I am grateful to have been interviewed by Ryan Hassan from The Centre for Healing recently. We covered several areas in our chat, including:
- The chaos that often comes with being a woman 35+ juggling multiple responsibilities and having no time for self-care
- My experience with gut issues and how it led me to discover embodied processing (EP), a body-based approach to working with trauma
- How the combination of embodied journaling and EP is helping people to gain clarity, accept their past and work with their nervous system rather than against it
- Public speaking fear, numbing out of life, trauma and more
You can watch the video and/or find the transcript below.
Ryan
Hello, Sarah.
Sarah
Hello. Thank you very much for having this chat with me. I'm excited.
Ryan
I always love chatting to you. We have Sarah Cannata from Storytelling for the Soul here today. We're going to be talking about healing, maybe a little bit about your story, what you're doing now. I know that you have a lot of experience and expertise in writing that you've incorporated. You've done our embodied processing (EP) program and we've loved having you in that, but now you're incorporating that into your writing and helping people with journaling and writing.
Well, you tell me: what are some of the people you work with coming to you for? What have you got them writing about? Because I think journaling is a bit of a worn-out term. It's like, oh, I've got to journal it.
Sarah
Yeah. Look, it is a heavily Googled term, which is why it's all over my website. So, really what we do in sessions is, usually, people come to me with a specific issue in mind or a challenge that they're looking to work through. It could be anything.
Some people are just feeling completely disconnected from their life. Or maybe they are struggling with anxiety and they're already working with another professional like a psychologist and they're looking for something complementary to weave into their daily life because the great thing about writing, and this is why I genuinely think it's one of the most underutilised tools, is it's available on a 24/7 basis.
There’s also a low barrier to entry, so all you need is pen, paper, something to type with and you're good to go. And what I always say to people is that even if you're working with a counsellor or a psychologist or whatever, if you wake up at 3am in the morning and you can't get back to sleep and you're dealing with overthinking, racing thoughts—whatever it may be—you can always write.
I'm not so sure your psychologist would be all that happy to receive a call from you at 3am and they probably won't pick up anyway. So generally, people do come to me with a specific issue that they want to explore. It's not necessarily something that they perceive as negative. The people I see tend to be women over 35 and in that period of their life where they're nearing middle age and it's that transition period. Often, a lot of their life has involved looking after kids, being very career focused—whether it's a job or a business—and they’ve lost themselves a bit. They are usually just go, go, go and overwhelmed. During our sessions, I implement the EP techniques and other body-based approaches. I always say there are no rules with writing, but with the work that I do—because writing can be triggering, especially if we're looking into something that people find challenging or upsetting—is the resourcing piece. Of course, resourcing is from EP and then all of the other techniques, I just allow them to surface as they're needed. And as you know Ryan, there's a lot of different approaches that people can do. What I aim to do in my sessions is to give people things that they can do in their daily life that aren’t going to be too overwhelming for them.
As you know, Ryan, with resourcing, you can basically do that whenever you need to without anyone else even knowing. That’s the same with a lot of the nervous system resilience techniques, which I've learnt from EP and a few other places as well. They can all be done pretty much without anyone else knowing what you're doing. So, hopefully I've answered your question.
Ryan
100%. Just for people that don't know, resourcing is where we're finding some sort of sense of safety within ourselves. Because when we're doing this work—whether writing, journaling, exploring our experience of being a human being—we're diving into some of the things from our past that we haven't processed, and we're going to encounter a lot of stored stress. That stress is held within our mind and body and that's going to start to come to the surface and that's really uncomfortable. And so what we do is we create what Peter Levine calls an island of safety. And we have different ways in EP of doing that:
- Finding somewhere in the body that feels safe
- Using a person, place, or a memory and imagine safe place
- We can orient to things in the room
- We can use movement
These are all of these things that we can do. Essentially, I like to think of it as the two islands. We have an island of safety or neutrality and one of more heightened stress or disturbance. And it's important that we deal with that stress and disturbance. But when that gets too much, we can go into overwhelm. We can start to run into a lot of issues. So having a resource to come back to is really important in any of this work. Because the last thing we want to do when we're doing work on ourself is bring up all of this stress and all of these heavy emotions and then just be stuck in them. It’s important to process and feel them in a safe way, but not to marinate in them for a long time.
