Ep 65 with Ann Saffi Biasetti

Ailey Jolie: 00:06

Welcome to In This Body, a podcast where we dive deep into the pop and power of embodiment. I'm your host, Aile Jolie, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life fully from the wisdom within your very own body. The podcast In This Body is a love letter to embodiment, a podcast dedicated to asking important questions like: 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 podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailey Jolie. Welcome back to How to Be in This Body. I'm your host, Ailey Jolie. And today I'm in conversation with Anne Safi Biassetti, psychotherapist, yoga therapist, mindfulness teacher, and the author of Befriending Your Body. Anne is also the author of Your Body Never Meant You Any Harm, which is her upcoming book that will be released in July 2026. Anne has been in the field of embodiment for 35 years. It means her thinking has been tested against real clinical experience, real research, and her own changing body. Anne is very open about how her body has navigated multiple immune diagnoses, a medical system that didn't always believe her, and the slow, nonlinear work of staying in relationship with a body that keeps surprising her. Anne's relationship with her body is the foundation in which she speaks of embodiment. I've wanted to have this conversation because Anne is one of the few people I've encountered who can hold the complexity of chronic illness and embodiment without collapsing either into spiritual bypass or clinical detachment. In our episode, we spent time on what it means to stay in a body when your body is the thing that feels like the problem, and on the language we use around illness, trauma, and healing that can quietly make that harder. I also brought some of my own experience into this episode. I hope you enjoy this episode of How to Be in This Body with me, Ailey Jolie. And I would love to hear from you what being in your body means.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 02:46

So I will say that be for me, being in my body means uh being in relationship with my body. So that means that all my experiences and even all my choices, um, I actually check in and consult with my body about as well. Like we're in communication. So um I go back to, you know, the beautiful words of Merle Ponte, you know, who said it's embodiment is being beside your body. And I love that. I love even the image of it for me that, like, okay, each day we're holding hands. Um, and so, you know, even this morning I I awakened and I was really tired, and but my body was really achy. And usually I do my practice every morning. And um, yeah, my mind didn't feel like it today because I was really tired. And I sort of checked in, and you know, my right hip was really speaking to me. And and I said, well, you know, that right hip needs something. And so, yeah, I got on my mat and it was 15 minutes rather than 30 minutes or 40 minutes there. And so many years ago, when I wasn't in my body, um, that wouldn't have counted for anything for me. You know, I wouldn't even have considered it or I would have pushed beyond my body's communication. I didn't even know my body's communication then. So that's really what it means for me now is that I'm in touch with my body's communication on a daily basis throughout the day. And I don't let my mind override it. And so that's what I mean about we're we're always in a collaboration together. So that's what it means to me.

Ailey Jolie: 04:44

I'm imagining that this next question may overlap with some of the answer that you just shared. But I know that you've been in the field of embodiment for the past 35 years. And because I listened to a bunch of your podcast episodes even before this, our time together that went back to I think when it was in 2019, even, um, your definition of embodiment has changed and evolved as I listen to you. And so I would love to hear from you how you define embodiment today and what maybe life experiences you've had that have changed that definition as well.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 05:17

Yeah, so I I definitely it has evolved for me on on so many different levels, and I can say more about that. But um, today, what it means to me is a very spiritual relationship with my body. And I will even venture to say, you know, using the word mystical too, um, because I really have compassionately come to understand that I may not understand everything about what my body needs and how often it needs it and how it changes, and and um that it's going to have its own evolution. So I have come to this place of really respecting that uh mystery about my body as well, that there are things, you know, recently uh I do share about, you know, I have uh have a number of autoimmune illnesses. And recently, just as I was writing this uh forthcoming book, toward the end of it, I was diagnosed with another one. And, you know, I go to my rheumatologist and he'll say something like, Oh, your lifestyle, like everything you do is what I would recommend, you know, and so my mind could go to a place of saying, Oh, I did everything right. Why would this happen? You know, and I don't go there anymore because I respect that my body has its own unfolding too and its own mystery. And that's more of that spiritual end that I've come to in embodiment, is respecting that. And I'm still going to stay on my body's side. I'm still going to care for it in the ways that I know I have received positive feedback from my body. Um, it's not going to take away these things, but it is going to keep us in relationship together. So it really has evolved to that for me into this much more spiritual and mystical end.

