20: Unlocking Body Wisdom with Carah Elizabeth

00;00;07;26 - 00;00;39;15

Narrator

Hello and welcome to Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing through raw and heartfelt conversation. We uncover the powerful tools and strategies these individuals use to not only heal themselves, but also inspire those around them. Join us on this incredible journey as we discover the human spirit's remarkable capacity to heal, find hope in the darkest of moments, and ultimately live an elevated life.

00;00;39;17 - 00;01;09;29

Cherie Lindberg

All right. Welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy. And I'm excited to have this converse session with Carah Elizabeth. I'm going to have her introduce herself in just a moment. We were talking just before we started our podcast, and I'm really excited to hear more about your perspective on Body Wisdom Coaching seminar. Let you take it away and we'll go from there.

00;01;10;02 - 00;01;30;22

Carah Elizabeth

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on. It's just a great pleasure to be asked and to be invited, so I appreciate it. My name is Carah Elizabeth, and I spent nearly 20 years in the formal mental health field doing therapy, building a private practice, a group practice, having a lot of success. But towards the end, I really realized that things just weren't feeling right.

00;01;30;22 - 00;02;02;12

Carah Elizabeth

They just weren't feeling in alignment for me. I had been on my own personal, spiritual healing journey and had gathered a lot of skills that I wasn't able to use with my clients, but I knew I could support them so much. Though the mixture of the super regulated field of mental health of therapy, the toxicity I saw within the other therapists in the field itself, and then this expansiveness that I was experiencing in my own journey, I decided to shift gears and do what I call body wisdom coaching with people.

00;02;02;12 - 00;02;25;26

Carah Elizabeth

So I released my license. I shifted things virtually. I expanded my reach globally because now I don't have a license and not pigeonholed into just Arizona. And I can really support people in falling in love with themselves again. And I'm tuning in to that innate wisdom of their body, that innate messaging that tells you when something's a yes and when something to know or something feels good and it feels bad.

00;02;25;29 - 00;02;38;24

Carah Elizabeth

In helping to unlock some of that tension, that constriction that we hold when we carry trauma in our bodies, that we can rest back into our lives and just live such abundant lives in such an intuitive way.

00;02;38;26 - 00;03;05;09

Cherie Lindberg

Uniform, beautiful. Well, I mean, we do know the body keeps the score. There's another, but the body bears the burden. Mental health is blocking. They're actually, you know, pulling away. If you bring up the body like they're fighting evidence based, all these kinds of things. But yet there's evidence because you are working in your practice with these folks and your folks are getting better.

00;03;05;13 - 00;03;25;09

Carah Elizabeth

Yeah. And there they're making such progress so much quicker than we can just focus on the psyche, the psychological aspect of it. But we have to remember, I mean, the psychology has been around for years and years and years, and we have to remember the founders and the men who created it and psyche really is the mind. And so anything outside of the mind is scary.

00;03;25;09 - 00;03;50;22

Carah Elizabeth

And as new. And of course, we know that that spirit lives in the mind. And so it's just kind of like this cyclical pattern of fear and lack of willingness to try something new. And that's what I see within the mental health field. I do feel like it's improving with post graduate certifications, but those graduate training programs are still very rooted in the old way of doing things.

00;03;50;24 - 00;04;21;10

Carah Elizabeth

And my hope is that as we grow and as we continue to see the expansion of the semantics that graduate programs will begin to build us in. But you're absolutely right, like we empirically studied, modality is and even though some acts have been around since the sixties and seventies and there's tons of evidence for it, it's not been empirically studied because it's the body and you can't really study it like in, say, X, Y and Z, what is true and what's actually happening.

00;04;21;12 - 00;04;42;28

Carah Elizabeth

But you can feel it. And that's what's so much more powerful to me as my clients being able to feel differently instead of just cognitively. No, And that's the power of the body and that's the core of the connection. And as we know with trauma, that's what trauma does, is it disconnects us to our body and it keeps us just in our mind if we just do the cognitive work, we're just continuing to dismiss the body, continue to struggle.

00;04;42;28 - 00;04;53;16

Carah Elizabeth

And that's where we see these patterns continue to override with anxiety and self-hatred and repetition of addiction and eating sorts of things like that. Because we're not getting to the root, we're not getting into the body.

00;04;53;21 - 00;05;04;24

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. So talk more about getting to the root. Like if I was a client coming into your office, just walk us through what that would look like. And you really going to do work with one of your clients?

00;05;04;26 - 00;05;24;23

Carah Elizabeth

Yes, absolutely. So the first thing I always do with people in my therapy practice, we did assessments. What I do now is this best life analysis. And so we talk through these areas of the life, those relationships work and pleasure like different areas of their lives. And I have a great on and we talk about why they rated them at that point.

