Kristen

Welcome to the Close the Chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice pathways to healing counseling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories, we will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore. And open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode, so be sure to subscribe. Welcome to this week's close to Chapter podcast. This episode is a must listen to, in terms of a new way to think about emotions, and the true meaning of embodying emotions to get towards healing. I had such a deep dive in could have gone on and on. And we only had so much time. I was fascinated by his answers. I just thought he shared things in a real way. He gave a lot of examples in how to embody our emotions. So I really appreciated that. And please listen to a whole episode. This may be an episode you're going to listen to several times to really gather what he said, I'm going to try to put this also on YouTube. So you could visually see him holding his hand over his heart center on his head, on his stomach, wherever he is feeling that emotion in the body. He does a lot of hands on placement. Although you don't have to do that it's a way to access and expand the emotion. So let me introduce you to today's guest, Dr. Raja Selvam PhD who has taught in over 25 countries on all continents as a licensed clinical psychologist from California, a senior trainer and Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing professional trauma training programs and the developer of integral somatic psychology, a science backed body based and emotion focused, complementary approach designed to reduce treatment times and improve diverse outcomes in all therapy modalities, including body psycho therapies. He is the author of the best selling book, the practice of embodying emotions, a guide for improving cognitive, emotional and behavioral outcomes. I am actually hopefully going to get him or his team are one of his trainers to train our team at pathways to healing counseling, I was so impressed with his approach. And it would be a nice intrical supplement and additive to EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization reprocessing and brain spotting, and other therapy modalities. And this is something you could do also at home. And I really just think it's an effective way to approach emotions. So also grab the healing guide if you want it or add to the mailing list at Kristen k, r i s t e n d Boice, B O i c e.com. Grab that get on the list. You'll be emailed the link to the podcast and I tried to do a blog post once a week. So you want to grab that and if I'm doing any speaking engagements, or presenting anywhere that will also be included in the weekly communication. So I would love to see you on the list. And without further ado, here's my impactful conversations about embodying emotions. Enjoy. Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast I am so excited for today's conversation. I feel like we don't talk enough about emotions, and the embodiment of emotions. So I am so excited to have my guest here with us who has a wealth and depth of wisdom. Raj Shah, thank you for joining the close the chapter podcast.

Dr. Raja

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to converse with you and your listeners.

Kristen

I'm so grateful you're here. Can you tell the listeners how you got into this work and feeling passionate about embodying emotions.

