How Diet Culture Armors Your Body and Using Hanna Somatics to Soften Again

Welcome to The Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host Stephanie Mara Fox your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Being entrenched in diet culture for decades can affect your bodily expression. One way this can show up is through tightening and sucking in your belly for years. I know this was something I used to do and sometimes have to remind my belly that's not something we need to do anymore. When you've received messages about how your body is supposed to look, your body can start to try to shape itself to the images you show it and the messages it's receiving. If you've been told you're supposed to have a flat belly over and over again, you may have found yourself trying to make your belly as tight as possible. This sucking in has been sending a constant cue of danger to your body that can slowly be rewired as you learn to breathe deeply and soften your muscles. I get into this and more with today's guest Aimee Takaya who is a Hanna Somatic Educator, Somatic Yoga Teacher and Transformation Facilitator who helps Heart-led Leaders, Yoga Teachers, Coaches, Therapists and Creative Visionaries become more somatically aware in their bodies so that they can release muscular tension and pain, perform at a higher level in all they do, move easily and age gracefully, ground their wisdom and knowledge into their bodies, and impact the world with their radiance. Today we talk about how Aimee found her way to Hanna Somatics including navigating food sensitivities, disordered eating, and dieting, the effects of sucking in your belly all the time, and how to re-shape your body's expression and the way it holds tension. One thing I wanted to explain to you now is we get into a conversation around a bottom up approach to healing or a top down. I was very vague in my description in what that means. So a bottom up approach is somatic work. You're working with the body to change how you think and express yourself. Top down approaches to healing are ones that focus on changing your thoughts and beliefs and internalized stories to then change how your body expresses itself in the world. Both approaches have gifts and benefits that we will further discuss. Now, welcome Aimee! I am so excited you are here today. I know we previously connected on your podcast and I'm thrilled to have you here. And you know, something that I wanted us to dive into today was just this topic on how when we are choosing a food out of emotional reasons, I know for a lot of individuals that I work with, they're really learning how to process emotion and stress and sensation through their body and I know that's kind of the work that you've gotten into and so I would love to start out with first hearing a little bit of your backstory and then we can kind of get into all the nitty gritty, but how did you get into this work with nervous system and somatics yourself?

Aimee Takaya 03:22

Yeah, so my healing journey was necessitated by a healing crisis that I experienced when I was in third grade. And that sort of set the tone for a pretty, you know, tumultuous relationship with food. And with my body for a long time I went through what's now referred to as early onset puberty. So in a short span of like a few months, I went from having the body of a little girl to having the body of a woman and it was pretty traumatic for me and very scary. And one of the things that came out of that was that I was told by some doctors and these were after my mother had searched and found doctors who would actually run tests to find out what was going on with me that I had food sensitivities, particularly to dairy, the casein, the protein in dairy and soy protein. And so, you know, this was 1999. So of course, like there was no like allergen free food available, it basically meant I no longer could eat processed foods. And I was very limited in my dietary choices. And this felt like some kind of punishment, you know, so I already felt like there was something wrong with me that I had gone through early onset puberty and then I felt additionally like you know, I was being punished and now I couldn't even eat my favorite foods. And it started I started to develop a pretty like I said dysfunctional tumultuous relationship with food. It continued on for many years. You know, in high school, I would go through these bouts of you know, staying away from things that were bad for me and then over indulging in them and gaining weight and feeling ill. One of the ways that showed up in my body was through hypothyroidism. And so I was on and off hypothyroid medication for most of my teen years and struggling with other kinds of somatic, you know, experiential issues, you know, unresolved pain and trauma from my early childhood, and then things that continue to happen. But then when I was in my early 20s, I guess by 19, I had another healing crisis, another time where my body, you know, and my body consciousness basically just screamed at me and said, like something needs to happen. And the result of that was that I just made this really strong, very strict commitment to myself to only eat, quote, unquote, healthy food, you know, things I'm not allergic to things that I'm not sensitive to. And I committed myself to that pretty strongly. And during that time I actually also committed myself to a yoga practice. And I committed myself in an intense way, because I felt like this was really the only option to save my life. At this point, the life that I wanted to live was not going to, I didn't believe it was going to happen if I continue down this road that I had been on. And, you know, flash forward to discovering hanna somatic education through my father, this was a total game changer. And honestly, it was something that happened really slow. Over time that I wasn't even really aware of it while it was happening, that there was this shifting of my awareness. I ended up finding out that my awareness had shifted so much, because after years of restrictive eating, and you know, being like eating clean, and then falling apart and eating, you know, binge eating food that was bad for me, and all this stuff that I was going through these cycles, right that you talk about that I was totally drawn to your content, because you really explore this in a somatic way. Right? Like after years of that I tried, I tried one last stand of doing some kind of like extreme diet after having become a kind of somatic educator like after having become a somatic person, I tried to go back to like my old way. And I went on keto for six months, and I put my body through a lot of stress running to lose like weight from having had a baby.

