S2: EP88- Understanding Trauma and the Role of the Body with Ally Wise

Join Mary and her very special guest, Ally Wise! Ally is a Trauma-Informed Life Transformation Coach, the founder of The Reconnection Process and the soon-to-come online platform Awakened Life and Leadership Institute (ALLI). She is passionate about healing, transformation and unlocking human potential. This work comes from the depth of her heart and her mission is to guide and support the unfolding of your own transformative power.

 Life brought Ally into this work. A car accident as a teenager left Ally’s nervous system in a state of shutdown. This brought Ally to yoga and meditation. Only then was she able to shift her attention from outside to inside and embrace that the internal is the source of our experience.

We have an epidemic of body disconnection. Listening to what your body needs and following its guidance is key to living fully alive. We have all experienced trauma in some shape or form. Being able to identify your trauma and how it got there is key to creating gentle shifts to reconnect to your own unique body wisdom.

Trauma doesn’t have to be something huge or catastrophic. We have all experienced some form of trauma. We have to identify our trauma and then we need to use the physical body to process it. 

Trauma is an overwhelming, intense, sudden energy that can come from various events. The nervous system can not process this event in the moment. Where does that energy go if we don’t have the support or space to process it in the moment? That energy becomes stored in our nervous system. We can also experience childhood trauma that comes from a disconnection with a caregiver or when our emotional needs weren’t met. That energy doesn’t vanish, it is stored in the body. We can also experience generational trauma that is passed down from our family. Lastly, we can experience collective trauma that is passed to us from society and the messages we receive from culture and media. 

We have all experienced one or more of these traumas. 

In order to begin to break through these traumas we need to be able to question everything we were taught was right. We need to be able to look around with naked eyes and see what is true to us. If we begin to listen to our bodies and begin to meet it needs, we can get out of our heads and we can give ourselves what we truly need. 

We are so identified with our symptoms. “I am anxious”. “I am depressed.” “I am bi-polar.”… in reality these are just responses from our nervous system. This is your nervous system trying to keep you safe and alive. When we begin to reconnect with our body, when we notice how we are feeling in the body, when we include the body in our experience we can get to the bottom of these responses and we can begin to heal. 

When we can become aware of what we are experiencing and what we have experienced in the past, we can find ways to process these emotions and traumas so the body doesn’t have to store them. When we begin to listen the body will guide us back into guidance and will tell us what our body needs in the moment. We will build trust with the body when we listen it. This trust is the foundation of a healthy relationship with our body.