Dr. Raja

I have been interested in developing more access to my emotions, and creating more capacity for that not just unpleasant emotions, but also pleasant emotions. Emotions are not good or bad. They're either pleasant or unpleasant to my childhood, because of many traumas of the overwhelming emotion that experiences that I didn't have the capacity as a child to handle without much support or understanding on the part of the caregivers. Eyes shut down. That's what we do. When we cannot bear an emotion. There are different things that we do if we use psychological defenses, such as denial, that this is not important. But what most people do not know is that we also found strong physiological defenses like constriction It's construction and the body, so as not to field not to access them feel them. So I became interested in accessing emotions, and getting support acts of margin, we need the support of others to access emotions, and how to open the body up in order to feel the emotions in our bodies. And to the extent possible, it turns out that emotion is the impact that a situation has on us, either things affect us positively or negatively. And we can have in response to favorable situation happen, number of pleasant emotions, happiness, sadness, and happiness and a pleasure thrill. Feeling good. They're all emotions. And when things aren't favorable, we have a number of unpleasant emotions be feel bad, be a pain, and be afraid, sad. So what we know about emotions now, we do not know about 25 or 30 years ago, because I was interested in emotions. And because I wanted to experience the emotions in my body because it was not experiencing them. Somehow live life was not so either juicy, so wherever and to drown in a finding ways to access the emotions to access them in the body. And I learned that an emotion as an impact of the situation on us can be felt throughout the body, throughout the brain Yugra theories that say that emotion has to do with this part of the brain or this organ, etc. But it turns out, according to the more recent scientific findings that are detailed in my book, The practice of a body emotions in guide for improving cognitive, behavioral and emotional outcomes that can be in motion is a full body brain phenomenon. If you allow it, not that we have to feel that way all the time. But in a difficult situation, if we shut down, then we get stuck in that place. And that place, we cannot overcome it. I'll give you an example. I worked with a man at Zoetic yesterday, and he was suffering from a breakup, a woman had rejected. And she said that she didn't want to be with him. And he was really hurt by it. He was in a place where he was just blaming himself for what happened. If only he had not done this, If only he had not done that. And he was feeling shame on account of that. So we stuck to the work. But it turned out by the end of the session, he came into the hurt, the heartache, the sadness, that he needed to feel, so that he could move on, when he was defending against the psychological defenses. Like, if I'd only done this not done this, I would still be with it. And the only emotion you can feel responsible that denial is shame, guilt and shame. So we're stuck. But then what we did was to we expanded the shape first in the body, and then that shifted to anger, but both shame and anger he was familiar with. But once we expanded that he then came into skirt, sadness and grief, then this whole being opened up, his energy opened up, etc, etc. When in the emotion that potentially be throughout the body, we tried to shut the body down through constriction, holding the breath, and so on. It just stuck cannot process it to completion. So I started to have this idea, once I learned that from a science that an emotion could be throughout the body, potentially. And I started notice that people are not having emotions, although the body they shouldn't, why should they have. But I noticed that this is very interesting. The clients are disappointing emotions in one place earlier, they I am only reporting emotion, one place out there, there, even though I'm trying to really access more of it. So then, because I'm also trained and body oriented therapies, and knew how to in a simple way to place a hand they place a hand there, with awareness, expansion, attention, open up the body, the physiological defenses, while it supported the person to have emotions, to have the emotion present more and more places. And you know what happened? People had a lot more time to process the emotions. So when you expand the emotion, one thing happens, what happens is that it becomes more tolerable. Why is that? It is equivalent to the difficulty we have. When you lift in lifting a 50 kilogram bag. It's very heavy, right? But we choose to lift it with both arms, the strain is less on both arms. So if I'm grief in the chest, it's unbearable. If expanded to more of the chestnuts, Nobel for expanding my belly or the answer, it's even more bearable. If you can tolerate it then what the brain has plenty of time to process it from meaning and for what it can do with the situation in which the emotions arise. emotion becomes more regulated. So cognition and behavior get more regulated, get more analyzed. So I noticed these things, working apart. The practice of biting emotions is simply the expansion of the emotional experience. took more places in the body, how many more places in the body? It depends on the person. How much emotion depends on the person called Ron do you do that depends on the person. All these things I write about in the book, then I had good outcomes, when I help people to embody their difficult emotions, that they were rewarding, because they didn't have the support, nor the understanding what is starting to notice, their emotions stopped bothering them, things like fear of dying, for example. But they also had insight, they also their behavior changed, one woman said, or in some thinking about what is wrong with me, or what is dangerous. And it my brain is not thinking that we belong, on the basis of it, she would go and do this or that she's not doing any of those things. She's doing things that are more important. It's not do being driven by a fear of dying, that goes back who God knows where then a start up, write the book, and the slug can do research to figure out in what other ways, am I getting the outcomes and getting. So turned out that unbeknownst to me, a lot of research had been done at the time, I was developing the technique. And there's a research paradigm called embodied emotions, what it says is that if you block the emotion from being in any part of the body, brain shuts down analysis of the situation and the emotions, the details of the situation, behaviors and the situation cognitions in the situation, and so on. So then I realized I developed a science based method that can actually predict the outcomes. So this is how it came apart. And so I've been teaching this training for many, many countries, about 25 countries, and the book itself is going to be out in 11 languages. But you know, one thing that I'm most excited about that I presented for an hour and a half, to an association of 12 Step programs, Alcoholics Anonymous, codependents, anonymous, and so on. And I used to go to them so long time ago. So I just thought, I'm going to give back to the community that I grew up through very early, even before I became a clinical psychologist in California. And now, that group has arranged an online study group, but 300 people are reading my book, chapter by chapter. These are not therapists, these are people in recovery, right? And they will overcome their addictions. In the next step. They want emotional sobriety, which means access to emotions, but also regulated demotius that our dance does not go back to addictions, right? So I'm giving them chapter by chapter guidelines in terms of questions, and they send me questions, I write answers. That's the most exciting thing, because I wrote the book in a way that people are interested in self and use it directly, they can also go to my website and look at videos of the work. And if going to get the book, I would recommend you read the section one introduction, And section three, the method and then come back to section two theory, it's immediately useful to you, you can read the theory while you applied the method to yourself, because you have emotions all the time, like this are developed a little bit of theory, then I found the method and this Russell, which is more theory that came to support it.