Sarah
Yes. The experience from EP that I learned was just how disconnected from the body I was on a day-to-day basis. And I'll be honest with you, my intention for enrolling in EP was both personal and professional.
At that point in time, I'd been having a lot of quite serious gut issues and I'd had all the standard tests that they usually use in the Western medical model. And basically everything had been ruled out and I got diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which anyone who has unfortunately had gut issues or symptoms knows that generally IBS is the diagnosis you get when they can't find anything.
I got to a point where they actually bluntly told me, look, we can't help you. It's just something that you're going to have to manage for the rest of your life. So as someone in their mid-30s and look, gut issues can be really life-limiting - they can really muck up your life. So I wasn't really satisfied with just having to manage this in life.
I started doing a little bit of my own research and came across the gut-brain connection. And then that's when I found EP as well. So, like I said, I enrolled in EP for myself to hopefully help with the gut symptoms that I was experiencing and then also to weave it into my business because I've always been doing the journaling and writing side of things, but I haven't always been blending the two. And what I discovered throughout the EP process—going through the theory, understanding the nervous system, and then engaging in the practice sessions with other practitioners—is this is lifestyle work. This is the piece sometimes people don't want to hear. You can't expect to come to a 45-minute fortnightly session with me, do the work in the session and do nothing else in between. I always like to give people homework like resourcing or practicing the different techniques to see which ones work for them and which ones don't.
So I was basically applying EP to my entire life. I was doing resourcing daily, incorporating meditation. I made sure that I was moving, all that kind of stuff. And then the big change came when my environment changed. So I ended up shifting homes and I'm about a year into that and at this point, I don't have the gut symptoms on a daily basis. They are effectively gone. So who knows if it was EP, who knows if it was the lifestyle change? Who knows if it was the change in environment? And I will say that if I get nervous or anxious about something, my gut is the first thing to go. So it must just be an area of sensitivity for me. And that's pretty common, but it has just been really life-changing.
So there was the personal side and then the professional side. And then what I always knew all along was that writing can be triggering. Because I'd had the experience myself. I've been writing—I mean, I wouldn't have called it embodied writing or embodied journaling as a 12 year old—but I've been journaling basically since I was 12 years old. I'm now 37. That's a long time to be writing. And I know when I've gone back and looked at my past upsetting experiences or just things I maybe don't want to look at—but I know I need to look at them to move forward and digest whatever's happened—I've noticed within myself how triggering it can be.
I knew that was happening with my clients as well. So EP and blending the two has been a massive game-changer because now I know that I can help people to use writing far more safely. In the past when people would get triggered, beyond being there for them and having a presence with them, checking up on them, I didn't really know anything else about the nervous system to help them beyond that, if that makes sense?
Ryan
Yeah. Well, I think it's when we dip into too much stress and overwhelm, then we don't have the ability to hold and be with that stress. And so what you're talking about is when that stress arises for you, when you're taking people through these writing or journaling exercises—that when they know how to get back to safety within themselves—then they can continue on with the writing.
So I can imagine a lot of people, they might start, you know, journaling or whatnot, but it brings up so much stuff that, you know, they're like, I don't want to do it today because yesterday was so rough. I'm still getting over that.
Sarah
I actually had a conversation with someone the other week where, they were journaling consistently—but they were actually too scared because they felt flooded in terms of their emotions. That's great self awareness. Often, we don't want to go to the places that maybe we need to go to move on. And then the other thing that helped with doing EP was just on a daily basis, actually understanding how my body was feeling. Because for so much of my life, I was just completely numb and I didn't even realise that I was numb because obviously I've been living in this body my whole life. I haven't had an experience as anyone else, but I would say that most of my life I lived 90% in my head, which is really easy to do because obviously our society values intellect above everything else.
