Month: April 2021

In this episode, I interview Lesha Nelson. Lesha and I met years ago at the children’s hospital we both worked at.  We immediately bonded over our shared love for mind-body practices and passion for holistic care. Lesha has numerous certifications and licensures from modalities including occupational therapy, psychosomatics, yoga, craniosacral therapy, integral facilitation, spiral clearing process, womb healing apprenticeship, and family constellations. In this episode I talk with Lesha about her unique background and process for working with people who have experienced trauma.

We discuss…

• How is trauma defined?
• What does a trauma response look like?
• Polyvagal theory
• Flight, fight, freeze, and fawn
• How does trauma shape the brain and impact the nervous system?
• What does it mean to be trauma informed?
• Is mindfulness appropriate for someone who has experienced trauma?
• A mix of Eastern and Western tools to help regulate your nervous system throughout the day
• and more…

Lesha’s Bio:

Having spent over a decade studying trauma, meditation, stress responses in the body, embodiment, psychosomatics, the womb, and birth work, Lesha Nelson is an established specialist in facilitating the release of trauma and conditioning in the mind and body, allowing the body to its natural state of thriving and pure potentiality.

She has built two businesses from the ground up: a busy craniosacral therapy practice addressing care for both moms and newborns as well as an online coaching business where she focuses on trauma, nervous system regulation, embodiment, and womb healing. Her work guides women to release trauma and patterning so they can become more embodied, connected to their inner wisdom, and capable of their own potentiality for creation.

She also teaches coaches and practitioners how to help their own clients’ process trauma and to help them to create lasting changes by addressing the nervous system. Coaches who work with her can confidently recognize and treat trauma with integrity and offer deep healing sessions.

Lesha has numerous certifications and licensures from modalities including occupational therapy, psychosomatics, yoga, craniosacral therapy, integral facilitation, spiral clearing process, womb healing apprenticeship, and family constellations.

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This episode is hands down one of the most vulnerable and raw episodes I have posted to date. I am a huge self-love advocate and often talk about showing ourselves grace and compassion. Although I know and believe these things, truthfully, self-love is something I am constantly working on. I have a noisy inner critic in my head that is constantly telling me that I am unworthy and that I need to be doing more to be “enough.” This is one of the biggest reason’s that I fell in love with mindfulness and my meditation practice in the first place. It was the first time that I felt a glimpse of quiet inside my head. It was also one of the first times that I realized the power of observing my thoughts without attaching to them. 

Recently, as I sat in my meditation practice, the old familiar feelings of unworthiness started to creep back in. I found myself observing my thoughts, noticing their presence, and instead of allowing them to spiral me downward, I became curious about them. I turned on my microphone and began recording my experience. There was no script, no agenda, and no editing (except for some extended pauses I took as I was processing). Turns out my external mic wasn’t actually even on, therefore, the quality of sound is not the best.

And still, here I am raw, imperfect, and lovable fully as I am.

In this episode, I discuss…

• My quest for being enough, or what I refer to in the episode as, my search for “enoughness” (I think I made up my own word there)!
• How this belief has shown up in my life 
• My previous coping mechanisms of overworking, perfectionism, people-pleasing, beating myself up, shutting down, and isolating myself
• Shifting from finding self-love in others to finding it within myself
• My step by step process of how I am choosing to respond:

1. 1. Notice the body sensations that are happening
   2. Watch my thoughts without attaching to them 
   3. Investigate where the thought could be coming from without judgment
   4. Show myself love and compassion 
   5. Get back into my body. This could be through physical exercise, breathing, or just pausing to notice my senses. This helps bring me out of my head (which often is not in the present moment) to my body (which is physically here in the present moment).
   6. Come back to my “why.” What is my purpose/what is the outcome that I want out of this life?

As vulnerable as this episode feels to share I think it needs to be heard. For anyone who has not felt good enough, I wan’t you to know that you are not alone. We are all on this journey of “enoughness” together. I hope that these tools will be helpful for you. I am worthy of love and compassion and so are you. I hope we can create a space where we feel more open talking about our mental health and we can continue to support and uplift one another. 

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