Ailey Jolie: 07:30

I really heard the presence of spirit in your upcoming book and the way that you wrote and how it was just really subtly interwoven in there, sometimes not so subtly. And I know that the title kind of came from what I would say is quite maybe an esoteric or deeply embodied moment where you kind of heard the words, and you described this in the book in the room. Go silent. I would love for the listener who hasn't read the book just yet, for you to maybe explore a little bit more of the title and what the title means from this kind of more esoteric or spiritual place.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 08:04

Yeah, thank you. Um, that was an interesting one because uh because my last book was Befriending Your Body, and because this current book was based on the independent qualitative research study that I did called the Body Forgiveness Project. Initially, I was in discussion with the editor and they they kind of wanted it to be forgiving your body, the title. And I said, Well, you know, it doesn't quite capture it because it's really not just about forgiveness, it's about a path back to embodiment. And I wanted the um title to really strike people in whatever way it needed to for them. And um, when I was in my um pilot study on my first program, the Befriending Your Body program, um, I was with a group of uh participants at that point, and they were really struggling with this idea of forgiving their bodies or even practicing forgiveness or compassion at that point. And they were like, you know, how can I do this? I can't stand what this body has done to me. And I realized in that moment, you know, of course, they were in what we call that objective view of their body, you know, looking at their body as outside of them, looking at their body as the enemy, feeling their body and sensing it as the enemy, rightfully so, because it was so difficult for them to understand what was happening inside. And I kind of sat there stumped for a moment, like, wow, what where am I gonna take them with this? Because I could feel the sense in the room getting really dysregulated. You know, I could feel their nervous systems really uh becoming hyper-arroused. And I was like, whoa, I got to bring this whole group back. And I just thought for a moment, and what I felt deep inside is, wow, do they have any idea that their body is suffering too? Do they have any idea that their body would have never wished for any of this? And so, right in that moment is when I said the words, well, you know, the one thing I want you to know is that your body never wanted any of this either. Your body never meant you any harm. It never meant to harm you. And in that moment, the entire energy of the room shifted. Everyone went from up here to all of a sudden just this softening in their own bodies, the tears started to come. And it wasn't a dysregulated place any longer. It was a true place. It was a really like something shifted in that moment that was so deeply felt by everyone because this was an in-person group, too. And people looked around the room and they saw it happening in each other. And they all said, I never ever thought of it that way. I never considered what my body could have been going through or what it wanted or what it didn't want. And so those words stood out as so powerful to me. And I have them in a particular practice that I use in my program. But when it came to the title, I uh really kind of forced it with the publisher. I said, I need these words there because even in the introduction, I asked people to embody immediately as soon as they open the book. I asked them, you know, there's something about those words that struck you. And then when I did the um body forgiveness project research, I started all the women out with that statement. I asked them to just take a moment. I took them through a grounding practice, asked them to just softly close their eyes or and to just listen to those words. And those words meant something different to every single participant that was part of the study. You know, for some women, it evoked anger in them. Well, I don't know if I believe that, you know. Um, for others, it evoked all the way on the other end that beautiful mystery, saying, Yeah, who knows what my body, you know, needs sometimes. I have to be in touch with it. Or and for others, it evoked lots of tears, you know, saying, I finally get that. I finally feel that. So I really wanted that title to stand out because for embodiment as we know, there are so many things that have taken us away. Everything from, you know, what we hear constantly on the outside, we're born into a disembodied culture and that invitation out. But then there are so many things that impact our road back, you know, whether it be body hatred, whether it be body image issues, whether it be illness, sickness, you know, um chronic conditions, injuries, you know, the we can go on and on about um, you know, the systemic oppression alone that constantly uh is uh a force that that knocks someone completely off their feet and out of their body. So these are just ongoing um conditions, you know, of experience, of lived experience that um those words have a different meaning to everyone about.

Ailey Jolie: 14:02

Throughout your answer there, you shared a little bit about the body forgiveness project. And I would love if you could share a little bit more about what was included, but also some of the responses and maybe what you learned about your own experience of being in a body from what they shared.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 14:18