Kristen

So let's talk about the method because we have a lot of people who get overwhelmed quickly. And they'll think, Oh, I can't do this. I don't even know what I feel. They'll start with that. I don't even know what I feel. So let's walk through how someone would start embodying their emotions.

Dr. Raja

Okay, so let's say it has come to you feeling not good. It's just they don't know what they feeling right? And I will tell them, yeah, but the fact that if feeling bad, isn't itself an emotion. This is something that we don't get taught in psychology, trainings, courses, at universities, or even at in Institute's even body oriented psychotherapy systems. We don't learn it. It's feeling bad and feeling good are the most basic emotions because what does it tell us? The situation is not favorable. Therefore, we should feel bad, but situation is great. I feel good. So people don't come to us because they feeling good. They shouldn't. There are a lot of people who are feeling bad out there who need help. So you start with that. You start with that. So it's situation, you don't even know what the situation. Situation is a first step. Most people come to us because of a specific situation. I don't feel good in the relationship. Yesterday, I was working with a woman who said, my husband tells me he wants to be closer. But I know that if we're not close, but something is blocking me, that's a situation. I would like to work with the trip. Sometimes people say I don't know what I'm feeling, but I just feel bad. Can you help me? So you're already emotional is the second step. So the data situation somebody can have an emotion very often that is the case. And then what do we do? We embody that is expand, feeling bad in the body, and how can you go about it? How can you go about it? This third step expansion it first step is situation and motion and location of the body and expansion. So I would say feeling bad? Where do you feel bad look, and or just describe how it feels bad. And then if it stopped, then it'll start to show up in the body somewhere. Usually people don't come to us unless they feel bad. And the body by the way, they seldom come to the just apps feeling bad in the brain, they might feel bad in the brain. So let's start with the brain. So he says, Okay, be with that feeling and see whether he can expand it to more of your head intention, awareness. Sometimes that helps. Or you'd say, okay, hold your head, do you see fan to help the bad feeling spread more not to take the beat? Usually, when a deck, we put the hand to take the bad feeling right here. You said, your hand there? Yeah. And it'll expand. If it doesn't expand, you can do another taking the Lord's number techniques, we say, express that feeling. So like, what not It feels bad, right? We do the, you know what that will do? That will expand it not only the head, but also the pod. And so that one place, you expand a little bit, and then expanded another place, look for it in another place and expand it in another place. And how do you do that? When you expand from one place supported, it automatically expands? But if it does not, what do you do? So maybe put a hand where it feels bad, and put her hand in the chest, for example, in an adjacent area, and go and see where they can locate the chest, and then focus on the chest and expand it there a little. So we're doing step three, expansion, but don't do it. If you're quite great deal of difficulty tolerating it, don't push it to other places? And what do you do? You look in the body to see how the embodiment has improved their body? And they will say, What do you mean improved my body? Do I have to get a blood test or something? No, you say, improvement on the body, your breath, check to see where the breathing is a little better, let's get a little better. We're not talking about huge changes. Or notice whether in the places you are feeling emotions, or somewhere else, the muscles are less tense, they just became more relaxed, not to a large degree just a little bit. Or notice whether the energy in the body is expanded in a good way. This is the three things because people don't know how to approach the body. So you give them very specific guidelines, things to notice things that everybody can notice. So breathing is better, muscular tension is less or energy's expanded. So in order isn't in one place, they might say I feel it in the chest, sir, you just noticed that put your hand there and see whether you can expand it there a little bit. And then for not for too long, because this person doesn't have too much capacity in either direction. See, where else in the body? Do you notice those three improvements, improvement breath, expansion of energy, in reduction, muscular tension, I actually have an article on this process. It's called the seven step protocol for people with low AFIC