00;05;24;25 - 00;05;47;05

Carah Elizabeth

And that kind of gives me a game plan of like maybe what the pillars of things that we're going to focus on first. But all of my work is so Eastern focus. So Eastern philosophy, both I really work on chakra work and social work, and so we work from the root app. And so building a strong foundation of safety, security, strength and the key things about is the body has to be taken care of.

00;05;47;05 - 00;06;18;04

Carah Elizabeth

First. We need to be having nourishing food, we need to be resting, we need to be moving our bodies every day. So really focusing on the root chakra mula dara and addressing some of the wounding there, addressing the fear, which is the wounding of the root chakra as well. The gift is, is the safety. And so finding that safety within ourselves and then moving up the tracker system, moving up to the sacral Chopra, where we have pleasure and creativity and fun and learning to to be a little bit more fluid and then into our powerhouse of monitoring and so on.

00;06;18;10 - 00;06;26;27

Carah Elizabeth

So really addressing from these chakra energy centers in the body to see where the wounding is and where the strengths really are.

00;06;26;29 - 00;06;30;27

Cherie Lindberg

So do you do in-person and online when you work with folks?

00;06;30;29 - 00;06;49;17

Carah Elizabeth

I mean, I just everything in: 2020

00;06;49;20 - 00;06;58;18

Cherie Lindberg

So I got to me a little bit about how you trusted yourself to pivot like this.

00;06;58;20 - 00;07;21;05

Carah Elizabeth

and things like that. And in: 2020

00;07;21;05 - 00;07;41;04

Carah Elizabeth

But what I saw during that year of starting with coaching while I was still doing formal therapy was my coaching clients were able to expand and move through their trauma and make greater progress at such rapid speeds compared to the clients in just therapy. Because I was able to do Reiki, I was able to do movement, I was able to take them out on the land and hike with them.

00;07;41;04 - 00;08;05;01

Carah Elizabeth

I was able to do all of these things. That is a whole being approach, whereas therapy is often just the mind starting to get into the body. But I was able to address what I call trauma as a spiritual wound. It's a spiritual wound. It wounds us to our core of who we believe we are. And so by adding body, mind and spirit together, my clients are able to move so much quicker through their experiences.

00;08;05;08 - 00;08;29;23

Carah Elizabeth

And it was beautiful. So to be 100% honest, I first put my license in active I and activated it for two years just in case, you know, I had that safety net while I branched out into coaching. But then I finally did it just formally last January, release it completely because even having that safety net, although it feels really good, sometimes it actually they'll just hold us back because we have something to fall back to talk to.

00;08;29;23 - 00;08;39;26

Cherie Lindberg

Ignore about this spiritual wound. Your perspective on that? I mean, I get the concept of it, but what are you seeing in your office?

00;08;39;29 - 00;09;01;09

Carah Elizabeth

Probably the easiest way. So my education, my own experience, I had an eating disorder in my young, my adolescence, in my young adulthood. So most of my therapy clients were women with eating disorders as well. And the way we treat them is similar to the kind of way that I start my process, which is they have to be medically stable before we can dive into the trauma work.

00;09;01;12 - 00;09;19;18

Carah Elizabeth

But what I see is often, yes, we get them medically stable and they may do some therapy afterwards, but it's almost like once their body in back to a healthy weight, it's like, oh, they're good. They're on the road to recovery. That's not really valid. It's not really true because we haven't dealt with what's underneath. We haven't dealt with the core wounding.

00;09;19;20 - 00;09;36;18

Carah Elizabeth

And what I see so often, especially with trauma, especially with a lot of my experience and sexualized trauma, is it really we hold is like a definition of who we are and our worthiness and how people are going to treat us, which is a wounding to our spirit, which is the wounding to our self-esteem, which is our wounding to our self-worth.

00;09;36;20 - 00;09;56;16

Carah Elizabeth

And we can't just nourish the body to get it back to a stable weight. And we can't just try to reframe the maladaptive thought patterns. We have to get into that inner child. We have to get into those inner wounded parts, those anxiety parts, those warrior parts that are trying to protect us. And we have to help nourish them as well.

00;09;56;16 - 00;10;18;11

Carah Elizabeth

We have to help them heal, that we can function and not be worried about them rearing their heads and attacking the rest of our lives. And so it really is that spirit. It's the spirit of who we are that's often been, though, hidden away and for lack of a better term, and it kind of so broken by the traumas that we've faced, we've kind of lost sight of who we are.

00;10;18;11 - 00;10;33;28

Carah Elizabeth

We've forgotten that part of us. We've shrunk it so down, so small and gotten it so quiet that we don't even really know who we are. That's a lot of what I hear from women when I start working with them is I don't even know who I am anymore. And so it's really addressing that core of like, who are we?