Aimee Takaya 06:48

And it was, it was really unpleasant. And it was also unpleasant because I had this new awareness in my body and in my body consciousness through the physical practice that I had been cultivating, that said, there is another way to operate. And this way, you know, kind of trying on those old patterns did not fit into this new paradigm of my body. And you know, kind of coming back to stress and, you know, stress and tension and experiences that we're holding in our body, I couldn't see another way out of my food challenges when I was younger, because I was so immersed in them. And I was so immersed in this paradigm of that I have to force myself that I have to punish myself that I have to, you know, either reward or, you know, the all these systems of how to control myself. And I had that a lot like restrictive eating, controlling my eating and being really harsh with myself about food as I moved into a completely new way of handling stress in my body. And I actually released so much of the charge that you know, was underneath those behaviors, it just didn't make any sense anymore to behave that way. So like I said, I did that one last stand of like trying it on and right after that, like three months after that, I realized I went through this realization like I can't, I can't treat my body. I can't treat myself this way anymore. I'm different, even though like, okay, I lost some weight I got, you know what I wanted, so to speak, but I was like miserable the whole time. And I just had this awakening. And so since then I've really loved having food conversations with my clients, with people who are starting to awaken in a somatic way to their bodies who are looking for a new way because the old way that they've been operating just doesn't work. Right? And for me, the foundation of making that shift in my body consciousness more easeful, more simple, more effective, was the somatic, you know, movement, body work that I had been doing that really reduced how much stress and how many stories I was holding about that stuff, it made it easier to change, shift the mindset, right? And shift the emotional behaviors when I just wasn't charged up in the same way, and I wasn't carrying so much stress in my body. So that's kind of the long and short of it. Thanks for this opportunity to tell that story in this kind of condensed way. I haven't really done that before. So I'm really yeah, I'm really glad I got to.

Stephanie Mara 09:17

Yeah, I hear so many pieces of your journey that I really resonate with in my own. One thing that I heard in there is just especially when you're navigating food sensitivities, or even food allergies, I feel like that's not talked as much about especially if you're already navigating disordered eating, and your body is navigating something where it's saying, hey, this food actually doesn't work for me. Because often the suggestion is you got to eat all foods. You got to get comfortable eating all foods and for some individuals, and I'm one of those included that this is a little bit of what has shaped my work, is it's you have to discover what supports your unique system and the other piece that you reference was it was never really about food to begin with, which, you know, we talk so much about here. So I'm curious about this Hanna Somatics that you got into and what is this modality of somatics and how you found it be supportive to start to move away from using food as a coping mechanism?