Yeah, it was really interesting because um my very first research study, I specifically sought out um female participants. And in this study, um, I actually didn't. I kept it open and just asked people if uh to qualify if they related to the term forgiveness, if they related to the term embodiment, if they related to being in relationship with their body, um, as you know, qualitative, you know, indicators of, you know, is this study for them? And um, and I had all women come my way. So that's where I said, okay, so this is interesting. And um really uh the the whole term came about as uh after the first research study, what was left over was the relationship. One of the components left over was this very interesting dynamic between forgiveness and self-compassion. But that didn't surprise me. Like in other words, people had to forgive themselves for some of the harms they did uh before they felt like they could open and release into self-compassion. But what evolved through the years that was something different that I started hearing was it wasn't a quality of forgiveness. What I write about in this book is that it wasn't a quality of forgiveness from the mind. Like it wasn't what did I do wrong that I have to forgive. Um, body forgiveness meant shifting into that, what we call that subjective relationship with the body, where um body forgiveness is a felt experience of both release, like having a release of all that mind element of what did I do wrong, or what could it have done? It's like a release when that mind element gets released, then what's left is this union between self and body that all of a sudden sees the body as a living, breathing, sensing, feeling entity. And then it's like self begins to internally observe to say, What did you go through, body? What did you go through? And can I forgive that there are some things happening in my body that I may not be able to just release when I want to? Um, I have a statement in the book, a practice that that says, you know, your mind may be ready to let something go, but your body may not be ready yet. So body forgiveness is both this sense of um understanding, and then it goes deep into the felt sense and the felt experience that says, um, I want to know what my body went through. Like that's how how much I want to care about it now, just like any other relationship that we would form. And um the the words that I hear when I know someone is there is when they say things to me. I recently had a dear client who um had a terrible early trauma history. And um for years she spent at war with her body and terrified of her body. And then recently she said to me, Um, is it normal for me to start feeling bad for what my body went through? And I was so touched by it because, like, those are the words. She said, I almost feel like I'm like I'm understanding and forgiving my body for the years of what I thought it was doing to me. And now I want to know what did it go through? And so there's just this beautiful switch and crossover to like really just this uh holding of the body as, like I said, um, a relationship that we want to know more. We want to know the depth of it more. So those words I started hearing throughout the years. And that's really what made me um start to question wait a minute, this is something that's beyond this forgiveness of the mind, the way we think about it. Like I have to exonerate myself around something, and I have to, you know, clear this path. Um, and you know, many people even have religious conversations with that, you know, like I must forgive something. And and that's not the forgiveness we're talking about when it comes to the embodied sense of it. It it really is this felt sense to um be in union with one's body.

Ailey Jolie: 19:26

I'm really excited to hear you answer maybe some of these next questions, maybe for a little bit of a selfish reason, being someone who has struggled a lot with their health, but also because I I think like a lot of clinicians right now have many clients who are also struggling with their health or with their bodies. And we could, you know, go into all of the factors environmentally and culturally that are causing that. But nonetheless, there's an increase of many of these conditions. And so you named there this union with the body. And I would love to hear from you, and you can speak from personal, professional experience, whatever feels most comfortable around how you navigate that union when your body is maybe living with a chronic condition, as you've named, or you found yourself in a health challenge, or the the the polyp or the growth of the tumor came back, and you're like, oh, I thought I was doing all of the things right, if I even kind of bring you back to where you started. Because this conversation of how to be in union with the body when you're living with illness is one that I've really struggled to find access to definitely a few years ago when I was really sick. Um, and I think it actually prolonged my willingness to get better because I didn't want to engage in a lot of things that felt like diet culture or wellness culture, even though I actually kind of did need to engage in them from very different intention, and that was hard to pull apart. So I'd love to start this conversation with talking about the union, and then maybe we'll move into diet and wellness culture later.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 21:01