tolerance. On website in, I'll give you my website, people can go to my blog section and actually print this up as nice colorful diagram too. And are they interested, they can also go to my book section and find that demonstration of my working with grief with a woman with the seven step protocol. I'll give you that information later. So another place, they'd say, Well, my back is less little less debt. So notice that and see whether you can support that to expand a bit. And then what you do the next step, remember, situation, or emotion without situation. That's step one. Step two, locate the bad feeling in one place, expanding it a bit, locating the bad feeling in one place, expanding it. Then the fourth step, we tell them to look for these things that educate them about looking for what is called integration in terms of breathing improvement, muscle tension improvement, or energy improvement. So you do that in two places. That steps five and six, the seventh step what they do, you sense the whole body, you sense the whole body. And notice how the whole body is breathing better, whole bodies might be more relaxed, all bodies increasing in energy, and the energy is getting more Berets. This is these are things most people can notice. And stay there a little bit. You know, what happens in that state lacks capacity to tolerate the most and shut the body down. By creating some capacity for the pay back feeling. Body is more open. It's not just more open to the brain so that the brain can process and help the body but the body is also more open to the environment. And why and Madeira be at the subatomic level be a continuous with the rest of the universe. This is quantum physics fact. So that thing opens up so energies can come into the body to help us. Some people might say we increasing the connection of the individual with the universe or spirit or God. It's all mechanically physical, but sometimes people viewed that way. And there are a lot of changes can take place. I'll give you an example of this. Yesterday, the two sisters in training and Zuri and asked they sitting in the front row. And I was doing a lot of difficult work, World War Two trauma, fear of dying and so on. And one sister got very agitated next day she couldn't sleep. And I said, You're too close to the perhaps you're too close to the client, you're resonating because we can exchange, electromagnetic and quantum mechanical energy use with each other and to personal residence. I said, Why did one sit on the back? And that she was sitting in the back and she was crying? And I said, Why? Because I'm not good. My sister was sitting in the front. And I realized she was regressed. So I realized she had a very low level of AFIC tolerance, right and abandoned, which was an issue. And so I said, Would you like to do a demonstration as a cut, and I wouldn't let her cry because for her crying helplessly is the discharge, that doesn't help her, it totally makes her feel disempowered at the end of it, right. The reason why she's crying is because she cannot tolerate how bad whatever it is that she's feeling. She's feeling in the body. So beyond the one for how bad it feels, or how bad it felt, to not be with us next to her sister, bad feeling, we did the seven steps, one place for a very short time, not the place very short time, how to vocalize. And then I had orient toward a primitive the body does a breath, muscular tension energy with two places, and we did the integration. So then she said, What do you notice, she said, I feel pleasure in my belly. Now, I was not sure whether that was an dissociated response. Sometimes dissociated response can be a surge of endorphins, then it turned out it was not that because she has expanded that feeling that pleasure that not for too long. So don't go open your eyes, not for too long. And then we are to the chest. And then we actually went to the overall body, and we entered it, then she was feeling so good, so stable, so adult. And then next day, I wanted to see whether she was still in the same place, she was still in the same place. She said that she got a gift. So then I knew that she had not dissociate. It was true. How did that happen? The reason why it happened is because your capacity to suffer is so small, that as soon as she suffers, the suffering comes of she just reacts to it gives her price becomes helpless becomes clingy. And all that we did was to just correct that a little bit. And because her capacity was so low, even building a little bit of capacity was enough for her find the sense of self. That's what she said, pleasure here, pleasure there. And feeling whole. This was interesting. I don't feel whole often. I feel fragmented. I feel no solid sense of serve. That's because she had very low level of emotional capacity to withstand suffering in the body. So that's another example. So does it