I was highly ambitious; I had my goals and nothing was going to stop me from achieving those goals. But then my body started breaking down. So it was only at that point that I genuinely was forced to change my whole approach to life because what else could I do?
Ryan
We're pretty stubborn, aren't we? Sometimes it just takes a big slap in the face. I think it's also the thinking and it's also the doing as well. You know, we get rewarded for the intellect, like you said, but also to continually be doing stuff and being productive and being of value to other people or a company and that kind of thing. So, and now with all of the distractions we have on the phone and everything, it's really easy to just keep going - all day non-stop. Until hang on, let me just sit here and jump into my body and find out what it's like to be me in this moment. That's why most people only get a taste of that at night time when they turn everything off and try and go to sleep. And all of a sudden they're just flooded with all sorts of stuff and can't go to sleep.
It's this accumulation of thinking. It's not just the thinking, it's the obsession with focusing on our thinking. And just having that be our experience and not jumping back into the body. And that can be a slow process for people. The reason why we call what we do embodied processing is because we ourselves were very, very disembodied and we see most of society as that. It's not as easy as telling someone, “Oi, stop thinking and just jump back into your body.
Number one, it's too hard to stop thinking because that's a coping mechanism. And number two, if you get someone in their body—like I have clients in a first session, just stop and come into their body and experience what's happening in there—that in itself can be just so completely and utterly overwhelming because it's like decades of all of this stored stuff that hasn't been dealt with in there. And so then it's a really gradual process and I think I've actually used it with clients as well and like writing can be a beautiful gateway to come back into the body in a gradual way.
Sarah
Yes. And the reason I love the writing piece is because it can be very cerebral and intellectual. And I find people are open to that when they're at the start of their journey because being in the body can actually be quite scary, especially when you know that you've got things that have happened to you and there are crumbs left over from those experiences. While on some level you understand that whatever's in your body is holding you back and it would be highly beneficial to process it, it's actually quite scary as well. And I know that I went through that as well when I first started EP. I had those moments where I'm like, Wow. Feeling numb was so much easier than feeling all of this stuff that is now popping up.
It was like from one extreme to the other, but it was really great that you and Matt, you very clearly say that's quite normal. In the training and even if you look at other people online who talk about trauma, like Irene Lyon, they will often say that sometimes things get worse before they get better.
Ryan
Yeah. It feels like it's getting worse. I've seen over and over again. It's like, maybe I've got this issue, you know, in relationships and I find out, oh, it's because of an early relational dynamic I had with Mum or Dad. And, you know, I felt like I couldn't trust the opposite sex or whatever it was.
And you look at it and work through it and you're like, Oh my God, that's fascinating. I can't believe that's where it came from. Oh my God, I feel free. Because I've kind of processed and I understand that now and you feel great. But then all of a sudden you’ve brought to the light of attention, this unconscious material that was running a certain part of your life.
And you're so fascinated. You think it's great. But then all of a sudden you start seeing all of the bullshit that you've got going on in there. You say, Oh my God, this is how I'm narcissistic. This is how I fawn or people please. This is how I'm actually being selfish and trying to get what I want in the guise of trying to help other people.
And so you get slapped in the face with all of this stuff from the way you act. And so it just feels super overwhelming. But awareness is an uncomfortable part of the process.
Sarah
It is. You reminded me while you were talking that often where we end up in sessions is nowhere near where we started or what the person originally came to me for.
Ryan
I have a client right now and they came to me because they're like, I just got this money issue, I have a bad relationship with money and I want to start, you know, being a lot better with it etc. We're probably, 7 or 8 sessions in and we haven't talked about money or looked at anything to do with the money.