Aimee Takaya 10:18

Yes. So Hanna Somatics in kind of a dry clinical sense is a neuromuscular reeducation method that changes the way that our nervous system holds, habitually unconsciously, holds our musculature, right? And it does this by way of the motor cortex through a very specific way of moving that some people might describe as micro movements, right, very small, gentle movements. And the focus in Hana Somatics is on the letting go and the releasing of the musculature slowly. And this is how we actually make structural changes in the way that your body is holding tension, right and holding stress in a more kind of philosophical sense. This somatic work is about regaining a sense of living moment to moment control in our bodies, because there are unconscious muscular contractions that we are experiencing all the time. And they actually accumulate over time. That's why a little five year old is all, you know, loosey goosey and can run around and is flexible, but somebody in their 60s or 70s may be experiencing a lot of pressure in their joints, their their posture may be kind of stuck in a position that it wasn't in 10 or 15 years ago. This is because an of an accumulation of muscular stress over time. And if you've lived a rather hard life, or you've had, you know, maybe some predispositions like I did like hypermobile joints and things like this, you may find that like me, you are experiencing chronic tension or pain as early as like your 20s and 30s. There's people who are experiencing feeling limited in their mobility limited in their activities. Now, every muscle pattern, well actually let me turn that around, every experience that we've ever had positive or negative, came with a muscular contraction that went along with it. Right? And our system is very smart. And it will make these little shortcuts. So if you sit at a desk job for eight hours a day, you may think that is a inactive position. But technically, there are a bunch of muscles in your body that are holding you in that position with your body and your hips and you know, spine at 90 degrees, leaning forward attending to something that is a muscular activity, maybe it's not particularly functional or natural. But it is a muscular activity. And your brain will build those patterns and make those shortcuts and you'll find, oh, my head is forward all the time because of that desk job that technique, right. So when you start to release these patterns, when I started to release them, you release the conditioning that you have unconsciously accumulated. So I used to have a lot of and I'm sure there's so many women who are going to relate to this because they feel like it's a widespread challenge, I used to unconsciously suck my stomach in all the time. I would keep my abdominals, especially my lower abdominals contracted all the time. And if I was in public, I would do this even more. And now I wasn't even really aware of this. It was just what I had trained myself to do from an early age. Now let's think about what that does biologically to our system. When your stomach is maintained in contractions, you are basically heightening your nervous system activity, you are putting yourself a little bit into that fight or flight response. Right, maybe you already live there. And so you're just intensifying it, but your abdominals being in contraction does not allow for deep breathing to occur. Right. It also doesn't really allow for digestive processes to occur very easily, right. So when I released my stomach on a neuromuscular level when I consciously got my motor cortex to actually reconnect with and lengthen those muscles in my abdominals. And I practiced doing this until I was walking around with a soft, round belly, right, which was really uncomfortable and confronting for a period of time until I was able to get used to it and move through, you know, the emotional and mental patterns that had me sucking my stomach in right? When I was able to release that I experienced a sense of neutrality and calmness, that, you know, in a broader sense, this is how it made it so much easier to shift my behaviors and patterns around food was this kind of neutral, calm experience in my body through releasing my muscular stress, right. And then because my baseline stress is so much lower, life hits me and something challenging happens, I'm not pushed as through the roof as I would be otherwise. I'm not pushed so far that I'm like reaching for that chocolate cake or I'm going on a crash diet or I'm doing any of those things that I once did, because now I'm just more resilient and more capable of dealing with stress when it shows up and I have other ways, I have a diverse set of tools including Hanna Somatic education, right, this very effective for releasing my stress other than just stress eating.

Stephanie Mara 15:04

Yeah, this makes me think of I did a series on the history of Somatics, and it sounds like Hannah Somatics is based on one of the many original creators of the somatic, you know, psychotherapy field is how we learn how to armor ourselves. And we learn how to, you know, carry our bodies in specific ways, based off of our life experiences. And so I love that you're bringing this in, and that these ways of holding ourselves of, you know, sucking in our bellies like everything that we're even taught, from diet culture, around, like how our body is meant to perform or be presented in the world, like, kind of over time, the more that you're immersed in it, you know, you reshape how you're expressing yourself that you might not even be aware of the things that you're doing, especially if this also comes generationally you grew up around a grandmother that was sucking in her belly, and then a mom that was sucking in her belly. And so you learned Oh, like, I see mommy in the mirror at you know, however young you are, you know, sucking in her belly, and you learn this is what you're supposed to do. So this tension is like held in your body from maybe as young as you can remember. And it's just been, you know, building like you said over time. I'm curious, like, when you're talking about slowly tapping into that and releasing it. What does that look like? Like, what does that process? Yeah, if you could give an example.

