Unwinding Trauma/Building Resiliency - Nature's Diamonds

[00:00:06] Hi, this is the Be Well with Michelle Greenwell podcast. Our heartwarming conversation is designed to lift you on your wellness journey. Grab your cup of tea and enjoy the podcast.

[00:00:26] Welcome everyone to season six and the first episode of Be Well with Dr. Michelle Greenwell. We are so excited to share with you what's in the vault for this season. And I say it that way because we have been recording incredible conversations over the last few years.

[00:00:43] A few months leading up to this season. Today's episode, I want to explore a little bit more about the work that I do. And I often share my conversations exploring what other people are doing in the bioenergetic wellness field. But today I want to share with you a little bit about what I've been doing. This is unwinding trauma, building resiliency, and the radiant vitality of nature's diamonds. And I'm so excited to share that with you.

[00:01:13] So welcome. And with this, we open the season. I want to take a moment to pause in gratitude for the journey that has brought all of us here. The conversations we've shared, the wisdom that's been offered, the stories of healing that continue to inspire, and the beautiful community that continues to gather here and open hearts and curious minds.

[00:01:40] This season begins with a very special conversation because it's reflecting so much of what is unfolding in my work and how intentional embodied practices can support us in moving forward with greater clarity, strength, and vitality.

[00:01:56] As always, when you're listening to the journey.

[00:02:24] I am sending to the journey. growth and development. And I hope that as I say those words, you can take them into your heart. And you can bring that frequency of healing and opportunity into you and all that you are. Now, you also know if you've been following the podcast, that I always introduce a T.

[00:02:48] And this is a way for us to set the body in motion for making change, for being able to develop the goals that we've identified. And as you're listening today and you're wondering, what is season six going to be offering me and why should I tune in? Well, we're going to be offering you a lot of ways to look at your life, how you approach things and how you think about your day. And we're going to be asking you, is it the best way that you could be adjusting? Or could this be adjusting?

[00:04:10] I'm a Kate Breton Tea Company. has a great opportunity for you to think about a 60 means diamonds. How my trip around the sun for another year is going to be reflecting vitality, radiance, wisdom, and the beauty of honoring a journey. And that's what's in this particular tea.

[00:04:36] Nature's diamond features the spiritual essence of many different kinds of berries and fruit that comes from the garden. But I'm just going to highlight today elderberry and currants, two beautiful botanicals that carry both nourishment and symbolic wisdom. Elderberry has long been associated with protection, renewal, and deep restorative support.

[00:05:02] It reminds us of resilience, of the body's capacity to restore, and the wisdom that comes from being rooted and supported. Currents carry the energy of vitality, brightness, renewal. They offer a beautiful reminder of sweetness, nourishment, and the small but powerful ways that life restores us when we allow ourselves to receive.

[00:05:31] Now together, these herbs create a part of the blend that feels both grounding and radiant. A beautiful reflection of what it means to honor healing while continuing to grow. And the affirmation for this tea is, with every sip, I absorb the radiant vitality of nature's diamonds. So I've been holding my tea in my mug. Let me share with you.

[00:05:59] This was a gift from my aunt for my birthday. And so what it says is, Limited edition, the 60th, of fabulous aged perfection. So I feel very, very grateful for all that my family does to help me celebrate and honor where we are in going into the 60th year. So I'd like you to take a moment with your tea. Smell it.

[00:06:30] Let the blend that you have in your hands go into that limbic system. Provide you with a calmness. Link it up to your motor system, which is going to provide the opportunity for change. Allow that to settle into your body. And then have a sip. Here I go.

[00:06:58] I have to say, it smells amazing. It just smells amazing. I'm quite pleased with this blend. All right. So now that we've activated our goal, we've brought awareness and energy to it. Let's look at an opening reflection. There is a difference between getting through the day and truly supporting ourselves through it.

[00:07:25] So often we put effort into our days by pushing ourselves, striving for performance, responding to everything that comes our way, and of course, carrying the load. But effort is not always the same as well-being. This season begins with an important question. How do we move beyond coping and go into meaningful restoration? How do we unwind what has been stored in the body?