Yeah, yeah, they're so so interconnected, that's for sure. And and so this is probably one of the hardest, uh, really one of the hardest is when uh it's so natural and human when um these bodies uh age when they get sick, um, or sometimes when they get sick before they age. Uh, that happens a great deal. That's what happened to me. Uh, I was pretty young when I was first diagnosed with my first autoimmune illness, which really took me down at the time. And it's inevitably, it's going to feel like a huge rupture. It's going to feel like a huge betrayal because we don't like surprises in these bodies. We do not like surprises. We like planned, predictable, you know, we like to be able to imagine that we can heal and control and keep everything the way we. Wanted to be. Why wouldn't we? That's human nature, right? So there's just compassion around our humanness, number one. But that betrayal will absolutely feel like it's there. That rupture will be there. And that's the whole piece, really, that uh that I've came to discover in this second research, too, along the path of embodiment. Like what does it take to reembody? And at the end, the truth is we are always going to have things that pop us out again. We are always going to have these ruptures. And the key in that is okay, can we recognize that? Can we grieve what we're going through? Because we have an absolute right to go through that. And then can we find our way back? That's really the biggest challenge is can we find our way back? Because it keeps coming back to that statement that I said, which is your body doesn't want this either. If we really look at, and this is where I love anatomy and understanding our body's internal experience really and how it works, and there's that spiritual component, which is your body is super interconnected. There's not one thing, even though uh here our Western medical system, especially here in the States, we treat everything. Yeah, I recently went to an orthopedic for my hip that's been causing me pain and distress. And um, I told him about my autoimmune condition, and he's like, uh, yeah, I don't know about that. You let your rheumatologist take care of that, and uh, you're here for me to do the x-ray on your hip. And I was like, Oh, is he kidding me? I was like, it's it's all connected, you know, and that's not how I ever see my body as separate. So when we look at the internal body and we see that every single organ is there to help another. Every single organ is where every single muscle, every single ligament, every single joint and bone is moving and coordinating and working with the entire bodily system. And this is where I love my yoga therapy background to come in to inform uh myself, and then I can inform my clients and my students about this. And they love to experience that. So when we understand this interconnectedness, well, then we have to also have some regard for that. Our body is constantly fighting for a homeostasis. So, what I call in this book, what is your body's nature? Your body's nature is to do its best at all times, to have things working together compassionately, one to the other, helping each other, everything is helping each other there. Um, and its nature is to achieve homeostasis. Now, can it always do that? No. But if we start there, and like I look at something like this autoimmune, even these autoimmune illnesses, you know, they're fascinating in so many ways. When we look at it and we go inside, there it is, your body is believing that something is harming you. And the messages have gotten confused. So that in thinking it's protecting you, it's instigating, you know, a really heightened immune response that unfortunately can attack one area of the body, but it's not what it's meaning to do. It's meaning to protect you. So, in that regard, it comes back to that statement of well, you know, your body never meant to have something go haywire. It really meant to attempt to protect to get back to homeostasis. And so, with that regard, uh, you know, we can come to a different understanding that's like, yeah, okay, so what if we call, you know, I had a client who had a lot of pain in her body, and he would name each part of her body and say, like, oh, now my arm is so angry today, and now my shoulder is so angry today. And it was interesting, she kept using that word, and words are such a big part of uh my uh somatic and embodied uh therapy experience with my clients. I really focus a great deal on the internal experience of a word. So I had her pause and take a listen to that word. Like, what's that like? You know, I'm just curious about that word, angry, body's angry. Can you explain that to me? And once I got her into the sensory experience, like, what does that mean inside that shoulder, inside that arm? Oh, it means inflammation, it means heat and red. And, you know, now we were in the interoceptive quality. And then I said to her, um, I'm kind of wondering if you would be open to hearing uh a reframe of the word, my body's angry. And she said, Okay. And I said, How about considering your your body is actually crying? And just like the look on your face just changed, Ailey, right? That's exactly what happened to her. You know, she didn't have as much buy-in, right? Because she was like, Yeah, she gave me one of those. But even that, I said, what shifted hearing those or something? All right, you know, it was kind of like, you know, I'm not ready to really, you know, be so compassionate to it, but the words shifted something. So when, you know, I wake up with this hip pain. Um, you know, I'm not angry at my body about it. I'm actually saying in the through the door of compassion, I'm actually saying, oh wow, you need help. How may I help you? You know, so um so it's sort of a long, you know, a long answer to uh to that question of, you know, you know, what happens when we have these things that go awry? You know, how may we be careful with the words we're using, number one, because words can either disembody us or they can really embody us and take us back to that relationship. So I think that's where we have to start first. We have to grieve. It's okay to like have had enough too, you know. I really encourage people. The maintenance is a lot when we have something chronic on and ongoing, uh, or when something comes back when we believe it's been healed. Uh, that's a lot. That is a lot. So that grief is there. We have to take breaks. We have to sometimes purposely and intentionally say, I don't care right now. I'm gonna not care. And I'm gonna go eat that. Or, you know, I was recently on vacation and I I have found that, you know, really no alcohol I can have because it really inflames my body. And uh, but I was on vacation. I was in the Caribbean. I'm like, my husband's like, You want one of those rum punches? I'm like, I'm gonna have one of those rums. And I said, and and I actually, he knows my funny language, you know, but I actually was like, dear Bonnie, I'm very sorry. I know you're not gonna like this. But we can have one of these rum punches because it's my last day on vacation and I'm enjoying it. And so, you know, there's moments that we have to have like that too.

Ailey Jolie: 30:24

I would love to dive into this a little bit more with you because there were a few things that stood out into your in your answer that I know have been brought to me by clients, but also things that I've experienced as well, which is which was the first one that came to my mind was a part of your answer and being with the orthopedic who like really didn't acknowledge the system working together. And I am imagining, but I've also read your book, so I don't have to imagine too much, that you've had a lot of other experiences of medical practitioners being really dismissive or not believing you or even engaging in medical gaslighting. And I would just love to spend a little bit of time focusing there because you speak around embodiment advocacy. And that was something that I really enjoyed uh listening to you speak about. And I think it could be quite helpful for the listener for them also to hear a little bit about this concept of embodied advocacy and how that plays into taking care of your body in a medical system that is based on mind-body dualism.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 31:28

