Bonus Episode: Let it RAIN – An interview with RN & Integrative Health Coach Lindsay Johnson

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Speaker 1

The TNA surprise Journey can be shocking, upsetting and isolating, but you're not alone and there is hope connection and Community are powerful tools as we process.

And he'll DNA surprise Network and DNA surprises podcast are proud to host.

The first ever DNA, surprise Retreat May for through the 7th 2023 and Tucson Arizona.

Join Us for four days of healing, including expert-led sessions delicious meals and fun time together that will help us integrate our DNA surprises and Lead, happier more fulfilling lives.

If you've been looking for space to learn grow and heal, this is your sign.

Registration is open.

Learn more at DNA surprise retreat.com

Speaker 2

Emotions take nearly seconds in our brains chemically but we can hold onto them for years.

Oh, I believe that.

Yeah, right we can hold onto them for years and and when we were able to actually feel them in our bodies in our nervous systems they release, right?

They don't stay, we don't put them in a box, walk it and throw away the key, right?

We feel it we synthesize, it's gone, right?

And then it's actually going to go and it takes a lot less

energy.

Welcome to a bonus episode of DNA surprises.

In this episode, I'm joined by Lindsay Johnson, a registered nurse board, certified nurse coach and Integrative Health coach who cares for the caregiver through stress burnout and Trauma healing.

She utilizes the various methodologies in her practice including mindful, listening transformative coaching somatic experience and Trauma, healing mindfulness heart.

Math, and gentle, accountability Lindsay helps.

Her clients reconnect themselves in their bodies.

Become more aware and mindful of their coping mechanisms access, their courage and inner wisdom and shed old habits in order to make way for more self compassion and love.

Lindsay will be facilitating, a session called Let It Rain recognize allow investigate and nurture at the DNA surprise retreat in this episode.

We talk about what rain is.

Self-compassion is so important and how we can come home to ourselves.

I really enjoyed this conversation and Lindsay's wisdom.

Self-compassion can often be one of the more difficult components of the DNA surprise Journey.

So, I hope that you find this as valuable as I did today, I am joined for a very special bonus episode with Lindsay.

And she is an integrative health coach, who will be facilitating a session on self-compassion.

At the DNA, surprise Retreat, welcome Lindsay.

Hi Alexis.

Thanks for having me.

So, to just get started, can you tell listeners a little bit about your background and how you got into the work that you

do?

Yeah.

So I am a board certified nurse coach and a somatic experiencing practitioner and I started my career out as an ICU nurse 14 years ago.

I guess that's probably around what I'm at and I got burned out.

Within around six years of being at the bedside.

And so after a few other few more years, I figured out where I needed to be.

And I was like, I fell into this coaching role and helping people on their road to more health and wellness.

And then I found that there was a lot, really.

A lot of things that were really getting in the way of people finding health and wellness.

And that had to do, Ooh, with stress and burnout and Trauma.

And so these days I help people with stress burnout and Trauma deal with their nervous systems and heal their nervous systems so that they can achieve the health and wellness and well-being that they truly desire and deserve.

That's a great description of what led you to this place and definitely resonates.

I think, for people who have experienced DNA surprise is because for so many of us, it is a trauma.

One of the things on your website that really drew me to you is that you you have a note about how we can come home to ourselves.

And that really resonated with me in my DNA, surprise Journey, the fact that my identity has changed so much and so many of the people that I've spoken to have experienced the same thing.

So can you describe what you mean?

When you say come home to

ourselves?

Yeah, I love that.

That spoke to it.

Clearly is a meaningful part of my own life and I think that's meaningful for a lot of people.

I think that coming home from to ourselves is really around finding, who we are at the core of us, as human beings, to, of my mentors, and the somatic experiencing world, I described this as maybe our Essence, right?

Our essence of who we are.

Another Mentor, has this big Mint in her office and it like a, you know, faux diamond with all the facets all around and she will hold it up and say, hey look, these are all the facets of who you are on this side and you can't even see the ones that are on the other side of you of this.

And so we are so complex as people.

We are a special collection of temperaments and genetics and life experiences, and we are not just one thing we are Are a collection of things and life can often pull us away from this, right, our experiences, and he's sort of nervous system trauma or simply conditioning and it takes us away from that authenticity.