[00:07:56] How do we restore the nervous system and build the kind of resiliency that isn't just about endurance, but about recovery, regulation, and renewal? How do we do that? So this is the heart of the work that we're going to be exploring this season. And I hope that this is enticing you on a journey to think about how are you approaching things and are you pushing through? Are you making those lists longer? Are you feeling inadequate because you didn't finish the list?

[00:08:26] Let's look at the unwinding trauma and building resiliency portion of what we'll be working with. One of the central themes that's guided my work is the process of unwinding trauma. And we shifted the wording over to building resiliency because unwinding trauma is valuable.

[00:08:46] And some people may appreciate that approach, the wording of being able to take that tightness that's wrapped around an incident or an event that has really changed who you are, but in a tight way. And allow that to just let go, like the ropes on a wheel that they just start to soften and then pretty soon they unravel from that wheel and fall away.

[00:09:14] Now that would be the opportunity for building resiliency. And this is where we want to focus our time.

[00:09:20] How can we move into an intentional, embodied, and therapeutic experience that creates our day, has ease and flow that can come with it, and allows us to move from the nuggets of our learning and our expertise because of our experiences into who we want to be and what we want to be moving forward.

[00:09:48] Either with that experience and gaining more skill or doing other things that really light us up. So trauma is not simply the event that occurred. It's what remains held in the body when the system's not had the opportunity to fully process, release, and restore. When we understand trauma through the lens this way, we can begin to shift the question. Instead of asking, what happened?

[00:10:18] Please tell me your story again. We begin to ask, what is the body still holding? What has not yet been expressed? What is the nervous system still protecting? And what would support safe release, restoration, and reorganization? This is where the work of unwinding begins. And this is also where we begin to understand resiliency differently.

[00:10:48] Resiliency is not simply the ability to keep going. It's the capacity to recover, reorganize, and then return to the coherence that is our lifelong journey, but also our birthright. This is a very different kind of strength that we're working with. The Unwinding Trauma Building Resiliency Protocols were built for a special conference held by Nolative.

[00:11:17] And that was in 2024 in Spain, in Tenerife. It was the most amazing journey, but it was also the opportunity to think differently about trauma and about how we can start to change the languaging around it. Since that time, that protocol has had three years to grow and to be nurtured and expanded and explored.

[00:11:43] And it has also had a life, beyond just what we created it to be, into a life with Marathon Jam, an organization of musicians who raise funds for veterans, first responders, and caregivers in the United States. It works out of North Carolina, an amazing group of people. They are so devoted to helping people recover and to gain back vitality in their lives.

[00:12:13] And what we've done is we've taken the Unwinding Trauma Building Resiliency Program and the protocol, so the way that you set up events, the way that you set up days, the way that you set up your experiences, and we've laid that over top of the day's activities, which have been a way for people to find nurturing, love, and support. Now, this is through music therapy. This is dance therapy.

[00:12:41] I've done it with Tai Chi. I've had the pleasure of working with Colin McLeod with Intuitive Music. And we've been wrapping that all up into a very special day for Marathon Jam. We've done two events, and we're looking at the third one. And this is helping to take the protocol, give it a life, expand it. And what we really want to do is bring it to more musicians so they can understand when they're playing for others,

[00:13:09] how they could be supporting them in a better way. We know music heals. We know that when everybody's on the same wavelength with the music or with singing, their heartbeats, they go together. They synchronize. So do the breath, especially if you're singing together. What we want to do is to be able to support musicians who are doing therapy work

[00:13:35] or who are entertaining others with a protocol that helps them to realize certain keys can produce certain results. The body will respond to different kinds of music, and it can lift the posture up. It can deepen the breath. It can relax a whole room full of people. Now, this does happen when people play music. But isn't it awesome when we can target it, but we can be also very precise in what we want to offer.

[00:14:03] And for those musicians who have very special words and meanings behind the songs that they create, wouldn't it be lovely for them to know which energy systems that song is really targeting and then to be able to help the audience experience that in a better way. That's what we're doing. So Marathon Jam has been a place for us to place this protocol and see it grow and to see it expand.

