have inspired my embodiment, and into In Body.

In Body is my upcoming course. We have a January cohort and a May cohort, and we spend fourteen weeks together in community, really untangling all the stories inside our bodies so we can rewrite them. That's where I want to put my energy right now. Not because individual work isn't valuable—it's so, so valuable—but because something in me is ready to shift how I'm of service.

[39:20]

For so long, my identity was organized around being the one who holds, the one who hears the hardest things. There's something seductive about that role—it makes you feel essential, like you matter because you're needed.

But I found it became a trap. When your worth is tied to being needed, you can't stop, can't rest, can't let anyone hold you because you're too busy being the holder.

One strange gift of being sick is that I couldn't be the holder anymore—or maybe I could have continued, but I saw the consequence on my own body. I also had the capacity to be honest that there were people who could hold better than me while I was already holding so much for myself.

I really broke through what you could call the fawn response—being so attuned to others' needs that you lose access to your own. Last year was a deep process of becoming attuned to my own needs first. It all ties into that question.

What I didn't expect is that when I really attuned to my needs, when I stopped—I had real capacity for the people I love, for my life. It's so ironic and obvious, but I knew it intellectually and had never really felt it in my body: when you put your oxygen mask on first, when you put your simple needs like water first, your capacity changes in this remarkable, fabulous way.

That's what's allowed me to keep some private practice going, to keep seeing clients and doing the work I love so much, as I develop this new, different thing that's scary and challenging and uncertain, but really exciting—something I hope reaches more and more people.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope there are nuggets and pieces that stand out—things that bring you a deeper sense of connection to your body, or curiosity, or compassion, as we start our new year.

I hope this episode gives you permission not to set any goals or intentions or make a whole new you in 2026. If you do, that's amazing—no judgment. But I hope it leaves you with more questions than you came with.

I deeply believe the road back home to ourselves—to authenticity, to the body, to whatever we want to call it—comes through practicing compassionate curiosity again and again. There's so much noise out there, so many stories—our own, intergenerational, family, partners, society. We absorb it all like sponges. That's why it's so important to practice being compassionately curious about the stories we hear in our minds, the sensations in our bodies, and to slow down without being afraid of the answers.

If you're interested in asking yourself questions this year, you're welcome to join my In Body program beginning again in May. It's slow, intentional work—not your regular self-development course. It's a guided process back into your body through meditations, movement, guest teachers, psychoeducational lectures, and community calls with me.

Through each module, you'll be invited to write the story of your body as you understand it now. You'll explore the relationship between your body and food, how romantic relationships have impacted your relationship with your body. We'll look at the story as it is, and through our time together, you'll be invited to unpick it, unpack it, explore it, and ultimately rewrite the story of your body.

If In Body feels like too much commitment, there's always my Substack where I write longer reflections—the things that don't fit on Instagram. It's paid or free, at aileyjolie.substack.com. I'd love to have you there.

If this episode meant something to you, I'd love if you'd share it. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for being in the process of finding and figuring out how to come home to your very own body.

If you found value in this episode, it would mean so much to me for you to share the podcast with friends, a loved one, or on your social media. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so it reaches a larger audience and can inspire more humans to connect to their bodies too.

Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your very own body.