Episode 80: Heidi stokes
08/27/2026
What happens when you learn to read everyone else before you learn to read yourself?
In this episode, Ailey sits down with registered clinical counsellor and yoga therapist, Heidi Stokes, to explore how the nervous system shapes our experience of safety. Together, they look at how easily we can become focused on reading the room while losing touch with what is happening inside our own bodies.
Heidi shares how patterns like people pleasing can develop as ways of staying connected and protected. The conversation explores what it takes to turn our attention inward again, especially when insight has not been enough to create meaningful change.
Ailey and Heidi also discuss why trauma healing requires patience and why feeling safe with another person can be an important part of learning to feel safe within ourselves. Rather than pushing the body toward change, they consider what becomes possible when healing moves at a pace the nervous system can actually hold.
If you have ever struggled to know what you feel or found yourself paying more attention to everyone else than to yourself, this conversation offers a gentler way back to your body.
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:
3:25 What Being In Your Body Means
6:00 Women Trained To Leave The Body
11:27 Somatic Therapy Versus Talk Therapy
22:16 What Yoga Therapy Looks Like
27:24 Trauma Disclosure And Building Safety
35:37 The Harm Of Going Too Fast
40:57 Co-Regulation Before Self-Regulation
48:59 Self-Regulation As A Gentle Choice
57:16 When Talk Therapy Is Not Shifting
1:00:00 Closing Invitation To Rest And Validate
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