[00:14:31] But it also has provided us with a lens of observing how people work with it, both as professionals, but as caregivers, also as veterans, first responders. So this is a way for us to now take that protocol even further. So NOLATIF's idea in their conferences is to look at things in a way you've never looked at it before,

[00:14:55] present that material, and then bring it together with people from around the world and together see what else you can create. So this program really has had such an incredible life. Along with it came six Ts and a whole set of coasters, and so artwork went with it. And this means that it was carefully designed with supports that have intention, with a way to regulate, to have co-regulation.

[00:15:24] We included movement, musical entrainment, emotional release, integration, and restoration. Now these elements are sequenced intentionally, so the experience becomes more than enjoyable. It is therapeutic. It is restorative. It becomes a way for the body to experience safety expression and reorganization. And it's supported and it has meaning all the way through the day.

[00:15:52] And this is one of the great invitations of the work for you, to understand that healing is not simply about what we know, it's about what we experience and how we create the space for that experience to be expanded. So let's move from that because that's going to continue to grow and you'll hear more about that as that comes around towards the end of the season. But let's go into another section.

[00:16:23] This is the formula for moving forward. One of the things I continue to return to with my work is the importance of following a very supportive formula. Now we have the Unwinding Trauma one, and it's based also on this one, which is embedded in there. Healing does not happen because we just try harder. We definitely won't want to try harder. We're already probably working too hard. And for many of us, that's 150%.

[00:16:49] And when you have a trauma or you have an injury, you need to back up to 40% effort so that the body doesn't feel like it's always being attacked. It has an opportunity to relax into healing. So this happens when we create the right conditions. When we understand there's a sequence, when we support the systems, when we listen to the body, when we create conditions of coherence. And that's the difference between effort and outcome.

[00:17:19] A supportive healing formula that allows us to move forward with more clarity, with less depletion. That's really important. Greater regulation, stronger recovery, more sustainable well-being. And that's one of the most important shifts we can make, moving from effort-based living to coherence-based living. So you will hear me talk about, in many episodes, the bioenergetic wellness formula.

[00:17:49] In Season 5, I opened Episode 1, explaining that formula. And you can also find videos on my YouTube channel, which explore it in depth. So please take the time if that's, you want to make sure that that's embedded in your day. Go and learn about it. Find out how those pieces came out of my dissertation work. And how the research showed how important those pieces are. Okay.

[00:18:16] Let's move to neuroarts. This was an exciting part of this last year. Oh, my goodness. In one year, we went from a music and movement program with unwinding trauma into adding some intuitive art and some photographs of nature. That led us to movement and music. We had two different programs we run.

[00:18:45] The first one was with the unwinding trauma protocols in its background. And the second one was looking at the research I did around the spine, the spiritual essence and the emotions that are linked to different parts of the spine, but which are also linked to organ systems and muscles. So that's a deep dive that we did. But we didn't just stay with the structure of the physical body. We actually went into neuroarts.

[00:19:13] We went into having Marian Egan's work with painting what she intuitively felt about the session as she was listening to Colin's music. Or we also had Donna Hutchinson and Brenda Bowen Cox on heart. And between those three musicians, we had some incredible opportunities with music. And then we had the different movements patterns that we were working with as well.

[00:19:40] I wanted to bring this forward because we didn't know that's where we were heading. Unwinding trauma had included that neuroarts piece, but it started to expand. And as the year progressed, it just got stronger and stronger. And we knew we were on the right path. And we knew that we needed to continue to add and advance those pieces.

[00:20:04] So this understanding of how neuroarts really supports our healing process means that we have more ways with less effort for you because you can engage with nature. You can engage with music. You can engage with the art. And then we developed fables. We went into some explanations, some journal prompts.

[00:20:29] We have some writings from Tanya Levy who did all of the photography for us and helped us to link to nature. It just was so exciting to watch this whole piece unfold. As we've gone through that, we've realized people want to be well. And they are involved in these different aspects, maybe just one or two.

[00:20:56] But when we bring a kind of a blanket around you that encompass all of that, you can pull the nuggets that you want to yourself. And then you can use that to continue to support you on your journey of well-being. So we have the movement and music program. There's two of them, plus the Symphony of Radiance, which expanded everything even further.

