Ep 75 with Dr. Stephanie Minchin

Ailey Jolie: 00:06

My guest today is Dr. Stephanie Minchin, known to many as the yoga psychologist. She's a highly specialized clinical psychologist and yoga therapist with over 17 years of experience. She's also the founder of House of Yoga Psychology, a practice built on integrating psyche, soma, and soul. Her clinical training runs through trauma work, narrative therapy, compassion-focused therapy, and internal family systems. And her yoga training runs just as deep from trauma-informed teaching to breath work facilitation. She describes her work simply, helping women come home to embodied wholeness. In this conversation, we talk about what happens when psychology and yoga stop living in separate rooms and are finally held as one. Steph walks us through the map she built with her clients, through the koshas, the layered bodies of yogic thought, and she shares how she recognizes trauma held in the body long before it's been named with words. We talk about the difference between working with a single overwhelming event and the slower, older wounds of disrupted attachment, about why the stabilizing and soothing is often rushed, and about how you build a sense of safety within a world that's inherently unsafe. We also talk about internal family systems and how you can bring it onto the mat. I wanted Steph on this podcast because she sits in a rare place between two disciplines that often aren't in communication with each other. Not only is she extremely well educated, she's kind, compassionate, and you can truly feel her embodied presence through her voice. I hope that you enjoy this episode of How to Be in This Body with Me, Ailey Jolie. My first question for you is one that I always start the podcast with. And I would love to hear what being in your body means to you.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 01:47

And what this means for me is being in a really loving, kind relationship to my body. So, as someone who has struggled in relationship to my body for many years into most of my adult life without the acknowledgement that I was actually struggling with it, learning to be kind to my body, be present with her, show up to her in a different way has been absolutely transformational. I lived for so long with such a critical relationship of my body. Whether that was fat-shaming her, having dysmorphic views about her, to actually, through the various therapeutic processes that I've been in, now be in deep reverence to my body. And something that was deeply transformational with that was one of my own mentors, it was a good few years ago now, and we were in a workshop together, and she shared this amazing excerpt from a book, and the tagline just really, really spoke to so many of us in the group, and it was let my body be a living ceremony. And from there, just being able to give thanks to my body every day. Thank you, body, thank you, thank you, body, thank you, to really start to build a different relationship to her and celebration of her has been deeply, deeply transformational.

Ailey Jolie: 03:19

Yeah, I know that you call yourself the yoga psychologist, and I would love to hear what that title means to you, and also if you could break it down for someone who is totally new to the realm of maybe yoga therapy or therapy more generally.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 03:36

Of course, yeah. So I have positioned myself or my professional identity as a yoga psychologist since 2016, and I suppose a little bit about that background and a super summary is that my first profession is a clinical psychologist, and then I became a yoga teacher, and for so long it was this Jekyll and Hyde Life juggling the two until I discovered yoga therapy. And yoga therapy was almost like this sweet spot of uniting yoga and psychology together, because for me one was about healing through the mind, the narratives, the beliefs, the thoughts, the psyche, and the other was healing through body, breath, movement, nervous system. And it just became so clear they're not separate. That actually healing is about the un the union of the body and mind, the integration of the two. So when I started bringing the two together more, it was almost like, wow, that they're singing from the same hymn sheet. And I was weaving psychological concepts into my yoga classes. I was teaching more informed nervous system work in the therapy room, bringing in more breath and mindfulness and sometimes some movement. So bringing those two together is what I guess it was the practice first that then gave rise to the identity of the yoga psychologist. And back at that time, for to my awareness at least, there was no one else who was really in the realm of yoga psychology. So, yes, yoga therapy has been a discipline since about the 1920s, but in our more sort of modern mainstream world, living and working in London, I couldn't see anyone that was doing yoga psychology that was bringing the two together. And for me, what this means is actually how for those of us perhaps in the talking world, the talking therapy world, how can we bring the body more into our therapeutic practice? It's essential as a healing tool that it is absolutely instrumental that we are supporting our clients to bring the body into their therapy. It's having this permission to really unite the mind and body together.