Yes, exactly. And I do say that that embodiment absolutely is empowerment and it is advocacy and activism because we, you know, once we feel that, uh, we have, you know, we find our voice. We find our voice around our bodies. So um I learned that very early on when uh I had the first autoimmune, which was uh Graves disease after the birth. My first uh pregnancy was the birth of my twin boys. And um I was extremely, extremely ill for the first year postpartum, which every mother knows is hard enough to begin with, let alone with two babies, you know, and um and being 30 years old, you know, again, I was young, I was quote unquote internally strong and healthy according to all medical, you know, reports. And yet something was, you know, they they call that in Graves' disease a thyroid storm. And I say, oh, isn't it interesting, the embodied experience of the words, because that's what it felt like in my body, a storm happening. And I was going to doctor after doctor, you know, a dare I say male doctor after male doctor. And I say that purposely because the responses I was getting was, oh, look at you. Uh, you know, that 75 pounds of baby weight is completely off. You look fantastic four months postpartum. Now, four months postpartum to lose 75 pounds and to be down beyond that should be the biggest red flag ever. Uh, no matter what is happening, it should be the biggest red flag. Instead, I was dismissed on the surface body and sent away. And that uh that was not only so discouraging and disappointing, and I had it actually again recently when I was chasing down when I knew this second time around. I said to every doctor I went to, I know what autoimmunity feels like. I have something again. I know I do. And I went to a top doctor in New York City. This doctor was a female, and um, she said, There's no, everything's fine. And we left. And my husband said to me, Well, do you feel better with that? I said, not at all. I said, actually, I feel pretty enraged, you know, uh, because I know something isn't okay. And I had to keep being my own advocate. I had to keep chasing it down and chasing it down until finally some lovely doctor listened to me and did a whole battery of really strange, you know, autoimmunity uh tests that most people don't even know about. And sure enough, found, you know, what it was. So this is um this happens constantly. I hear it nonstop um from my clients. Uh, we know it happens even, it happens disproportionately to those in larger bodies, uh, especially. And it's why so many of my clients in larger bodies don't even want to go to the doctor. And these illnesses get worse and worse because they know they're going to be dismissed and they know they're going to be sent away saying, no, it's your weight. If you lose weight, if you lose weight, this will happen. If you lose weight, you know, this whole idea of running wild now in the health, you know, diet uh culture and health and wellness industry about inflammation. Oh, GOP1's a weight, it's all weight and inflammation. I am not in a large body. My body's in constant inflammatory process, and I'm not in a large body. So inflammation is not something that is just about uh size and weight. It's about what your body's communicating to you. And this is where I say interception, which is the hugest road to embodiment, is a superpower. It's a superpower to be able to go into your doctor. And now none of my doctors question me because I go right in and I say, I want you to know what I do for a living. And I say, I'm saying this not to be arrogant. I'm saying this so that you know if I tell you something is happening within me that I'm asking you to please trust me. And so my primary care says, whatever you say, whatever test you want, I now will give you. Uh, because uh I, you know, the Joe standing joke is I had a surgery once and I said, I have pain, you know, and oh no, everything should be fine. I said, I have pain. All right, I'll examine you. I said, No, it's not there, it's on the upper right quadrant. And sure enough, she goes there and she's saying, Oh, there was a stitch left in. And so, so interception, which is the, like I said, the superpower that really does help us secure our embodied relationship, is really what we need the most when it comes to I know my body and being able to say that with, you know, like standing on your in your two feet, feeling the ground, feeling your center, feeling your regulation, and saying, I know my body.

Ailey Jolie: 37:14

I'm gonna ask this question. I know you touched on parts of the answer a bit earlier, but I think it's really important to slow down because so much of I'll say like wellness culture, which I think has actually happened probably in response to a lot of how um marginalized bodies, women's bodies, bodies of color have been really gas-lit and denied access in the healthcare system. So there's kind of been this movement to wellness culture is how we fix everything. And then you bring in books that have been absolutely amazing in regards to bringing trauma discourse into the cultural site, guys. But also maybe planted some seeds that if you release trauma, you'll somehow heal all your diseases. Like, you know, so I I don't think any of them ever ever intended to do that, but nonetheless, that is a consequence probably more from the system failings that you've named there as physicians not having the time or being appropriately trained or having the capacity to be curious. And I would love to just spend some time pulling this apart with you because I think it's a really tricky one when you're holding this frame of like, okay, I know I have a history of trauma. I know I'm maybe struggling with some self-hatred or judgment, and I don't really like my body. But then does that mean I'm responsible for my chronic illness or I'm the reason, you know, why I've developed polyps in my uterus or whatever it can be. And I think that's gonna be like it's a really tricky place to be. And I feel really grateful. I mean, I've I've had really terrible medical care. I had an OBGYN almost killed me because she didn't report the accident that she had. Uh mistake. She's a human, they make mistakes. You just have to tell people. I sort of had really terrible care and I've had, you know, amazing care with male surgeons and physicians who've just been like, your body, like you tell me, like, I'm here for you, like ride or die. And I've been like wow, this is so healing. So I would love to kind of and and I bring up those people because they gave me this confidence to hold both. Like yes, I could have a history of trauma and I could definitely have unconscious beliefs. And I am not the cause of this. Like, this is not what my body wants for me. And so I would love to pull this a little bit apart from your clinical experience and also if you're willing to share some of your personal experiences. I think it's a place that anyone who's gone through illness has to reconcile in some ways if they've received either these cultural narratives or have felt let down by the medical system.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 39:53