Essentially, when I really do in my practice is help people get more in touch with who their full Human Experience.

Sometimes we can be so limited with what we allow ourselves to feel And to experience, or we think that calm and peaceful is the only thing that were allowed to ever feel, but that's just not true, right?

We have, we have so many things that we can be so many things that we can experience and it's all rooted in a sense of safety.

And so when we are able to feel safe with ourselves that's when we're able to come home.

Oh I love that diamond analogy because it's so true.

I always say you know my DNA Rise.

Is something that happened to me?

It's one piece of me, but it's not all alone.

I'm all these other things.

I'm a mom.

I'm a friend, I'm a wife and I think when we first have our DNA surprises there, so all-encompassing, and so that idea of returning to all of the other things that we are is really

special.

Yeah, I could rock your identity.

Yes, for sure.

When we talk about coming home to ourselves and processing, these traumas, where does Of compassion come into play.

It's pretty integral.

I say that only because I think that you need safety as sort of a precursor to the self-compassion.

But that being said, it's really a necessary component of allowing us to be who we are things like toxic shame.

Right?

The the shame that's not actually supposed to be there around emotions or not feeling good enough.

It can take us away.

Away from that Essence, that I was talking about before, when our nervous system neuro substantial, right?

When we, our nervous system just sense is that there?

Danger not consciously.

Shane can end up being a protective response, right?

We go into that sense of, I'm not enough, all of that can really get into in the way, but it's also protective.

So, I don't remember where I heard this from, but, oh, it was in back.

Kennedy's good inside.

She said something to the effect of my surroundings can't be awful so I must be awful right as children.

We can't we mm it's intensely horrific to imagine that my surroundings are awful.

So I must be the bad one and so we sort of take that on as we grow older and self compassion becomes just a little bit more hard to come by and so self-compassion ends up being a practice.

I think it's not something that comes naturally to.

I think most of us in our, in our society, right?

And so, it becomes a practice

that's so that is so interesting because I think so many of the people in the DNA surprise Community grow up, feeling out of place in their homes, and their families feeling like something's off and sometimes being the black sheep of the family, and all of those things are so tied to shame.

As well as just the secrecy, my good and all of that around, you know, learning the truth and and their shame for our parents.

There's a lot of shame.

I think just involved in the DNA, surprise

World generally.

Yeah, and so self-compassion is just one of those things that is necessary for us to be able to have our full Human Experience.

That I was talking about and that is such a important part of that experience I think for people.

So you touched on some Attic experiencing.

And I've heard about this a few times over the last couple of years, but I don't know what ton about it and I know that that's not necessarily what we're going to be covering in the retreat, but can you share more about

that?

Yes, so somatic experiencing is a method of nervous system, healing mostly for trauma.

I liken it to strengthening your nervous system like, you would working out right if you're doing some Training.

You're building muscle and I liken it to building your nervous system muscles.

We all have a window of Tolerance essentially of what?

How much stress that we can manage and handle, right?

Sometimes, we are given too much stress and we cannot handle it and we get end up.

Getting stuck in activation or freeze.

And when we get stuck, we're not really able to be present with ourselves.

And the people around us, and we don't really have a full experience of our lives, right?

We can't access joy and safety.

And so somatic experiencing allows us to get kind of, in touch with our bodies and our experiences as a whole, but it's really around our bodies.

Thus the word somatic in that phrase and read it allows us to, to deactivate They and teaches our system to deactivate more.

And this is, this comes from the teachings of Peter Levine.

If you've ever heard of waking the tiger, mmm, this is this is all his

work really interesting.

Now, your session at The Retreat, like we said, it's focused on self compassion but when we talked about what specifically you wanted to cover the you are instantly just flowing with ideas or super excited about the topic.

And one of the things that you brought up was rain and And I'd never heard of it before.

But once you explained it to me, I thought, oh my gosh, yes, this is absolutely part of the retreat.

This is how we need to process.

So, can you talk a little bit about what rain is, and how it relates to self

compassion?

Yes.

So rain is an acronym that I learned years ago.

I was introduced to this from chora.

Brock is one of those big names out there.

That talks about rain and she's a Buddhist Meditation.

In psychologist and she talks a lot about mindfulness and I really do a lot of mindfulness around like a bodied mindfulness.

And my work, can you explain what?