Ailey Jolie: 06:00

Could you share to the listener who's maybe new to the practice of yoga therapy what is included or what does it what does a session look like? Aha.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 06:11

I love this question because I get I get asked it, it's like one of the top questions I get asked all the time, and it's really, really important. Like, but what does that look like? Because people people are familiar with yoga classes, they're familiar with um a structure of sequences or of poses. And if we take yoga in its its eight limbs and its form, it has movement, it has breath work, it has meditation, it has yogic philosophies like the niyamas and yamas and ways of living, etc. I like to explain the difference between yoga teaching and yoga therapy is on a continuum. So yoga teaching is very instructive, it's guided, it's perhaps specific poses. But when we go down the end of yoga therapy, it's a lot more about the therapeutic inquiry and building an intervention which is going to be specific to the individual so that they can overcome a specific mental health difficulty or physical health need, whether that's let's say depression, anxiety, lower back pain, living with cancer, etc. So, what this looks like in the therapy room or on the yoga map from a yoga therapy perspective is that we might start the session by landing together with a mindfulness meditation as a check-in, using somatic inquiry, what are you aware of, what are you noticing in your body. And then with my clients, I build out a formulation, which is our our map, our sense-making picture of what's going on. And that formulation that begins our therapy work is led by the kosher model. And the kosher is the word kosher in Sanskrit translates uh to like a layer or the level of our experience, our different bodies. So, together, me and the client will work through what's happening at the layer of our physical body, our energy body, our emotional body, our wisdom body, and our bliss body. And when we can create this map together of where there's imbalance, and of course, all those bodies are interlinked, but where are those imbalances, whether it's in nutrition, whether it's in muscular tension, whether it's in um nervous system, and we need to work with the breath, then we can start to from that map build out bespoke intervention for them as to what they need. So yoga therapy sessions can look different between different individuals. For someone who presents with um, let's say anxiety, and then their nervous system is quite heightened and their muscles are quite tense. We might be gently bringing them into more calming, relaxation, restorative type movements or astanas, the poses, or breath work. For other people, we might be if let's say you were feeling very low and heavy, we might be doing more that's going to bring more activity. But essentially, the yoga therapy session could be a medley of meditations, mindfulness, um, movements, yoga poses, as well as therapeutic dialogue throughout. That's kind of somatic inquiry, awareness building, and it's it's very much it can be a mixed picture, but it all goes back to that uh map that we build together.

Ailey Jolie: 09:48

Are there particular struggles that often lead someone to go to yoga therapy over maybe more over maybe somatic experiencing or traditional talk therapy?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 10:01

It's a really powerful question because what I witness in a lot of clients that I work with is that many people have exhausted the talk therapy domain, and they may have done, let's say, traditional cognitive behavior therapy or maybe psychodynamic and looked more about relationships, but often something that I witness in clients is there's something missing. I need something more, there's something deeper. And even though I've you know worked in psychology as my first and original profession for years, I do believe that thinking alone, and I mean alone, has limitations. That I really witness people are looking for something where they can work through it more somatically. Let's say anxiety, yes, might show up in the mind as the fast overthinking and projection into the future, and but it might also be showing up in the gut, the dysregulation of bowel movements or anxiety and butterflies in the stomach, whatever that looks like, people are looking for something more and different, and particularly when we look at more of the say, I say spiritual, but you don't have to be spiritual to connect to yoga therapy. People are looking for something deeper that speaks to that sense of self or the soul a little bit more.

Ailey Jolie: 11:32

What are some signs that you may be hitting the edges of talk therapy? I know for myself, I've experienced that before, mostly in psychoanalysis, where I was like, oh, I just this has really, really, really helped me. And I can feel like I'm just hitting something and I've explored this. It's not just my resistance, you know, there's something else going on here. Um, how would you maybe explain in that moment to someone who's maybe felt that feeling or has gone, okay, well then I have to like try harder in this space? I know that that can oftentimes be a little bit of a tricky spiral to get caught on, um, because it does take a level of courage to say, this isn't working anymore. Maybe it's time to try something new.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 12:13

Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about different things here. The first thing that's come to mind daily is about um a metaphor that I use in therapy. Uh, have you played the game Jenga before with the building blocks? Yeah. So I use this metaphor to explain the idea of push where it moves. So sometimes with that game Jenga, we're pushing a building block and we meet that resistance. Like, nope, we are not going here. Like, that is not ready to move. We might meet another building block and we're like, oh, if we go there, it's all going to fall down. Like too wobbly, we just can't go there. So the therapeutic process is about pushing where it moves, i.e., what brick can we move from that building block in a way that's safe and stable and it's not all going to fall down? What's our readiness? What's our openness? What's our motivation? Where is the door opening? So that can also be true of the type of therapy that we engage with, or even the type of therapist, you know, our connection to who we're in the therapy room with. Is this a good fit? Is it still working? Um, so some signs to speak more to specifically to your questions that people might feel that they've maybe reached a plateau. Um, maybe that progress has um halted, maybe something has shifted and that's enough for where they're at, or maybe they're finding their talk therapy is now just becoming a bit like a catch-up and a check-in or an offload, but isn't quite getting to the depths of another layer. Because what I experience in therapy is that we're so multifaceted that none of us are a finished product, none of us are that perfectly formed, healed, recovered version. Like we're you know, we strip back a layer and it's like, aha, okay, yeah, we're good here. And then actually, then maybe there's another deepening, and maybe there's another deepening, and it's about finding not necessarily the next thing. We don't always need to all be in a healing process all of the time, but actually, if there is something else we're looking for, what's that next layer?

Ailey Jolie: 14:24

And this ties, I'm imagining that this ties in. I would love to hear from you what a body maybe reveals in a yoga therapy session that it doesn't reveal in a traditional therapy room.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 14:38

Yeah. So even in a traditional therapy room, from my experience of going through the yogic path and being more embodied, there are certain cues that I would really start to pay attention to. So even in traditional talk therapy, how is the person entering the room? What's their body posture? What are their movements? How do they hold themselves when they sit? How do they open or close when they talk? 90% of our communication is non-verbal. So you have a wealth of information, even just by observing the body in front of you in the therapy room. How comfortable are they as they sit? Do they lean in or do they pull away? Do they avert eye gaze? Do they take their coat off or on? What's the armor that they're wearing as such? So there is a wealth of information we can really be observing already. When we bring this into more of a yogic practice, again, it's the subtle communication of the body that when we can really start to be in presence with it, it's almost like the more we listen, the more we will hear, the more it will start to communicate. So, as an example, I can share from my own experience about six months ago. I was in um on a yoga retreat and I was in uh it was a yin yoga practice. So, for listeners who may not be familiar with yin, that's where you hold certain postures for at least three minutes, and that longer hold of the pose allows um a deeper relaxation to work with the fascia. So in this particular hip opener, after a couple of minutes, just from nowhere, I can feel emotion rising. If we understand emotion as energy emotion, there was something moving up and through from my hips that was so deeply held. I absolutely know that talking or thinking wouldn't have got to you alone. And being in that pose, holding that pose and letting it move, it just rose up. I could try and put a label to it. I think it was sadness or grief or bereavement, but it didn't need a label, it didn't need words, it just needed space and stillness to move up. So the things that we might start to witness in the yoga class a little bit more are actually how do we be with the sensing and feeling of our body in a way that isn't intellectualizing it. And on an energetic level as well, when we're using yoga to perhaps move into postures in a particular way, that will work with certain energy points within our body. The chakras are uh a system of energy points that we work with, and that can reveal again deeper held emotions or blockages that we're working with in the body.

Ailey Jolie: 17:50

I'm assuming that this ties together, but you'll let me know. I would love to hear how you recognize trauma in a body before it's named in words. And this may be just you know what you said there around noticing blockages in the body or the way that someone armors. So I would love to hear your answer to this question, both from your perspective as a clinician, but also as someone living in a body, what are some ways that we can maybe notice uh some of that trauma inside of us that could be activation energy, it could be posturing, um, before we have words for it.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 18:21