Yes, exactly. Um, it's a big one. And as you say, you know, the, you know, the big names in the field that gave us so much wonderful understanding. Uh, you know, I know I've seen your work around it too. You know, I love Bessel Vanderkook's work. He put really put the body on the map for all of us, thematic folks. He really did. Um, but you know, I'm not a fan of, again, I'm really careful with words and language, and I'm not a fan of like our body keeps the score, or, you know, your your, I say this to my yoga teachers in training all the time, like the trauma stored in your hips, you know, or oh, we're just gonna release that in your back. And you, you know, it um it actually disembodies us. That language alone is disembodying because I don't know about you, but the moment I hear something like that, I feel terrified. And I feel more afraid of my body, and I feel more responsible for my body, like, oh my gosh, what did that incident do to me and it's living in me? And it makes us, it makes us feel so far away from our body and can, you know, is is something just gonna happen to me in that yoga class, or is something just gonna happen where I have no control over what's coming out of me, you know, and this and that. And so I think we have to be really careful to understand that, first of all, when we hear those kinds of words, we also think that something big has to happen to and within our body for there to be some kind of alleviation, release, you know, like jump in that cold plunge or get in that hot, hot infrared sauna or whatever. I mean, or you know, uh again, go deep into that hip to our body actually needs so little and such gentle movement toward to actually release. So healing happens in the tiniest, tiniest, most subtle little increments. No one's body likes extremes. That's against the nature of our body. So when we bring treatment and when we bring words that are extreme, we are just right back into the cultural conditioning that leaves us to believe we can never get close to these bodies. And but it's also part of what keeps us hooked into the diet culture or the health and wellness industry and everything else, because I need something extreme. I need, I have no idea how to release this giant thing within me. Um, and I need something big. And it leaves the responsibility also on the individual. Um, you know, I I've been saying constantly to my students and my clients when they, you know, I'm always picking up on themes as a qualitative researcher. I can't help that. And um, I will say to them constantly, um, we're gonna look at the individual, you know, perspective here. I said, but for a moment, I just want to open this up to honor the collective experience of what's happening now and how come you're also feeling this much more unsafe and this much more anxious right now and this much more in pain. Um, so you know, I'll never separate that so that people can understand this is not an individual experience ever. Um, and we don't know, we have we really have very little in medical knowledge and research. That can tell us this is true causation. We have correlation, but you know, it's important to understand the difference between the two. Um, and I often say this is this is a perfect example. I have multiple, multiple wonderful dear clients that have um that are absolutely embodied and free from behavior in their eating disorder recovery. And they are in, some of them are in larger bodies that, you know, uh according to the medical industry, would look at them and say, oh, well, you're still not well, um, you know, because you're in this framework that, you know, we go by to say this is going to cause illness. In the meanwhile, the stopping of self-harming behavior, meaning having come to a place with food that is now in relationship, where food is coming into their body in a consistent and gentle manner and no longer in extreme, all of a sudden their A1C levels have responded. All of a sudden, you know, their inflammation has gone down and they're recognizing that themselves. But yet they're still going to be looked at and blamed for not being well. In the meanwhile, they're like, but I'm feeling so much better. You know, so I think it's rare that we're ever asked the full picture. You know, I said to um, I say this to doctors and I ask my clients, how many times do you ever walk into a doctor's office and you're uh and you're asked, what's your relationship with food like? We're never asked that. I mean, most people are not even asked, you know, how do you eat, you know, and but I don't mean the quality of food. I want to know the relationship with food. You know, do you allow your body to have consistency and regularity so that your body's not scared and in scarcity mode between meals, which is going to heighten your nervous system, which guess what? It's gonna put you into sympathetic arousal and it's gonna release a lot of inflammatory proteins in your body, you know, so that when we're looking at, oh, I better stay away from that, oh, look at that, and now look, now my body's giving now I'm mad at my body, it's giving me all these terrible signals. And it's like, well, actually was giving me the signal that it's scared to not have food for six hours or 12 hours if I skip breakfast, you know. So rarely are we asked these kinds of questions, and we just jump toward, you know, what did I do? What could I do more of to cure this, you know? What and really it's about doing it's about doing less and just coming back to your body's nature, understanding that, and responding to the signals. And even then, it kind of circles back to what I said earlier. We will have moments of maybe this happened because of this, and maybe it didn't. I mean, I grew up, right? Myself and my two siblings, we both all three of us grew up in the same household. Yes, we're different ages, same household. I'm the only one that has these autoimmune illnesses. Not my brother or my sister, but we both grew up under the same traumatic household. I'm a really sensitive system. Maybe that's why my system absorbed it in a different way. Maybe I had more dysregulation than they did. I don't know. All I know is that I don't know. And so I'm not going to sit there and say, if this didn't happen, if this didn't happen, if this didn't happen, because it's not fair. It's not fair to my mind. It'll actually create more distress for me now in my mind and body. And it's really not fair to my body because that's that's wasted time that I could be attending to my sensory experience, what I need in this moment. And sometimes what my body needs is to just give up the chase of what happened or didn't happen that caused this. And rather, it's like any other relationship. It's like, look at me now, please, and just be with me.