Sarah
The other thing that strikes me, and I will say I often am attracting more mature women—I'm going to say 35 plus—is just how often they appreciate having 45 minutes just to themselves because often their life is about everyone else. And I know that this is stereotypical, but women tend to be nurturers, so they're running around catering for everyone else and they're kind of always last. And sometimes it's just having the 45 minutes where you’re with another person who's 100% present. You and Matt say all along throughout the training, but it's not until you start actually getting a little bit of experience that you realise how important the presence piece is.
The techniques are one thing, and obviously they're an important element as well, but having that attunement with someone and just being present with them is so powerful and it's quite fascinating. Even though we're so much more connected these days thanks to technology, we're somehow more disconnected than ever before.
And this is why I think AI has a lot of potential, but I can't ever see it replacing human connection. Even if you just think about, so I know how I'm feeling in my body, talking to you, connecting with you right now. It is not the same as typing something into chat GPT or even Google spitting out information. I can't see that human connection piece ever being replaced.
And then the really interesting thing to me is often these people who I'm talking to, they have kids, they have family, they have friends, but they're not getting that connection that they need because it's always about everyone else.
Ryan
That's right. And you said stereotypical, but it's just something that plays out the majority of the time in my experience as well. And so someone's looking after everyone else. They're also rushing and trying to fulfil the roles. You know, they're probably working as well. They're trying to get all the housework done, be a mother, be a wife, all of that kind of thing.
And time for themselves might be like, Oh, I'm going to go to a day spa or go for a walk by myself, around the lake or that kind of thing. It's like, go to the spa as well, but like, go and see Sarah as well. People will come and sit down and all of a sudden you have someone looking at you and you’re literally in their presence to make you feel seen, heard, and understood.
I've had clients like that, when they come in for the first time, they just start. We haven't even gone into anything, but they just start crying. Because they’re just realising that it's been years since they've taken time to themselves and someone's genuinely there to try and help them. It's just so, so important.
Sarah
I see that whole theme popping up in random places here and there. For example, I think my scenario that I find myself in—I don't have any kids, I don't have a partner—is pretty unique for someone who is 37 and all my friends are in the phase where they're getting married and having kids. Obviously all their attention is in those places, but then I'll be in random places and see disconnection. I was at an appointment the other week and there was a more mature lady speaking to someone else. And she'd had kids, grandkids and they've all moved on. And she was basically reflecting to this woman saying, it's like I'm invisible now. No one gives me any time of the day. There's this isolation piece that seems to be everywhere, but no one's talking about it.
Ryan
I agree. And I think we have these life events—these significant ones throughout our life—and that's oftentimes when people start to reach out for help.
They call it when Saturn returns; about 28 years old. A lot of people start to question their life. What's the meaning of it? What are they doing? Because oftentimes they've ticked off a lot of the boxes society said they should tick off in order to be happy and ride off into the sunset.
And they have gone to school, gone to uni, got a job, found someone, got married, got the house and kids. And they look in the mirror and go, I'm not that happy. Like have I been sold? Have I been sold something false? So that's one. Having kids is a huge stress. I see that as one of those life events as well.
The other one is the empty nest, and that's probably most applicable to the women that you're talking about. It's like when the kids are getting a little bit older where they don't need you as much, and that can be before they've moved out or after. There's the number one role of a woman being a mother and a nurturer, so now that role is taken away and so on the flip side for men, it’s when they go into retirement. They have all sorts of problems because their role is this worker and provider and now that's gone they're like, Well, who am I? What do I do with my hands? Like Talladega Knights kind of thing, but they're all not sure.
And so they’ve distracted ourselves with being the nurturer, the carer or the provider and the worker. And then when we stop those things, when we stop the distraction, all of the stuff from our past that we've stored tends to come to the surface. And I guess that’s the people we're talking to.
Sarah
Yeah. And I think it's so brave to look into that because it's quite confronting and you can just kind of, I mean, I've done this for many years of my life - you just motor along and you go through the motions and there's always something to do, especially if you're still working.