That is.

Great question.

So embodied mindfulness, really understanding what's happening in your experience.

Emotionally may be visually in your in your head, visually thoughts.

But also what's happening in our bodies.

So what's actually happening in our bodies when we're having an activated nervous, System response, right?

That sort of thing.

So I don't really teach meditation but it's a different sort of mindfulness of being present with your self.

So tarah Brock talks about mindfulness being the like two wings of a bird.

The first wing of the bird is awareness and the second Wing is compassion, so self-compassion.

And so rain is an acronym that essentially will take you through that method of mindful, self-compassion.

Passion.

And so the first letter is r and that stands for recognized and so we have a chance to recognize what's happening for us.

We get this wild news about.

Oh my goodness, I have something that I was not expecting to happen.

What is happening for me, in my experience, in my body, in my emotions naming those and then a is allow right?

How often is Is that sort of the most difficult thing for us to do as human beings allowing that to be there?

Something that's terrifically difficult and just allowing that to be present and then investigation and I don't mean investigation like overthinking, everything.

Like this is the one this is reason.

This is why I think this way and it's because my mom did this when I was a kid.

And I don't even mean that, I mean, really noticing what it's like to And that experience, if I'm feeling intense grief, what does the grief feel like right now in my body?

Can I really just figure out what that's like and what do I need in this moment?

What do I need to hear?

What do I need from maybe a partner?

What do I need to do for myself?

What sort of self-care practice do I need?

And then nurture, how can I give that to myself?

How can I nurture myself in this moment?

And really give myself.

What what that piece of me needs right now.

And so I love this practice because it's so very linked to the somatic, experiencing work that I do.

And just really takes into account how we respond to the world to our experiences, how we think, feel behave.

And I'm just really excited to share this with, with your crowd.

Yeah, yeah.

So I know we'll go into this more at the retreat but for Who are listening or for people who can't make it.

What does this look like for a DNA surprise?

So, the first letters are

recognized.

Recognize,

what, how I've gotten I got this news.

I've opened up my ancestry results.

My dad isn't my dad.

Recognize what is happening for you?

What emotions are you feeling?

Are you, are you?

I'm sure there's multiple, right?

And maybe allowing for that.

At strange ambiguity that's happening.

Possibly recognizing what's happening in your body with that as well, right?

That's probably a very activating thing to figure to find out, right?

And then a allow allow for that to happen.

Allow for the grief to really take some time because I think that oftentimes in our society were like, no, you need to get over it already, right?

We don't take our time to really Really be in it.

And so that's when the investigation comes in.

And and so and I'm hoping that I can also help people in this Retreat, really find out what sort of ways that they can nurture themselves as well around these feelings.

And so, what I would do is I'll probably be taking everybody through some exercises, these exercises, and we can really dive into Into what you're noticing and finding out how to really feel into your experience.

Yeah, I think it's so true.

I mean, yeah, we get a lot of that.

Get over it.

It's been a while now or kind of some of the dismissive things like your dad, still your dad, nothing's changed, all of those kinds of things.

I also think that there's a lot of which maybe ties into the shame that you were saying but that self-judgment about how we feel.

All that guilts, you know, personally is seeking guilt about exploring new relationships, when you had, you know, I had strong relationship with my raised parents.

How can people move through some of the self judgement and switch to self compassion when they're looking at their feelings?

See that's that's the thing that's the thing.

It's the first thing is name.

Aiming it naming, that that's what's happening for us.

That we feel shame around these feelings that we shouldn't be feeling this way.

So the thing about shame, if it's not actually a useful emotion, it's I mean, sometimes it is, if you're actually causing harm to another human being, that's a really good emotion to have, right?

Sure.

But if, if we're having a feelings that really, we don't have a whole lot of control over, right.

Emotions are not exactly something that we can control.

And That's not a useful tool.

And so if we're able to disconnect ourselves and depersonalized, the shame, that is where it makes the difference.

And so, the rain practice that I do, we're not going to go deep into our shame response, right?

Right, you're finding what's underneath it, we are saying, okay, I'm feeling that inadequacy here, I'm feeling that Shane here, that doesn't have to be here and I can put this over here for a little while.

What am I here?

Feeling underneath this?

This for a little while and maybe through that, we're actually going to be able to find some self-compassion because the shame is not going to contribute to any of that.