Ailey Jolie: 49:02

There are so many beautiful moments that you shared in there, and I caught myself going back to reflecting. I had a really wonderful gastro and um had to have a surgery to remove polyps twice. And one time was with AI, and there were like eight surgeons in the room, which is a whole other story, but um put that to the side. But he actually asked me those questions that you shared. And I never really put that together around how deeply important that was going into surgery to have this man ask me about my relationship with food. Did I feel nervous when I ate food? How was I breathing when I ate? And to, you know, I was just like, wow, I didn't realize I hadn't put that together how important that was until you shared that. And so I really want to encourage the listener to to maybe even ask themselves some of those questions that you just offer because they're so beautiful and important. And you're right. Like it's so rare that we get asked them and invited into dialogue in this way. Which brings me to kind of another question that I would love to ask you. And you, you, you really embody it, if I'm kind of cliche and use that word here. But it is this like deep sense of self-compassion. And I wanted to bring this in near the end of our time together because it loops back to the start, which is this place of spirituality. And I would love to hear a little bit more from you around how being in your body has maybe become a spiritual practice for you, how it's inspired your self-compassion. And that's one thing when I was reading your book, it really made me reflect on my experience of West Nile, which is an infectious disease. And uh, I got West Nile when I was in Africa, but I always knew what West Nile was because when I was about 10, living in rural Canada, I heard this news story about it and I got super scared of mosquitoes. Like my whole life I've been scared of mosquitoes because I was gonna get West Nile. And then I did. But it, you know, I'm now I'm on the other side of kind of the most acute impact, which was just two years of awfulness. But it it also made me so deeply connected to the body of the earth and aware of environmental changes and migration of species and insects and what we're doing, and how one small little insect can be hungry and need a little bit of blood, and your whole life has changed. That's how fragile. Yeah. And I I saw when I saw I felt while I was reading your book these threads of this deep reverence for our bodies, how we're connected to the body of the earth, but also the body of the mystical. So I would love uh before we end our time together today, for you to share a little bit about these themes that I've brought forward.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 52:01

Yeah, it's um it really uh speaks to me on so many levels because self-compassion to me is what brought me into that reverence uh with my body. And I I think, you know, one of the quotes that um, or little stories I should say, that I share a lot was from the um beautiful spiritual teacher, Tigna Khan, who talked about the body being compassion, like the body is compassion. And the beautiful story he shared was um, you know, if you're walking down the street and you step on a nail and without any thought, within seconds, a hand reaches down, you know, to the foot. And like, what is that? What is that right there? We don't we don't even think about it. We're like, ouch, you know, a nail, and we go and we reach the hand down. But if we really stop and pause and listen and pay attention, that is your body's immediate sensory response, one part to the other, of care, of care, of help, of concern. And so I, you know, what you know, when I understood that on the embodied level is when compassion took on a whole other form for me. You know, I would say that I didn't even know I was practicing self-kindness when I was doing it, because it first started out as really a protective nature for me. Um, it was me thinking about my body. It was like, oh, uh, better take food along, you know, today I'm gonna be out for hours, or I better take my lunch along. It was like this protective nature, almost like you would take care of a child that way, like, let me get prepared, the bag prepared, you know, for the day. And so uh it started off on that protective nature, but then as the years went on, it really became about uh rather than just a protective nature, it became a connective nature, you know, it became this piece of really paying attention to that the care that I was feeling for myself. And this was a big shift for me was um the first time I was introduced through through uh Chris Germer, the uh meta meditation, and it was part of my training experience and my mindfulness program. And in that meditation, for folks that don't know you, you offer kindness in different categories. And one of those categories is a self. And the other categories, you know, one of them is what we call the easy category, which is bringing in people you love. Like that's really easy to bring, you know, send kindness and love out to people you love. And so what was interesting though is um in the Buddhist teachings, we call the definition of compassion on an embodied level is the trembling of the heart. And I just love that definition because it's like it's so embodied and it's so what happens when we feel a responsive care towards self or the other. Like you feel a movement of the heart. And that's why in self-compassion work we often bring hands to the heart as an embodied gesture. And in that meditation, I remember when, you know, offering that care to others, it was like, oh gosh, I was so moved. I was crying. I could feel the trembling of my heart toward my kids, my partner, and my animals and everything else. And then the category came to me. And this is after years of having that protection, you know, that self-kindness through protection. And when I had the category came to me, what struck me is I had the same embodied response. I had the same trembling of my heart toward myself. And that may not sound like such a big deal, but to me, it was everything because, as most women, I will say, so enculturated into putting others first and others' needs first and my own needs last, my own body's needs last, shutting that down for years and putting everyone else before me. The fact that I felt internally the same response of care to myself that I did to the people I love was like mind-blowing to me, body-blowing to me. It was like, what? This is actually in me now. And there was no other way to understand that because this was not through the mind. That protective nature came through the mind, a lot of thought about it. No, this was just a lived experience, and there was no way to understand that internally. Like what shifted was was spirit for me. That is what shifted. And it was in that shift that that uh brought me connected, not just to my own body, but to others outside of my love people, you know, the care and concern for the stranger down, you know, walking past down the street, the the care of the collective more. And it's why I deeply feel that so much, you know, with with all the going on around us and all. And I do in my work, I have to take the time and space because of that spiritual connection, that interconnectedness to really care for myself and take breaks because of feeling that uh that deep care and concern that not only is the trembling of my own heart in response to me, but it's toward others as well.