I can imagine the retirement piece would be a whole other challenge of its own. And for me, and I think I do see this in who I work with as well, the only reason I really was guided to look into this work was because my body was breaking down. So it was almost screaming at me and it wasn't until it started breaking down and forcing me to change that I really had any intent to change anything. In some ways it was kind of easier to just motor along being numb, going through the motions, doing what society says that I should do. Go to school, go to uni, get a job, achieve all the things. And then you get to this place where things are not okay.
Ryan
Yeah, I think as well, what I have seen, let's say in the last 5 years, still probably most people are like that. I was the same. It's like the analogy of I need my car to be worked on because it's not working very well anymore. And instead of like bringing it to the mechanic when we can hear that slight little weird noise and you know, it's not taking off the mark properly, we pull that thing in and two of the tires are missing. All the windows are smashed. Like it's a complete and utter mess. And that's when we normally reach out for help.
But I am seeing more people now reaching out earlier down the line. So things maybe they're noticing that they're a little bit disillusioned with their life. They're sick of the monotony. They're sick of the self flagellation — like having a poor opinion of themselves and letting other people maybe not treat them the way they want.
They're sick of not feeling fulfilled. They're sick of always being triggered in certain situations in relationships, with family at work, whatever it is. And I'm just seeing more people now coming in. And I love that.
You know, I love working with people who are really down in the dumps. That's cool as well. But I love when someone comes in and they're like, I feel myself going down this path and I, I can see where it leads if I don't start to address this in one, 2 or 5 years, but I don't want to be down that path.
Sarah
And it's so much better to be proactive than to find yourself basically, whether it's burnout, whether it's a physical problem, whatever else - it's so much better to be proactive because I mean, otherwise you're kind of just making it harder for yourself.
Ryan
Yeah, and you do. It takes some bravery, you know, there's going to be fear. There's going to be nerves that come up. Speaking of that, I have to tell everyone that Sarah walks her talk here because she let me know before we pressed record that you're doing Toastmasters this year. I can't let it go. I'm so proud of you.
Sarah
Hopefully I survive this experience, but I think it's well overdue.
Ryan
Do you reckon anyone actually died from public speaking?
Sarah
I don't know, but as someone who's had—I'm going to out myself here—as someone who's had several, I actually figured out recently that they're not panic attacks, they're anxiety attacks. I've been saying panic attacks all along, but apparently they're anxiety attacks.
As someone who's had several of those, it's not pleasant. Even within those experiences and by the by EP has helped immensely with all of that as well. I mean, I can't say that, although we don't like to use the term cure because we never say that with this work—whether it's embodied journaling or embodied writing—is a cure for anything, but it has helped to build my capacity to be with the experiences, but wow, it's awful.
Also on the flip side, I know that with the gut stuff, it doesn't work to ignore it. And actually I think my biggest mistake over the last, I want to say 10 years with the public speaking, has been avoiding it because avoiding it has made it so much worse.
And it reminds me of something you said Ryan in one of the trainings that I think it was in relation to anxiety. So often with anxiety, the coping mechanism is to just avoid whatever the thing is. But then once you start doing that across multiple things, your life just starts getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.
So I think it's time. In 2025, I'm going on record. I'm going to Toastmasters. I am very sure I will live through the experience.
Ryan
Well, you know, life will show us where we're stuck. It'll show us where we have these fears and we all have them in different areas. And a lot of people will have them in public speaking.
Like, you know, I don't mind it now, but I used to hate it. I never wanted to get up and talk. Like, what do they say? People fear that more than dying. But you're stepping into that fear, which is so important. And the important thing that you said is one thing that we teach is we want to change our relationship to the things that we experience that we think shouldn't be happening or the things we desperately want to go away.
And, you know, anxiety, the way I talk about, it's like a little tug on the shirt. And normally it's an older part of ourself that's scared of something or perceives that there's a threat in the environment or the future and it's trying to alert us to that fact and we kind of swipe the hand away and go, fuck off, leave me alone.