00;10;34;00 - 00;10;41;00

Carah Elizabeth

Like, Who are you at your core beyond trying to meet anybody else's expectations or make anybody else happy?

00;10;41;02 - 00;10;46;11

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, for sure. That that really gets to the meat of it, doesn't it?

00;10;46;13 - 00;10;47;12

Carah Elizabeth

Absolutely.

00;10;47;15 - 00;11;11;27

Cherie Lindberg

You were talking I was just thinking about we all know the mindsets, you know, that get in the way. Did you find when you were switching from therapy to more of a coaching mindset that because the client Towelhead would invest in themselves with coaching, that that difference is wild versus that folks that are like, well, I want to use my insurance, you know, that kind of situation.

00;11;11;27 - 00;11;13;15

Cherie Lindberg

What was that experience like for you?

00;11;13;22 - 00;11;32;05

Carah Elizabeth

Yes and no. I did have several. I mean, I went cash pay towards the end of my own therapy practice as well. So I did notice that when I went self-pay that some people, for whatever reason, just preferred to use their insurance, although they literally couldn't afford the self-pay rate or, you know, we invest in insurance, so why not use it?

00;11;32;05 - 00;11;56;15

Carah Elizabeth

And I do understand that as well. But there is a different quality of people for sure that will, when they are investing in self-pay, whether it's coaching or therapy, they show up differently. They show up in a different and a bigger energy like them ready to to do the work as opposed to some clients that are paying a $10 co-pay to sit on your couch for ten years and talk about the same thing over and over again, but not make any differences in their lives.

00;11;56;17 - 00;12;02;06

Cherie Lindberg

When you would experience those kinds of clients, how would you change that?

00;12;02;08 - 00;12;17;13

Carah Elizabeth

So for that, I laugh because for people who know me, they know that I did. I fired a lot of clients. Like if they were unwilling to do the work, I wasn't willing to work harder than them. And that's not that wasn't my practice. I was there to and can I swear I was there to get shit done.

00;12;17;13 - 00;12;19;02

Cherie Lindberg

So I that's.

00;12;19;02 - 00;12;34;20

Carah Elizabeth

And, and I was there to support and help people and we would have those conversations and some people really took those conversations to heart and started doing work and some people didn't. And so it was just time for them to move on and to find another therapist. I would offer them referrals. Of course I did. So in the most professional way.

00;12;34;23 - 00;12;40;15

Carah Elizabeth

But again, my form of therapy wasn't, you know, paying for a friend because.

00;12;40;16 - 00;13;10;08

Cherie Lindberg

A lot of sense. So a very similar story in that working with folks that were experiencing trauma and staying focused, their BERSET is post-traumatic growth and flourishing. I love this best life analysis. I always talk about my clients, what is nourishing you, and you kind of said that to what is nourishing and we create a nourishing list. And what I find over and over and over again is that they have this list, but they're not doing it very often.

00;13;10;10 - 00;13;16;05

Cherie Lindberg

So it sounds like you also use internal family systems or parts work in the body with some coaching.

00;13;16;07 - 00;13;33;24

Carah Elizabeth

Yeah, absolutely. We made a lot of parts. We definitely do that work for sure because again, those are the things that are often stuck in the patterns. Those are the parts of us are stuck in the parties and we have so much compassion for them. I mean, I always make sure that when we address these parts, we say thank you because they're just trying to protect us.

00;13;33;26 - 00;13;53;14

Carah Elizabeth

They just don't realize we're not actually in danger anymore. And so we have to let our adult self or our old our self come up to the forefront, say, Hey, I love you. I'm so glad you here, because you kept me safe at a time when I needed you too. And I would really appreciate I would step back right now and let me step forward because I can take this now.

00;13;53;14 - 00;14;07;16

Carah Elizabeth

I can do things differently. And so we always have so much compassion, but it's such an important part because again, that's part of the spirit, that's part of the spirit of who we are. And if we let those wounded parts continue to drive the bus, we're going to stay in the same place we've always been.

00;14;07;19 - 00;14;30;20

Cherie Lindberg

I just am really loving hearing everything that you're saying to know that there's someone else thinking and feeling similar, thinking that the thoughts and feelings that I like and it's really nice to sit with somebody else that's, you know, really aligned. If somebody that was listening for maybe the first time to this podcast, what would you really want them to know?

00;14;30;22 - 00;14;50;16

Carah Elizabeth

I would want them to know that their body is so wise that they have wisdom inside of them as well. Because I imagine and I know a lot of people say my body doesn't tell me anything. It does. We just haven't been listening. We've and so it's gotten so buried underneath all the other noise that we allow to be louder.