If we can figure out that, oh my gosh.

I'm feeling so much grief right now that the person that I love and adore my whole life, suddenly isn't actually biologically related to me.

Then I can actually feel the grief, right?

And I don't have to feel any shame, that's on top of that.

It's, that's, that's useless.

You can that can go away.

But the grief that's that's that has a

point.

Is it possible to move through the acceptance and integrating something like a DNA surprise trauma without

self-compassion?

No.

But I think it takes more than that to.

Yeah, I think it takes I think it takes being with other human beings to in that shames antidote is compassion, right?

From other human beings to so the Of compassion is part of it, but we need other people and I think that's what you're doing.

Yeah, that's the goal, right?

Is yeah.

That that connection and spending time with people who really get it, I can count myself, very lucky that I have a lot of amazing people in my life who have been there to support me through all of this and no one gets it.

Like people who have been through this experience, the people that I interview on the podcast, the people that I meet online.

And so

honest and F talks about her She's a researcher in self-compassion and she talks about three ways to kind of get out of that cycle of not self compassion.

Together three ways of getting into self compassion and that is mindfulness.

The unique Human Experience and the third one is self-kindness right?

Speaking to yourself as your some, as if you're someone that you love.

And I think that unique Human Experience piece is super important, right?

Self-kindness fine.

Like that's that can be hard for a lot of people.

Isil knows that could be hard for a lot of people but that unique Human Experience is a biggie.

I think

Hmm.

So the retreat we're at least gonna cover to, we're going to have that patent mindfulness self-compassion piece there and then that that unique human experience with other people who get it.

And Polly will be able to help with that kindness part 2.

That is definitely something that I have struggled with myself and and kind of posing a question to myself.

Just like would you talk that way to your friend?

What I talk that way to my daughter.

You know, those kinds of things helps me reframe a bit but definitely still a practice.

And speaking of practice, you said that rain is a practice.

How often do people find themselves digging that?

That out of their tool box.

I mean, is it something that the people could do daily multiple times a day?

A really good question.

I think it can be used any time and like anything else.

It's good.

It's a good idea to practice when you're not feeling really activated or emotional, right?

So even starting out very small and just doing a, maybe if journaling is something that you enjoy doing, you can do that at the end of a long day and just writing out what you're noticing.

You can also use this as a meditation practice, if that's something that you're into or just checking in with yourself, like this is 0, this is how I'm feeling today and then when you sort of because that becomes a easier, it becomes a habit, like I can do this within about a few minutes.

Instead of 15, you can start doing this when things really come up for you, in the middle of the day.

It's just a really nice tool to have in your toolbox.

I'm excited to learn more about out it and use it.

Can you talk more about what your session will look like with the attendees in May?

I will be taking everybody through the steps of rain.

What rain is all about?

This will be a workshop of sorts where you get to really explore each of the steps recognize allow investigate and nurture.

And so, we'll take some time with each of these steps so that you can process.

One of your experiences that you're having at that moment.

And so hopefully by the end of my session, you will come away, having a deeper awareness of not only the practice of rain so that you can use it.

Use it in your own life but really have an idea of your experience in that present moment that you're having and also come away, having felt like you've achieved some of that nurturing piece, right?

I think that's the most important.

Part for me, is, is really digging into that n of the rain and nurturing, that, that person, that you are that multi-faceted person and really having having a moment of that full experience.

The full life experience that I was talking about before.

Well, I can't wait to go over this to learn some new tools and to share them with other people at the retreat.

Do you offer services to people who are outside of the Tucson area?

If anyone listening is

I said,

yes, I do.

I I am a registered nurse so my licensure is covered in What's called the compact license agreement.

And so I do offer my services to around 30 35 states in the in the u.s.

So I do Zoom calls that way as and if if you're in Tucson I I see people in person

great and will be sure to link all of your information.

Nation of people are interested in finding your website or anything like that in the show notes.

Well, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me today.

Can't wait to see you in May, and learn all about rain.

Thanks so much Alexis.

I really had fun talking to you today.

Thanks again, to Lindsay for joining me.

If learning more about how to nurture yourself through a DNA, surprise resonates with you.

Please join us at the DNA surprise retreat.

They for through the 7th in Tucson, Arizona.

Until next time.