[00:21:22] All of which you can find in my shop at thegreenwellcenter.com. And if you just go into the shop, look at events, there's listed there. That will connect you up to the on-demand programs that we have. These resources are designed to help you continue working beyond the moment of inspiration and get you into practical, sustainable integration with insights that are so important for your growth

[00:21:51] and integration that helps you change your life. I'm going to drink to that and seal that. Okay, let's look ahead from there. As we open Season 6, we're also planting seeds for what's to come. We will be exploring some extraordinary bioenergetic wellness approaches that offer a different lens on healing.

[00:22:19] We're rooted in the science of biophysics and the energetic relationships between emotions, the body, movement, and well-being. You'll see conversations which are going to explore PTSD, migraines, mental health challenges, dementia, chronic pain, nervous system deregulation, and emotional well-being. This is all through a lens that moves beyond a purely biochemical model,

[00:22:48] which is how we usually look at wellness, and we've moved it over to the biophysical. And this isn't replacing one model for another. It's just expanding the lens that we can look to, and it's allowing us to ask deeper questions and explore more opportunities for you to be able to bring into your day with ease and joy. It's a way for us to understand the body as an energetic, intelligent, responsive system with profound healing capacity.

[00:23:17] And remember, every episode that you listen to, I've already opened it up that every interaction I have is a healing interaction, and I'm so grateful you've come along to listen. For those of you who want to learn more about movement programs that I offer, we have just released an on-demand program with Muscle Tuners International. So muscletuners.ca slash MMP.

[00:23:46] And this is called Movement Mastery Program. We've created four deep modules to reveal, but Module 1 is the one just released, which provides you with a great start at assessing, gaining awareness, and developing basic movement skills and knowledge to begin transforming your days and your activities. And you can enjoy this basic program or develop deeper insights with our intermediate and academic levels,

[00:24:15] which include readings, background resources, exams, and written assignments. It's truly a great way to really change who you are and what you want out of life, a step forward with movement, posture, mental clarity, and purpose. So if that's something that appeals to you, you can read more about that on my website, greenwellcenter.com slash movement. And that'll give you some of the insight, but also introduce you to a wonderful colleague

[00:24:44] I've known for a really long time, Denise Cambiotti. And it has been such a joy to be able to work on this project with her. So the closing reflection, let's come back to you and what you've received from listening today. As we begin this season six, I invite you to consider this. What if healing is not about doing more?

[00:25:09] What if healing is about creating better conditions for the body to do what it already knows how to do? What if resilience isn't endurance? What if resilience is restoration? And what becomes possible when we begin to support ourselves in this way? As you return to your tea, let's take one more sip.

[00:25:37] With every sip, I absorb the radiant vitality of nature's diamonds. Let this be your invitation into the season, a season of unwinding, a season of restoration, a season of resilience, a season of radiant well-being. Thank you for joining me for this opening of the season.

[00:26:04] I hope you enjoy what we're bringing out of the vault and the many conversations and wonderful people who've come along to support me in the podcast by sharing their expertise, their experience, and their passion for helping others to be well. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here, for celebrating my diamonds and my 60th birthday.

[00:26:32] Thank you so much for being a part of the podcast in the past. I look forward to sharing so much more with you in the future. And until next time, be well. Take care, everyone. Thank you for listening to Be Well with Dr. Michelle Greenwell. There are a couple of resources I want to just point out. When you go to the website greenwellcenter.com, you'll have a pop-up window.

[00:27:01] That pop-up gives you the top eight easy stress releasers that you can use every day. That's something you can put beside your computer, the bathroom mirror, beside the bedside table. A great resource. Also, my YouTube channel. It is full of playlists with all kinds of different ways that you can activate energy and bring vitality into your day. You can find that when you go to YouTube at Michelle Greenwell.

[00:27:29] And last, if you're a Linktree person, Linktree, L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash Greenwell Centre. That has all my resources in one spot. Those are for intricate little things that you can't get everywhere. And it's a wonderful way for me to be able to share all the different aspects of the kind of work I do. So thank you for listening. Be sure to drink that tea.

[00:27:57] And if you want to have the tea blend that was shared in the podcast today, then be sure to check out kbrettontea.ca. Have a wonderful day.