Kristen

give you Yes, I want to break down a few things here. Because I love these examples. I think that really helps the audience start to conceptualize it for themselves. There's a couple things. One is the crane, you said was kind of a cleanser, and a regressed date that led to clean. And usually we think crying is a way to release what's held in the body. So talk a little bit about that piece.

Dr. Raja

I think it's emotional expression. It can be therapeutic art can be repetitive and non therapeutic. I'll give an example. Another example, a woman, she had asthma. And I asked her when she developed it the year before. I said what is going on around that time to find the situation? She said I broke up with my boyfriend, the love of my life. I broke up with them. Why did you break up with them? He was beginning to disappoint me. Okay. When did he get asthma after a before after? Do you think there's a connection? I don't think so. She's a psychotherapist. She's telling me because the fire broke up with them. I only process the grief. Okay. I said, Okay, let's think about this relationship and see whether we can get some emotion in relation to that. It turned out that she had very little access to emotion and a little bit of sadness, the little bit of sadness here. We could barely expanded a little bit here and barely expanded a little bit here very short periods of time. At the end of the session, we looked at each other and said, Did anything happen? We don't know. So she went home and I was thinking probably wouldn't lead change. She came back six months later to tell me that after that session, she no longer had asthma attacks. I said, Tell me what happened after the session. She said she went home and suddenly she felt more sad. And she started to cry. She cried for one or two hours after that there was no asthma. So in this case, crying helps someone who didn't express whereas the other person, they just using crying as a bit and not feel the bad feeling of an unpleasant emotion at the body. So we have to discriminate.

Kristen

So help someone understand how they would discriminate. I can see what you're saying from I I wouldn't have a clinical perspective, how would christeli be able to discern between therapeutic crying and just kind of a reflex of almost a defense is what you're saying. It's like vomity. Yeah, it's like an automatic reflex to chronic

Dr. Raja

condition, because the conditioning, so they know themselves, they should ask themselves, do I cry, every time I get upset, and I cry, they probably doing that, because they didn't have enough support, to name and sense and express and tolerate emotions a surgeon, that's why they're not doing it to make other people suffer, because they cannot withstand the suffering in the body. So they have to ask themselves that. If they are, then what you do is that hold back the tears a little bit, and look in the body to see where it feels so bad that they have to cry, the even noticing that will reduce the cry, and then do the steps that I just outlined and expand that area. Sometimes it's just a matter of expanding the awareness. When something feels bad, we tend to go ooh, try to corral that animal back into hold soulless people. But when you relax and say, let's expand the awareness, and expand awareness, energy expands, and then emotional will also expand. But sometimes with the physiological differences, a straw, then you put one hand, where it is the heart of the hand in the lung of the other part of the chest. And with the intention to expand the emotion, of fear or grief from one area to the other area of the chest locally, in the same V can also go from one area to another area, right from the chest to the abdomen.

Kristen

And you're putting your hands there purposely, yet the hands on your hands on your chest are pretty hands on your abdomen.

Dr. Raja

The intention, the intention is not to sue that away, but help the body to expand to accommodate the emotion there that the intention is important.

Kristen

Yeah, so expansion with your hand over it, wherever you're feeling in your body to expand it, you place your hand in that. So if it's your head, your brain, you put your hand on your brain, if it's your chest, you put your hand on your throat.

Dr. Raja

Yeah, if you need if you need it, because sometimes just expansion of awareness is enough with the intention to expand the emotional experience. This is another tool, there are many tools like bad inner self touches one tool we use, because most therapists don't touch their clients. So we teach therapists to teach their clients to use their own hands, which is not as good as that it presents but we don't touch people. So that's the problem. Yes,

Kristen

I've had many clients want me to hold them? No, no, it's part of the regressed kind of back in infancy, what they didn't get. One of the things I think is interesting is working with the defenses. How do you help people notice their defenses and become more aware of them, because many people don't even know that's a defense.

Dr. Raja

I've made that simple. And emotion, difficult emotion and intense emotion. Wherever you feel it in the body, the body is not defending against it. Wherever you don't feel it. It's defended against.

Kristen

Okay, so let me just say it, okay, that's a really good way to put it. So if I feel it in my body, I'm not defended against it, if I don't feel it in my body, I am defended against

Dr. Raja

parts of the body, that you're not feeling it, you defend it against, because you're trying to access the emotion, right? And it's still showing up and only in a few places. It's a habit, the other places shut down to it. And you want to open more and more places in the body. Why is that? Because the researcher told you about embodied emotions, that the fewer places that are blocking emotions, the more the brain is capable of processing the emotion and the situation, or the more places with the emotion and saying the same thing in another way, the better the brain's ability to process the emotion. And I also said to you, this isn't not something they talk about, they will say, Well, if the emotion is processing, it better meets, it becomes more regulated, what they don't know is a physiological point of view, that you spread the emotion, it becomes more bearable because you're you're lifting your weight with more muscles than just with one muscle.

Kristen

Yeah, that was your point in the body. You're expanding in the body because there's one thing about cognitive they think to your point with the therapist that said I had processed the grief are you using your thoughts to process the grief? This is what I want to distinguish for our listeners because a lot of people think why process that but it's an intellectual processing rather than a body processing. So walk us through the difference.