Yes, yes. So from a clinical perspective, if we think of um, and perhaps this is more medicalized language that I use less uh with my clients, but to speak to the more sort of practitioner clinical side of things, we might be looking um at avoidance behaviours, dysregulation in arousal, so with the nervous system, is there hyper-arousal, so over activation, or is there hypo-arousal, underactivation? Is there uh uh dysregulation or distortion in thoughts, whether that's mood, whether that's uh beliefs? I think I said avoidance behaviours already, just checking, um, or in intrusions, so being flashbacks. And yes, there's different sort of measures and checklists that we can do to assess that more formally with the clients that we work with. If we well, what I notice in a lot of my clients is that sometimes people are coming for trauma work without having named it as trauma, or aren't necessarily aware that they've lived through trauma, either because it's unconsciously blocked for very good reasons, that's a way of defending and being safe, or there's denial, or they never knew how to process it. So, what I witness in a lot of women that I work with is they might come because they're burnt out at work, they're overwhelmed in some way, they're feeling anxious about something, and then within a couple of sessions, through the formulation process and the storytelling or what's being revealed in the body, there is a wealth of traumas, whether that's big T of trauma is a one-off big event, or whether it's um, I say a smaller T trauma, but could be equally as impactful, let's say lots of incidences over the lifetime, or developmental trauma such as disrupted attachment in early life. And it never ceases to amaze me the bravery and resilience of what women are carrying without having acknowledged what they've lived through. And some of this is is really profound. It can show up in the therapy room as um almost a dismissal of it. Oh no, oh no, it wasn't a big deal. Oh no, other other people have it worse. Oh, oh no, it doesn't really matter. That was many years ago, you know, that real kind of subjugation of of what happened. It can show up as um avoidance of not wanting to go there, which is also valid in the space and time of readiness that may want to be processed. It might show up as when it starts to be named or inquired about, maybe even the kind of reliving symptoms of restlessness, uh, averted gaze, maybe you're noticing the voice or the pitch change, the tone of the voice. So all of these cues, which might then suggest oh, hang on, there's even a little bit of re triggering as it's named. So it needs to be really, really responded to so, so sensitively because in my experience, sometimes it's about almost uh reintroducing people lightly through that psychoeducation of actually what you've lived through has been traumatic. And what you're experiencing now is a traumatic response in order to support your survival through that. And it requires a lot of psychoeducation for people to even come into contact with it if it's been safely stored in the background for a long time.

Ailey Jolie: 22:22

I would love to hear from you how you work differently with, I'll use your language, a big T trauma, small T trauma, and developmental trauma. Because how I we have similar training, but also different in many ways. You're obviously an expert in yoga therapy and clinical psychology. Mine is more counseling psych. So I would love to hear from you how you work differently with those three different types because oftentimes there's an assumption, and I wouldn't say clinically, but clients often kind of assume a similar process with all three, or there are some modalities that do encourage you to work with all three as if they were the same. And I know you well enough to know that I don't think this is how you work with them. And so I'd love to maybe slow this down and explore how maybe parts work is better for one or yoga therapy is more suited for one of these. I think because this knowledge I find is oftentimes quite gate kept. And I think it's really empowering if you are someone who knows, oh, I do, I do have the experience of small T trauma. This approach from the somatic kind of toolkit might be best suited for me, or actually, this is where I would like to go with my big T trauma. That sounds interesting to me. Um, does that question A make sense and interest you to answer?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 23:37

Yeah, okay, of course, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. So the the immediate thing that has come to my daily is is I'm thinking about traditional methods that are very linear, manualized, protocol-based that would say, and this is not to say that they're not effective, they are just not aligned with how I work or what I believe to be most impactful or meaningful with the type of things and people I work with. So as you can imagine, I don't necessarily work in a straight line, however, um, I do think that a big T trauma as a one-off event, let's say a road accident or um a sexual assault, I think they're actually very different in nature, to be honest, but you could for a one-off incident, if we're just thinking episodic, just one isolated incident, you could work in more of a linear way that will gradually take someone through the stabilization and soothing and the reprocessing and the moving forward. To speak to actually, are there similarities or differences in working across big T, little T, and developmental traumas? I absolutely cannot express enough the importance of stabilization and soothing in the first place, no matter what the trauma or how many traumas there have been. And I really, really believe that this is so overlooked. If we were looking at say more of a manualized structured approach, it's like three sessions here, then four sessions on this section, it's very time-limited, it's very contained, and I feel that you can't put healing in a box. I feel that not enough time is spent by practitioners or clinicians with the stabilization and soothing. And that is really the resourcing. How do we resource people so that they feel safe, so that they can self-regulate enough, so that when we start to look at Pandora's box, go close to Pandora's box, open Pandora's box, that actually they're going to be self-regulated enough so that when we look at the big, scary, overwhelming, traumatic things, that they can be regulated enough to be working within on the edge of their window of tolerance. Working more with I would say developmental trauma, which is in fact, most of my clients have disrupted attachment in some way, but deep, deep attachment wounds. I really feel that actually slower embodied work is much more profound. And an approach like internal family systems, relationship building with different parts, especially because it brings us back into getting to know the parts of us that developed at such young ages, typically before the age of seven, has really profound healing, like getting to know who is that on the inside, why do these patterns in my life keep occurring in the way that they do, and how can I learn to work with my system differently. So IFS work is a lot slower, and I remember one of my trainers teaching that slow is fast, and that's really a philosophy that I carry in my work now. Because if we're thinking of developmental trauma, people have lived a whole lifetime with certain beliefs, certain narratives, certain ways of living in the world. There's not a magic wand that's going to fix that in 10 sessions or overnight. And this is where the body-based work really comes into play because we are finding ways for the body to relearn how to be safe. And when we can do that at this level of somatically, the sensing and feeling the automatic processes, the nervous system first, the mind will gradually follow, but it needs to be led by the body, and doing that is it needs a really safe, resourced, slow and contained way of doing it.