You know, I don't want to, I don't want to feel that. And then the tug of the shirt then becomes a tap on the shoulder, which becomes a shove, which becomes like a slap in the face, and all of a sudden we're riddled with these anxieties because we're not on the same team. We're adversarial with it; we think it shouldn't be there, we want it to go away, and we ignore it. And so many of the fears, and I've had this with heaps of different stuff, it's like, the fear might be a little poodle, but by avoiding it over time, it becomes this giant polar bear in the corner of the room, and it's much worse than we think it is.
So stepping into is so important. There's nothing wrong with feeling anxious as long as we can hold it and contain it. But if we think it should go away and it won't, then it’ll cause attacks because it's trying to get our attention. We need to acknowledge that we're scared of something. It's like, oh, wow, I'm scared of public speaking.
I'm scared of getting up in front of people. I feel like I'm going to be judged. I'm going to stuff things up and everyone will have a poor opinion of me. I'll be like, we need to acknowledge that, first. And that's just part of being a human being. We're scared of stuff. We're anxious. We're anxious apes that have evolved a little bit.
Sarah
And look, whenever I decide to look into things, ‘cause, I mean, we all know with the healing journey, there are always more layers, right? You could spend a lifetime just looking at layer after layer after layer. I always like to, and I use the writing for this, ask myself, why am I doing something?
And if it's about anyone else but me, I think, well, this really isn't about me. But with this, so public speaking, I'm actually not okay with it. And that's how I know it's something that I need to go and look into because it's something I'm not comfortable with.
Ryan
So it's like, why would we do something that we don't like to do? And so for me, it's like I—and I know that you do as well—is that I have a message that I feel very, very strongly about. That's not even my message, that's probably a key distinction. There's a message out there in the ether that's really, really important and I feel more people need to know about and that's part of my mission in this life.
So now it's the message that is being delivered is far more important than the human being, Ryan Hassan. And so, if someone looks at me and goes, Oh my God, he's talking way too fast. Oh look, he looks like he's really red and he's sweating. He must be really anxious or he's forgotten what he was saying.
That doesn't really matter because it's not about Ryan. Ryan's just a funny creature that delivers the message. So like you, it's like you're putting yourself through this because you know there's great importance in what you do and what you're putting out into the world and being able to speak in front of a group is going to be integral to you doing that.
Sarah
I think it's also about being relatable. So I really don't care if I get up there and just tell people I'm feeling really uncomfortable. I would willingly tell someone I'm about to have an anxiety attack, but you know what? What I have to say, what I believe in is more important than me looking a bit silly.
And I'm happy to be that person on stage, but I think I've just come to the realisation that writing is my safe place. So I can write all the blogs, all the articles, but there's a limit to how many people that will reach and also something happens when people see and hear you. It's a different kind of connection.
We spoke before Ryan about how important trust is with this work. And I read a book over these holidays that body language is something crazy—like 80% of communication—beyond just words. So people are getting all that when you are speaking. So they're not even necessarily hearing your words.
And I genuinely—because I don't do this—I don't look at someone speaking and judge every aspect of their character. I don't think, Oh, dodgy shoes. Oh, bad tone, bad pitch. Like people don't do that. But for some reason in our head, we think that people are sitting there and tearing shreds of us. I guess it's that inner critic that most of us have that doesn't feel worthwhile.
And also I know for me, because I've looked into this quite a bit, I see myself as a behind the scenes person. It's like, there's a lot there for me to explore around being seen. It's uncomfortable for me. So it'll be an interesting adventure.
Ryan
Please have that orientation and adventure. That's part of your identity. You're behind the scenes. I'm the behind the scenes person. I get it done back here, but not out there. Good. The body language one's interesting. Milton Erickson, he's possibly one of the grandfathers of hypnotherapy. And maybe possibly the best hypnotherapist that ever lived and he developed a condition when he was younger where he couldn’t move his body or communicate.