00;14;50;18 - 00;15;03;12

Carah Elizabeth

And so I would just want them to know that they have they the body is talking to them. It's more of a matter of whether they're able to hear it yet. And it's all about peeling back those layers and letting it be heard.

00;15;03;15 - 00;15;07;17

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, And it sounds like that's what you do is you teach your clients how to hear.

00;15;07;20 - 00;15;32;25

Carah Elizabeth

Adequately and to know that they have different choices. I think that's the biggest thing of so many people. And I remember being in this place myself so I can have so much compassion for it of being in my own therapist's office and be like I, I don't have any other option than we do. And if we really, really take away and release all the expectations and release all of the things that we've learned and release all the things that people told us, we realize we do have options.

00;15;32;28 - 00;15;45;23

Carah Elizabeth

They just can be more difficult to make because they may upset some people. And so that's why if you're strong enough in yourself, if you have that conviction within yourself, then it doesn't matter if people are upset because that's not about you, it's about them.

00;15;45;25 - 00;15;53;02

Cherie Lindberg

Is there anything that you feel would additional that you would like to share here? As we're getting ready to wrap up?

00;15;53;08 - 00;16;16;08

Carah Elizabeth

I think the biggest thing is rest that people struggle with and they don't realize that's a such an important and such a pivotal part of the programing that I do with people is in order to hear that voice, you have to get still in quiet. And isn't that the hardest thing for so many of us to do because we've spent so much time being, you know, on the go and so in a hurry and everything that.

00;16;16;13 - 00;16;38;21

Carah Elizabeth

And so if you can just take some time to rest, to be still and to be quiet and put the phone away and put the TV's and the radios and everything off and just as fast. And I find that best for me in nature when I'm out on a walk or in hiking, but just creating the space to feel and to hear what your body is saying.

00;16;38;23 - 00;16;55;11

Cherie Lindberg

Create the space to feel. And I would wonder. My next question is, I would imagine you probably teach and I talk to this to about daily practices. They can be a one and done. It's got to be a habit, a new habit that you create for yourself.

00;16;55;13 - 00;17;16;12

Carah Elizabeth

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's part of why, you know, in January, I ran a program called Rooted in Rust, and it was a 40 day program where every day I was hopping into the group and I was doing anywhere from 10 to 30 minute like rest and discussion to help get into that practice of that daily resting routine.

00;17;16;15 - 00;17;33;25

Carah Elizabeth

And so creating that space every day. And it doesn't have to be a long time. It can be 5 minutes, it can be five minute, it can be 2 minutes to start, if that's all you can tolerate. It's just that the purpose, like you said, is just just starting and just continuing it and practicing it every day, even when it sucks.

00;17;33;27 - 00;17;55;25

Cherie Lindberg

Well, I just want to thank you for taking the time to come and talk to our listeners and we will have resource links to your your website and anything that you sent to us for those to be able to contact you, can you just because we're still online, I know the links will be there, but I also want to have you verbally said you know the name of your website.

00;17;55;25 - 00;17;57;11

Cherie Lindberg

So that they know where to reach you.

00;17;57;18 - 00;18;07;05

Carah Elizabeth

Yeah so it is Carah Elizabeth dot com and Carah as felt see a RH and then Elizabeth Eliza Abby.

00;18;07;08 - 00;18;10;22

Cherie Lindberg

All right wonderful thank you for spending time with us.

00;18;10;25 - 00;18;15;07

Carah Elizabeth

You had thank you so much for having me it's been a pleasure.

00;18;15;10 - 00;18;41;09

Cherie Lindberg

I hope you enjoyed our podcast this evening talking about body wisdom. We do need to get back into our bodies, as Carah so eloquently talked about, the need for a holistic healing and not to just pay attention to our mind. I really liked what she had to say about our core wounding, and that trauma really is a spiritual wound.

00;18;41;11 - 00;19;12;22

Cherie Lindberg

And so I hope that you found this educational and you will be able to see where you can connect with Carah on our notes. So thank you so much for being with us. And if you really felt that this was moving and that this could help somebody, please share with others. The more that we share, the more we show that we care and we are really looking to share with as many people as possible so that everyone could get a little bit of taste of what it might be like to live an elevated life.

00;19;12;24 - 00;19;16;13

Cherie Lindberg

Thank you for being with us and listening.

00;19;16;15 - 00;19;35;10

Narrator

Thank you for joining us. On another uplifting journey on Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy Stories of hope and healing. If you found resonance or connection with what you've heard today, we encourage you to share this episode and consider becoming a subscriber. Please spread the word so others can live an elevated life.