Episode 81: Ailey Jolie

09/03/2026


What if the voices we instinctively trust have less to do with wisdom and more to do with what our bodies have been taught to recognize as authority?

In this solo episode, Ailey explores how cultural conditioning can quietly shape whose knowledge we trust and whose confidence makes us uncomfortable. Drawing from what she has been noticing while writing her book, she considers how these patterns can live beneath our conscious beliefs and influence the way we respond to women in positions of authority.

Ailey reflects on the difference between confidence and safety, questioning why women are so often expected to prove their expertise while navigating the discomfort that can come with fully claiming it. She also turns toward the women whose work has profoundly shaped modern approaches to trauma and embodiment, despite their names not always receiving the same recognition as the ideas they helped establish.

Rather than approaching these biases as something to judge or intellectualize, Ailey invites us to notice them in the body. What happens when a woman speaks with certainty? What shifts when the same message comes from a man?

This conversation is an invitation to become more discerning about whose wisdom we receive, while creating more freedom for women to take up space within their own work.

About In This Body: Conversations with leading experts about the importance of embodiment in living an authentic life. In This Body asks the important questions: How does connecting to your body change your life? How will connecting to your body allow you to love better and live more authentically? And how does connecting to your body change the trajectory of our shared world?

In this episode:

  • 4:07 The Question Of Female Authority

  • 16:44 Confidence Is Not The Issue

  • 22:22 Naming The Female Elders We Miss

  • 33:22 Neuroception And Somatic Misogyny

  • 37:20 Family Conditioning And Inherited Safety

  • 39:29 Ageism And Women As Threat

  • 44:06 A Body Based Practice For Change

  • 47:03 Ways To Go Deeper Together

Learn more about Ailey Jolie:

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Episode 80: Heidi stokes