He was kind of paralysed and I can't remember how long it was, but it was a long time. And he was like in this bed and couldn't communicate, but his mum and his sisters, they would all come and visit and spend time with him and talk to him. But he was still aware. He knew what was going on.
And over time, of him not being able to communicate or really worry about himself, couldn't do anything, he would sit there and he would just start to notice everything. Like the sister would walk in and tell the mum something and he'd be like, she's lying about that, that's not true. And he started just noticing all of these cues, tonality and everything, to the point where he became a hypnotherapist after he got over his condition.
He would get people come in, sit and look at a blank wall. He'd stand behind them and just say, tell me what happened with your mum when you were 5. And they're like, how the fuck did you know that? And it's like the way that you walked into the room, it was obvious to me. So body language is so important.
Sarah
It is. And look, I think there's just so much about being human that we don't quite understand yet. Like I know that we know a lot and there's increasing research and even the traumatology side of things, and the nervous system work, is becoming more known, which I think is great and it's largely due to people like Gabor Mate, but I think there's just so much more that we will potentially never know.
Ryan
Yeah. We know this much in the breadth of everything. There was a famous cell biologist, one of the best cell biologists in the world, giving a lecture at one of the top universities and they had the uni halls and all those huge whiteboards or blackboards on the wall, those massive ones.
And he goes, imagine this - the blackboard is the human cell. And he went and did a dot in the middle. He goes, that's how much we know about it. And this was like one of the foremost experts on that particular topic in the whole world. We’re learning. I mean, we're a species learning stuff and I think we are moving in the right direction.
Although if you spend too much time online, you'll think that the world's a horrible place and that it's dangerous everywhere and everyone hates each other. But if you walk outside and connect with people in your local community, I think you'll find that it's very, very different to that. I want to talk a little bit more before we wrap up about the writing and the journaling.
People I think would have an association and go, well, if I'm journaling, I'm just doing a brain dump. I'm just—‘cause that's what they've probably been told—I'm just getting what I'm thinking in my head out onto a bit of paper. What else is journaling or writing? Like is it just that or what other things can people do?
Sarah
No. So the way that I teach it is as you are writing to feel into the felt sense of the body because I think there are always clues there. So like when you write something down, say you're talking about your job. It might all seem okay on the surface in terms of what you're writing, but if your body is telling you otherwise, that means there's something to investigate there.
So maybe you're getting butterflies in the stomach. Maybe you're getting an accelerated heartbeat. I think that there's so much wisdom in the body that we are cut off from. So the whole brain dump thing, I mean, it might work if you're having racing thoughts and you've woken up at 3am and you just need to get whatever's on your head, out of your head, down onto the piece of paper. I mean, in that sense, I think it's great.
In terms of what I think that we can get from writing, I think by feeling into the felt sense of the body as we write, there's a whole other world that we can be exploring.
Ryan
Yeah. Sometimes like I'm trying to think like in a session—someone might be explaining something to me and they're like on a bit of a rant—and there'll be just sort of one sentence that they'll say and it might be like, Oh, this happened and this. And yeah, he said that, that always reminded me of the way my dad talked to me anyway back at work.
And I'm like, stop. Just stop and repeat what you said about that's the way Dad used to talk to me. And then we get to drop into the body and experience how that lands. And I'm thinking even just writing out things like that on a bit of paper and looking at them and having the person drop into it can be a whole new experience.
Sarah
Yes. So often what will happen is I'll give people a prompt and I'll give them 5 minutes or so to write. And then I'll ask them whatever you feel comfortable sharing with me, just read it out. And then what I'm doing when they're reading is listening for the sentences that jar with me, and then I'll repeat it back to them and I'll say to them, how does that feel in your body?
And then depending upon what they say, I often simply just ask, does it feel okay to be with whatever? And then basically whatever happens from there, they're the next steps. But I think if we're only focusing on a massive brain dump, we're just missing out on a whole piece of wisdom.