Ailey Jolie: 28:07

What are some ways that you offer stabilization or soothing in a world that always will have and will continue to have different systems of oppression that maybe are kind of scratching on some of those wounds? This is often a place that I can struggle sometimes with my clients of being in that reality of the world is inherently unsafe. But how do we create a sense of safety inside ourselves? This is one of the things that I was gifted in doing my own yoga therapy. So I would love to just maybe explore the intersection of those two realities or two possibilities at the same time.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 28:44

Yes, yeah. And it is important to still acknowledge that. I'm really glad that you've brought that in because doing healing work and finding safety within doesn't suddenly mean we all live on cloud nine and it's rainbows and lollipops. Wouldn't that be beautiful? And unfortunately, that is not the reality of our world, like we only need to look outside of us. So that's something that I really validate with my clients. If we think about the amygdala in the brain, which I describe as almost the alarm, and that for so many years, let's say for a client who's had significant trauma, that alarm bell is super sensitive, rightly so, and hyper-vigilant. So when we start to do trauma work, it's not that that alarm bell is going to be turned off, it still needs to be there to protect us. So it's really, really important with clients that actually, yes, whilst we're still finding safety within, that we are still aware of actually there is suffering in the world, there are bad things that happen, and that is an unfortunate part of our human lived experience. So, to go back to your question about building that inner safety and resource, yes, we can be doing that through stabilization of the nervous system with breath work, with grounding, building our capacity to hold in different emotions by expanding our window of tolerance through all of the different yoga therapy skills, etc., and at the same time still maintaining awareness of what's going on on the outside. It's learning actually to live differently and respond differently relatively and appropriately to the dangers that are outside. Does that answer your question, Ailey?

Ailey Jolie: 30:39

It does. I would love to hear how internal family systems maybe plays into what we've just described there, finding that safety inside, but also how you blend that into yoga therapy.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 30:52

My first experience of IFS was actually in my own yoga therapy training. And we were required to do some yoga therapy sessions for ourselves. So my my therapist who I'm actually still with today, she's incredible, is a psychotherapist and yoga therapist. And as we started our journey, this was really also the pinnacle of me realizing, like, oh, okay, now I'm ready to go to this deeper layer of the body image difficulties, which I've just not touched on before. And I remember her saying to me, You're in recovery. And I'd never even sort of realized or acknowledged fully it was a problem to the depth that it was. And as we started our yoga therapy sessions, she said, There's this therapy that I think is going to be really helpful for you. A lot of yogis tend to like it because in yoga we have the concept of Atman. So from Sanskrit, that translates to the self, and within IFS, we have self-energy made up of all of those different ACs: the connection, the compassion, the calm, the clarity, etc. So that was really my first introduction to IFS, and I learned through my experiences in my own therapy how that could be brought so beautifully into the yoga map. So as I became more embodied in my own journey, and this is what I support clients with, and you get more familiar with your different parts. Let's say you have an inner critic, you have a perfectionist, you have an overachiever, you have a rebellious one. When you can use your yoga therapy skills to be more aware, more attuned, more sensing and feeling, it's almost like you have more noticing of when those parts arrive. Like, okay, that tightening in my chest and that rise of heat in my body was actually the anger, the angry part, really wanting to shout out loud, or oh, I noticed the tightening in my jaw and wanting to act out in this way. So, actually bridging the knowledge of who are these different parts that are around in my lived experience inside, and how are they arriving? How are they expressing themselves through sensation, through behavior, through thoughts, and actually what is it they need in response to them? So, in the yogic skills, like really building up that loving, that kindness, that compassion is building that self-energy. And when we have more self-energy, we can turn to our parts differently, tend to them, give them the gifts that they didn't have from a young age, be the mother to those parts, and that's really, really where you can start to build a different relationship, not only to the parts, but to your body.