Dr. Raja

You can think of cognition, that includes thinking and talking about the situation cognition, among other things, behavior we know verbal nonverbal prohibit What do you do what you don't do what you say what you don't say, then emotion that we have defined as anything. When I talk about emotion, I'm including everything people understand by feelings, emotions, affect, mood, temperament, and so on. So tap drawing then it should have

Kristen

emotions, not like neuroscience. These are the seven core emotions.

Dr. Raja

And that's there are seven emotions, no doubt, the only seven of the infinite variety of emotions we have. But that is one of the

Kristen

components, not just this, here's this because we think seven emotions, here's the emotion.

Dr. Raja

Yeah, we were really taught. That's why I said people come to us and say I feel bad helped me You say, What are you feeling? And I just told you, I'm feeling bad that am I, in fact, I'm even saying I feel bad way call tells me, what am I feeling? That's because of the education we have had? Yes, yes. So you're saying, because we don't pay attention, all of them. I'm defining emotions, as all of those things, psychoanalysts will define all of these things as an effect. But the public doesn't know anything about an effect. The terminology psychoanalytic so far my publisher, and I agreed, we'll put everything under emotion, what other people understand as an effect, or emotional feeling, or mood or temperament, that will expand that if you also include something new called sensorimotor emotions, to cover all those experiences, like emptiness, when I'm alone, fullness when I'm with you, these are all emotions, these are body states. And because talk therapy does not look at the body, it misses all these things. So in this way, you can always find emotions, and then you start to embody it. And what happens is that as you do that things become more differentiated, people might sense more differentiated emotions, like sadness and other things.

Kristen

So you're becoming more whole and more secure in this space, and the world around you and your relationships with yourself or with other people, is that

Dr. Raja

emotion regulation is the key to relationship. And how do you regulate emotions, emotion, cognition, and behavior are not separate things. They're one in the same. I mean, the one ask one energy, and neuroscience is coming to that now, what they're saying now is that the physiology of emotion, cognition and behavior are not three separate things, all three depend on the brain, the entire body and the environment. This is the theory of embodied cognition, emotion behavior. So you can say, if they're super related, then you can work with one and change the other. That is my cognitive therapy works for some people, or you just work with behavior and change. The other two, emotion and cognition that is true, these are things true because they delete the other one at the same, ultimately, are Berber. What we are learning now, of late is that it is emotion in every moment, that is determining what your cognition will be whatever, this is one thing. So therefore, my focus on emotion, and I said, Why is the other focus on emotion in the body, why is to focus on emotion in the body, because science tells us that we block emotion from the body, then what happens cognition and behavior both get compromised with the brain, emotional processing results are not happening in the brain, all they did was have a group of people bite on a pen while they watched the video clip, compared to another group that did not get the free tip the free pen to bite on. And they wired the brains and both groups either what they found during the experiment, after the experiment, when they were recalling it two weeks after when they were recalling the group with the pen in the mouth, the so poor in terms of brain processing of emotion, cognition, behavior, that is why I think it's important. And I tell cognitive behavioral therapists, you do good work, do it. But when it doesn't work, if the bond is blocked from emotion, it will not work as well as you think it should work, then embody the emotion, look for an emotion, embody the emotion that fight and then go back to doing your cognitive behavioral therapy, it will be much smoother, much more effective.

Kristen

Yeah, I think cognitive behavioral therapy will only take you so far, you're missing the

Dr. Raja

precise rules. I'm okay with say, for people whose bodies are open to emotions, cognitive behavioral therapy will work fine. But we are all used to door not bigger to the body not paying attention to how a body shuts down emotional experience. Therefore, for those people, this becomes very important. And if covered by a therapist will use emotional embodiment from time to time with the client, the therapy will be shorter, and the outcomes will be better. This science guarantees I'm not saying this. We have the science to predict the natural happen.

Kristen

I agree. I agree. 100%. Talk to me about the breath, because that was one of the expander points. Yeah, we have just a few minutes left. How important is the breathing deep breathing, accessing your breath, breath, work in body embodying emotions.