Aimee Takaya 16:30

Yeah, so all of the somatic movements, they can be done actually in any position to gravity, but the best position is lying down, because then you don't have the same kind of load of gravity on your spine and on the major muscles of your torso. So things are already a little bit more relaxed, the extensor muscles and the flexor muscles are less engaged to begin with when you're laying down. And what I have people do is release their muscles by engaging them a little bit, right, consciously, and then very, very slowly releasing them. So usually, we start with an arch actually an arching of your back, because that's one of the first primal patterns that babies and infants develop in their bodies to hold up their heads, right. So that one goes a little deeper than, you know, we could call it the startle reflex, or the fear pattern of tucking our tail and pulling our stomach in. What you do is you first arch your back a little bit. And then you really, really, really slowly, slowly release the arch of your back until at the end of the movement, there is no more activity, and you rest there to allow your brain to receive the biofeedback about the new muscle length, we probably do this a couple of times to reinforce that idea of letting go of the muscle fibers of sending that inhibitory signal to get the muscles to actually not be firing so many motor units and this is neurophys speak, but like get the the muscle activity to lower, you do that three or four times. And then I would have someone go the other way where they draw their pubic bone and their sternum towards each other, we could include some breath with this, like they do it on an exhale, they flatten their back by rolling their belly in, and then very slowly, they release their belly until they can feel that natural arch returning to their spine. And then we might do that a number of times, right? This is specifically to release rectus abdominus. And then there are various other exercises that release other abdominal areas, and also deeper muscles that are part of that tail tucking action, for example, or so as our oblique muscles, there are various muscles, not just our rectus abdominus, that's going to be involved in that tail tucking pattern. And so the series that I teach in the movement practice that I teach is about freeing you all the way around 360 degrees, including your abdominals.

Stephanie Mara 18:52

It's really interesting that a lot of the attention and I feel like this comes in for a lot of women, is on that pelvic area, the belly, because we hold so much tension there, and especially if you're a woman who has had a child, you know, there's just so much that changes in that area. And I find that even for, you know, those struggling with body image, there's so much attention on this core area of our body, that it's really interesting that a lot of even the examples you just gave is like starting to maybe release some of the tension there so that you might start to be able to have a different kind of relationship with this area. Like I get curious if you've seen some kind of connection that when maybe this area has stopped being viewed as like you're in danger because there's less tension there, like you can start also viewing this area of your body differently.

Aimee Takaya 19:47

Absolutely. Because we hold emotions and you know how many women out there have felt ashamed of their stomachs and have drawn their stomachs in as a response to feeling shame. And so then therefore, there is shame that is being held in your stomach. What's so fascinating about this is that that area of our bodies is what makes us uniquely female. It's actually where we produce life and hold a lot of wisdom. And so to have these patterns that are related to, not to say this very charged word, but misogyny, to have this, like shame over being female, and having a round soft body and a round soft stomach that carries life, and rejecting that, and instead, embracing an idea that we have a body that's more like a adolescent, or a small child, or maybe more like, man, a man's body with narrow hips and a flat, hard abdominal wall, right like that, releasing that shame and releasing that conditioning that you spoke of earlier that it's generational, right. And if you think about like Western culture, like corsets, like all that was definitely a holding in and a compressing of this very sacred space within us. And as you start to release those layers of conditioning, you do open up a new connection and appreciation for your human body. And for what it can do, not just how it looks, for what it can experience. I had a client recently who was talking about, we were writing affirmations that she was she was going to plant this affirmation in her body, and she has a six year old daughter and her daughter was saying, I know that I'm ugly, the world knows that I'm ugly. Her daughter said this, and she was like, heartbroken. And then her daughter said, and Mama has an ugly belly, and she like slapped her mom on the stomach. And she said, I really want to try to figure out how to change this, because I don't like this belief that she's showing me she has because I don't know how she picked this up. Like maybe it was unconsciously for me, because I've definitely had feelings and you know, negative feelings about my stomach before. And so we had a conversation and I said, well, let's think if you're gonna write an affirmation that says, My stomach is beautiful, are you going to believe that with the surface of you know, beauty that you may be assuming is is what beauty is right? And we dug deeper and we're looking at maybe your stomach is beautiful because of what it does. It breaks down food and turns it into lifeforce energy. So you can go out in the world and do beautiful things. Your stomach is beautiful, because it carried your daughter to term, it was her home in her life, and it built her little body. And now she is here in the world, bringing so much joy and love to you and others. Your stomach might be beautiful, because of its existence, and that it feels and senses that it can be touched, you know, and that someone can touch your belly and perceive its beauty through the texture of your skin and through the interaction that your stomach has. And so let's look at this broader definition of what beauty is, before we just throw that affirmation out there, let's really define what beauty can be beyond how it looks and what we expect it to, you know, value at at, like a cultural level.