Ailey Jolie: 58:13

Thank you so much for sharing that. That feels like a beautiful place and beautiful image and embodied gesture to leave the listener with and our time together is the trembling of the heart. Thank you so much for again your time, your wisdom, your books, your past podcast episodes. They're all like full of so many gems. And it's so evident to me as someone who listened across the years, how much you've deepened into yourself in the articulation of your answers. And it's was really beautiful to kind of feel this emergence of spirituality come into embodiment. And I absolutely adored reading that and feeling that in your upcoming book, which will be out in July 2026.

Ann Saffi Biasetti: 58:59

Thank you so much, Ailey. It was such a pleasure being with you and an honor, really. Thank you.

Ailey Jolie: 59:17

She asked her to sit with that word angry and then offered another one. What if your body is crying? And the woman's face changed. That is a clinical intervention and a precise one. Because the word angry positions the body as adversarial. Crying positions it as suffering. And those two frames ask completely different things of us in response. This is something I pay a lot of attention to in my own work. The language people use to describe what's happening inside them because it's almost never neutral. It either moves them toward the body or further away from it. Words like store trauma, release, block, stuck, these can generate fear without orienting someone toward what to actually do with that fear. And fear of the body's interior is one of the most consistent things I see in my clinical work. It keeps people hovering just outside themselves, managing from a distance rather than actually arriving. What Anne calls body forgiveness is something I want to unpack a little bit more clinically because I think it can be misunderstood. It's not an absolution. It's not a cognitive reframe where you decide to stop being angry at your body. It's a shift in the relational position from looking at the body as an object that has failed you to orienting toward it as something that has been through something. That's a move from what we'd call an objective stance to a subjective one. And that shift, when it happens somatically rather than intellectually, changes everything. And described it as a union. Clinically, I'd say it's a return to interceptive contact after a long period of defensive disconnection. The conversation about illness and causation is one I feel strongly about. And I want to be clear. The research on adverse childhood experiences and chronic illness is real and worth taking seriously. Trauma does have physiological consequences. That's not in dispute. What I want to nudge on and what Anne nudges as well is the leap from correlation to causation. And more importantly, the way that leap lend and the way that leap lands on the people who are already suffering. If the story becomes you manifested this or your unresolved trauma is why you're sick, we just add another layer of shame onto someone who's already navigating something very hard. And that's not healing. That is harm in the language of healing. Anne said something I think it's worth sitting with. We really don't know. She grew up in the same traumatic household as her siblings, and she's the only one with autoimmune illness. The body is not a simple system. Genetics, environment, sensitivity, timing, chance, these all interact in ways we cannot fully map. Holding that uncertainty is not a failure of the clinical frame. It's the honest clinical frame. The piece around interoception is where I want to close because I think it's the most practically useful thing and offered. Interception, the capacity to sense what's happening inside the body, is the ground of everything she's describing. It's how we know we're hungry before the clock tells us it's lunchtime. It's how we know something is wrong before our test confirms it. It's how we stay in a relationship with a body that is changing, declining, surprising us, asking things of us we didn't expect. Building that capacity slowly, gently, without agenda is the actual work, not releasing stored trauma in a hot yoga class, not optimizing inflammation through elimination diets. Those might be helpful tools, but we build capacity through listening and then trusting what we hear. Anne's book will be out this summer. And when it's out, I'll have it linked in the show notes. If this conversation opened something up in you, embodies where I take this kind of work into real practice. You can find out more at embodymethod.com. Again, thank you for listening and for being in the tender, ongoing process of coming home to your body and allowing this podcast, our guest, and me, Ailey Jolie, to be part of that process for you. 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 platform. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so that this podcast reaches a larger audience and can inspire more and more humans to connect to their bodies too. Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your various bodies.