Ailey Jolie: 33:57

What is one thing that you wish more people understood about IFS as a healing modality as it's become more and more popular? I've noticed it kind of spread out into the mainstream, and sometimes some of the modality gets lost. Is there anything that you wish more people understood or knew about the practice?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 34:16

It's a really good question. And the immediate thing that comes to mind is that people is it a bit woo-woo. I think it's like a massive myth that comes to mind. Um and that actually, yes, there is a spiritual aspect to it, but you don't have to be spiritual to practice, and that's something that I contend in the yogic world as well is that first you don't have to be flexible to touch your toes to do some aspect of yoga, like you don't have to be spiritual to practice IFS. Something that I really witness in a lot of my clients when we're doing more parts-led work is intellectualization of the parts, so thinking about the parts and for the parts, whereas actually, can we be with the parts? And that's that's very different to talk about them rather than to feel and be in connection to them, and something that I would really, really, really love people to know, and this takes time to get to in therapy, is that actually even the ones that have acted out in a harmful way or seemingly harmful way or unhelpful way on the surface are still just doing the best they can to support you. And what I really witness in clients is when they have that understanding and shift, something really shifts when they have that understanding. It's that oh so even though I was 13 and ended up in hospital with an eating disorder, or even though myself harmed at 15 years old, or even though I used to take drugs, it was just because I was just trying to find a way to escape because those feelings were too big for me to handle at that time, and it's really, really beautiful, excuse me, and it's really really beautiful when people find that shift and build a different relationship to their parts.

Ailey Jolie: 36:23

How do you because I'm imagining that this does come up in a yoga therapy session? How do you connect to those parts in the body?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 36:35

A really lovely way of doing that is through the breath. So connecting to the parts through the body, there's a really lovely way, really through the somatic IFS lens, where we might be looking at awareness, breath, resonance, touch, and attune touch and movement. Those are the five layers of somatic IFS. The way that I find most accessible for clients to connect to the parts first is really through the breath. So a beautiful practice that I love to do with clients is start to use a particular breath work skill, depending on what they've learned or what's accessible to them in the room. And with that breath, imagining a colour, a colour of their choice that brings a sense of calm or compassion or whatever it is they're inviting in. And really bringing the breath down into the heart space, imagining that every inhale is expanding the heart, and that with every exhale, the self-energy that they're building from the heart is being sent to the parts on the inside, and it's a really, really lovely way to connect from the person to where they feel the part within their body. So using the breath, a colour, energy, movement can I say be powerful, but it can also be really fun. Like, you know, actually, yes, this angry part just wants to act out in this way, or actually the you know, this really young hurt part just wants to collapse a little and need some tenderness, so you can really see it in body posture and and movement as well, like giving people permission to express, move, take on that part in some way so that they can tend to it with the healing that it never got.

Ailey Jolie: 38:23

For someone who is brand new to somatic internal family systems, I would love if you could spend some time breaking down the practice and maybe also exploring how it's different than internal family systems.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 38:36

Yes, it's a really great question. How is it different from internal family systems? And with internal family systems, when we start to learn the process, it's very much about the six F's the find, the focus, the befriend, the feel towards, etc. With somatics, it's really bringing that model into the body. And something that I hold in mind is for those that are perhaps practitioners here, is both the horizontal and the vertical axis. So in one sense, we're going uh we're going down and in, like as we explore those those different F's. But on the other plane, we're really expanding into the felt sense of the body. And as we bring IFS more somatically into the body, it's really giving us permission to sense and feel it on the inside, and sometimes maybe even the dialogue isn't needed as much. Maybe we don't need to verbalize it as much. But firstly bringing our awareness in. So, where is it in my body? Oh, it's in my left shoulder, oh, it's in my right hip. Okay, as I'm focusing on that part, that critical part, I can feel my shoulders really tighten or my lower back collapse. And then we're starting to perhaps use our breath to either connect to the part or notice and witness what happens in our breath when it's there. So, yeah, the anxious one, okay. My breath is becoming really tight and short and shallow, for example. And then maybe building this energetic resonance with the part. Can we be in connection to it? Can the part really feel our presence with it? And then perhaps through the movement, we might bring whether that's a yogic pose or whether that's an expression that the part wants to do. But it's a lot more giving the part space to move and to feel and to be expressed in a different way that's not only like sitting in a chair and intellectualizing and verbalizing it. Touch as well.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 41:00

I use a lot with my clients. So I actually I work online, but self-touch, self-guided, helping clients connect their part by placing a hand there, um, hugging themselves, gentle rocking, soothing movements. It's very, very powerful. It helps them bring connection inwards.