Stephanie Mara 23:07

Yeah, it's amazing how much conditioning our bodies are holding on to, that we can be completely unaware of, but it can start, like we're talking about at such a young age, that, you know, I hear for her, like she maybe had a belief about her belly for decades of her life, and that we may not even be aware of the little, like micro movements that we're doing that's expressing something that becomes so habituated inside of our system, you know, we think of like individuals who want to start to be intimate with someone else and they get touched in certain areas and you know, there's like a startle response or something. And it's like, oh, that was always there. But now like something is coming up to bring it more to the forefront. So like, for her it was her daughter was like picking up something in the environment because kids are so sensitive, and they're so wise and they pick up so much and I love the reframe of sometimes we have to, and I do this a lot myself of, get curious about the meaning that we've been taught about things like I would even be curious about what does ugly mean? Yeah, like how our body holds that meaning. You know, have you noticed that when you're doing kind of this Hanna Somatics work that the bottom up work of we're changing our thoughts changes, and you know, top down to the thoughts start to change to then maybe have different musculature happening in the body.

Aimee Takaya 24:36

Yeah, so I think they work both ways. And when you work bottom up, it's a great way to actually I guess subvert somebody's resistance, that they might have to thinking about something differently. Sometimes people, even though they want to change the way that they think, they resist it, they resist it mentally, but when you just start to bring in a new way of experiencing their body, and when you invite them to try these really sensitive, gentle, small movements and help them learn to respond to themselves with tenderness and compassion and they can start to feel themselves being more open, that's open in every way. It's open mentally, it's open emotionally to a different way of perceiving something. And so I think that somatic work really gives people a foundation that makes all the other different kinds of work that we might do, whether it's mindset shifts, or emotional work, it makes it more comfortable, more easeful, and you just experience less resistance in the process when you work bottom up. You know, top down has benefits too, if the person is really willing, has the intellectual will to to change the way that they've been operating. But like I said, I found that myself included, had, oh, I want to think about myself differently, but then as soon as I say all those affirmations to myself in the mirror, like I don't believe them, I've physically don't believe them. There's part of me that just rejects that, even though I want to believe that I can, you know, say this and feel differently about my body or my life, it wasn't until I actually got into my body in this way that those things started being possible to shift through mental work.

Stephanie Mara 26:10

Such a great example of why somatics is so amazing. Which I know we both share that passion. You know, I'm wondering, just because you brought in the food piece so early on, I'm curious just in your journey, and maybe those you've worked with as the you know, expression of the body changed through maybe lowering that stress response threshold in the body. And so you know, if, like you said earlier, if something came at you wasn't experienced as big in the body, did you notice for yourself or others, that relationship with foods started to change in some particular way.

Aimee Takaya 26:43

I think that there were alarms that just were used to going off in my body around food. And when suddenly those alarms were not as loud or simply not there, I felt like I had a lot more freedom to think about food differently. Literally read a couple of books that if I had read those books, like 10 years ago, they would have totally triggered me and sent me on some kind of disordered eating, you know, restrictive diet kind of thing. Instead, I read some books that were very helpful, very well researched books about food and the human body. And I felt this sense of like, oh, I want to explore this, I want to play with this, I want to see how it feels to eat this way for a little bit. But without this like commanding, forceful, you know, disciplinarian kind of attitude, I was just, like, ready to explore. And I felt like, I've seen that in my clients as well. And we have somatic food conversations and their alarm bells are just down, you know, they can hear data and information about things like heart disease, and they don't get totally freaked out. And either like, you know, run towards like an animal free diet, you know, or run away from the information and just want to like, hide in a hole, you know, they're able to just like, listen to it and consider and then make some maybe more intuitive and personalized choices for themselves in the moment, right, with respect to the fact that food is not just a you know, data based, kind of medicalized experience, food is personal, cultural, emotional, it's all the things that we are. And so you know, developing more space to explore and play and be less rigid has definitely come from my somatic work and as it pertains to food.