And there's this—I think it's also because of how we speak about the body in terms of the Western medical model—where we have specialists for every different area of our body. So somewhere along the way, it feels like we've lost the fact that our whole body is our whole body. So brain, neck, everything from the neck down — it's all part of our one body. And I think we've lost a little bit of that in just how we generally go about life.
And that's really what I try to weave into the sessions. And sometimes people will be completely blocked in terms of the writing. And what we'll do is we'll go into the resourcing and eventually something will come up, even if it's only a word or a sentence — but even a word you can work with and can bring it back to the body. What does that feel like in your body? Does it feel okay to be with that sensation in the body? What's going on?
The most random things will pop up if you spend enough time with people and do a little bit of probing and just also keeping in mind you don't want to tip them into overwhelm. It can be a delicate dance sometimes, but I personally don't like writing ever just being a cerebral process.
It's not how I like doing this work, but I will say, it’s about whatever works for people at the end of the day. I mean, writing might not be their preferred modality. They might like something like Qigong or art therapy, or there are so many things out there. I think what I always say to people is: Keep experimenting and be curious and don't give up.
Because I mean, if I had’ve given up on my gut stuff, that would have been really depressing in my mid-30s. I'm so glad because what I found is that I've basically discovered this whole new world that isn't only helping me for my gut issues, but basically I'm using in every aspect of my life now and everything that pops up, like I said before, it's a lifestyle.
Ryan
Yeah, it really is. I had the gut issues as well. I got diagnosed with Crohn's disease and had operations and all that. And the exact same thing. It's like, you're going to have this your whole life and we'll just try and manage it. You'll be hospitalised on a semi regular basis and all that. And it's like, no. I don't want to.
But then once you look at alternatives and get these results, then like you said—it's like what Miyamoto Masashi said—I'm going to butcher this line. But it's like, once you see the way in one thing, you'll see it in all things, something like that. And so once I do get past this thing and the same as you did and go, Oh, this is something I can get past.
I can not have these gut issues and not have to be in this place where from my 30s I just have to manage it. What else in my life is like that? Or when the new challenge comes up, it's like, I can get past this, I've already done it with my gut stuff. Like this is just another challenge along the way that I'll understand and I'll be with and I'll work with until I can be free of it.
Sarah
Exactly. And I think that hope piece is really important because it's so easy to just feel like you're backed into a corner and you've got nowhere else to go. But I always feel like never say never in life and just keep on exploring and being open. And I get how frustrating it can be because I was really at the end of my tether as well with all the gut stuff by the time you've seen 100 different health professionals.
So I really get it, but I would say to people to be open. And even if EP and this work hadn't helped the gut stuff, it's added so much to my life. I can't even put into words how much it's added to my life because I'm far better connected with myself. I know who I am. Not who society has told me to be.
And also I think the one thing that I really want to point to, especially with the Centre for Healing and EP is the amazing community that you get as part of the training. So there are a whole group of people in that community. So, and this is for people who have felt a little bit like me, where I've always felt a little bit different and like a little bit of an outlier in life and it's been hard to find like-minded people, but trust me, there are people who think differently and that has been so inspiring.
There's always someone there who's happy to help. Who's happy to connect. It's just amazing what you've created — you and Melissa and Matt, Noel, Ryan.
Ryan
It was about you today, Sarah, not me, but thank you. And let's go. I know who I am, not who society says I should be. That's awesome.
And we love different. We embrace different. We're meant to be different. You know, I had the same thing. I went through school and I think deep down I knew I was different, but all I would spend my time doing is desperately trying to fit in and not stand out. And it's like, that happened for fuck, nearly 30 years.
And it's so freeing to know. I am different and that's okay. And so many people that I see coming into this work and the work that you're doing are a bit different, but they're trying to hold it all together and not be different. But it's like, difference, okay, it's good.
We shouldn't all be the same. So boring.
Sarah
Yeah. And it's that whole thing that mostly we wear a mask throughout our life, and it is so freeing when you find people who you can remove the mask with for even a few moments.