Ailey Jolie: 41:22

From your perspective, who is maybe better suited for somatic IFS versus traditional IFS?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 41:33

I wonder if, and of course it can be open to anyone, but I wonder if typically what I see is that people that have some kind of movement or yogic background already, or some awareness of the body. Because I'm reflecting on clients that I work with that are curious about the somatics and the yogic, but are then again thinking about a continuum are down more of the end of the intellectualizers and talking and verbalizing. Maybe someone that's had traditional talk therapy, but as we spoke to earlier, that is is feeling that they've reached a point or a stuckness or a wall or a plateau that they're feeling that dropping down into the body is going to help them more. I don't necessarily think you need to, you know, be embodied already because the the model itself can take you there. It's about having a curiosity and openness to the body and to work with the body. What I love to say to my clients is really that embodied work is learning the language of the body, you're starting to build a conversation with the body. That if you think about learning a language at school like French, that you don't walk into the room on your first class being fluent. And it's also about making those, I say making mistakes, but you know, maybe misreading cues or or learning things differently along the way. So someone that's more suited to somatic IFS might be someone that is more open to embodied approaches and is at that point of readiness to really come in connection to their body.

Ailey Jolie: 43:18

What are some other tools or practices that you oftentimes recommend that are helpful in learning how to listen or learning the language of the body as you described?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 43:29

Yeah. So some helpful tools. Everything starts with awareness. Again, if if that language building, that conversation with the body, if we're not listening, we can't we can't hear. And there'd be actually very valid reasons why people will be disconnected from their body or outside of their body or not able to be with their cues. Very simple starting practices would be something like. Tracking very simple exercise I do with clients is I am aware of. So maybe we're sitting down, we're lying down, just noticing okay. I I'm aware of my hair touching my shoulder, I'm aware of a flutter in my stomach, I'm aware of my heel touching the ground. So we're starting to just really build that cognitive attention with the physical sensation. Then from that awareness building, I would typically go on to mindfulness-based exercises, whether that's body scans, whether that's meditations, whether it's grounding exercises, to be more in the body. What I find really helpful in working with clients is from the outside in. Because again, with that language building and that conversation building, we can't expect to be on the inside if we haven't journeyed there gradually and slowly. From a more practitioner perspective or clinical perspective, this is about the titration, the window of tolerance, going there slowly, slowly, slowly. So small practices that build up over time. From the awareness building, I would then move on to breath. So practices like that are really accessible, we don't want to overwhelm people. Something with breath work that's really powerful is coherent breathing. Coherent breathing is reducing the breath rate down to about five or six breaths per minute. So in modern society, we breathe typically at 10 breaths per minute. In urban environments, research shows sometimes we breathe up to 15 breaths per minute, which is really a sign of going into sympathetic arousal, the stress response. So if we can teach people to start to bring their breath rate down, coherent breathing with or extended exhales, square breathing, again, very, very practical small tools that will help to people be bringing themselves back into a zone of safety in their body.

Ailey Jolie: 46:15

What do you wish more women knew about their bodies from all of your clinical experience and working with people? Is there something that if you could depart one word of wisdom before a woman entered your room, what would it be?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 46:33

The words coming through are welcome home. That that really that really feels resonant around you're coming back into yourself, you're arriving back. This is your homecoming. And it's time, like the words of wisdom before before someone even comes into the room, they're making a decision that now is the time, I'm ready, I'm open, showing up for themselves in a way that is they're prepared to do the work, and that healing journey is a process. There's not one linear way, there's no right or wrong, but it's a process of walking themselves home, back to themselves, of rediscovering themselves, and what a really beautiful path to walk on. So my words would be welcome home.