Stephanie Mara 28:25

Yeah. I'm so glad you're bringing this in. Because there is such like strong polarities, when it comes to food around like, this is the right way, this is the wrong way. And especially when you're healing your relationship with food, you know, I know you know of my work, it's why it's so important to bring in this body piece, that there is no right way, that if you were navigating something like disordered eating, that only your body's really going to tell you what's safety producing with where you're at now and that as you come more into your window of tolerance and also widen that window of tolerance, which is what I really hear you talking about as well, is that you're also learning, you know, how to listen to your body when it's in relationship with food. So there's this feedback in this conversation happening that if you decide, hey, you know what, I'll bring in like the sugar conversation, because like, there's such strong messages around like, you should be able to eat all the sugar or like, no, you should cut out all the sugar, where it just gets to be a conversation with your body of sugar is a food, how does sugar process in my body based off of where I'm at in my healing process? And also if I don't feel like sugar is supporting me right now, it's your choice what to do with that. So I really hear just this listening to the body, hearing its feedback and that you know, as you kind of supported your body and feeling safer to be here you were able to play a little bit more with your food. And I just again, appreciate that perspective. Because sometimes if where you're at now is things feel so hightened in your body, you may not be at a place now, where you're able to play with different ways of eating. And it may need to feel more structured for a period of time, because you just have to work with where you're at.

Aimee Takaya 30:12

Yes. And when you're getting getting those signals from your body, you know, it can be really frustrating while you're in it, where you feel this sense of like, my body's really telling me that right now, for whatever reason in my life, like, dairy is not working out for me. You know, I've had multiple clients say that to me, they say like, oh, you know, I ended up eating cheese, and then I feel really heavy, or lethargic or tired, you know. And the truth is, is that our bodies are constantly shifting and changing. And maybe something that was a food that worked for you, at this point in your life, for this season of your life, when you had this level of physical activity, when you had this level of stress, right is not going to be the same healthful food two, three years later, when your body is in a completely different state. And so having that, like you said, ability to make choices and be dynamic in our responsiveness to what our body is saying. And sometimes listening isn't easy. Sometimes listening is going to be like, okay, I really do need to take a break from this kind of food for a little while. And wow, look at that at two weeks out of, you know, less sugar in my diet or less dairy or whatever it is I do I feel so much better. That was that was the right move for me right now to listen to my body. The tricky part is that people get so alarmist, myself included, that we take something like, you know, having this negative reaction to dairy at this time in my life, and we just make that a staple and rule forever now. And then when we veer away from that, or when we break that rule, we make ourselves suffer for it, we tell ourselves how wrong we are for breaking that rule.

Stephanie Mara 31:39

Yeah, yeah. So well said, you know, I really hear in that just the experience of having to meet your body now. And now. And now. And now. And because it's we live in a constantly changing system. I mean, when you look at all the research of how many of our systems are constantly renewing itself, and even like the timeline of our whole body renewing itself, after many years, that we are never living in the same body. So how could we possibly expect even how you're eating now is going to be the way that you interact with food forever.

Aimee Takaya 32:13

Right. Yes, absolutely. And I think that being able to shift gears with the seasons is also really lovely. I tried in my 20s to be a raw foodist for an entire year. That was my goal. And I got to about eight or nine months, and I was underweight. And I was you know, I just wasn't eating enough calories, I realized now, you know, with all the activity that I was up to, but I really was getting a strong call from my body to eat like warm starchy things, it was winter in Southern Oregon, you know, which was cold and rainy. And so my body was like, no more salads, I want potatoes. And, you know, I felt I went through such a battle with myself to like, give myself that warm starchy food. And now it's like if my body wants a salad for breakfast, or potatoes for breakfast, or breakfast for dinner, or whatever it is, you know, a handful of chocolate almonds before I head out the door, I'm that much more confident that it's okay to give my body those things. And that I have developed a lot of knowledge about what my body needs and how to give my body what it needs. Right. And that's, that's that's the bigger picture of this relationship with food. If you've had a troubled relationship, you've probably also simultaneously gathered a lot of information about food, a lot of information about different ways of eating, right, you've probably tried a lot of different things on if you can step out of like the panic that you've been in about all that you can turn it into wisdom.

Stephanie Mara 33:34

Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, just coming back to the piece of Hanna Somatics for a second and wondering, you know, of what you're describing, if someone wanted to maybe practice little exercises they could do on their own at home. Like it makes me think of a very long time ago, I did mayan abdominal massage, just when you're talking about all the tension in bellies like, oh, do I know that. And you know, basically, this is just a massage that is just focus on the softening your belly and releasing the tension in there. And the whole thing is based off of massaging that part of your body and nothing else. And you know, I know coming away from that there were exercises I could do at home to continue to practice like releasing the tension in the muscles in my belly. I'm wondering if they're like little practices, someone could do it in their own home.