Dr. Raja

I think breath can is another tool. If you don't breathe, you don't have energy, you have no experience. You can't think you can't do anything. Right. It's as simple as that. It is important. But it's also important to know that sometimes we can use prayer to not feel the things we need to feel because breathe in a particular way and get rid of anxiety then become dependent on the breathing technique longterm every time you get an anxiety whereas here is you can embody emotion of fear Anxiety, you might not have to deal with it, you might not have to deal with it on the long run.

Kristen

You're the first person has ever said that, that the breath can almost be a you can use it as a bypass love not to feel

Dr. Raja

everything in the world that's good can also be used in a bad way. We just need to know we need we need to discriminate. Words are useful symbols are useful. When I can put a word to what I'm feeling is fear. It's helpful. When we tell it suffering, often friend leaves three year old four year old and he say you're feeling lonely, you're feeling sad, the church fits better in a way because he put words you're given them symbols. But what what do subtypes in psychotherapy be over symbolizes? We use too many words. So words are important, very important. Languages. But we can also use it to get away from our authentic self as you start, as he said at the very beginning.

Kristen

Yeah, so it's an end and both. So where can people find you in your book and your work? And if they want to learn more, they want to see the videos you talked about they want it's in your book? And then where else can they find you.

Dr. Raja

The book is called the price of embodying emotions, a guide to improving cognitive emotional behavioral outcomes. The titled longer title Ricardo, is it all therapies and in life, that is

Kristen

Twilight Atlantic, so because they didn't want you to have that title, subtitle, I liked that one.

Dr. Raja

In German, they do say, you know, they put us thing there for life all day, every day, I'll talk I like

Kristen

that. I think that resonates, my body was and

Dr. Raja

and this is written like in the form of a guide. So you can read that and ever motion your body. It's a simple step, even though it does complicated science behind it, read section one, section three in a start, apply it and then go to section two theory to see how it works wait work, and then you can go to my website. It's called integral somatic psychology, one word I T Grl, integral, somatic. So ma ti c psychology.com. And if you go there, you can go to my blog section. And in the block section, that is the first article the last article is on the seven steps. For people with low alpha colors, I would really look at that. Then you can go to the book section tab on top, and it will say digital resources for the book. You click on it, you'll get about two or three videos, the first videos of me working with them myself with anxiety of being taped, not when you're with me asking me questions. I'm so quite comfortable. When somebody says Why didn't it tape a five minute video for me. That's when my inner critic gets so loud that I keep aborting, recording. I can't speak in a nickel in I like Echo charge. I don't take use this very situation and anxiety and demonstrate how to embody emotions and footsteps situation emotion expansion integration, I did that. There is also a video of my working with a woman in Hong Kong from the beginning of the pandemic with the death anxiety that came up that got triggered. She has had pre and Perinatal trauma in which she nearly died with Coronavirus, danger, and then it came up so I was working with her with the fear of die, then the third one is actually working with grief with the seven steps. And then in the first cycle, then through the second cycle, and I did the four steps only. So you can find the resources there, you can sign up for my newsletter. And so

Kristen

thank you for sharing those resources, those are going to be so helpful to many people. And really believe this is transformational work for many people I do because it's new for our audience, many members of our audience if you've had therapy with me not so new, if it's but then you've added pieces that I really resonate with me and I think are going to be helpful that I want to integrate into my own work. So yeah, thank you so much,

Dr. Raja

you're most welcome. And let me know how you do it. But if people would just read the book therapists who are applying it, and then write to me and say, it's working, I don't know, deep transformation is taking place very quickly, but the long term plan with whom I was taught, and I hear that, and so remember that it's not just for therapists, but also because we don't have enough therapists for the world these days. So that came out to the right time I wrote during the pandemic, and therefore I hope that many of you listeners who are not therapists also get a copy of the book and use it.

Kristen

Yes, grab the book. Let us know how it's working for you try what is being outlined in the book, and then give us your feedback. I will share that with you. And that's just last week. I would love that. Yes. So thank you so much for your energy, your time and your heart and your expansion with so many people and heart opener that you are so thank you.

Dr. Raja

Thank you very much Kristin. I really enjoyed talking with you and I hope to hear from you.

Kristen

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast My hope is that you took home some actionable steps, along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoyed this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share with a friend or a family member. For more information about how to get connected visit Kristen k r i s t e n d Boice BO ice.com. Thanks and have a great day.