Ailey Jolie: 47:33

We opened our time together by me asking you what it means to be in the body, and I would love to hear if there's anything that you would like to add to your answer now as we come to the close of our time together today.

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 47:51

Is there anything that I would add about what it means to be in the body? Actually, in this moment, maybe there isn't. Let me have a thing. Um something that I would add is actually a question that I would encourage people to ask. So with my clients, when I ask, have you had an eating disorder? Many people say no. No, no, no. And then I the second question. I will ask is, What's your relationship to your body? And immediately people answer, I hate it, no, it's horrible, it's fat, you know, whatever. So, so, so critical. So, what does it mean to be in this body? The question I would love to leave listeners with is what's your relationship to your body? And really honestly ask yourself that. Are you in reverence to your body? Are you in celebration of your body? How do you give thanks to your body? How do you celebrate your body? How do you value her? Because she lives and breathes for you all day, every day, without you having to ask. So that's the final thought I would love to leave listeners with.

Ailey Jolie: 49:21

Thank you so much for your time and your thoughtful and insightful answers. Is there anything that you have upcoming that you would like the listener to know about?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 49:31

Yes, there absolutely is. So, upcoming, I am offering a course called Integrate, and this is really for practitioners. So the listeners that are professionals, maybe they're a therapist, a coach, a yoga teacher, who really want to learn my framework of bringing yoga and psychology together. This is because what I witness in the professional space is there's so many more yoga teachers that are going in the direction of counseling and trauma-informed work. There are lots of professionals who are wanting to learn more about how do I bring the breath and body into the therapy room. And the Integrate framework is something that I created a couple of years ago and have run several courses on since, which is bringing Western psychology into Eastern philosophy. It's uniting therapy models with the kosher's, which I've spoken to in this podcast, the chakras, nervous system regulation, and it's really a framework and the method that I use with my clients. So that is a course that is relaunching in autumn. And there is also the embodied entrepreneur movement, and this is where I really support women who work in health, healing, and wellness to be a living, breathing example of the work that they share. I really believe that if you're going to be working in this realm and you want to build a business that's based on your body, for your body, and being of service in the way that you want to, that we need to be more embodied as practitioners. So I run both a membership and a mentorship program.

Ailey Jolie: 51:10

Thank you so much for that. We'll have all the links in the show notes. Is there anything else before I stop our recording?

Dr. Stephanie Minchin: 51:17

Just to say thank you so much. It's a real privilege to be in conversation with you, Rayleigh, and it's a real, yeah, joy to do this work in the world.

Ailey Jolie: 51:25

Steph left us with two words near the end. Welcome home. And they've stayed with me since we stopped recording because coming home to the body is not only a feeling, it's a physiology. It's worth naming what that physiology is. The capacity to sense yourself from the inside has a name, interoception. It's the channel that carries the signal of your own heartbeat or the flutter in your stomach that staff asks her clients to notice. Many of the women I sit with have spent years with this channel turned down low, and there's nothing broken or wrong with that. When inside your body has felt frightening, learning not to feel is a form of intelligence and protection. This is why when a woman tells me she can't feel anything in her body, I don't hear a failure. I hear a nervous system that wants it to stop listening in order to survive. Reconnecting to your interceptive awareness can happen through many of the practices that Steph named in this episode. And one thing that is absolutely essential to having your interceptive awareness come back is calming that amygdala so that the alarm system that is constantly scanning for threat is accurately detecting the environment around you. When this happens, the body can begin to metabolize past experiences that may be stuck or stored inside the body. Steph gave an example of being in a pose and something coming up from a her hip. I know that I've had an experience like this too. This type of interceptive awareness is only possible when the nervous system feels like it's back in its window of tolerance and the amygdala is no longer scanning the environment as a sign of danger. One way to work with the amygdala is some of the breath practices that Steph offered. So if any of this resonates with you, I highly recommend going back and trying some of the practices that were named in this episode. If this conversation has stirred something in you or you would like some of those practices led by me, you can join me in my online program Inbody. This is a 14-week embodiment program where we follow the body's own story rather than the mind's account of what happened. You can find all the details at inbodymethod.com. If you would like to experience some of these practices in person with me, you can join me in Nosarra, Costa Rica this fall. All of the information is available at alieyjolie.com. And lastly, if you're interested in reading more of my words or staying connected, you can find me at alieyjolie.substack.com. 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, to be a part of that process for you.