Aimee Takaya 34:22

Oh, absolutely. I could even guide everybody in a sitting movement right now kind of similar to the one that I described. I'd be happy to do that this practice with a modality that I work with. It's a couple of things. I do hands on facilitation, hands on bodywork, right in person. And then I also teach movement classes. And then I can also teach someone one on one where I get a lot of feedback from what they're experiencing in their body and I create a movement or we create a movement together that will specifically release the tension that they're experiencing. Right so like kind of a one on one movement session where they get to have specialized movements right. Then the other piece of this which is what's so empowering about this practice is that there is a series of movements that one can learn that you can practice on your own. And in about 10 or 15 minutes a day, you can actually continue making changes. So I can work with someone like in a 90 minute session, and then they can continue to work on their own. And they can continue to open their body and open their body awareness and their body intelligence laying on their bedroom floor, right or laying in bed. And I coach people around all of that, especially building a daily practice, because for many people, it's really hard to add in a new thing. And so support and education and you know, helping them really feel and experience the result, the why they would want to do this every day, you know, is a big part of my work. But yeah, I'd be happy to get everybody in a little, a little movement practice right now, maybe like five minutes.

Stephanie Mara 35:49

Yeah, let's go for it. Absolutely.

Aimee Takaya 35:52

Cool. Okay, so if you're sitting upright in a chair, let's just imagine we're all sitting upright in a chair and feel your hips on the chair. And then hopefully, maybe you can have your feet on the floor as well. And you can get a sense of your feet on the floor. And then you're welcome to close your eyes if you're comfortable with that. And just start to sense the weight of your body on the chair. How is your body positioned over top of your hips, right or your shoulders directly over your hips, or maybe they're a little forward from your hips, maybe they're a little back from your hips. And then where's your head in relation to your shoulders. To get a sense of where everything is, notice if there's any sensations, maybe tension or tightness through your neck or your back that maybe lives there that maybe you're acquainted with. And then also notice if there's areas in your body that feel kind of neutral, or maybe even kind of good right now. And the first movement that we're going to start with is that little arching of your lower back, okay, and so you're going to inhale and when you're ready, you're going to inhale, you're going to arch your back and you're going to feel how that arch kind of lifts and rises your body up a little bit. And then super, super slow motion, release the arch, taking your time very gradually come out of the arch. And at the end of the movement, simply rest and be there for a moment. We're going to do that again. If there was any pain or discomfort when you arch you want to try the movement smaller and less intensely. Okay. So as you're ready, you're going to inhale and arch your back a little bit, tilting your pelvis forward, feel your body weight shifting on the chair, and then slowly, slowly come out of the arch. Taking your time and find that moment where you're out of the arch. You're not holding an arch anymore, and rest there. Good. Three times a charm. We're going to do that one more time. This time, we're going to bring your shoulders into it slightly, okay. So when you arch your back, your shoulders are going to draw back a little bit your head might even want to slightly lift. Okay, inhale, arch your back, draw your shoulders back and lift your chin a little bit. So more of your back gets involved this time. Super slow release that, bring your chin back to level, let your shoulders come away from each other. Coming all the way out, find that place where you're no longer holding what you just did, and relax. And then just notice if there's any new awareness or sensation in your back, your hips, your shoulders, we're going to go forward now into a round into a curl which is your belly muscles engaging. You don't want to overdo any of these movements. The idea here is to move within a space of ease and comfort. So if you come forward and you feel your lower back or your neck kind of pulling, just go smaller. Okay, we're going to use your exhale breath to do this. Take an inhale. And as you exhale, round your spine slumped forward, feel your belly go in, notice what the backside of your body is doing is allowing you to come forward pulling back anywhere. And then slowly inhale and use your inhale to slowly rise up out of that shortness back to center and relax. Good. We're gonna do that once more. Take an inhale to start. And as you exhale, round, belly goes in, head comes forward, pelvis tucks under a few your weight shifting on the chair, shoulders coming forward. Use your inhale to slowly rise about the inhale. It's like that balloon filling you up, lengthening the front of your body and then rest. And now this time, we'll add your shoulders, your shoulders are going to elevate a little bit. They're going to come up towards your ears as you come forward and then they're going to release away from your ears when you come back. Take an inhale. As you exhale, round, shoulders come up towards your ears, you making yourself a nice little small creature here. Feeling your pelvis tuck. Inhale slowly rise up out of that feel this lengthening on the front of your body and rest. Good. And then to finish here. We're gonna go back to the first movement once just to see if there's a new awareness or a new ability to release slowly out of this movement, maybe it's going to feel different than it did the first time. But just check in and notice how your hips feel. Notice how your shoulders feel. And when you're ready here, you're going to inhale, arch your back, gently draw your shoulders back, maybe lift your chin a little bit, the back side of your body turning on super slow, slow release that taking your time find that place of neutral, and rest. And now where are your hips? How are they sitting on the chair? Feel up the length of your body? And where are your shoulders in relation to your hips? Where's your head in relation to your shoulders? What new awareness are you experiencing? From the top of your spine to the bottom? How was that for you, Stephanie?

Stephanie Mara 40:48

That was awesome. One thing for anyone doing that, because I actually did it with right now. And I know you all can't see me but I was doing it along with you is to check out any imagery that came up for you. I'm very imagery based when I do some of these somatic practices and like color, and things come to me. And so I could really feel like baby startle response. Like when I went back, like that was the image that came to me. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's still there. It's still in there. And yeah, it was also interesting to feel at the end, a little bit more spaciousness in my hips, kind of finding, like, what's that sweet spot of that tilt in that curve that it wants right now. So that was fantastic. I'm so glad that you offered that right now. And I hope everyone listening that was helpful for you too. I definitely found that really interesting. And I could see, you know, as you practice that potentially even like a little bit every day, you know, just kind of feeling into like how much you can get into it, how your body's responding. Like I noticed kind of curling in, felt really comforting. Whereas like opening out, I was like, Oh, this, this isn't something that I've done yet today. So it felt a little bit like stiffer to kind of go in that direction. So it was kind of interesting to also notice my body's responses to each as well.

Aimee Takaya 42:05

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there's so much didactic information that I offer about understanding these things, understanding these reflexive patterns. And then helping people kind of navigate, you know, like you said, what areas of our life are still in there, right, like you said, you kind of got in touch with like, maybe your baby self for a moment that still had some of that startle reflex going on, right, or there may be other versions of ourselves that are in there, and we get to kind of open them up and invite them to come out and be seen, and then also get to be integrated back into our nervous system. And I love the idea of playing with imagery. And I've had people tell me, you know, different colors that show up or, you know, images, some people with, like, Oh, I saw this image of a tree, and I was the tree and I was rooted down to the earth, you know, there's so much there that we get to explore because our body is the home of our consciousness and our imagination, and our spirituality and all of that.

Stephanie Mara 43:00

Oh, well, I so appreciate you bringing this work and your wisdom and your expertise here today. And I'm just curious if individuals want to learn more about this, how they can find you and keep in touch with you.

Aimee Takaya 43:13

Yeah, so I share a lot on Instagram, it's sort of varies, my content is not quite as beautifully informative as yours, I tend to be like, it's a little more off the fly sometimes. But I do share quite a bit on there. And then I also have a new offering that's going to be coming up later this year. And it is my first kind of like, I guess you could say it's at a more accessible price point than my six month program, which is my signature program. This is at a more accessible timeframe and price point for people who are just starting out on this somatic adventure. It's called Revive a nine week somatic movement adventure. And it is this idea that with adventure, there is struggle, right. And there is a challenge. But there's also excitement, there's joy, there's awakening, and discovery. And so yeah, this is a movement journey for anybody who wants to open up their body intelligence and experience more of who they are, who's ready to release muscle pain and tension patterns. And it can all be done from the comfort of your own home.

Stephanie Mara 44:13

That's awesome. And I so also resonate with the word adventure because there are highs and lows and you don't know where it's going and you just start going along for the ride and seeing where it takes you. So I'm super excited for your new creation and just thank you so much again for being here and sharing everything that you did.

Aimee Takaya 44:30

Yeah, it was a gift. Thank you for inviting me. I really resonated with your work. I loved having you on the podcast and you know, I hope for many more collaborations of any kind.

Stephanie Mara 44:40

Yeah, me too. Absolutely. And to everyone listening if you have any questions, I will leave our contacts in the show notes and I hope you all have a beautiful regulating rest of the day. Bye!

Keep in touch with Aimee here:

Website: https://www.freeyoursoma.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aimeetakaya/